Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[Lateralthinking1]

.....and tonight's outrage from Sadism plc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/06/cancer-patients-welfare-work-tests

Really when is someone going to storm the gates and send our "representatives" off to the Tower?

[MrGongGong]

These people have no morals and no humanity
there's nothing to say really

[Lateralthinking1]

It is just downright sick. It makes me ashamed to be British and feel like I want to get the first plane out.

I'm totally against vigilantes but in the case of Professor Malcolm Harrington I now exempt my opposition.

[teamsaint]

.....and tonight's outrage from Sadism plc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/06/cancer-patients-welfare-work-tests

Really when is someone going to storm the gates and send our "representatives" off to the Tower?

can we go to the storming by car? if so i am happy to drive, but if folks could chip in for diesel.........
Mind you, its in the congestion zone, so perhaps a day travelcard makes more sense.

Sorry, very flippant !! don't know how to react any more to what is going on..........

[Lateralthinking1]

I tell you one thing though. Just as the phrase "time to send the boys round" springs to mind, the brain puts on the brakes and imagines the campaign posters for Labour at the next election.

"Get off your backsides, cancer sufferers, and go out to work" (Coalition Government, 2012)

"Where will they go next? Be very afraid. Vote safe. Vote decent. Vote Labour".

I really don't think Labour have got much to offer but Miliband would get a landslide. It is surely like dynamite to the electorate. They can't possibly go through with it. It's madness.

[teamsaint]

these are the people who are telling the world that Germany, france and the whole Eurozone are a bad bet.(threatening us with genuine economic meltdown)

If you don't want to read the article, suffice it to say, that S and P gave all the big sub prime mortgage packages in the USA triple A star ratings.No, really.
They have an agenda, and its not a nice one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_%26_Poor's

[teamsaint]

I tell you one thing though. Just as the phrase "time to send the boys round" springs to mind, the brain puts on the brakes and imagines the campaign posters for Labour at the next election.

"Get off your backsides, cancer sufferers, and go out to work" (Coalition Government, 2012)

"Where will they go next? Be very afraid. Vote safe. Vote decent. Vote Labour".

I really don't think Labour have got much to offer but Miliband would get a landslide. It is surely like dynamite to the electorate. They can't possibly go through with it. It's madness.

I would love to think you are right LT1, but they have gone through with any amount of other mad plans (and wars).

[Lateralthinking1]

I'm glad I'm out of there now. I couldn't work for it. Whatever my future difficulties, I just couldn't cope with it on moral grounds. My feeling is that if and when it gets to the stage of needing benefits, which is highly likely in this climate, I just wouldn't go through the process. It would be like psychological torture. Seriously, I'd choose to starve. I feel that's what they want people to do and that many will probably comply with their wishes.

I'm afraid that this is the start of the new fascism. It incorporates some groups that old fascism spurns - ie those who are racially different. Why? Because its motivation is wholly based on who might or might not be economically viable. Skin colour is no barrier to productivity. Gay people are also incorporated because they too are economically viable but less so than those who produce offspring. The incorporation of such productive groups will prevent a mass rainbow rebellion. It is a divide and rule tactic with all the emphasis on youth and fitness. The really rough deal will be for the physically and mentally disabled and the elderly. Social policy is being actively engineered to speed up their disposal, placing impossible demands on them in the name of opportunity.

Further division is being encouraged between young and old so that the young consider all the old are privileged. It would suit the new ethos if humanity was dropped for being "over-emotional" or "sentimental" and generations of families went to war with each other. Patterns of family breakdown have already set the ball rolling. To reinforce the "harder" approach, the media is being endorsed to promote ever violent material and reverse the economically non viable aspects of political correctness. And the fact that many diverse groups are welcomed is the perfect smokescreen for the policy. It isn't racist. It isn't overtly homophobic. Ideally for the new states, it doesn't look to most what it actually is - a western world takeover by a modern version of the Nazis.

I mentioned some time ago that I dropped a very long-term high-flying economist friend because of information I had received and a sense of something being not right. I know now. I can see it so clearly. I know what they are doing. And it makes me shudder. It is precisely for this reason why we need to fight for the emphasis on diversity to shift to vulnerability : Many in diverse groups no longer need protection from such a system on diversity grounds. But all, whether in majority or minority groups, are potentially targets for discrimination for every single person alive could one day become ill, disabled or old. Everyone should insist on the introduction of laws to protect the vulnerable. Don't be fooled that the old rules now apply and will always benefit you.

[Lateralthinking1]

...They used to call it the "Liberals' Mantra":

"The moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped"

Last Speech of Hubert H. Humphrey
1 November 1977, Washington, D.C.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

corpocat pay and shareholders ... this piece contains very significant evidence about shareholders but misses a big point by focusing on employees ... inequality is corrosive of society - it is a social evil, we should therefore seek a wider constituency for controlling corpocat pay ... it is called tax, effective, doable and available ....

nb average length of shareholding is now 7.5 months

Andrew Haldane, a member of the Bank of England financial policy committee noted that "average shareholding periods for US and UK banks fell from around three years in 1998 to around three months by 2008. Banking became, quite literally, quarterly capitalism".

[Serial_Apologist]

In a posting a sent to the old BBC messasgeboards about 18 months ago, in answer to another optimistically claiming in so many words that "things here wouldn't be allowed to get to the levels of 3rd world countries" I pointed out that unless people stood up collectively for rights decent living standards, there was nothing to stop capitalism asset stripping UK plc to the bare bones. No one replied. The new excuse will be productivity returns in China and India. Forget about "spreading democracy" - it was a rhetorical lie in any case.

[Lateralthinking1]

Feedback on Harrington's proposal for cancer patients. If these are the comments in today's broadsheets, one can only imagine the ones in the tabloids. If this proposal is accepted, congratulations Ed. You've won the next general election.

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/06/cancer-patients-welfare-work-tests?commentpage=1#start-of-comments

The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8939361/Cancer-patients-to-be-forced-to-prove-they-are-not-fit-to-work.html

[Lateralthinking1]

.....and similar comments from some of the communist readers of the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2071002/Chemotherapy-proposals-Seriously-ill-cancer-patients-face-work-tests-benefits-removed.html

[MrGongGong]

I'll hold Lansley down for you if you want !
these people are simply beyond contempt

[handsomefortune]

"The moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped"


yes, thanks lateralthinking1 - it's very similar to clement attlee's perspective postwar.

my mum's neighbour just went through two years of cancer and chemo, didn't claim any money whatsoever....i guess it was due to shame, pride, or whatever (hardly suprising when you read the links above) meanwhile, the coalition rhetoric on the subject of illness and atos rules got worse and worse.

she died a couple a months ago, after a long and painful fight. god only knows how her husband feels, having nursed his wife through the whole tragedy, then hearing of sadistic 'reports' such as this.

the coalition 'research' is close to outright accusations that cancer patients are fiddling money ...'to the value of £100 pw ..... encouraging a culture of benefit dependency'! this supposed research finding was 'buried in the report', but has been exposed. many must be asking what this govt knows about 'value' ...other than greed?

imv landsley and co need diagnosing as the sociopaths they are, go on atos/benefits asap themselves - do us all a favour and go away. we can then elect some politicians to run the country properly....those of us left wth the will to carry on that is. as someone points out below the article, on top of the stress of cancer, just the threat of doing atos assessments is enough to finish off any remaining will people still have to fight the disease itself. logically, why would anyone want to recover? statistically, those who care for the longterm sick and dying don't have good odds themselves, so the report is an all round winner -, as far as the coalition are concerned.

(the woman in the daily mail pic perhaps has too much hair, unhelpful given the subject? but i guess if you show the reality people will simply turn to sport/etc instead).