At age 16, I was issued with a national insurance number/card, as was everyone of my age at the time.I had already been working part-time while still at school, pumping petrol on weekends, and washing dishes in the local hotel during holidays. It was explained to me then that this NI number would identify me to the National Insurance system and that out of my pay I would contribute a percentage which the government would use provide me with a pension and to pay for medical treatment throughout my life, and to pay me unemployment benefit if and when I needed it. That was the deal that this country made with me as I entered the economy. Now, after 30 years of contributions and taxes I am sick and disabled, and claiming disability benefits. I have had asthma since I was 7, and now have emphysema, Irritable Bowel syndrome, arthritis/poly myalgia rheumatica, depression and anxiety. I am now to face assessment under the WCA and if past performance is any indicator will have my disability benefit taken away, leaving me with the only option of trying to claim JSA.
I had to claim JSA or as it was then unemployment benefit the last time we had a Tory sponsored recession. I lost everything in that one, my job my home, most of my possessions, my car and my health. Over the course of a handful of years I went from being an aspiring professional to being all but homeless living in one room surrounded by pimps and prostitutes, drunks and drug abusers and petty criminals. During the course of 4 years in that one room I dealt with two fires, two overdoses, and multiple medical emergencies, all on behalf of my fellow inmates. I managed to dig myself out of the debt that had accrued, and retrained myself over the course of several years at college, and re-launched my career, this time as a college tutor. I taught people from age 16 to 70, until my health again left me unable to continue. Refused DLA I have had to manage on Incapacity Benefit, and it has been possible just, but without DLA I have no car, and because of my condition no prospect of employment.
And now even the little that I do have is under threat, my housing benefit has been cut, meaning I have to supplement rent from my benefit, and I am facing being moved from IB to ESA, to have my ESA taken away under the discredited WCA, eventually to expect to again be forced to claim JSA, but this time also to face crippling sanctions if I fail to jump through hoops, or fail to perform free labour for private companies under the Work Program. Even should I be granted ESA I could still face these sanctions. So it is not surprising then that I should feel that this government has breached its contract with me, and with hundreds of thousands of people like me, why did I pay in all those years, if the promised support can just be taken away? I count myself lucky that I did not have a family, and children. What would I say to them, not being able to provide for them? So what was the point of National Insurance, indeed what is the point of any insurance if they will not pay out on claims after having unilaterally changed the rules or the fine print?
The policies of this ConDem coalition are indefensible, attacking sick and disabled people is the lowest form of expression of power. The demonising of the sick and disabled, branding us ‘scroungers’ and worse in order to justify these attacks on disability benefits is immoral. Millions of taxpayers money have been spent on propaganda of this form, and billions are being handed to Workfare Providers to bully people into applying for jobs that are not suitable or non-existent, and the labour of these poor unfortunates is being handed to charities and private companies for free. They are literally being used as work slaves, for profit and on pain of having the bare pittance they receive removed if they will not submit to this indignity. Not content with making slaves of the healthy unemployed they extend this programme to the sick and disabled, to those whose medical practitioners have declared unfit for work, but whom so called healthcare professionals employed by a private company subsequently declare fit for work in accordance with a government determined quota system.
New charity food banks open every week, to provide emergency rations to those affected by the cuts. The list of suicides gets longer every month, each new death adding to those who have died after being unfairly assessed ‘fit for work’. Disabled people who were living independently and receiving care in their own homes now face isolation, or committal to nursing homes with all the potential for neglect and abuse that comes with that. And why is this being done? apparently to reduce the deficit under the pre-Keynesian notion that this will bring us out of recession, when the evidence shows that this can not work, and has already cause not just a double dip recession but we are now going under for the third time! Britain is drowning and far from throwing a lifeline, this Government is confiscating the life belts, refusing to buy any life rafts and mothballing the life boats!
Meanwhile MPs fiddle their expenses and are not jailed, corporations pour millions into Tory party coffers, bankers fiddle the interest rates and pay themselves huge bonuses and are not jailed, while sitting on the bailout money taxpayers have forked over, and tax avoidance amongst the rich is rife with billions being sequestered offshore, with corporations paying a paltry couple of million in tax on multi-billion pounds worth of revenue. There is a perfect storm coming, the government has breached its contract with the people and sits smugly enjoying subsidised homes, lunches and free Champaign while the unemployed, low waged and the sick and disabled face homelessness and starvation in one of the richest countries in the world.
