Happy New Year readers – are you feeling happy? I thought not, but look on the bright side: the ‘jolly’ season is over, and we can all go back to not having to pretend to be happy!
This morning I was awakened by the joyful sound of credit card bills falling through the letter box, and one of them was my Nursing and Midwifery Council subscription renewal, which you’ll be pleased to know comes yearly now!
Why am I so tickety-boo at this dark and gloomy time of year, I hear you ask? Well, I’ve had a positive revelation, and my life will never be the same again. Within the month of November, I came upon an article which has totally transformed my view of work and, indeed, the future.
This article was in the good old Daily Mail (19 November 2007) and was an informative little piece about the cost to the taxpayers of those on incapacity benefit and the reasons that are given for doing naff all and actually getting paid for it. Well, that concept alone is laughable, and I wish I’d cottoned on to it years ago, especially when you see the excuses given.
But more seriously, what incapacity benefit doctor actually considered these conditions serious enough to warrant signing someone off to a life of Riley with fortnightly ‘handouts’ from the State? Did you know that 200 men are claiming benefit for swollen testicles, and another 100 for cysts on them? Well have ’em off, I say, and let’s save a few bob.
Meanwhile, 800 women are claiming for excessive and frequent periods – whatever happened to the D&C (dilation and curettage?) and 10 are claiming for scant or absent periods – since when did that stop anyone working? I’d have thought they’d be grateful and full of vim and vigour, not ‘suffering’. Typical women, no pleasing them. And £100,000 is being spent on people with nail disorders – I expect that’s funding these new ‘falsies’ with the diamonds on!
I could go on, but I’ll be late for my appointment with the doc as I’d like to get one of these Med 3s so that I can have a few months off. My wife is suffering from Dyspareunia (look it up) which causes sleep disorders for both of us – we don’t. On top of that, myself, along with many other incapacity benefit claimants have a chronic bone disorder which will stop us all working for the foreseeable future – it’s called ‘bone idle’.
