Latest Benefits reform articles

Some more articles from yesterday and today's Guardian, "reform cannot be a one-size-fits-all policy" and "it's a sin that people fail to take up work".

Comments of note on the first with reference to disabilities:
- There are two distinct reasons for claiming benefits? Not being able to get a job despite looking and not being able to work because of ill health. I'm too ill to leave the house most of the time, simply cutting my benefits isn't magically going to make the chronic condition I've had since I was 14 go away. It's just going to make me sicker and even less likely to be able to work in the future...
- You'd rather have my fitness for work decided by some non-qualified tick-box expert.
- How can someone who has problems with ill health but not so desparately ill as to get the Support part of Employment Support allowance ever going to get a job, especially now with 500,000 jobs and 2 and a half million unemployed. They are going to be constantly on JSA. Empathise a lot with this one, so much at the able end of the Asperger scale I'd never even be considered for Incapacity / ESA, but still not employers' first choice of person.

At the end of the second article was the shadow work and pensions secretary telling BBC Breakfast that the opposition party supported moves to simplify the benefits system, but concerns remained about job availability. He said "If we can have a simpler benefits system that removes disincentives for people to get into work, we will support them. That was a big part of the work we were trying to take forward ourselves when we were in government. Our real concern is this: without work these changes won't work. If you are going to move people from welfare into work, there needs to be jobs for people to take up ... It is important to remember that if you get these changes wrong, you could end up with a higher welfare bill not a lower welfare bill."

Comments of note after the second article:
- What work...?
- I agree with the idea in principle there is a flaw that there are people on benefit who want to work (like me) but cannot find work and the support received from the Jobcentre is non-exsistent. Personally if more support was offered people who want to work will find work they want to do instead of be forced into unpaid work which they do not want to do and may no benefit to their personal preference.
- The overwhelming majority of unemployed people are desperate to find work. This crazy and insulting Tory campaign to re-brand the unemployed and disadvantaged as work shy scroungers must be challenged and rejected. Let's start talking about the real issue - where are the jobs going to come from???
- A new Tesco Express opened up in Layton in Blackpool. They advertised 9 vacancies.160 applicants applied for a job. The lucky 9 got a job, the other 151 not only face disappointment at not getting a job, but also face a weekly onslaught of being portrayed as workshy, lazy, lager swilling, daytime TV watchers.