Is there any cruelty the right-wing papers won't endorse?
Is there any cruelty the right-wing press won’t endorse?
Today they cheer on work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith as he promises to close the ‘disability employment gap’ – a nice IngSoc term for ‘make sick people work, they’re only faking or being lazy anyway’.
His plans to ‘reform’ (read: destroy) the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and tests for sickness benefits could be dangerous. As the Times reports today, the charity Mind said four out of five Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants with mental health problems found Duncan Smith’s back-to-work schemes ‘made their mental health worse or much worse’.
On Thursday IDS will finally reveal how many people have died after having their disability benefits cut or stopped.
Despite all this, most of the Tory rags think his latest wheeze is a grand idea.
The Daily Mail is pleased the government is tackling our ‘sicknote culture’, while the Telegraph was so excited it forgot to quote, or even acknowledge, any possible opposition from charities and campaigners. Not even the Mail or the Sun did that.
Speaking of the Sun, the country’s favourite paper complains that ‘only 90,000 people have come off sickness benefit’, and says of IDS:
“Work and pensions secretary Mr Duncan Smith is a man the Left love to hate. But that says far more about them than it does about him.
As today’s changes show, he is dealing with the dependency culture created by Labour that has trapped so many people on benefits.”
It will come as news to people who cannot work because of illness, and who rely on state support to live, that they are ‘trapped on benefits’, or that they should hate the Labour party for making them ‘dependent’.
The argument IDS makes – parroted by the press – is that the options ‘fit’ and ‘unfit for work’ are too narrow, and that some people can work a bit, or do some kind of work.
No doubt attempts to remedy this will be administered with his trademark care and transparency.
But perhaps only 90,000 out of over 2 million have been kicked off sickness benefit because many people really are sick and need those benefits.
This seems too much for Iain Duncan Smith to process. To him, they aren’t working and they should be.
If there are other points of view, he’s unlikely to find them in newspapers so abject they won’t even scrutinise his policies.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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55 Responses to “Tory press cheers Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to force mentally ill people to work”
ted francis
I’m not a self-righteous, chattering-class leftie or disabled neither am I a politically dedicated commentator. I’m just an 81 year-old, British, floating voting pensioner (I even voted for Maggie Thatcher – once). Over the years of my existence, around the world, I’ve seen it all; wars, pestilence, poverty, deprivation and starvation. And I have to tell you that I have never experienced a more cynical, insensitive, uncaring, British government than this. The right wing press to which you refer is 75% controlled by Rupert Murdoch and family. They have only one objective: total control of the media and the power and ever-increasing profits that ensue. To this end they will give unstinting support to those who have it within their gift to help the Murdochs achieve this objective. Cameron is in debt to Murdoch and to repay him, he and his ministers will use all devious means to give Murdoch what he wants: control of BskyB, the emasculation of the BBC’s audience share and finally, the ownership of Channel4 through its public sale. This is not a mere conspiracy theory, it is actually happening.
Keith M
I feel ashamed at some of the shite written here.
gaia
Well i cant get ATOS details but heres a link to what maximus plans to do and earn what with having there fingers in the whole ill and disabled process.
http**://finance.yahoo.com/news/edited-transcript-mms-earnings-conference-183709275.html
(Just delete ** between http and : and the link will work. Ive done it this way as the site or disqus keep blocking links).
Many people don’t realize maximus owns remploy like there not aware maximus will be having a major hand in the fit for work tests for workers taking sick time. This is all a waste of tax payer money lining for profit companies pockets that arent even British.
Our NHS is crying out for money so why arent they the ones carrying out these tests and receiving the profit, why because the tories want our NHS to collapse so they can force the public into a costly health insurance scheme. This is why they have brought up the topic of unemployed obese people and addicts having forced treatment through threat of sanction so the public start saying why should i pay for your dole if you cant work or for that fact pay for anyone’s habits.
The public through Tory rhetoric are so busy looking at the unemployed and supporting the hardline reforms, they cant see this has a wider narrative , that its all a ploy of whats good for the goose is good for the ganda as the tories then launch the very same reductions and practices on the working public like the fit for work scheme, reductions and soon conditionality on child/tax credits for instance.
Sue Fewster
I agree totally and have been arguing against this since it began. If we cannot trust our doctors to decide what is best for us – why are we employing them? You are correct, it is a way of undermining the NHS and giving money to private companies… They will then replace the NHS and we will be well and truly screwed.
Sue Fewster
PS I don’t touch yahoo…