The Tories

[Less]

Originally Posted by cmonstanley

i see 80% of lobbyists are exempt from the so called new rules

Excuse me? Do you not know the rules set down by our local M.P.?
The maximum amount of exaggeration allowed onsite is 75%.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I don't know where you have been...and it was quiet while you weren't around(though I can't personally say I missed you - well, no..... I could, but it would be a lie).
You can go back now - I've had enough already.

[cmonstanley]

a little bit of fracking scandal on the way not just osbornes father in law

[Less]

Originally Posted by cmonstanley

a little bit of fracking scandal on the way not just osbornes father in law

I never thought I'd have to say this to you, link please!

[westendlass]

Originally Posted by MargaretR

So a family friend of Gummers died young from CJD - I wonder if he felt indirectly responsible - probably not - psychos seem to blame anyone but themselves.

I had a psycho/ narcissist husband until 1980, who would only eat wild meat because he was concerned that eating medicated domestic animals was a threat to his 'potency' (he used this more away than at home)

I could see there was some shred of logic in his warped thinking, so after our split in 1980, I continued not to eat beef, and ate lamb instead (sheep are 'free range', many cattle are shed reared)

When the CJD scandal broke several years later I was glad that I had not eaten beef for years.

I too had a psycho / narcissistic husband. He's just completed his PhD, my mother now refers to him as Dr. Dick. Don't know whether this has anything to do with meat though.!

[cmonstanley]

its just reaching the main papers now. heres a link Now Cameron aide Lynton Crosby?s links to fracking industry are explored - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

[DtheP47]

Originally Posted by MargaretR

.

I had a psycho/ narcissist husband until 1980, who would only eat wild meat because he was concerned that eating medicated domestic animals was a threat to his 'potency' (he used this more away than at home)

So he never chewed on your ear then Margaret ?

[MargaretR]

Originally Posted by DtheP47

So he never chewed on your ear then Margaret ?

I don't find that amusing - just in very bad taste and not relevant to this thread.

[accyman]

dont mind me im just checking in to this thread to see if cameron is still an evil funt


looks like he is

[cmonstanley]

As the countdown to the termination of Atos' gravy train approaches, I just wanted to throw my thoughts into the melting pot and air my thoughts on this organisation, and the way it conducts medicals on behalf of the government.
But first a little history. In the 1980's, when Thatcherism was operating a scorched Earth policy throughout our heavy industry, which also happened to be areas of Labour's core support, millions upon millions of men were made redundant as the nationalised steelworks; coal mines and manufacturing sectors were closed and broken up, to be sold to speculators and other ne'er-do-well 'investors'.
With a nominal figure of 3 million people unemployed (a fair price to pay for 'economic stability' according to the housewife from Grantham), a further groundswell of unemployment was far from welcome to the government of the day. Only so many school leavers and long term jobless people could be squirreled away on government schemes, where they did not figure in the unemployment reckoning, so something had to be done.
Front line Jobcentre staff were brow beaten into encouraging new, and existing, claimants into making claims for sickness benefit, at that time called Invalidity Benefit. It paid more than the dole AND you didn't have to sign on every fortnight. Rules were relaxed, even those suffering from things such as dyspepsia (burping to you and I) were allowed to claim. Very soon there was a very covert explosion in sickness claims, and the government were not further embarrassed by an explosion in the unemployment figure, job done!
However, as the economy eventually grew, and European money began to slowly regenerate these devastated areas, very poorly paid jobs began to emerge. Where a miner once earned £300 per week for four day's work, he was now faced with the prospect of working in a call centre, or assembling electronic circuits, for £2.50 per hour. "No thanks" says he, and he stays on 'the sick'.
Somewhat miffed that Joe Scrote won't get off his arse to work for a pittance, like the pre-nationalised form of the industries they had closed, the government then made it more difficult to qualify for sickness benefits. BUT, as with any life form, the sickness claimant, who over the previous ten years or so, has learned to live within his benefit means, learned how to circumvent the stricter regime, they adapted, developing illnesses such as 'a bad back' and the classic of the nineties, depression. Not only that, in the meantime the benefit claimants had procreated, and the young of the time had grown up, all in an environment of benefit dependency, why work for a living when you can be 'depressed' and get free money? Living on benefit had become a lifestyle option as young adults learned (like every other animal) from their parents, how to survive.
Consequently, until the introduction of the national minimum wage, such mundane work; which had replaced traditional industries; was far from attractive, and it proved very difficult to wean a certain sector of social strata from the safety net of sickness benefit. Again, however, this still proved very difficult, not least because generations of young adults had little or no literacy and numeracy skills, why did they need them, they were never going to get a job? So not only did we have several generations of former 'working' class people out of work following in the footsteps of their parents, we now had a barely educated workforce, who even if they looked for work, were hardly attractive to potential employers.
With the advent of New Labour, new hope emerged. The new government pumped what seemed to be and endless supply of money into the economy of the poor, tax breaks, tax credits, child tax credits, apprenticeships, freely available learning for those who had failed at school.
Even though great strides were made, a hard core of people still remained, convinced they were unfit for work, after all the government had been telling them that for the best part of twenty years, and there were; of course; the shirkers, of whom there were a small but significant minority. The solution to this, Employment and Support Allowance, a benefit that will pay the same as unemployment benefits, but has a small premium if you are judged to be able to, and are willing to, move towards work, or, a larger premium if it is felt that you are not likely to be in a position to work in the foreseeable future. In order to discriminate between those who are fit for work, those who may; in time; return to work, and those for whom the days of work are over, a test had to be formulated, this became the Work Capability Assessment, and someone needed to administer the said tests. The French jack of all trades ATOS was selected, after all, they took care of occupational health services for government employees, who were all cock-a-hoop with the boxes they ticked when referred to them, and whilst I would not hear of any suggestion of deals behind closed doors, Robert Deveraux (or Bobby Davro to his subordinates) the current permanent secretary, insists the bidding for the contract was transparent, but refuses to release details to the committee governing it, I will leave that to your own consideration.
Despite initial teething troubles; lack of staff, lack of office space, lack of training, in fact a lack of just about everything needed to cope with the number of assessments being referred to them, ATOS got into the stride of finding people fit to work.
Many assertions and assumptions were made with regard to ATOS, people believed they were awarded a bonus for every person they found fit, or a bonus if they found 'X' amount of people fit etc. I believe the contract was generous from the outset, based upon a PREDICTION that they would find a certain quantity of people fit for work, and ultimately I suspect this is the basis for the secrecy surrounding its award, and continuity.
When the Conservatives were rather dubiously elected, their contempt for those in receipt of benefit (despite their leader being a very high profile recipient of DLA) drove their ideology forward, laws were tightened, the regime made more difficult, pleas of the disabled lobby that the UNUM system of assessment, used by ATOS, was unfair and discriminatory were ignored, rulings by the EU that the UNUM system discriminated against disabled people were similarly ignored and even hushed.
Every extremist ideology needs a scapegoat, the Nazis had the Jews (and the British right wing of the time, the Daily Mail calling them 'The Dirty Jews'), the French revolutionists had the Aristo's, the KKK have the black people etcetera, etcetera. The current Tory crop, no longer having a substantial, militant trade union movement to blame the ills of the world on, have chosen those in receipt of state benefit to be the focus of their invective and blame, specifically those who are the most vulnerable, and least able to fight back, the sick and disabled. There are, no doubt, within that group an element of shirkers, work-shy lay abouts and people who just don't want to work and are happy to wallow at the bottom of the heap, merely existing. It is this minority the Tory government wants to eliminate, and to do this they gave ATOS a very large sledge hammer to crack a small; but very hard; walnut!
ATOS, like most French, have no substance or scruples, they will collapse at the first sign of a fight, especially a moral one, especially one that has an additional financial incentive, so consequently they happily took on board the new 'stricter' regime. They voraciously recruited 'healthcare professionals' regardless of their claimed qualifications, and set them to work using a system of assessment specifically designed to disregard illness or disability as a barrier to work. In addition to this the Department for Work and Pensions, under the instruction of the government (initially Labour) had to phase out the old Incapacity Benefit, and transfer the recipients to a 'more suitable' benefit, the natural assumption being ESA as this was now the 'sickness' benefit. This involved conducting approximately 2.5 million additional Work Capability Assessments, over and above those required for the new ESA claims. ATOS went into overdrive recruiting 'healthcare professionals' from all over the world, it did not matter that they were barely qualified, or even if they had qualifications that were recognised in this country, those who could barely speak English, and more importantly could barely write English, none of this mattered, because ATOS would 'train' them and give them a qualification facilitating their ability to assess potential and current claimants. What was not generally known was that the 'qualification' they received, to allow them to conduct assessments, is one that was simply conjured from thin air, it does not exist in medical circles and is not recognised by any regulatory body - AT ALL!
Nonetheless, it did not prevent physiotherapists assessing people with mental health issues, nurses disputing the veracity of consultant's advice, and foreign nationals submitting reports that were barely understandable. As stories of ATOS' shambolic performance began to emerge, journalists began to take an interest, especially when medical professionals with a moral backbone began to speak out against the practices of this, primarily, computer services provider. Television programmes highlighted the training schemes where the healthcare professionals were shown how to twist and distort evidence to show that someone was fit for work, and even more damningly, that they referred to claimants as Lying, Thieving Bastards.
Despite their shameful performance in the sphere of humanity, one that could compete with the policies of Pol Pot, the government were quite happy with their ability to 'cure' people of illness, hailing the fact that when re-assessed, a third of Incapacity Benefit claimants were fit for work, not only that, they MUST have been claiming fraudulently regardless of what the official figures suggest. Despite this, disallowed claimants had the temerity to appeal these decisions, winning around 25% of them when representing themselves, but rising to around 75% when they were represented by bodies such as C.A.B or solicitors for example. Even so, the Tories still hailed this as a victory against the work-shy, and as they continued to pummel those who had found themselves out of work as a result of their policies, as a result of the crisis caused by their chums in the banking sector, people were dying. Yes, ATOS' miracle cure was simply snake oil, thousands of people, found fit for work, were dying weeks after their assessments. no-one can say whether it was as a result of their reported illnesses, or if it was as a result of unforeseen circumstances, or if it was a result of the undue stress placed upon them after being 'cured'. Although the government could ignore this, the problem wouldn't go away, even when the DWP were ordered not to collate/publish figures showing the number of such deaths, the problem would stubbornly remain, refused Freedom of Information Act requests simply served to highlight the potential embarrassment.
Like so many private enterprises hired by central government, ATOS' walls began to crumble, as is always the case when an organisation is motivated by profit, not service, or indeed, compassion. The government's solution is to review ATOS' monopoly, and look at introducing further tenders to improve the system. However, there are only so many 'trained' 'healthcare professionals' to go around, so what makes anyone think that these 'quacks' will perform better, more compassionately, or more comprehensively because they have a different badge on their shirt? The game that the claimant enters is still stacked against them. So whilst it is good that the government is prepared to admit that one of their providers (there are many, many more failing in the Work Programme - at least 10 providers for 12 contracts are being reviewed... and you can take that to the bank) is failing - not that THEY chose the wrong one - I doubt very little will actually change for those in receipt of assessments. As a conclusion I would just like to give a couple of examples of the sort of blather the so called healthcare professionals submit as evidence, that I have personally come across in the course of my work:

"The patient is likely to improve in three months' time" - FANTASTIC! This doctor has a cure for the Alzheimer’s Disease that the claimant suffered, a miracle!

"The client showed no evidence of muscle wasting in the hands and feet" - That could be due to the fact that our hands and feet do not have muscles (other than the thumb).

"A return to work could be considered within three months" - an ATOS nurse. An ATOS doctor assessing the same client two weeks earlier as part of an occupational health assessment on behalf of Royal Mail "This patient is not fit for any kind of work, and is unlikely to be so for the foreseeable future"

[Barrie Yates]

I wonder how long it took to cut and paste 3175, one idiot stops posting then back comes another one.
As for the continual harping back to the "bad old" days of Margaret Thatcher, I am surprised that no-one has a go at Gavrilo Princip, who probably precipitated WWI, and therefore the deaths of not only the Accrington Pals but all the other casualties - surely that was a greater assault on this countries way of life than Maggie ever perpetrated.
So let us all have a hate session for Gavrilo Princip

[cmonstanley]

only pointing out that people blamed labour for starting the sick culture when actually it was the tories ,but lets not get in the way of the truth

[Mick]

If people must copy and paste from other sites instead of thinking about the post please make it readable
this is just a jumble of words with sentences starting and ending mid line what a mess

But its a great example of bad posting

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Mick

this is just a jumble of words with sentences starting and ending mid line what a mess

It's the long-awaited sequel to "Finnegans Wake"

[Less]

Originally Posted by Eric

It's the long-awaited sequel to "Finnegans Wake"

If Finnegan waded through that he'd be asleep.