DM:
Walking around the exhibition listening to each of these tragic stories, would you say that the experiences of benefit claimants with disabilities in a wider sense are more prevalent than is generally reported? Is this just the tip of the iceberg?

JP:
Absolutely. I usually say that the DWP is responsible for hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths. The reason I start with hundreds is that there is research that linked DWP’s actions with about 600 suicides between 2010 and 2013, and there has so far been no other cast-iron evidence we can point to beyond that, other than the grim trail of one death after another that has been revealed over the last decade.

It surprises me that so little attention is paid to the evidence that does come out. Often it is only the most appalling horrors—such as Errol Graham starving to death, and the other tragedies we’ve represented in MoA—that grab the media’s interest. But every week I hear from disabled people about the slow, grinding, torturous impact that the disability benefits system has on them, often over months or even years. It’s that slow violence again. It’s one of the great scandals of 21st century UK society (with its roots in the early 1990s) and it’s happening pretty much in clear sight. The deaths are linked to the widespread disablism in our society, and then the failure to report properly on this scandal is also linked to that same disablism.

DM:
Many people have described the current benefit system as being draconian in its attitude to claimants, leaving them at serious risk of destitution and financial hardship.

JP:
Draconian is the mildest word I would use. The grim, awful truth--and I write about this in my book, The Department, which will be published next summer by Pluto Press--is that hundreds, probably thousands, of disabled people have been failed by our country’s social security system in their moments of greatest need, and that politicians, senior civil servants and private sector contractors averted their eyes and let it happen again and again and again. It’s no less than a horror story.

2/2

I had to go to a food bank once. Because I have dietary issues they gave me a Tesco voucher, everyone was so kind. It was a really humbling experience but not an awful one.

I’m doing much better these days and you will be soon too.

I'm sorry to hear you've been having a hard time but glad you were able to get some support and compassion locally.

We shouldn't need food banks, but their existence is proof that communities will look out for each other with or without central government telling them to or even funding them, and while they represent a failure of our current system, I also see them as representing hope for what a future could look like without outside of a for-profit exisrence.

@Fudoshin @DessertStorms Bad things can happen to everybody indeed. 😔

But even (or especially) when you feel like it won't happen to you, you should be kind to others and help them. Helping each other doesn't have to be reciprocating.

@Fudoshin @DessertStorms Support your local food bank! It doesn't take much money to provide a big bag of food for folks.

Farmers, please grow a little more produce and give that excess away if you can.

@Fudoshin @[email protected]

And I'm reminded, as a psychologist and a Buddhist,* that being kind and humane to others benefits us, too. It really does.

____
(*In my over-educated view, being a psychologist and a Buddhist are the same thing in the end.)

@Fudoshin @DessertStorms

We regularly contribute to foodbanks in the UK and we always include treats and toiletries ❤️

Really hope you get your life back on track🫂

@Fudoshin @DessertStorms the thing that made me cry, when I needed a food bank, was they asked if I had pets and included food for my cats.

There is an awful lot of good in this world.

@Fudoshin
When I drove a "food rescue van" for a local food pantry collecting birthday cakes from the grocery stores' bakeries was the height of my day. People who shopped at the pantry were registered; when they checked in volunteers checked for kids with birthdays coming soon & notified the volunteers assisting shoppers to give them a cake.

I sometimes hung around to watch the faces as folks left with them. There was almost at least one every day. I sometimes got 4 or 5 cakes on a trip.