Its were the system fails!

I do not apologise for the title of this post, in truth I wanted to take it further. I have turned into a Spelling Pedant!

Reading an item posted on facebook today, I had to mentally replace "there" with "their" and "where" with "were" on so many occasions it made me feel physically ill.  I fully realise that not everyone is blessed with a decent education in the UK, but please people, if you are going to write in English, use the right words.

I must have been so lucky in my education that I was taught where to use the right homonym.  There are several ways to remember which spelling is required for the correct meaning to be conveyed, it's a case of finding the one that works for you.

For example, one of the worst culprits is the easiest to remember:

THERE/THEIR/THEY'RE

• There - is not HERE.
• Their - that person is the HEIR, the item is tHEIR property.
• They're = They are - the apostrophe is here to take the place of missing letters.

WHERE/WERE/WEAR/WE'RE

• Where - it is not HERE, wHERE is it?
• Were - They wERE here ERE they left.
• Wear - You wEAR glasses over your EAR.
• We're = We are - the apostrophe is here to take the place of missing letters.

So you can see that with a little simple thought and care homonyms can be tamed. (sEE with your EyE not sEA that meets the bEAch.) [oh, and that was mEEt as in sEE not mEAT as in EAT]

The biggest drawback with homonyms is that you the user has to know how to use them as a spell-checker will see "We wear here" as correct as "we were here".

So please, people, take care and learn the differences, and make sure you use the right word.  I know some will knock my use of grammar in the examples I have given, but if it works, it works!

The turn has wormed!

Yes, OK, I know that it should be the worm that has turned, but in the two months since I last wrote on this blog things have changed a little and it's not me that changed.

So there was I, at the end of my tether, DLA had been denied, ESA on Assessment Rate while I appealed and the thud of paper hitting my doorstep threatened to break my floorboards.  Wait five weeks and the date for the appeal into my ESA arrived. Nice and close, BRIGHTON!

In case you don't already know, Hastings is 52 miles away from Brighton and like most people asked to visit a town or city so far away I do not know the layout of it.  So, thanks to my dad, I bought a train ticket and got some cash for the taxis and some food.

The day arrived, fortunately as I was about to walk to the station (600m to the platform) so I was going to be in agony before the day started, and my darling daughter turned up to drop her mother off, so I begged a lift and cut out 400m of the walk!

I got to Brighton, fell off the train (at the wrong end) and hobbled to the exit.  Unfortunately, Brighton station is designed so that you have to walk across 20 m to get to the ticket barrier and then back 20 m to get to the taxis, which I sort of bypassed and went and got a coffee.  Great little coffee bar in the old waiting room with the imaginitive name of "The Waiting Room", nice staff and nice coffee.  So then I downed some instant hit Tramadol (those that I get sent into the country from Spain) and shuffled off to get a taxi for the mile to the tribunal centre.

So, there is our hero, arriving at the tribunal centre with his customary early arrival - 30 minutes in this case, and the security man says "Really early sir!  You're due to be here in 2 and a half hours!"

"No," Says I, "my appointment is for 2 pm.  If they don't like it, they can get me a chair to sit in because I am not sitting on that sofa, as there's no way I'll ever get out of it!"

He dials a number on his telephone and I am soon greeted and taken to the Tribunal Service office and shown into a waiting room.  Barely had I sat when a clerk with his shirt hanging out from the back of his trousers called me in to the hearing room.

Quick little chat with a GP and a judge about how things were and how they are (I told the GP that Arthritis is a degenerative illness and yes, over the last 18 months it had got worse).  How do you manage to do things, like shopping? We have it delivered, I can drive to the supermarket, but can barely walk round it.

"How do you grip the steering wheel?" asked the judge.  The next day I nearly died at the answer I gave!  "I don't grip the steering wheel, you don't grip a steering wheel, if you do and hit a pothole you're going into the kerb or a car, anyone that says you grip the steering wheel should go back and learn to drive!"  It was the next day I realised the judge had blushed!

"Go sit down again and we'll make our decision." Eh, what? I haven't had a chance to put my side of the argument over, I haven't had a chance to point out the 22 errors in the Atos report!  If you have a complaint about Atos, you'll have to take it up with them!

So, I go back to the waiting room, take my bag off my shoulder sit down and the clerk comes back!  I was escorted back to the hearing room and there on the table was a piece of paper with "Appeal is allowed"!  Mr Turtle is hereby awarded 15 points! 6 more than the original decision.

Now all I have to do is wait for the money to go into my bank for the backdated money that they owe me, including TWO Christmas bonuses - a whole twenty pounds!  Ten pounds for each Christmas, a measly fiver for me and a fiver for my wife!  This amount was instigated way, way back many decades ago when £10 filled a shopping trolley, now it will pay the delivery fee for the shopping and the electricity to heat the house on Christmas day!  Still, the government know the use of a ten pound note, it's used to light a cigarette, well, you can't light a cigar with a £10 it's way too small!

Still, my 18 month fight against the system has been won and now I have to fill in the 40 page form for Personal Independence Payment. I did 5 pages last night, I might go for 5 tomorrow that'll be a fortnight to fill in the whole form!  Don't these people realise we're disabled and we didn't choose to be!

Poetry Day UK

Today is #PoetryDayUK apparently, and my friends that tweet on behalf of WoWPetition suggested a WoW Petition Poetry book.  Good idea, if it gets people using poetry.

Poetry is a much maligned form of communication, it takes a lot of thought and a fair smattering of vocabulary.  It can't take a lot of brains as Rappers do it (sorry Rappers).

So I thought I'd better get started, and, as a fair shot, I decided to blog a one-hit poem about disability.  I promise you the poem below came out in one go, no editing and re-editing like I have the first few paragraphs! Oh, I will come back and add a title, the poem will suggest it.

Hidden Pain

It can't be seen or measured up,
It can't be cured with a click,
It can't be fixed by a suture's stitch
Or by visiting a local witch.

The government think it really simple,
You can see it like a dimple.
Pain comes upon a simple scale
Like a colour dark or pale.

Now think real hard just for me
About some pain that used to be
Now on a scale of one to ten
Say how it hurt and when?

So if I walk for twenty yards
Tomorrow's pain is on the cards
But I can do it so you see,
DLA is not for me!

Getting Ground Down By The System

Quick recap for those of you who may not know me:

I am 50 years old, I have been suffering with a dislocating knee cap and arthritis in my right knee until 2009 when they replaced the knee joint.  This has now put the weight off the left leg which is now suffering from an arthritic condition.  The arthritis now affects my arms so I can hardly scratch my own head, I am stuck in my basement and ground floor maisonette with only my car to get me about outside.

The DWP decided last year to reassess me for ESA, and sent out their 21 page form the ESA50.  Half way through is a question that I misunderstood and that got me into BIG trouble.  First off, in concert with the French Data Processing company ATOS, they based a decision on a report with a minimum of 21 errors and my stupid error and said I am fit for work.

Then the DWP set a person, who to my knowledge has done nothing in their life other than work for the DWP and has no medical knowledge, to look at my Disability Living Allowance.  Based on the report with a minimum of 21 errors and my stupid error they said I am not eligible for DLA.

I do a voluntary job on Tuesdays, on Wednesday I am in bed until about 11am trying to get moving as I am so stiff and painful.  Many nights, I don't get to sleep because I am in pain until 2 am, but do they care about that?  No.

So, as you would, I put in an appeal against the decision to class me as fit for work as far as ESA is concerned, when the decision about the DLA came through, I appealed against that.

Now, twelve months after the so called Work Capability Assessment, I have not yet had my appeal for ESA heard, but the Tribunal Service have drawn a line under my DLA appeal - Not Approved. Basically, Mr Turtle, you have had two 36 mile round trips two towns over on the South Coast and had to climb a massive flight of stairs at the hotel that the tribunal was held at, all for nothing!!!

So I had a quick chat with the DWP representative about what to do, his answer, Shut Up and Put Up, until the ESA Appeal is heard, they may give you points and you can appeal your DLA again!

Alright for him to say, he doesn't realise what I am facing. He doesn't realise what I am about to lose.

Unless I can find a way round it, I will lose my car, therefore, I will lose my mobility, therefore I will be trapped inside this house with no way to get out and about, therefore I will lose my voluntary job, therefore I will have nothing to keep my mind occupied, therefore I will lose my sanity!  But I'm FIT FOR WORK!

There's the good news, I can get a job that allows me to move about when I stiffen up, will allow me twice the time of a "normal" person to walk down the corridor to the photocopier/break room etc. and allow me to be taking close to an overdose on Tramadol.  Then, on the day after I get into work, they will allow me a day off to recover from the first day, so, possibly, I could work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  So does anyone know anywhere that will pay me five days pay for a three day week? (Apart from being an MP)

I just wish there was some way of temporarily inflicting the pain I feel, the fuzzy head making me question everything I do, the feeling of "have I remembered to do all I had to do", on some one so that they can understand what I am going through.  The frustration I feel when I reach for something in a cupboard that I can no longer reach, and it's only just above eye-level.  The anger that I cannot keep up with my wife or grandchildren when we are out and about.  The way I scream inside my own head at night, so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, but the pain is so great that I cannot get off to sleep. The useless feeling I get when the weight of my laptop sends needles of pain through my knees and I have to put a tray on a cushion on my lap with the laptop on to ease it.

So here am I, wondering if I have the internal strength to carry on, wondering why everything is mounting up against me, wondering why my MP is such an uncaring sheep she follows the lies and mistruths that the Prime Minister and his cabinet keep spouting without question.  Why do all these politicians listen to the lies that are spouted and don't question them I do not understand.

It's a simple thing to go on-line and check on the lies that the government are spouting, it's easy to spot when David Cameron is lying, it's when he's talking about caring, "Being in this together", or benefit claimants in general.  I am still looking for the proof of "The test of a good society is you look after the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society. And that test is even more important in difficult times, when difficult decisions have to be taken, than it is in better times." as said by David Cameron on the Andrew Marr Show on 2nd May 2010.  Three years later and we're getting to see that his society is a BAD one.

Another week has gone by - thank God!

If I have any regular readers, you will note that I have been less forthcoming with my comments lately.  There's a very good reason for this, or as I would have typed a week ago " h   's a      good  eason fo   his", basically, the old laptop had a keyboard explosion, 8 keys had lost their buttons.  I struggled on, even to the length of borrowing a plug-in keyboard, but, have you tried using a keyboard on top of a keyboard?

So, when MrsT's laptop decided to start issuing blue smoke, I went a-begging of the paternal parent.  Two laptops later and we're back on-line.

So now I have to try and get used to, not just a new keyboard layout, but a new operating system, Windows 8!  So far, I have only found use for one or two things on the so-called "Metro" screen, the Google shortcut I added is weird, the twitter and facebook shortcuts are so "Retro", I feel as if it were back in the first few months of facebook going global.

Internet Explorer 10 keeps crashing, and I thought they would have had the glitches sorted already!  So, the most used shortcut from the "Metro" screen is the "Desktop".  But those users of the earlier Windows system will know and love the "Start" Button, the first point of call for closing the computer down, has gone! Still, Microsoft have given a simple way of turning off the computer from any screen.

Half of my programs that I used to use are 32 bit, so won't run on a 64 bit machine!  Why MS didn't allow for this beggars belief.  We're in a global recession, not enough time for the Software houses to get their act in gear to provide 64 bit versions of all their systems and not enough money to buy it if they had!

Still "Nil carborundum illegittimi" as the pig Latin phrase goes.

So, we have the ultimate in sporting weekends, mid-way through (yawn) Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix of Formula One Motor-Racing, the second Rugby test for the British Lions and the start of the Tour de France.  I'm surprised the Cricket world hasn't got a big match on!

With a little bit of a fight for the remote, I got the TV onto the start of the cycling and the Mrs sitting there on her sofa looks up and says "Ooh, is that an easyJet team?", "No dear," I said trying not to be too patronising as all the participants in her choice all wear all white, "that's the Basque cycling team sponsored by a phone company, Euskatel-Euskadi!"

Pity that the Basques are so proud of their region that they won't let an airline that doesn't serve their area aid sponsoring their cycling team.  Or Blogger, the people that host this blog, their "corporate" colour is orange too.

Cycling is a strange sport, the female of the species is as fierce as the male, we saw that last year at the Olympic Games.  If we're lucky we see it if ITV4 show the National Championships as they did last week.  It's a heck of a sport, and you have to be an amazingly fit person to do it, my hat is off to every sport cyclist.

It amazes me when footballers scream for millions of pounds wages per year when they will play two or three matches a week.  The 198 cyclists facing the 3,404 kilometres (2115mi 259.65yd) over the next 23 days with only two days rest and will be in the saddle for about 90 hours.  Each stage (other than the time trials) will be about 200km (124.274miles) long and at the end of seven of them there will be (hopefully) a sprint finish with speeds reaching 60 km/h (38 mph) on the flat, on a pushbike!!!

I know I ask many people to appreciate what it's like for disabled people, but can you imagine riding a bicycle for six hours and then being able to push it to nearly forty miles an hour?  After driving that distance, I want to lie down and have a rest, (OK at the moment, I want to do that after 20 minutes), but when I was younger and fitter, I would have.

So, what's the rest of what's happening? I'm still preparing for round two of my DLA appeal, I'm still waiting for the ESA appeal and it's now a year since the Atos Assessment. 

Life, the Pain and the Medication!

As a follower of the Diary of a Benefit Scrounger - Sue Marsh's views on life I read with a growing awareness that her blog And Drugs Don't Work They Just Make Things Worse mirrored my life. 

I am fairly fortunate that my GP understands how much I respect the lack of control that some medication gives, the fact that some of the medication he has me on is OK for some parts of my life, but doesn't quite help out at the times I need it to.  Yes, my GP has agreed to let me control some of my medication with the clear knowledge and understanding that I do respect the maximum daily dose. 

Through this, I have now been able to adapt my medication levels to the extent that I can manage to cope with my voluntary job on a Tuesday. This is a good thing.

The negative side to being able to cope with Tuesday is to lose Wednesday.  I don't do Wednesdays very well, it takes until about 2 p.m. for the near overdose of Tramadol on the Tuesday to clear out of my head enough for me to feel safe driving (I just pray I don't get a drug test when driving on Wednesdays). 

In addition to the loss of Wednesdays and the fuzzy headedness is the disbelief of my wife.  Yep, she that must be obeyed can not get her head around the fact that I can cope on Tuesday but not through the rest of the week.

The other really annoying thing about pain, that thing that I have tickling away at my nerve endings even now as I sit here feeling no pain, thanks to the meds, is describing it.  Every Health Care Professional wants to know how much pain I'm in on a scale of one to ten.  I don't know, I seem to remember the pain I had when my knee dislocated as being the worst I can remember.  Now this being the most, it should be a ten.  Now I have to think where my pain level is compared to that?  At times it seems more as it lasts longer. 

Is it as bad as hitting my thumb with a hammer (about a four)?  Is it as bad as breaking a rib (about a seven)?  Is it as bad as slicing my arm open when falling through a plastic gutter (6)? Is it as bad as ... ? That's my interpretations, what is someone else's?

I can understand 30°C temperature, I've felt it.  I've felt it in the south of Spain, I've felt it in the South of France (well in the Pyrenees), I've felt it in the south of England.  Three places where the temperature at ground level was the same.  Oh no it isn't!  In Spain, it's warm.  In France it was tolerable.  In the UK, however, it's stifling, to hot to breathe.

We can measure temperature, we can measure blood pressure, we can count the number of pulses in a minute. We can do all these things, and do them accurately and repeatedly.  So why can't we measure pain accurately?

Religious Hatred

After the brutal killing of Drummer Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Woolwich by two misguided people, attacks have been made on mosques and muslims in the UK.

Why?

Why are people so focussed on Islam? 

Why are there so many Muslims so angry against everything?

I cannot see what difference there is between a Muslim extremist of today or an IRA activist from the 1970's.  Yet, when the IRA set off a bomb in Canary Wharf in 1996 killing two, and injuring 39 others, no-one went to Westminster Cathedral and smashed a window.  No one thumped an Irish person for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What is wrong with the world?

The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are responsible for the damage done to the reputation of the Islamic people.  They are the ones that have infiltrated the mosques to incite the hatred of some young people to such an incendiary level.  It's not a political thing.  It's not a religious thing.  It's something that has no explanation as it occurs only in the heads of people that are so unbalanced that they are looking at the world from some strange viewpoint that no sane person can understand.

I can't quote from the Q'uran, but I am sure that in that holy book, somewhere, it says that to take the life of another human being is wrong.

I can quote from the Old Testament and I know it says "You shall not kill!"

Just remember, do as you would be done by.  Love one another.  Give Peace a Chance!

Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...

Reblogged from: Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...:

Last night was the season finale of Doctor Who. I  thought it was one of the best episodes for quite some time, certainly the best of the season. But it also got me to thinking. A major theme was losing and gaining control - both for the Doctor and his current companion, Clara. And that's also a huge issue for spoonies, people with long-term illnesses that cause crippling fatigue.

The baddies in this episode were the Whispermen, who kidnap the Doctor's friends Clara, Vastra, Jenny and Strax to lure him to the one place he must never go: his grave, on the planet Trenzalore.

When we become ill, it's as if we've been kidnapped and taken to a different planet. We are snatched away from our everyday lives, held hostage by the limitations of our conditions.

There is no body in the Doctor's tomb. Instead there is a time tunnel, made of scar tissue from all the Doctor's travels through time and space. The villain of the piece, the Great Intelligence (hammed up wonderfully by Richard E. Grant) enters the time tunnel, aiming to split itself into fragments scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline and corrupt it absolutely, undoing all the good he's done.

Clara follows it into the time tunnel in an attempt to reverse the damage. Things take place around her. Previous incarnations of the Doctor run by. At first she feels out of control. She has no idea what's going on.

Gradually she works out her purpose. The Doctor is always there, though not always in the same form. She can recognise the best thing for the Doctor to do: she saves his life.

It's the same for us. At first, everything is confusion and feeling out of control. Fatigue, pain, brain fog. But gradually, a pattern emerges. We work out what to do. How to live our lives in the best possible way for ourselves and those around us. Maybe we're not saving the Doctor (or maybe you are?) but in our own way we're time lords, pacing and resting so we can do the things we really want to do.

We're the impossible girls and boys. We learn our purpose. We regain control over our lives.

We're spoonies. 

Posted by Funky Mango at 09:27 

False Imprisonment and the Government

Take a walk through this semi-hypothetical situation with me and ask yourself if you agree with me that there is a law being broken.

Joe Bloggs has arthritis, he can walk about 130 metres, however this distance is split up by repeated stops because of pain.  His nearest bus stop is 450 metres away from his home so there is very little chance he can get there.  He has a car, which thanks to "Passport" benefits, he can tax and because of the Higher Rate Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance he can use a Blue Badge to allow parking closer to buildings that he has to visit.

Now thanks to the changes in the regulations in PIP, if Ms Esther McVey, the minister for Disabled People has her way, the requirement for the Blue Badge and car tax will be drastically reduced, so much so that Joe will lose all the Passported Benefits that allow him to use his car.  As he is not able to reach the bus stop, he cannot go anywhere to do all the things he does.  His shopping will have to be done online and delivered; his visit to the Department of Work and Pensions or the Jobcentre Plus will have to be by friends giving him lifts or at the worst, he will have to forgo food so that he can use a taxi.

He will be detained within the four walls of his home. 

He will be detained against his wishes.

He will be denied the freedom to move freely through the world.

The law states that False Imprisonment is The illegal confinement of one individual against his or her will by another individual in such a manner as to violate the confined individual's right to be free from restraint of movement.

So, does that mean Joe and all the others that will have their mobility stripped from them by the changes in the regulations, simply so the government can save some money without taxing their friends the high earners, or the bankers with their ridiculous bonuses paid for simply doing their job?

Does the change in the regulations which will affect 600,000 (according to Esther McVey) be tantamount to False Imprisonment?

If so, are we entitled to compensation for this being done to us?

There are so many different ways these Welfare Reforms are wrong, they are poorly thought out, they harm those who cannot fight back, they harm those the government promised to protect, and they are being carried out in a virtual media blackout.

There has been no Cumulative Impact Assessment of Welfare Reform there needs to be one, if you haven't already signed the "WOW Petition" started by the disabled comic Francesca Martinez. please do so now at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154 and let all your friends know about it, this blog and all the harm that is being done to the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society.

Thank you, and remember, every time you see a person on crutches, with a walking stick, in a wheelchair, there, but for the grace of God, goes you.

My label.

Disabled! What an awful label, I wish I could get away from it. 

I have lost the ability to stand for long periods, I have lost the ability to get items from the top shelf in the supermarket (if I can get there), I have lost the ability to walk long distances.  I am disabled, but I don't want to be called that!


Thesaurus.com has this to say on the matter of being disabled:

Main Entry:	disabled [dis-ey-buhld]  /dɪsˈeɪbəld/ Show Spelled
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	incapacitated
Synonyms:	broken-down, confined, decrepit, disarmed, hamstrung, handicapped, helpless, hurt, incapable, infirm, laid-up, lame, maimed, out-of-action, out-of-commission, paralyzed, powerless, run-down, sidelined, stalled, weakened, worn-out, wounded, wrecked
Antonyms:	able, healthy

Let me take the synonyms step-by-step:

broken-down
That makes me sound like I'm an unkempt tramp,

confined
Close, confined to my home by the DWP thanks to them stopping my DLA.

decrepit
Isn't that a building that's falling down?

disarmed
Nope, definitely got two of them, even if the connections are killing me.

hamstrung
Erm, no, I think my strings are still attached to my hams.

handicapped
Only when meeting a lady or entering a bilding, otherwise my cap is on my head.

helpless
I have help in the form of glamorous assistant Sally, who I help in turn.

hurt
YES!!! I'll go for that, I'm definitely hurting especially in my arthritic joints.

incapable
Ah, no, I am capable of many things; I just prefer them not to be negative things.

infirm
Afraid not, just poked my tummy and it's definitely solid and firm.

laid-up
No, I'm sat up at the moment, it's not bed-time yet

lame
ah, hm, close - movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible,

maimed
Nobody did this to me.

out-of-action
If I weren't fighting the symptoms of osteoarthritis, I might go for that.

out-of-commission
Excuse me??? As all Armed Forces NCOs would say I work to survive.

paralyzed
Bah! My limbs move.

powerless
Not until the electricity prepayment meter runs out of cash.

run-down
Never in my knowledge has a car hit me and run over me.

sidelined
Never been a game player, so can't have been sidelined.

stalled
This is a house, not a stable, I'm not a horse even though my wife sometimes nags me (geddit?).

weakened
Yes, true, but so is a tree branch when half cut through.

worn-out
No, I'm not a piece of clothing.

wounded
No holes in me that shouldn't be there.

wrecked
Not sunken, not crashed, not wrecked.

 
So it looks like I can't rely on a "proper" old-fashioned word, it'll have to be more modern, more street-speak.  The problem is I don't do street-speak!

The lies that men tell live on in infamy!

The Second of May 2010 a day that should live in infamy alongside the Attack on Pearl Harbor (7 dec 1941).  A day when a prospective Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland appeared on British National Television and promised within the space of seven sentences 

" I don't want to leave anyone behind. The test of a good society is you look after the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society. And that test is even more important in difficult times, when difficult decisions have to be taken, than it is in better times. "

So there you have it David Cameron promising the nation that he would protect those at the bottom of the social heap.
 

 
Now, three years later we have
 

• Disabled people are dying because they have been told they are "Fit For Work" while they have serious heart defects or disabilities.   Is this something to be concerned about?
• The attack on the Disabled was started to reduce fraudulent claims, even when the DWP admit only 0.7% of claims were fraudulent.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• Disabled and Unemployed have had their basic benefit capped at a 1% per year rise with inflation running at over 2.5% this is a 1.5% per year reduction.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• Mobility assessments are being slashed to keep disabled people within their homes as they won't get enough to run a car, use taxis, busses or trains.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• The complex quantity of benefits that are being changed, combined, renamed or scrapped is so confusing that it takes a battery of people to explain them.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• The poor, vulnerable and frail of our society have had their right to legal representation for many actions removed from them.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• The number of disability fora and marches opposing the cuts and changes are rising.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• The changes in disability calculation and benefits are being challenged in some of the highest courts of law in the country.  Is this something to be concerned about?
• The unemployed and disabled have been branded as scroungers, it's no good retracting the statement, it's still in the general psyche.  Is this something to be concerned about?

And now, as part of a stealth attack, the government, formerly a supporter of the NHS are trying to privatise it, at the same time the previously privatised railways and steel works are failing.
 

 

 
To protest the cuts to the NHS, there's even a protestor pushing a toy pig through the streets of London using his nose.  A bit pointless, any Conservative worth their membership is too dense to understanding the symbolism.

And all along, government ministers have been misrepresenting, manipulating and massaging the truth with the use of percentages rather than numbers. 

The thing that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition is that they have forgotten the power of the people, and the internet that they are insisting the unemployed, handicapped and elderly should all have.  Or, did they underestimate this power and this record that is the internet?

Every word that people in (or soon to be in) power is recorded, written down and saved, the interview on the 2nd of May 2010, given to Andrew Marr on the BBC is transcribed, you can find it by following this link. Photographs of posters that parties use are saved on the net and the people who are being hurt by these draconian cuts are saving them on their computers.

So,

How many more lies do we have to put up with?

How many more U-turns?

How many more people dying on our shores when we send billions abroad in Foreign Aid?

Oh, and the one thing that he could have done, had he had an economist in the Treasury instead of his Bullingdon club pal History student, keep the higher rate of tax where it was.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you have a shortage of money, why take a pay cut at the same time you cut your expenses?  Or in plain English, tax the rich and cut benefits.

No Ta! I want None Of The Above

In the 1995 film "Brewster's Millions", Montgomery Brewster, played, in this incarnation by Richard Pryor, gets an idea to waste money by running for public office.  He is so fed up with the corruption that fuels the other contestants he launches his campaign to "Vote None of the Above"!

It is too late, in the film, to have the ballot sheets reprinted, so, thanks to an American voting law, the electorate is allowed to write on the sheet the party they want to vote for - NONE OF THE ABOVE.

At the conclusion of the election, even though Monty has resigned from the campaign, the electorate have responded with a massive majority for "None of the Above". 

Would this work in the United Kingdom?  Without a charismatic leader to take the peoples imaginations and spin them through myriad hoops, could the electorate get off their backsides and vote None of the Above?

The electorate in this country are disenchanted with the politicians that we have.  One bunch is doing all they can for their mates in big business, so that when they retire from politics they will have a lucrative consultants fee; the other lot lining the pockets of their rich mates so that they will employ them in a consultancy position in their big businesses and pay them a large retainer.  Which lot do we, the people want?  None of the Above!

If the country, full of apathetic voters, like the mother of the Downs Syndrome child shown on the news in the run up to the Eastleigh by-election showed, people do not vote because they get cardboard cutouts of the last lot in if they vote for the other lot.  As soon as candidates become MPs they seem to forget about their constituents and focus on their bank balance, squeezing expenses, getting paid their £1000 a week.  What do we the grass-roots voters want - None of the Above!

We want no apathy, we want people to use their vote, to elect a government that can make this country "Great" again, we are fed up of living in Britain, we want it to be Great Britain again.  We don't want these sycophantic university brats who have had little or no experience of life outside Public School and politics running our country, we want, nay need people who know what they are doing. 

Do we want a history student in charge of the Exchequer?  Do we want a soldier in charge of Benefits and Pensions?  Do we want a TV presenter representing the disabled? Do we want a director of a house building company in charge of the Armed Forces? No, we want None of the Above.

Although the Registration of Political Parties (Prohibited Words and Expressions) (Amendment) Order 2005 stipulates that no political party can be registered in the UK under the name "None of the Above", there is no legislation against a person changing their name by deed poll and appearing on the ballot paper as "None Of the Above".  This does, however, bring about problems of order on the ballot paper as "Above, None of the" would be at the top of the paper, not the bottom!  If the candidate was to change their name to "Of The Above None" they would end up in the middle.

My thought, although there can be no political party named "None of the Above", does this exclude the option being given on the ballot?  Does this preclude the option of voicing one's dissent to the political system?
I believe that a wake up call should be sent to the political parties of the United Kingdom that the time has come to stop thinking of themselves and start thinking of the well-being of the country and the people in it.  As John F. Kennedy said "ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country".  

I believe that a vote of no-confidence, not only in the Government, but also the political parties and their politicians is needed.  At the next by-election for a Constituency Seat at Westminster, or, if it comes first, a General Election, the electorate should, in all decency, spoil their ballot papers with the words "None of the Above".

So, to vote None of the Above, do not stay sat in your house on election day, this just says you are apathetic and lazy, you do not want to take part in the election process.  Get up, get out of your house, go to the polling station and vote - "None of the Above". 

Then, to highlight the choice of people in your constituency, send a letter to the returning officer of your constituency asking how many spoiled papers were spoiled with "None of the Above".  (This may be better being asked in advance of the day, so that they have a chance to set up the count for it.)  Ask your local paper to enquire how many papers were spoiled in this manner and if the constituency had in fact elected "None of the Above".

If the movement to vote "None of the Above" were to become prominent enough, it might be that the returning officers would look for this statistic to be included in their returns.  It might be that rather than using half-truths or manipulations of the truth, that Members of Parliament would again earn the right to be called "Honourable", an appellation that makes me laugh when I hear "The honourable member for Chingford and Woodford Green" mentioned.

So please, remember, when you are called to vote, get out of your house, go to the polling station and vote -

NONE OF THE ABOVE!

What's Wrong With The World?

People on low income having their benefits cut.

People on low income because of long term illness or disability being told they are fit for work by people with no medical training.

People on low income being told they have to pay more of their rent because they have a spare room.

People on low income being told they have to pay part of their Council Tax Bill.

People on High income getting Tax Cuts and therefore, more money.

And then David Cameron, our partially elected Prime Minister, goes in front of the House of Commons and says that the Reduction of Rent Benefit is "not a tax, it's a benefit."  OK, I partially agree with Mr Cameron, {Yuk} it's not a tax, it's a REDUCTION in Benefit.

But, Mr Cameron did not agree it was a reduction in benefit, he was just decrying the fact that the "Bedroom Tax" is being called a Tax, when it's a penalty.  Yes, a penalty, those people with one extra room, used for medical equipment, used for respite from a partner tossing and turning and moaning in pain, used for a child who is at University or serving our country by being sent to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Falklands at the Government's behest.

There is an old saying, "Never Corner A Wounded Animal", Mr Cameron, you have pushed and pushed the low paid and disabled back and back, into a corner, if you refuse to acknowledge the harm you are doing to a large portion of the population, you will get bitten!

There is no single set of teeth being bared against you, instead, every single disabled person who has a family has that family set against you.  Every low paid family which have family members in reasonably and high paid employment has the high, medium and low paid against you.

That is, unless, like you appear to be, they are cold heartless animals.

Stop what you are doing to this country before it is too late, before the benefit claimants turn against you, and remember please,your cuts affect servicemen and their families, there could be revolution against the Government.

Stop, now.  Freeze the pogrom of cuts against those that cannot afford cuts.  Work on a workable solution, get the fix ready, discussed and corrected, then put it in place.

Stop "Raising more money for the rich", and make this a fairer society.  You see, your own words show your inhumanity.  Is it fair that the rich get richer while the poor are slammed time and time again with benefit cuts in real money and with penalties on their homes?

Stop reducing taxes to pay for everything.  How that works, I will never understand.  You have a chance to get more money coming in to pay for everything, but don't use it!  Raise taxes, impose a penalty on anyone getting paid bonuses for doing their job. 

Oh, especially, stop people being paid £200 a day for sitting in an office, doing nothing, occasionally going to a meeting and making decisions that affect everyone in the country.  Why get three times the amount the average benefit claimant gets a week every day? 

We the striving, led by the unknowing are surviving on nothing but insults and slander.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

In the film "Independence Day", part of the speech the embattled President of the United States uses to inspire the pilots at Groom Lake (Area 51) before they fly off to repel the alien hordes got me thinking.

 

""Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! "

Is this guy trying to reach through the years and give us hope? Did the script writers realise the end was closer than we thought?

Mankind, all the human beings on the planet, be they black, white, yellow or tanned, be they male, female, transgender or transsexual, be they fit or unit, able or disabled. We are fighting for our freedom from a tyrannical, oppressive government that by adroit use of the media are persecuting those of our society that need the most help. Why? I wish someone could tell me.

But, be it May the Fourth or July the Fourth, we need our independence from fear of starvation, we need to be able to survive. I don't want a Teak Toilet Seat for £50, I don't want to pay a researcher, or buy a Garlic Press or some Jamie Oliver cooking equipment, I want to know that my wife and I can eat and be kept warm.

It would be nice to buy food, I don't want a massive amount of food, we only eat one cooked meal a day, a small snack and a small breakfast. It's not a large meal, and we don't use expensive ingredients.

It would be nice to carry on being able to watch some television, I don't want Sky Movies, I don't want the Sports Channels, I definitely DO NOT want any "Adult" channels.

It would be nice to keep my telephone, so my daughter who has just recently been diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyeltis can phone at 5 a.m. to get her mm to talk her through getting up. So my 83 year old Dad who lives in Spain can call and let the phone ring enough so we know he's alive still!

It would be nice to keep paying for gas and electricity, to keep us warm and dry, to keep us and our clothes clean. 

It would be nice to pay the water company for providing clean water to cook with, to drink and to wash with.  OK, once we have used the water, we need them to take it away as well!

It would be nice to be able to keep the Internet, so I can carry on learning about how cruel the government can get, so I can keep in touch with my MP and friends by email.

It would also be nice to hang on to my car. Not a priority to most, but I cannot get to the nearest bus stop without severe pain!  Without the car, I'm stuck indoors.

Soon, I've got to pay the Council £2 a week for Council Tax top up.  In addition to that I may have to pay £14 for the bedroom I'm about to go to sleep in as I am twitching so much that I will wake my wife if I go to sleep in our bedroom.

Let's have a rough break-down of how my money goes at present-

Electricity	£       15.00
Gas	£       15.00
TV	£         6.00
TV Licence	£         8.00
Water	£       15.00
Broadband	£         6.00
Telephone	£         6.00
Food	£       40.00
	£     111.00

Oh great, I get £111 on the DWP's Assessment Rate while waiting for my ESA appeal to be sorted out!   I can survive!

BUT ... When the Council Tax and Rent Top-Up come into play I've got to find another £16 a week to pay for that, what goes?  Looks like there's two choices, £26 a week for food or "Can't Pay, Won't Pay!" 

Now, imagine, I didn't like keeping up with the TV, I could lose the TV and TV licence, the problem is the TV comes as part of a package that supplies TV, Telephone and Internet.  I stop paying for the TV channels, I have to pay more for the Internet and phone. OK, I might save the Licence fee, but that would soon be swallowed up in the increases in Fuel prices and now Water rates.

Did anyone not tell the Members of Parliament that restricting benefit increases to 1% would cause severe problems of poverty?  Well, I told my MP, but she still voted for the cap!  I have half a feeling that she was misled by the title of the Bill, "the Benefit Uprating Bill", it didn't up any rates, just cut them.  That and the lies that Iain Duncan Smith spouted about benefits going up by double what wages went up by.

Did you notice, in the calculations above, the missing link? The thing I used my Disabled Living Allowance for?  Yep, petrol and maintenance for the car! 

As I said in my earlier blog entry, http://aturtle05.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-death-sentence-arrives.html the Department of Workshy and Painfree have stopped that, so, the car is eating into money I haven't got already. 

The guidelines to Personal Independence Payments

The Department of Works and Pensions have released the a guidance document for providers carrying out assessments for Personal Independence Payment. (You can find it here)  It started well, it was produced on the 22 January 2013, yet it took two days before they corrected a glaring error, it was dated 22 January 2012!

It includes, at long last Governmental recognition for the requirements to state Safely, Acceptably, Repeatedly and In a timely manner.  The one draw-back, there is no real definition of "Timely".  They give an example of someone walking 200 metres in four minutes and say that "although a little slower than normal, this is a reasonable time period for someone to walk this distance and therefore he can complete the activity in a timely manner."

Erm, my calculations based on the average walking speed for hikers tells me that a fit person should cover four and a half kilometres an hour, says that a fit person should cover 200 metres in about 2 minutes forty seconds. Four minutes is One and a Half times this (OK 1.53 times). So is that reasonable?

I would get worried, when manning checkpoints for cadets, if they were five minutes late for a 4.5km stretch of walking, half an hour late and I would have almost been calling the police for helicopter back-up! 

On top of the time problem there's one of my little bug-bears,

The STRIVER Factor.

Disabled people are not Skivers, Mr Osborne, if they have to get one hundred and fifty metres up the road to charge their gas card or electricity key they WILL do it.  They will then walk back the 150m to the meters and plug the card and key in to get heat in the winter.

They may take 30 minutes to do this, they may be stuck in bed for the rest of the day, curled up in agony, in tears and sky high on pain killers - but they WILL do it as they HAVE to.  Disabled people do not give in and surrender, it takes a lot for a disabled person to give in, after all they have been fighting for a long time to survive, and they will keep fighting. 

So why do Messers Duncan Smith, Osborne, Hoban and Ms McVey seem to think that the Disabled are valid targets under their, now defunct, blanket Skivers and Strivers Attack?

The Work Capability Assessment and the proposed Personal Independance Payment Assessment restrict the disabled person to a minute distance of 20 metres for high level payment and hence the Blue Badge for disabled drivers will be taken from people who can force themselves to walk further than that distance.  Oh and they still won't be fit for work.

I know that personally, suspension of DLA means that my car is hanging in the balance. I lose my car, I lose my ability to get to work (if  had a job), let alone actually work when there!  Why they have to fix a benefit that needs sorting, without a sensible fix, just a plan that two months before it starts is not ready, I do not know.