Seen on reddit. Someone asked: “What happens after the welfare cuts? I feel this has not been thought through properly. There are currently over 1.6 million people actively looking for work, and around 736,000 jobs available.”
Another redditor responded: "*I work in a job centre.
We are openly told by line managers there is no plan. The reforms will mean many people lose out directly (their PIP is cut), but also indirectly (carers of people with PIP are entitled to an additional rate on UC).
The main things we are being trained for is an increase in 6PP situations (suicidal claimants) and additional training on managing those with severe health conditions whilst on UC.
The Work Capability Assessment system is expected to totally collapse immediately after the reforms are implemented due to demand as people denied PIP scramble to get LCWRA classification.
Even the harshest people on my team see it as a disasterous act of cruelty, as someone put it “saying the quiet part out loud.”*
What is the government hoping will happen? There aren’t enough jobs already. Do they hope everyone just kills themselves? Or turns to crime like mugging and shoplifting?
No wonder the UK is the second most miserable country on earth: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/latest-updates/uk-is-officially-the-worlds-second-most-miserable-country-these-were-the-happiest-and-unhappiest-countries-of-2023/articleshow/108361220.cms?from=mdr
Cut to disabilities while legalizing assisted suicide? IT’S A EUGENICS PROGRAM FOR FUCKS SAKE! God damn useless handwringing shitlibs everywhere.
I would gladly take the assisted suicide. Better than cutting benefits and leaving people to starve as they do now.
I’m not sure I get what you’re saying. They cut NHS, welfare, disability etc. then “offer” but in practice often pressure those who suffer to accept assisted dying as a “way out”.
You’ll get tagged for assisted dying for simply being on disability, having a diagnose like autism, etc. etc. this is an ACTIVE EUGENICS PROGRAM to KILL people whom the state considers “USELESS EATERS”, it’s NAZI LEVEL SHIT, no fucking joke.
The fact that many of those on disability already have a bleak outlook on life is manufactured by a capitalist society that would love to work us all like slaves with minimal education and kill us off at an age of 40-50 (or whatever) when we slow down and can’t produce as much as we used to. This is not about individuals - they don’t see humans at all.https://xcancel.com/doctor_oxford/status/1936394093250183636
They’re training them to deal with people who phone the benefits people saying they’re suicidal and desperate because their benefits have been cut. In the UK assisted suicide isn’t even legal, so when they cut people’s benefits the only ways out are starve to death (which has happened to many people already after their benefits were stopped, like Errol Graham and Mark Wood) or DIY suicide (like Jodey Whiting and many others). I’d prefer euthanasia for a peaceful exit, but we can’t even be allowed that. We have to do it ourselves, painfully and risk botching the job. The system is designed to be as cruel and painful as possible in every way. They’re just training their staff how to take phone calls from suicidal people basically. They aren’t even offering them an easy way out.
Would you feel the same if Israel set up camps where they offered a free bullet in the head to any Palestinian who wanted one? “It’s better than continuing the siege and leaving people to starve”?
I am simply speaking here of my own personal preference, from my own personal experience. Before I found lemmy/hexbear, I was starving, absolutely starving to the point of actual nutritional deficiencies and even fainted in the street from hunger. The food bank was worthless and I had no-one to help me. All because my benefits got wrongfully stopped. This was on top of the exhaustion of having cancer treatment and recovering from a stroke. I had already tried to commit suicide once but just ended up in intensive care for 5 days, it’s very difficult to do, especially when you are severely disabled. So for me, yes, since the government is going to kill disabled people anyway I would much rather they make it quick and painless instead of long drawn out and painful.
Look, I get it. I have starved (am doing so now, in fact) and have attempted suicide and been in ICU multiple times, sometimes for weeks.
But putting authority figures (be they NHS doctors or anyone else) in charge of judging who deserves to live and who deserves to die just fast tracks genocide, with “consent” becoming an outcome that is forcibly attained. As a trans woman, I have had multiple psychiatrists tell me to kill myself, and repeatedly lie to other authorities to get permission to forcibly drug me with drugs that left me unable to feed or clothe myself, and those are the exact same people who would be in charge of deciding to kill me if medical authorities were ever given permission to kill off people for being disabled, mentally ill, or whatever else.
Giving the same people who decide my quality of life the power to then decide if I should die outright because my quality of life is too low (when they made it that low intentionally) is not freedom, it is truly incredible and systematic abuse.
The point is we are already being systematically abused. The disabled are already being murdered via starvation etc. It’s a genocide already and it’s not going to stop. So I’d rather it was made quicker and painless.
You being trans, presumably would not appreciate being told that you shouldn’t be allowed to choose to have a gender reassignment because society thinks being trans is a mental illness and wants to save you from yourself. Yet that’s exactly what you’re supporting by being against assisted suicide. That people who want to access this service - for whatever reason, whether they’re dying slowly, disabled, in chronic pain, or being completely neglected by society - should be told suicidality is just a mental illness and they should be saved from themselves by having their freedom of choice taken away.
There’s been a lot of stuff in the news over the years with people claiming that some young people are being brainwashed into having gender reassignments and then regretting it, and this has been used as an argument against gender reassignments, or a tightening of access to them. How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s fair that a trans person should be denied this service because anti-trans people fearmonger this way, and convince lawmakers that people who consider themselves trans need to be protected from themselves? Because from my point of view, the point of view of someone who wants to be able to access assisted suicide, this is exactly what your anti-assisted suicide argument sounds like. It sounds just like what a detransitioner probably sounds like to you. Fearmongering and trying to take away other people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies and lives.
Abortion is another example. People were outraged when some American state made abortion illegal and now women have to travel to other states and spend a huge amount of money to access it, and some have been threatened with punishment for travelling across state lines for abortion. People are up in arms about this, yet this is the exact situation with assisted suicide in countries where it’s illegal. A British person who wants assisted suicide must be able to travel to Switzerland, spend up to £20K and their relatives risk years in prison for helping them. What’s the difference?
You either support freedom of choice, or an unwanted lifestyle enforced by the state.
You being trans, presumably would not appreciate being told that you shouldn’t be allowed to choose to have a gender reassignment because society thinks being trans is a mental illness and wants to save you from yourself. Yet that’s exactly what you’re supporting by being against assisted suicide.
No, I’m actually super against the medicalisation of trans stuff and think blockers and E, T, etc. should all be available OTC at pharmacies. I’d make a similar argument about barbiturates and DNRs if I was in the mood to talk about an actual right to end one’s own life, because giving authority figures some say in the matter is just going to make things worse in exciting new ways.
So… you want to make access to trans medications easier then, not harder. And think people should be able to pick up DIY suicide kits at pharmacies?
capitalist societies offer us the “right to die” or the “right to die with dignity” as a warm fuzzy little send off as they hurry us to the door
too many people think that’s a great deal because they’ve seen enough real life to understand that just letting nature take its course is often not very dignified. and the fact is that we tend to take on bourgeois attitudes without asking ourselves who really benefits from this idea that human life should be disposed of once it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. caring for others is a burden by default. so an elder or terminally ill loved one will be seen a thankless chore and nobody wants to be that, so we think this right to die is sooo neat. we can’t wait to die with dignity.
i wonder why we never demand dignity for when we’re alive. wouldn’t that be nice? we are Marxists but we don’t think we can demand the best quality palliative care so we can live out the end of our lives in comfort, spending time with our loved ones? as long as we are alive we can continue to connect - that is why we live and it’s why we want to live.
we are expected to believe we’ve got 2 choices - suffering or death. there is another choice - what is the point of being a Marxist if you can’t imagine a society where life doesn’t suck so hard that we just want to get it over with? what if we wanted to stick around as long as we can because we like it here?
we can ask for that. we should all get that.
