The DWP call handlers’ strike and the Milgram experiment framework

Originally posted on Politics and Insights:
Universal Credit call handlers working at centres in Wolverhampton and Walsall have overwhelmingly voted in favour of strike action, accusing the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of treating them with “utter contempt”. A ballot of PCS members working for the DWP on it’s highly controversial programme was announced…

Disabled people face a hostile environment of calculated, strategic ordeals to deny support

Originally posted on Politics and Insights:
Disabled people face a hostile environment comprised of strategically placed and thoroughly demoralising ordeals, which are being passed off as arising because of bad administrative practices and simple errors. However, such ordeals are happening far too frequently to have arisen through random error. Furthermore, there is an identifiable pattern…

Life yearns to live

I am not sure how I feel about the world we now live in. We’re in a dead end street of political fuckery that looks like a bunch of morons planning the end of the world. Our children take a day off school to protest about the suffering planet that is their home and they […]

DWP is trying to co-opt GPs in forcing ill people into work

Originally posted on Politics and Insights:
Yesterday on Twitter, I posted one of my previous posts – Jobcentre tells GP to stop issuing sick notes to patient assessed as ‘fit for work’ and he died – in which I discuss a letter addressed to a GP regarding a seriously ill patient. It said: “We have decided your patient is capable…

64 year old woman with multiple health condition fails universal credit medical assessment. Living in substandard accommodation. How are people supposed to survive this?

Originally posted on The poor side of life:
Dear readers, its Thursday yet again. The sun was shining for us today, what a welcome surprise. It was lovely to see. No joy was found from the DWP though, there’s a surprise. I’ll be listing everything that happened today as usual. No real names will be…

Depression – the beating of a war drum

No one can say how much depression is a genetically determined condition and how much it is a response to lived experience. Whilst genetics cannot be ruled out, lived experience is something that must be ruled in because depression, like poverty, is a whole lot more than just a personal weakness, problem or failing. If […]

Democracy – not for me?

Originally posted on Disappointed Idealist:
In 2017, I was the candidate for Labour here on the Isle of Wight. One day I may share some anecdotes, but to be honest, John O’Farrell got there first, and he’s much funnier than me. Since the election, I’ve been the main spokesperson for the CLP, and since June…

We must never lose sight of being animals with intelligence

It’s incredibly difficult to make sense of this because, being animals, we don’t act through intelligence most of the time. We are driven by much that has nothing to do with intelligence, not least our biologically determined and driven sex drive. We are fantastically good at doing things which it’s painfully and ludicrously obvious are […]

The NHS business services authority is creating a hostile environment for vulnerable patients

Originally posted on Politics and Insights:
Patients claiming universal credit who are exempted from prescription charges are receiving penalty notices because prescription forms have not been amended to include the benefit – six years after it was introduced. Some people have reported receiving multiple charge notices. Many people are being penalised for a pharmacy error…

The power of uncertainty – Tory abuse

One of the most despicable psychological weapons that the government uses extensively, and nowhere more intensely than the benefits system under the abomination that is Universal Credit, is uncertainty. Britain is in the grip of catastrophic uncertainty planned and executed by the Tories, from Brexit to Universal Credit, to pensions, our NHS, GP’s and front […]