Benefits and the deficit: what would you cut?

Andy_L

Perhaps in the olden days they'd of had the decency to just die instead of lingering on?

nickmason

ray123 wrote: »

If you are blind, you receive a 50% discount!

(on your TV licence)

I used to think this funny, until I realised that:
1) audio description channels make the "watching" tv experience much better than you might imagine
2) blind people watch more tv than sighted people

(I'm now working for the RNIB, rather than Amnesty!)

michael1983l

Andy_L wrote: »

No there aren't, try again. Hint: Not everyone in infrastructur support is a manager.

PS, your link to your source doesn't work

The link works for me, and what nobody is addressing here is the fact Labour sold 50% of our gold reserves at a low price to fund the so called reduction in debt at the time. If they hadn't have sold our contingency fund then would debt have fallen, would it balls

Lets look at history, labour balls everything up for the nation, torys come in make hard decisions but get the economy back on track. Labour come in ride the Tory planning but eventually balls it all up again. Torys come back in and steady the ship again. Notice the cycle or shall we go back to the 3 day working week again?

Rochdale_Pioneers

michael1983l wrote: »

Lets look at history, labour balls everything up for the nation, torys come in make hard decisions but get the economy back on track. Labour come in ride the Tory planning but eventually balls it all up again. Torys come back in and steady the ship again. Notice the cycle or shall we go back to the 3 day working week again?

You do know that the three day week was under Heath don't you? Perhaps a history book would assist in your frothing.

michael1983l

The 3 day working week was on the back of labour allowing mining strikes to cripple the nation

Rochdale_Pioneers

michael1983l wrote: »

The 3 day working week was on the back of labour allowing mining strikes to cripple the nation

You really do need that history book don't you! Harold Wilson was famously paranoid about MI5 - rightly so if he was as all-powerful as you'd have it.

So the miners were on strike because they wanted pay rises to keep up with the soaring rate of inflation caused by the oil crisis. The government hadn't bothered to build up coal reservces so its effect was massive. The oil crisis was a result of Israel's 6 day war. The dispute between the government and the unions was caused by Heath taking them on (his "Selsdon Man" stratagem) then abruptly reversing the policy and showing that he was a soft touch.

All that was undoubtedly Labour's fault as you state, and those pesky history books must have had it wrong. After all, Labour being to blame the voters when asked "who govern's Britain" in the Feb 74 election obviously would have voted against Labour and their puppet miners and returned Heath with a mandate to smash them.

Oh thats right, they didn't. You must be talking cobblers then.

baileysbattlebus

MrsE wrote: »

Its an odd one that............

Medical procedures have improved, health care has come on in leaps & bounds, we have the best "free" healthcare system in Europe.....

And the most sick?????
And growing in relation to improvements in medical science:think::think::think:

I agree - but is there a social disease now that there wasn't years ago?

I know there are large numbers of women claiming now - in the 1980s and 1990s it was predominently men - but over a million women claim now - not that I'm saying they shouldn't - but it is interesting.

Here is an extract from a study I read about incapacity benefit claimants: -

Since the mid- to late 1990s, there has been a dramatic shift in the main reason for claiming IB from musculoskeletal to mental health diagnoses. A recent figure for the whole of the UK showed that 42% of the stock IB population were claiming IB because of mental health conditions, compared with 16% in 1996.6 The vast majority of this increase is in mild to moderate mental health conditions like depressive symptoms, stress, anxiety or other ‘neuroses’, with only a small numbers having serious psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. Interestingly, there was a geographical dimension to this increase in mild/moderate mental health conditions, which started in the south east of England and spread gradually to the rest of the country supporting the augment that it is a social rather than a biological phenomenon

The study is interesting, although it only covers Scotland and Glasgow and not the whole of the UK - it is an insight into the changing face of incapacity benefit recipients. It covers those who have a good work history (payment claimants) and those who have none (credit only claimants).

A sign of our times perhaps?

And the paper

http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/fdn098v1

MrsE_2

baileysbattlebus wrote: »

I agree - but is there a social disease now that there wasn't years ago?

Since the mid- to late 1990s,

When did Blair get in & start the benefits bonanza for those on sick benefits?
The same time as an explosion in claimants perhaps?

iamana1ias

MrsE wrote: »

When did Blair get in?

Erm, May 1997. You were no doubt having a day off.

MrsE_2

iamana1ias wrote: »

Erm, May 1997. You were no doubt having a day off.

I know, I was making a point, mid to late 90s.

Went straight over your head!