Misleading Stories

Esther McVey, our new minister "for" disabled people, claims in this BBC article that:

there were a lot of misleading stories about the impact of welfare reforms on disabled people.

And

too often under the current system we are wasting money on overpayments where people's conditions have changed, with £630m a year on DLA alone.

According to these official DWP figures on page 14 the total annual overpayment is £240 million, less than half of McVey's claim.

Of that £240 million, only £60 million is lost to fraud. If your circumstances change and you fail to notify the DWP that is benefit fraud.

The amount of overpayments because someone's condition has changed has got to be less than £60 million a year because that £60m includes not only people whose condition has changed, but the outright false claimers too. Now; who exactly is it spinning misleading stories?

I once calculated that reassessing all DLA claimants annually would cost around £247,456,000. £247 million on reassessments is a hell of a lot more "taxpayers money" than losing less than £60m a year to fraud.

Then there's the fact that a hell of a lot of people don't get indefinite DLA awards. People with conditions that might get better get limited term awards. It's only people with incurable conditions like mine that get indefinite awards. Declan Gaffney once explained how at any given time there will always appear to be a greater percentage of people with indefinite awards, but many, many people get limited term DLA and the implication that everyone's got a lifetime award for a temporary condition is just a tall tale. Or a "misleading story".

If they don't know how can we know?

I was at a disability conference today.  Amongst the various different speakers there were two staff members from local branches of jobcentre plus.  They'd been asked to talk about the new Personal Independence Payment or PIP which will be replacing DLA.

I was sitting at the back with the vice chair of a disability group which is very influential within Oxfordshire.  We'd like to think that we're both pretty clued up on the changes that will be coming in the next year or so.  Or at least as clued up as it's possible to be when the exact details of the changes still haven't been decided and/or announced.

Within the first five minutes of that talk we both went "that's not right."  Because not only was the talk highlighting just how badly the changes have been thought out, it was also becoming clear that the speakers understanding of the changes didn't match reality. 

PIP comes in next April.  According to the speaker existing DLA claimants will then be written too to be offered the chance to apply for PIP instead if they are likely to be better off or remain on DLA until their award ends if thats what they'd be better off on.  I have an indefinite award of DLA (I have cerebral palsy - a life long condition that is incurable and doesn't improve) and the way the talk was given it appeared that I have the choice to remain on DLA indefinitely and never move to PIP.  If that was a real choice it's the one I'd make.

The reality of the matter is:  PIP comes in next April for new claimants and reassessments.  She's right about that.
Some DLA claimants may at that point chose to claim to PIP. She's right about that.

 But starting in October next year all DLA claimants regardless of whether their award is time limited or indefinite will be reassessed on a rolling basis until everyone is moved to PIP.  There is no consideration of which benefit suits people better or choice in the matter.  Just like the Incapacity Benefit to ESA migration this is forced upon us.  That wasn't clear in that talk.

I went to speak to the them after and asked for clarification of the situation with an indefinite DLA award.  And after checking their notes they agreed that it has no effect on PIP migration.  I got correct information.  But  we have a room of in the region of 50 disabled people who were given unclear information or which is could even be argued is wrong. 

Changes to benefits mean it's possible fines of up to £50 a time could be levied against people who make mistakes or omit information when filling out benefit forms.  If staff on the front line of benefits services don't know the information that's needed how can the disabled people whose very lives it affects be expected to know?

It's a shame each person at that event couldn't levy the same fine against the jobcentre staff for failing to make their talk clear.  We could use it to fund our next event - and to support each other through these changes in a way that doesn't seem available at the moment.

Poor and disabled? Tories think you're a troublemaker

I wrote yesterday about the plans by Iain Duncan Smith to restrict what "troubled families" can spend benefits on through the use of smart cards, and why this is a terrible idea for many reasons. It's even worse than that though. The plan is to get councils to send "troubleshooters" to confront these families and force them to conform to the expectations of the government. The Independent and BBC News both have more details.

What I didn't write about yesterday is the definition that the government are using for troubled family, and that definition is very bad indeed. The Conservative Party have turned to research by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to decide who might be "troubled". The government have decided that a troubled family is one that meets five out of seven criteria:

• Low income
• No one in the family who is working
• Poor housing
• Parents who have no qualifications
• The mother has a mental health problem
• One parent has a long-standing illness or disability
• Unable to afford basics, including food and clothes.

Government Lies

In fact these criteria boil down to one thing: poverty. And the ESRC have come right out and stated that the government have basically made up their own minds about what it all means. They said "In the term 'troubled families' it deliberately conflates families experiencing multiple disadvantage and families that cause trouble." The definition that the government are using does not mention child truancy, criminal records, ASBOs, police call outs, drug abuse, or any of the other things that they claim to be addressing.

It is quite likely that none of these conditions are under the control of the family themselves, and yet under government plans they can be penalised for it. Even worse than that, though, is the presence of illness, disability and mental health on that list. These are definitely not under the control of the people involved, but it is clear from what Eric Pickles told The Independent that the government do blame these people. Pickles said that these families must end an "it's not my fault" culture of excuses and must stop avoiding taking responsibility for their own lives. He said that there would be "less understanding" and a tougher approach.

Victim Blaming

This is blaming the victim, plain and simple. It fits right in with the Bio-Psychosocial model of disability that the government have adopted after decades of being advised by insurance company UNUM. The model basically says that disability is all in the mind of the disabled person and they only need to adopt a better attitude to overcome barriers to work and other activities. This is the model that has seen so many people judged fit for work in their Work Capability Assessment by Atos, and now we see it being used to clamp down on poor people who the Tories find distasteful. Instead of helping them, which costs money, they are punishing them because they don't fit their Victorian ideal of "deserving poor".

120,000 troubled families could be legally banned from spending benefits on alcohol and tobacco [Telegraph]
Problem families told - 'Stop blaming others' [The Independent]
Councils back troubled families scheme [BBC News]

This blog post first appeared at A Latent Existence.

No alcohol or tobacco

"No alcohol or tobacco"

That's what you get printed on vouchers for emergency food supplies  from Co-op and Tesco given out by a charity where I live. And now, it seems, it could apply to all benefits paid to "120,000 problem families" if Iain Duncan Smith has his way. According to The Telegraph:

Iain Duncan Smith has asked his officials to see if so-called ‘problem’ families should receive their welfare payments on smart cards, rather than in cash. 

The cards would only be able to pay for “priority” items such as food, housing, clothing, education and health care. 

The Work and Pensions secretary wants to stop parents who are alcoholics or who are on drugs from using welfare payments to fuel their addictions. 

The team of civil servants in his department have been asked to come up with proposals by the end of this month.

We can find the government's definition of these 120,000 "problem families" in an article from The Independent back in June:

Under government criteria, a troubled family is one that meets five out of seven criteria: having a low income, no one in the family who is working, poor housing, parents who have no qualifications, where the mother has a mental health problem, one parent has a long-standing illness or disability, and where the family is unable to afford basics, including food and clothes.

There are many problems with this definition but it can be summarised thusly:

@spoonydoc @latentexistence So basically anyone without the good manners to be born healthy, rich and privileged.
— Jonathan Hume (@IamMrJ) October 13, 2012

The Problems

Leaving aside for a moment the morality of dictating what people can buy, the first problem I can see with this scheme is that it will favour big businesses and supermarkets and leave small local shops and markets by the wayside. There will be costs involved in accepting these payment cards as well, I'm sure, as checks to make sure that shops honour the restrictions. Markets are usually cash only which would bar people from getting cheap local fresh fruit and vegetables.

The second problem is related; because of barriers to accepting the smart cards or to restrictions on what can be purchased people will be barred from shopping around for cheaper food and some will be prevented from purchasing specialist items that are required for their health but are not prescribed or considered by government to be necessary.

The third problem, and possibly the biggest problem I see is that sick or disabled people often have no choice in where they shop. The limited ability to travel or to carry things can mean that the nearest shop is the only one they can use. If small shops are not able to accept these cards then there may be no other source of food open to these people.

@philrandal @latentexistence Many social services insist you buy your shopping online. Won't provide carers to help. #nojoinedupthinking
— Spoonydoc (@Spoonydoc) October 13, 2012

Many sick or disabled people order their shopping over the internet; in fact this is often a requirement since care plans have written internet shopping in so as to cut costs of providing carers for shopping trips. This will probably be less of a problem since supermarkets will accept cards but the question remains as to whether or not they will accept them over the internet.

Breaking Addiction

If the idea of this scheme is as reported, to stop feeding addiction, then it will be pointless anyway. Addiction is powerful and removing funds doesn't mean that people won't be addicted any more. If someone is dependant on nicotine or alcohol then providing benefits on a restricted smart code will not prevent them from obtaining these things if they have to. It will lead to a black market - to bartering of valuable food items for cigarettes and alcohol, or to selling of restricted funds for much less than the real value resulting in less money for the benefit recipient. It could well lead to theft to feed the addiction. It will certainly drive some into prostitution. Drug dependency drives people to desperate measures and they won't always be rational.

Pleasure and Entertainment

Finally we must ask why society deems it acceptable to tell those who are least fortunate that they must not have any pleasures or enjoyment. It seems that those who must rely on benefits are resented and even envied for what they have. Some is illogical; for example Motability cars are not a luxury, they are required for people who cannot walk to get to medical appointments or to go shopping and the cars are leased not given. Internet connections may be the only way that some people can shop, communicate, pay bills, claim benefits or get support and yet some people still think that an internet connection is a luxury that those on benefits should not have. People who have TVs and perhaps TV subscriptions are resented, but for those who are forced to stay in the home by illness or have no funds to go out it may be the only thing to occupy their time. Should these people be forced to sit and stare at the wall for the rest of their lives? We seem to have broken the concept of national insurance. When a person who has worked and paid their dues becomes unemployed or unable to work and receives benefits they are resented for claiming benefits that they have been paying for while working. Must they too give up all pleasure in their lives?

The government hasn't addressed the reasons for smoking and drinking either, and it's not just about addiction. Smoking is an appetite suppressant  When food is expensive and income is so low parents often buy food for their children while smoking to mitigate their own hunger pangs. Alcohol is a pain killer and a sedative; like it or not for some people despite all of our medical advances alcohol may be the only way that they can have a few pain-free hours or relax enough to go to sleep.

Nanny State

Others have said this better than me:

If it incoveniences the middle classes, it's Nanny State. If it restricts those on benefits, it's 'for their own good': telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…
— DickMandrake (@DickMandrake) October 13, 2012

Tories love to bitch and whine about the Nanny State but only if it affects them personally. The poor on the other hand…
— Hugo Z. Hackenbush (@DocHackenbush) October 13, 2012

…well they NEED nannying because they are too feckless and indolent to look after themselves. #torylogic
— Hugo Z. Hackenbush (@DocHackenbush) October 13, 2012

I shall end with this. Another extremely worrying element of this is what the cards would pay for:

"education and health care"

Now why would we need to pay for those?

Sources:
120,000 troubled families could be legally banned from spending benefits on alcohol and tobacco [Telegraph]
Problem families told - 'Stop blaming others' [The Independent]

This blog post first appeared at latentexistence.me.uk

Work Consultation

As many of you may remember, I ran a consultation on this blog some time ago, asking about work with long term fluctuating conditions or disability. It received over 250 responses.

Most people said they would like to "work" but that they either could not possibly now hope to work at all or that "work" as understood in our society simply does not suit or accommodate people with mental or physical illness.

However, five ideas came up time and time again :

1) Working from home - In 2012, many commented that it is ridiculous that businesses don't do more to allow people with illnesses or disabilities to work from home. With email, Skype and video conferencing, intranets and disability aids, it is perfectly possibly - indeed cheaper for many businesses - to facilitate home working.

However, the concept of "part time" or "full time" work as understood by most businesses does not fit with long term, unpredictable conditions. Any work would need to be utterly flexible, allowing the employee to dip in and out as their conditions require. Some might work well very early in the morning but be useless by midday. Some might be able to work for an hour or two here and there. Some need work that they can do at night when symptoms make sleep impossible. Any work would need to be utterly flexible over a 24 hour period.

It was felt that many had great experience and expertise from a lifetime of work that was now going to waste.

Employers were as much a barrier to work as the conditions that make work so difficult. Much more had to be done to include businesses in any conversation about taking on sick or disabled employees.

A "Work Bank" allowing businesses to upload overflow work from peak times (ie data entry, paralegal, accountancy, design, etc) was suggested. Business could plan for busier times, and those looking for flexible work could log on, accept certain hours or chunks of work and "bank" hours towards an annual work goal.

2) Micro Businesses - Many felt that they had developed new skills since becoming chronically ill. Hobbies had become slightly more, but the benefit system simply didn't allow them to develop these into viable businesses. As soon as they started to earn any small income from these talents, they found themselves unable to develop them as they simply weren't confident enough to lose all benefits.

Many suggested a kind of small business co-operative, where those living with long term conditions wanting to develop small businesses could come together in an area and support one another. Some might be better able to take product to market, some might have great marketing skills, yet others might be creative but unable to physically participate.

A combination of small micro-loans, Access to Work, networking with others in the same position, business support and flexibility within the benefit system might allow these businesses to flourish. Might. But crucially, there needs to be a totally new approach to benefits and work that allowed space and accepts that those with significant barriers to work need a much less punitive benefit system with much less draconian marginal tax rates and sanctions.

3) Education and training - Often, when someone becomes chronically ill or their impairment means that their current job is no longer viable, they are simply thrown on the scrapheap. Every study shows that once someone with an illness or disability is excluded from the job market, it is many times harder to re-enter.

A real commitment to find other suitable work within an existing company, supported by Access to Work, re-training or further education where appropriate could mean that someone never becomes excluded in the first place. This should be a partnership between the person with barriers to work, employers and government. All too often it has been a lonely path between a supportive employer and a willing worker, but the business simply cannot carry these costs alone. A little early intervention from Government could save years of benefit payments in the future.

4) "Falling off a cliff" - For decades our benefit system has become more and more punitive with tougher sanctions and limitations. The more dependent on social security someone is, the more impossible it becomes to consider any kind of paid work. Earning disregards (the amount you are allowed to earn before losing huge chunks of support) are ludicrous - often as little as £20 a week. This, sadly, is unlikely to improve significantly under Universal Credit.

Successive governments were seduced by the idea that those with long term illnesses simply needed to try harder, yet at every turn, politicians created their own barriers to work within the very system supposed to enable and encourage.

If someone stands to lose £6,000 a year in benefits by working, they need to know that they can earn at least that amount - reliably -before they could have the confidence to "go it alone". If someone will lose £10,000 or even more, yet could only ever reasonably expect or hope to earn a few thousand, many are excluded from even trying.

Politicians must accept that :

A) Some will simply never be able to "work" again at all.

B) Some will never be able to work again in the way society expects.

C) Some will always be excluded from the workplace despite a willingness - even eagerness to work.

ALL work should be valued. Anyone with a significant impairment should get extra support. If they have a diagnosis that means they will always face difficulties sustaining consistent work or face barriers to working, any work they feel they can do should be supported.

If someone can only ever manage a few hours from home, or can only manage to volunteer for a few hours here and there, that effort should be rewarded too. If we truly want a "good society" or a "big society" or "one nation" then we must value all contribution.

Politicians should consider a "volunteer credit" - available to those discussed above, carers, parents who support their children's school, or any other volunteer who is for whatever reason unable to "work" traditionally. The credit could boost final pension levels.

5) Despite all of the above, many with long term fluctuating conditions asked what on earth they were supposed to do during very bad times. All of the above suggestions meant that there would be times when they were simply unable to "work" and would be left high and dry with no salary. The "rollercoaster" effect had led many to give up on the idea of work at all. One minute self sufficient with some salary, the next plunged into poverty and fear, faced with a welfare system almost impossible to re-enter, the stress of re-applications, tribunals, appeals. Ironically, the more sanction we have developed, the less likely those with long term illnesses are to feel they could even attempt to work.

Those with long term conditions that will always face a significant barrier to work should see some of the tax they pay go towards a "lifetime fund" - heavily subsidised by the employer and Government (just as a pension is) that they can dip in and out of when illness makes it impossible to work. It might go back to the employer to help them cover long periods of illness. It might provide a small extra income during very difficult times. It might pay for adjustments when they become necessary. For the relatively small cost to the employee, business and government, it would be vastly cheaper over the long term in wasted benefit payments and recruitment or lost work hours.

Business have been largely absent from these discussions for too long. However, there appears to be a real appetite to change this, just a lack of suggestions on how. Tax incentives could encourage business to take on more people who suffer from long term conditions. Targets for employing a certain % of long term ill or disabled people are used effectively in many other developed countries. Government effort could be channelled much more into supporting business to set up schemes such as those detailed above, or "cover" business against times when the worker simply cannot work, rather than decades of social security support.

So, with all of this in mind, could I ask you again, to leave your comments below? If you would like to answer the questions below, it might help to add a little structure, but if not, feel free to say as little or as much as you like and of course, make any further suggestions you have.

Would any of these suggestions help you?

What is your condition, How long have you had it for?

Do you have other suggestions that you think could work?

When did you last work?

What did you do?

How long did you work for?

Why did you have to stop working?

Would you like to work, however little?

Are you now totally unable to work?

Does the benefit system hold you back from working?

What fears do you have about schemes that aim to do more to support those with long term conditions into work? What, if anything, interests or inspires you?

The biggest problem has been politicians who conflated long term illness with worklessness. The two are not the same. Please, if you can spare a few moments, use this thread to explain to politicians why.

Many thanks.

** Some have suggested that the list of questions at the end may make some reveal too much personal information. PLEASE don't feel pressured to reveal anything personal at all. 

Consulting?

I was sent a consultation document from my council this week. I'm always happy to take part in a consultation, as it shows that the council is doing what it is supposed to, and consulting on changes. But, unsurprisingly, in these days of Coalition cuts-that-kill, this consultation seemed to have something of a hidden agenda, beyond just asking for people's opinions.

The subject of this survey: Council Tax Benefit cuts. I'm not currently on Council Tax Benefit, but I have been in the past, and I'm sure I could find myself in a situation where I need to claim that benefit in the future. Any of us, at any time, could find ourselves in dire straits in this economy - disabled or not. The survey opens with a brief explanation about how they will ask questions about what their current and future priorities for housing should be. (As you will see, this explanation turned out to be inadequate.) Fine, I think. And then I see the questions.

Question 1: Bringing empty homes back into use should be a priority.
I have no problem with this. I see houses sitting empty in my area all the time - often, I suspect, as a result of mortgage repossessions, but probably also as a result of people owning several properties and not being able to rent some of them out. I tick the box marked 'agree' - it could be one of the council's priorities.

Question 2: Proposed changes in legislation should be used to reduce council tax exemptions and discounts on empty homes and second homes.
Hang on a minute. We just moved from sensibly-worded questions to ones that would get me a 'fail' on my Quantitative Research Methods course. Now I have a problem. I am all in favour of the council reducing discounts for people who own more than one home. I have no idea why they get council tax discounts at all - if you can afford to own two homes, you can afford to pay council tax on them. So why have the council potentially shoved in two extremely different groups of people together in this question? Depending on how you read the question (which is very unclear), it looks like two groups could be lumped in together here: rich landlords, and other, often extremely poor people who need to claim general council tax exemptions. If the second group is suggested in this question, this includes a large number of disabled people, many of whom claim a discount because they have an extra room (for a carer to sleep in, or for mobility equipment, or because they need more than one bathroom as a result of their care needs). As a dyslexic and dyspraxic person, I have serious problems understanding which groups are meant to be included here. I sighed, ticked 'strongly disagree', and wrote an explanation: This question is unclear. I am happy to see reductions on second home exemptions, but do not touch council tax exemptions for those on benefits, disabled people, and other people who need them for reasons of disadvantage and poverty. They are the reason why council tax exemptions exist.

Question 3 was another fairly clearly-worded, not-too-controversial question about charging more council tax on empty properties, and then we get to question 4.
Question 4: Whilst pension age claimants are protected, working age claimants should have their amount of council tax support reduced.
Ah yes. A leading question that suggests we will 'protect' the people who it's currently fashionable to help (those 'hard-working' people who have now retired), but not the scroungers who don't work. Look at how they refer to us: 'working age claimants'. Why not a term that gets across the concept of 'those who can't work because they are disadvantaged by this economy and its high unemployment levels, and disabled people'? I can't believe it's really that difficult to call us something that suggests 'disadvantaged people' rather than 'people who should be working'. I think this is emotive and biased wording of a question - another example of bad quantitative research. I ticked 'strongly disagree' and tried to explain why (in the very small amount of white space next to the ticky boxes).

Question 5: Using existing administrative and computer systems to minimise costs should be a priority at this point in time.
I'm not at all sure what they meant by that, but I ticked 'agree'. I wonder now if I should have left it blank. Questions in quantitative research, and especially in consultations, should be clear. Nowhere on the consultation paper was this question explained in more detail.

Question 6: Changes to other welfare benefits should be known about before looking to implement a radically changed council tax support scheme.
Again, this is a bit unclear - what changes are we talking about here? The information sheet hasn't fully explained this. I ticked 'strongly agree', and wrote 'Any cuts to council tax benefits must be applied sparingly, and only once we know the effects of current cuts on disadvantaged groups'. If I'd had more space, I'd have written a lot more about how disabled people are being abandoned into worse and worse levels of poverty by government-level benefit cuts, and how councils should be helping to make this a little bit easier, rather than jumping on the bandwagon and cutting local-level benefits too. I did not have enough space.

There were no 'Please write any further opinions here' type questions/spaces at the end. This is a serious failing in a consultation, and especially on such an unclear survey. As you can see, I had a lot of words I wanted to write, to explain my answers in more detail.

But what worried me most was the list of ticky boxes at the end. The survey had two sections under 'ABOUT YOU' - the second section involved Equalities Monitoring (and was solely about ethnicity). The first section, which I have to conclude would be used in analysis for putting answers in context, asked the following. Am I male or female? Answered. What's my age band? Answered. And then:
Are you presently claiming council tax benefit?
Oh, excellent. A chance for the council to discount the opinions of the people who will be affected by these changes most. The opposite might be true - but how do I know? The way these answers are used are not explained, anywhere, and that's the biggest problem here.
Will the proposed changes to council tax discounts affect you?
See above. I ticked 'no' to both of these, which is the truth at the moment (although possibly not in the future), and in the hope that they would take my answers more seriously as a result. But why should I be given that privilege? No explanation of how these answers will be used means people are left confused.
And the final whammy:
Do you consider yourself to be disabled?
Given that this question was also NOT under the 'equalities monitoring' section, I can only assume that, once again, this information is being used by the council in their analysis of my answers. I was so close to ticking 'no', until I realised that the council just might be using this information to give my answers more weight, not less. Unfortunately, since they again haven't explained how it will be used, I'm left very worried about what my answer (I did tick 'yes') will mean for the way that my opinions are taken into account.

The 'equalities monitoring' section itself was about ethnic origin. This once again gives the impression that disability is not an equality issue in this consultation - it's a situation that will be taken into account when answers are analysed. I still don't know how.

Consultation is really important. Councils have to consult before they make changes to things like benefits. I may be wrong about how the questions about disability etc. are being used - maybe councils do want to listen more closely to the views of people who will be affected by the changes. Unfortunately, with no explanation of how any of these questions will be used and analysed, and with such a poorly-designed survey anyway, I'm left with paranoia and doubts - especially in this age of the government ignoring disabled people's opinions and needs, on a massive scale.

I will be writing to my local councillor and asking why the council is issuing, as a consultation document, a survey that wouldn't pass as a basic Quantitative Methods assignment at university. Personally, I think they know very well what they're doing, and that they're using the badly-worded questions and lack of explanations for their own purposes. I can't prove any of this, of course. But there are far more responsible ways to consult, so that 'vulnerable' people aren't left feeling like this.

Have you experienced a bad local consultation recently? Are you concerned that your council is finding ways to overlook your opinions? I'd like to know how widespread this situation is.

What's the difference between 1930s Germany and modern-day Britain?

Before we start I would like to point out that I am not a historian and I am not a sociologist and as such I have done my best to present the information here as I understand it. With that out of the way, I'll start with an overview of how disabled people were treated in Germany during WWII.

1930s Germany

A poster about how expensive disabled people are.

The Aktion T4 programme ran in Germany from 1939 to 1945. In the 1920s  Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding, part of an extreme eugenics movement, advocated killing those who were judged to have "life unworthy of life."  In the 1930s there were huge cuts to state institutions causing overcrowding and Nazi propaganda emphasised the cost of caring for mentally ill and disabled people. In 1939 parents of disabled child Gerhard Kretschmar wrote to Hitler to ask him to permit their child to be killed. Hitler agreed and immediately set up a committee whose job was to organise more such murders - Aktion T4. When the war started parents were told that their mentally ill and physically disabled children were being sent to special treatments centres. In fact they were murdered without the knowledge of the parents. The programme was soon extended to adults, starting in Poland then in Germany. Throughout the programme Hitler knew that there would be huge opposition to such killing and so he never put his orders in writing. The one exception was a secret letter written to authorise the formation of the Aktion T4 programme, mainly because his justice minister would not cooperate without one. The programme operated in secrecy until it was too late for most people. Under the programme at least 200,000 disabled people were murdered over six years, either through lethal medication, starvation or gas chambers.

Modern Britain

Now we jump forward to Britain today. The events I describe in the paragraph above are unthinkable. No government minister, no tabloid newspaper, no man in the street would advocate such things, right?

That's not quite true though. Most of the pieces are in place. We have propaganda pushing the idea that sick and disabled people are scroungers, workshy, lazy. This propaganda is coming from government ministers, their special advisers, and tabloids like the Daily Express, The Sun, the Daily Mail. Even broadsheets like the Times and the Telegraph have contributed. Such propaganda has even been raised by MPs in the Work and Pensions Select Committee and ministers told to stop. The propaganda is working too, with hate crimes against disabled people up in vast numbers.

We have many people fighting to legalise assisted suicide, inadvertently promoting the idea that life for some people is not worth living. Sure, we're only asking for voluntary euthanasia, but what other factors might be in play? Pressure to stop being a burden, financial problems, cuts to care all contribute to a desire for death. If euthanasia becomes legal what is to stop people from being pushed to kill themselves? It may be overt or it may be through suggestion and through making their lives hell. (This is more my fear of how it could go wrong than any judgement on my part for or against euthanasia.)

We have cuts to local authority care budgets, starting in Worcestershire, that mean anyone whose care costs more than sending them to an institution will lose some care. The politicians argue that it's a choice because people can choose to move to a care home or to cut some of their care provision. But what to cut? Eating? Washing? Dressing? Using a toilet? We have already seen people lose in court after fighting to not have to wear a nappy. Adults are expected to soil themselves rather than get help to use a toilet. We have also seen the loss of the independent living fund. The net result is loss of care or institutionalising people. Most care homes are run by private companies and neglect does not seem uncommon. I think more abuse and neglect is likely especially when companies are cutting costs because they have underquoted better homes.

We have sick and disabled people being  judged as fit to work and told to claim job seeker's allowance and look for work, and we have even more seriously sick and disabled people being placed in the Work Related Activity Group. Both groups are subject to The Work Programme where they are expected to undertake unpaid work experience for large companies, and government plans are to make such work placements of unlimited duration. Work makes you free.

Under these plans anyone who is seen to not be cooperating with The Work Programme and other work related activities will see their benefit income slashed. Those on Job Seeker's Allowance can have their entire allowance removed entirely for weeks even six months. Those on Employment Support Allowance (e.g. too sick to work) will see three quarters of their allowance removed. Of course anyone who has been judged as fit to work or has been placed in the WRAG is expected to be capable of going on work placements even if their assessment was wrong and they are waiting a year for an appeal, and even if people are seriously harmed by trying to work. The result is that those who don't destroy themselves trying to find jobs that don't exist or going to endless work placements will instead not be able to afford food, clothes, fuel bills, rent and more. Many will be able to use food banks but some will not be physically able to get to them and food banks rely on charity from other people who are struggling too.

The result

Is it such a large step for disabled people to be dying? No. It's already  happening. Reports in April claimed that 1,100 people had already died after being placed in the work related activity group. That's more than thirty people a week. This is what Chris Grayling calls "Tough love."

Some government ministers make policy decisions without thinking about the consequences of what will happen in practice. Others are fully aware of what will happen and just don't care. Either way, they are often covered by claiming that their policy in itself does not harm people, even though the flaws with implementation allow people to fall through the net and come to harm. Government ignore evidence. They dismiss statistics, they blame the previous government, they claim that processes are being sorted out now, they claim that any harm is the fault of the sick or disabled or unemployed individual. The Government are hiding behind Atos and A4e who are "just carrying out orders" but they way they carry out those orders makes things even worse. Government ministers have the same attitude as many other people in power - they can say "make it happen" and the minions do the murdering.

In 1930s Germany the government themselves ordered the rounding up and the killing of disabled people. In modern-day Britain the government can claim that it is not their fault, even that it should not happen, but private companies and the chasm of bureaucracy between various government departments are what kill people. Starvation, homelessness and neglect are what will kill people. The implementation is different but the outcome is the same.

Further Reading

Godwin’s law must die [A Latent Existence]
Action T4 [Wikipedia]
Disabled benefits claimants face £71 a week fines for breaching work plan [The Guardian]
32 die a week after failing test for new incapacity benefit [Mirror]
Early day motion 295 [Parliament]
Work-or-starve plans for seriously ill welfare claimants might backfire [Eklesia]
Past Caring? [We are Spartacus]

Consultations: Make Your Voice Heard

At least four consultations/calls for evidence important to the future of disabled people are ending soon, so if you want the opportunity to make your voice heard, the clock is ticking.

First to close is the Year 3 Harrington call for evidence on the operation of the Work Capability Assessment which is due to close on September 7th (i.e. this Friday). Professor Harrington has announced he is being replaced after this year, and the likelihood is that any replacement will be worse, so get your opinions in while there is a chance they will be heard.

The Harrington Call For Evidence can be found here.

Next to close after that is the consultation on what to do once the Disabled People's Transport Advisory Committee is abolished, which is due to close on September 14th (i.e. a week Friday).

(While not well known, DPTAC has done some useful work in making our voice heard on transport issues, but is falling victim to the Tory horror of voices they can't control, or, as they put it, a desire to 'increase accountability, reduce duplication of activity, improve transparency and discontinue obsolete activities').

The DPTAC Consultation can be found here.

Third to close is the consultation on Personal Independence Payment and Blue Badge Eligibility, this is looking into how to deal with the changes in the migration from DLA to PIP which may mean that people who are currently automatically eligible for a Blue Badge due to receipt of Higher Rate Mobility may not receive PIP, no matter the severity of their mobility disability and therefore introduces the question of how to ensure they remain able to obtain a Blue Badge. This is due to close on 2nd October.

The PIP/Blue Badge Consultation can be found here.

Last, but potentially most devastating for those affected, is the consultation on the 'Future' of the Independent Living Fund, which might be considered a particularly disingenuous title considering what is being discussed is actually the impact of the closure of ILF - something which has already been in effect for nearly 2 years for new applicants (despite the Equality Act requirement for consultations prior to any significant changes) and which will affect current recipients in 2015. This is due to close 10th October.

The ILF Consultation can be found here.

Thanks go to the #Spartacusreport peeps for flagging most of these up, if anyone is aware of any other disability related consultations that are ongoing, please flag them up in the comments.

Atos: 'A Brand Under Terrible Pressure'

The Guardian described the Paralympics as 'Surprisingly Political' in an article on Monday. How anyone can be surprised given the ongoing demonisation of disabled people in public life I'm not certain, especially when that demonisation continued during the games as plans for savage punishment of disabled benefit claimants became clear and the Telegraph sank to Hate Mail levels as it branded us 'lazy sickness benefit claimants'. However the article ranged wider than just covering the protests that disabled people had been staging against the backdrop of the Games, touching also on C4's focus on the transport issues of No Go Britain and coverage of the rising disability hate crime rates.

But it was the anti-Atos protests that were the meat of the article, and the final paragraphs provide ample proof that they have achieved their objective in raising awareness of how Atos really views disabled people beyond the disability community as the article concludes:

(Atos) has become a lightning rod for disability rights protests, such as the demonstrations outside the Atos London HQ and elsewhere last Friday.

"Its not good for Atos, " says PR consultant Mark Borkowski. "If people were not aware of Atos, they certainly are now. It is a brand under terrible pressure."

I'd call that a result!

Disabled People Told to do Workfare, or Live on £25 a Week

The headline in the Guardian is scary enough, "Disabled benefits claimants face £71 a week fines for breaching work plan", while the Daily Telegraph descends to the vile levels of the Hate Mail with "Fines for workshy sickness benefit claimants to double", but the reality for disabled people may be scarier still. The basic rate of ESA is a little over £96 a week (assuming you haven't hit time-limiting and are getting nothing whatsoever), a £71 or 70% fine for a perceived refusal to comply with a work plan would leave you trying to survive on around £25 a week.

I've claimed both JSA and ESA in the past, and I'm currently claiming neither and living on my rapidly evaporating savings because of the damage both of those, but in particular the ATOS-run WCA test for ESA, have done to my health. Having entered the process with a physical disability I now face panic attacks any time I try to deal with official, or potentially official, mail. What that means in the context of these latest headlines is that I have actually been through the process of setting up a work plan, and that is what worries me.

When I started to claim JSA I insisted that I needed to speak to one of the Job Centre Plus Disability Employment Advisors. Having explained to her that I had just been made redundant from a cutting-edge job as a specialist engineer working on the development of the flight control system for the Eurofighter, she immediately started advocating that I apply for minimum wage positions, and then admitted that she did not think there was any likelihood of being able to find work (bear in mind that this was before the financial crash and the massive worsening of employment prospects). After a couple more sessions, when she realised that whatever help she could offer I had already done at a far higher level, she washed her hands of me and threw me back into the pool with their non-specialist advisors.

As part of this process I had to agree to a Job Seeker's Contract, but the problem was that the contract bore little relation to reality. As a specialist engineer my employment prospects are overwhelmingly through specialist recruitment agencies working online, and it was only in looking for a job in my own speciality that I was likely to find an employer willing to live with the extent of my disability. Trying to insist that I went through the local paper looking for any opportunity whatsoever simply failed to grasp the reality of my disability. And where I did specify precise limitations that my disability imposed, a disturbing process took place. When I told the advisor that I struggled to manage the 15 minute commute to my previous employer, she noted "Well, in that case we won't require you to look at jobs more than 30 minutes from home." And each time that I signed on, whichever advisor I saw would try to force me to accept an extension of that commute radius to an hour, four times further than a distance I was already struggling to manage.

I was sent to see a succession of executive and disability employment advisors working on JCP contracts, the same people who will now be executing workfare contracts under the Work Programme. Each took one look at the combination of my abilities, and my disability, and panicked. The only possible match for my needs any of them could suggest was as a researcher in higher education, yet only because I had been the one who introduced that possibility, and my health hasn't been good enough to pursue the advanced degree I would need. Faced with an attempt by JCP to force me onto an utterly inappropriate programme, which even the workfare provider running admitted was utterly inappropriate, I had to lodge a complaint with the Minister for Disabled People (though fortunately not the current incumbent!), which resulted in JCP admitting that they 'had lost sight of my disability'.

And these people who 'had lost sight of my disability' are the people that IDS wants to be able to levy £71/week fines on disabled people for any perceived deviation from the work plan. A work plan that will soon include the potential for a disabled person to be forced onto unlimited duration work experience. Yet, even after my ministerial complaint, JCP was still trying to send me to training providers with completely inaccessible premises (what makes this worse is that these providers were the disability specialist providers, not general ones).

If I am to have any hope of working (and I don't believe I am currently well enough for that to be a possibility), then I will need to work from the prone position, taking breaks as required, and with a schedule to suit myself. Any position will be absolutely dependent on the employer and the Access to Work programme providing a suitable workstation to accommodate my needs, and somehow I don't see that being a priority with a workfare contractor. Placing myself in the hands of JCP or sub-contracted advisors truly scares me, my experience has shown me that my health is in danger from the depth of their ignorance, yet that ignorance is now to be backed by overwhelmingly punitive powers with no pretence of due process.

As a friend of mine noted when looking at this headline 'people will die.'

Lord Morris of Manchester

I'm sure you've all read by now about the death of Labour peer Alf Morris. He was the man behind the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and the man behind Mobility Allowance (which then became the mobility component of DLA and will soon become the mobility component of PIP).

The Channel 4 website's obituary has a great quote from him:

“If we could each bequeath one precious gift to posterity, I would choose a society in which there is genuine compassion for long-term sick and disabled people; where understanding is unostentatious and sincere; where needs come before means; where if years cannot be added to their lives, at least life can be added to their years; where the mobility of disabled people is restricted only by the bounds of technical progress and discovery; where they have the fundamental right to participate in industry and society according to ability; where socially preventable distress is unknown; and where no one has cause to be ill at ease because of her or his disability.”

How the last few years must have broken his heart. That all compassion for disabled people has evaporated from our society, that all understanding has been replaced by hate. The fact that means have been put far in front of needs; resulting in the deaths of numerous disabled people because the government had decided to retract their support. The closure of the Remploy factories restricting the number of disabled people taking part in industry. Where socially preventable distress is inflicted on disabled people deliberately. And given that Mobility Allowance was his baby; the fact that mobility is being taken from 20% of that benefit's successors.

NAO Says DWP failed to penalise Atos

The National Audit Office has said that the Department of Work and Pensions has failed to penalise Atos for under-performance on the Work Capability Assessment and has failed to set the French multinational sufficiently challenging targets. In the past year Atos has been paid £122 million for carrying out the WCA, but a further £60 million has had to be spent on Tribunal cases appealing Atos judgements, 40% of which succeed. DWP has admitted that Atos performance has failed to meet agreed time limits and has been sub-standard since mid-2011.

The NAO also noted that DWP's failure to seek the reasons behind tribunal judgements mean that it is impossible to determine whether changes are required to the Work Capability Assessment and that its negotiating position is undermined by inaccurate forecasting of the number of people requiring an assessment, likely related to DWP's recent admission that people assigned into the ESA WRAG by the WCA are significantly more disabled than it forecast. Of the penalty clauses which have been triggered by Atos performance, DWP have claimed only 10% of the redress the taxpayer is entitled to.

A DWP spokesman claimed that they were committed to obtaining "value for money for the taxpayer", while an Atos spokesman said that the WCA contract was "complex and challenging".

The review was conducted by the NAO at the request of the Labour MP Tom Greatrex, who noted that the failure to claim redress and the tribunal costs mean that "The taxpayer is effectively paying for this service twice ... clearing up the mess that results from Atos assessments."

Given the Tory focus on applying 'private sector best practise' to government, the leniency being applied to Atos seems difficult to comprehend; no private company would simply let a failing subcontractor off with 90% of penalty clauses, while a stringent recovery plan would be demanded to deal with the failures rather than allow them to continue bumbling on without intervention.

National Insurance and "Taxpayers' Money"

An article I wrote appears in the latest issue of The Occupied Times and can be found online here. This is the unedited version I originally submitted, posted with kind agreement from the OT.

On the day that I’m sitting down to write this piece; an article largely about me and my fears over welfare reform appeared on the US Huffington Post. With it being the US site most of the commenters were Fox News viewers banging on about how Obamacare will introduce Death Panels and nothing to do with what the article was actually about.

There were some supportive comments from decent people who thought the UK welfare cuts were too much. There were some deeply disturbing comments from the pro-eugenics people saying that I shouldn’t be allowed to live at all. Aside from the Fox News fans, the other large group of commenters were the people who said either “well, it’s sad that people have these conditions; but why should they get taxpayers money?” Or “she says she can’t work but she also says she can do her own shopping. If she can leave the house to shop she can get a job and doesn’t need taxpayers money.” Because hitting the supermarket for 45 mins on a good day is exactly the same as working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. But I digress.

The recurring point there is the one about “taxpayers money”. We seem to have developed this cultural notion that people who claim benefits are not taxpayers, and never have been. This isn’t true.

Because “please don’t dismantle the welfare state and leave people undergoing cancer treatment completely destitute” is considered an extreme left position these days I occasionally get pitted in radio debates against libertarians who are completely opposed to a welfare state because they don’t want to spend “their taxes” on paying benefits to other people. At some point I always end up screeching “it’s called National Insurance for a reason! That’s how insurance schemes work!”

I didn’t get my first job until I was part-way through my degree. My impaired mobility meant I couldn’t do the kinds of work young people traditionally do like bar work or stacking supermarket shelves. So I claimed benefits until I was educated enough for people to be willing to give me a job within my physical limits. I started paying my own National Insurance contributions halfway through my final year at uni and continued to do so for several years.

I was in my mid-20s when my health started to deteriorate. Over the next few years, bit by bit, I reduced the amount of work I was doing until, when I was 28, I reached a point where working was something I’d become completely incapable of. So I’ve now reached a point where I’ve claimed back from the National Insurance pot more than I ever paid in, but that’s how the insurance business works.

Some people buy annual multi-trip travel insurance every year and never make a claim. Other people take out a fortnight’s insurance for their first ever oversees holiday and have to make a claim immediately for a suitcase and contents that were destroyed on the outbound flight. Sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

I am not just scrounging taxes from others; I paid my taxes and my National Insurance contributions when I could, and now I can’t I’m living under the protection that the insurance scheme offered.

During one of the aforementioned radio debates I was up against a guy who felt that the idea of a third of tax spending going on welfare was absurd. His suggestion? Rich people take out private income-protection insurance instead and only us filthy poor people claim from the state.

Private insurance premiums would cost more than National Insurance contributions. Private insurance companies also try extremely hard to not pay out. If there’s an element of self-infliction to your condition - for example if you drunkenly dived into the shallow end of a pool and broke your neck – your insurer will probably not payout. The welfare state traditionally has paid out to all who needed support, regardless of how the need for support arose. He’d rather people pay more for poorer quality cover just for the satisfaction of saying “yeah, well, at least we’re not spending a third of our taxes on welfare!”

Wealthy people paying for private insurance and not claiming state benefits if they become ill or impaired would further undermine what little will there is among the rich to keep the welfare state going. A rich person has a motivation to pay their National Insurance contributions if they know they’ll get their £90-odd a week should they develop cancer; even though they’ve got their own means to not need it. With strict means testing for people claiming Employment and Support Allowance having come in, this gives the rich further grounds to be hostile towards the poor for claiming what they see as “their taxes”.

Some disabled people have never been able to work and will never be able to work. Some might argue that someone like me who only worked for a few years and has claimed back more than they paid in should at least be eligible because that’s the nature of insurance. What about those who’ve never paid and will never pay even one week’s National Insurance?

The answer to this question is something brought up by a different radio debating partner of mine and also is brought up several times by commenters on the Huff Post article telling me that I don’t deserve state benefits: It’s a family’s responsibility to look after a disabled child.

Of course, what they mean is that a parent should pay to meet every one of the disabled child’s needs for life and the state shouldn’t be forced to pay for a quirk of genetics, a traumatic birth or an accident. But I see it differently: If I’d never been able to work at all; the National Insurance premiums my parents paid would cover me. Radio Rightwinger said that she’s made private insurance arrangements to protect her family, how does National Insurance differ? Both my parents worked in factories and paid their National Insurance, how is that any different to Radio Rightwinger’s private insurance pot?

With people of means no longer able to claim Contributory Employment and Support Allowance for more than a year if they’re deemed capable of possibly being able to work at some point in the future it not only undermines support for National Insurance as I’ve already mentioned; it’s also a remarkable bait and switch. A comparable situation is public sector pensions: Public sector workers were sold a pension scheme and now the government is trying to change the rules. You have to have paid a minimum amount of National Insurance contributions to get Contributory ESA – the clue is in the name – but disabled people are not getting the same outrage and support over this changing of the rules. Two million people striked over pension changes, but because we’re seen as “scrounging taxpayers money” rather than “people who paid into an insurance scheme” I don’t think we’ll ever see the same amount of support in fighting the changes.

Atos sponsors Olympics and Paralympics

At the end of last week @hossylass and I were both asked to write a short piece about Atos to go into this satirical paper about the Olympic/Paralympic sponsors. Our submissions were then not included. So I'm posting them on WtB instead. Mine can be found here. Hossy in fact wrote 2 pieces as she was unsure what they wanted, these are them:

Dear Customer,

You have been carefully selected by your Government database to be one of the first to benefit from our latest opportunity to turn your life around.

Remember how we managed, in one simple assessment, to free you from the burden that is state dependency, and to simultaneously reduce your sickness or disability from “severe” to “marginal” or in some cases cure you altogether?

Well now there is more good news. We have been carefully chosen to take you on a new journey of discovery, to help you to be even less dependent on the state.

This journey will consist of an interview with someone who has an understanding of disability (having completed our extensive 3 hour course), and will be a wonderful opportunity for you to experience different cultural opinions to disability, to learn how to decipher strong accents from many nations, and to allow you to describe your disability in a much reduced manner.

No more shall you be compelled to explain at depth your condition and its affects on your everyday life – we have removed that burden too, and all that will be asked of you is Yes or No answers.

I am confident that you will embrace this opportunity – it will almost certainly be life changing!

Atos Healthcare

---

Atos sponsors Olympics and Paralympics

Atos are proud to sponsor the 2012 London Olypmic Games, and the UK Government are thrilled that Atos are committing with such generosity.

A spokesperson for the DWP said: “In all our dealings with Atos we have found them very receptive to opportunities, sponsoring the Olympics is another way that the Government can cement our relationship. It is also a clear sign that Atos care about not just healthy people, but also those who need to become healthy. Sport is clearly the way forward to good health, as is work.

It is this commitment to ensuring that people are termed healthy that has convinced us that Atos Healthcare are genuinely the best people not just to sponsor the Olympics and Paralympics, but also to manage assessments that increase the number of people who are fit for work, whilst decreasing their personal costs, something I am sure all sick and disabled people want.”

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Atos said: “We are very much looking forward to watching the Olympians, and are grateful for the opportunity to do so. When the Paralympics start, we will be watching equally as closely, if not more so. It is a marvellous opportunity for us to analyse and assess performance, it should be quite enlightening and educational, and may give us increased opportunity to help people to become less dependent on the state. We may be recording some of the competitors for training and fact verification, in order to reinforce our views.”

When questioned on their knowledge of the Paralympic grading system of disability, and disability in general, Atos admitted to being “not quite up to speed” but are “willing to learn”. This is indeed positive news, given that Atos are currently being accused of not having complete understanding of disability, and the vast amounts of proof available that these accusations are founded in fact.

Atos found "fit for work"

At the end of last week @hossylass and I were both asked to write a short piece about Atos to go into this satirical paper about the Olympic/Paralympic sponsors. Our submissions were then not included. So I'm posting them here instead. This first post is my submission, while Hossy's is here:

Atos found "fit for work"

French IT company Atos were last week found "fit for work" when they were awarded the contract by the ConDems to assess disabled people for the new benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP). This is despite them being completely incapable when it comes to assessing people for the existing benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Atos's conclusions in ESA decisions are frequently challenged and appeals found in favour of the disabled person.

If a disabled person was as lacking in ability as Atos then even Atos would probably find them incapable of functioning in the workplace. Despite Atos not being able to correctly decide if they can wipe their own bums without help from a tribunal panel, they will now be tasked with not only finding out if disabled people are fit for work, but also whether or not disabled people are entitled to help in the bum wiping area. And you need that wipe to be damn effective now: The government have redefined the verb “to bathe” and if you need help when it comes to washing you're now only allowed to wash your hands, face, underarms and torso. So when wiping your butt you need to get it spotless because you're not allowed to clean it in the bath.

Atos operate from the idea everyone's a faker until proved otherwise. The same mindset that has excluded all athletes with learning difficulties from the Paralmypics since the Spanish learning disabled basketball team were found to be mostly comprised of frauds in Sydney in 2000. Genuine athletes with learning difficulties make their return this year after having been excluded for 12 years because of a tiny number of fakers. Disability benefit fraud is less than 0.5% but Atos are torturing all disabled people. Kinda makes it seem like Atos are the perfect sponsor.

#ATOS Contracts: Sick Joke, Or Rewarding Incompetence?

It seems the reward for all the heartache and suffering that ATOS have inflicted on disabled people over the past few years, the bonus for getting one assessment in six so wrong it is overturned in front of a judge, for wasting £50m/year of taxpayer’s money in those appeal tribunals, is the right to inflict precisely the same kind of abuse on millions of disabled recipients of Disability Living Allowance as the government axes that successful benefit in order to exclude 20 to 25% of current recipients.

In the same week that ATOS has been pilloried by back to back Dispatches and Panorama documentaries that revealed staff who consider their job toxic, who spend their time looking for ways to not think about the consequences on the patients they swore an oath to protect, while celebrating that they are never called before the tribunals who have to put right their failure, and who seemingly find nothing wrong with asking a suicidal patient why they haven’t succeeded yet (not to mention the absolute triumph of finding a sectioned, catatonic man fit for work), the government has seen fit to reward their execution of the WCA contract with the majority of the contracts to conduct the DLA to PIP migration. The other contracts have gone to Capita, an outsourcing company, because clearly managing office cleaning is everything you need to know to conduct complex medical assessments of disability (or maybe it was their work as bailiffs which drew Grayling’s eye). The terrifying thing is it could have been even worse, G4S were competing for the PIP contracts until they reduced Olympic security to a farce.

You have to wonder what IDS was thinking when he signed off on this. Was he rewarding incompetence, or rewarding ATOS for their demonstrated ability to ignore facts, humanity, ethical obligations and even sheer common sense in pursuit of the mandated cuts?

Fear, Loathing and Disability in the Torygraph

It turns out yesterday's attacks on us in the Mail and Express were not the DWP's only pre-emptive strike against the disastrous revelations of Dispatches and Panorama. The DWP puppetmasters also convinced the Daily Telegraph to launch an attack on disabled people, this time with a rehashed version of a Christina Odone blog (apparently the Telegraph were too lazy even to write an original piece).

This being the Torygraph, the primal hate of the Mail and Express would not suit their house style, so the article is framed to claim that the 'disability rights lobby' (a term she uses repeatedly, apparently in an attempt to paint us as no different to any corporate lobby group, rather than as an actively disparaged minority subject to spiralling levels of hate crime) are attempting to have their cake and eat it, by demanding both the right to work, and the right to have out of work benefits on demand. She even drags in the Paralympics, writing:

Aren't the Paralympics proof that even the most physically challenged can achieve awesome feats? Their disabilities did not prevent Nelson, Byron, FDR, JFK from achieving their goals.

Apparently if we aren't winning gold medals or becoming living legends, then Ms Odone considers we are letting the side down. She is actually articulating a view many of us have been afraid of, the use of the Paralympics as a tool to beat us with, rather than to celebrate our achievements, while her selection of disabled heroes make an interesting choice: Nelson who was already marked for high office (and had patrons to ensure that) before he ever became disabled; Byron, whose club foot did little to limit his poetry (but which does demonstrate the psychological damage caused by negative views of disability); FDR, who was again a major figure prior to disability, and who did everything in his power to hide his disability, to the extent that most Americans did not realise they had a disabled president, and JFK, whose political career was the vehicle of his media magnate father, and who suffered from the back pain she goes on to deride later. There is much to celebrate in all four of these disabled lives, but also much to be critical of in the light of contemporary views of disability, and all four had assets and influence operating on their behalf that are available to very few people in our society, disabled or otherwise.

But it is in her final paragraph that Ms Odone's mask slips and she descends to the level of the Mail and the Express, proclaiming:

A man who claims to suffer from a debilitating but unprovable backache, an alcoholic who refuses to tackle her addiction: they may be considered "disabled" but should they receive benefits? When they do, the truly incapacitated feel cheated. As do the rest of us.


As someone who actually has a 'debilitating but unprovable backache,' I had just finished speaking on Radio London about disability hate crime and the irresponsibility of vile tabloids like the Mail and Express in whipping up ignorant hatred against disabled people by teaching the mob that common disabilities are not real and that we are all 'fakes' and 'frauds' and legitimate targets for their hatred when I came across Ms Odone's article. To find the same hate-filled line being repeated in the Telegraph, supposedly a 'quality' broadsheet was utterly depressing.

My 'debilitating but unprovable backache' manifests itself as pain across the entire lower surface of my body if I sit at a desk. Imagine feeling like you have a burn across everything from knees to buttocks, and feeling that every day across 20-odd years of disability. I worked for most of that, but every other day would see me curled up on the office floor, in so much pain that I couldn't string two coherent thoughts together. It might not show on x-rays or MRIs, neuro-plasticity means that the only issue need be the internal wiring of the spinal cord, but multiple rheumatologists and my pain management specialist are in no doubt that my pain is very real, and utterly disabling. Yet apparently Ms Odone is medically qualified to the point of being able to dismiss them without even seeing me.

Forced out of work, even DWP accepted there was no hope of me finding work, but my WCA was a bitter farce that triggered a major flare-up in my disability which lasted months. Never mind the problems shown in last night's documentaries, the ATOS doctor was verbally aggressive from the outset, criticising me for my knowledge of the process, dismissing evidence later proved to be absolutely true as my condition worsened in front of him, and actively trying to prevent me giving the one piece of evidence that qualified me for ESA outright. My report of what happened now forms part of the Work And Pensions Select Committee report into the WCA.

And then last year, no doubt because of the encouragement of hate-filled articles like this, someone reported me to the Benefit Fraud Hotline as working full time. I rarely leave the house more than once a week for a couple of hours, my car sits on the drive in open view for all of that time, yet someone felt able to assure DWP I was a benefit fraudster, because they had been taught by the tabloids and by articles like this that all of us are. The DWP investigator may have dismissed the allegation before she was even through my front door, but the consequences for me were a massive flare-up, lasting months, leaving me barely able to snatch an hours' sleep at a time. And when it came time to renew my ESA claim at Christmas, I was simply unable to do it, every attempt triggering panic attacks. That is the reality that articles like this create for disabled people, that is the climate of hatred we live in. 

Hatemongering at the DWP?

The press-officers and Special Advisers at the Department of Work and Pensions must have been burning the midnight oil the last couple of days, searching the records of the DWP for benefit claimants they can spin as having unjustifiably claimed benefits for what they can try to convince people are minor injuries. And today they must have been patting themselves on the back as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express laid into disabled people for daring to claim when suffering such minor injuries as low back pain.

As it happens I have low back pain, it has dominated my life for twenty years, it led to the end of my career as an engineer developing flight control systems, on far too many days it has left me curled up on the office floor, in so much pain I can’t think straight, as sensation tries to convince me I have burns across the entire lower surface of my body. So forgive me if I disagree that this is a minor disability.

As I read that article in the Mail, I didn’t share its outrage. What I felt was fear, the fear of being targeted for the baying mob as a ‘fraud’ and a ‘scrounger’. The Mail is teaching everyone who reads that article that people who have low back pain, people who have any little understood disability, ultimately all disabled people, are ‘frauds’ and ‘scroungers’, and suitable targets for their hatred as the economy tanks. Is it any wonder disabled people see terrifying parallels to the similar campaign in Nazi Germany.

Incitement to Disability Hate Crimes dressed up as socially responsible reporting by the Hate Mail and the Vexpress, this is nothing new, but the interesting question is why today?

The answer can be found in the TV schedules. At 8 PM on Channel 4, Dispatches will be ripping open the repellent truth of ATOS and the WCA, with a doctor going undercover and being told by his ATOS trainers that the point of the WCA is to get people off benefits and that if they don’t hit the targets and put sufficient people off benefits they will be sanctioned (the targets the DWP swears blind do not exist). Then at 8:30PM on BBC 2, Panorama does exactly the same thing, with Professor Harrington, the independent reviewer of the WCA saying that there are areas where it is clearly failing disabled people.

The DWP are desperate to do whatever they can to prevent the truth of their disablist behaviour and that of their contractors becoming more widely known, and as they have done on previous occasions, they have tried to launch a pre-emptive strike through their glove-puppets in the right-wing press. We may not see their hand directly, but only the DWP is in a position to dredge up the figures quoted in both articles.

IDS may proclaim himself perplexed at the way the right-wing press turn DWP statements into vicious attacks on disabled people, but there can be no doubt that we are seeing a deliberate campaign of vilification orchestrated from within the DWP. If they want the results to be different, they have had years to change their behaviour, but there has been no such change. Instead we see the shameful sight of a government inciting hatred against its most vulnerable subjects.

And the effects of that campaign of hatred and incitement will be seen tomorrow when Scope publish the results of their latest survey, revealing that the rate of disability hate crime has doubled since 2008.

A Toxic Day for ATOS at the Olympics?

ATOS will no doubt have been hoping to milk their association with the Olympics and their partnership with the International Paralympic Committee over the next few weeks, but is the milk about to curdle, could the Olympics turn ATOS into a toxic brand?

Later tonight, at 8PM on Channel 4, and at 8:30PM on BBC2, both Dispatches  and Panorama will be running exposes of the ATOS WCA process. We’ve already seen hints of what is to come with leaks from Dispatches showing ATOS trainers telling doctors that if they pass more than the approved amount of disabled people they will be subject to sanctions, and a DWP spokesperson claiming it is nonsense to say there are targets. Meanwhile Panorama has Professor Harrington, the independent reviewer of the WCA process admitting that it is failing disabled people and is not good enough.

Worse, Steve Hill’s case, featured on Panorama, and summarized here by bendygirl, raises the disturbing possibility that the WCA may have directly contributed to his death, by convincing a man with chronic heart failure and waiting for surgery that he was actually fit for work. Steve Hill died of a heart attack after vacuuming his car, 39 days after an ATOS doctor told him he was fit for work.

Meanwhile, a Parliamentary Early Day Motion, laid down by the superb John McDonnell, MP, one of disabled people's true friends in the Lower House, castigates ATOS for their treatment of disabled people, and the International Paralympic Committee for associating themselves with an openly disablist company by naming it as a partner. Never mind the active mistreatment of disabled people, ATOS can’t even be bothered to make most of their assessment centres actually accessible to disabled people. The IPC’s attitude when disabled people write to complain (and I have done that myself and seen their reply) is essentially that they don’t care as it isn’t their problem – I am curious as to which part of the Olympic spirit is reflected in telling disabled people you don’t care about the way they are treated by the company you are allowing to wrap itself in your flag?

83 MPs covering just about every party, though no Tories yet (quel surprise), have signed the EDM so far. Just think about that, 83 MPs condemning the International Paralympic Committee and its partner company on the first full day of the Olympics for the way disabled people are treated by them.

My own experiences of ATOS can be found here, and the long term effects it has had on me are discussed here.

I am hoping for a wonderful Olympics and Paralympics, but for a disastrous one for ATOS. And as for the International Paralympic Committee, I am hoping that this will serve to remind them that they are supposed to represent everything that is best about disabled people, not defend their oppression. The Olympic Spirit is about being the best that we can be, not about providing corporate whitewashes.  

#OpeningCeremony Programme Image Transcript

Last night this image did the rounds on Twitter. It's a page from the opening ceremony programme in which Boyle explained his vision.

As the image is not accessible to screenreader users, and because of its reference to the welfare state, it seemed sensible to post a transcript here. Huge, huge thanks to @lilacwheelz who actually transcribed it.

‘Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises’

The Tempest, William Shakespeare



At some point in their histories, most nations experience a revolution that changes everything about them.

The United Kingdom had a revolution that changed the whole of human existence.

In 1709 Abraham Darby smelted iron in a blast furnace, using coke. And so began the Industrial Revolution. Out of Abraham’s Shropshire furnace flowed molten metal. Out of his genus flowed the mills, looms, engines, weapons, railways, ships, cities, conflicts and prosperity that built the world we live in.

In November 1990 another Briton sparked another revolution – equally far-reaching – a revolution we’re still experiencing. The digital revolution was sparked by Tim Berners-Lee’s amazing gift to the world – the World Wide Web. This, he said, is for everyone.

We welcome you to an Olympic Opening Ceremony for everyone. A ceremony that celebrates the creativity, eccentricity, daring and openness of the British genius by harnessing the genius, creativity, eccentricity, daring and openness of modern London.

You’ll hear the words of our great poets – Shakespeare, Blake and Milton. You’ll hear the glorious noise of our unrivalled pop culture. You’ll see the characters from our great children’s literature – Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Mary Poppins, Voldemort, Cruella de Vil. You’ll see ordinary families and extraordinary athletes. Dancing nurses, singing children and amazing special effects.

But we hope, too, that through all the noise and excitement you’ll glimpse a single golden thread of purpose – the idea of Jerusalem – of the better world, the world of real freedom and true equality, a world that can be built through the prosperity of industry, through the caring nation that built the welfare state, through the joyous energy of popular culture, through the dream of universal communication. A belief that we can build Jerusalem.