What Planet Are The Tories On?

Chris Grayling

Today the government is announcing that it plans to assess the half a million people that currently claim Incapacity Benefit, with a view to getting them back to work. On BBC Radio Five Live today I heard a lady called Margaret, who is partially sighted and has no feeling in her left arm, she was left this way after suffering a brain hemorrhage a couple of years ago. Margaret has been assessed in the government's pilot scheme as fit to return to work. She told her story of her assessment the doctor held his fingers up in front of her eyes and asked her how many, she kept telling him she was blind in one eye and she could not see, he ignored her and kept asking her. This lady broke down in tears on the radio and said she had the awful feeling the doctor thought she was lying, she was obviously very distressed. The next person to talk was Tory minister responsible for this reform and what did he say? "We are doing this to help people like Margaret who want to return to work". Chris Grayling may just as well have been  in the same room as the doctor that refused to listen to Margaret and in my opinion neglected his duty and as a physician by not listening to what Margaret was telling him and neither did Chris Grayling. Margaret was NOT saying she wanted to return to work, she obviously finds the whole thing extremely frightening and she is now riddled with anxiousness and feels totally insecure. How is she going to get to work? She obviously cannot drive, can she use public transport adequately with a hemiplegia affecting one side and her arm after her illness? That is doubtful too. How many people like Margaret are going to be taken off of one benefit and put onto another and classed as fit to work unfairly? It is not just a case of putting her onto another benefit, it is also a case that she may lose other benefits that help her with daily living since her illness. It is one thing to get people back to work who want to go and who are actually claiming incapacity benefit incorrectly, it is quite another bullying sick people that already have enough distress to contend with in their lives, not to mention having to cope with a disability. Here is the example of another human being caused terrible anxiety, the case of "Ben". Ben is in his early 20's, he is severely autistic, doubly incontinent and has severe learning disabilities and the mental age of a child and does not speak, in appearance Ben looks like anyone else, Ben has just been classed as fit to work under the government's pilot scheme. Ben now stands l to lose all the benefits that help with his care and help his parents care for him at home.

How many Bens and Margarets and their families are going to be caused immense distress and unnecessary suffering to appease this totally inept minister and his totally inept Tory government and for what reason?

Iain Duncan Smith

Also today Iain Duncan Smith the Tory minister for Work and Pensions has made the glib and general comment that people coming up to retirement age of 65 do not want to retire, they want to carry on working, no doubt some do, but many do not, are they going to be forced to carry on working maybe with failing health issues? Maybe some 65 year olds work on because they have to for financial reasons, but this is not the same as "wanting" to. Iain Duncan Snith lives in a RENT FREE  country mansion, complete with extensive grounds, swimming pools and tennis courts.

Apart from all of this, can this Conservative government who are in the middle of radically reforming everything in sight, from privatising the NHS to pensions, to welfare, to education to the police and sacking nearly all our armed forces and whose policies are causing soaring inflation  and escalating unemployment actually tell us where all the jobs are going to come from to employ all these people they are bullying and shoving around like cattle? This Government are making hundreds of thousand redundant from the public sector, yet it is the public sector that was the largest equal opportunities employer, if an elderly or severely disabled person is going to find work, then it would probably be within the public sector, how can they now if those jobs have been destroyed by this government and other companies that employ disabled people are not employing or laying off or going out of business?

I would like to know where all the companies are that are going to hire disabled people and go to the expense of providing adequate facilities for them, from access to hygiene to the specialist chairs they may require to sit on. Will these employers not mind when disabled people may suddenly feel unwell and have to go home of find a place to rest  until they regain their strength not to mention their composure? Will employers not mind the sometimes erratic life of how a disabled person or chronically sick person's health can fluctuate often from hour to hour? Can the Government guarantee that employers will not get angry with a disabled person when for the 6th week running has had to take time off from work because of ill health or doctors or hospital appointments?

All that withstanding, just where with unemployment currently at 2.53 million and rising rapidly are the jobs to employ over half million extra people hitting the workplace all being forced to look for work? And where are the employers all falling over themselves to offer jobs to the long term unemployed, chronically sick and disabled?

Once again this government is found wanting and has not thought a policy through yet is forcing it through without understanding the problems it is creating. Once again they are found arrogantly bullying people and are refusing to listen to concerns from disabled groups.

I have noticed something else about this arrogant government, everytime they get into difficulties they attack people who cannot fight back, people such as the long term unemployed, those on incapacity benefit and those on disability living allowances etc. They make comparisons between able people fit for work and set them against others who are not working through no fault of their own.

Bullying...Bullying....Bullying!