This, in particular, is a very glaring part of what they're doing.
It seems evident to me that, at least as far as the poor and disabled are concerned, they're convinced that the only solution is coercion. And if coercion isn't working - as it clearly won't if you're trying to coerce, say, people with lifelong illnesses to get better - then their answer seems to be simply to up the coercion.
And nowhere is this quite so obvious as the policy in regard to people with mental health issues. It truly does appear that the DWP, if not the rest of government, subscribes to the "snap out of it/pull yourself together" view on mental illness, and, faced with the real experience of mad people having full-on meltdowns in/before/after DWP assessments, they simply don't know what to do. Their dogma and ideology says they're only faking it, but I would imagine that all but the most inhumane (so that'd be IDS, then) cunt will find it hard to square a "they're only swinging the lead" argument with claimants dying by suicide in ever-increasing numbers. Some will try and make that OK by simply refusing to believe that the suicides have anything to do with the assessment process, but as the data points build up, that won't continue to wash; some will, I imagine, just assume that these people were always going to make suicide attempts, so "not my problem, guv".
But some - I dearly hope - will recognise that beating disabled (especially those with mental health problems) with ever-bigger sticks won't solve anything, except perhaps to reduce the numbers through death and suicide, and start lobbying for change. It can't come soon enough.
Does anyone stay in hospital any longer than they have to these days? Grim places where you as likely to pick up something worse than what you went in for.
