Why should a young person at the start of their life feel like they want to end it?  | The poor side of life

Last Updated: October 9, 2015By
Ashton-Under-Lyne Job Centre Plus.

Ashton-Under-Lyne Job Centre Plus.

I received a telephone call. It was from a claimant at Ashton Jobcentre. They were panicking and I could hear them crying. I asked what was wrong and they said that they had received a letter stating that they had to attend a work programme course in a different town too far away to walk and they didn’t have enough bus fare to get there.

The claimant sat down and said that they couldn’t do this anymore. They wanted to end their life. It was too hard. How many things are they going to be asked to do, they said.

This [person] is very vulnerable with health issues. They were found fit by the gods of Atos and were now being put into situations that they are finding very difficult to deal with.

Comrades took them to a safe place and provided the compassion that they needed. Made sure that they had enough food etc and a list of things to do – one of them being to be put back on ESA.

The stress of the Jobcentre is literally killing them.

Source: Why should a young person at the start of their life feel like they want to end it?  | The poor side of life

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17 Comments

  1. mohandeer October 9, 2015 at 8:56 am - Reply

    I am so sick of people who don’t want to get rid of the Royal Family, scroungers of the first order. What good is she if she really couldn’t give a toss about “her subjects”. If we ditch the Royals that’s money in the pot for less “privileged” people.Their are people kn the house of Lords who are paid a fortune by some peoples standards (approx. 20 million) for doing as little as they possibly can and we have politicians who “scrape by” with a measly £74,000 plus expenses, more than 40 million working people could only dream of. What a disgusting state of affairs we have in this country. No “big” society, no “caring” society just high society and Cameron says we are all in this together? Is he having a laugh or what?

    • Mike Sivier October 9, 2015 at 11:13 am - Reply

      I don’t see the relevance of this to the article.

  2. Jeffery Davies October 9, 2015 at 9:07 am - Reply

    Its an abuse by the government, culling the stock through benefits denial. day by day new cases surface showing us that aktion t4 is alive today jeff3

  3. Dez October 9, 2015 at 9:34 am - Reply

    maybe its time for a public black list of such heartless centres with little understanding of how to treat the public especially the vulnerable…..do they get a bonus for such treatment resulting in suicide??

  4. Lorfarius October 9, 2015 at 10:40 am - Reply

    Why is it Ashton Job Center that keeps getting featured all the time? Very worrying for that area.

    • Mike Sivier October 9, 2015 at 10:59 am - Reply

      It’s simply because there’s a blog – The Poor Side of Life – that concentrates on people affected by the decisions made there.
      But consider this: For all we know, Ashton-Under-Lyne Jobcentre is typical of the 800 or so others across the UK. If you think it’s bad that one Jobcentre is causing so much misery, try multiplying it by 800!

      • wildswimmerpete October 9, 2015 at 4:02 pm - Reply

        Mike
        Ashton-U-Lyne is one of the pathfinder Jobcentres for Universal Credit which is probably why their advisers do seem to be vicious. I suspect their performance is closely monitored by their Fuhrer.

  5. NMac October 9, 2015 at 10:45 am - Reply

    Has that UN Inquiry started yet? I just hope it isn’t going to be yet another whitewash.

  6. Florence October 9, 2015 at 12:02 pm - Reply

    The treatment of this person reported by those picketing the Ashton job centre is just the tiny tip of the ice-berg, but shows graphically how someone already with problems is being tipped over the edge by the Job Centre, that will hopefully take centre stage in the UN investigation.

    If we take that one step outside the cultural bubble created by the last 5 years propaganda this is actually OUTRAGEOUS. It is unconscionable that someone was instructed to make a journey that it is known they cannot do That the pressure generated – by the threat of sanction, and loss of all support possibly for month or years – is unbearable, The only outcome possible would be the obvious suicidal ideation, from intense suffering from contemplation of the unavoidable inability to comply. The Job Centre are deliberately causing psychological harm, brandishing the bigger threat of physical harm. Homelessness, hunger, fear, death. If the casual barbarity under this heinous government isn’t a massive breach in human rights, what is?

    My concern about the UN investigation is the apparent agreement to cooperate with Saudi in the UN that has the Saudi now holding the Chair of the Human Rights Committee. That puts them in a position to influence investigations and reporting.

  7. Jim Round October 9, 2015 at 12:52 pm - Reply

    Anyone know what the claimant count is for A-U-L jobcentre, I can’t seem to find it

  8. mrmarcpc October 9, 2015 at 3:04 pm - Reply

    The government are telling the youth of the UK, you’re poor, peasant scum and you always will be, you’re not going to advance to university because we’ve made it more expensive and so harder to get into so to keep riff raff like you plebs out, as soon as you leave school, you get nothing, no help with anything at all, we learnt that trick from our supreme leader Adolf Thatcher, we are setting you up to fail immediately so you will lose all of your drive, your ambitions, your hopes, your dreams, your will and hopefully after you’ve lost all that, you’ll kill yourselves because basically, under tory Britain, you’re better off dead and we want you dead so we don’t have to pay anything out to you plebeian filth, that’s right you horrid peasants, even ones who stupidly voted for us, we want you dead too, hazzah, tally ho, seig hiel!

    • maureen laverty October 9, 2015 at 5:51 pm - Reply

      mrmarcpc, that’s it in a nutshell, I couldn’t have put it any clearer than you have. This tory filth despise us, working class, so much, even more so if we’re not contributing tax towards funding their lavish, pampered lifestyles and expense accounts. They want anyone who is of no use to them dead, simple as !

  9. Chris Kitcher October 9, 2015 at 3:20 pm - Reply

    Does anyone know how to make representations to the Investigator from the United Nations?

  10. lanzalaco October 9, 2015 at 6:06 pm - Reply

    they need better procedures so those on the sharp end can figure out whats, what.. because fact is too many people game the system. BTW I dont read about this, I know it from countless people telling me things like “I can just tell the doctor I am depressed, after all they can only judge by what you tell them”.

    OK I come from a city where there is lot of exchanging notes about how to game the system.. and clearly there is more actual real cases then fraud. Just because there is fraud, that does not mean give up and stop developing interventions/support. But then to go war on the disabled like mad horse Duncan smith. In the real world if you get depressed, most employers will find a way to get rid of you, so i don’t know what planet IDS is living on. Probably taken out of context that some types of work situation can be good when things improve.

    Maybe the cases Mike talks of in the WCA where the assessors ask when somebody is going to commit suicide is an intervention technique. Because asking when, how, where is a marker that somebody is likely to do it. Why else would they ask ?

    • Mike Sivier October 9, 2015 at 6:15 pm - Reply

      Oh, you hear lots of people saying that, do you?
      I think we’ve all heard that particular line of nonsense before!
      No, the WCA question is not an intervention technique. They don’t ask when the claimant is planning to kill themselves – they ask why the claimant has not already done so. Important difference, there. The question seems clearly intended to encourage the claimants to go out and kill themselves, and save money for the government so they can cut taxes for the rich.

      • Helen October 10, 2015 at 2:23 am - Reply

        I totally agree with you Mike!

        • Mike Sivier October 10, 2015 at 1:07 pm - Reply

          Thank you!

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