You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully pt.3

After my complaint I had to go to a meeting to see the big boss and the supervisor and basically they said that my heatlh is nobody elses business. They don't want to see me coming to work anxious. They told me that what she is doing is like treating me like the person who I was when I first started volunteering. I am not the person all wrapped up in cotton wool and things have moved on and I have made a lot of progress since then.

They said if I have any problems is to go and see them rather than contacting the agency. I just really followed what it said in the manual I got from the agency.

Since that time some new rules have been implemented in the area where I work and also due to the time of year my hours have been plummeting spectacularly. Yesterday I went to work and did 4.5 hours work and today I did 3 hours work. It will be lucky if I even do 20 hours work this week.

The woman in the morning seems to enjoy telling me there is not a lot of work to do and also seems to like to see me squirm when I have nothing to do. Going to work is kind of strange now because when I go to work I just go and pick up what I need to do and disappear. I don't need a lot of assistance and barely have anything to say. I am not very good in engaging in conversations or trying to keep a conversation going so a lot of the time I am quiet.

With my hours dropping and not doing any work in the afternoon I emailed the big boss today and I asked after I have finished working in the area I work in is there any other areas I can help in. He said he was going to talk to my supervisor and would be pleased if I could help elsewhere. I was quite surprised as I was expecting him to say no so I am going to see what happens there and I did it all by myself. It might do me some good to work with someone else or in a different environment.

Ta ta

Brain Blogger

You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully pt.2

Back again. I am writing my blog at 1.54 in the morning as I can not sleep

Monday and Tuesday this week have been different, instead of me going into work and sorting out what I need to do as part of my job it is now already done for me. This was stuff I previously did by myself quite happily. I picked parcels up and had a look at the list of what I needed to get signed for in the different offices.

As soon as I walk in and walk over to where my work the woman who has been harassing me follows me over stands by me and says "I have done all your bags for you and there is this parcel and that parcel that you have to take". I did not know I have suddenly turned into an idiot and everything has to be explained to me. I know I have got brain damage and everything but I am not stupid. I can still read and I can still work it out for myself what to do. I think she plays on my disability because I have short term memory problems.

I also think she doesn't like it because over time I have learnt what to do and I need little or no supervision. I think all she just wants is like someone to be like a little puppy for her to boss round and say yes ma'am to her all day.

Another thing has happened while I am out and about she does some of my work which is one of the jobs in my job description. I said this to her but she has an answer for everything. She says when she has got nothing to do she has got to do something so that includes doing my work as well, nice. She has also been doing Gail's work which didn't go down to well. This in turn means Gail has less to do and then I have nothing to do to help Gail later on meaning I have to go home. I think she has taken exception that I do more hours for the agency and I help Gail in the afternoon.

As soon as I walked in this morning even before I had even hung my bag up she was on to me about something. She did this in front of another member of staff which isn't the right thing to do but it gave me the opportunity to say even though I was shaking like a jelly I managed to say to her to stop harassing me as it is not necessary.

I went out with the post trolley and then later tried to find my supervisor but she was nowhere to be seen. I was in quite a state so I phoned the work agency and asked what do I do if I am being harassed and they said to send my list of complaints and things that have been said to me. I managed to find a computer in one of the offices and I sent my email to the agency.

She got back to me later and said she has passed it on to the chap I saw when I first started working for the agency. He said that they appreciate the work I have been doing and that I am an intelligent guy and I shouldn't have to come to work and work in that environment so that made me feel a bit better.

As I have made a complaint it now has to be investigated as harrassment is not tolerated. No doubt this woman who's been harrassing me will say I have blown everything out of proportion and it is all in my head and all she is worried about really is my well-being. Seen it all before, got the t-shirt and the dvd.

The only person who I want to worry about my health is me. It really gets on my tits when I go to work now and in the past how people wrap me up in cotton wool.

I managed to speak to the supervisor later on and said I could not find her and I phoned the work agency to ask for some advice and she wasn't very happy as I had not given her my complaint and completely bypassed her. She just said I have got to work it out with the woman who is harassing me.

Its all so simple, spend years on benefits, do voluntary work to build yourself up, get work with an agency and then try to find a way to build yourself up again to beat the bully at work.

What happens tomorrow and whether I will still have a job at the end of the day I do not know.

Thank you for reading my blog

cheers

Brain Blogger

You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully

I have been working for the employment agency for nearly six months, however there have been some funny goings in the last 6 weeks or so. It was really difficult getting to where I have got to now but I am facing a problem.

My work hours are normally 9-2.30 with a half hour break. I have been doing quite well and feeling confident in myself. In the morning I work with the woman who is about 60 and then I fill in helping the other Lady who is nearer my age who works in the afternoon.

Just recently It has been very busy at work and I have been helping a bit longer in the afternoon. The Lady in the afternoon has said to the supervisor that I have been very helpful and she could not have managed without me. My hours have been gradually building up to 30 plus hours and the last two weeks I have done full-time hours which I was surprised with myself.

Most of the work is repetitive and is in a customer service environment. In the last few years I have been listening to the other people how they go about things and now I am having my own take at it. I am always polite and I ask what can I do to help.

The supervisor and the assistant director were concerned that I was doing too many hours but I said I am happy helping in the afternoon and if I have any problems I will come and see them. Nobody has said I am doing too many hours and I have had no problems when I have handed my time-sheets in.

However the woman in the morning who works there and does not work for the agency seems to have taken exception to me working longer hours. She has been asking what hours I have been doing and has asked me about what time do I get home. She does not ask me or the supervisor but the Lady who comes in at 1pm. Are crip's not capable of working after 2.30 then?.

I dread going to work in the morning and I have had some of the anxiety symptoms return, headache, feeling sick, heat pounding. I often think what have I done yesterday afternoon that the woman in the morning will find fault with. The woman in the morning is the same one who I said about in one of my previous posts and just recently she has been making me feeling quite inadequate, doubt myself, gives me impossible targets, talks to me like I am a child and over supervises which can be quite suffocating. A classic one is when someone who has come in and asks me a question she butts in. Its like having a interpreter but in a bad way. Due to the damage to my brain I know what I want to say but I just takes a little longer to get it out. Sometimes when I am doing something she will quote bizarre health and safety rules.

This week it has been trivial complaints which aren't worth the time of day. Yesterday a student came in to post a letter so I said it will cost 41p. Next thing the other woman is interrupting me and saying excuse me, excuse me, the student goes over and then she says that will cost 41p. Thats funny I thought thats what I just said. Am I not capable of taking 41p of someone and putting it in a till?.

This morning I did the capital crime of forgetting to deliver a parcel to someone. I took my fleece off and put it in the post trolley and inadvertently covered this parcel up. I got back to the office and a few minutes later she said, you don't normally forget to deliver parcels and I have noticed you are not quite with it lately. I said it wasn't a major disaster and I said I would take it over a bit later and what was it that is supposed to be wrong with me.

I see my supervisor regularly and I mention some of the things that happen and she says thats what the woman in the morning is like and I have got to try and not take much notice. I have started to write down some of these things down and I am wondering whether to email it to the Lady at the employment agency. It says in the employment agency handbook I was originally given that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect at work. I feel like I am being harassed but I am not sure what to do because if I make the wrong choices it will all backfire on me.

see you later

Brain blogger

Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website

Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website
12 July 2010

This is a single issue newsletter asking for your urgent help in getting a government website closed down. The site, set up by the treasury to allow people to suggest ways to cut government spending, is full of hate-filled racist and disablist suggestions, including the sterilisation of benefits claimants, the return of the workhouse and the forced repatriation of asylum seekers and migrants. Some of the site’s content is so extreme it may even constitute a criminal offence.

The Spending Challenge website at

http://spendingchallenge.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

was set up on Friday by the coalition government and features an introduction and video on its home page by chancellor George Osborne.

In his video Osborne tells visitors that “Your government needs you, please get in touch” and the introduction assures visitors that:

“A team has been put together right at the heart of government and their job is to make sure that your ideas and comments are taken seriously - and that the best ideas are taken forward as part of the Spending Review.”

Yet these ideas and comments clearly demonstrate how the demonisation of claimants by successive governments has succeeded in promoting open and widespread hatred. One suggestion is to “Re-open the workhouses” for the unemployed, the elderly and asylum seekers. The poster goes on to suggest that:

“To prevent the problem of generations of poor people, release could be conditional on getting sterilised.”

Another idea entitled “Discouraging those who do not work from starting a family” goes on to say that:

“Where NHS staff have identified that a couple or single mother isn't in a position to support themselves and a child financially, they should be advised to terminate the pregnancy (if very early on), or be recommended to give the child up for adoption.”

Other ideas include:

“Benefits claimants to work in sweatshops” which urges the government to also send the unemployed to Afghanistan as cannon fodder;

“Let The Disabled Community Forge A New Industry” which suggests that disabled claimants should grow and sell cannabis for a living;

“Employ Crocodiles in Benefits Offices” to discourage claims;

the self-explanatory “Stop paying JSA etc to drunks, druggies & wastrels”; and

“Stop handing out free laptops and internet connections to the unemployed” in which the poster goes on to say that “I worked fifteen years before I could afford to buy myself a laptop, some toerag who's never worked a day in his life gets it courtesy of the State.”

Even where the initial post appears to be an attempt at humour or irony, the baying mob of supportive posters demonstrates that many others take the ideas seriously.

Equally disturbing and possibly criminal are the huge number of racist rants being published by the treasury.

In one suggestion “Move immigrants in council houses out of cities”, the original poster wants the coalition government to “Tell immigrants that they are being moved to less expensive areas. If they don't want to, they can leave the country.”

However, in a subsequent comment, another poster responds with “I'm not sure that I want to see immigrants living in our villages - keep them in the ghetto's until such time as they can all be deported.”

Many of the suggestions target specific groups such as Somalis and the site is littered with the most ugly and examples of ignorance and prejudice, many so extreme that we are not prepared to reproduce them,

The Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to publish material which is likely to stir up racial hatred. Benefits and Work believes that this is exactly the effect that the treasury website will have. The content may also be in breach of discrimination and harassment legislation. Whilst we do not have the legal knowledge to pursue this matter further, and don’t want to be accused of a publicity stunt, we hope that there are readers of this newsletter who will have both the knowledge and the sense of outrage to do so and that they will involve the police in investigating this site.

The site has a ‘Report to the moderator’ feature, but appears to be otherwise unmoderated. To leave the responsibility for policing a government website to members of the public instead of checking each submission before publishing it is, at best, inexcusably negligent and, at worst, criminally irresponsible. There are, in any case, so many vile sentiments being posted there, that it would be a full-time job to keep reporting them all.

If you are as revolted as we are by the use of taxpayers money to encourage racism and hatred of claimants, please consider doing the following:

Contact your MP today and ask them to tell the chancellor to close down this vile site, clean it up and don’t reopen it until it is properly policed;

Make a complaint to the Equalities and human Rights Commission at

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/our-job/contact-us/

Good luck,

Steve Donnison

This article can be viewed online at

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/latest-news/1233-sterilise-claimants-urges-racist-treasury-website


(c) 2010 Steve Donnison. Benefits and Work Publishing Ltd. Company registration No. 5962666
You are welcome to reproduce this newsletter on your website or blog, provided you do so in full.

America Here We Come!

I read this on the Ipswich Unemployed action this morning about how the government is considering plans to distribute food vouchers to people on the dole. I find this shocking in this day and age. Is this not what they do in America?.

DLA/Brown Envelopes/3 Months On

How do?

Just when I had thought I had escaped from Incapacity Benefit and the medicals I now face a new horror. I receive lower rate care DLA so that means at some point I will have a DLA medical. Can they not just f*****g leave me alone and let me try to get on as best I can?. I did what they wanted and did the right thing and panicked jumped ship from IB and got a job which was a miracle in itself.

I mean its just another way to add more anxiety to the problems people already have. I have been getting low rate DLA for care because of things related to my head injury and also because I am epileptic, it really helps just being reminded to have tablets because I often forget or for someone to be aware that I having a bath and just to check on me.

I would have thought it would cost a small fortune to have everyone on DLA to go through a medical test and no doubt some private healthcare companies the usual suspects are going to make a packet on the way. It looks like it will cost more just to save a measly £75 a month. Judging by what happened with ESA I would imagine there would be a lot of appeals as well so that is going to cost time and money.

I feel like it's not disabled & sick peoples fault that they have to go through these medicals. We are all paying in this thinly disguised attack on DLA in the emergency budget. The government have wanted to cut DLA and here an opportunity has presented itself on a silver platter. It was just convenient about the economy and the bankers came along so the Government could use it as an excuse to add medical tests for DLA claimants in the emergency budget.

Here's my really simple way for DWP to save some money is by not sending me a remittance advice every bloody week telling me I am getting £40 a week Return to Work Credit. How much does that cost every week sending them out to all the people on RTWC?. Why not just send me a letter once a quarter showing all the transactions?. I know I am getting RTWC for a year but I don't need a stupid brown letter every single week reminding me of the fact. I thought I had escaped the brown letters from hell but I get one every week.

I have been working now for the agency for about 3 months and I think the honeymoon period is over and I am facing the reality of being in work. I do like my work but physically I get exhausted and I know its catching up a bit as I have had a couple of 3-4 hour sleeps this week when I have got back from work. The reality of the situation is if I did less work then I don't get paid for it.

I am no longer getting Incapacity benefit, so there's some nice savings there for the DWP and I also pay Tax and NI so I am also contributing. I don't want to sound melodramatic but in my case this is the price of having a disability and going to work but what price am I paying with my health. I think its a case of trying to manage both and manage my spoons

ta ta for now.

Four Weeks On

How do?

I have been at work for four weeks now. It is a bummer that the job is with an agency but I am prepared to take that risk.

My supervisor at work has said she has already noticed that I now have a better attitude. I feel better in myself and I seem to have more energy. I don't know whether it is just me but people are different with me now. There are quite a few people who work for the same agency where I work and they now say I am one of the crew now.

The Lady from the agency rings me up every week or sends me a text to say that I am required the next week and then I get a new time-sheet and the last payslip in the post at the weekend. I get paid weekly which is different and I have been able to budget quite well so far. I could not believe it when I had my first payslip in 12 years. I was so happy I took my Wife and the Children out for a slap-up meal.

The Working Tax credits have been worked out and I am definitely better off so far. I don't know what plans the future government has for tax credits but they are crucial to me at this stage. I have also received a letter this weekend saying I qualified for Return to Work Credits of £40 a week as well. I could now be a walking talking advert for the DWP better off in work.

I now enjoy going to work more than I did before. It is going well except I have had a couple of problems which I have had to speak to the supervisor about. The Lady who I had problems with before keeps telling me when I should have my break, and she says she has to know at all times where I am. Its quite suffocating. Why don't I have an electronic tag attached to my ankle?. I did something I had not done before I stuck up for myself and I said I will go for my break when I am ready. I think she cares but she just goes the wrong way about it. I think it is also the transition from how I started on a work placement all being wrapped up in cotton wool to now being a fully fledged working person. I will see how it goes.

In other news Transfattyacid said "I guess now you are employed you will have the luxury of moaning about all those scroungers faking disability to live the life of Riley on the state". If the DWP could get the real career scroungers off benefits who give disabled people a bad name perhaps they might be able to give the time and the energy to help people with genuine disabilities.

I feel like I have been very lucky and I have had a lot of help along the way but not from the jobcentre though but from people where I volunteered. I know where I came from to where I am now and I was labelled a scrounger and it is not a nice experience. It might go ok or it might go wrong but I am just taking one day at a time and see where it takes me.

Have a nice weekend

Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire

How do?

I find it quite bizarre what has happened since I quit my voluntary work. My original plan was to start looking for either different voluntary work, look for work and go to the jobcentre and look at what options they had even if it meant going on the Pathways to Nowhere.

I went over to see Linda the volunteer organiser at the uni as she had not seen me for a while and I said that I had enough and I was leaving and I wanted to do something else. I went and had a talk to her and explained some things to her and things she did not know. She said that they were not taking on any staff which was the same as what my supervisor had said. Linda then said she would ask at a higher level and make some enquiries about me. She said I was welcome to drop in any time as I was not banned from the campus or anything.

I was not expecting to hear anything different to what I had heard before but then a week or so later I got an email from the Deputy Director asking if I could go in and see him.

I met up with Linda again and we sat in the reception area waiting to meet the Deputy Director. At this point I was shaking with anxiety and I did not know what to expect. Linda was with me and reassured me that there was nothing to worry about and I was not in trouble.

We went in and met the Deputy Director and Linda said it would better if I explained my situation and why I had left. I said I originally came from a work placement via the DEA at the jobcentre & Rehab UK. I then said that when the six weeks placement finished, Rehab UK didn't come up with any other options but I liked it where I was. I asked the line manager at the time if I could carry on as a volunteer so I could build up my confidence and perhaps get some more experience in the workplace.

I originally had this loopy idea that If I could built up as much experience as I could then it would give me some chance of finding a job at some point in the future.

The Deputy Director had not realised that I was a volunteer and just thought I worked there and I was a guy who worked there who came round every day. He was very straight with me and explained that the voluntary work would have had to stop as it had gone on for too long. He said that there were no jobs at this time but one of the things they do is take on agency staff.

What came up which has come up before was the fact that I am on IB and that if I came off it what was there to lose and would I be worse off. He then said he needed some time to have a think and would contact me at the end of the week.

At the end of the week I got an email asking if I could go and see him again with Linda. I went in with Linda and sat down and he said he had spoken to the employment agency and he then gave me a piece of paper showing details of a job which was basically my old voluntary job but working for an employment agency with fixed hours. He said that there was an element of risk working for an employment agency as the work may not be permanent.

He said did I want to have a think about it and compare the figures to what I got on IB. It didn't matter because I had already made my mind up as I had been comparing figures for a while using wage & tax credit calculators. Here was a chance to get off IB, do a job I already know what to do and get paid. I was prepared to take the risk.

The next day I had to go to the employment agency in town and fill in some forms. I was quite embarrassed when I was asked about when I last worked. I said the last time I worked was in 1998 and since that I have been going between doctor and hospital appointments to sort my brain out and my thinking, struggling with periods of depression, going on jobcentre schemes and doing a bit of voluntary work. After getting all the forms done she then phoned the Deputy Director and then she said she had a start date for me, wow!.

Three weeks after leaving my voluntary work I am now back again at the same place doing my old job pretty much doing the same as before with fixed hours and now getting paid for it.

One of the things I found most exciting was to ring up the DWP office and say that I have some exciting news is that I now have a job. Bye Bye Incapacity Benefit!

The DWP said because I am in a Pathways to Work area I should be entitled to a £250 work grant and £40 a week Return to Work Credit for a year. The brown envelopes have been coming thick and fast, first with my P45 and then the application form for RTWC.

I am waiting to find out if I still get DLA next month. I have also applied for Working Tax Credits.

One thing that has come out of all this is that someone originally gave me a chance even though it was as a volunteer and then I have had quite a bit of help along the way.

Perhaps people would feel better if the jobcentre did not just farm people off to schemes to park them on and if there were more people who were willing to just give disabled people a chance.

I can't see how workfare schemes are going to work because people are going to resent it from the start being forced to work and working for less then the minimum wage. I went to voluntary work because I wanted to do it and then I tried to build on it.

If only the people who keep banging on about welfare reform listen especially those who want time limited benefits and stop treating people as benefit scrounging scum. We are not scum but we are real people with real problems, sometimes you just need that little extra boost from somewhere just to help you on your way. Sorry about my rant buts that's how I feel.

On to Day One

Ta Ta

Back To Square One Again

The last thing I wrote on my blog was about managing my brain injury and trying to be able to cope with work. I have been doing voluntary work at a university to try and build myself up in a busy working environment.

Having not been in work for such a long time I don't have a very good medical history and I do not have a lot of experience in the workplace. I do look at jobs in the paper and on the net but with not a lot of work history my chances of getting a job are very slim.

Just recently where I do my voluntary work I felt that I have been taken advantage of and I have been having too much work to do, ie people in where I work have left and not been replaced and I have been doing virtually two peoples jobs and then being asked to take on other things as well.

Last week I asked if I could start work half an hour earlier so I could help get things ready and get started a bit earlier and perhaps finish earlier. I came into work on Monday morning and instead of my co-worker working together with me she did the work she needed to do and left me with everything else. I wasn't expecting that. What happened to working as a team?

At about 9.00am she came out with "well if you had come in at 9.00 like before everything would have been ready and you could have started", with the tone of her voice saying I told you so.

Not deterred by this I went off and did some of the jobs I normally do and then a bit later I saw my supervisor and explained what had happened. I said that I was doing too much work and it needed to be cut down. I said that I felt that I was just an unpaid skivvie and I must be a mug for doing this. I can't recall everything she said but she did day something like "We try to support you but one week you are alright, one week you are not, one week you are bored and you need another challenge".

I had done some of my work and went back to where the co-worker was and I was trying to explain that I was having to do more work and having less time to do it in. My co-worker said " Well I have been doing that and I have been working for 30 years. I have done all these things to help you in the past to make it easy for you, now that you had taken on so much [even though I had been asked to do these jobs by the supervisor] and now you are complaining about it. I found this quite patronising and despite the fact that I had been helping her and all for nothing, what did she want me to do give her a medal or something?.

I had enquired with my supervisor previously whether it would be possible if the work I do considering the amount of work I was doing could do turned into a proper job and I could get off benefits. I have said many times that I am sick of being on IB and want to get some sort of proper job. I have been reading some info from benefits & work recently about voluntary work and I think I have not been doing voluntary work but actually unpaid work.

I had also been told that the employer wanted to look after me so to protect my benefits and they didn't want me to be worse off, ie the employer could not match what I get on IB. It was explained to me that there was nothing in the current years budget and I would have to wait until they find out the next budget for the department. I had compared what I get on IB and what figure they were talking about what I could possibly earned but it wasn't that far away to be impossible.

Quite a lot of the time I have also been rather worried about being transferred to either ESA or JSA so in this eventuality they said that there was something in place in case this happened. So I carried on doing my work for nothing while taking on more work in the process. However this was beginning to have a negative effect on my health ie not having time to have a sufficient break or even lunch [I don't recall having many proper breaks] and I was then coming back from work exhausted and having to sleep 2-3 hours to recover.

Then just to add the icing on the cake I found out later in the day that the thing that was in place in the eventuality of being kicked off IB was no longer in place as they could not afford it and had not been in place for a while. its just nobody thought of telling me and this was all while I still working for nothing. I might have well of just had the word mug tattooed on my forehead.

I made my mind up very quickly that this wasn't for me any more and a change of scenery would be required.

There are some volunteers who do a fantastic job and are very much appreciated but there are some who are just used in the place of actual paid employees.

At least I can be positive and say I have now have some work history in a busy working environment. Does voluntary work and the then therapeutic work count for anything on a CV these days? I am no nearer to a job now as I was when I first got the placement from Rehab UK via the DEA. Sad but true. Back to square one again and the isolated world of Incapacity Benefit. What's next?

What's the Point?

Having read recently about David Cameron wanting to get the sick and disabled off IB and into the world of work if the Conservatives get into power. I notice that the politicians seem to forget that sick/disabled people have to manage there condition/disability and then have to manage to be able to work.

I keep trying to push myself to the point where I feel like I could do a job. One of the biggest problems I have with a brain injury even after 20 years is fatigue. I get home from voluntary work and I am constantly have to fight to stop myself going to sleep as I am physically exhausted.

I have had this problem since day one of the head injury and it's made worse when I try to get back into a work situation. Yesterday I got home, got washed, had a drink, sat down and then the fight begins to not go to sleep. I usually like to have a sit down and then check my email but by this time my brain is already trying to shut me down and make me sleep. It's not like the sort of late in the evening time to go to bed tired, its difficult to describe but its not pleasant.

I often think that having a can of red bull or something like that will help keep me awake but in fact this is actually quite futile. I can have a coffee or a red bull and half hour later I am asleep for anything for 2-4 hours which is quite bizarre. This often happens so it makes the time in the afternoon/early evening a write off.

This also makes a mess of sleep as it is like instead of having a long 7 hour sleep at night I often have 2 sleeps and then I can be awake at 2 am in the morning. Somebody said to me last week that I should try going to the sleep clinic.

What is happening is in my attempt to be well enough to work is the fatigue is then crossing over into my family life. What's the point to all this?. Is this what the politicians want all in the name of getting people to work and saving there precious money?. I am only 1 person who has to manage there condition, what about all the other people who have to manage there condition everyday and then in the future going to be punished for having a disability or condition and then being forced to find work?.

see ya

Heart Of A Nation

There is a lot being said about IB at the moment but I have found this excellent blog article which is well worth a read.