David Craig, on October 6th, 2014With our national debt shooting up towards an unsustainable £1.45trn (give or take a few billion) by the time of the 2015 election, whoever wins is going to have to drastically raise taxes, drastically cut spending or drastically do both.
One potential area of cuts is the amount of money paid to the supposedly disabled. Yet those of us who read the Daily Mail are forever being regaled with stories of benefits scroungers claiming to be disabled while going on expensive foreign holidays, running marathons or working as football referees.
Of course, there are many genuinely disabled who need and deserve our support. But please, before accusing me of being a heartless, right-wing, hate-the-poor fanatic, have a look at this chart (click to see more clearly)
It’s from my 2008 book SQUANDERED and shows the number of people claiming disability benefits (the thick line) and the number claiming unemployment benefits (the dotted line) from 1979 to 2005.
Looking at this, almost the only conclusion one can reach is that successive governments have deliberately encouraged people to claim disabilities in order to make it look like unemployment was lower than it really was. Moreover, what successive governments have done is to waste much of the tax gained from North Sea oil on paying for an army of the unemployed and the ‘disabled’ whereas countries like Norway have reinvested their oil money for the future.
I’ve now brought this chart up to date (click to see more clearly)
There has been a continuing rise in those claiming disability in spite of the fact that spending on the NHS has increased in every single year since 1992 and shot up from £45bn a year when New Labour first came to power in 1997 to over £100bn today. Yet the number of apparently disabled people claiming disability benefits has almost tripled from just over one million in 1992 to over three million last year.
I’m sorry, but I simply don’t believe that the number of genuinely disabled people in Britain has really almost tripled in just 21 years.
I realise there are many people with disabilities and I realise many of them might not be getting the support they need. But the charts suggest that disability benefits have become a massive scam allowing hundreds of thousands of thieves to steal billions from us every year in the knowledge that the useless DWP will never catch them and that even if they are caught they’ll never have to pay back any of the money they’ve stolen from us and from those that really are disabled.
(By the way, a couple of days ago I asked for your help to sell the Kindle version of my book “DON’T BUY IT!” in Australia by putting this address into your browser http://www.amazon.com.au/Dont-Buy-tricks-traps-salespeople-ebook/dp/B00J0Y59GC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1412573739&sr=8-9&keywords=don%27t+buy+it and placing a short review of either “DON’T BUY IT!” or my books in general. Out of the many hundreds of people who visit my website snouts-in-the-trough.com every day, only three – yes just three – could be bothered to help out. Oh dear, oh dear. Britain really has changed for the worse in the 20 years I spent living abroad)
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Make that 4, David.
It would be interesting to compare your chart with the equivalent data from the first and second World Wars.
If the numbers themselves are not enough to convince those in power of the scale of the scam then I suggest they talk to any GP or GP’s receptionist. They’ll tell you they constantly see people running around the place who were so crippled they had to be carried from the waiting room to see the doctor, just a day or so before.
The figures are probably mostly genuine unfortunatly as immigration is mostly behind the increase. The polish builder that came here 10 years ago then fell off a ladder and cant work. The immigrant that latter went on to develop a disease and now cant work etc etc…