Don't be poor, disabled, sick or elderly . .

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/apr/19/rishi-sunak-sicknote-culture-welfare-reform-post-office-horizon-conservatives-labour-uk-politics-lastest-updates

So this is a big part of the next Tory strategy to get elected.

I hope the buggers don't get in

@MushMonster what a great post.

I suggest Rishi recommends therapy for anybody earning over £150k who doesn't want to pay their taxes. You only need so much money and it is a mental health issue in my opinion to hoard it in the billions and trillions. It's insane. It's like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have committed to giving away the majority of their wealth, but its not happening significantly until they are dead! Why, why do you need to be dead. Give it now and see the improvements you can make to society whilst you're alive!

Do these rich people read the rich lists and decide to hoard their wealth because they want to prove they die richer than X person. Get them some therapy.

@HeBeaverandSheBeaver
Thanks for your post.
That is exactly what I mean. Thanks God you can go private when you need it, but it should not be so, at all.

69 billion on sickness and disability payment is an awful lot of money ! And set to rise hugely in the next 5-10 years.

Yes and if it was a case of simply ‘tax the corporations then we could have everything we want’ why isn’t that Labour’s position? Why have they sacked off the their most expensive policies due to affordability? Nobody ever answers this.

Agreed.

Nigel Edwards has an excellent set of posts about insurance models in other countries vs. the NHS single payer system.

Through the looking glass: myths and magical thinking about the NHSA series of short articles looking at common critiques of the NHS and why they're mistaken.

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/comment-series/through-the-looking-glass-myths-and-magical-thinking-about-the-nhs

Because the very intelligent economists have tangled things like our pensions to corporation exorbitated profits. Pensions used to be money coming into the nation's treasury. Now a % of it goes to private funds.
Much of the basic intraestructure of UK and many other countries is private, so we depend on the finantial performance of said private companies. To the ridiculous point that they report recotd high profits while we are in the middle of a cost of live crisis.
Governments have lost leverage because they no longer control a large portion of their own economy, corporations do.
And banks, with the liberal system.
There are many good things with capitalism, but it needs some control. To push money flow one way or the other when a healthy balance is breached.
No one needs massive stashes of cash offshore. It is fair that investors can afford a really good life: they work hard, are good at what they do, their work generates jobs. But no one really need 1 or 2 millions in wages.
Now, to regain some control on the overall economics will take a coalition of worldwide superb leaders. Let's hope we do get it.
At present, we have a bunch that are fixated with investing in the arms and the use of arms business.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/millionaires-more-wealth-tax-davos-b2479863.html

See, things like above are happening. Experts in economy, wealthy people can see this.
It is not really, for me, to get peole to pay more tax, but to get what we pay for. We pay for services, but we are not getting them!
More cuts cuts cuts cuts = fucked up economy, long term damage

By the way, let's imagine an employee that had an accident and can no longer work. They will not get millions, they get barely enough to live. So it is not really money taken out of the economy, is it? It will move to buy food, pay bills, some clothing, some local business. These activities do generate wages, so taxes get back to the system.

Let's give someone 2 million bonus. What will they do with it? Spend it in UK? Or will they put a good part of it in a low tax paying account somewhere? If the somewhere is not UK, well that much money is out of the UK economy for good!

So the Tories want to get people off benefits and into work, so they're going to introduce measures to do so, including cutting people off after 12 months.

They're also going to do this: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/21/help-disabled-people-england-wales-jobs-axed-benefits-crackdown

You couldn't make it up. Honestly, my brain just exploded.

And seemingly replacing it (eventually - seems to be delayed until after an election) with something with a much smaller scope.
How ridiculous.

It's beyond parody.

Not that there's anything funny about it.

OP there is so much to say, but mostly this whole pissing on the most vulnerable makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. Especially when a lot of it is down to policies. The increasing tolerance for vile rhetoric, particularly since the last election is absolutely vile. The amount of money pissed up the wall on corruption, the amount lost to fraud and tax evasion, the increasing chasm between rich and poor, the time and money spent on deferring or defending the indefensible - all of which are subsidised by the taxpayer, but no, we can afford that, but let's tell desperate Mrs ABC that she's faking.

The safety net on offer already looks like you have to walk over hot coals with broken feet to reach it and when you get there, it is broken. Many (but apparently not enough) have died trying to access it. It is so fucked up.

I'm not on benefits or below the poverty line btw - not that that should make a difference to what I said, but for some, it clearly does.

I get so frustrated when I hear people mouthing off against the poor, disabled, and other vulnerable groups of people, blaming them for the country's woes because Rishi or whatever Tory minister said so. People who are least in a position to stick up for themselves.

As you say, they conveniently forget the millionaires and corporations avoiding tax. Didn't Rishi's wife allegedly end up paying £10m after being outed for taking advantage of some loophole?

But people believe it. What I am reading about the amazing carers being persecuted too disgusts me. They save the country money but some are too scared to claim what they are entitled to .. These people save the country millions.

For the people who agree with Rishi - it could be you going through this one day xxx

Agree. Also many more people now that are fed up with these tyrants, manipulative, corrupt and lying shits even more!

@MushMonster you are not wrong and, in fact are entirely right. But ideology has the hold so you will not be believed. At some points in history the ideological overrides the objective due to power. Power is never exercised for the common good so it doesn't end well.

I think we have all forgotten or never experienced in our lifetimes that existential threats are hugely profitable and that it is hard to give up those profits even if they are meaningless to the public good but only increase wealth of the minority. The pandemic heralded a huge shift of wealth. The only way to sustain 'growth' is through austerity or war.

Surely there is a better way.

UK: [raises state pension age]

'The working population are now on the sick'

UK: [shocked Pikachu face]

It’s the other way round.

Too many people off sick leads to an increase of pension age.

Exactly that. It should have been obvious that people in manual occupations would fare badly with raising state pension age.

The Tories have had 14 years to sort this out, if it's truly as bad as they tell us, then why wait until now to sort it out?
Isn't it incompetence to have allowed this situation to get so bad that it threatens to take us all down?

Or could it be a load of complete bollocks designed to froth up those who get their knowledge of the benefits system from channel 5 'benefits street' programmes and assumptions about those around them and stereotypes?

I have been accused of being on sickness benefits when there's nothing wrong with me because I was in bed all day, was seen in my nightclothes during the day, live in social housing and oh, was a single mum. I bet the DWP were quite confused when I was reported for this benefit fraud, considering I worked permanent nights and didn't claim anything from them. Oh but these people knew, for a fact.

And the reason that so many people are sick?
A non functional health system, a global pandemic, increasing retirement age and a cost of living crisis. That and the fact that so many companies are allowed to ride roughshod over their staff, expect ridiculous workloads, provide shit conditions and pay and then wonder why people can't cope. While they make millions in profits.

But no, it's all the fault of low income people in the country, couldn't possibly be a result of the decisions by the people running it for 14 years!

I voted for Cameron as thought Tories would be more fiscally responsible. I didn't think austerity would go as far as it did. Regretting my decision and the absolute shitshow that followed won't help you, but I am sorry.

because from what PP's have said and the number of successful appeals, even if you are very deserving, it's very hard to get. It doesn't sound like 'support' - it sounds like begging. I also don't believe that if the tiny minority who are fraudulently claiming suddenly decided not to, that the money would go to those who deserve it but have been denied. Reports in the public domain show how cruel the process is and that it's led to a number of deaths. That's prior to other new and massive costs like Brexit, pandemic corruption, a new virus highly impacting sickness levels, the cost of long covid which could have been reduced with mitigations so that fewer were lost to the workforce, abortive costs of HS2 etc etc.

The system is downright abusive and has been shown by research to create mental health problems where they didn't exist before and exacerbate existing ones. Many, many, many people have died as a result of DWP policies. There are hundreds of articles on this on disabilitynewsservice dot com

And how much is wasted on these assessments, tribunals and reassessing people?

Sunak wants to starve our own citizens, but he doesn't seem to mind spending millions on housing illegal immigrants. Surely there is a law that prevents him leaving mentally ill people or any of our citizens homeless and destitute. In the past there have been cases of people starving to death because of their benefits being cut.

I wonder when they'll bring back the workhouse.... Its an indication of how civilised a society is in the way they treat the vulnerable.

They impose illegal lockdowns on us and then wonder why mental illness has gone up.