Reblogged from The Void:
This petition calling for an inquiry into the benefit sanctions which killed David Clapson has hit almost 75,000 signatures in just over a week.
Mr Clapson had his benefits stopped after missing a meeting with the
Jobcentre. This left him unable to chill the insulin he needed to
manage his diabetes and without any money for food or electricity.
Shortly after his benefits were sanctioned he was found dead without any
food in his stomach.
His sister launched the petition last week calling an inquiry into
benefit sanctions and the terrible damage they inflict. Tens of
thousands of people have signed already. The Government will do
everything they can to ignore it, but behinds the scenes this will not
go unnoticed.
Benefit sanctions are the teeth of welfare reform, and are designed
as a form of punishment for being on benefits. If you don’t jump
through every hoop set up by the deranged Iain Duncan Smith – in the
exact way he has decided you should – then you will have all forms of
meeting your basic needs stopped. Depending on your circumstances you
might become homeless, ill, or even die. It doesn’t even have to be
your fault. The system is as haphazard as it is vicious, and thousands
have been wrongly sanctioned for the most trivial and vindictive of reasons.
There are signs that, as the public discover what the DWP are doing
to people, the mood is starting to change. A recent poll by Ipsos Mori
found that more people are concerned about poverty and inequality in
the UK since they began collecting figures in 1998 (h/t @patrickjbutler).
If this petition can hit 100,000 signatures then it will be further
proof that people are finally saying enough is enough to the war on the
poor that has been waged so brutally by both this, and the last
government.
One last push can make that happen, so please share, tweet, blog and post the petition everywhere: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother