[UK] Autistic starves to death after benefits stop

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"A 44-year-old disabled man living in David Cameron's Oxford constituency starved to death after his benefits were cut. Although Mark Wood was declared fit to earn a living by controversial agency Atos - the French company which carries out DWP benefit assessments - he weighed 5st 8lbs when his body was discovered. Wood had lost his housing and employment benefit; he was left with just a £40 disability grant to survive on":
http://money.aol.co.uk/2014/03/03/asper ... s-stopped/

Policy working more or less as planned by the tories, then.


Edited to add: I wonder if it would be possible for the surviving family to sue Atos "Powering Progress" for enough money to A) discourage this from happening again and B) help offset the damage they have already done to disabled people in the United Kingdom?

Perhaps it's the result of living in America for so long that this thought occurs to me--but I can't help but think that a large enough financial hit would change this evil company's operating practices.

Our current government are scum.

I can find no further words.

RIP.

One thing I am wondering about after reading this is, why wasn't someone checking up on him periodically? It would have given them ample time to see that things were going downhill with him, and that if his phobias were that severe he could have been given something to calm his anxiety, or even get hospitalized to keep this phobia from becoming lethal.

and here's an article in UK's The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 61749.html

And the sad tragic irony is that David and Samantha Cameron had a special needs child who died in 2009, and it sounds like they were regular parents and in fact really good parents for this son, and their other children as well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... chool.html

I don't know what to say, other than the ideology of "austerity" is much too widely believed. and maybe that's a place to start asking questions

In the west we can get used to this sort of thing happening more often now. To make their economies more viable our right and even left governments will finish what Thatcher and Reagan started. Because there's two ways to increase foreign investment in our western countries.
1. Make the third world and the developing world better so multinationals no longer have any cheap exploitable labour then they'll have to start paying us all fairly instead of saying 'look how little these poor Africans work for, why can't you be more like them?'. This could be done in 12 months. Each year the world's nation states spend several times the amount that would end poverty just on military funding.
2. The other way is to let states keep spending money on military hardware while cutting vital social benefits, keep letting multinationals use cheap sweatshop labour and then just corrode at our countries until they look like the third and developing worlds so as to increase their cheap labour market. Obviously number 1 is unacceptable so enjoy the last few years of western middle class privilege before they bend us over. This will be the coup de grace of the political class and the super wealthy's plan to establish themselves as the replacement of Europe's aristocracy.

The autistic was evaluated as being fit for work. But this is a half truth. In order to be really fit for work you have to have the ability to hold down a job.

I'd rather starve than deal with Atos. Which is why I haven't had benefits for the last five years. Luckily my mum took me in again and so as long as she lives I won't starve. But afterwards?

Must not think about that or I cease functioning.

This sort of thing was planned at a Bildeberg meeting years before these psychopaths came to power as well as the crash of 2008 and the sub prime crisis and to scapegoat the poor and disabled and non allistic people. The ATOS tests were actually brought in by Tony Blair's government but tightened by the Consevative government and which got in with the help of David Cameron's sob story about his son who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy who had died during childhood. How low can someone get to try to garnish pity from allistic society and then when it works turn on disabled and non allistics and at the time ignore multi millionaire tax avoiders and bankers who caused the financial crisis in the first place. Unfortunately these work capability tests are still carrying on but by another company because atos has pulled out of it.

For an autistic person to be fit for work he or she has to be able to get through a job interview and then hold down a job and if a person cannot get through the interview stage into a job the how is he going to hold down a job? Since an interview is like a pervert style grooming session. A skill which people on the autistic spectrum by default lack and therefore are outcompeted because up to 500 people are chasing every job and even if he or she is successful it is because he or she is the only applicant. Not only that, employers now test for social and emotional intelligence and a score below 70 on these is by default a developmental disability and therefore are rejected before the interview stage. This has to be addressed as it is blatant discrimination.

The Conservatives have had a natural hatred of disabled andd non allistic people and have resisted in passing civil rights legislation in the UK in favour of the Disability Discrimination Act which is based on 'reasonable adjustments basically for the convenience of non disabled and allistic people The government in 1995 was reluctant and talked out the disability civil rights bill which goes to show the hate and contempt these animals have for disabled and non allistic people. I see a case of impeachment of Ian Duncan Smith here in the complicit killing of sick,disabled and non allistic people here but unfortunately there is about as much chance of that as there is of my mum becoming the 46th president of the USA.

This is f*****g horrible. I thought autistics were treated better than this in the UK.

Another murder by the government.

… that's last years news ….


(confused)

That pretty much sums up my feelings towards this.