To think we need to prioritise defence/Ukraine spending?

[Wildflowers99]

I’ll admit I had no idea how depleted our military has become until a few weeks ago. I was absolutely staggered to read we now spend more on PIP and DLA than our entire military.

I feel like slowly all of our public spending has been funnelled into health, benefits and social care, leaving everything else in a very poor state. Any time anyone has suggested spending money on anything apart from ‘freezing pensioners, the homeless or disabled’ they get shouted down (I am disabled btw, so I do understand the need).

AIBU to think we need to urgently address our spending priorities and as a nation wake up to the fact we’ve been overspending on the above for too long?

I think routine, human interaction and a sense of accomplishment is what a lot of people desperately need. I don’t want to be that person but I think work would in many cases would be good for their MH. The issue is so many people have been on benefits for years that they have no skills any more - I think local councils should run (for example) 3 month courses in admin, hospitality, that sort of thing. They can then give a reference at the end as to whether the person was punctual, engaged and how well they did. If they refuse to turn up or have low attendance, they should be financially penalised.

There can’t be a safety net for absolutely everything. We’ve taken that approach and it’s slowly leading us to a place where the economy teeters on the brink due to a dwindling pool of taxpayers and a population with a complex web of very expensive needs.

People who are severely disabled and this is clearly for life (ie somebody with Downs or a child who is non verbal and autistic) should receive benefits which are not reviewed, because it’s pointless and stressful to review them.

There’s only 2 directions of travel and that’s to either carry on and we eventually become a country where basically everything is run on a shoestring bar the welfare bill, or we reduce/control the welfare bill and that can’t be by continuing to pay the amount we do to the numbers who are claiming.
What are the alternatives? I would be genuinely interested to hear. I anticipate more attacks on me as a person though. I can’t think of anything else that can be cut at this point.
Yes, people don't seem to get it - the nhs is not coping at present but somehow piling on more ill people rather than fixing the ill people and sending them to work, or making it less lucrative not to work is less desirable than retaining the status quo.

What is also happening is the huge surges in recruitment (remember those good times) in the NHS, police in the 1970s are all retiring and claiming their pensions - which, as we all live longer, will have to be honoured for decades to come (that's not counting the Civil Servants) So extra funding for the NHS going forward is going to go in pensions mainly. Doctors too.

Can you imagine the outcry if the Gov ?Nhs tried to renege on that. That's not going to happen.

Using the Armed forces as a driver - this is the once chance the Gov have of slashing welfare or pensions and the Labour and Cons voting together to make that change. Could they for once in 30 years actually show some backbone.

Coming at it from a naive perspective, but - shouldn't it be possible to build up a defence industry in such a way that helps the economy and actually boosts resources available for disability benefits? E.g. Britain creates more armaments, which means jobs, and sells some abroad as well as building up its own armed forces.

At any rate, for whatever reason we've made ourselves dependent on America (eg making aircraft carriers that only work with American made planes etc). That has to stop.

That is happening - Starmer has announced we will be making 1.6bn of LMM missiles in Belfast, which was a master stroke. Hopefully more projects in this area, but we also need to be able to spend on our own defence and that comes from the core budget. You can’t run the military as an investment project.

If we need more money quickly, the answer would be a tax rise.

Imagine if we were actually at war, and needed a rapid rise in armaments spending. The answer would not be to leave taxes in place, and cast millions of vulnerable people into extreme poverty. That would cause social problems and loss of morale just at the time we all needed to pull together as a nation.

We can’t rise tax as quickly as the welfare bill is rising, that’s the problem. We’re not talking about a large but stable spend. It’s projected to be £100 billion on disability alone by 2030. To put it into context, it’s 64bn now. Do we just keeping raising taxes forever to meet it? This isn’t a war situation, it’s an area of spending that is consistent and will be there forever.

No. The war should end. Did you say the same about other wars or just this one?

Have you dropped Putin a note to let him know?

We can’t rise tax as quickly as the welfare bill is rising

But if we don't provide care, the social cost would be enormous.

There would be people falling ill and unable to work due to a lack of health care.

There would be people unable to work because they suddenly had full care responsibility for vulnerable relatives.

There would be a dramatic rise in crime as desperate people turned to alternative sources of income.

If it did come to a draft, recruits might not be as physically fit to fight. One of the driving forces behind introducing better social care was when the country's leaders saw how poverty had weakened the nation. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46118040 - "World War One had shown up the lamentable health and education of some conscripts, and the government had to act to remedy that."

This is a very simplistic solution to what is often a complex problem.
You appear to be looking at this solely from the point of view that the person with MH disabilities is choosing the path of least resistance, ie they are choosing not to work because they somehow lack the discipline or resilience to work, hence your comment that if they refused to turn up or engage on a 3 month course, they'd be financially penalised.

Your posts strongly suggest these people are choosing not to work because they don't want to, rather than that they can't.

Whilst there may be some people who choose not to work, I think they are probably in the minority and it's foolish to lump all people with MH disabilities into the 'wont' work category, rather than the 'cant' work.

I don't have extensive knowledge on all MH disabilities, however even I can see that in order to find work for people with MH problems that render them disabled, you would need to match them with employers who would employ them. How do you propose to encourage employers to offer work to people who cannot even cope with basic functions? People who cannot keep themselves safe without supervision? People who cannot remain calm under any perceived pressure? Even the pressure of interacting with people or focusing on a set task? People who are already highly medicated in order to function at a basic level? People who react in any number of inappropriate ways when they are put under the pressure of work related performance? This is just a small example.
Many people with MH issues can lash out when they feel under pressure. Many people with MH issues will internalise their frustration and attack themselves.
It is common for these people to get enormously overwhelmed with what you would consider simple tasks, such as washing themselves, brushing their teeth, getting dressed and leaving their homes. Many of them suffer extreme levels of overwhelm speaking on the phone or writing emails, as well as speaking in person to people.
It is the age old adage of 'I can't see your disability at first glance, so I don't believe it is a disability and you are exaggerating it to avoid doing what everyone else has to do.'
Historically, this doubting attitude has always affected people with any disability that can't easily be seen by everyone they come across and it's wrong to dismiss a person's difficulties based on whether you can see them or not, unless you are qualified to make that judgement.

Would you employ people with severe MH issues?
Why aren't you questioning the qualified professionals who are supporting these people? Why only question the disabled people?

If lots of people misunderstand what you've said, that probably means it wasn't clear. Tone is tricky online.

With regards improving the overall health of the nation, one thing I have seen suggested is that “Sport” should be moved out of the oversight of “DCMS” and moved into the brief of “Health”. Apparently several other European countries do this and it means that sport/exercise becomes part of the tool box in preventative health measures rather than being seen simply as a leisure activity for some.

But that is a slightly different argument to the one before. 2 issues being conflated:

1. we need to increase defense spending to keep ourselves safe
2. Disability payments are rising

Maybe problem 1 could be funded with tax rises. Or funded by a variety of things. Maybe problem 2 couldn't. Of course the two are linked because they both come out of the government budget. But it seems a bit like some people are using the need to raise defense spending as a reason to cut benefits when really they want to cut benefits for other reasons (which may be practical or ideological). But you can't say "because increasing taxes to pay for benefits won't work longtime therefore we can never raise taxes to pay for defense or anything else ever."

This is also where the dreaded DEI clashes with concerns around benefits. Some disabled people could work if given the chance/reasonable adjustments but many employers would, if given the choice between 2 otherwise identical candidates one of whom is in a wheelchair/was out of work for a year due to a breakdown and one of whom was 100% healthy would always choose the healthy worker. You could alleviate that by encouraging (or requiring) employers to hire or just interview a % of qualified candidates with disabilities etc. But the same people who object to benefits payments because it encourages people not to work, are often the same people who object on principle to anything that helps people into work.

But... therapy for PTSD absolutely can help. It isn't a silver bullet but we know a lot about PTSD and similar issues. The sooner people receive treatment the easier they are to treat and help back into work. If we made everyone wait over a year to have their broken arms/legs fixed (if at all) you would find many people who never fully recovered from breaking their arm. You couldn't then say "clearly fixing broken bones is just throwing money at the problem."

There are no ideological reasons that I want to cut benefits other than the eye watering cost and the knock on effect on wider society and other services. I couldn’t care less what other people do if it doesn’t significantly affect my life, I make my choices and they make theirs. But we’ve reached a point now where everything else has been slowly defunded to pay for benefits and that has bitten us on the arse in a spectacular fashion with Ukraine. I resent that after paying tax since 19, there is currently no adequate military to protect us now we desperately need it. Even getting the spending up to 2.5% is a struggle.

Because breaking an arm is completely different.

To cut benefits you need gov to approve it - the gov might vote in favour if they have to increase military spending other wise you get the party in Gov wanting to reduce spending and the opposing party being ‘kind’ and voting against benefit cuts to gain votes -which is the case for the last 20 years. The opposition votes against the Gov.
the opposition want votes …. so nothing happens and we the public are all happy as -oh well they can borrow more and dump it on future generations.

This can not be a serious suggestion. It is almost like you are saying that people who use scooters/wheelchairs are doing so because they simply can't be arsed to walk. Or being able to walk will mean that someone is then fit to work...

Not lots of people, one person mis understood then the usual happened a few jumped in, they apologised after I cleared it up, you just continued to be mean for no reason.

I just despair. I don’t want my kids lumped with the dual burden of paralysing welfare state plus pensions. How the hell will they even do it? We’re storing up massive problems for the future and everyone is desperately putting their fingers in their ears because it’s ‘mean’ to point out the problem.

I don’t think people unable to walk should be summoned for exercise. No.

I think public services have been an interesting experiment in what people will do if there is a safety net to catch them (or several). I read a book about workhouses a few weeks ago (Jennifer Worth from Call the Midwife series), and it was absolutely awful - mums being separated from their toddlers who then usually died a few months later of mistreatment, open sewers, just so much suffering that it’s hard to put into words. I probably spent a good couple of hours in tears after reading the book as it was so incredibly harrowing and I agree we can never, ever go back to that again. The welfare state is essential and I’ve always been happy to contribute to it.

But is it now doing people more harm than good? Has removing that little bit of pressure and individual responsibility resulted in people letting their physical or mental health degrade as there will always be somebody to pick up after them? I think it has, to a certain extent.

There are a huge number of relatively young (40s-70s) people round here who use mobility scooters, they are not very frail nor are they paraplegic. They’re usually very overweight and smoking/vaping as they go. At some point these people stopped working, and as the years have gone by benefits have enabled them to journey further and further into poor health as they have all day to smoke/drink/eat, and their skills have declined to the point you look at them and just see a virtually unemployable person. What would’ve happened had they stayed in work? They’d probably be much better off than they are now. Benefits for many seem entirely counterproductive.

There is a lot of probably unhelpful trends in mental health care to pathologise everything. Ironically this is a much bigger problem in countries with privatized/profit driven health care systems as the healthcare goes where the money is not where the problems are (so you get lots of wealthy people having weekly therapy their whole lives about noting much while schitzophrenic people roam the NY subway with no treatment).

But - PTSD is real. Treatment for PTSD has real, measurable outcomes: Long-term outcomes of psychological treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis - PubMed
12-month follow-up of intensive outpatient treatment for PTSD combining prolonged exposure therapy, EMDR and physical activity | BMC Psychiatry | Full Text
People that suffer very traumatising events (murder attempts, having someone jump in front of the train they are driving, rape) can go on to have PTSD which impacts their ability to work and function in normal society. This isn't a new thing. Shell shock post WW1 was known about and thats when treatments started to be developed (many counterprodctive). During WW1 some people were put before the firing squad - if it was something they could have snapped out of they would have done before it reached that point! My grandad h a teacher who used to leap under the table when someone
Just as with breaking an arm - not getting timely treatment will mean less people are able to work than getting timely treatment.
Likewise, some disorders like depression, anxiety etc are also real and treatments also exist for them (they don't always work and it isn't 1 size fits all). Not treating those things means less productivity (people working) than treating those things.
Yes also some people probably suffer from too much introspection, and maybe thinking they have MH issues is actively harmful for them.

But you seem really panicked about the possibility of too many people on sickness benefits swamping our welfare state, but completely resistant to any practical ways of solving the problem. Basically, treating ill people = less ill people. Not treating ill people= more ill people (unless they die but even then there is an extended period of malingering).

Of course I’m panicked, the stats are extremely alarming. This issue will literally ruin the economy in about 10 years, if there isn’t a sharp reverse. A reverse which nobody wants apparently, because it’s mean and we should instead fund everything via removal of the Parliament bar.

There are no practical ways of solving this. There are a handful of nebulous conditions which are dominating disability benefits. And they’re not conditions that can be grasped in any way, therefore a solution is basically impossible. I’m all for extra MH services but the cuts should be made first to fund them. Because ultimately we can’t gamble on the fact it will make a real difference. I think people would likely have their therapy and still say they are unable to work, after thousands has been spent on it.

One problem was not funding the development of the regions. Where I live there are people gaming the system - but how can they be ordered back to work if there are no jobs.