Positive Feedback/Back to the Workhouse

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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.