Thread by @SamInFleet

In 2014, I came to the attention of the #DWP work assessments. By the time they were finished with me (when the Tribunal found in my favour), I was homeless and DWP had dragged their heels so much that they owed me £5,000 (for which I was paying eye-watering interest to my bank).

They'd spent 18 months trying (successfully) to bully me, often sending me 2 or 3 of their brown envelopes a day, claiming I owed them £12,500 (I didn't), losing my paperwork, lying, etc etc - some of you will sadly have similar stories.

Tribunal told DWP to stop harrassing me.

Even though I was 65 that year, DWP went right on harrassing me, and (obviously) took forever before they paid me the £5,000 while I went on paying interest.

I still have no home of my own (not even rented), and now never will.

I can't prove the effect on my health...

But I developed pain in my chest towards the end of all this and within months required open heart surgery, from which I haven't really recovered.

So far, so commonplace.

Now it's 2019 and, in the last couple of weeks DWP have sent me a mountain of paperwork and several letters

They've spoken to my OH on the phone, but wouldn't tell her what all this is about.

Now: though I suffered severe mental health problems all my life, I've been 'high functioning'. I've worked in Europe, USA, Palestine; I'm an Hon Lt Colonel and a Freeman of the City of London.

I paid National Insurance all my adult life: toward the end, I needed to claim on it (that's what the safety net of insurance is for). Life wasn't going to be easy, but with luck it was going to be survivable.

Instead of being supported however, I was delivered to DWP.

The experience changed who I am.

Instead of being 'high-functioning', I've become fearful, terrified. I won't go into further detail.

So, since DWP has got me in its sights again, I have a screaming pain in my chest and I'm on the edge of suicide.

(I don't write lightly about suicide: 50 years ago I saw my Mum kill herself by jumping out of a fifth-for window.

(Now, I AM FORCED to believe that Duncan Smith and his successors in the DWP are content to see folk bumping themselves off. Why would I think any different?)

So, to get back to the flurry of paperwork that the DWP are sending me...

I'm not a man any more; I've lost all my pride and self-respect. These letters have drained me of everything... AND I'M TOO SCARED EVEN TO OPEN THEM AND FIND OUT WHAT THEY'RE ALL ABOUT.

Fuck the lot of them, for what they've done to me and to literally millions of others.

If you're 50, or 40, or 30, I can see you would feel that I'm just an old guy, of no great importance, who's lived his life.

All power to you: most of you will never be in the same boat, Insh'Allah. But each time you vote for right wing parties, or Brexit, think for a moment...

I just had the thought that if someone like me, reduced to shameful misery, were to turn his thoughts *outward* (threatening say IDS, or the fat yellow oaf who's grinning at me right now on TV as he tells me that Brexit will be 'bumpy')...

Yup.