News Just In !

"New Work Programme Inititiatives Announced"....."People with mental illness to be helped into work"....."Lunatics to be in charge of the asylum".

 

The UK Government's new Work Programme will be designed to help morbidly obese people, alcoholics and drug addicts get back to work. 

Great idea. 

Which jobs are they gonna get then? 

Can I have one of those jobs first?

Oh, and if they don't take these jobs they'll have their benefits taken away.

Great idea.

Addicts with no money. 

They'll wake up in the morning and say: "Oh dear, Clarence. I have no money for drugs/booze/cream cakes. I think I'll give them up and get a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken instead."

Hang on they might steal stuff from you to get drugs/booze/cream cakes. 

Like they already do. Except more often.

You may have already noticed, if you've been here before, that I was made redundant from my job in January.

My role was helping people who had returned to work after an illness to keep their jobs and stay in work.

Her Majesty's Government had decided that it was time for an overhaul of the benefits system and the associated agencies who serviced it.

Fair enough. I'll go with that.

For a start we have a prison system with a lot of drug addicts in it. People who are often in there because they kept nicking stuff to buy drugs.

Let's get them off drugs!

Instead of just managing their dependency with methadone let's go for getting them off drugs properly and turning them into non-addicts.

Oh no- we can't do that.

The medical establishment won't wear it. 

Or the multinational pharaceutical comapanies who sell "safe" alternatives to smack.

Did you know that heroin was created by Heinrich Dreser when he thought it would make a really neat cough medicine. 

He tried it on his workforce. They said they felt "heroic"

Hero-ic became "hero-in"

Sold as an ingredient in patent medicines it was advertised thus: 

"Heroin: the Sedative for Coughs . . . order a supply from your jobber." 

It's usefulness (and therefore financial viability) was explored. It was advertised as a "non-addictive replacement for morphine".

Ooops!

How similarly retarded will we seem a hundred years from now in our treatment of drug addicts?

Give 'em methadone. Hell, why not put in in cough sweets!

Anyway....

Overhauling the system...

One of the first bits of "overhauling of the system" is that agencies will be paid by results. 

Sounds like a good idea.

Except....my old firm crashed and burned as it couldn't afford to deliver that way.

The only firms that CAN afford to deliver a service that way  are huge organisations that can afford it. 

In fact they need about £20,000,000 working capital. 

That aint no small potatoes.

But HMG will pay them, potentially lots and lots of wonga for their results:

"The highest payments will be up to £14,000 for someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a number of years, then secured a job and was still in employment two years later." 

Two years. 

A company will have to wait two years to get paid?

I'll try that with Asda next time I get my week's shopping.

The money aspect creates an interesting situation. Some of the firms that have moved into this sector seem like odd guests at the table.

Group Four Security (Now re-badged as G4) are one of them. More often seen in the past driving convicted offenders to prison they will now be in charge of keeping them out of prison. if they fail to do that, at least they'll have a van handy.

It's pretty apparent that firms who are cash-rich are moving into offender management and the Work Programme, regardless of their track record.

Due to the gap in time between the Old Provision ending and the New Provision commencing a lot of experienced firms have now wound down and thrown their workers into a deep freeze.

I worked with some first class people with lots of experience. Now many of them, like me, are unemployed. (I'm not a drug addict yet, but give me a few more weeks and who knows?).

In short: The "old system" that tolerated  and self-perpetuated people to be dependant and weak needed a radical overhaul. I had a client who had found a job and really wanted to come off the booze but he had waited five months and still hadn't got a place on a detox course.

So yes, the system and it's misleading "targets" badly needed overhauling.

But absolutely and utterly not the overhauling it's about to get.

Oh, I had another thought: Morbidly obese people not being able to work.

How about subsidising the cost of salads, fruit and vegetables and doubling the VAT rate on sugary, fatty foods?
Nope?

Didn't think so.

Products where VAT is payable
Wholly or partly chocolate coated biscuits
Gingerbread man decorated with chocolate (unless this amounts to no more than two chocolate eyes!)
Arctic Rolls
Sorbet
Chocolate bar
Nuts or fruits covered in chocolate or yogurt
Flavourings for milk shake
Potato crisps
Roasted or salted nuts without shells

...and the VAT-exempt alternatives
Chocolate chip biscuits
Jaffa cakes
Cream Gateaux
Mousse
Chocolate spread
Toffee apples
Milkshake
Tortilla or corn chips
Roasted or salted nuts supplied in shells e.g. monkey nuts, pistachios 

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/money-saving-ideas/article.html?in_article_id=506772&in_page_id=512
.....and that makes a whole heap of sense......