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

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.

I can't actually fathom this at all. Surely there's some boring Tory drone type they could have put in the role?

They were looking for someone to make Lansley look... ept (or whatever the opposite of inept is) so that people will be begging to have him back in another 6 months?

Andrew Lansley will now be free to join Wifey Lansley on the boards of however many private healthcare companies he can manage.

David Laws and Jeremy Hunt are basically criminals; guess crime DOES pay if you're a shiteing Tory arsehole.

(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)

I think there was an underlying government policy of shifting away from coursework and towards "controlled assessment" which had a huge impact here but the grade boundaries were changed mid-year largely because the exam boards realised they were wrong when they had a larger cohort to analyse, rather than implicit pressure from Gove.

The point about ATOS increasing their level of cynicism in line with government attitudes is correct though, i think.

Leaving all questions of morality or integrity aside this is just fucking dumb. Health is one the department people care deeply about above all others, why on earth give it to your resident Cabinet liability?

Worth remembering too that the new Justice Secretary Chris Grayling doesn't believe in gay equality:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/dont-forget-graylings-comments-gay-couples

@TwopTwips FOLLOW the PM’s lead and have an effective family reshuffle by promoting your 3 year old to ‘Dad’ and letting him drive.

DG, it's JEREMY FUCKING HUNT.

the work assessments are an entirely dwp affair, grayling was smith's underling, hunt won't have anything to do with it bar closing all the hospitals etc

agreed abt the fire/acid thing

Hunt is also anti-choice and wants to limit the 'abortion window' if poss. CUNT.

The point about ATOS increasing their level of cynicism in line with government attitudes is correct though, i think.

no the cruelty and cynicism has been consistent, i don't think labour should be given any slack here

DWP's own stats say over a million people were assessed by ATOS in the period Oct 2008-Aug 2010 ( http://fullfact.org/factchecks/ATOS_ESA_assessments_overturned-3135 ) so either there's a fuckload more people now or it's just getting publicity and traction now.

For what it's worth, in my last job I had to use ATOS three times to ascertain fitness for work. (They're mandated pan-government to assess likelihood of long term sick employees ever returning for work, and what reasonable adjustments might need to be made in the workplace.) In the way they were used by my department - NB this may or may not use the DWP questionnaire as a basis, I don't know - I had to specify exactly what questions I wanted asked and they stuck pretty rigidly to what I wanted asked. In one of the cases their role was very useful; the employee worked with them to build a return to work plan, which coincided with (after 3 years and 4 GPs) a formal diagnosis for what was wrong with them. In the other two cases they didn't really help, but I can't go into those individuals for legal reasons.

I'm sure ATOS are as cunty as ever, but they have to be cunty in higher volume now.

the scheme's just had time to develop, it's the same scheme to vet the long term sick that james purnell (iirc) got rolling

James Purnell would have fitted comfortably into this government- in fact, I'm slightly surprised he has not joined it in some capacity.

Probably prefers to be earning real money.