Letter: Cutting benefits, but Government waste goes on
Saturday 30th October 2010, 9:08AM BST.
Under proposed Government welfare reforms over half a million people claiming long-term sick pay will have to work or risk losing their benefit. Claimants in Burnley and Aberdeen will be the first to undergo the medical assessments.
This will include the genuine claimants as well as those termed “scroungers”, that may not always take into account medical history or even advice from GPs.
Many individuals with long-standing and medically established permanent health problems will no doubt suffer. With the emphasis on getting people back to work to satisfy Government targets, scant regard will be shown, I fear.
It will be interesting to see just what will happen to those who have new vehicles supplied every two years under the mobility scheme.
With all this going on it is alarming to read that Whitehall wastes billions of taxpayers’ cash on hotels, credit cards, mobile phones, stationery, computers, car hire – the list is endless. In addition, councils everywhere spend thousands on pointless “non-jobs”, such as political advisors and European and diversity officers.
Across the UK local authorities spent more than £41 million on filling the “non-jobs”. A total of 543 full-time council employees worked as diversity officers at a cost of £20 million.
Is it any wonder why council tax is now financially crippling us all?
Then we have the House of Lords, a refuge for failed MPs, who are able to claim in excess of £400 a day for attendance with no responsibilities.
With thousands facing redundancy under Government cutbacks, just where will all these “extra” jobs come from? Sort the benefits system out by all means but don’t forget the idle, wealthy fat cats who enjoy luxurious lifestyles at public cost, who do not know the meaning of life on a pittance.
Bernard Jones
Newtown
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Waste, non-jobs, profligacy, House of Lords attendance “bung” – I agree entirely with what you say here and action should be taken to address that situation.
However, I am still baffled by your question about the mobility scheme and new cars every two years.
My car is 11 years old and well maintained; I maintain it because it’s vital to me and it’s 11 years old because I cannot afford to buy a new(er) car. I am not on benefits and I am not a mobility scheme member.
Even if one accepts that the mobility scheme should exist, (and just why should the woman around the corner from me with sleep apnoea and fear of open spaces [I speak the truth here] get a new car every two years?), I cannot understand why there should be an expectation of a brand new car every two years. If the car is sound and has the correct adaptations, (and I am prepared to accept that taxpayers should fund modifications), why should it be changed every 730 days?
It’s revelations like that (at least it’s a revelation to some people like me who aren’t on benefits) that make me wonder if the levels of generosity are not just taken for granted and expected as a hand-out, but not appreciated for their true cost to the taxpayer.
It’s that attitude that makes claimants immune to the fact that the things that they actually receive would need to be paid by a taxpayer out of TAXED income, after all the bills for everything else had been paid and therefore probably not affordable at all.
It’s that attitude that makes workers on lower wages look with envy at the benefits that enable claimants to live a carefree life with no financial worries and no need to plan for the future, unlike the people who fund these schemes.
Just like the £650 PER WEEK cap on housing benefit. People are wailing that this will be the end of the line for decent unemployed families as they’ll all be chucked out onto the streets by heartless landlords.
Any of those people actually seen what can be rented for £2600 per month in Shropshire?
8 bed detached country house with 3 garages and a swimming pool, with stabling for the kids’ ponies, anybody?
(£2600 – a working person on basic tax would need to earn £3510 before tax and NI to end up with that amount.)
Anyway, please don’t let me detract further from the essence of the writer’s attack on government waste – I agree and it needs to be addressed.
We workers are the filling in the money sandwich: a nice tasty taxpaying filling between government waste as the top slice of bread and government generosity as the bottom slice.
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Just a few points to make about the original letter, and about Rodney’s response.
Firstly, I wonder what expertise or knowledge the letter writer has of any public sector job? I note that he picks the hoary old tabloid favourite of ‘diversity officer’ as his only example of waste?
Whilst I agree that the cuts are blanket in nature and will hit disabled people and genuine claimants widely, does the letter writer not understand that ‘diversity officers’ spend a great deal of their time helping to integrate disabled people into the wider community? 543 officers UK-wide doesn’t sound like a huge number of people to me.
Moving on to Rodney’s reply – do you not understand that much in housing benefit is paid to the working poor? It doesn’t only go to the unemployed. People are expected to find work – fair enough – but surely they stand less chance if they can’t afford to live in areas where the work is likely to be?
Seemingly excessive amounts in housing benefit are almost exclusively out in London and other large cities. The effect of this ill-thought through policy will be to move people out of work in large cities, and to ‘socially engineer’ them to become a burden on council taxpayers in other, lower cost areas – Shropshire amongs them.
As for your comments about mobility payments, are you sure about your neighbour’s reasons for entitlement? Do you have access to her medical records?
Sounds like a typical ‘my mate says he knows a bloke down the pub who reckons…etc.’ story to me.
Sleep apnoea is not a condition that would qualify someone for a mobility allowance. If the sleep apnoea was not being treated successfully she would probably be banned from driving (it’s a DVLA notifiable condition) – if treated successfully, with a CPAP machine for example, it would have no adverse effect on her mobility at all.
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Thank you for your explanation Peter.
Yes, I’m aware of the facts as she is not backward in coming forward about her conditions (to which can be added obesity – the main reason for lack of mobility) and the “rewards” that she receives; no surprise, as she’s obviously happy that her standard of living on state generosity is much, much more rewarding than mine as a modest worker. You are absolutely correct, she is unable to drive. Her husband smokes around in the car, using it as his day to day mode of transport, including getting to work, whereas I have to pay to get myself to work in a car that is older and funded entirely by myself.
I didn’t state above, but am happy to do so now, that a large number of my wider family are on benefits, including mobility allowance. I love them all, but even they don’t deserve a lot of what they take for granted.
My Uncle, 74 years old and admittedly unable to get around easily due to Parkinsons gets a new car on a regular basis. He gives it to my cousin who lives 20 miles away and uses it as her day to day car. Meanwhile, my Uncle’s sons (my cousins) who still live with him, walk to the nearby shops to do his shopping and an ambulance collects him to take him to appointments at hospital. The mobility car is seen maybe once a month when daughter comes around for Sunday lunch and actually used for him once a year to transport him for Christmas dinner.
He’s not bothered that the car is not used for him; on the contrary, he’s loved and well cared for and feels good that he can supply my cousin with a nice car. It’s his mobility entitlement, but I wouldn’t say that he actually needs it, but nor would I say that my cousin would be able to afford to buy a new car every two years if she had to pay for it out of her money. The state really is generous to her (or, rather, to my Uncle).
The one point that you don’t seem to have addressed is why a new car is supplied every two years. Modern cars last a lot longer than that and if they have been expensively refitted with adaptive equipment at the start of the contract, it seems stupid to change them so regularly. It’s also greener to keep using an older car rather than using a newly-manufactured vehicle to replace it.
My vehicle is 11 years old, works well and is reliable, but even if mobility cars were just replaced every three years rather than two, this would still greatly reduce the amount of money poured into this scheme.
As for housing benefit, I understand that it’s paid to the working poor as well as the unemployed. Again, I’m relatively poor but don’t receive benefits, so do not see it as a right to be able to live in a more expensive area. I aspire to do so, but I don’t see why the state should pony up for me to ave the pleasure.
Surely that’s how we ended up with “poor” and “rich” areas – based on the ability to pay to move “upwards”. The fact that landlords and buy to renters have bought as expensively as possible has skewed this logic slightly, but regardless, I see no reason why a family on limited means should expect to live in a rich area at the state’s (taxpayers’) expense as long as there is DECENT housing for them at lower cost (i.e. within the benefit’s generous cap) in another area.
And of course, by effecting a cap, we may actually see downward pressure on rents
as landlords stop applying the maximum possible in the knowledge that the state will pick the tab up, thus assisting hard working poorer families looking to rent in the first place.
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