People whose family members have died while going through the DWP/Atos work capability assessment are being urged to contact a disability specialist – who has been seeking international legal action against the austerity-enforced injustice.

Vox Political reported back in September that Samuel Miller had contacted the International Criminal Court in The Hague, intending to file a complaint against Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and Maria Miller, the ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions, considered most responsible for“draconian welfare reforms and the resultant deaths of their society’s most vulnerable”.

Mr Miller got in touch over the weekend, but said that the result had been disappointing: “They stated that the International Criminal Court has a very limited jurisdiction. The Court may only address the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as defined by Articles 6 to 8 of the Rome Statute.”

The Rome Statute is the document under which the ICC was established. Article 7, which covers crimes against humanity, states: “For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

“(k) Inhumane acts … intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

I thought this – Article 7 (k) – was a perfect description of what the DWP and its ministers are trying to achieve, and Mr Miller agreed. But he said: “Clearly the ICC is striving to discourage the filing of austerity complaints.”

There is a way forward. He added: “On a welcome note, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently acknowledged that austerity measures may violate human rights — which certainly is a step in the right direction.”

He’s right. The chair of the UN committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay said on October 23 that, although member states face tough decisions when dealing with rising public deficits, austerity measures are potentially violations of their legal obligations to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

“All States Parties should avoid at all times taking decisions which lead to the denial or infringement of economic, social and cultural rights,” Pillay said, citing an open letter to States Parties from the committee earlier this year that clarified the committee’s position on austerity measures.

By ratifying the Covenant, member states like the UK have a legally binding obligation to progressively improve, without retrogression, universal access to goods and services such as healthcare, education, housing and social security and to ensure just and favourable conditions of work,without discrimination, in accordance with established international standards. These rights must be achieved by using the maximum of available resources.

Pillay pointed out that austerity measures are also a disincentive to economic growth and thereby hamper progressive realization of economic and social rights.

The committee had pointed out that social insecurity and political instability, as seen in parts of Europe today, were also potential effects of the denial or infringement of economic, social and cultural rights.

The poor, women, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, people with HIV/AIDS, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugeeswere particularly at risk, the committee had noted.

Having identified the possibility, we come to the burden of proof. Mr Miller said: “My best hope lies in procuring coroner’s reports where the cause of death is found to be destitution and/or suicide.”

Inevitably, there is a problem. The UK Coronial system does not involve the collating of such information, nor does it look for national trends. The role of the Coroner is case specific, so wider information is not available. This is because the system of inquests into deaths was never intended to investigate whether those deaths were being caused by insane decisions of the government itself.

The law in relation to death certification may be amended in 2014 to provide for Medical Examiners whose role will be to examine such matters – but that is two years from now, and the DWP/Atos system could pile up another 7,600 bodies in that time (using the generally-accepted average of 73 deaths per week).

Mr Miller has written to the DWP, seeking a change of coroners’ duties to allow proper and robust reporting of trends such as stress-related deaths, suicides and/or destitution deaths of welfare recipients and recipients who perished shortly after being stripped of their benefits can be reported to both the DWP and the Ministry of Justice.

But I think we all know there is little chance of success there. This government is hardly going to hand over the tools by which its own ministers might end up in an international court. They’re insane, but they’re not stupid!

So people are going to have to do it themselves. We know about high-profile cases in which deaths have been blamed on Atos. Information about the others needs to be available now.

This is why I want to appeal for anyone who has lost a loved one because of the DWP/Atos work capability assessment system to get in touch with Mr Miller. He needs to know the verdict that was reached at the inquests into their deaths.

His email address is disabilityinliterature@gmail.com

I would strongly urge that anyone writing to Mr Miller keeps their correspondence to the point. It is to be hoped that he will receive a strong response, but this entails a large amount of work. It is therefore important to make that work as easy as possible, perhaps by putting the deceased’s name, address and the verdict at the top of your email.

Original post: IDS off the hook with ICC – so evidence needed of Atos deaths.

Ad hominem – A Latin phrase which has come to mean attacking your opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments. David Cameron employs this strategy with considerable psychopathic expertise in Parliamentary debate. (See Prime Ministers Questions).

Ad nauseam – This approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator. Joseph Goebbels, not known to be driven by the passionate inspiration of the moment, but by the result of sober psychological calculation, was particularly talented in utilising this approach. Iain Duncan Smith has a similar penchant for repeated mendacity. A serial offender.

Common man – The ordinary folks  or Common man approach is an attempt to convince the audience that the propagandist’s positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

Appeals to authority – this technique involves citing prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action. The Tories covertly appeal to the Nazis, although overtly, there are none who know better, or have more authority than the Tories. According to the Tories.

Bandwagon – Bandwagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that “everyone else is taking.”

• Inevitable victory: invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action. See recent election claims and “predictions” made, by jove, by that great oracle… erm… Gove
• Join the crowd: This technique reinforces people’s natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their best interest to join. See Grant Shapps under fire over website ‘sham’ which used models featured on Australian university site to make Tory activists look ‘youthful and in touch’ with Britain. See also Behaviourism.

Black and White fallacy – Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. (e.g. “You are either with us, or you are with the enemy” or “If you aren’t part of the solution, then you are part of the problem”). So this involves reducing complex issues to overly simplified and contrived oppositional dichotomies, and uncritically favouring one of the two schemata.

Loaded language – Specific words and phrases with strong emotional implications are used to influence the audience. News headlines are often used for this purpose. For example “Britain risks huge influx of east Europe migrants”, from the Telegraph.

Examples also include the ad nauseum use of value-laden terms in political narratives and the media, such as “benefit cheat”, “dependency”, “entrenched”, “fraud”, “worklessness”, “addiction”, and more opprobrious examples such as “scrounger”, “skiver”, “workshy” (see Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich and the origins of this word, it’s now being used very frequently in the media to describe unemployed and disabled people.)

Appeal to fear or Ad Horribilis – Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example Goebbels exploited Theodore N. Kaufman’s Germany Must Perish!  to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

This strategy is often employed to justify racism. It often appeals to the “burden on the taxpayer”  proposition, and often utilises Stereotyping and Flag-Waving techniques. Use of reactionary words like “swamping”, “spiralling”, “invading” and “crisis” have a long history of creating and heightening public fears of immigration, implying blame for economic downturns and recession and justifying racist policy.

Big Lie – See also Disinformation. The repeated articulation of a complex of series of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the “big lie” generalisations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events. After World War I the German Stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarisation and revanchist aggression.

Common man – The ordinary folks  or Common man approach is an attempt to convince the audience that the propagandist’s positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

Demonising the enemy – Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic group, or those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman (e.g., the Vietnam War-era term “gooks” for National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam aka Vietcong, (or ‘VC’) soldiers), worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or false accusations.

Another example is the current Government making individuals of the Opposition Party appear responsible for the socio-economic crisis of Coalition origin and manufacture. (See The Great Debt Lie and the Deficit Myth).

Direct order – This technique is an attempt to simplify the decision making process by using images and words to tell the audience exactly what actions to take, eliminating any other possible choices. Authority figures can be used to give the order, overlapping it with the Appeal to authority technique, but not necessarily.

Disinformation – The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the purpose of making a false record of an event or the actions of a person or organisation, including outright forgery of photographs, motion pictures, broadcasts, and sound recordings as well as printed documents. And in the case of the Tories, statistics  (Iain Duncan Smith).See David “paying down the debt” Cameron also.

Euphoria – The use of an event that generates euphoria or “feel good”, happiness, or using an appealing event to boost morale, such as the Olympic games. Euphoria can also be created by declaring a holiday, or mounting a military parade with marching bands and patriotic messages. Royal weddings and births are elevated and spotlighted by the media for this purpose. See also Ad Nauseum

Flag-waving – An attempt to justify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more patriotic, or in some way benefit a group, country, or idea. The feeling of patriotism which this technique attempts to inspire may not necessarily diminish or entirely omit one’s capability for rational examination of the matter in question.

Intentional vagueness – Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analysing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own interpretations rather than simply being presented with an explicit idea. In trying to “figure out” the propaganda, the audience forgoes judgement of the ideas presented. Their validity, reasonableness and application may still be considered.

Labeling – A Euphemism is used when the propagandist attempts to increase the perceived quality, credibility, or credence of a particular ideal. A Dysphemism is used when the intent of the propagandist is to discredit, diminish the perceived quality, or hurt the perceived righteousness of the Mark. By creating a “label” or “category” or “faction” of a population, it is much easier to make an example of these larger bodies, because they can uplift or defame the Mark without actually incurring legal-defamation. “Scrounger/striver” rhetoric would fall into this category.

Name-calling – Propagandists use this technique to incite fears and arouse prejudices in their hearers with the intent that the bad names will cause hearers to construct a negative opinion about a group or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist would wish hearers to denounce. The method is intended to provoke conclusions about a matter apart from impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against the an idea or belief on its own merits. Again, “scrounger”, “fraud” and “workshy” are examples of this technique. See also Labeling and Stereotyping.

Obtain disapproval or Reductio ad Hitlerum – This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of an action or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus if a group which supports a certain policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people support the same policy, then the members of the group may decide to change their original position. This is a form of bad logic, where it is said that a ∈ X and a ∈ Y, therefore, X=Y.

Invocation of Reductio ad Hitlerum or the related Godwin’s Law is unreasonable where such a comparison is apt and reasonable (for example, in discussions of dangers involved in eugenics, the stigmatisation and persecution of a social group, the tolerance of racist and nationalist political parties, and the use of propaganda for any of these purposes.) In such contexts, the belittling and dismissal of an opponent’s argument on this basis becomes its own form of association fallacy and Ad Hominem attack.

Oversimplification – Favourable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems. An example of this is the use of the word “worklessness”  instead of unemployment. We know that unemployment arises through political and economic macro-level structural conditions caused by Government decision making. But the word “worklessness” is used by the current Government to shift the burden of guilt, divert attention from their shortcomings and to blame individuals for the fact they cannot find a job. There aren’t enough jobs, it’s a grim recession, we know this is so, but the Government blatantly ignores this crucial detail, or invents statistical “evidence” of none existent jobs.  See Labeling also

Quotes out of Context – Selective editing of quotes which can change meanings. Political documentaries designed to discredit an opponent or an opposing political viewpoint often make use of this technique.

An example of this is Liam Byrne’s jesting note to David Laws, his successor. It said “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”  It is a long-standing convention for outgoing ministers to leave notes for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job, which are often slanted with humour. But Byrne’s note – which he later confirmed was certainly intended as a private joke – was used in Tory-led attempts to negate Labour’s credibility regarding their economic record. Mind the logical gap.

Rationalisation – Individuals or groups may use favourable generalities to rationalise questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions or beliefs. A good example is the rationalisation that benefit sanctions  – the taking away of someone’s means of basic survival – will “support people into work”.

Red herring – Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the argument at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument. Or if you are Iain Duncan Smith, invention of statistics is the preferred sub-set technique here.

Repetition – This type of propaganda deals with a jingle or word that is repeated over and over again, thus getting it stuck in someone’s head, so they can buy the product. The “Repetition” method has been described previously. A good example is “making work pay”, which has also become something of a Tory slogan, (see below). The phrase has come to mean stripping social security, and welfare provision, whilst driving down wages at the same time. Another example is Cameron’s unconvincing “Big Society”. There is definitely Orwellian Doublespeak going on there. See also Ad Nauseum.

Slogans – A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned ideas, in practice they tend to act only as emotional appeals. Opponents of the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq use the slogan “blood for oil” to suggest that the invasion and its human losses was done to access Iraq’s oil riches. On the other hand, “hawks” who argued that the US should continue to fight in Iraq use the slogan “cut and run” to suggest that it would be cowardly or weak to withdraw from Iraq. Similarly, the names of the military campaigns, such as “enduring freedom” or “just cause”, may also be regarded as slogans, devised to influence people.

A Tory slogan of epic farce value is “We are all in it together”. We know that whilst the majority endure austerity, and life changing cuts to our basic income, the minority of the very wealthy are enjoying an increase in their already considerable standard of living, at our expense. Also see Repetition and Ad Nauseum. Again.

Stereotyping (Name-Calling or Labeling) – This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable. For instance, reporting on a foreign country or social group may focus on the stereotypical traits that the reader expects, even though they are far from being representative of the whole country or group; such reporting often focuses on the constructed and amplified negative traits (See the Telegraph, Daily Mail and Sun in particular).

Testimonial – Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to support or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The reputation or the role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the individual giving the statement is exploited. The testimonial places the official sanction of a respected person or authority in a propaganda message. This is done in an effort to cause the target audience to identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority’s opinions and beliefs as its own. See also damaging quotation and Appeal to Authority.

Transfer – Also known as Association, this is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organisation, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognised authorities.

Unstated assumption – This technique is used when the propaganda concept that the propagandist intends to transmit would seem less credible if explicitly stated. The concept is instead repeatedly assumed or implied.

Virtue words – These are words in the value system of the target audience which tend to produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, “The Truth”,  striver etc. are virtue words. In countries such as the U.S. religiosity is seen as a virtue, making associations to this quality effectively beneficial. This technique is now very evident in the UK.  See Transfer.

Straw man – This type of argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

This was taken from a much longer piece of work – Full length version here, with many current examples of the application of propaganda.

Thanks to Robert Livingstone for his brilliant pictures

My work is unfunded and I don’t make any money from it. But you can support Politics and Insights and contribute by making a donation which will help me continue to research and write informative, insightful and independent articles, and to provide support to others.

The tax-benefit system is unfair to people who are living in poverty. It appears to be generous, but it is not. Most people do not understand how unfair the current system really is.

• The system make little difference to the incomes of the poorest
• People in poverty pay the highest rates of tax
• It is hardest for the poorest to earn, save and be a family
• Most money actually goes to the better-off

To make things worse the current UK government is targeting the benefit system for cuts (£18 billion annual cut by 2014-15) – this is shown in Figure 1. It has declared that the benefit system is in need of radical reform and it is in the final stages of passing its Welfare Reform Bill. Under the cover of something that could have been good – a redesigned tax-benefit system – we will have something that is an attack on disabled people and people in poverty.

Figure 1 Planned changes to annual UK central government expenditure by 2015

One of the things that has made this possible is the great confusion that exists in the minds of the media and, hence, the public about the way the benefit system works.

Net benefit

In many respects the current system works by a sleight of hand. It appears to be generous (giving about £180 billion in benefits and pensions) but actually it takes almost all of this money back through the tax system. Only a tiny amount of the benefit system provides a net benefit.

Figure 2 is based on data published by the government on the net effect of benefits and taxes for households. Households vary in size, but on average contain nearly 3 people. As the chart shows, 40% of households see their net incomes increase after benefits and taxes – but only by a very modest amount.

Figure 2 Net impact of tax-benefit system on household income (ONS data, 2009)

The overall positive adjustment for the 40% of households who do see a net improvement is only £25 billion (only 13% of all benefits paid out, about 5% of government spending and about 2.5% of GDP). The reason that this is possible is that benefit recipients are also tax payers – so much so that the benefit system hardly benefits them at all. Almost all benefits are paid back as taxes.

On average the poorest 10% of households are only £1,500 better off after paying their taxes (less than £28 per week). The idea that the benefit system is overly generous and needs to be capped is ludicrous.

Super tax payers

The poor not only pay taxes they also pay the highest taxes. See Figure 3 which shows the rate of tax paid by each group. For instance, the poorest 10% of households pay 47% of their income in tax. This is a higher percentage than any other group. We forget that people in poverty pay taxes because we forget how many different ways we are taxed:

• VAT
• Duties
• Income tax
• National Insurance
• Council tax
• Licences
• Social care charges, and many others taxes

Figure 3 Average income and tax paid by household for each decile (ONS data, 2009)

Poverty traps

In addition people in poverty also pay extreme rates of what is called marginal tax – the amount paid to government for the next pound earned (although this tax is disguised as a ‘benefit reduction rates’ and is part of the benefit system). Often people are paying taxes at marginal rates of over 100%.

This problem, known as the ‘poverty trap’ is so great that the government has slowly begun to recognise that people often find that working can make them poorer. However the government’s plans for solving this problem are problematic. Their strategy is to:

• Pay private organisations to ‘get people back to work’ and reward shareholders with savings from reduction in benefits
• Reduce the value of the minimum benefit level, so that those in poverty are even poorer
• Change and simplify the system so that the advantages of work appear to be greater
• Target deeper benefit cuts on those who do not find work for themselves quickly enough

Even if we are optimistic, and hope that the economy will improve and that employment will increase, we will be left with a system that gives the poor next to nothing – while all the time pretending that it is very generous. It is worth bearing in mind that the UK is a very wealthy country – but also the third most unequal developed country. The changes planned will inevitably make us even more unequal.

If we are less optimistic then we can expect to see more people in poverty with an increase in the social problems associated with inequality (crime, mental and physical illness, reduced educational achievement).

A more positive way of resolving this problem would be to move to a system with a universal minimum income for all, and where everybody pays taxes at a fair level above the minimum income. This idea is outlined in A Fair Income.

Who really benefits?

It is natural to ask, if the welfare state doesn’t actually reduce poverty, what does it do with all that money? After all the state is currently spending over £585 billion per year. The answer is interesting. The table below sets out current government spending (from the October Spending Review 2010).

Most of the money goes on services, government and administration. Of course much of this is needed, and it is used by, and benefits everyone (although not equally, the poorest 10% of households actually use £1,675 less than the average household). However most of it is actually delivered through salaried posts in government and government funded agencies.

In other words less than 5% of government spending (£25 billion) is spent on directly reducing inequality and poverty, most is spent on employing people to provide services that benefit everyone (to different degrees), but which particularly benefit those who are lucky enough to be employed directly, or indirectly, by government.

There is a particular danger that those of us who work for the welfare state become rather complacent about our own role. I recently attended a seminar on welfare reform in London where an eminent speaker summarised the welfare state’s function as ‘being for the benefit of the poor.’ Yet her audience (academics, think-tankers, civil servants) seemed, to me at least, to be the real beneficiaries of the welfare state. They were all on very high salaries, all enjoying very nice lifestyles, and all funded by the tax payer.

It is almost as if, when we work for government we don’t see ourselves as beneficiaries, instead we see ourselves as doing everyone else a favour by offering them our services. We believe we are fully entitled to our own salaries, to our pensions and to our power, whereas ‘the poor’ should think themselves lucky to be getting our services. This is self-deception on a rather grand scale and it encourages a deeply patronising attitude to those who live in poverty.

In addition, the danger for the welfare state, is that it becomes a centralised, cumbersome and disempowering system that doesn’t even tackle the most basic problem – poverty. Most of the money raised in taxes goes, not to the poorest, but to the better off – many of them functionaries of the state. It justifies its existence by the ‘good’ it appears to do – but for those with the least this claim looks very hollow indeed.

Further reading:
Briefing on How Cuts Are Targeted – Dr Simon Duffy 
Quantitative Data on Poverty from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Thanks to Robert Livingstone

The publisher is The Centre for Welfare Reform.
Who Really Benefits from Welfare? © Simon Duffy 2012.

Republished here with thanks.

The Department of Work and Pensions have said:

“Our welfare “reforms” will improve the lives of some of the poorest families in our communities.”

Anyone with a degree of sociological imagination, an interest in what happens in our society, a conscience, and a mind of their own, will know that this is lie of unprecedented magnitude. One of many Tory lies. We know that “reform” is Tory-speak for CUT.

How can any of these savage CUTS improve the lives of the growing numbers of already poor people in this Country? CUTS that are falsely named “reforms” by our deceitful, shameful, lying Government – CUTS to people’s already subsistence level income.

We must not lose sight of the fact that it is our money, paid via taxes, that funds our social security. And that basic subsistence level income is just enough to ensure we meet basic survival needs. Food, fuel and shelter. Basic Department of Work and Pensions linked benefit rates were originally calculated with the assumption that people will also receive full housing benefit and council tax benefit. The amounts were carefully calculated by officials and specialists to cover those costs of our fundamental survival needs – enshrined in “the amount the law says you need to live on”.

However, the cost of living has risen by 25%, and our benefit rates have not. People are struggling to survive now, and the impact of the cuts in April hasn’t yet become fully apparent. We have lost entitlement to full housing benefit because of the bedroom tax, and the Local Housing Rate policy, and eligibility to council tax benefit is now a postcode lottery, the amount you pay depends on your Local Authority, full exemption for those on other State benefits no longer applies.

The massive welfare cuts, unemployment, insecure work, benefit sanctions, and rising costs of living – all caused by this Government – have had a devastating impact on the most vulnerable citizens. Does anyone actually believe that the only people in this Country that fail to see, and who seem unable to accept that there is a growing social crisis driven by the these brutal cuts under the guise of austerity, and the rapidly rising cost of living, is the Government? The same Government that is responsible for the accelerating, deepening social crisis? I don’t.

Not one bit. Bloody liars.

How can they NOT know that their massive cuts to social safety nets  and lifeline benefits have gone much too far, leading to destitution, hardship and hunger, and sometimes, death? This IS economic violence. This IS deliberate and calculated, and not “short-sighted”, or down to simple incompetence. This Government knows exactly what they are doing.

Your money and your services ARE being stolen so that a handful of millionaires can have £107, 000 extra each, every year, and so that ruthless self-serving big businesses and greedy, self-serving, irresponsible and anti-socially behaved rich people can carry on avoiding their tax contributions and social responsibility. The same people have taken a lot from our society, and benefited greatly from it. They don’t want to give anything back. Poor people pay the most tax in the UK.

Income tax forms the bulk of revenues collected by the Government. The second largest source of Government revenue is National Insurance Contributions. The third largest source of Government revenues is value added tax (VAT), and the fourth-largest is corporation tax. A good question to ask is how does this Government spend our money on improving the lives of the citizens of this Country? What is this money for – OUR MONEY –  if not to provide services and support those who need it?

US millionaire Stephen King said recently: “The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing Disco Inferno than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.” Set aside the sexist presumption that all unwilling tax payers are men, stop visualising the unlikely scenario of someone singing Trammps classics with their genitals on fire and realise the truth that tax-gathering institutions are rarely headed by men with pimps’ names.

King has a point: no one wants to pay taxes, least of all the very wealthy. They go to great lengths to avoid their obligation. Worse, some think that what they have been taxed is their money and should be returned to them lickety split or faster. His other point, that stayed in my mind was that the tax system is supposed to stop “rich jerks favouring jerk-off projects” and making our society even more disgustingly inegalitarian than it already is. That’s what democratically elected Governments should do, isn’t it?

Not ours though. Our Tory-led Government with no mandate has truly turned back the tide of social evolution. There are people now living in caves around Stockport, the UK is the world’s six largest economy, yet 1 in 5 of the UK population live below the official poverty line, this means that they experience life as a daily struggle for survival.

This is the reality of the situation: poverty is now more acutely absolute, and becoming more widespread because of an enormous wealth transfer from the taxpayer to private interests, and a bogus ideological austerity programme, sold as a fait accompli. But how do you sell such a thing to civil society?

The battle is being won by propaganda. Disability hate crime is up by 25% after the Government’s attacks on disability benefit claimants, claiming that they are all committing benefit fraud, that these are people pretending to be ill to avoid work. Negative day-to-day reporting, with political endorsement and open support from malevolent individuals such as Mark Hoban and Iain Duncan Smith, constantly portrays people with disability and those facing unemployment as a burden or drain on society.

This method of constructing “Otherness” by the politically powerful colluding in social narrative, commonly via the mainstream media, is a recognised method of social exclusion, minorization and marginalisation. Constructing “Other” social identities involves highlighting difference, rather than acknowledging our common, shared human qualities, characteristics and needs, and typically involves the demonisation and dehumanisation of specific groups, which further justifies political attempts to “civilise” and exploit these “inferior” others. It is a method of propaganda that is commonly employed by authoritarian Governments to justify atrocities such as ethnic cleansing.

A recent TUC study in the UK revealed people’s perceptions about the scale of the welfare bill and welfare fraud were entirely unrelated to the reality. This method of crass negative labelling, demonisation and scapegoating clearly works. Tory – created , “Others”, folk devils and moral panics, to justify the dismantling of our social security and support for the vulnerable. That is an outrage. So where IS the public outrage?

We need to constantly confront the lies with truths and facts, and replace the propaganda with a compelling narrative of our own.

The Tories use a distinctive propaganda technique – much the same as Orwellian “doublespeak” – for example, calling unemployment “worklessness” to imply individual blame and responsibility for a socio-economic phenomenon caused by Governments, and calling benefit sanctions –  which condemn those desperate enough to need to claim the pittance “benefits” to survive (just) –  “helping people into work”.

What kind of “help” is starvation, destitution and deliberately inflicted pauperisation? I have never come across any theory in psychological research that even suggests that punishment and calculated, callously inflicted impoverishment will motivate anyone at all to get a (none existent) job. In an economic recession.

Actually, it tends not to motivate people on ANY level at all. Maslow points this out, in his well known work on the hierarchy of human needs.  He says basically that if people are struggling to meet their basic survival needs, such as finding food, fuel and shelter, then they can’t do anything else but try to survive.

The Chicago Mafia used very similar “techniques of neutralisation” – a series of methods by which those who commit illegitimate acts temporarily neutralise certain values within themselves which would normally prohibit them from carrying out such acts, such as morality, obligation to abide by the law, and so on. In simpler terms, it is a psychological method for people to turn off “inner protests” when they do, or are about to do something they themselves perceive as wrong. Some people don’t have such inner protests – psychopaths, for example, but they employ techniques of neutralisation to manipulate, and switch off those conscience protests of others.

Language use can reflect attempts at minimising the impact of such wrongful acts. The Mafia don’t ever commit “murder”, for example, instead they “take someone out”, “whack them” or “give someone their medicine”. But the victim ends up dead, though, no matter what people choose to call it.

In a similar way, the Tories attempt to to distort meanings, to minimise the impact of what they are doing. For example, when they habitually use  the word “reform”, what they are referring to is an act that entails “removal and cut”, and “help and support”: Tory-speak that means to “punish and take from”.Targets for such punishment and cuts translates as Tory “statistical norms” or “not targets but aspirations” and “robust expectations of performance”.

So let’s explore the “help” and “incentivisation” that the Tory-led Coalition have provided for jobseekers in the recession, at a time when jobs are scarce, full-time work is also scarce, and decent jobs that pay enough to get by on are like …well…Tory statistics. Conjured from the aether, a very cheap trick – an illusion. We know that unemployment and underemployment are rising.

The number and length of benefit sanctions has risen hugely under the coalition. This is because the Government have set sanction targets. This means that the sanctions have been decided in advance of any possible reason for them to be applied. As such, they cannot possibly be deemed “fair” or reasonable. When we see they are combined with persecution, media lies and political scapegoating, we see clearly that this is nothing short of economic terrorism.

Two and a quarter million JSA claimants have had their money stopped, and sanctions are for a minimum of four weeks and a maximum of three years. ESA claimants can have 70% of their benefits stopped indefinitely. Imagine being without any income for a month, when your annual income is less than £4,000 a year – no chance of savings to fall back onto. 

Claimants go into debt, go hungry and use foodbanks, go into rent arrears or don’t turn on the heating when it’s cold.

Here are a few cases gathered from a variety of sources online, in newspapers and parliamentary debates. Remember that sanctions are supposedly there to “incentivise” claimants to find work. As we see, the State is imposing a Kafkaesque, existential attack on benefit claimants, as well as committing acts of economic terrorism. (Gathered originally by Birmingham Against Cuts, reproduced here with thanks.)

• You work for 20 years, then because you haven’t had the process clearly explained to you, you miss an appointment, so you get sanctioned for 3 weeks. (source: Councillor John O’Shea)
• You’re on a workfare placement, and your jobcentre appointment comes round. The jobcentre tells you to sign on then go to your placement which you do. The workfare placement reports you for being late and you get sanctioned for 3 months. (Source: DefiniteMaybe post on Mumsnet forums)
• You’re five minutes late for your appointment, you show the advisor your watch which is running late, but you still get sanctioned for a month (source: Clydebank Post)
• You apply for more jobs than required by your jobseeker’s agreement, but forgot to put down that you checked the local paper (which you’ve been specifically instructed to do via a jobseeker’s direction) so you get sanctioned (source: Steve Rose on twitter – part 1 . part 2)
• You’re on contributions based JSA (which is JSA paid on the basis of National Insurance you’ve paid in, not on your level of income) and get your appointment day wrong and turn up on Thursday instead of Tuesday so you get a four week sanction (source: Cheesy Monkey comment )
• It’s Christmas Day. You don’t do any jobsearch, because it’s Christmas Day. So you get sanctioned. For not looking to see if anyone has advertised a new job on Christmas Day. (source: Poverty Alliance)
• You get an interview but it’s on the day of your nan’s funeral. You have 3 interviews the day before, and you try to rearrange the interview, but the company reports you to the jobcentre and you get sanctioned for failing to accept a job. (source: @TSAAPG on twitter – part 1 . part 2)
• You get given the wrong forms, get sanctioned for not doing the right forms. (Source: Adventures in Workfare blog )
• You’re sick and miss an appointment, but you’ve already missed one so you get sanctioned (Source: @thinktyler on twitter. Rules actually state you can miss a grand total of two appointments for illness each year – particularly harsh if you’re sick and have been wrongly kicked off ESA by ATOS)
• You don’t apply for an IT job that needs skills you don’t have so you get sanctioned. (Source: Geminisnake on Urban75 forums )
• You volunteer in a youth club. For some reason the jobcentre thinks this is paid work so they sanction you. (source: @ukeleleKris on twitter )
• You attend a work programme interview so you miss your jobcentre appointement and get sanctioned (Source: CAB )
• You’ve got no money to travel to look for work so you get sanctioned (source: CAB)
• You have an interview which runs long, so you arrive at your jobcentre appointment 9 minutes late and get sanctioned for a month (source: jsdk posting on Consumer Action Group forums)
• You’ve been unemployed for seven months and are forced onto a workfare scheme but can’t afford to travel to the shop. You offer to work in a different branch you can walk to but are refused and get sanctioned for not attending your workfare placement. (Source: Caroline Lucas MP)
• You attend a family funeral and miss your jobcentre appointment so you get sanctioned. (Source: Derek Twigg MP)
• You have a training appointment at the same time as your jobcentre appointment, you tell the jobcentre you won’t be coming but they say you have to, and to get a letter from your new training organisation. Your training organisation says they don’t provide letters. (Source: Russell Brown MP)
• You are easily confused or have poor English language skills, you will be disproportionately targetted for sanctions (Source: Fiona Taggart MP)
• You retire on the grounds of ill health and claim ESA. You go to your assessment and during the assessment you have a heart attack, so the nurse says they have to stop the assessment. You get sanctioned for not withdrawing from your assessment (Source: Debbie Abrahams MP)
• You get a job, isn’t that great? The job doesn’t start for two weeks, so you don’t look for work in those two weeks, and get sanctioned for it. (Souce:The Guardian )

We know that benefits are calculated to meet basic living requirements only such as food, fuel and shelter needs. To take away that basic support is devastating for those people having to then struggle for basic survival. The Labour Party managed to secure concessions recently that ensured that the right of appeal for those sanctioned is maintained. Iain Duncan Smith wanted to remove that right. But appeals take months to happen, and meanwhile people are left suffering as a result of having no money to live on.

Sanctions are not “help” for jobseekers, sanctions are punishment and persecution. It doesn’t matter how hard you look for work when you are one of 2,500,000 unemployed people and there are only 400,000 jobs available. If we want to help people into work we need to create jobs, not punish individuals for being out of work during the worst recession for over 100 years.

Under Universal Credit rules, it won’t be only the unemployed, sick or disabled people facing sanctions, but everyone dependent on some form of support, such as Tax Credits or Housing Benefits.  Part-time workers earning less than the minimum wage for a full week’s work will be placed under the same “conditionality” regime for in-work benefits as those currently claiming Jobseekers Allowance. This is intended to to “incentivise” low paid workers to continuously look for “more or better paid work”.

This conditionality, already experienced by sick and disabled people and those facing unemployment is known as “Work Related Activity”, and will include regular interviews at the Jobcentre, and people will be expected to spend a few hours every day searching for additional work hours. That’s in addition to the hours they already work. How can workers be held accountable and responsible for the work hours that are available to them, when that is a matter decided by employers?

This is not a reasonable policy at all. Sanctioning is senseless, brutal and cruel and serves only to make vulnerable people suffer terribly for the mess that the Tory-led Government are creating by their redistribution of wealth to those who need it the very least.

Not content with “helping” sick and disabled people and the unemployed, the Government is now turning it’s extremely anti-social, baleful Basilisk-styled glance at those in work. They are “making work pay”. That same baleful stare is petrifying society, group by group, starting with the most vulnerable. Martin Niemöller had the measure of this process when he wrote of his pre-Holocaust observations. Group by group. We think we are free, but we are not.

Well I’m getting the hang of this new Tory language, and I can translate, loosely, quite well now: “Tory Ideology is all about Handouts to the Wealthy paid for by the Poor“.

I believe that when the State initiates, perpetuates and encourages mocking and bullying of the vulnerable, and all in an attempt to justify State economic terrorism and theft, then WE NEED TO OPPOSE AND CHANGE IT.

Further reading:

The BBC is colluding in the government’s attack on benefit claimants

Confirmed: Duncan Smith will be grilled by MPs in September over misuse of benefit statistics

UK inequality rising more quickly than under Thatcher – report

The poverty of responsibility and the politics of blame

Constructing the Other

Holocaust and Genocide Studies: Visualising Otherness

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone for his brilliant graphics

Posted originally by Mike Sivier on Vox Political here: DWP refuses to provide information on ESA/IB deaths. What is it hiding?.

Brian McArdle. On the BBC’s Question Time in November last year, Iain Duncan Smith flew into a rage when Owen Jones challenged him about what happened to Mr McArdle, “57 years old, paralysed down one side, blind in one eye; he couldn’t speak. He died one day after being found ‘fit for work’ by Atos.”

Once bitten, twice shy – the DWP has refused to release an update to its figures on the deaths of people in receipt of incapacity benefits (including Employment and Support Allowance).

Long-term readers may recall there was quite a stir last year when these figures were released, showing that around 73 people were dying every week after having been denied ESA or put in the work-related activity group.

This was more than twice as many as the previously-accepted figure of 32 people every week (which was still scandalous).

I received word of the cover-up last night, from Samuel Miller, the long-time friend of Vox Political who has been liaising with the United Nations about the Coalition government’s record on disability and incapacity benefits and the possibility that the Coalition is committing crimes against humanity.

“Just received word from the DWP that they will NOT release an update to ‘Incapacity Benefits: Deaths of recipients’,” he wrote.

“Is this tantamount to a cover-up of thousands of deaths and/or has mortality of the sick and disabled become too politicized for the government?

“Needless to say, I am furious.”

The response from the DWP runs as follows:

“Thank you for your email and apologies for the delay in responding.

“The publication you refer to was released on Department’s website as an ad-hoc statistical analysis publication. As such there is no intention of releasing an updated version of these statistics.” [Emphasis mine]

The “delay in responding” was a particularly long one. Mr Miller sent, by email, a copy of the original acknowledgement he received from the DWP, dated – if you can believe it – November 16, 2012. Were they hoping he would forget about it?

That letter stated: “I am sorry that the information you require is not readily available. As this would take a considerable length of time to pull together I am unable, at this stage, to tell you when the next report will be available.”

Never, if the department has its way, it seems.

This is not good enough, and we would be letting down everybody who has died if we let it pass.

I have therefore, today, sent a Freedom of Information request to the DWP, asking almost exactly the same questions as those to which ‘Incapacity Benefits: Deaths of recipients’ responds.

Sent to ministers@dwp.gsi.gov.uk and under the title ‘Freedom of Information requests’, it runs as follows:

“Please provide the number of Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance claimants who have died in 2012. Please break that figure down into the following categories:

• Those who are in the assessment phase
• Those who were found fit for work
• Those who were placed in the work-related activity group
• Those who were placed in the support group
• Those who have an appeal pending

“I am aware that the Department for Work and Pensions came under criticism last year because it did not follow up on the conditions of people who had been found fit for work and signed off the benefit. It is to be hoped that this has been rectified and follow-up checks have been carried out. If this is the case, please provide details of:

• Former ESA/IB claimants who have died after being put onto Jobseekers’ Allowance
• Former ISA/IB claimants who were taken off benefit but put onto no other means of support, and the number of these who have died.

“Thank you for your co-operation in this matter.”

I strongly urge you to do the same. There is strength in numbers.

Further reading:

“A Department for Work and Pensions FOI reveals that people having their claim for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) stopped, between October 2010 and November 2011, with a recorded date of death within six weeks of that claim ceasing, who were until recently claiming Incapacity Benefit, totalled 310. Between January and November 2011, those having their ESA claim ended, with a recorded date of death within six weeks of that claim ending totalled 10,600.”  KittySJones – The ESA ‘Revolving Door’ Process, and its Correlation with a Significant Increase in Deaths amongst the Disabled. 

Clause 99, the Mandatory Review is yet another indication that the Coalition are authoritarian, and aiming to silence the victims of its maladministration – those it has oppressed – and of hiding the evidence of that maladministration – Clause 99, Catch 22: The ESA Mandatory Second Revision and Appeals

How the cuts target disabled people

The UK government is making big cuts in public expenditure in order to try and solve a financial crisis that was primarily triggered by excessive house price inflation, private borrowing and over-lending by the banks. However, most people think that everything is being cut and that the cuts being made are probably fair. The latest report from The Centre for Welfare Reform – A Fair Society? – shows that this is not true.

Not everything is being cut.

In fact over 50% of cuts fall in just two areas which together make up only 25% of government spending:

• Benefits (to be cut by 20%) most of which is for disabled people and people in poverty
• Local government (to be cut by over 40%) most of which (60%) is for social care (which will be cut by 33%)

The cuts are not fair.

They target the very groups that a decent society would protect:

• People in poverty (1 in 5 of us) bear 39% of all the cuts
• Disabled people (1 in 13 of us) bear 29% of all the cuts
• People with severe disabilities (1 in 50 of us) bear 15% of all the cuts

These facts are represented in the following info-graphic:

The unfairness of this policy is seen even more clearly when we look at the difference between the burden of cuts that falls on most citizens and the burdens that fall on minority groups. By 2015 the annual average loss in income or services will be:

• People who are not in poverty or have no disability will lose £467 per year
• People who are in poverty will lose £2,195 per year
• Disabled people will lose £4,410 per year
• Disabled people needing social care will lose £8,832 per year

These facts are represented in the following info-graphic:

This also means that if we compare the relative targeting of the cuts on different groups then:

• People in poverty are targeted 5 times more than most citizens
• Disabled people are targeted 9 times more than most citizens
• People needing social care are targeted 19 times more than most citizens

These facts are represented in the following info-graphic:

If regressive tax increases were also included in this analysis the picture would be even worse.

This is a conservative analysis, based upon facts taken from the government’s own reports and from the reports of reputable national bodies like CIPFA and ADASS.

Cuts to social care are already in underway – over £4 billion has already been cut from the social care budget reducing care and support to disabled children, adults and frail older people.

Cuts to benefits are being disguised within ‘reforms’ that mask reductions in the value, type and scope of benefits.

The UK is the third most unequal developed country in the world and most disabled people live in poverty. The current policy is guaranteed to increase inequality and to make extreme poverty even worse.

All of this may seem surprising given the UK government’s claim that the cuts would be “fair” and that they have even provided “extra money” for social care. However it seems that many of the government’s claims are either very misleading or utterly false.

Many people do not know the real facts about the current welfare system:

1. Benefit fraud is very low – it is only 6% the level of tax fraud and about 1% the level of tax evasion.
2. Planned benefit cuts are 22 times the size of benefit fraud
3. £17 billion benefits go unclaimed each year because the system is unfair, stigmatising and too difficult to understand, this is 17 times more than the level of benefit fraud.
4. It is the poorest 10% of families who pay the highest percentage of their overall income in taxes – 45%
5. The real cost of benefits and pensions is very low, 86% is paid straight back to the government in taxes. The net cost of benefits after taxes is really only £25 billion.
6. Most local government spending is ring-fenced by Whitehall (e.g. education) the 41% cut to local government must fall largely on social care, for social care is 60% of the funding that local government actually controls.
7. The claim that there is extra social care funding is false and relies upon misleading information and statistical distortions.

The report argues that the main reason for the unfairness of the cuts is that the current democratic and welfare system has a built-in bias towards protecting some services and for cutting others. The public have been persuaded that the NHS, pensions and education are universal services that benefit everybody; but they see benefits and social care as being for  ‘other people’.

This bias is highly dangerous, especially when politicians pander to it, and use the rhetoric of ‘shirkers’, ‘scroungers’ or ‘cheats’ to appeal to the prejudices of swing voters. A new level of honesty and self-discipline is required within our political elites.

Not only is this policy dangerously unfair it will be ineffective. Increased inequality and reduced social care will increase social crises, crime, institutionalisation and will increase the inefficiency of other public services, like the NHS. Benefits and social care are relatively efficient and effective at reducing need and strengthening communities.

The current economic crisis was created by unsustainable house price inflation which was certainly not caused by people in poverty or by disabled people. Nor did they benefit from this inflation in asset values. However they are now being made to foot the bill for the mistakes of others. None of this is necessary. Even if one were to accept the need for public expenditure cuts then effective salary control would have saved jobs and reduced inequality.

The Campaign for a Fair Society demands that MPs of all political parties call for:

1. A halt to the current programme of cuts
2. An independent assessment of the cumulative impact of the cuts on disabled people and other vulnerable groups
3. The development of a fairer and more sustainable welfare system
4. A welfare system that is built on a recognition of the equal worth of all human beings and the guarantee of human rights for all