We must persuade the public that they’re wrong about welfare.

By Sue Marsh.

Who says magic can’t happen on a Monday morning?

From now until the election we have to do just one thing. We must persuade the public that they’re wrong about welfare. Just that one thing.

If we don’t, whoever wins the election will not see a need to address the great social crisis unfolding.

So from now on, every Monday, if everyone that reads this blog persuades just one other person that they’ve been misled, that “reform” is simply another word for hate, we will have converted nearly 200,000 people.

It doesn’t matter who it is – a nurse or doctor, a teacher or school-gate Mum. Maybe the electrician or the postman. You might email an old friend and tell them about the fears you have for the futures of sick and disabled people in the UK.

Best of all, write letters to your local paper.

Every Monday, a quick email to the letters editor pointing out the new PIP 20 mtr rule or the chaos of Universal Credit or the total mess of ESA and you could have a big impact.

One week at a time, one person at a time, it might not seem like much but it could make a big difference. If you plead with the people you convince to convince others, that 200,000 might become a million and those million night become 2.

Here’s my offering for this week’s “MagicMonday” action…

“Dear Sir,

I wanted to let your readers know about Mark Wood.

Mark was 44 and suffered from severe mental health problems. Amongst other things, he was diagnosed with  aspbergers and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)

Last year, Atos Healthcare, the French IT company who carry out Employment & Support Allowance (previously incapacity or “sickness” benefit) judged that Mark was fit to work. They didn’t consult his GP who has since said that if he had been consulted he would never have recommended that Mark could work.

His ESA was stopped along with his housing benefit, leaving him just £40 per week to cover all his expenses. Food, shelter, warmth.

Mark died of starvation just 4 months later. When they found him, there was just a banana and a tin of tuna in his home.

It is the UK and the year is 2014. Yet people are starving to death, alone in their homes. They do it discreetly, out of sight, but they die just the same.

If Mark was an isolated case, then maybe, just maybe, we could forgive his tragic loss. Maybe the pain his family feel would have been less crushing.

But he’s very far from an isolated case. Stephanie Bottril, Karen Sherlock, Mark and Helen Mullins, Denis Jones, Jacqueline Harris, David Barr, Elaine Lowe, Elenor Tatton, Linda Wootton…

The list goes on and on now. Every day a different death linked directly to government social security “reforms” yet we, the public, seem determined to look away.

I never thought I’d see the day when I had to warn people, right here in the UK, that often vulnerable sick or disabled people are dying and no-one cares.

In 2011/12, 10,600 people died within just 3 months of being found “fit for work” by the DWP. Since then, they’ve refused to publish further statistics at all.

When this government speaks of “welfare reforms”, I’m fairly sure readers don’t assume that they will cause tens of thousands of deaths. I just hope we all wake up  soon, before they are joined by thousands more

Very best

Sue Marsh”

As we’ve always reassured one another, alone we whisper, but together we shout.

A version of this post first appeared on Sue Marsh’s  blog ‘Diary of a Benefit Scrounger’.

Sue has a rare form of Crohn’s Disease: she has had many operations to remove strictures (narrowings in my bowel that grow like tumours), suffers daily pain, often vomiting, malnourished and weak; takes mega-strong medications every day including chemo-style immuno-suppressants, opiates and anti-sickness injections.