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Losing benefit if you're an addict or obese

KeeperofDragons said:
And they're supposed to be looking for work as well, a friend works in the jobcentre and changes to the jobseekers benefit they're supposed to be looking for work 37 hours a week. Now how the he'll is anyone supposed to do that & community service at the same time - ready made excuse to sanction everyone :hmm::mad:
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I can't figure out how anyone is even supposed to look for work for 37 hours a week.

Ok, the first week, maybe. At push.
 
Good article in The Times(paywall) by the Spectators Isobel Hardman which basically savages this policy as a 'kite-flying exercise' to distract from the tax avoidance scandal, but also mentions it was in New Labours 2008 Welfare Reform Bill and yes, the odious Purnell floated it again in 2009.
 
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Isabel Hardman's Times article
Typical. They’re flying the fat people again

The easiest way for unscrupulous politicians to avoid a problem is to announce a ‘new’ policy to grab a quick headline

The seafront in Brighton and Hove is rather bracing at this time of the year, so perhaps David Cameron didn’t fancy popping down to enjoy the breeze when he visited yesterday. On a fine day, kites dip and bob over the beach huts. Some of them are professional-looking contraptions. Others are more of the “tuppence for paper and strings” variety that the Banks children fly at the end of Mary Poppins.

Mr Cameron was busy doing his own bit of kite-flying yesterday. Tucked inside a warm hall, the prime minister stood alongside Graham Cox, the Tory candidate for Hove, and pledged his support for plans to cut the benefits of people out of work because of obesity or addictions. He wanted Dame Carol Black to run a review on getting those “stuck in bad old habits” back into work. “And yes, that means looking at whether people should face the threat of a reduction in benefits if they refuse to engage with a recommended treatment plan,” he said, adding that though there were mental health issues that needed to be “handled carefully”, he didn’t want his party to “tip-toe around these issues any longer”.

The Tory leader didn’t want tip-toeing, he wanted kite-flying, the easiest way for a politician to distract from an awkward row. There Labour was, talking about tax avoidance and there the media was, talking about a ball where ministers had been up for auction to wealthy donors. And so along came the Tories, shouting “look over there at that exciting kite!” to distract everyone’s attention. Perhaps they sang Let’s Go Fly a Kite as they tied this exciting new policy together in Downing Street, skipping about with relief that they might move the political debate along a bit.

Constructing this policy kite must have been child’s play. Indeed, it only needed a few tweaks from the last time it fluttered about in the press. Consider this story from July 12, 2014: “Hundreds of thousands of benefit claimants face being stripped of their state allowances if they refuse to undergo treatment for anxiety and depression, under radical plans being drawn up by ministers.”

This week’s “radical plans” differ only in that they don’t include depressed benefit claimants, perhaps because the Tories realised that if you’re going to force people to attend treatment sessions for mental health problems, you might need to improve its very patchy provision.

Mind, the mental health charity, says that one in ten people waits longer than a year for a talking therapy. So the policy flopped back down to ground, and then six months later it went back up again. And even this announcement may not fly for very long: the review could still conclude that “bashing a boozer” isn’t quite the way to nurse someone out of a crippling alcohol dependency.

Still, the kite has flown many times before and could fly again. Plans to dock benefits for drug addicts and alcoholics who refused treatment first emerged in the Welfare Reform Bill in 2008, but Labour’s James Purnell re-announced them in 2009, only days after Damian McBride had resigned from the government for trying to smear members of the Opposition. Handy, that.

Kites have always been useful tools in times of trouble. Another cross-party favourite is the promise to “give priority on the council housing waiting list to local people”. You can always tell when an announcement is less to do with good policymaking and more to do with briefing Sunday newspaper journalists when the government press release describes it as “tough”, and sure enough, days after coming a miserable third in the Eastleigh by-election, the Tories rushed out “tough new housing rules to control immigration” which would “ensure that councils give priority to local people when allocating their social housing”.

The “local homes for local people” policy was so nice ministers announced it more than twice. Ed Miliband reeled out his own version on two occasions in 2011. Perhaps, though, the Labour leader and the Tories failed to notice that councils have been able to do this since 2009.

Of course, it doesn’t make much difference overall when you’re still shuffling people about on a list far bigger than the supply of social housing and when there certainly isn’t enough new housing of any tenure. But it is easier to announce “tough new rules” than upset voters by building the 250,000 homes a year that this country needs.

Why bother trying to solve big problems, such as a housing shortage, poor mental health care or a miserable lack of treatment for drug addictions and alcoholism, when you can go fly a little kite instead? Spin doctors of all parties seem to buy their kites from the same shop, announcing year after year the same policies on capping class sizes (©Tony Blair, 1997, David Cameron, April 2010, and Ed Miliband, February 2015), protecting homeowners who attack burglars in their properties (© the common law, Labour 2008, Ken Clarke, 2011, and Chris Grayling 2012 and 2013), and cracking down on tax avoidance to fund pleasant-sounding policies (© anyone working on fiscal policy for either main party since the money ran out).

You can shuffle people about on a housing waiting list, threaten mentally ill people, and reassure would-be burglar bashers all you like, but the problem with kites is they often don’t amount to much more than a bit of paper and strings. They belong on a beach or in Mary Poppins, not in a politician’s pre-election armoury.
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scifisam said:
Nah, that's just an extra link at the bottom of the page after it lists dietician as the first UK spelling. That doesn't mean dietitian is incorrect, of course. Both are fine.
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Not according to UK dietitians! I learnt this the hard way when working with them on tendering an enteral feeding contract. I'd used the US spelling, and they were really quite sensitive about it...!
 
scifisam said:
Volunteer work for under-18s is hard to get these days.
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is it? i wonder if that's area dependent. cause son was at a cats protection place over the summer and he's 16. a few hours cleaning pens and brushing older cats. then when they knew he was good with kittys, he got allowed in with the kittens to help socialise them. idk if they have a site near you, but might be worth a check. and he was only there one day a week over the summer.
 
toggle said:
is it? i wonder if that's area dependent. cause son was at a cats protection place over the summer and he's 16. a few hours cleaning pens and brushing older cats. then when they knew he was good with kittys, he got allowed in with the kittens to help socialise them. idk if they have a site near you, but might be worth a check. and he was only there one day a week over the summer.
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In London it very much is. I've tried all the cats' and dogs' homes and they all say no under-18s. There's a volunteer work coordinator at J's sixth form and she's come up against the same problem. It's a shame, because she'd be good at it and it'd give her a focus outside the house other than school.
 
scifisam said:
In London it very much is. I've tried all the cats' and dogs' homes and they all say no under-18s. There's a volunteer work coordinator at J's sixth form and she's come up against the same problem. It's a shame, because she'd be good at it and it'd give her a focus outside the house other than school.
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:(
 
toggle said:
is it? i wonder if that's area dependent. cause son was at a cats protection place over the summer and he's 16. a few hours cleaning pens and brushing older cats. then when they knew he was good with kittys, he got allowed in with the kittens to help socialise them. idk if they have a site near you, but might be worth a check. and he was only there one day a week over the summer.
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Your son sounds like a good un :)
 
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