Two cracking ideas from the government, over the last few days.
1) Target people with mental health problems and stop them from being able to claim PIP by taking the process for being signed off sick, with a mental health issue, away from the GPs and give them to…… Who? I have seen mention of getting “other” health workers to do this, yet there is a shortage of mental health professionals available and there are currently 1.9 million people with mental health issues on the waiting list, whose mental health will continue to deteriorate without treatment!!!
Rishi Nosac kept on speaking about the need to get these people back into work, “as it would be beneficial to them”, which might be partly true, but totally untrue if the cause of the mental health issues are work related.
I have had a job that I couldn’t resign from because of economic reasons - it paid reasonably well and I wasn’t able to secure another job at the time - but it was giving me so much stress that I had to seek help from the doctor. For a while I was on anti depressants, which eased the problem slightly, but I still remember the days when I arrived at the car park and sat in my car for several minutes trying to get my thoughts together and control the nausea that I felt, before feeling able to enter the workplace.
Leaving that company and type of work was an instant remedy to my mental anxiety and I have never felt like that since.
Attacking people with mental health issues and trying to deliberately stigmatise them is just another low being set by an inhumane political party.
2) Rail companies are consistently failing to achieve a variety of targets, such as customer service, ticket office, toilets available, cleanliness etc, all that are linked to the bosses of the companies receiving bonuses if they achieve their goals.
The government response, apparently, is to reduce the percentage scores needed to achieve the goals, thus making the bonuses more achievable, instead of rinsing the companies and perhaps making them pay a punitive fine (probably not in the contracts, but if not, why not?).