This DWP assault on disabled people isn’t what Labour is supposed to look like… is it?

A little over a week ago — and unsurprisingly ignored by the British corporate media — the United Nations published a new report calling for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party government to take “corrective measures” to address the impact of the devastating cuts to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability benefits introduced under Conservative governments.

The recommendations, made by the UN’s committee on economic, social, and cultural rights, call for an increase in disability-related benefits, more commonly known as PIP and ESA, to allow disabled people to live adequately.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

Just as the UN calls for an increase in spending on Britain’s welfare system along comes Keir Starmer’s Labour to attack the very people the report calls to be protected by increased spending.

DWP cuts to cover for the unwinnable war against Putin

With an unwinnable war of distraction against Putin’s Russia looking increasingly unlikely to happen, Labour has officially declared a catastrophic war on sick and disabled people instead.

Documents leaked to ITV suggest the Labour government plan to cut £6 billion from the welfare budget, with £5 billion coming from DWP PIP — money that is awarded to help with the additional cost of living with disabilities.

I need to know, what the fuck actually happens to an MP when they enter parliament?

Their promise of building a better tomorrow is left at the door, along with anything that resembles the intellectual ability to think for themselves.

These detestable, Labour freeloaders make traffic wardens and speed camera cops look like loveable angels of the highways.

Have any of the soulless carpetbaggers even thought about looking at the number of current job vacancies — 819,000 — and the number of healthy DWP jobseekers — 1.46 million — and then wondered what they plan to do with the disabled people that they will try and force into work with a combination of ‘anti-obesity’ pills, public shaming and cuts to disability benefits?

How things have changed

Cast your mind back to 2020. Covid arrived in the UK, millions of people were told to stay at home, and in many cases were forced to apply for DWP Universal Credit to help make ends meet.

For some, it was the first time in their lives that they needed to claim some form of social security, and as pitiful as Universal Credit is, there’s no doubt that it’s better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick when you’re wondering how you are going to afford to put some food on the table, wherever you sit upon the political spectrum.

But most noticeably, the media and the political establishment came together to mute the entirely dishonest feckless scrounger narrative, almost.

Suddenly, you could get a speedier advance on your Universal Credit claim. Universal Credit, and let’s not forget the furlough scheme, were shining examples of why the welfare state was so important to the British people.

Now think about where we are today.

The hostility towards disabled benefit claimants being promoted in the British media, and helped along by Labour politicians this past week has been as vile and hostile as anything I have seen over the past ten years. No doubt.

The half-hearted, dim-witted attempt at compassion and understanding from just five years ago has gone, and once again, the hostile rhetoric has returned to haunt the millions of disabled people that feel utterly betrayed by Keir Starmer.

Dignitas sponsoring the DWP?

Labour think the answer to our apparent economic woes lies in penalising some of the most vulnerable people in Britain while the media get angry over Sky TV, iPhones, and single mums scrounging DWP benefits. We’re actually living through the Cameron years again.

What next? Why don’t we just have Dignitas sponsor the DWP’s ‘economically inactive’ task force and be done with the fluffy bullshit about helping disabled people back into work?

If you tell them you’re friendly with Liz Duncan Smith they might even throw in a free flight to Switzerland. One way, obviously.

How do they sleep at night?

I’ll tell you exactly how they sleep. Perfectly well, on a nice comfortable bed, with adequate warmth that is generously paid for from the public purse. That’s not all of them. Some of them hang upside down in their lairs all day because they cannot be exposed to sunlight.

I’ve sat down over the last few days and looked at the “difficult decisions” that we need to make to ensure Zelenskyy can lose a war to Russia in a dignified manner, and I think we’re missing an obvious opportunity.

Why force millions of disabled people to find nonexistent jobs AND send the neo-Nazis a shit tonne of bombs when we can send the Ukrainian comedy guy a shit tonne of disabled people, deemed surplus to requirements by the British Labour Party?

Furthermore, why do we need to boost our own army numbers at home while there’s plenty of British pensioners that can earn back (some of) their winter fuel allowance with a bit of paratrooper duty and hand-to-hand combat with Putin’s highly trained killers, and keep warm at the same time?

YOU try filling out a DWP Universal Credit claim

I need to be careful here.

I don’t want the editor thinking I’ve joined UKIP 2.0, but don’t let anyone tell you a bed-bound chronic pain sufferer can’t do their bit by volunteering to pull down lefty protestors from Big Ben, or better still, do some labouring on one of the many building sites that must be cropping up everywhere, what with the prime minister promising to get Britain building houses again…

In a coma? Don’t let that hold you back. Members of the House of Lords have been getting away with it for centuries. If those brandy-drenched dossers can turn up half-dead for a twenty minute shift and pick up more than £300 for the inconvenience, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from finding ‘dignity in work’.

Work sets you… okay I’ll stop now.

I think it’s a weird coping mechanism. Labour turns out to be worse than the Tories, my little brain retreats in absolute horror, and all I’m left with is sarcasm.

If the ridiculous right honestly believe a life on benefits is so bloody easy, why don’t they ditch their jobs and start filling out the forms to claim DWP Universal Credit? They can always volunteer if they want to contribute something positive, or give themselves a purpose to get up in the morning, right? They can start on my front garden first thing Monday morning, if it’s a pride thing.

You should see the weeds that are growing, and I’m not talking about the laughably-illegal stuff that you can smell just about everywhere these days.

I don’t smoke da reefa – however…

I know that’s another conversation altogether, but why is it you can go to your doctor and get some seriously heavy duty opioids — I’m regularly offered oxycontin and morphine by my various GPs — for free if you qualify, but you can’t smoke a bit of self-purchased pain relieving wacky baccy without risking a criminal record? Isn’t that what’s known as “arse about tit”, or something?

I don’t smoke weed, and I rarely take anything stronger than a paracetamol to manage osteoarthritis, a chronic pain syndrome called fibromyalgia, and a couple of other issues that deem me to be blue-badge-worthy.

There’s also the fact that I don’t want to be having conversations with imaginary purple penguins whilst trying to lecture sizeable groups on the virtues of losing weight in a healthy and balanced way, if you know what I mean?

But like most of you, I know more than one person that benefits from instant pain relief after they’ve had a smoke, so why not take it out of the hands of the dealers, who often sell harder substances, and make it as widely available as a pack of 16 Nurofen from your nearest Tesco Express?

That would obviously require a tiny bit of progressive thinking, so you can bet your bottom dollar that Keir Starmer will reclassify cannabis as a Class A substance before you can say “a pack of king-size Rizla and just these eighteen bags of Haribo Tangfastics, please”, given half-the-chance.

Labour’s new war on disabled people will go down as one of the darkest chapters of this deeply unpopular government’s one term in power.

Labour’s assault on DWP claimants: its darkest hour yet

We were ridiculed by the centrists for having the temerity to point out that Keir Starmer is a bit of a Tory. Perhaps they were right to laugh at us, because there’s no “bit of” about it. Keir Starmer is a one nation Tory, and a fucking nasty one at that.

Taking money from pensioners? Looking for war with Russia? Slashing DWP disability money to pay for it? Kissing the saggy arse of a neofascist tangerine? Funded by foreign lobbyists? Supportive of genocidal regimes and their fugitive leaders?

This really isn’t what a Labour government is supposed to look like. Is it?

Finally, sharing independent left-wing media on every fucking platform known to humankind has never been so important.

There’s a very good chance you are reading my weekly Canary column via the platform formally known as Twitter, or perhaps Facebook.

While the battle with the establishment media will never end, the giants of social media have turned up and taken the narrative to a whole new, exceptionally dangerous level.

Please do support the Canary, if you can. You will struggle to find better coverage of Labour’s war on the disabled people of Britain, because the Canary actively supports and employs disabled writers and journalists to bring you the news the corporate media prefers to gloss over.

And they do a mighty fine job of it.

Featured image via Rachael Swindon