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[Activism] A Reply to David Burrowes

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ConservativesI got this email from Mr Burrowes

Dear Mr. Warner

Thank you for your e-mail of 26th October, regarding the reforms of ESA.

Reforming benefits is, of course, a difficult and important task. The government is taking every precaution to ensure that the new benefits system will provide the improved support that the weakest in our society need.

In your e-mail you helpfully attached a striking statistic showing the number of claimants leaving ESA with a recorded date of death. Having researched the issue, that FOI request paper states that this ‘represents about 1% of total ESA caseload in November 2011, the latest caseload now available.’[p. 6] This is a significant increase on the normal death rate, but the FOI request does explain that ‘It would be expected that the mortality rate amongst those on incapacity benefits recipients would be higher than the general population as some people receive incapacity benefits due to life-threatening conditions or terminal illness. Those in the Support Group [who make up 7,100 of the 10,600 mentioned in the table] receive unconditional support due to the nature of their illness, which can include degenerative conditions, terminal illness and severe disability.’[p.4]

You refer to the recent complaints made to the UN. Esther McVey (Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) addressed this in the House of Commons, on 5th November. Specifically with reference to disabled people, she said that the Government’s welfare reform ‘fully conforms with the UN right. In fact, we are a world leader in that regard.’ [Hansard: 5th November 2012, Column 573] The Government is utterly committed to maintaining this world-leading standard.

Thank you again for writing to raise your concerns.

Best wishes

David

My reply is short but brutal: I have had it with these people.

Dear Mr Burrowes

Let us not kid ourselves: These are not reforms these are cuts. There was no need to reform a system with a 99.9995% success rate and you are now paying more money to the fraudsters at ATOS than you are to the disabled.

Still the government persists in using the fraudulent system of Unum Insurance rather than genuine medical professionals and still people are dying every day having been found “fit for work”

Worst still those “Fit for Work” now are as sanction-able as the able bodied when it comes to turning up for appointments at the Job Centre regardless of reasoning and are just as eligible for the SLAVERY of the Workfare scheme.

Workfare is not just an abomination against basic human rights as a businessman I see it as practically undermining the economy. Why pay for workers when you can get them free from the government? There are hundreds of cases of people being sacked from minimum wage jobs only to be put back in the same job under Workfare slavery. Most of my market is the poorest in society. If they can’t afford my stuff I suffer as well. May be not as much but my savings can’t last forever.

My ancestor William Wilberforce would be spinning in his grave at what your party are doing to our own citizens: He fought to the detriment of his own health to stop these kinds of abuses only for the so called Supreme Court to turn round in 2012 and declare slavery legal again.

Not only that but having identified my escape route from your attempt to enslave the working man you are now planning on increasing surveillance of the self employed. There is some dishonesty when it comes to tax amongst us yes but far less than there is amongst the huge companies that not only bankroll all 3 political parties but profit from the poverty they create.

Seeing as there seems to be a cross party consensus that slavery and stealth genocide are a-okay and that this is, thanks to our criminally undemocratic election process, a safe Tory seat my vote doesn’t count for much but rest assured it won’t be for you or any mainstream candidate.

I pity your pathetic defence of the indefensible

In Faith

Ian Warner

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[Activism] A Thank You Letter to David Burrowes

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Dear Mr Burrowes

My thanks for our helpful chat today, you clearly are a very sincere man and your compliance with the party line is clearly out of ignorance. I do not mean to be insulting in saying that, after all it was only a couple of months ago that I found out the full extent and impact of the existing reforms of ESA via various internet support groups and the work of the infamous “Keith Ordinary Guy.”

The Black Triangle Campaign has done sterling work documenting the abuses of this legislation including providing news from the horse’s mouth through the wonders of the internet.

The original UN Complaint is HERE though many have sent their own since then. I’d imagine some poor bureaucrat is sat under a pile of them at The Hague.

When it comes to their choice of name and their use of language you may well be appalled. As someone who was forced by our excuse of an education system to study Nazi Germany non stop for 4 years nobody believes in enforcing the famous “Godwin’s Law” (when you invoke Hitler you lose the argument) any more than me but what we are seeing here, whether the fault of ministers, ATOS or the Rhetoric of the tabloids is VERY reminiscent of the initial campaign waged by the German Coalition in 1933.

I attach the key screen shot from the FOI request which, being released on the internet, has been used in many picture memes against the WCA over the last few weeks.

Whether this is carelessness or maliciousness this has to stop. As I said my solution of transferring disability support to ACTUAL DOCTORS as part of the NHS rather than the DWP is probably impractical but the possibility should at least be explored.

Thanks

Ian Warner

[Activism] Letter to David Burrowes MP- Round 2

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Grown Back

Dear Mr Burrowes

In a slightly more upbeat note from my last letter (dated 11.09.2012) I am writing to thank you for your work in standing up for a fellow autistic lad Garry McKinnon.

You are absolutely right that it is immoral and inhumane to drag a vulnerable young man thousands of miles to face particularly flimsy charges from a government too incompetent to work out how to make a computer system secure.

Then again I am somewhat puzzled how you don’t see the parallels with this country’s benefits system. Vulnerable people like Gary are being assumed to be criminals just for being disabled or unemployed, not over the pond in that backward corporate-fascist nightmare but over here in Britain.

Friends of yours at St Thomas’ have said how much you admire William Wilberforce but this year your party undid his fine work and reintroduced slavery via the notorious Workfare program who’s operators cannot even be bothered to provide the appropriate training, equipment or even overnight accommodation for the people who are, in legal terms, their slaves.

Add to this the well documented crimes of Unum/ATOS (the full report from Black Triangle is linked on my Blog) in driving over 32 people a weak to death through how sick its making them and it really becomes difficult to hold the moral high ground for the McKinnon case.

As I said I greatly appreciate what you have done for Garry. I would have worded it a lot stronger as I do not believe in this destructive “special relationship” that brings us nothing in return but dead soldiers and regressive ideologies but I appreciate the political mainstream hasn’t quite caught up to how morally bankrupt that regime truly is yet.

I would however appreciate some action on the forgotten vulnerable young (and old) people of this nation who also face trumped up charges based on failed government computer schemes that have already cost many of them their lives and are likely to cost many more in the days to come

In Faith

Ian Warner
Directing Editor of Kittiwake Classics

Member of…
The National Autistic Society
The Dyspraxia Association
Republic UK
The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
The Social Welfare Union
The Black Triangle Campaign against Defamation of the Sick and Disabled
The Justice Union of Great Britain (As Mr Fowl)

[Activism] Open Letter to David Burrowes MP on ATOS and the Right to Die

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Annoy A Conservative

Dear Mr Burrowes

Forgiveness is something I have always found difficult but through the wise counsel of others I am learning that even in these harsh times it is by far the most productive course of action.

I have made no secret of my strong disagreement with you in the past.

I believe you ran a very spiteful and unfair campaign against our greatest ever MP Mr Twigg that you only really won because of the actions of his (now convicted) war criminal boss.

I have seen you continue in full time employment in conjunction with being an MP which should be the most full time of all full time jobs.

I have also seen you use your political office to further a fundamentalist theocratic agenda that has no place in a civilised nation such as the UK.

Worst of all your ridiculously sized family is not only, doubtless, another full time job in itself but a horrifically bad example in a ridiculously overpopulated nation and indeed world.

All of this I am willing to overlook, however for the greater good of the nation and specifically my people the mentally and physically ill and disabled.

I know you think your colleague Mr Grayling’s “reforms” are part of a “big society” that will see people off the state’s care and into the care of private charity however the fact on the ground is private charity cannot cope with the people it has to care for at the moment let alone millions of our most isolated and vulnerable who’s only recourse is the state.

Worst still his employment of known “outlaw company” (a quote from an “elected” official in the United States, a barbaric land where you have to be stinking rich to get any restitution in law or government) ATOS who’s broken system and heartless employees directly lead to the deaths of some 1200 people is considered an act of wilful genocide on the part of your government and party by a great many disabled people.

As you can imagine your colleague Anna Soubry’s recent comments about the right to die have only inflamed this already red hot rage amongst the disabled.

I understand and I support the right to die debate as of critical importance. Regardless of what side of it you are on it is clear existing laws are woefully out of touch with modern medical technology and the feelings of the people at large. However, now is not the time to have this debate and yours is not the government that should be anywhere near writing the legislation.

Already the disabled live in fear of the ATOS “Gestapo” coming for the paltry sum they are paid and dragging them through confusing, nonsensical kangaroo courts like political prisoners in some third world tyranny: What do you think having this same government many are already calling crypto-fascist talk openly about legalising Euthanasia?

Already the hateful rhetoric and propaganda of some of your colleagues and their media allies has created a general consensus that accepts 32 disabled people dying every week as acceptable.

It won’t take much of a push for people to similarly coldly accept disabled people being “put down” rather than being driven to take their own lives or dying naturally from the stress of the cruel and unusual punishment of the ATOS assessment process.

You pride yourself in your claim to be a Christian Mr Burrowes. Your definition and my definition of what that actually means may well be wildly different but I hope you at least see the value of human life even if it is a human life that is reliant on wider society to survive.

Please at least do all you can to bury this issue in the typical Tory way, if not outright speak out against it: The sick and the dying are calling out to this regime, if they answer with “you have the right to die” they may just snap.

One young Tory said to me quite brazenly “spastics can’t fight back can they?” Of course he’s right that the poor and disabled have few means to do so but there are plenty of rumblings amongst their dependants and carers that combined with the exposure of ATOS crimes past and present could turn very nasty indeed.

In faith

Ian Warner
Directing Editor of Kittiwake Classics
Member of…
The National Autistic Society
The Dyspraxia Association
Republic UK
The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
The Social Welfare Union
The Black Triangle Campaign against Defamation of the Sick and Disabled
The Justice Union of Great Britain (As Mr Fowl)