Benefits, Brexit effects, and a much-criticised knighthood – all thanks to Boris

December’s general election in the UK proved to be a resounding success for the Conservative party. It gained an overall majority of 80 seats, allowing prime minister Boris Johnson to ride roughshod over all opposition. This is a disaster. It presents all kinds of problems for the UK itself, such as government benefits for people …

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Don’t be fooled by government’s callous weasel words – disability benefits cuts are still planned

Mystery still surrounds the fate of the threatened cuts to the UK’s Personal Independence Payment paid to people with disabilities. including Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, blindness and mental illnesses. Just look at the timetable: March 11, Justin Tomlinson, Disabilities Minister in the Department of Work and Pensions, officially announced plans to make changes, to make …

Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation and government’s benefit cut ‘rethink’ may not change anything

Iain Duncan Smith's resignation from his position as UK's Work and Pensions Secretary gives the government a chance to abandon its planned cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) - but don't hold your breath, it probably won't happen. In his resignation letter, Duncan Smith said that while the benefit cuts are "defensible in narrow terms, …

Lies, damn lies, and IDS’s statistics

Mired in controversy over his handling of what the Government calls welfare benefit ‘reform’ and critics call ‘cuts’, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (pictured, above) is now being accused of having ‘lost the plot’ after making an incredible statistical claim that 75% of people who have had their benefits stopped under his department's sanctions …

Government advisers say benefit system is ‘broken’

  Government ministers in the UK may be celebrating the forcing through of their planned cut to welfare benefit paid through its Employment Support Allowance from April next year but a new think-tank report is describing the benefits system as broken and is calling for a complete overhaul. The Social Market Foundation1 report includes a …

Government wages ‘disability war’ on benefit claims

  For those of you outside the UK, as I am now, it must be difficult to understand what is happening there with government policies seeming to be continually targeting disabled people including those with multiple sclerosis and all other physical and mental disabilities. Well, it’s true. It is easy enough to find news stories …