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
64 Responses to “Comment: IDS and the DWP can run, but they can’t hide”
LB
The period doesn’t matter. Its irrelevant – almost
There hasn’t been an increase in disability. There has been an increase and its not justified by people being crippled or disabled or whatever word you want to put on it. It’s down to disguised unemployment. Thatcher started it. Blair and Brown carried on.
So where does the period come in? 1988 – 2013. 25 years, paying out for 1,5 million people, free schooling, free health care, no council tax, housing benefit, income support, disability benefit, free pension, …. Add it up. It’s a lot of money.
Now there is no money. The state is bankrupt by all measures. So the result is that they are kicking these people off disability. 25 years too late.
The next consequence, is that
a) they will make mistakes.
b) With no money, they are going to hit those in real need.
c) When people want their pensions, the state will say, sorry, we’ve spent it. We’re bust.
25 years of fraud, pretty much 90% by politicians.
Sam Barnett-Cormack
Well, they did that to Sue once before, on Newsnight…
Mason Dixon, Autistic
The reading and listening thing I suggested, care to try it? The period of rise coinciding with Care in the Community- what was the primary policy goal of that initiative? To save money- it costs less to pay someone benefit than it does to keep them in a residential unit. So where is the net rise in cost that is supposedly now unaffordable?
As for the ‘research’ you don’t point to that supposed shows it being used to hide unemployment- there are serious academics who have also made this claim and been challenged to actually show the evidence for it and they haven’t. You would be the first if you could.
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Yes, they do not in fact have any PR or ethical concern at the BBC in that respect.
LB
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/Hidden-Unemployment-in-Hackney.pdf
Hackney – left wing council – disability and hidden unemployment.
http://www.shu.ac.uk/_assets/pdf/the-real-level-of-unemployment-2012.pdf
Sheffield Hallem. Hardly a right wing set up
For Britain as a whole in April 2012, the new figures point to more than 3.4 million unemployed. This compares to just 1.5 million on the claimant count and 2.5 million according to the Labour Force Survey – the government’s two official measures of unemployment. The difference is attributable to extensive hidden unemployment.
….
It goes on and on. It’s a political fraud where they have spent people’s retirement money for political ends.