Benefit reforms.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by entwisi

He claims his knee is badly damaged so he can't work and gets the old sticks out whenever he has to go for an interview.

I bet between us we could think of 50 jobs that could be done with a damaged knee. We have a bloke at work who is on his feet for 8 hours a day and he only has 1 leg. I think it is missing from below the knee.

You only need 1 leg to drive a fork lift truck
or a taxi
or work in a call centre
or write software
or .......

[lettie]

Originally Posted by Madhatter

It's the NHS that needs the reforms.

The NHS is reformed every week Madhatter, which is why it's in such a state. Not a week goes by without there being some sort of change in the NHS. These changes come from government level, from people so far removed from reality that they are unable to see the true picture of life on the shop floor. With every new change something else suffers and the staffing levels become even more diabolical. Experienced nurses and midwives are buggering off to Australia and New Zealand in droves, and I don't blame them. It is only a matter of time before they privatise the NHS. They've already done it with the dentists...

[Tinkerbelle]

If the Government are reforming the benefits system for those claiming incapacity benefit it would need to go hand in hand with a reform of employers attitude towards disabled employee applicants. In most cases the employer favours the able bodied for employment, how many times can a disabled person be knocked backed for jobs before believing themselves that they are un-employable.

[lazeeboy]

The system is totally wrong the problem, I believe, is that to SOFTEN the UNEMPLOYMENT figures people were "put on" DISSABILITY ALLOWANCE.
I am on dissability allowance, after a heart attack in august 2004, my Cardiac Specialist says, and it's true, that I have a very complicated medical history.
I wish I was fit enough to work, but I know I'm not.
Yes I get dissability allowance but I pay half of that myself,in income tax, because I paid to 15% of my earnings to a pension scheme for the past 20 years.
Some employers do employ the requisit disabled persons, others greet them with open arms as cheap labour.
Leave the people on disability alone and get those who won't work.
On telvision last night a guy with nine children said he cannot afford to get a job because benefits were so good.
Catch the benefit cheats and make them repay what they stole.
We come then across the old adage we can't let the children suffer so we have to give the benefits.
We often you see a very young couple, with child/children, both smoking, wandering around the streets, why aren't these men at work and supporting their own children, how do they get away with it.

[pendy]

I have mixed feelings on this. Those who are genuinely incapacitated, for whatever cause, should be allowed to receive benefits. The problem is that there are so many people claiming who are swinging the lead. We had a one day tube strike in London a while back because London Transport had sacked a tube driver (a job you do sitting down) who had been off sick for nearly 18 months, who claimed that he was unfit to work because of, as I remember, a bad back. LT were suspicious, so had him followed - to his Squash Club, where he proceeded to play a hard-fought game. What do you do about people like that? When I was working at the Royal Free, we had a man who complained that he had fallen off a ladder TWO YEARS BEFORE and was thus rendered incapable of work ever again - except that our suspicious Registrar noticed he was wearing paint-spattered Armani glasses, and reported him. Of course, he was claiming benefit and working as well, for cash.

I do agree that anyone claiming Income Support or whatever it is now should be made to do something useful, perhaps helping in a hospital or whatever. They might well decide that working for a living was not a bad alternative.

[fireman]

from what i read the reforms would get rid of lead swingers and the genuine cases would receive an increase in benefits .

[WillowTheWhisp]

I hope that works out as planned fireman because there are some genuine people who really struggle and it adds insult to injury when there are people who have never done a days work in their lives and never intend to behave as if the world owes them something. I'm thinking in particular of one lad I know in his 20s who spends all his DLA on computer games. He supposedly needs attendance allowance and yet has been abroad on holiday alone.

[fireman]

i agree totally i too know genuine claimants who struggle and scroungers who just rip the a-- out of the system.