easyMoney

If you're slightly geeky, like me, then the best time to follow me on twitter is from about 7pm when the kids go off to bed.

All day, people send me links, or I see links on my timeline, and I open them to read later. In the evening, I read them all and comment. Then I have a glass of wine or two and become expansive. I splurge my opinions about the place a bit, there is usually some mocking of government ministers or random debate about banks or supermarkets or workfare or business, depending on the links I've read. 

For some time I've watched the news and seen scenes of abject horror in Greece, that nice haven of ouzo and sunburn so beloved of Brits abroad. 

Just in case you somehow missed it I want to interject here and point out that the Greeks are starving. In case you missed it. In case you thought the riots were a bit of discontent from radical troublemakers. In case it hasn't really sunk in. They're starving, they're queueing for soup kitchens and scrabbling in bins for food. They are proud people who work hard, not the profligate siesta hounds, powerful men would have us believe. They are our neighbours, our brothers and sisters. 

I wondered why Osborne and Cameron couldn't encourage us all to holiday in Greece. I mean, it would be something wouldn't it? If we all showed a little solidarity and booked our holidays in the fishing villages and tourist hot-spots of Mykonos and Athens? If we helped those proud small businesses to sell a little more olive oil or fresh seafood or ice cream? 

After a while, I had a thought. All of the countries in trouble were holiday destinations - Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal even Ireland. The one's weathering the storm were the colder, northern countries. Would it not make sense to encourage and  incentivise holidays?

There was another pressing urgency to my question - was it not better to find a joyous, uplifting way to beat this depression - would it not pay dividends in itself, easing some of the discontent between the Eurozone countries and giving people hope that there were better ways than austerity to sort this mess out? Hell, was fun automatically not an option just because it was fun? 

A few weeks ago, there were rumours of another 700 billion bailout for Eurozone banks. I had just watched Spanish banks get a bailout of more billions and the markets ate the extra money mercilessly in about 48 hours. With the press of a few buttons, the banks or markets appeared to have eaten the very money they had just created!! Nice work if you can get it eh? 

I thought it must be better to give actual human people the money to spend and have a nice time if you're just going to flush it all away anyway? 

I asked more seriously on twitter if any economists could explain to me why my holiday idea wouldn't be a better stimulus to the Eurozone than another bank bailout. 

Warning : Be careful of tipsy tweeting on twitter. Especially if you in any way suggest you might have solutions to something quite big. 

I found myself in a conversation on twitter, with the curiously well connected Declan Gaffney and some other tweeps - as you do and put my idea - couldn't we somehow incentivise countries like Germany to go on holiday to places like Greece by directing any Eurozone bailout money instead, into a scheme where it was used as spending money for tourism going directly to the local economies - the fishermen and bakers and restaurateurs so desperate for business. 

Astonishingly - and rather scarily, none of them thought it was a bad idea. At the very least they agreed it was a rather better idea than only bailing out the banks again and could be done in combination with another bailout. 

After one nice tweet from Jonathan Portes I tweeted, "See Declan my idea haz *economic credibility* #proud face" which shows you the level of a) my tipsiness and b) my lack of grown-up-ness throughout the whole chat. 

After about an hour, I checked the profiles of the clever tweeps giving me advice and found that they were  Jonathan Portes director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), Duncan Weldon, Economist and TUC Senior Policy Officer and Ian Mulhheirn, Director of the Social Market Foundation. 

Gulp. 

I tweeted "Whoops, just checked all of your profiles *rabbit in headlight face*

Which no doubt added even more to my economic credibility.  

I went to bed, embarrassed at the fact I appeared to have just tried to present an economic idea to some people who actually knew stuff about economics. Quite a lot actually. Unlike me. 

The next morning, Declan tweeted that I ought to "check my emails. Sitting down."

Jonathan Portes and Declan thought it was actually quite a good idea. One that might in fact solve quite a few problems causing the current stalemate in Eurozone economics. They wanted to pitch it to the FT!!! Who accepted it!!!!

Gulp.

They've written about it here as you can see so a huge thanks to Declan and especially to Jonathan for translating my tipsy tweeting into econospeak.

Quite incredibly, as is my luck, it turned out someone had had a spookily similar idea some time before!! The FT couldn't publish our article as they'd already published his! nonetheless, Jonathan wanted to post the article on his superb blog. But I nearly got an idea in the FT, which was awfully exciting. 

But here's a thought. I do like economics, I hate too much self effacing and dumbing down, especially from women, so I won't pretend I didn't know some very basic reasons why this could be an alternative. 

What's more, I do passionately believe that we can solve many of our current problems by swapping pain for innovation, by inspiring people rather than crushing them. and by fostering a sense of the achievable, not by state-sponsoring misery. 

Generally, new ideas can't be heard. But often, they come from nothing at all. If we just listen. 

If we listen to the patient saying how their care could be more effective and efficient, if we listen to the worker who sees the waste every day. The poor could tell us what keeps them poor and the sick and disabled could tell us how our care and support could be administered in a way that was better for us and almost certainly more cost effective. If we just listened. 

If we listened, our children could tell us what they need in school and we could act. If we listened, our staff could tell us where our businesses succeed and fail. 

And if we listened, the Greeks would tell us they want work again. They want trade and pride, and some hope. They want to feed their families.

So here's to listening, and may there be very, very much more of it. 

Netroots 2012 - Some thoughts

So Netroots was fun. Fun-fun-fun in fact.

I had forgotten to think about the logistics of getting there, which is just the sort of thing I do. On Thursday therefore, when it came to booking train tickets, I realised it would mean getting up at 5am to get to that big London and speak for 9.30. Clearly that wasn't going to happen. If it did, I would be an incomprehensible blob of stuttering exhaustion by the time I tried to open my mouth on stage.

But fear not, the chivalric order of the TUC swept in and booked me a nice hotel for the night before and took me for Chinese-food in Chinatown when I got there. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. So many thanks to John Wood and Alen who were models of organisational skill and so attentive I felt spoilt.

The squidgable, adorable Mark Ferguson was there. He went a bit sad when he told me how he'd phoned Kaliya the day I had my op and was begging for help from recovery, how a friend had walked in and asked "What on earth's wrong with you" he looked so pale. He'd replied "I'm trying to save my friend's life. It's sobering to realise that if you blog, if you pledge to make corruption and incompetence public, others feel your pain and hurt when you hurt.

Netroots was a bit bit exciting! Packed with people, I soon met Matthew Smith (@indigojo_uk) Jamie Cartwright (epipsychidion86) Emma Round (@pseudodeviant) Jamie Robertson from Scope (jae2k1025) and Lisa Egan (@lisybabe)

It's sooooo odd to finally meet people you feel you "know" so well online but have never met in the flesh. Odd-diddly-odd-odd it is. Nice though - you get over the shock of faces that aren't quite the ones in your head quite soon.

Then it was time for my speech. I hadn't really prepared one - I never usually do. I just sort of stood up and told the Spartacus story - you know, the mess we were in for so long, how we decided to fight back, how we made Lord Fraud pooh his little pants - all of that stuff. I got a lovely long round of applause after, that made me blush and wave my hand in a stoppy-kind-of-awwwww-shucks way, but that just turned it into a slow hand clap of appreciation that made me sink into me chair and blush more. (Incidentally, Netroots, massive chair fail - they were sort of slanty downy and slippery, so my trousers-of-unknown-man-made-fibre kept making me slide off. Not very dignified.)

After my speech, I persuaded the disabled posse listed above to "bunk off" and get tea in the lobby to catch up. Matthew nobly took on the job of chief munchie gatherer and got us all delicious little jammy shortbreads from the Sainsbury's just down the road. It felt very nice for the guys in the wheelchairs and us others of indistinguishable disabilities to be the naughty kids. Somehow appropriate.

Then, I bunked off from bunking off and went for lunch with the incomparable Declan Gaffney (@djmgaffneyw4) author of the government busting statistical stuff from Spartacus Report. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. Declan has taken it upon himself to provide unofficial PA support to Kaliya and I whenever we are in London and carried my bags, pushed me in a chair when it all got too much, escorted me all the way back to Victoria when the time came to go home and saw me safely on to the train. What a thing eh?

Anyway, we went back to the conference in time for the final session - lots of 5 minute segments on different ways to campaign effectively online, all rounded off with a barnstorming speech from Owen Jones. There was a race to the free bar after and much schmoozing - the bit everyone really goes to these things for. There may have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say.

I had an odd day. It's strange to walk into a very crowded room of people who all know who you are. It's slightly discombobulating to be "someone" when, clearly, in real life I am no-one at all, just me. It's peculiar to be a bit famous in my own lunch break.

Blogging gives you anonymity on the whole. None of the people I know in "real life" think of me as famous. But in the rarified atmosphere of a political conference, I'm constantly surprised by how many people know what we did, by the awe they treat "the disabled" with now. We are a force to be reckoned with my friends! We are seen as the indomitable; no longer the downtrodden. We are feted as the very model of kick-ass campaigners. People read our report and look at the amendments we won in the Lords and shake their heads in admiration. It's all very Alice in Wonderland. They listen to how we harnessed the might of the internet and they take notes!!!

Wriggling with discomfort, I deflected compliments with very poor grace.

My life has changed, I'm finding it awfully hard to comprehend. Spending, as I do, so much time tucked up in my pjs, blogging from bed, I'm not exactly sure who this other me is - she probably doesn't exist, but in the eyes of very many people she does - we do - and it takes some getting used to.

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"