I’ve always avoided comparisons between the current Tory-led government and the Nazis, lest it seem hysterical. But they appear to be trying really, really hard to make the comparison perfectly mundane.
This excellent article by Mike Sivier, and the one it links to by Johnny Void, show the government’s thinking: let’s put the disabled and unemployed into ‘residential workfare’, or a work camp as the rest of us would call it. Iain (Duncan) Smith actually once said ‘work makes you free’, a direct translation of ‘Arbeit macht Frei’. It gets more and more obvious that wasn’t a slip of the tongue.
And that’s why it’s so essential that the Tories get rid of the ECHR’s jurisdiction over this country. That’s not just a reaction to a (frankly correct) run of judgements, whatever that odious May person says; it’s an essential part of their long-term vision, because it threatens to pull everything else they want to do down around their ears.
Indeed!
My mother survived Nazi Germany. Not all her relatives did.
She told me how it starts – and history shows that long before the disabled were experimented on or sent to camps, they were starved; their subsistence money was reduced and there were posters everywhere showing beefy aryan types carrying wizened little people complete with a heading explaining how many reichsmarks it was costing to “carry” these not-normal (ie. non-aryan) beings.
All of this applied to the gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, etc. too, in time.
The public were expected to snoop on their neighbours; unemployed people had to do hard labour to earn their subsistence, and if a person seemed to have more money than they should, people were encouraged to report them to the authorities.
We have a Secretary of State who has endorsed, in public, the Sun’s shop-a-scrounger helpline. He knows that his own department follows up every single call to the official fraud line – 99.7% of all calls are mistaken or malicious.
We have workfare already for the unemployed – work for subsistence level benefits or no support; for the sick, this workfare is both mandatory and indefinite even though the people sent to it have been judged incapable of work by the draconian standards of DWP/Atos.
Residential training for people who are newly blind, for example, used to be a wonderful thing – it can help people to make the adjustments they need to live a good life with a new and life-changing disability.
The point about this – and the report recommends it, see johnnyvoid – is that such training might not only be extended to the non-disabled but it will be opened up to the market.
Lots of money to be made corralling people in work “training” camps.
Why don’t they just cull us all and be done with it?
By the way, Steve – have you seen the latest in the Independent on the Lister Surgicentre in Stevenage?
It’s to be closed and the local hospital will take over – and we have paid in excess of £54 Million to “buy” it back from Carillion.
I’ve heard but haven’t read the details, will be taking a close look once I finish work!
It really is abysmal how badly this govt is prepared to treat vulnerable people. Sickening.
… and now it seems that disabled people in south Wales are to lose the support of their GPs in their attempts to appeal ATOS ‘fit for work’ decisions …
http://welfarenewsservice.com/dont-help-claimants-with-benefit-appeals-gps-told/#.Uf6OkWbYFsp
Some hope?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-hope-440000-disabled-2336615