More Media Misinformation

The BBC over the last couple of days has been running stories about the Government's proposals, published today in a Green Paper, on abolishing Incapacity benefit, and replacing it with a new regime based on forcing sick people to go to work. It follows, ironically a period, during which many employers including the Government and Local Authorities, have been taking a much harder line on sickness by people actually in work, the new regulations in the Public Sector, for instance that have made it almost impossible to obtain retirement on the basis of ill-health, and the turn to simply sacking people for being off sick for too long.

The BBC reports have talked about people claiming Incapacity Benefit having to be seen by a doctor who is not their own GP. But, that gives the impression that that is not the case already, suggesting that people have been simply imposing on their personal relationship with their GP to get them to sign unwarranted sick notes. Firstly, of course that is a terrible slur on GP's, but secondly it simply isn't true. It has always, or at least for many, many years, been the case that if you claim Incapacity Benefit, then after a couple of months, you have to go to see a doctor appointed by the Department of Work and Pensions, in order to be assessed. They have a points based criteria of if you are sufficiently incapacitated to need Benefit. Not only that, but in addition to be seen in the interim by your GP, you have to go back to the DWP doctor at regular intervals to be re-assessed.

So yet again the capitalist media without actually telling lies, phrase things in a way that suggests that some people are getting something for nothing. No wonder you get people writing in like the idiot whose e-mail was read out on News 24, - who probably being lucky enough not yet to have suffered ill-health, and who has been lucky enough to get a well-paid job or leaches of the profit made by workers - who claimed that there were loads of lazy people living off his taxes, who should just be left to work or starve!!!

Of course, in another news story there were identified people who actually do get something for nothing. I'm not talking here about the parasites of the Royal Family who live on a dole of millions o pounds, and who live in luxurious Council houses for free,no I'm talking about the Directors of Network Rail, who were paid bonuses of around £200,000. Most people would be delighted to be paid that amount of money let alone get it just as a bonus!!! Even the highest rate of Incapacity Benefit is only £84.50 a week, the lowest rate £63.75. In other words that single £200,000 bonus is equivalent to all the Incapacity Benefit someone could receive in about 70 years!!!!! That's before we consider all of the billions of pounds that the rich squirrel away that they avoid paying in tax.

One of the features of modern life is the number of quangos that the Government has set up on the pretext of dealing with some of the problems of Sickness and Unemployment. Of course, each of these new organisations that appear and disappear over night like mushrooms, is headed by some bureaucrat on a whacking salary. My son who has recently started his own business after being made redundant has in recent weeks had to come into contact with many of them. One ridiculous thing was that if we lived about half a mile further South he would have been able to have received £72 a week for a year as part of starting a new business. As it is he gets nothing. One organisation he was pointed to, the Princes Trust, which it turns out was sponsored by the Abbey, effectively only wanted to get him to take out a loan!!!! After he was made redundant one piece of advice he was given by the dole was that he should buy a car!!! And they wonder why people have so much debt, and this from a Government that is supposed to be in favour of reducing reliance on the car.

There was another example, of this on the BBC coverage this morning. They had someone on from one of these quangos, I think it was called Worklink or something like that, he interviewer quite rightly asked the question in relation to proposals to make the unemployed work for their dole, if they would be paid the Minimum Wage, or was this effectively just a slave labour programme similar to those run in many totalitarian regimes. Of course, the interviewee didn't answer the question. But, if such schmes are introduced then it is up o the unions to ensure that nyone so employed is paid the Minimum Wage, or better still the Union Rate for whatever job is being undertaken.