Absolutely disgusting

Not content with destroying the economy and the social safety nets, the ConDem coalition is also threatening those who are exposing the effects of their policies:

The chair of the Trussell Trust has said that the charity made a decision to tone down its criticisms of the benefit system after someone in power warned them that they could get shut down.

Chris Mould, chair of the Trussell Trust, was giving evidence to the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector yesterday when he said that the charity, which aims to tackle poverty, had been criticised by the government for raising awareness of the need for food banks.

He said that he had seen several examples of how “people in power do pretty inappropriate things at times to try and curb and curtail independence of a voluntary organisation when it proves to be inconvenient to them”.

Mould, who made it clear that the charity was not a campaigning organisation, told the panel that most of these examples had arisen in private conversations with those in power.

“Nice charity you have there. Shame if something happened to it.”

Disagree With An Atos Decision? Then Starve

There have been a lot of problems with the Work Capability Assessment run by companies like Atos, testing and retesting whether people are disabled enough for Employment Support Allowance (ESA), as claimaints are declared fit for work when they’re patently not. Now things are going to be made worse, as the possibility to appeal against these decisions is going to be made, both by complicating the process to do so and by stopping ESA during the appeal process, with claimants needing to apply for Job Seeksers Allowance instead:

This will mean that those appealing an ESA decision and claiming Jobseekers Allowance will be placed in a potentially fraudulent position. They will be appealing an ESA decision based on the fact they do not believe themselves able to work, and will be claiming JSA based on a claim that they are able to work.

It’s been quite clear for a while now that the current UK government is engaging in the salami slicing of welfare, discontinuing some benefit schemes, means testing others, tightening up access in general. The point in these exercises is clearly not limiting fraud or other tabloid friendly excuses, but to throw people off of welfare regardless of whether they need it or not. This has been the clearest in the way disability benefits have been handled, with no regards for the wellbeing and health of the people affected.

To put it blunty: the suicides, the unnecessary deaths of people cut off from disability benefits, the starving, that’s the system working.