Cheerio then, David. (Excuse me while I dance a little jig.)
I do have a sense of déjà vu, but it’s probably for the best. Now Blair can put someone in place who actually agrees with him on forcing the disabled into work, and Blunkett can keep his shares and make thousands of pounds.
As he won’t be returning to the Cabinet any time soon, can we assume he’ll finally be turfed out of the grace and favour house he got for being, erm, Home Secretary?
“…forcing the disabled into work”.
If I may take issue with you choice of words. What I would say is “on incapacity benefit”. My late father was classed disabled for many years, so I know about this subject first hand.
In my experience, politicians, civil servants, and health workers were encouraged by the Thatcher government to push numbers from the unemployment figures to the disabled figures. The then media liked to brandish the number unemployed as a weapon against the Tory government.
Now that levels of unemployment is no longer a hostage to fortune, the sensible thing now is correct this political fudging by encourage ‘those that can’ off of incapacity benefit. Leaving, of course, those who are in real need, on the list.
I need to proof reader better 😉 Apologies.
In my experience, politicians, civil servants, and health workers were encouraged by the Thatcher government to push numbers from the unemployment figures to the disabled figures.
Thatcher’s government found many ways to fiddle the unemployment figures – as did Major’s government, as has Blair’s. Shifting people onto disability/incapacity benefit on increasingly tenuous grounds was indeed one such method, most commonly done for those whose professions no longer existed (miners, in particular), and normally done for/to those who had been unemployed for a long period.
I find it hard to believe the government wants these people to go back onto the official unemployment figure, and send it sky-rocketing again. I can’t believe it honestly thinks there are actual jobs for the people it wants to take off incapacity – even this government can’t be that far out of touch with reality. So I can only assume it hasn’t thought this latest cost-cutting excercise through and is hoping those who lose their incapacity benefit will starve quietly.
The then media liked to brandish the number unemployed as a weapon against the Tory government.
That’s one way of putting it. Alternatively, “the then media regularly published the government’s own unemployment figures (already fiddled to reduce the number of recorded unemployed), unforuntately illustrating how many millions of people had been put out of work by the Tories’ cack-handed attempts to control inflation, and their irrational determination to do this regardless of the cost”.
Blunkers should have been Prime Minister, then it would really have been the blind leading the blind