Bill & his cronies are just puppets & a mouthpiece for those pushing the New World Order or One World Government agenda.

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Rachel is right. Not all invalid beneficiaries are terminally ill or don’t want to work. I have a daughter on IB who would LOVE to be able to hold down a normal job, has tried very hard to get jobs, has even started some but been unable to keep going. It’s extremely stressful and demoralisng to be treated like a second-class citizen and very hard to live on the income too. WINZ do not help to find work, and were not helpful about how to manage the balance of income and benefit when she has managed to find work. On one occasion, it was one of those semi-casual jobs where you might get up to 15 hours a week (the maximum an IB is allowed to work) – or less. WINZ took it that it would be a regular 15 hours per week, but in fact it never was. She got anywhere from 4-9 hours a week but had her benefit abated as though she was working 15. I thought they should have balanced it up at the end of the year, but they didn’t.

Now, she has managed to find a couple of people who pay her to do housework a couple of hours a week which just about makes it possible to survive (with help from us). She has registered with a group that looks for work for people with disabilities but they have never found anything for her. There is just too much competition from ‘normal’ people. And she HATES being on the IB by the way.

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“[National is] not delivering for people on benefits who need more carrot and stick to become self reliant.” Lindsay Mitchell could be partly correct were disabled people given the opportunity to define that carrot. So what could that big juicy organic carrot look like that enticed disabled people into work?

Respect – People with disabilities say that attitudes are the biggest barrier to living an ordinary life. The language that disables us would be removed from media and public service usage. No longer would we be referred to as ‘special’ or ‘handicapped’. We’re ordinary people who deserve respectful language.

Disability Strategy funding – If it were properly implemented people with disabilities could return to work. Yet there is no centralised funding for the implementation of the Disability Strategy and it remains on the shelf until there is.

Transport – A comprehensive network of accessible public transport would be introduced to enable disabled people to get out their front door.

Web Access – The web accessibility standards http://www.webstandards.govt.nz/ for government that recently became mandatory would be properly resourced to hasten their implementation. These enable blind people and those with low vision to access the web with ease. Being blind is not a reason in itself not to work but not being able to access the most commonly used working tool is.

The torridly named ‘invalids’ benefit, which further ostracises those on it could then be renamed to something more dignified.

What about the stick part? Disabled people have long been told they need to harden up and get back out there. Disabled people need access and support not sticks, a few walking canes maybe, but the real sticks should be used to stir up society to take responsibility for removing the barriers that prevent people with disabilities participating fully.

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Greenfly I take your point I don’t think that we should compromise one iota with the national.

What they say has proven to be not what they deliver.

I know a few people on sickness and invalids benefit. those on invalids, well it’s the last station of the cross and those in position of power need to have a little more empathy.

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“Someone better tell him then – he thinks he’s Mussolini.”

ridiculous. Only Micael Laws is Mussolini!

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Fly; You are on to it I reck’n…it wasn’t what the Thick Hide Did. It was the arrogance with which he responded….and THIS man is a Public Servant????
Someone better tell him then – he thinks he’s Mussolini.

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I suspect that many of those who have posted here have no actual experience of what an Invalid’s benefit covers, and how it is different to a Sickness benefit, or indeed, a Disability Allowance that can be attached to another benefit, or given as a top-up to part-time employment.

Each of the above scenarios exist to fund different scales of disability/degenerative illness, and differing levels of permanence; with terminal diseases being the hardcore IB recipients.
However, don’t worry your little right-wing hearts about those with terminal diseases, this situation resolves when the patient achieves terminality.
See Mary Potter Hospice’s website (or indeed, any hospice of your own choosing) if you’re having trouble understanding the concepts of degenerative, painfilled, terminal disease, of which cancer is merely the most commonly understood form.

The purpose of an Invalid’s benefit is to fund Doctor’s costs, medication, pain-relief, treatment that has beneficial if not curative effects on the illness, and basic needs of daily life. It exists for those who are too debilitated to work as their condition exacerbates, and who have no earning partner or close relative supporting them.
In other words, those who are ill, functionally destitute, and occupationally incapacitated.

Having once watched an elderly relative die of liver cancer, I can safely say that I would rather that continued access to morphine and professional care existed for those who must exit humanity in this condition, than that a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat stripped this suppport from the poorest of our society, for simple political capital.

The measure of a civilised society is how the weakest amongst us are cared for by the strongest, that is all.

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Valis: Please can we have a list of the merely outrageous, in case some of it deserves attention?

I was thinking very generally rather than in this specific area, though no doubt a read of Paula Bennet’s press releases would give you plenty of examples. For instance, I think Brownlee has purposely not ruled out mining in national parks so that he can do it later when the list of areas to be mined is announced, so it looks like the govt has listened to the people, etc, in the hopes that people will see it as a reasonable compromise and stop bitching.

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As an aside there was the opine that Roe v Wade resulted in less children being born to the disadvantaged and this led to the falling crime rate. It may be false conclusion, as another reason is that crime predominately occurs amongst the young and the baby boomer population was aging when/before the rates began to fall (another was the peaking of crime rates coinciding with the end of the baby boomer bulge and 80′s policy – Volckers “beat stagflation” recession and the Reagan era cut backs in government spending).

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Valis: Please can we have a list of the merely outrageous, in case some of it deserves attention?

Drakula: According to Freakanomics, abortion on demand would achieve the same results, apart from the political ones. I have difficulty imagining Mr Laws supporting it, because it would cause costs and freedoms for the wrong people, and break the wrong scabs, to use greenfly’s terminology.

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http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-poverty-rates.html

responds to your points about US poverty rates.

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There probably was a move from the dole to SB and IB in recent years – as jobs became available and WINZ was removing people from the UB they came across those with barriers to work issues and no doubt moved them onto other benefits – these could have been addiction issues or people with health issues resulting from years on unemployment poverty. This probably happens a lot at the end of a strong growth cycle. Coinciding with this a look at those on SB and IB who could work part-time – give WINZ staff a new focus as numbers on the dole reduced – including treatment programmes for addicts etc.

But to do this when UB numbers are back at a 15 year high places huge pressures on staff. Apart from treatment programmes which probably pay off it should be a back to basics and perhaps a general look at reducing barriers to those on the SB and IB working part-time (if they want), it should be focus on youth unemployment and parents raising children in poverty (increasing the other income earnt before abatement helps here and also for the general unemployed only able to find part-time).

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Quick! Throw some crusts! Gulls!

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There was a big shifting of people off the dole and onto IB. I suspect that that rate of change will probably be diminished as people who actually belong on IB are on it and those who were not transferred should not be, and so we have (I think) a situation that has not yet reached a steady state. It would take someone with copious resources (time) to go through the stats and work out what the long term STABLE rate of people needing to go on IB is. Shucks… Is there such a thing? I THINK there is but I don’t have that sort of time.

But the recently alarming rate of people going onto IB may not be as significant in the long run.

Then there is the fact that for everyone on the IB who is being considered for a part time job because they can “sort-of” work, there is someone who would qualify for IB but has a partner who is carrying them, who might want to work but is not able to find anything within his/her limits. Which gives that particular family a fair handicap, particularly if there are children in the mix.

…and this all needs to be couched in terms of the “war-on-drugs” which so encourages the population to use the cheapest most damaging concoctions available when they turn to chemical recreations. ‘P’ is almost a guaranteed trip to the head-doctors.

I don’t think making the evaluations mandatory is as smart as it looks though. Most case workers have the wit to work out what is hopeless and what is not. The waste involved in finding the exceptions where they MAY have got it wrong seems unlikely to pay for the effort of re-evaluating everyone regularly to see if they have recovered from their autopsy. It isn’t un-doable but it is IMHO, very likely to be a waste of time and money.

respectfully
BJ

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I think there is a substantial difference between identifying those who are on the IB who could work part-time and work testing them while jobs are hard to find – work testing would add stress to the life of a person who does not need any more stress. If people want the help to find part-time work fine. But it’s not as if there is a problem of inter-generational dependency caused by people being on the IB.

The real problem is unemployment amongst youth and parents raising children in poverty. The problem which was easing there is now worsening again and this needs government attention.

SB and IB numbers are growing worldwide across the economic cycle – this is a function of an aging population and some public health issues – such as diabetes/diet and lung and heart health (smoking/diet) as well as hospital system burdened with waiting lists. This is exacerbated whenever access to pensions is reduced by raising the age of eligibility. It’s no surprise that those who want to toughen up policy to those on SB and IB are also the ones who decry “nanny-state” PC for trying to deal with the causes of some of the ill-health – anti-smoking and healthy diet campaigns.

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BTW, the big thumbs up @Lindsay 7:59 AM is becasue she has blogged this on her own blog and it is attracting all the righties here.

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Bro – your hero Hide has been revealed as a thief and a suck-up. Is that why you’re here, trying to irritate the Greens? Is this actoid-displacement behaviour? Drop Rodders a line and tell him what you think of his ‘born to rule’ attitude and share your remedies for the ‘foot in mouth’ disease he’s displayed recently.

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Lindsay deals in facts, what a pity the Greens don’t give it a try sometime soon.

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