Nation’s outlook is not so healthy
LIKE a chemist who has all the solutions, non-dom culture Richy took time off last week from his obsession with Raynergate and Rwanda culture to demonise those receiving benefits because they are too ill or disabled to work.
According to Richy, we are living in a “sick note” culture and that’s a problem for the economy.
He forgot to say: the country is getting sicker and poorer each year, with more than 2.8 million people off work due to long-term sickness. According to most European health indices, the UK comes in around number 10.
It also slipped his mind that the UK’S rate of sick pay is among the lowest in Europe, and that UK workers take fewer sick days than many other countries. In Wales, it is the high levels of poverty that drive its poor health.
It’s a classic case of “if at first you don’t succeed, redefine success” and a sign of desperation that looks to the sick and disabled as scapegoats for the broken health and social care service and stagnant economy.
It’s the spreadsheet culture taking precedence over the welfare of ordinary people where the cost to the taxpayer is regarded as more important than the cost to people’s health and wellbeing.
Suitable work, as well as providing a living, can give people pride and selfsatisfaction, a sense of identity and can help the community.
Yet work for its own sake, as a means of accumulating personal wealth, is an outmoded mantra which originated in what sociologist Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic. It viewed work as intrinsically virtuous and wealth as sign of divine pleasure and gave rise to the spirit of capitalism with its relentless pursuit of profit and personal gain.
The problem is it tends to come with hair shirts and selfflagellation and resonates in governments which want to reduce benefits for those whose health and circumstances stop them joining in the rat race.
As soon as you attach moral value to economic success, you enter the “working means hurting” culture which usually ends up in the culture of moral bankruptcy.