Purnell: more attacks on the unemployed, etc

[_angel_]

What qualifications do Doctors have in assesing what work people can and cant do?

What qualifications did "you can't be sick if you're carrying a handbag" guy have? I reckon most doctors have a basic grounding in what someone with depression is meant to be feeling and not write them off as spongers because they don't * look * depressed. Let's face it, if a GP had said that there'd be good grounds to suspend/ discipline them.

 

[jiggajagga]

I do think though that if people are paying out benefits they should be involved in the process but there needs to be a proper appeals procedure.

...and meanwhile you have had your money stopped, the rent goes unpaid, the leccy cuts you off and you starve!!
Is this the kind of society you want in GB2008?

 

[_angel_]

...and meanwhile you have had your money stopped, the rent goes unpaid, the leccy cuts you off and you starve!!
Is this the kind of society you want in GB2008?

The person this happened to had to eventually move, over this cock up.

 

[jiggajagga]

The person this happened to had to eventually move, over this cock up.

Really really sad that! What are we becoming Angel? I fear for the young ones today and in the future. I really do.
Not the Balders of this world but the poorly educated, the ones who have had their aspirations knocked out of them by either bad parents, broken homes, bad employers, etc, etc.
I have 10 grandchildren Angel and I should envy them their futures but at this juncture in human selfishness I don't envy them, I fear for them.
If they are healthy and educated they will be fine but don't you dare fall ill or have misfortune in GB2008 because no one really cares about you anymore.

 

[treelover]

Many long-term sick 'could be kept in work

More than 90% of people with health problems could be helped to return to work with good healthcare and workplace management, research for the Department for Work and Pensions suggests. The report, from the social policy research unit at York University, said between 20% and 60% of those going on long-term incapacity benefit could be kept in work. Work and pensions secretary James Purnell hailed it as proof it was possible to get 1 million people off incapacity benefit by 2015. The challenge lies in lifting the stigma of mental illness and convincing GPs they have a critical role to play, the report says.
Patrick Wintour

Is this the report?, balders, i would love to see how they came to those conclusions, I notice Purnell doesn't mention the DWP's own research which showed sanctions could be counter-productive or that pathways to work is not succeeding in its aims, (unless of course, i always had more sinister aims)

 

[treelover]

Oh, and how does between 20% and 60% become 90%, methinks the Guardian has an agenda!

 

[ViolentPanda]

What qualifications do Doctors have in assesing what work people can and cant do?

Medical qualifications that allow them to gauge the degree of function someone has to do particular or general work.

 

[_angel_]

Many long-term sick 'could be kept in work

More than 90% of people with health problems could be helped to return to work with good healthcare and workplace management, research for the Department for Work and Pensions suggests. The report, from the social policy research unit at York University, said between 20% and 60% of those going on long-term incapacity benefit could be kept in work. Work and pensions secretary James Purnell hailed it as proof it was possible to get 1 million people off incapacity benefit by 2015. The challenge lies in lifting the stigma of mental illness and convincing GPs they have a critical role to play, the report says.
Patrick Wintour

Doesn't changing employers attitudes have anything to do with it?
Employers who want to know how many days sick you've had in the last two years (this is standard practice) Employers who shun people with long periods of unemployment, never mind ill health. Employers who don't want to know because you might have to take a few days off over half term and don't have any childcare for them (never mind if you have a problem with childcare over the summer and before/ after school)??
No, let's blame the docs who sign people off sick and have staff paid to get people off their books decide who can work in what capacity and who can't.


Seriously, if they want people with health conditions/ parental responsibility and no childcare to work, they have to persuade employers to take them on. At the very, very least they need to persuade local governments, the nhs and civil service to take them on on these terms.

Oh, and how does between 20% and 60% become 90%, methinks the Guardian has an agenda!

Hmmmm.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Is this the report?, balders, i would love to see how they came to those conclusions, I notice Purnell doesn't mention the DWP's own research which showed sanctions could be counter-productive or that pathways to work is not succeeding in its aims, (unless of course, i always had more sinister aims)

According to the "Benefits and Work" site:

Pathfinder pilots are to start from 2010-2011 running for three years in:

Greater Manchester; Norfolk; Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth.

Two more three year pilots will begin in the following financial year.

These will explore implementing City banker David Freud’s recommendations for the private and voluntary sector to be paid very large amounts for ‘outcome based contracts’ in which they move sick and disabled people back into work. Payments will be based on the amount of money their outcomes are likely to save the taxpayer through reducing the welfare benefits bill.

In addition, in order to enable David Freud’s idea of making benefits millionaires out of people who have a cunning plan to get people back to work, a new Right to Bid is to be introduced. This gives anyone with a serious ‘radical’ back-to-work scheme the right to have it considered by the DWP and reasons given if it is not taken up. Where ideas meet the necessary criteria they will be funded so that they can be put into action, at least in pilot form.

I wonder if Baldwin's employer is part of the "Pathfinder" project?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I find the whole "crack and smack" testing idea risible too.

Does Purnell have any idea how many people with moderately painful conditions use codeine? Guess what, Mr. Purnell? Codeine use gives a false positive for heroin use on most of the cheap mass-produced test kits. The fucking things even react to culinary poppy seed ingestion!

 

[_angel_]

I find the whole "crack and smack" testing idea risible too.

Does Purnell have any idea how many people with moderately painful conditions use codeine? Guess what, Mr. Purnell? Codeine use gives a false positive for heroin use on most of the cheap mass-produced test kits. The fucking things even react to culinary poppy seed ingestion!

What the fuck's that?


Got to say I loved his smear that I must be a drug addict, just because I'm on benefits. (Wonder if he includes recipients of state pensions, child benefit and working tax credits in that nice little idea )

 

[ViolentPanda]

Doesn't changing employers attitudes have anything to do with it?
Employers who want to know how many days sick you've had in the last two years (this is standard practice) Employers who shun people with long periods of unemployment, never mind ill health. Employers who don't want to know because you might have to take a few days off over half term and don't have any childcare for them (never mind if you have a problem with childcare over the summer and before/ after school)??
No, let's blame the docs who sign people off sick and have staff paid to get people off their books decide who can work in what capacity and who can't.


Seriously, if they want people with health conditions/ parental responsibility and no childcare to work, they have to persuade employers to take them on. At the very, very least they need to persuade local governments, the nhs and civil service to take them on on these terms.

Hmmmm.

Most small employers just aren't going to have or want the infrastructure and mechanisms to rehabilitate rather than bin sick/disabled staff, either.
And even those who do have them (the Civil Service for example) generally only use them to rubber-stamp ill-health retirements, rather than giving active assistance to people to retain their jobs.

 

[treelover]

In addition, in order to enable David Freud’s idea of making benefits millionaires out of people who have a cunning plan to get people back to work, a new Right to Bid is to be introduced. This gives anyone with a serious ‘radical’ back-to-work scheme the right to have it considered by the DWP and reasons given if it is not taken up. Where ideas meet the necessary criteria they will be funded so that they can be put into action, at least in pilot form.

FFs, this is crazy US right wing think tank stuff, one can imagine, say, a group of evangicals bidding for this or dodgy businessmen/women, it will create massve divisions....

 

[ViolentPanda]

What the fuck's that?

Eating a bagel (down, Swarthy, down!) with poppy seeds on top, or Chollah bread, or any of those Middle-eastern pastries that have poppy seeds in them.

Got to say I loved his smear that I must be a drug addict, just because I'm on benefits. (Wonder if he includes recipients of state pensions, child benefit and working tax credits in that nice little idea )

The man's a cunt, no doubt about it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

FFs, this is crazy US right wing think tank stuff, one can imagine, say, a group of evangicals bidding for this or dodgy businessmen/women, it will create massve divisions....

They don't care, as long as it puts public money in private pockets.

 

[_angel_]

Eating a bagel (down, Swarthy, down!) with poppy seeds on top, or Chollah bread, or any of those Middle-eastern pastries that have poppy seeds in them.

The man's a cunt, no doubt about it.

I meant the test you were talking about? What's the proposal? Drugs tests when you sign on (wouldn't surprise me)!

Is that how that guy in the middle east got done for drugs just for having a poppy seed on his bread????

 

[treelover]

Haven't they learnt anything with the massive failure of the Individual Learning Accounts which saw people set up 'training colleges' in their back room. its also could be divisive: in my area most were set up by BEM 'entrepreneurs' this could be used by the far right if they (as i expect many will) look to make a profit from these schemes which will inevitably be very repressive and hardline.

 

[_angel_]

Haven't they learnt anything with the massive failure of the Individual Learning Accounts which saw people set up 'training colleges' in their back room. its also could be divisive: in my area most were set up by BEM 'entrepreneurs' this could be used by the far right if they (as i expect many will) look to make a profit from these schemes which will inevitably be very repressive and hardline.

To be fair, I think the ILA thing was a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They were a good idea, to help people in work, not on benefit get onto courses they may not be able to afford. Sadly, like you said, dodgy people were able to use them. If they had just set out an established list of colleges that were legitimate, to be able to accept them, I think it would have been fine.

 

[shagnasty]

Something balders loses track of the first consideration of a doctor is the welfare of their patients whether work will worsen the condition they have not whether they are burden on the state .being a doctor is a caring proffesion in which they take an oath and stick to that ethic

 

[shagnasty]

What do make of this nicked it from a guardian comment on an article

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social security

 

[treelover]

Yes, but I think welfare benefits were deliberately ringfenced from the Human Rights Act and the European Court Of Human Rights, which may hint of the often bourgeois nature of HR.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I meant the test you were talking about? What's the proposal? Drugs tests when you sign on (wouldn't surprise me)!

You have to sign a "declaration", although I suspect they'll institute a piss test or a sweat swab (both of which give false positives for the stuff I suggested earlier) once they've pushed the "declaration" legislation through.

Is that how that guy in the middle east got done for drugs just for having a poppy seed on his bread????

Yep.

 

[_angel_]

You have to sign a "declaration", although I suspect they'll institute a piss test or a sweat swab (both of which give false positives for the stuff I suggested earlier) once they've pushed the "declaration" legislation through.

Yep.

You kidding me, you have to say you're not using drugs when you sign on?

How much longer till you're not allowed to smoke or drink?

 

[ViolentPanda]

You kidding me, you have to say you're not using drugs when you sign on?

Not yet, but it's part of the Welfare Reform Green Paper, so unless enough people make a noise about it, it'll probably be legislated in early 2009.

How much longer till you're not allowed to smoke or drink?

Hey, people are already being de-prioritised for healthcare or denied it altogether because of their alcohol or tobacco use.

 

[Nigel]

Goddamn those indecent unemployed folk!

Not for much longer
Have they measured you up for your new working clothes yet?

 

[denniseagle]

Only when it's apparent that the person I'm corresponding with has already made up their mind.

No, you also got answers.

Coupled with childish insults there by negating any acceptance .

Why would I want my opinions accepted? I'm not participating in a popularity contest.
But you are surely wanting to alter my way of thinking/re educate me??

You'll find that I did answer your questions.
If that is, you bothered to read my replies properly.

See above.

2.3 million (according to the DWP's own figures for claimants, but current figures include SDA claims too, which they didn't 10 years ago.
The fact is claims for IB have been decreasing for at least the last 5 years, and this will possibly speed up as many of the people "passported" onto Invalidity Benefit" by that wonderful Mrs Thatcher reach retirement age and are shucked off of IB and get their old age pension.
But hey, this stuff hardly ever gets in the press, and when it does it's ignored because it doesn't conform to simplistic prejudices and assumptions by held by people who project their own meanness of spirit and deceit onto everyone else.

Have I claimed that?

Did I say YOU had??

Please Please read and comprehend what is posted BEFORE attempting to reply.
Nope.
So don't put words in my mouth, Dennis.
There's a fringe of fraudulent claimants. That's an accepted fact, but the reality of 10 years-worth of hard work by the DWP and their predecessor is that the fraud rate for IB is less than a single percent of the claimant population. That's why you get big noises made about individual cases, but never find the DWP's investigation teams turning over consistent fraud.

Evidence please.


You wouldn't know that to read the papers or listen to the pundits though.

Oh, and just so you don't feel left out and un-insulted, go piss up a rope, you shonky twat.

There we go again ................... please explain how that comment furthers the validity of any of your posts.

 

[ViolentPanda]

There we go again ................... please explain how that comment furthers the validity of any of your posts.

So, no answers to any of the substantive points in the post, Dennis, just a portion of sententious rambling?

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE HARD-OF-THINKING:
Insults aren't inserted to provide validity, as most people capable of critical thinking will have worked out sometime around their 12th birthday They're present to leaven the stodgy bread of discourse with the yeasts of sarcasm, mockery and vituperation, to convey the degree of estimation in which you hold the insultee's opinions or views. They do so more than adequately.

 

[The Black Hand]

I find the whole "crack and smack" testing idea risible too.

Does Purnell have any idea how many people with moderately painful conditions use codeine? Guess what, Mr. Purnell? Codeine use gives a false positive for heroin use on most of the cheap mass-produced test kits. The fucking things even react to culinary poppy seed ingestion!

Do you know if the ones the police use in the station when you're nicked are the same? DO they give the same crap results?

 

[SpookyFrank]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights


Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

The argument, presumably, is that even under workfare nobody will be forced to do anything. They will merely be given a free choice between doing what they're told regardless of the pay, conditions or the type of work involved; and quietly starving to death in the gutter. They get you coming and going here, because anyone quietly starving to death in the gutter having been denied any benefits will have chosen to do so when they turned down the slave labour offered to them. That deals happily with all that 'right to food and shelter' nonsense.

Sometimes you really have to just stand back an admire the magnificently evil reasoning these government types are capable of.










































There again sometimes you have to drag them all into the streets and set them on fire.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Do you know if the ones the police use in the station when you're nicked are the same? DO they give the same crap results?

I don't know which "police services" use which tests (although I'm fairly sure they purchase their own, given the way their budgets are now structured, so different regions may do deals with different pharma companies), but I do know there's quite a bit of legal iffiness in terms of whether the test results stand up in court, especially if you can produce proof that you've been taken OTC codeine or have a prescription for it, and given that companies making urine-sampling drug-testing kits acknowledge that poppy seeds in very small amounts may produce false positives too.

I can't personally see the old bill, the Prison Service or any other sub-branch of the apparatus of state investing in top-of-the-range testing, though, can you? So all in all, I'd strongly suspect that your police station kits are as shonky as anything else on the market and give false positives for heroin use if you've taken codeine or eaten a couple of poppy seed bagels.