DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

"nce we get to wintertime and everyone's still skint and out of work and losing benefits and services the Olympics will be a distant memory"

so you're saying it's not relevant?

I've not seem much of a Tory attempt to gain credit for the games.

You've not been paying much attention to Boris then.

Cameron has been pretty quiet, admittedly.

Admittedly Boris has only just been re-elected anyway but he's the one politician who is unequivocally benefiting from the Olympics.

so you're saying it's not relevant?

As relevant as any poll discussion, so no :)

I'm saying recent polls show a strong Labour lead but I expect that to change slightly thanks to Olympic GB feelgood. I mentioned the poll (iirc) in response to Ken saying Labour wouldn't win/want to win an election should the coalition dissolve.

Cameron will wait till after the games then try to milk it for all it's worth. There'll be a short term bounce for him, not least as it's keeping bad news off the front page, but it'll fade after a few months. I don't think this is his Falkland's moment.

Boris is more of a liability to the current tory regime, he needs cameron to fail to be ascend.

TBF he was in charge of the project longer than Ken or the Tories in central government were.

xposts

he's the one politician who is unequivocally benefiting from the Olympics.

Jeremy Hunt attempted a wee bit of glory-hunting but fucked it up with his bell-end falling off then being pictured with Murdoch.

I've not seem much of a Tory attempt to gain credit for the games. Admittedly from afar, I see them presenting this as a great coming together and haven't seen much political hay being made, I could be wrong.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Monday, 6 August 2012 15:11 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

JHunt was on this morning explaining that cutting the funding to sports academies etc was creating a leaner, fitter population, or something...

XPOST !!

"If we starve our children today they will be tomorrow's long distance champions, look at Ethopia!" he didn't say.

Cameron's having a hilariously bad Olympics. Every time he says anything up pops Boris to either torpedo it or hijack it.

Not just Boris...

https://twitter.com/KarlTurnerMP/status/233641912807075840

Lololol.

Have we talked about businesses not gaining the expected boost in profits they expected from the Games? To me it's no surprise.

Beautiful, beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nMtSJDrGc

ha! i'm stealing that, thanks!

hahaha yesss

i think this makes george osborne OFFICIALLY worse than hitler.

well timed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/03/disabled-benefits-claimants-fines-work

keepin it classy.

incidentally a friend of mine who was kicked off of disability benefits and had her first appeal rejected now, after countless bureaucratic hurdles, has a date set for her independent appeal tribunal, 4.5 months after the rejection of the first appeal.

my mum got pwned by atos and it took 18 months to get her benefits back. best of luck to your friend :(

i got pwned by atos and am appealing the decision. got told that there is currently a 9-12 month backlog in getting appeals heard. in the meantime i haven't had any income for 2 months due to dwp fuckups/lack of staff. fun!

what exactly are people supposed to do in these benefits-free periods? my friend has been lucky enough to have enough people able to help keep her ALIVE albeit with a laughably meagre lifestyle, but what about the people who don't have that?

it's tough love apparently so i suppose the answer is 'pull yourself together'

how these cunts sleep at night i don't know

what gets me is that despite having letters & reports out the wazoo from GPs & consultants saying "zappi is one sick lil bunny, no work for him sadly" i get assessed as being fully fit for work by someone who saw me once for 15 minutes and who wasn't even a GP!

well the premise is that your gp knows you and is therefore not 'objective', hence they're ordered to ignore any prior medical 'evidence' and only go on the joke assessment

My GP (who is probably a Tory) makes snide comments about the wider employability of people who work for ATOS.

If a person appeals the decision, don't they get £71/week while waiting?

what gets me is that despite having letters & reports out the wazoo from GPs & consultants saying "zappi is one sick lil bunny, no work for him sadly" i get assessed as being fully fit for work by someone who saw me once for 15 minutes and who wasn't even a GP!

what do the 15-min assessments actually involve, out of interest? what qualifications do the assessors have? the entire process sounds so unbelievably shady

If a person appeals the decision, don't they get £71/week while waiting?

yes, but it can take ages for the bureaucracy to swing into action, 2 months & counting in my case. housing benefit also gets cut, god knows when the local council are going to sort that out. I think my GP felt personally insulted when i told him what was going on, i suppose in a way they are calling him a liar!

what do the 15-min assessments actually involve, out of interest?

the first stage is a poorly designed (imo) questionnaire that has basic questions like "can you walk 200 yards? can you hold your arm above your head?" that you get marked on. if you don't get enough points then you go to an atos meeting which is supposed to be more in depth. in practice they ask the same dumb questions and mark the same dumb questionnaire in the same way. I think my assessor was a physiotherapist, but i didn't want to inquire too deeply, i figured demanding to know what their qualifications were would't be the best idea in the circumstances - wish i'd been more arsey now though :/

I know what you mean, but I think under the circumstances - this person is making a medical decision that will materially affect the rest of your life - wanting to know someone's qualifications and "are you even a real doctor?" is actually pretty urgent & key.

This stuff makes me so angry - I see what people go through and it just seems like harassment and bullying of exactly the people who lack the resources to adequately cope with, let alone fight it.

This Grant Shapps stuff is all very lol-worthy:
http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2012/09/grant-shapps-websites

What price on him getting the sack in the reshuffle?

Reluctant to stick up for Shapps but I hope I'm not held responsible for all the sites hosted on "my" server aka the server owned by the hosting company that I have absolutely no affiliation with.

is the questionnaire a blanket one that's the same for all claimants, irrespective of what their disability is or what their qualifications are or what kind of jobs are even available for them? 15 mins surely only scratches the surface. and from the pov of their stated aim, ie to cut out benefit fraud, it doesn't seem particularly efficient (what's to stop claimants lying in the initial questionnaire? or in the follow-up assessment?) would quite like to know whether the physio doing the assessment was private or NHS. this all seems shockingly inadequate in every way.

what exactly are people supposed to do in these benefits-free periods? my friend has been lucky enough to have enough people able to help keep her ALIVE albeit with a laughably meagre lifestyle, but what about the people who don't have that?

Die, I think, is the calculation.

xxp I think the point Watson is making is that Shapps has been seen to be using undeclared aliases in running dubious SEO businesses, and that there are unanswered questions about the extent of his involvement with this kind of shady business. The sites Watson mentions are all in the same line, and all seem to use aliases. Shapps needs to categorically distance himself from these sites, if he is able to do so. Here are some more of those questions:
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2012/09/grant-shapps/

is the questionnaire a blanket one that's the same for all claimants, irrespective of what their disability is or what their qualifications are or what kind of jobs are even available for them?

yes, which is i think why it's proving to be particularly disastrous for people with mental health issues. so you can walk reasonably well, you're clearly capable of entering the job market. (not that people with physical illnesses are having a great time with it either.)

actually a bit speechless here. anyone got links to any in-depth investigations into this process? surely some have been done.

i don't suppose that, if one is assessed as "fit to work" because you can raise your hand or whatever, you then get support finding a job that fits your disability AND your skillset. or are you just left to find whatever yourself

both Dispatches & Panorama ran undercover investigations a couple of months ago
summary here http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/07/31/tough-love-or-tough-luck-assessing-disability-benefits/

The use of ATOS isn't really a coalition issue though, is it? Original contract let in 98, new contract award in 2005.

Aldo, it's a neo-liberal arseholes issue, and those fuckers are in every party marking time until they can go collecting directorships (David Blunkett is a NED of Atos, FYI). I think the main difference is that, pre-Coalition, only a fraction of claimants were sent to see Atos after filling out the standard health questionnaires long-term sick people must periodically complete. People with mental health issues are often physically fit (GPs can refer chronically depressed people to local authority fitness access programmes) so theoretically they can get to the assessment centre or a workplace - the problem is, of course, what happens after that. If you ask the examiner how on Earth a reflex test is relevant to to mental health, they simply reply that something came up in your questionnaire but don't offer details. What galls me is that people on incapacity benefit or DLA who use the break/funds as an opportunity to sort their lives out are then punished for their efforts by the withdrawal of the means they were using to return themselves to health.

Great, the guy who voted for homeopathic hospitals and reducing abortion time limit to 12 weeks is now health secretary

xposts

isn't the general sense that ATOS have increased the stringency/cynicism of their tests in response to the requirements of this coalition government?

(even if indirectly -- the way that with the current GCSE marking scandal it's understood that the exam boards changed their marking system mid-year in order to appease Gove's department of education and their demands for stricter gcse grades)

my mother informs me that as well as Gosborne getting booed, Gordon Brown had cheers from the crowd at the Paras? Oh, this country.

i don't suppose that, if one is assessed as "fit to work" because you can raise your hand or whatever, you then get support finding a job that fits your disability AND your skillset. or are you just left to find whatever yourself

the latter of course

My GP (who is probably a Tory) makes snide comments about the wider employability of people who work for ATOS.

it's an open secret that the assessors are not exactly first-rate medical professionals

I think the main difference is that, pre-Coalition, only a fraction of claimants were sent to see Atos after filling out the standard health questionnaires long-term sick people must periodically complete.

i think this was only because there wasn't enough time! they got my mum while brown was still pm

isn't the general sense that ATOS have increased the stringency/cynicism of their tests in response to the requirements of this coalition government?

it's the same afaik, see above

that wanker grayling has been reshuffled, any word on who is replacing him? the graun says 'ids' was supposed to be justice secretary but seems to have an ahab-like dedication to terrorising britain's poor

xp to stet- Hunt is also anti-stem cell research apparently.

DG, it's JEREMY FUCKING HUNT.

BURN THESE PEOPLE AND THROW ACID ON THEIR SMOULDERING CORPSES.

WTF? Seriously? Jeremy Hunt? Has Cameron gone mad?

PRO-HOMEOPATHY?

in addition to BEING JEREMY HUNT?

WHATTTT

Perhaps the PM knows something we don't and there's going to be a massive national disaster in 2016 that he doesn't want to be in power for.