Cancer patients to face welfare tests during chemotherapy, charities warn

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/06/cancer-patients-welfare-work-tests

Thoughts, anybody? Nick? Vince? Beaker?

Maybe just those troublesome lefties at MacMillan Cancer Care making trouble?

Bastards.

Words fail me.

The Skin

[dipsydoodle]

1. Aside from disapproval

I can't quite make it out. From experience chemo generally runs over 12 weeks or so in 6 or so batches. During that period and for a some weeks afterwards its unlikely that a recipient could work - wouldn't have enough energy.

Cancer is cancer : hardly subject to malingering.

Its almost as if the article in incomplete. :shrug:

[LeftishBrit]

2. I don't think that the idea is that patients are malingering, in the sense of pretending to have

cancer when they don't.

The difference between Iain Duncan-Smith and most other Ministers, past and present, is that he isn't just preoccupied with benefit fraud, and prepared to let some genuine claimants suffer in the cause of preventing fraud; he has an active, almost religious belief in 'tough love' for poor and/or weak people. He, and others like him, believe that people with disabilities or other restrictions should not be coddled too much, but should be forcibly weaned off 'dependency' and forced into the 'dignity' of work. In a full-employment state, such views could possibly have some justification with regard to *some* people; when combined with a recession and ever-increasing unemployment, they are sheer savagery.

They are using as an excuse that employers sometimes sack people with cancer because of inaccurate views about their capacity. But surely that should be dealt with through the existing Disability Discrimination Act; not by punishing the sick.

'chemo generally runs over 12 weeks or so in 6 or so batches. During that period and for a some weeks afterwards its unlikely that a recipient could work - wouldn't have enough energy.'

Tell that to Duncan-Smith and his pals.

Actually, I think, or at least hope, that most of the people concerned probably *wouldn't* ultimately be forced off benefits, but they would have to undergo stressful and humiliating tests, and demands that they prove themselves to be genuinely unable to work, during a time when they are already under extreme physical and mental stress.

Perhaps if a few people on chemo are sick all over the welfare testers, it will discourage this nasty practice!

[LeftishBrit]

3. Wouldn't be the first time that Macmillan Cancer Care have been treated as troublesome lefties

They've been accused before of acting as political campaigners.

In theory the Government wants the Big Society; in practice, the charities had better not open their mouths too wide.

Macmillan are a great organization, which have made a huge difference to friends of mine. And no doubt in practice they save the government quite a bit, e.g. by enabling people to stay at home when they would otherwise need to go into a hospital. But this government doesn't like any criticism.