Sue Marsh from Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, reports on a concerted effort in the right-wing press to prevent any real debate over benefits.
Sue Marsh blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
Today, the Daily Express and Daily Mail are full of cheating, scrounging sick people.
The Express screams: “Blitz on Britain’s benefits madness”, contrasting those on “sickness handouts” with “hard working taxpayers”.
According to the the Express, Tory MP Philip Davies joined the outcry, saying:
“People are sick to the back teeth of being taken for a ride by people sponging and scrounging and abusing the system.”
While the Mail screams:
“Scandal of 80,000 on sickness benefits for minor ailments… including diarrhoea.”
To accompany the claim that “drug addicts” have been allowed to claim, they included a picture of someone snorting white powder through a rolled up note.
The papers go on to list “blisters”, “headaches”, “depression”, and “problems with scholastic skills” as evidence that there are hundreds of thousands of people living the good life at “taxpayers” expense who have nothing really wrong with them.
For a moment, let’s forget the fact that only the first ailment a person lists on their claim form is taken into account in these figures. Let’s ignore the fact that someone with “nail disorders” might also have cancer or kidney failure. Let’s ignore the fact that someone classified under “drug abuse” might also suffer from schizophrenia or multiple sclerosis..
I have “diarrhoea” but why? Well, because of the 32 growths I’ve had to have removed from my guts and the seven major operations to remove rotten lengths of bowel, leaving me with half as much intestine as your average ill-informed hack.
My friend has “blisters.” She suffers from the rare skin disease Epidermolysis Bullosa. Her skin blisters and comes away at the lightest touch, leaving her scarred and in constant, terrible pain.
“Headaches?” Cluster headaches (also referred to as “suicide headaches”) are thought to be one of the worst pains known to man, not something to be confused with a hangover.
I could go on, but I’m sure you’re beginning to see why these horrible articles, fuelled by “statements” today from Chris Grayling, minister for Work and Pensions and our very own prime minister, only serve to turn a sensitive, delicate subject into a form of attack. They aim to pitch one condition against another whilst asking more fortunate citizens to view those who are unwell with mistrust and contempt.
Perhaps there is a legitimate debate to be had over which conditions “hard working tax-payers” are willing to support. There is certainly some validity in the claim that many sick or disabled people would love help and support to find a job.
However, surely none of us agree that this is the way in which to conduct that debate? Surely allowing our politicians and our media to whip up hate and prejudice against a particular group of society is something we should all be ashamed of?
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148 Responses to “Right-wing hate campaign clouds debate on benefits”
donald james pearl
RT @leftfootfwd: Right-wing hate campaign clouds debate on benefits http://bit.ly/f9qXNM
Anon E Mouse
BenM – The clanging sound was of people’s jaws hitting the table in expressions of incredulity at your remark.
(I guessed it couldn’t have been your intellect rattling in your skull). I love stats BenM and regarding the last election on this very fine blog I recently posted:
Labour’s worst performance in a general election since 1918.
More seats were lost than at any general election since 1931.
The Conservatives achieved their second biggest swing from Labour since Thatcher in 1979.
2% more than Michael Foot in 1983 – 3% less than John Major in his landslide defeat of 1997.
Over 4000 councillors lost since Tony Blair’s election as Labour leader.
No government has lost so many votes/ percentage points as Labour 1997 and 2010.
Five million voters lost since 1st May 1997.
More people voted Conservative in Wales than Labour for the first time ever.
Gordon Brown was the least popular Prime Minister since records began.
The PLP never elected Brown or Miliband. Or the Labour Party members.
The biggest budget deficit in British peacetime history was inflicted on this country under Labour.
The Labour Party owes in excess of £24million – it’s bust.
I don’t do stats? Please. The remark was about Mason Dixon, Autistic claiming eating as many pies as Lord Prescott was no different than the genetic disorder, PWS. I say it is very different.
Anyway normally you avoid my questions on this great blog BenM but do you think self inflicted obesity is equivalent to a genetic disorder?
Clare Fernyhough
The point of the article above was to demonstrate how accurate facts are withheld in order to manipulate public opinion. By all means, we should know all of the statistics, including those concerning alcoholics and drug users, but let them be accurate at least. Moreover, we need a completely different and positive approach to welfare that does not stigmatise any claimant. I apologise in advance for the length of comment, but it is something I feel passionate about.
Whether you have a genuine health problem, you are unemployed, or you have an alcohol/drug problem, the idea of ‘welfare’ is that it achieves just that. A dictionary definition of welfare states: 1: The good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc., of a person, group, or organization; well-being: to look after a child’s welfare; the physical or moral welfare of society. 2: Financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government. 3: A governmental agency that provides funds and aid to people in need, especially those unable to work. There is much more to the concept of welfare than financial aid, and the current and proposed system will continue to fail because it does not address this concept. For example, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with people receiving benefits, whatever their circumstances, if those benefits and the systems in place to administer them empowered people to change their life course, providing the individual with happiness and good fortune, and in doing so benefiting communities as a whole: this would be genuine welfare reform.
There is no doubt that there is a small percentage of claimants who have been able to trick the system, but how they have actually been able to do so remains a mystery to me. As someone with a genuine health problem, I can assure people that there is absolutely no way that someone would have been signed off work long term with some of the trivial health problems described. Anyone who has been through the process both during the period under the Labour Government and this Government, will tell you just how difficult it is to obtain any support even when you have legitimate health problems. I have been chronically ill for 14 years and I have suffered much deprivation as a result. At the beginning I was given full support, but then after 18 months, despite my condition becoming worse, that support was removed (I have an undiagnosed neurological condition). I kept trying to go back into work, but after only a few weeks I would be very ill, and after a few months I would be near to collapse. I would then try to claim disability benefits again, but without success even though my G.P. made it clear that I was not capable of working. I was allowed ‘income support at a sick person’ which was no more than JSA, but at least it meant that I was spared having to look for work; often I had to sell anything of value in my possession in order to buy food however. Eventually I was forced back into work out of desperation since I would be in arrears with all utilities and I was basically starving. The cycle just continued until finally I had a massive deterioration 5 years ago. I was left without any income for 2 months; often I just had bread to eat. At that point I called social services and asked to be put into a care home. It was then that they stepped in and I finally received the practical and financial support I needed. With that support I was able to finish a degree and work professionally part time doing jobs that were less strenuous than the unskilled jobs I had before. Unfortunately, I had another deterioration 2 years ago that made it impossible to continue working. The point I’m making here is that it has never been easy for the disabled to obtain disability benefits, let alone someone with no apparent health problem.
During those 9 years of absolute hell when I was trying to work and obtain a degree, I was aware of individuals in my community who gained full disability benefits for drug and alcohol abuse. I can’t tell you how hurt and angry that made me feel; it just wasn’t fair. I was working and studying, and spending the rest of the time in bed. I rarely even had the energy to bathe. Nevertheless, many of these peoples’ addictions are rooted in serious depression, which we should take account of if we are truly serious about peoples’ ‘welfare’. I knew one of these people personally from a time years ago when I was canvassing in the area. He was a drunk yes, but a very damaged and tormented soul. He was a gentle and kind young man. Unfortunately, he died about 5 years ago, as many alcoholics do. The other woman I have in mind was a close friend at one time. We worked together as waitresses in a motorway café. She was married to a farm hand and had her own house and car. Her marriage fell apart and she lost everything. She fell in with a bad crowd and ended up a drunk and a heroin addict, regularly beaten by partners. She will probably die early too. No one helped that man or enabled him to change his life; similarly the woman. She is vilified in the community; no one cares or even if they do, they don’t know how to help.
On the other hand though there must be many addicts out there who play the system, and many who just don’t want to work. Whatever their backgrounds, rather than removing their benefits, successive governments should have made rehab and counselling a condition of receiving them, helping them work towards becoming independent adults. Most will never work again however because of the physical damage drink and drugs cause. If these people are then migrated onto JSA though, as anyone will understand who has attempted to live on it, the money barely pays utility costs let alone food and other personal necessary items. The temptation for many would be to slip back into a life of crime; many former prison inmates face just the same problem. It is a cycle which is hardly ever broken.
Governments are not willing to invest in the programmes to enable such people to re-engage with society, partly because these programmes cost so much. For example, there have been trial projects where social workers and mentors work intensively with problem families and they have achieved great success, but in these times of austerity, it is unlikely that the government will approve further funding for such projects as they are very expensive. Even before the current cuts, rehab places were very limited; no doubt many centres will close over the next few years. It does make you wonder what would happen if we were to invest in such projects all over the country as opposed to bearing the long term cost of keeping people in prison, costs to the NHS, costs to communities in terms of policing problem estates and repairing the damage caused, cost to insurance companies due to robbery , and of course, the long term cost to the state in terms of welfare payments.
The whole idea of what ‘welfare’ stands for could be changed within current systems, which would completely remove the idea that the majority of claimants are somehow ‘scrounging’. I detest how successive governments threatened and initiated all sorts of ‘work programmes’. I remember friends in the 80s who were forced to work full time on pointless projects that did nothing to advance their employability. They were treated with a great amount of disrespect within communities and by those who oversaw the work programmes. Currently, they want to force people to work full time for what would amount to less than minimum wage, which is tantamount to slave labour. As it stands, claimants are paid by the government for doing nothing. Why can’t this just be seen as an actual wage, not a benefit? A wage in return for an equal amount of work, perhaps a couple of days per week, whatever work that may be. No one would be considered unemployed. Communities across the country need improvements and again, even before the cuts this was the case. There is so much in my community that needs attending to. If claimants were mobilised to provide such help, keeping in mind that they shouldn’t actually be used to replace traditionally paid positions, real progress could be made. Couple that with training or education in areas of employment that this country requires (the ‘green revolution’ perhaps?) and self employment support for those not suitable for such training for another couple of days a week and each claimant would be engaged in something worthwhile. Since no one can live on JSA they should be allowed to earn something on top of that to supplement their incomes. I am chronically disabled and housebound. Time and again on disability forums we have said that we all have computers or laptops and a phone, and would be prepared to work even from our beds for an hour or two a day in return for our benefits if suitably flexible work could be found for us. People have even written to the DWP to ask if this would be possible; they have received no reply.
In conclusion if we are allowed to earn this ‘government wage’, we wouldn’t be scroungers; we would have a sense of dignity and purpose. Imagine over a generation how this could transform our country. I sometimes feel that successive governments would rather encourage the status quo so that benefit claimants become the natural scapegoat for this country’s ills, and in doing so, it redirects peoples’ focus away from the continual incompetencies of Governments in general, and away from those in society who are really to blame for the financial nightmare we now find ourselves in. We also should note that even in boom times, there are never millions of jobs available. At the moment there are only around 500,000 UK job vacancies (600,000 during boom periods), so there will never be enough jobs for the millions of unemployed and disabled. Governments are aware of this of course, but there has never been a serious attempt at solving this dichotomy. It is about time then that we had an honest debate about welfare especially since another million people are about to join the ranks of the unemployed. Has no one even thought of offering some of these people who work in the public sector an opportunity to continue to work in the job, albeit at much reduced hours equivalent to the JSA amount? I know of people prepared to do this so that they can maintain their workplace skills and because they love their job. If that were not possible they also have many skills that could be used to train the unemployed, which would save the government money since they wouldn’t be paying excessive amounts to private companies that are about to take over the administration of the work programmes. There are real opportunities here then to use the unemployed to administer their own programmes and save the government money to boot.
People are being manipulated by the media every day with regard to this issue and it is only right that people like Sue Marsh continue to expose such propaganda so that we can have a candid debate in regard to the facts, not the fiction designed to divide us.
Mason Dixon, Autistic
“Your remark was a crude attempt to try to undermine my perfectably reasonable remark about obesity caused not by a genetic disorder but by overeating. That’s why I mentioned the fat, croquet playing Lord Prescott and the number of pies he eats. ”
No, my remark was in response to your statement that you were not interested in the reasons why people with ‘self-inflicted’ conditions as I have explicitly made clear and you have repeatedly preferred your own made-up version of what my opinion is to my actual stated opinion. The full facts are inconvenient to your entire case which presume that those with addictions or obesity are mostly undeserving when you do not have the evidence on hand to make such a presumption.
You have lied repeatedly and when caught out, your response is to lie even more.
Anon E Mouse
Clare Fernyhough – It would be hard to disagree with an awful lot of your post and personally I don’t – particularly your last couple of paragraphs where you articulate a possible solution to this problem.
The main problem is there is simply no money available in this country to look after everybody who claims disability benefits. The last government has left the country bust with it’s reckless spending on public services and now we have to pick up the tab for that.
All right wing governments, Labour or Conservative, are in the same position. The only reason things looked good for Labour was the worldwide economic boom benefitted them on the tax take.
I would far rather the country spend it’s money on looking after the genuinely disabled than on stupid non jobs like Climate Control Outreach Project Co-ordinators – whatever they are.
But I would also like those in genuine need, clearly like Sue Marsh and yourself, to be differentiated from people such as the obese who can be “cured” by eating less. That self inflicted obesity devalues real disabilities people suffer from.
Finally people need to realise that papers like the Daily Mail or The Sun are the most popular on sale in Britain – The Daily Mirror and The Guardian are only read by a tiny minority (I refuse to read The Guardian because of the tax avoidance it engages in whilst criticising the bankers for less avoidance than they themselves commit).
Therefore unless an appeal is made which chimes with those readers, it simply will not work. It’s why Blair did so well and Miliband will do so badly.
Sue Marsh’s daft headlines to her otherwise thoughtful articles and the worthy subjects on which she writes, devalue the otherwise excellent points she makes. In fairness she doesn’t always write these headlines, just the articles.
I feel there needs to be a discrimination between those in genuine need and those with “curable” self inflicted illness such as obesity or illegal drug addiction. What is disappointing though is that some of the contributors here seem more concerned with the formation of some childish socialist state which hands out money to people than real care and help for those less fortunate than ourselves…