And people who have paid contributions get contributions based benefits, those who have not, or have exhausted their contributions, get income based benefits. Those on contributions based benefits can do what the fuck they want.

Pot smoking is not an addiction: you don’t need help to stop, you just quit. Nicotine withdrawal is a different matter but I’ve yet to encounter someone whose nicotine addiction prevents them from work.

Surely the job of the state is to ensure that recipients of benefits are making reasonable efforts to re-establish their self sufficiency, not just casting around for an excuse to withhold benefits from those who have a sound track record of contributions. Perhaps we should sack the state, and appoint someone more competent.

Would you really mind if I called you Shatter, or SF – Shatterface just seems so aggressive a name to me?

Jobseekers aren’t going to be arbitrarily tested for alcoholism, alcoholism is only an issue where it is preventing them from looking for work.

This is where you have the crux of the whole problem. Who defines what, or who is, an alcoholic? What test is to be done to stipulate anything? Drug user or dependent on booze, you come back to more employed doctor of – well not so much good reputation – who will do the testing.

People want to work, all they need is the jobs to fill – millions are waiting for those jobs, literally.

As one who has used the benefit system in the UK, I am registered disabled, but I won’t go into that here – I know how bad it is for disabled people to even try to get the help you need. I didn’t want, in fact I hated, getting benefits! And wheter people agree with me or not, drink dependency is an illness and needs to be treated in what way it helps the person.

Purnell does not care one jot about the person – only his attack, in response to the Tory attack, on those who are poor and cannot look after themselves.

WTF is 45 quid a week when you have CEOs of councils scamming council tax for 1/4 of a million a year?

The priorities of people are simply fucked up – big style.

Exemptions to this include for those who are on training courses because while this is not strictly speaking looking for work it is improving their chances of finding employment. I see no reason why treatment for alcoholism – or at least looking for treatment – would not fall into this category.

And no, Sally does not have a point. Jobseekers aren’t going to be arbitrarily tested for alcoholism, alcoholism is only an issue where it is preventing them from looking for work.

The majority of alcoholics, like the majority of drug users are functional: they might not be suitable for positions as surgeons but that is not to say they are incapable of any work at all. For the worst cases alcoholism IS a barrier to employment and ‘leave them alone’ might sound like a liberal response but we do not ‘leave them alone’, we feed their habit.

I can’t say that those who are alcoholic really like being that way – most know they have a problem. But what I can tell you is for those who have sought help most come to the same conclusion – there just isn’t enough spaces in the programs, so, believe it or not, they are told to wait until an opening comes up and that someone will be in touch.

So, if this dipstick wishes to bring about this legislation then I presume he is going to fund the AA 300% and put them and the organisation on the payroll. Now – if he were to do that to give the people the help they need – so be it, I wouldn’t mind – but you can bet your last quid that as soon as that is funded the Tories would be on to it like a shot!

If you take away the 45 quid, then how do the addicts get his/her fix?

Does Sally have a point? I believe so – because the people she mentioned are all on the public payroll – private companies can ask you to take sobriety test, can public bodies? If they can then those people who are pissed or has a joint should come under the same scrutiny as those who are on a piss poor benefit.

This is Purnell’s and New Labour’s attack on the poor – again!

If, as I say, the government wants to fund rehab clinics, go for it. If not, then leave people alone and provide what they can with the help of the general public.

The issue is with people who find alcoholism a barrier to work. So far I’m not seeing any alternatives more coherent than ‘OOH, YOU’RE SO MEAN!’

A few weeks back most people here argued that alcoholics are incapable of consenting to sex, now apparently they’re happy to be the way they are.

Alcoholic and drunken farmers will have their subsidies taken away from them.
Members of the Royal family who get drunk regularly should be booted off the civil list.
Members of the armed services who get drunk all the time should lose their pensions.
Judges and Policeman seen coming out of pubs and clubs should be followed to ascertain if they are drunks and then should be fired, with loss of pension..
Members of Parliament who get drunk should lose their salaries, and pensions.

Oh dear, does not seem such a good idea after all.

Yes, but again, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The correlation is real. The causality analysis is considerably more complex than Purnell wants to imply.

I detest New Labour as much as the next person because they are keen on inventing solutions to problems which don’t exist (e.g. ID cards and their associated database) but the association of alcoholism and unemployment is real and simply ignoring it won’t make it go away.

We should be attempting to work out a solution to the problem, not denying it.

How is cutting off Social money to Junkies or boozers going to help? How will they purchase their necessities, except by committing crimes, and thus cause more social problems? Many, if not most, addicts use drugs to escape from a world that they find intolerable. Unless they can see the possibility of a better life, they will wish to remain in the oblivion of addiction than face an unpleasant reality. This recession is bound to increase feelings of hopelessness, and will almost certainly lead to an increase in drunkenness and drug use, as people try to hide from the increasingly miserable and harsh world by drinking or using drugs. Purnell’s suggestions are cheap politics; something in which New Labour revels.

I could see Purnell and many other of his ilk defecting from New Labour, if they feel that another party can help them with their authoritarian ambitions. Perhaps the Tories, but they seem to be projecting a more ‘understanding’ image for these hard guys. If a new brand of right-wing authoritarian politics takes off — not a re-run of traditional fascism, but something quite different (for example, much less racially-oriented) — the Purnells of this world will be amongst the first to join — and then to lead — it.

And they wonder why people take the piss out of them.

*Wide-eyed and dumbfounded*

Well, you could provide treatment via the NHS – but where are the headlines in that? In any case, Purnell can’t ‘sell’ it better because selling on the basis of threats is the whole point – it’s just that when you call him on it, he starts whining about how you really don’t care about the unemployed like he does.

James Purnell on the other hand strikes me as having decided he wanted a career in politics, looked about for the party most likely to get him elected and then adopted his principles accordingly.

He might prefer defection to a generation in opposition with little real chance of a ministerial position again.

It sort of worked for Shaun Woodward though his limited rewards for his act of treachary is some testament to what a piss-poor politician he his.

God forbid we give benefits to alcoholics, the poor, single mothers. Oh no, let’s not abandon them to the awful fate of having a bit more money than the market would give them. Perish the thought.

Learn to have a fucking conscience.

Shatterface,

Like you, I don’t believe in abandoning anyone to a life on benefits, and would support any reforms which might offer better training, education, voluntary work or help resolving pre-existing social/mental problems which might make people less likely to languish on the dole. I’d support an involved and proactive jobs service, should one ever come to pass. But what I fear (and this is based partly on the reading I did when the welfare white paper came out, and partly from the few months I was unemployed towards the tail end of last year) is that the current welfare system is too bureaucratic and mechanistic to make a policy like this work. Even if Purnell’s plan is devised with the noblest of intentions (and, frankly, he could’ve sold it better), I’m still not sure the current system – nor the reform proposed in the DWP’s white paper – will be able to do what he’s intending. For that reason, if I was given only the two options, I would rather the government keep things as they are than implement a deeply flawed alternative which would end up unfairly stripping people of their benefits.

Like I said in the piece, I could be proved wrong. But I doubt it.

Learn to fucking read.

Flawed though Purnell’s plans are, it’s those who think leaving alcoholics untreated is an acceptable alternative who are letting them rot.