The DWP published a press release yesterday, reinforcing the status of benefit claimants as primarily suspected criminals. Titled Cheats warned of benefit fraud blitz, it describes how claimants who live in "high risk postcodes" will be scrutinised, "regardless of age, gender, ethnic make-up, type of benefit recipient, income, disability breakdown or family status".
The lucky claimants in Birmingham's B44 postcode, the Perry Barr and Kingstanding area, will be the first to receive the Mobile Regional Taskforce. Yet again, benefit claimants are automatically under suspicion, simply because they are unlucky enough to have to rely on government money, and now because they live in certain postcode areas.
It does not explain what makes a particular postcode 'high risk', but I would imagine they are made up of areas which are more deprived, with higher numbers of people already living in poverty. So, the more likely you are to need government support, the more under suspicion you are?
Benefit claimants are not criminals! While finding people who are committing fraud on a huge scale is clearly important, this move just reinforces the propaganda coming freely from the government and certain parts of the media that we are all ripping off 'the taxpayer' and need hunting down and prosecuting. It increases people's anger at us, and our fear at our situation, over which we have no control.
(Cross-posted at incurable hippie blog).
Campaigning against the government's distressing war on disabled benefit claimants. All posts represent the opinions of their respective authors and not WtB as a whole.
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out To Get You.
The media rhetoric around, and the threatened government cuts to, disability benefits are filling people with fear. They are contributing to deep suspicion and even aggression from the general public towards disabled people, and lots of us are feeling more than a little petrified.
From Nadine Dorries' Shop a Twit campaign, to virtually everything put out by the Daily Mail, many disabled people are becoming scared to go out, to have occasional treats, to try something normally outside of their limits, such as walking a few steps, or to put their name to anything they post on the internet at all, in case someone should see them, report them for benefit fraud, and accuse them of 'faking it'.
Of those who have continued to post on twitter, despite previous threats, many feel more limited about what they can say, lest they are judged to be faking, scrounging, or wasting taxpayers' money. Still more are finding they feel they have to justify everything they say, just in case somebody is watching. And programmes like the BBC's Saints and Scroungers do little to help, either people's attitudes, or the overriding fear and paranoia experienced by disabled benefit claimaints.
So I was saddened, but not surprised, to see one person's response to this build-up of fear.
So Steven Sumpter, aka latent existence, took, "the drastic step of deleting all 12,272 of my tweets". All of them. And why? Fear. Fear they would be used against him. Fear that they would portray an image of him actually being fine. Now, I follow him on twitter, and it's not like he's endlessly talking of weekends away skiing and trekking up mountains, and decided he'd better suddenly get rid of the evidence. This is the twitter account of someone who is clearly not well enough to work. This is someone who talks about a good day being when they open their curtains 'without fleeing in pain from the light'.
This someone who nobody could accuse of faking it. Anyone with a chronic illness can recognise straight away that these aren't a series of made-up tweets by someone imagining what it might be like to be ill, and even so he felt so threatened by the current atmosphere of suspicion and attack, that deleting over 12,000 tweets felt like the only way forward.
But he's not the only one scared. It's not a paranoid or psychotic illness which is making him have these suspicions, some of the most mentally healthy people I know concur with him. And I want our progressive, equal society to take a look at itself, and wonder just how progressive and equal it is.
(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog).
From Nadine Dorries' Shop a Twit campaign, to virtually everything put out by the Daily Mail, many disabled people are becoming scared to go out, to have occasional treats, to try something normally outside of their limits, such as walking a few steps, or to put their name to anything they post on the internet at all, in case someone should see them, report them for benefit fraud, and accuse them of 'faking it'.
Of those who have continued to post on twitter, despite previous threats, many feel more limited about what they can say, lest they are judged to be faking, scrounging, or wasting taxpayers' money. Still more are finding they feel they have to justify everything they say, just in case somebody is watching. And programmes like the BBC's Saints and Scroungers do little to help, either people's attitudes, or the overriding fear and paranoia experienced by disabled benefit claimaints.
So I was saddened, but not surprised, to see one person's response to this build-up of fear.
I started to worry that my heavy use of twitter could be used against me in this process. I have already explained how and why I can use twitter without that meaning that I am fit to work, but I also worried that my tweets could easily be taken out of context. For example, a tweet about undertaking an activity of some sort could be used as proof that I can do that all the time. What an investigator would not see is how good or bad a day I was having, how much I had to prepare for and work around the activity, or how much pain and exhaustion that activity would cause for days afterwards.
So Steven Sumpter, aka latent existence, took, "the drastic step of deleting all 12,272 of my tweets". All of them. And why? Fear. Fear they would be used against him. Fear that they would portray an image of him actually being fine. Now, I follow him on twitter, and it's not like he's endlessly talking of weekends away skiing and trekking up mountains, and decided he'd better suddenly get rid of the evidence. This is the twitter account of someone who is clearly not well enough to work. This is someone who talks about a good day being when they open their curtains 'without fleeing in pain from the light'.
This someone who nobody could accuse of faking it. Anyone with a chronic illness can recognise straight away that these aren't a series of made-up tweets by someone imagining what it might be like to be ill, and even so he felt so threatened by the current atmosphere of suspicion and attack, that deleting over 12,000 tweets felt like the only way forward.
But he's not the only one scared. It's not a paranoid or psychotic illness which is making him have these suspicions, some of the most mentally healthy people I know concur with him. And I want our progressive, equal society to take a look at itself, and wonder just how progressive and equal it is.
(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog).
Sunday, 6 February 2011
What's a Life Worth?
Someone pointed me to a site called 5 Quid for Life,
Set up in response to Aliquant's post about her plans for suicide if she is refused ESA,
It made me sad, and then it made me angry. Not the site itself - the site is lovely, and caring, and a beautiful response to someone's utter despair. Rather, it made me angry that this is necessary at all. That anyone in this country in the 21st century saw a need to get strangers to donate money so that people with mental health problems can support themselves rather than kill themselves.
How has this happened? That we are under such scrutiny, and in a state of such terror, and so disregarded by the government, as well as the opposing party, that millions of us are at risk of homelessness and destitution, as some kind of punishment for being ill.
Any idea that once our benefits are stopped, we will 'buck our ideas up' will be proven again and again to be, at best, misguided, and at worst, downright dangerous. Threats of suicide are worryingly frequent in comments on this blog alone. Those of us with mental health problems are thought to be the most at risk of failing the assessments, which are reported to ask questions which are much less relevant to people with mental health problems, as well as other invisible disabilities.
One thing is for sure, the medicals, the reassessments, the regular hatred in parts of the media, the misinformation from the government, are all working together to make us more stressed, more depressed, more anxious and more paranoid. Therefore further and further away from the elusive 'wellness' which would enable us to start thinking about paid work and leaving the benefits system.
I am disgusted, and ashamed, to be in a country where people are having to hold collections in order that people will be able to eat. People, specifically, who are frightened, sick and vulnerable.
(Cross posted at incurable hippie blog)
a new charity-in-the-making, set up in January 2011 to support mentally ill people who may be adversely affected by changes to the UK benefits system.and it made me so, so sad.
Set up in response to Aliquant's post about her plans for suicide if she is refused ESA,
to encourage people to give, ideally to commit to regular giving of £5 per month, to enable us to offer a life-saving safety net beneath the benefits system.
It made me sad, and then it made me angry. Not the site itself - the site is lovely, and caring, and a beautiful response to someone's utter despair. Rather, it made me angry that this is necessary at all. That anyone in this country in the 21st century saw a need to get strangers to donate money so that people with mental health problems can support themselves rather than kill themselves.
How has this happened? That we are under such scrutiny, and in a state of such terror, and so disregarded by the government, as well as the opposing party, that millions of us are at risk of homelessness and destitution, as some kind of punishment for being ill.
Any idea that once our benefits are stopped, we will 'buck our ideas up' will be proven again and again to be, at best, misguided, and at worst, downright dangerous. Threats of suicide are worryingly frequent in comments on this blog alone. Those of us with mental health problems are thought to be the most at risk of failing the assessments, which are reported to ask questions which are much less relevant to people with mental health problems, as well as other invisible disabilities.
One thing is for sure, the medicals, the reassessments, the regular hatred in parts of the media, the misinformation from the government, are all working together to make us more stressed, more depressed, more anxious and more paranoid. Therefore further and further away from the elusive 'wellness' which would enable us to start thinking about paid work and leaving the benefits system.
I am disgusted, and ashamed, to be in a country where people are having to hold collections in order that people will be able to eat. People, specifically, who are frightened, sick and vulnerable.
(Cross posted at incurable hippie blog)
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