"Suicide's an option" - UKIP's Neil Hamilton

In May 2016 the disgraced former Tory MP Neil "cash for questions" Hamilton was handed a lifeline back into politics by the 25,042 people in the Mid and West Wales region who voted UKIP in the Welsh Assembly elections.

In March 2017 the bigoted ex-Tory made it absolutely clear why his political resurrection was such an embarrassment to Wales by remarking that "suicide's an option" as the Labour Assembly Member Eluned Morgan was explaining that the economic consequences of Brexit would be hardest for those who could least afford it.

After his suicide remark a wave of disquiet rippled through the chamber until the Presiding Officer Elin Jones intervened to give Hamilton the opportunity to apologise.

Hamilton belligerently refused to admit that he'd said anything unacceptable by asking "What is there to apologise for?" and "What was unparliamentary about the remark?".

In 2015 the number of suicides in England and Wales increased to its highest level in 20 years. Whether Hamilton was being serious that people who are thrown into poverty by Brexit should kill themselves, or he was making some kind of sick joke, his remarks were completely unacceptable.

The people of the Mid and West Wales region who voted this corrupt ex-Tory back into politics deserve a slow hand clap for giving this appalling individual the chance to spew offensive and bigoted nonsense in their national parliament.

I guess most of them won't care though. They'll have an excuse for it, or they'll outright deny reality by saying it didn't happen, just like all the 'Kippers a few days previously who had no problem with Nigel Farage saying that if Brexit turns out to be a social and economic catastrophe he'll go and live abroad rather than apologise to the nation.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" scandal

People tend to react with disbelief when I try to explain to them how badly disabled people are treated in Britain.

They tend to disbelieve me when I tell them that the UK government has been severely critisised by the United Nations for their "systematic violations" of disabled people's rights.

They tend to disbelieve me when I tell them that the dehumanising Work Capacity Assessment regime for disabled people has been ruled unlawful in the courts for the way it discriminates against people with mental health conditions, and that it costs way more in corporate outsourcing fees to administer than it will ever save in reduced benefits payments.

They tend to disbelieve me when I tell them that disabled people are by far the most likely people to suffer the punitive "Bedroom Tax" regime, and that people with mental illnesses and learning difficulties are disproportionately affected by the draconian Tory sanctions regime (another brutal Tory welfare policy that costs way more to administer than it will ever save in reduced benefits payments).

In March 2017 another scandal erupted about the callous way in which disabled people are treated in Britain. It's so extreme that again, people really struggle to believe that it's actually happening in a supposedly decent and humane society like Britain.

It turns out that the private profit-making companies that are carrying out the dehumanising and discriminatory Work Capacity Assessment and other disability assessments like PIP on behalf of the Tory government have been asking disabled people why they haven't committed suicide yet.

During my #pip assessment I was asked why I hadn't killed myself yet. This is standard, assessors regularly ask this question.

— Alice Kirby (@Alice__Kirby) February 24, 2017

After Alice Kirby Tweeted about this outrageous line of questioning dozens of other disabled people have come forward to testify about how they had been asked similar "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" type questions during the various dehumanising assessment processes the Tory government put them through.

One of the corporate outsourcing giants conducting disability assessments on behalf of the Tory government (Maximus) has openly admitted that asking disabled people questions like "what stops you from acting on the [suicidal] thoughts that you have?" and "Can you think of any reason you're not doing that [committing suicide]?" is "in line with their policies and guidelines".

If you can't see why this is such a shocking and dangerous line of questioning for people with disabilities, you might as well stop reading now and continue living in your bubble of denial about the absolutely disgusting ways in which the Tory government and their corporate outsourcing chums have been treating sick and disabled people.

It's so obviously sick and dangerous to ask people with severe physical and mental illnesses "Why haven't you killed yourself yet?" that I feel like I'm being ridiculously patronising even explaining it, but it needs to be said.

Asking people with severe mental illnesses like depression and Post Traumatic Stress why they haven't killed themselves yet is obviously going to increase the risk of suicide, but it's also likely to increase the risk of suicide amongst people with all manner of other disabilities who may already feel like their condition is a burden on their families, or on wider society. 

In fact the whole process of treating disabled people like they are scroungers on the make who deserve to be put through one dehumanising assessment regime after another is bad enough, but actually asking people why they've not killed themselves yet during these appalling processes is so obscene it's actually beyond my ability as a writer to express how disgusted I am by it.

Shockingly the mainstream media have totally neglected this dreadful scandal. During my research for this article the only coverage whatever seems to be from fellow independent media sources (Black Triangle, Disability News Service, Vox Political, The Canary) and from personal social media accounts. At the time of writing this scandal has been covered in alternative media sources for over a week, yet nobody from the mainstream press seems even remotely bothered about holding the government to account over it.
It's astounding that nobody from the mainstream press has bothered to try to give this appalling story the publicity it deserves. 

Perhaps even worse than the fact these "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" questions are being asked* is the way that the mainstream press have abjectly failed in their duty to hold the Tories to account over this scandal.

Of course ordinary people are going to continue having doubts that disabled people are being systematically abused by the Tory government and their profiteering outsourcing chums if the mainstream press refuse to involve themselves in the subject whatever, leaving the job of holding the government to account to small independent bloggers and websites like me and the others listed in this article.

What you can do

• Follow the independent media sources who have actually bothered to publicise the outrageous "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" scandal while the mainstream press have studiously ignored it. (Facebook pages: Another Angry Voice, Black Triangle, Vox Political, Disability News Service, The Canary).

• Write to mainstream media organisations asking why they have done nothing to expose such scandalous mistreatment of disabled people, and whether they have any intention of actually covering the story at all.

• Write to your MP and ask them to clearly explain their position on whether disabled people should be asked why they haven't killed themselves during the already extremely stressful assessment regimes they're put through. If they try to justify the suicide questions or provide evasive or misleading answers, consider sharing their letters with me, or the other independent media organisations named above so they can be publicly shamed.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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* = After witnessing almost seven years of Tory rule, those of us who actually pay attention to what they're up to expect nothing less than extreme callousness towards disabled people from the Tories and their profiteering corporate outsourcing minions

The Tory postcode lottery of destitution

A scathing National Audit Office investigation into the brutal Tory sanctions regime found an alarming number of failings. One of the most serious was the fact that benefits sanctions are inconsistently applied which creates a lottery of destitution. People in some areas of the welfare system are relatively safe from the threat of being thrust into absolute poverty for the most trivial of offences, while people in other situations are subjected to significantly harsher and more draconian standards.

One of the findings of the National Audit Office investigation was that sanctions applied by profiteering private sector welfare contractors were more than twice as likely to be overturned on appeal as sanctions applied by Jobcentre staff. This evidence shows that staff working for private contractors are on average more than twice as trigger-happy in using absolute destitution as a punishment as proper Jobcentre staff are.

Another of the glaring inconsistencies identified by the National Audit Office is that the Tories are operating a postcode lottery of destitution. Unemployed people in some parts of the north east of England are three times as likely to suffer benefits sanctions as unemployed people in the south west.

There are only two ways to explain such huge discrepancies. Either people in the north east are inherently more lazy and feckless than people in the south west (the kind of explanation only a bigot would accept), or the welfare system treats people in the north east much more harshly than it treats people from more affluent regions.

There is an awful lot of evidence that many welfare providers in the north east operate a culture of bullying and humiliation, and that they're extraordinarily trigger happy when it comes to imposing staggeringly harsh benefits sanctions.

MPs representing constituencies in the north east have been complaining about the harsh benefits sanctions regime and the dehumanising culture of humiliation for years. In a January 2015 House of Commons debate MPs from the north east listed one example after another of the appalling suffering inflicted on their constituents, but the NAO investigation has revealed that the sanctions regime in the north east is still far harsher than other parts of the country.

The House of Commons debate included examples of people being sanctioned for missing an appointment due to an emergency hospitalisation; sanctioned for being late for an appointment because of severe traffic congestion; sanctioned for missing an appointment on the day a parent died; sanctioned failing to provide evidence of looking for work on the day after a parent died; sanctioned because the Jobcentre sent an appointment letter to an old address; sanctioned for failing to attend a Work Capacity Assessment that had been cancelled by the provider; sanctioned for attending a grandfather's funeral; sanctioned for failing to complete a form properly; and sanctioned for missing an appointment to collect an ill child from school (Jobcentre staff then falsely accused the parent of inventing a fictional child).

All of these people were thrust into weeks of absolute destitution for utterly trivial offences, but perhaps the most galling testimony came from the MP for Newcastle Central Chi Onwurah who raised the tragic case of one of his constituents who committed suicide as a result of his appalling treatment by the private sector contractor that kept finding him "fit for work" despite all of the expert opinion that he wasn't.

Unfortunately the serious concerns of the north east MPs were ignored by the Tory government, and now it's too late for 18 year old David Brown of Eston in North Yorkshire who committed suicide on October 3rd 2016 after being "belittled" jobcentre staff.

Shortly before he took his own life he told his mother "the way the Jobcentre treat people, it's no wonder people commit suicide".

It's not just a matter of opinion that David Brown took his own life because of the demeaning bullying attitude of Jobcentre staff in the north east, it's the official finding of the inquest into his death.

The problems of bullying and punishment with brutal benefits sanctions exist all over the country, but the evidence suggests that they're significantly worse in the north east. So the question has to be asked why?

Why is the poorest region in England also the place with the harshest sanctions regime and an ingrained culture of bullying and humiliation against unemployed people?

Is it simply because it's an economically deprived area and people working in the north east welfare system see it as their duty to punish poverty with more poverty? Is it because it's largely a loyal Labour Party voting area while the Tories are in charge of the DWP? Has this culture of bullying come about because it's being pushed from above by particularly vindictive regional managers in the north east? Is there some other explanation?

Why does this culture of bullying and abuse in the welfare system exist? Why is it particularly bad in the north east? And what can be done to resolve these problems?

This situation can no longer be ignored. It's almost two years since north east MPs told parliament about the problems of the culture of bullying and humiliation and the unfair sanctions regime in their region, and now an 18 year old lad is dead because nothing was done..

It's beyond obvious that if nothing continues to be done then more humiliation, suffering and death is inevitable.

What could you do?

If you live in the north east you could write to your MP to ask what is being done.

If you don't live in the north east you could write to your MP anyway. It might not be quite as bad as the north east where you live, but the scathing National Audit Office investigation into benefits sanctions found that the benefits sanctions regime costs the taxpayer far more to administer than it will ever save in reduced benefits (which is obviously an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money).

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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