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Recent Posts
- How DWP rules for disability benefit assessment could change as Reeves’ Budget approaches
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- Turning warm words into action to end the need for emergency food
- More than 9 million Britons vulnerable to reliance on food banks, research finds
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work capability assessment (WCA); biopsychosocial model (BPS); DWP
e-petition - Stop Unfair Re-assessments For Disabled People
Responsible department: Department for Work and Pensions
Stop the unfair and cruel re-assessments via ATOS for disabled people currently on Incapacity Benefit. ESA is a flawed benefit, and puts terrible pressure and stress on vulnerable people, putting people who cannot work on lesser benefits and applying sanctions. Let disabled people decide for themselves if they can work, they and their carers know best.
Click HERE to Sign
Recommended Web Sites
- 'Down With All That' In-depth background reading on the shambles of the (rapidly disappearing) welfare state
- Aktion T4 The T4 Program was responsible for the murder of over 100,000 German citizens…babies, children, adults, and elderly…who had physical and mental disabilities. Developed in 1938 and carried out at six different sites throughout Germany and Austria, the T4 P
- AtoS Healthcare User Group (Closed Group – Request to Join) “How do you feel about the Government’s move in scrapping Income Support and Disability Living Allowance and the organisation calling itself AtoS ‘HEALTHCARE’ ?”
- Atos Miracles Find out where your nearest Atos Miracle Cure Center is on this fantastic web site.
- Atos Miracles A place for the sick and disabled to share stories of how ATOS have cured them. Many sites on this subject have been threatened with legal action by the company and this is a place of satire – which we are hoping is not yet outlawed in the UK.
- ATOS VICTIMS GROUP “Telling it How it IS” – Staunch alllies and fighters against the UK’s genocidal so-called welfare ‘reform’ programme
- Benefits Claimants Fight Back
- Boycott Workfare Workfare – compulsory work for benefits – is being rolled-out across the country. We call on public sector bodies, voluntary organisations and businesses being offered these placements as well as union branches to join others in signing a pledge to boycot
- Crippen Cartoons The website of David Luton-Crippen, renown disabled cartoonist and a member of The Black Triangle
- Crippen Cartoons Blog David Luton-Crippen’s blog
- Diary of a Benefits Scrounger Sue Marshes excellent blog that shares information on Welfare cuts, illness, disability and general, current, political thought.
- Disability Arts Online A ‘must read’! Not to be missed.
- Disability History Month Scotland The official website of Disability History Month Scotland – 22nd November to 22nd December 2011
- Disability History Month Scotland Held annually in the Autumn to celebrate our history of struggle and to build for a better future
- Disabled People Against Cuts DPAC is about disabled people and their allies. DPAC is UK based but we know that disabled people in other countries are suffering from austerity cuts and a lack of fundamental rights. We welcome all to join us in fighting for justice and human rights for
- Double Karma Ania Waterman’s blog on everything to do with disabled people’s activism
- Down With All That Bigleyma’s excellent blog that chronicles the farce that the WCA assessments are and the major players involved in it’s execution.
- DWP Examinations Forum A friendly online community for those undergoing an Atos Medical Assessment or appeal full of loads of information and valuable advice.
- Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty Practical advice and solidarity for all those facing benefit difficulties and hardship. Excellent campaigning organisation
- Good Advice Matters Guides that haven been produced in an effort to simplify the various processes involved when trying to claim benefits.
- Inspired By Atos Origin A Facebook Group for people to post their artwork that is inspired by Atos Origin.
- Ouch Too A disability support forum founded from the ashes of the BBC’s Ouch Board after they closed it.
- Paralympics 2012 Boycott Website Dedicated to exposing AtoS’s hypocrisy as disability deniers and sponsors of the Paralympic Games! Paralympians: SPEAK OUT AND PROTEST!!!
- Rolling with the Punches Blog “33 year old with lupus since 17 and a variety of other weird awkward symptoms!” Campaigner who co-authored the Spartacus Report
- soiniciulacht – 'Taking the fight to this Morally Disabled Government' Cuts right to the heart of all that’s wrong with the neoliberal tyranny we endure today …
- Solidarity Federation Advice on what to do if you ‘fail’ your DWP/ATOS Work Capability Assessment
- The Broken of Britain Non-partisan UK-based Disability campaign. Advocacy for people with invisible illness and/or physical & mental health conditions. Also Carers, their Families and Friends. Our individual voices are too quiet to be heard, but collectively we can shout
- The Dawn Willis Blog Dawn Willis sharing the news & views of the “Mentally Wealthy”
- The New Republic The daily tabloid of the “Age of Austerity”
- The Void Narking off the state since 2005
- Unum Insurance Blog An excellent website that exposes advisor to the UK Government on welfare reform, Unum, for what they are.
- Using the Law to Fight Cuts to Disabled People’s Services A practical guide for campaigners – disabled people and their families; carers and local groups (Updated July 2012)
- Victims of Atos Corrupton They tried to silence Atos Register of Shame and it back as Victims of Atos Corruption.
- Where's the Benefit A blog on all things that affect sick and/or disabled people under the ConDem jackboot
- Why Wait Forever – DWP ATOS Veterans An amazing website containing interesting detailed research carried out by Mo Stewart into Atos & Unum Insurance
- YOUR CALL – National Freephone Telephone Counselling Service for Disabled People in Scotland This is the first service of its kind in the UK. The service takes calls to its appointment line from 11am until 3 pm Mondays to Thursdays. Calls are free from a home telephone, and from most mobile networks(including T-Mobile, Vodaphone, O2, 3, Orange a
Called in for an ESA by Atos? You are not alone, join DWPExaminations Forum
For Help, Advice & Support
Recent Posts
- How DWP rules for disability benefit assessment could change as Reeves’ Budget approaches
- Anger and confusion over Kendall’s comments on sending work coaches into mental health hospitals
- Disabled people’s organisations unite to oppose assisted suicide bill that has ‘far-reaching implications’
- Turning warm words into action to end the need for emergency food
- More than 9 million Britons vulnerable to reliance on food banks, research finds
Recent Comments
- MarkCarlisle on Fit For Work – Three Part Series on BBC Radio 4 by Jolyon Jenkins
- trevorandrewmillar@yahoo.co.uk on Watchdog receives hundreds of complaints over Telegraph’s ‘toxic’ benefits article
- trevorandrewmillar@yahoo.co.uk on DWP criticised in parliament for ‘hiding’ information on starvation death
- trevorandrewmillar@yahoo.co.uk on Coffey’s DWP watered down key parts of plan to prevent suicides
- MarkCarlisle on YOU can prevent the DWP interfering in the patient/doctor’s relationship
13 Responses
About time! Hope this is a vigorous attack – too many people have already died. Why the opposition haven’t just walked out of the H of C in protest already is beyond me. ‘Strivers and skivers’ OMG!!! It’s just ‘divide and rule’, the cynical demonisation of a huge percentage of human beings living in this country. See ‘The Empire of Shame’ by Jan Ziegler: maintaining false distinctions between different groups of citizens (or in this case emphasizing and whipping them up) is a way to disunite the populace and keep control when ruling a country. Just pick your ‘difference’: age, gender, geographical location, income bracket, sexual orientation, religion, cultural background, car/bus/bike, dog owner/non dog owner, meat eater/vegetarian, size, hair colour, sign of the zodiac, working/not working, preferred supermarket/newspaper/clothing designer, blood group (a favourite in Japan), height, educational background, accent… the stupid list goes on and on. WE ARE ALL HUMANS – and that makes us 95% the same as each other.
Well said Jan.
About time Labour did something, how about them pinpointing the fact that the poor are having to pay a bedroom tax while the rich strive to avoid any tax on their palatial homes.
Would someone please remove the disgusting picture that accompanies this article. Those laughing hyaenas make me feel severely nauseous
Senior Labour figures stopped short of confirming that Labour would vote against the cuts in the Commons in January. Stopped short all right! Labour do anything , I’ll believe it when I see it!
Labour cannot be trusted anymore since Tony Blair ruined it.
Miliband is a man? of straw and Balls has none, they all eat and drink at the same trough, they are all plastic Tories. There is no real opposition in this country. Don’t be fooled by U.K.I.P ultra right wing scum. They all know they have this country to ransom, they’ve spent forty years dividing us and breeding apathy. We need to get rid of the left wing, right wing mentality. What is needed, is a party of common sense that speaks the truth and will stop the rape and pillage of our nation. If you own a business and you sit on your hands and do nothing, the business will fail, or if you squirrel away the profits into some offshore tax haven, it will fail, you need to invest and grow, you better your products through investment whether with technology or a happy, well educated, well paid workforce. Investment creates employment. The problem we have is, the government of the day sold our industries, we have very little industry now, unless you’re making armaments and making illegal wars. When I went to school we did domestic science, we learned how bake how to cook a three course meal and breakfast etc, today they are taught how to buy a frozen pizza, take it out of the box and put it in the oven for 15 minutes. The governments of the day have betrayed us, sold our jobs, dumb ed down our children through a ruined education system, (unless you can pay). They are ruining our health care system,they fail to invest in this country and they are destroying it, instead they give billions of hard earned to foreign powers, then beg a little back and say we have a good deal for Britain. If we don’t invest in ourselves the hole they have dug for us will be inescapable. Is it not funny that the only place in Britain that now shines bright is the centre of mass corruption. They don’t even tell you the true figure of the unemployed, I have three friends who are highly qualified but cannot find work, their spouses work, not in highly paid jobs, but because the system will not allow their spouses to sign on for unemployment they are not registered or counted. How many more households are like this? They take our tax, take as much as they can steal through corrupt expenses claims, or buying themselves properties (Blair was a prime example of this). They give billions to their superiors in the E.U, billions to a fraudulent financial and banking system, to buy their seats in the boardroom for when they are kicked out of politics.They have infiltrated every organization that was implemented to help the working class and low paid and are still destroying them from within. In the N.H.S. there are eight bureaucrats for every front line worker.Pay the front line staff a decent wage and put a mop in the hands of the useless bureaucrats and make them clean up the mess they have made. Put the engineers, builders,designers, nurses, doctors,police and unemployed back to work with decent pay packets, with the pen pushers and bean counters as low paid labourers. Leave the E.U, implement a different banking system, stop immigration for the next five years, not for racially motivated reasons, but to give us time to sort out our housing crisis, our overcrowded schools and our overworked health service, stop investing public money into private education and healthcare. It is morally wrong when you take public funding from a state school to invest in a private academy. There is just enough time for decent, honest MP’s and independents to come together before the next general election and form a party that stands for Britain and the British people. We can and should get rid of this, all in it for me, self aggrandizing, corrupt one political party cabal. Time is running out..Before someone says you have time to sit up all night typing, instead of me being asleep getting ready for work and paying my tax’s or whatever, can I just say in my defense, it has taken me almost six hours to type this and the reason is, the pain I am in at this time of the morning has kept me awake now for three days, I have gone way over the recommended Morphine dose and it has done little to ease it, I am now frightened that if I do fall asleep I may not wake up, Oh the joys of being disabled, if you able bodied critics only knew or could experience 24 hours of the bad pain, not the worst there are very few people I would wish that upon . I wouldn’t mind all the bureaucrats in parliament suffering for 12 months or even a lifetime I think they would whistle a different tune then
I wouldn’t get too excited – this is just a generalised sweeping statement reiterating what several charities have been saying for the past few years.
Despite being disabled and really rather ill due to my seizures, I have chosen to stand for my local parish and county councils in Durham. We need representation within government and it has to be by people who are disabled and from poor backgrounds – otherwise, how will anything change?
Anyone going through the misery of Atos assessment is more than welcome to speak to me, regardless of where they are. I can be found as Jo Yelland on Facebook and my Green Party email is jo.yelland_green@yahoo.co.uk. I can offer some advice as I am going through the same things and the Green Party are fighting against Atos contracts so your local party would love to hear from you and will help if they can. Disability Law Services are also looking to speak to disabled people who are struggling with Atos and benefit cuts/reductions and, along with Citizens Advice Bureau, are a fantastic source of advice and free help.
Jo, really agree with your comments and good for you for standing for your local councils, despite and or maybe because of your issues/experiences. I sometimes feel so helpless and beyond frustration, even though I’m pretty good at speaking up/fighting for things/my rights, I did it it for many years while bringing up my disabled son(now age 29). But maybe because I’m now disabled and have been pushed further and further into poor health, trying to hold down work(now stopped for 2 years)helping my disabled adult son and daughter-in-law, the 2 children, signing on looking for work I can’t get and likely can’t sustain, etc., etc. I used to work for DWP in one of their call centres, so didn’t go on to ESA because of what we were hearing people tell us, I moved areas and wouldn’t have known the Doctor, so I figured JSA was better option!! I’m now also on a dreaded private work programme and that has been a real eye opener, in a very bad way, I have been telling them things, useless doesn’t cover it and patronising of course? I have now located from Kent to Norwich and would you believe because of the DWP contract with these work providers, I can’t switch to one locally and have to have phone calls, paperwork in the post from them, therefore adding to my high stress levels.
I’m now living in a damp flat(viewed in June)where the Landlord is the usual nasty/don’t care kind and has actually tried to blame me for it, saying I don’t open the windows enough, while admitting he had a previous tenant who never opened the windows! Not being funny but I’ve lived in lots of rented accommodation, some social housing, private for last 8 years and though I haven’t done anything dodgy, I have experienced a wide variety of properties and probably know more than Landlord does, unfortunately Norfolk is a very damp county, I’ve lived here on and off since 2005 so know about this, in fact the first place I rented, not only did it aggravate my asthma through the damp, I got bronchitis and when I got the council involved, the owner, who lived in Spain said he couldn’t put up with the hassle, gave me 2 months to leave as he was selling up!! That’s my general experience of private Landlords and I’m appalled that nothing has really be done in this country to stop this, in fact if anyhting it’s now getting worse?
Wanted to also mention I really appreciate what Andrew(just above your comment)said and really agree with it, like him I have been having very bad nights recently and pretty regularly have so much pain, I can’t think straight. The only vaguely funny(if that’s the right word!)thing is I can’t always work out which disability/condition is causing the pain, is it the Fibromyalgia, Arthritis, Scoliosis, or something else? The damp flat, including damp bedroom can’t be helping? I had my 8 year old Grandson to stay at the weekend, don’t get to have much Grandparent time with him as I do have to help with school run etc., and really wanted to do lots with him in the city centre saturday. But really overdid it and after having to travel by bus 20 miles to take him home yesterday, I was in agony, yet I’m expected to work!! And it’s rubbish that “you’ll be better off in work”, I get so sick of hearing that and to top it off hardly anyone will give me a job, Landlords don’t want to take you on and it took almost 4 months to get my Housing Benefit in Nowich.
Sorry to go on, but I feel that you are someone Jo, who understands where we’re coming from and in fact most others on here. so glad I found this from going on the Hradest Hit march in London in Oct.
The only fight Miliband has had in his life was for his father’s inheritence.
Miliband is as nasty as cameron because he can see what is happening and choses not to say or do anything about it. In fact, in large part he agrees with what is happening. Miliband is a man without a cause in a world that mistyfies him. He is a coward and a traitor to the cause of the oppressed. I don’t want Miliband on my side!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree with you on this Jed and am just surprised more people haven’t sussed him out yet. From the moment he appeared on TV,I thought there was something so untrustworthy and smarmy about him and unfortunately I’m usually right on my first impression of people!
The Leader of the Opposition has a Duty to Provide Opposition where it is Needed
to the Regime like in this Instance
Things have Got Worse Under the Tyrant Tories
I CANNOT Stand Them
How dare they call us scroungers when they are ripping off the British tax payers to fund their second homes/ duckponds/ banquets/ and all other meaningless, overpriced, unnecessary frivolities. Oh yeh, Im having the time of my life on benefits. I have 3 incurable illnesses, and other problems. im in pain EVERY DAY, with Fibromyalgia and Arthritis, which restricts my everyday activities, and I mean general day-to-day things like walking, sitting, cleaning, shopping etc. I cant get proper sleep, I have to watch what I eat (if I do eat, coz money is juggled around to pay for essentials). I struggle with depression and memory issues. Thats just a taster of what ive had to cope with for 30 odd years. Id gladly swop it all with someone who isnt sick. Any offers?? No, I didnt think so. I happen to have a body thats dealt me a really crappy blow and there are so many others in far worse health than me, who are having their benefits denied, some dying as a result. We need financial help. DONT YOU DARE INSULT ME BY CALLING ME A SCROUNGER. Look a bit closer to home first. Posh rich people havent got a clue about the real world and ordinary people. Oh, and I wondered when the church was going to say something in our defense, with them being full of kindness and love and caring and all. Too little too late, but thanks anyway. BTW, Im not a Christian…..oh really??!!!!
Scrounger is an awful word and one that is banded about all the time. To me its a way of turning people against each other. I have to say at points I felt like that bit expereince of the shameful way we are treated to get benefits has changed me. I am no scrounger and many people on here are saying the same thing because it hurts us. I have worked for 30 years and paid my taxes so I feel I have the right for help from the benefits system whilst not being villified for asking got it.
Trying to claim DLA has turned into a nightmare despite multiple illnesses I was at first denied. I have met numerous people on benefits and in the grand scale of things hate what there lives are and want to work.
I am very sceptical about Ed Milliband I want to believe he will stand up for all of those struggling to live but I just don’t see it. I shall be contacting my local MP to ask him to stand up for me.
so osbourn thinks its funny i hope has a very nasty illness then we can send him to atos for a fake medical that is total irrelevent to the condition he has … jeff …