To ask you to all sign this petition asking the government to investigate 9,580 benefits-related deaths?

[BowieFan]

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/170364

The excellent Jack Monroe has started a campaign on twitter and has been collating stories of awful experiences with the DWP, Atos, Capita and Maximus. Some of the stories are heartbreaking.

Please, please sign this petition - at the very least, the families of people who died because of the DWP deserve some closure.

Take David Clapson - former soldier who died of hunger and insulin-related shock. He had been sanctioned for being late for an appointment, and couldn't afford to pay for electricity for his fridge to keep his insulin cold. The coroner said his stomach had had no food in it for upwards of three days. Nobody should be dying like that in 2016.

I recommend you check out Jack's twitter (@MxJackMonroe) and read some of the stories using the #HungerHurts hashtag. It's heartbreaking, but we need to confront this.

Pinkie do you know what happens when you try to apply for minimum wage work using a professional-level CV?

He was only being sensible by applying for jobs he was qualified for and hence at a chance of getting.

she kept sanctioning him for no reason, insisting he went after jobs that were very much beneath his skill set

The job centre is there to help you find work, any work.
If you're unemployed, ypoure unemployed, you're no longer above any work.
The delmis you go on to job match and apply for work..... Not apply for only job you deem good enough and not beneath you.

Pinkie you are incredibly ignorant

I've signed and shared.

I don't claim ESA because I worked part time due to my disability, and the kids, so didn't pay enough NI. I'm so glad because I couldn't be doing with the assessments.

I do claim PIP and I was lucky I transferred from DLA to the same rate of PIP with no appeal or reconsideration. However, they are bastards and they try to catch you out. They wanted me to go for an assessment in a city over an hour away for 8:00am. I'd told them I need time of a morning to get up due to pain and stiffness. Then they said they had no parking, and the room was on the third floor and they couldn't guarantee the lift would work. I said I wasn't going because I couldn't access the room, so they offered to come to my house.

My assessor was lovely and made me feel really relaxed. However, when I got the report she had lied. I was gobsmacked. I'd heard they did that, but was a bit sceptical. But they bloody well do. She, also, said I could use ready chopped up food and microwave meals to live on so didn't need help to cook. They're not allowed to do that.

Fortunately for me I have an excellent GP and a world renowned consultant who wrote reports. I, also, sent in 50 pieces of evidence. My consultant wrote on the report that he can't cure me, it's a case of managing my pain and I shall be like this for life. When I got my award it was for 3 years because they don't know what will happen with medical advancements.

It's a bloody joke and a complete waste of money. If we are going to run out of money maybe they should start listening to the medical profession, who know what they are doing, and quit with these assessments of people who aren't ever going to get better?

I've signed despite the error in the statistics.

Because the topic as a whole needs discussed in parliament, and I'd be very happy for the statistics - and fact that the DWP isn't presenting clear figures - to be a big part of that debate.

To re-iterate: the DWP absolutely knows whether each claim has been stopped because of death or not. They are notified by the death registration system and use that information to stop payments. (And then bombard the death informant with badly written letters hinting at possible overpayment, regardless of whether the informant is in fact next of kin or an executor or anything to do with the deceased's financials, IME.)

If there were a better worded petition I'd sign that instead, but there isn't, and this one may get traction. So for now I'll go with this.

Pinkie is that another vote for the workhouse?

Speaking of the workhouse - I only found out a few weeks ago that people had to apply for the workhouse and be deemed "worthy poor"

Yes, I was just coming on to say that in the UK we have to stop expecting strangers' taxes to pay for our care whether we are single mums or ageing demented oldies or homeless mentally ill.
They are my taxes. I have paid into the system too. I am ill, through no fault of my own.

if the benefit system was that bad people wouldn't actively choose to claim and the would have been no need for caps or limits of children.
What would you suggest I do, starve? Do you think I enjoy living on £73 a week? How far do you think that goes?

If I could choose who NOT to share a country and taxation system with, it would be tax avoiders and the uncompassionate that I would deport. They add nothing to the community.

I was really lucky when I had to sign on for three months, I met with somebody with a brain who knew her resources were better directed towards those who needed help and they left me alone, on the understanding that I disappeared at the end of the three months. Still conned me out of £210 I was entitled to be tbh I was just glad to never have to go there again

This thread really does make me lose my faith in humanity.

The story of the poor man who died starving and without his medicine would provoke only compassion and a desire to change the broken system that caused this, surely? In anyone with a shred of humanity? Instead we have people sniping and refusing to sign, refusing to give less than a minute of their time, to an action that will cost them nothing, refusing to sign something that might help people worse off than them. But no. Spite and bile win the day and people would rather slag off the well-meaning individual who has taken the time to try to do something to change this dreadful state of affairs, than actually do anything to help.

I have mixed feelings about Jack. I think her work on raising awareness around poverty is sterling and she certainly opened my eyes with her Hunger Hurts piece. I really like her cook books, too. I didn't have a lot of time for her demanding to be called they and all the special snowflake stuff. But I signed this anyway because not signing it doesn't hurt her, whereas signing might actually do some good.

2016 Britain. Where people actually don't give a shit about their fellow humans starving to death. Feel quite disgusted.

Yep, I can't believe there are people genuinely not bothered about a man dying because he can't eat or take his insulin.

Digusts me, but this is what happens when you vote a party into power that tells people it's OK to hate anyone who has the misfortune to be ill or disabled or need a helping hand. It's OK to step on them to get to a higher rung in life.

It fucking disgusts me and people like PinkiePiesCupcakes and ComfortingKormaBalls should be ashamed of themselves. I hope you don't have kids, because you are so lacking in compassion and decency that I'm pretty sure you're sociopaths.

Me too, glitterpants and Bowiefan.

Pinkie my 'advisor' repeatedly put me up for jobs that i could not do due to my health problems however she thought i should be able to as she knew people like me because we are all the same ( even though she was mistaking my one health problem with something of a similar sounding health condition) and sent me for jobs that i didn't have the qualifications for.
The only onterviews i got were for hobs that i applied for not through the job center.

TheFairyCaravan hi! I wrote the same thing as you!
Same story, lovely to my face and report full of fucking lies.
Things i'd never even said and others i'd said she'd made no note of. Gp was shocked.
I took mine further and caught the lying bastard out

Bowie I'm neither ignorant nor ashamed, I'm REALISTIC.

The benefits system (in general) should be there for those that need it, not who want it, or who want it to supplement their lifestyle.

What happened to the soldier and other stories is terrible, but I would like ALL the facts rather than reading left-wing spin and being totally gullible that it can't be any other way. Neither you nor I are privy to the exact details.

Stop griping on about the Tories, they are clearing up the mess from the last Labour Government.

Meanwhile, there's a tax cut for those with £20K a year knocking around spare.

The annual amount you can pay into an ISA (savings or stocks & shares where the interest or dividends aren't taxed) is going up from £15,240 to £20,000.

Nearly doubled from £11,880 in 2014.

So that's nice.

(Budget 2016: Isa limit to rise to £20,000 - how the allowance has changed since 1999, The Telegraph )

Signed. This should have been done ages ago. Regardless of my thoughts on Monroe, she is doing a great thing here. The system is clearly not working when so many die so soon after being 'cured' by people who aren't even doctors.

People can be left at this stage for months. I was once left 17 months from an ATOS assessment to a decision, after I challenged the original decision.

26 months between my 'fail' and my tribunal which overturned the decision before they even spoke to me, simply be reviewing the evidence I had provided to the advisor. 0 points to 21 in a few minutes.

Mandatory reconsideration is bullshit. Just rubber stamping the original decision and dragging it out even longer. I wasn't able to claim JSA during the mandatory reconsideration stage as I was 'clearly too ill to work'. So I had nothing at all.

Stop griping on about the Tories, they are clearing up the mess from the last Labour Government.
Clearly demonstrating how unrealistic and uninformed you are. The mess was caused by the bankers. The Tories have created a sinkhole in funds greater than the whole of the last Labour administration.
As for 'leftie facts, figures' etc. The evidence is there. You just refuse to read it. May I suggest starting with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a hot bed of erm, independence. Or is being brought face to face with the facts by an independent body more than your Tory principles could cope with?

I have signed the petition as it needs to be discussed.

On the discussion about JM I think everything she says about her life needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt. There is a lot she tweets about that doesn't add up. You'll also often find when she has had some kind of big twitter spat or controversy there is often talk of a hospital visit/ admission/ a&e trip soon afterwards.

Stop griping on about the Tories, they are clearing up the mess from the last Labour Government.

Blimey, the Tories have done a good job on you haven't they, ComfortingKormaBalls? Labour were not responsible for the global financial meltdown. It's good Tory spin that they were, but they're not. The Tories have actually borrowed more money from 2010-2015 than Labour did in the previous 9 years to that. Blair and Brown actually ran a surplus from 1997-2001 whilst building more hospitals and houses than the Tories have done.

The job centre is there to help you find work, any work.
If you're unemployed, ypoure unemployed, you're no longer above any work.
The delmis you go on to job match and apply for work..... Not apply for only job you deem good enough and not beneath you

Well that's ridiculously short signed.

I am graduate with professional level qualifications. I found myself out of work through redundancy and had to sign on. Of course, the medium term plan is to get back into my higher tax paying, well respected career. Which surely should also be the government's aim as I am then not just a net contributor, I'm a massive contributor over the next 40 or so years.

Down at the job centre they just gaped at me. I was by far the most qualified person in the building, staff included. It was embarrassing watching the staff try to understand what I did in my previous job, they were clueless. And then it was suggested I take a job 90minutes away as a kitchen porter in a pub.

So sod the fact that I'd have spent more on petrol than I earned, that I would have fucked my cv and never got back into my career, that my income wouldn't have paid my bills..... they'd have got a tick in their box and they were happy with that.

In the end I did some retraining and got back into my career in a different area.

Fuck the job centre and their aggressive, patronising staff.

I understand the system has to be a bit one size fits all, but in reality it actually doesn't fit anyone.

And the thing is, instantly, what you're saying is not exactly news.

The economics of labour markets is a pretty well-examined field. I remember reading a textbook in the 1990s saying that in general it's not good for the economy to place high-skilled people in low-skilled positions.

It simultaneously deprives the high-skill sector of an expensively trained potential worker, and displaces a low-skilled person into unemployment by depriving them of that low-skilled job.

Jesus Christ, there are some nasty people on here (And I sincerely hope that none of them has the gall to claim they're Christians). Unkind, small-minded and quite extraordinarily gullible. Let's hope they never need any help.