Jeffs posts
tories hay the;; the truth hmmm Sweeping cuts to school meal eligibility have been waved through in a Commons vote.
Nobody will lose a free school meal because of the changes to Universal Credit. That’s what the Tories said.
They said the change would make more people eligible.
Numerically, that is accurate.
But it doesn’t mean nobody will lose out.
The truth is exactly as was stated at the time the change was introduced – 160,000 vulnerable pupils will lose free school meals.
The fact that 210,000 others will gain them does not make this fact any less unpalatable.
Tens of thousands of poorer kids will find free school meals swiped from their plates under the Tories’ flagship welfare shake-up.
The ongoing rollout of Universal Credit will see 160,000 children – one in eight who received the handout through the old system – denied the hot lunch after the switch, according to experts.
Only youngsters from families on UC with net earnings below £7,400 a year will get free school meals.
IFS [Institute for Fiscal Studies] research economist Tom Waters said: “The change in the structure of the benefits system inherent in Universal Credit … creates a substantial number of losers, but also a greater number of winners, with children of lone parents and of working parents especially likely to gain entitlement.”
Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: “Ministers claimed time and time again that nobody would lose a meal under their plans, but the IFS have revealed that one in eight children who were eligible before Universal Credit could find their meals taken away once the Tories’ plans are imposed in full.”
Posted by jeffrey davies on 07 April 2018
Jeffs posts
I cannot explain adequately what it is like to be terminally ill. To be told that the thing that is causing you so much pain and trouble is unbeatable, that you have lost the fight and your time will soon be over.
I cannot express the emotions. I’m not that good at writing. But, after talking with the other Walking Dead (our gallows humour name for my new found soon-to-die friends) it seems we all had the same thought the instant we were told – who will look after ‘X’ now? You see, we are all bread winners or primary carers and the idea that our loved ones, who rely on us for so much, are going to be alone and vulnerable terrifies us.
It also makes us angry and ashamed. Angry at this thing is going kill us and ashamed that we are too pathetic to stop it.
When you have to face mortality there are a hundred ways of doing so. And I’ve seen them all. Done some of them too, with the numerous false alarms I’ve had. You can’t avoid them when you are in waiting rooms and on wards where the words ‘Pallative Care’ are used. I should have died 2 years ago. They don’t know why I ain’t dead. They think its the chemo. I think its my hyperbolic rage* (* see Twitter)
But there is something I have seen time and again that I can’t bounce back from and its something that I also wish I had the adequate skills and words to properly explain.
When someone who is terminally ill is screwed over their benefits.
Eighty terminally ill people a month are found to be ‘fit for work’ and go onto die within six weeks of that expert finding.
And if that isn’t bad enough, more terminally ill people lose their benefits because they haven’t died quickly enough.
When you are too ill to work it is horrific. When are too dying to work its even worse.
The worry and self-loathing at being so inadequate is all consuming. I cannot tell you how bad. How will you eat? Pay bills, go out? And worse..how will ‘X’ eat, pay their bills, get what they need?
Those benefits aren’t a necessity, they are a candle in the black, a spark of hope, one less worry that a dead man/woman has to carry.
And then its taken away.
It truly is a form of torture. People who should be spending what time they have left living now have to spend it fighting. Feeling even more pathetic, more inadequate, more ashamed and worst of all a terrible burden.
The dying are a burden. You have NO idea how that feels.
It is said that suicide rates among those on welfare have jumped incredibly high. I know it is true.
If someone is dying and frightened, finding them fit-for-work says two things.
1) You are a burden on your family
2) You are a lying parasite.
They cut Cancer benefits too.
Now imagine how it feels when the State tells you that you need to hurry up and die. Because, they’ve spent money on you. And its not good enough that a parasite like you is still here.
I (and 2 nurses) had to talk a 40 year old terminally ill man from suiciding after being told he hadn’t died and so was being punished.
He was a burden to his suffering family, you see. They’d be better off if he was gone.
I’ve held the old, the young and the middle-aged whilst their souls shatter. Not dead yet. Not dying enough. Not enough pain, not enough invalidity, not enough cancer.
I hate the Tories.
I really do mean that.
It is the Tories who are doing this.
And sometimes I hate you.
Because you let them.
I try to tweet this about this stuff. It might be my tweets are crap. Fair enough. But those tweets are completely ignored.
Just as the torture of the terminally ill is normally ignored. We don’t have loud voices.
We don’t have the energy to fight death and fight our torturers.
And we are ignored. As I write this, Labour is fighting itself over Antisemitism. Started by a comment over a mural.
People even marched. I would love to march.
I would march for every forgotten soul killed and tortured by Tory policy. I would march for the 120000.
And NO Labour MP or activist would march with me (confession – as I write this, I am actually crying. The betrayal that I feel, is more painful than the cancer eating my lungs)
I remember there was a time when Labour MPs actually did bring our plight to the Commons.
And the Tories laughed.
They.
Laughed.
Centrists like Jess Phillips want us to hug a Tory. Its mature and adult she says.
They. Laughed. At. The. Dying.
Centrists like Stella Creasy rolled their eyes when someone said Tory policy was killing people.
They. Have. Killed. 120000. Vulnerable. People.
Centrists like Wes Streeting went on a march with Norman Tebbit and the DUP because of a commeny about a mural.
He ignores every invitation by disabled activists to march with them.
John Mann staged a fight with Ken Livingstone at the BBC.
He blocked me, when I politely asked him to not abstain on a Welfare Bill that would harm my disabled brother. So did John Mann, Tom Watson and Rachel Reeves.
Did I mention that I now loathe Centrist Labour MP’s?
I learned to. I didn’t before 2010.
Whilst Labour fights over antiSemitism we go in to April
Another 80+ people will die within 6 weeks of being found fit for work. Their last days on Earth will be filled with worry and stress about money and shame and self loathing.
More disabled people will attempt suicide. A lot will be successful. Only their families and the coroner will notice. Labour won’t. The media will for a minute. But smearing the Labour Leader is more important. The Tories will laugh.
Remainers tell me they aren’t voting Labour because of Brexit. They are proud that this will ensure another Tory government and teach Labour a lesson!
It will certainly teach the dying a lesson. I don’t care much for remainers either. The Left are just as bad.
They ignore us just as much. They want to fight over Brexit and deselections and anything other than what is happening to us. I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn knows we exist. Or are important enough to be in his manifesto.
Even though the UK is the only country to be condemned by the UN for human rights abuses against the disabled.
A disabled writer once likened our deaths to genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I don’t care if you think it is hyperbole. I do often wonder if he was right.
I also remember, when I was doing my degree, coming across a school exam from Germany 1938
Paraphrasing one of the questions, it asked ‘If the State has to pay X amount to keep a non-contributing, weak disabled person alive and there are X amount of these people burdening the State, how much would be saved for true Germans if there were no disabled people in Germany?
Feel free to think me hysterical. I will be in the waiting room trying to comfort the latest victim of Tory Britain.
Last week a lady was in the waiting room holding back tears. She had been found fit for work. She is dying.
She told me she had voted Tory all her life. She wanted to know why were they doing this to us?
I could have said lots of things. I gave her the truth. I don’t know. It hurts. And no one cares.
A.S.
Since I posted this on Twitter I have been overwhelmed by the love and support I have received.
One last thing. A few years ago a young pundit caught my eye on BBC Question Time. He looked Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of our suffering, straight in the eye and read out to him a list of those who had died. IDS was furious, Dimbleby shot this pundit down but this young pundit did something no other had done in the media. Faced IDS down with what he was responsible for.
His name is Owen Jones. Whether you agree with his politics or not, whether you like him or not, he is one of the few, the very few who ever spoke up for us.
I owe him that recognition.
Here is a bit of that moment
Posted by jeffrey davies on 06 April 2018
jeffs posts
YOU can prevent the DWP interfering in the patient/doctor’s relationship
News Add comments
Apr
04
2018
The DWP has issued a new ESA65B, the form used to inform a patient’s GP of their WCA outcome. This form which requests GPs not to send any further fit notes for ESA purposes after a claimant has been found fit for work, unless they appeal had already been at the centre of a controversy. James Harrison died 10 months after being found fit for work and after the jobcentre asked his GP not to issue further fit notes for ESA purposes. James Harrison wanted a fit note because he was too ill to attend the jobcentre appointments, but his GP refused to issue them.
The new ESA65B form which is headed ‘Help us support your patient to return to or start work’ has an added paragraph
In the course of any further consultations with [Title] [First name] [Surname] we hope you will also encourage [select] in [select] efforts to return to, or start, work.
It is all in keeping with DWP’s mantra that not only work is good for health, but also should be a ‘health outcome’. There are many reasons why this is wrong and DR Jay Watts, Consultant clinical psychologist, lists some of them:
Health professionals across the country will be horrified at this latest interference from the DWP – a move that undermines clinical expertise and threatens the safety of patients. There are a number of problems. First the letter places the expertise of DWP-funded ESA assessors above that of GPs. This is despite the fact GPs are more qualified to assess mental health, and can do so with the benefits of having known the patient for years, often decades (as opposed to in a one-off assessment). The DWP letter makes clear that they wish claimants to return to work at any cost, even if that means leaving a current occupation – an attack on the core identity of patients likely to have a damaging effect on mental health. Second, the letter states that “we know most people are better off in work”. This ignores a considerable literature showing that work can be damaging for mental health, with poor work environments a frequent trigger to mental breakdown. Economic evidence shows that rushing people back into work increases the likelihood of long-term illness. How then can it be right to encourage GPs to coerce patients back to work, a pressure likely to increase the feelings of shame, despair and anxiety at not working that have been exacerbated by the governments relentless and damaging campaign to associate worklessness with worthlessness? Third, the pressure the DWP is exerting on GPs to ‘encourage’ patients back to work, and desist from providing fit notes, is an attack on clinical expertise and the sanctity of the clinical space and clinical decision-making. Without a firm denouncement of this letter from Royal College of General Practitioners, we risk a situation where claimants will feel unwilling to make appointments with their GPs, given the level of fear the DWP and the work agenda elicits, with damaging and potentially life-threatening effects on the physical and mental health of claimants. It is vital that health professionals speak up for claimants rights, and insist that fit notes and therapeutic conversations are dictated by the needs of patients not the DWP.
WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?
You can make sure that your GP does not receive this letter and is not informed of your WCA outcome. This is sensitive personal data and the DWP needs your consent to share it as show here in this FOI request. There are several steps you need to take to refuse your consent:
1) You need to refuse to give your consent when you are completing your ESA50. On page 21 of the ESA50 form, under the “Other information” box you will write:
I DO NOT consent/agree to my doctor or any doctor treating me,
being informed about the Secretary of State’s
determination on
– limited capability for work
– limited capability for work-related activity
or being sent a summary of the Limited Capability for Work Assessment.
And you need to remove/strike out the text on the ESA50 form in the Declaration section page 22, that covers allowing the DWP to notify the person’s GP. The ESA50 form used for this is this form
AND
2) Because you cannot be sure that the ESA50 form will be read by DWP, you need to write to the benefit centre which processes your claim, to inform them that you refuse to give your consent to share the WCA outcome with your GP, or any doctor. You will find a proforma letter to do so at the end of this article.
If you forgot to amend the ESA50 form in order to refuse your consent, you can still write to the DWP/benefit centre after every ESA50 form submitted and or after every WCA undertaken asking them not to share your WCA outcome with your GP.
This is heavily drawn from Frank Zola’s article on the same subject, which also provides more information and template letters to help you to refuse your consent. t/
That should stop the DWP interfering in the doctor/patient’s relationship and destroying the trust which exists between them and also stop the DWP from exerting pressures on GPs in a way which can be detrimental for their patients.
Template letter
[Your full address]
[The date]
Department for Work and Pensions
[Address of your local JCP office]
[Enter Your National Insurance Number]
Dear Sir or Madam
RE: Consent, ESA50 and my Work Capability Assessment (WCA)
I write to confirm that I do not consent to my or any doctor being informed of any determination related to:
limited capability for work
limited capability for work-related activity
I am asserting my rights under the Data Protection Act (1998), as the Department requires my explicit consent to share said determination with my or any Doctor/GP, as it is my sensitive personal data.
Please write to me to acknowledge receipt of this letter and confirm that my records have been updated on the appropriate IT systems.
On your ESA50 form, a copy of which I have retained, I have removed/ struck-out the part of the declaration section that states:
“I agree to my doctor or any doctor treating me, being informed about the Secretary of State’s determination on
– limited capability for work
– limited capability for work-related activity, or
– both”
If I change my mind in the future I will write to the Department to advise it. I will not notify the Department of any change via the ESA50 form and should there be any doubt this letter should always take precedent.
Yours faithfully
[Signature]
Posted by jeffrey davies
on 05 April 2018
jeffs posts
For those watching the government squirm lie about the poisoning of Russian father and daughter read below
Craig Murray was our ambassador to Uzbekistan, before he fell foul of the government and establishment for standing up and recommending that we shouldn't do deals with them because it was an oppressive dictatorship. Murray's been fiercely criticising the official line that the substance used to poison the Skripals was manufactured in Russia. In this short interview with RT, which is just over five minutes long, he further tears apart the government's accusations of Russian responsibility.
Murray states that he was told by people in the Foreign Office two weeks ago that they couldn't say that Russia manufactured the poison. He talks about how there was pressure on Porton Down to say it was Russian, but the latest statement by the government slightly amending their stance is nothing more than information management. The government was aware that the International Chemical Weapons Authority were going to issue a statement that there is no evidence the Russians were responsible, and so modified their own statements about it accordingly. The RT interviewer asks him about the poison, and whether it is so complex and difficult to manufacture that it requires the resources of a state. Murray replies that there are at least half a dozen states that could manufacture the Novichoks nerve agent. As for it being too complicated for anyone, he cites Prof. Collum in New York, a chemist, who said that any of his postgraduate students could have made it.
He also talks about a film that has been broadcast stating the government's opinion on the poisoning. He observes that the end of the film looks like it has been tacked on. It is as though the film makers were also pressured to add a bit more to their film in order for it to support the government's line.
The RT interviewer then mentions that Murray was an ambassador to Uzbekistan, and asks if the Uzbeks could have manufactured the poison. Murray repeats that half a dozen states could, and says that there was indeed a chemical weapons plant in Uzbekistan. This was dismantled by the Americans, and he attended the party that was held when they had finished the job. The materials were then taken back to America, so the Americans certainly have the ability to manufacture the poison. The facility, however, was soviet, not Russian, and there were people of many nationalities working in it, including Ukrainians. They have now returned to the Ukraine, so that country now possesses the knowledge and ability to manufacture the poison.
He also tears apart the statement of one other country, which denied that they produced the poison. He notes that they didn't say that they couldn't make it, only that it wouldn't have come from them, because their security was too tight.
Murray states that what is needed in Salisbury poisoning is a proper criminal investigation with all the resources these have. But this has not been done. Instead, the government has leapt in, with little thought or evidence, to accuse the Russians in order to increase the Cold War tensions with Russia and create a confrontation with them.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 04 April 2018
