When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a […]
Posts under ‘Disability’
Parliament should have power to force Duncan Smith to resign over WCA deaths
Aug 29th, 2015 by Jon Lansman.The report that in just over 2 years up to February last year no less than 2,380 disabled claimants died within 2 weeks of being assessed as fit for work and then having their benefit either reduced or stopped altogether, is beyond shocking. It is arguably the most damning statistic yet of the sheer callousness […]
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Iain Duncan Smith demands as many disabled people work as able-bodied
Aug 28th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.As part of the government’s plan to extract £12bn from social security benefits, IDS has announced his latest target is “the disability employment gap”. According to analysis of official ONS figures, this represents the difference between the number of disabled people who are in employment (48%) and the figure for the general population (73%). The […]
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Would a Rachel Reeves budget yesterday have been much different?
Jul 9th, 2015 by James Elliott.Ahead of yesterday’s budget, in which George Osborne laid out £12bn of welfare cuts, a continued squeeze on public sector pay, the abolition of student maintenance grants and higher tuition fees, Labour’s ‘opposition’ front benchers went out of their way to agree with Osborne’s narrative of austerity. Still reeling from the General Election, or now […]
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Does the party of the welfare state talk tough because it doesn’t know where the centre ground is?
Mar 29th, 2015 by David Osland.Sometimes I suspect that not a syllable escapes the lips of Rachel Reeves unless it somehow encapsulates the pitch for the latest Channel Four eat the poor documentary while simultaneously disgusting a sizeable chunk of Labour activists. Most recently, her declamation that Labour is not the party of the welfare state and doesn’t represent those out […]
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Labour should promise radical reform to rules for disability benefits
Mar 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.No section of the population has suffered worse abuses from the government over the last 5 years than disabled people – those who are least able to bear it. They are subject to assessments about their capability to work, enforced by Atos at the behest of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which in […]
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Too fat to work – meet your new hate figures
Jan 6th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Those lovely folks over at Daily Express TV have hit on a relatively untapped vein of hate. Marry together your idea of the undeserving poor sponging off the hardworking tax payer with fat people and you have the perfect scapegoat: someone who cannot work because they are obese. Channel 5’s Benefits: Too Fat to Work […]
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David Cameron is a serial exploiter of his dead son for political purposes
Nov 26th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.It’s past the time, we think, to move on from attacking well-meaning left-wing Islingtonians. Instead, let’s turn the spotlight on nasty attacks by right -wing political commentators. Step up Richard Littlejohn yesterday in the Daily Mail where he generalises the attack from Emily Thornberry via Jack Monroe (aka A Girl called Jack) to all of us: “The […]
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What Tories really think of the minimum wage
Oct 16th, 2014 by Grahame Morris.David Cameron’s welfare minister has advocated treating those most in need differently by paying them below the national minimum wage. Lord David Freud, talking amongst friends at Conservative Party Conference, said he thought there was “a group” of disabled people who are “not worth the full wage”. Lord Freud is not the only Conservative seeking to […]
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Almost total tack of accountability of private hospitals is a glaring scandal
Sep 17th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Last month’s report by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest on patient safety risks in private hospitals is a real eye-opener. Apparently more than 800 people have died ‘unexpectedly’ in private hospitals in the last 4 years, and a total of 921 serious injuries were recorded. Even this may be a significant under-estimation […]
