They don't though. Mental health is treated like ****. The Government is the problem. The Tories cut ESA by £50+ a week to hurt the poorest people. Now doing the same to PIP. The Tories made the tests more strict. One thing people with mental health issues are marked down on is if they have smart hair or not... like what the ****. The Tories are the ones ****ing over the sick and disabled. Yet you question why the BBC have a picture of a person on a wheelchair. Just because you think you are ok doesn't mean others are. He ****ed up then made up some **** to try to cover his ass. But yes people are twisting the truth. Seriously I don't get you any more.
It's got pretty lively on here since I last looked. As a wizened old leftie I'm delighted! Love the Daily Mail video, and obviously a donation has gone. BUT! Is anyone else starting to get a mite worried by the madness that seems to be The Labour Party. When discussing football, those of us of an optimistic bent get called happy-clappy. Dear God. There are people in the Labour Party who have re-invented the concept. As a member I get e-mails like "We've smashed UKIP; now for The Tories". Smashed UKIP? Beating a bunch of right wing nutters led by a guy who makes Billy Liar look like a realist into second place after this self same leader has scored more own goals than Everton is not a major victory! And as for the Tories .... they won a seat in Copeland where they should have been a distant third. I despair. As someone who has always been politically active I can't see where to go. Issues that matter to me greatly - the dismantling of the NHS; the cuts in education - are matters on which I would have tramped the streets in the past. But now if I do I am with people who have lost all grip on reality and mutter things like "growing membership" and "UKIP are finished." UKIP may never get another MP elected, but they are setting the agenda. Or is it just me?
Got into a major argument this weekend with a prat of a family member over "I, Daniel Blake". I've been involved with a foodbank for far too long, and stories like those in this film are common-place. I was told that it was left wing propaganda, and that the truth is that people on benefits are scroungers and work the system. I've met people I know are working the system. But I've met far more people who desperately need support to try to get their chaotic lives sorted. This would cost, but the benefits in having people taking responsibility for their own lives would see less re-offending etc etc. A lot of our clients are quite happy to break the terms of their licences to go back inside where they'll get a bed and 3 meals a day. And don't get me started on the failure of the system to help people with Mental Health issues. One thing for certain. If you haven't got MH issues when you start on the streets you sure as hell will after a few weeks or months of our current regime. "Daniel Blake" is everywhere. In my experience the film understates just how crap the system has become.
Yep. The welfare state is being dismantled at exactly the same time as Jeremy Corbyn is dismantling the Labour Party. Labour isn't finished in England - Sadiq Khan's election as mayor of London proves that. But it is on life support while Captain Birdseye remains at the helm.
It's a similar situation for Labour to when Michael Foot became leader of the party. Went back to core values, Clause 4, etc.., and essentially became unelectable. This is the problem that Labour will never face. Every time it positions itself as a more centralist party it wins, and sometimes by a landslide, and every time it goes back to its socialist roots it becomes unelectable. Clement Atlee created the Welfare State and Harold Wilson and Tony Blair got it right. Better to be elected so that those who are weakest, and the institutions that protect them [and everyone else], are strong than to stoically remain left wing socialist and watch those institutions whither away, cut down by a Conservative party that believes that the strongest only should survive and the weakest can ultimately go to the wall.
Well written Lambo! Being a leftie isn't supporting policies that were formulated in Victorian times. The issues you raise of health and education are the fundamentals. The need for quality health care and the provision of educational opportunities for all, provided by the state are the minimum requirements for a fair and just society. Without them the poor stay poor and the rich... find a tax haven. The Labour party need to re-focus. They are fighting the wrong fights. Oh and whilst I'm having a rant, as someone who spent his career working in mental health, we closed the county asylums 20-25 years ago on the understanding the monies saved would be invested in community care... What happened? Large tracts of public land in the countryside were sold for a pittance so developers could build new villages/towns with the minimum of social housing, whilst a generation of (and future generations) of Chronic Schizophrenics found that underfunded community care led to a poorer quality of life and/or prison. The current pressures on mental health services, for services from the cradle to the grave are a national disgrace. When the most vulnerable are neglected and often demonised one can only question the ethical values employed to get us to this position. To quote Mr Dylan, 'It's a hard rain..'
What the Labour party don't seem to understand (but Blair and the Tories at the moment do) is that the majority of voters are neither left or right but central. We want the best of both worlds. Whilst Corbyn is in charge Labour will only suffer with the wider electorate because he is too far left. Unless he stands down though they are stuck with him it seems. It is not good for democracy in this country to have such a weak opposition.
Can't say I've seen Daniel blake, but on everything else I couldn't agree more. I work for a housing association, so we house all sorts of people with MH or other disabilities. And unfortunately some of these people may be who you end up seeing on the street. Most of what we spend is government mandated, such as the level of repairs etc. But we are well aware of the type of care our residents need which is why above the requirements, a lot of our money goes on our support services. Some of this we do get funding for but a lot doesn't. Things like sending an advisor out to help measure the amount of energy a resident is using for various things and help them budget and find grants so vulnerable residents (often elderly) don't think the only way they can pay they rent is to not turn their heating on. Its staggering how many of are residents are seeking medical help for things like depression and anxiety. People really do need to know how real the stress can be for some people who are barely scraping by and the mental health issues that causes. It also often causes people to make things worse for themselves by taking pay day loans to pay their rent (because they will be more understanding than us please log in to view this image ). Many also just escape with drugs etc which just adds to their problems. Don't want to get into too much detail for privacy reasons but there was a case a few months back where somebody young was a regular user most of his life and had never had a real job. His rent was piling up and was in danger of getting evicted, he became genuinely scared and we were pretty much thinking he was gone. We managed to work with him and helped him to start getting off what he was taking, and worked with him to arrange a payment plan which he actually managed to stick to. He even got a small job shortly after- I'd never heard somebody so proud of getting a paper round job. I think is must have been a symbol of him turning his life around to him as I can't imagine it helped him financially. Either way a while after that I heard he had turned up dead from a drug overdose (when you stop using your resistence goes down) had a stack of papers by the door ready to be delivered. I only mention that be cause I bet it's the type of person your 'prat of a family member' was imagining, but it just shows there are people who want and need to be helped. The government's way of helping: force housing associations to reduce rent by 1%. Because a 1% reduction in rent is totally going to help somebody who's life is spiralling into debt. What it does mean however is that extra money I mentioned earlier that we put into support gets reduced and that energy advice guy I mentioned? He's gone now. We cant cut much else as most finances are goverment requirements. So those who are well off on benefits get a nice 1% while those in dire need still get evicted and now have to live without heating until they do. I'm sure the government know this won't help people in reality, but I'm sure they think being able to say 'we've cut rent for the most needy!' Will win them votes. Sorry that turned into a rant but you can understand the frustration! (I typed this on my phone while on the train back from work so apologies for typos)
That's a great post VM, for terrible reasons if you understand me. I don't know much about that side of life first hand but my wife who was a CPN for many years has many terrible stories about the lack of support in financial terms from the state for the majority of her patients. Very often she would have to help them fill in benefit claims as there was no one else available to help. One of the things that I am involved with is dealing with planning applications as a Parish Councillor. We don't have the final say, that goes to the District Council, but we see the plans in great detail. One of the rules is that developments of more than 12 homes have to have a third of them of the "affordable" type, which sounds great, but unless the build is being commissioned by a Housing Association, the chances are the low cost homes will be bought up by a private landlord who will then charge the maximum possible rent. Quite how that helps people like those you describe above escapes me.
You carry on ranting VM. People need to know the realities. Especially when everyone is just a unfortunate set of circumstances away from the gutter. People who genuinely think that most of the poor and the weak are scroungers need to actually test that lie. Go out and take a proper look. But of course, they won't. They might actually see something which shakes their comfy cynical outlook.
I think the benefits system is a mess. I'm sure there are lots of people in need suffering but the benefits system is ridiculous in the other direction as well. I'll give 3 examples of people I've known over the last 10 years: 1) Around 2005/06 I was working for the Probation Service in London. I was talking to one of the younger offenders I was supervising about getting a job and he said "Yeah, I want to get a job but it has to be worth it." He then listed off the benefits he got and gave the minimum figure he'd need to earn for it to be financially beneficial for him to get a job. That figure was more than I was getting paid! 2) In 2009 a friend of mine was made redundant from his well-paid job. He went to the job centre to sign on and was told he had too much money in savings so he wouldn't get anything. He left the job centre and went and spent all his savings on a collection of home entertainment equipment (hi-fi, film projector, dozens of DVDs, maybe a games console). He went back the next week, told them he no longer had any savings and was told the government would make interest-only payments on the mortgage on his flat in Highgate. 3) In 2014/15 I worked for a council in London. I was talking to one of the call centre staff who'd been recently unemployed and he told me that only took home about £30 a week more working full-time than he did when he was unemployed. So, as much as there are people suffering, there are also situations like these. The people above aren't lazy, they aren't scroungers, they aren't to be blamed. They've looked at the system and made rational, logical decisions. The problem is that there are situations where claiming benefits means you are financially better off than you would be if you were working, situations where working 35-40 hours a week earns you not much more than doing nothing, situations where the system rewards irresponsibility. The biggest problem in my experience is the huge amount of money paid out in housing benefit, which is essentially a subsidy for landlords. We should be using at least some of that money to build more council homes. You could even keep the right to buy scheme in place, so long as any money raised from sales is ploughed back into building more homes.
I completely agree with you about the system being a mess and the points you made there, one of the reasons i was annoyed about the government taking the money away from our system of care is that we can target it at the people who actually need it, whereas the reduced rent is universal so helps the people you just mentioned as much as those who would need it more.(though those on full housing benefit won't feel it as hb pays the rent, but that's by no means everybody). As for the part in bold, we have the money to build homes, that's not an issue, we've planned for more than were managing to build. It's finding the land to build on thats the major limiter. We've even gone as far as taking over development contracts where the original developer has gone bust and finishing them ourselves. Anything to get a home built. edit: Just to clarify as i just realised it could raise questions. Its not my area but i believe the house-building money comes from government grants, re inbursment from right to buy etc etc and has to be put on building new homes. It can't be used for care etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39133400 The government has been defeated after the House of Lords said ministers should guarantee EU nationals' right to stay in the UK after Brexit. I have to say I don't agree with this and it seems it's probable the House of Commons will rightly, in my opinion, override it. I understand that the reason they want the amendment is to give certainty to EU nationals and I have no problem with that but it's not that simple. We need to ensure that UK nationals in the EU are given similar reassurances and if the 27 remaining countries don't need to worry about their citizens why would they prioritise any negotiations about ours? I have heard someone say we should take the high ground but that's pretty naive, I would say, when negotiating with 27 other countries who are pretty annoyed with us already.
Isn't it just the decent thing to do, to offer reassurance to people who have built their lives over here? Like a French friend of mine, a hard working single mum whose son is at a local school? Don't those people deserve certainty? Sometimes, in my opinion, you should just do the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing. I would forget using people's lives as bargaining chips in some supposed future negotiations, & yeah, take the moral highground, naive or not. Well done the Lords.
In my opinion, most if not all, government run establishments are run horrendously, pouring money down the drain on pointless guff and ignoring the real issues. As an engineer that used to work for a ministry of defence site, I can confirm that what I saw there will horrify you. The amount of wastage and ineptitude caused by poor planning, over staffing the wrong areas and understaffing the necessary areas was absolutely mind-boggling. In the end I left out of moral pain for what I was witnessing. I can only imagine this relates to what you guys see in the health service. The worst part is, a lot of it would be so easy to fix. But no-one listens to the people at ground level. Our government establishments are a total, utter embarrassment.
This whole EU nationals thing feels like we're going into a hostage exchange with guns drawn. Somebody has got to take the first step and lower their weapons. If we go into these EU negotiations as enemies at war, we're all going to be worse off for it. Were still meant to be friends.
Theresa May has said the UK government is prepared to guarantee the status of EU nationals in return for the EU doing the same for Brits in the EU. This is hardly unreasonable. It would be nice to unilaterally guarantee their status but May has a responsibility to UK citizens living abroad. The most sensible solution would be for the UK and EU to say any EU national who moved here before [insert appropriate date] can stay. There would be some difficulties doing that because it seems we don't keep track of EU citizens entering the country but even so. So it's the EU (Merkel mainly?) that has refused to agree anything yet you hear very little criticism of the EU/leaders of the EU governments and lots of criticism of the UK government. Odd.
Negotiations have yet to begin, so it's absurd to accuse Merkel or the EU of refusing to agree anything. What the Lords' ammendment seeks to do is establish common decency as a given, before all parties get bogged down in the inevitable legal detail which is about to keep half our Civil Service tied up for the next two years.
The EU have not formally started negotiations as we have not yet enacted article 50, so technically there are no hold up on the EU side or opinions offered until that is done. In practice I suspect some chat has happened and I can't imagine the EU are going to suddenly kick out all those OAPs on the Costa Brava.
Some sort of guarantee for citizens living abroad should probably be included in the leaving process to be honest but this stuff about "negotiations haven't started" is nonsense. If Merkel and co wanted an early agreement then there would be an early agreement. You could easily justify it on the grounds that it is a high priority issue that's causing concern and uncertainty for people across the EU. Or, if you prefer, on the grounds that "common decency" requires it. If the UK is able to guarantee the status of EU nationals in the UK at this point then there is nothing stopping other EU governments making a similar promise for UK citizens living in their countries. If Angela Merkel is able to say her country will accept a million refugees from Syria then she there is nothing to stop her saying UK citizens will be allowed to stay after Brexit. She won't do that though because she's facing an election and that would not be popular with her supporters. But yeah, let's all criticise the one person who's said they want to agree something and remove people's uncertainty.
