well said.

tell you what give me back the three disc’s I had removed from my spine, give me the ability to walk, give me back my bladder and bowel function guess what I will return to work, and I’m skilled. remove the pain from breaking my back and a lesion of my spinal cord and boy I’ve back at work now.

The fact is where I live most of the disabled come from the building trade, come from the steel works the Mines, yes I know thats a long time ago, but I’m now 59 and I worked down a mine putting in lights wiring up machinery.

But my accident kept me in hospital for eighteen months, fix that and I’ll be working now, but lets not kid our selves this return to work came from Blair and brown, I was at the meeting when that grinning buffoon stated most disabled people are only on benefits because we had to keep the unemployment figures down. And then Brown another of the grinning new labour flocks about to stop DLA.

Little wonder people moved to other parties or did not bother voting.

relatedly, today’s Nobel prize in economics went to the economists who established the practice of studying unemployment by looking at things like vacancies, skill matches etc.

“A key breakthrough was to realize that the problem was not how to explain unemployment per se but rather how to explain hiring, firing, quits, vacancies and job search and to think of unemployment as the result of all of this underlying microeconomic behavior.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/business/economy/12nobel.html

That there has been a steep rise in the number of people claiming Incapacity Benefit is a right wing myth.

The number of people on Incapacity Benefit is the same now as in 1997.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubacc/404/40405.htm

Since Invalidity Benefit (later Incapacity Benefit) was introduced:

1985: 1 million claimants

1993: 2 million claimants

(remembering Tories shifted many unemployed off unemployment benefit on to IB to rig the unemployment figures)

1997: 2.5 million claimants

2010: 2.6 million claimants

This is all about cutting benefits not “helping people back into work”, and giving greedy private companies like ATOS fat contracts.

this data is for the USA, and the factors at work there may have no relation to how things work in the UK, but interesting nonetheless.

disability applications and unemployment

This is a non-story. The estimate* that IDS is quoting is based on the percentage of people who were tested by the previous government and taken off IB.
“There are only 467,000 vacancies nationally,”
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. There are only 467,000 vacancies advertised in local Jobcentres. That isn’t the same as the national total of vacancies. No-one actually knows what that is but we do know that it must be more than the number advertised in Jobcentres. How many times do you see a vacancy for a brain surgeon or an investment banker advertised in your local Jobcentre?
IDS is alleged to have added that a number more could gets jobs “with a little help” – these are those who are genuinely disabled and presupposes that the programme that Nicola desires will be introduced.
Nicola gets high marks for heart but a fairly low for analysis
*It is probably an over-estimate since there have been many complaints that the New Labour tests were carried out by people who were not trained in analysing the particular problems from which the IB claimant suffered. Chris Grayling has said that the Coalition government will improve the tests.

http://www.disabilityalliance.org/f33.pdf

This gives you the medical check to see if your disabled you need 15 points to see if your disabled.

At my last PCA medical I was given 188 points.

Ah yes ,

the undeserving sick. No chance of them fighting back. Just the way tories like them.

It’s a labour party medical all the above has been carried forward by labour, labour has stated it will not stop or fight these medicals/ cuts unless it goes to far, so it has not yet gone to far reason because it was all put in place by labour.

Ms Cooper said about child benefit we had looked at this but decided it was to expensive, in other words they intended to use means testing. So nothing moral about it them.

“Straight into a job” – ha ha! Tell us another one, IDS.

I would dearly love to support myself financially and not have to rely on IB. I have a good degree and postgrad training, and thus am better off education-wise than many IB claimants. My medical conditions mean however that any work I could do would need to be done from home, with flexible part time hours. But the labour market just does not work that way. In the city where I live, part time jobs make up about 5% of the vacancies available. All require working outside the home (there are plenty of companies advertising ‘work from home’ schemes, but almost all are scams), and the vast majority specify that certain regular hours be worked (for example, Monday to Wednesday 9-5) every week. For a person with an unpredictable medical condition, this is not doable. And that’s before you consider that most prospective employers would take one look at my sickness record and think ‘no thanks’.

Given that before I became ill and disabled, suitable vacancies were thin on the ground as it was, what job I could do now that I have all these criteria to meet is beyond me. Especially at the moment, with unemployment the way it is. A friend of mine told me recently that at her place of work, she was having ex-managers applying for admin roles. Really, what chance does a disabled or chronically ill person have?

And of course, if there are only 467,000 vacancies available in the UK at the moment, how can 500,000 people find jobs anyway? Maths isn’t IDS’s strong point, it seems…

I’d love to know where those 500 000 jobs are.

What IDS is saying is that 500,000 of those on IB are able to work, not that there are jobs out there with individual claimant’s names on them.

The scary statistic is the amazing growth in claimants since 1985. This doesn’t say much for our progress as a nation (what’s caused this catastrophe?), and does less than nothing for genuine claimants.

@ 12
Part of the growth between 1985 and 1997 was due to the closure of coal mines and the transfer of tens or hundreds of thousands of miners from ‘light duties’ on the surface onto IB while their healthier colleagues went onto Unemployment Benefit. As most of these guys have retired in the last twenty-five years (it takes years for silicosis to become apparent and cause a miner to be transferred onto ‘light duties’ so most of them were at least middle-aged when the mines closed), there must have been a flow of new entrants onto the IB register to replace them.

What Next @ 12

what’s caused this catastrophe

The main thing that happened was the huge shift in unemployment to IB during the Tory years, in order to get the unemployment figures down. Then it was a huge surplus of Labour that meant that even relatively minor or treatable ailments would render people unemployable.

It is one thing to take an otherwise able bodied person with epilepsy for example, and declare him fit for work, but who in their right mind would employ him and risk a dangerous accident and potential claim when there are millions of people without any such restrictions on their health willing to work?

Employers do not take kindly to hiring people with diabilities hence the Disability Discrimination Act which encourages employers to make reasonable adjustments to allow workers with disabilities to make a valuable contribution. This in turn lowers the number of people claiming disabled benefits.

There are many disabled workers who could make a fantastic contribution in the workplace but sadly steroetypes and prejudices amonst employers is still prevelant. Disabled workers are in the “hard to deal with” bracket so the easy option is to not go there at all.

Change this attitude by employers and we may indeed get more people off benefits and into work?

On the other hand you have a lot of people who will be hard to employ those with learning disabilities, those like myself with Paraplegia.

I went to a meeting with a local group with the Labour party, and it was discussed how it was the duty of employers to take the strain from the state, it was said the state cannot keep on paying benefits to people with disabilities it was up to the private sector to find a social conscience’s.

Of course I know of no private company which are not driven by profits, but according to labour we had to have a new spirit a new ethos, a new beginning, and it had to be companies employing disabled people.

For example did you know a child is born within the UK which will have a life changing illness or disability every 25 minutes, who is going to employ a person with say Downs syndrome, well according to labour it had to be a private employer.

In many countries throughout the EU, also in the USA especially the USA in which the New Deal, Pathways to work and workfare are totally different then here in the UK, Labour pinched the idea but removed the major area which would have helped me to find work, for example major tax breaks to an employer who employed X number of disabled people, the USA pays half the wages of the most disabled , plus tax breaks, this allowed a company to take on a disabled person pay them without any loses.

because like it or not I’m not now or in the future ever going to be an asset to that company making money, it’s just one of those things, because my hands are damaged my legs are damaged and sadly like it or not my mind, I’ve had a stroke.

“Of course I know of no private company which are not driven by profits,”
That is because company law is based on the axiom that the Directors are acting as stewards for the owners and so they are required to act in the interests of the shareholders. If the company is wholly-owned by a single individual (or all the shareholders are directors and they act unanimously) he/she/they can use the company for other purposes (so long as they are within the law) like supporting a favourite football team or providing opportunities for disadvantaged individuals or groups. A very large proportion of sponsorship for charity events comes from small local businesses. However in the normal situation where directors represent outside shareholders this would be both illegal and immoral (no exceptions – if I want to spend my spare cash helping the homeless in the UK you have no right to use all of it to sponsor a child in Uganda).
The USA is far from perfect but it has a better grasp on reality than Robert’s Labour group.

I’ve not voted labour for many years, but I get asked to do BBC radio , and BBC disability shows regularly, so I get asked to go to meetings bit like an animal charity using a nice fluffy animal to try and get people to give money. If your talking about issues of disability I’m brought out allowed to sit in the front to make it seem as if the disabled are involved.

I’m now more Tory then labour.

But nothing better if your going to talk about getting retards and crips back into work then have me in the front, mumbling dribbling like most people see us anyway.

Fact is if a private company is being expected to take on the retards and crips then sadly the Government has to do more to help those companies regain any loss, lower taxes or paying part of the wages.

But hell lets not pull the punches, this is not about getting people back to work, it’s about moving retards and crips onto lower benefits, we are 10 million in total 7.5 who have never worked because they are born with serious problems, and 2,4 million who worked like myself and get £130 a week in benefits, if you can take all these people and pay them £65 a week it’s a massive saving.

sadly for labour the new medicals are a farce designed again to move people from one benefit to another.

‘That isn’t the same as the national total of vacancies. No-one actually knows what that is but we do know that it must be more than the number advertised in Jobcentres.’

Many jobs advertised in Jobcentres are actually the same job advertised by different employment agencies so the number of jobs advertised may be an overestimate.

And that’s before we get to the ethics of employment agencies filling their vacancies using the coercive arm of the state (benefit suspensions, etc) when the end employer might just as well have advertised through the Jobcentres directly.

“How many times do you see a vacancy for a brain surgeon or an investment banker advertised in your local Jobcentre?”

LOL

How many people claiming benefits could do the job of a brain surgeon?

Although granted they could do an investment banker’s job, at the very least they couldn’t do worse than the current crop.

Shatterface is also correct, the number of vacanacies is likely to be an over-estimate. Furthermore many of the vacancies are in sales type comission only roles which are advertised year round and the sort of jobs with very high staff turnovers. They are not suitable roles for people who have been unemployed for a long time, who may have health problems that mean putting them in stressful situations is a bad idea, and are unlikely to be of any long term benefit to them or society (come on, what benefits do we really get from door to door salespeople?)

@ Planestaff
“How many people claiming benefits could do the job of a brain surgeon?” which is precisely why jobs requiring highly specialised skills are not advertised in Jobcentres but in professional magazines, specialist recruiting agencies and websites.
Shatterface is just plain wrong. The number of jobs advertised in the Financial Times, Accountancy Age, the Law Society Journal etc that are not also advertised in Jobcentres cannot be less than zero. I get two professional journals every month: each of them has several pages of job adverts aimed specifically at the readership (some of whom are among the unemployed – one of my professional bodies has introduced a near-zero subscription rate for unemployed members as a result of the recession). So the number of vacancies is definitely and unarguably greater that the 467,000 government figure.
Whatever it is the gap between the number of unemployed and the number of vacancies is still over 5 million – no wonder that a lot of people have given up looking for work.

“So the number of vacancies is definitely and unarguably greater that the 467,000 government figure.”

You clearly didn’t read shatterface. He was pointing out that some of those 467,000 jobs are duplicate jobs, whereby several agencies have advertised the same job. For example; a shop wants a sales assistant – they ring up the job centre and place an advert. They also let the agencies know. Lets say there are 9 of them. Each one of those 9 agencies also places an ad in a job centre. So the same job now has 10 adverts for it in the job centre, and thus gets counted as 10 jobs in the stats.

I was additionally pointing out that many of these jobs are also essentially comission only sales jobs that are advertised year round – they may as well not exist as only a small proportion of those who get employed in these roles actually end up doing it for longer than a few weeks.

@ 22 Planeshift
I DID read Shatterface. The “Vacancies” number does not include double-counting of jobs advertised by two different employment agencies because it doesn’t count the jobs advertised by private sector agencies. Hence there is NO, repeat NO, doublecounting in the government statistics.
There are two figures – one hard which is the number of Jobs advertised in Jobcentres, one soft which is an estimate based on a survey of employers who are actively trying to recruit from outside their organisation (which would, incidentally, understate the total number of vacancies because it excludes all those filled internally).
Your last paragraph would have some merit IF that meant the job was being counted every time it was readvertised and all the times that it was readvertised during the year was counted in each month’s figures. However that is not how it works: each time it is vacant it gets counted ONCE in that month’s figures. Your earlier comment that these jobs are not suitable for some long-term unemployed is a fair one and I was not disputing that.

Let’s assume there really are 500000 vacancies. Let’s imagine that every single one is taken by those forced off IB. Problem solved? Well not really. We now have a massive spike in unemployment. How big is anybody’s guess. Seeing as everyone is pulling out numbers out of thin air, let’s say 250,000!
When a ‘very senior designer’ post is filled by ‘not quite very senior designer’ progressing in his/her career, their job is filled by someone else who, guess what, provides another vacancy….and on it goes.
You also have folk just jumping ship to another company for a similar post; people moving etc..
Conceivably you might get a chain of 15 vacancies without a single ‘new’ job having been created.
In boom times with ‘full employment’ there are probably, oh I don’t know, 500000 vacancies at any given time?
I don’t know, but on the ‘evidence’ IDS is using, my guess is at least as good as his…

@ 24 Janek
You have misunderstood – that vacancy will eventually produce one job that goes to an external candidate, but it is not included in the government calculation of total vacancies so the number of jobs available is understated by one not overstated by 15.
So the number of vacancies is some unknown number more than 467,000. But it is not more than 4 million greater than 467,000 and New Labour have left us with more than 5 million unemployed (there are said to be 7.5 million receiving unemployment-related benefits). There are also more than 1 million working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job. Nicola Smith is way, way wrong in saying there are only 2.5 million unemployed but then she works for the TUC, the founder and paymaster of the Labour Party so she would say that, wouldn’t she?
The only solution is to create more real jobs – not ones producing forms in a government office for someone to tick the boxes in another government office.
IDS is not planning to “force 500,000 of IB” – he was estimating the number who will be declared fit for work by a New Labour system which started operating before the election and saying that others would need help in order to take up jobs. He wants government to provide that help.

“The only solution is to create more real jobs”

Genuine question – how are you defining “real job”?

@ 26 donpaskini
One that provides a good or service that someone actually wants (usually to the extent of voluntarily paying for it).
I should have a better definition and I shouldn’t casually use phrases whose meaning is “in the eye of the beholder”; sorry, I blurted that out because we have over 5 million unemployed and bloggers are nitpicking as to whether I should say 467,001 vacancies or 466.985 vacancies.

i am a 61 year olm man i worked in the nhs as a constuction worker i had a very bad accident at work i recieved no composation and no pension as i worked just under 5 years the consultant said that i would never work again after years of test etc i had to claim the old ib yes i was called in for a medical in the 15 mins i was there this i cant call him a doc as he was the most ignorant man i have ever met told me he would imform my local office of his findings yes i was told i was fit for work that was 20 years ago i spend most days in bed crying with the pain spasam as i broke my spine at work now i am waiting for a letter to drop on my floor calling me for a medicall well my partner who has cared for me for the last 20 years has told our gp that she will take me to the doctors and they can arrange for my care they can have my 90 pounds but it will cost them thosands in care costs to look after me and i would point out my partner owns the home we live in and has no obligation to house or care for me i can see lots of these cases comeing up i hope the council will be able to cope with this amon

sales jobs are always in demand but you have to be a good sales person to maintain your job ::