Sickness benefit review to consider obesity and drug problems

People who are obese or have alcohol or drug problems could have disability and sickness benefits cut if they refuse treatment, David Cameron has said.

The PM has commissioned a review of the system, which he says fails to encourage people with such conditions to get medical help.

About 100,000 people with long-term, treatable conditions claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), the Department of Work and Pensions says.

Campaigners called the plan unworkable.

Mr Cameron has asked Prof Dame Carol Black, an adviser to the Department of Health, to carry out the review.

More on this story here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31464897

So, the Government push a diet for decades that almost guarantees obesity and type two diabetes for many, and when they become ill, no benefits for the person who may have contributed to the pot for 30 or 40 years. Nice to see Cameron has lumped this group of people in with drug addicts. Do these morons think people become morbidly obese by choice?

Eddie I am so angry about this I'm actually going to write to my (Conservative) MP about this. I have only ever written to an MP once before, so it shows how strongly I feel about it.

This country seems to me to have two quite distinct and separate benefits systems.  There is the Real World system, where it can be a struggle to survive, and the Through the Looking Glass system, which is closely observed by Conservative ministers and Daily Mail reporters.  Unlike Alice's looking glass, a seemingly normal piece of Victorian furniture, the divide between our two worlds, is one of those fairground, distorting mirrors, so all the people on the other side are obese, ugly, lazy and living in great comfort, off the earnings of those in the real world. You can be assured that, when you climb through the looking glass, there will always be a roaring fire in the grate, not the cold and empty hearth, which you have left behind.  ( This will make no sense at all, if you haven't read Alice Through the Looking Glass, in which she climbs through the mirror over the fireplace, into the world beyond.)

I wonder what sort of treatments David Cameron imagines can be given to these obese folk, treatments which they are currently refusing, but could solve their problems and return them to work?  Again, should we be looking to the Adventures of Alice, where she ate (I think) from different sides of a mushroom to make herself alternately enormously large and then frighteningly small?

Back in the real world, note that the report is not due until after the next election, so is unlikely to see the light of day.  
Sally

zand wrote:Eddie I am so angry about this I'm actually going to write to my (Conservative) MP about this.  I have only ever written to an MP once before, so it shows how strongly I feel about it.  

Similar reaction to mine Zand when I heard this news ......

All the best Jan

@Sally - loved your thoughts

Thanks

All the best Jan

Great post Sally ! @Zand, good luch with the letter. I personally think this is just another headline grabber by Cameron trying to portray himself as a man of action. Pick on the weak and under represented as usual. Pretty sure this will never happen as it's nigh on impossible to enforce but still maddening piece to read.

It would seem no-one is safe from being used as a scapegoat to blame for all the faults of society and the economic deficit when it comes to the Axeman Cameron!! Who is he going to pick on next? Poorly children? The coalition has already hit disabled childrens services HARD in my area despite Mr Cameron being the father of a disabled child himself.

Paul wrote:It would seem no-one is safe from being used as a scapegoat to blame for all the faults of society and the economic deficit  when it comes to the Axeman Cameron!! Who is he going to pick on next? Poorly children? The coalition has already hit disabled childrens services HARD in my area despite Mr Cameron being the father of a disabled child himself.

So many times it is the vulnerable who are affected by any budgetary cuts.The very young, the old and the vulnerable need more .......I often wonder would the majority of people who could pay really refuse a little bit extra - if the guarantee could be made it would solely be used to help others those in real need?

All the best Jan