Showing posts with label uk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uk. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

An idiot speaks: Time for Europe to let British farmers grow GM food, says environment minister


'Genetically modified crops should be sold in Europe, despite consumers' concerns about 'Frankenstein foods’, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will say.

Mr Paterson, who has previously spoken out about the benefits of GM technology, has decided to make a high-profile speech in the hope of turning the tide on the issue.

It is understood he has the firm backing of Chancellor George Osborne, who believes GM food could provide opportunities for British farmers.'

Read more: An idiot speaks: Time for Europe to let British farmers grow GM food, says environment minister

Saturday, March 2, 2013

WHY THE DWP-ATOS BROWN ENVELOPE CAN KILL: Broken Heart Death Syndrome

 

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy

The government, DWP and Atos surely KNOW about this condition. By placing sick and disabled individuals under severe chronic stress, they are playing russian roulette with each and every life.


 Killer can strike at any age

 

Why a shock can kill you (even good news): Release of adrenaline after sudden discovery can lead to heart problems 

By Sophie Borland
|

A shock can be fatal – and it makes no difference whether it's the trauma of a loved one's death or the excitement of a lottery win, experts claim.
Research suggests that a startling revelation can pose a danger to health whether the news is positive or negative.

And it seems women who have just been through the menopause are most at risk.

Researchers say they have identified how emotional trauma - from winning the lottery to losing a close relative - can trigger a potentially lethal catastrophe in the body they call the 'broken heart syndrome'.

German scientists say they have discovered exactly how a sudden discovery or traumatic experience can be fatal.

They say the news or event causes the body to produce large amounts of stress hormones including adrenaline, which narrows the main arteries which supply blood to the heart.

This paralyses the heart's main pumping chamber, causing a sudden change in rhythm similar to a heart attack.

The victim will suddenly find it very difficult to breathe, have sharp pains in their chest and may feel very weak. Some die, although many recover if given urgent medical treatment.

Scientists have been aware for some time of 'broken heart syndrome', or patients who apparently die from grief after losing a loved one, but they have not fully understood why it happens.

Professor Nienaber said broken heart syndrome mostly affects women who have gone through the menopause

Now, however, researchers from the University Clinic of Rostock, in northern Germany, have come up with a possible explanation based on studies of patients.

 And they say the reaction isn't necessarily triggered by a bereavement – it could also happen after winning the lottery or even having an argument.

Dr Christoph Nienaber, director of cardiology at the university, said: 'These patients suffer under a heavy emotional load, either positive or negative. Their hearts literally break. It usually happens within minutes to an hour of hearing the news.

 'The typical scenario is bad  news but there are reports of  both and we don't know what causes it most.

'We are very far from a conclusion however, this is only speculative.'

He added: 'It mostly affects women who have undergone the menopause and are aged between 50 and 70 when they fall ill.

'We are still unsure why it seems to affect this group the most.' One theory is that the female body reacts especially strongly to stress hormones after menopause.

It is estimated that 2 per cent of the 300,000 Britons recorded as having a heart attack every year have suffered from broken heart syndrome – amounting to some 6,000 patients.

The exact figures are not known as many will simply be recorded as having had a heart attack.
Dr Nienaber said that most patients in these cases survive, provided they receive swift treatment.

Daily Mail





Why you really can suffer from a broken heart

Last updated at 09:27 10 February 2005

Doctors were today urged to recognise the unique symptoms of "broken heart syndrome" in patients who appear to have suffered a heart attack.

Shocking events such as the death of a loved-one or being the victim of crime have long been known as possible triggers for medical conditions such as a heart attack.

Now researchers in the United States have found that sudden emotional stress can also lead to severe but reversible heart muscle weakness which mimics the symptoms of a heart attack.

The team, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, said that patients with this condition - stress cardiomyopathy or "broken heart syndrome" - were often misdiagnosed with a massive heart attack.

Instead they had actually suffered from a surge in adrenalin and other stress hormones that temporarily "stun" the heart.

The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said they while "broken heart syndrome" was not as common as heart attack, it probably occurred more often than doctors realised.

Dr Ilan Wittstein said: "Our study should help physicians distinguish between stress cardiomyopathy and heart attacks. It should also reassure patients that they have not had permanent heart damage."

The researchers found that some people responded to sudden and overwhelming emotional stress by releasing large amount of stress chemicals like adrenalin into the bloodstream, as well as breakdown products and small proteins produced by an excited nervous system.

They said these chemicals could be temporarily toxic to the heart, effectively stunning the muscle and producing symptoms similar to a typical heart attack - chest pain, shortness of breath and heart failure.

By examining a group of 19 patients with symptoms of "broken heart syndrome", the researchers found that it was clinically very different to the typical heart attack.

The patients, 18 of whom were women, had signs of an apparent heart attack after emotional stress, including a death, shock from a surprise party and an armed robbery.

They were compared to seven other patients who had suffered a severe heart attack.

Dr Wittstein said: "After observing several cases of 'broken heart' syndrome at Hopkins hospitals - most of them in middle-aged or elderly women - we realised that these patients had clinical features quite different from typical cases of heart attack, and that something very different was happening.

"These cases were, initially, difficult to explain because most of the patients were previously healthy and had few risk factors for heart disease."

Tests on these patients showed no blockages in the arteries which supplied the heart.

Blood tests also failed to reveal some of the typical signs of a heart attack - such as high levels of cardiac enzymes that are released into the bloodstream from damaged heart muscle.

MRI scans revealed that none of the stressed patients had suffered irreversible muscle damage. The researchers said of one surprise was that recovery rates in the stressed patients were much faster than typically seen after a heart attack.

Within a few days the patients showed dramatic improvement in the heart's ability to pump and had completely recovered in two weeks.

In comparison, partial recovery after a heart attack can take weeks or months, and often the heart muscle damage is permanent.

Levels of stress chemicals in the stressed patient group were also significantly higher than in those with a classic heart attack.

Researcher Dr Hunter Champion said: "How stress hormones act to stun the heart remains unknown, but there are several possible explanations that will be the subject of additional studies.

"The chemicals may cause spasm in the coronary arteries, or have a direct toxic effect on the heart muscle, or cause calcium overloads that results in temporary dysfunction."

The researchers said they expected the number of patients diagnosed with "broken heart syndrome" to increase as more doctors learnt to recognise its unique clinical features.

Daily Mail

 

Why a broken heart really can kill you and women are NINE times more at risk

 

  • Condition brought on by sudden or prolonged stress can lead to heart failure

  • Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances typical of a heart attack, but no artery blockages


By Deborah Arthurs


The end of a romance or the death of a loved one really can cause the heart to break – and women are the most likely to suffer.

Research shows that a shock or emotional trauma can trigger the symptoms of a heart attack or other cardiac problem.

Women are up to nine times more likely to suffer ‘broken heart syndrome’, the first large-scale study of the condition has concluded.

Women are seven to nine times more likely to suffer a heart attack from shock or distress - with no sign of blocked arteries or previous history of cardiac problems

Doctors say the classic case involves the death of a husband triggering a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart’s main pumping chamber to balloon suddenly and malfunction. 

Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances  typical of a heart attack, but none of the artery blockages that  typically cause one.

Most patients recover with no lasting damage, but 1 per cent of cases prove fatal.
Dr Abhishek Deshmukh, a heart specialist at the University of Arkansas in the U.S., studied the phenomenon after noting he had treated more women for ‘broken heart syndrome’ than men.

A trawl of records of 1,000 hospitals revealed 6,229 cases in 2007. Only 671 of these involved men.

Taking into account factors such as high blood pressure revealed women to be 7.5 times more likely to suffer the syndrome than men.  It was three times more common in females over 55 than those under.

Broken heart syndrome can occur as a result of shock - usually from bad news, but occasionally from good, such as a lottery win

And females under 55 were 9.5 times more likely to suffer it than men of that age, an American Heart Association conference heard.

No one knows why women are more vulnerable but sex hormones may be at play or men’s bodies  may be better at handling stress. The conference also heard that while heart attacks happen more in winter, broken heart syndrome is more common in summer. It can also be brought on by ‘good’ shocks such as winning the lottery.

The study looked specifically at heart problems but bereavement can also damage health in other ways, with men the weaker sex.

A British study found that losing a wife puts the widower at six times a higher risk of death, while a widow’s chances of dying are doubled.

The risk peaks for either surviving spouse in the first year after bereavement, with those married the longest in greatest danger. It is thought the resultant stress depresses the immune system, making existing medical conditions worse.

Ex-prime minister James Callaghan was said to have died of a  broken heart after he passed away aged 92 in 1995, days after Audrey, his wife of 67 years.

In 2009, the parents of Spandau Ballet’s Martin and Gary Kemp died within 48 hours of each other.Their father Frank, 79, suffered a heart attack. His wife Eileen, 77, was in the same Bournemouth  hospital having a heart bypass. Her sons told her when she came round and she died soon afterwards.

Daily Mail

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

JobCentre pressures firms to turn jobs into workfare

Angus MP Mike Weir has demanded that the Prime Minister personally intervene and act on claims that some JobCentre managers are putting pressure on employers to convert paid vacancies into workplace experience placements to meet targets set by the Department of Work and Pensions.

He said: “On the day that unemployment figures showed unemployment in Scotland had fallen to the lowest levels in four years it is scandalous to hear that a Westminster Government department is apparently seeking to undermine real jobs.

“Whilst I was pleased the Prime Minister appeared to accept the seriousness of the issue I was disappointed he did not undertake to ensure that the practise was immediately stopped.”

Source

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The bad guys are terrified of exposure

What do I believe is happening? A vicious world dictatorship is forming with increasing speed and the UK establishment and government is a major part of the malevolent force helping to create it. A major part of the driving force is the corrupt, fraudulent international banking cartels.

On the path to the dictatorship, the most dangerous agenda is that of violence on the streets. And that is precisely what our government and fraudulent establishment want. They are attempting to manifest violence with increasing urgency. If succesful it will be followed by a massive clampdown by force on individual and public freedoms. To stop their plans for violence we need all good people to work together. Our key weapons are common sense and exposure of the malevolent agenda and its purpetrators. It does not matter if you are black, white, Asian, East European, Christian, Muslim, green, yellow or white. If you now live in UK, we are all in the same immediate danger. 


And no that does not mean we can have totally free uncontrolled national borders. That idea defies common sense - at least until we have governments of truth, integrity, honesty and common sense.

The controlling networks for the emerging British dictatorship ultimately rely on embedded paedophile networks. The paedophiles are not dirty old men on the street but 'respected' people, both men and women, at high levels of position and power. These people must be stopped. They are perverted, powerful and very dangerous.

If we want to stop the dictatorship, and we must, we have to understand how it thinks, plans and acts, and we have to take action. For some people, sitting at home researching is all they can do, and we are grateful for their efforts. Keep doing it. Other people can be more proactive and get out and about to warn people, spread the word, organise and act. Doing that already? Keep doing it. We are now at the point where we have to act - sitting and watching is not an option. Not if our children are to have a future they can enjoy.


What makes me tick? I woke up to realise that much of what I learned and believed in was false. I now understand that the Britain of which I was once proud, is rotten and controlled by a rotten criminal government and establishment elite. Even our churches and religions have been corrupted. I felt particularly betrayed, having 'served' my Queen and Country as a Naval Officer fro 21 years. Much of it in a 'tin box'.  (TAP = submarine)


Rather than sit and watch the action I decided to do something, and the first step was to tell the truth about what I knew - to speak out. What an adventure it has been and what great new friends I have met.

Many people get very nervous when they first wake up. Who is listening, what are they doing, are my emails are being monitored, am I being watched, will they get me? - it's scary. These fears and feelings are exactly what the other side want us to have, as then they can further suppress, depress and control us.


The good news is that action conquers fear. I'll say that again "ACTION CONQUERS FEAR". Try it, but use common sense. Don't jump in the deep end without understanding and calculated planning. Think carefully and decide what you can do and in an area you feel comfortable. Then do it. No matter how small. And tell others about your successes. You will gain new friends. Good people. All colours, shapes and sizes. The word will spread, the good networks will grow, and so will the exposure.
Why exposure? Because the bad guys are terrified, absolutely terrified of exposure. That their dirty deeds will be brought into the light. It does not matter what position or powers they hold, they are all terrified of exposure. Try it. Expose one of the bad guys in your area. Use only truth and factual evidence and you may be surprised at the effect. Anger, then fear of you - the position is reversed. You have taken the first step to winning. Enough of us winning means the battle is won. 'Nuff said. Go to it Forum fellows.

Kind Regards
Brian Gerrish

The Tap

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Benefits system? It’s more like psychological warfare [Vox Political]

Alan Carr: Another comedian who, like Paul O'Grady, must be fuming that his taxes support a government that is more interested in looking after its own fat expenses claims than in looking after people who genuinely need help.
Alan Carr: Another comedian who, like Paul O’Grady, must be fuming that his taxes support a government that is more interested in looking after its own fat expenses claims than in looking after people who genuinely need help.

Mrs Mike has had another setback in her struggle to become a worthwhile member of society.

For those not in the know, my significant other has been receiving sickness benefits for many years after damaging her back in what she believes was a work-related injury. Her (now-former) employers have never admitted any liability and her trade union let her down badly. She currently suffers with back problems which are worsened by fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome (operation soon) and mental problems including depression.

Until last August she was in receipt of Incapacity Benefit, but after one of the DWP’s infamous Work Capability Assessments she was put in the work-related activity group of Employment and Support Allowance. Shortly before Christmas she had an interview at the local Job Centre Plus, when possible ways of slowly reintroducing her into the job market were suggested.

She has always hated being unable to work, and the opportunity to get back into active service, so to speak, brightened her outlook considerably.

Arrangements were made for her to have a telephone interview with a representative from a company that provides help in getting people back to work. Having presented the experiences of David Dennis on this blog, I was sceptical about the amount of real, practical help this could offer, but I kept quiet and waited to see what would happen.

Firstly, they phoned to say their rep was sick.

Then they phoned to ask Mrs Mike to call back on another day.

Then the Job Centre phoned to ask why she hadn’t spoken to the company rep. When she explained, arrangements were made for her to phone again – today.

She called at 3pm. Spoke to a machine because nobody was answering. Left her number. After a while, she took the return call. A while after that, she passed the phone on to me.

“Could you talk to them, please?”

The lady on the line was friendly enough, but her message was utterly frustrating. “I’ve spoken to your partner and from what she tells me, we can’t do anything to help her. She’s not going to get better in the timeframe within which we work. I know people with fibromyalgia and that’s just not going to happen. I recommend that you appeal against the decision to put her in the work-related activity group.”

“We can’t appeal,” I said. “That decision came back in August and we were advised not to appeal against it because it was unlikely to succeed.”

She was adamant. “Ask for a review of the decision, with a view to going into the support group. Go back to her doctor and request reassessment.”

So there you go. Six months in the new system (the WCA was in July) and we’re at square one. The whole experience has been pointless so far.

Worse than pointless, in fact. This has affected my girlfriend’s state of mind, you see. The thought of going through another WCA terrifies her (the first was harrowing enough), and the possibility of going through the system again and getting nowhere – again – seems a certainty to her.

It’s like psychological warfare.

I’m not blaming anyone who has dealt with us directly. I’m sure they all mean well. But it’s the system that is at fault. It has been created, not to help people, but to break their spirit. The message is: “You’re wasting your time here. You won’t get what you need. You should give up and do something else instead.”

Except, the prime choice for people on disability benefits who DO choose to do something else instead appears to be suicide.

And all the time we have to listen to Iain Duncan Smith verbalising his DWP inanities via every right-wing news outlet he can dupe into carrying them.

I shall keep you informed.

Source

Friday, December 14, 2012

Government Think Tank Calls For Infiltrating Conspiracy Websites

Furious that state involvement in major terror attacks is being exposed to a wider audience than ever before via the Internet, a UK think tank closely affiliated with the Downing Street has called for authorities to infiltrate conspiracy websites in an effort to “increase trust in the government”.
“A Demos report published today, The Power of Unreason, argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to unsubstantiated claims that they were “inside jobs,” reports the London Independent.
In other words, the fact that the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that both 7/7 and 9/11were “inside jobs” of one form or another, and that huge numbers of people are now aware of this via the increasing influence of the Internet, is hampering efforts to commit more acts of terror, therefore the government needs to change its strategy.
In the report, Demos, “Recommends the Government fight back by infiltrating internet sites to dispute these theories.” One of the tools Demos already employs to “fight back” against conspiracy theories is by labeling anyone who challenges the government’s official story as an extremist or a terrorist recruiter.
The strategy mirrors that advocated by White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a 2008 white paper similarly called for conspiracy websites to be infiltrated and undermined in order to dilute their influence. In the same report, Sunstein also called for taxing conspiracy theories (any viewpoint that differs with the official version) and outright banning free speech that the authorities disapproved of.
What Demos and Sunstein are essentially calling for is classic “provocateur” style infiltration, updated for the 21st century, that came to the fore during the Cointelpro years, an FBI program from 1956-1971 that was focused around disrupting, marginalizing and neutralizing political dissidents, often using illegal methods.
The fact that governments on both sides of the pond have been caught over and over again habitually lying about everything under the sun, allied to a compliant corporate media that has aided authorities in covering up their misdeeds, has prompted a complete collapse in trust from the people, an effect that is now seriously hampering the state’s efforts to enlist implied consent, with millions of people rebelling against the system through civil disobedience and non-compliance in a myriad of different ways.
That’s why Demos, a mouthpiece for the British authorities, is desperate to infiltrate “conspiracy websites,” ie groups of people who broadcast the truth, in order to “increase trust” in a government that has lost all credibility. 
As we have documented, governments all over the world, most notably the U.S. and Israel, already employ teams of agents whose sole job revolves around infiltrating and subverting websites that publish the truth about government corruption and atrocities.
Demos is a front for the insidious Common Purpose network, a group that Lt Cdr Brian Gerrish has exposed as playing a fundamental role in the advancement of Britain’s role in the new world order.Julia Middleton, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, sits on Demos’ advisory council. 
Demos was founded in 1993 by marxists Martin Jacques and Geoff Mulgan, and was seen as being closely affiliated with Tony Blair’s Labour government. Mulgan went on to work inside Downing Street in 1997. Current British Prime Minister David Cameron also works closely with Demos and has given speeches at the group’s events.
Demos has routinely acted as a platform for elitists who wish to drastically alter society, eliminate freedoms, and sacrifice British sovereignty in pursuit of global government. On August 9, 2006,British Home Secretary Dr John Reid, another former marxist, gave a speech at a Demos conferencestating that Britons “may have to modify their notion of freedom”, claiming that freedom is “misused and abused by terrorists.” 
Demos is partnered with numerous other globalist organizations from government and industry, including IBM, The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and Shell International. The organization’s logo includes an all-seeing eye within its design.
 Although the group poses as an independent think tank, Demos is little more than a public relations firm for the British government and security services. Its efforts to demonize conspiracy theories in order to “increase trust in the government” is a transparent ploy to do the bidding of its masters, by demonizing anyone who challenges a corrupt, lying state and its nefarious activities as an extremist and a potential domestic terrorist – contributing to the chilling process which seeks to crush free speech on the Internet.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show. 

Thursday, September 13, 2012

PCS Union: Workfare a stain on welfare state

Standing up for the poor and vulnerable: Day Four at TUC Congress

A vigorous defence of the welfare state was spearheaded by PCS to open the final day of proceedings at the 2012 TUC Congress.
Since the coalition government came into power in May 2010 there has been a clear rise in the levels of deprivation. New inequalities are having a destructive impact upon the lives of vulnerable people and services are becoming ever more fragmented, leading to wide variations in access across the UK.

Around £30billion of welfare cuts have been announced by the government, coupled with a sinister vilification by this government and right-wing tabloids to denigrate the welfare state and to demonise those without work, or unable to work, and young people, migrants and the disabled.

Proposing composite Motion 8 - which includes reiterating the principles of fair and equal pay, condemns ‘workfare’ policies and re-instating services necessary to support vulnerable groups – PCS president Janice Godrich said: “We face a government firmly in the interests of the richest 1% of society. It tells us that the welfare state is unaffordable but has already found the money to cut the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45% and to cut corporation tax from 28% to 24%.

“Cameron and Osborne are taking money from the disabled, the unemployed, lone parents and those struggling to pay rent to give to the super rich. But it’s not just this perverse re-distribution we should be concerned about, what we see is the see is the vilification and bullying of anyone on benefits. We see this with the work capability assessments carried out by Atos, the private I.T. company paid £100million a year to carry out these tests formerly performed by public sector workers. We know these tests are deeply flawed because disabled people tell us they are and the British Medical Association has called for them to be scrapped.

“Unemployed people are being bullied as well. The workfare schemes are a disgraceful stain on the welfare state our movement created. A society which refuses to support its most vulnerable has lost the right to call itself a civilised society.”

The motion was unanimously carried.

12 September 2012
Public and Commercial Services Union

Find out more about the PCS alternative to the cuts

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Suicide training in Job Centres? Cancer patients scrubbing floors? Welcome to Cameron’s Brave New World

By Sonia Poulton



So, the Welfare Reform Bill - the part that refers to sick and disabled people - limped bruised and bloodied over the finishing line in Parliament last week. The various acts of treachery and betrayal it contained making its final journey into law once it has been granted the Queen's royal assent.

 

It was inevitable, really, and disability campaigners who, for the past two years, have fought feverishly, and quite literally at times from their sickbeds, to oppose it, resigned themselves to the fact that nothing short of a Biblical-type miracle would reverse their fate.

 

However, it is only now that the full implications of what these reforms - or brutal acts of savagery as I prefer to call them - will actually mean to millions of seriously vulnerable people in our country. And it is an ugly realisation.

 

This is how I see it. In the life of most every politician there is one, or several, events that mark out their ‘D’Oh moment. This is not based on severity but on a feeling it should not have happened at all.

David and Samantha Cameron themselves claimed Disability Living Allowance for their child
Brave New World? David and Samantha Cameron themselves claimed Disability Living Allowance for their child

For examples: Nixon - Watergate. Kennedy - Marilyn. Major - Edwina Currie. Tony Blair - Iraq. You get my point?

 

Well here’s my ‘D’oh moment prediction for David Cameron. He will be remembered as the Prime Minister - without a mandate, remember - who attacked the sick and disabled of our country with a vehemence beyond human comprehension. And when you think that he had a disabled son who tragically passed two years ago, well, then, it beggars belief even more so.
So, to bring the story up to speed.

 

Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair’s Governments set the blueprint of the welfare reforms that David Cameron has just forced through Parliament. And when I say forced I mean the type that requires extraordinary levels of subterfuge and manipulation to shoehorn into place.

 

He ignored panels and focus groups, charities and campaigners and he overturned the Lords' by invoking an archaic law of “financial privilege”, which allows the Commons the last say on money matters.

Such was his unstoppable zeal to push through reforms - contrary to all advice, personal and professional - that you had to wonder if it was a psychological issue driving him on.

Talk to any disabled or sick person right now and there is a word that crops up more than any other, a running thread central to what they are feeling. It is this: fear
Talk to any disabled or sick person right now and there is a word that crops up more than any other, a running thread central to what they are feeling. It is this: fear

Perhaps denied grief at the death of his disabled son. Bereavement affects us on an individual basis and there is no guarantee that it will manifest in logical ways.

 

So these cuts will now become law and, as a nation weeps, the details are sorrowful when applied to reality.

 

Here's an example. Any disabled or sick person who has been given more than six months to live - and is unable to financially support themselves - will be sent out to work. If they refuse, or back out of a scheme, then they will be subject to benefit sanctions.

 

This, it must be noted, is extraordinarily punishing towards disabled people when we consider how DWP boss, Chris Grayling, treats others involved in 'Workfare' type arrangements.

 

Consider, if you will, how he was forced to back-track last week following pressure from campaigners and businesses.  After a summit designed to get more businesses on board the Workfare bus, he announced that he would remove the threat of benefit sanctions for unemployed young people on job seeker allowance who drop out of the scheme.

 

Wow. In what world can young, fit people be given protection that we deny our most vulnerable? That's more suited to an Aldous Huxley script than real life.
 
Next up in the reforms will be an increase in multiple testing of patients, including those with Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis, to see if they are fit for work. They will be tested repeatedly. It will cost a great deal of money to administer and it will wear already sick people to a pulp.
And as for children who dare to be born disabled, well that assistance previously available to them has been wiped out in Cameron's Armageddon on the poor. 

 

Sue Marsh, one of the co-authors of 'Responsible Reform - The Spartacus Report' - which launched a worthy counter-attack to the Coalition's WRB measures said: "We begged for £11 Million to protect profoundly disabled children into adulthood, but nuh-huh."

 

And yet we, as a nation, manage to find millions of pounds to pay Cameron's army of advisers and assessors including the allegedly fraudulent activities of back-to-work company A4E which was set up by the Coalition's 'families czar' Emma Harrison.

 

Could we consider this? If this is really a cost-cutting exercise to fill the billion pound deficit, when is the Coalition going to start from within? The DWP spend over 25 thousand pounds per month on travel, hotels and stationery - surely there is something that could be curbed there rather than taking 20% from disability which, according to their own figures, only has 0.5% of fraud.

 

I'm writing this and I'm struggling to believe it at the same time, which is quite a conflict.

 

With all this insistence of paid employment for the terminally ill (despite the fact that we have almost 3million unemployed) it is no wonder that job centres, up and down the land, have been issued with details on how to handle suicides in their establishments. Something, apparently, they are anticipating rather more of since the WRB was voted in.

 

I think the expression ‘you couldn’t make this up’ is appropriate here.

 

Perhaps the aim is to finish off the sick and disabled sooner rather than later. Well that way, at least, you get to save on the medical bills of our increasingly privatised National Health Service.

 

After all, what use are such people to our society?

There is a notion, false obviously, that disabled and sick people make no contribution and only ‘drain’ the system. What short-sightedness. Such a statement assumes that only paid work has social value.

Legacy: Will Cameron be remembered as the PM who attacked the sick and disabled of our country with a vehemence?
Legacy: Will Cameron be remembered as the PM who attacked the sick and disabled of our country with a vehemence?

What about other contributions including volunteer work - from charity shops to hospitals and schools? These roles are frequently staffed by disabled people, too.

 

Ironically, a number of disabled people will now be removed from such vital community roles and placed in a Workfare scheme - free labour to private businesses - so that they may mop floors, wash dishes or clean toilets. Ain't life grand?

 

Disabled people, like the majority of people, want to work but they also have to take account of how their illness or disability will affect their working life. Unlike the able-bodied and healthy, they do not know which turn their well-being will take when they wake in the morning. Whether they will be able to physically climb out of bed much less make it to the factory floor.

 

People on disability benefit are not living it up. If only. According to the group Family Action, some families survive on less than two pounds per day. Quite a contrast when you compare it to the Peers in the Lords who receive 300 a day just to show up and then get to enjoy smoked salmon in the tax-payer subsidised cafeteria (cost to the taxpayer is a mere 1.44million a year. bargain). Oh how the other half live.

 

So where will disabled and sick have to turn to now in their greatest hour of need? Well they can forget the Social Fund because that was viciously axed in these reforms, too.

 

For millions of people, a Social Fund loan - yes it was repayable, it wasn't a gift - was the difference between sleeping on a bed or a floor. The MP's who voted to banish this have no understanding of such destitution and poverty. Not while they are able to subsidise the purchase of their country mansions with their parliamentary expenses.

 

Defending himself: Ricky, seen here in a photo he posted onto his Twitter page, said he never meant to use the word 'mong' to mean Down Syndrome
There are those who openly mock the disabled: Ricky Gervais's 'mong' comment says more about him than anything else

People are already impoverished and it is certain to get worse. I read one online disability forum where a woman with breast cancer and liver disease didn't know where she was going to get the ten pound needed for travel to hospital for an appointment.

 

Unlike David and Samantha Cameron, who claimed Disability Living Allowance for their child - and absolutely did not need to - many disabled now must adjust to seriously reduced circumstances since Cameron attacked DLA in the reforms and will replace with the patently detrimental Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

 

The transfer from DLA to PIP will remove help from 25% of those in receipt of the benefit now, despite the fact that this is a benefit that helps some disabled people to stay in work.
And therein lies much of the problem with these reforms. They lack joined-up thinking. They don't appear to have been thought through to a satisfactory end.

 

Take for example the perception within the Coalition, the DWP and the care services that everyone has a spouse and family to fall back on but that is not the reality for many people.
As a consequence of these cuts, more disabled people will find themselves in bedsits, or hostels or on the streets. There is a significant proportion of people with mental health issues and learning difficulties who find themselves in this situation already and it is certain to increase.

 

Well then perhaps it's time to resurrect another part of our history - seeing as David Cameron is clearly following a Dickensian blueprint for our poor - the workhouse.  Yes, that testament to our proud, class-conscious society.

 

Talk to any disabled or sick person right now and there is a word that crops up more than any other, a running thread central to what they are feeling. It is this: fear.

 

Fear of losing their homes when they no longer have DLA to top up their Housing Benefit shortfall where, thanks to the previous Conservative Government, private rents are uncapped and extortionate. Fear of losing their carer because there will be no allowance for them. Fear of being bed-ridden for the lack of anyone to lend support. Fear of losing ramps and assistance to get in and out of the house. Cold fear that this feeling of being unwanted and excluded from society is how it is going to be for the rest of their days.

With all this insistence of paid employment for the terminally ill it is no wonder that job centers, up and down the land, have been issued with details on how to handle suicides in their establishmentsv

With all this insistence of paid employment for the terminally ill it is no wonder that job centers, up and down the land, have been issued with details on how to handle suicides in their establishments.


In internet circles, where many disabled campaigners congregate, names are bandied around of those who have committed suicide through fear of going cold and hungry and feeling that they are increasingly a burden to society.

 

At the last count there were some 103 names linked to such suicides and I have actually heard people say that they would consider suicide as a way out of this constant state of anxiety and despair.

 

What alarms me is how this dispassion towards people with disabilities appears to be spreading from the Coalition down.

 

There are commentators who openly deride disabled people (Rod Liddle's ill-informed and hate-inciting rhetoric - a type of drunk-sick on paper - in a tabloid was one, but he's not alone). There are also comedians who mock disability. Ricky Gervais' 'mong' impersonation surely says more about him than it does about anyone else (although to be fair, Ricky has since claimed this to be naivety and that he was unaware that the term was still used to describe disability).

 

There is also, according to recent figures, a 40 per cent increase in disabled attacks in the past year alone.  Hardly wonder when the general public are constantly being goaded with the idea that we are 'mugs for supporting scroungers'. Talk like that tends to breed resentment.
And then there's this. An occurrence that should serve to alarm us all.

 

The British Medical Journal published a paper from Oxford University don Francesca Minerva, a philosopher and medical ethicist, who argued that doctors should have the right to kill newborn babies including those born with disabilities because, according to Minerva, a young baby is not a real person and so killing it in the first days after birth is little different to aborting it in the womb.


But here's what gives me hope. Ever since last week's rubber stamping of the Welfare Reform Bill, disability campaigners have begun a serious fightback and are preparing, like an army, to overcome this wickedness that has been wrought on them.  Information is being compiled and exchanged, despite ill-health and disability I have never witnessed such a bank of people determined to overcome the odds piled on them.

 

Let us not forget, and despite the mainstream media's best efforts to convince us otherwise, this is not about the neighbor with the apparent bad back who plays golf at weekends (who can also be genuinely disabled but even disabilities allow for better days when activity can increase), but about some of the most horrendous acts against truly vulnerable people.

 

This may not affect you. Perhaps your parents, or yourself even, have a sufficient financial cushion not to worry about that. What an enviable position to be in.

 

But what about those less fortunate?

 

I believe - and I’ve 47 years of a colourful life to base this judgement on - that the UK is comprised of essentially decent people. Citizens who care enough to see beyond their own selfish existence.

 

The people I know don’t want to be - and neither are they - the type of people who turn their backs when the going gets tough. They actually seek a more compassionate life on earth where we are prepared to support and contribute to each others lives.

 

In is unconscionable that these disability reforms have been allowed to happen. To be fair, we all knew it was a Conservative agenda, but a Liberal one as well? Goodness how Nick Clegg can ever recover from this I do not know. My imagination is not that good.

 

So the Welfare Reform Bill, after decades in the making, has finally come to pass. Oh, how proud are we as a nation? We did it. Gave those sick and crippled unfortunates a good old kicking. Let’s give ourselves a collective pat on the back for allowing this to proceed. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

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Sonia Poulton