THERE’S more chance of dying at the hands of the government than at the hands of a murderer in Britain.

Sounds obscene doesn’t it? Sounds like I’m scaremongering but I’m not. This is the reality of being poor and disabled and living in Britain at the moment.

I feel much safer walking down the street on a dark night than I do walking into a jobcentre and dealing with any DWP department.

That’s an astonishing statement to make, but this government is running riot and we need to stop it.

The poor don’t have fun: life is very hard. I don’t know of anyone that actually benefits from being on so-called benefits at the moment.

It’s a word that I don’t like using. It’s social security and we need to start using the correct wording. Blairite and Tory language should not be used.

The reason why they don’t like us saying “social security” is because it actually states what it is. It is a safety net that most people have paid into throughout their life. When you fall on hard times its there to provide some security from starving and the other results of poverty.

What this government has done very successfully is to make people forget this. It’s got control of the media. The red-top newspapers are having a field day. Not happy with that, the media started to produce hateful programmes such as Benefits Street.

This has resulted in the poor turning against the poor. They believe what the newspapers and the TV programmes say. And people have been discriminated against and bullied by others as a result.

We have a society that is falling apart at the seams. This government has failed everyone except the rich, which of course is their plan. The poor cost them money — or so they think — and therefore they want rid.

They forget though that the poor have helped to make them rich, and always have done throughout the ages.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there now and the poor are the fall guys, taking the blame for the mistakes of the richest in society.

The amount of stress I’m under because I’m poor at the moment is unbelievable. I’m the worst off financially I have ever been and I always have the fear of losing my home at the back of my mind.

My grandmother told me that when the NHS was created it was the best thing that ever happened.

When the safety nets were created it made sure that there was no more suffering in the workhouses. If you had asked anyone of an older generation, the very mention of the word “workhouse” would send shivers down their spines.

But we don’t even have that anymore. People I know have committed suicide, have had nervous breakdowns and their families have fallen apart as a result of this government’s draconian system.

But one thing that we still have the power to do is react. We can fight back. Being poor makes you very resourceful, and you have nothing to lose.

Charlotte Hughes blogs at thepoorsideoflife.wordpress.com, where a version of this article first appeared.