The Criminality of a Price on Life

In yesterday ‘s Guardian the Government is facing calls to investigate ” a deeply worrying trend in the number of deaths from cocaine use”, 432  in 2017 compared with 112 in 201. I would never dispute any needless death is sad, nor am I unsympathetic to the reasons behind drug use; but it is a choice.

Compare this to a report on Wednesday by Welfare Weekly who demonstrated “111,450 ESA claims were closed following the death of claimants between March 2014 to February 2017″. These people Died through NO fault of their own and indeed may have be as a result of Government Processes.

Desperately this is not new, back in 2014 I was writing about the number of Chronically Sick and Disabled people dying waiting for benefits where ” between January & November 2011 10,600 disabled people either in receipt of or awaiting benefits died”

I called it a Scandal then, now I can only call it Criminal and my real question is Where is the Call for this to Stop ?

I  don’t know if there is one place which has recorded all the deaths of sick and disabled people either waiting for, or after losing their Welfare Benefits;  Steve Topple at The Canary used the Welfare Weekly figures and calculates

the deaths per day were:

• Slightly more than 7 in the “unknown” group.
• 9.02 during the assessment phase.
• 10 in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG).
• Almost 75 in the Support Group.

Further there are numerous petitions, reports and investigations undertaken by ourselves as a disabled community through to the UN; all attempting to identify – Why have so many of our most vulnerable citizens died before their time.

Despite the struggles to address this over the past seven or eight years it continues; ergo I feel compelled to ask When and by Whom will the #DWP, who as the benefits administrator must surely be the responsible party and the Ministers of State who Manages said department be held to account?

Nothing will bring back those we have lost, but surely no one will disagree, it well past time those responsible paid the price for these needless Deaths – it is Time For The TRUTH.