I find this absolutely terrifying. And we all know what this means - pushing disabled people into jobs that aren’t at all suitable, by stopping their disability payments. As for the claim they’re going to increase mental health services to get the mentally ill back into work, well just read my previous posts about what NHS therapy is like. It’s worse than useless, to the extent that my therapist refused to give me real therapy, saying there’s no point in my case, and me committing suicide seems like a reasonable plan. That’s NHS therapy for you! These things are never about helping the disabled, they’re always about the economy. While those in charge live like kings.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    54·
    3 days ago

    The bi-partisan eugenicist project continues it’s accelerating trajectory.

    I spoke to a Labour MP about this (and the similar approach to unemployment benefits) and got the usual boilerplate “dignity in work, government costs, blah blah blah”.

    Instead of making the usual (correct and moral) counter arguments I decided to try something else, asking instead how a government that is…

    • pushing increased AI and job automation as the solution to business growth and shrinking government departments

    • overseeing a reduction in worker rights and abandoning policy ideas to reduce exploitative or ‘always on call’ work (zero hour contract legislation for example)

    • overseeing a benefits system that increasingly penalises and discourages part-time and voluntary work, while deliberately pushing end users into low paid, low skill, often explicitly exploitative, 9-5 full time labour intensive work in an effort to hit targets for removing people from the system

    …can possibly hope to achieve these aims and square that of actions and economic incentives.

    They didn’t have an answer. At all. They tried a few weasel words which I pushed back on and they all but admitted it doesn’t make sense. “You do make a good point” was the exact phrase before they brushed it off and excused themselves to go and ‘urgently’ chat to someone else about ‘something’ before they left awkwardly.

    It’s bullshit and they know it’s bullshit. There’s the ones who are fully on board with this neoliberal eugenicist ideology and there’s the ones that certainly aren’t going to stand up against it but mostly just don’t want to think about it. And they’re both complicit.