ATOS Medical Assessment .

[TheAnimus]

It is Nazi camp because theres only exit out and no one wins other than the Nazi Tories and all their benefactors.

I would really suggest that you hurt your argument for benefits, by comparing people who are paying for them, to being those who are running a Nazi camp. The camps they ran people were forcefully moved, stripped off everything they had before being systematically exterminated by their captors.

To suggest that having someone who is less disabled than others move to JSA and at the very least pretend to look for a job is really not a valid comparison.

The gap of poverty shows there is no middleclass any more just poor and rich - go watch 1984 or read animal farm because thats where we're just about at.

If you've read 1984 you will remember that he refers to the middle class ousting the upper, whilst the proles are just left to their own devices. In animal farm he makes no comparison except for the suggestion of a change in power being openly exploitative to one that tells you its in your best interest to allow them to have a better lifestyle.

Both were about treating people (animals were the worker-class people in the animal farm) who were economically productive under the guises of lifestyles. The difference was the pigs and BB lied and re-wrote history, generate a culture of war, so everyone is united against a common foe.

I don't think that is really applicable to a government benefit scheme.

Now why is it those who are rich and caused all this mess are being rewarded more if , by your theory every one should shoulder this mess ( which I have no problem with IF its applied fairly ), but where is the evidence to show that is happening if its not already ?

Why are they being rewarded more? Rich people are been taxed more than they were 10 years ago. Also the assertion that 'rich people caused this mess' is a little bit, if you excuse the pun rich. The 'mess' we're in now is mostly due to government debt. Rich people don't like government debt because rich people benefit comparatively the least from government spending. Where were you when they suddenly stole 10% of income from high earners? This wasn't a case of them having a benefit or a handout, this was because they were working for it. This is why many firms left to Geneva, and why the 50p rate didn't raise as much as it was said it would, anyone earning over say half a million would just re-structure it so they don't pay tax, this is legal it is what the Guardian did with Autotrader. Those who earn less probably can't afford that, but they could either become non-dom, become a company with dodgy offshoring (such as the reprehensible loan back trusts which are underinvestigation) or skip country. I know many people who did the latter, most weren't born in the UK, and had the attitude well if you don't want us here... fine.

What your in effect saying is that Rich people should pay more for you. If they don't want to continue paying more than they ever have before, they are the same as genocidal people who actually went out of their way to exterminate people.

Look at the US , the motherland of the big C and look at the poverty gap now

Look at USSR the motherland of equality and look at the poverty gap now.

Saying the names of indicators is fun isn't it!

It's better to look at Gini really, I like that one because it shows quite a lot of data. Poverty should always be avoided when comparing countries, otherwise Albania appears like a good place, they have such a low rate of what Albanians called poverty!

Gini I'll talk about why its better if you want, or you can use the wikipedia on it.


But think of this... In London to get to work, buy a coffee, pay rent, council tax, for one day frequently costs ~ £40. Someone on the UK minimum wage might earn £49.52 for an 8 hour shift, they have to work 7 days a week. That would be poverty? Well not really no, because that is £18k per year (they also can't ever take a day off!) So they wouldn't count. Yet someone who has living costs of £8 a day, because they live in some cheap place up north, earning only 3 hours minimum wage a day, would be in poverty.

Gini doesn't help with that kind of analaysis, it just shows distrabution.

Do you think its right someone dependent on that money should lose half of it , if not all while someone who perpetrated it gets to decided how much they should pay ?

What about the person paying for it, they are probably losing more than half. It is sometimes pretty frustrating to know that if you stopped working because you felt sick, your still in debt, you've not made it far enough through the day to earn money for you and your life. The fact of the matter is that lots of people who aren't on benefits are loosing a lot of income right now. That the benefits bill keeps getting bigger and bigger. Ultimately that means we have to take some people off the higher level and give what is sustainable where its most needed, not just to those who got there first.

You seem to forget what started all this , it wasnt some wee disabled person or even the single mothers it was the politicians who setup these conditions, and time and time again no matter what they do , they get away with it .

Yes sadly they do get away scott free, the fact more evidence of blairs dossier has emerged yet no criminal case worries the hell out of me. If something as simple as fabricating of an official document which is used for voting on war isn't scrutinised with criminal liabilities what is.

The thing to recap again, Nazi's actively killed people.
Cutting people to JSA because we don't want to borrow money to pay for them isn't in the same league.

[melon]

I would really suggest that you hurt your argument for benefits, by comparing people who are paying for them, to being those who are running a Nazi camp. The camps they ran people were forcefully moved, stripped off everything they had before being systematically exterminated by their captors.

To suggest that having someone who is less disabled than others move to JSA and at the very least pretend to look for a job is really not a valid comparison.If you've read 1984 you will remember that he refers to the middle class ousting the upper, whilst the proles are just left to their own devices. In animal farm he makes no comparison except for the suggestion of a change in power being openly exploitative to one that tells you its in your best interest to allow them to have a better lifestyle.

Both were about treating people (animals were the worker-class people in the animal farm) who were economically productive under the guises of lifestyles. The difference was the pigs and BB lied and re-wrote history, generate a culture of war, so everyone is united against a common foe.

I don't think that is really applicable to a government benefit scheme.Why are they being rewarded more? Rich people are been taxed more than they were 10 years ago. Also the assertion that 'rich people caused this mess' is a little bit, if you excuse the pun rich. The 'mess' we're in now is mostly due to government debt. Rich people don't like government debt because rich people benefit comparatively the least from government spending. Where were you when they suddenly stole 10% of income from high earners? This wasn't a case of them having a benefit or a handout, this was because they were working for it. This is why many firms left to Geneva, and why the 50p rate didn't raise as much as it was said it would, anyone earning over say half a million would just re-structure it so they don't pay tax, this is legal it is what the Guardian did with Autotrader. Those who earn less probably can't afford that, but they could either become non-dom, become a company with dodgy offshoring (such as the reprehensible loan back trusts which are underinvestigation) or skip country. I know many people who did the latter, most weren't born in the UK, and had the attitude well if you don't want us here... fine.

What your in effect saying is that Rich people should pay more for you. If they don't want to continue paying more than they ever have before, they are the same as genocidal people who actually went out of their way to exterminate people.Look at USSR the motherland of equality and look at the poverty gap now.

Saying the names of indicators is fun isn't it!

It's better to look at Gini really, I like that one because it shows quite a lot of data. Poverty should always be avoided when comparing countries, otherwise Albania appears like a good place, they have such a low rate of what Albanians called poverty!

Gini I'll talk about why its better if you want, or you can use the wikipedia on it.


But think of this... In London to get to work, buy a coffee, pay rent, council tax, for one day frequently costs ~ £40. Someone on the UK minimum wage might earn £49.52 for an 8 hour shift, they have to work 7 days a week. That would be poverty? Well not really no, because that is £18k per year (they also can't ever take a day off!) So they wouldn't count. Yet someone who has living costs of £8 a day, because they live in some cheap place up north, earning only 3 hours minimum wage a day, would be in poverty.

Gini doesn't help with that kind of analaysis, it just shows distrabution.
What about the person paying for it, they are probably losing more than half. It is sometimes pretty frustrating to know that if you stopped working because you felt sick, your still in debt, you've not made it far enough through the day to earn money for you and your life. The fact of the matter is that lots of people who aren't on benefits are loosing a lot of income right now. That the benefits bill keeps getting bigger and bigger. Ultimately that means we have to take some people off the higher level and give what is sustainable where its most needed, not just to those who got there first.

Yes sadly they do get away scott free, the fact more evidence of blairs dossier has emerged yet no criminal case worries the hell out of me. If something as simple as fabricating of an official document which is used for voting on war isn't scrutinised with criminal liabilities what is.

The thing to recap again, Nazi's actively killed people.
Cutting people to JSA because we don't want to borrow money to pay for them isn't in the same league.

buggered me hands again

Yes sadly they do get away scott free, the fact more evidence of blairs dossier has emerged yet no criminal case worries the hell out of me. If something as simple as fabricating of an official document which is used for voting on war isn't scrutinised with criminal liabilities what is.

And this is why whistleblowers like wikileaks scares them.

[TheAnimus]

buggered me hands again

Try Voice Attack or Voice Finger. They extend the speech recognition engine that is built into windows, I've set it up for people with certain kinds of disabilities and found them both to be very helpful. (when my company has spare resources we often work with a charity to provide technical knowledge to improve HCI for children with disabilities, I've been trying to hook them up with my old university to get people designing better controllers too)

And this is why whistleblowers like wikileaks scares them.

No it scares them because there are some things that really should be kept secret. A lot of the very vocal 'pro' wikileaks lobby remind me of a stroppy teenager who is petulantly saying they are old enough to know the truth now, only to be told to throw a massive hissy fit after finding it out.

The point I was trying to make is that getting angry with the politicians of past, isn't going to help anything. When you look at some of the systems in place we have currently for encouraging employers to take on disabled workers they simply aren't there.

As an example I mentioned before, a certain internet based travel company came up with the idea of structuring their call centres around casual stay at home workers. Mostly mothers. This was important because the travel firm wanted 'smart' people, people who are educated and a resourceful, yet couldn't in their business model pay that much money for them. Their solution was mostly technological, having a punch in punch out system, shift assigning and the like entirely distributed and automated. This allowed them to have a vast number of part time workers, whilst providing 24 hour coverage for their phone support. Compared to the traditional call centre costs this is cheap. But most importantly they found say at home mums. More than happy to work 3/4 hours a day, plenty of them highly educated who opted to have children. As a result they cost a fraction of what they would for a full time staff member of that quality.

What is needed is a way for someone to be able to extract the value advantage of many of the people who are currently written off as long term disabled. The problem is, that one can not simply dump a bunch of cheap labour on the market when the market has no use for them, this was the end result of the de-subsidisation of certain industries which people to this day blame Thatcher for. However ending the culture which says anyone who has any kind of disability can opt out of working isn't going to be remotely sustainable at the current growth of expenditure.

This is why its just down right objectionable to see someone who is complaining that they are having to be assessed by comparing it to an internment in an death camp. For some reason the idea makes me think of maslow's pyramid, with the notion that if someone is so un-able to see the difference, they have to be really at the top in terms of their needs been satisfied.

The question I then have is how the hell can a politician engage with people about this sort of thing! Owen Jones (he is a ****) reeled off a list of names of people who'd committed suicide on question time to Ian Duncan Smith recently, blaming ATOS and suggesting IDS was personally responsible for their deaths. Yet at the same time he writes in the Indie that we can't use examples of benefit abusers who murder children as an example of the failing system. It's very tricky therefore for them to be able to change anything. The fact that people are committing suicide over something as trivial as a benefit cut shows how badly we are failing in providing mental health care, that all the money they had previously been given didn't achieve sufficient recovery. Yet they can't politically suggest that allowing people to live independently who are in that situation isn't a good idea.

[Phage]

You read the Independent ?
I found it even worse than the Guardian. In fact I can hardly read any British papers due to their inability to provide unbiased reporting.

[wasabi]

You read the Independent ?
I found it even worse than the Guardian. In fact I can hardly read any British papers due to their inability to provide unbiased reporting.

I know a couple of proper hardcore communists (not socialists - communists, and I use the term advisedly), They read The Times as they can't stand the woolly soft left New Labour sneer of The Gu or The Indy.

The BBC is so shockingly soft-left biased I'm amazed they don't get pulled up more.

Personally I just hop around various sites for news - most mainstream news outlets these days suck. If I just wanted to reinforce my own political views I'd read the Spectator.

[TheAnimus]

You read the Independent ?

I read pretty much all of them, the mirror / sun to find out what people are told they should think, the Guardian/Independent to find out what people are been instructed to feel emotional about, the daily mail to find out what people are outraged about. To be honest I don't read the telegraph or the times much because they don't provide much that is new to me, the analysis is pretty poor, but I'm sure the writers english is top rate.

I don't buy them, mostly reading them online via aggregators, I generally keep an eye on reddits worldnews and such too.

The only thing I read on paper is the economist, its quite frankly the only news source that is worth paying for, most of the time their analysis is top notch. I also find them to be the least partisan of any english news publication.

Being honest, I do think I look down on anyone who reads mostly/only the Guardian. I find they lack such balance with their analysis and interpretation. They generally have news stories which are really more editorial comment marked as news, which is fair enough, if you are intending to be The Sun / Mirror.

For instance I don't understand how anyone who is behind the ukuncut movement buys their paper given their aggressive tax avoidance. To me that hypocrisy casts such a shadow of credibility on everything they do. This is why I look down on those readers, because ultimately they want something which pretends to be close to the wire honest analysis, so long as it doesn't disagree with their preconceived notions. But it is the fact that most readers of it look down on DM readers as rabid mouth foaming fascists, seemingly oblivious to how they are cut from the same cloth.

[Smudger]

The BBC is so shockingly soft-left biased I'm amazed they don't get pulled up more.

Seems everyone thinks they're biased against their point of view, if you take the complaints about Thatcher coverage as a very rough yardstick...

However, the BBC said on Wednesday it had received 268 complaints that its coverage was biased in favour of Thatcher, and 227 who said it was biased against her.

A further 271 people complained that the BBC had devoted too much airtime to the former Tory leader's death.

[BlackDwarf]

Words just fail me.
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2013/0...-please-share/

[Top_gun]

Words just fail me.
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2013/0...-please-share/

I'll be interested to hear what job she can do as well. Absolutely shocking.

[chaotic_russ]

has a mental age of 3

wtf . what is she supposed to do then ? , mind you she could do the pm's job cause he has a mental age of zero if he thinks she can work . jeeze this country is screwed

[wasabi]

Hmm. Would lke a less biased view on this, given that from the very same page...

ATOS declare Richard III fit for work
ATOS to reduce ‘fit for work’ test to one question: “Are you alive?”
UK pulls out of 2016 Paralympics after ATOS declares no disabled in UK
ATOS assessor found blind woman fit for work after “wiggling his fingers” in front of her eyes
Toby Young – disabled children should be excluded from schools

[wasabi]

I personally know several people on disability benefits who have absolutely no need of it. One has fake MS yet does cash in hand building work, the other is simply a lazy ex-services guy in his 50s and a bit stiff through age but still gets the free car and so on by hamming it up. Yet I know a bloke with no legs who is a senior director of a company and earns plenty.

So OK disabled lobby, given that a high percentage of those on disability benefit are quite probably taking the mick in varying degrees, how do you solve this other than just throwing cash at it? Every single person who tries to get the benefit is going to do exactly the same thing - appeal, kick up a righteous moral outrage etc etc - it is a horrible situation. Just going blah blah 'the government should..' is a cop-out - every single disabled person is taking MY money that I work hard for - it is not 'the government's' money.

[Smudger]

I personally know several people on disability benefits who have absolutely no need of it. One has fake MS yet does cash in hand building work, the other is simply a lazy ex-services guy in his 50s and a bit stiff through age but still gets the free car and so on by hamming it up. Yet I know a bloke with no legs who is a senior director of a company and earns plenty.

So OK disabled lobby, given that a high percentage of those on disability benefit are quite probably taking the p155 in varying degrees, how do you solve this other than just throwing cash at it? Every single person who tries to get the benefit is going to do exactly the same thing - appeal, kick up a righteous moral outrage etc etc - it is a horrible situation. Just going blah blah 'the government should..' is a cop-out - every single disabled person is taking MY money that I work hard for - it is not 'the government's' money.

What do you class as a 'high percentage'? It does seem like certain branches of the media are trying to paint all people on DB as 'scroungers'.

[wasabi]

What do you class as a 'high percentage'? It does seem like certain branches of the media are trying to paint all people on DB as 'scroungers'.

The number of people on disability benefit has roughly trebled since the 70s. Do the maths.

[chuckskull]

I personally know several people on disability benefits who have absolutely no need of it. One has fake MS yet does cash in hand building work, the other is simply a lazy ex-services guy in his 50s and a bit stiff through age but still gets the free car and so on by hamming it up. Yet I know a bloke with no legs who is a senior director of a company and earns plenty.

So OK disabled lobby, given that a high percentage of those on disability benefit are quite probably taking the mick in varying degrees, how do you solve this other than just throwing cash at it? Every single person who tries to get the benefit is going to do exactly the same thing - appeal, kick up a righteous moral outrage etc etc - it is a horrible situation. Just going blah blah 'the government should..' is a cop-out - every single disabled person is taking MY money that I work hard for - it is not 'the government's' money.

Firstly; Please respect the rules on swearing.

Secondly; Disabled people pay in too, that was the point. Many while doing the jobs that left them disabled. It's called National Insurance for a reason. It's not your money it's ours, the taxpayers, the same people who decided they'd like a social safety net, just in case, badly enough to pay for it. If you could would you opt out? I doubt it.

Thirdly; The detected fraud rate is 0.5%, despite dedicated departments for detection and constant financial monitoring by Experian.

Finally; There'd be several less people allegedly committing fraud if you rode your high horse over to; https://www.gov.uk/report-benefit-fraud Always amazes me that so many people, particularly those who dislike the current system, apparently know so many fraudsters, but never report them.

[TheAnimus]

Hmm. Would lke a less biased view on this, given that from the very same page...

ATOS declare Richard III fit for work
ATOS to reduce ‘fit for work’ test to one question: “Are you alive?”
UK pulls out of 2016 Paralympics after ATOS declares no disabled in UK
ATOS assessor found blind woman fit for work after “wiggling his fingers” in front of her eyes
Toby Young – disabled children should be excluded from schools

Wait, are you suggesting that someone who is opposed to the reforms to benefits would rather than supply credible sustainable alternatives, instead take an emotional story out of context?!

You'll be saying that someone would compare ATOS assessment to a Nazi Death Camp next, or Owen Jones would use the names of people who've committed suicide to provoke a reaction from a cabinet member.

The thing is, this could make a very interesting case study of how ATOS deal with someone who if medically disabled in such a way I thought would need a legal guardian as she would be declared incapable already. Given the circumstances I would have assumed that this case would be very complex indeed. Compared to Europe we have odd laws regarding such matters as my understanding is we have simply a power of attorney, which is granted by a judge.

To people like the blog author I would suggest he actually takes the time to learn the state of affairs that is having a friend who isn't a bloody family member who suffers from a mental breakdown, the legal issues regarding such attempt for guardianship.

It might sound cruel, it might sound just odd, but someone who is in this situation is going to have a lot more paperwork around it, but obviously anyone who has been legally declared incompetent (which you would have done, if they have a mental age of 3) isn't going to realise what is going on.

If your reviewing the state of affairs you can't simply be emotional about particular ones, all cases have to be treated equally (incompetently as it may be!).