BMA Demand immediate end to WCAs!

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Black Triangle campaign group, I have some rather startlingly good news!

The BMA - that bastion of conservatism (small c) have voted at their annual conference to demand an immediate end to Work Capability Assessments (WCAs). WCAs are the "fit for work" assessment used to determine eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance. (ESA)


WCAs have been found "unfit for purpose" by every major study into them. Recently the Chief Executive of Mind stood down from the Government's WCA advisory panel, unconvinced the Government had any real interest in changing the assessments. Currently 40% of cases go to appeal and 40% of appeal decisions are overturned.

The BMA vote follows votes by GPs in Scotland and England to also demand the immediate withdrawal of WCAs.

It is astonishing that this isn't bigger news today. Without the support of doctors - who say that WCAs are harmful to their patients - the Government faces it's first serious challenge in implementing its welfare reform agenda.

Yet again, we must report our own news, so could I ask that anyone reading this, or reading the Black Triangle page share them everywhere you can? Facebook, Twitter, email, blog it; we must make sure that this story gets the attention it deserves.

It is a landmark in the campaign to see an end to ESA and WCAs or at the very least a total re-design of the system to make it serve the sick and disabled people it currently punishes.

At this point in time, almost every major charity, every campaign group, the CAB, the Liberal Democrat Party and now the BMA, representing doctors, oppose WCAs in their current form. All have called for major improvements to the process of assessing whether someone is able to work or not. Now doctorsw demand that they be withdrawn altogether until they can be made safe for their patients. 

I would remind Liberal Democrats that it is their party's policy to oppose the one year time limit on ESA and to make WCAs fit for purpose.

Finally an enormous "thank you" to doctors up and down Britain for standing up with us, your patients. For seeing what is just and what is not, for speaking out when so many are staying silent. To see our evidence when so many choose to look away

The censored MoJ Video is back!

If you saw this post on my blog earlier in the week  by the brilliant Benefits and Work site 

"HELP MAKE CHRIS GRAYLING MAD

Well, if you click on the link to youtube now, the kind, supportive video has disappeared. Again

Grayling demanded the video was removed from the Ministry of Justice's website months ago, but a few days ago, it reappeared. It seemed the MoJ had decided they could and would show it after all.

Thousands of campaigners shared the video online. The last time I checked nearly 9000 people had watched it, but it could have been more in the end.

What was so striking for me though, was how shocked people were about how nice the video is. We are so used to being called "stock" or "scrounger", "lazy" or "feckless" ("festering" was my favourite by a whisker though I think) No-one quite believed a government department produced a video that sounded like they....cared?


So, without further ado, the hawk-eyed @AzuriteEnigma has found another on youtube here

By sharing the link, we can carry on sharing a very helpful, reassuring video that anyone appealing a benefit decision ought to get a chance to watch.

I am honestly racking my brains on this one, but I the only reason I can't think of to remove the video, is because it's too nice. Stay classy Chris Grayling

Watch Video Here

The Horror Film that Never Ends

PTSD pops up in the oddest places eh?

I mean, I've got simple ones after my recent hospital stay - Mum's dying in books and on film aren't doing me any favours at all. You'd be astonished how often this seemingly rare narrative pops up. It's happened to me 5 times so far. A voice starts to scream in my head "YOU NEARLY DIED YOU NEARLY DIED YOU NEARLY DIED" I do actually mean that it screams. It shouts with an urgency as though the subtext might be "AREN'T YOU LISTENING YOU STUPID BITCH - YOU NEARLY DIED - THAT WOMAN LYING THERE COULD HAVE BEEN YOU, THEY COULD BE YOUR KIDS CRYING AND LOST" I can barely hear what people are saying to me over it. I shake, my hands go clammy. Physically I find I've scrunched into myself, like a little, defensive ball.

But then there are weird ones. The smell of the treats I bought in hospital. You know in a sci-fi film where the actors get sucked backwards into some kind of vortex at a speed only achieved through cgi? Well that's what flashbacks are like for me. I smell the lovely body mist and I am there, sucked back into a starched linen bed, frightened and hurt.

Weirder still is the spicy parsnip soup. The first thing that I was allowed to eat after surgery that rebelled urgently from the confines of my stomach, reappearing with spicy petulance for an hour or two. I saw a tin in the supermarket last week and bile rushed into my mouth, my heart raced, and I found myself looking for the door, to run away - run and run and run and run until the images faded. If only running were an option.

I picked up a pillowcase to put in the wash, forgetting it was the one I took as comfort in hospital. It reeked of antiseptic, sweat, pain and liquid feed. I gagged, threw it urgently away from my face, found myself shaking my head in an odd twitch, up and to the right. I realised I was trying to make a no-longer-present feeding tube comfortable. Whirling images of vomiting chemical waste, sweating so much the sheets were drenched, the tube bruising the back of my throat from the constant gagging so I can no longer swallow.

This morning, I have to see a doctor. Not my doctor; the old, paternalistic partner at the surgery. I can't tell you the details of why this will be an incredible difficult and awkward consultation, but believe me, I may as well be there to persuade him to give Dr Shipman another chance. I'm shaking and small. In my mind, I'm a little girl, lost and scared, every scenario is running through my head like the chatter of a thousand crickets. The strong, eloquent, witty me is gone, replaced by the worst kind of me. A doubtful me, a stuttering, whining, pleading me.

Recovery is not just about scars healing. Not the ones you can see, anyway.

Help Make Grayling Mad

This was posted on the quite excellent Benefits and Work site and then re-posted on Black Triangle, but it seems many can't view it on either. Here it is again if you're having trouble. 

Whilst making Grayling angry is one of my reasons for breathing, I thought the tone and sensitivity of he MoJ video was striking. It couldn't be more different to an experience with the DWP or Atos. If the latter are genuine about improving their customer interactions, this should be their guide in everything that they do!

HELP MAKE CHRIS GRAYLING MAD
Here’s an opportunity for you to help make a minister wish he hadn’t interfered.

Back in March we wrote about the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) employment and support allowance appeals video (external link) on Youtube.  The video was pulled after less than a week, on the orders of senior officials.
, nu
Independent benefits expert Neil Bateman (external link), discovered that the video was taken down after employment minister Chris Grayling emailed the ministry complaining about, amongst other things, the fact that it told claimants:

• that they are twice as likely to win their appeal if they appear in person rather than having a paper hearing;
• that the DWP doesn’t normally send a representative to the hearing;
• to send additional evidence to the tribunal, when Grayling wants it sent to the DWP.

Yesterday, three months later, the video reappeared and, to their credit, after their initial panic MoJ officials seem to have left it unaltered.  The video is actually reasonably informative and reassuring for people who have no previous experience of appeal tribunals.

Normally, however, MoJ videos get very little attention – one has had just two views and few of the 120 videos on the MoJ channel gets more than a few hundred views.

If Grayling hadn’t intervened this video would probably also have remained largely unseen.  Now, however, we’re askingBenefits and Work newsletter readers to make it the most popular video the MoJ has ever produced.  The current record holder has had 4,269 views and the ESA video currently stands at 1,063.

So, please, make Grayling mad by taking a look at the video and passing the link on to anyone you think might benefit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L8EPHDjeqU  (external link)

Members can read more and comment here.

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/

I was just following orders......

Oh Britain, you look away.  

Please see.

See them claim that the state should not fund the work of charities trying to alleviate homelessness if the group dare to disagree with what they're doing? Have you not heard? Any disagreement : Striking, campaigning on benefits helping colleagues through union work - they would starve them out of that protest by stopping benefits or pay? See them silence us? 

What about the quadriplegic, non-verbal, unable to feed woman, totally reliant on the state for her dignity and support? She uses eye movement software to write her negative opinions about welfare reform? Because she has lost 8 hours a week care and has to find another £170 a month towards her housing benefit - but only for a while, because they are making her move to a smaller property when there are no smaller properties and she will have to leave behind the 1000s of £s worth of modifications to her home that have been done over the years? 

You would starve her into silence? Oh wait..... not flickering her eyes? 

If you think this is fantasy it absolutely isn't. It is happening up and down the country - yes to people that are that disabled - and you are all turning away. You are choosing to look away. You quote comforting opinion polls from a public fed a steady stream of scrounger propaganda as though that means something?? 

Politicians, you crow that welfare reform is "popular" without even the most basic understanding of the policies you support? You seek the popularity-refuge of rationing nappies for disabled adults and leaving people in their own filth overnight? You sigh with relief that people will be delighted when you leave disabled people trapped in their own homes without the vital services or transport they rely on?

There is a case in Worcester where the council wants to put disabled people currently living independently, back into institutions again because it's cheaper. Google it - I'm not making it up. Would you accept asylums for your own children? See them locked away?  But you turn away. You ignore the 0.5% fraud rate (DWP own figures) and you continue to believe what you're told "Ah but so many are just trying it on" 

You turn away. You look away. You let it happen. 

As Edmunde Burke said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

Run Rabbit Run

Do please listen to the song below as you read this post if you can. Somehow it puts it all into a historical context. 

So, Cameron is planning to scrap housing benefit for under 25s then?

Gove wants to bring back 'O' Levels and a two tier education system.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Carr is the most evil man on the planet. It's official. Because he AVOIDED TAX!!! Look! Look! Over there! A celebrity!


And we all ooh and ahh at the evil celebrity who did exactly what his "betters" in government did, but with way less ruthless intent. Meanwhile, in Mahiki bar, the real tax avoiders of the next generation chuckle over their champagne cocktails and Aston Martins like flappers at the Ritz dancing through the Blitz.

While the guardianistas and twitterati faint and rage over possibly cutting housing benefit for under 25s after the next election, it is oh so easy to forget that this government actually cut housing benefit for under 35s, now consigned to share a room or live in a studio until most might hope to be parents themselves. Most disabled people are actually trying to find £80, £140 even £280 a month extra to make up the shortfall in their rent already passed into law. £280 a month!!! Say it slowly. Got that laying around have you? Any suggestions at all how someone with profound disabilities might get their hands on that kind of sum?

And Gove levels. Oh please. No-one knew about it, Cameron asked for some spiffing ideas and Gove obliged. The public will absolutely love the idea, because the fact that 80% of students will be thrown once more onto a CSE scrapheap will not catch their eye. Meanwhile, as our schools are quietly sold off to MacDonalds and Murdoch, EMA grants are slashed and youth unemployment is at it's highest since records began, the genius of the Pob-Gove keeps us all just outraged enough over bibles and yachts that we don't notice.

I could go on and on, but this wounded government are in a corner and it makes them dangerous. Expect a steady stream of unbelievable headlines and here's a thought, if they sound unbelievable, they probably are.

We're in a recession. NOW. A deep deep recession almost entirely re-started by THIS GOVERNMENT
Sick and Disabled people are being forced back 40 years by  THIS GOVERNMENT, NOW
Our schools are being sold off NOW to businesses by THIS GOVERNMENT
Our NHS is being privatised NOW by THIS GOVERNMENT

It is THIS GOVERNMENT, NOW who are presiding over rising crime, rising waiting times for medical treatment, fewer police officers, the rationing of justice, record unemployment, the destruction of business confidence, the highest debt since records began, failing to meet their deficit reduction targets, sacking teachers, decimating pensions, utterly failing on immigration and Europe, returning elitism to education, the persecution of sick disabled people, millions more quietly eased into the 40p tax rate..... shall I go on? Did they not give us quite enough to be going on with?

Of course they want to distract us. "Look! over there! a Jubilee-Celebrity-Get-Me-Over-To-Essex!!!!"

"Hey, people! Look, an Olympics-Factor-Bake-Off!!!"

But really, the most sniggerful of all must be "Here's what we'll do after the next election" A reasonable response would simply be "Over my dead body" Campaigners must surely spend every waking moment ensuring that not only do they not get to do anything at all after the next election, but hopefully, that they can never, ever , EVER be elected again.

We can only do that by doing what we do best. Focusing on our own issues, the issues we are experts in. Issues affecting millions of people NOW. Never being distracted by ludicrous soundbites and party-rallying proposals. We can repeat the mistakes of the 80s or we can keep our heads down, keep writing the same stories, exposing the same injustices, reaching out ever further to engage with those who as yet have no idea.

We have to win hearts and minds. We have to show that our version of reality is the accurate one. By doing that, we make the government look ever more desperate, ever more hunted.

They are the rabbit from the song above, and we are hunting them down. All the clever PR and spin in the world should not be able to turn that situation around.

Disability Debate - A Sketch

Well, I'm not really sure what to say.

An alien arriving in the middle of the Labour Opposition Day disability debate today would have found it very hard indeed to learn anything of any note at all.

He would surely have come away confident of two things. All sick and disabled people work in Remploy factories and the two tribes of this planet hate each other very much.

He might have been puzzled by how long lists of statistics seemed to make the case for totally incompatible claims. Yet each side seemed so convincing! Each did such a good job! It was almost as though the job mattered more than the actual subject matter. Everyone loved these disableds though, that's for sure.

Well apart from the ones who couldn't work.

But they all made such a good case for how much they loved the disableds! How could either tribe be right about how much the other side hates them? It couldn't all be true?

I feel sort of deflated. What was this pantomime parody of 10 million lives? It was like watching a nativity play version of Hamlet. It seemed somehow unrelated to reality.

To be fair, I must confess I missed Anne McGuire and John McDonnell, the headline acts, but by that time I'd already had to put down a sharp knife and step away from the arsenic. It was like watching paint dry - or was that hope die?

Kaliya Franklin said "Behave like the adults you claim to be let alone elected representatives. Stop blaming everyone else & be constructive. Dear MP's. Of ALL parties. I can do better than this semi conscious half way down a bottle of oramorph"

I can confirm this to be true. She can. And regularly does.

Tom Pollard from Mind said the debate had "created a bit of heat but very little light - no informed discussion of the real problems that need sorting out"

Dr S J Campbell, co-author of the spartacus report said "MPs don't come to debates.Those that do don't know the facts. Others only talk about 1 part of problem (Remploy)"

Perhaps the most irritatingly possible quote came from a Tory MP I'd lost the will to identify, who suggested that this wasn't in fact a debate, but a "Labour press release designed to appeal to an audience."

IDS mooed a lot in a low, sort of grunty way when he agreed with something. Otherwise he took turns smirking and looking outraged. There was something vile about watching a man causing actual outrage mimicking the expression for his own ends.

Maria Miller was chillingly good. Yes, she was. I did say good. Evil clearly, but polished-evil. This is worrying. If they've learnt to re-programme her, she might stop saying such silly things and offering us such open goals..

No-one else was there really.

Can't say I blame them.