Monday 21 September 2015

YET ANOTHER HUMAN MISERY STORY INVOLVING THE DWP



My mother, Ruby Urbacz aged 59, was found dead at her home on September 6 as a result of a heart attack.

She had been admitted to hospital a August 1 with chest pains. In hospital they found she had had three minor heart attacks.

Even though my mother had poor mobility , type 2 diabetes, very basic numeracy and literacy skills and mental health problems including depression, she had been deemed "fit for work" by the DWP.

She was put on JSA and hounded to show evidence of looking for a job. 

She struggled to write a shopping list and thus constantly worried about money and if her benefits would be stopped.

Her benefits were stopped without any investigation as she missed her jsa appointment whilst in hospital.

After her discharge she had received no money for five consecutive weeks. Of the £50 per week she would have normally received she was also paying £20 per week in bedroom tax. On only £30 per week she could not afford to feed herself properly as bills were her main priority, so was living off food bought from Poundland which obviously worsened her diabetes. 

She was getting carer visits from the Red Cross.

After her discharge from hospital, on the 4th September the carers’ notes say "Ruby is worried about money, still waiting for benefits to be sorted."

She died less than 48 hours later. 

I'm writing this not because I want sympathy, but to make you aware that Ian Duncan Smith's policies are directly contributing to the deaths of the most vulnerable people in our society. 

Please do not comment with sympathetic messages as this will not change anything. Instead share this post and make as many people aware of the contemptuous nature of our self serving government who punish the poor and give to the rich. 

23 comments:

  1. Tris

    This country is horrid to the core, and I am taking about the majority, if the opinion polls are correct, that support the attacks on social security. We have allowed the Tories, some in the Lib Dems and some in Labour to turn this country into a right wing nightmare. I know we have these conversations on a weekly basis these days but I guess I want to keep my anger fresh and I applaud you for keeping the posts going when you probably just want to sit down and cry like many of us do in this horrible little UK.

    On the day that Tim Farron asks Liberal Democrats to reject a motion on the scrapping of trident for yet another committee on the issue it passes by 579 to 447 for yet another review, you have to wonder if this is the longest suicide note in political history by the Lib Dems. At a time when people are starving the Lib Dems had a clear chance to stand up and be counted but Tim Farron is more concerned with the UK's standing in the world and while he will vote against a like for like replacement our so called place in the world is worth spending hundreds of billions on rather than a clear statement of intend. I'm embarrassed by a lot of Lib Dems today. Maybe they should have read this blog and then maybe some of them would get an undertsnading of what is actually important right now in this country and what isn't.

    IDS and DWP can go do one, if there is a more nasty man in this country than that scum bag I am yet to see one. He is a toilet bug and I cannot believe that anyone would vote for that party of filth. Some days you are just ashamed to be classed as British even though I have never considered myself that at any point in my life.

    Bruce

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    1. Actually Bruce, sometimes I do think "I've said all this before". But it's yet another example and so yes, I think we should do it again, because the alternative is to allow ourselves to think that...well, it's just IDS's vile DWP again, and that's when you start to accept it.

      Just like we accept that the Queen's family can have 6 palaces paid for by the tax payer, while other Brits sleep on the street. No one dreams of questioning that, yet it is incredibly illogical.

      As for Nukes, I must say I can't understand the Lib Dems.

      Clearly it is not dangerous NOT to have nukes, as all but ten countries in the world manage fine without them, including some of the most powerful and rich (Germany, Japan, Saudi). Their governments and citizens don;t wake up sweating in the night wondering of a bomb big enough to blow away Bavaria, is at that very moment, flying their way.

      The nukes are a status symbol (some would say a penis extension). Even Blair admitted that. They serve no useful purpose except to keep Britain on an outdated and obsolete council of the most important nations in the world in 1945!

      The Liberal Democrats need to join with the other progressive parties to get them banned, and at any rate,, the hell away from the periphery of our biggest city.

      IDS is beyond contempt. The laugh is that he calls himself a good catholic. I bet the Pope thinks he's not.

      I've never felt British, but now, when I am abroad I try to make it very clear that I am Scottish, not British. That way you get a lot less scorn poured on you.


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  2. There are no words to convey my anger with regard to this, no Peter, I will offer no sympathy, I would be just as disgusted with that as you are. I did not vote for these disgusting people, unfortunately the people in England did and continue to think that calling people with life limiting conditions are all "Benefit Scroungers" well until it happens to them Like they are calling Refugees, Migrants. I will recommend this on Google, it is the best I can do. I usually do with Munguin.

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    1. As I said to Bruce, we need to keep highlighting this. Otherwise it becomes the norm.

      I've worked with various groups trying to get people into work. One group was people who have health problems. Most of them would dearly love a job; the provide of having a job; the joy of having money to spend; the thought of holidays, new carpets, hairstyles, clothes, whatever...

      Most can only dream of it, because employers, in the main, don't want to employ people with health problems for very obvious reasons that they may be off sick more, or unable to work at the super fast pace, or under stressful conditions that many employers now provide for their staff.

      This woman was 59 years old with multiple health issues. A humane society would say that unless she wants to try to find work, she should be allowed to retire a couple of years early.

      And the DWP really do need to get it together when people miss appointments because they are lying on resuscitation machines in hospital having suffered heat attacks.

      That's simply incompetent.

      If you are wired up to an electrocardiogram, you can;t nip down the JC for an pointless interview. Even someone as remote form real life as Underpants Smith should be able to understand that.

      But then he's the person who thought that his wife could collect a salary when she wasn't even in the building... so who knows?

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  3. There was a case on Radio 4 this morning, where the coroner has officially stated that the assessment for a particular individual declared fit for work was the primary factor in their death.

    As expected, the DWP said that there have been changes since that case.

    Sorry, but one death is too many. IDS is not fit to serve as an MP, let alone a minister.

    IDS should be dragged into an interview and asked why he thought the system that killed someone was fit for purpose.

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    1. I don't know why they don;t put him on the spot on radio or TV or in the House and ask him if he'd like to comment on this, or anyone of thousands of other cases where the system has let people down. Oh wait a minute, yes I do. The English Culture Secretary is deciding whether or not they can have a bigger licence fee to spend on the Jimmy Saville's of this world, and the English Justice Secretary is contemplating making non payment of the licence fee a non criminal offensive. That explains their compliance with IDS and this bunch of crooks.

      Does anyone know if the Scottish government can de criminalise the non payment of the licence fee in our own country?

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  4. Replies
    1. They just don't have a clue. Every little excuse to stop £50 here and £20 there.

      But we pay for wet wipes for the secretary of state.

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    2. That's the one.

      I sometimes wonder if IDS is trying to implement his version of the Euthanasia programme, as it bloody well feels like it.

      zog

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    3. Joking apart I believe that they quite like the idea of killing off the sick and the poor who will never, in their opinions, be anything other than a burden to the state.

      My guess is they intend to push it for as long and as far as they can.

      I apologise if this offends anyone, but if you kill them off early, you save on their social security and pension.

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  5. tris

    Problem is we see these tragedies as an awful indictment of mans
    inhumanity to their fellow man and feel sick.

    The Conservatives and other austerity hawks in other parties and none
    see these attacks on the weak,ill and unemployed as badges of honour
    and wear them with pride and are more than happy to applaud this cruelty
    UNTIL THEY ARE ON THE RECEIVING END

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    1. Yes, as I said, they are ways of saving little bits here and there.

      And, of course, they know that THEY will never be on the receiving end.

      IDS's father in law will always see him alright, even if we stop one day replacing his undergarments on his expenses.

      I seriously think that they don't see the sick, poor or unemployed as being quite human.

      I remember seeing many many years ago, a documentary about Charlie Windsor. One of his retired servants was speaking. Charlie had had, at one point, a girl friend a Lady Something of Something, daughter of some Noble Duke. The servant said that she made it quite clear that she thought that commoners were a sub species of human, quite literally.

      So her feelings towards them were not quite as one human to another. She wasn't necessarily unpleasant, it was more that she treated them as being non-human. Like she treated her dogs and horses perhaps.

      I tend not to wish ill on people. But I'd love to see IDS in penury, begging for food.

      Won't happen, but it's a comforting thought when I'm VERY angry, like now.

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    2. There are a few exceptions in the world of nobles. Lord Lovat (of Commando fame) was a good example of a true leader. Strong disciplinarian, but looked after his men.

      There are a few Tory MPs, all backbenchers, who are known not to claim unnecessary expenses. There is even one who refuses to make a single claim. Self-made millionaire, his argument is that he serves his constituents, not himself. We could do with a lot more like him. Too many politicians feather their own nest. And the worst argument is that "it's perfectly legal". Pisses me off.

      IDS may have been in the Army, but he's a typical peacetime twat who would be bloody useless in conflict.

      Rant over!

      zog

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    3. For sure there are exceptions Zog.

      There are even decent members of the royal family, I suppose.

      But overall the ruling classes are despicable.

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  6. To the author Peter Urbacz,

    My sympathy would be the least of it.

    cynicalHighlander is right.

    Any consensus about right and wrong has been blown apart by these guttersnipes. We are going to be asked to forgive stuff that makes us sick. Because the great British State is unconcerned, truly unconcerned, about the pecadillos of it's senior administrators, or politicians, if you prefer. Because these same potential perverts are doing what we want. They are killing off the people that the English have been told to despise, which is an interesting trick. Point to those in need and utterly ignore those causing their need in the first place. And the English electorate votes in these despicable people as though they had a right to rule.

    That may have come across as a diatribe against the English, but it does not reflect any English person I know. So, what is happening? I would suggest that they have been as comprehensively lied to, threatened and cajoled as we were during the referendum. In their case any fears they have had have been nurtured at least back to the days of Enoch Powell and his infamous 'Rivers of Blood' nonsense.

    To attack, with venom, the poor, to alienate them, through compliant media is beyond contempt. Someone wise once said:

    "Beware of how a government treats immigrants, because that is exactly how they would like to treat us."

    And now they are doing it.

    The rich escape any censure for their failings, are not called to account in any meaningful way and the Tory Party appears almost Teflon in the eyes of the English part of our electorate. Quite why is beyond me. Do they imagine that they too will become part of an elite ritual dependent gangsta Etonian mafia?

    Perhaps they do, perhaps as someone else's web site carried as a banner:

    "“So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.”

    Which was written by an Englishman, Aldous Huxley.

    Nowadays, he might have mentioned that we raise to our highest Parliament people who have, allegedly, predelictions for inserting their 'private parts' into children or dead animals. The allegations are buried. We will never be given the truth, for that would set us free to rebuild a politic worthy of purpose.

    I doubt we have one now, when secrets are kept and, again allegedly, papers are shredded.

    I do not know how much worse it has to get before we leave this sad, foreign - in the sense of having nothing in common with the normal people of Scotland - land behind.

    No more secrecy.

    This is a recipe for independence.

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    1. Excellently put, Douglas.

      I don;t feel part of any of it.

      Someone said not long ago that Scotland is already independent in some ways. We feel no affinity with this nonsense.

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  7. What a shower of heartless bastards and in that I include those who voted for them in the full knowledge that they actually are a shower of heartless bastards...

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    1. I've never understood how people could vote Tory.

      They seem all my life to have been for the rich and only for the rich.

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  8. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bullingdon-club-initiation-ceremony-claim-1725912

    Links don't work for me on here, but it's stuff on the Mirror today about how Cameron and his piggy mates burned £50 notes under the noses of homeless people begging on the streets of London, as part of their initiation cermony to become members of this elite club of future Westminster PMs, Lord Mayors and HoL stalwarts.

    I was going to post Pete Wishart's link to it on Twitter, but the Wikipedia link he posted has been mysteriously "edited" in the last couple of hours, to remove all reference.

    So they are trained early in life to despise and denigrate all those of us who fall far below the line of being material they can manipulate. Glad to be down here, amongst the real people.

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    1. That should probably be a criminal offence. It is unbelievably inhuman to do that.

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  9. Dear me, ham-fisted attempt by Lord Ashcroft to denigrate our beloved Prime Minister. He claims that her majesty did not 'purr' to Dave over the telephone and that is was just crackling on the line...

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    1. Oh... has there been a change in government? Do we have a dearly beloved prime minister?

      The queen should really tell MI 5 to stop listening in on calls. Philip's too old for affairs now.


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    2. I think Ashcroft's revelations are great! And I bet they are bloody true. The Piers thingy club is named after the alleged lover of Edward II. That Piers was partly responsible for screwing up the monarchy then (it's 700 years ago don't start with the blue woad and invading York!). Typical of the rich boys to name a club for arseholes after him, wonder what they do with red hot pokers.......

      zog

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