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
Showing posts with label Employment and Support Allowance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Employment and Support Allowance. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Can I Believe in Miracles?
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
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
Thursday, 16 April 2009
High Hopes
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
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
Saturday, 11 October 2008
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 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.
Monday, 28 July 2008
For the vast majority, ESA “will be a temporary benefit, not a permanent snare”.
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
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
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