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.
We didn’t vote Tory and we barely voted Liberal Democrat, so the government probably feels within its can dump the worst of its miserable policies on us, with no political fallout. And to prove it, they are to launch a pilot scheme to remove people from Incapacity Benefit and put them on to Employment Support in Aberdeen (another one will be trialled in Northern England). It’s strange that the Tories didn’t want to do anything like that in their heartlands of the south, where half the population lives and where there are plenty Incapacity benefit claimants.
With targets to reach the medics (for they are not necessarily doctors) of a private (for profit) company, will examine IB claimants and try to get them off the more expensive benefits, which are paid in recognition of long term illness and inability to work. Perhaps Camerclegg think that the resultant rise in unemployment in Scotland can be blamed on the Scottish 
Government? Labour had the same idea and had to admit that, although the medics were happy to deprive ill people of their money, the courts were not. On tribunal appeal more than half the cases were overturned by judges and doctors appointed by the English Ministry of Justice.
Now it has emerged, thanks to a parliamentary question in the London parliament, that some Scottish rail services may have to be reduced because the new rolling stock may not be able to run on lines North of Edinburgh.
Mike Weir, asked the English Transport Secretary about something that those of us north of Edinburgh are concerned about: the future of direct train services between London, Aberdeen and Inverness.
The reply from Theresa Villliers was that the future of these railways services would depend on decision, yet to be made, about the type of rolling stock. Clearly this is a question of electrification. Lines from England to Edinburgh and Glasgow
are electric, but no one bothered to electrify the lines north of Edinburgh. If then the new trains are electric, then there can be no direct service.
So, it seems that if you have to make the long (well, it is in the UK) journey between Aberdeen and London, or Inverness and London, then you will have to rely on local trains to get you to Edinburgh, where you will be obliged to change for London and the south (including the continent).
Labour had proposed purchasing duel fuel trains for the Scottish lines, but the Coalition has put that on hold. I presume that this means that despite the railway companies being private, making profits and giving t
heir directors huge bonuses, the government, or the public if you like, still has to pay for the trains. Nice business.
Long distance travel in the UK is already a misery in comparison to travel in France, Spain, Italy or Germany, and the cross border trains that ply the continent at half the price and twice the speed of UK ones. Scotland's railways are, even by comparison with Englands, a travesty. Is it necessary for us to be subjected to further inconveniences and train journeys be made longer?
.
It is good news that the Tories are going to tackle the problem of the people that, 30 years ago, they put on the scrap heap.
In a concerted effort to drive down the unemployment figures in the 1980s Mrs Thatcher’s Employment Secretary ordered Jobcentres to transfer as many people as they could from the embarrassing figures for those out of work, which were published each month. The favourite (according to people I know who worked in the Benefit Office), was to persuade them to go to the doctor and get “signed off”. They then immediately disappeared from the monthly figures.
Job done.
Well, except that these people were simply left to moulder on the “sick”. It was often in areas where one by one the traditional industries offering “men’s work” were closing down. Steel works, coal mines, ship building, heavy engineering, car manufacture, textiles, ceramics, bricks, glass.
The jobs that came along to replace them in the new, smart, clean Britain were insurance, banking, sales, call centres...... The men and the jobs didn’t go together: didn't match. So, no one from JC pestered them, and there were no jobs suitable for them, so their wives worked, they claimed Sickness Benefit, and as their mental health deteriorated they claimed Invalidity Benefit... and so it went.
Now it’s all to stop.
And that’s good.
People will not be allowed to moulder on the “sick”.
In a speech today Mr Duncan-Smith set out the new Tory strategy. And in keeping with IDS’s reputation for fairness, those who have spe
nt their lives on benefit, thanks to Mrs Thatcher, and who are now approaching retirement age, will be allowed to retire. Anyone else will be re-assessed and helped to get into work. The kind of work that is suitable: part time, very part time.... light duties.
I’ve a few words of caution for IDS. Firstly, with all the jobs that are going to be lost because of the bankers’/government's/FSA's incompetence, and the civil service pay offs, there aren’t going to be many jobs for the millions of people that you intend shifting off the sick list.
If and when employers do take on, they will want to do so from well qualified and job ready people, conversant with today’s way of doing business.... and there are any number of them available at the moment. They will be spoilt for choice.
Secondly Iain, what comes out of your office way up in the dizzy heights of Whitehall may be good and well intentioned. But by the time it has moved down about 18 levels of responsibility to the clerk, or the medical person... it has become a target. The guy sitting in front of them is no longer a person. He is a target to be achieved.
So, just make sure that you keep an eye on what’s going on. Remember that the tests under Labour were so strict that more than half the decisions to refuse benefit were overturned by tribunals. That’s time and money consuming not to mention a terrible thing to do to sick people. A tribunal can take up to a year to be convened.
Tell your staff that not everyone who is on Incapacity Benefit is a skiver, or a liar and fit as a fiddle. Just like not every MP is a liar, a cheat or a thief.
And please Iain. Forget the bloody targets. These are PEOPLE
...............
