Another week, another absolutely bullshit story about what the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) plans to subject benefits claimants to.
The DWP are coming for your… DRIVING LICENCES
This week, “benefits cheats could lose driving licences”. In amongst the launch of the government’s new proposals in their latest CRACKDOWN on benefits fraud, DWP boss Liz Kendall slipped out something truly ridiculous.
Explaining the new plans to have stricter powers to spy on benefits claimants, she told Sky News:
This means greater consequences for fraudsters who cheat and evade the system, including as a last resort in the most serious cases removing their driving licence.
Kendall says the fraud bill will tackle fraud not just across welfare but also across “all sectors”.
She told Sky News this was:
So we can make sure that anyone who’s defrauded the state, whether it’s through welfare or any other public sector, that we will tackle that, we will deal with it and we will get the money back.
Funnily enough, she didn’t mention millionaires and billionaires who don’t pay their taxes, with unpaid tax accounting for £42 billion each year.
Kendall is attempting to sound like a hard Taskmaster, but she’s looking more like Labour Party PM Keir Starmer’s pretentious little dog’s body.
The excuse for this, as usual, is that it will stop organised crime gangs. But thanks to decades of DWP “benefits cheats” rhetoric around disabled people faking it to rinse the taxpayer and single mothers that pop out kids so they don’t have to work, the common man doesn’t hear that and think of gangs.
Scroungers, cheats, and liars
They think of their neighbour who claims they can’t work but they’ve definitely seen run for a bus.
That friend of a friend who hasn’t told the Jobcentre her boyfriend moved in cos she’d lose her dole, ignoring that she doesn’t want to lose financial freedom and independence.
They’re remembering with disdain that man in their street who’s in a wheelchair yet is always shining his fancy car that he no doubt got on benefits.
Their cousin’s pal’s brother who once made a joke down the pub about staying for an extra pint cos his dole came in.
Those are the type of people who these constant stories of DWP BENEFIT CHEATS appeal to, the type who think disabled people don’t deserve nice things like takeaways and that we all spend our well-scrounged benefits on fags and booze.
They’re the same type of people who tweet about how disabled people shouldn’t be able to have nice cars and if they do they must be scrounging them off Motability. The horrible people who’ll tweet that the only type of car that should be available on Motability is a grey box.
These are the type of people that Starmer needs to appeal to because this is how he won the election: throwing disabled people under the bus for those who would rather we were dead.
And of course, as usual. this bullshit is a smokescreen for what they don’t want us to talk about.
Masking the REAL story: more DWP benefit cuts
While DWP benefits don’t just affect disabled people, a big chunk of the faker/scrounger narrative is focused on disabled people. It feels far from coincidental that there’s a huge drive to remind everyone that there’s too much fraud and too many people are claiming disability benefits, whilst the government are getting ready to once again cut the welfare bill.
With that comes the fact that the DWP last week pledged to still push ahead with Tory plans to destroy the lives of disabled people who are subject to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), despite the previous consultation being found unlawful in the High Court.
And whilst they spend taxpayers money proving how much disabled people don’t need support, they’re also refusing disabled people the right to give evidence to the Assisted Dying Committee which is pushing to legalise it.
Just this week, founder of the Assisted Dying Bill Kim Leadbeater had to U-turn and allow the Royal College of Psychiatrists to take part. Yet DDPOs have been blocked. This is all while the committee is painting care of sick and dying people as too costly.
While the papers may be full of DWP BENEFIT CHEATS stories, it’s important to remember what’s real.
Disability benefit fraud is at almost 0 and that disabled people deserve support – and nothing the papers or government says will change that.
Featured image via the Canary
