AtoS are contracted by the government to assess the fitness of people with disabilities to be able to work. All well and good, you may think, but private companies notorious for having very little accountability or transparency. You don't know how they make the decisions and you have very little room for appeal if you don't like it. Ordinary benefits claims are bad enough, but you're talking some of the most vulnerable people in society here, and there are an increasing number of deaths resulting from claims being wrongfully withdrawn. It is said that Doctors bury their mistakes and it's looking like AtoS does too.
Here's an interesting thought, though. If they are trying to outsource benefits assessment, why don't they do the same with tax evasion? It would be far more profitable: millions of pounds as opposed to thousands at most. Maybe it's because those who are likely to suffer contribute to the major political parties, and those on benefits don't. Nah, that can't be it, surely!
Coda: I've just had a look at the Department of Work and Pensions web site and there's an interesting case of doublethink. There's a phrase used, "... help people break the cycle of benefit dependency". It's the same phrase used to describe the help given to people on class A drugs. Use the word "heroin" instead of "benefit" and you can see that they are equating people claiming with smack-heads. Nice. People are also dependent on the wages given to them by their employer, so lets see how that works: "... help people break the cycle of wage dependency". Suits me. Try governments and taxes: "... help the government break the cycle of tax dependency". Something for the Financial Times reader there. Howabout a certain political party and contributions: "... help the Conservatives break cycle of dependency on donations by corporate fat cats". That's more like it.
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