The cutbacks are also affecting the IB figures, because one of the things being cut year on year is social care.
See, it's all very well for the 'expert' to come out with statements like "if you can push a button, you can work". But if you can't wash or dress yourself in the morning, and there's no one available to help you, then your colleagues at the button-pushing plant might start to object to your stinky, pyjama-clad presence. Assuming you got past interview in the first place.
The new IB hoops will be no trouble at all for the workshy able-bodied to jump through. People genuinely struggling with incapacitating conditions will probably have more difficulty with the hoop-jumping, because they're, you know, incapacitated by their conditions. Who's going to lose out in that scenario?
And finally, whatever Panorama shows will be based on making 'good telly'. It's in their interests to show the dodgiest long-term scroungers vs the most undoubtedly severely disabled no-one-can-deny genuine cases. The middle ground - disabled people who can work, but not full time; disabled people who could work but only if they had the help, equipment or adjustment they needed; disabled people whose conditions are only stable as long as they are very careful about the efforts they make - well, they're complicated, and just not entertaining enough.
I wish those with an axe to grind would stop perpetuating the myth that "people now only have their rubbish collected fortnightly". Are things like paper, plastic and cardboard which are typically collected on alternate weeks to the non recyclable waste not 'rubbish'? If not, why are people disposing of them?
Presumably the people like you who say "people now only have their rubbish collected fortnightly" are making some use of these things and therefore do not throw them away. Please elighten the rest of us who are too short sighted to see what uses these things may be put to about the house.
Matt Kelly's comment fails to acknowledge that persihable rubbish IS only collected fortnightly. The inevitable problems associated with such stuff, particularly in the summer, are well known but simply ignored by local authorities. Until they get embroiled in a serious breach of public health, that is. We really are going backwards in terms of service provision.
One question how many people are on IB today and how many were in 1946 (after a rather big war). The answer should be a lot less now.
Our council spends its annual road repair budget on spray cans of white paint. They mark out all the big, deep holes in year 1. In year 2 they spend the budget on ashphalt which they use to fill the big deep holes. Unfortunately the little holes have now become big holes, so in year three they use the budget on spray paint. They mark all the big holes. This takes all year. In year 4 they buy some ashphalt and fill in all the big holes.
Unfortunately, all the holes that were repaired in year 2 have opened up again.......
I have to disagree with Altonian. Where I live, we have weekly collections still. The only diffrence is that so-called "perishable" waste is collected on alternate weeks to "recyclable" waste, ie paper, cardboard, glass and plastics. There is no problem in this provided that food waste is wrapped up or, better still, placed in a compost bin in the garden. The great advantage for me is that I no longer have to take recyclable waste to the nearest supermarket recycling centre.
George Orwell: Why on earth should less people be on IB today than in 1946?
An illness or injury that would have killed you within a month in 1946, these days, thanks to medical advances, will "merely" leave you disabled. For life. And you will be kept alive longer.
Those 'miracle babies', saved by the wonders of modern medicine? So cute, so inspiring, they wouldn't have survived ten years ago, the surgery and treatments are expensive, but what price a child's life...? get 18 years down the line and they're IB claimants, and quite possibly will be for the rest of their lives.
Mary,
The Panorama program (which I thought was quite reasonable) pointed out that studies show that work improves mental and physical health. I am no 'benefit basher', and I have a lot of sympathy with people with little hope who choose a life on benefits because they are incentivised to do so. They are in a dependency trap created by the welfare state.
You might also like to ponder on the fact that, as a a proportion of the population, we have about three times the number of people on sickness benefits than they have in France and Germany. Adding IB benefits to unemployment benefits reveals that we are doing no better than those countries when it comes to unemployment, contrary to government spin.
And can we have less about the 'wonders of modern medicine' as a factor please? Marvellous though some modern treatments are, all the evidence is that the biggest influences on health are sanitation, housing, diet and exercise (and whether or not you smoke) and some relatively cheap and simple medical treatments. Modern medicine and the amount you spend on it have relatively little influence on health or life expectancy as many international studies have shown (on average, people consume half their lifetime medical spend in their last 2 years of life - so clearly all this spend doesn't materially change or delay the outcome). If medicine has such a big effect, why do we have so many IB claimants? Why can't the medics fix these people?
"I have a lot of sympathy with people with little hope who choose a life on benefits because they are incentivised to do so."
I'm not asking you to sympathise with anyone who chooses to claim benefit. I'm asking for fair treatment to those who are not in a position to make any such choice. When I got sick and went onto IB, I certainly wasn't 'choosing' to give up my comfortable wage and rewarding job, for a poverty-level income from a system that treats every claimant like a lazy fraudster, a piece of workshy scum looking to scrounge off superior members of society...
I agree about the benefits trap though. I would not have been able to get off IB and back into work if it had not been for a dramatic change in my circumstances (not my condition) which meant I suddenly had all the help with essential personal care and essential household tasks that I needed.
Mary,
You are missing the point I was making. Nobody (least of all me) is advocating penalising those that, through no fault of their own, are medically unfit to work. In fact, I think that most of us would like them to be treated a lot better but this is going to be very difficult while we have so people on IB - they money just isn't there.
Neither am I having a go at people 'choosing' to claim IB. Indeed, many do so because, even though they may be medically fit to work, IB is still their only choice. Other benefits are lower and are often time limited - and these people need to survive. If decently paid work isn't available and if they get poorly paid work, they are taxed and lose benefits (especially housing benefit) at such a frightening rate that they often find themselves no better or worse off. Who can blame them - they need to survive, but then their habits become entrenched. It is no coincidence that two thirds of IB claimants have no educational qualifications.
This problem is created by the workings of the welfare state and these people are largely victims of it, more than they are exploiters of it.
The solution is better incentives (through removal of income tax and employers and employees NI) and a more locally run welfare 'system' rather than the impersonal government one we currently have.
You might like to try counting public ice-rinks too.
Same thing is happening to them.
Same considerations apply - yes we know they are expensive items, but we've paid the bloody money, many times over, so why are they closing?
(Actually I know the answer - it's so that the hordes can keep their retirement at 60 and their gold-plated pensions, their "company" cars, their nice offices, laptops, etc. But that doesn't really cut the mustard, does it?)
Matt K-
Yes we do have an alternating weekly bin collection as you suggest. And to be honest with you, we have had no problems with the new system. And as someone else says, it does mean we no longer have to go to the recycling tip.
But we are a TWO PERSON household - we used to produce much more rubblish when we had kids here.
And personally I AM concerned about the public health issues in cities and towns where the council supplied wheelie bins may well be insufficient to hold two weeks worth of rotting rubbish safely.
Time will tell I guess.
Mary-
Like HJ, I ceratinly do not want to see welfare support for the genuinely incapacitated stopped ( as it happens, one of my brothers was recently diagnosed with MS - although he's still working full-time from a motorised scooter).
But everyone who's looked at this in detail reckons many - even most - of those drawing IB could do some kind of work. The problem is our welfare system draws them onto benefits and then keeps them there.
I've blogged about this several times, and I'll do another.
I know... and I would like to apologise. I was stressed-out and angry about other stuff yesterday and I should have been less ranty.
I think it mostly bugs me because every time the Sun et al go on about dodgy Incap claims, it's people like me who get it in the shorts from armchair doctors who think that if you're not paralysed and dribbling, you're not disabled.
You know I work. You know I do a crap job for crap money. I am neither lazy nor greedy.
But I could only work once my personal care needs were taken care of (things like helping with preparing food, showering and dressing). And the council/social services, who are supposed to provide assistance for such care needs, are just consistently cutting back and tightening the criteria and leaving people on waiting lists... this neglect is what kept me out of work and on IB for two and a half years. Within a month of living with someone who could help me with that stuff, bam, I was employed again.
No amount of restrictions on IB claims was going to give me the capacity to attend to my *essential* needs myself, and unless my essential needs were attended to, there was no way I could work. I am not unusual.
Mary,
You have put your finger on another aspect of the problem. Social Services and your local council are largely monopoly taxpayer-funded services. They already have your money and they look after their own needs and interests first. It would be better if these things were either locally run and funded or, even better, if you had control over your personal care budget and could spend it on whatever provider and provision you preferred - then they'd have to provide the service you need or you could go elsewhere.
Incidentally, one of the striking things under this government has been how increased taxes and charges have occurred at the same time as the cutbacks in provision of services that we used to take for granted. Northcote C. Parkinson wrote about this in 'Parkinson's Law' - bureaucracies tend to grow inexorably as the services they run are cut back. Why? Because their priority is their needs, not yours.
I have a wife and two kids, we never fill our 'perishables' bin, even though it's emptied every on alternate weeks. Our garage does tend to play host to several bags of recyclable rubbish over the same period though. I acknowledge that the alternate weekly collection of perishable waste may not work for everyone, in the house we used to live in before we had two children it wouldn't have been easy. It just gets on my nerves when people say that they no longer have weekly rubbish collections - they do it's just that the same sort of rubbish is not collected every week.
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