Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

We actually need more children to become tax payers of the future, to keep & look after us in our old age. If you discourage less well off from having kids the "idle Rich" will be able to have as many as they like. Rich kids are then going to take most places in further education and the better jobs, they're not going to want to do lower paid jobs. Some hardworking, tax -paying parents fall on hard times, not all poor are scroungers. What if they fall ill or loose a partner when they already have 3 children or more? There but for the grace of God .....

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

The well off will probably fail as a result of not acknowledging the importance of the less well off, when we need the support of a social structure, we will probably share a waiting room with folks from all walks of life.

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

According to the Department of Work and Pensions, the rate of fraud amongst DLA claimants is 0.05% - while in theory I would agree that there should be NO fraudulent claims at all, the reality is that the cost of investigating and stopping such a tiny proportion of claims would far outweigh the money saved in benefits (if indeed there was any money saved at all - after all, if there were no jobs, the claimants would simply move from DLA to JSA).
I can assure you that currently the disabled are required to go through a variety of demeaning and demoralising processes before they are granted DLA - it is certainly not just a question of the DWP unquestioningly accepting peoples' word that "they can't walk further than 100 yards with a stick!" In reality there are probably a greater number of people who should claim DLA and don't, than there are who claim it fraudulently.
Maybe in the past it was easy to defraud the DWP, but it certainly isn't now. Unfortunately, the gutter press and gutter TV love to highlight one example of fraud and then claim that such behaviour is the norm, when nothing is further from the truth. The despicable behaviour of the DWP and its appalling minion ATOS, has actually led to hundreds of deaths amongst disabled people whom these scum have wrongly designated as "fit for work!"
What should be remembered is that the vast majority of those people on Disability Living Allowance are not "just" disabled. They are, for the most part, disabled and chronically ill. My wife, for example suffers from chronic osteo-arthritis (the result of a fall at work in which she broke both her knees) in her knees, hips and hands, bursitis, high blood pressure, a damaged spinal column, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, Vitamin D shortage and migraines - and this is before we even start to consider the wide range of unpleasant side-effects caused by the huge variety of drugs she has to take for the constant pain. She is on huge doses of Morphine, Oxycodone and Solpadol as well as a cocktail of 12 other drugs for her various ailments. The irony is, she would kill to be able to go back to work. She absolutely loved her work, but given her disabilities and her drug regime, no employer would touch her with a bargepole (not least because her painkillers lead to to fall asleep without warning every so often). I would submit, based on my experience of disabled people, that the vast, vast majority are like my wife - they are not scroungers, but previously hard-working people who would give anything to be able to work again. THAT is the reality of the situation, not the gutter press's artificial Aunt Sally Scroungers. So, I'm afraid Wrinkly, you are right! Your opinion is not very popular with me at the very least.

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

Great post Mick, so much common sense, i wonder why this goverment is so set on demonising those at the bottom, is it to take peopless attention away from their failures.

And what annoys me is despite the fact they are payed well the seem happy to fiddle expenses as a right. They do so in full knowledge they are nothing better than those they call scroungers.

Corporate avoidence of tax is a much bigger issue than any so called welfare fiddling, and would reap much more cash if addressd, so why is it not being dealt with.

Crooked banking practices have been the major cuase of our current problems, yet us taxpayers have had to bail them out, and sit back while they reward themselves with massive bonus payments.

Sadly none of the parties seem to offer anything different,the gravy train rolls on.

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

Mick said :---I can assure you that currently the disabled are required to go through a variety of demeaning and demoralising processes before they are granted DLA -

I know this not to be entirely right, for instance I have a condition that is up and down, sometimes it is disabling others times it is not.
Back in 2000 I had a bad attack, and my legs seized in a bent position, consequently I had a wheelchair, and was in hospital for a month, and 8 months in the chair.
I applied for a blue badge so I could park my car closer to premises etc. I was still running a good business from my wheelchair, and also drive OK.
The reply from the DWP was "do you have DLA" no I said I don't need it I can work OK. "Well you can't have one sir"
To cut a long story short, a doctor visited me, I was then told I was eligible for top rate DLA. but I don't want DLA, "but you have to have it sir to have a blue badge"
OK I said, I will have the DLA and the blue badge.
After knee replacements etc. which was a year later, I said I no longer want my DLA, but sometimes my condition is up and down, so I kept my blue badge, and 13 years later I still have my blue badge, and I haven't had a car for 3 years.
The system is useless and is not a good system at all.
I was once approached by a chap in a car park, who told me he had just got a new car, a very expensive model, and he said it was a mobility car, i said but you don't look disabled, he smiled and said my breathing is bad.
I spent the next 2 hours following that chap round a shopping centre, and he was fine, walking up flights of stairs carrying shopping and doing an able bodied person would do.
T^hat is just one case of many I know, and I am sure most of us know of similar cases.

So I know that the figure you give is not correct, and it has to scrutinised properly.

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

The 0.05% is not my figure - it is the estimate given by the DWP and given their attitude towards the disabled it is unlikely that they would deliberately minimise the extent of fraud. On the contrary.

The Blue Badge system is totally different from the issue of disability benefits and seems to be administered differently by each local authority. For example, our local authority will issue blue badges to the disabled whether they are claiming DLA or not. As you say, many people whose mobility is seriously impaired can still work (in the same way that some disabled people are still capable of being top class athletes) - which is why I made the crucial point in my post that the vast majority of those claiming DLA are not only disabled, but disabled and chronically ill. If my wife's disability was confined to her lack of mobility, wild horses wouldn't stop her from doing the work that she loves - it's the chronic illnesses which accompany the disability which makes it impossible for her to work.

As far as the Motability Scheme is concerned, there has been abuse of the system in the past - disabled parents using it to provide a cheap car for their children etc - but the regulations have been seriously tightened in recent years and such abuse is much less likely to occur.
Having said that, no system will ever be 100% foolproof and it would be naive to think that it could ever be so. The issue is, do we, as a society, really want to make the most vulnerable people in our society suffer because of a tiny minority of fraudulent scum. If we do, that's not the kind of society I want to be a part of!

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

Isn't it demoralising to see the level of envy and hate aimed at those who have some how managed to acculmulate some savings and are perceived to be 'rich' what a typical example of the worst aspects of human behaviour, never trust your fellow man for he will covet whatever you have

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

The idle poor of the Philpott ilk are likely to have kids just as idle as themselves, and a drain on society. Don't knock the rich many of them do a lot for this country!

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

Superb post Grouse - I heard on tv yesterday that if all the avoided tax was taken, the debt would be wiped out and social housing built so thereby kickstarting the economy. I used to argue against excessive building project but then heard that only 7% of land in Britain is built on (I know it's more complex than that mere percentage) but even so, why the shortage of housing and no investment? It was stated on the programme that if there was more social housing, unscrupulous landlords wouldn't be in a position to overcharge.

Anyone have any thoughts on that? Anything glaring that I should have been able to spot?

Re: George Osborne v Mick Philpott

On the contrary - it's very sensible. To me the biggest problem with welfare is the fact that one of the biggest recipients are private landlords who rake in a fortune by setting rents artificially high and getting housing benefit paid direct into their coffers. If we built more social housing there would be a very beneficial effect all round (apart from the private landlords, of course).
Of course another "elephant in the room" in this whole discussion is the role played by large-scale immigration on employment, housing and other infrastructure (GPS, Social Services etc). With a possible 2 million Romanians and Bulgarians due to arrive over the next few years, this can only exacerbate the situation. At the moment, government is working hard to force people "back to work" when "work" is pretty much non-existent and most new vacancies are taken up by new immigrant workers who undercut indigenous workers. I read somewhere the other day that Costa Coffee recieved over 1700 applications for just 8 jobs - many of the applicants were graduates.(http://swns.com/news/costa-coffee-bo...cancies-31690/ )
In such a situation, what possible sense does it make to invite hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into our already overcrowded and economically challenged country.