July's UK borrowing figures

Degenerate

heathcote123 wrote: »

Thats nonsense. A business can put someone on statuatory sick pay or more likely fire them.

Only if they treat cancer patients the same way. Whether it's physical or mental illnesses is irrelevant if both have sick notes. Otherwise they risk legal trouble for discrimination. Business managers are not qualified to assess the severity of people's medical conditions and dispute the opinions of medical professionals.

Again, the problem lies with those doctors who so casually hand-out sick notes.

Generali

Degenerate wrote: »

Only if they treat cancer patients the same way. Whether it's physical or mental illnesses is irrelevant if both have sick notes. Otherwise they risk legal trouble for discrimination. Business managers are not qualified to assess the severity of people's medical conditions and dispute the opinions of medical professionals.

Again, the problem lies with those doctors who so casually hand-out sick notes.

I think that the problem lies with the people that abuse the system.

In the UK a few decades back a political decision was made that people that can't work should have the financial burden bourne by the whole of society, not just their family or themselves. The cost to individuals that couldn't find work or simply couldn't work was high.

Now there seem to be some people who want to milk that system. Instead of feel grateful to people that have kept them out of penuary there are some that want to take all the kindness and more because they feel entitled.

If someone lies to their Doctor to defraud the taxpaying majority, it's hardly the doctor's fault!

pqrdef

Generali wrote: »

In the UK a few decades back a political decision was made

Statutory poor relief goes back to the time of Elizabeth I. Where we are now, we've been before, notably when the enclosures reduced the demand for agricultural labour.

This has a depressingly familiar ring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system

The 19th-century crisis led inexorably to the workhouse, and the logic of the right is leading inexorably back to the same place. We just have to figure out how to make workhouses pay.