The answer’s simple, but will our pensioners work it out?
With both Labour and the Tories refusing to guarantee the continuation of the triple-lock, there is no reason for the worst-paid pensioners in Europe – ours, here in the UK – to give either party their vote.
Jeremy Hunt refuses to guarantee the pensions triple lock will be in next Tory manifesto.
The same as Labour.
UK present/future retirees condemned to one of the lowest state pensions in Europe.
Find another party to support! Your life depends on it.
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The short answer is he isn’t – if you can believe what Rishi Sunak said during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Asked if he was committed to the pension’s triple-lock, that commits the government to increasing pensions each year by the highest of 2.5 per cent, inflation, or average wages, Sunak said:
“This is the Government who introduced and remain committed to the triple lock.”
That means pensions should rise by 8.5 per cent – the average annual wage increase recorded in the summer months.
But Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride had previously refused to commit to this, and it is rumoured that he wants to strip out the effect of one-off bonuses paid to public sector workers, to bring the increase down to 7.8 per cent.
It’s an argument reminiscent of that used back in September 2021, when a huge fall in earnings caused by the Covid pandemic was followed by a similarly whopping rise when everybody went back to work and their pay packets re-balanced.
The real-terms change in that case was negligible, but the rule does not take account of falls in income – only of increases.
The suspension of the triple-lock in that year was halted in the House of Lords, when Baron Prem Sikka demonstrated that it would result in a loss of more than £30 billion to pensioners by 2027:
DAYLIGHT ROBBERY: UK govt admits that suspension of the triple-lock will rob retirees of £5.4bn of pensions in 2022/23, £5,78bn in 2023/24, £6.1bn in 2024/25, £6.5bn in 2025/26 and £6.7bn in 2026/27, totalling £30.5bn over 5yrs (see page 136 of the link).https://t.co/yoDIiMbSsd
Suspending the triple-lock would also have broken a Tory manifesto promise – as it will if Sunak does it this year.
In fact, This Writer was not particularly impressed with any of the arguments about pensions back in 2021 because I thought a simple cost-of-living increase would have been more in spirit with the intention of the triple-lock.
No – my argument with what the Tories were doing was more holistic than that; I looked at the wider issue of how much the UK pays in pensions, and found that the people were being short-changed. Here’s what I said then:
The point is that the UK state pension is one of the worst pension deals in the whole world.
On retirement, our pensioners will receive, on average, 29 per cent of their former earnings. This compares with an increase of 0.6 per cent in the Netherlands, more than 90 per cent of former earnings in Portugal, Italy and Austria, and an OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development) nations’ average of nearly 63 per cent.
In fact, the UK’s pensions deal comes in at slightly worse than that provided in… Mexico.
This was a chance to level up the UK pension with some of our closest neighbours – but the Tories didn’t want to. That’s why people should be angry.
Some of the figures may have changed since then – but I doubt the UK’s position relative to other countries has.
Mine certainly hasn’t. How about yours?
Ultimately, of course, this is just part of Sunak’s quest to find which sector of society he can most comfortably penalise in order to give a big tax break to rich and influential people, so they will then persuade or coerce enough of the wider electorate to vote in another Tory government at the next election.
I still reckon that, rather than attacking pensioners or people on Universal Credit (which will include employees), the axe will fall on sick and disabled people, because they are least able to defend themselves. As usual.
Rishi Sunak: he likes money but he doesn’t understand it. By giving benefit money to the rich in tax cuts, he is cutting away the foundations of the UK’s economy. How will you be able to afford anything?
Once again, the Tories are threatening defenceless benefit claimants in their endless campaign to bribe donation money from rich benefactors.
More people looking for work relieves pressure on employers to increase wages, because jobseekers will undercut each other in their desperation – and I use that word advisedly – to get a regular wage packet.
Now Sunak is threatening more than six million Universal Credit claimants – most of whom are in work – with an effective cut in payments if he decides to make the annual benefit increase next April lower than the rate of inflation.
The apparent reason is to fund another tax cut for the very richest, in time for the next general election; he’s buying support where he wants it by harming those he doesn’t ever expect to help him.
Here’s the Mirror:
the Prime Minister refused to commit to inflation-proof benefit rises next year, arguing that payments had already gone up by a “huge amount”.
For clarity, it doesn’t matter how much payments have already increased. Inflation is always a measure of how fast prices are rising. If the inflation rate slows, prices are still rising, only more slowly. Increasing benefits at a rate lower than inflation means millions of working people and benefit claimants will not be able to afford basic necessities.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is thought to be considering a real-terms cut this autumn. Payments usually rise each April by the inflation figure of the previous September – expected to be 6.9%. But the Government is looking at a lower figure, leaving 6.1 million on UC worse off.
A rise 1% below inflation would result in a low-income working couple with two children losing £220. Asked if he could guarantee benefits continue to rise with inflation, Mr Sunak declined but insisted he would “make sure we look after the most vulnerable”.
That has to be a lie; Sunak has already attacked “the most vulnerable” with his plan to push long-term sick and disabled people off benefits.
Be in no doubt: this is an attack on you.
The fear is that, by buying support from the rich, Sunak will be able to rely on their influence to persuade – or coerce – you or people like you into supporting yet another godawful Tory election win.
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David Hencke’s ever-informative Westminster Confidential site provides this update on the struggle to get restitution for women who have been harmed by changes to the pension system:
One of London’s top law firms has written to Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, inviting him to agree to mediation talks to end the long suffering impasse on awarding compensation to the now 3.5 million 50s born women who had to wait another six years before they got their pension.
[A] report into the issue was published at the end of November and concluded that there was direct discrimination … women who were born from 1950 to 1960 had been singled out to wait for their pension while everyone else was unaffected.
It has also to be taken into account that 9.8m men were given 5 years free auto credits to retire 5 years early, aged 60, whilst the state pension of 3.8m 1950’s women was twice deferred, by stealth, and they were then coerced back to work for up to another 6 years having been denied the promised similar auto credits awarded to men.
The report [was hand-delivered] to Rishi Sunak at Downing Street just before it was published. It was also delivered to Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who is currently involved in a long inquiry into how much the women should be compensated after finding partial maladminstration.
It might be instructive to contrast this with another case of discrimination against women, that has been in the news recently; I refer to that of Birmingham City Council, which used a bonus scheme that unfairly benefited men more than women while it was run by a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition and then was under no overal control, between 2004 and 2010.
After a court battle, the council was ordered to pay £760 million to settle equal pay claims – and attempting to comply has caused the council to declare (effective) bankruptcy. Tory MPs have made a big fuss of the fact that a council that is now run by Labour has been financially embarrassed, even though it was their party that caused the problem.
The UK government cannot go bankrupt; it can always issue currency to cover any spending it has to make (although there should be a balancing tax take, to counter inflation).
But, so far, it has resisted calls to compensate women harmed by the state pension changes, even though those changes were clearly discriminatory against them.
Hypocrisy? What gives the Tory government the right to avoid a responsibility that the law has thrust onto a local authority – with the enthusiastic support of Tory MPs?
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A cartoonist’s view of government sickness and disability assessments; ministers set the bar at an impossibly high level.
The Conservatives seem to have launched another attack on sickness and disability benefit claimants – labelling them as “scroungers” again, even though many are dying before they even receive state payments – due to the Kafka-esque assessment process.
Tory lickspittle Andrew Pierce has published a poison pen piece in the Daily Hate Mail, aimed at whipping up division between claimants and the rest of the population.
It’s a classic Tory “divide and rule” tactic, that was deployed to devastating effect during the years of the Coalition government. It comes out whenever the government needs to distract people away from its own shortcomings.
So, for example, today you could be asking why the Conservatives ignored warnings that schools built with RAAC concrete were falling down – for 13 years – and only started doing something about it after collapses came to public attention. The Tory answer to that is: “Look at those skiving benefit scroungers!”
The reality isn’t remotely similar to Tory Boy Pierce’s claim.
The reality is that people claiming sickness and disability benefits often die before they receive a penny, because the system already works very hard to deprive them of it – as Labour MP Debbie Abrahams pointed out in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this week:
Earlier this week, in a #WestminsterHall debate on #HealthAssessments I emphasised the link between the difficulties that some claimants experience in their applications and the tragic deaths of claimants. This will be looked into in the #WPSC safeguarding inquiry this autumn. pic.twitter.com/8xFanlXNZi
If a coroner writes a ‘Prevention of Future Death’ report, it means they believe a death could have been prevented but the circumstances in which the deceased had been placed – in this case, a benefit claim process that is so complicated and obstructive that it not only discourages claimants but depresses them and further harms their physical health – actually contributed to or caused their death.
Obviously, if we have a claim process that is actually harming or killing claimants, it should be impossible to suggest that they are lazy scroungers; a lazy scrounger would not put him- or herself through the trial of such a procedure because it would not be worth the hassle.
And the underlying reality is that prime minister Rishi Sunak and Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride want to make the Work Capability Assessment harsher, in order to force a million sick and disabled people back onto the jobs market.
They’re not doing this because those people are actually fit for work and shouldn’t be on benefits.
They’re doing it because more people looking for work means employers can pay less; if a job applicant wants more than employers are willing to pay – like an actual living wage – they can refuse the application on the grounds that they can always find someone else who will take the lower payment.
But you won’t see that fact in one of Tory Boy’s hate screeds.
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The new Tory way to tell whether a sick or disabled person can work: it’s quite an old cartoon by now – but it still works because it is more or less accurate.
That was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?
Remember when Jeremy Hunt announced a plan to scrap Work Capability Assessments for sickness benefits in his first spring budget earlier this year?
Well, it seems the Tories have changed their collective mind because Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has launched a consultation on proposed changes to the work capability assessment – the test aimed at establishing how a disability or illness limits a claimant’s ability to work.
Updating the categories associated with mobility and social interaction
Reflecting flexible and home working – and minimising the risk of these issues causing problems for workers
Providing “tailored support” for those found capable of work preparation activity in light of the proposed changes
The consultation is expected to run for eight weeks, and the Government hopes the reforms will come into force by 2025 – which will be after the next general election.
The BBC fails to include a link to the government consultation
Reading between the lines, it seems Stride wants to change the guidelines so that people who are too ill to work will be deemed to be perfectly capable of doing so – possibly by working from home.
The BBC report features a dissenting view from James Taylor, executive director of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said if people are forced to look for work when they are unwell this could make them even “more ill”.
“If they don’t meet strict conditions, they’ll have their benefits stopped. In the grips of a cost-of-living crisis this could be catastrophic,” he added.
Yeah – we’ve witnessed such catastrophic situations before under Tory governments since 2010. Thousands of people died when they should not have had to.
Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, who has worked to help sick and disabled people in danger due to government policies, highlighted the problems with the Tory approach in Parliament:
Today’s announcement on the #WCA consultation will cause fear & anxiety for many #disabledpeople who after 13 years of draconian cuts will see this as yet another stick.
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As seen on Twitter: but is the UK government already planning ways to discredit a new United Nations investigation into the (mis)treatment of disabled people here?
That’s right – the UK’s minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, couldn’t be bothered to attend the United Nations in Geneva to provide the Tory government’s side of the story:
UK groups representing disabled people are giving evidence today on plight of disabled people in our country. The government tried to use stalling tactic to prevent this & the government minister hasn’t even bothered to show up. Disgraceful but typical show of disrespect #CRDP23https://t.co/lfiwrPLkng
This Writer will dare to predict what will happen:
Firstly, the government – that will have had plenty of time to put together a report before this meeting took place – will complain that it was not allowed an opportunity to present its case.
Secondly, any findings by the UN will be vilified by government representatives, in line with what has happened to other UN reports criticising the UK’s Tory government in the past.
Nothing will be done to improve the lives of disabled people in the UK.
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Rishi Sunak: another UK prime minister has been caught lying to the public.
Outrage as Sunak’s claims about the Labour Party and lawyers ‘undermine the rule of law’
Rishi Sunak has disgraced himself and his government again, with a false claim that the Labour Party and “a subset of lawyers” are supporting alleged criminal gangs who are said to be bringing people into the UK from abroad for illegal purposes.
Here’s his claim:
This is what we’re up against.
The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs – they're all on the same side, propping up a system of exploitation that profits from getting people to the UK illegally.
It isn’t true and it has provoked a storm of outrage – particularly as previous falsehoods by Sunak have led to an attempt on one solicitor’s life.
Pamela Fitzpatrick, who is director of Harrow Law Centre, tweeted: “This is completely irresponsible of Sunak. Solicitors are officers of the Court subject to a professional code of conduct. This type of misinformation by Sunak has already led to a far right extremist trying to kill a Harrow immigration Solicitor. It must stop.”
This appears to be a reference to alleged far-right extremist Cavan Medlock, who was accused of trying to murder Harrow immigration solicitor Toufique Hossain because “he objected to the solicitor Hossain’s involvement in preventing the Government from deporting immigrants”.
The alleged attack took place on September 7, 2020. It seems likely to have been provoked by claims such as this, from Sunak’s Tory colleague, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel:
Today we removed people who came here via small boat.
They had previously claimed asylum elsewhere and had no legal right to be in the UK.
Removals continue to be frustrated by activist lawyers, but I will not let up until this route is unviable https://t.co/oc1sOTTOae
The trial was last reported to be taking place on June 26 this year – but This Writer can find no report of it. News blackout?
Going back to Sunak’s allegation, there is no evidence that the Labour Party – even in its current incarnation as a Substitute Tory Party (STP) – has ever supported people-trafficking by criminal gangs.
And shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock has called for the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority to launch an inquiry into any attempt to help people get into the UK under false pretences, according to the Mirror.
Fellow Labour MP Chris Bryant also condemned Sunak’s claim: “In his desperation he has plumbed a new depth… He debases his office and forgets act as PM of the United Kingdom not seek to sow division.”
And shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry tweeted: “Usually, I try and maintain some sense of respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but it’s just impossible when the man doing the job is willing to demean it like this. What a desperate attempt to deflect from his own dismal failures. Utterly pathetic.”
The Bar Council – the organisation representing all barristers in England and Wales – stated: “The comments by the Prime Minister… are clearly an attempt to play politics with the legal profession. This damaging rhetoric undermines the rule of law, trust in lawyers and confidence in the UK legal system and is to be deplored.”
For the sake of accuracy, the organisation had to also state: “Lawyers are not beyond reproach, and all professions have individuals who commit misconduct and are dishonest. Regulators are there to discipline them.” Sunak is likely to point to this as evidence to support his wafer-thin claim.
It’s not likely to sway thinking members of the public. For example:
“Sunak did not get into politics to make a better world for the people of Britain – only to make more money for himself and his rich friends – and now his grubby inhumanity is exposed for all to see. Better he had never been PM and that his inadequacy had remained his secret,” tweeted science journalist Marcus Chown.
Finally, there is a question over whether Sunak’s government colluded with the Daily Mail on the article, in order to have some kind of “fig leaf” with which to cover its draconian and internationally-illegal new measures against people fleeing persecution in foreign countries.
Here’s another member of the law-practising community that Sunak has attacked:
2/ Before anyone cries "crank!" and "conspiracy theory!" at me, Labour did something similar in respect of "bogus asylum seekers" when Blunkett was Home Sec, as recounted some time ago by Peter Oborne here: https://t.co/OOKodjuv72
Zionist origins of BBC reporter who challenged politician on anti-Semitism raise serious question about BBC impartiality
It's been revealed that the @BBCNews reporter, who cut off ex-chair of Uxbridge Constituency Labour Party who'd challenged the 'Labour antisemitism' scam, was a pro-Israel activist!
Strange. When This Writer was trained as a journalist, I was taught to be fair and impartial – that is, not to colour my reporting of events with falsehoods.
Now it seems the BBC – the biggest news organisation in the world, if I recall correctly – is employing people with an ideological bias towards the exact opposite.
Samantha Simmonds, the interviewer who reeled off false claims of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, was a member of a Zionist group and may have had an interest in discrediting the former leader and his supporters.
If she allowed her own personal politics to slant her on-air reporting, the BBC should be considering this to be a very serious matter indeed.
Watch her interview again and see how she presented falsehoods as facts and, when countered by former Uxbridge and South Ruislip Labour chair David Williams with the truth, cut him off:
The BBC relies heavily on its reputation as a factual news reporter – and its dominance of the news media means a majority of the public relies on it too.
When one of its representatives is found to be regurgitating untrue propaganda for political ends (Jeremy Corbyn sought a peaceful solution for the Israel/Palestine question, including freedom for Palestine and Zionism demands that all Palestinian territory must become part of Israel, with its inhabitants thrown out), it brings the integrity of the BBC as a whole into question.
Knowing what has happened here, will you be ready to believe BBC reporting on the next big controversy?
If you want to complain, the BBC has a web page telling you how to do so. Feel free to use it.
Keir Starmer claims he’ll give every child ‘the best opportunities’ – after condemning hundreds of thousands to poverty
You are a liar. It will be impossible for every child to have "the best opportunities in life" while you continue to impose the two-child limit on child benefit.
You will be sealing those children and their families into poverty and you know it. https://t.co/PFnRHL1lGh
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The Department for Work and Pensions is being forced to rethink a scheme to pay debts and bills directly out of a person’s benefits without discussing it with them first.
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the current guidance on the Third Party Deduction (TPD) scheme issued by the DWP is unlawful because it says there is no point in finding out whether a claimant’s personal circumstances affect whether deductions should be made, since it only makes a difference in very few cases.
The court said this is very close to saying that the interests of the claimant are irrelevant, which is precisely the opposite of what the regulations demand.
The decision was in response to Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride’s appeal against the findings of a judicial review brought by benefit claimant Helen Timson.
The review found in her favour last September and the appeal was heard in April. Now the Appeal Court judges have ruled unanimously that the way the DWP operates the scheme is unfair.
Lord Justice Edis said:
The submission of the Secretary of State… comes down to the proposition that because only in very few cases can the personal circumstances of the claimant or their family make any difference, there is no point finding out what they are.
This is very close to saying that the interests of the claimant are irrelevant, which is precisely the opposite of what the regulations say.
The Secretary of State can only make a TPD direction after forming an opinion or being satisfied about the interests of the particular claimant and family under consideration.
The regulations therefore require that their interests are assessed in the light of all relevant information which must include anything they wish to say on the subject. After forming that judgment the Secretary of State may make a TPD direction.
He added:
In my judgment, the regulations, by framing the decision-making as they do, require a consideration of the interests of the individual claimant and their family.
Under the guidance, however, the decision-maker has the option of contacting them, or of investigating their benefit records, but the guidance allows a decision to be made where the claimant or their family has been given no opportunity to supply information beyond what the utility company puts in the spreadsheet.
This appears to me to be obviously unfair.’
This is an important victory for anybody who might be affected by deductions in the future – and the High Court judgment recorded that there were more than 250,000 deductions in respect of water, electricity and gas debts last year.
In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, it seems reasonable to expect the relevant utility firms to make increasing numbers of TPD requests in the foreseeable future.
This judgment means no deductions may be made without first discussing the extent of any hardship they are likely to cause with the claimant. This may lead to the request being turned down.
But it isn’t all good news: the judgment applies to deductions for utility charges from legacy benefit (non-Universal Credit) only. The DWP can make deductions from benefit for other things which don’t have the same statutory requirement to be in a person’s ‘interests’ (e.g. for council tax, fines, and child support) and so will not be caught by this judgment.
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Targeted: this poster appeared in 2019 so the number of sick and disabled people who have died is likely to be far higher – especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. Papers like the Telegraph seem to be trying to make that number skyrocket.
What’s going on at the Daily Telegraph? First we find that the paper has been spreading falsehoods that the boss of a supermarket chain that keeps its groceries as cheap as possible and pays its workers more than most has blamed the minimum wage for inflation (he hasn’t); now this:
“It raises the question, just how much of our hard won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work?”
It raises the question, just how much of a role does the media play in fuelling disability hate crimes? And what do early eugenic arguments look like? pic.twitter.com/btRfVRkU0j
And the website to which Samuel Miller links, here, pulls no punches – claiming the tool to calculate “how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state” is “straight out of the Nazi handbook”:
British Newspaper Attacks Disability Benefits With 'Calculator' Straight Out of the Nazi Handbook | The Mary Sue https://t.co/yAVBD2auyP
The Telegraph article states: “Of the 5.2 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job, following a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic, it emerged last week.”
The Mary Sue piece responds [boldings mine]: “As a propaganda piece, it’s not subtle. “Roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job” is a funny way of saying that 3.7 million disabled people, who cannot work due to their disabilities, have been awarded up to £515.40 a month (maybe going all the way up to £782.35 if they’re severely disabled) in order to keep them from starving to death on the streets.
“Putting this number down to “a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic” is derisive and clearly intended to diminish the reader’s perception of what are, in fact, disabling conditions to live with that, yes, actually were caused by the pandemic—either a result of infection with the virus itself or the psychological impacts of lockdown, mass death, and the other sociological effects of a global pandemic.”
The Torygraph continues: “On top of this, the controversial decision to maintain the state pension triple lock is estimated to cost taxpayers £1,000 each over the next four years, according to calculations by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a think tank.
“It raises the question, just how much of our hard-won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work? With the calculator below, Telegraph Money can now reveal how much of your salary goes towards bankrolling the welfare state.”
In fact, none of our salaries are spent on benefits. The system doesn’t work that way. The government of the day sets its spending levels and then taxes us enough to keep that spending from pushing inflation too high (not accounting for interference from external influences like foreign wars and Brexit).
But let’s not allow trifles like the facts to get in the way of the Torygraph‘s argument.
Back to Mary Sue: “Note the emphasis on “do not work” and how it conflates the people who cannot work due to age or disability with the fantasy figure of the refusenik, who lounges around at home, wilfully choosing not to work, all on the government’s tab. It should be clear by now that the purpose of this article is to raise outrage against both the welfare system itself and the most vulnerable people who are dependent on it, but still, there’s more.”
The Torygraph states: “Despite Rishi Sunak’s insistence that he is a “low tax conservative” who wants to “bring people’s taxes down”, his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has implemented a combination of frozen thresholds, removed investment incentives, and increased corporation tax – all while keeping welfare spending close to £300bn a year.
“At the same time, welfare spending was the single biggest component of public sector expenditure in the financial year 2021-22, at £298.7bn out of a total of £952.3bn. For the typical taxpayer, this amounts to close to a third of their annual tax bill of £6,500 paid directly towards benefits.
“Using the latest public spending data, our analysis shows someone with the average UK salary of £33,000 sees £2,000 a year spent on welfare.”
Mary Sue responds: “The authors of the piece, Alex Clark and Tom Haynes, go on to object to the marginal and long overdue increase of corporation tax (even though the U.K. still has the joint highest uncapped headline rate of tax relief among G7 countries), the freeze on higher rate tax thresholds (meaning the wealthiest aren’t getting a tax cut), and the fact that this didn’t coincide with a lowering of government welfare spending, as if the former requires the latter as a form of penance.
“They seem outraged that most public sector spending goes toward the welfare state, with around a third of the average individual’s tax bill going toward it—this despite acknowledging that the percentage of public spending that goes toward welfare benefits has actually gone down while overall spending has gone up.”
The Torygraph: “Many high earners are now paying relatively more towards the welfare state because of the lowering of the 45p tax threshold in 2023-24, which now stands at £125,000, down from £150,000 before. Telegraph analysis shows 6pc of the average salary goes towards paying for benefits, compared to 13pc of a high earner’s salary.
“Someone earning £150,000, five times the average salary, contributes close to £19,000 towards the welfare state – more than nine times the contribution of someone on the average salary.”
Mary Sue: “But of course, the greatest outrage in this piece is reserved for the very wealthiest, who, due to earning significantly more than people in lower tax brackets, accordingly pay more tax and therefore contribute more to the welfare system. Leaning heavily on the fact that the highest tax bracket’s threshold was lowered from £150,000 pa to £125,140 this year, requiring the people in that gap to pay a whole 5% more on anything they earn above that limit, Clark and Haynes bemoan that a larger percentage of their tax bill goes towards maintaining the welfare system than lower earners. Someone earning five times the average U.K. salary pays up to nine times the amount towards the welfare system, we are told, as if this isn’t the entire point of staggered tax rates and how the system is supposed to work.”
Mary Sue then makes a hugely important point [boldings mine, again]: “It’s incredibly difficult to successfully apply for disability benefits of any kind in the U.K. According to a recent government study, the release of which is suspiciously close this particular Telegraph article’s publication, “the health assessment system for deciding if someone can claim disability benefits is grueling and often incorrect.” 90% of PIP (the most common benefit) claimants are denied on their first attempt with 89% of them denied again on their second round.
“While 3.7 million people considered too disabled to work may seem like a lot, when the total number of disabled people across the country is taken into consideration, 12.1 million, it suddenly seems a lot more reasonable. There aren’t too many people in receipt of benefits, or capable of working but given a pass not to—it’s the exact opposite, and the amount of money disabled people are awarded by the government is, in most cases, barely enough to live on.”
“Labelling them as “useless eaters,” people who required care and support while being unable to contribute to the state, the Nazis distributed a flurry of propaganda focused on presenting disabled people as a financial burden to everyone else—a burden that prevented “good Germans,” who worked and paid taxes, from being able to access the resources they needed. This propaganda was so ubiquitous that it even made its way into children’s maths books.
“How many steps is a calculator—designed to let you know exactly how much enabling disabled people’s continued survival costs you personally—removed from this? How far off is an article dedicated to decrying the expense of disabled lives as an undue burden, especially on the upper classes?”
Charitably, the author of the Mary Sue article doesn’t believe those who wrote the Torygraph piece were deliberately trying to stir up hatred: “it seems very likely that the authors have bought into the British right wing cultural obsessions of benefit frauds and disability fakers, a group of people that are vanishingly rare but which conservatives see as boogeymen around every corner. I’m sure they believe all those people now experiencing joint pain and mental health problems, as a result of a mass disabling event which caused those specific medical problems on a large scale, are just lying to get out of having to work.
“It’s a very convenient thing to believe if you want to pay lower taxes and are resentful of having to share even a fraction of your wealth with people less fortunate than yourself. It ties in very nicely with all the other conservative ideals that The Telegraph and its readers stand for, and that’s why it’s so dangerous: That’s exactly how and why it worked so well the last time.
“Painting a group of people as too expensive to keep alive is literally the first step to genocide, and given the political environment, in which hate speech against a number of groups as well as legislation targeting them has become normalized, in both the press and parliament, its very concerning that The Telegraph felt comfortable publishing an article that so openly expresses these sentiments.
“I wonder how many people’s disability benefits the coronation could have paid for instead. Funny how papers like The Telegraph didn’t have an issue with taxpayers funding that.”
In fact, some of us would suggest that the genocide has been happening, quietly, for more than a decade – since before the Conservatives came back into office in 2010, in fact.
Back in 2015, after This Writer (that’s me) forced the government to honour a Freedom of Information request I had submitted, we all learned that 2,400 people had died between dates in 2011 and 2014 – within two weeks of being denied the sickness benefit ESA on grounds of being “fit for work”.
Nobody knows how many have died over a longer period after being found “fit for work” because the Department for Work and Pensions has never bothered to check. But the newspapers have been full of stories telling how people have died of starvation, of ill-health due to their disabilities, or simply committed suicide in despair because of the cruelty of the system.
Changes to the way ESA is assessed – removing the admittedly-hated “Work Capability Assessment” in favour of the even-worse Personal Independence Payment assessment – are expected to deprive a million people of the benefits they need to survive.
And benefit sanctions – which have been proved to be useless in getting people with long-term illnesses and disabilities back to work – are to be stepped up, pushing more vulnerable people towards taking their own lives.
As This Writer has stated many times over more than a decade in which I’ve been writing about it, this is genocide by proxy. The government creates conditions that force sick and disabled people to die, and then claims to be totally innocent of causing the deaths.
And it is at a time when these changes are being introduced that bosses of a national, right-wing, newspaper decide to publish an article demonising the sick and disabled (together with other benefit claimants and pensioners).
Going back to Mary Sue‘s “Nazi” motif, everybody know by now (don’t they?) that before World War II the Daily Mail actually supported Hitler’s regime in its articles.
Now it seems to be the Telegraph that has taken up the baton of the fascists.
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