Disability goes the wrong way!

Before you get confused by the title, I emphasise here, that it is semi-sarcastic and I ask you to consider the ways that it can be read!

Now, what am I going on about today? This Guardian article.  Basically, a blind lady was challenged for bringing a guide dog into a Tesco store.

So, let us look at the elements:

A visually challenged lady,
A dog in a harness and
A mature student.

Oh, hang on, should that read:

A visually challenged lady,
A dog in a harness and
A mature student who is registered as blind!

We, in this country, are not necessarily taught the fact that a dog wearing a harness with a metal handle is helping the person attached to it.  Although, somehow, we all learn it.



The image is enough, we don't need the new(ish) style lead with the words "GUIDE DOG" on a bright yellow flag!  This is a Guide Dog, this dog will be attached to a person with extremely poor or no sight.  This is NOT a pet, this is NOT a family dog, this is a WORKING dog, this is a dog that will not do something to endanger the health of other shoppers.

Tesco's insulting voucher is not enough.  Tesco's management should grab the cashier by the scruff of the neck, frog-marched to Ms Makri's front door and made to get down on her knees and give an apology that includes her resignation.  

I wonder where this (hopefully former) cashier is from.  Obviously a country where the blind are hidden from view, where disabled are kept in institutions, a country where the disabled are not acknowledged.

Or, is this cashier actually visually impaired, and as such is she able to perform her duties?  Is the disability held by the one behind the counter, not in front? Is discrimination of the disabled not a disability in itself?  After all, the discriminator is not able to see that the person is human?  They have the disability!

Here goes for the Indignity!

Coming to a computer screen near you, the final degrading step that a person who is already ground down by the benefits system in the UK has to undergo.  

I have been poked, prodded, lied about, forced to travel near enough 200 miles to fight my case and now I'm called for a Work Focussed Interview.  This is an interview that will most probably be carried out between me and a twenty-something slip of a girl (or man) who has had one job in their life, other than a paper-round while still at school.  

The idea of this interview is to tell me that I should be doing this, that and the other to find a job where the employer will not employ me, or if they do, they will most probably ask me to leave after a week because of my disability.  I mean, what employer wants an employee that has trouble concentrating in the morning and has trouble staying awake in the afternoon, needs to get out of a normal chair after about 15-20 minutes to loosen his knee joints, can hardly climb stairs (and so is a fire hazard), cannot lift his hands above his head and cannot stand for more than a few minutes.  

Yet this is the indignity I have to face on Tuesday.  I have to pray that I can park near the DWP office on the other side of town and that they do not want me to go upstairs to an interview room.  On top of all this, I have to hope that I do not do, or say, the wrong thing and have the DWP "sanction" me.  For those outside the UK, this is where the Department for Works and Pensions arbitrarily decide that I have breached their rules and stop all of my benefits.  Not some of my benefits, we are talking, for a first offence (supposedly), all of my benefits.  This will mean that my wife and I will have no money for food, heating or light, but we will owe our landlord £200 for the two weeks of rent that will not be paid, if not more if the council do not restart the payments after the fortnight.

The standard working period for the DWP is a fortnight, as, in the past, unemployed people had to sign on for their benefit and then get paid this often.  This is not a problem for the clerks in their centrally heated offices who can mark off two weeks on a calendar easily enough.  For businesses and banks this is unworkable.  It seems that direct debits and the like can only be paid monthly, that is, on the same date every month, days do not come into it unless the 14th falls on a weekend, in which case it used to be paid on the Monday following.

Now, I think to normal people, the problem will be becoming obvious, some months have five weeks in them, in fact, the only month that is an exact four week period is a non-leap year February.  So, although the 14th of January is on a Tuesday this year, it is not an even number of weeks from the 14th of February, and so on and so on.  This means that budgeting on benefits is an amazing feat of accounting, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer needed to do it, he would fail unless, as he does, he had a large bank balance in the black.

So, the Minister for Works and Pensions has decided to bring in a system whereby benefits claimants will be paid monthly.  It has already cost £50M of lost money already to prepare the system to do it, but it doesn't work.  So will future sanctions be for a minimum of a month?

The government, which, yet again, has been caught in a PR lie, is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public by making every claimant guilty of "shirking" and cheating the system by use of the media.  This government by Upper Class Twits who only have the needs of themselves and their own classmates from Public School or University in mind.  These cheats who started by preventing themselves being voted out in the first days of their filling the seats of power with a bunch of sycophantic cronies who are all filling jobs for which they have little or any qualification for.  

The people are getting fed up with the austerity package they are being forced to undergo - pay rises capped to 1% while MPs vote themselves a massive pay rise; high paid people get tax cuts in their favour; power companies raise prices by 3% and train companies raise fares by 6%.  There will come a time when the people can take no more hypocrisy.

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.

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.

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.

What's wrong at Westminster?

I spent a couple of mind numbing hours today watching the BBC Parliament feed covering the Backbench business debate brought by the Labour MP Michael Meacher.

Mind numbing? Yes, here were about twenty seven MPs from a variety of political parties, the majority standing up for those that cannot stand.  A lot of sad tales, I can't bear to use the word story, about disabled people some expected to travel overnight and sleep on a railway station platform for a connecting train.  People expected to go to meetings to prepare them for a return to a job that they had been invalided out of on health grounds!

All the stuff about the damage done by the incorrect reports that AtoS sent to the DWP and errors in judgement by the DWP Decision Makers, going on and on.  It was getting depressing, hearing so many bad news tales.  It was difficult listening through the accents of the various MPs, but I persevered.

Then with about ten minutes to go, having been hidden for the first half of the debate, the Minister for Work and Pensions, Mark Hoban, gets up and says, in effect, "I don't believe what you say, there's no way people can have been so depressed that they killed themselves.  Oh and there's nothing wrong with the Work Capability Assessments or AtoS."

He goes on to say that Decision Makers were able to take variability into account, so that if you are good today but bad tomorrow, you would be able to claim ESA.  I have it, in writing from a Decision Maker that he was NOT allowed to take into account variations in my condition caused by climate!

What a flaming plonker the Minister sounded!  Had he even been in the House for the first half when MPs were telling of people in my situation where AtoS got it totally wrong, passed on their report to the Decision Maker who, working on incorrect information gaily decides that the claimant doesn't need money and that they are fit for work.

Michael Meacher in his summary said he had never seen a debate where such cross party agreement occurred.  If Mark Hoban came out into the real world and looked at a few diverse blogs, fora (forums, for those that like incorrect plurals) and information websites, he'd realise that every lie he has been fed by his master was another nail in the coffins of disabled people.

Mr Hoban, Ms McVey (at some conference today), Ms Amber Rudd (my MP), if you've got a chance, look at:

http://calumslist.org/
http://wearespartacus.org.uk/
http://thehardesthit.wordpress.com/
http://fullfact.org/

And then there's blogs like:
http://benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.co.uk/
http://thebrokenofbritain.blogspot.co.uk/

[Addition: I am running low on energy today and forgot the main point I wanted to make]

I believe that the method of debating in the House of Commons is flawed, two to three hours of questioning and then the Minister has five minutes to reply to all questions asked.  It should be more like Prime Minister's Questions:

The MP for Someplace asks a question, with others asking to add in, and sits.
The Minister/Secretary of State/Prime Minister answers the question and we move on to the next question.

That to me is a debate, not ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, answer.

Seven Seconds...

Back in the 1990's Neneh Cherry and Youssou N'Dour recorded a song called Seven Seconds, basically the song talks of the fact that every seven seconds a child is born into this world.  That child does not care about the colour of it's skin or the language or religion of it's parents.  That child does not care whether mum or dad or big brother or big sister is disabled, either through the hand of fate or the hand of man.

While floating around the video jukebox that is YouTube looking for something totally unrelated with that song, I came across a video blog recorded by a young girl named Emily Perry from the USA (I think that was an American accent).  This awesome young lady had had a debate in her classroom that day about whether "People with disabilities are less valuable to society than "Normal" people".  Young Emily has disabilities in her family so she obviously argued against the subject. 

She stood up against the rest of the class as they were arguing that disabled people should be culled first if there was a global catastrophe.  She stood alone in a room of her peers baying for blood.  She alone stood up for those who could not stand up for themselves.

You can find Emily's video here.

This young lady is an example of why I cannot give up on young people. There is good in most of them, it is just their parents and families that give them the wrong slant on life. 

One of Emily's detractors annoyed me so much that I had to comment.  He, like so many people (yes, I am looking at those in the Palace of Westminster!) forget that it takes a split second to go from "Normal" to "Disabled".  Christopher Reeve, the actor that played Superman in three films, was a fit active man who went riding one day and was in a wheelchair on a ventilator for the rest of his life. 

He went from Normal to broken and it only took a millisecond.

The time it took to fall from a horse to the ground...

less than a second,

less than one thousandth of a second to separate his spinal cord and spend the next nine years tied to a machine to do his breathing for him. 

One seven thousandth of the space between two babies being born into the world on average.

And once about fifteen years ago, one of those seven second intervals produced an angel.  Would that there were more angels like Emily in this world that would get up and stand up for those of us that can't stand.  People who would get up and shout out about the injustices done to those of us who can't shout.

It's strange how looking for something that said I was overlooked by my fellow man should lead to a connection between a wonderful young lady and babies being born.  This world is a STRANGE place.

Oh and for the entertainment value, 7 Seconds by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry