On Wednesday they take away #AssistancetoLive. On Friday -today - they may give #AssistanceToDie. On Wednesday they take away our Personal Independence. They make us dependent. They take support away from unpaid carers on whom we depend. 🧵
On Friday they look set to give people who feel dependent – a burden – a way out. In just a few days they go from #TakingThePIP to #TakingOurLives.
For yeas disabled people fought for #RightsNotCharity, for an equal fundamental human right to life. To live. Without fear. With the dignity of rights. For recognition that we are #EquallyHuman. We are not 'other'. We may be your child, your mum, your bestie. Maybe you. Any day.
On Wednesday they take away those rights, and with it #DignityInLiving. On Friday they give #DignityInDying? But it is not just benefit rights, but other essential support that are under threat due to soaring need, with the arrival of Covid marking a step change upwards.
Not just benefits, but social care support, mental health services, healthcare, ‘special educational needs’ support for children, Access to Work support for those in work, for years all have long been systematically underfunded to the point of collapse. And that was before Covid.
Then Covid came. And another new wave has just arrived. Maybe at some point they’ll put two and two together and get four. Maybe they’ll add the intolerable pressure on mental health of cost-of-living crises, freedom of speech that means freedom to lie, attack...
whip up anger & hatred, the catastrophe of looming climate destruction, the gearing up for war, & loss of faith in govts of supposedly different political colours that only seem to make ordinary people’s lives harder, while a few individuals amass more wealth than some countries.
Maybe someday they’ll work out that sick and disabled people’s rising need for support is because the collapse of social and economic systems is making more people sick and disabled.
It’s crunch time. Will govts get tough on the causes of sickness & disability their policy failures have created or on sick/disabled people, the victims? Will they drive a final nail in the coffin of sick/disabled people & those who will become so if we continue down this path?
Is this what happens when AI means the rich don’t need the poor anymore, or even the middle-classes? If, when Musk said to Sunak a while ago ‘soon no one will need to work’, what he meant was ‘soon we won’t need workers’?
A petition calling for an end to the benefit cuts also called for a National Disability Strategy. But it very much looks like the Government has one. Unusually for a government strategy not only is it coherent, they are actually implementing it. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/7239…
So, let’s be clear why this safeguard-free Assisted Dying Bill is so dangerous. We live in an era where so many lives are being made completely intolerable. Unbearable.
There is no evidence of political will to address the root causes. People are being driven into sickness, disability & dependency & the door is to be opened to end it.
No one should experience #IndignityInLife or #IndignityInDeath. The resources & tools exist to achieve both. They're not being used. Some may disagree, but I simply don’t accept that it’s beyond our collective capacity to find a way to square the circle. To have dignity in both.
I know MPs who are sincerely wrestling with which to choose – a rock or a hard place. My message to you is, please vote against this dangerous Bill. Let's work together to find a better way forward, on the shared view that profound avoidable suffering is never acceptable
And to those MPs who know exactly what they’re doing, who only value human life by how much profit can be made from it, who know that they don’t need to herd people seen as ‘useless eaters’ into camps & kill them if they can make death their choice, I say shame on you. I see you.
Gandi said “"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable” I would like to propose a codicil: “The true measure of any society is whether it forces people into vulnerability when it has the resources, tools and capacity not to do so”
Solidarity to all living in avoidable suffering and to those going through or witnessing avoidable suffering in death. Please vote against the Bill & please let's work to find a better way ahead, to end avoidable suffering for all, from cradle to grave.
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