Do we actually pay people for these ideas?

[enaid]

Oh here's another one, someone somewhere is having a real good think lol



Radical plans to get hundreds of thousands of people off benefits and into work are being launched by the Government.

The controversial reforms were hailed by Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell as the biggest shake-up of the modern welfare state since the Beveridge Report of the 1940s.
And they were backed by Conservative leader David Cameron, who offered ministers the support of his MPs to ensure that the package is not derailed by a Labour backbench rebellion in the House of Commons.
Under the proposals laid out in Mr Purnell's Welfare Reform Green Paper, incapacity benefit will be abolished by 2013 and income support will also be scrapped.
In their place will be a simplified system of two benefits - Employment Support Allowance for those with medical problems which limit their ability to work and JobSeekers' Allowance for those who are fit to work.
A leaked late draft of the Green Paper revealed that ministers are aiming for a record 80% employment rate - up from the current 75% - and made clear their insistence that there will be "no right to a life on benefits" for anyone capable of working.
All incapacity benefit claimants will undergo medical tests to determine what capacity they have for employment, and only full-time carers and disabled people "with the greatest needs" will be exempt from being expected to find work.
Unemployed drug addicts who lie to get benefits will be forced to repay the money and could face jail, while jobless people who take drugs will be banned from receiving dole money unless they accept treatment.
Lone parents with children aged seven or more will be expected to seek work.
The long-term unemployed will face US-style "work for dole" programmes requiring them to undertake useful activities to ensure they make a "fair contribution" in return for state support.

[Jester]

Re: Do we actually pay people for these ideas?

Having first hand experience of this (AND having actually been in correspondence with this muppet), it's about time these Ministers actually came out from their ivory towers and actually got in touch with the REAL world.

A good start would be to actually LISTEN to the people at the sharp end of this ineffectual system (i.e. the staff at the DWP). While there is no denying that there are people who are blatantly milking the system for all they can get, the fact of the matter is that those who have PAID for the system all of their lives can get nothing out of it when in their greatest need (i.e. unexpectedly finding themselves unemployed). Unless of course you happen to be an assylum seeeker or a suspected terrorist in which case the DWP shower you in money and comforts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only solution to the benefits system is this. IF YOU AINT PAID IN THEN YOU DON'T GET ANYTHING OUT OF IT.

Otherwise, why the hell do we bother paying taxes at all ?