Taking Risks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ta ta

Brain Blogger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for reading my blog

cheers

Brain Blogger

You Can't Beat a Bit of Bully

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

see you later

Brain blogger

Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website

Sterilise claimants urges racist treasury website
12 July 2010

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

The Spending Challenge website at

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other ideas include:

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

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

“Employ Crocodiles in Benefits Offices” to discourage claims;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make a complaint to the Equalities and human Rights Commission at

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

Good luck,

Steve Donnison

This article can be viewed online at

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


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

America Here We Come!

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

DLA/Brown Envelopes/3 Months On

How do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ta ta for now.