Lies, damned lies and the Telegraph. They posted CSJ figures using an outrageously false comparison of 2 cases. It claimed a benefits family were better off by £18k than a working household when the real figure was £16k worse off. The details benefitsinthefuture.com #benefits #budget

Rigby has 'the help of a runner' in order to play cricket, which suggests he can't run and may struggle to walk. He is in pain, and has to take extra painkillers in order to play cricket. PIP is supposed to take into account the consequences of an activity, like pain. www.lbc.co.uk/article/fath...

'Can you change between pyjamas and day-time clothes at the start and end of the day, plus take a jumper off once in the day for a physio exam' is a really poor test for 'can you repeatedly raise your arms above your head without causing pain, weakness, or damage'.

I'm not in such severe pain that to move my shoulders at all is completely intolerable and I can't force myself to do it. But there is pain, weakness, and instability. Over-activity or inappropriate activity would damage my shoulders, even if I can still put a jumper on and off.

I had a physio exam recently for my shoulders. I'm struggling with pain and fatigue, caused by trying to do life from a powerchair, and the weird angles and strains this causes. But a simple physio exam doesn't reveal #PEM or the cumulative impact of day-to-day life.

How does the physio know there was 'no difficulty'? There could have been pain. The patient may have felt it necessary to comply with removing the jumper in order to get a thorough examination, and then explained the pain/fatigue/stiffness when asked for specific movements.

"Once in the mindset of “I’m too sick to work”, it’s very hard to get back out." Is it though? Do we actually have evidence of that? Real evidence, not healthy people putting their own interpretations onto the internal reality of living with chronic illness?

For a GP to conclude that there isn't enough evidence to support a sick note requires a much more thorough examination and patient history than "I'm going to deny your experience based off one short observation and no questioning of your symptoms."

A GP whose first response to someone expressing a problem is to deny the problem rather than query how the presentation (patient walked a short distance) compares to reality (is it reliable & repeatable; what about long distances; is there pain or muscle weakness) is a poor GP.

Can you share the intrinsic problems? I'm in the process of applying to the council for a Disabled Facilities Grant, and I imagine they'll want to push a wetroom on me. I do need a wheelchair accessible bathroom, but it needs to be usable.

It's good to see State Pension shown separately to working-age Social Security. So often, politicians and commentators combine the two to justify arguing against working-age SS, whilst ignoring that SP is much larger.

A Bureaucratic State may be a viable option to a Welfare State, though I rarely see anyone argue for it without also wanting a Welfare State to protect those who still fall through the cracks. More typically, people who don't want a Welfare State also hate a Bureaucratic State.

But if you want pre-distribution to be so good that almost no-one is poor, and the few who are poor are there by vicissitudes of life that can be solved by the church, then you're going to need an awful lot of law and enforcement of that law. A very bureaucratic State.

One might argue that the ideal is 'pre-distribution'. This would mean business regulations that stop people from accruing large amounts of wealth to themselves, e.g. via minimum wage and limits on how much the top earner in a company can earn relative to the bottom earner.

But then you say, "Yet although the idea that the poor should be provided for is a biblical one, the belief that this must be done through state-enforced redistribution is not." And that's where I have to disagree. As stated above, God gave clear state-enforced redistribution.

You seem to recognise the State's role to some extent, when you say, "Of course, rulers should seek to prevent the vulnerable from being exploited - this was a requirement for Old Testament kings." Naturally, this requires law. (It was also a requirement for pagan rulers)

If a government wants to run a country based on NAIRU, then it owes something to the people whom it has deliberately put out of work. It is not the church's responsibility to bail out people whom the State has made unemployed. It is the church's prophetic role to call that out.

For example, economists like to talk about the 'Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment'. Nairu tells us that we need a certain level of unemployment in order to control inflation. Those unemployed people are sacrificed by the State to some sense of a 'greater good'.

So we are left with the Church, ending poverty on its own. How is it to do that? The experience of multitudes of poverty-relief workers over centuries of work will tell you that charity has its limits when the issue is a society set up to impoverish some for the gain of others.

So we are left with the church becoming the sole fixer of poverty in the UK. How is the church to do that? There are three options: 1) Charity, i.e. responding to individual need by donating; 2) Education, i.e. teaching the poor how not to be poor; 3) Working for systemic change

This segregation of the poor into poor families and poor communities has another issue: in your recommendation, the rich cease to have any responsibility for the poor, because the poor aren't in *their* family, and nor do the poor live in *their* community.

Poverty is a rarely a case of a poor individual with an otherwise wealthy family, in an otherwise wealthy area. It's usually a poor person, whose family is poor, living in a poor and deprived area. Family & community have too many demands to solve any given individual's poverty.

When you say that 'community' should take responsibility for the poor, what is that 'community'? People in a geographic area? How big an area? Council ward, local authority, combined authorities, nation? People of the same ethnic heritage? People of the same religion? Same age?

I also wonder, when you say that 'family, community and Church' should take responsibility for the poor, exactly how you see that happening? How extended is that family? My second or third cousin? My great-niece or nephew? Where does 'family' stop? What if the family is too poor?

No-one in Israelite times could lose their home and land in perpetuity. This stands in stark contrast to Joseph's behaviour during the famine, which Joseph used to amass the people's land to the Pharaoh, thus impoverishing the people. This is a State-level law, not charity.

Sellers were banned from price gouging (Lev 27:35-38). "So that they can continue to live among you" suggests a standard of living that is respectable. There were strict restrictions on lending, so that all lending was for the good of the debtor and not the profit of the lender.

There are other laws in the Bible which, if given today, would be called 'business regulation'. E.g., crop growers had to dedicate a portion of their turnover to the poor. This was to occur regardless of whether a profit was made on the rest of the crop.

The Israelites paid tax/tithe to support the poor. Unlike charity, this wasn't discretionary. The giver had no choice over what to give, how much to give, when to give, and to whom to give. It was a tax, and it was redistributed by the civil servants of the day - the Levites.

There are commands in the OT which, if given today, would be called 'tax and redistribution'. The Israelites paid tax/tithe to support the priests. As well as religious duties, the priests taught the law and acted as judges. They also managed matters of public health.

If family, community, and a religious body is all that is needed to end poverty, then why didn't God simply tell the Israelites 'be charitable'? Why did he go beyond the principle - give to the poor - to give specific commands about how to do it?

That's an interesting statement that merits justification. The law given by God to his people - people who, of all peoples, should not need any form of State intervention to end poverty if it is the case that the State has no such duty - does seem to involve State intervention.

@resfoundation previously looked at labour force elasticities to comment on employment rates after cutting support to sick & disabled people. Barr et al's paper indicates that the UK, with its already-harsh system, is unlikely to see even the very small gains of other countries.

Cutting the income of people who are too sick to work but deemed capable of work-related activity: - increases poverty; - increases the incidence of mental illness; - does not increase entry to work. Labour want to repeat this, for people who are more sick. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

@UKLabour have *not* long-grassed the key welfare change that they proposed - to completely eradicate the concept of long-term sickness, or being too sick to work, from Social Security. They plan to do this by scrapping the Work Capability Assessment.

It's not 4mn who *never* have to work. It's 4mn who currently aren't required to look or prepare for work, due to e.g. severe illness, disability, or caring responsibilities. Also at an all-time high: the size of the UK working-age population. Also high: state pension age.

This is my favourite pain scale. It feels like the one that most accurately captures the full range of pain, and conveys the associated distress. I might have to print it out, so that I can point to it when people ask how my pain is.

The first question to ask whenever you hear a statisical claim about sickness & disability benefit receipt is 'has @benbgeiger.bsky.social posted on this yet?' and if the answer is 'no' wait until he has before commenting. inequalities.substack.com/p/have-new-w...

Do you know what else young people miss out on when they're too ill to work? Health. Because that's the real problem here. It's not young 'workers' missing out on 'work'. It's young *people* who are *sick*. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

I've written up some initial thoughts on the government's response to the Pathways to Work consultation. There were 48,000 responses to this consultation. Many people oppose the basic principles and key changes (cuts) proposed by the government. www.stefbenstead.co.uk/post/pathway...

I have previously 'overcome anxiety' to speak on TV (I was on BBC NW). This doesn't change the fact that I have two anti-depressants and a sedative to keep my distress levels within manageable levels. By 'manageable' I mean I'm managing to stay alive.

Do you know what organisation/group was responsible for this? "32,788 responses from a single campaigning platform, which put 2 surveys asking its own questions to its members". I can't remember seeing a survey with massive reach like that, but that may be Twitter's fault.

If what you mean to say is that Motability should only be for adapted vehicles, then you should know that adapted vehicles on Motability require up-front payments, above a person's PIP, which many can't afford. The scheme is already beyond many people's means.

Most disabled people don't need adapted vehicles. I'm not a permanent wheelchair user, & therefore don't need an adapted vehicle because I can transfer to a normal seat. But I still need to pay for a mobility scooter and taxis, because I'm disabled. That's why I qualify for PIP.

GPs know that work can be good for people. They also know that work can be bad for people. Sick-notes are a valuable therapeutic tool. Sick people need healthcare, not workfare. https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2296-13-82

It's World Mental Health Day. Here in the UK, we're lucky to have a government that plans to cure mental illness by the radical approach of declaring it to not be a mental illness. Here in my life, my general snark levels are increasing as a side-effect of anti-depressant #2.

Shock discovery that people who are eligible for *and claim* PIP get more PIP than people who are eligible for *but don't claim* PIP. And more money than people who aren't eligible and don't claim, but not enough to mitigate the extra costs of disability. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

"Everyone ultimately believes in some moral absolutes. Once we realise this, the new question becomes: Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?" Tim Keller, The Prodigal Prophet, pg173

Latest blog! I don't think it's as well constructed and written as normal; I'm just too exhausted. But I'm keen to get this work out there, because other reports are over-estimating the likely efficacy of employment support for sick and disabled people who aren't fit for work.

"Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency & leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators." Angus Deaton www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

“Some people say wait until you’ve got all the waiting lists down, wait until you’ve created all the new jobs.” Yes. Does she know why people say that? It's because if you cut social security whilst people are sick & there aren't enough jobs, all you're doing is harm. observer.co.uk/news/politic...