#frances ryan

[reasonsforhope]

"Self-care has become a new priority—the revelation that it's perfectly permissible to listen to your body and do what it needs."

—Frances Ryan

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Currently listening.

[tweetingukpolitics]

[tzifron]

The austerity crisis and threat to disability rights

In austerity Britain, disabled people have been recast as worthless scroungers. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and the media alike have made the case that Britain’s 12 million disabled people are nothing but a drain on the public purse. In Crippled, journalist and campaigner Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the stories of those most affected by this devastating regime. It is at once both a damning indictment of a safety net so compromised it strangles many of those it catches and a passionate demand for an end to austerity, which hits hardest those most in need.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2972-crippled

[lilithsplace]

Kew I, 2017 - Frances Ryan oil on canvas |  source:

[ailedhoo]

The Tory blueprint: fund a cruel system, not the disabled people it punishes | Frances Ryan

A new report shows a system riddled with failings. But this isn’t policy gone wrong – it’s one going exactly as planned, writes Guardian columnist Frances Ryan

That’s the most grotesque part of this. When ministers design a social security system based on how much money they can cut, unqualified assessors and bloated appeal bills aren’t a sign of a policy gone wrong – it’s a sign that it’s going exactly as planned.

It’s often said that we get the politicians we deserve. We could say the same for the welfare state they run for us. No matter what the normalisation of the mistreatment of disabled people suggests, it’s entirely possible to create a humane and competent disability benefit system – one that spends public money on supporting people in their time of need and uses medical evidence from our own doctors. This report offers more powerful evidence that we need change. But until we rid ourselves of this rightwing government, so keen to vilify the sick and the poor, we will have a benefits system that harms them.

Frances Ryan looks at the damning situation in the UK regarding disability rights in relation to the work and pensions select committee report on the failings of policies, including the shocking practices of the Department for Work and Pensions, in relation to how austerity practices have harmed the disabled populace of the UK.

[ailedhoo]

They say Labour is financially inept. Yet just look at Tory welfare spending | Frances Ryan

From the botched universal credit scheme to a housing policy that puts people on the streets, Conservative policies are a masterclass in incompetence

One of the greatest falsehoods of modern British politics is that the public purse is safe in Conservative hands.

Frances Ryan questions the claims of the Tories that our financial capabilities are safe under their administration.

Ryan examines how the Tories, a party which likes to paint Labour as the party of “chaos” and “risks,” has mishandled welfare, as seen in the follies with UC (universal credit), the housing crisis and the general blunder that is austerity.

As Ryan concludes:

The left, quite correctly, talks of the human cost of Conservative policy, but it’s hammering the Tories on the financial costs that will hit them where it really hurts. In any case, whether it’s a council paying to keep a young family in a B&B because they’ve lost their home after benefit delays, or a cancer patient put through the costly tribunal system after being wrongly found “fit for work”, morality and economics are not neatly separate concepts.

That the government has spent years arguing there isn’t enough money to properly fund public services or the benefit safety net only makes their flawed spending choices more disgraceful. This election, Labour can say it with confidence: the Conservatives are the party of incompetence.

[theflyingfruitbowl]

Frances Ryan