Let's all live off benefits. It's our human right.

Cutting dole for those who fail to take up jobs 'goes against human rights'

Plans to cut the dole for people who refuse to look for work could be contrary to their human rights, MPs warned last night.

How unbelievable is that statement? These MP's are not talking about people who can't work, but people who refuse to work. If I refuse to work to earn a living, how can somebody else refusing to give me the money instead be against my human rights? It simply can't.

Ministers want to impose a condition that those who are able to look for or prepare for work should be required to do so as a condition of receiving benefit – and those who do not should face a financial sanction.

Sounds fair. They're not even saying that people have to find work, just that they have to look for it. To make an effort.

But the parliamentary Human Rights Joint Committee has decided that to do so could put the human rights of the ‘unemployable’ at risk.

Oh so now it's the unemployable, not the refuseniks. What makes a person unemployable?

1) Disability

2) Alcohol or drug addiction.

I have met many 'unemployable' alcoholics during my time in the pub trade. Do you know why they are unemployable? Because they spend all day every day down the pub. Why do they do that? Because the benefit system gives them enough money to be able to afford it.

Reducing their benefits or even stopping them would not infringe the rights of these people. If they want to spend every day getting pissed then no body else is obliged to pay for that. If they don't want to live like that then there is plenty of help available to get themselves cleaned up*. They just need to pay one visit to a doctor.

*(I know it isn't quite that black and white but the only incentive these people will really have to make the first step is have their free money taken away)

They also said that taking away jobseekers’ allowance from these people could plunge some families into destitution – something which would amount to ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’.

Terrible use of the language there. Inhuman or degrading treatment is something you do to a person, not something you don't do.
If a person refuses to work to support their family, not giving them taxpayers money is not degrading them. They are doing that to themselves. Wiring their balls to the mains until they agree to get a job would be.

The committee also criticised Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s plan to impose a welfare cap of £26,000 a year, to ensure that families on benefits do not receive more than the average worker.

They're really going for it aren't they. The benefit cap makes perfect sense. Some benefit claimants are on silly money. They keep having larger families, buying more crap and demanding bigger houses because they know we will keep paying for it all. Of course there should be a limit to what those out of work can claim off the taxpayer.

And they said taking sickness benefit away from people after an assessment could also have a ‘discriminatory impact’.

You're digging now. How can not giving sickness benefit to someone who isn't sick be discrimination?

It means the committee believes Mr Duncan Smith’s new provisions could potentially be challenged in the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.

That's fine. Tell those Strasbourg based ponces to shove their challenge where the sun don't shine and clear it back out with prunes.

Discussing the threat to cut the dole of the workshy, the report said: ‘We believe there is a risk that the conditionality and sanction provisions in the Bill might in some circumstances lead to destitution, such as would amount to inhuman or degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, if the individual concerned was genuinely incapable of work.’

They're reading this totally the wrong way around. Scrapping benefits for the workshy does not lead to destitution. Refusing to work leads to destitution.

The report also criticised the housing benefit cap, saying it was wrong for the government to set the level of the cap with reference to the average income of all households. Instead, the reference should be the average income of households with children.

Whats that? Average income plus £2.50 from Johnny's paper round? Fair enough. Seriously though, aren't households with children more likely to have one parent out of work or in part time work, making the average wages lower and bring the cap even further down. Again, fair enough.

‘The changes to the welfare system will protect those who need the most help, with more support, whilst encouraging others to take responsibility for their own lives and the lives of their families.’

Sounds good. And at the risk of sounding like one of those I hate, I bet it doesn't go far enough.