Sue Marsh writes about the DWP's refusal to send anyone on the radio to debate her on the ESA cuts.
I’ve just heard the Department for Work and Pensions has refused to send anyone to Radio 4’s You and Yours show on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow (12 noon) to defend and debate with me the changes we exposed in #esaSOS.
Despite leading barristers saying they are illegal and professors of medicine saying they are immoral and unworkable, the DWP haven’t answered a single point we raised. Again.
It’s remarkable. People are suffering – 140,000 people have been proven to have been unfairly stripped of their livelihood. We challenge them, they don’t even deny we’re right, but they sit there in their ivory towers and say, “so sue us”.
Well, DWP, we will and if you think I’ll stop at defeating you on ESA you’re wrong. I’ll make sure every last one of you is held personally accountable for the horrific assault you’re inflicting on vulnerable people in the UK who need you most.
In the next few weeks, I will release stories proving you are liars and cheats. I promise, you will not be able to hide from these. You will have no defence, no one to blame but yourselves. And yes, I’ll do it from my hospital bed, and yes, I’ll do it fed into my central line, and yes, I will win.
And think on this DWP – you’ve left me the whole show to say what I like unopposed.
This article was originally published on Sue’s blog, “Diary of a Benefit Scrounger”; follow Sue on Twitter: @suey2y.
See also:
• ESA SOS: Another day, another attack on disabled people – January 17th, 2013
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64 Responses to “Comment: IDS and the DWP can run, but they can’t hide”
LB
140,000 people have been proven to have been unfairly stripped of their livelihood
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Yep, living on benefits when you don’t qualify as disabled, its a livelihood. Next it will be a career with promotions. Perhaps they should get bonuses too.
So come on, why have the number of disabled gone from 1 million to 2.5 million?
Who is crippling 1.5 million people?
There are many who need help. Who will never work because of disability. However, there are at least 1.5 million who shouldn’t be receiving help at the level they are now.
So when it comes to not paying out the state pension, are you going to stand up in front of the losers and tell them, yep, we gave away 430,000 of your money, so you’re going to have to make do with what’s left, and by the way, we’re probably not going to pay you the 130,000 we promised.
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Really? You’re trying the ‘number gone from X to 2.5 million’ talking point? If you’re given the answer, you’re not going to come back the next time the topic is brought up and ask them same thing again as if nothing had happened?
The key point here is *when* you believe this rise happened. It’s usual for people to get the numbers ‘1 million’ and ‘2.5 million’ stuck in their heads, but then they tend to assume this change was recent. It wasn’t. Incapacity Benefit was introduced in 1995- since then it had almost no net rise. It’s predecessor was Invalidity Benefit and this did see a rise, but that rise happened almost entirely in the period between 1988 and 1995. What happened during those years? The roll-out of Care in the Community. Residents and patients in care homes and psychiatric units aren’t eligible for benefits, so when they were closed down a lot more people became eligible and that is when we get the rise in claimants.
Anthony
LB – Total bummer that you’ve bought the idea that the only way to support some poor people is to pull support from other poor people. From what I can tell that’s what Tories like to see, disabled people, unemployed people and pensioners fighting it out over their diminished portion of the social security bill while Osborne cuts corporation tax
LB
1. It has gone up from 1 to 2.5 million. A 1.5 million increase.
2. Why is the period relevant? The issue is that it has risen, not of the period.
For example, the population has gone up from around 58 million to 61 million. A small increase in percentage 5%, but we’ve had a 250% increase in disability.
Now a small percentage is down to the increased participation of women in the workforce.
However with the demise of heavy industry such as mining, the number should be dropping. It’s rocketed.
What the research points out, is that its disguised unemployment. That’s the jargon for a fraud by the government(s). Hiding the number of unemployed. The 1.5 million pay the cost, because being on benefits is a shit life.
The genuine disabled pay the price, because the help they should be getting is going on massaging the statistics.
The rest, the hard working and the struggling haven’t realised the price they have paid, because the money has come out of their pensions.
If a 26K a year worker, had been allowed to put their NI into the FTSE, they would have had a fund of 560,000 pounds at retirement. The state pays them a pension, which if bought from a capitalist, money making insurance firm would cost 130,000 pounds.
So that 26K a year worker is out by 430,000 quid, a large chunk of which is funding the massaging of the unemployment figures. Instead of 19K a year pension, RPI linked, joint life, from 65, they get 5K, CPI linked (20% less value), form 67, and not fully joint life. And even that is under threat.
The reason its under threat is that rather than invest the cash, people like you have taken it and handed it out. The 5K a year payments add up. The ONS put the pensions bill which is hidden off the books, at 5,300 bn pounds (2 years ago, it was 5,010 bn, and at 2.5% its risen in the interim). Now since you’re spending 700 bn, on taxes of 550 bn, and the total debts are over 7,000 bn, its a bust.
The money has gone, and the madness of the state spending other people’s money is about to come home to roost. Rather than help people, you’ve impoverished people, and that effect is starting to be felt. In the process the people who really need help are going to be shafted. All because you want to give money to people who shouldn’t be getting it.
Even today, we get French ministers admitting France is bankrupt.
Not even the rich, or the middle class can save this.
Take all of Richard Bransons money. 2 billion. About midnight on Thursday, it will have gone. Not on spending, just plugging the increase in borrowing. Whose money are you going to take next? Are 400 billionaires in the UK? Is the UK creating that number a year?
brossen99
Its pretty clear now that in conjunction with the forthcoming Energy Bill that they are working to a plan very similar to what I describe here !
http://nollyprott.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/green-holocaust-2/