List of those for whom Welfare Reform and cuts were too much to bear

[Frankie Jack]

A mentally ill woman forced on to the Coalition’s Work Programme is in a coma – but is still being sent letters by benefits assessors.

Bipolar patient Sheila Holt, 47, was sectioned in December after being taken off Income Support. Days later she had a heart attack and fell into the coma.

This weekend, Miss Holt, of Rochdale, Gtr Manchester, was sent a letter by Atos to ask why she was not working.

Local Labour MP Simon Danczuk said: "I am in favour of welfare reform but trying to bulldoze through changes in a reckless and insensitive way is not the right way to go about it.

“This Government is causing a huge amount of damage and I have no doubt that Sheila’s story is being repeated in towns and cities up and down the country.

“She has a complex disability caused by severe trauma in her childhood and you cannot aggressively push vulnerable people, like Sheila, back into work because it can have, as we’ve seen, very serious health consequences.”

Her dad Kenneth said: “It’s just not right what they have done. It sent my daughter hypermanic.

“She said to me, ‘they are going to knock my money off me dad’. I said they wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t looking for a job - she couldn’t - until they forced her to.

“She hadn’t had a job for 26 years. Anyone who knew her would tell you she couldn’t do a job.”

 

[nino_savatte]

I wasn't sure where to put this. The Council of Europe has declared that the UK's benefits are less than generous (but we already knew that). Of course IDS, McVile and the Vapour Party will all disagree.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/29/uk-benefits-inadequate-council-of-europe?CMP=twt_gu

Duncan Smith said: "This government has made great strides in fixing the welfare system so that spending is brought under control. It's lunacy for the Council of Europe to suggest welfare payments need to increase when we paid out £204bn in benefits and pensions last year alone.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I wasn't sure where to put this. The Council of Europe has declared that the UK's benefits are less than generous (but we already knew that). Of course IDS, McVile and the Vapour Party will all disagree.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/29/uk-benefits-inadequate-council-of-europe?CMP=twt_gu

Of course, pensions are no more "welfare" than most social security payments are, the mendacious Mekon-headed shit-stick.

 

[treelover]

Local Labour MP Simon Danczuk said: "I am in favour of welfare reform but trying to bulldoze through changes in a reckless and insensitive way is not the right way to go about it.

This is the guy who relentlessly goes on about 'scroungers', etc.

 

[Obnoxiousness]

 

[existentialist]

...and then I'm going to s-l-o-w-l-y reduce their council tax benefit, slap them with a bedroom tax, make them spend all their time applying for pointless jobs, do everything I can to stop food banks from feeding them, while I go on endlessly about "making work pay".

 

[ViolentPanda]

...and then I'm going to s-l-o-w-l-y reduce their council tax benefit, slap them with a bedroom tax, make them spend all their time applying for pointless jobs, do everything I can to stop food banks from feeding them, while I go on endlessly about "making work pay".

And people wonder why he needs an armed guard!

 

[nino_savatte]

It would be nice if those armed guards did an 'Indira Gandhi' on him.

But then that would result in a Golden Temple style massacre of anyone who cheered in the aftermath of his death.

 

[Obnoxiousness]

Iain Duncan Smith is a social criminal, and this thread is full of his victims. I do hope that one day he will realise what he has done.

 

[Libertad]

Iain Duncan Smith is a social criminal, and this thread is full of his victims. I do hope that one day he will realise what he has done.

He won't, he thinks he's on the path of righteousness and wants to drag the rest of us with him. The bloke's a fucking sociopath.

 

[free spirit]

Anders Verkitso 2 hours ago
My wife was assessed as being fit for work, despite being bipolar and in the middle of an epic depression. Such was her brokenness, she tried to kill herself. Thanks, ATOS.

thruthseeker 2 hours ago
Katherine’s Story

Every year i fill out my ESA form, I go to the medical and fail (of Course) then it goes all the way to tribunal and i win my case. This has happened four years in a row now at considerable expense to the tax payer and i find myself waiting for the that brown envelope in the door any day now for the whole process to start again. I have been given anti depressants and a course of sleeping tablets by my GP (who is furious about it all and the time he has to spend on letter writing) to cope with the anticipation of having to make a new claim for ESA and the failure that is to follow resulting from the medical.

A criminal only has to go to court once to prove his guilt or innocence. I AM INNOCENT ! all i did was get sick. I need help to fight my corner but that now is denied to me with the cut in the legal aid budget. A very cynical manoeuvre combined to cuts in the welfare state and coping with the government propaganda media machine. I even give back to the community as well without being asked. Im a volunteer which takes considerable effort on my part but is rewarding in many ways. This time it will be different. I am terrified of the new appeal process.

I have no savings and lead a hand to mouth existence. For four weeks my money will stop. It will be suggested by DWP that if i want to have money coming in that i should claim JSA thus jeopardising any tribunal that should follow because i would ostensibly be perjuring myself by saying that i am fit for work. I have already made an anonymous query to DWP about claiming JSA in this circumstance and they have said that they would not accept me as i am deemed “Not Fit for Work” by themselves and my GP. I WANT to work. I have a lot to offer. Please help me to have my voice heard. For any further information i will be happy to help.

taken from the comments section on this article

Not sure if this is the right thread, but seemed the best place to cross post them.

 

[eatmorecheese]

I look at this thread infrequently. Fills me with sorrow and anger. They will not be forgotten. They can't be. Pure, pure evil, masked by manufactured consent.

When's the British Spring?

 

[Obnoxiousness]

<removed at posters request: LL>

 

[Obnoxiousness]

<removed at posters request: LL>

 

[treelover]

He's pointing at Owen Jones there on QT, proclaiming he is liberating claimants, the ones that aren't dead yet...

 

[treelover]

oops, just realised this(again) is the thread for lost ones, etc, bereaved families have been know to see this thread, can posters just post up the sad losses?

 

[Frankie Jack]

Man who was too ill to attend fit-for-work interview but terrified of losing benefits dies after Atos test


A SERIOUSLY ill man died hours after he was hauled into an Atos fit-for-work assessment.

Terry McGarvey knew he wasn’t well enough to attend the hearing. But he was terrified his benefits would be stopped if he didn’t turn up.

He dragged himself to the assessment but had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance. Terry, 48, died the next day.

His brother Charlie, 50, said: “He said he felt terrible and didn’t think he could leave the house.

“But he was worried they’d take his benefits away if he didn’t go.

“When he went in, he sat down with a young woman who started asking him questions.

“I pointed out that he needed an ambulance, not a medical.

“They put us into a room next door and lay him on a bed. We waited more than an hour for the ambulance without anyone coming in to even ask how he was.”

Terry, who had blood disorder polycytheamia, died in Glasgow’s Victoria Infirmary from pneumonia last month. His death certificate also lists liver disease.

 

[superfly101]

^^^^ That story has made it into the Mirror - tragic is an understatement!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/terry-mcgarvey-man-ill-attend-3178486#ixzz2uG6MGZLC

 

[Frankie Jack]

Daily Record and Mirror are sister papers.

 

[bywhacky]

another for the list

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11043378.Man_starved_after_benefits_were_cut/

 

[Frankie Jack]

From the link above.

A "VULNERABLE and fragile" man starved to death four months after most of his benefits were stopped and he was left with just £40 a week to survive on.

Atos Healthcare – which assesses peoples’ ability to work on behalf of the Government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – ruled that 44-year-old Mark Wood, from Bampton, was fit to work.

But at an inquest into his death, Oxford Coroner's Court heard testimony that Mr Wood was far from fit to hold down a job.

Weighing just 5st 8lbs when he died of malnutrition in August last year, Mr Wood had obsessive compulsive disorder, Aspergers syndrome, phobias of food, pollution, paint fumes, and social situations, and cognitive behavioural problems.

His GP Nicolas Ward told yesterday’s proceedings: “He was an extremely vulnerable and fragile individual who was coping with life.

“Something pushed him or affected him in the time before he died and the only thing I can put my finger on is the pressure he felt he was under when his benefits were removed.”

Dr Ward, from Bampton Medical Practice, said he had not been contacted by either Atos or DWP about Mr Wood’s medical history, and revealed that if they had asked for his professional opinion he would have said Mr Wood was unfit for work.

 

[eatmorecheese]

From the link above.

The sort of impotence I'm feeling right now about this evil scares me, because it forces me to conclude that IDS and the rest have forfeited their humanity.

We must NEVER forget.

 

[Awesome Wells]

IDS is psychotic. There's no other explanation. He needs to be sectioned.

 

[ViolentPanda]

IDS is psychotic. There's no other explanation. He needs to be sectioned.

No, he's not psychotic. His vileness isn't caused by psychological disturbance or psychiatric pathology, it's caused by faith. Faith in the politics he espouses, faith that he's right, and faith in his G-d.
He doesn't need sectioning, he needs to have his faith broken - he needs to be subjected to a latter-day version of Job's trials.

 

[existentialist]

IDS is psychotic. There's no other explanation. He needs to be sectioned.

TBF, I think that's pretty harsh on genuinely psychotic people, who have plenty to contend with already without having to have IDS lumped in with them.

If IDS is ignorant of what he is doing to people, it is wilful ignorance borne of a choice not to see what's in front of his face, not delusion.

He should not even have the figleaf of psychosis to excuse himself from what he is doing.

 

[Awesome Wells]

TBF, I think that's pretty harsh on genuinely psychotic people, who have plenty to contend with already without having to have IDS lumped in with them.

If IDS is ignorant of what he is doing to people, it is wilful ignorance borne of a choice not to see what's in front of his face, not delusion.

He should not even have the figleaf of psychosis to excuse himself from what he is doing.

It's not a judgement on people with such problems.

It's trying to explain and understand how he thinks because god knows something is informing his actions and the devastation they are causing.

No, he's not psychotic. His vileness isn't caused by psychological disturbance or psychiatric pathology, it's caused by faith. Faith in the politics he espouses, faith that he's right, and faith in his G-d.
He doesn't need sectioning, he needs to have his faith broken - he needs to be subjected to a latter-day version of Job's trials.

I doubt, like the rest of them, that he isn't really a faithful christian. It's just part of the job. I doubt he even goes to church outside of births deaths marriages and christmas. It's just that politicians in modern society have to adopt the prevailing faith of the day.

God only knows what he really thinks. I'm not sure I even want to understand this man. All i know is that he, and his disgusting party of wolves, need stopping. ASAP.

 

[existentialist]

. (just remembered that this isn't the thread for these debates. Oops. Sorry)

 

[Frankie Jack]

Aspects of why this is happening need to be debated existentialist. Here is as good a place as any. When I started the thread I didn't include or expect posting rules.

 

[treelover]

Families of the bereaved may read this thread, imo, there are many others that can be used for debate, do others agree?

 

[Frankie Jack]

The pics like the ones above are not warranted or wanted yet they are there. They add nothing to any debate and are probably offensive to some looking in. Most who come to the thread can add comment without it turning into anything disrespectful.