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Tag Archives: hate

Unwell person incited to commit suicide – on David Cameron’s Facebook page

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Employment and Support Allowance, Health, Politics

≈ 104 Comments

Tags

allowance, Atos Miracles, benefit, benefits, Conservative, David Cameron, Department, disability, DWP, employment, ESA, Facebook, George Osborne, hate, incite, Job Centre, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, politics, sanction, sick, social security, suicide, support, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare, work


Just when you think you’ve seen the lowest the Conservatives can go, something happens that is completely beyond the pale.

Yesterday a message was posted to David Cameron’s Facebook page from a person who said they were going to commit suicide because they had been wrongly sanctioned.

The response – from one of Cameron’s supporters – was as follows: “Well get on with it then.”

This serious disability hate remark has been allowed to remain ever since – on the Prime Minister’s own Facebook page, which we are led to understand is overseen by professionals who, let’s not forget, paid for people to visit it and press the ‘Like’ button in order to make him look popular, and who may reasonably be expected to moderate such offensive behaviour off the page before it causes any real harm.

You can read more details on the Atos Miracles Facebook page.

Part of the post that encouraged Cameron’s supporter to incite this person to suicide went as follows:

“I am in receipt of ESA. I am trying my best to get better. I want to get better as I fully believe I have a lot of offer. However I am being continually lied about because when I ask for help I find a lot wrong with the system. Mainly due to the unfair cuts imposed by your government to public sector services and … as a consequence I have not got any better in fact I have got worse. A lot worse. To the point I no longer want to live anymore.

“I have now been sanctioned for not getting better. I don’t mind anymore today I telephoned them and told them this… Because of how many people your government have murdered through the Sanctions regime and taking away their rights to financial aid the DWP have stopped counting how many people have died. Yet George Osborne keeps telling everyone how well the country is prospering. This is a lie… the benefits office informed me I had telephoned the wrong number to discuss my sanction. Perhaps you have too many telephone numbers he did inform me it was my choice to take my life.”

If you had seen this on Facebook, would you have told the author to “get on with it then”?

Or would you have sent a message of support and tried to get them the help they need?

The rational choice would be the latter.

If you had been overseeing that Facebook page, would you have allowed such a dangerous comment to remain or would you have removed it and reported the sender?

The very least that could have been done by the Tory overseers of Cameron’s page would have been to check up on the Job Centre advisor mentioned in the post, whose response was just as bad. “He did inform me it was my choice to take my life” – that person should have got in touch with the relevant authorities and rallied help, but no. It seems some people will do anything for a “positive benefit outcome”.

I’m told the person who wrote the message has been found and is safe and well – no thanks to the Job Centre, to the inhabitants and moderators of David Cameron’s Facebook page, or to Cameron himself.

He should be utterly ashamed.

But he probably doesn’t even know this has happened.

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Tom Davey – another example of the best Conservatism has to offer

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, People

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

affordable, Barnet, benefit, benefits, Conservative, councillor, disabled, Facebook, hate, homophobia, housing, London School of Economics, LSE, minorities, minority, murder, racism, sexism, social cleansing, Tom Davey, Tories, Tory, women


[Image: Political Scrapbook]

[Image: Political Scrapbook]

These creeps are coming out of the woodwork, it seems.

The latest member of the Conservative Party to reveal his true colours via the social media is Tom Davey. That’s DaVey, not DaLey the Olympic diver – although the world would be a happier place if this guy took a running jump.

Davey has been broadcasting his thoughts on Facebook, spreading messages of hatred towards minorities and women, along with dubious attempts at humour (according to Political Scrapbook) – for at least the past six years.

For example, take a look at this message:

“Benefit claiming scum beware. ps i don’t like paying taxes for you lazy bastards!”

or this one:

“Finding a job would be easier if [I] were a black female wheel chair bound amputee who is sexually attracted to other women.”

or this one:

“More excited than Harold Shipman in a nursing home.”

The messages were posted in 2008, when he was at the London School of Economics. One is led to question whether he was a member of that organisation’s Tory clubs because this man is now a Conservative councillor in Barnet.

The following year he delivered this:

“Smacking [my] bitch up… that’ll teach her for ironing loudly whilst the football is on!”

He later justified this by saying he does not like football and his wife doesn’t do the ironing.

Has he mellowed in the years since? Evidence suggests otherwise.

Last week, as Barnet Council’s lead member for housing, he admitted that he doesn’t care about the lack of affordable housing pushing poor people out; he wants rich people to take their place.

In a debate that was filmed by a member of the public, he said: “If there is such a problem with Barnet, if Barent is such a terrible place to ive and if it is so unaffordable, why are people flocking to Barnet and why are house prices going up? It’s because people want to live here.”

Challenged by an opposition councillor who said the only people coming were those who could afford it, he blurted: “And they’re the people we want!”

See for yourself:

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How do you fight disability hate crime if the police are the perpetrators?

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Crime, Disability, Justice, People, Police, UK

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

autism, Bedfordshire, commissioner, crime, disability, disabled, Faruk Ali, hate, Independent Police Complaints Commission, investigation, IPCC, learning difficulties, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, police, suspend, Vox Political, whitewash


police

An attack on a disabled man is being investigated by the local police and crime commissioner and the Independent Police Complaints Commission – because the victim said it was committed by on-duty police officers.

Bedfordshire’s police commissioner has said the alleged attack may have been a disability hate crime, but the force has stirred up anger by refusing to suspend the two constables while the investigation takes place.

Faruk Ali, who has autism and learning difficulties, allegedly suffered the assault as he stood in his slippers, next to the dustbins outside his family home.

He says – in a story confirmed by neighbours – that he was grabbed by one policeman, pushed to the floor, and thrown against some wheelie-bins before being chased screaming into the house. There, family members said the assault continued and one of the officers punched the victim.

The two accused policemen did not immediately report the incident to their superiors, and it is understood they have claimed they thought Faruk Ali was committing a robbery (in his slippers, remember).

The Disability News Service has the full story.

All I can say is the people of Luton, where the incident took place, had better hope they have a good commissioner; experience suggests the IPCC will be as much use as a bucket of whitewash.

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BBC confirms ‘Tory mouthpiece’ accusation with updated lies about ESA

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Disability, Employment and Support Allowance, People, Politics, UK

≈ 55 Comments

Tags

abuse, allowance, andrew dilnot, Atos, BBC, benefit, Black Triangle, Britain on the sick, Channel 4, Conservative, contempt, crime, defamation, defamatory, Department, disability, disabled, Disabled or faking it, Disabled People Against Cuts, Dispatches, DPAC, DWP, employment, error, ESA, falsehood, fit for work, hate, hatred, IB, identical, inaccuracies, inaccuracy, Incapacity Benefit, Income Support, lie, medical, mouthpiece, offense, offensive, Panorama, Pensions, report, ridicule, Severe Disablement Allowance, Sheila Gilmore, sick, sickness, statistics, story, support, Tories, Tory, uk statistics authority, UKSA, update, WCA, withdraw, work, work capability assessment


131029bbcbias

I have complained to the BBC and the UK Statistics Authority about this disgrace.

Today (January 25) the BBC published a scurrilous little screed claiming that “nearly a million people who applied for sickness benefit have been found fit for work”. Needless to say, the figures come from the Department for Work and Pensions and aren’t worth the time it took to type them in.

The story states: “The DWP claims 980,400 people – 32% of new applicants for Employment and Support Allowance – were judged capable of work between 2008 and March 2013.

“More than a million others withdrew their claims after interviews, it adds.”

It goes on to say that disability campaigners had stated that the work capability assessment tests were “ridiculously harsh and extremely unfair”, but says nothing about the fact that an almost-identical story was withdrawn last year after it was found to be riddled with inaccuracies – if not outright lies.

Even more bizarre is the fact that the story does provide the factual reason for claims being withdrawn. They “either returned to work, recovered or claimed a benefit “more appropriate to their situation”.

In other words, these people used the system in exactly the right way, yet the DWP – and the BBC – are pretending that they were trying to fiddle it in some way.

To explain what happened last year, let’s look at a letter from Sheila Gilmore MP to Andrew Dilnot, head of the UK Statistics Authority, and his response. You can find it on page 39 of the DPAC report on DWP abuse of statistics.

The letter from Sheila Gilmore states: “On 30 March 2013 an article by Patrick Hennessy entitled ‘900,000 choose to come off sickness benefit ahead of tests’ was published in the Sunday Telegraph. Please find a copy enclosed. I believe that the headline and the subsequent story are fundamentally misleading because they conflate two related but separate sets of statistics. I would be grateful if you could confirm that my interpretation of what has happened is correct.

“The sickness benefit in question is Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). People have been able to make new claims for ESA since October 2008, but those in receipt of the benefits it replaced – Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, and Income Support on the grounds of disability – only started migrating across in April 2011.

“The article implied that many of this latter group were dropping their claim rather than having to go through a face-to-face assessment, with the implication that they were never really ill in the first place and had been ‘playing the system’.

“However I have checked the figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions and it would appear that the figure of 900,000 actually refers to all those who have made new claims for ESA since its introduction over four years ago, but who have since withdrawn their application before undergoing a face-to-face assessment. These people were not claiming the benefit before and generally drop out of the system for perfectly innocent reasons – often people become ill, apply as a precaution, but withdraw when they get better.

“Of the 600,000 people who have been migrated from Incapacity Benefit over the past two years, only 19,700 have dropped their claim. This is the figure that should have featured in the headline, but the 900,000 figure was used instead.”

Mr Dilnot replied: “Having reviewed the article and the relevant figures, we have concluded that these statements appear to conflate official statistics relating to new claimants of the ESA with official statistics on recipients of the incapacity
benefit (IB) who are being migrated across to the ESA.

“According to official statistics published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in January 2013, a total of 603,600 recipients of IB were referred for reassessment as part of the migration across to ESA between March 2011 and May 2012. Of these, 19,700 claims were closed prior to a work capability assessment in the period to May 2012.

“The figure of “nearly 900,000” referenced in the article appears to refer to the cumulative total of 878,300 new claims for the ESA (i.e. not pre-existing IB recipients) which were closed before undergoing assessment in the period from October 2008 to May 2012.

“In your letter, you also expressed concern about the apparent implication in the Sunday Telegraph article that claims for ESA had been dropped because the individuals were never really ill in the first place. The statistical release does not address the issue of why cases were closed in great depth, but it does point to research undertaken by DWP which suggests that ‘an important reason why ESA claims in this sample were withdrawn or closed before they were fully assessed was because the person recovered and either returned to work, or claimed a benefit more appropriate to their situation’.”

What he was saying, in his officialese way, was that the Conservatives had wrongly ‘conflated’ monthly figures into a cumulative total; they had misled the press about the figures’ significance; and the press release (which then mysteriously disappeared) ignored a clear caveat in the DWP’s own report that the reason the claims were dropped each month had nothing to do with fear of medical assessment but were because people recovered and went back to work, or else were switched to another benefit deemed more suitable to their circumstances.

Now the BBC has resurrected this story, with brand new, larger numbers that add in the totals for 2013 without telling you whether these were all new claims, or repeat claims, or a mixture; they are all treated as new.

The claim that 980,400 people had been found fit for work after medical tests – the feared Atos work capability assessments – is also extremely questionable – as the BBC well knows.

Its own Panorama programme, ‘Disabled or Faking It?’, investigated whether the DWP was knocking people off-benefit in order to hit financial targets – in essence, making people destitute in order to show a budget saving. A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, ‘Britain on the Sick’, proved that this was happening. Both were shown at the end of July 2012.

I have complained to the BBC and to Mr Dilnot about the deeply offensive and defamatory way in which these lies have been resurrected, in order to encourage the general public to hold people who are genuinely ill in hatred, ridicule and contempt. If you believe this cause is just, go thou and do likewise.

This behaviour is even more appalling when one considers the rise and rise of hate crime against the sick and disabled.

Members of groups such as DPAC or Black Triangle may even wish to take libel action against the corporation and the DWP on the basis of this report.

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UK Coalition revealed as comic-book villains.

12 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Corruption, Cost of living, Food Banks, Immigration, Liberal Democrats, Media, People, Politics, Poverty, Race, UK

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

benefit, benefits, bigot, Coalition, Conservative, Daredevil, Democrat, empower, enemies, enemy, food bank, government, hate, hatred, ideological, immigrant, influence, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mark Waid, Marvel Comics, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, power, prey, Tories, Tory, victim, Vox Political, weaponise


The enemy within: Superhero comic Daredevil dishes out a warning that we, in Britain, need to heed - beware the 'friend' telling us what we want to hear in order to set us against each other. A Conservative friend? A Liberal Democrat friend?

The enemy within: Superhero comic Daredevil dishes out a warning that we, in Britain, need to heed – beware the ‘friend’ telling us what we want to hear in order to set us against each other. A Conservative friend? A Liberal Democrat friend?

Tell me this doesn’t describe the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition government:

“A group of ideologically-motivated power-seekers has infiltrated society, hiding inside the political system and behind ambiguous words to increase their fellow citizens’ bigotry and hatred against each other and thereby increase their own power and influence while everybody else is looking the other way.”

If you agree that it does, well, you’re mistaken. It’s actually about a group of villains in the superhero comic Daredevil, released by US publisher Marvel.

In the latest issue, a friend of the eponymous hero broadcasts to the city of New York, warning the population to beware of the infiltrators who say they are friends but are in fact the worst kind of enemy. Her words (by scriptwriter Mark Waid) are chillingly relevant to today’s United Kingdom. Here’s what she has to say:

“If we… are going to take our home back from a band of manipulative bigots, we have to rise above our anger.

“They want you angry at the world.

“They need us all to feel like victims. [bolding mine]

“And it’s an easy get, because times suck. Every day is a battle. We all feel like we’re on the wrong end of the wrecking ball.

“We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and that makes us scared. And that’s rocket fuel for S.O.B.s like [these].

“They prey on us when we’re frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food [bank] family next door.

“They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it’s ’empowering’.

“Except it’s not.

“We don’t become ’empowered’. We become weaponised.

“So that while we lash out at one another, they can take from all of us.”

In America, it seems, they can see what’s happening here and turn it into part of their artistic culture.

In Britain, it should be on the news.

Why isn’t it?

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Let’s kill the myth that right-wingers merely think those on the left are ‘misguided’

06 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in People, Politics

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Adolf Hitler, Alastair Campbell, anti human, Conservative, cretin, Daily Mail, debate, Dominic Lawson, fashion reporter, hate, hate speech, insult, invective, John Prescott, John Reid, Labour, left wing, Marxist, Mehdi Hasan, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, misguided, moral, myth, National Service, Nazi, Peter Dacre, politics, profanity, Ralph Miliband, reason, right-wing, Royal Navy, Stalin, Sunday Times, superior, Tony Blair, Tories, Tory, Viscount Rothermere, Vox Political, wicked, Winston Churchill


Dominic Lawson: He thinks left-wingers are "driven by hate" while "most Tories... regard the Left as just misguided". He's wondering how else he can patronise you today.

Dominic Lawson: He thinks left-wingers are “driven by hate” while “most Tories… regard the Left as just misguided”. He’s wondering how else he can patronise you today. [Picture: BBC]

Dominic Lawson, writing in the Daily Mail (yes, we’re still having fun at the Rothermere Rag’s expense – any objections? I thought not), has told us: “The tribal left is driven by hate.”

Paraphrasing an article he wrote previously in the Sunday Times, he continued: “It is one of the factors tending to distinguish the left in politics from the right, that the former frequently regard the latter as actually wicked, if not evil; whereas most Tories tend to regard the Left as just misguided.”

That is not my experience.

I have found that right-wingers and Conservatives (who tend to claim the middle ground in politics, while still claiming to differentiate themselves from “you lefties”) tend to fall into insults, invective and profanity – hate speech, if you like, with extreme rapidity. It is they who are driven by hate – in my experience – and not those of us on the left who enjoy a reasoned debate. So nobody in the Conservative Party, the right-wing press, or even offering right-of-centre views on Facebook pages should claim any moral superiority over the rest of us on those grounds.

I have an example to illustrate my case. It developed from the earlier Vox Political post on the Mail‘s attacks against Ralph Miliband and Mehdi Hasan. Those of you who are familiar with it will know it quoted the fact that Mr Miliband Senior – who the Mail claimed was The man who hated Britain – served in the Royal Navy during World War II, while the proprietor of the Daily Mail, Viscount Rothermere, had been a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the father of the Mail’s current editor, Peter Dacre, had been a fashion reporter at the age of 19, when he should have been doing National Service and fighting the Nazis.

I received the following, from a commenter called Raymond Northgreaves (quoted verbatim): “should he have served in any of HM Forces he would have been given a service number and then can be identified”.

Several possibilities were available as to who “he” might be. I wasn’t willing to make an inaccurate guess – nobody was disputing that Mr Miliband Senior had seen active service, so there was a presumption that it might be somebody else, but that’s all it was – so I asked: “To whom are you referring – Dacre Senior?”

In reply, I received the following, which I again quote verbatim:

“Mark Sivier, Hi! You know to whom I am referring to, so why play the cretin left wing anti human. many of us who are from working class family’s know what the value of labour and what it stood for. Now its taken away the voice from the many, and given it to the Marxist rich. Fact, which you and your left wing friends will never understand, you attend Uni and had to slum it in some dose house, which was beneath your middle class upbringing, and you all took on the “we the working class” are fighting to be??? something that you have never dreamed could happen to GB subjects(sovereignty is in the many and not the one), ‘yes’ subjects, before you jump through a window, screeching your left wing head off, British citizens are the one’s going around bombing and murdering people! My age group know all about DS, from the second world war; the mistake that Winston Churchill made was putting people like him in prison, when he should have executed them all. In my life time, I have never knowingly put my hand in shit, and I am not going to start writing to it The rest of us center of the road people know that the left and right are the one. When you all stand up and defend my homeland, then come back and communicate with me, until then, do what you left do, and renumber, it was Blair, Campbell, Prescott and Reed, that sold us all out to the USA, and made us all murderers to 1.5 million people; they also condoned the murder of 2514 British soldiers by the Roman Catholics, and some 30,000 civilians, of which many of their bodies have never found as yet? You and yours are no better then Hitler or your Icon Starling. pro patria!”

I was going to try to analyse this but, look at it; do I really have to?

Point made, I think.

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The European courts have their priorities wrong. Why aren’t they stopping the disability deaths?

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Disability, European Union, Health, Housing, Immigration, Liberal Democrats, Politics, UK

≈ 37 Comments

Tags

1961, 73, allowance, Atos, bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, campaign, Coalition, Conservative, corporate, death, Democrat, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, employment, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, European Court, evict, government, hate, health, Iain Duncan Smith, ill, International Criminal Court, Justice, Liberal, Linda Wootton, manslaughter, mental, migrant, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, scrounger, sick, skiver, social security, Stephanie Bottrill, Suicide Act, support, Tories, Tory, un, united nations, Universal Credit, unum, Vox Political, WCA, week, welfare, work capability assessment, workshy


The villain of the piece: Iain Duncan Smith drives all of the government's policies that discriminate against the sick or disabled. Others have memorably noted that his idea of helping them is to kick away their walking-sticks to see how far they can crawl.

The villain of the piece: Iain Duncan Smith drives all of the government’s policies that discriminate against the sick or disabled. Others have memorably noted that his idea of helping them is to kick away their walking-sticks to see how far they can crawl.

The UK Coalition government is to face trial by the European Court of Justice over an alleged failure to correctly assess the benefits EU migrants are entitled to claim. This is very laudable, but begs the question: When are the European courts going to address the Coalition’s transgressions against its own citizens?

I refer, of course, to the continuing scandal of Employment and Support Allowance, the disability benefit that isn’t (according to the government’s plans for another so-called benefit, Universal Credit).

Vox readers are, by now, well aware that the so-called “work capability assessment” that allegedly determines whether a person is entitled to the benefit or is fit for work is in fact a sham, run by a French Information Technology company (Atos), using a computerised, tick-box assessment system that is based on a scheme that earned the American insurance company that devised it (Unum) a criminal record, because its sole intention was to prevent as many people as possible from fitting the criteria necessary to win a claim.

The application of this assessment system has led to an average of 73 deaths every week. This means that, between the moment I woke up this morning and the time I’m writing this (around midday), at least two more people are likely to have died – either because their condition has worsened due to the strain of the assessment procedure, or through suicide; their mental health was not strong enough and they decided to give up, rather than fight for what should be theirs by right as UK citizens.

A BBC documentary (Week In, Week Out, May 28, 2013) recently quoted a statistic that claimed people with chronic pain – who are therefore entitled to claim ESA – are twice as likely to die prematurely than those without, so why is the Coalition forcing them through these fake “medical” examinations and then telling them they are fit to work – effectively trying to induce such premature deaths?

That question has been taken to the European courts – and the United Nations’ International Criminal Court. The response, so far, has been breathtakingly disappointing. It seems that they need proof that the UK’s own justice system will not rectify the problem before they will agree to take action.

How much proof do they need?

Within the last couple of weeks, Linda Wootton, a lady who had endured multiple organ transplants due to illness, died – within days of receiving notice that a work capability assessment had found her fit for work and her ESA had been cancelled.

In the same period, a High Court tribunal ruled that the Coalition has broken the law by discriminating against people who are mentally ill. This is exactly the kind of discrimination that causes the suicides. It is something about which the government has been warned – not rarely, but continually and with passion. And what is the government’s response?

It intends to appeal against the decision. It says it has made enough concessions to the mentally ill already.

We know what happens when the government appeals against court decisions. It loses.

And then it changes the law, in order to make its actions legal again.

That is the act of a criminal regime.

But the international courts are still sitting on their thumbs.

By the time I finish posting this article, according to the averages, another ESA claimant will be dead – making three, or thereabouts, since I woke up this morning. If the international courts finally get their act together, examine the mountain of evidence that has built up against the Coalition over the last three years, and find it guilty of corporate manslaughter – or procuring suicide under the Suicide Act 1961 – it will be a tremendous day for the most vulnerable people in the UK.

And make no mistake – the chronically sick and disabled are far more vulnerable than most European migrants.

But one fact will remain: Thousands upon thousands of these vulnerable people will have died, and no court decision will ever bring them back.

ESA isn’t the only benefit system that is failing the British people. Look at Stephanie Bottrill, who committed suicide because she was facing eviction. She couldn’t afford to pay the Coalition’s hated Bedroom Tax.

You see, these aren’t just numbers. They’re people. Thousands and thousands of real people. With real families who are left to mourn the loss.

In the UK, the Coalition and the press have worked hard to create a lack of empathy for these people – calling them scroungers, or skivers, or work-shy. In reality they are nothing of the sort. They are seriously, seriously ill. They are victims of a libellous hate campaign. And they are too sick, and too poor, to mount a challenge against what is happening to them.

Now, I don’t want the Comment column after this article to fill up with hate-speak for Johnny Foreigner. The fact is, the Coalition probably is denying benefits to migrants.

My rationale for suggesting this is the fact that it is denying benefits to the UK’s own citizens, and is perfectly comfortable with letting them die as a result.

So, while I applaud the European Court of Justice for taking this step against the UK government, I must also add this:

Get your priorities right.

Postscript: You know, it isn’t my job to point out these things. There are people in this country who are employed – in fact, there are people in this country who are elected – to do so. Why aren’t these people spending every waking hour campaigning for justice, for their constituents and for the nation as a whole? Why aren’t they fighting the media lies? Where is the opposition to this government criminality?

Post-postscript: Have a look at this article, reporting that the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights has found the Coalition government in breach of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Now we have proof that the Coalition is actively discriminating against the disabled, and breaking UN conventions to do it, will the UN, finally, step in?

Oh! I just looked at the time. That’ll be another person dead, then.

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Survey boosts ‘divide and rule’ agenda – and hate crime

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Disability, Economy, Liberal Democrats, People, Police, Politics, Tax, UK

≈ Comments Off on Survey boosts ‘divide and rule’ agenda – and hate crime

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bank, benefits, brainwash, business, campaign, cancer, carer, carers, Coalition, debt, deficit, disability, disabled, disadvantaged, economy, hate, hate crime, illness, immigrant, job, Labour Conservative, Lib Dem, Liberal Democrat, low-paid, migrant, NatCen, national debt, offshore, Penny Young, racism, safety net, sick, survey, tax, taxes, Tories, Tory, underclass, unemployed, wealthy, welfare


“I don’t know if anyone’s listened to the news/checked the papers today, but I’m sickened (although not surprised) the Tories are stepping up their hatred campaign against immigrants and the unemployed, by publishing exaggerated and out-of-context statistical reports. All they’re doing is fuelling racism and lack of compassion to get small minded people to support their agenda. Outrageous.”

That was the response of Alex – a very non-political friend of mine – to the data from NatCen Social Research today, that claimed people want to see less spending on welfare and benefits, and fewer immigrants.

The BBC’s report had NatCen’s chief executive Penny Young, who wrote the report, saying the public’s view on welfare was “in tune… with the coalition’s policies”.

Not according to Alex, sister!

He reckons Ms Young is part of a Coalition government agenda to brainwash us all into agreeing with schemes that are, even if only on the face of it, evil. And so do I. Who funded this survey?

Here’s a thing you might not have picked up in all the reporting: You may have noticed that Ms Young says, “For the first time since 2008, we’ve seen that the number of people who are prepared to see more money go on disability benefits has actually fallen.”

But that has never been part of anybody’s plans – Labour, the Tories, the Liberal Democrats or the smaller parties (to my knowledge). The problem is that the Coalition is cutting the amount of money being spent on disability – and other – benefits. Massively.

In doing so, it has created a new target for hate crime and a new underclass for society, presumably as a huge distraction from the real problem faced by the country – the Coalition’s mismanagement of the world’s seventh-largest economy.

There is plenty of money here, enough to help all those with illnesses and disabilities, feed all the children (see yesterday’s blog entry), and even to invest in new businesses and jobs. But it is being held by wealthy people – mostly in offshore bank accounts – and the Coalition is doing nothing to free it from their grasp.

Perhaps people think cutting the welfare benefit bill will lead to a cut in taxes. Think again, people! Even on the face of it – by which I mean according to what they’ve told us – the Coalition needs the money to pay down the deficit and cut back the national debt. What they’re really doing is anybody’s guess, but slashing the livelihood of the disabled will not save you one penny in tax.

And let’s take a moment to remember this important fact, posted on Facebook by Adele (not the singer): “Welfare isn’t just about people on the dole. It’s about people in low-paid jobs, people who are carers, people who are too sick or disabled to work, people with cancer and people who have lost their jobs and cannot get another. It is a safety net for those who are disadvantaged in our society. Everyone falls on hard times and just when it may happen to you and you need that safety net, you would want it to be there to catch you.”

Also attacked in the report are immigrants, with three-quarters of the 3,000+ people asked saying they wanted to see a reduction in the number of those coming into the country.

This survey looks like it was written by the editor of the Daily Mail.

The fact that it also suggests people don’t want any more cuts in public spending is meaningless, compared to the damage it inflicts with what I’ve reported above.

I predict a greater increase in hate crime against immigrants and the disabled because – and this is what the perpetrators will say – “It’s what people want, innit?”

Is it?

Over to you.

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MPs: Terminate the deadly Atos assessment regime before anyone else dies

26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Disability, Health, Labour Party, People, Politics, UK

≈ 19 Comments

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allowance, appeal, Atos, BBC, benefit, benefits, Britain on the sick, care, Channel 4, cheats, Chris, Chris Grayling, claimants, claims, Coalition, Conservative, crime, David Cameron, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, Disabled or faking it, Dispatches, DLA, Duncan, DWP, Ed Miliband, Employment Minister, Employment Support Allowance, ESA, fit for work, fraud, government, GP, Grayling, harassed, harassment, hate, health, Iain, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, Incapacity Benefit, Labour, living, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minorities, minority, Panorama, Pensions, people, PIP, politics, private, safety, scroungers, service, Smith, Sonia Poulton, state, suicide, support, Tories, Tory, tribunal, WCA, work, work capability assessment, work-related activity, workshy


It may seem a strange partnership, but Daily Mail columnist Sonia Poulton and Labour leader Ed Miliband, together, might be able to dent the government’s hated Work Capability Assessment regime.

Sick and disabled people in the UK can justifiably feel they are lining up for a death sentence as they prepare to take the dreaded Work Capability Assessment – the test devised by the Department of Work and Pensions and run (badly) by the French company Atos.

It leads – directly or indirectly – to an average of 32 deaths every week.

But there may be a ray of hope for them in the fact that the Labour Party has secured a Parliamentary debate on Atos and the WCA, to take place on September 4 – next Tuesday.

It is to be hoped that this will be the debate when Labour leader Ed Miliband finally gets off the fence and puts his weight – and that of his party – fully against the murderous system imposed by Chris Grayling and his master Iain Duncan Smith, both of whom are on record as stating that their version of the system is preferable, and less harsh, than that carried out under the previous Labour government.

The Daily Mail columnist Sonia Poulton has written two open letters to Mr Miliband, calling on him to break cover and declare his opposition to the scheme, and it seems bizarre that he has left people wondering for so long whether he actually supports a scheme that kills society’s most vulnerable.

The signs are hopeful that Mr Miliband will support change. In a letter to Sonia Poulton, he wrote: “Disabled people need support and compassion, and the Labour Party believes in a welfare state that fulfils this principle… I share some of the concerns that have been expressed about the test by you, along with many charities, disability groups and healthcare professionals. These concerns… have shown that the test must be improved. The Government needs to listen. We have also forced a vote in Parliament on the need to reduce the human cost of the wrong decisions that result from the WCA in its current form.”

Let’s remind ourselves why it’s important. There’s a petition online at the moment, calling for the restoration of benefits to an Afghanistan war hero who lost his leg in the line of duty. Sapper Karl Boon lost his left leg in a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade attack in Afghanistan in 2010 and has been stripped of his benefits by the Department for Work and Pensions and ATOS.

In signing the petition, I wrote: “More penny-pinching from the poor by the government that doesn’t have the guts to tax the rich. Here’s a man who has risked his life and lost a limb in the service of his country, and all his country’s leaders can think of doing in return is taking away his financial support – aided by a foreign company. We have witnessed many stories like that of Sapper Karl Boon over the last two years and it seems to me that there is no depth to which the current government will not sink. To those in government, I say: Prove me wrong. Give this man the respect he deserves and pay him what you owe him.” Too harsh? Think on this: At least Karl Boon is currently still alive.

Let’s also remember that we’re experiencing an enormous rise in hate crime against the sick and disabled, fuelled by government propoganda and a right-wing media that’s primed to support it. ITV’s Tonight programme reported last Thursday (August 23) that more than 65,000 hate crimes against the disabled were reported in the last year. You can read my article on this blog site to find some of the stories.

So why has Miliband sat on the fence for so long?

There are two issues to separate out here.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with the idea of having regular assessments to judge whether a person on one or both of the disability benefits is able to work, or will be likely to be able to do so in the near future. The only people who can be against that are people who want the easy life, living on benefits and off the hard work of the taxpayers.

But the way the Coalition regime has gone about these assessments, through its private contractor Atos, is totally inappropriate and unfit for purpose. We can see that in the many horror stories that have come out over the last few weeks and months.

Why should those who are permanently disabled be forced to go through reassessment every few months? They’re never going to get better! But we have Atos reports saying an amputee will be fit for work as soon as his arm grows back (for crying out loud)!

Why are doctors’ reports ignored? I know there is an argument that doctors may be persuaded to sign people off work when they aren’t actually unfit but, if the assessments were carried out by properly qualified medical professionals, working in accordance with the standards their qualifications have set for them, those would be found out. Instead, we get unqualified assessors working to a tick-box questionnaire, that isn’t remotely adequate to the job and has been acknowledged (as we saw on both Dispatches and Panorama) to be designed to get people off benefit.

There is no realism to the questions in the assessment, no anticipation of the kind of work that a person will be asked to do. There is no acknowledgement of the ways an employer would have to stretch to accommodate people with particular disabilities. Signing somebody as fit for work because they have one finger able to push a button does not make them attractive to an employer and merely sets them up to fail, possibly on a life-threatening scale because, as we know and I make no apologies for repeating, 32 people are dying every week because of the assessment system.

So what’s the alternative?

A better assessment would refer to the notes made by a patient’s GP, but would also include tests by a medical professional to ascertain the current condition of the disability – that it has been correctly reported.

It would then go on to cover the patients’ ability to carry out the sort of work that they might reasonably be likely to see on offer. Would they be able to manage it with a minimum of bother to an employer? That is the only way we will see sensible assessments coming in.

Atos is not fit to carry out these assessments in any case. The company had a bad reputation in France before it ever got a British contract and does not deserve to be making money from the taxpayer by condemning British people to the death that many of them have suffered.

These are the arguments I would wish to hear aired during the Parliamentary debate on the subject.

What would you like to hear?

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Ashamed to be British as prejudice and bigotry stalk the streets

18 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Disability, Health, Law, People, Politics, Tax, UK

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

allowance, Atos, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, crime, David Cameron, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, Duncan, DWP, Employment Support Allowance, ESA, government, hate, health, Iain, Iain Duncan Smith, Incapacity Benefit, Jobseeker's Allowance, Labour, living, mental health problem, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, NHS, Pensions, people, PIP, politics, private, service, Smith, suicide, Tories, Tory, work, work capability assessment


Cameron’s government has launched a hate campaign against the sick and disabled – those least able to defend themselves – and he’s using them to divert attention away from his atrocious government.

“Too many people in this country wallowing in their own self-pity who will find the slightest reason to avoid doing a day’s work. Get them out to work by force and take their money off them. I dont see why I should work so hard and pay so much tax to pay for the lazy and workshy to sit at home.”

There is so much wrong with this statement that I hardly know where to start. It is a genuine comment, made in response to a BBC news article, and describes the writer’s reaction to a report that the National Audit Office has discovered problems with the contract between the Department for Work and Pensions and Atos, the company hired to carry out work capability assessments on people claiming Employment and Support Allowance. The test works on a points-based system – 0 points means you are ‘fit for work’, while 15 or more mean you must receive benefit.

The report sparked a debate on the suitability of Atos to be running the assessment system, the value of the system itself, and also the honesty of claimants – the last group inspiring the headline at the top of this article.

Let’s recap a few facts: Less than 0.4 per cent of disability benefit claims are fraudulent. The Work Capability Assessment is designed to ensure that 87 per cent of disability benefit claimants are pushed onto Jobseekers Allowance within a year of taking the test (as proved by both Channel 4’s Dispatches and the BBC’s own Panorama). That’s 217.5 times as many claimants as are committing fraud and therefore must include some people who are entitled to the benefit. The Work Capability Assessment is a computer-based ‘tick-box’ assessment that is carried out by people who are not medical professionals; the opinion of a claimant’s own GP is, it seems, ignored.

Now let’s look at some of the comments. All emphases are my own:

“The fact is our benefits system is clogged to the hilt with benefit cheats and people avoiding work.” So 0.4 per cent amounts to being “clogged to the hilt”? I don’t think so.

“Unfortunately the “bad back brigade” who have fleeced the system over the many years have wrecked it for the genuine disabled. Very sad.” This person thinks they know exactly what claimants are saying, despite never having experienced an assessment. I doubt they have even spoken to a person who has taken one.

“The whole problem has been created by the vast majority of malingerers who think they are entitled to something for nothing.” Vast majority – less than one-two-hundredth of claimants is a vast majority in this person’s mind.

“If you’re genuine and unfit for work then the test will show it. Please don’t worry. However, you fraudsters out there who sponge off us hard working taxpayers: It’s not on, that you can sponge like you’ve been doing for so long. Go and get a job or create your own way of earning a living. If it wasn’t for you the country wouldn’t be in such a mess, most of our taxes are given to you lazy sods.” Where do I start with this one? Try this: Less than one per cent of tax money is spent on benefit payments for the sick and disabled (according to the Daily Mail).

“As someone who knows the WCA very well I can easily say that 90 per cent of the so-called disabled people claiming are nothing short of fraudsters. Start giving these fraudsters 10 years for their deception and see how many continue to claim. Those who are disabled and genuinely can’t work have nothing to worry about.” We’ll get to comments from those who are disabled and genuinely can’t work, a little later in this article. Remember the claim, though: They have nothing to worry about.

“I can name a dozen who COULD work but are claiming disability! In fact, I’m begining to wonder if I’m the only bloody one working in my postal code!!!! One scrounger is off of work with some wrist injury, but doesn’t stop him [doing] cash-in-hand jobs or being at pub. I thought Dave “Everyone deserves an holiday” Cameron was going to crack down on this? I see no evidence of it whatsoever…” A classic case of someone seeing only what they want to see?

“There are people out there who abuse the system at our expense. We all know of at least one, maybe more, such case…. I’m no medical expert but I know if someone’s on DLA and out driving a taxi or whatever then he/she’s a fraudster. They should be reported.” For the record, DLA (Disability Living Allowance) is an in-work benefit; it is intended to make it easier for disabled people to manage the extra expenses incurred by their disability and make it possible for them to have a job. This person is completely mistaken.

“So many people use ESA as a means to escape having to look for work. I see it every single day.” Oh! This is a good one. For information, only the support group of ESA claimants get the benefit without having to look for work; the work-related activity group receive the benefit for one year only, during which time they are expected to attend interviews and courses intended to make it possible for them to get a suitable job. After the year is up, they are taken of ESA and put on Jobseekers’ Allowance (which is cheaper for the government as it pays less money). Those in the support group aren’t expected to seek work because of the nature of their disability and the high likelihood that their condition is terminal – between January and August 2011, official figures show that 5,500 people in the support group lost their lives.

All right.

To balance these views, below are some comments from people with genuine experience of the system – claimants or those close to them. Before we get to them, let’s remind ourselves that the UK is experiencing a dramatic increase in violent hate crime against the disabled, as I have reported in a previous blog. Since 2009, these crimes have increased by 60 per cent nationwide; in my own police force area they multiplied fourfold between 2010 and 2011.

My belief is that government propoganda, coupled with hysterical reporting of so-called benefit scroungers in the right-wing press, has served to whip up hatred against this tiny section of society – those who are the most vulnerable and the least able to protect themselves. Divide and conquer has always been the Conservative way. They don’t want people to be angry at them, so they create another bogeyman for folk to hate instead. It’s a strategy that worked very well in Germany during the 1930s.

So how do the disabled react to claims that they are mostly fraudulent, lazy scroungers?

“Absolute rubbish. Do you know the medical records of all these people you claim are fraudulent? Or are you just taking a guess. The media sensationalise the 0.5 per cent of claims that are fraudulent, but what about the stories of the other 99.5 per cent? The propaganda is sickening.”

“Genuinely sick and disabled people are judged as fit for work and demonised by the Govt. Little wonder that fools abuse the sick and disabled folk who are ‘officially’ labelled as scroungers.”

Let’s see how Atos treats benefit claimants, shall we?

“Took my neighbour to a tribunal [I think they mean a Work Capability Assessment], member of tribunal helped me almost carry her in. Result…. fit for work! Well done Atos, you’ll get YOUR money.”

“My sister has MS, an auto-immune disease that varies in severity from day to day. On the days she’s mobile enough to attend an assessment, she’s told she’s fit to work, and her benefits get cut. On days she can barely move or see, she simply has her appointment rescheduled to when she is better. It’s a catch-22, and the stress of it has landed her back in hospital on more than one occasion.”

“My daughter-in-law’s father had an Atos medical, he is on morphine for a severe back condition that he has had surgery for, his pain management clinic say he is unemployable, guess what Atos say he is?”

“My brother is severly autistic. He has no speech, can’t read or write, severe learning difficulties, epilepsy, and stays in residential care. My mum got a phonecall demanding a phone interview with my brother to assess his fitness to work. They then sent a completely inappropiate form to fill out (adressed to my brother) asking about his fitness to work. Whole thing was an upsetting disgrace.”

“I have had the same debilitating disease for 29 years, got the full 15 points needed for the benefit at my first medical, then on the second they decided to give me 0. After an 8 month wait a Judge upheld my appeal against the 0 points. And now three months later the government want me to go through the same medical assesment again.”

“Before I’d ever heard of ATOS, I received a phone call from them at home one Friday evening at 8 o’clock. The person demanded that I give them my name, date of birth and National Insurance number. I said I wasn’t prepared to disclose any personal information to someone I didn’t know, whereupon I was told that, unless I did, they would suspend my benefits. I hung up. Shameful, but typical, of them.”

“I was on ESA because I have fibromyalgia, and am often in so much pain, I can hardly walk. I was ‘assessed’ and found to be capable of working. The letter informing me of this decision had been backdated 1 month, making it impossible for me to appeal the decision (within 1 month of the date at the top of the letter). There was no proof I got the letter late, though, so it was no good trying.”

“I have won my case at two tribunals and now I wait for a third. Once I one the first DWP really wanted me hence my third tribunal. Each tribunal takes approx 14months to happen. Life is very difficult during the wait costing me dearly healthwise. I had no income since April 30th this year. Atos always give me 0 points the judge has always given me max.”

The stress caused by the Atos/DWP treatment of claimants means that an average of 32 sick or disabled people are dying every week, while going through the assessment regime or the appeal process after being passed ‘fit for work’.

Now let’s see some genuine accounts of how disabled people are treated on the streets:

“I get abuse nearly every time I go into town because of my disability. It’s not even worth going to the supermarket anymore, I’d rather get somebody else to go for me.”

“Me and my husband have degenerating arthritis and several other medical conditions. I get abused and called ignorant because people don’t look where they are going and expect me to jump out of the way of their trolleys in the supermarket because I walk too slowly.”

“When [X] goes to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread, he can be subjected to sly comments and in some cases threatening abuse, just because he is youngish and using a walking stick. These same people will go next door to the bank and put on a nice smile for the counter girl. He now goes out when it’s raining when few people are about. I’m ashamed to be British.”

Many have been put off claiming the benefits that the law says they should receive, because of the stigma attached to them – which is, of course, what our Tory-led government wants. The aim of the exercise, as I mentioned above, is to get as many people off benefit as possible. How they live thereafter is of no interest to the government; it just doesn’t want to pay people what they are entitled. And the plan is working. A huge proportion of the population is failing to claim benefits to which it is due. Here’s what some have to say:

“I have had my biggest relapse of a long-term condition in 20 years and have been off sick 5 months. I have not gone on to benefits yet for fear of being penalised as have read the horror stories on many health related blogs.”

“Before I reach retirement age I will not be able to work. I am, frankly, terrified of the world I might live in by then and cannot help feeling that the hope of some is that we die before we reach the wrong side of the balance sheet.”

“It’s a scary time to be a disabled/ill person; if the condition doesn’t kill you the government are trying to do it through stress and uncertainty.”

But most are unbowed, and have vowed to fight to the end:

“I started working when I was 13 carried on until my wife’s accident. I have paid in far more than I will ever get out. I object in the strongest possable terms to being called a scrounger and fraudulent,” wrote one.

And another pointed out: “90 per cent of cases are won at appeal if you take a specialist advisor to your appeal. 40 per cent are won if you go alone. Don’t give up.”

As was once declared next to an airbrushed picture of David Cameron, on hoardings across the country, “We can’t go on like this”. But people won’t vote for the most popular alternative – Labour – unless that party vows to put forward a fair and balanced assessment process for the sick and disabled, ending the sick-minded prejudice against the most vulnerable in society.

I say: As soon as Labour promises this, let’s have an election.

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