Disability Benefits
The Today programme on Radio 4 is geared towards doing very short pieces, presumably in order to keep people’s attention who are busy doing other things between 6 am and 9.
Their feature today on benefits was frustrating because it added to the confusion which the heading of this blog engenders.
The disability benefit they started off talking about this morning was Disability Living Allowance. The conversation with a young man then seemed to morph into comments on people not working because they were ‘depressed’ or said they had ‘a bad back’. The young man was presumably talking about people who were on Employment and Support Allowance, an out of work benefit accessed through the Work Capability Assessment. This is a quite different benefit from DLA. Disability Living Allowance can be paid to people in work, not just out of work and is not easy to get. There are two components: a mobility and a care component. The mobility component has two levels: higher and lower rate, while the care component has three levels: higher, middle and lower rates. The assessment is a long and detailed form, which asks for medical reports from a doctor or consultant. For those of working age, DLA will become PIP – a Personal Independence Payment. The criteria are due to be set out in regulations – a third version – which will be published in draft very soon. A lot of disabled people are fearful that they will be ineligible for the new benefit, but until the regulations are out, no-one yet knows.
As far as the Work Capability Assessment is concerned, this has come in for a lot of criticism recently, but should be working better in the future, now that Professor Harrington’s reforms have been accepted. So some people will be on both DLA and ESA, some on one or the other, but they shouldn’t be mixed up because they are quite separate.
So lets see. Changing the name of something means its ok to hand over the cash.
Come on, lets ask the core question.
There used to be 1 million on disability. That’s risen to 2.5 million.
Whose been disabling 1.5 million people? Has the NHS gone down the toilet in terms of patient care?
Or is it that you’ve been handing the cash out to hide people off the unemployment statistics.
Lord Blagger – DLA is an in work as well as out of work benefit so doesn’t impact the unemployment statistics. As for the number of claimants going up, this may be because of greater longevity of disabled people thanks to the NHS and better publicity for the benefit.
No its not. Most of the increase is down to what is euphemistically called ‘disguised unemployment’.
As for the NHS. Their own figures are that they kill between 20-80,000 a year by contributing or directly causing patients deaths.
How many do you think they are maiming?
Now I suspect you think that figure is bonkers, after all, its your beloved NHS that can do no wrong. In which case I’ll put the evidence to the contrary.
As the the increase, there is a small increase due to increased participation by women in the workforce, but the rest is government fraud hiding unemployment at a massive cost.
That’s why with the reassessment with a test ‘fit for some sort of work’, so many are failing. It’s because they are fit for some sort of work. Even more evidence for the scam.
[Queue 40% pass on appeal, so that means 40% of all tests must be wrong. If you spout that you clearly haven’t understood one iota of statistics. Appellants are not representative of claimants.]
The evidence all points to either the NHS being a massive killer and maimer of people, or out right fraud by Westminster.
1.5 million crippled? I doubt. Most have been killed off.
Industrial injury? Nope, that’s gone.
Fraud to hide embarrassing facts? Yep. That’s where the evidence is.
If you want referenced research, ask away. I’ve plenty of peer reviewed papers on what’s been going on.
However, its all going to self correct in a nasty way. You’ve run up massive debts in spending above the countries means. Those debts are hidden off the books. Those debts are too big for any taxpayer to pay. So people who are dependent on the government are going to be shafted as a consequence of your actions. Worst hit, will be the disabled.
That is a very narrow view of why disability claims have risen, Baroness.
If you import millions of people and increase the level of citizens to any country, by at least 4 million, the likelihood will be an increase in the disability level in line with that increase of population.
If you add to that, millions entering from countries that have serious poverty and illness due to their conditions in life, including inter family marriage and birth defects as a result, what would you expect? A healthy brand of golden youth like creations or a group of people needing serious assistance as a result?
Additionally, once a person has gained citizenship in the UK their first duty is to assist their extended families into the lifestyle and benefit they have achieved, who would not do that? Hence an application for those of your family to join you under the rights of family life. A large majority of those family members are elderly, infirm and in need of care.
Is Blagger correct in his analysis of the NHS? Has it let down the nation’s sick and disadvantaged? Well, on a current cursory look I would say, drastically. It shows itself as unfit for purpose in much of the country and it can be construed that you take your life in your hands if you use a hospital or care home as an elderly person today.
As a footnote on DLA. If this idiot Eton boy government tamper with that specific part of the benefit system, the country will simply fall apart, as the cost to pick up the pieces will quadruple overnight. And they know it. It will be akin to the lines of sick and crippled turning up at the soup kitchens in ambulance, sitting in wheelchairs or lying on gurneys, ready for the daily feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fishes.
Who will be playing the role of Jesus I wonder?
So lets see about the 20K (lower figure).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/27/standardised-bed-chart-hospital-deaths
As many as 6,000 deaths attributable to miscalculated deterioration of patients’ condition could be prevented once the new system is in place, the RCP said.
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6,000 out of the 20,000 lower estimate from just one cause.
Do we have 6,000 compensation cases? Nope. The NHS view is that victim pays. It’s the same logic as rapists claiming that their victims dressed provocatively.
If this idiot Eton boy government
Another good one from Maude!
One does wonder how long those people in Tottenham for example, or Edgbaston(?) have been in the country, who are claiming disability benefits.
They need an insurance number and three or four years work, or do they need the latter at all?
Understanding the system takes an honours degree though, so not that many would succeed in misusing it.
Again and again I refer to the wisdom of the Open Door policy in world migrations.
You refered to Jesus. I refer to the Good Samaritan to all the people of the world.
hey need an insurance number and three or four years work, or do they need the latter at all?
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Apparently not. See Panorama from last night
@Twm:
Here is the Panorama documentary Blagger refers to.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nbryp/Panorama_Britains_Secret_Health_Tourists/
However, this has been going on since the sixties. Family members came in to visit their relative who has obtained citizenship, and they had, say, swollen leg veins. It is painful and they have had it for years and are unable to get treatment at home. Family takes them to their A&E, complaining of how it is causing grief. They give the name of their wife, husband son or daughter, as the person needing treatment, depending on age, etc.. And an appointment is made for them to be looked at. It went on from there.
This film only scratches the surface, because, what they don’t tell you is, under New Labour and the Blair/Brown administration, nationalization was force fed at a rate that would take your head off.
Solicitors who are specialists in immigration were directed to put in for citizenship for all applying as it had been fast tracked to raise the level of the multi culturalism of their objective. It was a business that was paid for by legal aid and if you doubt it, get the FOI records to tell the real story.
This meant that mass immigration into this country since 1997 was rampant. And once you are a citizen you are entitled to all benefits on offer. And the family follows. Ask any lawyer who has practiced this line of business over the last 25 years and see what they tell you. Especially those situated in Ealing or Birmingham. It was a nice little earner.
Government knew of it and turned a blind eye because it was the policy they wanted to follow. Immigrants vote Labour in vast numbers. Could that be the reason for the benevolence given at the tax payers cost?
However, I don’t see any change under this Tory government. No matter what they tell us.
It doesn’t matter how many times you explain it Baroness Thomas, there are people in the world, in denial. If I had a penny each time someone on my Facebook page is horrible towards anyone on benefits, I would be a very rich lady. It’s hardly surprising though when we have TV programs and Politicians spouting off nonsense about those in need, faking it. Reform should start with the politicians admitting they had it wrong in the beginning. Not once have I seen any of them apologising for the shambles of the WCA before they started implementing changes. Also, any of those that were effected by the faulty WCA’s should have been reviewed automatically.
You can’t explain why disability rocketed
Are you going to offer me a penny for each person that drops off disability because they haven’t passed the test?
At a penny a time each year, I wouldn’t even have to work.
However, this has been going on since the sixties.
No doubt about that. But then what do Brits get from the countries of all those who do arrive to see the pavements of gold? Quite a lot, I fear.
I’m not going to pander to your obsession with the reason why disability has rocketed. You clearly wouldn’t listen anyway as your needle is stuck in a groove. Have you even looked into why people don’t pass the test? You know… like the people with mental disorders who commit suicide every year because they know they’re unfit for work and simply can’t face up to it but the state says otherwise, or the people who die shortly after from serious illnesses after being found fit for work because the test simply put is total crap? If you had a penny for every one of those you would be a thousand pounds better off and then some each year.
I’m not going to pander to your obsession with the reason why disability has rocketed.
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Of course you aren’t. It’s because it blows out of the water your fallacy that there are 2,5 million disabled, and the government is somehow doing them in.
So of course you’re going to ignore it. In addition because as there are 1.5 million disguised unemployed, the arguments about testing fail too. You’re case collapses like a house of cards.
So I know why you want to ignore the hard fact. I’m not that stupid.
Similarly, you won’t go anywhere near the question of state debts. After all, if you have to admit that the state is bankrupt, you then have to face up to the consequences of that bankruptcy.
Here, you and I are in agreement about the consequences for the 1 million disabled. It’s going to be dire. So where’s the difference? You want to carry on paying disabled benefits to 1.5 million who aren’t disabled. What that means is 1.5 million people not paying tax, and consuming vast amounts of money from the state. It’s a double whammy.
So what I predict? Your reply is likely to be that disability payouts are small peanuts compared to other spending or some putative tax evasion. However, in the process you will ignore housing benefit, free health care, free schooling, free council tax and all the other benefits that aren’t being paid for in tax.
As an example, Labour were paying non disabled people 172,000 pounds a year in benefits and services without receiving any money from them. Hence a lot of the debts by the way.
Now for the testing. I’ve repeatedly asked what is an objective test for being fit for some sort of work? No one has even been prepared to offer a set of principles.
The nearest people have got is the “Let the GP decide”. However, look at what we now know. Lots of GPs have been signing people off for a quite life. Why should disability be so high in Liverpool? It’s not an ex-mining town where you might expect long term issues. It’s because people have repeatedly been turning up to ask for it, so GPs have given in. A bit hard when its a national standard applied centrally.
Even the ‘appeal success rate’ is a figure that is misused. No doubt you will try and claim that 40% success rate means a 40% failure rate across the board. However, if you do you clearly do not understand statistics. The population that appeals isn’t representative of the 2.5 million claimants. It’s the border line claimant that is appealing. I would expect a 50% success rate.
At the end of the day, 1.5 million claiming when they shouldn’t be.
No one offers up what test should be applied.
The government is bankrupt.
The later drives it all. For example, you won’t get your state pension. The plan is to default on it. FOI request to the treasury.
@Blagger:
So, you want to know why we have so many disabled here, and refuse to take what is written already with an explanation. Well here are the facts.
People from Bangladesh and Pakistan have the highest rate of disability per group in the country, followed by the Welsh. Check out number four. But, they decline to give the figures. That may be because the tax payers of this country might want to look into why so many people were imported into the UK who would desperately need assistance and extra money to survive in their condition and no special facilities or funds were made available for them ever. What kind of lunatic officials would raise the level of a population to such a vast extent without preparation being readied for such an influx. And why are the people who brought this onto the public purse knowing it was unsustainable not being investigated as to why they did this? What did they get out of it personally? Because they sure as heck didn’t do it as a result of altruism.
You can’t call yourself altruistic when you take drastic action against a nation without first asking their permission and then preparing them and the infrastructure of that society to support such a decision. This action has impoverished those already devastatingly poor as well as bringing the entire country to its knees. Then to add insult to injury, pretend not to notice or refuse to accept the chaos they created or face their culpability for it.
http://www.papworth.org.uk/downloads/factsandfigures_disabilityintheuk_july2011_110721132605.pdf
And you Blagger have your figures all wrong. There are 8 million disabled people in the UK not 1.5 million.
And you sound as if you are one of these people here. Hate mongers are a plenty.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/aug/14/disability-hate-crime-increase-reported-incidents-data
And the jobs for them are non existent. People like you sent these income resources to areas of the world where they can pay slave trade wages and fill their big fat bloated guts with more of the blubber that keeps them greasy and bald.
As plenty of evidence shows, the British Establishment, Governance, Health & Wellbeing, and Human-Development-Professional including Education, Classes
have serious spirit and mind functional impairments,
both largely caused and insidiously perpetuated hy various categories of Corruption not the worst of which is Money-Greed, aided by insufficient education & life-experience and by both delusions of grandeur and blindness of core organs in their share of the Human Longest-Term Budgeting Brain.
In turn those “leaders” are corrupting Peoples’ minds and spirits
Forcing us to value Disability, Unemployment, Illness, Insufficient-Income, and Other Disadvantagements, as being definable as “beneficial”
such that the victim thereof will draw “benefits” for being thus incapacitated when, in fact, such income needs to be measured and seen as a lifesupportive-allowance.
The further bad-leadership fact, hobbling this Nation from becoming both all-round-healthy in Itself and happily emulable inter-nationally.
Is its failure to provide every level of Resident and Citizen with a Sustainworthy Earth & UK Citizenship Model and personal lifeplace handbook.
Even the best, and nearest-to-statesmanlike, political party ‘manifesto’-speeches by Mr E. Miliband today
Fails to address the National Need for Lifeplace-Education & Voluntary Participatory Democratisation Practice by Individuals and also by Small Mutual-Learning-and-Practice-Neighbourhood-Groups ;
quite and utterly-distinct from Workplace-Training for The Workplace by universities, schools, apprenticeships and other job/career-training businesses.
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Furthermore,
A human-being’s ultimate Natural and Civilised/Civilising Identity is grown in the Lifeplace, not at all in the Workplace;
for in the latter Workplace, the worker’s ‘identity’ is confinedly related only to that workplace,
a workplace that is in fact owned and dictated by the Employer, as are the identities ‘awarded’ therein.
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[ I would add supportive references
but the Lords of the Blog moderators,
mainly from Hansard’s Citizenship Education staff, I believe,
have forbidden me so to do, on their grounds that it constitutes ‘advertising’, and might have been ‘said before therefore can not be repeated’
or ‘has nothing whatsoever to do with the posted-topic’
(regardless of whether the posted-topic has anything much to do with our Real-Life Needs and how they may best and most affordably be met) ].
I heard a lunch time programme by a certain Mr Jeremy Vine recently, which was so drastically in accurate I squirmed at the very thought of ever listening to such a programme again.
Radio and TV has a lot to answer for in myth and inaccuracy, and general popular ignorance,
[not least in the realm of clinical surgery, “advances” in medical techniques, which make one shudder at the prospect for the future of humanity.]
“Today” is a little better, but not much.
I suppose anything which is a “show” has got to be a performance by definition, or it would be nothing.
More stuff on the NHS today.
What can we expect? Not a peep from the BBC, not a peep from Peers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9591814/Patients-starve-and-die-of-thirst-on-hospital-wards.html
The death toll was disclosed by the Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards.
They will also fuel concerns about care homes, as it was disclosed that eight people starved to death and 21 people died of thirst while in care.
Last night there were warnings that they must prompt action by the NHS and care home regulators to prevent further deaths among patients.
The Office for National Statistics figures also showed that:
* as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals;
* there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals;
* 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a further 650 people who died had their presence noted on their death certificates;
* 21,696 were recorded as suffering from septicemia when they died, a condition which experts say is most often associated with infected wounds.
Socialism – killing and maiming people since it started.
Hence one reason for the rise in the number of disabled. Killed or maimed by the NHS.
The rest is hidden unemployment.
@LB:
Here is a little information for your lacking education on what and why we so desperately needed the NHS. And now more than ever.
What has brought the NHS to the state it is in now is too much government interference and the use of it as a political football. And of course the right wingers who have invested heavily in the private secotr. Big money earner that. And all out of the public purse of course.
The ethos of the system has changed from the strict practice of vocation to the overbearing practice of big business. Patent care is secondary to the unfit for purpose class presently involved in it up to their self interested ears.
People are dying because government is not interested in them living. The incompetence has reached the level associated with countries steeped in dire poverty. Those in the know, pander to a Jimmy Savile style mentality, and keep it quiet at all costs, because to do otherwise will mean they lose their income. Whistle blowers are harrassed and targeted.
Oh, and government pays heavily doctors who keep the charade knocking on.Has given them a further 8% rise. What a joke that is. And they know it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9goL8LU6760
And here we see how they used to believe in our future and worth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG9wCSrTbXs
And those against have always wanted to deny us this social reform that meant the money players felt they would not be able to play the US game of robbery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ywP8wjfOx4&feature=related
Several things.
1. I’ve had personal experience of people being killed by the NHS. Not once, not twice, but multiple occasions. Only once did they admit they had screwed up, because it was so blatent, they wouldn’t have got away with it.
In this case, it was intubating into the stomach and not the airway, not monitoring O2 levels until brain death had occurred.
The others are just as bad, and in one case I would go as far as murder. Bumping off your mistakes is deliberate premeditated killing.
Now its even more of a problem because you might have noticed I post occasionally of similar problems. Hence 20-80,000 killed a year.
How many get maimed?
How many get compenstation? Bugger all.
2. Look around. It’s not NHS versus the USA or the Victorian era medicine.
It’s all about what works, and the NHS doesn’t. [For a start you haven’t got the bill yet]
So the other place I’ve had long term experience of a health system is Switzerland. The comparison and other things has convinced me that the NHS is a disaster.
First, the level of care here compared to there is atrocious. A doctor cutting the wrong leg off is disbarred for life. Out. Here there were multiple occurances. We even have lots of patients starved to death and deprived of water – but no prosecutions bar one.
The reason is the conflict of interest. It’s not in the NHS’s interests to regulate, because that would mean paying compenstation. The victim pays here. It’s not in the NHS’s interest to lower costs. After all it has a monopoly.
That’s why the Swiss solution is the one. Regulator, insurer and supplier are separated. No conflict of interest in any one role.
Universal coverage? Yep. You have to have insurance and it has to be supplied.
Cost? Last time I looked it was 1900 GBP a year, compared to the current cost in the UK of 1900. And, more importantly, you aren’t paying for the pensions of medical staff (millions in the case of Doctors) for the next 60 years. That’s not included in the cost.
So here’s my prediction.
The NHS will go bust. After all the government has its debts. Will they choose the NHS or will they choose to pay NHS pensions? Difficult. After all, for those outside the NHS, they won’t get any services for their cash.
You need to cotton on. The state can protect people against corporate theft. However, the state won’t protect us from its theft.
Challenge for you, how much does the state owe for civil service pensions? Just one part of the debt.
Until you realize by doing some basic maths on what has been hidden, you will delude yourself as to the problem, its causes and its solution.
Try it. Find out about how much is owed for the civil service pension, and see if its on the debts admitted too by the government. [Hint, it isn’t]
Now ask how its going to be paid.
@Blagger:
And you don’t seriously believe that in countries with a fully privatized, buy your own health insurance policy, don’t have deaths in their midst on a regular basis, do you? You can’t be that naive. And the results they have, because big money is so worshiped, the cover ups are more vicious and rampant than we have any idea of here.
Listen carefully.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TsaHmtgfA&feature=related
And again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocoxv5tmwJg
Medical abuse is rampant in the USA. And this is what our politicians are importing as fast as they can. Because it’s a big money earner. And they are in the business of envy for the US style greed they absorb when they go to the Hamptons. Take, Cherie Blair, for example, in on the ground floor knowing from her connections that US privatization is being installed here. With the assistance and gloat prone Lordships of the, Freddie Curzon, ilk who push it through covertly, whilst they smile aristocratically and with exceptional good manners, as they do it. Along with their Tory friends who have their grubby fat hands in the same goodie bag.
William Beveridge – whose report/plan for social insurance was very influential
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He was also a fan of Hitler and wanted to kill of undesirables and stop them breeding. A eugenicist.