Comments by "iggle" (@iggle6448) on "2.5 Million Working Age on Sickness Benefits? Germany Considers Banning AfD Party." video.

  1. I agree with you, though I would say that people aren't work shy so much as resistant to jobs that simply do not pay enough to live on.
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  2.  @jjs3287  Oh yes! I can't tell you how an gry I've been, as a parent and educator, at successive governments for ransacking and wrecking young people's hopes, dreams and futures. I have every sympathy for them, if they choose not to participate in glorified slavery, then well...that's their prerogative, and perhaps it would be sensible to withdraw from and top supporting the sheer mess that our governments have made. It's so unlike my younger days - and yours by the sound of it: we had a wide choice of interesting and exciting things to work at and create the futures we wanted.
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  3. I thought a bit more about your excellent point. It's probably not as clear cut as the misleading and disingenuous figure they put out. Here's the thing: I recall being told something like there are separate categories for claimants, one is the shorter term 'Sickness Benefits' list where people are expected to recover and resume their normal day jobs. Another is the long term disabled list (those expected to be incapacitated for longer than 1yr) and where few are expected to recover - the 'write-offs' in other words. The people on the long term list are paid more and are more numerous than the people on the short term list. Here's a quick figure from the UK Office of National Statistics: 24.8 million households contain 1 or more disabled people. (out of 28million households in 2020). Not all will be on long term benefits but the majority will be receiving some sort of state aid. It's really difficult to find clear, up to date figures but these give a flavour of the numbers involved. From the DWP site: - 2020 : the total number of people claiming DWP benefits was 22.8 million in the year to August 2020 12.5 million were Pension Age, 9.5 million were Working Age, and the remainder children claiming Disability Living Allowance. - June 2023: More than 6 million disabled people across the UK are set to receive a £150 Disability Cost of Living Payment from today. (These 6 million comprise a large contingent of those on long term disabled benefits, there are more in other categories. Many of whom will be in the 7 million NHS wait list) . So, there's upwards of maybe 10-12 million people who are on sickness and longer term benefits) To my mind, a great many of all these sick and disabled people represent the chronic ineptitude of the NHS over decades to treat and support people to recover and get back to some sort of paid work. The NHS has always had a very low bar for categorising people as disabled and thus minimising treatment and support. Let's not blame sick and disabled people - many of whom want to work and could be back in work with better treatment/support. Bottom line, I guess paying millions of people benefits is cheaper than providing better healthcare.
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  4. A 2020 study from the British Psychological Society posited that our culture is "depressogenic". I believe the majority of us all know intuitively that this is true, that our society is injuring us. If we and the academics know this, then we can be sure our governments know it. Yet they still carry on with their injurious, exploitative policies. It's deliberate and sociopathic.
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