Sick and disabled people
Cheating
We all hear stories about cheating; I mention the McFadden family case elsewhere in this blog. Nobody likes to hear these stories, but genuine benefit claimants get really annoyed with them. One disabled person, who himself does voluntary work helping others, told us about able-bodied people wanting to claim disabled benefits (scroll down to Robert's comment). With stories like these, it is hardly surprising that the politicians and the public are sceptical. Unfortunately, a crackdown could result in genuinely disabled people suffering. Traditionally, the politicians erred on the side of ensuring that disabled people get the benefits that they are entitled to. To weed out the cheats, I fear that a lot of disabled people are going to be wrongly declared fit to work when they clearly aren't fit to work.
Misinterpretation
Going back to Robert's comments, it includes this piece.
I'd love to work at something except handing out baskets at Asda. sadly all i get offered is handing out baskets at Asda.
When I provided a link to the page containing the comment on a forum, somebody obviously misread his comment, saying
the disabled guy Robert said he didn't want to work at Asda stacking shelves etc.
No wonder benefit claimants of all types have difficulty explaining themselves. I pointed out the error, but my correction elicited no further response.
Start at the bottom and progress upwards
The same person who misinterpreted Robert's comments went on to describe the career of Sir Terry Leahy, who was appointed as the CEO of Tesco in 1997 and who announced in 2010 of his intention to retire in 2011, then summed up by saying ....
Here then is an example of someone who started at the very bottom of the ladder (and wasn't too proud to be there) and worked his way up to the very top.
.... to which I responded ....
The questions you really have to ask yourself are - if Sir Terry Leahy had been disabled, (a) would he have got the job in the first place and (b) would he ever have been promoted if he did? Probably no in both cases at the time he started. Today, society has progressed far enough to suggest that the answer to the first question is maybe and the second is very unlikely.
Another witch-hunt?
Supposedly, the government policies are aimed at able-bodied people, but we know that the government has another agenda. They are replacing incapacity benefit with employment and support allowance and the politicians are also looking at how many people on those benefits can be transferred to jobseeker's allowance. One person in the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service?, apparently quoting an official source, said
Only the most severely disabled will be able to avoid work. We plan to get up to 2 million of the 2.7 million who currently claim incapacity benefit off the sick.
Very worrying indeed. I don't particularly like the new proposals that the government outlined in July 2008 anyway, but a lot of people are going to suffer much more than myself if they become law in anything like their proposed form. Here's a very sad comment by somebody in that BBC debate.
My father, who is physically fit, suffers from PTSD from his time in the forces, lost his career through a nervous breakdown and has another breakdown once a year, when he is forced to relive his experiences at his "interview" with the incapacity benefit assessment team. Under this new scheme, he will have topped himself from depression caused by financial stress, by 2009. Ah well, one less benefit claimant, eh?
I fear that many sick and disabled people will end up accepting job offers and subsequently being unable to cope, with the result that employers, having been persuaded to give them a chance, harden their attitudes towards such people.
Data entry
In the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service?, some people pointed out that plenty of sick and disabled people could obviously type, so suggested that these people could get a job in data entry, if necessary using a computer at home. Well, of course, it's not that simple. In a normal working environment, data entry clerks usually have to achieve a minimum typing speed and we have no way of knowing any individual's typing speed just by looking at what they've typed.
In the case of home-workers, they'd be expected to get through a certain amount of work each week, which means that if they're slow, they may have to work very long hours to get through the work. Also, we don't know what special assistance the disabled people referred to might need to do normal work. Even if it is home-based, they still have to be supplied with the documents that they are required to type from. It's possible (theoretically) that the documents could be scanned in and transmitted via e-mail, but that wouldn't be practical in most cases due to the sheer volumes involved. An employer would therefore have to arrange for transportation of the documents and that would impose a cost overhead. Here's yet another quote from that BBC debate.
Rampant prejudice amongst employers means it is near impossible for someone with a disability to find work. Employers simply will not employ the disabled. Being attacked by the government and treated like a criminal will not change this and is a disgrace.
More recently, I've learned that the public sector these days is more sympathetic to disabled people, but with major cutbacks expected in the next few years, public sector job vacancies are likely to become a rarity.
Getting back to the point about data entry typing speeds, some of the same principles apply to able-bodied people. Just because I can type doesn't mean that I can do it fast enough to be employed as a data entry clerk. If an employer offered me such a job knowing my likely limit of 30 words per minute, then I'd accept the offer. But would 30 words per minute be enough? I doubt it because most employers looking for data entry clerks ask for at least 40 (and sometimes 50 or 60) words per minute. There are jobs where accuracy is more important than speed, but even for these jobs speed might still be a deciding factor.
Carers
Here's something I hadn't thought about before seeing somebody mention it in that BBC debate. A lot of people stay at home to care for sick, disabled or elderly relatives, for which they are paid a carer's allowance. This actually saves the government money as otherwise those people would fill up nursing homes or hospitals, costing the government far more than they'd earn from the carer being employed instead of receiving a carer's allowance. But all this is not considered when the relative dies. The carer is then expected to seek work like everybody else. Fair enough, you might say, but if that carer had been staying at home for a long time, it won't necessarily be easy. If the new proposals that the government outlined in July 2008 become law, some people may decide that it's not worth becoming a carer in the first place. Consequently, more elderly people will end up in nursing homes and hospitals than would otherwise be the case.
What they say
Please let me know of any other interesting blogs and web pages that you'd like me to consider for inclusion in this section.
| On their own blogs |
|---|
| Taking it easy watching Jeremy Kyle |
| Benefit scrounging scum |
| Diary of a goldfish |
| "Good Communication Skills" sucks |
| This is my blog (after a fashion, anyway) |
| On the subject of sick and disabled people |
|---|
| They can’t all be disabled, can they? (John Redwood) |
| How do we define a benefit scrounger? (Debate club - Baby Centre) |
| Time called on benefit claimants (Loughborough Echo) |
| Test to put heat on the cheats (Sun) |
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