Karen, I do know what it is like to be in different states of 'pain' some over very quickly, others slow and horrible. It is not the point I am making. Genuine cases of people not being able to work should access to welfare.

Nick, look at that Daily Mail article again. Look at the picture carefully especially at the boyfriend's face. Then think about why the parents might not tell the truth.

you've proved nothing. answer my question - would you employ these spongers with back ache and depression?

Nick have you got a insult tag team after me! This one is definitely someone else's personna.

Emerline, what are you doing up at 5 o clock in the morning in pommie land? Are you going for a walk on the top of the moors or perhaps you're sticking some spuds in the ground? Maybe you're trying to get your name on the silver screen, Emerline, Emerline. You should have your own New Statesman blog.

'profoundly misguided view' 'ideologically confused' .. sounds ... kind of ... familiar. Maybe everyone in England has the same black adder insulting lexicon nowadays and syntactic arrangement.

How long have you been carefully reading my comments for Emeline? And why haven't you written under this name before?

PISS OFF YOU DICKHEAD

no i cant im already taking 3 different painkillers and in the next couple of weeks i will be a guinea pig again to try a new drug to try to ease the pain even so that it is tolerable because ive been told by my pain management consultant that i will now always be in pain for the rest of my life

employers got sick of waiting for lazy brits to take the jobs. Here in East anglia - some firms actually ADVERTISE IN POLAND because they can't get staff here. If there are no jobs, then move to somewhere that does - instead of waiting for a labour government to build low - wage factories. You are the Troll who likes keeping the poor poor !!! why? because it keeps you in a government job (until, ironically, you are cut!!) and also because the poor vote for labour - the benefits partie (paid for by the hard workers).

Monk, you are the ignorant communist troll!

What I meant by 'as if' wasn't what you were thinking. You see when someone like you comes on here, like many have done in the past, and starts insulting me, well they remind me of people from the past. So I think, maybe this is so and so from the past under a different name. Your name has never appeared before but the way you write things has.

Because I don't know you from any comments under your own name I assume you are someone else. Does that make sense? You see with Nick, we go back a long way and occasionally we flare up but generally speaking we have a dialogue that isn't full of insults... we exchange points of view. With you I haven't even exchanged a point of view under your name and you've just started laying into me! Its very funny.

What have you got to say apart from taking the piss out of me? You wanna be a pom in Australia; you get the piss taken out of you all the time.

Anyway I'm off to a bonfire tonight at mate's place. It's long weekend celebrating the Queen's birthday! What are you doing Spud?

What sort of pain is it? And where is it? Sounds like you can't do any work.

I have prolapsed discs in my neck.

If I come off anti-inflams I can't move my arms above my head and sleep properly.

I have had other stuff as well.

I'm in the Riverina NSW. Where are you living approx?

I live in scotland i have a condition called diabetic neuropathy look it up. its where high blood sugar damages the nerves of the body and there is no cure

when i go for a bath the pain intensifies even more also there times when i wont get out of bed for a long long time and my family are constantly encouraging me to get out of bed, to wash or even get out of my pj's i get hot flushes from the meds as well as my conditions i feel as though ive nothing to live for. tell me why should i want to live this is hell

@Martin L ha, yeah yeah, back under the bridge, and listen out for the next signs of passing life...

Oh come on Martin, cut people some slack. Like the woman I dealt with not so long ago. 'Bad back' comment was what went on the ATOS report, the reality was she'd had two 18" titanium rods precariously shifting either side of her spine after spending a year in and out of hospital, 6 months of which were in a plaster cast around her torso. Before she could recover, she went back to work. Work she loved, as a care assistant, it's years of heavy lifting which caused it. She took to drink because the pain killers wouldn't touch it. Two appeals upheld, each time the Tribunal saying they couldn't fathom out why on earth she was before them. Whilst waiting for her appeals, she couldn't afford to feed her meter and had to go without electric; - hardly good for someone in her condition. Oh and she's one year off being a pensioner, she's also had years of abuse at the hands of a very violent partner.

The ATOS examiner didn't even ask my client to take her coat off and said she hadn't got time to look at the x-rays she'd taken along.

By the way, her Tory MP says she's one of the most deserving cases he's ever seen, he also thinks the system is 'absurd'.

All true, not fiction.

Go outside now and see the sunrise, the clouds are breaking apart.

I find some of the stats from Lauries article difficult to swallow, 'benefit fraud rates remain stubbornly low, at 1 per cent' yet we hear headlines saying two thirds of incapacity benefit recipients could work?, i worked previously with a charity & with rented housing & would say from personal experience it must be higher than 1% .

I need money Laurie.

Can you please give me some right away?

Thanks in advance.

There's a section of society that needs dealt with, its not working class people, or poor, but the antisocial behaviour & refusal to work attitude of a % that blights our society. Everyone is sick of them, Laurie will have an impossible time defending that group.

Give them a council house house, they trash it & give their working neighbours a mental breakdown, not acceptable. Its gone too far.

Part of the problem is that both in the U.K. and the States there's a "weakness isn't tolerated" idea. You pull yourself up by your ______ and get on with it. The sillier view of this is the old Python sketch. Back in my day we used to walk 5 miles to school. Then on the way back home we had to clean the street as well before dinner, and so on.

The other part of this is mass hypocracy. I know lots of people hate the EU and the UN. However, until further notice both the U.K. and the States are members of the U.N. The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights says that all people are entitled to live a decent life without fear and to be able to express their opinions.

Unfortunately, the Tories and Obama have made it clear that maintaining global power comes first at the expense of their citizens. Apparently they could care less.

Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is exactly what it says Eddy; - an allowance for having a disability. It's intended to meet the costs associated with living with a disability and entitlement, in most cases, is confirmed by a doctor.

It's not a replacement for Jobseeker's Allowance. DLA is paid at different rates to people according to the severity of their condition for their care and or mobility needs. It can be paid whether you are in or out of work.

Indeed informed research by Disability Alliance shows that many people are helped back into work by an award of DLA. It can help with their mobility; - making it possible to get to and from work. It also passports people to entitlement to mobility aids and blue badges. Without it, many won't be able to get to work!

A lot of people cry out for tax reduction as an incentive to help people back to work. Okay DLA isn't a tax break, but it is linked to other allowances such as tax credits which make it more viable to return to work. In short DLA is not purely an 'out of work' benefit. One of the reasons why benefit claims increased over the last decade is because of the number of work related enhancements.

As a result the 2010 IFS/DWP figures for unemployment related benefits show they accounted for just 2.6% of the total benefit bill.

People need to understand the system before quoting 'simple facts'.

Wellfare should be seen as a very flawed form of wealth redistribution. Labeling people who collect it as "scroungers" is a cowardly back biting. It is directing hatred towards the econmically disadvantaged. Its hatred directed towards the weak.

Where do you think this nations wealth comes from? It comes from the third world. It was taken by force, that is a form of spunging that is far more large scales than a benifit collecters.

Also people must be insane to want to go down the American road. Do you see the levels of poverty in that country?

The Tories are doing what they have always done - it's called divide and rule. Look back at the 19th century and see how the poor were treated then. There were the poor and the 'undeserving poor.' Aren't we just talking about the same thing now? It's all propaganda designed to divide the masses who are the 'natural' opposition to the rich ruling elite.
We are as a nation sliding back to the dim dark days of Victorian England.

A society should be judged according to the way it treats the young, the sick, the old and the disabled.If a rich society cannot provide for its vulnerable members then this society has the wrong values and needs to be reformed, through a revolution if need be.
The wolves in the wild take care of the injured or sick animals in the pack,kill for them and bring them food. Why are they people here who thinks it is all right for this society to abandon vulnerable people and make them pay for the banks' monumental fuck up?
Some people are wondering why there seems to be more disabled people than ever when "we live longer and healthier lives". Actually yes precisely we are living longer BUT NOT healthier lives.Some conditions which may have killed the victims a few decades ago, are now survivable but the people affected may remain disabled or not well for years, some times for the rest of their lives.It is quite easy to explain but the press prefers to claim that most disabled claimants are fake because it fits their political agenda.

The other statistic that's worth mentioning is the benefits that have been budgeted for and go unclaimed each year, which(according to Citizen's Advice who have absolutely THE best data on this) in 2010 reached £16billion! That's a MASSIVE saving that the gov't never mentions. If the poor are so hell-bent on scamming the system, how does one account for that HUGE amount of unclaimed money?

As for the lack of any moral objection to the gutting of the Welfare State, the reason for that is quite simply an increasingly selfish society. All too many people believe the myth of the "self-made man": that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But the truth, as many studies have shown (see Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) is that none of us operate in a vacuum and much of what any of us achieve is due to the people and (more broadly) the society around us. A decent Welfare State benefits us all.

I am one of the "work shy scroungers" vilified in the press on an almost daily basis. I havent worked for 5 years nor am I going to be able to for the next five years. the past 12 months I have been spat at and abused in the street, been called a faker by strangers.

and why? because I served for 13 years in the armed forces until I was caught in an IED which left me completely blind, reliant on oxygen, take 52 tablets a day to keep my organs working and only able to stand for 5 minutes until my spine gives out.

according to the proposed cuts I will have to leave the small 2 bedroom house i have which means loosing an overnight carer when I am ill and my guide dog. Today I had a letter from Lord Freud who just said we all have to accept what is happening and gave the worst case scenario of benefit fraud and inflated rent prices (£2000 a week - mine is 133 a fortnight - big difference !!!)as a blanket excuse. my local MP is aware that if the reform goes through as planned I will have to choose to either move to another area loosing all contact with friends and be in complete isolation or make up the short fall in my benefits to pay the rent which will be paid using my meals on wheels money allowing me to have a meal just once every other day.

My situation is not unique but this is what thousands of others are facing. but i thought in this day and age i would never have to choose between if i want human contact each day or a meal each day. This is not what I fought for my country for. and i wish those who want to tar us all with the scrounger brush to have a think before you speak. we have feelings dignity and pride even if we dont have a meal everyday. I am ashamed to be British if this is how we will treat the disabled and sick in this country from now on

Fraziel: In which case you're regularly wrong, it's a waste of time pointing you in the right direction.

Although you might like to try...

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/specialist-guides/decision-makers-gui... it should be familiar.

There are many more reference points; You may just learn something.

You remind me of a DM at a Tribunal only very recently, there she was reading away quoting chapter and verse. I looked and over and felt compelled to ask her what particular version she was refering to when quoting the law. '2010 she says - it's up to date'. Mmmm, I remind her it's an overpayment case and what we're actually looking at is the law as it was in 2003. The Judge looked skywards at her incompetence.

I'll not bother telling you the outcome.

@Privet you sound like a daily mail reader, nobody here is defending anyone who sets out to abuse the system.

In today's Guardian there was a man, who had two brain tumours and died of cancer just after being found fit for work by government 'doctors' at ATOS. This is not unique, i have read loads of similar cases.

in a recent survey over a third of disabled people said they'd been abused. the government is actively nurturing a spirit of resentment against the vulnerable. an easy, helpless target.

it's not a figment of anyone's imagination, it's happening.