http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31464897

People who cannot work because they are obese or have alcohol or drug problems could have their sickness benefits cut if they refuse treatment, the PM says.

David Cameron has launched a review of the current system, which he says fails to encourage people with long-term, treatable issues to get medical help.

Some 100,000 people with such conditions claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), the government says.

Labour said the policy would do nothing to help people off benefits.

Campaigners said it was "naive" to think overweight people did not want to change their lives.

There is currently no requirement for people with such health problems to undertake treatment.

'A life of work'
Mr Cameron has asked Prof Dame Carol Black, an adviser to the Department of Health, to look at whether it would be appropriate to withhold benefits from those who are unwilling to accept help.

Announcing the proposal, he said: "Some [people] have drug or alcohol problems, but refuse treatment.

"In other cases people have problems with their weight that could be addressed - but instead a life on benefits rather than work becomes the choice.

"It is not fair to ask hardworking taxpayers to fund the benefits of people who refuse to accept the support and treatment that could help them get back to a life of work."

Minister for Disabled People Mark Harper said the government wanted to get people to "engage" with available treatments, adding that the right interventions could be "very successful".

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Disabilities Minister Mark Harper said people who were overweight or had alcohol or drug problems needed treatment to get back to work
Dame Carol said she was keen to "overcome the challenges" posed by the current system.

"These people, in addition to their long-term conditions and lifestyle issues, suffer the great disadvantage of not being engaged in the world of work, such an important feature of society."

But Susannah Gilbert, co-founder of online obesity support group Big Matters, said the policy "wouldn't be feasible".

She said: "I think it's naive to think that people don't want to change their life. Many of them have tried every diet under the sun and they still have a weight problem, so to think they don't want to have help isn't true."

Not helping
Kate Green MP, Labour's shadow minister for disabled people, said the number of people claiming sickness benefits had risen under the coalition.

"David Cameron's government has stripped back funding for drug support programmes and their Work Programme has helped just 7% of people back to work, so it is clear the Tory plan isn't working," she said.

"Today's announcement does nothing to help people off benefits and into work while the government continues to fail to clamp down on tax avoiders and offshore tax havens."

ESA was introduced in 2008 to replace incapacity benefit and income support, paid because of an illness or disability.

It requires claimants to undertake a work capability assessment to see how much their illness or disability affects their ability to work.

Some 60% of the 2.5 million people claiming ESA have been doing so for more than five years.

100% support and wholeheartedly agree. Being obese is, in the vast majority of all cases, a choice and is guaranteed to cause severe health problems in the long term.

I have to say that, by and large (no pun intended), I am also in favour of this measure so long as other incentives are in place such as added assistance for buying healthy food items, and possibly free consultations/exercise classes/information

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I have to say that, by and large (no pun intended), I am also in favour of this measure so long as other incentives are in place such as added assistance for buying healthy food items, and possibly free consultations/exercise classes/information

As a fattie, that is able to work and used to hang as a firefighter for five years I might add , I agree as well. I think that benefits should always be tied to some attempt to get off benefits. I'm fine with benefits for not working as long as you are actively looking for work, stop trying and the benefit is gone. Benefits while you are going to school to get a better job instead of your minimum wage gig with education paid if fine with me (and I think the state makes that investment back with higher taxes from a higher income), but drop out and your benefits are gome. Treatment for obesity can be expensive and may involve a very multi-faceted approach (diet, medical, excercise) that could add costs. But a few years at a much higher cost to the state would be better than a lifetime of lower cost.

It's also an interesting combination of issues, obesity and substance abuse, with obesity quite often (with some exceptions) being a result of substance abuse as well. I think most people "choose" to be fat the same way they "choose" to have cirrhosis or "choose" to have no teeth. Food can be an addiction, and with obese people it frequently is. I'm not saying that to make excuses for myself and my fat bretheren, just pointing out that it often can be a complex combination of physical problems as well as a mental health component. But just like other addictions the person has to want to quit, although with food you can't ever really quit since you do kinda need it to stay alive. It's like telling a meth-addict that they just have to take a tiny bit of meth for the rest of their lives, but they are not allowed to quit or take too much.

I think what I am trying to say in my long rambling that I think it's a good idea, that some people need that kick in the rear, but that proponents need to realise that with substance abuse (especially food addiction) the treatment may continue long after the person is no longer fat and that I think for optimum benefit the state should make continued assistance available to keep them from falling back into benefit-land.

I'd almost suggest something like is is pretty much a necessity in a nationalized healthcare system

EDIT: I'd expand it to include substance abuse, and honestly I'd mandate basic vaccinations while I was at it. This nonsense with vaccines has already resulted in measles, a disease nearly eradicated by man 20 years ago, to spring back to life.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'd almost suggest something like is is pretty much a necessity in a nationalized healthcare system

I was also talking generally about the basic concept in a variety of systems, some with a "feth you" approach to nationalized healthcare

 d-usa wrote:
I think what I am trying to say in my long rambling that I think it's a good idea, that some people need that kick in the rear, but that proponents need to realise that with substance abuse (especially food addiction) the treatment may continue long after the person is no longer fat and that I think for optimum benefit the state should make continued assistance available to keep them from falling back into benefit-land.

I agree that their needs to be long term investment in this. If you get someone to lose weight and then they revert back to being obese again then that helps no one, and may result in more push back from people as they suffer blows to self esteem. I think that one of the big problems that discourages people on public assistance from eating healthy are the prices.

Last time my wife and I sent grocery shopping there was a very clear disparity. For $10 we could get eleven TV dinners chock full of calories, salt, fat, and additives. That is much easier to feed a family on than healthier foods.

Another thing to consider is education. People on public assistance, typically, are less well educated and so may not be as well versed in reading the nutritional content on labels.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
EDIT: I'd expand it to include substance abuse, and honestly I'd mandate basic vaccinations while I was at it. This nonsense with vaccines has already resulted in measles, a disease nearly eradicated by man 20 years ago, to spring back to life.

One of the requirements before I moved here. Vaccinations. Lots of vaccinations.
- Mumps
- Measles
- Rubella
- Polio
- Tetanus and diphtheria
- Pertussis
- Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib)
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Rotavirus
- Meningococcal disease
- Varicella
- Pneumococcal disease
- Seasonal influenza

I am in favour of the general concept, but fear that many people will inevitably suffer unjustly due to it being conceived with fairness in mind, and physically written and implemented in such a way that hurts people. As with most Tory cuts to the welfare system, if the Atos debacle is anything to show.

Atos aside I think it's fair.

Perhaps given long enough without benefits they'll experience extreme weight loss and then fly from their homes upon the excess skin.

Envisage the flying squirrel.

Need some votes? Why not demonise people on benefits some more? After decades of talking about how everyone on unemployment is a leech to the point that even becoming unemployed briefly leads to self esteem problems, nobody will doubt that this parasitic underclass is a serious issue.

It's certainly easier than tackling actual problems with the economy, like the incredible amount of corporate tax fraud, but since you're David Cameron you're probably not interested in that anyway.

Despite being a filthy lefty, I am generally in favour of this sort of thing if done carefully and in such a way as to encourage lifestyle change. Carrot and stick approaches work better than an endless supply of low quality carrots.

In fact, I'd push it even further. The UK has a massive problem with binge drinking and the violence and antisocial behaviour stemming from it. I would be delighted if the NHS would not pay for anyone brought in with injuries who had a blood alcohol level above a certain point (a high point), and forced them to face the bills themselves. In certain city centres you have state paid for emergency services on call to look after people who can't manage their drinking like adults at tremendous cost to the rest of the country. I'd be down with some sort of "drunk tank" where aggressive drunks can be thrown for 24-48 hours without having to go through the court processes and arrest malarky, too.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Atos aside I think it's fair.

Perhaps given long enough without benefits they'll experience extreme weight loss and then fly from their homes upon the excess skin.

Envisage the flying squirrel.

What worries is the idea of targets being set as a way of measuring.

'What's that? You ate a Snickers this week? Well, I'll just be docking your weeks rent and food money, since you clearly aren't trying...'

It is also the case that addicts and substance abusers are, well...addicts. Most if not all will relapse at some point, regardless of the consequences. Taking food and rent money away from an addict is a very quick way to make a lot of addicts homeless. Good for the exchequer, not so good for the fresh number of thieves and squatters it creates.

This is a reasonable idea, but I'm of the opinion that like the Atos scandal, there will be targets and pushes to make it so that anyone who fails to meet every expectation instantly (including unreasonable ones) will have their means of subsistence cut off.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

One of the requirements before I moved here. Vaccinations. Lots of vaccinations.
- Mumps
- Measles
- Rubella
- Polio
- Tetanus and diphtheria
- Pertussis
- Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib)
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Rotavirus
- Meningococcal disease
- Varicella
- Pneumococcal disease
- Seasonal influenza

Hey, we have to make sure anyone entering the country has all their shots!

We don't care if you're already here Go spread virulent diseases

Well, yeah. The tendency to bureaucratize in British society will almost definitely result in some sort of glorified checklist being followed by jobsworth civil servants. And likely there'll be some sort of generous state contracts for private "consultants" (bs merchants).

But trying to do something to encourage good behaviour is better than just hoping it will go away. I wouldn't do it as a way to save money though- the best way they could show that they are trying to do this as a way to benefit citizens would be to keep welfare spending static after the initial cost of implementing this, and use the extra money for support programs for people. But this being a Tory government I doubt they'll implement this idea in a way I will agree with.

Use the saved money to grant each normal-weighted person a monthly bonus. Negative punishment, positive reinforcement, best of both worlds.

A lot of alcoholoic jobless are on higher rate of benefits because of the problems overdrinking causes. Where do you thin k thet money goes?

When unemployed you get £75 a week, if on sickness benefit you can get £75, £85, £110 or £150. Many alcoholics are on £110, which when you consider free rent etc is a very good take home pay.

As for obesity and work, generally it only effects manual work, fatties can get desk jobs. The trouble here is that actually getting help from the NHS over obesity is now difficult. I am overweight and contacted my GP and wheras a few years ago you could get slimming pills, ow you only get advice. Slimming pills are not a complete answer but they are a stat, like patches are for giving up smoking. Its hard to give up comfort foods when you are in the gak, and unemployments counts as that.

On face value its a good bill, however on application I am not so sure. A lot of the disabled got hosed under this government. What I expect is a dogma of your are overweight and unemployed, therefore you are workshy.

I agree they should lose benefits if they refuse treatment, but if they do not have a valid reason to refuse it.

...and add taxes for junk food and such. Sadly, the only way for a lot of people to learn to stay away from bad food is not buying it because it's too expensive.

 Da Boss wrote:

In fact, I'd push it even further. The UK has a massive problem with binge drinking and the violence and antisocial behaviour stemming from it. I would be delighted if the NHS would not pay for anyone brought in with injuries who had a blood alcohol level above a certain point (a high point), and forced them to face the bills themselves. In certain city centres you have state paid for emergency services on call to look after people who can't manage their drinking like adults at tremendous cost to the rest of the country. I'd be down with some sort of "drunk tank" where aggressive drunks can be thrown for 24-48 hours without having to go through the court processes and arrest malarky, too.

So if you're out drinking and someone jumps you with an iron pipe and beats you silly you'd be gak out of luck if you've got a too high blood alcohol level?

What are those "tremendous costs" though? Drunks usually get a very basic support. In Germany, you most likely have to pay the entire thing on your own as well.

The cases that really bring the system close to breaking are long-term treatments. Cancer e.g. Those are the horrendously high expenses that weigh in on the system and constantly increase its cost. A few drunks don't matter at all.

AlmightyWalrus: Essentially, yes. Drinking to excess is extremely irresponsible. It's a good idea to discourage it.

Sigvatr: Having lived in both countries, I feel pretty confident in saying at least for the places I saw that the UK has a much bigger problem with binge drinking (outside of fests) than Germany.

 Da Boss wrote:
AlmightyWalrus: Essentially, yes. Drinking to excess is extremely irresponsible. It's a good idea to discourage it.

BINGO!

>> Blame the victim

If you get drunk and then mugged, how on earth is that to blame on the mugged dude? Are you claiming that if he wasn't drunk, he'd be able to kung fu his way out?

 Da Boss wrote:
In fact, I'd push it even further. The UK has a massive problem with binge drinking and the violence and antisocial behaviour stemming from it. I would be delighted if the NHS would not pay for anyone brought in with injuries who had a blood alcohol level above a certain point (a high point), and forced them to face the bills themselves. In certain city centres you have state paid for emergency services on call to look after people who can't manage their drinking like adults at tremendous cost to the rest of the country. I'd be down with some sort of "drunk tank" where aggressive drunks can be thrown for 24-48 hours without having to go through the court processes and arrest malarky, too.

So what if you are out for a few drinks with friends and are assaulted with no provocation?
What about people with violent tendencies? Should they be made to pay their own visits for injuries related to an assault?
What about people on public assistance? How will you punish those people?

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey, we have to make sure anyone entering the country has all their shots!

Entering the country legally. This Administration doesn't tend to worry too much about illegals with infectious diseases staying on as a public health risk

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Having lived in both countries, I feel pretty confident in saying at least for the places I saw that the UK has a much bigger problem with binge drinking (outside of fests) than Germany.

As I lack the time to look up statistics right now, I take your word for it

Depends on how you define "obese"; if you're using the antiquated, fake BMI chart....yeah, I'm obese then and so is every body builder I know. I weigh 240 and can bench 320; according the BMI chart, my age/weight/height equals obese but my pants sure don't look it.

Obviously the best way for British people to combat obesity is for Americans to sue them for IP infringement.

 Da Boss wrote:
AlmightyWalrus: Essentially, yes. Drinking to excess is extremely irresponsible. It's a good idea to discourage it.

So if a girl goes out and has one too many and is sexually assaulted requiring treatment do you have the same view? If not why not.

If you're out for a few drinks with friends, your blood alcohol level should not be high enough to disbar you from treatment. It's not a complicated idea that you want to separate those who drink responsibly from those who get legless, black out drunk.

Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

Dreadclaw: If she's over the limit that has been set, then yeah, she gets treated the same as everyone else. The limit would be high though, as I've said in every one of my posts. Alcohol costs the NHS up to 6 billion pounds a year. That is not an insignificant cost that can just be ignored.

 Strombones wrote:
Obviously the best way for British people to combat obesity is for Americans to sue them for IP infringement.

lol.. QFT.

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

People could always still get treated through privately paid medical insurance if they want to, but if you've not got that, don't drink to excess.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

For that tiny amount of people, they would surely be able to prove such a problem to a doctor delegated by the government and then, if successful, go on as usual.

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

People could always still get treated through privately paid medical insurance if they want to, but if you've not got that, don't drink to excess.

College kids with alcohol poisoning should just die then? Great idea! Thin the gene-pool!

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

 Strombones wrote:
Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

I wish that I could take credit for that; a friend did it and unfortunately didn't win. :(

 d-usa wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I have to say that, by and large (no pun intended), I am also in favour of this measure so long as other incentives are in place such as added assistance for buying healthy food items, and possibly free consultations/exercise classes/information

As a fattie, that is able to work and used to hang as a firefighter for five years I might add , I agree as well. I think that benefits should always be tied to some attempt to get off benefits. I'm fine with benefits for not working as long as you are actively looking for work, stop trying and the benefit is gone. Benefits while you are going to school to get a better job instead of your minimum wage gig with education paid if fine with me (and I think the state makes that investment back with higher taxes from a higher income), but drop out and your benefits are gome. Treatment for obesity can be expensive and may involve a very multi-faceted approach (diet, medical, excercise) that could add costs. But a few years at a much higher cost to the state would be better than a lifetime of lower cost.

It's also an interesting combination of issues, obesity and substance abuse, with obesity quite often (with some exceptions) being a result of substance abuse as well. I think most people "choose" to be fat the same way they "choose" to have cirrhosis or "choose" to have no teeth. Food can be an addiction, and with obese people it frequently is. I'm not saying that to make excuses for myself and my fat bretheren, just pointing out that it often can be a complex combination of physical problems as well as a mental health component. But just like other addictions the person has to want to quit, although with food you can't ever really quit since you do kinda need it to stay alive. It's like telling a meth-addict that they just have to take a tiny bit of meth for the rest of their lives, but they are not allowed to quit or take too much.

I think what I am trying to say in my long rambling that I think it's a good idea, that some people need that kick in the rear, but that proponents need to realise that with substance abuse (especially food addiction) the treatment may continue long after the person is no longer fat and that I think for optimum benefit the state should make continued assistance available to keep them from falling back into benefit-land.

There are a few issues with the idea.

It's being proposed by the Tories(Conservative Party), and it's a huge steaming pile of crap. They said the new Work Programme would be focused on helping people into work, instead it's structured to give Jobcentre staff excuses to "sanction" people (read; take away benefits for anywhere from a few weeks to several months, leaving them destitute) and cut costs compared to the previous "back to work" schemes(which were moderately effective, while the Work Programme is demonstrably ineffective). They said the new Personal Independence Payments would make life easier for the disabled compared to the current system, but for the vast majority who were in receipt of the old Disability Living Allowance it means they will have less money to pay for carers, necessary home access work, transport etc, and for new claimants PIP is significantly harder to get. They claimed the previously-ATOS-run Work Capability Assessments were designed to accurately gauge the needs of the sick and disabled, so those in need of the most help would get easier access to it and those who had the potential to live a fuller life would be enabled to do so rather than just abandoning them on benefits for the rest of their lives, in reality it was a crude computerised tickbox-sheet administered by "health professionals" who were completely unqualified to assess most of the conditions they were judging, resulting in a system that declared terminal cancer patients on chemo, late-stage MS sufferers, people with severe autism, and people with bone disorders so severe they could barely stand as "fit for work", stripping them of disability benefits and forcing them onto Jobseekers Allowance(and thus making them subject to the Work Programme's sanctions regime). Oh yes, and then they changed the rules so that you no longer received disability while you were appealing an ATOS decision(2/3 of which were overturned at review months later), and now are considering charging people a fee if they want to make such an appeal. They claimed the "bedroom tax"(a nickname, essentially the policy docks your Housing Benefit if they judge you have "unused space", a definition which seemingly includes things like disabled people who have a spare room for a part-time carer, or divorced parents who have a small box-room with a bed for their kid to stay over on weekends) was about more efficient usage of our social housing stock, but neglected to mention that the reason a lot of people who didn't need an additional bedroom were placed in a two-bedroom home was that we don't have enough one-bedroom social housing because the bloody Tories sold it off in the 80's and neither Tory nor Labour governments since have built any more.

Every change to the benefits system being made by the present coalition government has been claimed prior to its implementation that the goal was to help people or make existing policies more effective, and the reality in every single bloody case is that their sole objective has been to cut the benefits bill by any means necessary, with no regard for whether the people being affected were in genuine need or not, and this will be no different. What's the most atrocious thing about this governments attempts to socially cleanse the poor and disabled from society is that it's predicated on a monstrous distortion of reality(the idea that there is some vast "moocher class" living it up on benefits - the rate of benefit fraud in this country is less than 1%, as low as 0.5% by some measures, it's a bloody myth) and on top of that, is a total failure because the coalition's other policies have resulted in such a large increase in the number of people claiming benefits that they can't use the new measures to sanction people off them again fast enough to keep up. In fact, the entire policy agenda of the coalition has been a failure - the justification for austerity was supposed to be that it would reduce the debt and deficit, and even if you accept the, to put it extremely politely, questionable idea that those are the only or indeed the main measures of the success of a national economy, under the current government the deficit has not come down and the debt has gotten bigger. This is not about helping people, or saving money, it is about class warfare - a group of privately-educated millionaire politicians carving the state apart piece by piece and selling it off to their cronies in the private sector; just look at the NHS "reforms"(read: privatisation), something like 2/3 of the politicians involved in voting these "reforms" have interests in the private healthcare sector.

It's a con, and this is just the latest part of that. They've played out the moochers, scroungers, "strivers vs skivers" rhetoric for as long as they can, and now they have to find ways to make people accept the next round of cuts to public services and benefits(which aren't actually "cuts", just transfers of wealth from the public purse to their private sector pals), well, who better to make into the next targets than "fatties"? It's perfect, even better than trying to get the public to hate people with mental disorders - those are invisible, but people still have some level of sympathy. Even people who don't buy into the bollocks that poverty is some kind of character defect finds it easy to believe the bollocks that the clinically obese can just "cut back on the cheeseburgers, tubbo" if they really want to, and while the public are basking in the self-satisfied abuse which will doubtless soon be masquerading as journalism in our national press, a nice safe target found to blame for society's ills, the coalition will be dumping tens of thousands of addicts off benefits and back into the criminal behaviour the benefits were supposed to curb, and which in the long run costs us a lot more, both society in the abstract sense and the government in the fiscal sense.

 Da Boss wrote:
If you're out for a few drinks with friends, your blood alcohol level should not be high enough to disbar you from treatment. It's not a complicated idea that you want to separate those who drink responsibly from those who get legless, black out drunk.

Dreadclaw: If she's over the limit that has been set, then yeah, she gets treated the same as everyone else. The limit would be high though, as I've said in every one of my posts. Alcohol costs the NHS up to 6 billion pounds a year. That is not an insignificant cost that can just be ignored.

So innocent victims of crime are now made victims again by the NHS. So what do you propose the legal limit be for your scheme?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

Oh yeah, sure. This is a law I would like to see, but I have no expectation that I would ever see it. People would kick up murders because they want to be able to get blind drunk and have the state look after them- it's just all those OTHER people that are getting too much in "entitlements". Not sure how the European Court of Human rights could put a stop to it though. People would get treated, they'd just be expected to pay for their treatment instead of having the NHS foot the bill.

I can see my suggestion is as popular as it ever is Last time I brought this up I got into a pretty big row with two close friends, so Dakka OT is actually a more welcoming place to the idea

Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible. The limit would be pretty high, not being a specialist on blood alcohol level I couldn't say how high, but much higher than those for drink driving, for example.

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible.

So who exactly are the victims of drinking to excess?

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

Rare, treatable, and sometimes thyroid issues are caused by childhood obesity, which makes the obesity worse, which makes the thyroid problems worse, which makes the obesity worse... and so on. So, sure, it's a more complicated case, but it's no reason to think they shouldn't try to get healthier. You just need a bit different treatments.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible.

So who exactly are the victims of drinking to excess?

In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

 Sigvatr wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

For that tiny amount of people, they would surely be able to prove such a problem to a doctor delegated by the government and then, if successful, go on as usual.

More than you think:

PCOS
thyroid
diabetes T1 & T2
general endocrine
depression
side effects of medicines

Also what happens when we find the obesity gene in 10 years and all these people sue the government?

 Ketara wrote:
I am in favour of the general concept, but fear that many people will inevitably suffer unjustly due to it being conceived with fairness in mind, and physically written and implemented in such a way that hurts people. As with most Tory cuts to the welfare system, if the Atos debacle is anything to show.

Yep, you do have to be careful. We were doing BMI's at work and a lot of the Polynesians were coming up as overweight when it was muscle that was putting them over. They didn't have the fat to lose.

The "obesity gene" would have to make an obesity protein, which there is no evidence for.

Obesity is influenced by genetic factors but it's unlikely to be strictly genetically controlled apart from in a few edge cases.

And I think it would be hard to sue the government if the government was acting in good faith and did not know about the existence of any such gene.

PCOS: Cannot be fully cured, but what is recommended to greatly compensate? Healthy diet, exercise. Check.

Hypothyriodism: supplementals and, again, healthy diet.

Diabetes T1&T2: Medication and...healthy diet.

Depression: Uhm? Depression already is a sickness that's covered by health services...

Again, all this debate about whether this or that condition makes being obese justifiable is besides the point; these changes are not about helping people or saving money, they're about giving people an easy target to hate while the Tories undertake an ideologically-motivated reduction of the state, and in the end whether a person is obese because they eat too much completely of their own free will or because they have a legitimate medical condition won't matter - the policy will screw them regardless. Just as it didn't matter to ATOS if you could barely walk or would be dead in a couple of months, it didn't matter to the government if you genuinely needed the additional care that DLA provided and so on.

 Da Boss wrote:
In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

That presupposes that everyone who binge drinks commits crime, or is antisocial. What about those who commit no crime or antisocial behaviour, but are assaulted?
So do occasional binge drinkers cost the NHS more than they contribute?

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

Oh yeah, sure. This is a law I would like to see, but I have no expectation that I would ever see it. People would kick up murders because they want to be able to get blind drunk and have the state look after them- it's just all those OTHER people that are getting too much in "entitlements". Not sure how the European Court of Human rights could put a stop to it though. People would get treated, they'd just be expected to pay for their treatment instead of having the NHS foot the bill.

I can see my suggestion is as popular as it ever is Last time I brought this up I got into a pretty big row with two close friends, so Dakka OT is actually a more welcoming place to the idea

Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible. The limit would be pretty high, not being a specialist on blood alcohol level I couldn't say how high, but much higher than those for drink driving, for example.

How about twice the legal drink driving limit? That's the current definition of binge drinking, according to the NHS.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

That presupposes that everyone who binge drinks commits crime, or is antisocial. What about those who commit no crime or antisocial behaviour, but are assaulted?
So do occasional binge drinkers cost the NHS more than they contribute?

Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly. Binge drinking and excessive drunkeness are harmful and as a whole, society would be better off without them. The provision of free medical treatment is a potential lever that can be used to disincentivise the behaviour. I prefer it to for example, harsher penalties on public drunkeness, because prison costs the state more money and takes potentially productive people out of society. Instead, to tell people that yeah, you can do that if you want, but there will be no safety blanket for you if you do, is something I'd at least like to see tried.

Drinking to excess is fundamentally antisocial in a country with completely socialised medicine, though not severely so.

 Da Boss wrote:
Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly.

That much of your plan is more than abundantly clear.

You are so enjoyable to communicate with Dreadclaw. The way you engage only selectively with points and use rhetorical questions as a weapon.

 Da Boss wrote:
You are so enjoyable to communicate with Dreadclaw. The way you engage only selectively with points and use rhetorical questions as a weapon.

I would appreciate if you would stick with the discussion, not the person with whom you are having the discussion.

 Da Boss wrote:

Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly. Binge drinking and excessive drunkeness are harmful and as a whole, society would be better off without them. The provision of free medical treatment is a potential lever that can be used to disincentivise the behaviour. I prefer it to for example, harsher penalties on public drunkeness, because prison costs the state more money and takes potentially productive people out of society. Instead, to tell people that yeah, you can do that if you want, but there will be no safety blanket for you if you do, is something I'd at least like to see tried.

Drinking to excess is fundamentally antisocial in a country with completely socialised medicine, though not severely so.

So why not execute people who excessively drink? No more cost for the state!

Hyperbole, yes, but...come on. You're not arguing here, you're pushing an agenda bar common sense. Drinking excessively isn't a crime and you're trying to criminalize it on top of seriously going that far to blame drunk people for being mugged. By the very same logic, women who wear short skirts should not be helped by the police because they asked for it? And after all, police investigations are even more expensive...

If you want to actually do something useful against excessive drinking, then push for higher taxes. Period. Hurting the wallet is the only way to make people rethink their ways. If a shot suddenly costs 15$ instead of 8$, people will think twice before getting wasted. Or if a sixpack of beer suddenly costs 25$ instead of 13$. More taxes, less drinking, everyone wins.

If these overweight people are claiming ESA (more likely than PIP) then they have already been seeking treatment from their doctor; you need to see your GP, get sick notes, send these to the Job Centre and then make a claim for ESA.

Then you get to the assessment and it goes like this: Letter turns up from ATOS and you open it (-1 point), you read it (-1 point) and you turn up for the appointment (-1 point). You manage to get to the very well hidden assessment centre (-1 point) and read the sign on the door that says, "press buzzer" (-1 point), press the buzzer (-1 point) hear the voice say "who's there?" very, very quietly (-1 point), get through the door (-1 point). Go to the desk (-1 point) sign in (-1 point) follow the instruction to sit and wait (-1 point), sit down unaided (-1 point), read a magazine on the table whilst they watch you through cameras for twenty minutes (-1 point), and if you manage to wait those twenty minutes (-1 point). Answer when they finally call your turn (-1 point). By the time you see the 'Health Care Professional' you've already failed your assessment for ESA.

To me, this measure is just more rhetoric to get people wound up about dole bludgers, and worse, fat dole bludgers because they (all 1830 of the people who claim benefits due to obesity) are an easy target.

Same as the Bedroom Tax, supposedly for having unused rooms but even if you fill the place up then you're probably liable for a non-dependent deduction instead which amounts to the same thing. And how much has all this saved for the government? About 400 million, the exact same amount of money George Osborne has just overspent on the interest on the 'hugely successful' Pensioner bonds so we know exactly where all the 'savings' went, strait to well of pensioners in order to secure the Grey Vote, because we know all those idle, feckless, dole bludging scroungers all vote Labour don't we?

edited, motyak

 Soteks Prophet wrote:

diabetes T1

Sorry, but Type 1 Diabetes is NOT an obesity disease. My younger brother had Type One, and I can tell you point blank, he was the opposite of "fat" in every sense of the word.

Type 1 is purely genetic. It causes obesity in the same way that water causes hydration. Whether a person with Type 1 diabetes is obese or not, is entirely dependent on the person's lifestyle and choices.

 agnosto wrote:

 Strombones wrote:
Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

I wish that I could take credit for that; a friend did it and unfortunately didn't win. :(

Bah! Was too perfect. Ya'll must have some very clever Cards Against Humanity players!

My only hope is that the rest of the world/dakka knows about this very awesome game.

Relapse wrote:
Yep, you do have to be careful. We were doing BMI's at work and a lot of the Polynesians were coming up as overweight when it was muscle that was putting them over. They didn't have the fat to lose.

As an aside, today I learned that Polynesians have, on average, more muscle mass that non-Polynesians. .... why is that? Honest question.

All that rowing from island to island and evolution.

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

People could always still get treated through privately paid medical insurance if they want to, but if you've not got that, don't drink to excess.

Well done. Anyone injured while drunk just waits a day to seek treatment.

Really? That seems harsh? What if they are a person who only drinks once in awhile and gets injure on a night out?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Really? That seems harsh? What if they are a person who only drinks once in awhile and gets injure on a night out?

Not to mention... it hasn't been said, but I know many of us are thinking it... what if someone is sexually assaulted? They're going to have to "wait" for treatment now? wtf??

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Soteks Prophet wrote:

diabetes T1

Sorry, but Type 1 Diabetes is NOT an obesity disease. My younger brother had Type One, and I can tell you point blank, he was the opposite of "fat" in every sense of the word.

Type 1 is purely genetic. It causes obesity in the same way that water causes hydration. Whether a person with Type 1 diabetes is obese or not, is entirely dependent on the person's lifestyle and choices.

Diabetes is all about insulin and blood sugar imbalances. It's fairly complicated, but simplified version is that insulin is what causes blood sugar to be stored as fat. When your insulin and blood sugar levels get jacked up, in some cases it can predispose you to obesity. Eating healthy goes a long way to help control diabetes, though, and there are treatments, so there's no reason you can't be otherwise healthy even with type 1. Conversely, poor nutrition and lots of high-glycemic index foods causes blood sugar spikes, which causes you to release more insulin, which causes you to become insulin resistant, which causes more blood sugar spikes, which causes more insulin release, which causes more insulin resistance, and so on in an ugly death spiral until your entire system for regulating insulin and blood sugar just breaks down and you get diabetes. But, again, eating healthy will regulate your blood sugar in a good way, so just as eating poorly can cause diabetes eating healthy can improve it.

Long story short, using diabetes as an excuse for being fat is just that, and excuse. You can control and treat it, even if it's difficult. Especially since the vast majority of diabetes cases are caused by unhealthy lifestyles rather than being born with it.

 DarkLink wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Soteks Prophet wrote:

diabetes T1

Sorry, but Type 1 Diabetes is NOT an obesity disease. My younger brother had Type One, and I can tell you point blank, he was the opposite of "fat" in every sense of the word.

Type 1 is purely genetic. It causes obesity in the same way that water causes hydration. Whether a person with Type 1 diabetes is obese or not, is entirely dependent on the person's lifestyle and choices.

Diabetes is all about insulin and blood sugar imbalances. It's fairly complicated, but simplified version is that insulin is what causes blood sugar to be stored as fat. When your insulin and blood sugar levels get jacked up, in some cases it can predispose you to obesity. Eating healthy goes a long way to help control diabetes, though, and there are treatments, so there's no reason you can't be otherwise healthy even with type 1. Conversely, poor nutrition and lots of high-glycemic index foods causes blood sugar spikes, which causes you to release more insulin, which causes you to become insulin resistant, which causes more blood sugar spikes, which causes more insulin release, which causes more insulin resistance, and so on in an ugly death spiral until your entire system for regulating insulin and blood sugar just breaks down and you get diabetes. But, again, eating healthy will regulate your blood sugar in a good way, so just as eating poorly can cause diabetes eating healthy can improve it.

Long story short, using diabetes as an excuse for being fat is just that, and excuse. You can control and treat it, even if it's difficult. Especially since the vast majority of diabetes cases are caused by unhealthy lifestyles rather than being born with it.

But again, Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that is not related to obesity and since there is no insulin resistance obesity is hardly ever a complication of Type 1. A Type 1 diabetic has ZERO intrinsic insulin in their body and as such will not really have a problem with insulin resistance and having increased insulin levels causing increased fat storage.

Type 2, pre-diabetis, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, etc are all a completely different story. But Type 1 is pretty much in the clear when it comes to stuff like this.

 DarkLink wrote:

Long story short, using diabetes as an excuse for being fat is just that, and excuse. You can control and treat it, even if it's difficult. Especially since the vast majority of diabetes cases are caused by unhealthy lifestyles rather than being born with it.

That is basically what I was saying.. Yes, my younger brother had to use injected insulin to control his blood sugars. However, and if any of you guys know about insulin shots, you know that diabetics are told to inject in a "fatty" spot on their body.... Well, my younger brother had issues with finding those "fat spots"... He played lead snare in the marching band, as well as being one of the top under-18 bowlers in the city, as well as being on the school Tennis team, as well as working at a gym, etc. etc. etc.

This past quarter at my school, one of the ladies that I sat with in math class was going through that initial stage of Type 1 with her daughter, who was a Cross Country runner (last I spoke to her, they were fighting the doctors over using the permanent pump system, which would effectively retire the poor girl from running).

In fact, even 18-19 years after my brother was first diagnosed, I can still remember exactly what the specialist doctor told us at that first appointment (it was the appointment where mom, dad, and myself had to learn to give insulin, etc. which is why the whole fam was there). He looked straight at my mom and dad and said, "There's nothing you could have done differently. If you had taken your son to the doctor earlier, he would be dead."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:

But again, Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that is not related to obesity and since there is no insulin resistance obesity is hardly ever a complication of Type 1. A Type 1 diabetic has ZERO intrinsic insulin in their body and as such will not really have a problem with insulin resistance and having increased insulin levels causing increased fat storage.

Type 2, pre-diabetis, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, etc are all a completely different story. But Type 1 is pretty much in the clear when it comes to stuff like this.

Yes, I know this, however, in my original quote, the user I was quoting had lumped Type 1 in with all the other "fat diseases" (Im sure that's not the correct scientific name)

I think this issue will just lead to another bureaucratic system being implemented. If the current state of the country is anything to go by that's a bad thing.

Not treating people who are drunk just sounds like it will ultimately create too many problems. Imagine the legal battles that the NHS would be embroiled in? It's totally infeasible to implement at the moment.

It might be worth doing something along the lines of a blood alcohol test and implementing a fine of "X" when over a certain limit. However that starts to lead down to the legal territory again.

Surely a better idea would be to treat the symptom of binge drinking than to fine the problems it creates. Alcohol creates too much money to be tackled in any meaningful way.

The whole of the UK being as bureaucratic as it is depresses me greatly. I honestly think there needs to be an entire reformation of the way we do things.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Not to mention... it hasn't been said, but I know many of us are thinking it... what if someone is sexually assaulted? They're going to have to "wait" for treatment now? wtf??

That question was asked;

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
AlmightyWalrus: Essentially, yes. Drinking to excess is extremely irresponsible. It's a good idea to discourage it.

So if a girl goes out and has one too many and is sexually assaulted requiring treatment do you have the same view? If not why not.

And this was the answer;

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: If she's over the limit that has been set, then yeah, she gets treated the same as everyone else.

With the reason being;

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'd almost suggest something like is is pretty much a necessity in a nationalized healthcare system

EDIT: I'd expand it to include substance abuse, and honestly I'd mandate basic vaccinations while I was at it. This nonsense with vaccines has already resulted in measles, a disease nearly eradicated by man 20 years ago, to spring back to life.

But nooooooooo, vaccines cause autism, a random guy on Omegle told me that so it's truuuu!

These kind of suggestions are always so flawed and full of holes that they either have made no effort to think it through or dont care who it hurts.

What is the treatment for Obseity? Diet and exercise right? So how do you make sure someones following the treatment? Watch them eat? Check their shopping bills? Having them followed to make sure they run three times a day? You cant just track their weight because they may follow the diet perfectly and still not lose weight.

Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

Also how much is the testing and supervision for this going to cost? Usually with these kind of suggestions such as Drug Test benefits claimaints or lets get rid of (the very tiny amount of) benfit fraud. It ends up costing considerably more to implement these things than was saved by putting them in place and in addition innocent people get caught in the middle and litterally end up starving.

Da Boss: I think your view that sexal assault victiums who were drunk at the time should have to pay for medical treatment instead of getting it on the NHS is morally reprehensible.

 carlos13th wrote:

Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

See, this is a terrible excuse. I really think it is. I got into it at school with another, rather large and rotund fellow in my class (it wasn't all that heated, but it was a debate/argument)

Here's basically what it boils down to, and why it's a crap excuse:


-How much money are people willing to spend on their car each month? (Perhaps a US thing, since theres a lot higher number of car owners here compared to public transport people)
-How much money are people willing to spend on XBox or Playstation games, each month?
-How often, and how much are people spending at the movie theater each month?

Then, I usually ask, how much money does a medical procedure cost as a result of NOT spending money on your health ahead of time?

Just a quick google search on health care costs lead me to this AFLAC site: [urlhttp://www.aflac.com/individuals/realcost/source/[/url]



Now, compare that with your "average" gym membership... Planet Fitness (which is, IMO a horrible, terrible place) can cost as little as 10 bucks a month.... so, for 120/year over 20 years that would be 2400 USD to prevent having to spend upwards of $100,000 to $1,000,000 dollars on medical issues that could be prevented. (yeah, we all know that there are folks who do stay healthy and still have issues, but if you're healthy the risk is much, much lower.)

We can take my gym, which is 28 bucks per month. So over 1 year, I will pay $336, and over a 20 year span, assuming I'm still living in this same area, etc. I will have spent $6720 to prevent that 100k medical bill. And the cost of my gym is still less than one new release video game. It's definitely a trade off that most people are willing to make, once they are educated on the real costs and real dangers of their poor lifestyle.

How much money are these people on benefits earning? How much more of their budget would they need to spend in order to eat healthier.

You pay 28 bucks for the gym which is what £20 some people only get £50 a week in benefits to feed and clothe themselves, pay the bills etc. So if you can find a for that price (which is rare) and it's close enough you don't have to pay to get their via public transport or driving that's 10% of your merge monthly budget gone. Also factor in that if the person is looking after children for example they may struggle to find the time especially if they are a single parent.

Try to see things from the point of view of people who have very very little money as it is. Every single further expense eats into what little money they get.

 carlos13th wrote:
How much money are these people on benefits earning? How much more of their budget would they need to spend in order to eat healthier.

You pay 28 bucks for the gym which is what £20 some people only get £50 a week in benefits to feed and clothe themselves, pay the bills etc. So if you can find a for that price (which is rare) and it's close enough you don't have to pay to get their via public transport or driving that's 10% of your merge monthly budget gone. Also factor in that if the person is looking after children for example they may struggle to find the time especially if they are a single parent.

Try to see things from the point of view of people who have very very little money as it is. Every single further expense eats into what little money they get.

I get that benefits are tight... and maybe this is where the US and UK differ... but here in the US, I can't recall how many people that are "obviously" on social programs are blowing that money on booze, video games, etc. rather than the things they should be spending them on.


I have seen some places in the US that do sort of limit what can be purchased on the state welfare programs money, but I do wonder if it'd be better overall to go more towards a WW2 style rationing. Basically, in WW2, families got a "stamp book" that took their family size, and allotted a certain amount of produce and foods to the family. In this way, they were getting their fresh veggies and fruit and were eating healthy, and you knew that there was little going to waste. Obviously, the stamps were a result of food rationing for the overall war effort, but if the State were to create a system that said "X number of stamps must be used for Y" it would be much easier to track and ensure people were eating healthier foods.

 carlos13th wrote:
These kind of suggestions are always so flawed and full of holes that they either have made no effort to think it through or dont care who it hurts.

What is the treatment for Obseity? Diet and exercise right? So how do you make sure someones following the treatment? Watch them eat? Check their shopping bills? Having them followed to make sure they run three times a day? You cant just track their weight because they may follow the diet perfectly and still not lose weight.

Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

Also how much is the testing and supervision for this going to cost? Usually with these kind of suggestions such as Drug Test benefits claimaints or lets get rid of (the very tiny amount of) benfit fraud. It ends up costing considerably more to implement these things than was saved by putting them in place and in addition innocent people get caught in the middle and litterally end up starving.

Da Boss: I think your view that sexal assault victiums who were drunk at the time should have to pay for medical treatment instead of getting it on the NHS is morally reprehensible.

*cough* why go to a gym *cough*

 carlos13th wrote:
Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

As suggested earlier one suggested method of payment may be to increase public assistance for healthy foods, or some credit system where those on public assistance may get certain deals. The idea of education, training, and support was also mentioned earlier too.

 carlos13th wrote:


Da Boss: I think your view that sexal assault victiums who were drunk at the time should have to pay for medical treatment instead of getting it on the NHS is morally reprehensible.

That's okay, it is probably the worst edge case scenario for what I am proposing.

That said "drunk" is not what I am proposing should bar you from free treatment on the NHS, "dangerously intoxicated" is. But you're free to find it disgusting, of course.

Sigvatr: The point is to put a social control on binge drinking without criminalizing it. Make it cost to drink to excess.

Speak to any doctor working the emergency room and they will talk about the stress that drunks put on public hospitals every single weekend in the UK.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

As suggested earlier one suggested method of payment may be to increase public assistance for healthy foods, or some credit system where those on public assistance may get certain deals. The idea of education, training, and support was also mentioned earlier too.

Many American Insurance companies are including free gym memberships and a number of nutritionist visits as a part of health insurance now. With ours, we get memberships to two gyms (per person) and a free dietitian/nutritionist visit a quarter.

Still can't make people use it.

 Da Boss wrote:
That said "drunk" is not what I am proposing should bar you from free treatment on the NHS, "dangerously intoxicated" is. But you're free to find it disgusting, of course.

You clearly and unequivocally stated " If she[the victim of sexual assault]'s over the limit that has been set, then yeah, she gets treated the same as everyone else" You want to refuse medical treatment to a rape victim because she is intoxicated and someone took the worst possible advantage of her. But then punishing people for drinking is your goal, you have already acknowledged that you are "not interested in what's fair or just particularly"

That's interesting, because this is the first time the phrase "dangerously intoxicated" has appeared in this thread;
You started off railing against binge drinking, for which there is little consensus on a definition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge_drinking#Definition
"There is currently no world wide consensus on how many drinks constitute a "binge", but in the United States, the term is often taken to mean consuming five or more standard drinks (male), or four or more drinks (female), over a 2-hour period.[10][11] One definition states that 5 drinks for men and 4 drinks for women must be consumed on one occasion at least once in a two-week period for it to be classed as binge drinking.[12] This is colloquially known as the "5/4 definition", and depending on the source, the timeframe can vary. In the United Kingdom, binge drinking is defined as drinking more than twice the daily limit, that is, drinking eight units or more for men or six units or more for women (roughly equivalent to five or four American standard drinks, respectively).[13]

The above definition is not without controversy since it does not take into account the time period over which the drinking occurs or the size of the person drinking. A person could be defined as a binge drinker even if he or she never becomes intoxicated. The term, however, has succeeded in drawing public awareness to the problem of excess drinking."

Then you admitted that "The limit would be pretty high, not being a specialist on blood alcohol level I couldn't say how high, but much higher than those for drink driving, for example.", but you could not even quantify that level.

So what constitutes your new criteria of "dangerously intoxicated"? How many people do you believe that require hospital treatment have imbibed alcohol until they are "dangerously intoxicated"? How much of a burden do they place on the NHS?

 carlos13th wrote:

Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

The real difficulty with eating healthier isn't cost, its time spent in preparation. At least assuming by "healthier" you mean food that has been tagged as "healthy". Its actually quite possible to effectively subsist off of the McDonalds dollar menu for long periods of time*, so long as you're not going overboard on consumption, about all you would really need to add is an occasional salad and some fruit; both of which are quick and cheap.




*Not forever, of course, but that's true of all eating habits.

 dogma wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:

Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

The real difficulty with eating healthier isn't cost, its time spent in preparation. At least assuming by "healthier" you mean food that has been tagged as "healthy". Its actually quite possible to effectively subsist off of the McDonalds dollar menu for long periods of time*, so long as you're not going overboard on consumption, about all you would really need to add is an occasional salad and some fruit; both of which are quick and cheap.




*Not forever, of course, but that's true of all eating habits.

Also, who needs to go to a gym? If you're so obese that you need benefits because you can't work, then the most you're going to end up doing is walking, for quite a while. Last I checked, anyone could walk, anywhere, for free.

 djones520 wrote:

Also, who needs to go to a gym? If you're so obese that you need benefits because you can't work, then the most you're going to end up doing is walking, for quite a while. Last I checked, anyone could walk, anywhere, for free.

Actually, you would probably end up on a stationary bike or doing aquatics. Walking when you're that obese is a bad idea.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
families got a "stamp book" that took their family size

That already experimented with that many, many years ago and the result was that the local black marketeers would call round and exchange your book for cash, obviously at an amount less than what the book was worth but you then had the cash to spend on what you wanted/needed that the book stopped you buying. It's a stupid system, begging to be exploited by criminals (and has in the past) and like many of these 'reasonable' measures treats everyone like a life-long dole bludger, a Frank Gallagher or Rab C. Nesbitt type, the so called 'undeserving' poor and it has nothing to do with helping people, or justice, or fairness its a sop for Daily Mail types to feel smug at election time, as with Cameron's current nonsense about the obese.

 dogma wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

Also, who needs to go to a gym? If you're so obese that you need benefits because you can't work, then the most you're going to end up doing is walking, for quite a while. Last I checked, anyone could walk, anywhere, for free.

Actually, you would probably end up on a stationary bike or doing aquatics. Walking when you're that obese is a bad idea.

Then I'd say have the government buy one for folks like that. A few hundred dollar investment would end up saving tens to hundreds of thousands down the road.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Obviously, the stamps were a result of food rationing for the overall war effort, but if the State were to create a system that said "X number of stamps must be used for Y" it would be much easier to track and ensure people were eating healthier foods.

Simply purchasing and consuming healthy food does not mean that a person is eating healthy.

 djones520 wrote:

Then I'd say have the government buy one for folks like that. A few hundred dollar investment would end up saving tens to hundreds of thousands down the road.

I agree completely. It wouldn't even be that hard to track attendance.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Also what about the costs of eating healthier, joining a gym etc. Is the government going to help with that?

As suggested earlier one suggested method of payment may be to increase public assistance for healthy foods, or some credit system where those on public assistance may get certain deals. The idea of education, training, and support was also mentioned earlier too.

Which would all be lovely, but once again; the point of this policy is not to help people. It is not even about saving money. It's a crude propaganda exercise designed to put a face on the concept of "benefit claimant" that the public find it easy to hate(like "teen mum that has loads of kids to get extra benefits", "man who claims jobseekers allowance while self-employed", "delinquent who claims disability then goes out partying" etc, in this case we add "fattie-fat-fat who won't get off his lazy arse and wants YOU, Mr Hardworking Taxpayer, to fund his maccy-D's habit", despite the fact that all of them are so rare they constitute less than a single percent of the total benefits budget, an amount of money over 200-times less than we lose each year to tax evasion) to slow the rate at which public opinion is turning against the present government's despicable socio-economic policies thanks to the stories of suicides and people starving to death that have resulted from them, and as a handy side-benefit will allow the government to continue their long-running trend of pouring public money into private corporate coffers by forcing drug and alcohol addicts en masse onto programmes run by the private healthcare companies run by party donors.

I have a really hard time with things like this because I have the mental fortitude to keep myself from getting morbidly obese. I understand that there are people that have mental, physical, or genetic problems that make their bodies react oddly and they gain weight. Some that is ... not all.

I am a really lazy person but I am horrified by the sheer amount of people that are chunk a munks that eat fast food all the time and then wonder why they are fat. It is almost as if they think that it is not their fault. Some people have problems, most are even lazier than I am. If people are not going to do anything to help themselves then why should it become a burden for the rest of the country?

I would really love it if my insurance would pay for a gym membership. Until they do I guess I will just have to control my hunger and lift heavy stuff while I am at work. Smoking doesn't hurt the weight thing too, but I would not recommend that to anyone!

There are roughly 40 million working age adults in the UK and apparently 61.9% are reckoned to be obese, so roughly 24 million fat people. Of that number 1830 claim a benefit due to obesity. So when you say 'some that is ...not all' you're right and the government's empty propaganda about clamping down on fat people is nonsense because hardly anyone is claiming a benefit due to obesity.

 Gogsnik wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
families got a "stamp book" that took their family size

That already experimented with that many, many years ago and the result was that the local black marketeers would call round and exchange your book for cash, obviously at an amount less than what the book was worth but you then had the cash to spend on what you wanted/needed that the book stopped you buying. It's a stupid system, begging to be exploited by criminals (and has in the past) and like many of these 'reasonable' measures treats everyone like a life-long dole bludger, a Frank Gallagher or Rab C. Nesbitt type, the so called 'undeserving' poor and it has nothing to do with helping people, or justice, or fairness its a sop for Daily Mail types to feel smug at election time, as with Cameron's current nonsense about the obese.

Yeah, I was using the "stamp book" as a quick idea/ example. With modern technology, everything could be tied to a swipe card and tracked much more efficiently, and with "less" risk of being used illegally.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Yeah, I was using the "stamp book" as a quick idea/ example. With modern technology, everything could be tied to a swipe card and tracked much more efficiently, and with "less" risk of being used illegally.

That's what the grey market is for.

 Sigvatr wrote:
...and add taxes for junk food and such. Sadly, the only way for a lot of people to learn to stay away from bad food is not buying it because it's too expensive.

No thanks. I like lollies and chocolate. I also exercise and am not fat. Why should I have to pay extra for something because other people eat the wrong food?

If you want to go all Obama food police then how about doing what is done with alcohol? In most places it's illegal to serve a drunk alcohol or sell alcohol to someone who is drunk. Why not make it illegal for a fat person to buy junk food? Actually I'm opposed to this, I believe people should accept personal responsibility.

It's more important to find out why people not working are so fat, it's probably depression related so making it harder to get a nice sugar fix is counter-intuitive, it'll likely make them more depressed. Better to set up a fat camp where fatties have to attend an exercise session every morning at say 7am in order to continue receiving their full benefit. Jobs would be even better - perhaps heavier penalties for companies that send jobs to other countries.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OIIIIIIO wrote:


I am a really lazy person but I am horrified by the sheer amount of people that are chunk a munks that eat fast food all the time and then wonder why they are fat. It is almost as if they think that it is not their fault. Some people have problems, most are even lazier than I am. If people are not going to do anything to help themselves then why should it become a burden for the rest of the country?

Well, I was driving earlier and saw this really fat woman mowing her lawn. Middle of the day (it's summer here), little (bleach?) blonde ponytail, black singlet, shiny black skintight pants huge arms and shoulders the colour of sunubrn. At least she was exercising but I suspect most of the time is spent on the couch watching tv and stuffing maccas and kfc into her gob.

 OIIIIIIO wrote:
I have a really hard time with things like this because I have the mental fortitude to keep myself from getting morbidly obese. I understand that there are people that have mental, physical, or genetic problems that make their bodies react oddly and they gain weight. Some that is ... not all.

I am a really lazy person but I am horrified by the sheer amount of people that are chunk a munks that eat fast food all the time and then wonder why they are fat. It is almost as if they think that it is not their fault. Some people have problems, most are even lazier than I am. If people are not going to do anything to help themselves then why should it become a burden for the rest of the country?

I would really love it if my insurance would pay for a gym membership. Until they do I guess I will just have to control my hunger and lift heavy stuff while I am at work. Smoking doesn't hurt the weight thing too, but I would not recommend that to anyone!

And as Gogsnik points out; this is exactly the sentiment the government are hoping to evoke in people. Obese people claiming benefits are not a problem, they're a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the total social security budget, even if you just kicked them all off benefits it would save the government bugger all money. But by making "lazy fatties" the face of their latest round of cuts, helped along by despicable hit-pieces on individuals carried out by the right-wing press(sadly pretty much our entire print-media is right-wing, and even the centrist/nominally-left minority aspects of it are pro-establishment, sensationalist, and tend to only challenge the current economic orthodoxy in a handful of opinion pieces), they make it easier for the public to "other" people on benefits; fat, lazy, scroungers, frauds, it's all designed to prevent people empathising with the vast, vast, VAST majority(literally 99%+) of people who receive some form of social security who're simply in pain, ill, disabled, or having a run of bad luck and need our collective help to prevent them from becoming utterly destitute.

I generally agree that it's just a distraction story to get people to waste their time discussing a relative non-issue while there are bigger things going on.

Tax evasion for example. There's been a lot of tough talk over the years, but talk is cheap and there doesn't seem to be anything being done about it.

 Yodhrin wrote:
it's all designed to prevent people empathising with the vast, vast, VAST majority(literally 99%+) of people who receive some form of social security who're simply in pain, ill, disabled, or having a run of bad luck and need our collective help to prevent them from becoming utterly destitute.

I think it's more about cheap political point-scoring in the run-up to an election to be honest. They're all at it at the moment, from the SNP down to the Lib Dems.

Unfortunately, the nature of the democratic five year term political system promotes and rewards short-termism and blatant lies.

 Medium of Death wrote:


Tax evasion for example. There's been a lot of tough talk over the years, but talk is cheap and there doesn't seem to be anything being done about it.

Meh, generic strawman is generic.

The problem with striking against tax evasion is that you bite the hand that feeds you. And that the other side is better-informed and has the more effective means to counter-work any changes.

 Ketara wrote:
I am in favour of the general concept, but fear that many people will inevitably suffer unjustly due to it being conceived with fairness in mind, and physically written and implemented in such a way that hurts people. As with most Tory cuts to the welfare system, if the Atos debacle is anything to show.

It's not conceived to be fair. It's conceived as a way of blaming the poor for the state we're in. That's why Osborne sends out figures trying to make it look like we spend tens of billions on benefits, when reality the bulk of the figure was made up of pensions. From memory, incapacity benefit is £4 or £5billion a year - when we dropped £40 biillion in one year on Bank of Scotland alone!

Judge a society by how they treat the unfortunate. Blame the fatty, and you end up with Lord of the Flies.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:


Tax evasion for example. There's been a lot of tough talk over the years, but talk is cheap and there doesn't seem to be anything being done about it.

Meh, generic strawman is generic.

The problem with striking against tax evasion is that you bite the hand that feeds you. And that the other side is better-informed and has the more effective means to counter-work any changes.

It's not a straw man.

It could be addressed by lowering their taxes so that they at least pay something rather than avoid it.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Gogsnik wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
families got a "stamp book" that took their family size

That already experimented with that many, many years ago and the result was that the local black marketeers would call round and exchange your book for cash, obviously at an amount less than what the book was worth but you then had the cash to spend on what you wanted/needed that the book stopped you buying. It's a stupid system, begging to be exploited by criminals (and has in the past) and like many of these 'reasonable' measures treats everyone like a life-long dole bludger, a Frank Gallagher or Rab C. Nesbitt type, the so called 'undeserving' poor and it has nothing to do with helping people, or justice, or fairness its a sop for Daily Mail types to feel smug at election time, as with Cameron's current nonsense about the obese.

Yeah, I was using the "stamp book" as a quick idea/ example. With modern technology, everything could be tied to a swipe card and tracked much more efficiently, and with "less" risk of being used illegally.

No-one familiar with the lamentable history of massive failure of UK government IT programmes would suggest a technology solution.

 Medium of Death wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:


Tax evasion for example. There's been a lot of tough talk over the years, but talk is cheap and there doesn't seem to be anything being done about it.

Meh, generic strawman is generic.

The problem with striking against tax evasion is that you bite the hand that feeds you. And that the other side is better-informed and has the more effective means to counter-work any changes.

It's not a straw man.

It could be addressed by lowering their taxes so that they at least pay something rather than avoid it.

It's used to derail the discussion away from the topic / problem at hand as in trying to make the point that the OT isn't a problem because taxes are a bigger problem.

The problem with taxes, often, isn't the height. It's about how it's used. We pay a lot of taxes. A LOT. And without...financial advice, we'd be paying more, significantally more. We aren't opposed to paying taxes as they can fulfill a great service - supporting schools, kitchens for the poor etc. are worthwhile things to have and support. The problem is that we get robbed of our money and it then...disappears. Sucked into a black hole. Make taxes transparent. Let us directly support issues with our money.

Meh, different topic.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:


Tax evasion for example. There's been a lot of tough talk over the years, but talk is cheap and there doesn't seem to be anything being done about it.

Meh, generic strawman is generic.

The problem with striking against tax evasion is that you bite the hand that feeds you. And that the other side is better-informed and has the more effective means to counter-work any changes.

It's not a straw man.

It could be addressed by lowering their taxes so that they at least pay something rather than avoid it.

It's used to derail the discussion away from the topic / problem at hand as in trying to make the point that the OT isn't a problem because taxes are a bigger problem.

Which isn't a strawman, it's deflecting the issue.

If this issue is being used as a way to save money I think all talk about other measures the Government could pursue is relevant to the discussion.

 Medium of Death wrote:
If this issue is being used as a way to save money I think all talk about other measures the Government could pursue is relevant to the discussion.

It's not. The issue at hand is about obese people being forced to choose between either doing something against their obesity or rejecting welfare (or parts of it). That's the OT. Saving money definitely is a part of it, but this would also mean that we should start to talk about using a different kind of pavement to save money, or hiring cheaper workers from abroad etc....and all of those points miss the OT. Saying "But B means saving more money than A!" in order to prove that A therefore shouldn't be discussed is foolish.

We are discussing it. I agreed on the first page that I think it's time. I'm agreeing with others that it is a bit of a convenient time to be bringing it up.

Then have a topic on it. If you're not going to debate the thread's topic, then you might be better off discussing the topic you want to discuss in a thread dedicated to it.

The suggested implementation of such a law certainly is planned to satisfy voters as it's an easily understandable cause that affects a lot of people. And whether the reasons for bringing it up now are morally alright or not is up to debate; the actual issue, however, is a good one and while the idea certainly needs a few tweaks, it would be a worthwhile consideration.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
If this issue is being used as a way to save money I think all talk about other measures the Government could pursue is relevant to the discussion.

It's not. The issue at hand is about obese people being forced to choose between either doing something against their obesity or rejecting welfare (or parts of it). That's the OT. Saving money definitely is a part of it, but this would also mean that we should start to talk about using a different kind of pavement to save money, or hiring cheaper workers from abroad etc....and all of those points miss the OT. Saying "But B means saving more money than A!" in order to prove that A therefore shouldn't be discussed is foolish.

Total rubbish. We're discussing a political initiative, it's entirely appropriate to consider the motivations behind it, the relative value of it compared to other possible policies, and whether it's even necessary at all given the realities of the UK's present social security system.

I don't believe for a moment that the point of this initiative is actually to save money, but that is the purpose which is being claimed by its instigators, so it's entirely reasonable to point out that even if we accept benefit fraud/overpayment is a problem in general(it's not) and that obese people claiming benefits is a problem specifically(it's not), using government time and resources(which themselves cost money) to address the latter (not actually a)problem when it would account for a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the total budget(a handful of million at the absolute most) is grotesque when tax evasion/avoidance costs the Treasury 32 billion pounds a year and the government devotes 30 times as many resources to pursuing benefit fraud as it does tax evaders.

 Sigvatr wrote:
100% support and wholeheartedly agree. Being obese is, in the vast majority of all cases, a choice and is guaranteed to cause severe health problems in the long term.

Welcome to the US Republican Party and presidential candidate Scott Walker's position. Does it burn?

 Frazzled wrote:


Welcome to the US Republican Party and presidential candidate Scott Walker's position. Does it burn?

Being a conservative, I'm as Republican as possible

 carlos13th wrote:
How much money are these people on benefits earning? How much more of their budget would they need to spend in order to eat healthier.

You pay 28 bucks for the gym which is what £20 some people only get £50 a week in benefits to feed and clothe themselves, pay the bills etc. So if you can find a for that price (which is rare) and it's close enough you don't have to pay to get their via public transport or driving that's 10% of your merge monthly budget gone. Also factor in that if the person is looking after children for example they may struggle to find the time especially if they are a single parent.

Exercising is free, you don't need to go to a gym to stay fit. Walking, jogging, running, skipping etc is free, second hand bicycle not a lot, getting a friend or family member to babysit while you exercise if you're a single parent doesn't take a lot of organising.
All I'm seeing is excuses here for not exercising. The problem is really that many on the dole or similar have no mental discipline. Instead of drinking and smoking all day they could exercise. There was even some guy who claimed that he was too fit to go and work, he spends all his time on the dole working out so having to go to work means his exercise regime would be affected.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2928097/Kamran-Kam-claims-benefits-9-5-jobs-interfere-fitness-regime.html

getting a friend or family member to babysit while you exercise if you're a single parent doesn't take a lot of organising.

Depending on individual circumstances, things like that can and do take a significant amount of organising for a lot of people. You'd be surprised at how often single parents get little or no support in raising their children from both friends and family, and any ex-partners involved tend to shy away from any sort of responsibility whatsoever. The only reliable way for some people to get their child/children looked after for an amount of time is to hire a babysitter, or drop them off at a child-minder, both of which can bring unwelcome and ultimately avoidable costs.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
AlmightyWalrus: Essentially, yes. Drinking to excess is extremely irresponsible. It's a good idea to discourage it.

BINGO!

>> Blame the victim

If you get drunk and then mugged, how on earth is that to blame on the mugged dude? Are you claiming that if he wasn't drunk, he'd be able to kung fu his way out?

Sometimes we just need to acknowledge that ideas, unlike questions, are sometimes in fact incredibly stupid. This is one of those times.

As for the OP, it's interesting that people view this proposition so favorably considering the way that similar propositions in US healthcare are often viewed.

Computron wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
How much money are these people on benefits earning? How much more of their budget would they need to spend in order to eat healthier.

You pay 28 bucks for the gym which is what £20 some people only get £50 a week in benefits to feed and clothe themselves, pay the bills etc. So if you can find a for that price (which is rare) and it's close enough you don't have to pay to get their via public transport or driving that's 10% of your merge monthly budget gone. Also factor in that if the person is looking after children for example they may struggle to find the time especially if they are a single parent.

Exercising is free, you don't need to go to a gym to stay fit. Walking, jogging, running, skipping etc is free, second hand bicycle not a lot, getting a friend or family member to babysit while you exercise if you're a single parent doesn't take a lot of organising.
All I'm seeing is excuses here for not exercising. The problem is really that many on the dole or similar have no mental discipline. Instead of drinking and smoking all day they could exercise. There was even some guy who claimed that he was too fit to go and work, he spends all his time on the dole working out so having to go to work means his exercise regime would be affected.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2928097/Kamran-Kam-claims-benefits-9-5-jobs-interfere-fitness-regime.html

That's 10 points docked right away for linking the Daily Heil to support an argument. Another ten points for using a single incident(even if it is accurate and not sensationalised drivel like every other Daily Fail article relating to social security) as justification for a massive sweeping statement. A sweeping statement that's a load of old balls, to boot; half of non-pension benefits in the UK go to people who are in work, and more than 75% of Jobseekers Allowance claimants find a job within six months - the rate of JSA claimants who've been out of work for three years or more is less than 3%(and a large portion of that percentage will be disabled and sick people who have been inappropriately kicked off Employment and Support Allowance because of the present government's grotesque assessment and sanctions regime). The "feckless dole bum" is a myth.

We're not talking about folk who eat one two many pies and would rather take a bus/car than walk anywhere here, this policy is specifically aimed at people who are claiming disability because they are obese. Not tubby, not "plus-size", clinically obese. It doesn't matter if someone becomes that overweight because of any number of medical issues, or because they ate McDonalds every day for a decade, "walking, jogging, running, skipping etc" either isn't going to help or will make their situation worse - when someone is seriously overweight they need access to proper facilities to engage in appropriate types of intensive exercise, ideally with expert advice/supervision, or they're just going to end up in hospital needing expensive operations to fix their torn muscles and blown-out joints.

A Lot of unemployed in Britain are under weight, most suffer from depression related illness.
Some have turned to alcohol or drugs,
Suicides are up.
Suicide in men 'highest since 2001'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31533551

The proportion of men taking their own lives in the UK has reached its highest level for more than a decade, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics data shows 19 deaths by suicide for every 100,000 men in 2013.

Overall there were 6,233 suicides in men and women over the age of 15 in 2013 - 4% higher than the previous year.

The legacy of the recession is one explanation for the rise.

Overall suicide rates had been falling consistently from 15.6 deaths per 100,000 in 1981 to 10.6 per 100,000 in 2007.

"Since 2007, the female rate stayed relatively constant while the male rate increased significantly," the ONS report states.

In 2013, 78% of suicides were in men.

The most vulnerable age group were those aged between 45 and 59, however, the rates have been increasing in all age groups except in the under thirties.

The report added that research suggested that "the recent recession in the UK could be an influencing factor in the increase in suicides" and that "areas with greater rises in unemployment had also experienced higher rises in male suicides".

'Shocking'
Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, commented: "It is really shocking that men who are or could be in their prime of life should feel driven to such a state of hopelessness and despair for the future that they are taking their own lives.

"SANE's own research shows that many suicides could be prevented, if people were able to talk more openly about their feelings and felt able to seek therapy or other help.

"Our concern is the number of suicides which are preventable and the fact that when people with mental illness hit crisis point, there are no available beds or units and they are sent home from A&E and left to suffer in silence."

Joe Ferns, from the Samaritans, said: "The news is sadly not surprising to us given the context of a challenging economic environment and the social impact that brings.

"We need to see a greater focus at local and regional levels on the co-ordination and prioritisation of suicide prevention activity especially in areas with high socio-economic deprivation.

So when papers say unemployed are fat lazy work shy ETC. they're pushing an agenda.

Loki.... I do have a question, and I hope that you can at least point me in the right direction:

Do you think that the rise in men committing suicide has some link to soldiers/servicemen in Her Majesty's Military Forces?

I know that, in the US, there is a MAJOR correlation between Vets, homelessness, unemployment and suicide, but I am just curious if it is similar over there in the UK.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Loki.... I do have a question, and I hope that you can at least point me in the right direction:

Do you think that the rise in men committing suicide has some link to soldiers/servicemen in Her Majesty's Military Forces?

I know that, in the US, there is a MAJOR correlation between Vets, homelessness, unemployment and suicide, but I am just curious if it is similar over there in the UK.

Possibly, but mostly thru depression related to loss of job/family/status in life/debt.
Some could be ex military, depressed because of cut backs or post operational issues. All the above in orange could easily apply to ex service men.