Turned down for ESA, got *zero* points

[SilverbladeTE]

The sick insanity and stupidity of the UK's "new" disability system is like something out of Kafka...

 

[Dreambirdie]

SO sorry, Silverblade. I've read about this on my FB page, and it does sound insane.

 

[sianrecovery]

It's just awful, and the sheer hideousness of it leaves me speechless. Did they turn you down then?

 

[snowathlete]

so sorry, the system is an insult. your best bet to get it is to go to the tribunal if you can.

 

[sianrecovery]

They can find x million to bury Margaret Thatcher....

 

[Dreambirdie]

Yes, Thatcher! What's up with all that insane adoration? AT least Morrissey got it right.

"Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a determined refusal to listen to others.

Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the ivory trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own cabinet booted her out. She gave the order to blow up The Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone—and was sailing AWAY from the islands! When the young Argentinean boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs-up sign for the British press.

Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes. She hated feminists even though it was largely due to the progression of the women's movement that the British people allowed themselves to accept that a prime minister could actually be female. But because of Thatcher, there will never again be another woman in power in British politics, and rather than opening that particular door for other women, she closed it.

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity."

MORRISSEY.


http://www.alternet.org/world/singe...argaret-thatcher-terror-without-atom-humanity

 

[Nielk]

I'm sorry, Silver.

 

[Esther12]

Great news Silverbalde... you've recovered! Now you'll be able to enjoy working, drinking, sports and all of the other things you missed out on.

Or maybe you'll just have to struggle on with a life of appeals and DWP nonsense, which would be rather less cheering. I remember some benefits decision in which they'd informed me that I was able to do things I could not, but really wanted to: it didn't feel great.

I hope things go okay for you while you do have these appeals to go on through. The new system is crazy and scary, but a lot of people are winning their appeals.

 

[SickOfSickness]

Sorry. Hang in there.

 

[baccarat]

Yes, Thatcher! What's up with all that insane adoration?

You're essentially saying that the majority of the British public who voted her in more than once were a bunch of lunatics ( I couldn't vote at the time so I can't be accused of being one!) . It seems to me you've got no idea of what the UK was like before Thatcher.

I just want to pick up on the manufacturing industry point you made which is incorrect.
If we look for e.g. at foreign investment coming into the UK during the Thatcher years, the numbers rather than opinions, show that the business environment was much better than it was before (1.4bn in '70, 10bn in '80, 30bn in '90, 119bn in '00) hence was attracting interest and money from abroad.

Money coming in kept going up and a lot of it went into investments in manufacturing.
It was only during the other lot decade of "cool britannia" that it sharply came down and with it manufacturing but we all know that was the decade of banking and finance.
Now the country is full of debt and sick people also are paying the price.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01828

 

[Esther12]

It seems to me you've got no idea of what the UK was like before Thatcher.

I feel increasingly aware of how ignorant I am of what British society was like before I was old enough to experience it for myself (and since then too!). One problem is that the history of the period prior to Thatcher seems to have become politicised itself, with supporters emphasising how bad things were, while detractors point to the good things which she went on to harm.

Things like Section 28 were still morally repulsive though, and in a nice simple way for us historically illiterate youngsters to be able to enjoy.

edit: also re

It was only during the other lot decade of "cool britannia" that it sharply came down and with it manufacturing but we all know that was the decade of banking and finance.

Banking deregulation was a Thatcherite policy (even if she seemed to have second thoughts as she came to realise the scale of the changes it had brought about). The Cool Britania fad was over by 2000 too.

Here's an ESA story:

ATOS tell woman with mental age of 3 yrs to get a job (not satire – please share)

Fahmeena is 30 years old. She can’t walk or talk and has an estimated mental age of about 3 years old.
She likes to be called Princess Meena. Here she is:

ATOS – in their wisdom – have assessed her and have decided that Princess Meena doesn’t need any benefits and she should go and get a job instead.

So Meena’s sister – Farzana – has decided to turn to social media to ask for ideas about what job she could do.
Here’s some information to help you with ideas for work for Meena:

Meena has Profound Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD), brain damage, Cerebral Palsy, can’t talk, can’t walk, has a mental age of 3, is incontinent and likes wearing pink and Minnie the Mouse headbands as well as making shitbombs.

If you have any ideas for jobs that Meena can do, you can post your ideas under the hashtag #JobsforMeena on Twitter.

Presumably Princess Meena is an example of one of the myriad ’scroungers’ unfairly claiming disability benefits we hear so much about.

Not a word of this is satire I can assure you, but I’m sure many people will have the same question as I have.
What have we become in this once great country that we turn our backs on people like Meena?

.​

Answers on a postcard please to your MP.

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2013/...f-3-yrs-to-get-a-job-not-satire-please-share/

 

[anna8]

Hi silver!
So sorry! I got zero points last year! You must appeal I got help from the local cab office who were great they put my case together practically did all the work for me! On the day that I had my appeal I was so stressed out I felt like I was going to be sent down for ten years! But I needn't of worried I didn't even need to answer one single question! I walk in the room legs shaking to be told! After reviewing the medical evidence you have won your appeal! All over within a few second which just show how stupid the whole system is!
If you win your appeal which you have a really good chance of doing your money will be back dated! So kind of them!! Ha ha!!
Good luck
Best wishes anna

 

[Merry]

Very sorry, Silver. Get some extra rest, do something fun (design the hell out of a ship), and then take the next step to win what you are due. Courage!

 

[maryb]

Silver good advice from Anna8 - hope you do appeal and it goes well for you too. Try to get some support.

re: Margaret Thatcher - as one who lived and worked during her years as prime minister - I can tell you one thing the unions would have brought the country down before they'd have given in, I'm working class my father was a bricklayer and still working at that time, he hated the Labour party and weak politicians, they would not have stood up to them.
You only have to look at the retirement pensions of civil servants, teachers, doctors etc and compare them to the average pension of a working man currently at £120 per week ( and in those days not as many people had cars, walking to the bus stop in freezing conditions at 5.30am in the morning, times were very hard) , is that right?
I'm not knocking unions, they have their place, I'm still a member of one, but too many rights and fantastic benefits for selective parts of the working force is not right.

I didn't particularly like MT and didn't agree with a lot of her policies - but we've had better and worse Prime Ministers, what I don't like is disrespect for the dead. I don't want to start a political debate though.............

 

[MeSci]

Silver good advice from Anna8 - hope you do appeal it goes well for you too. Try to get some support.

re: Margaret Thatcher - as one who lived and worked during her years as prime minister - I can tell you one thing the unions would have brought the country down before they'd have given in, I'm working class my father was a bricklayer and still working at that time, he hated the Labour party and weak politicians, they would not have stood up to them.
You only have to look at the retirement pensions of civil servants, teachers, doctors etc and compare them to the average pension of a working man currently at £120 per week ( and in those days not as many people had cars, walking to the bus stop in freezing conditions at 5.30am in the morning, times were very hard) , is that right?
I'm not knocking unions, they have their place, I'm still a member of one, but too many rights and fantastic benefits for selective parts of the working force is not right.

I didn't particularly like MT and didn't agree with a lot of her policies - but we've had better and worse Prime Ministers, what I don't like is disrespect for the dead. I don't want to start a political debate though.............

Very sorry to hear that you have fallen victim to this dreadful system, Silverblade. I'm just hoping that I can get to retirement age before my Working Tax Credit is considered for transfer to Universal Credit, which would mean I would have to attend one of these stressful interviews and potentially lose my WTC. The WTC system means that a disabled person like me, who can only earn a small amount from self-employment, gets WTC on top and is not subject to endless reassessments, just simple annual forms to state one's income. Under Universal Credit it is assumed that all self-employed people will be achieving the minimum wage within a year. There is no way I can achieve that. I'm having to run and develop businesses on a shoestring as I don't want to risk incurring debts that I might not be able to repay due to worsening health, so it takes a very long time to get things running well. I opted for home-based self-employment due to the unpredictability of the illness, so that I can work when well enough and rest whenever needed, and avoid artificial perfume exposure.

A person with ME featured on today's BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours. He won compensation under disability legislation for ATOS failing to provide what was necessary for access, etc.

It was the first item, I think. You can listen online in due course from here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rrc15

Re Thatcher, I am very much old enough to remember her. I agree that some of the unions had gone too far. They were making ridiculous demands where I worked, such as demanding the right to be let off 1-2 hours early from shifts (on full pay, of course) in addition to the numerous and long breaks we already had, but did little to remedy the serious inequities of wages based on age, and called strikes without consulting staff.

But Thatcher went much too far, and played a large role in making greed socially acceptable (if I can use the word 'socially' in a non-existent society!) and even laudable, and increasing inequality.

It was during her reign that peaceful demonstrations were subjected to draconian curbs, and anyone involved with an organisation the government disapproved of, however legal and peaceful, was liable to having their phone tapped (it happened to me).

I have no problem with disrespect for the dead as long as it is not gratuitous. I think there is a need for people to express negative views at a time like this, to counter the risk of her coming across as some kind of saint.

And surely there are some dead people that we can be rude about - Jimmy Savile, for example? Whilst he harmed a lot of people, it could be argued that Thatcher harmed many more.

 

[baccarat]

Esther,
I don't want to take this thread off topic but it's helpful remembering that MT's policies in the 80's had more to do with liberalisation, breaking down old monopolies and allowing competition in finance and other industries. In finance she succeeded in replacing the old-boy network that had ruled the city forever with more efficient institutions.

The harmful deregulation came in the late 90's with the creation of an "ingeniuos" new regulatory system in the UK (no doubt inspired by some of the many investment bankers employed by N.10 and 11 at the time) and in the US with the new legislation replacing the Glass-Steagall act (which separated retail retail from investment banking) and deregulation of derivatives all happened under a "pro-poor" administration with some of the people involved making a lot of money from the change in the rules.

PS: anybody who wants to understand how the Street really works would find the "Inside job" documentary really interesting

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Well going to see social work to get help to appeal
can't take it any more
to cope with life I've long had to just "cut out", sideline, whatever, all the crap or have serious breakdown

• maggie ordered the SAS to train the Mujahedeen, over the protests of many who saw where that would end (ie, Al-Qeda)
• She called and regarded Nelson Mandela a "common terrorist"
• she supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (fact)
• She triggered the Falklands War by reducing its defences in face of warnings not to do so (fact VERY glossed over in history)
• her family got heavily into the business of selling cigarettes and guns to the developing world's new markets...and thus condemning millions to death
• her son is a convicted criminal (for his part in a coup attempt in Africa)
• She never had a true majority of support (44% at best) more that Libs etc had good support and folk were fed up with Labour
• Our military cut slashed to pay for the obscenity that is Trident (1/3rd of miltary was cut, £83 billion wasted on Trident over the years, a weapon designed to exterminate millions, first strike, suicidal doomsday lunacy! military are real people who need real jobs and who can be actually useful....oh and where do they base the nuclear weapons? RIGHT BESIDE SCOTLAND'S TWO MAIN CITIES! and the Westminster scum privatized the Aldermaston and Coulport manufacturing and storage facilities, respectively. yes, 160 hydrogen bombs, in a munitions store that's being privatized bit by bit...oh ye gods...)

etc etc

Oh yes, any of you UK folk, remember I mentioned I lived beside a steelwork? guess which one?
RAVENSCRAIG
My father was thrown on the scrapheap (different company entirelynot Ravenscraig) and could never get another job, his pension was robbed by the bosses so they could keep their luxury life styles.
I spent years unemployed, YTS schemes were a con game, they never intended to keep us on...lots of other stuff that makes my blood boil, still.

So, you can guess my thoughts on Maggie
She simply did NOT get the Scots' character
Adam Smith wrote TWO major books, how many folk know what his first one was and that he thought it the more important, hm?


I suggest folk watch, if they can find it online anymore, the "Sermon on the Mound" speech by Thatcher, where she spoke in front of the Scottish church (the "mound"), and had the sacriligeous, blasphemous audacity to say the "Good Samartin" was about him having money! (and I'm not a perosn to use "blasphemous" as a label, lightly)
Jesus didn't like the money changers in the temple not one bit

yes the unions were often *but not always* too close minded, but there was a very easy fix for that the Germans did which helped *both* sides of the problem: give union members shares/seats on the board! Incentivise, not treat like bloody slaves.

Folk were "bolshie" for very damn good reasons, pay/conditions and just way people were treated was *atrocious*
which lead to an adversarial attitude between workers and managers, and part of that is the disgusting class system in the UK.
side note: Technically you have NO rights in the UK, except what the Crown and Government will *lend* you, you are a *subject* of the Crown, not a *citizen*. Our constitution and Bill of Rights aint' worth squat
cousin of mine died just before I was born in a pathetically pointless industrial accident that was easily avoidable, as an example of way things were.
Health & Safety, minimum wage? Safety harnesses? Pfft, no! that was only for "real Human Beings" not untermensch.
(some of the decent managers were bloody embarassed about the crap, sigh. From experience only about 1/3rd of companies were run decently)

Only place I never tried ot get a job, ironically, was Ravenscraig as I was brought up on stories from family who'd seen folk died/suffer in the most horrendous ways in the steelworks. Not fiction, fact. One relative had a mental breakdown after his best mate was torn apart not far from him.
Gives me the "grues" to this day, ugh. (oh pal's dad was senior foreman in there, still took him four years to get his son a job in there, that's how bad it was for jobs)

 

[maryb]

Life was very hard for the working class especially in those days - thats why I have this problem accepting people are worth all these big fat retirement pensions when they haven't done an iota of what our parent's did and they have to retire on little pensions and can't afford to heat their homes even. Disgusting.

MeSci - I've already said I didn't agree with a lot of her policies, others I did. Disrespect of the dead - not exactly like Jimmy Saville!!
I meant the street parties - what's all that about? Think its more about standards and that is not having any.

 

[anna8]

Hi sliver! So glad to here you are getting help!
The whole system stinks! And I could say a whole lot more! But right now you need to use all the energy you've got left to get what you deserve! There is a really good web site that a forum member told me about, I think it was Sasha that I found really helpful!
WWW.benefitsandwork.co.uk
I am no expert but I've been through the process and if I can help in anyway please just ask! Which I,m sure many other member will too! So your not on your own!
Try not too get to stressed out you will get through this!
Best wishes Anna x

 

[John Mac]

Hello Silverblade, sorry to hear they turned you down for ESA. If it's any consolation they gave me a score of 0/26 on the initial assessment and the appeal, but I was given 15/26 at the tribunal. The tribunal is the first place you get to actually argue your case in front of human beings (a magistrate and a doctor), before that it's just a box ticking exercise on a computer by an automaton.
So please stick with it as you'll stand more chance at the tribunal if you can put up with the BS on the way. The Me association website has a guide on ESA it may be worth having a look there.
Best wishes
John