welfare

Listening to “You and Yours’” Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme, on the way into work today I was following the debate on the proposed government changes to the benefits system. The government plans to shake up the benefits system by encouraging some of the long term unemployed to do voluntary work in return for receiving state benefits. Also included in the Government green paper are plans to scrap invalidity benefit and replace it with an enhanced benefit with stricter medical criteria administered by someone other than the individuals GP (Invalidity nurse practitioner?). Those not qualifying for the new benefit will be moved to a new employment support allowance scheme by 2013 which it is hoped by ministers will be regarded as a temporary benefit by all but the most disabled

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That’s the latest cry of the MoS:

That giant sucking sound you hear is the noise of money being vacuumed from the wages of productive workers into the pockets of dubious welfare claimants.

..writes a MoS journalist, who, by definition of his chosen career, is also a dubious claimant to being a productive member of society. It continues…

How can it be right for taxes to be used to subsidise alcoholics and drug abusers, in the guise of a questionable, inadequately monitored payment called ‘Disability Living Allowance’, which can be obtained without a doctor’s letter?

The same way a smoker can get access to a mobility allowance when they can’t walk more than 10 steps; or a fast food junkie can apply for home renovations because they can’t fit through the door anymore.

Why is this article picking on alcoholics and drug users?

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