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

CockacidalManiac if you're still reading, thank you so much for confirming what's happening with PIP assessments. Thank you too for going public with this, that was brave. Was it also you who did the help with PIP threads? I think you mentioned it upthread but it's a long way back now

I am horrified by these descriptions of PIPs interviews CockacidalManiac and kudos for going to the BBC , and your client's death MrsHoolie, it is utterly tragic. both.

But thank you for posting, I am learning.

It's not much help, but I think it would be worth keeping up the pressure on labour. It's the vicious inhumanity of the process which seems to be the issue.

I'm not sure if this has been posted.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/06/labour-mps-urge-government-to-delay-universal-credit-rollout

“The current timetable will cause our residents severe hardship over the months which are most financially difficult. We urge that you do not roll this system out in November and December, but look to a date later in 2018,” they said.

The Labour MPs include the shadow cabinet minister Kate Osamor, Stella Creasy, Alison McGovern, John Mann, Jon Cruddas and John Cryer, along with the Green MP Caroline Lucas".

MsHooliesCardigan thank you too for sharing what happened to your patient, as well as your own experience of mental illness

Every single person shat on by the benefit system is a complex human being with a life and a story and a unique situation that none of the rest of us have lived through. There's an ugly agenda to dehumanise and 'other' poor, disabled and migrant people, which is what this thread is basically about. We can do something to resist this by sharing people's individual stories, alongside collecting reliable data on the scale and growth of the problems.

To read posters saying it's claimants' own fault for not developing resilience, or that loads of people are claiming fraudulently, or the usual ignorant lifestyle choice bollox, is really upsetting and anger-inducing.

The weird thing is, the posters expressing these sorts of views are in the main the same people who are saying this thread is offensive and hyperbolic, yet they are expressing exactly the sort of views some of us are worried about.

For me, Grenfell Tower is really symbolic of what's happening to our country. This happened in the richest London borough full of millionaires and billionaires who buy property as a way to avoid tax. The council basically cut costs by buying the cheaper cladding rather than the non combustible one thus saving a few thousand pounds. That decision cost the lives of at least 80 people.
But hey, we all know that people who live in social housing are scum. Helena I know you are really active about this and I'm right behind you.

Ta Hoolies I have the greatest respect for what you do and you did all that you could possibly have done for the young woman you knew

This lack of humanity showed in the links below resembles the lack of humanity accorded to non-Aryans, communists, Jehovah's witnesses, gay people and those with disabilities under National Socialism.

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/woman-forced-to-sit-in-her-own-urine-for-two-hours-by-pip-assessor/

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gran-suffered-heart-attack-job-10458734

I'm pretty horrified by some of the attitudes on here. The nonsense that "a friend of a neighbour" is on benefits and has 3 holidays and year, and a new car, but is fine.
The figures show fraud is very low.
The ideas that the benefits system doesn't sh*t all over the disabled and vulnerable - isn't very difficult to access and often punative.
I work with people with learning difficulties and disabilities to support them into, and at employment. They rarely get the support they need to access dealings with the Job Centre (we help where we can), and the system is very difficult to deal with. The poverty or near poverty is a real struggle and has, to my mind, contributed, to some clients' early deaths. Also, MissHoolie (sic) and the terrible story of the young person she worked with.
Truly disgusted by the attitudes of some posters on here...

Shit min wage is poverty wage, so how people are thinking income less than a tenth of that is luxury is just mental.

What shocks me are how many people think 'the fucking immigrants' is seen as a bonding opening sentence with people they don't know by so many people. That is very 1930s germany-esque. Even quite racist people in the 50s would lower their voice and look around themselves if they said that, now it's opening chatter in the smoking area of half the scum pubs in England

It's been going that way since at least 2001 - far longer actually. Hitler and his thugs were financed and armed by some very shady but powerful characters in Western countries who did extraordinarily well out of all that slave labour. Many ex-Nazis were spirited away to the West after the war in operations like Operation Paperclip. They have vested interests in constant war. One problem for them is that so many of us have been called terrorists and have had our communities targeted in the past that they are facing serious demographic decline. Sort of a 'Midas gold' situation.

That there have always been corrupt racist authoritarians is not a surprise.

That they have successfully conducted a coup d'etat in britain ( and America) is, a bit.

And in plain sight.

A really good book on this is Glen Yeadon's The Nazi Hydra in America.

I hate that people just dismiss this thought, particularly when they aren't disabled themselves.

I've felt a real shift in public attitude over recent years. No, things were not rosy before, but there was a sense of hope in the late 90s early 2000s that has vanished now.

So many of my disabled friends are living in fear. I know people who have a benefit stop (for whatever reason) and it's like a knock-on effect of everything else halting. They've done nothing wrong, but suddenly they have nothing. And there is no safety net now - all the last resort funds/loans have vanished. Once you've used your three food bank vouchers, that's it. I know someone who has just had to give her children up as she just couldn't afford to keep them, and social services refused to help her care for them with the support she needed.

It feels like a constant onslaught from all sides - NHS, social services, benefits, the things we all rely on. Everything feels so fragile and like it might crumble at any moment. It's a COMPLETELY different situation than being able to have the privileged to work harder, take on another job, do some extra shifts to change things. There is zero security and every time you open the paper there is a negative story against disabled people.

I'm not saying they are the only groups being hit, but they are the hardest hit group statistically when it comes to cuts, and the least able to 'take it'.

Yet when disabled people say this, we are just dismissed as hysterical, rather than speaking of a real genuine fear that exists every day.

Glitter there was someone on a Universal Credit thread on here who was told to put her kids into care.

Oh Helena that's awful. All these issues are linked. I taught pregnant teens not in school. Wonderful mums all of them, with great families, and they were financially poor. They were in terror of having their babies taken. Cruel.

a real genuine fear that exists every day.
And very few people are not disabled at some point in their lives. A culture of fear is what it is. It's plain wrong.

If Charles Dickens were alive, I'd have hoped he'd have written a book which would have brought the truth of what is being done to people and families, and things would have changed.

The silence is deafening round so many things going on at the moment.

3 people have been killed and many injured by fascists in Charlotteville today. Watch the broadcast footage. Very dangerous to claim that fascism is a thing of the past. As a PP said, Jo Cox was killed for her political opinions by a fascist. No getting round that one.

People are having to put their children into care because of this benefits shit? That's is so fucked up.

Pages ago I said the alt-right were a distraction. I've changed my mind. I was being UK centric and I think the situation is very different in the US.

"The alt-right is a new danger. We have a right-wing gangster in the White House who emboldens them, who empowers them. So they feel they have permission for their hate to come out in public, and maybe even harm others. We are in a dangerous moment."

BBC

Follow the money too pencils they all piss on the same pot, at least the funders of trump and brexit do.

in the same pot

If anybody has truly had to give their children up just because they can't afford to keep them they need to get a solicitor and apply for legal aid. This is basic article 8 human rights stuff.

swing thats ONE person.
Not, its ONE example. I could give many more unfortunately but there's no point because in the end, the response will be as always 'but you don't know their real circumstances, you don't know that they really can't cope, these people are exceptions etc... and the one that inevitably followed 'but benefit fraud is low'.

Benefit fraud is low because bringing cases up is too costly for what it is worth. If the DWP were to start investigating all people who claim Caring Allowance, checking that they really do provide 35 hours care, that is care rather than support that any family member would normally provide to a love one, then I bet that figure would go up, however, the investigation would cost more than the award, so what would be the point of that?

Most people who feel as I do are NOT against disable benefits at all. I would be more than prepare to pay more tax to increase it, what I have an issue with is my belief that more and more people are using the system as a mean to an end rather than as a last resort. Usually people who are low skilled, so that working would hardly bring more money than what they can claim on benefits.

I do agree that the system is very ill itself. You have very poorly people who are clueless about how the system work and end up penalised for not going through it in the right way, whilst you have the growing number of 'system experts', or those who know where to go to gain support with that expertise, who know what to say and how to act to tick the right boxes so they can't be challenged.

I found it so disheartening to read forum where people going to assessment are told exactly what to do and say, given advice on taking a cane to walk in, make sure to say you need a break before entering the room because you're out of breath, ask your partner to take your coat off so that they believe you can't do it yourself etc...

The system is open to abuse an whilst those who genuinely need it fall victim to those who do.

them they need to get a solicitor and apply for legal aid

You can barely get legal aid anymore the Tories have made sure of that.

You can barely get legal aid anymore the Tories have made sure of that

The Daily Mail weren't happy when fees for employment tribunals were seen by the courts as unfair. God forbid people should be able to take their employers to court when the act unfairly.

High fees put people off complaining.

them they need to get a solicitor and apply for legal aid

This sounds like 'let them eat cake'.

Yes there have been major cuts to legal aid but one area it is still available is LA court proceedings to take a child into care.

This is a situation that crops up regularly with destitute migrant families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF):

Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 promotes the upbringing of children by their families. It imposes duties on local authorities to provide services that enable children to stay with their parents. That means that if a parent does not have enough money for food, or is facing homelessness with their child, the local council can provide accommodation or cash to support them all.

Social services are only ever entitled to remove children without the consent of their parents if the children are at risk of serious harm - like abuse or neglect - and are not safe with the parents because of their actions.

Despite this, families are routinely threatened with having their children taken into care, even when there are no safeguarding issues surrounding parent’s care. We see this frequently through our advice and advocacy work and on our telephone advice line.

Our advice service shows that, when challenged, local authorities usually back away from this assertion. But we are concerned that many families do not seek independent help, and ‘disappear’ after being told by local authorities that their children can be taken into care. Many families remain homeless or destitute because they are too frightened to go back to social services after being threatened with having their children taken away.