Monday 5 December 2011

SHOULD CHEMOTHERAPY PATIENTS BE LOOKING FOR WORK?

The UK government's Department of Work and Pensions has proposed a policy in its desperation to save money at any cost (as it spends more and more on JSA because of the catastrophic economic situation). This policy would see cancer sufferers, even ones currently on chemotherapy, made to undergo work availability interviews at the Jobcentre.


No, it's true apparently. 


So, your hair is falling out on your pillow, you've never felt more sick in your life, you are weak, fragile, and you look awful. All you want to do is curl up in bed and hope that this awful feeling will go away.


You're not even sure that it will work. You may have gone through all this for nothing. You may die. You have a certificate from the hospital. At least all that is taken care of.


But no. You haven't taken the Iain Duncan Smith element into consideration. The job centre writes telling you to appear before them on Tuesday at 9.30 am. There is a bold line at the bottom of the letter which tells you in stark terms that failure to attend this interview will result in your (meagre) benefits being cut off.


Just imagine.


So two Liberal bloggers from the sidebar bloglist, Caron and George, have put together a petition to the government to try to stop them implementing this most desperate of policies.


They reckon they may be pushing at an open door as their Liberal colleagues and even one or two of the Tories, find that it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth to do this to people. And it's so pointless. After all, just how many employers would be likely to take on someone undergoing chemo?


I wish the petition success. After all, it could be me...or you one day. 


And there's a limit to how low even this UK government can sink, surely.



22 comments:

  1. And there are those who still want the people of Scotland to be part of this Union Unbelievable

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh they will go lower than this if they can tris, but this alone ought to have them put through chemo just so they can 'understand and fully empathise' with their electorate!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes anon,

    We complain about human rights abuses in places like China, and we treat our own people like this?

    Shameful.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm all for that actually. Iain Duncan Smith and his odious bag carrier Chris Grayling, both. Let's see if they don't want sick notes after a few dozes of chemo.

    I want out of a union that supports this kind of behaviour.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tris

    This is only the start. The nasty party will get even nastier since they realise that in England there is no real opposition.

    Am I alone in thinking it is ironic that two Lib Dems who support to their core the right of Westminster to rule Scotland, should raise a petition against policy, no matter how abhorrent, that by them being in government and in Cabinet, Lib Dems support.

    The only meaningful protest from Lib Dems would be resignation from this despicable government.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tris

    Its policies like this that will always make sure that there are more Pandas in Scotland than tory MPs.

    Thank to cynicalhighlander for the Panda to MP ratio. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  7. What! and lose all those hard won perks.Never in a month of Sundays doing something like that takes principle and we all know where that went

    ReplyDelete
  8. Guess Which Country Has Debt Of Nearly 1000% Of GDP...

    Meanwhile in funny farm austerity olympics money is no problem as the security bill has more than doubled to over half a billion, revolution anyone.

    ReplyDelete
  9. To be fair Dubs, Mr Potter has torn a strip off the supine Lib Dems in government on his blog posting today. He's fighting for what the Lib Dems should be, rather than what they are.

    I'd like to think that if the SNP were sucked into something completely and utterly wrong, I'd stay with them but fight what they were doing, rather than just leave and join some other party.

    After all the Liberals are a lot more than the cabinet ministers that have become Tories.

    But you're right, the useless Labour party, which also became Tory to win in southern England, and is led by a total muppet, is about as much use as an underwater hair-dryer.

    That's one of the reasons we need independence. England has 3 parties all of which are various degrees of right wing, rich people's parties. Get sick, get old, get poor and they want rid of you.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yes Anon. They swallowed most of their principles when they were sucked into the Tory party by the evil Eton boy.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Yes, the Olympics will end up costing £30 billion or more. it's one of the reasons Greece is in the mess that it is. Very prestigious, but hopelessly expensive. Why we can't just have sports, without islands being floated round the coast and rubbish like that.

    Suppression of human rights too... freedom to demonstrate removed... just like China, I bet the Met secret police will be moving tramps away from where they might be seen sleeping on the streets.

    And they'll be arresting people who wave Scottish flags, or wear Burger King t shirts, or Clydesdale Bank caps.

    Mustn't spoil it for the advertisers.

    Meanwhile pensioners and unemployed freeze in their houses.

    Revolution sounds like a plan. I'm so angry.

    BTW where did you get the security figure. I thought it would be top secret.

    ReplyDelete
  12. PS Interesting figures, CH.

    You always find great stuff!

    We are the most broke nation then... Well done Britain.

    Still, just as well we are not independent. We might have been...er bankrupt...

    ReplyDelete
  13. Oh! yeah drag the Union into it although whats that got to do with who knows.Only the loony Nationalist extremists.

    Lets be honest there many(snp) people in scotland who applaud this approach to those on benefits.

    anyway cancer sufferers would fit very well into short term temporary work.,and then die perfect capitalist working fodder.

    ReplyDelete
  14. It came across the airways briefly tris so the BBC has satisfied its reporting code before going velly quiet on it or should that be sushi.

    Independence support is steadily rising is that why Niko is pulling his hair out or has he been swimming in Dalgetty Bay

    ReplyDelete
  15. Cynical

    Which is more toxic?

    The torys, Dalgety Bay or a certain poster?

    ReplyDelete
  16. CH

    Steadily rising like a blancmange
    just before deflating.

    'The number of people who said they would support independence more than halved, dropping from 47% to 21%, if the economy would get worse'

    Ha!a bit of unionist negativity and fear used well should easily frighten the shite out of potential Independence voters.

    all to play for yet snp not doing as well as it needs so far

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dubbieside

    That's easy it has to Dalgetty Bay as the other two are becoming more irrelevant by the day

    Niko see above.

    ReplyDelete
  18. CH

    Oh! well time will tell there comes a day when all votes will be counted
    and a result declared......

    ReplyDelete
  19. Niko: What the union has to do with it is no government in Edinburgh, not a Labour one, Liberal one or an SNP one would dream of doing this. Probably not even the Scottish Tories would do it.

    We don't want that kind of policy here.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I fund it on the Beeb CH, and I've written a post about it.

    Thank goodness the country has any amount of money to waste on these games. It would be terrible if we have more debt than anyone else in the G10 wouldn't it.... Oh wait, we do.

    ReplyDelete
  21. How many times you gonna vote in the referendum Niko?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Blancmange (or white eat as we should properly call it, if we are speaking the Queen's English)

    Does yours deflate Niko?

    Oh dear. How unfortunate.

    ReplyDelete