Is Politics Devoid Of ANY Humanity?

Yes. Weird in the extreme.

There will be more voluntary work on behalf ofpeople who cannot help themselves.

Before workhouses and such the Church took care of the sick, the traveller, and the poor. Maybe churches will step up to organise care of the needy on a very large scale.There is a lot of good will among the public that simply needs organising.

Who knows whether OP is in receipt of a health-related benefit and is worried she might lose it or is speaking on behalf of others? Key here is that this is only a Green Paper, a consultation document. Everybody is invited to submit comments and suggestions.

As always, the press goes into overdrive, stoking unnecessary fear and worry.

I understand the economical arguments: tax the wealthy instead, no need to balance the books etc but that is only focusing on one aspect.

Something is changing in the UK. Fewer and fewer are people working, many claiming mental health as the reason.

We have around a million 16-24 year olds who are not in employment, education or training, 600,000 of them not even looking for work. That's four times the population of my nearest city.

We have a record number of people between the ages of 50 and 66 no longer working.

The working-age population is around 44 million from a total population of around 70 million, 13 million of whom are under 16 and 13 million over 65.

More than nine million working age people are not economical active i.e. nort working and not looking for work. That leaves 35 million people working. So we only have around half of the whole population in work - which is unsustainable if the economy is to grow.

For every two people receiving some kind of benefit (whether it’s child benefit at one end for a new-born, through working-age benefits to state pension at the other end), for every one person working.

The Green Paper is titled Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working. What is wrong with the ethos behind that if it encourages and helps people to find work and discourages a life exisiting on residual welfare?

Picking up on Caleo’s point. The voluntary sector will have a part to play in this through providing work opportunities. Voluntary work is often a pathway to paid work.

The point of this exercise is to save money for the treasury. The government has said that the amount of money that is given to people who are ill or who are disabled is unsustainable, that is what they have said. Therefore we will have to reduce the amount of money that is paid to people who are ill or who have disabilities .
We either accept that this will reduce the quality of life for people who are ill or disabled, or we pretend that they are not ill at all (over diagnosis, snowflakes, etc.)

All well and good what they are proposing, BUT my lived experience thus far is, I houseshare to save money same as my housemate, neither can afford to rent and pay bills for a whole house each, we have a room each and a room each for our respective children. BUT because we are deemed a couple, neither gets any help as we simply refuse to lie and say we are an item when we clearly with our respective relationships elsewhere are not. Both work, he does earn bit more than me and has been bailing the household out as my part time job became even more part time once the NMW went up, employer simply dropped hours to save. ( still expectsd same amount of work though, funny that) I am long term very ill never recovered from covid acannot get a docs appt and end result look and feel like death most days. Been tryin to get a second job but every single employer has either politely said they prefer a school leaver, or else taken one look at my aged 40 yrs in the past 5 self and kindly suggested I would not be fit enough to do the job ( believe me I have tried and tried to mask this) When I sday every single employer, there really aren't that many jobs actually out there and now I see even more companies are closing down, so where are all these magical jobs that are happy and able to take on disabled and sick people?

Or you know there could be a middle ground where some of us don't think young people should be written off to a life of not working. Some of us might think that this a situation we wouldn't want for our own children so why would we cheer it on for other people's children. Some of us might think that socialism might not be care workers and bin men working endless hours of difficult work to help support the (frequently middle class) people who know how to play the system.

You're right it being unfair treating you as a "couple" when you are "house sharing". You cant be the only ones in this situation. Can it be got round by separate rental contracts with the landlord? Certainly worth raising with your MP as its a green paper.

there could be a middle ground where some of us don't think young people should be written off to a life of not working

And that’s the thing that really worries me about what seems to be a sea-change in society - that so many young people are NEET.

I can’t find a breakdown in the numbers e.g. how many young people are severely disabled and cannot work, how many are able and have tried to get into the job market and given up, how many are graduates who have never worked since finishing post-compulsory education etc.

Thing is, Galaxy while that is a really good point, it would mean spending money to help the young people involved. Whereas the point of this exercise is to spend less.

Ilovecheese

Thing is, Galaxy while that is a really good point, it would mean spending money to help the young people involved. Whereas the point of this exercise is to spend less.

It's false economy.

The money is presumably to fill the mythical black hole but what they should be doing is redirecting this money, and more, to invest in these young people, their futures and the future of of country.

Ilovecheese

Thing is, Galaxy while that is a really good point, it would mean spending money to help the young people involved. Whereas the point of this exercise is to spend less.

No, it’s to spend money more effectively while still helping the people most in need. Please read the Green Paper to get a full perspective on this.

Yours is a similar argument to the one over the Winter Fuel Payment. It has saved money by removing the universal entitlement but has helped the poorest by encouraging them to claim Pension Credit which is a gateway to a range of other help.

Since July 2024, 117,800 Pension Credit claims have been awarded, a 64% increase compared to the previous year. The average award is £75 pw plus the ancilliary benefits of WFP + WHD.

Taking into account claims still to be processed and processing costs as a whole, the cost is similar to the savings from removing universality but the poorest are helped.

But it has been made very clear by the Government that they want to reduce the amout of benefits that are paid out. They have said out loud that it is unsustainable. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that it is a fase economy , but that is what is happening.

Young people must be helped to have employment, age 20 and
a life of benefits

Wanting to reduce the number of benefits being paid by providing employment as an alternative for those who are able to work is different to reducing the amount of benefits that are paid out. The provision of an infrastructure to enable people to work is not without significant cost, but ultimately it should improve the quality of life of the individuals affected.

Casdon

Wanting to reduce the number of benefits being paid by providing employment as an alternative for those who are able to work is different to reducing the amount of benefits that are paid out. The provision of an infrastructure to enable people to work is not without significant cost, but ultimately it should improve the quality of life of the individuals affected.

Yes, I agree. I just don't think that that is what is happening.

I don’t think we’ll know until the details of how the support systems are configured and funded is clearer Ilovecheese, which won’t be for a while yet. I’m not jumping the gun and being negative until I know how it works, because in principle I think it’s the right thing to do.

I admire your optimism Casdon and I really hope you are right.

Casdon

I don’t think we’ll know until the details of how the support systems are configured and funded is clearer Ilovecheese, which won’t be for a while yet. I’m not jumping the gun and being negative until I know how it works, because in principle I think it’s the right thing to do.

I agree Casdon
I don’t expect perfection
I’m keen on the power of positive thinking

Ilovecheese

Casdon

Wanting to reduce the number of benefits being paid by providing employment as an alternative for those who are able to work is different to reducing the amount of benefits that are paid out. The provision of an infrastructure to enable people to work is not without significant cost, but ultimately it should improve the quality of life of the individuals affected.

Yes, I agree. I just don't think that that is what is happening.

It can't happen overnight, Ilovecheese. Passing legislation to say that X is to be done so as to achieve the result Y doesn't mean that on the following day X is fully set up and running smoothly and the result Y is reported in all the media by that evening.

First the theoretical details in the Green Paper have to be considered, and adjusted if necessary, and the proposal has to be debated, voted on, and passed into law. Then the people to head it up have to be appointed, and the other employees to carry it out found and trained. It is guaranteed to have a shaky start, as the actualities of running the schemes are discovered and problems sorted out.

After that you may well find that your fears were groundless.

Agreed. It's a long term set of proposals. The overall re set to boundaries of benefits, plus measures to support back to work.

Its massive and bold undertaking that previous governments have just avoided, hats of to Starmer to acting in this crucial area.

To those who doubt - and of course there are doubts - I'd ask -

"Well, what would you have done instead?" and of course - "how could plans be improved upon", since there is time to adjust plans.

Casdon

Wanting to reduce the number of benefits being paid by providing employment as an alternative for those who are able to work is different to reducing the amount of benefits that are paid out. The provision of an infrastructure to enable people to work is not without significant cost, but ultimately it should improve the quality of life of the individuals affected.

The problem is Casdon, that so many posters are simply headline readers and are not only not interested in not educating themselves on the detail, they also seem to get a rush of satisfaction repeating misleading information. Sadly, we see a great deal of it on here.

in not educating themselves in educating themselves

The shivers that go down my spine with the 'educate yourselves' theme. I always associate it with power, control, and general unpleasantness.

Galaxy

The shivers that go down my spine with the 'educate yourselves' theme. I always associate it with power, control, and general unpleasantness.

I don’t think that’s fair in this case. I agree that ‘educate yourself’ is often used to mean ‘I don’t really know, but I want to pretend to be superior’, but I think that in this case the phrase is being used literally.

It is true that not everyone reads or thinks beyond headlines, and when those headlines are sensationalist and misleading it can lead to anger about things that aren’t happening. If people don’t want to make an effort to look behind the headlines (or see doing so as an ‘obsession’, as we’ve seen on another thread) then they are not speaking from a position of knowledge.

It’s not being controlling or unpleasant to point that out.

Ilovecheese

The point of this exercise is to save money for the treasury. The government has said that the amount of money that is given to people who are ill or who are disabled is unsustainable, that is what they have said. Therefore we will have to reduce the amount of money that is paid to people who are ill or who have disabilities .
We either accept that this will reduce the quality of life for people who are ill or disabled, or we pretend that they are not ill at all (over diagnosis, snowflakes, etc.)

It’s a difficult one isn’t it? I see fair points in both what you say and in the comment by silverbrooks
The best and middle way would be to promote work and eliminate any scroungers while making sure that the genuine cases are helped even more.
What will happen in practice rather than theory is another matter.