If the Welfare Reform Bill passes, the results will be horrific and at the Department for Work and Pensions, they are confident that it is a price worth paying.
Sue Marsh blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
Recently, it was reported that Crisis, the charity for the homeless, had warned 11,000 young disabled people were at risk of losing their homes due to the coalition’s housing benefit cap:
“Although 4,000 of the most vulnerable disabled claimants will be exempt because they need help through the day or night, most ill and disabled people will be forced to move into cheaper accommodation, often outside the area where they live.”
Those aged 25-34 will now only be able to rent shared accommodation rather than a one bed flat, on average, losing £41 per week towards their rent. The article makes the point that:
“This disturbing cut will force people suffering serious physical disabilities or mental illness to share with strangers, even if it damages their health.”
Well, yes it will and it is shocking. Not too shocking of course until we start to see things that make us feel uncomfortable. Not too shocking until we pass twisted bodies on the streets, their collecting cup lodged into their wheelchair handles, but shocking nonetheless.
Actually the really shocking thing is the accumulation of all the cuts faced by sick or disabled people and the effect it will have on their lives and almost certainly, their homes.
We already face the squeeze that able bodied people face. The VAT rise, the high inflation, the public sector cuts, the pay freezes, but overwhelmingly this group already live in poverty. On top of all of this, Scope report that sick and disabled people will lose £9.2 billion over the term of this parliament.
“The government’s proposed welfare reforms will see 3.5 million disabled people lose over £9.2 billion of critical support by 2015 pushing them further into poverty and closer to the fringes of society.”
The figure 9.2 billion is more than 10 per cent of Mr Osborne’s entire UK cuts to reduce the deficit. A full 10% taken from those with extra costs, extra needs and very, very difficult lives; it doesn’t matter how often I write it, I am shocked and terrified by its implications.
That’s 3.5 million people. Again, I write it and can hardly believe it’s true. Many don’t yet know what they face. Some will never know – their disabilities are too severe – but they will be affected just the same.
I have no idea how many of those 3.5 million will lose their homes, but the maths seems fairly clear. The entire cost (xls) to the welfare budget of sickness and disability benefits is £16 billion. 9.2 billion is over half of that.
I’m sure that unlike me, you won’t want to read this lengthy transcript of the Welfare Reform Bill committee, currently on its last stages through parliament, but I wish you would. After all these points were made and more, after a full discussion of the horrors that lie ahead for the sick and disabled, the poverty they are facing, the categorical failure of work programmes to help when their benefits are removed, Chris Grayling, Minister of State for Work and Pensions, had little to say.
To summarise, his answer was “I don’t care, we can no longer afford it…”
I don’t exaggerate – I wish I did. You can read it for yourselves. So, if I were you, I’d get used to seeing sick or disabled people on the streets. If this bill passes, the results will be horrific and at the DWP, they are confident that it is a price worth paying.
152 Responses to “The shocking impact of Osborne’s heartless cuts on the disabled”
joe kane
blah blah blah mousey.
Everybody knew Blair was lying. Nobody supported the Blairites except the Tories without whose crucial support there would have been no Iraq war. You believed his lies at the time which puts you in a fanatical minority along with Blair’s allies in the Tory Party.
You support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Mousey, why don’t you use images of ethnic cleansing caused by British Government foreign policy and the British empire?
Your using images of dead human is revolting. It proves nothing except how revolting you Tories are and the tactics you’ll stoop to in order to degrade and prevent decent, honest, civilised public debate which is critical of the Tories.
Whatever they quotes are they aren’t mine, but nice try zionist racist ethnic-cleanser mousey.
Keep up the great work of mousey. I couldn’t agree with you more. You Tories are so intellectually and morally bankrupt you do have to resort to degrading public discourse and public discussion by any and all means possible.
Anon E Mouse
joe kane – I have never supported the ethnic cleansing of anybody and really think we need to move on from the old British Empire and dated terms like “zionism”. Grow up.
As readers can see you have compared genocide with government cuts and have shown you are antisemitic. You have condemned the views and opinions of members of a religion as “crimes” – basically thought crimes and you have actually excused “poor Nazi’s” as you call them for the holocaust.
If we didn’t know you were a socialist I wouldn’t be surprised to see you voting BNP, along with others that hold your inhumane, racist and fascist views.
You are sick in the head joe kane and the Labour Party really doesn’t need support from people like you. It’s time to move on now…
joe kane
I do so love mousey’s attempts to deny reality.
Ethnic cleansing isn’t genocide mousey. Try again.
I don’t accuse Judaism and Jewish people of the crimes of the Israeli state. Only zionists like you claim the crimes of Israel are the responsibility of Judaism and Jewish people everywhere. To blame innocent Jewish people of crimes they have never committed and have never been involved in in any way, and don’t support, is typical antisemitism.
I am not a Nazi and have never expressed the opinions which you claim I have. Those aren’t my own words. They are your lies and your invented defamations – which is the only method you know of how to deal with the intellectual and moral arguments of others. Throw mud and hope some of it sticks.
Mousey supports the violent racist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Palestinians by the war crimes racist zionist state of Apartheid Israel.
Like his fellow Tories, Mousey supported the Blair British Government when it committed the supreme crime of “unprovoked aggression” against Iraq. Without a UN mandate, the Tories voted in the clear knowledge they were committing the “supreme crime” of international aggression. Nazis were hanged by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal for committing this exact same crime.
As you are a keen autobiographer mousey, which is mostly what your comments are comprised of, as they seem to be some sort of talking psycho-therapy of you telling everyone what you hate most about yourself, I don’t vote for or support the Labour Party. This thread is actually meant to be an intellectual discussion and debate about government housing benefit cuts and their effects on disabled people, and is not about me and my support for whichever political party.
Keep on foaming Daily hate Mail Mousey. Your are a typical tory. Always in a constant, perpetual state of outrage and personalised indignation about everything really. Intellectual, abstract, neutral, sociable interaction with others is completely beyond you.
The more vile filth and lies you pore out in public forums, the more people see how morally and intellectually bankrupt you Tories are.
Keep up the great work mousey. We can’t do it without you. You are a great example of a typical Tory for us all to point to –
– and Sue Marsh and the way she carries herself in public debate, despite the appalling abuse she receives on unmoderated blogs like this, is a great example to us all and convincing that her arguments are indeed correct and unanswerable.
Anon E Mouse
joe kane – You need help…
joe kane
Comment 91 by mousey –
“It’s time to move on now…”
– Even that is a lie.
On an unmoderated blog mousey is simply unable to show any self-discipline.
Coment 93 by mousey –
“joe kane – You need help…”
– The childish playground tauntings of a morally and intellectually bankrupt tory supporter of a democratically bankrupt party that stole the British general election through lies and fraud.