The recent announcement by David Cameron to cut incapacity benefit to those deemed "fit enough to work" has been met with an understandably mixed reaction from the British public.
Cameron suggested bringing in a new test to determine whether individuals should be placed on job seekers allowance instead of incapacity benefit which would mean reducing their benefits by £25 a week.
There are 2.6 million incapacity benefit claimers in the UK and the Conservatives believes one in five are actually fit enough to work. That's about 400,000 people.
For one of the millions rightfully claiming benefits this will mean more stress as they have to go for more check ups and tests to determine whether they are actually unfit to work.
Some individuals will undoubtedly believe that if they are told they are fit enough to work, the jobs they are qualified to do just simply aren't there.
Anthony Phillips from Cambridge who stopped working a year ago from a heart condition said: "They should think about cutting their own wage packets before picking on the already poor." (BBC News)
Cases in the UK must be handled more personally and should take into account the whole picture of the claimant.
The Conservatives need to realise that their proposed system of ticking boxes and fulfilling criteria will lead to many people in the UK feeling like scroungers.
Too sick to work?
Letterman blackmail case
Last week, the U.S. chat show host David Letterman shockingly informed his viewers of his affairs with women who work on his late night show.
He made the revelation during a filming of his late show because he said he was being blackmailed by a former colleague attempting to extort $2 million from him.
As the UK media history has shown us, Letterman had several options available to him once he knew that someone was in a position to expose his wrong doings.
As with the 'royal' blackmail case last year, Letterman could have applied for an injunction preventing the newspapers from reporting his name. Even though once the case went to court anyone with access to the Internet and even the remotest knowledge of how to operate a search engine could have found out the name of the 'celebrity' embroiled in the scandal.
More recently this inadequacy of media law was once again exposed in the UK as the papers were banned from revealing the identity of a TV journalist who was involved in an extra-marital affair which resulted in a child.
In order to make the area of media law relating to the press banning publication of names more airtight the Internet needs to closely regulated. This is a totally separate issue and many feel this would never be entirely possible because of the scale of in the World Wide Web.
More importantly the Letterman case demonstrates that some celebrities are willing to stand up tall and admit they made mistakes, even if it takes a blackmail case for them to finally come clean.
Maybe its time some UK celebrities started to face the music as well.
