There is NO BENEFIT to Being Debilitated!

Glancing at the disabilities and welfare blogs I read I can see that the situation is dire in the UK. We're doomed basically. All kinds of other policy initiatives introduced by the manic phase new government are being reversed or rethought because they are incredibly unpopular. Welfare reform is not unpopular. And one has to ask whether this is because from day one, aided by a parasitic news media culture, the DWP waged a propaganda war against the benefit system, often stretching the truth to make their point, and making the most extreme abuses seem like the norm for all benefit claimants? Or is the popularity of welfare reform really what people want? I would argue that it is a clear case of manufacturing consent.

The very language here is fucked. The welfare payment is not a benefit, it's a fucking consolation for losing your job (so often because of economic forces outside your control) and/or becoming so ill that one cannot work. It's a minimal payment - and they reinforce the minimal in their communication with the applicant: "this is just enough to stop you dying, but don't get cocky".

There is no benefit to becoming so ill you have to stop working. Even Pollyanna would struggle to look on the bright side of debilitating illness - oh yes it's great not having to work, and the charity shops have the most intriguing range of hand-me-downs; if only I were not in constant pain and able to walk I would feel I was the luckiest person in the world. NOT. And welfare is not claimed, it is applied for certainly, but it is granted by the powers that be whose mercy we are at, and we are never allowed to forget it! Rather than a benefit claimant I would prefer to be known as a Consolation Grant Applicant, and the payment to be called a grant rather than a benefit.

The trouble is no one is listening to people who rely on welfare payments. All they see is someone getting something for nothing. So, even more than bankers, the system targets those who receive welfare, and the general population either supports the measure or quietly turns away and let's it happen. Pray you never get ill - all you able bodied people out there. Pray. Because once you do become ill, you become "outcast".

Benefit Fraud vs Tax Cheats

I picked the following from the comments on an article in the Guardian by Peter Beresford: The Victorians knew a thing or two about benefit cheats. The leader says "David Cameron promised an uncompromising clampdown on benefit fraud, but what does this actually mean for communities?" and the article compares the actuality of the Victorian workhouse system to the rhetoric of the ConDem evil axis.

RosemaryUK comments...

Reform of the benefit system is needed, no one can deny that but not one where 'punishment' and sanctions' are used to 'threaten' disabled people.

As regards fraud...

Annual Benefit fraud estimate £5.2bn
Annual Tax fraud estimate £70bn

Spending on Tax evasion PR/advertising : £633,000
Spending on benefit fraud PR/advertising : £17.5 million
(both figures exclude VAT)
Figures from Hansard.

If any political party had any real morals , they would have condemned this 'campaign' by some media outlets that is raging against those on benefits.

Yes. A few of us have made the same point, though I admit I got it from the Now Show on BBC Radio 4. Another figure to compare is the £150bn that we spend over what is earned in tax. That is to say that is tax fraud were tackled with the same enthusiasm it would make a good contribution to reducing the deficit. Attacking benefit fraud is unlikely to make much difference, though it should of course be tackled. I've said before the noise is Cameron trying to make good with the Tory faithful who think he's a useless cunt who lost a sure thing election against a lame duck Labour government. The noise is out of proportion to the good that he can do - especially on the eve of making massive cuts that will result in 1000's of civil servants being made redundant.

One thing that would make a big difference would be to pursue the well known tax cheat Tony Blair our former Prime Minister who has tied his financial affairs up in such knots that it is very difficult to say for sure what happens to the tens of millions of money coming in from advising foreign investors, and giving lectures, and more recently setting up a bank for the super-rich. See here for instance: Tony Blair under pressure to explain if he is avoiding UK taxes. (Telegraph 3.9.10) and here: The mystery of Tony Blair's finances (Guardian 1.12.09). A good strong example might send a message about social responsibility to the rest of the rich who try to keep from making their contribution to society.

Millions of People Off Benefits?

Heard on the radio this morning that the aim of the government is "to get millions of people off benefits and into work". Let's look at some more official stats: (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=12)

April 2010

employment : 28.86 million

unemployment : 2.47 million (7.9%)

claiming JSA : 1.48 million

unemployed 12 months+ : 772,000.

Inactive people : 8.19 million (i.e. working age, but not working)

That's relatively high unemployment - especially considering we've just had a boom. Has the bust affected us so much?

Now from the same page:

The number of vacancies for the three months to May 2010 was 492,000, up 7,000 over the quarter.

So for the 3 months to May there were roughly 500k jobs available when at any given time during that period there were roughly 1500k people seeking work, and another 1000k unemployed but not looking (bums like me). That's 3 people for every job going.

Now the government is pursuing a high unemployment strategy and expects (partially) incapacitated people to join the work force. My question is what the fuck are they talking about? Where are these millions of jobs coming from?

The government approach to benefits is to sweep it all under the carpet in a way that reduces welfare spending, but reduces welfare full-stop.

Some Truths About Benefit Fraud

In 2009 the DWP published some statistics about benefit fraud. These can be found in the document entitled: Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: April 2008 to March 2009. We are right to be worried about this as it depletes resources that should otherwise go to worthy people. There are three sources of benefit overpayment: fraud, customer error and official error. Here's the graph of the period 1997/8 - 2008/9 for Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance.

There are two main things to say about this. Firstly in the last 10 years there has been a massive reduction in benefit fraud overpayments. This appears to have bottomed out in 2005/6 and to have had a small increase since then. To be clear the reduction is from £850m to £330, with a low of £290m in 2005/6.

Fraud overpayments are less than half what they were a decade ago. How did this get lost in the discussion!?

Now notice that as fraud has gone up, official overpayments have gone up by the same amount. So 50% of the increase (more or less) of the increase from the low figure of £290m is due not to increasing fraud but to official errors (i.e. incompetence).

At the same time there the contribution from the customer has remained much the same -getting as high as £160, but presently at about the same as it was a decade ago.

As it stands about half of the overpayments are due to fraud, ie people deliberately misleading the DWP, and about half are due to mistakes by either the customer or the DWP (with the DWP making twice as many mistakes as the customer).

The DWP are responsible for one third of the overpayments - let's target them for efficiency savings!

Here are the figures from the report in a table:

Year	Fraud	Customer Error	Official Error	Total
1997/98	850,000,000	100,000,000	280,000,000	1,220,000,000
1998/99	780,000,000	90,000,000	330,000,000	1,190,000,000
1999/00	760,000,000	90,000,000	260,000,000	1,120,000,000
2000/01	690,000,000	80,000,000	200,000,000	980,000,000
2001/02	600,000,000	120,000,000	220,000,000	940,000,000
2002/03	570,000,000	110,000,000	250,000,000	920,000,000
2003/04	400,000,000	160,000,000	290,000,000	840,000,000
2004/05	290,000,000	140,000,000	250,000,000	680,000,000
2005/06	240,000,000	150,000,000	180,000,000	570,000,000
2006/07	300,000,000	110,000,000	170,000,000	590,000,000
2007/08	280,000,000	120,000,000	140,000,000	540,000,000
2008/09	330,000,000	110,000,000	200,000,000	640,000,000

Benefits Culture

Interesting, well written, informative and sensitive blog on the experience of living on a benefit in the UK.

http://benefitsculture.wordpress.com/

Applying for Incapacity Benefit

After I had to stop working was a lean period because I did not immediately qualify for Incapacity Benefit (IB). What happened was this. As an acolyte to a religious order I was invited to be ordained on a four month retreat in the mountains in Spain. Yes! The business is run by members of the order and in return for a certain number of years service, and some other minor conditions they not only gave me leave but paid the cost of the retreat. So far so good. I should say that for the five years I worked for them I did so as a volunteer receiving board and lodging and a small stipend – so the retreat was the big payoff. But while I was away they did not pay National Insurance contributions for me and though I could top them up for the purposes of my pension, there was nothing I could do about the IB, and just had to wait until I qualified – about 6 months it was.

Applying for the IB is a nightmare. One fills in an IB50 form in which they want to know every little detail of one’s illness and disability – no detail of your affliction is too small. When one is “mentally ill” (how I hate that term, but that is my designation) one must supply details just as though it were a physical illness. “How does your mental illness affect your life?” they ask. With mental health issues you have to divulge your deepest fears, your darkest moments, your black heart on command to complete strangers in clinical detail in order to be taken seriously – it is grotesque. If I wasn’t suicidal at the start I was by the end. What they don’t tell you, but the Citizen’s Advice Bureau do, is that some drone goes through with a marker and gives you points on the tick boxes – they probably only look at the narrative answers as a last resort and in any case they won’t take your word for it, you have to be examined.

When one is sick it is expected that one will talk openly and frankly about one’s illness to any stranger that the state says one must – they’re paying the bill after all. So I duly showed up for my appointment with the state doctor and the anonymous seventies office block which looked like it had been going cheap. I was anxious to the point of nausea, but I knew that my life depended on this meeting.

When said doctor appeared to call me from the mercifully empty waiting room I was gob-smacked. He was late 50’s and hugely fat. Perspiration ran down a forehead pocked with pimples old and new, and his hair hung limp and oily down the side of his head like a dead fern. This man was going to judge my state of mind and body? Actually this fat and spotty man was very kind and I realised that he had a shitty job that he did with the grace that (older ) English people still often have under difficult circumstances. Don’t get me started on the youth of today.

Anyway he was kind and I am grateful to him. Then after eight months you get a letter with a new IB50 to fill in. Same ordeal all over again. Except that I got my form in by the due date of 27 June, and now it’s October. I’m too terrified to ring them and ask about it because they may well judge me fit to work – this means £25 less per week (which means not being able to afford my psychotherapist) and having to take seriously the idea of finding a job. Who in their right mind, in this performance and youth obsessed world, would employ me? It’s terrifying.

Other perceptions of the IB50 experience

• benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.com

Tips for filling in the IB50.

Disability Living Allowance

Ah shit. Now the UK Govt is looking to save all the money they wasted on the banks by cutting the DLA! Read this

"A government green paper has revealed plans to stop paying disability benefits and hand the cash over to social services instead. The consultation period for the green paper ends on 13 November. If there has been no significant outcry against the plans by then, it seems very likely that whichever party is in power after the next election will seize this opportunity to cut public spending by over a billion pounds a year. Although the actual changes may take years to be brought in, it is what happens between now and November 13th that is likely to seal the fate of attendance allowance (AA) and disability living allowance (DLA)."

Now - join the campaign against it! here >>> Benefits and Work.

Also look at the Social Care Experts blog.

Sign the Downing St petition

Introduction

I came to the UK in 2002 having sold most of my meagre worldly possession and resigned my job at the Polytech library. I was still optimistic and idealistic – I was coming to study Buddhism with my teachers and immerse myself in the burgeoning Buddhist culture which you will be surprised to know flourishes here in the UK. I ended up in a small UK town where I worked in various capacities for a not-for-profit business that gives the bulk of its profits to a charity whose aim is the promotion of the Buddhist religion (or something like that). It buys property with the rest of the profits.

Two years ago my health collapsed. I have struggled (successfully) with depression and anxiety all my life, but now my arms and back were in agony – I have a syndrome… fibromyalgia, or non-specific upper-limb pain (as one specialist referred to it). Bless the NHS and the generous benefits in this country – I’d be lost without them. But. Here I am a ‘bloody foreigner’ living on benefits with no savings and no prospects of ever being able to go home or be cured. I could die from embarrassment, if I don’t kill myself first.