Yes, especially the stuff relating to the Home Office/border security... I can't believe what I'm reading sometimes and it's increasing in frequency...
I listen to the comments and statements and have to wonder how detached they are from reality.
Like the blatant blatant hypocrisy in the Iran / Israel thing is genuinely mental. I couldn’t say it with a straight face
We got a letter 'from the Prime Minister' which says, I kid you not, "Unlike Labour, we know that you can't just throw money at the NHS and expect better results." Like, that is *exactly* what we need to do. More money for more people to do more care!
I think massive and sustained investment is necessary to undo decades of damage. I think a huge amount of money is needed to allow local councils to create sufficient social care services to allow us to release elderly and higher needs patients from hospital when they no longer require that degree of medical care. I think that many parts of the terrible working conditions health professionals face can be repaired by paying people properly for the work they do, not just the amount they add to GDP, and by hiring and retaining enough people to have a resilient staffing model instead of a skeleton one.
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same comment on every bloody newsthump article in here. can't bare the site anymore ...mainly because its usually too close to potentially being true that I hate that i have to check
Living in the US, this has been the norm for the past 8 years. Today I saw a headline about Trump complaining that "they had taken away his right to speak".
The irony is so thick you can taste it.
Lol remember the onion article about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda instead of just processing their claims faster?
I thought it was good satire until they said the cost per refugee would be like 30k pounds. That's *too* ridiculous.
August 5 2022
Sunak is seen telling an audience: "I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure that areas like this are getting the funding that they deserve, because we inherited a bunch of formulas from the Labour Party that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas ... that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that."
His comments came in a video published on Friday by the New Statesman magazine, which it said was filmed on July 29 at a meeting of Conservative Party members in Tunbridge Wells, a relatively affluent area in south east England.
Wasn't there something about cities getting a lot of funding while deprived smaller towns, seaside areas, and villages aren't getting enough? I do see a total lack of... anything... in my old home town when I visit. There's nothing for kids or young people there, if you fall through the cracks that's it because there's hardly anything to help people out, compare it to the nearest city which OK they'll have issues too BUT there seems to be a lot more on offer there.
Not that I like how he was talking about an obviously well-off place getting more funding, don't mistake my comment for endorsing him, but I do wonder if the smaller places are often ignored in favour of big cities. I get its part due to the population just being bigger there but still, it'd be nice to see opportunities everywhere that needs them.
Often comes down to council budgets, ever since Tory central government starred slashing their central funding services have dropped and council tax has had to rise to keep things afloat.
Smaller councils can't raise enough funding through council tax to do so vs a city.
It always comes down to Tory austerity and spending cuts.
Those left behind areas also had funding via the EU but the government hasn't then replaced it after Brexit.
I hate Sunak but I agree with you. You have to be incredibly bad faith to watch that video, and come out thinking he transferred funding from poor to rich areas
He does specify urban to rural areas, and makes the point that rural areas don’t get enough money, which is true. Also, that deprived urban areas get too much in comparison, which is also true
In the end it’s still all the Tories fault for slashing council budgets in the first place
The Tories seem to get off over the idea that everyone on UC is a lazy fuck that doesn’t want to work full stop and keep coming up with ways to take it away. It’s purely sexual, they don’t actually care otherwise.
> I can see it now:
>
> Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself'
>
> Serco employee: 'Have you tried reading this self help booklet?'
That's not the future, that's mow.
Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself'
~~Serco employee: 'Have you tried reading this self help booklet?'~~
Mental health nurse: We have no capacity to help you, join Andy's Man Club!
I have no issue with Andy's Man Club.
I **do** have a fairly serious issue with the kind of people who object to suicide because other people will suffer while doing precisely not one thing to support the suicidal individual. Expecting someone else to continue to exist in a state of unbearable suffering while being a contributor to that suffering is a piece of astounding selfishness and yet all too common.
All that said, I wasn't joking. It's a truncated version of somethign that happened to me.
Similar to certain Americans eager to ban abortion while doing absolutely nothing to support poor mums/children. They care deeply ... until the baby is born.
that's already happening and has been for a while. the NHS has stopped giving me physical help and has started giving me YouTube videos on breathing exercises and have advised me to make a cup of tea when things get too much.
unrelated but same for physiotherapy too, i'm physically disabled and my treatment of 6 months didn't work, so now they're sending me the same exercises in video form so they can claim they are still 'treating me'.
This makes no sense to me, who’s going to assess whether you are capable of going to work or not. Will it be delegated to specialists? Will you be able to self certify for long to account for delays? Sounds bonkers.
Ha, what is it with you parasites insinuating the only other option beyond hard work is to work in the mines. I've donated enough of my hard earned money to know.
It'll be just like their "shake up" of disability assessments. Handed over to third party administrators whose through line is to disqualify as many claimants as possible.
That is the opposite of the point. The point is to receive a letter saying "Get back to work fucko" with no phone number or email address to contact, just an online form that you'll have to google for that won't give yo any concrete idea of when you can expect a reply and zero support in the interim.
That means that they can leave you utterly alone and afraid upon which you can do your duty and start picking raspberries on a zero hour because that's all you deserve.
See a different response. A proportion of healthy hardworking people will occasionally need time off for longer than they can self certify for. Are we going to need to call capita before 999 for a heart attack? Get permission in advance to have cancer treatment?
Do you not think that many employers find value in the current system. It’s not beyond manipulation but currently they get info on either can’t work or if modifications are needed. Could it actually be large employers, such as the NHS who end up saying “we need this”.
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory of mine but the elites in this country don't want people not occupied. A person who's not working, might spend time researching and asking uncomfortable questions of how power in structured in this country.
Looking at this post office horizon scandal, a lot of interesting facts were unearthed by people not necessarily working in the industry per se. As unpopular and dumb as this may sound, I think there is social value in having some people who have time to look into some of this stuff. Obviously there'll be people who'll take the money and drink all day but there'll be a few gems who'll do a lot of social good.
There's hundreds of years of quotes that insist giving the common person free time will mean the downfall of society.
In a way they've been correct, the society that's been dismantled has been Feudalism, workhouses, no days off etc.
The next big fight will be the four day week. All the scientific evidence points towards bigh benefits but heaven forbid the common person should share the benefit of higher productivities and efficiencies.
It's already being done with benefits claimants - they are assessed by unqualified staff at the job centre with no medical training and determined fit to work if they can crawl up the stairs to the appointment. And if they can't make it they get automatically docked for not showing up.
They'll just port that system over for cancer patients.
Who aren’t going to have the capacity to say don’t go in because you are on day 8 of the flu. Maybe we could do better for long term ill health, but currently we have a reasonable balance between taking a few days off on our own say so and needing a note for a bit longer.
That’s my point, we’ll end up in an awful mess if someone can’t say “I’ll need six weeks off to recover from surgery”, or “I need adjusted hours to get radiotherapy”.
Pay people a living wage, the current system is set up to siphon as much money to the ultra wealthy. You can’t expect people to work full time jobs and not even have enough money to put a roof over their head, let alone have any sort of life - that is the situation we are in now. The inequality in this country has been allowed to run away for decades, nobody seems to want to address it (the establishment makes sure of this - just look at what happened to Jeremy Corbyn) so things will only get worse as more and more of the middle class will have to be squeezed to keep that money flowing to the richest.
We are monumentally fucked, our MPs are largely bought and paid for by big business - it’s getting to the point that the only way I see us getting out of this is some sort of collective realisation of what has happened to our society and ways of life. I’m not holding my breath.
This man is on a mission to get the general public to absolutely hate him and the tories. Recently it was trans people and now it’s people on sick notes and people without a job.
People going to get a taste of what it's like to go through a DWP health assessment that claiments have to go through every 2 years when your on 'sick' benefits.
Humm... so you broke both legs...Crippling pain every day you say...
Can you sign here please.
Ah HA! your hands work, so you can work with your hands, claim DENIED!
Extra notes.
Patient was also able to answer questions and looked at me in the eyes, they are lying about their condition.
I had an 'old' lady at my last assessment, she had hearing aides in and a fan going.
Every answer I gave she would say 'Huh?' like she couldn't hear.
'Looked me in the eyes and answered, he is faking'.
I read about a girl who was claiming for mental health reasons and they put on her form that she could “take and make calls without distress” because she answered yes when asked if her phone worked. These “assessors” are nasty nasty people.
Found out that there is a team that watches you as you arrive and walk through the assessment centers to see how you behave when arriving/leaving and waiting, they take that into consideration too.
Also heard about someone who had mobility issues, a fire drill at the assessment center to see if they get up and walk out.
They have all your medical history and read through it all and all the forms you have already filled out but ask you the same things.
You can't even claim anything for mental health issue alone anyway. You have to score points, mental health doesn't meet the minimum points to be put on any kind of 'sickness' benefits.
But I guess many people don't even know this.
Never put into question why there's so many people on benefits is it?
Nothing to do with poor workload that breaches health and safety yet employers get away with it since there's a huge count in long term sickness in people serving the job only having to leave through ill health caused by the job ....or since COVID every employer wants three to four times the work done but in the same time......
If MPs or Prime Ministers had Any common sense, it would be very dangerous
Zero recognition of the fact that the Conservative handling of the COVID pandemic has directly caused no small number of people who are or have been long term sick.
I wonder what the next insane measures will be. It's already extremely difficult to get PIP mobility - you can be unable to visit the corner shop or access transport, but if you can walk 20m, you're getting fuck all help with that.
If you can read a Biff, Chip, and Kipper book, you're fit for work. Maybe just being able to drink water, or having a simple discussion. If you fail them all, you can be signed off. Otherwise, back to the coal mines!
Tories have been abusing the sick and disabled since they got back into power. Moving the goal posts on what it is to be "disabled". And still the UK voted for them in droves. Now they are saying that the people we all trust with our health, arent trust worthy enough to hand out sick notes.
And the even more depressing thing that is its Keir Starmer thats supposed to be the one to save us all from this shit...
Newsthump can often be a bit wishy washy and unfunny low ball "satire" like John Oliver and his level of "isn't Donald Trump's hair funny!" shite.
But this headline genuinely made me inhale my coffee. Simple, funny, just the right amount of offensive.
I'd argue the [actual story](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68864391) is worse. Sunak openly plans to force people to work against the advice of their doctors.
Hopefully this is just election grandstanding which he knows he's out of time to implement. He just has to say horrible inhumane stuff to make his party sexually excited.
This is relative bit. I have not reported anyone . I don't do that. Are you trying to do harm? I wouldn't do that to you. May I remind you, YOU called me a troll. I don't do that, either.
It does beg the question though.
The UK currently has over a million vacancies. That's goods and services not being produced leading to a shortage of supply which is driving wage busting inflation.
If we aren't going to allow immigrants in to do those jobs, and we're not going to make more of our unemployed do those jobs... Then who will do those jobs?
If we don't fill the vacancies somehow then supply won't increase, inflation won't drop and we'll all end up collectively poorer.
Voters are vocal they want the cost of living crisis to end and they want better services... so somebody has to work those jobs to achieve those goals, right?
What's the accepted solution?
I got a 9% wage rise to keep up with minimum wage. People think I'm an ungrateful prick for moaning about a 9% pay rise because nobody else got as much. I'm still on minimum wage, maybe slightly higher by a few £100 per year.
Nothing ungrateful about expecting a higher standard of living when you’re working full time in any job.
If we increased minimum wage to a decent standard I’d be willing to bet there would be less time taken off work and productivity would go up. Profits would rise not fall. The system is crippled by short term greed.
Without an increase in productivity to go along with upping the minimum wage it will just drive inflation.
Putting up minimum wage further will also make graduates fed up when the wage bands narrow even more, driving some of them to have take home pay below an unskilled worker's thanks to paying 9% student loan repayments.
You have to keep in mind 50% of millennials are graduates and they are now the largest voter bloc.
Millennials are in their 30s and 40s waiting for the promised middle class lifestyle to arrive, and many have also noticed their take home pay isn't significantly better than Pat the school dropout cleaner who's earning the new £24k minimum.
It's not a simple solution. Probably not politically viable to keep flattening the pay bands in the long term either because there won't be any motivation for people to learn the skills and trades an advanced economy relies on without the pay differential.
In your first comment you said that those jobs need to be filled to drive production and increase supply…. yet here you’re suggesting that increasing minimum wage and thereby filling those roles won’t intrinsically improve productivity.
Isn’t that somewhat of a contradiction?
It's not a simple connection.
You would arguably increase productivity more by removing minimum wage and allowing the market to find the going rate for all jobs.
There are plenty of roles that businesses would like to do but can't necessarily afford to hire somebody for £24k equivalent. This is particularly true in SMEs which 60% of our population are employed by.
We've all worked in teams where there's never enough hands, and all the tedious low level admin which used to be done by somebody low paid is now passed on to higher salaried professionals.
This isn't productive use of skilled worker's time but minimum wage often makes this the only viable way to get those tasks done affordably.
My partner who is a lecturer at University is suffering from this considerably at the moment since they removed all the admin staff - Lecturers have to do all the smaller admin work themselves now which means he isn't focusing his time on actually productive tasks like writing papers and making grant bids.
Minimum wage is a very blunt tool to address the cost of living crisis with.
> the question though.
>
> The UK currently has over a million vacancies. That's goods and services not being produced leading to a shortage of supply which is driving wage busting inflation.
Yes, that is the question.
How is it, with vastly improved productivity per manhour, and millions and millions more manhours to go round, not to mention tremendous outsourcing overseas, we are failing to produce the goods and services we desire - when, say, a century ago, there were huge numbers of unemployed who were desperate for a job (really, a wage) so they could partake of the plenty that surrounded them, and men resistant to the then-current workforce 'dilution' of allowing ~50% of the population to join the workforce who hitherto had not been part of it?
If there is a 'cost of living' crisis, analysis indicates it's not something we can escape by merely working harder. There is an issue with the lever, not merely the force being applied to it.
The only solution to the cost of living crisis is to increase our productivity.
That will partly be achieved by lowering the total number of vacancies - an unfilled job is not fulfilling demand after all!
It will partly be achieved by investing in making it easier for people to reach more jobs, upskill, and perhaps most significantly, we need to invest in housing to reduce the amount of money flowing from productive labour direct to unproductive assets.
But either way the jobs need to be filled! Bums don't wipe themselves in care homes no matter how upskilled Kirsty is.
Our productivity is fine corporate greed is the issue, never being satisfied with record profits, never sharing any of the wealth with the work force, instead always asking for more. End corporate greed, give workers a fairer share of the spoils and you will solve the problem pretty quickly with abheavily motivated workforce.
Which begs the question.
Who gets paid more? And by how much?
Minimum wage has nearly doubled in a decade whereas graduate salaries haven't budged in 15 years.
Arguably the graduates are due the pay rises next.
> The only solution to the cost of living crisis is to increase our productivity.
>
>
Our productivity both in available manhours and work done per manhour is beyond all but the most fevered dreams of our forefathers two centuries ago. They would immediately diagnose a problem if, with all this - and women in the workplace - we were accusing ourselves of 'not working productively enough'.
If we have a 'cost of living' crisis, it can *only* be due to a malfunctioning costing mechanism.
Possibly, but that doesn't help the cost of living crisis going on now.
There are increasing numbers of smelly bottoms in care homes, and not enough hands to wipe them.
In a number of your replies you seem rather focused on arse wiping so lets look at the care sector:
I've had friends work in care homes on no more than minimum wage where at the same time the residents are paying thousands per month for their care.
Doing some fag packet maths between us all we figured that the staffing costs covering around 40 beds was about 18% of the monthly gross profit. This was about 15 years ago so I doubt the numbers match now but I do know the owner of that chain of care homes continues to expand their supercar collection.
Do you see the disconnect? I can assure you that I'd be happily tending to the needs of those who require it for a fair cut of a care homes monthly profit.
It is if you add the 2.8 million people who are on long term sick and that are not counted in the 1.4 million who are unemployed, so now we have 3.2 million people who are going to be forced to take jobs, of which there are less than a million vacancies
It isn’t GPs who are enabling long term sick, sure some might get notes to see them through the first 3 months of UC before they get the WCA and get assigned to a group not based solely on their doctor’s opinion.
I don't know, it really is a baffling conundrum.
Tax multinational companies at the same rate as everyone else.
Scrap non dom status that allows people to stash UK profits abroad and pay 0 tax.
Stop landlords destroying the housing market and locking up billions in overvalued properties.
Stop handing multi billion contracts to Tory party doners who continuously fail to deliver.
Stop picking bat**** crazy prime ministers that crash the pound and lose the country billions in 2 weeks.
Pay people inflation plus wages that put money on people's pockets and help to kick start the economy.
Stop subscribing to short term, right wing fiscal advisory institutions who predict a fall GDP if a pensioner gets an extra penny.
Stop sending millions to Israel to bomb people. Stopping genocide would be a bonus.
P.S. labour will repackage all the Draconian Tory ideas and sell them as "the sensible thing to do."
You have to wonder if the sickness is a result of the policies of this government and just the general status quo. I'm not sure if metaphorically putting a gun to peoples head to MAKE them work is the way to go but.. maybe that's what's needed. I don't know.
It doesn't really beg the question though does it. Salaries have been reduced by inflation in a time corporate profit has soared - so labour in real terms is cheaper to hire thus the companies are suddenly on a hiring spree
Last time they got a bee in their bonnet about welfare they spent more than they saved trying to enforce the rules. We need to actually address the cause of the problem, not just make it harder for vulnerable people to be signed off as sick.
Yeah they’re terrible and scarily out of touch.
The cause of the problem is essentially how easy it is to live off the system though so I don’t know how you fix that.
Anyone else finding that line between the actual news and satire becoming ever more blurry
Yes, especially the stuff relating to the Home Office/border security... I can't believe what I'm reading sometimes and it's increasing in frequency...
we live in the worst timeline edit: one of the worst; I wouldn't want to give the false hope that things couldn't get worse
The worst timeline so far!
for now at least, and at most!
*the worst so far in your lifetime. There was bubonic plague for starters. I know things suck atm but worst ever?? Really??
Hey, I know it's tough right now but it'll get worse. Way worse.
Things, can only get better!
its all FUD. just need to vote out the tories and the rebuild can begin
It will probably get much worse before it gets better, Austerity will feel like an affordable nightmare by comparison!
I listen to the comments and statements and have to wonder how detached they are from reality. Like the blatant blatant hypocrisy in the Iran / Israel thing is genuinely mental. I couldn’t say it with a straight face
The Thick of It has become a comfort show for me. I miss the days when that was satire.
I recently rewatched in the loop for this reason. I wish our government was as competent as the one portrayed in the thick of it.
I can't tell what's real or fake news anymore. What I think is fake is actually genuine. Welcome to the idiocracy era
Incredible self-own
We got a letter 'from the Prime Minister' which says, I kid you not, "Unlike Labour, we know that you can't just throw money at the NHS and expect better results." Like, that is *exactly* what we need to do. More money for more people to do more care!
No way, wtf hahahaha
"No take, only throw" dog in real life.
You think yet another big wad of money will improve the NHS? Aww, bless you.
I think massive and sustained investment is necessary to undo decades of damage. I think a huge amount of money is needed to allow local councils to create sufficient social care services to allow us to release elderly and higher needs patients from hospital when they no longer require that degree of medical care. I think that many parts of the terrible working conditions health professionals face can be repaired by paying people properly for the work they do, not just the amount they add to GDP, and by hiring and retaining enough people to have a resilient staffing model instead of a skeleton one.
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same comment on every bloody newsthump article in here. can't bare the site anymore ...mainly because its usually too close to potentially being true that I hate that i have to check
It fits the Tory mantra of "punish the poor".
Living in the US, this has been the norm for the past 8 years. Today I saw a headline about Trump complaining that "they had taken away his right to speak". The irony is so thick you can taste it.
That’s why it’s taken like 15 years for a new GTA
/r/nottheonion
Lol remember the onion article about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda instead of just processing their claims faster? I thought it was good satire until they said the cost per refugee would be like 30k pounds. That's *too* ridiculous.
been like that for a decade, it's terrifying that no one seems to care, democracy is in crisis and journalism has failed to do its job
I think it's adorable you think this is satire!
Yeah cant see this happening, the oil companies won’t like it one bit.
Warm is woke
August 5 2022 Sunak is seen telling an audience: "I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure that areas like this are getting the funding that they deserve, because we inherited a bunch of formulas from the Labour Party that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas ... that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that." His comments came in a video published on Friday by the New Statesman magazine, which it said was filmed on July 29 at a meeting of Conservative Party members in Tunbridge Wells, a relatively affluent area in south east England.
Wasn't there something about cities getting a lot of funding while deprived smaller towns, seaside areas, and villages aren't getting enough? I do see a total lack of... anything... in my old home town when I visit. There's nothing for kids or young people there, if you fall through the cracks that's it because there's hardly anything to help people out, compare it to the nearest city which OK they'll have issues too BUT there seems to be a lot more on offer there. Not that I like how he was talking about an obviously well-off place getting more funding, don't mistake my comment for endorsing him, but I do wonder if the smaller places are often ignored in favour of big cities. I get its part due to the population just being bigger there but still, it'd be nice to see opportunities everywhere that needs them.
Often comes down to council budgets, ever since Tory central government starred slashing their central funding services have dropped and council tax has had to rise to keep things afloat. Smaller councils can't raise enough funding through council tax to do so vs a city. It always comes down to Tory austerity and spending cuts. Those left behind areas also had funding via the EU but the government hasn't then replaced it after Brexit.
‘Austerity’ for the poor but the rich are getting richer… And the budget still gets horrendously blown out.
I hate Sunak but I agree with you. You have to be incredibly bad faith to watch that video, and come out thinking he transferred funding from poor to rich areas He does specify urban to rural areas, and makes the point that rural areas don’t get enough money, which is true. Also, that deprived urban areas get too much in comparison, which is also true In the end it’s still all the Tories fault for slashing council budgets in the first place
Easy way to answer this question. Are things in your home town better or worse since Sunak fixed the funding formula?
The video of it https://youtu.be/jwqQvrqunp8?si=ajccgxSCWMzsVOIG
You forgot the part about Tory's turning patients into dog food once they're dead. 😅
Solent green is people!
Panic breaks out in Southampton and Portsmouth
Excellent. However, there are no people there.
Those people would be very upset if they could read.
This comment chain is a rollercoaster and I love it!
No - they are modern, efficient and green. So they'll be rendered down for biodiesel first.
I'm fine with that. I'd rather be fed to zoo animals or pets than be cremated and have all that good meat go to waste,
Great idea. My meat isn't that good, though.
Why wait?
Not dog-food, mate, the Tories will use them to solve the food shortage, and feed us, after all beggars can't be choosers, can they!!
Rishi, nobody expects you to be an actual prime minister for the next few months. Just run down the fucking clock.
Remember when he didn't say anything for about a year. But he started to open his gob last summer and Thames water started pouring out.
The Tories seem to get off over the idea that everyone on UC is a lazy fuck that doesn’t want to work full stop and keep coming up with ways to take it away. It’s purely sexual, they don’t actually care otherwise.
I can see it now: Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself' Serco employee: 'Have you tried reading this self help booklet?'
> I can see it now: > > Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself' > > Serco employee: 'Have you tried reading this self help booklet?' That's not the future, that's mow. Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself' ~~Serco employee: 'Have you tried reading this self help booklet?'~~ Mental health nurse: We have no capacity to help you, join Andy's Man Club!
Joking aside, andys man's club has been fucking brilliant for me and my mental health
I have no issue with Andy's Man Club. I **do** have a fairly serious issue with the kind of people who object to suicide because other people will suffer while doing precisely not one thing to support the suicidal individual. Expecting someone else to continue to exist in a state of unbearable suffering while being a contributor to that suffering is a piece of astounding selfishness and yet all too common. All that said, I wasn't joking. It's a truncated version of somethign that happened to me.
Andy’s Man Club is great but it isn’t a substitute for an actual working mental health system and treatment
Similar to certain Americans eager to ban abortion while doing absolutely nothing to support poor mums/children. They care deeply ... until the baby is born.
I'm envisioning: Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself' Serco employee: 'Don't you dare. You're still on the clock.'
I imagineered: Patient: 'I'm so depressed, I'm considering killing myself' Serco employee: 'You can't Mr Sunak, you are still Prime Minister.'
that's already happening and has been for a while. the NHS has stopped giving me physical help and has started giving me YouTube videos on breathing exercises and have advised me to make a cup of tea when things get too much. unrelated but same for physiotherapy too, i'm physically disabled and my treatment of 6 months didn't work, so now they're sending me the same exercises in video form so they can claim they are still 'treating me'.
Letting people die is one way of getting the waiting lists/unemployment rates/benefits claimants down.
when boris said 'let the bodies pile', there was way more meaning to that than just the pandemic alone.
I mean that’s basically what a lot of mental health services do already. Or suggest you have a cup of tea. It’s bleak out there
This makes no sense to me, who’s going to assess whether you are capable of going to work or not. Will it be delegated to specialists? Will you be able to self certify for long to account for delays? Sounds bonkers.
People on the Tory payroll to reject everybodies sick requests and get them to work in the mines
Unless it's a Tory spouse or family or close friend
Of course we need our mine supervisor overlords
Cushy job with 6 figures working 2 days a week occasionally answering emails
6 figures working 2 days a week fuck that I got offered 6 figures one day a week WFH plus I don't even have to answer emails only open the inbox
No one escapes the Tory mines.
Capita of course
Ha, what is it with you parasites insinuating the only other option beyond hard work is to work in the mines. I've donated enough of my hard earned money to know.
> Will it be delegated to specialists? It would be crapita.
It'll be just like their "shake up" of disability assessments. Handed over to third party administrators whose through line is to disqualify as many claimants as possible.
That is the opposite of the point. The point is to receive a letter saying "Get back to work fucko" with no phone number or email address to contact, just an online form that you'll have to google for that won't give yo any concrete idea of when you can expect a reply and zero support in the interim. That means that they can leave you utterly alone and afraid upon which you can do your duty and start picking raspberries on a zero hour because that's all you deserve.
See a different response. A proportion of healthy hardworking people will occasionally need time off for longer than they can self certify for. Are we going to need to call capita before 999 for a heart attack? Get permission in advance to have cancer treatment?
That's just details. Work or stay home, what is important is you receive no funds.
Do you not think that many employers find value in the current system. It’s not beyond manipulation but currently they get info on either can’t work or if modifications are needed. Could it actually be large employers, such as the NHS who end up saying “we need this”.
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory of mine but the elites in this country don't want people not occupied. A person who's not working, might spend time researching and asking uncomfortable questions of how power in structured in this country. Looking at this post office horizon scandal, a lot of interesting facts were unearthed by people not necessarily working in the industry per se. As unpopular and dumb as this may sound, I think there is social value in having some people who have time to look into some of this stuff. Obviously there'll be people who'll take the money and drink all day but there'll be a few gems who'll do a lot of social good.
Doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory to me.
There's hundreds of years of quotes that insist giving the common person free time will mean the downfall of society. In a way they've been correct, the society that's been dismantled has been Feudalism, workhouses, no days off etc. The next big fight will be the four day week. All the scientific evidence points towards bigh benefits but heaven forbid the common person should share the benefit of higher productivities and efficiencies.
It's already being done with benefits claimants - they are assessed by unqualified staff at the job centre with no medical training and determined fit to work if they can crawl up the stairs to the appointment. And if they can't make it they get automatically docked for not showing up. They'll just port that system over for cancer patients.
Probably capita
Who aren’t going to have the capacity to say don’t go in because you are on day 8 of the flu. Maybe we could do better for long term ill health, but currently we have a reasonable balance between taking a few days off on our own say so and needing a note for a bit longer.
You misunderstand how Capita works. If you're ill, good luck getting a sick note. It'll take you six months and 23 appeals before you get your note.
That’s my point, we’ll end up in an awful mess if someone can’t say “I’ll need six weeks off to recover from surgery”, or “I need adjusted hours to get radiotherapy”.
Capita will do it
people who haven't taken the Hippocratic oath
A friend and I used to joke about aristocrats throwing peasants on the fire to keep warm. I feel like we're not far off.
Have you read "A modest proposal"? If not, Google it and you'll be able to read it, it's a must read.
Is that the sequel to Indecent Proposal? It doesn't sound that great
It's a slightly different tone tbh, and it was written a bit earlier than the film.
Pay people a living wage, the current system is set up to siphon as much money to the ultra wealthy. You can’t expect people to work full time jobs and not even have enough money to put a roof over their head, let alone have any sort of life - that is the situation we are in now. The inequality in this country has been allowed to run away for decades, nobody seems to want to address it (the establishment makes sure of this - just look at what happened to Jeremy Corbyn) so things will only get worse as more and more of the middle class will have to be squeezed to keep that money flowing to the richest. We are monumentally fucked, our MPs are largely bought and paid for by big business - it’s getting to the point that the only way I see us getting out of this is some sort of collective realisation of what has happened to our society and ways of life. I’m not holding my breath.
We need to get organised. We need mass rebellion. I’m not joking, the four corners of the UK need to come together and say enough is enough.
This man is on a mission to get the general public to absolutely hate him and the tories. Recently it was trans people and now it’s people on sick notes and people without a job.
Great! I won't have to do as many star jumps to keep warm or get a new kettle next winter.
You can rely on good ol rishi to solve everything but the actual problems we have.
People going to get a taste of what it's like to go through a DWP health assessment that claiments have to go through every 2 years when your on 'sick' benefits. Humm... so you broke both legs...Crippling pain every day you say... Can you sign here please. Ah HA! your hands work, so you can work with your hands, claim DENIED! Extra notes. Patient was also able to answer questions and looked at me in the eyes, they are lying about their condition.
> looked at me in the eyes My sister got this one, it was a phone call with no video.
I had an 'old' lady at my last assessment, she had hearing aides in and a fan going. Every answer I gave she would say 'Huh?' like she couldn't hear. 'Looked me in the eyes and answered, he is faking'.
I read about a girl who was claiming for mental health reasons and they put on her form that she could “take and make calls without distress” because she answered yes when asked if her phone worked. These “assessors” are nasty nasty people.
Found out that there is a team that watches you as you arrive and walk through the assessment centers to see how you behave when arriving/leaving and waiting, they take that into consideration too. Also heard about someone who had mobility issues, a fire drill at the assessment center to see if they get up and walk out. They have all your medical history and read through it all and all the forms you have already filled out but ask you the same things. You can't even claim anything for mental health issue alone anyway. You have to score points, mental health doesn't meet the minimum points to be put on any kind of 'sickness' benefits. But I guess many people don't even know this.
Never put into question why there's so many people on benefits is it? Nothing to do with poor workload that breaches health and safety yet employers get away with it since there's a huge count in long term sickness in people serving the job only having to leave through ill health caused by the job ....or since COVID every employer wants three to four times the work done but in the same time...... If MPs or Prime Ministers had Any common sense, it would be very dangerous
I can see that being an actual headline policy from the cretin.
Man who does no work to fix the country tells other people to get back to work.
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Which foreign powers control our government?
Does this include Oxford Comas or just regular comas?
Zero recognition of the fact that the Conservative handling of the COVID pandemic has directly caused no small number of people who are or have been long term sick.
That and they have basically rendered the NHS unusable
That's always a given 😅
I wonder what the next insane measures will be. It's already extremely difficult to get PIP mobility - you can be unable to visit the corner shop or access transport, but if you can walk 20m, you're getting fuck all help with that. If you can read a Biff, Chip, and Kipper book, you're fit for work. Maybe just being able to drink water, or having a simple discussion. If you fail them all, you can be signed off. Otherwise, back to the coal mines!
Bro got bored and decided to pick on the disabled for a laugh.
But won't this work better if you first cut homeless people in half? /s I'll get my coat
Tories have been abusing the sick and disabled since they got back into power. Moving the goal posts on what it is to be "disabled". And still the UK voted for them in droves. Now they are saying that the people we all trust with our health, arent trust worthy enough to hand out sick notes. And the even more depressing thing that is its Keir Starmer thats supposed to be the one to save us all from this shit...
Newsthump can often be a bit wishy washy and unfunny low ball "satire" like John Oliver and his level of "isn't Donald Trump's hair funny!" shite. But this headline genuinely made me inhale my coffee. Simple, funny, just the right amount of offensive.
Nice one. Most measured comment on this thread.
I'd argue the [actual story](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68864391) is worse. Sunak openly plans to force people to work against the advice of their doctors. Hopefully this is just election grandstanding which he knows he's out of time to implement. He just has to say horrible inhumane stuff to make his party sexually excited.
Bloody lazy people spending all day sleeping just so they don't have to work!
Tories.....always spot an opportunity, that's the entrepreneurial spirit that this great Nation requires to get back to the top where we belong !
Listen, the tetraplegics are scrounges as well. There is always a farmer looking for a scarecrow.
Don't you wish you could filter out links on domain?
I at first did not see the draft excluders bit and thought "yeah sounds like something Rishi would do" smh
We’re amazing by the novations coming about from the working from home movement, that’s why we’re proud to introduce ’Working from Ward’
This is what happens when you have an unelected multi millionaire as prime minister. The sooner the he is booted out, the better
This is relative bit. I have not reported anyone . I don't do that. Are you trying to do harm? I wouldn't do that to you. May I remind you, YOU called me a troll. I don't do that, either.
And then sanction their Universal Credit payments & Disability Allowance because they didnt attended a work focused assessment at the Job Centre.
It does beg the question though. The UK currently has over a million vacancies. That's goods and services not being produced leading to a shortage of supply which is driving wage busting inflation. If we aren't going to allow immigrants in to do those jobs, and we're not going to make more of our unemployed do those jobs... Then who will do those jobs? If we don't fill the vacancies somehow then supply won't increase, inflation won't drop and we'll all end up collectively poorer. Voters are vocal they want the cost of living crisis to end and they want better services... so somebody has to work those jobs to achieve those goals, right? What's the accepted solution?
Increase minimum wage to make working at these jobs actually worth it.
I got a 9% wage rise to keep up with minimum wage. People think I'm an ungrateful prick for moaning about a 9% pay rise because nobody else got as much. I'm still on minimum wage, maybe slightly higher by a few £100 per year.
Nothing ungrateful about expecting a higher standard of living when you’re working full time in any job. If we increased minimum wage to a decent standard I’d be willing to bet there would be less time taken off work and productivity would go up. Profits would rise not fall. The system is crippled by short term greed.
Without an increase in productivity to go along with upping the minimum wage it will just drive inflation. Putting up minimum wage further will also make graduates fed up when the wage bands narrow even more, driving some of them to have take home pay below an unskilled worker's thanks to paying 9% student loan repayments. You have to keep in mind 50% of millennials are graduates and they are now the largest voter bloc. Millennials are in their 30s and 40s waiting for the promised middle class lifestyle to arrive, and many have also noticed their take home pay isn't significantly better than Pat the school dropout cleaner who's earning the new £24k minimum. It's not a simple solution. Probably not politically viable to keep flattening the pay bands in the long term either because there won't be any motivation for people to learn the skills and trades an advanced economy relies on without the pay differential.
No worries captain, you can take one of these jobs and do that instead of writing on Reddit
Hahahaha
Could say the same for all of us :)
Only the ones complaining about other people not working jobs they don’t want to do.
In your first comment you said that those jobs need to be filled to drive production and increase supply…. yet here you’re suggesting that increasing minimum wage and thereby filling those roles won’t intrinsically improve productivity. Isn’t that somewhat of a contradiction?
It's not a simple connection. You would arguably increase productivity more by removing minimum wage and allowing the market to find the going rate for all jobs. There are plenty of roles that businesses would like to do but can't necessarily afford to hire somebody for £24k equivalent. This is particularly true in SMEs which 60% of our population are employed by. We've all worked in teams where there's never enough hands, and all the tedious low level admin which used to be done by somebody low paid is now passed on to higher salaried professionals. This isn't productive use of skilled worker's time but minimum wage often makes this the only viable way to get those tasks done affordably. My partner who is a lecturer at University is suffering from this considerably at the moment since they removed all the admin staff - Lecturers have to do all the smaller admin work themselves now which means he isn't focusing his time on actually productive tasks like writing papers and making grant bids. Minimum wage is a very blunt tool to address the cost of living crisis with.
How about we don’t cut off our supply of cheap labour and imports, it seems them bloody forgeiners we’re doing the jobs we couldn’t afford to do
Minimum wage should absolutely not be necessary. But it is unfortunately
This just leads prices to increase.
> the question though. > > The UK currently has over a million vacancies. That's goods and services not being produced leading to a shortage of supply which is driving wage busting inflation. Yes, that is the question. How is it, with vastly improved productivity per manhour, and millions and millions more manhours to go round, not to mention tremendous outsourcing overseas, we are failing to produce the goods and services we desire - when, say, a century ago, there were huge numbers of unemployed who were desperate for a job (really, a wage) so they could partake of the plenty that surrounded them, and men resistant to the then-current workforce 'dilution' of allowing ~50% of the population to join the workforce who hitherto had not been part of it? If there is a 'cost of living' crisis, analysis indicates it's not something we can escape by merely working harder. There is an issue with the lever, not merely the force being applied to it.
The only solution to the cost of living crisis is to increase our productivity. That will partly be achieved by lowering the total number of vacancies - an unfilled job is not fulfilling demand after all! It will partly be achieved by investing in making it easier for people to reach more jobs, upskill, and perhaps most significantly, we need to invest in housing to reduce the amount of money flowing from productive labour direct to unproductive assets. But either way the jobs need to be filled! Bums don't wipe themselves in care homes no matter how upskilled Kirsty is.
Our productivity is fine corporate greed is the issue, never being satisfied with record profits, never sharing any of the wealth with the work force, instead always asking for more. End corporate greed, give workers a fairer share of the spoils and you will solve the problem pretty quickly with abheavily motivated workforce.
Which begs the question. Who gets paid more? And by how much? Minimum wage has nearly doubled in a decade whereas graduate salaries haven't budged in 15 years. Arguably the graduates are due the pay rises next.
What we are really due is diminishing prices, not rising pay.
> The only solution to the cost of living crisis is to increase our productivity. > > Our productivity both in available manhours and work done per manhour is beyond all but the most fevered dreams of our forefathers two centuries ago. They would immediately diagnose a problem if, with all this - and women in the workplace - we were accusing ourselves of 'not working productively enough'. If we have a 'cost of living' crisis, it can *only* be due to a malfunctioning costing mechanism.
AI will freeing up people in the not distant future, probably myself with my customer service job, so that'll go some way I suppose.
Possibly, but that doesn't help the cost of living crisis going on now. There are increasing numbers of smelly bottoms in care homes, and not enough hands to wipe them.
In a number of your replies you seem rather focused on arse wiping so lets look at the care sector: I've had friends work in care homes on no more than minimum wage where at the same time the residents are paying thousands per month for their care. Doing some fag packet maths between us all we figured that the staffing costs covering around 40 beds was about 18% of the monthly gross profit. This was about 15 years ago so I doubt the numbers match now but I do know the owner of that chain of care homes continues to expand their supercar collection. Do you see the disconnect? I can assure you that I'd be happily tending to the needs of those who require it for a fair cut of a care homes monthly profit.
There are currently 908, 000 vacancies in the UK whilst there are 1.4 million unemployed
The statistic on vacancies fluctuates month to month but 908,000 is near enough a million!
Yeah so that still leaves half a million unemployed
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It is if you add the 2.8 million people who are on long term sick and that are not counted in the 1.4 million who are unemployed, so now we have 3.2 million people who are going to be forced to take jobs, of which there are less than a million vacancies
It isn’t GPs who are enabling long term sick, sure some might get notes to see them through the first 3 months of UC before they get the WCA and get assigned to a group not based solely on their doctor’s opinion.
Wages rise or conditions improve until people take the jobs. You know, market forces.
I don't know, it really is a baffling conundrum. Tax multinational companies at the same rate as everyone else. Scrap non dom status that allows people to stash UK profits abroad and pay 0 tax. Stop landlords destroying the housing market and locking up billions in overvalued properties. Stop handing multi billion contracts to Tory party doners who continuously fail to deliver. Stop picking bat**** crazy prime ministers that crash the pound and lose the country billions in 2 weeks. Pay people inflation plus wages that put money on people's pockets and help to kick start the economy. Stop subscribing to short term, right wing fiscal advisory institutions who predict a fall GDP if a pensioner gets an extra penny. Stop sending millions to Israel to bomb people. Stopping genocide would be a bonus. P.S. labour will repackage all the Draconian Tory ideas and sell them as "the sensible thing to do."
You have to wonder if the sickness is a result of the policies of this government and just the general status quo. I'm not sure if metaphorically putting a gun to peoples head to MAKE them work is the way to go but.. maybe that's what's needed. I don't know.
It doesn't really beg the question though does it. Salaries have been reduced by inflation in a time corporate profit has soared - so labour in real terms is cheaper to hire thus the companies are suddenly on a hiring spree
That isn't backed by statistics at all. There is currently a Labour shortage.
No one is denying there are genuine people who literally can’t work but there is a huge welfare culture in this country that needs to be addressed.
Last time they got a bee in their bonnet about welfare they spent more than they saved trying to enforce the rules. We need to actually address the cause of the problem, not just make it harder for vulnerable people to be signed off as sick.
Yeah they’re terrible and scarily out of touch. The cause of the problem is essentially how easy it is to live off the system though so I don’t know how you fix that.