Art attack on Coalition policies that drive people to their deaths

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allowance, art, benefit, Coalition, Conservative, Democrat, Department, Disability Living Allowance, DLA, DWP, employment, ESA, government, hb, housing benefit, IB, Incapacity Benefit, Lib Dem, Liberal, Melanie Cutler, memorial, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, People of Thurrock, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, politics, Reform, sick, social security, Stewardship, suicide, support, Tories, Tory, victim, welfare, work

A UK artist has created an art installation as a memorial to the suicide victims of welfare reform.

Melanie Cutler contacted Vox Political regarding her piece – ‘Stewardship’ – a few weeks ago, asking, “Do you think I’ll be arrested?”

The response was that it should be unlikely if she informed the media. The artworks have been displayed at the Northampton Degree Show and are currently at the Free Range Exhibition at the Old Truman Brewery building in Brick Lane, London, which ends tomorrow (June 30).

Entry is free and the installation will be located in F Block, B5.

“I have become an artist later on in life,” Melanie told Vox Political. “I was a carer for my son and, a few decades later, my father. I have worked most of my life too, raising three children.

“Only recently, while studying fine art at University I found my health deteriorating. I have a cocktail of conditions – Type 1 diabetes (diagnosed last year), Coeliac disease, asthma, rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis (currently being investigated), osteoarthritis, psoriasis and a brain tumour (thankfully benign and inactive). I have also lived with depression for almost all my adult life.

“I wanted my work to articulate how I feel about certain issues. In March this year I pitched up in Thurrock, a marginal seat which will be hotly fought-over in the run-up to the next general election. I sat in front of a blank canvas and asked the people of the town to tell me how they felt about welfare reform, the press and the 2015 General Election. I took a team of people to film and photograph the event and to explain to people what the work was about.

‘People of Thurrock’ in the making. Artist Melanie Cutler sits, silenced, while residents of Thurrock write their opinions of ‘welfare reform’ on the canvas.

“Buoyed on by the reaction to ‘People of Thurrock’, I went on to something else I felt was an important issue; I put welfare reform under the microscope and conducted research around this issue. I was struck by the amount of people who, through no fault of their own, seek to end their own lives as they feel they have no other option. My own family has been touched by suicide and one of my own children is on ESA and awaiting an interview with ATOS.”

‘Stewardship’: Each plaque features the name of a ‘welfare reform’ victim and a description of how they died.

‘Stewardship’: This memorial is to Paul Reekie, the Scottish poet and writer who took his own life in 2010. Letters left on his table stated that his Housing Benefit and Incapacity Benefit had been stopped.
The poet’s death led to the creation of the Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disability Rights.

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Home visit action* to check you are being treated appropriately*

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account, action, aktion, allowance, bank, benefit, building society, Conservative, Democrat, Department, duelling scar, DWP, employment, ESA, ethnic, euphemism, gay, Godwin's Law, government, hb, home visit, homosexual, housing benefit, in-work, Income Support, is, Jew, Jobseeker's Allowance, JSA, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minority, Nazi, payslip, pension, pension credit, Pensions, people, performance measurement review, political, politics, Post Office, rent book, social security, support, tax credit, tenancy agreement, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare, work

Too much for you? But Iain Duncan Smith’s DWP is adopting tactics that are ever-closer to those of the Nazis. Now they want to force their way into people’s homes, unannounced, presumably in attempts to catch out benefit cheats. What other reason could they possibly have..?

You may get a visit from a government officer to check that you are being treated appropriately* for your status.

A review officer may visit you if you are:

• Jewish
• Homosexual
• A member of an ethnic minority
• A member of a political party other than the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats

Your name is selected at random to be checked. You won’t always get a letter in advance telling you about the visit.

What to expect

The officer will interview you in your home and will want to see two forms of identification.

They’ll also ask to see documents about your ethnic origin, religion, and political or sexual history, including but not limited to:

• Birth certificate
• Synagogue at which you worship and the name of your rabbi
• Passport/details of your country of origin
• Political party membership card
• Medical records

Visits usually last up to an hour but may be longer.

You may be asked to accompany our officer and be conveyed to special measures* if a more detailed interview is required. You will be treated appropriately*.

Check their identity

You can check the identity of the review officer by:

• Asking to see their photo identity card and then checking their face to see if the duelling scars match.

Of course there would be outcry if the government released a press release in this form – except that’s exactly what has happened, and nobody batted an eyelid because the victims are people on state benefits.

If you are reading this and think that’s all right, ask yourself what you’ll do when they come for you. This government already has its eye on pensioners, and people who claim in-work benefits will not be far behind.

By the way, words and phrases marked * are euphemisms from an academic website and may be translated as follows:

• Action – Mission to seek out (in this case, Jews) and kill them
• Treated appropriately – Murdered
• Conveyed to special measures – Killed

What’s that you’re saying? “It couldn’t happen here”?

Oh. Well, that’s all right then.

You can go back to sleep.

(Anyone invoking Godwin’s Law will receive special treatment* for doing so inappropriately.)

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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This independent blog’s only funding comes from readers’ contributions.
Without YOUR help, we cannot keep going.
You can make a one-off donation here:

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The second – Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first, Strong Words and Hard Times
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The benefit cap: Popular, but ill-judged and supported by lies

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accommodation, authorities, authority, average, benefit, benefits, break, cap, cb, child, children, Coalition, Conservative, cost, council, credit, David Cameron, debt, Democrat, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, employment, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, family, government, hb, homeless, housing, Iain Duncan Smith, impoverish, income, is, Jobseeker's Allowance, JSA, Labour, Lib Dem, Liberal, lie, living, local, mark hoban, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, poverty, regional, rent, sick, social security, support, tax, temporary, Tories, Tory, Twitter, up, variation, Vox Political, wage, welfare, work, working

Mark Hoban has a history of lying to the people, as the above image shows. How can we believe what he’s trying to tell us about the benefit cap?

What a shame that so many Vox Political articles this week are on the same subject: Your Government Is Lying To You.

Today, the lies are clustered around the benefit cap, which has been launched this week – in only four London boroughs, rather than nationally.

Perhaps the Tory-led Coalition government already has an inkling that it got its sums wrong?

Nevertheless, David Cameron’s Twitter feed announced to the world that yesterday (April 15) was “A big day for welfare reform as we pilot a cap on benefits equal to the average wage. Amazingly Labour oppose it.”

Two sentences, two untruths.

Firstly, let’s look at the average amounts that families bring into their homes. While it may be true that the average family wage is £26,000 per year – equal to the £500 per week at which benefits will be capped – it is not true that this is the total amount of income such a working family may receive. A couple with four children earning that much after tax, with rent and council tax liabilities of £400 a week would get around £15,000 a year in housing benefit and council tax support, £3,146 in child benefit and more than £4,000 in tax credits: £48,146.

That’s not an average; just an example. The average income of a working family is, we are told, £31,500, or £605 per week, with a little change left over. So there is a huge difference between what Mr Cameron says the average working family takes home, and what the average working family in fact takes home.

If benefits were capped at this figure, though, most unemployed families would already be receiving less, so there is no saving to be made – and the whole point of this, from the Coalition’s point of view, is to cut the benefit bill. It isn’t about fairness at all.

The second lie is that Labour opposes it. In fact, the Labour Party agrees that there should be a limit on the amount of benefit working-age people may receive – for exactly the same reason the Coalition keeps using: Limiting benefits is an incentive to seek work.

Obviously, employment should pay more. If people have a particular way of life and they want it to continue, then they should earn it. There is cross-party support for that principle and, by stating otherwise, Mr Cameron is feeding falsehoods to the public, trying to create a false impression.

Is he doing this because this is his most popular policy (wrongly so, for reasons we’ll address shortly) and he doesn’t want to admit that Labour would have carried it through as well?

Of course, there would have been one difference: The Labour version would have been fair.

Note that the government is also lying about the benefits affected by the cap. It says Jobseekers’ Allowance, Income Support, Child and Housing Benefit all count towards it, but not disability benefits.

What is Employment and Support Allowance if it isn’t a disability benefit, then? ESA is also counted when calculating whether a claimant’s or family’s benefits should be capped. It is only provided to people with a long-term sickness or disability.

So: Labour supports the benefit cap and would probably have brought it in. But Labour would have installed the cap on a regional basis, taking account of variations in the cost of living across the country. Labour said this would help ensure that the policy works in practice.

As long ago as January last year, Labour was saying that the version of the policy that has now come into effect would backfire.

When rolled out nationally, it is expected to save £110 million per year from the £201 billion benefits bill. For the drop-in-the-ocean effect it will have, we can see that it is already disproportionately popular. But consider the knock-on effects and it becomes clear that the benefit cap may cost the taxpayer much more than leaving matters as they were!

How much will local authorities have to pay on homelessness and housing families in temporary accommodation? Most out-of-work families with four children, and all those with five or more, will be pushed into poverty – Department for Work and Pensions figures show that the poverty threshold for a non-working family with four children (two of whom are over 14) is £26,566 – £566 more than the cap.

“Serves them right for having so many children while on benefits,” you might say. What if they weren’t on benefits when they had the children? The UK has been plunged into a recession after a period of full employment (more or less) as defined back in the 1940s, when the original Welfare State was created. The number of families forced into unemployment has grown massively as a result of the credit crunch and banking crisis, and they have been kept there by the policies of the Coalition government, which continue to depress the economy and prevent growth. Anybody can fall on hard times unexpectedly and it is one of the principle injustices of the current government that a person can be labelled a “striver” one day, lose their job the next and instantly become a “skiver” in the opinion of, among others, Daily Mail readers.

Of course the DWP has not released any estimates of the increase in poverty – especially child poverty – but a leaked government analysis suggests around 100,000 children would be impoverished once the cap is introduced nationally.

The first benefit to be trimmed, if families’ or individuals’ current benefit exceeds the limit and is deemed to need capping, is Housing Benefit (or, let’s be accurate here, Landlord Subsidy). It is expected that 40,000 families will be unable to pay their rent and will become homeless. That’s a lot of work for local authorities, who will have to try to find reasonable accommodation for them while paying the (higher) cost of putting them up in bed-and-breakfasts.

Many families may break up in response to the pressures. Parents who live separately and divide the residency of their children between them will be able to claim up to £1,000 a week in benefits, while a couple living together will only be able to claim £500. Of course, this would completely wipe out any saving the government would have made on that family and in fact would cost £13,000 more every year, per family.

Finally, Mark Hoban was on Radio 4’s Today programme, telling the nation that the best way to avoid the benefit cap is “to move into work” – completely ignoring the fact that there is hardly any work available. When thousands of people apply for a single job in a coffee house, as happened within the last few weeks, you know the employment situation is dire. Perhaps the government is playing fast and loose with its increased employment figures as well?

So which do you believe – the comfortable lie that the benefit cap ensures people in work earn more than those on benefits (there was never any danger of the situation being otherwise), or the unpalatable truth that the government’s imbecilic handling of the situation will cost us all many millions more in damage control when it all goes wrong?