Monday, 21 November 2011

Jon Snow on Channel 4 News: new knight in shining armour for the hardest hit

Still struggling to fill in my "ESA 50" aka "Limited Capability For Work Questionnaire" and send it back to the DWP before December 8th.

Briefly stopped crying and dying inside at the humiliating catalogue of all that's wrong with me being revealed on the dreaded unhelpful and endless 20 page form (again!) as I watched the Channel 4 news with Jon Snow tonight. New benefit system dogged by 'endless appeals' Stopped sobbing to see the spectacle of masterful Jon Snow ripping at the flabby underbelly of Employment Minister Chris Grayling's defence of the slow car crash that is the Welfare Reform Bill.

"You could halt this reassessment failure now," Mr Snow pressed Grayling like a bulldog worrying a wasp.

At long last, instead of the BBC's propaganda and outright lies, Channel 4 tells it like it is. Pray God it's not too late.

Elsewhere today, Lord Freud in the Lords sounded like a smug puppet who had lost his script as other peers asked him questions about the Bill for which he had no answers. Again. Questions he tried to sidestep or in the face of which he seemed to be trying to hypnotise his opponents into a stupor with his whining, ingratiating but wholly compassion-free voice. Slowly but surely, the tide must turn. Mustn't it?

This on the same day Channel 4 News also revealed proof government plans to privatise NHS. Well done, Channel 4. A voice in the wilderness, calling for the proud and privileged to turn around at the brink of the precipice. A call for those in power to avoid another national disaster, the outrageous scapegoating of the hardest hit and most vulnerable citizens. A call to sort out these flawed Work Capability Assessments and prevent a return to the dark ages of stigma and more suicides for those wrongly labelled the "undeserving poor," left with no scrap of hope or means to face the future.

Thanks, Jon Snow and the Channel 4 team for helping me wipe the tears from my eyes and see more clearly again.

Back to the form. Courage. I can do this, whatever the outcome. Just knowing the truth is out there, whatever double speak and spin Big Brother Cameron chooses to put on it.

No comments:

Post a Comment