So, What is pissing you off tonight?

[Prophet 451]

63. The Tories

My other half tells me that the Tories have so screwed up the NHS that the old dear may have to start charging for some services. This is, of course, what the Tories have wanted from the beginning. Our governing party says we are in for a "decade of austerity", regardless of the fact that it hasn't worked, has never worked and can never work. By "austerity", what they mean is cutting off support from the poor and sick.

I'm one of the sick. I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder. Every day, I have to fight against an incredible urge to commit suicide. It's like the proverbial monkey on the back, never going away. As a way of coping with that, I frequently (every few days) self-harm (not the best coping mechanism, I know). At least once a week, I come within minutes of suicide. I also suffer from a wide array of other neuroses, some coming from my MDD (I am agoraphobic, for example), some not. In addition to that, my back and knees are so shot that I have to use crutches to stand or walk for more than a couple of minutes.

Here, there are two main disability benefits: ESA and DLA. ESA now has the harshest disability test in the world. It's on a points system and, for example, you get no points for not having hands if you can pick things up with your stumps. On top of that, the test is administered by a company known and proven to be, at best, utterly incompetent and incentivised to fail as many as possible. We are reassessed at least every year and suicides from the stress of this are not unknown. DLA used to have a saner test. Until the Tories decided they were going to scrap DLA, replace it with a new benefit called PIP and boot 20% off the rolls in the process. I'm aware, every moment of the day, how precarious my continued life is, how dependent I am on how much of a prick the Tories decide to be today.

And our PM has plans to make the benefits regime even harsher. The minister in charge of this (Iain Duncan Smith, who once co-authored a paper with Rick Santorum) has said that it's a "sin" to be out of work and disabled people "fester" on benefits. The bastard scum Tories are actively trying to kill us off and I'm now of the opinion that assassination would be a justifiable response. They are dragging us back to Victorian notions of the undeserving poor. They and their toadies in the press have drummed up an atmosphere of outright hatred for anyone who claims benefits for any reason. And yes, this shit affects my mental health. I have to live with the constant worry that the Tories will decide to be cunts today and cut off what little money I get from the state. Oh, but they cut the taxes of the rich. Dropped them from 50% to 45%. Plenty of money for that.

So really, it's partly pissing me off and partly despair. But thanks for letting me vent.