Introduction
Little did I realise when I began the research in 2009 that I would have the opportunity to have contact with academics from around the country, and around the world, including some very distinguished academics who are leaders in their specific fields of study. Below are a few examples of academic excellence in action. They are all relevant to the negative impact and the preventable harm created by the changing social policies in the UK, due to dangerous right-wing ideology created when neoliberal politics disregards human need. There are also video examples of the harm created by the UK government to chronically ill people, whose only crime is that they are unfit to work, but the UK government chooses not to believe them.
Danny Dorling and Chantelle Lewis in conversation with Eleanor Penny.
23 November 2023
SHATTERED NATION : INEQUALITY AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF A FAILING STATE : OCTOBER 2023
A video by Danny Dorling promoting the evidence identified in his new book. (31 minutes)
BBC RADIO 4: FIT FOR WORK – JUNE 2023
How government attempts to get disabled people into work had tragic consequences.
A radio mini series produced to identify the suffering created by social policy reforms and the enforced assessment of chronically ill and disabled people by the Department for Work and Pensions. This is the final of three episodes (28 minutes).
THE VIOLENCE OF AUSTERITY: MARCH 2023
A seminar by Mo Stewart for criminology students at QMUL (75mins)
THE ADOPTION OF PREVENTABLE HARM, MASQUERADING AS SOCIAL POLICY REFORMS: MARCH 2022
A presentation by Mo Stewart for the (In)Justice International World Convention, Taiwan (15 minutes)
KILLED BY THE STATE WEBINAR, WITH MO STEWART: NOVEMBER 2020
Hosted by the Centre for Welfare Reform (70 minutes)
This webinar “Killed By The State? Social Policy Abused: the creation of preventable harm” is the conclusion to the Preventable Harm Project conducted for ten years until November, 2019. I have spent the past twelve months promoting the research findings, demonstrating the influence of corporate America with UK social policy reforms since 1992, on route to the removal of the welfare state to be replaced by private health insurance. The webinar was hosted by the Centre for Welfare Reform and was held on 27th November, 2020, with an introduction by Centre Director, Simon Duffy, and a discussion including John McDonnell MP at the end of the talk.
AN AMERICAN FORM OF FASCISM IS UNFOLDING IN OUR COUNTRY. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT AND WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIGHT IT:
AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR HENRY GIROUX FEBRUARY 2022
A radio interview conducted by Law and Order Radio, February 14 2022.
Henry Giroux holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at the McMaster Univerity in Ontario, Canada. Henry is a leading cultural critic whose explanation of neoliberal politics, and the harm it has created, has inspired this researcher and many others around the world. Born in the US in Providence, Rhodes Island, and from a working class background, Henry speaks passionately about the serious problems faced by society when greed replaces need, when the financial elite gain political power and then introduce authoritarianism masquerading as social policies. As a renowned academic he has published widely, with a vast array of books and published papers. Henry’s valuable support for my research is very welcome from an academic who keeps telling it like it is. Prepare to be impressed from these words of wisdom by a world authority on the injustice created by neoliberalism which impacts on the very survival of democracy. (30 mins)
BROKEN HEARTS FOR DISABLED PEOPLE: DECEMBER, 2021
The disabled community and their supporters protest at the numbers of disabled people ‘slaughtered’ by the DWP. (14 minutes)
WELFARE IMAGINARIES SEMINAR TALK, LIVERPOOL: SEPTEMBER 2018
The American corporate influence with British welfare reforms (15 minutes).
‘CASH NOT CARE’ LONDON BOOK LAUNCH: OCTOBER 2016
My book ‘Cash Not Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state’ was published by New Generation Publishing in September 2016 following seven years of independent research. Hosted by Inclusion London, the launch of ‘Cash Not Care’ was held in London on 4th October 2016, with guest speakers Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Professor Peter Beresford and John McDonnell MP (42 mins).
FRANCES RYAN INTERVIEW: June 2019
Courtesy of the Guardian
Frances Ryan is a disabled woman and a distinguished columnist for the Guardian, who writes powerful articles about the impact of welfare reforms on the disabled community. In recent times she has become ‘the voice of disabled people’ and here talks about the launch of her new book, aptly called ‘Crippled’.
DANNY DORLING: NOVEMBER 2017
Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. He is one of the leading experts regarding income inequality, has published a vast amount of academic texts and papers and he’s a very valued academic supporter of my research. Like Peter Beresford, Danny has never ceased to support my work, and he went the extra mile by actively promoting my book ‘Cash Not Care’ when it was released in September 2016. Danny is an inspirational writer and speaker, and never fails to impress. There are various videos I could have chosen, but the recent 2017 ‘Cathie Marsh Memorial Lecture’ is especially informative, where Danny identifies the UK as the most unequal country in Europe. The video includes questions from the audience regarding inequality and social policy. I am very grateful to Danny for his continued valuable support for my work. Enjoy watching the great man in action (1hr 52mins).
THE PSYCHIC LIFE AND SLOW DOWN OF AUSTERITY: AUGUST 2017
Dr China Mills
China Mills was a lecturer at Sheffield University when she gave this talk, which identifies the increasing numbers of suicides linked to the cuts in social security benefits due to the ongoing welfare reforms and austerity measures, as imposed since the Coalition government took office in the UK in 2010. China’s 2017 paper ‘Dead people don’t claim’: a psychopolitical autopsy of UK austerity suicides offered more detailed academic analysis to the evidence of the disabled community which links death, despair and suicides to the ongoing ‘welfare reforms’. China is now a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at City, University of London. (21 mins).
THE BROKEN BENEFIT SYSTEM IS NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE: FEBRUARY 2017
A detailed account of the persecution of a chronically ill man, the increasingly authoritarian DWP ordering GPs not to award their patient’s ‘fit notes’ regardless of their knowledge of the patient or the diagnosis, and the intransigence of the government system regardless of the growing number of deaths linked to the Work Capability Assessment.
HENRY GIROUX, THE TRUTHOUT LECTURE: OCTOBER 2015
Henry Giroux holds the McMaster Univerity Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at the McMaster Univerity in Ontario, Canada. Henry is a leading cultural critic whose explanation of neoliberal politics, and the harm it has created, has inspired this researcher and many others around the world. Born in the US in Providence, Rhodes Island, and from a working class background, Henry speaks passionately about the serious problems faced by society when greed replaces need, when the financial elite gain political power and then introduce authoritarianism masquerading as social policies. As a renowned academic he has published widely, with a vast array of books and published papers. Henry’s valuable support for my research is very welcome from an academic who keeps telling it like it is. Prepare to be impressed from these words of wisdom by a world authority on the injustice created by neoliberalism which impacts on the very survival of democracy. (59 mins)
October 2015
PETER BERESFORD: FEBRUARY 2015
Peter Beresford is perhaps the best known of all academic professors who has worked tirelessly to help chronically sick and disabled people to find a public voice that can’t be disregarded. He is now the Professor of Citizen Participation at the University of Essex, and he is the co-founder of ‘Shaping Our Lives’ which is a network of service users designed to provide the chronically ill and disabled community with a substantial collective voice. More than any other academic, Peter has encouraged my research. So there was no-one else better qualified to write the foreword to my book ‘Cash Not Care’ and to speak at the London book launch in October 2016. Peter is a prolific writer and his book ‘All Our Welfare: Towards Participatory Social Policy’ is a tour de force within the disabled community. He gave me the confidence to believe I was capable of producing research of real social value, and he never ceases to encourage my efforts. I will always be indebted to Peter for his valuable support to me personally as well as to other chronically sick and disabled service users, and as an inspiration particularly to those who suffer with mental health problems. Peter’s stimulating February 2015 public lecture at the University of Brunel: ‘Sorting out social care or living unhappily ever after: the political choice we face’ is a master class in where the social care system is failing, and is identified as: “the C19th Poor Law is alive and well in the C21st”. Prepare to be impressed by this very remarkable man who is my academic mentor, friend and inspiration (1hr 24min).
TOM SHAKESPEARE: JULY 2014
Tom Shakespeare is a world renowned bioethicist and it is my very great pleasure to have contact with this brilliant academic. Written with colleagues and first published online in May 2016, Tom’s academic paper ‘Blaming the victim, all over again: Waddell and Aylward’s biopsychosocial (BPS) model of disability’ was the long awaited academic confirmation of the evidence exposed in my research over several years and, to date, Tom is the only academic to cite my research in this published work. Tom’s paper exposed the Waddell and Aylward BPS model of disability as having ‘no coherent theory or evidence behind this model’ and that the research by Waddell and Aylward demonstrated ‘a cavalier approach to scientific evidence’. This confirms my findings that the BPS model used by the DWP for the WCA is dangerously inadequate, and has finally been discredited by academic excellence. Tom is himself disabled and has the personal experience of living with a disability together with academic expertise and insight. His 2014 lecture ‘Labels, badges: diagnosis and identity’, which is followed by a discussion with Dr Darin Weinberg, demonstrates Tom’s support for diagnosis is not to be overlooked, as it is when using the fatally flawed BPS model of assessment, which supports my long-held argument that disregarding diagnosis and prognosis is dangerous. Tom’s lecture demonstrates his vast knowledge and reasoned logic. Enjoy! (1hr 1 mins)
ARE SCROUNGERS CLAIMING DISABILITY BENEFITS?: JULY 2012
According to successive British governments a lot of claimants of long-term out-of-work disability benefit are ‘faking’, which was the excuse used by various governments to justify the end of Incapacity Benefit and the introduction of the ESA using the dangerous and discredited WCA to restrict access to the benefit. Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) MP, when Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with the Coalition government, spent five years making sure the British public were influenced into thinking that most ESA claimants were bogus, which is totally untrue. Unfortunately IDS attracted a lot of press coverage, especially front page covers of the tabloids, which identified that 75% of the former Incapacity Benefit claimants were faking… Consequently, prejudice towards chronically ill and disabled people has returned to the UK (29 mins).
July 2012
DID INSURER CHEAT DISABLED CLAIMANTS? APRIL 2012
The American corporate insurance giant who have guided the UK government on ‘welfare claims management’ since 1994 have a diabolical reputation in the US. (13.32mins)
April 2012
BBC NEWS: FOREIGN GOVERNMENT ADVISERS: OCTOBER 2007
As long ago as October 2007, BBC News identified that American corporate government advisers were publicly identified as influencing British social policy. That influence would eventually lead to the adoption of the discredited BPS model of assessment by the DWP, as used for the WCA to restrict access to long-term ESA disability benefit (3mins 51secs).