Green Paper Related Discussions

where this article from squirrel ?

I’ve read a few different articles about Rayner plotting to take his place

IMO somethings happening behind the scenes as there’s talk of delaying the child poverty strategy until autumn. I have a bad feeling ( and pray I’m wrong) that they’re waiting to see the outcome of the disability vote and the backlash they receive if it goes through. If they get the cuts through will they use those savings as an excuse to scrap the 2 child limit? As I said I hope I’m wrong and just being overly suspicious

It does help us feel better if we remember that we can give them a lot of trouble at the Local Elections next year. ✊ That's what we have a democracy for, they seem to forget that our votes count and will make a lot of difference.

I'm doing quite well with the replies from my MP (a Tory) but so not to wear out my welcome I'll tackle him again after all this comes to a head next month, whether there's a vote or whether the proposals are postponed until the the OBRs impact assessment in October.

Hi 😊

Really don't worry about it. It's better that all the pages of the article are on, whether or not the photo's on it. Thanks for trying though. 👍

I'm sitting here chuckling, after reading about your efforts 😆, thanks for cheering me up!! 👌

Hi Jul ,

I think I’ve managed to remove her face though only hypothetically unfortunately 😂 . Isn’t it terrible when someone’s face has such a traumatic affect on people. And of course if they knew they wouldn’t care as those 3 are simply psychopaths.
What do you think of all this Rayner talk ? She seems to be distancing herself from the cuts and has apparently tried to get them to tax the wealthy instead of cutting benefits . Whether it’s true or not I’m going to write to her as she may be on our side . It’s worth a shot I think .

I’m glad it’s not just me . I wouldn’t put anything passed them . I just emailed Rayner and said I can’t vote Labour under the current premiership but could if it was someone with compassion for the disabled. I asked outright how she’ll be voting. Don’t expect a reply but that doesn’t matter , she’ll know through her staff that she’s getting emails regarding the cuts . It will be interesting how she votes as she hates starmer ( apparently) and from recent press doesn’t agree with the cuts . Imagine if she votes against starmer 😂

Well, no surprise really ,according to the Telegraph we are all scroungers and making it up ,

• Sherelle Jacobs

Paying welfare for staying at home is not a kindness. It is trapping millions in miserable dependency

2138Gift this article free

Credit: Patrick BlowerSherelle Jacobs22 May 2025 7:34pm BST

It is time to start saying the unsayable: a lot of people in this country are pretending to be sick in order to claim benefits.

The official story is that Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of ill health. Many are indeed suffering from real ailments, of course, but few politicians or commentators dare to point to the rising evidence that a proportion may be faking it. We urgently need to confront what is driving millions to choose a life on welfare: fake compassion, the medicalisation of everyday anguish, and the state crushing incentives to work.

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Unless we confront this uncomfortable reality, our economy will continue to stagnate while still remaining dependent on mass migration.

Despite Labour’s planned welfare cuts feeling ever less credible this week following the PM’s winter fuel U-turn, Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is feigning business as usual, vowing not to “resile” from her proposed £5 billion reduction in disability benefits. Yet the party’s hard Left, emboldened after winning their first concession from the PM, is organising behind the scenes to derail Kendall.

They may get their way. The central problem is that Labour doesn’t have the appetite to openly go to war with benefits scroungers. Even Blue Labourites on the party’s Right who admit privately that there are “bits of the system that are outright dodgy” and that the country is suffering from a kind of “cultural lethargy” are hesitant to make their views public.

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Starmer allies fear that this cowardice will cost them dear. As one veteran adviser told me: “The hardest thing in politics is when you can’t explain why you’re doing something. If you believe some are not deserving, you should have the courage to defend that position.”

It is perplexing that our politicians are so reluctant to call out benefits cheats. There is evidence that the system is rotten. As other benefits have been tightened since 2010, disability claims have surged, exactly the same thing that followed previous reforms in the 1980s.

The subjectivity of many conditions should ring alarm bells. More than half of the rise in disability claims since the pandemic is attributable to mental health. The most common physical ailments of those signing on are musculoskeletal, such as back pain. The latter is notoriously difficult for clinicians to verify.

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This is not to say that we are dealing with a completely pretend problem. Britain is a sickly country, a reality exacerbated by the NHS backlog. Diagnoses for mental conditions have soared in part because people have become more willing to seek help when they are struggling – a welcome breakthrough. There is something in the idea that modern mass neuroses, not least phone addiction, are chipping away at our collective mental state.

Still, it is hard to believe that a quarter of Britons are disabled and that a fifth of adults are too ill to work at all. Can it really be plausible that the proportion of incapacitated citizens in a wealthy, medically advanced country like ours is averaging 10 per cent higher than in developing countries like Congo, racked by poverty and low childhood vaccination rates?

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We must be open to the possibility that something has gone so wrong with this country that large numbers convince themselves that they are ill – or, indeed, engage in outright deceit.

The medicalisation of mundane suffering is not healthy. Some psychiatrists worry that it has become easier than ever to be diagnosed as mentally ill, as the thresholds for diagnosis have been lowered. According to Prof Frances Allen, chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University, there has been a “progressive shift” in the fuzzy boundary between mental illness and normality, with the range of mental conditions widening to include new disorders like generalised anxiety. In the UK, a smattering of doctors have also started to speak out.

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Our welfare state disincentivises people to get up in the morning and go to work. Scroungers are not an anomaly, but the logical product of a warped system; those who play the bureaucracy are not deviant but rational. Everything from the shape of universal credit to the earning cut-off for free school meals nudges people to stay on benefits.

High taxes are also proving destructive. I spoke to one benefits support worker who lamented the vicious cycle of people who find work and come off the dole, only to discover that the state, which once gave them free cash, is “now taking money off them” and that they are being “hit in the face” by HMRC.

It is not enough to merely scale back the state. The entire welfare system needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. Any policy that constitute a possible disincentive to work should be scrapped. This can’t just be a job for the Department for Work and Pensions. Ending worklessness should be a goal of all departments.

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Our unwillingness to confront the benefits crisis must be tackled. The annual cost of working-age ill health is higher than the yearly NHS budget. By 2030 we will be spending as much on disability benefits each year as we do on education.

Mass worklessness leaves the country reliant on mass immigration – a phenomenon that threatens a populist backlash that will make the Brexit revolt look like a tea party.

Nor should we gloss over the fact that it is wicked that we are crippling millions of people with kindness and indulging their fantasies that they are incapable of making their way in the world. It is not humane to indulge other human beings in self-sabotaging fantasies about their own lack of agency. It is not compassionate for the state to write off millions of people as broken goods. And it is not moral to extract labour from poor countries on an industrial scale to fill the gaps in a wealthy Western nation, depriving them of health and care workers.

Susie Boniface tells them !