Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website.

[JasonK]

Below I have copied and pasted a newsletter email sent to me by a Benefits Information & Resource site - https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/ . I have seen the subject discussed on these boards previously so thought it might be of interest to some. Apologies in advance for the long read.


Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website
12 July 2010

Dear ****

This is a single issue newsletter asking for your urgent help in getting a government website closed down. The site, set up by the treasury to allow people to suggest ways to cut government spending, is full of hate-filled racist and disablist suggestions, including the sterilisation of benefits claimants, the return of the workhouse and the forced repatriation of asylum seekers and migrants. Some of the site’s content is so extreme it may even constitute a criminal offence.

The Spending Challenge website at

https://spendingchallenge.hm-treasury.gov.uk/


was set up on Friday by the coalition government and features an introduction and video on its home page by chancellor George Osborne.

In his video Osborne tells visitors that “Your government needs you, please get in touch” and the introduction assures visitors that:

“A team has been put together right at the heart of government and their job is to make sure that your ideas and comments are taken seriously - and that the best ideas are taken forward as part of the Spending Review.”

Yet these ideas and comments clearly demonstrate how the demonisation of claimants by successive governments has succeeded in promoting open and widespread hatred. One suggestion is to “Re-open the workhouses” for the unemployed, the elderly and asylum seekers. The poster goes on to suggest that:

“To prevent the problem of generations of poor people, release could be conditional on getting sterilised.”

Another idea entitled “Discouraging those who do not work from starting a family” goes on to say that:

“Where NHS staff have identified that a couple or single mother isn't in a position to support themselves and a child financially, they should be advised to terminate the pregnancy (if very early on), or be recommended to give the child up for adoption.”

Other ideas include:

“Benefits claimants to work in sweatshops” which urges the government to also send the unemployed to Afghanistan as cannon fodder;

“Let The Disabled Community Forge A New Industry” which suggests that disabled claimants should grow and sell cannabis for a living;

“Employ Crocodiles in Benefits Offices” to discourage claims;

the self-explanatory “Stop paying JSA etc to drunks, druggies & wastrels”; and

“Stop handing out free laptops and internet connections to the unemployed” in which the poster goes on to say that “I worked fifteen years before I could afford to buy myself a laptop, some toerag who's never worked a day in his life gets it courtesy of the State.”

Even where the initial post appears to be an attempt at humour or irony, the baying mob of supportive posters demonstrates that many others take the ideas seriously.

Equally disturbing and possibly criminal are the huge number of racist rants being published by the treasury.

In one suggestion “Move immigrants in council houses out of cities”, the original poster wants the coalition government to “Tell immigrants that they are being moved to less expensive areas. If they don't want to, they can leave the country.”

However, in a subsequent comment, another poster responds with “I'm not sure that I want to see immigrants living in our villages - keep them in the ghetto's until such time as they can all be deported.”

Many of the suggestions target specific groups such as Somalis and the site is littered with the most ugly and examples of ignorance and prejudice, many so extreme that we are not prepared to reproduce them,

The Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to publish material which is likely to stir up racial hatred. Benefits and Work believes that this is exactly the effect that the treasury website will have. The content may also be in breach of discrimination and harassment legislation. Whilst we do not have the legal knowledge to pursue this matter further, and don’t want to be accused of a publicity stunt, we hope that there are readers of this newsletter who will have both the knowledge and the sense of outrage to do so and that they will involve the police in investigating this site.

The site has a ‘Report to the moderator’ feature, but appears to be otherwise unmoderated. To leave the responsibility for policing a government website to members of the public instead of checking each submission before publishing it is, at best, inexcusably negligent and, at worst, criminally irresponsible. There are, in any case, so many vile sentiments being posted there, that it would be a full-time job to keep reporting them all.

If you are as revolted as we are by the use of taxpayers money to encourage racism and hatred of claimants, please consider doing the following:

Contact your MP today and ask them to tell the chancellor to close down this vile site, clean it up and don’t reopen it until it is properly policed;

Make a complaint to the Equalities and human Rights Commission at

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/our-job/contact-us/

Good luck,

Steve Donnison

This article can be viewed online at

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/latest-news/1233-sterilise-claimants-urges-racist-treasury-website




(c) 2010 Steve Donnison. Benefits and Work Publishing Ltd. Company registration No. 5962666

You are welcome to reproduce this newsletter on your website or blog, provided you do so in full.

[Ste]

"Some of the site’s content is so extreme it may even constitute a criminal offence."

Link please.

[Raffles]

Which bits, exactly, are considered objectionable?
____________________
A good loser will always be a loser.

[JasonK]

Hi Ste,

There is a link to the site in my opening post. If you browse through the many pages you can find the ideas & comments mentioned, plus many more.

I have no wish to come on here and argue the whys & what fors. I simply thought it might be of interest to some being current affairs and all.

[skatefreak]

I'm sorry but you cant pull a whole site down just because some bad apples put up a few posts that are objectionable...
The site itself no doubt has some merit and there are people taking it seriously, bringing it down is a bit of a strong goal, moderation would be a far better approach...

Be reasonable though, if all websites containing anything *objectionable* were to be taken down in such a draconian fassion then we'd be left without the BFC...
I'm sure there are plenty of mothers against anything that would rally against a website showing pigs getting their heads chain sawed off, people getting murdered and the other delights floating around in the random banter section...

If there is overly offensive and racist material being posted then moderation would be a better approach and also fare more likely to be accepted by the people running the website...

-Jvr

[Mister James]

Looks like a professional benefits claimant trying to stave off any reassessment of the free money doled out to millions by clouding the issue.

He's right about one thing - his legal knowledge is a bit shonky.
____________________
>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[JasonK]

[Kickstart]

[JasonK]

[pa_broon74]

Isn't part of the problem a fear of offending those alleged vulnerable claimants? Is it not this operating logic that allows the abusers to take advantage?

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with inter-generational benefit claimants being sterilized. (Although not if its disability-based.)



____________________
Didn't catch anything.

[Mister James]

OK Jason - explain why you think it's whipping up hatred?

Saying things that upset people is not whipping up hatred, btw.
____________________
>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[JasonK]

As it happens it was disability claimants I most had in mind when using the word vulnerable.

I agree on the whole that things need a shake up and the wheat needs sorting from the chaff. I just can’t help feeling that with the approach they are taking it will be the people that genuinely need the help that will suffer most.

Many genuine Disability Living Allowance claims are already refused under the current system. It is not uncommon for genuinely deserving claimants to have to fight for a year or more to receive the decision they should have got in the first place. Obviously this can be a distressing ordeal when not in good health. At independent appeal tribunals around 45% of all DLA appeals are awarded in favour of the claimant. This figure rises to around 65% when the claimant attends with a representative.

“In fact, DLA is very widely believed to be an under claimed benefit, with possibly 40% of those entitled not making a claim. In addition, the DWP claim to have overseen a reduction in the level of fraud and overpayment in the benefits system in recent years and have always claimed that fraud in relation to DLA was very low. The DWP Information Directorate report on ‘Fraud and error in the benefits system’ for 2008-2009 estimated the level of fraud in relation to DLA at just 0.6%, a total of £60 million pounds.
Yet the coalition are planning to cut the DLA budget by 20 times that amount in response to alleged abuse of the system.”

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/blogs/2010/07/05/coalition-begins-smear-campaign-against-dla-claimants/#comments

@ Mr James

Because unfortunately, as demonstrated by The Daily Fail and the like, some people just believe whatever they read. Some of these people may just be stupid enough to give some of the genuinely racist and disablist material credence with it being on an official government website. To quote the text above “Even where the initial post appears to be an attempt at humour or irony, the baying mob of supportive posters demonstrates that many others take the ideas seriously.”

I think allowing the publication of clearly racist & disablist material etc. on a government website could be considered whipping up hatred. Depends on your viewpoint I suppose.

[herulach]

[Ste]

[Mudskipper]

I actually went on that spending challenge site today, thinking it was the one for comments from civil servants only. *

It is just filled with what looks like retarded facebook group type thicko rants, not exactly 'whipping up hatred' though. Couldn't be arsed with it as there's so much junk on it now, anything useful will be lost.

*I wanted to suggest that Gov Depts don't do things like 'forget about' 162 empty plastic storage crates dotting around the site costing £9 per week, per crate to hire. Yes, that's nearly £1500 a week pissed away on absolutely nothing. Just a drop in the ocean of obscene waste I've started to notice around me...
____________________
CBR125|||GSXR400|||CBR400|||CBR400|||CB250RS|||GSXR750|||CB250RS
"You're clumsy, you eat too much and you behave like a 12 year old boy. But you know what? Every once in a while, you find a thumb."

[Kickstart]

[JasonK]

[Mister James]

My sister is in a wheel chair at the age of 25, and will be for the rest of her life. Likewise my uncle - who is one of these chaps from the council who sues you if you don't put a ramp in your garden shed in case a disabled person pops round and wants to inspect your tumble drier. I spent several months crippled in 2006 following a near-fatal bike crash.

I have a rough grasp of the idea that plenty of people need and deserve disability payments.

That said, every shift my work takes me to households where the breadwinners appear to be as fit and healthy as me (certainly fit enough to be out all night drinking/burgling/robbing/fighting) yet are "on da sick" - and of course, on all the accompanying benefits that raise their net income to way beyond that of a relatively well paid police constable in London.

Plenty of them have kids, most of whom will go on to become criminals and benefit thieves in their own right.

Pisstakers are out there, and in huge numbers. If you doubt me, go and sit in your nearest magistrates court for the day and listen to the cases for the overnight custodies - those who have been caught fighting, robbing or burgling. They will - almost to a man - be on disability living allowance on incap. benefits- yet manage to scale walls, fight each other or run from the Garvers.

Being 'disabled' because you have turned yourself into a crack addict does not strike me as something that should be respected - or funded by the state.
____________________
>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[Kickstart]

[yuri2085]

Censoring such mindless waffle such as 'kill all poor people' (that is a terrible idea, rich people don't like doing much work generally; so who would do all the dirty jobs) implies you fear their message, it gives them credence.


It is true that mindless ideals can spread like wildfire and corrupt people, censorship doesn't help much either =] And I would imagine most of the comments are 'trolling' to bait reactions out of fearful reactionary people like you.

[Mister James]

Anyway - the website is just a cynical PR exercise - they have already decided what they are going to do, and they are just hoping that with the huge exposure in the press the site has received, enough people will come up with the same ideas so they can claim they have public support.

Anyone wanna make a bet on how many of the cuts will affect diversity champions or climate change advisors?
____________________
>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[Mudskipper]

[Raffles]

[Mister James]

Dirty Dave is as in love with those things as Nick - they are products of the same upper-middle class clueless-as-to-the-real-world background, insulated by their wealth.

A prime example is Immigration - something the Tories campaigned on, and that their core vote feel strongly about.

They have done NOTHING to even start to tackle this - a tiny percentage cut of work permits, one of the tiniest and least problematic bits of migration, does not count.
____________________
>Soultrader Mister James, I bet you are a copper
>Bazza Wow. Eyes like a shithouse rat, you...

[Ste]