Starmer government’s plan to slash thousands and intensify punitive regime drives victims to despair among people already under awful pressure
Calls to suicide helplines have seen a ‘huge increase’ over Labour’s war on disabled and long-term sick people, according to a leading consultant psychologist who spoke to a ‘reliable source at the highest possible level’:
Starmer and his hatchet-woman, DWP Secretary Liz Kendall, plan to take thousands – around £5,000 a year – from disability and sickness benefit claimants, pushing around half a million people into poverty, while forcing those whom doctors have found to be unfit for work to continually spend whole working weeks searching for jobs and undergo assessments to jump through hoops to qualify for support.
The Tories’ war on disabled people created a hostile environment in which almost half of disability claimants had attempted suicide as long ago as 2014 after just four years of Tory government, yet Labour has not even bothered to conduct an impact assessment of the effect of its plans on its victims.
In fact, Kendall is fighting in court to try to keep secret the number of people who died as a result of the Tories’ abuse, which was condemned by UN experts as a gross breach of human rights amounting to a ‘human catastrophe’ – and Starmer’s regime is increasingly using ‘useless eater’ rhetoric of ‘unsustainable’ sickness and disability benefit levels even though numbers have not increased significantly in decades relative to population size.
Labour has also now been told by the UN to not only cease but reverse the war on vulnerable people yet is pressing ahead with its war on the vulnerable. Tory austerity killed more than 300,000 people and Labour is looking to outdo the blue team in social murder.
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This what you meant by better future, wee gobshite?
This is on YOU and the rest of the vermin who absolve themselves because they didn’t vote toerag.
When in reality, you did far worse, despite continual warnings.
The misfortune of every single one of those poor sods being visited upon you and those prepared to implement such misery, I sincerely hope is visited upon you a thousand fold.
And even that’s not enough.
Buy this you are doing this government deeds of allowing to give in to them they are but devils in redties who haven’t any humanity in them aktion t4 is rolling along with out much of a ado
Back in 2009, I had to endure New Labour’s Work Capability Assessment for a temporary but no less debilitating physical condition that kept me off work for almost a year. They gave me nil points, yet I was barely able to walk 30 yards or sit for more than 15 minutes without severe pain, I had incontinence and needed to squat in a shallow bath afterwards to help with the healing process – hardly something you could do in the workplace!!
Since this now meant being taken off Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and placed on Job-Seekers Allowance (JSA), with all the attendant demands of that while recovering, I applied for a Tribunal which at least kept the Job Centre at bay for a while. Going to Citizens Advice beforehand to see if they would represent my case, they looked at the paperwork and refused on the grounds my case wasn’t strong enough!
Now feeling certain it would all count for nothing, I sent what diagnostic paperwork I had on my condition to the Tribunal but decided not to attend rather than go through the physical pain of all that. To my complete surprise, they wrote and asked for more medical information!
Between the CA visit and the Tribunal date, I had gone to see a colorectal consultant about an alternative treatment to what had initially been offered, only to find out the original diagnosis had missed what the real problem was – what I’d been told after having a sigmoidoscopy was severe haemorrhoids was, instead, a severe anal fissure. That paperwork was now sent to the Tribunal – which eventually dealt with it fully in my favour and resulted in my getting the back-dated ESA payments lost in the meantime.
Having known all along that at least my condition was only temporary, I had no real fear or worry over these assessments and Tribunals. Moreover, by the time the second one had occurred, the problem had virtually resolved itself, and within weeks I was back in the workplace.
On the other hand, having gone through this wretched process — which no doubt the current regime will make even more unfair and unreasonable than I suspect it’s already become since then — I dread to think how these callous assessments, and the consequent hurdles to overcome afterwards, might affect a person’s health and well-being, especially those with longer-term conditions that such stresses might exacerbate.
What I meant to add but forgot was how the WCA required 15 points to continue to claim ESA, which the Tribunal obviously had no trouble ‘finding’, yet the Atos assessor could not even find one!
Proof positive that the whole thing was designed for people to fail it, regardless of the unnecessary cost of Tribunals. The CA were no bloody help, either.
Knowing my luck, if I ever needed to phone the samaritans, it’d be the day keef was manning the lines for a publicity stunt/ photo op. 😒
There was a time, not for long, that I thought not voting New New Labour was allowing Reform in. Now I’m unsure which is worse.
I am Disabled been since 2002 with massive spine damage and a laundry list of fun medical BS to add to my pleasure my life has become anyhow. Take away my benefits and you better invest in flack vests because as far as I am concerned you have signed our death warrants so I might as well enjoy a nice warm cell, food and clothing at our kings holiday camps rather that or a life begging on the streets until we expire in short order.
I cannot work I have to use morphine to just move and not sit then screaming,. Plus a large supply of nasty side effects laden drugs. Before i detail my disabilities if I did it would gross most people out so I will spare you. I will leave one last thought if I am no longer safe to drive how exactly can I work / operate machinery?
Maybe these spinless MP’s might want to think on take away everything from thousands you have just put a huge target on yourself. Might sharpen some brains cells and develop some spines that this is a sick and depraved action and almost guaranteed someone will snap and say sod it and enact my unserious flight of fantasy…
In the present post-modernist dystopia, such flights of fancy are considered to be more serious ‘crimes’ than the actions they are speculating on.
However, given the deliberately manufactured total absence of any other meaningful options beyond TINA that speculation will most certainly become reality sooner rather than later.