Taking It Easy Watching Jeremy Kyle

Power to the people

2011-10-07T21:15:00.000+01:00

The cuts have also began to hit the school where two of my children go to and just lately most of the Mums have been talking about one of the popular teachers who was told she was being made redundant. She was phoned up on her mobile while she was shopping in Waitrose to be told she was being made redundant. That's a nice touch, wouldn't have speaking to her face to face been more suitable?. As a result of the shock of this she collapsed in the middle of the shop.

As more was found out a petition was started to say that the parents objected to the decision to make this teacher redundant and would they reconsider. Even parents of children who had left school in previous years wanted to sign the petition.

As the petition grew bigger other teachers were saying to the parents that they should stop the petition as there was no point. Also the teachers were saying that it was upsetting the children as they began find out that one of their favourite teachers would be leaving.

A committee meeting was held on Thursday and as parents waited to find out what was happening and today were issued with a letter saying the redundancy process was being stopped.

This is a copy of the letter which was received today. I say this petition has helped influence this decision. We will have see how this develops. I say Power to the People!.

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

2011-10-07T19:16:00.000+01:00

In my last post I said about the Lady at work who was losing her job as a result of the department she works in being closed down due to cuts.

I was in the bookshop dropping some parcels off and I saw her in the bookshop and she came up to me and said that it was her last day today. I was shocked and I said I felt sad because even though I might only see her for a few minutes every day she always managed to make me laugh. I just gave her big hug and I said was going to miss her.

Today I went into the office to collect the post and turned to where she normally sits and I was shocked to see her desk completely empty. Any sign of her existence had gone. It all seemed very final and it feels like you are losing part of the family.

Cuts.com

2011-08-25T13:44:00.000+01:00

Everybody has heard about George Osborne's spending cuts on the news and on the radio but where I work it is happening all around me. Everybody is worried and there are news on the radio and newspaper of possibly more redundancies but this is already on top of people who have left.

As part of my job I visit lots of departments on a daily basis and just this week I heard that an entire department I visit is going. it is almost like a family and you see the same people everyday and I notice when people are missing. I feel sad because the Lady in that office is leaving. I have got to know her over 6 years and she has helped me on my way and she makes me laugh. Another Lady in the same office has been there for 19 years and she is leaving.

People went to a large union meeting yesterday and then later you see whole offices closed for meetings, people talking in small groups saying things like how do I know my job is secure.

Another department is going next July and Clare who works there says she is gutted because it has become part of her life and she doesn't know what she is going to do. She says you have to be grateful now for everyday you have a job. See what happens tomorrow.

Taking Risks

2011-01-25T23:55:00.000Z

Having read on the scrapping of the 104 week linking rules on benefits & work & where's the benefit? means taking a big risk. I started work for the agency in April 2010 so the linking rules would have covered me up until April 2012.

Part of my decision to start work with the agency was based on knowing that I was covered by the linking rule and would be able to fall back on if things go wrong. After 31 Jan myself and probably many others will no longer be covered. Whose idea was it to scrap the linking rules?.

Luckily things haven't gone wrong but in the current climate anything can happen. This must be a worrying time for disabled people wanting to try work or been in work for a little while.. I was talking to a CAB worker today and they said that if I lost my job that I would probably not even get ESA as I have been working and would have to go to JSA. It is at the back of my mind and that's where its staying at the moment. I just go from week to week without making any big plans and then hope I get a text saying I am needed the next week.

see ya

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

2010-11-23T16:10:00.000Z

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

2010-11-03T02:02:00.001Z

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

2010-10-28T22:50:00.003+01:00

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

2010-07-12T16:41:00.000+01:00

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!

2010-07-04T11:47:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-03T12:10:00.003+01:00

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

2010-05-09T14:11:00.001+01:00

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

2010-05-02T12:12:00.019+01:00

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

2010-03-17T14:21:00.000Z

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?

2010-02-11T19:14:00.006Z

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

2010-02-05T21:53:00.002Z

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.

Benefits & Work Website Under Attack

2009-12-20T11:35:00.006Z

This morning the Sunday Express claims that the Benefits & Work website provides a web guide for bogus incapacity benefit claims. In fact they manage to mention it on another article as well on the same day claiming that benefit claims are at an all time high. Yet again another attack on sick and disabled people.

Brain Blogger

It appears that the article in the Sunday Express was removed after Benefits & Work members first picked up on it in there forum here

The Future is Uncertain

2009-12-11T14:07:00.009Z

Nothing of any real significance has happened since I last posted on my blog. I just haven't really felt like writing anything. I have been taking the Citalapram for quite a while now. I don't really feel depressed nor do I feel really happy. I sort of feel nothing. I don't feel sick anymore before I go to voluntary work nor do I have the pounding heart or the panic attacks which is a relief.

Since the brain injury I have no real work history other than therapeutic work and voluntary work. I feel like everyone who wanted to take advantage of me under the guise of rehabilitation has taken advantage of me.

After a life changing event like a brain injury there does not seem to be any sort of a plan to get yourself back to work and you just go through the motions, a week passes, a month passes, a year passes, now almost 20 years have passed since I last worked full-time. At least 18 years has been spent on IB and its variants via a couple of appeals. Its not something I am proud of.

I want to get off IB and get a proper part-time job with proper wages and some sort of career but how many of them are there about for disabled people at the moment?.

The problem is with going to a new job or environment with short-term memory problems it might take me a year to learn and to remember what to do properly. How many employers are there who have that sort of patience?. I feel like the future is uncertain. The only stability I have at the moment is IB and voluntary work.

I have been reading other blog's about peoples experience of the new deal and the flexible new deal but it sounds so depressing. I don't want to be depressed again. I have had a lifetime of experience of depression.

I have asked whether the voluntary work could turn into a proper part-time job but the employer said that they can't match what I get on IB and I would be worse off and wait until I get kicked off IB and onto jobseekers.

I phoned up the tax credit helpline and even with working tax credit I would actually be worse off. That's just crazy. Even on news articles I read in the last week or so it said if you earn less than so much you are classed as being in poverty. What's the incentive of going to work when you are going to go into poverty?.

Sometimes I feel like I am already working for my benefit. Sometimes I feel like I am being taken advantage of at the expense of a real employee. People have come and gone and not been replaced but at the end there is always me as backup. What alternatives are there?.

ta ta

brain blogger

DLA and AA Petition Needs Your Help

2009-10-06T22:09:00.006+01:00

If you are not already aware of the governments plans to scrap DLA & AA can you sign this petition please:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AttendanceA/

I received this in my email today from benefitsandwork:

CHARITIES ADMIT DEFEAT

We have received a copy of an email which a campaigner says came from the charity ASBAH (Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus) in response to his concerns about the care green paper. The email appears to admit defeat in the fight to save DLA and AA:

“. . .ASBAH, in line with many other larger bodies is of the view that these proposals have already gathered too much momentum to be reversed and that major changes are inevitable. . . it is vital within any alternative system that people retain elements within their budgets where they can exercise choice in how they spend that money. Although we have not adopted a position where we are fighting to save DLA and AA we would fight to see this element of choice protected and would resist any attempt to convert all support to 'in kind'.”

We have emailed ASBAH to ask for confirmation that the email is genuine and to ask which other ‘larger bodies’ – presumably disability charities - have also given up the fight to save DLA and AA.

We have yet to receive a response.

MINISTER’ STATEMENT: IS DLA REALLY SAVED?

One week on and there has been absolutely no corroboration of Care Services minister Phil Hope’s off-the-cuff statement that DLA is not being considered for the axe.

As we pointed out last week, Hope’s ‘don’t worry, be happy’ exhortation contradicts previous statements made by the DWP. So, the continued failure by either the DWP or the Department of Health to make any official statement confirming that they have changed their position and that DLA is now safe can only be a cause for deep suspicion and grave concern.

In addition, no reassuring words whatsoever have been offered in relation to AA.

So, at Benefits and Work, our message continues to be ‘It’s not over yet: carry on campaigning’.

NO 10 PETITION STRUGGLING

The petition about DLA and AA seems to be grinding to a halt again, at under 12,000 signatures. As we said last week, if any agency starts a petition it’s vital that they give it maximum publicity or it ends up damaging, rather than promoting, their cause.

Do you have time to check the website of any disability charity that you have a connection with and, if there isn’t an obvious link to the No 10 petition, email them and politely ask them to publish one.

You could point out that the petition was started by the Disability Charities Consortium and that it’s important that disability charities now work together effectively to promote it. If they can’t act together on so simple a thing as getting signatures on a petition, then what exactly can they act together on and how can they claim to be representing their members’ interests?

The petition can be found at:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AttendanceA/

GREEN PAPER WEBSITE AMAZED

The Big Care Debate website have answered our queries about missing responses by replying that “we have received an amazing response from the public in regards to the Green Paper, on both the website and via email. We are doing our best to work our way through them, and have them online and ready to view as soon as we can.”

We know that in the past, such consultations have struggled to get responses numbering in the hundreds, let alone the thousands. So, we can certainly believe that the ‘amazing’ response by Benefits and Work campaigners has taken the Department of Health by surprise. But we do wonder how hard it can be to read and publish a few thousand posts over several months. Is the sheer volume of communications really the only problem? Rather than, say, the fact that most responses are overwhelmingly hostile to the green paper?

If you haven’t yet sent a response to the green paper, please do so by visiting this link:

http://careandsupport.direct.gov.uk/greenpaper/execsum/

Or emailing: careandsupport@dh.gsi.gov.uk

We’re concerned that there doesn’t appear to be any complaints procedure for the green paper consultation and we’re looking into this. But at the very least, if they don’t publish your response it will give more grounds for challenging the validity of the whole green paper consultation, which is after all a statutory process.

POST YOUR NEWS

Finally, remember that you can post your news in the Benefits and Work forum, if you’re a member, at:

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/forum?func=showcat&catid=13

and/or in the free welfare watch forums at:

http://welfarewatch.myfineforum.org/index.php

You can also keep up with news about opposition to the green paper at the Carer Watch campaign blog:

http://carerwatch.com/cuts/

Unfortunately, we’re getting so many emails on this subject that we are unlikely to be able to respond individually. But we do appreciate hearing your news and views and we do encourage you to publish them for others to read on the forums detailed above.

Good luck,

Please feel free to forward or publish this email.

Benefits and Work Publishing Ltd

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk

Company registration No. 5962666

Nothing New Then, Move Along

2009-10-04T12:39:00.005+01:00

Hi,

I have been reading all this week that David Cameron's first priority as a Tory Prime Minister [if he wins of course] is to reduce the amount of people on Incapacity benefit. I would have thought his first priority would be to encourage companies in this country to start creating real, well paid jobs, what's the point of getting people to be work ready when there is no real work to go to. The only people who will be getting anything out of this is is companies like A4e, Working Links. I can imagine Emma Harrison rubbing her hands together already.

You have seen it on Benefit Busters already where people are placed in temporary work or in low paid employment. Imagine the career prospects and the stimulation for my brain working at the 99p shop?. I have experienced this already by going on a six week placement and there was no real job at the end of it only to go full circle and be back where I started again.

Its just the same old tosh to try and win voters before an election by saying that he will be attacking the people on benefits. Nothing new then, move along!.

ta ta

Brain Blogger

Benefit Busters Ep3

2009-09-04T08:16:00.014+01:00

How do?

Well what can I say about benefits busters that hasn't been said already. Shaw Trust were doing just the same as A4E were doing in the previous programme in trying to meet targets and to get the £300 monthly bonus. It would not be so bad as if they could treat people with some empathy not just objects to meet targets. It did not show anything that Shaw Trust actually did for the clients than the initial interviews, what did they do in the time spent while at Shaw Trust?. Were they making models in cardboard in team building exercises?.

Sherrie was asking if anyone was interested in being canvassers or car salesman, to me it all seemed a bit unrealistic, for example, here we have 2 applicants for a job as a car sales, one a car salesman who has say 5 years recent experience and a person who has been on IB for 5-10 years has little or no experience. The IB claimants application would go straight in the shredder.

It was also disgraceful the way Sherrie was saying about the guy who did the painting and decorating and saying she would support him but you could see that she was probably thinking that he did not really have a cat in hells chance of getting a job at 57. I thought she was being ageist and she had virtually made her mind up before she ahd even started. The thing is she should of realised that older people have knowledge and life experience, he also had a history of running his own business and this could be transferred into something else instead of just giving him false hope.

I felt the better advisor was the one helping Mandy who had PTSD/alchohol/depression problems. She seemed to be more on the ball. I think Mandy had the right idea in that she wanted to do something but most employers probably wouldn't touch her with a barge pole so doing some voluntary work is probably the best route to start off with building up her self-esteem. The advisor was also right saying that she needed some counselling and to sort herself out which might take a year.

To get people back into the workplace after a long time out isn't like selling a car, people have lots of problems that need addressing before they are even ready to try and get back in the workplace. It is not as simple as shoving them on a course and doing job search and trying to get your £300 bonus at the same time. The thing is in this country these things are not in place as yet.

I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for Kieron as he had no problems walking and he could walk so he was mobile, he could pick up a bucket full of water and mop the floor. How did the bucket get in the sink to start off with? Picking up the bucket with a bad back is difficult. If he is worried about ending up in a wheelchair I wouldn't have thought picking up a bucket of water was a good idea. I also thought at one point when he dropped the piece of paper he was going to pick it up again and I thought he was reaching forward for the ball in the garden. Kieron has done nothing to change the minds of any watching daily mail readers.

I thought the job Sherrie asked him to apply for as an office administrator was totally unrealistic as he was not experienced and then the other guy was talking him out of it and suggesting going to college to do basic maths and literacy. Oh I forgot Sherrie wants her £300 bonus. I think Kerion could do something but you have got to start somewhere.

Looking at the medical he went to I thought from the questions being asked that he was going to fail and he did. Was the examiner who asked him to bend over at the assessment actually qualified to make a judgement because apparently these disability analysts are not doctors and have only been on a three week course?.

I didn't think much of Sherries use of the phrase having to spoon-fed her clients who she felt were too lazy. I think if she knew about people who are sick/disabled then she should have said that they were not motivated and would have used her skills to address this. If a person wants to buy a car they already have the motivation to do it, that's the difference between selling cars and people with illnesses and disabilities, they are more complicated.

I think the governments plans to kick people off IB onto JSA isn't going to do much for motivating people and it would send people into depression.

From what I have read in the last year the sick and disabled feel that the government are punishing them for being sick and disabled. I just think the government have just gone the wrong way about it and all they are worried is saving there money. When they thought up these reforms did they actually think of asking sick and disabled people who have got back into work what motivated them and then asking current IB claimants what would motivate them.

If I can see all these things in this programme the question is why haven't I got a job for Shaw Trust/A4e earning £2000 a month?. I would definitely make a better job of it than Sherrie. I didn't think much to Hayley Taylor's approach but you can guess by now I am definitely not a fan of Sherrie Jepson. This to me just shows all the things that are bad about pathways to work.

This programme did very little to show the actual problems that lot's of sick and disabled people have trying to find work. Neither did it show anything about employers discrimination against the sick and disabled. I felt it seemed to spend a lot of its time focusing on Kieron and his negative attitude.

If you are a person on IB and after watching a programme like this would you want to go on one of these programmes offered by A4e/Shaw Trust/Working Links when you know there are people like Sherrie who are out there who are target & bonus driven working in the pathways to work system?.

Are they thinking about your best interests and your aspirations or about meeting the target and the £300 bonus?.

Ta ta for now

Mark Pilkington, I Feel Your Pain [Benefit Busters Episode 2]

2009-08-28T08:08:00.002+01:00

Having watched Benefits Busters last night I really felt for Mark Pilkington who got the job with the landscape contractors. Did they give him the job because the cameras were there?. It was so disheartening when he got the letter saying that his hours were being reduced. I really felt his pain. He wanted to work, you could see when he had been in the job a short while what a difference it was making to his life and the relationship with his Wife, he made the effort and now he his back to square one again.

The programme said A4e were paid for Mark being referred by the jobcentre and then I would imagine a4e would probably be paid again when he got the job at the contractors. Now Mark is back to square one again will he get referred back to a4e again? easy money if you ask me, no wonder Emma has that smug grin when she was being interviewed for benefit busters and i would have that smug grin after getting a multi-million contract from the DWP. I mean Emma's alright, arsehole to everyone else, show me the money! Does Emma care about someone like Mark?

Even when she was being interviewed she didn't even let the interviewer finish his question and kept saying, yes, yes, yes, yes and grinning.

Can someone tell me what was all the making of models with cardboard and sellotape got to do with looking for a job?. How demoralising. I mean my kids come back from school with models like that and this company is being paid to do this.

Lets see what happens next week with the sick and disabled.

ta ta

Brain blogger

How Can You Prove That You Have Epilepsy?

2009-08-27T22:57:00.005+01:00

I went away on a holiday this week but I forgot to take my medication with me, shit like this happens I forget things. I sat on the train going to London and I suddenly realised I had forgot my medication. I phoned my GP surgery as soon as I could and they said that I should temporarily register with another surgery which is the normal procedure. So I walked into the nearest surgery and I could not believe it when the receptionist said to me "I don't think we can help you very much unless you can prove you have epilepsy".

I mean how can you do that then? If I don't have any tablets for a while I could give you a ringside ticket when I do have a fit. I mean should I wear a t-shirt saying "I have epilepsy and I have been on the medication for almost 18 years". I did see a doctor eventually after waiting for over an hour and told him my predicament, gave him the number of my GP of which he phoned and he then gave me a prescription.

I have been thinking about having a t-shirt printed soon because my head injury is invisible and it affects me every day but it doesn't mean though that I am lazy or don't want to work. Any ideas?

Its Not My Fault Theres Not Enough Tanks In Afghanistan

2009-08-15T09:14:00.009+01:00

I love this comment I got in my comments box the other day, its just typical of the mindset that people think that blaming the long term unemployed and people on IB for the governments incompetence and the bankers greed:

kbo1964 said: jesus wept! i pay a fortune in stopages to support thieving scumbags!

why isn't the csa chaseing absent fathers
is this why the mod can't send vehicles to afganistan

james smith

James, I sympathise with you for paying a fortune in stoppages and the MOD not having enough vehicles and the absent fathers. I think you need to be knocking on Gordon Brown's door about this and asking the bankers these questions.

I would love to get a job but with a hidden disabilty and no work history for 10 years it doesn't really make me attractive to future employers. I do voluntary work to build up a work history and a track record and I have a good record of voluntary work and I am still trying to build myself up. Lots of people do voluntary work trying to build up there history and to try and get fit enough to get back to work but they are not recognized. As far as the government are concerned all they are doing is just sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle and drinking lager in the morning.

I want a job as much as anyone else, it would do wonders for my mental wellbeing and I would stop worrying about the nasty brown envelopes. I go to the jobcentre hoping that I can get somewhere but I afterwards I feel more depressed than before I went. I am so disillusioned. All they want me to do is apply for low paid jobs that are unrealistic and have no real prospects.

All the government and the Tories according to this article in the Times want to do is kick as many people off IB and onto JSA so they can save money. Will the jobcentre be able to cope?. Kick the 2.7m off IB onto JSA and you get 5m unemployed and then you will still be paying for me probably in higher taxes to pay for JSA.

see ya

DLA & Benefit Busters

2009-08-07T00:35:00.004+01:00

The possible threat of the withdrawal of DLA is worrying as I am a recipient of DLA myself. it looks like it is just another way of this damn governments no more benefits campaign and make sick and disabled peoples lives more difficult and back to the 1800's Poor Law.

It just seems to me just lately to be an all out attack on the vulnerable/the unemployed and people who don't have a voice to support them. I have already added my name to the Benefits and Work DLA & AA campaign which can be found here

I must say I really can't wait to watch on Channel 4 Benefit Busters , no doubt another program aimed to put benefit claimants in a bad light. No doubt the sick and disabled will feature in the series somewhere. We shall wait and see. I am appalled that such programs are put on our screens for so-called entertainment. I saw that it features A4e which you can read about on the newdealscandal blog

ta ta

brain blogger

Can I Believe in Miracles?

2009-07-14T17:59:00.009+01:00

Its official!!!!!!!!. I can now announce on my blog that all disabilties and sickness has been cured. The Express, The Mail and The Sun have been falling over themselves due to figures recently released about the new stricter tests of the ESA. Apparently 90% of claims are actually bogus and claimants are fit for work and the newspapers are now drooling at the prospect of it being applied to all the benefit scrounging scum currently on IB. I do like the article in the mail especially because it says that people will find it better "coming off the sick" and then it has got a picture of people queuing up at the jobcentre. I am crossing off the days on my calender now.

However The London Evening Standard has gone one further and says that all 2.6m on IB are actually fit for work. I don't know where I must have been when this miracle happened because it obviously missed me.

All we want now is another 2.6 million jobs [and sympathetic employers who don't mind taking on a few disabled workers, people with mental health problems, you get the picture] to add to the existing unemployed figures, has anyone got about 6 million jobs?. That's the next miracle!.

We all now this is all bullshit and all IB claimants haven't been magically cured and there aren't jobs a plenty for all these people to take up and what people will actually be facing is Jobseekers Allowance, £60 a week, workfare, more crap schemes to go on that do nothing to help and actually make you feel more depressed and slamming the glass door at where you go to sign on, I can't wait to have my own turn.

Roll on Arbeit Macht Frei

No Panic Saturday

2009-07-11T19:57:00.002+01:00

I went to a meeting today called No Panic Saturday as I am taking the first steps to deal with the problems I have with panic and anxiety. At the meeting I also found out about a organisation called No Panic.org.uk which I had never heard of before and it also has freephone number for a confidential national help-line.

Its Not Good Enough!

2009-06-11T20:30:00.008+01:00

I read this article titled "Employers back return to work" which says in a survey over a quarter (27%) of employers say they would still give people on incapacity benefit, and older people, the opportunity to return to the workplace, despite the economic recession.

Its not very impressive is it though?. In the article it makes it sound as if it is something really good but its not good enough, why should it not be 80-90%?. If claimants want to go back to work it makes it difficult if 73% will not even give you a chance in the first place.

Instead of the government attacking claimants shouldn't they be attacking the employers for not giving claimants a chance. Its a form of discrimination. All employers want though is someone who can start now and do the job so they are profitable to the business.

With the welfare reforms making life hell for genuine claimants. As a IB claimant myself I often feel like I am trapped. It feel like its either work or nothing or the being trapped in between.

brain blogger

He Will Be Back

2009-06-09T01:06:00.002+01:00

I read last week people rejoicing [i think thats the wrong word actually but it will do for the time being] the resignation of James Purnell, what I think though is at least when he resigned as Secretary of state for Work & Pensions he still has a job as an MP to fall back on and he still has a form of income unlike us lesser mortals.

I can't see James going down to the JobcentrePlus and signing up for some crap scheme and having to live off £60.50 a week. No doubt he has been the worst person to make benefit claimants lives hell but he will be back in some shape or form.

ta ta

brain blogger

Feeling A Bit Spaced Out

2009-06-09T00:07:00.005+01:00

I have been taking the citalopram for nearly two weeks now and I have made some observations already, it has certainly taken the edge off of my anxiety but the problem is after I have been taking them in the morning is I feel spaced out and it lasts for a couple of hours. It is not as bad though as when I used to take amitriptyline when I used to feel like I was literally floating around. I also have tegretol for epilepsy and to balance my mood but it hasn't been working very well recently but this combination with the citalopram seems to work quite well. I did a google search and I found that people suggest taking it at night so I have been doing that instead.

I have also noticed I am sleeping a lot more during the daytime, came back from voluntary work, went shopping to Lidl, my Wife and my children dislike going to Lidl so they prefer going on a secret mission to Asda at the weekend. Unfortunately going round the five rows at Lidl is all I can manage as going to a large supermarket like Tesco I find exhausting, so Lidl it is. So got back from shopping and I thought I would have a lay down, woke up 5 hours later at midnight, Wife asleep next to me, next morning my Wife was not too impressed as I had left on her own all evening. I knew she was alright because she would always find one of the forensics programmes to watch. It bothers me sometimes that she likes watching all these programmes especially her personal favourite "Snapped, Women who Kill". I do wonder what the gritty bits in my cup of tea are sometimes, only kidding. The problem with head injury is if you feel tired it don't matter you can still be asleep 20 minutes later after having a coffee or a stimulant drink. Also with sleeping in the daytime it affects your sleep patterns so when every else is asleep you are wide awake again.

ta ta

brain blogger

DWP New Deal Scandal

2009-06-08T23:43:00.005+01:00

I have just found this interesting new blog here about the 'New Deal' obviously written by someone with experience of the perils of being on it.

Anxiety?, Hello Citalopram

2009-05-28T00:22:00.011+01:00

Since my last couple of posts the anxiety and feeling depressed which I was feeling all started to get a bit too much, coping mechanisms went out of the window, not that I had any to start off with, allegedly I am supposed to have all these coping mechanisms to deal with these things but I can't remember what they are.

I took time off voluntary work as I felt drained and I felt like I was being overloaded with everything going on in my life. I underestimate the severity of my injury I have and I often think I can do more than I am capable of. I try to think that I am going to get back to some sort of level of where I used to be before my injury but I now have resided myself to the fact that its never going to happen which is frustrating.

I actually felt like on a few days why do I bother with voluntary work and I didn't want to go back but at least while I am doing that I am building up some sort of work history which might count for something one day and it gets me out of the house.

The problem is I do not know who is impartial that you can talk to about benefits/work. Half the time I don't know whether I am coming or going or who I can trust to advise me in my best interests. I don't trust jobcentreplus or the DEA after my previous experiences with him and I certainly don't want to go on the inflexible new deal or the pathways to nowhere. I just keep going back to my voluntary work. I suppose it will all come to a crunch when I get another IB50 and see what happens then.

Getting back to the plot I went to my new GP the other day which was fantastic, at the old doctors surgery you had to ring them between 8.00am and 8.30am, by the time you have got through after keeping you finger on the redial button, get through the multiple choice options and got through to speak to someone to find out all the appointments had gone for today so you have try again tomorrow. BT must making a small fortune here with all the people trying to phone at the same time. If you do get through and speak to someone on the phone you were subjected to a gestapo style interrogation. Is it an emergency and do you need to see the doctor today?, if it was an emergency I wouldn't be phoning here would I?. I would be phoning for an ambulance.

All I wanted to do was make an appointment to see the GP about my anxiety and some head injury related problems like not enough seratonin being pumped round my brain. Not really an emergency but necessary so it doesn't really fit into either category. Making the phone call to attempt to make an appointment was becoming so difficult I just kept putting it off all the time. If you walked into the surgery and asked at the reception they could not make you an appointment as they tell you to phone up in the morning.

There was the option of pre-booked appointments of course if you are on first name terms with the receptionist and you are not one of these difficult people who do not do what they are told. Hold it folks I thought this was a doctors surgery where you made appointments to see the GP not turn people away to phone up again every morning, got better chance of winning the lottery than getting an appointment.

So I wrote a complaint to the surgery and they generally fobbed me off, wrote a complaint to the primary care trust who were quite helpful but could not really do anything to improve the situation at the surgery. So decided to register somewhere else, the surgery couldn't give me the forms to register elsewhere quick enough after I told them I wanted to go somewhere where I could get a better standard of service. I am entitled to vote with my feet and go somewhere else.

I am now registered at new surgery and they are really helpful, saw the nurse who went over all my history and got an appointment within 4 days to see a new GP, now taking a drug called Citalopram to help the anxiety/depression and got an appointment to see the counciler in a month to help with my negative thinking, probably CBT or probably something similar I have done before.

Ta Ta

Brain-blogger

Strategy proving to be the right pathway to JSA

2009-05-18T14:13:00.004+01:00

Hello,

Have a quick read through this link

Shouldn't the first line of the article read:

Officials at the Department of the Work and Pensions can celebrate initial success in their attempt to get youngsters off incapacity benefits and onto Jobseekers Allowance with very little chance of progressing into employment.

I wouldn't really call getting people off IB and onto JSA and not actually into any employment a need for a celebration, would you?. Where's the party then?. It would have been better to back it up with actual figures of people who have get into employment.

It seems to me that the DWP want to get as many people off IB and onto JSA regardless of what effect it has on the claimants lives and what little chance claimants have of getting into employment.

Brainblogger

Domino's Dilemma

2009-05-16T12:08:00.008+01:00

Back again

I am one of these type of people that if I think something is wrong then I speak my mind or until I am proved otherwise.

Our children had been playing up and my wife looked too exhausted to start cooking dinner so I thought I will give her the day off so I ordered a couple of domino's pizzas to be delivered. I used there website which I have done previously, ordered the pizzas, went through to the checkout, paid using a visa debit card and using my verification number, got through to the verified by visa system and entered the letters from my password [which is in my head]. Everything went through ok and sat down expecting a knock on the door very soon.

A knock on the door 30 minutes later, Dominos delivery man arrives and he says I have 2 pizza's for you, can you sign this slip of paper? he then says "can I see the card you placed the order with please?" ok so I go upstairs to the pc, get my wallet go back downstairs and show him my card, at which point he tries to take the card out of my hand and tries to turn it over to look at my signature and also where my 3 number verification number is. At this juncture I felt quite suspicious as I have paid for the pizzas using 2 systems and why should I show the back of my card to someone I don't know. I said to the driver there's the card I ordered it with but I am not showing you the reverse of my card as that info is for me to look at. Delivery man disappears.

I sat down eating my pizza which I was sort of not really enjoying as I was bothered about what had just happened at the front door. I thought I will ring up the local domino's where I ordered it from and ask why is the guy was asking to look at the back of my card.

I spoke to the manager and asked why is your driver asking to look at back of my card as I have paid using a system put in place to replace the chip and pin machine and used verified by visa. I said I objected to this as my bank tells me to keep my card details to myself. The first thing he said was well you are the first person to raise this [woo! do I get a prize or something?].

The manager said due to there being about 6 fraudulent transactions a month where people cancel the transaction or cancel the card that it is now dominos policy to ask to compare the signature you signed the slip of paper with the signature on the back of the card. its funny because there's nowhere on the dominos website that says this. I said to the manager that I have used the verified by visa system and it went through ok, neither was my card reported stolen.

So sorting of going round in circles getting nowhere the manager then said they get the driver to check the cards because if there is a fraudulent transaction then the cost of the pizzas delivered comes out of the delivery drivers wages and how would I like it, nothing like giving me a guilt trip.

The manager then said he was having a busy day and he did not want to discuss it any more so that was the end of that conversation.

Why has the cost of the fraudulent transaction got to be deducted from drivers wages? Its not his fault, he's just the guy who's employed to deliver it. Is this type of practise fair?. If dominos want to offer an online delivery service then they have to take the risks that go with it. Why are they shifting the responsibilty to the delivery driver to check the customers card when 2 systems are already in place? Should they be doing this?

I emailed the head office to complain about this but they have not replied or even acknowledged it.

I have also queried it with my bank as to whether I am at liberty to show my card to a delivery driver [who I don't know if he has a photographic memory] when I have ordered something online, not that I have had a reply from them either. I order all sorts of things online and nobody else when they have delivered it have asked to look at my card. Is this going to be the future?

Would you like to show your bank card and its reverse to someone you don't know?.

seeya

brainblogger

State of the Nation

2009-05-13T15:54:00.009+01:00

How do?

Two brown envelopes in a week I can't take it anymore!. I did not realise IB was paying so much these days [I was saying that with a large hint of sarcasm].

How I wish I could to put the food and the other half of the rent on the expenses. As for the horse manure, us lesser mortals just have to go to B&Q and pay for it out of our own pocket not that I have a garden big enough to need horse manure. HTF is horse manure got to do with expenses related to your job?. They must think us lesser mortals are a bit wet behind the ears or something.

Can they claim all this money back that has been overpaid like they do with tax credits or council tax benefit and send them a unpaid reminder always sent after the deadline quickly followed by a summons?. Here's a good site about Tax Credit casualties

After reading this on this website, the reality of it is it is difficult for anyone to get a job let alone people with disabilities trying to get a job as well.

If James Purnell wants all these people on IB to stop scrounging, get off there backsides from in front of the tv watching Homes Under the Hammer and The Jeremy Kyle Show [I haven't mentioned that for a while, I think that idea's running a bit thin now, perhaps it will have to be Cash In The Attic in future] and get a job here's what James Purnell's idea for our futures may be for all the jobs that may need to be created to keep us all work-focused.

I also read yesterday that James wants all IB claimants means-tested to make sure there are getting the correct benefit. Is that correct benefit JSA do you mean James?.

Currently IB is not means-tested. Is that going to be changed to try and get more people off IB and be forced onto JSA?. I have already experienced before being on JSA and only getting a NI credit and having to live off my savings. I don't think my savings at 0.5% interest is going to go very far. More worrying times ahead. As if I don't feel bad enough as it is!.

see ya

Brainblogger

16 Hours

2009-05-12T00:01:00.007+01:00

How do?

Thank you Mary for your very understanding comments on one of my earlier posts.

In the past I have wanted to try the 'Permitted Work' scheme, this is the replacement of the therapeutic work scheme where you could try and go to see how you got on in the workplace and you could earn about £80 or something like that. When I was doing that it was fine and I actually built myself up quite well and the MD of the firm wanted me to work part-time which I did for 18 months until the office manager put paid to that by taking my jobs away.

Permitted work came along and was restricted to 16 hours a week but then you could only do it for a year. How are you supposed to gauge whether you can work in only a year or in 16 hours a week?. In the life of a head injured person a year goes quickly as in my case.

Also why 16 hours that's about 3 hours a day and a bit more in a working week. That's about enough time to get there do a few bits and go home again. If you came in at 9.00am you had to go at 12.00 and it did not give you the chance to test yourself and try and break into the afternoon.

Does it mean if you can do more than 16 hours you are magically fit for work, I don't think so. In the case of head injuries you have to build up resistance to fatigue and let my brain get used to being active. Why not 20 hours as that would be more sensible?.

After a year you do the permitted work the employer is supposed to take you on, but if it doesn't work out after a year, you can't do it again until a year later or as I was led to believe. What's the point of that?. Would it not be sensible if you could go somewhere else and try and do something different?

After something as traumatic as a head injury which can often take years to get to a reasonable stage of recovery how does the permitted work help me, well it doesn't. Due to this it lead down the road of voluntary work.

So here you go another jobcentre scheme that is supposed to help you get back to work but doesn't actually help because it is so restrictive. As I have said before with the jobcentre and there schemes it always seems to be all or nothing!.

see ya

Brainblogger

Fr..fr...fr...frustration!

2009-05-11T22:47:00.009+01:00

How do again?

I wrote my last entry on my blog because of the way I feel. Having a head injury is so frustrating, In the High Hopes video it reflects how I feel about before my accident and after, its how before how I had a nice job, money, friends etc, it is reflected in these lines:

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The night of wonder

Then my life was turned upside down. "Running before time took our dreams away"

I have always wanted to be somebody but it always seems to be beyond my reach and I never seemed to be in control.

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

So now after my accident I been through all the supposed rehabilitation what the case manager wanted, did the therapeutic work, tried to work part time while wrapped up in cotton wool, did voluntary work to do something towards the community, did what the DEA wanted and went to the work rehabilitation centre for 8 months, then throw in negative thinking, depression, anxiety, my Father dying, IB50's, medicals, welfare reform.

So as I nearer 40 and I think to myself what do I have to show for all the effort I have put in and been on these schemes that are supposed to help me get a job? Is it no wonder why I do not trust the DEA or pathways to work or anything the government say?. I often feel like that I was exploited by the jobcentre.

I read somewhere that at a work focused interview you have to tell them your aspirations for work/career, you having a laugh ain't you?. I thought that I had been telling the DEA and all these other people that I wanted to get back into work. I just feel like every ounce of energy has just been drained out of me and so often I just want to give up. Too many times I have tried to go forwards just to go twice as far backwards again. Welfare reform its just like moving the goalposts a bit further away and forcing you down another path.

Has anybody ever thought that looking after your health takes priority?. Why has everything got to revolve round work? Am I supposed to think that getting a job is suddenly going to make everything better again?.

This is a very good youtube video from the US about living with a brain injury.

seeya

Brainblogger

High Hopes

2009-04-16T23:58:00.019+01:00

How do?

I am sorry my blog is a bit gloomy but it is how I feel at the moment. I don't know whether it is me or whether other people on IB are feeling the same way but I seem to have this impending feeling of doom more than I have had before. I am not due to to have another IB50 until 2010, it could be next week for all I care because it is going to happen.

Every day I dread the post coming and I say to my Wife was there anything sinister in the post today?. I did get a brown envelope the other day which had me shaking but it was only a letter for an increase in DLA, whoopee!. If they get there way the DWP will take that off me as well. I am sure they will need the money to pay towards some bank bailout.

The government go on about how much they have to save on benefits as if we haven't heard it all before. The money used for benefits is nothing but small change compared to the money paid to bail out the banks!.

Is being on benefits actually supposed to make you feel worse? Is this supposed to be the desired effect?. What it is doing to my mental health at the moment I do not know, some days before I go to voluntary work I often feel sick. I dread it if a car sits outside for more than 15 minutes with them sitting there rabbiting away on the phone and I won't go out. I even walk in the opposite direction when I go to voluntary work so I don't go past that car. I feel like I am going to be the next person featured on "On The Fiddle". Its not a nice feeling, paranoid or what?.

I have been reading the forum of www.benefitsandwork.co.uk and what people are going through and its a nightmare, people who have already failed to qualify for ESA and they have worse conditions than I have. People with ME getting 0 points and expecting to find work. What is happening is people who are have failed medicals are appealing virtually straight away so making more work for the DWP and showing what the new system is doing and the over-zealous doctors at the medicals are doing. People with disabilities have enough problems managing already without a system that punishes them and causes more stress and anxiety.

I just feel like the next brown envelope I get will be the passport to jobseekers allowance. I feel like I am going to go full circle and be back where I started back at the jobcentre. I can't wait to go to a work focused interview just so I can write about the experience on my blog.

Before I had this head injury and all the frustration that goes with it I had high hopes of being a brain surgeon or being the chairman of ICI. Looking back at it now and as I am getting nearer to 40 I often feel like I haven't really achieved anything of any significance as far as work is concerned. This sums it up perfectly how I feel.

All I seem to have to have done is led down blind alleys, got my hopes up and then ended up further back than when I started. Who cares?.

I also feel like the government just want to get as many people off IB and on to JSA and leave it to the Tories to sort out the mess, then at prime ministers question time when David Cameron is PM, labour will be saying well look at how many unemployed people there are and what are you doing about it and all the opposition bench will be jumping round like Stadler & Waldorf.

I voted labour at the last election but now I am so sick [that's ironic] of Gordon Brown and labour even David Cameron sounds appealing. I don't suppose the Tories will make it any easier for disabled people though, labour have implemented Tory ideas with there blessing of course.

I went to my favourite pathways to nowhere provider workinglinks again to do some finding out and get some information, they said though that I would have to be referred to them by the jobcentre. I then picked up forms showing how they can help me fill in application forms and write a cv or even send me on a course. I already know how to fill in an application form or write a CV. I found the experience so disheartening and depressing.

Up to that point I was doing quite well and I was being positive. I did manage to have a conversation with the receptionist, she even remembered me but then some guy came in and the world had to stop for him. He was ranting on about how someone had not returned his call and why someone couldn't speak to him now, why someone could not speak to him even while they were having there lunch and how his mate had driven him 200 miles to get him there, oh yeh mate you're having a giraffe. Those sort of people get on my nerves how they have no consideration for anyone else except themselves.

I could only put up with him ranting and raving for so long and I waited patiently but then my anxiety kicked in and I had to choose between fight or flight and I took up the flight option. Why do I bother?.

No doubt I will get the usual comments on my blog from people who have no experience of actually having a disabilty and how I should just go out and get any job but you can not just get any job. Having a head injury and the results of it can be very complex, nobody knows what's going on in my head and I try to show a glimpse of it on this blog This write-up on this excellent blog is a very good reflection of the ins and out of looking for work

Trying to get a job was difficult enough for disabled people before the recession but it even more difficult now.

If you haven't slashed you wrists by now I have more in the pipeline soon.

see ya

Brainblogger

Positive Feedback/Back to the Workhouse

2009-03-17T01:24:00.006Z

How do?

The lecturer from the uni emailed me today with positive feedback no less after she had discussed the session I helped with 2 weeks ago. She wants to talk to me about it again next week and has also mentioned about the possibility of me doing it again in the future. I am glad that I did it now and that I have been able to do something positive from my experience.

One of the things I have managed to do in the last few years is research my family tree. I was rather shocked to find in the 1841 census that some of my descendants spent time in the Hardingstone Union Workhouse

If James Purnell gets his way with what is being implemented in the third reading of the welfare reform bill I may well not be the last person of my family and many other unfortunate souls in this country to experience the workhouse.

Let's not forget James Purnell is trying to implement this in a recession, he had obviously not planned for a recession and the virtual meltdown of the worlds banking system but just carries on regardless despite the effect it may well have on peoples lives.

read about it on the excellent happymarx website

see ya

Have A Go At IB Claimants Week , Haven't We Been Through All This Before?

2009-03-06T22:42:00.013Z

How do?

As it seems to be bash the IB claimants week this week in the newspapers I thought I might like to add a few points. It may well be alright having a go at IB claimants claiming they are lazy, fat, worthless pieces of shit who deserve all there benefits stopped and having it all claimed back, having them sent to the workhouse, starved, put in jail, do community work [I didn't know community work was paying so much these days] and the like but are there any better opportunities for people on IB in the recession?. I think not unless you fancy work focused interviews or the pathways to nowhere, thank the politicians and the banking fat cats with there £650000 year pensions for that, no doubt it will get a lot worse before it gets better so lets all get together and blame the usual easy targets on IB for it.

It will no doubt get worse for IB claimants. it always get worse for IB claimants unless of course you can magically recover or manage your condition and be able to find a rewarding job that pays more than the minimum wage so its actually worth doing.

All these people who write this crap in the comments sections about getting all the IB claimants off IB [even though they have not done anything wrong except be ill, being ill isn't a crime yet is it?] probably have no experience of having a disability/long term sickness at all. It also seems to these readers of these papers that if you are on benefits that you can not have some sort of social life or existence as well.

I have been writing for the last few months about my experience of brain injury, access to services, trying to get a job and experience of being on IB. It all came together 2 weeks ago with a session with a social work lecturer and a group of second year students at a university in the Midlands.

I was nervous before I went to the university and I had the same feeling you get when you go to the dentist and you are sitting in the waiting area and you can hear the drill in the background.

The lecturer explained to the students what the session was about and then what I was doing there and that I have a good few years experience of disability and the benefits system. The session was titled "Life inside the brown envelope from hell" I thought that bit up, clever eh?.

It was the first time I had done this type of thing and I did not realise beforehand that I was going to be doing most of the talking, it actually got very difficult trying to think what was in my head and then to actually say what I wanted to say. I think I surprised the students with some of my thoughts, the students asked me some very good questions as well. One of the students said that people should be able to manage there condition first without all the added pressure of trying to find work as all the extra pressure doesn't help your condition. just read some of the difficulties people have on the benefitsandwork forum to show what effects it has on peoples conditions.

If you are ill you know yourself when you are ready to try to go to work. When you do try to go to work then you find the other obstacles and blind alleys, getting your hopes up and then coming down again with bump.

It also makes me angry that every 18 months or so I have to go through the same old shit filling in the forms and having to prove that I am not well and my brain isn't going to get any better and I have had to adapt to it. Even though there is a track record from day one of my accident from hospitals/consultants/GPs I have to go through this process over and over again and it is draining.

I would love one of these hard working taxpayers or so they claim who write all there crap in the sun and the mail to take my place for a week. For one f***ing day just to be me again, they would soon change there mind.

I do love the recent benefits cheats adverts that were on tv recently, its typical how the people shown are the typical stereotyped type of people like the guy getting his cash in hand and looking unkempt. Also how do you expect them to be taken seriously when the guy who does the voiceover also does adverts for birds eye frozen products for a £1?.

Even though I don't think the No.10 petition site actually achieves anything I think this petition is well worth signing after what I wrote in my blog last time which is along the same subject:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/MumsAtHome/

Till next time

Brainblogger

We Play Trains, Mum Goes To Work, Boo Hoo!

2008-12-24T11:44:00.006Z

Anyone who got a letter this morning for the generous increases in child benefit will no doubt have had this leaflet fall out with the picture of children playing which is titled " We Play Trains, Mum Goes To Work, Whoo Whoo!".

Is this the part of the labours plan to get Mothers to abandon their children with childcare, start going to college to make preparations to go back to work, or if you are lucky enough to find a job, then to come back exhausted and then start looking after the children.

Labour should recognise that bringing up a child is more than a full-time job in itself. A child needs to bond with its parents. I feel strongly about this.

A child when it is growing up needs its parents rather than being dumped at child care to be looked after by an barely qualified childcare assistant. I could not imagine my Wife taking our 2 year old son and taking him to childcare, you would have to literally peel him off her leg.

I feel because of Labours plans to get as many people into work as possible there is going to be a whole new generation of latch-key kids. I often wonder why do people have children then dump them at childcare and go back to work after three months?. I often think that the child is going to spend more time with the childcare assistant that it is with its own Mother

I have seen when I have been up to the school to collect my Daughter the children who finish school then go straight to the Before & Afterschool club to wait for a parent/relative to pick them up at 5-6 pm. The whole process starts again in the morning all in the process of going to work to earn enough money to pay for the childcare and have enough to live on.

When my Brother & I got home from school, my Dad was usually at work, my Mother was there or you could usually find her round the corner talking to one of the pensioners who lived in the block of houses next door. The point I am making is that I never had to go to any after school club [they had not even been thought of in the seventies] and wait for my parents to pick me up at 6pm. The only time I got picked up after school was either after playing football or for 1 after school detention.

Its the same old thing I said about before with the incapacity benefit, why does everything revolve round having to go to work?. People should be able to make there own choices, what happens if you want to be a homemaker?.

On the Incapacity benefit front I have not been looking what's going on with IB of late, cancelled all the google alerts as I have only going to drive myself la-la or into an early grave worrying about it. There's virtually no point looking for a job in a recession, not that there would be many jobs to suit me anyway or that can pay enough, no point going to any of the pathways to work people as I have said before because they are only in it to make a profit unless I can be convinced otherwise.

I have decided in the meantime to wait for the next brown envelope from hell and not worry until it actually comes. Thinking back to when I went to the psychiatrist when they said that there is no point worrying about things that you can not change, well I am taking that view at the moment.

I will try to enjoy Christmas and be positive for next year

have a fantastic one and a fantastic new year folks

brainblogger

Employment & Support Allowance

2008-11-02T11:58:00.013Z

So Employment & Support Allowance is here to stay to replace Incapacity Benefit. Having got through an IB50 allegedly I will not be checked again until 2013. That means nothing to me. It could be tomorrow as far as I am concerned.

Whatever happens there is nothing I can do to stop being swept up into it. well what do I do now? Do I sit and do nothing and wait for it to happen?. People say to me that I shouldn't worry myself about it and just wait till it happens. I am sorry to disappoint you folks but I am worrying about it now.

The DWP virtually say in there explanation of ESA that as long as you can breath you are fit for some type of work. I have already read a lot about the ESA and there are many things written in to it to make your illnesses or disabilities not be as severe as they are for you the actual sufferer.

To me the ESA is nothing more than glorified jobseekers allowance.

So that leaves few choices: work or suffer on the pittance the government think you need to live on while not forgetting to go to your work-focused interviews or you will get sanctioned.

If you want to try and find a job [not that you haven't already been trying] don't forgot there's a recession looming on so there aren't that many jobs about really as everyone seems to think there are. You will have to compete with the people who have just lost there jobs and the employers who don't employ disabled people which I have said about in a previous post.

ESA is just a trap so the government can save money to pay for bailing out banks, wars and making the rich even richer. The sick and the disabled and the unemployed are just treated as some sort of under-class.

I don't believe all this garbage the DWP are coming out with how going to work will help your self-esteem and make you feel better. Robert wrote in my last post about him only being offered jobs at Asda handing out baskets. Sorry but handing out baskets at probably the minimum wage would not do Robert's or anyone's self esteem any good however wonderful it may be made up to sound.

The ESA has also been designed so people will worry and end up on the pathways to work so they can also make a profit out of your misery.

I also hold responsible the Jobcentre for failing in all there promises they made to me of helping me get back to work.

How the DEA raved on about how how wonderful it would be to go to rehab in Birmingham for eight months and how they would help me get a job. I went to Birmingham virtually every day for eight months and all they did was get me a voluntary work placement and effectively dumped me there. After all that they closed my case. Where is all the support? I am no nearer to a job as I was then.

I am nearly 40 years old, had a life threatening brain injury and I have got to start at the bottom again. ain't it about time somebody gave me a break for a change. It isn't all my fault I am in this situation. I can not be held responsible for everything that has happened.

The people who I trusted to help me get back into work have failed me and all they have done is make a profit out of me.

Politicians

2008-10-11T13:56:00.003+01:00

Having recovered from the brown envelope from hell and the next door neighbour trying to run me over I thought its about time I did something on my blog.

The DWP letter said I will not be assessed for another 5 years [allegedly] I am still afraid. I worry about what going to happen next. I just try to go from one day to the other and see what happens next.

Just lately I have been doing quite a bit of writing. I am helping a lecturer in social work at a university who contacted me, all voluntary of course. I have been writing about my experience of having a brain injury, the correct description is actually I have very severe cranio-cerebral injury with clear evidence of damage to the frontal and temporal regions of my brain.

I am writing what it is like waking up after being in a coma, how I felt and how I feel now, peoples attitudes to a hidden disability like when I go out and about and the "Does he take sugar?" effect when you try to conduct your daily business, you know like how difficult it can be when you try to do something simple like order a couple of meals in a pub, you know when your brain knows what you want to say but you can't get it all out how you want and the person taking the order thinks you are a bit of a simpleton, then there are people tutting behind you because you are a bit slow and then trying to deal with all the multiple noises around as well, it can be very difficult.

Would it have made a difference to my recovery if I could of gone to a rehab centre sooner, rather than have to wait five years, the inadequacies of case management that charge £35-£40 an hour and then later withdraw there support because they are not making a profit from you and how when you went to the appointment they kept looking at the clock to make sure you stayed the full hour, how you can't get to see a social worker face to face now like I used to who helped me, going on schemes setup by the jobcentre that don't help, the brown envelopes from hell, medicals, ideally it is to help the students understand what it is really like for someone being in this position.

I have a date for next year when it is to be presented which at the way things are going it will soon be here. I am looking forward to it but it sounds daunting so I am going to build myself up to it. When I contact the lecturer and show what I have written I keep getting more ideas so I have to write them in. I have also dug up a lot of old paperwork and I keep finding things that I now want to write in as well.

Just lately the government and the opposition are both been ranting on about getting the scroungers, no I mean the disabled/sick people and unemployed back into work, but with the banking crisis and possible recession jobs are scarce let alone jobs for disabled people as well. James Purnell could not have picked a worse time to bring in the ESA. Where are all the jobs for disabled going to come from and who's going to pay for all this support?

They are also going on about giving disabled people all this support, what support?, in my experience so far the support stopped as soon as they got me the voluntary work placement. Where will the support end? Will it end as soon as they have got you into a job and off the ESA? Will they provide support for you once you in your job?.

The conservatives have been going on about including the 3 strikes and you are out for people on IB as well as the unemployed if you refuse a reasonable job offer. I have applied for jobs but I haven't had 3 reasonable job offers yet. Its a miracle even to got a reply to say that you haven't even get an interview. Getting a job offer would be a miracle in itself.

I have read a letter from 1994 from an employment & rehabilitation consultant to my solicitor which said because of the level of my injury I would not have been even considered for sheltered employment [places like Remploy, a Remploy manager has to run his factory at a cost effective basis, therefore when a vacancy does arise the Remploy manager is likely to chose the most profiecent worker and not the slowest] and that there would have been many more suitable candidates. Whether this has changed now I do not know.

It was considered that I had no current earnings prospects and would not be placeable in the open labour market.

Also in the same letter it said relating to the DEA and disability services of the DWP that it was now common practice for the disability services to take no action whilst a person is in continuing receipt of Invalidity Benefit [which is now IB].

If this was happening in 1994 and that I was just considered a lost cause then what if it this applies to all the other people that were on IB then it is no wonder there is 2.6 million people on IB. It seems that what the government and future governments are trying to do now is shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. They are not going to find it so easy as they make out.

When I was talking to the lecturer I said was is it just me but when I see disabled people at work they are doing the things I have mentioned before in my blog like the sweeping litter in shopping centres or push trolleys in DIY store and she agreed with me. It is not just me who thinks that.

People also fail to realise that disabled people actually want to make a future for themselves as well and have prospects and will not just take any job. There are things to consider like having enough money to pay the bills, have enough food to eat. have enough money to survive on from day to day. We are all allowed our own dreams for what sort of future we want and not just do what the ministers think we should do.

The World According to Russell

2008-09-22T17:34:00.000+01:00

On my way home from work the other day I was using the zebra crossing near to where I live. One car stopped and the one coming the other way was a distance away to be able to see me and stop. However it just carried on while I was virtually in the middle of the crossing, another step and I would have been another statistic, unfortunately it just happened to be the next door neighbour in there big 4x4. rather incensed by the fact that she had nearly knocked me over I knocked on there front door and I said "did you realise you nearly fucking knocked me over at the crossing" you are supposed to fucking stop at the crossing when someone is walking across" all she said was "I didn't see you ". I can't remember whether she said sorry. If she did I would have been happy enough about that and perhaps she won't do it again the next time.

A little later on her Husband Russell came round to say that I shouldn't go round to there house swearing in the street [despite the fact his wife could have killed me]. What am I supposed to do go round to later for a cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches and say "when you next go over the crossing be careful and just try and make a better job of it next time"

Russell is the kind of guy who is aggressive, paranoid, intimidating and in the past has had heated arguments with his wife which the whole street and beyond can hear and he pushed her out round the lawn and then comes round our house ranting about was it us called the police.

I said to him don't come round here giving me a lecture when you should be more worried about wife's driving. I had every right to be angry. I have already been involved in one road accident and been on a life support machine and left brain damaged and I haven't any more plans to be on a life support machine. he said "I bet you don't know what a lecture is mate?", after I told him I had a brain injury he started talking to me like I was a bit simple. This in turn prompted my Wife to arrive on the scene and she said to him not to talk to me like I'm stupid.

My children were traumatised by the whole thing and hid in there bedroom and later said that they were glad that the nasty man from next door had gone away.

I did phone the police up later about about the near miss at the crossing but they could not do anything as I had not been injured or killed.

So if you drive a car and you go over a crossing while someone is walking across it doesn't matter until you are actually hit. it doesn't make sense that you have to be injured first before anyone can do anything.

I emailed the county council about the crossing and its dangers and they said it is going to be converted into a puffin crossing. Whether that makes it any safer I will have to wait and see

Give it to the Cripple Pt.2

2008-09-15T15:31:00.001+01:00

I finally heard from McDonald's about my complaint after my visit a couple of weeks ago. It is just a basic acknowledgement of my email but it doesn't answer my actual complaint. It makes them aware though that people listen to what there staff are saying in front of customers.

Whether anyone actually does anything about the guy who said "give it to the cripple" is a different matter.  This is basically what they said:

Thank you for contacting us about your visit.

As a company we aim to provide 100% customer satisfaction and high standards of quality, service and cleanliness at all times. I regret this has not been your experience on this occasion

Your comments are taken seriously by us and have been passed to the management team.  The details of your complaint will be used as part of their assessment of the restaurant's performance and procedures.  These ongoing reviews help to identify any areas needing improvement within the restaurant.

Get Back to Work, You Sponging Scumbags.

2008-09-14T14:52:00.004+01:00

I found this interesting article in the Timesonline about a new TV programme aimed at benefit claimants:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/carol_midgley/article4726714.ece?openComment=true

Brown Envelope from Hell Part 2

2008-09-03T21:40:00.002+01:00

First I would like to say thank you to Benefitscroungingscum for plugging my blog. I have not got a thing for Jeremy Kyle but it makes me angry when I hear the media say that allegedly Incapacity benefit recipients are sitting on there backsides watching the 42" plasma tv watching Jeremy Kyle.

I just came up with this taking it easy watching Jeremy Kyle and it seemed to stick. I imagine Bendygirl came up with hers with how people see benefits recipients as scrounging scum or benefit cheats rather than human beings just trying to get on with there lives as best they can.

While on the subject of TVs I was given a TV because someone had just bought a new one and thought I would like there old one which was very kind. If anyone would like to donate a 42" plasma tv that would be nice as well.

If the media actually took the time to see how people on IB get through day to day, week to week, month to month, they might find out what it is like to be on IB.

I had my brown envelope from hell come this morning, after I stopped shaking I read that the DWP have decided that I do not need a medical [that's a relief in itself] and I have enough points and my case will not be reviewed until September 2013. I have been since told that 5 years is the maximum that they can leave before another review. It was also a good indication what was in my brown envelope that there was not a map to go to the medical test centre. I think it is the first time I have not had to go to a medical.

What a nightmare it has all been what I have had to go through in the last few weeks just to prove I have had a brain injury and the symptoms exit and I am not just making it up. Why is it necessary to put IB recipients through all this?. We would all love to go to work but peoples medical conditions can make it difficult. I could sit at home feeling sorry for myself but I don't and I find doing voluntary work is quite therapeutic and I am putting something back into the community.

Having recently seeing how a McDonald's staff member treated there disabled team member I certainly won't be rushing to apply to take meals out to the customer in the blue bay. I never did hear anything about my complaint about my observation.

No doubt though James Purnell and his cronies or whoever in the future will think of new ways to pick on disabled people. They are probably thinking up something new now.

I feel that the my recent experience with the IB50 has not helped my health at all with all the worrying. I have been worrying about stupid things like whether the DWP have been parked outside in the car park where I volunteer checking on me. I imagine it will take a few days to sink in and I will start sleep properly again.

The only thing I am thinking of buying at the moment is the definite remastered edition of Rage In Eden by Ultravox. I loved the album when it came out the first time, it is a very dark album, I still love Billy Currie's swirling synthesizer riffs while he makes love to his keyboards. it still sounds as good as it was then in 1981.

right I am off now to go and sit in front of the 42" inch plasma TV and watch Jeremy. Where's the lottery ticket?

Give It To The Cripple!

2008-08-21T17:53:00.014+01:00

When in McDonald's recently I was waiting at the counter when I overhead one of the staff behind the counter asking a young man to take a meal out to a customer to the blue bay in the car park.

This young man said why should I? Give it to the cripple!. [The cripple he was referring to was the disabled lady who I feel sorry for who I said about before in one of my earlier posts]

I scowled at him as I had heard what he said and he knew I had heard exactly what he said as well, he just gave a false laugh and said he was he was only joking. I don't think he was joking somehow. I found this type of comment in the workplace about a co-worker appalling. It reminds me of the bully at school saying you were a spastic because you said something wrong and everyone in the class laughed at you.

I have written to McDonald's as I feel this is unacceptable especially in customer service environment and I am awaiting there reply. I don't know whether anything like this is covered by the Disability Discrimination Act as the lady in question wasn't close by. Would this be covered under the DDA?. I have heard and read about discrimination in the workplace but to see it happening in front of my own eyes is something else.

The Calm Before The Storm

2008-08-21T08:06:00.007+01:00

All my creative juices have dried up doing my blog and I have been off the radar since I got the IB50. I have felt drained, stressed out, my confidence has drained out of me and I have been quite short tempered.

It is almost two weeks since I sent the IB50 back and so far I have heard nothing.

I am on brown envelope watch again dreading what comes through the post but so far all I have had is a few bills, the same free papers, leaflets for every different pizza, Chinese, Indian meals and any other crap that comes through my letterbox which I don't mind at the moment.

I imagine the DWP are just checking with my GP just to check that I still have a brain injury even though it is well documented and I did actually go and see the community psychiatric nurse [I think she's called a counsellor now] just recently about my anxiety and starting to feel depressed and that I wasn't making it all up. I could of easily of been on some medication to help but I did not take that option. Medication is an easy option but it doesn't always work.

I am quite anxious to what the outcome of what this review is. I have been thinking about all the possible outcomes. One of the outcomes is having to live off £55 a week on Jobseekers Allowance, signing on and having to go through the appeal process fills me with dread. Having had previous experience of this before so I know what to expect if it happens.

I remember when I used to work full-time in the day time and then work part-time in the evenings and compare it to now, I used to start at work at 8.30 in the morning and come home at 10.30pm in the evening. now I start at 9pm then come home at about 2pm from voluntary work and I feel exhausted, the rest of the afternoon is usually a write off as I try not to go to sleep. I can drink a cup of coffee when I get home and can still be asleep 20 minutes later, coffee, lucozade and red bull and these sort of things makes little or no difference. Nothing has changed in he last 14 years and I go some the same thing virtually every day and its very frustrating. In head injury terms I have reached a plateau and I ain't going to make a over night recovery. I reached this plateau a long time ago.

I have been talking to some people about my situation with the IB50 and the possible outcomes and they can't believe what I have to go through just to prove that I have an acquired disability.

I don't even know how long I am supposed to wait now to find out or do I just wait for another brown envelope or a phone call out of the blue. Perhaps I will get the brown envelope tomorrow on my birthday what a fun day that will be.

I read this blog today and I found it very annoying as it is tarring all incapacity benefit claimants with the same brush and not looking at the actual facts.

http://www.loughboroughecho.net/views-and-blogs/matt-jarram-column/2008/08/21/time-called-on-benefit-claimants-73871-21577374/

I reckon he has been taking lessons from James Purnell. Perhaps he ought to try being me for a couple of years and see how he gets on. I have have better aspirations than working at McDonald's and clearing up other peoples crap. More about them later and one of there employees attitude towards a disabled employee.

I feel there has been some sort of conspiracy where all this type of thing keeps appearing in the media attacking Incapacity Benefit claimants, there was the panaroma episode about benefit claimants, the DWP/Government programme On the Fiddle, every other day there is something in the newspapers about benefit scroungers or fraud cases. then there is things about the new pathways to work or rather pathways to hell. I found this quite shocking: http://a-i-darlo.com/wordpress/?p=55

Why doesn't some someone do something sensible to help rather than claimants be prodded with a cattle prod and the usual threats against claimants. It doesn't exactly motivate me to rush out and try and get a job and it doesn't work.

I would love to have a 42" HD tv and a Nintendo Wii but I have other responsibilities to attend to like where is my next lot of money coming from?.

Waiting In The Condemned Cell

2008-08-09T00:19:00.007+01:00

I finally got the IB50 filled in with a lot of help and virtually wrote my life story. It has been sent it back to see the pending result. I imagine I will be getting another brown envelope soon with the map to where the medical examination centre is as if I don't already know. I know what it must feel like waiting in the condemned cell because now it is the time to wait and see what the decision is and if I have a medical to go to next. Why do I have to keep going through this?.

I have been looking at all the notes from when I had to appeal because of some clueless doctors decision with little or no knowledge of head injuries. I hope I haven't to go through that all over again because that's a nightmare in itself.

I feel like I have had every ounce of energy slowly drained out of me not that I had much to start off with and all my enthusiasm drained out of me as well. I felt better when I was in a coma.

I was supposed to be on two weeks off from my voluntary work but it has been a disaster. All I have been doing is going backwards and forwards seeing the lady to help get the IB50 filled in. All the things I had thought I was going to do in the time I had off hasn't happened.

I am supposed to be going back to voluntary work on Monday but where I am going to find the energy and enthusiasm from I do not know. I always feel like I have to go backwards to go forwards all the time. I feel like I have gone back a couple of years to where I was then, to me it feels exactly the same again. I don't know if this happens to other people when the get this damn form but this is what is doing to me.

Stress

2008-08-05T09:41:00.007+01:00

I haven't felt like doing any blogging for a day as I all my energy has been directed trying to get the IB50 sorted out. A very kind lady who supports me in my voluntary work helped me with it. She has experience of filling in these forms and said she would also send a supporting letter with it as well, she even said she would go to a medical as well which is really helpful.

I have another meeting tomorrow, hopefully I can get the end section of the IB50 all done and get it all sent back and wait to see if I have to go to a medical then.

It doesn't matter what you write in these forms if you don't fit in the right boxes they still want you to go to a medical just to make sure you haven't magically recovered. I was reading some notes from a neuro psychologist from 14 years ago and the day to day problems are pretty much the same now as they were then, unfortunately brain injures have this effect.

The DWP don't care what effect sending these forms to you has on your health. all that is important to them is getting another person off Incapacity benefit and down the jobcentre.

I would love to be how I was before the head injury and go to work properly but it is never going to happen. the government seem to think that disabled and sick people are all going to get jobs and we are all going to feel jolly and happy but I don't think they see the bigger picture

This is like the Arbeit Macht Frei effect. I am thinking quite negative after my experience at the working links office [still haven't heard from the DEA whether what Working Links told me is correct] and thinking what employer would want to take the risk with me with my conditions. I was talking to the lady helping me with the IB50 and it looks like I am a ticking bomb.

I have had some uncomfortable situations at my voluntary work previously and I have been to see one of the people who supports me and got a solution. When I had the part-time work in 1997 whenever I had a problem it was like it was always my fault because of my head injury and it was like always thrown back at me.

I have been worrying about getting the brown envelope for the last few months and now I have got one I have felt dreadful for over a week. I feel like I have had what energy I had drained out of me. I feel down but I don't feel depressed. It is difficult to feel positive at this moment in time with the IB50 hanging over my head. I was doing ok but now the brown envelope has come I am having a big anxiety problem more than usual, a letter come through the post about the tax credits and when I saw it I started feeling sick and then I was shaking later on. I am thinking about going to the GP and see if I can get anything done about it, It is a horrible feeling.

Shall I jump now or I wait until I am pushed?

2008-07-30T12:18:00.007+01:00

What a lovely morning I have just had.

As I said yesterday I would go to Working Links and see what wonderful things they have to offer outcasts like me.

I explained my circumstances, ie on IB but under IB50 review. They said as I am on Incapacity Benefit they can help. I said from previous experience that there is the possibility as I may have to go to a medical soon and I may well end up on JSA. We all like to know the Atos doctors like to reach their targets and get there commission.

In true James Purnell style the receptionist said "we look at what you can do not what you can't". they said they could help me while I am on IB but if I end up on JSA then I am no longer classed as disabled but fit for work, they said that Working Links would not be able to help me but I would have to go to the office upstairs.

This office upstairs is the one that someone has just come through the door slamming it very hardly making me jump and turning me into a nervous wreck, not though that I wasn't a nervous wreck to start off with. How the glass stayed in the door I do not know? I have experienced this effect before at the jobcentre, its no wonder I contact the DEA by email.

It is true what I said before that if the DWP deem you fit for work even if you have a disability then if you end up on JSA your disability doesn't exist anymore.

Working Links said that they could help me for 6 weeks regardless if I sign up now and do I really want to go back to work? I said I would think about it.

I said yes I would love to go to work but I have things which restrict me, you know effects of brain injury. The receptionist said that a consultant/whatever they are called can look at my work history [that's going to be fun] and what type of work I am interested in and even some people have turned hobbies or interests into work. I thought I am not a f***ing imbecile you know.

Just at that moment some council worker walked in off the street and stood virtually next to the receptionist which I found quite intimidating. I gave him my annoyed look and I wanted to ask him if he wanted to listen to every word in my conversation with the receptionist or tell him to p**s off but I left it as I did not feel like my normal jolly self at this juncture.

I was right when I thought it was all a trap. It turns out it is a even bigger trap now than what I first thought.

So where is all this government help to get you back to work? I did not know that it had conditions attached like you have to be on IB.

If you are not on IB but the DWP think you are fit for work even though you are disabled, it looks like you are on your own then.

Shall I jump now or shall I wait until I am pushed?

Working Links

2008-07-28T21:51:00.007+01:00

Pre-empting getting a medical and being passed as fit for work I contacted the DEA via email [the wonders of the internet] to find out what options there could be for me

This is the help I can look forward to:

Hello Brainblogger

There is a new programme which started on 28/04/08 called pathways, the sole provider of this programme which has effectively replaced new deal for disabled people are Working Links.

Hopefully this 3 year contract will be more radical in its attempts to help individuals who wish to move off incapacity benefits and back into paid employment.

I think it is unlikely that you will end up on Jobseeker’s Allowance or in some low paid employment, the aim is to make you better off in work financially, not worse off, as this is counter-productive.

Your health condition is still treated as a disability under the DDA.

Thanks

DEA

To me it basically looks like the jobcentre ain't bothered and would rather just farm me off to Working Links. I have not read good things about working links. It does not fill me with confidence.

Shall I go to working links in town and see what they have to say making sure I do not sign my life away and report back on my blog?. What do you think fellow bloggers?

How reassuring it is to know that my health condition is covered by the DDA,

My Philosophy is that the government don't give a monkeys what I want in terms of a career and as long as they get me off the Incapacity Benefit books and start collecting the savings.

Since my head injury I have not had a full-time job and my cv only has periods where I did therapeutic work [now permitted work], does therapeutic work count, part-time work filing catalogues and then the rest is voluntary work and then littered with gaps where I have been in hospital and done rehabilitation etc. I am sure my CV will be appealing to any future employer even though I did get help to do a groovy new CV.

When I left hospital all I did was go back to the Neuropsychologist every few weeks and then months and then three months etc, with numerous visits to the GP to get super headache tablets. you can see where this going.

I did try and go to back to my job again at the carpet distributor [this was one of my 3 jobs before the accident], critics of people on IB please note: I wanted to go back to work even though I only been out of hospital a few weeks and it was blatantly obvious to everyone except me that I wasn't well enough to go to work

I think at work the people in the office were all very nice to my face but I think they saw the mess I was in and it was all going to end in tears and trying to work wasn't going to last much longer. This was due to the fact I could not remember things , one side of my face was paralysed, [try eating roast dinner when one side of your face is paralysed] speaking was also a problem as I could not think of the words and I would get really frustrated. This is all typical effects of a brain injury. If I was an animal they would have put me down.

One morning I received a letter through the post & a P45 from the M.D after being on sick pay for a while basically giving me the boot suggesting I should get an alternative source of income from the government. No we wish you get well soon or anything, the heartless bastards [excuse my language]. I am not embarrassed to say but I literally cried my eyes out for hours.

I suddenly found I had a lot of time on my hands. I remember going to a special needs centre in town but there was no Jeremy Kyle then it was Kilroy

This is when I first met Incapacity Benefit but it wasn't called IB then I think it was called Sickness Benefit or something like that.

Where did it all go wrong?. If there had been proper support to start off with I would not have ended up in this situation.

Radical attempts to get people back to work, we have heard all about the radical attempts to get people back to work.

Did there not used to be a green card system many moons ago and employers had to have a quota of green card workers? I don't know where that came from but that's been in my brain swimming around.

How am I going to be better off in work financially when I do not have the capacity to work full-time?. This is where people like me feel anxious about finding work and plunging into the labour market.

I still feel trapped and I still have a IB50 to fill in. 23 days still to go

Light Bulbs

2008-07-28T15:46:00.009+01:00

Are the 4 free energy efficient light bulbs I received today from British Gas somehow supposed to help me save some money and make me feel better about the environment ?.

I don't think so, it is really more like the give with one hand and take with the other hand effect while they rob you blind with the rip off prices of the gas and electricity. I have been buying energy saving light bulbs for years now and I can't say it makes much difference to my bills because they keep going up anyway so why not just have cheap and cheerful light bulbs.

What am I going to do when I can't afford the electricity to put the TV on to watch Jeremy Kyle?, oh now, I have managed to slip Jeremy in again. I really need some therapy.

Will I have time to watch Jeremy Kyle when I will be out collecting litter, cleaning graffiti or helping change old folks incontinence pads?. I have nothing against old folks because they are lovely people but changing incontinence pads doesn't really appeal to me as a future career.

Money saving ideas here exclusively on How can you take it easy when you are already taking it easy.

I changed my mind since what I wrote earlier. I never used to be this cynical. Was it the bang on the head or is it putting up with years of government inflicted torture that's done it?.

For the vast majority, ESA “will be a temporary benefit, not a permanent snare”.

2008-07-28T13:40:00.006+01:00

James Purnell said "For the vast majority, ESA “will be a temporary benefit, not a permanent snare”.

Right so where does that apply to me then?. That's of course if I can survive the IB50 and possible medical which I am sure I will have to go to.

Allegedly the Employment and Support Allowance is supposed to be a temporary benefit between getting a job, however this is unworkable for lots of disabled people. ie, with a traumatic brain injury the effects that you are left with get better to a point [its called a plateau] but you are left with the damage for the rest of your life and you just have to cope. There isn't a magic fix. A lot of disabled people feel under threat.

I do voluntary work in the idea that I will build myself up so I am well enough to work full-time, this is my dream. However I am never going to get to the levels I was at before my head injury however hard I try.

Voluntary work is good for you if you get in the right place with the right support. It can help you build up your confidence and self-esteem.

I feel sorry for the people who after two years on JSA who will be doing community work to get their benefits. Collecting litter and cleaning graffiti will not be good for their self-esteem as people feel low enough already with being tarred as scroungers and cheats.

Will unemployed/disabled people have to wear orange suits or something else the government sees fit to humiliate them?.

Why can't disabled people get better jobs?. What sort of career can one look forward to?. What sort of earning potential do I have?. It makes me feel depressed looking through the jobs never seeing anything that looks stimulating and the jobs that say that they pay more than minimum wage [That's the £5.52 I was talking about in my first post]

In the town where I live it makes me angry when I see disabled people at work, two in particular, I see this poor girl who doesn't look very happy working in a well known burger chain [the one that does hardly anything for vegetarians, don't get me started] cleaning tables and mopping the floor and cleaning the toilets and all the shit jobs. I have never seen her working behind the counter serving the customers

I want to ask her does she enjoy her job?. What does she feel? Are there any career prospects in cleaning tables and refilling the tomato sauce pots?.

There's this guy who works in a large DIY store who constantly goes round the car park collecting trolleys. I think what sort of career prospects is there in collecting trolleys or does he have to feel grateful that he has a job?

Is this all the jobs that disabled people are worth doing? Perhaps I have just had a sheltered life and don't meet up with all the disabled people working in all the high flying jobs

The place where I worked at for a short time where I ended up filing magazines, the people said to me how you should be grateful that you have a job here, and when I went off for a couple of weeks for some rehabilitation that they would hold my job for me. How reassuring.

Have things changed since 1998?.

From my own experience if given the opportunity, disabled people can be hard working, motivated individuals.

People need to feel valued and not just being pushed into low paid crap jobs just so it makes government figures look good, then it makes you wonder why people like me rely on IB when the jobs out there aren't very attractive and the pay is less than IB.

However James Purnell will soon put that to an end with the introduction of ESA and we can all look forward to harsher medicals [even though they are harsh enough already] and visits to the Jobcentre to sign on for for JSA.

If in the meantime if Labour are voted out, the Conservatives aren't much better either. Our government want you to be poorer even though you haven't got the capacity to be able to work full-time

I am trying to remain positive but its difficult when you feel under threat every day.

Brainblogger

Brown Envelope Day

2008-07-25T14:34:00.005+01:00

As I predicted I have received my brown envelope yesterday with a IB50 old style questionnaire. Perhaps somebody has been reading my blog. I have been preparing myself for this moment for months. Now I have got over the shock, here's how it looks to me.

This is the form from previous experience that asks next to nothing about things involved with a brain injury, The questions relate more physical things, ie: walking, lifting, sitting down, toilet needs etc. Anything relating to a brain injury has to fitted in at the end next to the mental section. From previous experience pretty much whatever I fill in will end up with me going for a medical.

This is when I end up going to the place where they do the medicals which I dislike intensely and which makes me very anxious and my blood pressure goes into orbit. Then at the same time I have to be able to remember all the things I want to tell the doctor while I am feeling very anxious which is not an easy thing to do.

Here are some possible scenarios how I see it:

scenario 1:

fill in form, get no medical. Carry on voluntary work trying to get myself magically fit again, get away from Jeremy Kyle. See what Jobcentre can do to help, you are having a laugh aren't you?. Jobcentre pack me off onto pathways or whatever it is called to practice writing my c.v again [not that anybody takes any notice of your qualifications on your cv when you are damaged goods] and look for non-existent jobs on computer at college. Jobcentre makes unemployment figures look good because you are officialy not on IB. Then get another medical after 2010 and end up on ESA or JSA anyway.

scenario 2:

Fill in IB50, get medical, try and convince doctor if doctor actually listens that you are actually ill and these things it says in GP notes and hospital notes did actually happen and you are not making it up as you go along. Even though you know all along the doctor has to meet his targets and doctor is already thinking in his mind that you look a surefire bet to add to his magically fit for work list.

Scenario 3

Fill in IB50, get medical, pass medical as fit for work, apply for JSA and appeal against medical decision [6 months min] JSA is means tested, get no JSA due to other circumstances except stamp [live off savings] I have done this before when I appealed last time and it is not very pleasant.

The nice people at the Jobcentre tell you not to bother to come in and sign on when you are appealing, thy did the last time anyway. And I thought Jobcentre might help me to find a job paying £20000 a year while I was appealing and forget all this incapacity benefit malarky.

Scenario 4:

Fill in IB50, get medical, pass medical as fit for work, don't bother appealing, get JSA as above, look for a job

Scenario 5:

Don't bother returning form, This is what our caring government wants us all to do, Get a job/part-time job packing soap, filling shelves and claim tax credits. But then make yourself ill in the process because you were only kidding yourself when you thought you were well enough to go back to work again. Go to doctors do not pass go with out collecting prescription for Seroxat.

Scenario 6:

Find a magic cure for brain injury, take magic cure, I thought there would have been a cure coming through with all my spam I get, stop moaning, go back to work and live happily ever after as if you have been living in some dream world for last 18 years.

That's my thoughts for today, now I have got to build myself up to try and fill this damn form in. now do I have any problem controlling my bowels or my bladder?.

Trapped by Labours Arbeit Macht Frei

2008-07-23T14:46:00.000+01:00

This is my first attempt at a blog so It might be a bit rough round the edges.

I got the name how can you take it easy when you are already taking it easy from an unhelpful ex-stepmother/drama queen/control freak who regularly accused me of being a scrounger and how there was nothing wrong with me and how her Daughter was always more ill than me.

One week I said I was having some time off from voluntary work and she said "How can you take it easy when you are already taking it easy?"

I had a brain injury in a road accident 18 years ago, prior to that I was quite happy with my 3 jobs working 55 hours+. I liked my jobs, I liked working hard. I have been on and off incapacity benefit for easily 16/17 years. I am not proud of it but it has helped me survive. One has to survive on something. As I have been reading today some people think that you should get food vouchers instead of Incapacity Benefit. How are you going to be able to pay your council tax with food vouchers and think about how embarrassing it will be going to pay for your shopping in Aldi with food vouchers?.

One day I woke up in hospital after being on a life support machine I am told with the mother of all headaches [imagine eating ice-cream too fast and getting brain freeze but 50 times worse] wondering how the hell did I get here and what's happened to my motorbike and what happened to my chicken curry I was going to eat when I got home. apparently a car pulled in front of me and I hit it and I flew over the top, not that I can actually remember it. I remember leaving work and going to get a take-away curry on the way home and that's about it.

After the head injury I was told I would never work again. I always kept saying to myself when I am well enough to go to work again I will hope to get back to where I was but you will find with brain injuries don't work like that.

18 years on after going through various hospitals, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapy, you get the picture by now. I have been to these so called therapeutic schemes not that were very therapeutic. I can not forget the last place I actually worked therapeutically and then part-time for a very short time. From day to day I felt like I was being kept wrapped up in cotton wool all the time, now are you sure you can manage that as if I was an imbecile. I was moved around from one office to the other because they did not know how to manage someone like me on a day to day basis. Some days I would have good days and some days I had dreadful days. I ending up working in a drawing office entering data onto a computer from drawings which I quite enjoyed and was quite straightforward.

A new computer system arrived but I was not given the training despite asking on numerous occasions and my job went to the tart down the corridor. My new role was to cut up drawings or making cups of tea or just sit at my desk doing nothing hoping somebody could think up something for me to do. The office manager who had no idea of managing people regularly patted me on the back like I was a child at school. One day I had sorted out all these magazines and files in the cabinet by the office that no-one give a shit about and I was made to feel as if I was doing something really important when in fact it wasn't. My self-esteem dropped to zero and I felt truly depressed. Shortly after this I left. I think what this is called now is constructive dismissal. After visiting the doctors I made a new friend called Seroxat who was my friend for nearly ten years.

I can remember going to the job centre and the DEA asking me if I wanted to go to a place to pack soap for £20 a week. How stimulating for the brain I thought? Its now called permitted work now and it still doesn't work especially when it is limited to just a year. I didn't go packing soap but I started volunteering at an old folks home instead until they started messing me about.

After surviving all that now in 2005 the DEA said I should go to this place to help me get back to work and how it had helped other people with head injuries to get back to work, this I did for 8 months going backwards and forwards on the train to a place in Birmingham, the travelling was exhausting in itself on the worlds slowest train to Birmingham following the train that stopped at every station between Coventry and Birmingham . The disability employment advisor from the jobcentre was invited twice to meet up in Birmingham and see how I was doing but he never came, got the usual lame excuse, stuck in a meeting, perhaps he didn't care or perhaps he was just too busy playing golf.

When I was finally in the right frame of mind the people from Birmingham got me a work placement to get me back into a work environment. I was supposed to be there for 2 weeks which was extended to 6 weeks. After the 6 weeks I said could I stay as a volunteer to try and build up my mental stamina which was agreed. it was nice to get out of the house and meet people and get away from Jeremy Kyle, you know as all us incapacity benefit scroungers do. I wish I never heard of Jeremy Kyle but his name crops up a lot in my day to day life. The people who got me the placement saw me twice more and never followed up or tracked my progress and effectively dumped me there. I phoned up about my case and they said my case was closed and all I got was a certificate not worth the paper its written on, how I haven't put it in the shredder yet I do not know. I suppose it will have some use in the future, my children could have it for drawing on perhaps. Thank you guys but what was the point of that and how much was the cheque from the jobcentre by the way?

I feel let down because I am no nearer to getting a job as I was then although I have over 3 years experience as a volunteer now, nobody tracks my progress other than the supervisor/people I work with. The Jobcentre says the place where I am doing my voluntary work are taking advantage of me and should give me a job, not the fact I am in a working environment trying to build myself up.

How many times did the DEA say he was going to see me or he was going to send leaflets about permitted work to my supervisor or go up and explain about this scheme or that. I am still waiting. Not that you can see a DEA now because you have to pre-book. If the jobcentre are so keen to get sick people back to work I would of thought the jobcentre would be inviting you there and greeting you with glasses of champagne not making you pre-book.
I avoid the jobcentre because they are so negative towards me and what I am doing.

Why is it when you go to the jobcentre you have to get past the SS guards at the reception, you can not actually just go in and see someone. Did the people working at reception give up the day job working as wardresses at Auschwitz or something?.

Here I am 3 and a half years later still working as a volunteer. I love it and the people are all very nice and the support is fantastic. A couple of weeks ago I won an award for my commitment as a volunteer which I am thrilled to bits about.

I have asked if there are any vacancies that would be suitable for me for what I am doing. However we agree that as I would only be able to work part-time [as I am not well enough to work full-time, no magic cure for brain injury yet] it would be pointless. I now live in dread every day of the brown envelope with an IB50 coming or whatever it is called these days or a phone call for a medical. It's like government inflicted torture. I haven't had a medical in 3 years, last time I had a medical the clueless doctor said in his report that as I could watch tv [too much watching Jeremy Kyle as all us scroungers/criminals/fraudsters do] and as I can read the paper and fill the dishwasher as if by magic I am fit for work when I still have restrictions, can't remember how many months it took but I appealed and had IB reinstated with points to spare.

Fast forward to July 2008 Mr Purnell with his own version of Arbeit Macht Frei. work will make you free, no I mean work will make you feel better, not when you are worse off it won't make you feel better. With the withdrawal of age additions and money for dependants our caring government will make you worse off, that's of course if I am disabled enough to get on employment support allowance and not end up on jobseekers allowance where my disability won't exist anymore. That's a nightmare I am already contemplating.

I am sure the collecting litter and cleaning graffiti from walls will do wonders for ones self-esteem as if it isn't low enough already. Are there any career prospects in collecting litter?. a promotion to chief litter picker from £5.50 a week to £5.52 a week, it is disguised by saying that the rate of pay exceeds minimal wage when it might only 2p more than minimum wage.

Back to the plot where am I going to find a part-time job that will pay me full-time wages?.

I don't qualify for disability working tax credits either so I am penalised that way as well because of other circumstances. If I do get a part-time job I will be working for a pittance. If I could work full-time I would but I am restricted by my brain telling me its time to pack up and have a sleep usually by getting the headache is the first indicator.

In the current state of the UK employment where are all the jobs for the disabled going to come from?. Who is going to convince the employers to give disabled people jobs?. They don't do it now despite the DDA so they are not going to change there mind overnight. I have applied for jobs and I felt that I was one of the best candidates but I get turned down after an interview with lame excuses, that's of course if you get an interview to start off with. Just mention you have epilepsy or that you have an brain injury I suddenly have a mental illness and they would rather not take the risk, bye bye any chance of an interview.

Whoever thought this reform through didn't think it through properly, the red-top readers will be happy but it will actually penalise sick people more than the scroungers. Today I read this: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/article910854.ece

Apparently we are all cheats now and basically being tarred with the same brush, how convenient for the government.

I am trying so so hard to overcome my disability but feel like I am trapped.