So sad to hear of Karen’s death. The coalition of snakes and weasels will pay the price for their cruelty and their parasitic blood sucking of the sick and disabled. Come election time they will be out. They are considered more verminous than a plague of rats up here in Scotland.

“When the welfare reform bill passed I warned politicians that time limiting ESA would be the single biggest issue come election time.”

I wish I could be so sure.

We have already had at least two years of spin, manipulation and media bias all based around a set of convenient myths: “You get a blue badge for a scratch on the arm!”; “The fella two doors down from me’s been on the sick for fourteen years and goes to Marbella every winter!”; “My mate’s brother-in-law told him down the pub that his neighbour’s claiming he can’t walk more than forty yards, but he’s got a brand new car off the Social!”.

As I’ve remarked before here, once you start demonising a small proportion of a group perceived to be of limited economic utility and not in a strong position to fight back, it advances by degrees until eventually all people in that category can be portrayed in a negative light.

All this then makes it easier for the ideologues of the day to do things to that group without incurring the sh!t-storm which would otherwise follow. It’s a tactic as old as the earliest pogrom, and it is still used because – alas – it still works.

Would that I were wrong about this, but I fear I’m not.

Disgraceful. This government are sickos

And people wonder why I want to help to take my Country out of this cesspit? You seriously think we need this type of thing in Scotland?

The rest of the UK voted for this and it is on your conscience, if you voted Tory or Lib Dem at the last election. If you vote vermin, you get vermin.

It’s bad government to be sure but it was bad health that did it. Diabetes is a nasty bastard and sometimes that’s the way it goes. I used to work in tax credits doing 100 a day and I bet my bottom socks a lot of them were fuck ups. The fight goes on but appeal processes are hugely problematic – nobody wants to put their head above the parapet. Requiem pacet.

Going back to what I said before, perhaps even BT are in on the act?

One day Sue Marsh will tell us all what she actually wants to happen – for example:

– how are benefit levels to be assessed?
– what is the process?
– what will her process cost?
– how is this paid for?

rather than constantly repeating (genuine, I’m sure) cases which, in the main, there is no evidence quoted for.

@4 Jim – fair enough – off you go to the nirvana of the Euro.

Max – In fact I could. I have many times outlined alternative proposals.

What interests me is why you think I should? Why should a housewife and Mum of two with crohn’s, unpaid and unwell, devise a welfare policy for Government?

Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?

My “alternatives” will take me months and months to write up properly, though I have outlined them to Gov and opposition. Think tanks get paid hundreds of thousands to carry out this kind of research, I will do it in between vomiting and cooking tea.

Surely even people like you can see there is something wrong here?

“Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?”

Because even in a post leveson environment, most of them are too fucking afraid of their own shadows to propose anything that will anger the daily mail and their readers by challenging myths that have built around the benefit system. Even most of the disability charities have spent the past 10 years more concerned with their funding than in actually challenging power, with the result that we are where we are.

Except as Jim implicitly points out, it is only in England that the political and media class deem the current policy acceptable. The scottish and welsh devolved chambers have a virtual all party consensus against the reforms demonstrating that another political culture is possible. It still amazes me how many progressives still have faith in westminster and the union…..

The Government not only deprive the sick and disabled with their penny pinching, they deprive the carers and their families, particually if they are young.

A few years ago after i recovered from a prolonged and nasty infection, i have lupus. My husband took ill and had to have an emergency operation. I was in too much pain and he was too rushed off his feet to notice the signs. When he did eventually return to work he had to cut down his hours. Fortunately he is now retired.

But what of younger families that have to deal with ill health. Whether or not the sick person is getting the help that they were once entitled to, they still may need care. Many carers will look after their partners or families come what may. Carers save this Government a fortune and when a carer can’t cope anymore and leaves, it ends up costing the Government a lot more.

Demonisation,
Incarceration,
Extermination.

Camerons billionaire bribemasters are winning, disabled people are dying.

Who’s next?

@ 11 Dissident

“Demonisation,
Incarceration,
Extermination.”

Eh? Extermination? Are you aware that trying to make Tory Britain sound like the Third Reich harms the cause by making defenders of disabled people sound like tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorists?

“We had our own house for years – a beautiful beamed fisherman’s cottage by the sea – but we had to sell it before it was repossessed, as our income fell from £46,000 a year to 21k a year”

I suppose I’ll get my ass kicked for saying this but a lot of people wouldn’t scoff at 21k a year.

But then again there is the rising cost of living and all that.

@ 13 Dan

“I suppose I’ll get my ass kicked for saying this but a lot of people wouldn’t scoff at 21k a year.”

£21k would be a big payrise for me, but note that he said “our income”, not “my income”. £21k p.a. is pretty low for two people.

“£21k would be a big payrise for me, but note that he said “our income”, not “my income”. £21k p.a. is pretty low for two people.”

Particularly when you add that having a disability adds to the cost of living. There is often increased fuel bills (you have to be warm in winter – no choice here), round trips to specialist doctors (trains are expensive..), special dietry requirements etc.

Jim, Planeshift

Talking of deserting your English brethren? What hapenned to solidarity? Divided we all fall, remember.

” What hapenned to solidarity? ”

The prospects of disabled people in england are far greater if there are working models of better systems in scotland and Wales. Keeping the decisions in westminster condemns disabled people in all the nations to live under a system dominated by right wing politics for the forseeable future.

The question also needs to be turned around, why should disabled people in Scotland and Wales wait for the english political elites to grow up? Surely solidarity means not holding back their prospects?

I am sorry to hear of the death of Sue’s friend and my sympathies go to her family.

However, unless there is an allegation that government policy in some way caused her heart attack (and that would take some substantiation) I don’t think it is at all appropriate to use such an event to make political points.

Pagar
putting people under constant fear of destitution is called chronic stress. After bad diet/smoking that is one of the primary causes of heart attacks. Might be hard to prove in individual cases, but if a pattern emerges – ie increased death rate, then it has to be considered, correct?

Be interesting to see if the death rate is increasing amongst groups marginalised by government policy.

The Tories have been decimated in Scotland. When will we learn in England that they are no friend of the working classes or anyone who is not wealthy!

Lynne

People choose not to learn, they buy newspapers instead! They are very cheap…

Sue Marsh @ 8:

“What interests me is why you think I should? Why should a housewife and Mum of two with crohn’s, unpaid and unwell, devise a welfare policy for Government? ”

Max @ 7 is surely not asking you to devise a welfare policy for government. All he wants (as would I) is some brief answers to the questions he poses, because you give every indication to me that you think that all the financial demands of disabled people should be met without any assessment at all.

“Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?”

No policy could ever prevent disabled people from dying. Moreover, nothing you have written in the OP or in the NS provides any evidence that the Karen’s loss of benefits caused her death. It’s sad that she was so anxious about the assessment; but the government did not make her anxious – rather, she made herself anxious – and her GP could have advised her on the anti-anxiety drugs available. And in any event her partner was working and she would still be eligible for non-means tested benefits like Attendance Allowance.

Cherub @ 16

Who has deserted our English brethren? Not the Scots, because we always vote pro-human at elections. We vote, in the main, for decent compassionate, people with a sense of community. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, some have been flawed individuals. However, even if I disagree with many Scots MPs of all Parties, I can at least rest assured, that their hearts (if not all of their anatomy) was in the right place. It goes without saying that I have no time for cunts like Michael Forsyth and the like, but there are exceptions to every rule.

Since the fifties to the present day the Conservative Party have went from the dominant force in Scottish politics with around half of the popular vote, to a rump of a couple of MPs. This has coincided with the Party moving from its position of one Nation patricians to the self serving, greedy wankstains they are today. I doubt very much I would have much in common with the Cabinet of Harold Macmillan, but they appear to very genuine men. I would have shared a single malt with him, but I wouldn’t have pissed the result on the current crop of vermin if they were on fire. People ask questions like ‘Why have Scotland turned their backs on the Tories’ and you get the usual Tory response ‘not aspirational’, ‘not entrepreneurial’, ‘dependency culture’, but the truth is your average Scot, even affluent Scots are simply too good hearted to vote Tory. At least the type of grasping, bullying Tory that dominates the modern Party. We have scum in our Country as well, BTW, but our political system is not run for them.

So, if not the Scots who abandoned the disabled, then who? How do the vermin get into power when we Scots reject them so thoroughly? What malevolent underhand power throws them into office? The votes of millions of English, that’s who. Millions of anti disabled protesters marched into polling booths and etched an ‘X’ onto the heart of every disabled person in the Country. It is not me, or the other Scots of this Blogg that descend like vultures onto any post in defence of the disabled with insults. I am not aware of any regular Scottish contributor who uses terms like ‘scrounger’ ‘skiver’ or the like to describe the disabled. It was not a Scot that demanded that Downs syndrome suffers be allowed to ‘choose’ to earn less than the minimum wage.

Five million Scots are unlikely to leave fifty five million English ‘in the lurch’ are they?

If you vote vermin, you get vermin.

It will happen to many more of us during this fight but we wont forget the ones that gave their lives to fight for the rights of us the disabled people. Karen Sherlock was a hero fighting for fairness and support for us vulnerable frightened people. I’m so sorry she couldn’t enjoy her win.

I am going through the fear of THE letter arriving and being told to get myself to work with my morphine patch stuck on my side and with the exhausting tiredness many of us feel due to lack of sleep, caused by the continuous pain and the numbness from the anti depressants that keep us sane. I won my appeal but we all know that means nothing. It isn’t won for ever.

When I’m forced back to work where will I lie down when the tiredness over takes me or where will I lie down when the pain is too unbearable? Will these jobs we are forced to go to even have a bed to lie in until we recover enough to carry on doing the job we are paid for?

What will happen on the days we can’t get to work due to being too ill? who will buy my food? Will i have to starve? Will I lose my home? Where will I live?

I am so afraid that I will have to loose the only support that keeps me afloat.

I am so sorry you have lost your friend all because the strain of the fight with DWP and ATOS was too much for her poor body to cope with. I am so sorry for her family and wish them some relief from the hurt they will be feeling.

We all need to prepare for the day our broken bodies give up on us like Karen’s did, the day we are told ATOS has decided we are fit to get off our lazy backsides and get into work.

We will always remember the heroes who fell fighting for our rights.

RIP Karen

@ Sue Marsh

‘Max – In fact I could. I have many times outlined alternative proposals.’

Please provide a link.

‘What interests me is why you think I should? Why should a housewife and Mum of two with crohn’s, unpaid and unwell, devise a welfare policy for Government?”

Didn’t ask you that – you said in the OP you were a ‘writer’ – just summarise in a few words your thoughts.

‘Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?’

Please explain how anyone can have a disability policy where people don’t die?

‘My “alternatives” will take me months and months to write up properly, though I have outlined them to Gov and opposition. Think tanks get paid hundreds of thousands to carry out this kind of research, I will do it in between vomiting and cooking tea.’

Can you not just say something like – ‘I want DLA & ESA to stay as they are with not assessments’ – ‘Don’t care what it costs’ If you can’t provide at least a summary of your thoughts on this then…..

‘Surely even people like you can see there is something wrong here?’

Even ‘people like me’ – nice. Even ‘people like you’ Sue must be able to see that there is something wrong with the system as was.

Max @ 25

Please explain how anyone can have a disability policy where people don’t die?

Fuck me, what is it with the Tory Party that they attract such lice? No one is suggesting that you can invent a policy where no one dies. What the decent humans are saying that a system who passes someone as ‘fit for work’ who dies as a consequence of her illness is fundamentally flawed.

Not a single person has suggested that people with long term, life threatening illness should not die, we are saying that they should not be forced to jump through hoops to prove that they are severely il, when any competent doctor could tell us that in a few seconds.

see that there is something wrong with the system as was.

Was there? Says who? The Tory vermin and their mouthpieces? The disabled treated with dignity, yes I can see how the sub human Tories would be outraged with such a notion.

@23 Jim,

The point I was getting at wasn’t about Scotland, but rather that if you leave the Union then England is more likely to be stuck with the tories for ever. If it’s ok to argue that devolved Wales and Scotland having decent welfare policies would somehow cause Engalnd to follow suit, isn’t it ok to argue that the opposite might just as easily happen?

I don’t think the argument stands up. You’d get stuck with Salmond and find out what a dick he really is and we’d go wizzing back to the 19th century dystopia the tories dream of. United we stand…

Cherub @ 27

if you leave the Union then England is more likely to be stuck with the tories for ever

If that happens then it is because England is a more Right Wing Country. Believe me, I hate the modern Tory Party from the bottom of my boots, but I cannot, in all conscience, defend a system that effectively denies the English the Government they want.

It appears that when the Tories win the English are foisting an unpopular government us. However Labour win, five million Scots foist a Government that the vast majority of the English don’t want.

When we had a single parliament, then it was bad enough, but given that many of the decisions that affect Scotland are taken in Scotland, it seems only logical that everything that can be handed over to the Scottish parliament, should be. That includes policy on the disabled.

Last night I wrote about the British based ‘Left’ inability to engage the public regarding bread and butter issues, like compassion for the disabled, workfare and the hounding of vulnerable groups and Today, I see that we have YET another bite at the ‘gay marriage and Cameron’ thing again.

Seriously, this is beyond parody. Disabled people are dying through the direct actions of a Government and the Left can STILL manage to twitter on about something that few care about one way or another. Those that do have pretty much made their minds up anyway and are unlikely to change their voting intention one way or another. No doubt the editors are scanning blogs, lest a piece about Palestine has got under the radar.

Jim @ 26:

“No one is suggesting that you can invent a policy where no one dies.”

Sue Marsh does, above. Perhaps she did not mean to say this, but it does sugegst that her thoughts on this matter that occupies so much of her time are a little confused…

“a system who passes someone as ‘fit for work’ who dies as a consequence of her illness is fundamentally flawed.”

Nonsense. I know plenty of people with potentially fatal conditions and illnesses who are still working and happy to do so. The question is: which of these people cannot work and need to be supported by the state? In order to determine this, full and proper assessment is necessary – not a few seconds with any old doctor. Or do we just write all who claim to be incapable of working a blank cheque?

Jim @26

I see Tone @29 has answered your points. It just remains for me to say no to your offer of sexual congress.

TONE @29:

“In order to determine this, full and proper assessment is necessary – not a few seconds with any old doctor.”

Of course it is. But that is most emphatically not what happens with ATOS’ ‘tests’. In fact, you don’t see a doctor at all; just someone with a minor medical qualification (usually completely unrelated to the claimant’s condition) and a computer program tellling him/her what to say. ‘Proper’ assessment doesn’t happen, which is why such a large proportion of ATOS’ decisions are overturned, but only after a long and extremely stressful appeals process.

Tone @ 26

Sue Marsh does, above.

Fucking bollocks. You do realise everyone who reads this blogg can still read the OP? No-where does Sue say that any policy should prevent people with fatal illnesses from dying?

Nonsense. I know plenty of people with potentially fatal conditions and illnesses who are still working

Do you? Dou you really? Or is that just made up shit that you cunts always trot out, like the ‘some of my best mates are gay’ or ‘many of my friends are black’ etc?

So, you know lots of employers who are happy to take on people with chronic fatigue, do you? You know lots of employers who are willing to turn a blind eye to staff whose illnesses mean they are often unable to leave their beds for a couple of days? You know lots of employers who will employ people whose bowel problems make them incontinent?

Look, Stephen Hawking is completely paralysed, yet has been able to successfully hold down one of the highest jobs in academia, but does that set the standard for everyone in his predicament? Is there anyone who seriously would pass him ‘fit for work’ under normal circumstances? Would Stephen Hawking get a job in Tesco? No, and to be honest none of you cunts really expect him to so.

Simply passing someone ‘fit for work’ is meaningless unless there is a serious chance of that person of actually securing a job. All your pathetic tests count for exactly fuck all in the real world. The labour market is shrinking and the labour force is expanding. Most of the those with profound illnesses are never going to get a job when there are millions of fit, healthy people applying for the same job.

You know why I detest you Tory cunts so much? You know why I think you people are lower than lice? Because, you know as well as I do that most of these people will never hold down a job. It is not good enough that the disabled are driven into poverty and despair. You want the disabled to be seen to suffer.

Last week, you cunts were arguing that employers should be allowed to sack ‘under performing’ employees to ‘free up the labour market. In other words you want to be allowed to dump the old and the sick and replace them with, fit people who are supplied free via a forced labour campaign.

Chaise (@12)

18 months ago maybe. Now even rabbis are making the analogies.

http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/happy-mothers-day.html

@14 Thank you Chaise.

2 kids as well, and I live in Sussex, and no, to anyone who asks why I haven’t moved, I can’t move to Bute or somewhere cheaper just yet.

Oh would you look at yourselves!! I do get that people come to these threads to fight some kind of class/political/intellectual war. I get that the sole aim is to construct a rebuttal that make them feel they “won”

But I believe disabled people shouldn’t die? How utterly ridiculous.

You “just want a few sentences that say I don’t believe in assessments”? Yes, I bet you do.

I have no problem with assessments. They should however be based on work a person might actually be able to do in real life. Grayling is “implacably opposed” to this.

I have no problem with a DWP “decision maker” making the final decision. However, I believe there should be a “paper tier” assessment first based on the opinion of a person’s consultant (or the HCP who treats them at the highest level)

I think that a one year time limit to ESA is unworkable all the while we can’t cure all conditions in one year.

I think that the descriptors used to determine awards (DWP devised) should consider pain, fatigue and symptoms – currently we have a fitness for work test that doesn’t actually want to know what symptoms you get.

If someone comes to them in the state Karen was in, I want the system to immediately send her home with a Support Group award and a lifetime’s supply of Toblerone.

So, not all that unreasonable really. I want a test that works, that even tries to look at a person in the round and what work that could realistically do. I want a person’s own consultant to have the greatest say, avoiding need for a physical assessment where it’s clearly an utter waste of taxpayer money. And I want symptoms considered rather than 15 boxes being ticked on a computer screen.

I just threw in the Toblerones to give you something to get your teeth into. Judging by the banality of the comments above, it’ll probably be a headline in the Mail tomorrow.

@ 33 Sue Marsh

“Now even rabbis are making the analogies. ”

Regardless, calling it “extermination” is a) silly and b) not an analogy. By that argument, the NHS is guilty of extermination because it doesn’t provide certain expensive drugs.

Don’t get me wrong. Tory policy on the disabled – and vulnerable people in general – is cruel and callous, and the newspapers demonising those in need seem to be competing to see who can get sent to the deepest circle of Hell. But making it sound as if the government is rounding up people in wheelchairs and machine-gunning them in the street is *not* helpful. There’s no point cheating when you’re firmly on the moral highground to begin with.

@35 Sue Marsh

Well, I’m not trying to construct some sort of rebuttal. I asked for your summary thoughts and you’ve now given them – thanks.

IMHO you’d have more success in your campaign to get wide public support for your proposals if you explained these issues to people (like me) who have no contact with the disability benefits system.

CG @ 36 has a valid point about ‘extermination’ I think.

Might help to give the comments like ‘oh look at yourselves’ and ‘banal comments’ a miss as well.

@chaise, I merely took it to the logical conclusion. Demonisation has a nasty habit of leading to genocidal progroms, and they are not limited to NAZIS, after all the third reich did copy a British design for building all those concentration camps! As far as I am aware, no nazi has been PM of this country…
@Sue, I am not a rabbi lol
@Jim, well said. Tory scum use whatever justification they can invent, as they are wannabe class A monsters, what amazes me is how many people fall for them.

Jim @ 32:

“Fucking bollocks. You do realise everyone who reads this blogg can still read the OP? No-where does Sue say that any policy should prevent people with fatal illnesses from dying?”

Jim, Sue wrote @ 8 (not in the OP): “Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?” Do at least try to keep up…

“So, you know lots of employers who are happy to take on people with chronic fatigue, do you?”

I never claimed that. I claimed that your claim that “a system who passes someone as ‘fit for work’ who dies as a consequence of her illness is fundamentally flawed” was nonsense. Which it is, because there are plenty of folk working with terminal illnesses. I have a colleague, for example, with terminal cancer who continues to work with a life expectancy probably in months if not weeks. Sure, he has to take up to 4 days off each month when the drugs he’s taking make him feel unwell, but most days he says he feels ok and is fit to work. He will probably die while still working; and there are thousands like him. And just one counter-example like that is enough to refute your rash and ill considered claim!

[39] oh dear, somebody who fails to understand the obvious difference between affording a reasonable quality of life and forcing people to live – perhaps a few diagrams would help?

@39 so your colleauge feels he has to work till he drops huh? If I had terminal cancer, I would prioritise family, by spending as much time as possible with them.

Why do you see nothing wrong with your colleauge working till he dies? Are you THAT selfish, or is it because you are brainwashed into that Corporatist/Randian/pre-Fascist mindset.

Because if THEY have a terminal illness, they would make sure they are looked after properly, by everyone up to and INCLUDING the state. Money no object to them.

Jim @ 32:

“You know why I detest you Tory cunts so much? You know why I think you people are lower than lice?”

That is a very ugly thing to say, and it constitutes hate-speech. If you think I’m lower than lice, then I assume you’d feel justified in exterminating me. Just substitute ‘Tory’ with ‘Muslim’, ‘gay’, ‘Jew’, ‘black’…etc and you might see why I find your statement above so abhorrent. Remember your humanity, and forget the rest, as Bertrand Russell once said.

Your statement is simply no way to conduct political debate and discussion. LC is a forum in which strong views are expressed forcefully, but rarely hatefully. And some of the contributors here (from whom I have learned things, even though I disagree with their fundamental positions) are models of reasonableness and fair-mindedness (eg Chaise Guevara). Try learning from them, Jim.

Sue Marsh @ 35:

Thank you for this, Sue. Now, I understand where you are coming from; and what separates us is remarkably little – indeed, I can agree with it all, apart from two points:

1. giving the applicant’s consultant a pivotal and primary assessment role opens the door to fraud and deception. A second opinion, even if basic, is essential preliminary to an independent medical assessment

2. I cannot agree that “a one year time limit to ESA is unworkable”.

“But I believe disabled people shouldn’t die? How utterly ridiculous.”

Er…sorry, just reading what you wrote @ 8:
“Exactly what is wrong with their billion pound budgets, their so-called think tanks and “independent” analyses that they can’t devise a disability policy where people don’t die?”

In general, Sue, as CG suggests @ 36?, you should tone down the rhetoric…

*****

aecn @ 40:

No, I don’t: I understand the “difference between affording a reasonable quality of life and forcing people to live” very well. But (a) this does not apply to this individual who chooses to work in his well-paid post because he loves his job (clue: he and I work for a charity) and (b) I was simply making a logical point against Jim’s wild claim – one counter-example of ‘this x is not-F’ refutes ‘All x’s are F’

dissident @ 41:
“Why do you see nothing wrong with your colleauge working till he dies?”

Because it is his free choice. He loves his job; and every day he feels he is contributing…and his performance has not deteriorated when he is at work. And our employer is supportive….

“Are you THAT selfish, or is it because you are brainwashed into that Corporatist/Randian/pre-Fascist mindset.”

*Sigh*: ‘Are you SO stupid, or is that because you are brainwashed into that anti-capitalist/anti-freemarket/pre-totalitarian socialist mindset’.

Otherwise, see above.

@39 Sounds like you are no more corpie than I am commie lol, you are working in a charity, good for you. I contribute to charities, because I hate injustice, by the way, I am a shareholder. Hardly the stereotype of an anti-Capitalist. I do question free markets, as there is no such thing, ever, not even in a libertarian utopia. My real problem is anecdotes like yours about your colleauge are used as partof the leverage to demonise hundreds of thousands of otherwise innocent people. You might have the smarts to see the difference, but then you are not really the intended recepient.

Try explaining to the average sun, express or mail reader what is happening… You might understand then.

Dissident @ 44:

“Sounds like you are no more corpie than I am commie lol, you are working in a charity, good for you.”

Agreed! (So why did you insult me when you knew so little about me?)

“I am a shareholder. Hardly the stereotype of an anti-Capitalist. I do question free markets, as there is no such thing, ever, not even in a libertarian utopia.”

Free markets admit of degree. You are saying (rightly) that there is no such thing as an absolutely free market, and then you conclude that markets cannot be much free-er than they are. Logic fail!

“anecdotes like yours about your colleauge are used as partof the leverage to demonise hundreds of thousands of otherwise innocent people”

But that simply does NOT mean that we should not mention people like my colleague – in case a prejudiced thicko or propagandist mis-uses the example. Rather, it means that we should be ready to refute the prejudiced thickos and propagandists in the name of a balanced and nuanced position.

@45 The crux of the matter! it is all too easy to put people into pigeonholes, all of us are guilty of that. There are far too many cases of jumping to conclusions when all you see are a few short paragraphs.

There is no logic fail in thinking freer markets are unworkable in the long run, as the problem is the lack of perfect information, to say nothing of how accumulated capital distorts markets. Anyway that is only tangential to the original thread.

What we need is telling people the fact that for everyone like your colleauge, there are thousands who don’t have the choice, and corporations like ATOS leverage their own state appointed power to take the money supposed to keep people living a dignified life and convert it into their own profit. Which looks like it costs us all just as much, if not more than supporting disabled people in the first place.

So why does ATOS behave in the way they do?
Why does the government give them permission to behave that way?
And why do so many people accept without question propaganda and anecdotes are the whole truth, when at best they distort…