Mental ill health, top target for sanctions

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,171

Friday 07 August 2015.

Dear Mr Cameron,

As we know only too well, to the Tories our minds don’t matter. What we think, feel, care about or for, our considerations on any matter simply don’t matter. Why would our minds matter when all we are, as Iain Duncan Smith made clear to the House of Commons, is ‘stock’? At work we’re just ‘human resources’, the identity-less, dehumanised, cattle of commerce and industry. We can be lied to with impunity and you can lie to the House of Commons because liars care nothing for others, who are used only for self serving reasons.

So it is no surprise that Iain Duncan Smith does not consider people with serious mental health conditions as vulnerable or that mental health is any way an obstacle to work except in ‘extremely rare’ circumstances. DWP guidelines state, “A person will only be a member of a vulnerable group if the condition causes limitation in functional capacity because of a physical impairment. It is extremely rare for a mental condition to produce a physical impairment that limits or restricts functional capacity but it can happen.” Thus demonstrating that Iain Duncan Smith knows absolutely nothing about mental illness and cares even less for the physical restrictions and loss of function that the mentally ill know only too well and struggle with daily. Indeed, mental illness would be far less of a problem than it is if people could function normally despite it.

I do not as rule wish ill of others, but I fervently hope Iain Duncan Smith has a nervous breakdown, at the very least, so that he can explore the terrifying loss of functionality for himself and in so doing I hope he is in such a vulnerable position as to be sanctioned for not being able to function.

I live with the loss of function and physical restrictions of mental illness every minute of every day, daily grappling with intractable problems that impose severe limitations on my life, not helped by the venomous deceit of a fool who wields the power of life and death over people like me. Adding sanctions to the lot of those suffering mental illness is a bestial cruelty especially as it comes from a man who is clearly mentally ill himself, whose stock in trade is wilful cruelty and ill treatment towards others and in particular those who are the most vulnerable.

Data released by a consortium of church groups and charities has revealed that people with mental health problem are far more likely to be sanctioned than any other group. Sanctions have never been used as a last resort under Smith, that’s just one of his more egregious lies, they are routine and he is criminalizing and punishing mental illness through sanctions. There is no possible excuse for treating people this way; poor, sick and disabled people are the victims of Smiths own diseased mind. He is not fit to hold public office let alone occupy the position he does with a ready cache of victims for his brutality. He should be sectioned to protect the public from his predatory evil behaviour before anyone else dies and the figures released of those lives already lost as the Information Commissioner has so ordered.

http://www.iainduncansmith.org.uk/content/universal-credit-0

http://www.welfareweekly.com/sanctioned-jobseekers-with-mental-health-problems-are-not-vulnerable-says-dwp/

http://cameron-cloggysmoralcompass.blogspot.co.uk/p/coalition-christmas.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-prime-minister-david-2874744

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/03/victims-britains-harsh-welfare-sanctions

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/how-benefit-sanctions-punish-people-5005786