The Tories have been censured by the UN for their vile abuse of disabled people and benefit claimants – not a fact that you will see much mentioned in the mainstream media, apart from small articles tucked away in website corners.
Even such news fails to bring home the full horror of the regime of routine abuse that the government has constructed against vulnerable people. It speaks eloquently of the international disgrace that the Conservatives have brought on this country, but less of the awful reality of that everyday abuse.
For that, we need human stories. This is one.
The husband of a severely disabled woman received a letter from the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions). Unsurprisingly, as he’s her primary and busy caregiver, by the morning of the appointment he’d forgotten about it. He told their story on Facebook:
For missing that appointment, the DWP removed Mrs Rodger’s benefits – and stuck by that decision even after her husband explained. It was his ‘fault’, not hers – but the DWP is punishing both of them even though she clearly has not the remotest possibility of finding work.
A DWP insider told the SKWAWKBOX:
Most of us are sick to death of seeing people that can’t wipe their own backside being denied a bit of dignity, or being told their Parkinson’s is suddenly curable, or being sent nasty letters while lying in a coma. Deaths because people haven’t got enough to eat or heat their homes, soldiers dying with nothing in their stomach in a grotty bedsit or veterans on the street suffering from PTSD with nothing available to them but platitudes from swivel-eyed Tory sub-mediocrities. The man being sanctioned for missing a job centre appointment while his wife had to deliver her stillborn baby and told by Jobcentre Plus, “You should’ve rung us”.
If hell exists, the people responsible for this have a special place reserved for them. It’s genuinely evil.
It pisses me off when people tar DWP employees with the same brush, many of us disagree with these decisions and with the Tories, which is why so many people are now leaving, some of whom have worked in the Department since the old Social Security days.
So many people are leaving offices where it has been rolled out. Universal Credit is a failed Tory project that has so far cost £16bn, yet it won’t be fully rolled out until at least 2023 costing billions more.
In 2011, Ian Duncan Smith said 7 million people will be claiming Universal Credit by 2017; it went live in 2013 and four years later just 540,000 people are claiming it, and it has caused a surge in food bank referrals, debt, rent arrears and evictions wherever it has been rolled out. It’s a humanitarian disaster, but a deliberately-induced one.
Vincent and Julie Rodger are just two of many thousands of victims of a regime that is only going to get worse as the government presses ahead with its Universal Credit project.
So cruel is the system that sanctioned claimants are deliberately not being told of help that is available to them, according to information circulated by The Pileus:
The government will happily keep our eyes anywhere but on its concerted assault on the vulnerable in our society. Please share this information to raise awareness and to make the victims of sanctions aware of the help that is available but not publicised.
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