The big, grey, depressed elephant in the room

Setting to one side for a moment the stone cold fact that the Telegraph has turned into one massive trolling machine, what goes unspoken in the following article is worth saying:

It’s not difficult to know where to begin with this one…

It’s the same trick as with the ‘bedroom tax’: penalise people on society’s bottom rung for not availing themselves of something that is not available.

People can’t downsize their housing-benefit funded rental properties, because there are nowhere near enough 1 & 2 bedroom properties for the people who are required by the state to move into them. Accordingly, thousands find themselves perversely penalised for failing to do the impossible.

Now people who fail to undertake treatment for mental health problems face being penalised for not availing themselves of non-existent mental health services within the NHS.

The Tories are clearly their own worst enemy. Sure, they have a few good ideas (for a bunch of toffee-nosed, authoritarian bastards), particularly regarding the actual way economics works, but really? Putting the most vulnerable people in a no win situation so they can say they’re being tough on welfare dependency?

Fucking idiots. Evil, stupid, spiteful idiots.

More curiously still, it is a Lib Dem who speaks some sense.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health minister, said mandating mental health treatment for benefit claimants would not work and was "not a sensible idea".

"The idea that you frogmarch someone into therapy with the threat of a loss of benefits simply won’t work," he said. "It is not a question of whether tough love is a good concept.

"You actually need someone to go into therapy willingly."

And that is a completely valid point. It would be the key point were it not for the fact that mental health services within the NHS are completely inadequate.

AJ

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