Imagine if just days after they were (almost) elected, the government had announced they were going to scrap state pensions. Instead, they were going to replace pensions with Personal Retirement Payments. BUT, in the process 20% of existing pensioners would lose their pensions altogether. That's one in five no longer eligible. Overnight, just like that.
Imagine pensioners fought the changes through parliament and the Lords and WON, but the governemnt just went ahead anyway.
But then, as if that wasn't bad enough, imagine that just as they announced their final plans, they'd snuck a new change in at the last minute without asking anyone. Imagine that not only would 1 in 5 pensioners lose their entire income straight away, but they were also going to raise the retirement age to 104!! A 60% change with no warning at all!
Imagine pensioners took legal action and forced them to consult on raising the retirement age so drastically and unrealistically, but even when EVERYONE opposed it, the government just said "Meh, Oh well, we're going to do it anyway"
Well, the country would think the government had finally tipped over the edge into delusion wouldn't they? The Daily Mail would have geriatric armies with pitchforks razing parlaiment to the ground!! I imagine there would be a vote of no confidence in the government by about midday.
Yet, this is EXACTLY what they've done to sick and disabled people.
Firstly, with no warning, nothing in either manifesto, they abolished Disability Living Allowance and replaced it with Personal Independence Payments, announcing a 1 in 5 cut in existing cases.
Sick and Disabled people fought the changes with everything they had, but the government just ignored them.
Just like raising the retirement age to 104 would be a 60% increase overnight, so the government have slashed the distance you can walk before qualifying for assistance with getting about from 50 mtrs to 20 mtrs. A 60% reduction!!! Few people will qualify now, just as few would qualify for a pension at 104. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/251631/pip-mobility-consultation-government-response.pdf
Yet no-one says a word. The media don't listen, the public don't get to hear about it and far from pitchforks at dawn, the Daily Mail actually lead the charge against us. I haven't actually see this huge announcement on the mainstream news at all.
I watched a programme hosted by Stephen Fry the other night on homophobia. It struck me how casually homophobic some nations were, how instituionalised the homophobia and therefore how practically impossible it was for homosexuals to be heard or to report crimes against them. They were dismissed as "attention seeking" "corrupting" and even "ill". They couldn't tell their real stories, and no-one would listen to them if they did.
I watch legions of sick and disabled people try to tell the public every day what is really going on here in the UK and I watch how casually they are ignored. How ingrained the belief that "We wouldn't do that here in the UK" or that we're just a special interest group making a lot of noise.
It chills me. Just like many pensioners, not all sick and disabled people can simply go and earn more money. Just like pensioners, they paid tax and national insurance believing if they became sick or disabled, they would be entitled to support.
And just like pensions, disability support used to enjoy great cross party and public support.
Who knows, maybe, just maybe no-one would listen to the pensioners either. Nothing would surprise me any more.
so true ... words fail me ...bad shit
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/stanley-druckenmiller-social-security_b_4133863.html
DeleteIt's Global
I am sorry, but I am not surprised.
ReplyDeleteIf you call a kettle black for long enough, eventually everyone will believe a kettle is black, and only black!
Once your propaganda has worked and your brainwashing taken it's effect you can then do what you want.
It won't dawn on the great unwashed - "it won't happen to me" is the great defence mechanism.........Until it does!
Then one is hit between the eyes and one's life is changed for ever.
Those born with a silver spoon in their mouth will never need to care, worry, or be concerned at what happens to us. They truly wipe us off their shoes like dog poo........& I hope they rot in hell for what they are doing!
I am not surprised either.
DeletePropaganda, however vapid and vacuous, eventually sticks to some degree.
The privileged classes couldn't give a flying one for the people they deem beneath their contempt.
It really is beginning to look like something out of Nazi Germany, the hatred, the lies, the reinforcing of negative stereotypes and the whipping up of all kinds of hatred between all kinds of groups.
As a Christian, I believe we will answer for our actions on this planet, and all the wealth, high social status, grand London town houses and affluence will not save anyone, especially those who heap further hardship and misery on those already suffering in some way.
They are all hypocrites, because they do things to people they wouldn't like others to do to them. That is the definition of hypocrisy. And they are past masters at it.
I'm so beaten down with the whole thing now that they are (against all my common sense) convincing me I am worthless. ATOS next week - they've already stopped my allowance (my husband is meant to support me for the rest of my life) so this time I guess I'll lose my NI contributions because no way am I employable, even though on good days I can do a couple of hours of volunteering. This week I'm ill - I typed some minutes while in bed and have to let down the elderly people at our history group tomorrow as I'm not well enough to go out by myself. Who would employ me?
ReplyDeleteThey'll always protect the current lot of pensioners. Bullies chose very carefully who to pick on, softening the public up with the scrounger stories first. I think things will have changed so much by the time a lot of us get to pension age.
ReplyDeleteI'm just gobsmacked that nobody has picked up this story and run with it, like Woodward and Bernstein on the Watergate story. Where are all the journos hungry for a big story? Where is - everybody??
Imagine if disabled people and Jews in the 1930's had blogs and Twitter etc. They'd be writing about the same stuff, in disbelief, in horror.
And people said after that, what you are saying now - how could this possibly have been allowed to happen.
Nobody now though can say they didn't know what was going on. They just deliberately choose not to hear. Yes, may they rot in hell, absolutely.
What can we do, the Spartii army? Not giving up yet and nothing else to lose. There must still be something. Where there's life there's hope.
Great blog. I especially like being called a "pensioner". "Geriatric" is so offensive even to the most elderly. United we stand.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what I can do to help, other than shout about it everywhere I can, but that's exactly what I'll be doing until someone pays attention. I hope if there's any other useful action that can be taken, Spartaci will let us know. If you ask me, it's not the Spartaci that need ATOS testing, it's the Coalition as they don't seem to have functioning brains or hearts - how can they to do something like this?
ReplyDeleteAnd do you think Labour will listen or do anything different?
ReplyDeleteThere needs to be a general strike. Get that Owen Jones and his rubbish assembly actually DOING something. So far they've done FA.
I'm doing my bit by posting this on my facebook as I have done with other issues and do you know what little by little, facebook friends are contacting me saying things such as "this is appalling" I tell them that there but for the grace of God (or whoever you believe in) go any of us and they get that! So they are spreading the word on their facebook and twitter accounts too. So lets all be annoying insects to this government and keep on and on and on until they get the message.
ReplyDeleteI wrote this to help a few people think more clearly that sick and disabled are people like THEM, to use on those that think we are OTHER or in whatever way they feel ...
ReplyDeletehttp://virtualgherkin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/sickness-and-disability-is-not.html
i did say sue that things were out hand and i do know how negative I've been over the years this is only because of my background within the establishment
ReplyDeleteThey never ever did listen to anyone even way back when i knew Mrs thatcher even she never listened not even to common sense
She would get an idea and run with it be it good or bad just based on her upbringing. she just assumed that what was good for her should be good for everyone
life is not like that everywhere you go in the world people have there likes and dislikes you need to have a sound balance of mind and a gift of being able to see other viewpoints on how a policy will unravel
David Cameron has know personal skills or how to talk to the man or women in the street he has he said doesn't know the price of bread as he bakes his own
if he tried to get any type of job dealing with the public he would fail at the first hurdle but somehow he winged it into running the country and on a false manifesto,
All he is in reality both in sound and to look at is an estate agent nothing more nothing less' a gift of the gab because that's the life he's only ever known and in reality knows no better
sure if he was running a small country like Switzerland he would be ideal but he's not he's running a country that has always had a great understand and tolerance but even that today has failed with Scotland wonting to go it alone and who can blame them
100 years of constant neglect in Scotland has proved the tipping point and now David Cameron wants to kill off the sick and disabled and he'll get away with it like he has done the past 3 years killing off many off the sick and disabled
this is the tortured face of a man we must never forget David Coupe an ATOS/DWP victim who David Cameron showed no mercy for and it also highlights that no sick or disabled person is safe all the time they live in the uk
http://atosvictimsgroup.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/David-in-Chesterfield-hospital-2467804-300x199.jpg
Where are all the concerned Middle class crusading journalists now? On holiday in Tuscany probably. They and the rich don't care about poor people, because the more that is taken from the poor, the more that is in the pot for the rich and the affluent Middle classes. The equality organisations, generally very Middle class in outlook and make up, are ineffectual primarily because it is obvious they do not want anything fundamentally to change, and most of them are just Fabian socialists of the worst kind, in the fact that they will talk all day about equality, equal rights, injustices and so on and so on, but don't actually do anything about it. They are Middle class talking shops basically, and that's all they've ever been.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem is that no matter what you say to the government about there injustice to the poor and disabled, is that they ALREADY know because they are implementing the decisions that are causing the hardships in the first place! You cannot appeal to such people; it is like placating or reasoning with crocodiles not to eat you.
Owen Jones means well, but he's another Oxbridge Middle class boy writing about something from a removed academic perspective. The sad fact is, the wealthy and affluent benefit from the economic injustices meted out to the poor, disabled, unemployed, pensioners on state benefit and so on. Are the Middle class prepared to accept a decent minimum wage, a decent state pension for all, a chance for more equal opportunities if it accepts their privileged and affluent lifestyles in any way? Are the very rich going to pay their fair share of tax any time soon? You know the answers already. The Working class and poor are being demonised and brutally attacked by all means, and the Middle class dominated media is turning a blind eye to it because it's not trendy or sensational enough to bother with. If it was somewhere else they'd all be concerned wouldn't they? But as class is a dodgy subject for the Middle classes to broach, they do what they always do, studiously ignore it and hope no one notices, whilst they get on with the business of saving the world. The whole system needs changing.
It's bad and extreme enough that pension age has been raised to nearly 70.
ReplyDeleteWHY *IS* NO ONE GETTING OUTRAGED AND FIGHTING THIS THROUGH THE COURTS - including taking it to the UN? It will affect every one of us whose health is not destroyed in the meantime.
All too many of the reports coming out of seriously ill and disabled individuals being shafted by Atos and the DWP, now involve people over the age of 60 whose pensions have been snatched away, and who should have been free to retire with dignity.
There also would not be the growing army of school and university leavers to conscript on to workfare schemes, were there not the massive logjam of 60-somethings being forced to slog on in their jobs rather than moving over for the new generation.
Not to mention the charity shops now staffed with bullied and downtrodden workfare slaves because their traditional volunteers - pensioners in their 60s who were glad to give something back to their communities - are no longer free to help out (unless 'recycled' back as DWP slaves rather than respected volunteers).
And one of the most telling 'outcomes' of the #pensionsnatch is the disappearance of the people who used to bring the benefit of a lifetime's wisdom and experience to our local councils. Now being replaced with besuited yuppies with ministerial ambitions, attending council meetings on day release from solicitors and accountants offices, to push neoliberal and Common Purpose agendas.
Those who are affluent, privileged and wealthy don't care about the rest of us who aren't. But what they sow, they may reap.
DeleteLooking on the bright side, this decision, and the fact that there was only a consultation in the first place to block a judicial review - WILL TOTALLY STRENGTHEN THE CASE FOR AN INTERVENTION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURTS.
ReplyDeleteAccording to past discussions on Samuel Miller's blog,
http://mydisabilitystudiesblackboard.blogspot.com/
the UN and EU can only intervene in human rights abuses AFTER every legal resource has been exhausted/blocked within the victims' own country.
Well this has now happened.
Ten Reasons Why The CQC Must Investigate The WCA Programme
ReplyDeleteby Work Test Whistleblower
http://worktestwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2013/10/ten-reasons-why-cqc-must-investigate.html
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