albion:
In the case of the guy across the road, his daughter goes to a centre 5 days a week, gets picked up by a council paid taxi around 08.00 and returned by a council paid taxi. If she was at home more then I’d be fine, both parents could stay at home for all I care on other people’s taxes. An d why not move yourself to take your daughter there and back.
As said, social security isn’t conditional on living the life of a saint, or total devotion to care. It is there to ensure basic decency for disabled people who cannot look after themselves.
The daughter will receive benefits as a disabled person at the applicable rates. If she has mobility problems, then she has the option of receiving the higher rate mobility component (57.50 per week) in the form of a Motability car (instead of in cash). Fuel is not provided, nor is a driver. It is up to the disabled person how the car they pay for is used - whether it is used to transport them in general, whether it is just to make it easier for Dad to carry the shopping home once a week, or whether they use it at all.
I’m aware of council taxi schemes but I’m not sure exactly of the criteria for entitlement. For schoolchildren, it seems to be the distance of the destination (typically where a special school is attended). For disabled adults attending a council-provided day centre, the fact of their disability being so serious might mean that a taxi is offered as a matter of course, because they are not expected to be able to travel any distance without constant supervision.
I’m not aware of councils being willing to commute the taxi fare into a petrol payment for Motability users, and it is probably taken for granted that those who need to attend a day centre cannot drive themselves - so it is probably a case of use the taxi or make your own arrangements entirely at your own expense. It cannot be taken for granted that all those attending have a Motability car or an unpaid carer, or that the unpaid carer is willing and able to drive it. There’d be a bigger administrative burden if taxis were provided somehow conditionally or only as a backup. That is again aside from the principle of giving the disabled person a degree of independence away from parents.
Moving on to the carer, if they are receiving carer’s allowance, they are not obligated (particularly in the case of a disabled adult) to provide as much care as humanly possible. They aren’t at the disabled person’s beck and call. They aren’t obligated to provide any particular type of care at any particular time. They aren’t necessarily obliged to provide all the care the disabled person needs. They only have to show that they are doing a minimum quantity of care, which might mean only basic household duties, keeping the cupboards full, or, where relevant, supervision and watching-over.
The purpose of carer’s allowance is not to provide a domestic servant to a disabled person, or a domestic servant to the state. It is to enable (as well as encourage) another person (typically family members) to provide basic care - broadly in the manner that the disabled person and their carer see fit.
One would like to think family carers would have a degree of goodwill towards the disabled person and go beyond the bare minimum if they can, but for a family carer it is a hard, often lifelong responsibility, which disrupts the enjoyment of normal private life and freedoms - one does not go home from the care at the end of the day, nor have any separate living or psychological space to recover mental resources.
Now with all that said, I cannot obviously see what problem your example discloses. Unless the disabled daughter is obviously starving, unkempt, or somehow maltreated in a cruel family, or so mildly disabled as to make it questionable whether she even has a disability requiring care, then I would just take it as granted that the family are providing the care which they are required to as a condition of their benefit, and are probably providing the most care they can be expected to mentally cope with and maintain. The alternative would be for the state to take over care completely and pay strangers a proper wage for providing it - or to force those who cannot cope on their own to make do without.
Now we’ve discussed some of the underlying assumptions of social security, I wonder whether you still feel there is any problem with the family concerned, and if so, which unwritten rule of social security you feel is being broken.
I know you’re general view was that the father was not doing enough for his daughter, or doing enough for the state, but as far as any question of his benefit is concerned I’m sure he will be doing more than enough, and the daughter is properly using the facilities which are available, not just in accordance with the rules but in accordance with the purpose and design of those facilities.
Employers don’t have the rights over reproduction and as I commented in an earlier post, I hate the fact that low wages exist because employers know it’ll be topped up, thereby subsidizing their business. Deliberately choosing to get pregnant to avoid work is just an alien idea to me. My take on it is to work hard and/or get more qualifications, not to get knocked up and repeat.
How hard, and how many qualifications? If there aren’t enough jobs to go around, and those that exist are already paying too small a pittance (even before you have to follow your thinking and spend 5 years getting a PhD to stand a chance of working in a warehouse), then how does upskilling (if we even suspend disbelief for a moment and presume that the average person does not have the skills to do “unskilled” work) create more jobs to go around?
This old canard of the Blair years was based on the idea that more education creates the potential for businesses (and therefore more jobs overall) that wouldn’t exist in a low-skill society, but what we’ve ended up with (at great educational cost) is graduates working in the same old warehouses for the same old pay. Higher skilled workers are normally suited to more highly-technical roles, but wages are so low that automation and technological investment no longer makes any economic sense. Why pay 10 engineers to design and maintain the machine tools, when you can pay 10 fresh graduates a pittance to do the same work by hand?
I didn’t say that I don’t want to parents to claim dole. As I said, sometimes jobs aren’t there and so there should be support, that is what society is about - protecting people from poverty. What it isn’t about is a conscious decision to opt out of being a contributing member of society when you are able to contribute. That to me is a central point of socialism, that you contribute for those who have no choice, rather than those who just can’t be bothered.
Aside from the point that mothers do contribute to society by child-rearing, are the people you have in mind actually being given the chance to work under decent, respectful conditions? I say decent and respectful, because even if there is possibly some sort of work for them in the market, people still shouldn’t have to be demeaned and disrespected at work in order to make their contribution to society.
The problem with our society is that people aren’t given jobs to contribute to society. They’re given jobs to contribute to private profits. The business your workless claimant would work for may pay next to no tax anyway, and all they would be doing is down-competing wages (and so reducing what other workers are able to pay in tax too!). Most mothers you have in mind are not opting out of society, they’re opting out of either ■■■■ jobs which will never support their children anyway, or they are opting out of a childless life on JSA. People are not being given a chance in the market of actually being self-sufficient, because the market is not there to give choice, it is there to rob choice from the majority (and it especially robs the choice to be socially responsible) because it robs the money people need to make choices.
Even the boss ultimately has his choices robbed, because if he pays sufficient socially-responsible wages, the market will rob his profits and give them to the boss who does not!
, the rich must pay and pay more is the grand socialist way, more, more i say, to level the playing field for the downtrodden… 