Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship

Spin, not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's chosen method of communication. Ordinary people are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question which throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member might reveal himself or herself to be a human being like us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might tell the truth. Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004

 

WWW silentmajorityspeaks.com

Two-thirds who get incapacity pay could work, says Welfare Minister, Jane Kennedy

1,000 a week join long-term sick

By David Hughes, Political Editor, Daily Mail - November 18, 2004

More than 1,000 people joined the ranks of the long-term sick living on benefit every week for the last year, latest figures reveal. The surge in numbers by 60,000 in just 12 months means that 2.19million are now on long-term incapacity benefit.

The figures cast doubt on Government attempts to curb the soaring cost of the handout. Incapacity benefit costs £6billion/year, pays more than job-seekers allowance, and goes up the longer a claimant is off work.

In a fresh attempt to reverse the trend, the Public Health White Paper this week placed a new duty on GPs to get patients off sick leave and back to work. They will be asked to ensure that 'returning to work' is a core element of the treatment. In some regions, one in four men are on incapacity benefit, which is worth up to £74.15 a week, compared to jobseekers's allowance of up to £55.65.

It can be claimed by those off work sick once statutory sick pay - provided by employers for up to 28 weeks - ends. But the longer workers are off work, the more they get. After a year, they move to long-term incapacity benefit.

The remorseless increase in the number of long-term sick is blamed on the generous sickness benefits in a recent report by the Bank of England. It concluded that half a million men left the labour force in the 1990's, suffering from conditions such as stress and back pain. That had been 'almost exactly matched' by the rise in disability benefit claims. The apparent rise in sickness was 'surprising', the report went on, given falling mortality rates.

Critics said the spiralling numbers on sickness benefits has contributed to the fall in joblessness levels to a record low. The total fell by 67,000 to 1.38million, the lowest since the current way of counting began in 1984, said the Office for National Statistics.

Sick note Britain

The country's fastest growing industry: hundreds of thousands of workers signing on for long-term sick-ness benefit. And as this investigation reveals, it's a cynical ploy to camouflage unemployment figures.

writes Sue Reid in the Daily Mail, September 25, 2004

The number of people on incapacity benefit has doubled in the past 15 years. The Government's own Economic and Social Research Council has revealed that more than half the men claiming this benefit are, in fact, fit to work and committing fraud. Moreover, a damning report yesterday by the respected Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that Britain's generous sickness benefits have become a costly 'early retirement scheme' for thousands of workers. It said there has been an alarming increase in the number of older workers claiming incapacity benefit - far more than in the U.S., France and Germany.

The OECD says incapacity benefit is costing taxpayers £7.7billion/year with the number of men aged 50 to 64 claiming the benefit doubling since 1980, while the figure for women aged 50 to 59 has soared four-fold. Labour needs to ensure 'the social security system provides better incentives to work', it warns.

Yet before Labour won power in 1997, Tony Blair's boldest pledge was to 'think the unthinkable' and slash the ballooning cost of welfare. At the time, he declared,: "We do not want people living in dependency on state handouts. Judge me upon it - the buck stops with me."

Ever since, ministers have claimed that the number of jobless has gone spiralling down. Mr Blair himself has even talked headily of the prospect of zero unemployment in the future. Yet this seems most unlikely. For it appears that instead of the number dropping, there has been a controversial 'accounting' exercise by Whitehall which has simply taken the jobless off one list and put them on another, where they are invisible and claim incapacity.

Far from the number of unemployed going down, the figure are actually going up when those 'on the sick' are counted too. The conjuring trick first came to light a few weeks ago when researchers at Sheffield's Hallam University said that Britain's unemployment levels would rise by 80% - from 1.43 million to 2.5 million - if the Government included all the people claiming incapacity benefit. Not only have an astonishing one million unemployed people now become too sick even to look for work, but 718,000 of them are claiming State handouts for such notoriously hard-to-prove ailments as stress and depression.

According to the lobby group Taxpayers' Alliance, £1billion could be saved if those who are now wrongly on the sick list - and paid up to £74 a week - were simply transferred to the job seekers' list, where they get £10 a week less money. The entire North-East, where a massive one in eight are on some sort of sickness benefit, would claw back hundreds of millions of pounds of public money. In Hartlepool alone, £3million could be save every year.

Nowhere is the government spin on unemployment more evident than in Hartlepool, where Labour by-election canvassers are peddling the yarn that jobless numbers have plummeted by a third since Mr Blair become Prime Minister. Sadly, this appears far from the truth.

Take the circumstances of Paddy Murphy. He's 56 and has been signed off on the sick for 15 years. He seems a deserving case. He shattered both his ankles in a motorbike accident and says he can hardly walk. But he admits the officials dealing with him in Hartlepool barely check if he's still too ill to work.

"Back in the late 80's, when I had the accident, I had a note from my doctor but they still made me jump through so many hoops to get the sick benefit. Today, there's no problem at all," he told me this week.

One doctor in a North-East town said recently: "Most claimants come to me with stress. Some have been laid off and arrive with back pain. They know that it's a way of claiming benefit. Many are feigning illness or injury. If a claimant is not granted incapacity benefit at the first time of asking, he applies again and again until he gets it."

As John Adams, director of research at the Left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research, has pointed out; "It's shocking to see how many people actually claim sickness and incapacity benefits. Twenty three percent (23%) of the working age population now claim it in Easington, a district council in County Durham - the highest level in Britain. However, the problem is not confined to former coalfield communities. Urban centres such as Hartlepool have 14% of the workforce on incapacity benefit."

Can so many people really be so wretchedly suffering from long-term illnesses? Why, as public health improves, do the figures for those too sick to work go inexorably upwards? Can it really be possible for eight times as many adults to be in permanent ill-health in Hartlepool and its hinterlands as in the Home Counties?

According to David Green, director of independent think-tank Civitas, 'Hartlepool and many other areas seem to be actively encouraging people to go on incapacity benefits. Getting incapacity benefit and a bit of a black market job on the side is probably very appealing. The young grow up seeing adults getting away with it and think that's the life for them too. If someone down the street is getting incapacity benefit and then running with his children in the park, it weakens the ethos that you can only really make it through hard work - which is the only way any society is going to flourish."

Green is not alone in voicing disapproval of this scandal. Dr Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, insists: "The Hartlepool figures don't ring true. How can we have more people who cannot work though illness than in the days when there was heavy industry which really damaged peoples health? The Government is massaging the figures to hide the true levels of unemployment. Over-compassionate doctors are accelerating the problem. People of 55 or 60 come to them, not quite ready for retirement, and they see them as never working again. They sign them up for incapacity thinking they are helping because their patient will get more money than signing on as jobless."

Of course some people in Hartlepool are genuinely in need. Poor housing and poverty have never been the friend of good health. But incapacity benefit is attractive because it is not means-tested and the system positively invites those who lose their jobs to feign illness and get £80 more each month than on the ordinary dole. Inevitably, it has a corrosive effect on self-reliance.

At the Owten Manor social club, in the heart of one of Hartlepool's largest council estates, a group of middle-aged men play darts and pool before talking to the Mail about how many of them have no alternative but to claim incapacity benefit.

"There's nothing for us here," says Stanley Wilkins, a 56-year-old who is on the jobless list. "I am bored off my head. Some men go to their allotment, others take a walk around the town. Every day is the same. If you come here to the club to have a few pints and the wife finds out, you're in trouble. The only time I'd wake up with some money in my pocket is if I've got on someone else's trousers."

His friend, who refused to be named, butts in from behind his pint of Trophy hitter. "You have to go abroad for any real work that pays well. The jobs on offer in Hartlepool are shelf-stacking and litter-picking for £4.70 an hour. We'll not go out for that. There are government training schemes which give you £10 a week over unemployment benefit, but they're not much good if there's no job at the end. Then there's the sick, which pays best of the lot. The result is there are people here who don't know what work means. Generations are being raised by the State. They'll all vote Labour, you see, because they are dependent on Labour. It's hard not to think that's the way the government wants it."

Earlier this year there was fevered speculation that Hartlepool would vote in the Liberal Democrats, as Brent East in London did. The party is fielding articulate blonde barrister, Jody Dunn. "They've got so many wooden signs up with her name on that they must have cut down half the Brazil rain-forests they want to protect," jokes Jeffery Hope over at the King John's Tavern after yet another pint. The men with him laugh enthusiastically.

"But she doesn't stand a chance," he whispers to me, slightly blearily. "No one is going to vote out of power the party that gives them money every week, no questions asked." And he is probably right.

 For the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom, must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign

Mr Blair has lied and deceived us over Iraq. He must resign at once. Do you agree? Agree strongly Agree Disagree Disagree strongly Don't know Don't care Please click one of the links above to cast your vote Current results

Such defiance of the democratic process and the will of the majority of we people of the UK, must be exposed by voters as a matter or urgency, and not just in the two by-elections we have had this July and the European elections in June 2004. But how can this be done?

The most effective way of getting our deceitful PM to resign would be to mobilise the army of Labour MPs currently in the House of Commons and get them to demand it, the loss of their seat to be a penalty if they did not. All voters in Labour-held constituencies need to write a letter along these lines to their local Labour MPs:

Dear Despite his absolute and unequivocal assurances over the past year of the serious risk to our security of Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', Prime Minister Blair has admitted, that the threat was non-existent. For that critical error of judgement and for his gross incompetence in handling this very important issue, I ask you to take immediate steps to ensure that Tony Blair does the honourable thing and resign without delay.. I would therefore be much obliged if you would propose and help mobilise a Parliamentary vote of 'No Confidence' in Mr Blair which, despite Labour's huge majority, would leave the PM with no option but to resign. If I get no reply to this letter, I shall assume you will continue to support Mr Blair as our Prime Minister. In such circumstances I shall not vote for you in the forthcoming General Election. Signed:

Simple, non-violent, protest letters along these lines on a variety of issues could be the basis for re-vitalising our democracy and increasing voters' interest and participation in politics. Download a printable copy of the above letter here.

There is another way for the voice of the silent majority to be heard, a voice that made sure broken promises would not only be revealed, but punished in subsequent elections.

In the year available before the General Election expected in 2005, many topics are available as ammunition, each one asking questions.  A weapon for our purpose will be the results of Opinion Polls in individual  constituencies using ICM, NOP, Gallop, Mori  or YouGov.

Questions suggested for this purpose are listed here.

CAST YOUR VOTE ON A VARIETY OF OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES HERE.

Current and prospective Parliamentary candidates of all Parties running for election could share a platform at public forums in every constituency. They would be presented with  the results of polls on this issue expressed by the majority of voters in that constituency.

The candidates could be asked if their own views and that of their Party manifesto corresponded with the polls, and if not, how they intended to represent the will of the majority of local voters.  Local and National Press, Radio and TV coverage would be arranged and the results published on this web site.

Here is another powerful strategy for using your vote effectively in the forthcoming General Election. Send your sitting and prospective MPs a letter defining your requirements if they want your vote. This example deals with the proposed EU Constitutional Treaty.

Your letters would end: "If you do not answer this letter, I shall take it that you intend to follow the Government line. I shall act accordingly in the forthcoming General Election.

Or why not create a questionnaire that you send to all the candidates in your constituency, getting them to give yes/no answers to questions of your choice, and ending it with the same paragraph(above).

Download a printable example of the questionnaire.

It is high time for the people of this United Kingdom to stop allowing themselves to be manipulated by politicians. We need our representatives in Parliament to genuinely reflect the view of the majority in their own constituency, even if this means going against their personal and/or their party's policy. While they may argue their case, hoping to change the minds of the majority in their constituency, they should ultimately be obliged to reflect the majority view of those who elect them. 

It will be argued by politicians of all parties that most voters don't have the knowledge necessary to express an opinion on important subjects at issue, and that our vote is a form of delegated democracy. We should argue that it is their duty to ensure that we voters do have ready access to such information as is necessary to form an intelligent opinion. That, after all, is one main purpose of Opposition Parties in our Parliamentary Democracy.

Most important of all, such proceedings would rekindle in voters their latent interest and obligation to cast their vote, knowing that the candidate of their choice would be more likely to act in accordance with their wishes. A much higher turnout in elections would be the result.

Contact your local Party Chairman. Gain his support for setting up public forums in your constituency on these, as well as any other relevant topics, well before the next General Election expected in 2005. You should then, depending on the integrity of the candidate of your choice, feel fairly certain that your view on any subject being debated in Parliament will more accurately be reflected by your representative in that assembly.