I ONLY found out this week people round here used to get taken to court and fined if they didn't turn up for work.

I'd still be in the dark were it not for an elderly lady reminiscing about the time she was sued by her employers at the mill after missing the bus.

Now the fact I've only just learnt of this means I'm either ignorant, or it's just an example of how much things have changed in the past 60 years (it was 1946 when she was taken to court). Actually, it's probably a bit of both.

Just think of all those Monday morning hangovers and sneaky long weekends we have today -- you'd have ended up in front of the beak for that not so long ago!

Yep, the world of work has changed an awful lot. And it's set to change again, following the publication of a government green paper pledging to get one million sick and disabled folk back to work.

A review will see Incapacity Benefit changed to Employment and Support Allowance, while people on Incapacity will be -- what's the word? -- "encouraged" back to work.

If not, they could have their benefits cut.

Now at this point, are anyone else's alarm bells ringing? Because plenty of Labour backbenchers are worried.

What exactly does "encouraged" mean anyway? Will it be the sort of encouragement a football manager gives to a star striker? Or the sort of encouragement the guards give to the men playing Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter?

Soon, benefits offices across the land could be ringing with that recognisable cry of social security staff: "Mao! Mao! Didi mao!"

I can confidently predict when the changes are brought in, the pages of this newspaper will be carrying regular hard luck stories about deaf-blind paraplegics with brittle-bone disease having their only form of income stopped because they couldn't take that job as a trapeze artist.

I'm sure the government means well -- after all, it recognises that 80 per cent of those on incapacity say they are desperate to work again.

It also recognises they need a great deal of help to get those jobs. To be fair, its pilot scheme to get disabled people back to work -- giving them plenty of support along the way -- has been an early success.

But once we start means testing people on just "how disabled" they are and weighing up what sort of jobs they can and can't do -- well, that way danger lies.

That's because the buck will stop with benefits staff and their dodgy computers.

I'm sort of speaking from experience here. I spent a bit of time on the dole and I couldn't begin to count the number of times an idiot penpusher messed up my claim, "lost" information or ruined my chances of getting a job.

In fact, on the first day of unemployment, I went for a job only to be told: "You can't go for that, you haven't been unemployed long enough. That job's only open to long-term unemployed."

They were so keen to get long-term unemployed back to work, us short-term scum didn't matter. So they kept me on benefits. Which didn't always arrive.

Helping people back to work sounds great but it fails to take into account the Great British penchant for bureaucrats messing things up.