More than a million benefit sanctions have starved the sick and disabled since 2010 in the ongoing Tory genocide
Disabled people protest against cuts to their disability allowance [Image: Jay Shaw Baker/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock].
Some commenters took it upon themselves to be highly insulted by the possibility that such a thing could happen in the UK, in this day and age.
They said the Tory government was doing nothing more than controlling benefit expenditure.
“Controlling benefit expenditure”? Some of us have a different phrase for it: Culling the stock.
Even the language is genocidal.
Use of the word “stock” to describe UK benefit claimants became commonplace in the Department for Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith.
The suggestion that claimants are not human beings who deserve respect equal to everybody else is a classic technique of “dehumanisation” – Stage Four in the “Ten Stages of Genocide”.
How much evidence do you need?
The Tories are carrying out a genocide in plain sight. They use the classic methods outlined in the “Ten Stages”. The only difference is that, instead of murdering people outright, they are depriving the sick and disabled of the means to survive.
The DWP’s own rule book accepts that people will suffer declining health if their benefit is sanctioned. But it seems it does not suggest that a sanction should not be applied if a sick or disabled person is expected to suffer a more serious decline than one in good health.
And of course the DWP does not consider it to be any of its business if a claimant dies of starvation after their benefit claim has been denied.
We have all read many stories of sick and disabled people who have died after being sanctioned, or after their claim has been denied. It is a commonplace occurrence.
Yet some people say there is nothing wrong with it – it’s just “controlling benefit expenditure”.
Call it what it is. Call it genocide.
Disabled people receiving state benefits have been hit with a million sanctions in less than a decade, according to alarming new evidence that they are being discriminated against by the welfare system.
A comprehensive analysis of the treatment of unemployed disabled claimants has revealed that they are up to 53% more likely to be docked money than claimant who are not disabled. This raises serious concerns about how they and their conditions are treated.
The findings, from a four-year study by academic Ben Baumberg Geiger in collaboration with the Demos thinktank, will cause worry that a government drive to help a million more disabled people into work over the next 10 years could lead to more unfair treatment.
Sanctions – the cutting or withholding of benefits – are applied as a punishment when claimants infringe the conditions of their payments by, say, as missing appointments or failing to apply for enough jobs.
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have you noticed / heard how many job centers are close /closing ? non in blackpool now ,
I consider taking people’s free will away from them and depriving them of basic human rights, So that they can coerce people into doing what they are told, just because they are vulnerable, is abusive and is torture.
And these million + people need to be telling the government” by voting Labour and turn things round and we can all get our lives back, and our Hospitals our jobs our soscial services, it’s ours FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW.
While undoubtedly true that we should all be voting Labour, it is also true that illness and stress, not to mention cold, hunger and the loss of ones home, produces cognitive dissonance. That is, the struggle for the basics to survive becomes overwhelming to the exclusion of a other matters. Telling someone to get politically active and engaged when they have been deprived of their means of survival is actually quite cruel. That’s another reason this govt have managed to cling to power, as so many millions of people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, they won’t become politically active or radicalised.
It’s called aktion t4 following that program of jeff3
It is a genocide in plain view, yet, everyone looks away. No different from the holocaust…
In addition, note, many chronically ill are actively being diagnosed, whilst the newly sick are not being offered full spectrum of diagnostic test under the guise of NHS hospital consultants and Ms working in the community for various “private” subcontractors. They have 15 minutes with each patient and lack of diagnostic tests. Mds are now very limited in terms of clinical autonomy, which they brought on themselves whilst cozzying up to the neolibs, who, thereafter, altered their NHS contracts, ensuing massive loss of jobs.
I would add that the sick and disabled are in individualised ghettos especially those who are deprived of the means to leave their homes, or to be tended by carers.
At one low point, I wouldn’t go out because I had to use a wheel chair and became very anxious at the thought of having to endure verbal and physical assaults while shopping in supermarkets.
Now I am feeling stronger, and have a scooter, which attracts far less abuse. I am using my strength now to fight and campaign for Labour . I just wish more fit people would do it on our behalf, as you have Mike, as for many being sick or disabled is a full time occupation, and those in organisations like DPAC are our front line.