I just posted this in response to Liam Byrne's article in the Guardian.
"And what do you propose Liam? When you disappear off into your think tanks and focus groups?
For over a year, you have avoided meeting with me. You promised, but you haven't discussed your plans with sick and disabled people.
You talk of "unearned support" Liam, but this is the Guardian! Here, on these comment threads, we all know the details of ESA, DLA, contributory time limiting and independent living funds very well - almost certainly much, much better than you do Liam. We know about the hundreds of thousands terrified about what happens to those who CANNOT earn support. Until recently, we believed you gave it freely.
You have the audacity to attack an erosion of ESA?(time limiting) When it was your government who introduced this terrible failure? Your government who wrote the descriptors making it simply impossible for many conditions to qualify? "like employment and support allowance that working people have actually paid in for."
Then, you dare to criticise the appeals system for the failure of ESA? When you have ignored me and Kaliya Franklin and all others who have been trying to warn you for years? When we warned you repeatedly? when we tried everything, some risking their lives to engage with you? "current chaos in the assessment of those on disability benefits, with spiralling appeal times and poor back-to-work support, deeply troubling."
You let Ed loose in the Daily Mail then think you can throw us a bone with a few tag on lines about ESA and disability? We already know this is a pattern! Give the scroungers a good kicking then say something nice and fluffy about sick and disabled people in the Guardian.
NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
I strongly recommend you stop dreaming up ways in which the welfare state can be auctioned off to the highest private bidder - even planning the very systems in partnership with those very same businesses and insurers.
I suggest you :
Listen to the suggestions and alternatives of disabled people.
Look at our ideas and policy suggestions
Stop designing policy based on a complete disregard for the evidence
IMMEDIATELY stop reinforcing the scrounger narrative - it makes a Labour Party look utterly ridiculous and confirms dangerous stereotypes.
We will win the public Liam. I promise you. By 2015, we will have made this the "NHS 1997" issue.
So stop casting around for spurious, tough-talk soundbites, that conveniently stuff a few billion more in private pockets and get a real strategy on disability.
I suggest you do it very quickly indeed. Those prepared to apologise for these failures may retain some credibility.
The arrogant will simply be exposed as those who oversaw the biggest abuse of sickness and disability rights and protections since the welfare state was introduced."
Non-partisan UK-based Disability campaign. Advocacy for people with invisible illness and/or physical & mental health conditions. Also Carers, their Families and Friends. Our individual voices are too quiet to be heard, but collectively we can shout loud enough to drown out this tide of abuse against us. Disability Hate Crime, lack of full legal protection, people in care homes costing too much to be let out and not one political party willing to fight for us.
Sue, have finally been motivated ! Have sent to Kaliya a copy of my response to this to Liam. It was a bit too long to post on the Guardian...
ReplyDeleteRegards
Hoss.
p.s. I am a bit concerned that your capture is starting to have a laugh at my expense... it is "dicalike". Now whilst I like a bit of William on the odd ocasion, I am drawing the line at Dick !
How can anyone be surprised at Byrne? I tried to het that tosser to meet with carers years ago. He ignored carers when he was minister for care services and he is ignoring you now. The man is a closet Tory and only trying to attract Tory voters. If you do get to speak to this tosser ask him what he thinks of private landlords now stating 'no DSS' on their vacent propeties.
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ReplyDeleteThere all closet conservatives and always have been
The trouble is the public through lack of education don't see that
i myself am not educated but i know like lord sugar does in where i grew up a tall storey when i hear one
And the politics of today is just complete bull at it's finest
The reality is the country is to overcrowded with to many sick and disabled and no hoper's along with the elderly so all policies set out in future for this target group will be one of punishment in one form or another
In other words if you don't get the hell out of this country you will face the full wroth of a right wing conservative government and for most that will indeed be YOUR downfall
There are some however like the young Irish who are doing the right thing and that's getting out of town and to them i say good luck and you have my very sincerst best wishes
Byrne is a Blairite tory . "I'm alright Jack " brigade like so many others. Their day of reckoning will arrive.
ReplyDeleteA political system which is fashioned to serve the interests of an elitist band of over indulgent pigs will survive only as long as the citizens decide that it is time to roast the bacon !
Their time won't come though that's just the problem. They 'run' the system so it's rigged in their favour. I used to live in Byrne's consituancy and would give the idiot hell if I still lived there. My present MP is a high ranking Tory and I'm enjoying making his life hell.
ReplyDeletePoliticians won't meet with people that will cause them embarrasment and bad headlines, they prefer going through the charities they control. You can't reason with them, you can't vote them out as they are all pretty much the same sort of Tory. How to change things? Petitions won't work, marches won't work, history has shown that. The answer is to get in front of them when they are doing pieces in front of the media and show them up. But you also need to be aware many people won't speak out out of fear. Oh and anyone with any connection to Carerwatch need to reassess that connection because they have helped alienate online carers.
Something that is worthy of a mention is that the Coalition have been in power since May 2010. Have they gone on the record to discredit the atrocity that is the WCA? Have they withdrawn ATOS Origin's £100m contract for gross incompetence? No, because it saved them the job of implementing it. They have also taken the reform to a whole new level, and basically turned Blair's starter dish into a main course. Tony Blair could hardly be described as a 'Labour PM' neither. He did indeed preside over a Labour govt, but with a distinctly right of centre agenda. That is why he had to call his party 'New Labour'. A Labour party dishing out overtly Conservative policy would never have washed. Britain has been in the grip of the ideological right-wing since 1997. I'd like to think that Labour would be forced to move to the centre ground when they win the next election. Unless they would fancy a public revolt of epic proportions.
ReplyDeleteI really want to thank all of you for offering so many helpful infos. Keep up the good work.
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