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Interesting articles on information like this is a great find. It's like finding a treasure. I appreciate how you express your many points and share in your views. Thank you.

It could have impacted significantly

I am currently one of the "Malingerer's",this is due to a Lung disease. I have found Pathways to work to be a really good step for people trying to return to work IF you are ready. I was told that I needed to attend 5 interview's and am currently on my 3rd. The Adviser is excellent and very helpful .The problem with the system is the delivery to the system. I am not capable of work at the moment. My consultant, my GP and My Thorasic Surgeon all agree.Even the Nurses on the Ward where I was last week for a Collapsed lung agree. But on Thursday I shall be going to another Interview which will end with the Immortal word's "So when do you think you will be capable of work again".

Some members of medical and other services are only too willing to 'pilot' government projects which conform to their own political beliefs - but whilst claiming to be concerned with concepts such as the poverty gap, equality and democracy, fail to include in discussions, as equal partners, the very people whose lives will be affectd by their involvement in private lives.. People have become even more disempowered by coalitions of medical politicos and professional politicians.The public is to some extent aware of the activities of MPs but very ignorant of the involvement of medics in driving social policy.Very few of the people who become targetted as objects of research have access to relevant journals or internet sites and they are not informed by for example local doctors who publish only in professioanl journals rahther than local papers, they make no effort to inform local communities of their activities albeit sitting on governemnt committees and advisory groups, funding political campaignes etc,through notices in surgeries , meetings etc. Some examples of policy which has been piloted in GP surgeries especially in areas of london where practices have massive catchment areas and therefore individuals who can be identified from records are; the pilot Integrated Care Project which has contributed to the introduction of a Nation Register of children and families, Domestic Abuse research whereby information disclosed to professionals has been used to draw up policy; the introduction of advisers into GP sugeries to encourage people off Incapacity Benefit and a project to encourage the take up of benefits by elderly people, This is activity carried out by those in priveledged poitions and lacks any notion of realdemocracy.

'If we want to work towards a fair society with decent benefits for people who rely on them then I think it is a mistake to talk about the deserving and undeserving without some care.'
Frances

Well, I'll go along with abolishing the idea of the underserving poor, just as long as that doesn't involve abolishing the concept of the underserving rich.

'London's earning
Not since the loadsamoney Eighties has Britain had it so good. The colossal deals of the capital's private equity magnates have created a 'national wealth service'. But Brown's controversial tax loopholes and the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor have kick-started a moral backlash. Ned Temko enters the secretive world of hedgies, quants and non-doms
Ned Temko
Sunday July 15 2007
The Observer


Times are good for Patrick. At Christmas, he boarded a private jet for a ski break with a few workmates in Zermatt. Since then, he has spent a weekend fooling around in the English countryside in a £200,000 supercar, helicoptered off for an afternoon at Goodwood's Festival of Speed, enjoyed a private showing of Damien Hirst's famously bejewelled human skull, and, just last week, accepted a £5m offer on his gadget-filled South Kensington flat.

And the remarkable thing is that by the standards of London 2007, Patrick's not really rich. 'Nowhere near,' to use his phrase. He may fly by private jet but he doesn't actually own one. The supercar isn't his either. It's part of a £13,000-a-year 'car club' - not the kind where you share a single Prius for the school run and save the planet, but which loans out the latest Ferraris or Maseratis for a few days at a time.

One final thing. Patrick is also - it pains me to report for the purposes of what should have been a perfectly straightforward morality tale - a thoroughly nice guy. He works hard. He is frighteningly numerate, which, since he is a partner in one of Britain's leading hedge funds, he has to be. He is funny. He talks engagingly about film and literature, sport and politics. He pays his full whack of UK taxes. He gives to charity. The only crime he regularly commits is artfully dodging speed cameras.

But he is rich, and with the prospect of a partner's bonus likely to dwarf the price tag on his flat, he is getting steadily, inexorably richer. He and his even wealthier fellow hedge fund managers (or 'hedgies') - along with private equity magnates such as Sir Ronald Cohen (friend and confidant of Gordon Brown) and resident foreign billionaires like Roman Abramovich (friend and confidant of Vladimir Putin) - have fuelled an explosion of wealth that has transformed the face of London since New Labour came to power a decade ago.

They have pushed property prices in Kensington, Chelsea, Belgravia and Hampstead into the stratosphere, with a clutch of recent £4,000-per-square-foot sales outstripping even Monte Carlo. In June, a duplex 'flat' stretching across two listed houses in Lowndes Square - the haven close to Harrods and Harvey Nichols where the newly arrived Abramovich lived before selling up a few years ago - sold for a record £16m.

They have also poured millions into the tills of the area's luxury shops, King's Road boutiques and the archipelago of pricey restaurants that surround them. And the London art sales. At their auctions last month, Sotheby's and Christie's sold works totalling an unheard of £414m, trumpeting the city's challenge - in the art market as in the financial markets - to the dominance of New York.

The British capital's new rich have spawned a whole range of businesses and services dedicated simply to helping them find ways to spend their money. Patrick's car club is small change. Armies of personal buyers and fixers now make a living arranging the perfect party, scouting out the latest yacht or jet, millionaires-only hotel or imaginative holiday destination, or helping to find a second or third family home for downtime abroad. Favoured choices include Antibes and Lake Como.

It is little wonder, given the amount of disposable cash at their clients' command. Hungry hedgies, it is said, can spend upwards of £5,000 for a meal at Scott's or other favoured Mayfair retreats - 'It's not the food bill, but the wine,' Patrick explains. Others pay up to £35,000 for a place in the Royal Opera's 'First Night Club', guaranteeing four opening-night seats in Covent Garden as well as a lavish meal at the Floral Hall Balconies restaurant.

And last month, a 38-year-old Danish-born hedge fund trader with London's MAN group forked out an 'easily affordable' £100,000 for a place on one of the 150-minute sub-orbital 'space tourism' flights Richard Branson is planning to launch in 2009. 'I've travelled to 50 countries, seen the rainforests and even dived with sharks,' Per Wimmer explained. Having dreamed of space flight since childhood, he said, 'This seemed the obvious next step.'

The upmarket magazine stable of publisher Conde Nast - GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair - has been joined by a new title, Portfolio, targeted not only at New York money but at the hedgies, equity managers and other assorted super rich of London. Its launch issue, in May, was full of lifestyle pieces - as well as a devastating Tom Wolfe portrait of hedgies as the new, testosterone-stoked Masters of the Universe. 'But the odd thing,' remarks one Conde Nast executive, 'is that one of the responses from readers was: "Why are there so many ads?"' He smiles, as if to say: that's a bit like a scuba diver going into a sports shop and wondering why there are wetsuits.

The ads were a wonderful window into the world of the new rich: cars and jets and clothes. And wristwatches. Not your ordinary Rolex: that's just an everyday piece for the hedgie who has everything. But, as Portfolio's style page memorably puts it, Big Swinging Ticks. The pick of the crop, for a cool £100,000, was the Richard Mille RM002-V2.

The problem for Britain's new rich is that for the first time since the crashing finale of Margaret Thatcher's loadsamoney Eighties, there are suddenly big looming storm clouds on the horizon. The millions haven't stopped pouring in, at least not yet, and there is no imminent . sign that this will happen. The heavy weather is political, and it began with an assault not on the hedgies, who are the fastest-growing source of the capital's superwealth, but on private equity bosses, who are the most visible.

They used to be known as venture capitalists, and did pretty much what they said on the tin. They identified promising new business ventures, strong on ideas but short of cash, and backed them - with often spectacular returns. But with their bank accounts bursting, borrowing rates low, and the number of likely looking business start-ups limited, they began buying into existing companies. They re-engineered them, made them leaner and meaner - again with often spectacular results.

Leaner and meaner, however, almost always meant job cuts. When the equity funds began targeting household-name brands such as Birds Eye and Boots and the AA, the backlash came. It began in earnest with the AA, where some 3,400 workers have been laid off, and was led by the trade unions. At first, the issue was jobs. But, very quickly, it was also about the disparity between the plight of the jobless at AA and the fund managers with their big bank accounts, big houses and Big Swinging Ticks.

And about tax - about how little of it, at least in percentage terms, the people with the most money appeared to be paying. Private equity partners benefited from a perk introduced by Gordon Brown called 'taper relief'. In most cases, this meant they could pay a mere 10 per cent - rather than the top 40 per cent income tax rate - on gains from their buyouts. And there was more. Many of the private equity multimillionaires, though they lived and worked in London, were 'domiciled' overseas for tax purposes. This meant that such 'non-doms' could pay no UK tax at all on 'earnings abroad' - which, with the help of any half-decent accountant, could amount to a very large chunk of their wealth. That Brownite loophole earned Britain the dubious honour earlier this year of being formally classed a tax haven by the IMF.

The battle over private equity has quickly escalated, primed by one equity man's public admission that he paid a lower tax rate than his cleaner. The Commons Treasury Select Committee announced a series of hearings. At the first one, the spokesman for the trade body of British private equity was made to look so haplessly out of touch with the political crisis about to engulf his bosses that he ended up having to fall on his sword a few days later. Session two, with the MPs visibly armed and ready to take on the private equity bigwigs themselves, ended, perhaps predictably, in a score-draw.

But the storm has not gone away. While private equity can, and will, make the argument that putting huge sums of money into underperforming businesses promises more jobs in the long run, the issue of taxes - of wealth, of fairness - clearly has political legs. The unions may have kicked it off, but it has since generated headlines not only in the Guardian but the Daily Mail, and words of warning not only from Labour's Roy Hattersley but the Tories' shadow chancellor, George Osborne.

And crucially, the controversy has erupted just as Brown the chancellor has moved from Number 11 to Number 10 Downing Street.

Intriguingly, the new prime minister and the new rich have a considerable amount in common. For a start, they look at the world - or at least the part of it that involves markets and money, economies and jobs - in much the same way. For Brown, the challenge is to make Britain competitive in a 'global' century where almost anything that can be made by human hands can be churned out more cheaply in China or India, and where the mountains of cash that fund the making and the buying and selling can be kept and managed as easily in New York or Hong Kong as in London.

So while Brown may well come to regret his 'taper relief' or 'non-dom' loopholes, he - and the super rich they're helping - both know that if and when they're closed, many will either find new forms of creative accountancy, or simply take themselves and their business elsewhere.

But there are less obvious bonds, too. Except for the fact that the tycoons have and enjoy money, and Gordon Brown quite genuinely does neither, he respects their drive, their success, their often overlooked millions for charity. And while he would no doubt have gladly seen the callow and conspicuous rich kids of the Eighties boom stripped of their last yellow Lamborghini, the new rich, or at least many of the richest of them, are a different breed - in extraordinary ways, more than a little like the new prime minister.

So who are these guys? The first thing to recognise is that, with very few exceptions, they are guys. Search the richest in the rich lists and you'd be hard put to find any with more than a single X chromosome. And they are not the new rich for nothing. They may not, like Brown, have worked their way up to the highest office in the land from a humble Kirkcaldy manse. But to a remarkable extent, they are outsiders, and not just those who are foreigners. A surprising number began with next to nothing. Even those who didn't, scrapped. They grafted. If at key points they have been lucky, too, they weren't handed their fortune. They grabbed it. And, having got it, as Brown's long trek to Number 10 leaves him especially equipped to understand, they are that much more keen to stay at the top.

They are also clever. They have had to be. 'In the Eighties, the Big Bang had just happened,' Patrick reflects. 'The markets were booming. People like me used to stand on a London trading floor with a telephone to our ear. We would field calls from people who wanted to buy, or people wanted to sell, and all we had to do was cream off the earnings. Anyone with half a brain could make money. Kids with less than half a brain got their Lamborghinis!'

And Britain's new rich - or at least many of the biggest hitters - are Brownite in more fundamental ways. They are instinctively private. They shun conspicuous consumption, in part no doubt because they're so wealthy ...#8594;...#8592; they don't have to show it, except in the company of one another. And they are far more comfortable with a balance sheet, or ticking off agenda items at a planning meeting, than making small talk over canapes. There is a quip that was coined to describe the group known as 'quants' - the often almost asocially focused analysts, many with maths PhDs, who work in the engine room of the hedge funds. 'They knock,' it is said, 'at the door to their own office.' It is a phrase that could be applied to Gordon Brown, or to his closest ally among the new rich: Sir Ronald Cohen.

Cohen, who lives an opulent but guardedly private life in Notting Hill, can justifiably claim to have invented private equity in Britain. It was, like Brown's, a success that at times must have seen unlikely. He was born into a Sephardi Jewish family in Cairo who fled to England after the Suez crisis in 1956. Enrolled in a north London grammar school, he earned a scholarship to Oxford, got a PPE degree at Exeter College and was president of the Oxford Union - and then headed off to Harvard Business School. In 1971 he co-founded Apax Partners, Britain's first venture-capital firm, and over three decades built up investments ranging from AOL and Waterstones to Yell.com and the biotech company which cloned Dolly the Sheep.

Yet, having tried and failed to become an MP for the Liberals in the Seventies, he kindled throughout a wider interest in politics and social issues. He was an early supporter of Tony Blair when he won the Labour leadership in 1994, but the stronger bond was with Brown - for whom he helped create an initiative to promote enterprise in deprived areas. Having stepped back from a frontline role at Apax, he has spent the past few years promoting the idea of 'social' capital, both as a means of promoting the longer-term prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, and to regenerate Britain's inner cities.

Brown is clearly uncomfortable with the repeated media descriptions of Cohen as a close friend and aide. In a BBC Newsnight interview just days before becoming prime minister, he went so far as to interject at one point: 'He is not my adviser.' Which is true. But, as one businessman who knows both Brown and Cohen and has sat in on private meetings with them puts it, they are 'soulmates'. Neither, he says, 'engages in small-talk. They speak the same language. They are serious, results-focused. They go into a meeting with the attitude of "This is what we want to accomplish... here are the things we put in place."'

And the story of the most famous - and most dizzyingly wealthy - of London's foreign business residents is in some ways no less Brownite. Roman Abramovich, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, is worth nearly £11bn, a figure that would not be out of place as a departmental settlement in Brown's forthcoming spending review. He owns a small flotilla of yachts - and a plane: not just a lowly Gulfstream or a Learjet, but his own fully equipped Boeing 767. And Chelsea Football Club.

But it wasn't always like that. Abramovich's Kirkcaldy was Siberia, to which his parents had been exiled by Stalin after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. He was orphaned, raised by his uncle and later his grandmother. He saw, and took, his chance when Mikhail Gorbachev began dismantling the state control of the Soviet economy. He scored his big breakthrough in oil - buying Sibneft, along with Boris Berezovsky, in 1995. Berezovsky is a political exile in London, frequently sounding off against Putin. Abramovich, by contrast, is on good terms with the Russian president, is still governor of a province in Siberia, and backs football and charity in Moscow - but otherwise he steers clear of politics.

He also, in ways which Brown would find familiar and reassuring, steers clear of 'celebrity'. Ask club manager Jose Mourinho: even in his high-stake business feuds, Abramovich wields influence. He doesn't flaunt it.

Nor do the hedgies, as a rule, though the best known of London's rising phalanx of moneymakers can be decidedly un-Brownlike in his flashes of flamboyance. Arpad 'Arki' Busson spent his early twenties on the French Riviera, where he was briefly involved with the actress Farrah Fawcett. But he grew up in Switzerland, where his first job was selling toothbrushes door-to-door, and his success did not begin until, at 23, he got a job working for one of the American hedge fund giants, Paul Tudor Jones. Before long, he struck off to set up his own fund, EIM, which now controls upwards of £5bn. Busson is, by hedgie standards, at ease in the public eye. He has had to be, if only given the fact that he fathered two sons with the supermodel Elle Macpherson, from whom he has since separated, amicably.

But the hedge funds themselves resemble nothing so much as Brown's Treasury. The principle behind them would probably have made the former chancellor's skin crawl: the 'hedge' in hedge funds is from the phrase 'hedging your bets'. They are the market equivalent of a day in the betting shop. But unlike a punt on the 11.30 at Kempton Park, their day-to-day operations are rooted in the cold calculation of financial wonkery. The idea is to spot a market - any market, from government bonds to commodities to mortgages - that is suddenly out of kilter. The 'bet' - sometimes for a market to rise, sometimes to fall, that doesn't really matter to the trader - is rooted in the assumption that sooner or later the anomaly will disappear. The hedgie, and his very wealthy clients, pocket the difference.

And even Busson has his Brownite side, in the shape of ARK - Absolute Return for Kids. Along with fellow hedge funder Chris Hohn, who has separately donated £230m to a charity working to alleviate child poverty in the developing world, Busson has championed the idea that the super rich have a responsibility to help others on a super scale. Once a year, at Marlborough House on the Mall, he holds his ARK auction dinner, and raises millions.

Hundreds of hedgies attend. At this year's gala, in May, Patrick shared a table with his boss and fellow partners - total net worth, hundreds of millions of pounds - and watched as the keynote speaker, William Jefferson Clinton, delivered the 'perfect message for the occasion'. He joked that ordinarily he'd be a bit uncomfortable in a hall crammed to the rafters with the rich, the richer and the richest. But that what mattered was the cause, the need, to which multimillionaires directed their wealth.

Liz Hurley was there. So was Jemima Khan. And Madonna. Prince performed. But the business-end of the dinner was the annual auction - 'rival hedgies, many of which not only compete with each other but hate each other, trying to outdo the guys at the next table'. Busson, who used the occasion to announce an £8m initiative in partnership with the Clinton Foundation to help Aids victims in Mozambique, says it's about 'giving something back' - a principle he says also helped persuade him to answer the call of a fellow British hedge-fund boss, Ron Beller, to back one of the government's city academies.

'The charity message is genuine,' says Patrick. 'There are huge sums raised at the dinner, and that in the end is what matters. But it also shows the urge - in private, under the guise of charity - to be ostentatious, to pay silly money for dinner with Gwyneth Paltrow.'

And it is the ostentatiousness, however 'private' - and the simple, soaring scale of the wealth that has swamped London over the past decade - that is likely to ensure that the controversy surrounding the new rich will before long find its way to the top of Brown's in-tray.

No less a figure than Sir Ronald Cohen warned in a Daily Mail interview at the height of the recent private equity furore that 'great divergences in wealth' carried with them the danger of a 'violent reaction' of the sort that erupted on the streets of Paris.

'It's not so much the absolute figures in themselves,' reflects Patrick. 'It's the feeling of unfairness. That's what matters in the private equity debate - a sense of disparity.'

And on a walk through Chelsea, Kensington or Belgravia on any summer morning, the 'disparity' with the lives of most ordinary Britons is hard to miss. 'It's like Monte Carlo on the Thames,' remarks another successful hedgie. 'The flash cars. The overdressed women. The chauffeurs...' More acidly, a longtime Chelsea tenant protests: 'The final straw was seeing a woman arriving for her daily croissant at Baker and Spice and lay down a cashmere blanket for her miniature poodle.'

Cohen and other wiser heads among the new rich are 'worried'. It's not that they expect Brown to crack down hard, if only because he is seen as unlikely to fritter away his success in allowing London to establish itself as a rival - some would say, the victor - in the contest for world financial clout. The new chancellor, Alastair Darling, seemed out to reassure them when he used his first interview, with the Financial Times, to rule out any 'kneejerk' changes in the tax rules.

Still, there is a growing sense that the shared interest of the new prime minister and the new rich will soon make almost inevitable a genuine change in the way the government deals with the very wealthy. The 10 per cent 'taper' rate is seen as likely to double to 20 per cent, a concession to controversy that the private equity bosses appear ready to live with. They also expect pressure for a new 'transparency' in reporting how equity deals are structured and funded. But the open question is whether there will be serious moves to get more of the super rich to pay significantly more in tax.

There is another, quite different, concern as well: that in markets and money, what goes spectacularly up is bound at some stage to go down - if not quite on the scale of the last great City boom-and-bust, which ultimately spelt the end of 18 years of Conservative government. But among the hedgefunders - smarter, older, more cautious than the Lamborghini post-adolescents of the Eighties - there are nagging doubts about the future.

'Hedge funds are still the one legal way to go from zero to fabulously wealthy without passing go,' quips Richard, a European hedgie who got his start in a New York bank, now runs his own successful fund and drives Formula One cars for fun. 'The field is much, much more crowded. Every quant is looking at the same numbers. And to be really successful in the long-run, you are increasingly going to have to be one of the very big ones - with billions of dollars under management, not my $200m.'

Patrick agrees. 'There is a feeling that it can always end. Those who have made really big money are beginning to prepare for the rest of their lives, to put something away.' You might call it the ultimate hedgie's hedge.

Patrick, for his part, keeps a dog-eared copy of a 2001 bestseller on his bedside table. Written by the Wall Street Journal writer Roger Lowenstein, it tells the story of the greatest American hedge fund of them all, Long-Term Capital Management. Advised by mathematicians with brains the size of Wembley stadium, including two Nobel laureates, Long-Term began making its complex bets on an array of markets in 1994. With each new profit placed on a new bet, the sums soared. So did the partners' self-confidence, and the willingness of major banks to lend them funds to stoke an apparently failsafe money-making machine. Then came a series of ostensibly unimportant jolts, not on any of the spreadsheets or computer models - an Asian market crash, a Russian currency crisis. Long Term's strategy was based on the classic hedge-fund assumption that, given time, the natural tendency of out-of-kilter markets to rediscover balance would have won out. But if you're neck deep in leverage - or
as the rest of us would call it, debt - time is the one commodity you can't buy, whatever side of the wealth divide you are on.

Patrick is by no means the only hedgie to keep Lowenstein's book close at hand. They do so not for the contents - the story of the rise and fall of Long Term is familiar to them all - but for the short, sharp, salutary message of the title. It is called: When Genius Failed.'

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

If we want to work towards a fair society with decent benefits for people who rely on them then I think it is a mistake to talk about the deserving and undeserving without some care.

Non genuine claimants are a real problem and we should talk about it but with the pitiful level of the current benefits the problem of people willingly wanting to live on them is not major. When you raise them to a realistic living level then you may have a problem but it is unfair to genuine claimants to develop a habit of assuming many are non genuine.

Unemployent bill is £36 billion a year so why are they not picking at the real wasters that refuse to work after all thousands come in daily to do the jobs others' won't do.
Could it be that most of these claimants come from a protected class in this country?
It appears to be the case judging the government unemployment stats!
An absolute disgrace, The Welsh guy in the wheelchair don't clean up the filth left by others'
Makes me feel nothing but SHAME!

It is interesting to see what has been simmering away in the background. Thanks for this.

I know several people with severe illnesses who are unaware of the "imminent" cuts, let alone the naked greed behind them....

Chris said...
"Anyone claiming JSA ( Job Seekers Allowance ) AUTOMATICALLY qualifies for free prescriptions."

As I understand it if you are not capable of working but UnumProvident/NEW Labour say you are you will have your benefit cut. What will that then class you as?. I think they will then say you are not seeking work and do not fall into JSA?. All very confusing, to say the least!. After all this is all about saving money and nothing to do with helping disabled people.

Anyone claiming JSA ( Job Seekers Allowance ) AUTOMATICALLY qualifies for free prescriptions.

Anyone claiming CA ( Carers Allowance aka Pittance .... some £9 LESS than JSA ) does NOT automatically qualify for free prescriptions ..... the acid test is receiving IS ( Income Support ).

A Carer can be caring 24 \ 7 , and yet , caring in this sense is not classified as work.

The other thing to consider in all this is that if someone is said to be fit for work and NOT classed as disabled they will have to pay for any prescribing medicines they need. That will badly affect the many that can`t afford them and they will have to go without.

One Organisation to represent the Underclass ( the elderly \ the less abled \ the carers of one \ both ) ?

Yes .... to achieve social change , a new way is needed for those not represented by ANY current political party. Does any existing trade union look after the interests of it's retired members when they are faced with a multitude of problems just because they are old ?

Left \ Right \ Centre ? Has no meaning whatsoever when you are a member of the Underclass ...... the mass media has many " 5 minute wonder " horror stories almost daily ( NHS refusing to fund blindless saving treatment \ children as young as 5 " employed " as carers \ less abled wheelchair bound citizens threatened with withdrawal of benefits if they do not attend a work based interview - some 15 miles away with no public transport available ) ....... until such experiences are first hand , too many readers just pass over the story quickly.

For far too many , this is the society we are forced to live in ....... totally apathetic to the plight of , around , 1 in 7 of their fellow citizens.

Enough is enough ....

You are all absolutely right about the terrible state of services for the vulnerable and the way NewLabour ignore them. I have never heard NewLabour spinners claiming to have done anything for the vulnerable except tell them to go back to work.

A union for non workers sounds a great idea. Didn't Jack Jones do that for pensioners? Don't forget the mentally ill who find organising very, very hard and are being bullied mercilessly with the current cuts (see rethink papers on cuts)

Left with NO support the disabled could/may turn to crime?. Say keep Smashing the windows of the local police station then wait to be arrested and put into prison. NEW Labour would then have to look after the sick then. I think this will in the end be what many will have to do, how much more will that cost the tax payer???.

Being disabled and living under Blair's welfare reform regime is now a contradiction. This isn't 'living' - it's hell. We are made to feel like criminals, scrounger's, beggars. Why not just get rid of political correctness in this instance and put us all up against a wall and shoot us? Quick and clean, rather than this long, drawn out undignified castration of will and mind.

Janet.

on second thoughts, please delete the above post, the WRB is brutal enough without these accusations.

there is a very worrying article on indymedia uk, though while extreme and at first crazy, makes some very intersting points.

' THE UNDESERVING ILL - A WARNING (from 2005)

03.05.2007 14:15
(M.E. & THE NAZI LEGACY)

It is my considered opinion that at this moment in time we are on the verge of succumbing to elements of the same self-serving propaganda that "legitimised" the mass persecutions of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and early 40s.
It is my belief that the current - almost frenzied - campaign to psychologise M.E. and similar conditions is part of this propaganda and represents a dress rehearsal for the wider application of the psychosocial classification of a new "underclass" of "the undeserving ill", stripped of some of the very rights the Second World War was supposedly fought for by the Allies.
Being born of a British (soldier) father and German mother (who narrowly escaped the clutches of the Gestapo and SS during the war years), it has long been a personal quest of mine to understand how the crimes of the Nazis could be perpetrated among civilised nations only two generations ago. '

more

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369555.html?c=on#c172711

If an approach could be made by , say , the TUC , offering some form of affliation for the Elderly \ the Less Abled \ the Carers , a ready made infrostructure would exist for a first step towards one National body to represent the Underclass ?

After all , even at 10p per week , that represents a potential £ 26 million to go into the coffers ...... always assuming a sizeable amount is not taken out in " administrive " expenses ( aka virtually all supportng charities ).

A " Union " with Real elderly \ less abled \ carers as the hierarchy ? What potential ...... all it would need is the Will ..... ?

All readers of this post are only years away from joining the Underclass .... more some , your time will be even shorter.

The lack of support to challenge these reforms from progressive forces of all kinds: from unions, charities, churches , unions etc to the far left, anti-capitalists, etc, has been disgraceful. There have been no public meetings organized by left groups, union meetings, church/faith groups have ignored the issues, national protests organized by claimants groups were poorly supported by activists, if at all.

Basically, disabled people have been left to fend for themselves. Disabled people are not victims, but surely they could have expected some solidarity from those who declare they are fighting for a better world, Its clearly not a question of resources: for instance there have been numerous anti-war marches while the Bill has been developed and refugee campaigns for example have been energetic, well resourced and active. Welfare is an issue for all decent people: even leaving aside the notion of solidarity with those in difficulty, as Jonathan argues the global nature of welfare identifying global insurance companies, such as Unum Provident and the massive influence they have with all Gov'ts, means that welfare is now big business....

I echo Robert's observations.

When considering the Underclass ( the elderly \ the less abled ) , don't loose sight of the army of carers , many now caring 24 \ 7 without breaks , " earning " less than 60% of the figures mentioned in Robert's last post.

Where I agree 100% with Robert is in the support circus ..... totally out of their depths in dealing with the regressive wave of legislation \ cutbacks imposed , and , quite simply , more than overdue to be consigned to history ( together with some obscene salaries enjoyed by their executives ).

What is needed is a Social Wage to replace the zoo of benefits ..... X % of the Average Wage ..... a starting point for anyone considering how to tackle poverty for , shall we say , 1 in 6 of the UK population.

I have a spinal lesion after an accident, my wife was born with Spina bifia, we both worked my wife most of her life, myself only two years after my accident.

The problem right now in smaller areas of the country like Swansea Jobs for the disabled tend to be even for highly educated, handing out baskets at Asda, like Blair said we all have to get out foot on the employment ladder, these ladders go down not up.

Employers in my area have a massive choice of unemployed people, plus immigrants from all over the world, then the disabled, most pick immigrants, because they see these people as being desperate to work. I mean I my self would love to work, sadly if I was an employer I'd not employ me.

Since Tony Blair took over my benefits have in fact gone down, when you all shouted and scream the first year Blair came to power with his 75p rise for the pensioners not one single person said anything about the same rise being given to the disabled, because most of you think we are cheats anyway.

Since Labour has taken over each rise we have had has in fact been less then the rise in our council tax.

Yes people on IB actually get right now £125 a week, so my wife and I get £250 a week, we pay council tax and rent which takes all my money, my wife then buys the food and the electric bills gas bills water TV license, and anything else which comes up.

People talk about an American firm taking over and the fraud it has, believe me we have one here already it's called ATOS, this firm does the medicals for DLA benefits, under Labour it has become a nightmare.


What would I like well for people who can work or want to work JOBS, it's no good saying to me find a job I have been trying for six years even my Job Centers given up not only with me, Job brokers who give out jobs to the disabled should be made to employ the disabled, not 18 19 to 25 year old ex student who have no idea what I need or can do. I make a great Job Adviser, yet we are not being employed.

Right now the disabled market is making money off us, yet refuse to employ us, how about looking at jobs for us real jobs jobs worth doing, and yes everyone in the country is looking for one of those.

I am sick and tired of being offered work for 4 hours week picking up litter from a wheelchair, standing in Asda handing out baskets to customers being told smile.

I use to run contracts within the building industry worth millions.

fair benefits.

Fair chance of getting employment.

Stop using the media to make us look like frauds.

And ask us what we want and need, stop asking charities who pretend to work for us, yet have nobody who is disabled.

Jonathan’s article is well worth reading: the issue of welfare and benefits has, with a few exceptions such as John McDonnell MP been largely ignored by progressive forces in the U.K. There have been many dept failures in the DWP such as 80’000 claimants being wrongly accused of fraud which was not even discussed in the media. We are now rapidly moving to a US style minimal and privatised welfare system where the individual is blamed for his incapacity/poverty, etc. Just as privatisation of the NHS was once ‘unthinkable’ and so far out of mainstream political thinking and now is proceeding apace: now welfare reform is to undergo the same process. There would appear to be a consensus across the main political that drastic welfare reform is needed. Combined with the draconian Welfare Reform Bill its clear now that we are seeing the biggest structural changes in welfare since the 1940’s; indeed, there are now clear similarities between the Freud Review proposals and President Clinton's seminal 1996 welfare reforms which have been such a disaster for the poor in the U.S. The neo liberal notion of the ‘active citizen’: only those who can be productive can be ‘good’ is imbued in all of these reforms.

The reforms will be a disaster for disabled people, single parents, etc: If the Freud review is implemented, welfare will be run akin to high pressure sales teams where putative Willie Lomax’s (Death Of A Salesman) will aspire to ‘reach their targets’ their target being single mothers and the unemployed again forced into work or training. One very worrying ‘incentive’ in this review towards an ‘activist’ welfare system is the notion that if you leave a job which these ‘proactive agencies’ have procured you before three years, you can lose your right to benefits, yes, three years, they can come after you after that long!.
The Welfare Reform Bill will see Disabled People threatened with the loss of benefits and forced into unsuitable work or even medical interventions, on top of abolishing housing benefit in the private rented sector to be replaced by a fixed rate allowance for each city.

The only people who will benefit from all this are the Global companies mentioned by Jonathan and indeed their members such as Alyward and Wellesley but also the private training companies that have made millions for their owners, all from public funds. The PCS Union commissioned Steve Davies, a Senior Research Fellow at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, to conduct a study of the third sector, the results were very revealing.

Some claimant groups and others have been challenging these reforms since their inception, for instance, Sheffield Welfare Action Network (SWAN) members have organized national conferences on the WRB and disability benefits, put on demonstrations in Sheffield opposing the Welfare Reform Bill and helped organise the national lobby of the Labour Party Conference... They have lobbied groups across the political spectrum - everyone and anyone who will listen (and those who won't!). There is also Welfare Reform UK and the Campaign Against The Welfare Reform Bill(CAWRB). However, as well as dealing with a media blackout, the response to say the least has not been overwhelming, welfare is either not sexy or perhaps many people think the Govt are on the right track. Claimants and their allies are sure they are not.

www.swansheffield.org.uk

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352351.html

This link has been going round various discussion fora and self help groups; it would be good to know from people who are dependent on the IB system and disability benefits generally what , say, three changes would make a real improvement to life. Compass has also just posted a 'thinkpiece' on welfare to work. You can find it by going to the Compass home page

I went down with 'ME' 20yrs ago and recently it has been proven that what I was really suffering from was borrelia/Lyme disease and all I can say about the 20yrs of farce in claiming Dis All and the NHS is that it is complete rubbish. I have endured appeal after appeal and cannot believe the rudeness and disbelief that I have encounted from doctors etc. It is only because I am 'pig-headed' that I have managed to survive, some dont. I am fed up of hearing of ME/Lyme disease sufferers committing suicide, especially young people with this disease. They are worn down with the baffeling pain and disbifief by doctors that they are ill. IT IS A WORLDWIDE SCANDAL AND NEEDS ADDRESSING BY PARLIAMENT AS IT IS BEING DONE IN NORWAY.

Jonathan is so right about this. The mentally ill are being offered housing and support directly in relationship to getting back to work.

All mental health charities like Rethink support mentally ill people in going back to work and living independently, that's a given. But they are realistic in accepting that some people can't.

The government is using the concept of stigmatisation to close day centres where they say mentally ill people meet together and get stigmatised and protected accommodation where they live together with care. But stigma is never fought by hiding away. Mentally ill people need contact with other people with the same problems just like other disability groups. It's all an excuse to see if they can get people back to work and if they can't and they look like they will be ill for a long time, drop support for them.

This leave friends and relatives struggling and people relapsing and needing rehospitalisation. It's so short sighted.

But worse than that it's uncaring. And that feeds in to the heart of society.

A few extra thoughts... The workfare system that is taking shape in this country is turning the logic of welfare onto its head. It is no longer about asking how we can help people who are sick or disabled, but about asking them how they can help us. The demand for performativity in return for a meagre subsistence robs people of their autonomy, but New Labour dress it up in the language of individual career development and dignity for the disabled. John Hutton describes this as a ‘something for something’ approach and Tony Blair calls it ‘mutual responsibility’. But there is precious little mutuality or reciprocity in such an unequal compact.

But what would be our alternative? First, we need to make sure the Freud report is permanently shelved. We need an alternative philosophy of welfare which recognises the interrelational nature of the individual. We need to develop the idea of a social state in which welfare is a relational good. Its value resides in it being shared. Relational goods include social approval, solidarity, a desire to experience one’s own history, friendship, the need to be recognised or accepted by others. Relational goods can regenerate social life and help create a common good and in this context they make known the obligations of individuals to society.

Work is a relational good when it connects people with a common purposefulness of social value and in its creative aspects provides a source of individual self expression. A left welfare system must develop work as a relational good free of coercion: one that provides those who find themselves incapacitated, excluded and in poverty a way to connect to others, in their own time, in their own manner. In the meantime, benefits should be raised in order to lift people out of poverty.

Corporate Crimefighters website, www.corporatecrimefighters.com, exposes UnumProvident, a disability company which practices massive and unjustified claim denial, driving their insured into destitution and despair, or worse - purposely throwing their liabilities off on the U.S. Govt Social Security system, although they keep the profits. While the webmaster is on semi-hiatus, much information can be gleaned from the site archives at http://archives.zinester.com/75758

It would also be wise to join the discussion group, where you may get advice from other victims and from experts, at fixingdisability-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Jim Mooney, webmaster

New Labour and the end of welfare...

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, and nothing is more difficult than to understand him."

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist (1821 - 1881)

Interesting stuff Jonathan. I can't recall the quality newspapers giving this any decent coverage. Maybe you should consider turning it into an article so the issue can be given a decent airing?
BTW: I attended last year's Soundings event and got a lot from it (and have booked for the upcoming one).

Linda, You're right it doesn't focus on the claims management practices of Unum in the US. I wanted to concentrate on what was happening in the UK. The point I want to make is that a company that has been found guilty of fraudulent practices and denying legitimate claims has been used by the UK government to help tighten the rules on claiming Invalidity Benefit. The longer version of the article has more information about the US. In the meantime anyone interested can find out more on these links.

M.E. Action UK (www.meaction.org.uk). For example http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Notes_on_the_Insurance_issue_in_ME.htm.

Also comments made in the House of Lords, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldhansrd/vo040122/text/40122-12.htm

For the archive of the US campaign against UnumProvident see, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.corporatecrimefighters.com

The social research by Alison Ravetz-Green is a useful introduction to IB reform in the UK available online at
http://www.swansheffield.org.uk/docs/AlisonRavetz-Green%20Paper.doc.

Although I haven't seen the full version of the article, it does not address the egregiousness of UNUMProvident's claims practices and the potential harm it will cause the people of the UK.

The article in my opinion parrots articles written in the US "shielding" and protecting disclosure of a "claims process gone bad" and managed by the "Robber Barons". When I provided information I had hoped the article would reveal more of the horrible claims practices and the pain people have when involved with UNUM. Sorry.
Linda

Nothing to surprise us here. We have an untrusted and untrustworthy government essentially intent on kicking the most vulnerable in society, and which is obsessed with the rituals of privatisation in its race to recreate a profoundly unequal, vicious, and corrupt pseudo-Victorian society dominated by neocon ideologues and their corporate sponsors. The only saving grace may be its brazen incompetence as it attempts to put in place another unworkable policy which probably seemed like "a good idea at the time" because it provides a guaranteed income to shareholders, like any good PFI should.

I have as much confidence in the Welfare Reform Bill to benefit anyone apart from those private contractors who will suck off the welfare budget as junior doctors have in their loony job training application process - and the confidentiality of the information they were expected to provide for the prize of not gettin an interview in the first place.

If, has Channel 4 discovered, there has been absolutely open access to confidential data about junior hospital doctors, what are the chances of patients' information being securely protected on the proposed, and equally loony, NHS spine?

I know this will be regarded as a cry from the outer reaches of fairyland but, given the shambolic state of the NHS, isn't it appropriate for the Secretary of State and every Health Minister to resign, right down to the lowliest PPS, to resign, or, failing that, be sacked? Maybe that way, we might be prepared to accept that this government actually takes at least some of its responsibilities to its citizens seriously.