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
Your policy is to take other people’s pension money and spend it, and then when they want to retire, they end up in poverty.
You might not intend doing that, but its because you ignore the effect,that you’ve condemned millions to a poverty stricken retirement.
You just focus on the here and now, and bugger the long term effects of your policies.
LB
http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pdflibrary/wp1.pdf
differences in the relative attractiveness of (or ease of claiming of) disability related benefits among older compared with younger disabled people. It has often been argued that the rapid growth in the numbers of recipients of incapacity‐related benefits in the high‐unemployment era of the 1980s was partly due to the deliberate use of such benefits as a form of ‘disguised unemployment’ or effective early retirement, particularly among older men having lost their jobs in depressed industrial areas (see Thornton 2005, for a discussion of this).
Exactly what I’ve been saying.
Interestingly it points to another effect.
a higher level of discrimination by employers against older disabled people. Until the advent of age discrimination legislation in 2006, it has been legal to discriminate against older workers, whereas disability discrimination has been outlawed since 1996, and it is possible that employers have used their ability to discriminate on age grounds effectively to exclude some older disabled workers from employment
So here we have disabled people capable of working, but because of the discrimination, they end up on welfare. Since they are capable of work, shouldn’t they be treated like anyone else looking for work? [PS What is important is that every extra cost they incur, should be met collectively]
They shouldn’t be allowed to treat being disabled as a career choice, a livelyhood as you put it.
DR DAVID ATOSKI
Way to go 😉 lets hear Your voice x
Timmo111
If only you had cared about disabled people when it was labour attacking them, when the economy was booming and millionaires where only paying a top rate of tax of 40 pence, you could have nipped this in the bud.
Newsbot9
Yes, you’re a fraud.
You are ignoring the real trends, of course. Labour actually kicked a lot of people off disability. Indeed, they brought in ATOS.
And keep claiming we don’t have the pound. And of course you cheer on harming the poor. And oppose paying pensions, regardless of the fact that you’re taking the cash to pay them.