With the current 'clampdown' on the benefits system it was only a matter of time before this sort of thing happens:
Man sets himself on fire outside Birmingham jobcentre
The company that would have been contracted by the DWP to assess this man's fitness for employment is called ATOS Healthcare. I have had dealings with them myself, and the bloke I saw even told me off the record that they routinely disenfranchise almost everyone they (non-medically) assess from receiving incapacity benefit/ESA, and that the sucess rate of appeals against ATOS's assesments are in the region of 80%. Of course the appeals process is long and drawn out, with the sort of routine communications that someone on Jobseeker's Allowance enjoys being pretty much non-existant when dealing with an ESA claim. Being forced by unfortunate circumstance to have to deal with the perverse motivations and spin of parasitic companies like ATOS or Action4Employment is enough to make someone sick if they weren't sick enough already.
Having said that, the government are in an unenviable position. They have to maintain the status quo by selling the delusions of a mid 20th-century style economic growth paradigm in spite of an economic, social and ecological reality that increasingly can't sustain it. So when the chips are down what should we do? Why, put the boot in on society's most vunerable whilst make a few quid in the process of course, and who better to do that than a bunch of old Etonian millionaires?
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