Video Commemorating the Victims of this Tory Government

I’ve reblogged many articles and videos commemorating the people, who’ve died in hunger and misery thanks to the Tories’ wretched welfare policies. There have been pieces by Johnny Void, Mike, Another Angry Voice, Stilloaks and many, many others, which have given the names of some of these victims and brief descriptions of the circumstances in which they died.

This is another of these videos. It was originally produced by Jack back on YouTube, and then reposted by Democratic Socialist, an Aussie YouTuber, who argues with various right-wing idiots about socialism and the nature of capitalism. And some of them are truly mind-boggling stupid. One British Conservative, who put up a video attacking a pro-socialist video, stated in his own that he didn’t know, who Nye Bevin was. Democratic Socialist in his own critique of the Tory’s video pointed out how ridiculous it was that he, an Australian, should have to point out to him that Nye Bevan was the founder of the British NHS.

The video begins with this quote from Theresa May

‘We will make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few, but for everyone of us. That will be the mission of the government I lead, and together we will build a better Britain’.

This is then followed by the brief descriptions of some of the victims of the Tories’ welfare reforms, which has seen seriously and even terminally ill women and men thrown off their benefits after being assessed as ‘fit for work’, first by ATOS and then by their successor, Maximus. It has also resulted in desperately poor people being sanctioned and denied benefits by the Jobcentre for the most trivial of reasons. Many of the people in the video died by their own hand, unable to bear the misery and starvation any more. Although they killed themselves, the ultimate responsibility for their deaths lies with Conservatives, who instituted the policies that created their desperate poverty.

The people listed in the video as having been killed by these murderous welfare policies, which Mike and others have rightly described as the genocide of the disabled, include

Neil Groves
Brian McArdle
Mark Wood
David Clapson
David Coupe
Linda Wootton
Stephanie Bottrill
Annette Francis

The video ends with the statement

‘These are some of the people who got the media’s attention. There are many more that didn’t’.

Quite. The last thing I read, it was heading for around 700, though I can’t remember the precise figure. And there are many more, who are keeping body and soul together only through food banks.

Enough’s enough. The time’s long past that this government should have been forced out. It’s time an election was called and the Tories voted out of office before they murder any more of the poor, sick and disabled.

Benefits And Work: IDS Runs from Meeting Sister of Sanctions’ Victim

Benefits and Work have this piece, IDS flees from sister of dead claimant, posted three days ago on the 29th. The minister for killing the poor and disabled was due to appear on a hustings in his Chingford constituency with six other candidates. One of the speakers was the sister of David Clapson, the diabetic ex-serviceman, who died of starvation and his illness thanks to the government’s sanctions. Suddenly, IDS couldn’t make it, because he was unexpectedly called away to the north of England.

The story, and Benefits and Work’s own comments on the incident, can be read at http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3084-ids-flees-from-sister-of-dead-claimant.

I am not remotely surprised that RTU, or ‘Tosser’, as he was known to the squaddies in his unit, ran away from debating with her. For all Cameron’s boasting last week about how physically tough he is, there is very little evidence that he could crush someone’s skull with his kneecaps. Instead, he has a long history of running away from the slightest hint of trouble. Upon in Scotland, he hid in a laundry basket to avoid a confrontation with angry opponents. Speaking to the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions, he surrounded himself with armed police and bodyguards. Just in case any of the disabled people or their carers in the public gallery decided to attack. When opening a jobcentre in Bath, he sneaked out the back. He was due to open a jobs fair held by the Tories in Chingford, but did so much earlier than the advertised time. This looks again like a piece of monumental cowardice.

This says so much about the man, who is apparently proud of the reforms he has introduced into the benefits system, and has even had the audacity, if not the megalomania, to compare it with William Wilberforce’s abolition of slavery. Somehow, I don’t think Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson or the other anti-slavery campaigners, like Olaudah Equiano, ever shrank from meeting the victims of slavery or human suffering.

Cameron and IDS have absolutely no sympathy with the disabled, or the people, whose lives have been destroyed by their sanctions. Cameron himself desperately tried not to answer Andrew Marr’s question about whether he realised just how much ordinary people were suffering from these reforms. When he finally did answer, he said that the sanctions regime was entirely appropriate.

They know, however, how hard it is hitting ordinary people, and how bad that makes them look. And so they try to change the question, and run from debate with its victims as hard and as fast as possible.

Or failing that, just get a thuggish goon to manhandle their prospective interlocutor away, as Boris did today with Rupa Huq, sister of Konnie, former Blue Peter presenter and wife of Charlie Brooker.

Brooker has recently taken to writing dystopian SF in the shape of the Black Mirror tv series. The violence and thuggish behaviour of certain Tory candidates would seem to be a fitting premonition of a very grim near future if the present lot get back in power.

Vox Political: Tories Run from Welfare Debate with Labour

Mike over at Vox Political posted this piece on Tudesday commenting on the Tories’ latest attempts to pull out or alter the format and content of the Leader debates as soon as they look like they’re going to be potentially embarrassing. The article’s entitled Tories run from welfare debate after Cameron’s Marr Show disaster, as it discusses the way Cameron was due to debate Ed Miliband about welfare policy. In the event, he didn’t, and pulled out. This came after he was humiliated on the Andrew Marr when he was asked if he understood the terrible suffering his welfare cuts were causing ordinary people.

Marr specifically raised the case of David Clapson, a diabetic former soldier, who died after his benefit was sanctioned. This left him unable to afford food, or pay for the insulin he needed.

Cameron hummed and ha-ed a bit, as he usually does when faced with a question he doesn’t like, and for which he doesn’t have answer specially prepared by Lynton Crosby or the other policy wonks at Tory Central Office. He claimed that the benefit cuts had seen people get back into work. They haven’t – see Johnny Void effective demolition of this claim over at his blog, as well as Mike’s own pieces on this. Then he made the devastating admission.

He thought it was entire right that people should suffer such deprivation, if they did not comply with the DWP’s demands.

He is damned by his own words: he has absolutely no concern or sympathy for the tens of thousands of lives that have been destroyed by his policies. Of his attitude towards David Clapson’s particular case, Mike comments

Cameron’s responses indicate that he seems to think it was right for Mr Clapson to die as punishment for missing a single Job Centre appointment (for reasons that have not been disclosed). He refused to accept that the system should be reviewed.

Cameron clearly felt deeply humiliated by the interview. The Mirror reported that Cameron and his cronies stormed off without going back to the green room afterwards to chat with the other guests. As for his demeanour when Paxo had asked him a similar, difficult question, Private Eye stated that it left him in ‘silent, puce fury’, as though his fag had dared to cheek him back.

And so Cameron decided that he was definitely not going to face Miliband in a debate about welfare policy. Mike comments that it shows the Tories for what they are: bullies. And

Like all bullies, they like to torture the weak. When public opinion rises up against them and they have a choice between “fight” and “flight”, they run like rabbits.

Mike’s article is at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/04/21/tories-run-from-welfare-debate-after-camerons-marr-show-disaster/. Go there and read it for yourself.

Mike’s article also has the highly relevant memes. This one below is specifically about David Clapson.

The other is on how Cameron plans to cut all social security spending, leaving the poor and sick to fend for themselves.