I know that in Wales the higher disability related unemployment figures are partly due to the decline in industry - mining, steel etc. Many miners left with genuine long term health problems, and also mental health problems/depression resulting from the loss of the only type of work they were skilled for, economic decline and increased poverty in mining communities, loss of community identity and so on.

Excellent and very comprehensive diary, afew. I'll try to read through it in more detail once I get my next essay out of the way!

Quite a few of the people who did take it up were long term unemployed, in their late twenties/early thirties, who were on the point of becoming institutionalised into unemployment/ on sink estates in run down mining villages/steel towns. Now they would, if their life is still running the same way be twenty years older and unemployable, so there's no personal reason for them to come off the sick for another 15 years.

Another factor I seem to remember was at this time there was a thing in the news saying that benefit officers were to get cash bonuses to reduce the number of people on the books, and there was an undercurrent among the consumers that it wasn't considered to be that important how the numbers were reduced.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.