To wonder if Nazi Germany felt like the UK does now, when they were creeping into power?

[oneggshellsforever]

Transformations in the justice system are happening, stacking the odds against disabled people having a fair hearing when they appeal sanctions or having disability benefits turned down.

They're getting rid of in person tribunals, and getting rid of expert panel members.

Disabled people are often successful when it goes to appeal, so the government seem to be systematically stripping the legal system of a fair trial?

Will start happening in October. What the government is doing to disabled people, and people with very little money in general, is chilling me to the bone. I honestly wonder if the feeling in the atmosphere was like this in 1930's Germany.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/12/online-benefits-appeals-tribunals-disabled

A fair few have left notes, lemonsandlimes. Have a browse through the pages of Calum's list someone linked to earlier. It's 'supposition' to assume all those people had severe MH issues. It's incredibly dismissive as well to place the blame for their despair solely on any MH issues they might have had. How desperate might you feel if you'd been in their position?

I'll tell you what's 'disingenuous' - pretending you give a shit about support for people with MH issues while at the same time defending the cruel assessment process and subsequent stopping of their means of support.

Hmmm. It sometimes feels like some people would like to make it a bit like Stalin's Russia where anything that isn't extreme left is labelled fascism.

Well, I suppose that a little like how people that are concerned about Brexit are called traitors, saboteurs, or receive death/acid attack threats?
Or in Jo Cox's case, actually murdered by an actual fascist.

I'll tell you what's 'disingenuous' - pretending you give a shit about support for people with MH issues while at the same time defending the cruel assessment process and subsequent stopping of their means of support.

Exactly

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/recordings-prove-pip-report-ignored-near-fatal-attacks-overdoses-and-blackouts/

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-is-using-lost-benefit-assessment-letters-to-cut-spending/

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/pip-investigation-200-cases-of-dishonesty-and-still-dwp-atos-and-capita-refuse-to-act/

Half the country oppose brexit, including me and everyone I know personally. Not one of us have been subject to anything at all. We are free to express our opinions at as much length as we like.

Of course people live in squalid conditions. They always have. Drug abuse, alcoholism, poor health etc are reality for lots of people in the UK. It hasn't got worse though.

Janeismymiddlename - Do you not see that if you are at death's door, a simple note from a doctor/consultant/specialist should be enough to extend benefits to end of life?

Claimants with enough medical evidence to show they are likely to die in the next 6 months do not have to go through the WCA or PIP assessments. Their claims are also supposed to be fast-tracked.

I suppose DWP could adopt lemonsandlimes idea and just not bother processing their claims at all because they'll be dead in a few weeks anyway, but at the moment even the DWP have not gone that far (barring some new horrendous issues that are surfacing for terminally ill Universal Credit claimants, but that is just the usual clusterfuckery rather than deliberate malicious policy).

The people who are dying following a decision that they are 'fit for work' are not those who have been identified as terminally ill. They are people who are seriously chronically ill and/or have serious permanent disabilities. These are people who were in no way 'fit for work' but who were also not expected to die in the near future.

Half the country oppose brexit, including me and everyone I know personally. Not one of us have been subject to anything at all. We are free to express our opinions at as much length as we like.

Tell that to Gina Miller.

Squalid conditions did exist before, but I certainly think that in the immediate post war years there was a real feeling that this was no longer acceptable.

There was a lot of idealism post-war about slum clearance and reducing squalid housing conditions. Yes, this created its own problems through ill thought out brutalist housing estates, but there was certainly a feeling that something should be done. Because of a huge reduction in the building of social housing, and because a lot of that stock is now in the private sector (owned by landlords of widely differing attitudes), a lot of people are living in very poor conditions.
The political will to do something about this is not very evident at present.

This is the fifth time I have posted this but I think it's relevant. I'm a mental health nurse and spent 10 years working in a team for young people with psychosis. Just before Christmas 2015, I went to visit a patient and she told me that her benefits had been stopped and she had no money. The reason her benefits were stopped is because she didn't attend a work capability appointment. She didn't attend because she didn't open the letter because she thought it was contaminated. She couldn't apply for a crisis loan because the coalition abolished them. She couldn't borrow from family because the few family members she had in this country had disowned her. She couldn't borrow from friends because she did have any.
I gave her £20 of my own money and a food bank voucher. I gave her details about Crisis at Christmas although I knew that she almost certainly wouldn't go as she was too anxious to walk into a place full of strangers.
When I came back to work in early January, I turned my work phone on to hear a message from the Police saying that she had been found hanged in a local park on New Years Day. When the Police broke into her flat, they found that she had no gas or electricity and no food in her cupboards. She was 19.
It breaks my heart to think of her cold and hungry and sitting in the dark. This would not have happened when I started doing this job 18 years ago.
The whole work capability thing has been catastrophic for people with serious mental illness. The thing about conditions like schizophrenia is that many people who have it don't think there is anything wrong with them. So they go along to these appointments and tell the assessor that they're fine and they instantly get moved to JSA. They don't go and sign on or attend job centre appointments and then their benefits get stopped and it can take months to get them reinstated.
I had a patient who was declared fit for work 2 days before she was sectioned and spent 4 months in hospital.
I see so much more abject poverty in my job compared to when I started. When I started in 1999, nearly all the patients I saw lived in social housing. Now, I see numerous families of up to 6 people living in one tiny room and sharing a kitchen and bathroom with up to 15 people. I see people living with infestations of mice and cockroaches where the landlord just shrugs and says 'not my problem'.
I see the council paying private landlords to house people in conditions that I wouldn't subject my cat to.
I see the council temporarily moving people 20 miles away so that they are spending all their money on transport to take their children to school. They don't want to disrupt their children by changing schools because, in 12 weeks, they will get moved back again.
I see people going through supermarket bins trying to find out of date food. This never used to happen.
I do think that we have moved forwards in terms of the rights of women, ethnic minorities and gay people. But there are many ways in which we are going backwards and one of those is demonising poor people. Also, the gap between the richest and poorest which started to widen under Thatcher has now become a gaping chasm which never bodes well for any society.
There is a lot of research showing that emotional wellbeing is higher in countries which are poorer but where wealth is evenly distributed than there is in countries which are richer but have a massive inequality of wealth.

MsHooliesCardigan

Thank you for that post. Heartbreaking as it is to read, people need to know how the ill and disabled are treated in this country at present. Although I'm not one of those who believe that we're on a slippery slope to fascism, it's fair to say that the attitude in this country is fucking small-minded and cruel.
Like yourself I've said this before, but my 25 years as a nurse and my short career as a PIP assessor (plus my own experiences within the MH system) back your view completely.

Tell that to Gina Miller.

I'm sure you feel just as sorry for Nigel Farage for the few idiots from either side who spout bile and death threats anonymously

I meant to add that having her benefits stopped may have had nothing to do with this young woman taking her life but it certainly couldn't have helped. As far as I'm concerned, government policy played a significant part in her death.

And for those who base their views on 'a programme I watched about scroungers', or some bullshit friend-of-a-friend anecdote about benefit claimants living the high life; open your eyes.

Farage is a fascist. At school, he sang Hitler Youth songs. His teachers thought him a nasty little fascist. He supported Marine Le Pen, a fascist. I'm not one of those who uses the word lightly either. Fuck Nigel Farage.
History teaches us what to do about fascists.

Bit bored yesterday afternoon were you OP? What a load of bollocks. .

Farage is a fascist.

Stopped reading there....

Im a remainer, but perhaps the op is right, but its not from the bogey man of the right like everyone is overplaying

That poor woman MsHooliesCardigan I remember reading one of your posts about her before and thinking how utterly terrible it is that things have come to this. She's no isolated incident, it doesn't take much imagination or empathy to understand why someone might take their life in a situation like that.

Stopped reading there....

Your prerogative, of course.
But what's that old MN mantra about 'when a man tells you who he is through his behaviour, then listen'?

I think that the attitude of this government towards the poor and disabled has more to do with Scrooge than Hitler. It's rooted in that Victorian idea of the deserving and undeserving poor.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Thanks Maniac and Natsku I still struggle with her death. She had been doing really well and I think that, in time, she would have recovered. She desperately wanted to be a midwife.
Something like this simply shouldn't happen in a rich country in the 21st century.

It really shouldn't. There needs to be a stigma-free, very few rules dependant, last resort benefit. This is what we have in Finland (where I live now) and if they sanction you on it they can only reduce it by 20% - 40% if you continue not to follow suggestions, and that's only on part of it, and until this year it was managed by social workers who (in my experience, having been on it a few times in three different areas) are really good at understanding individual circumstances and pointing people towards the right help or next step for them.

Politicians and high profile campaigners of every stripe have always been a target. Some have been attacked, harassed or even killed.

Of every stripe. Throughout history. That's why so few people actually want high power. It comes with huge risks.

DWP decision makers have more power than the judiciary, no court in the land can sanction 100% of your income, yet some of you think thats fine, who cares if its for a spurious reason, 10 minutes late to an appt = no money, literally no money, having to reapply for housing benefit and council tax benefit because you lose that if you're not eligible for benefits BUT you have to go in and sign on daily and still prove you are looking for work even though you now have no income, fucking disgusting

In Dickensian times children literally lived on the streets, with no parents. Disease was rife, as was brutality and sexual exploitation. Education was not universal. Health care was a luxury for the rich. Anti biotics and telephones were distant fantasy.

Lots of people live with huge struggles in their lives but comparisons with victorian times, workhouses and nazis are as wide of the mark as to be farcical.