ATOS

[go.oot.by.dog]

“Dear†Mr Cameron

 

https://fromthemindoftinapj.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/dear-mr-cameron/

 

I came across this exceptionally well written piece!

[go.oot.by.dog]

£500m bill for appeal battles over benefits

 

More than 1.2 million cases involving claims for disability and unemployment allowances have been taken to the special tribunals since April 2010, latest Ministry of Justice data reveals.

 

With each case costing an average £377 to process, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the bill has been £475million.

 

Rising unemployment, a large backlog and confusion over welfare reforms and controversial work capability assessments mean that the figure is forecast to hit nearly £1billion by the end of this Parliament in 2015. The numbers were compiled by researchers at ilegal, the internet forum for law specialists.

 

Full story here -

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/400721/500m-bill-for-appeal-battles-over-benefits

[go.oot.by.dog]

Jobseekers and benefits data release postponed by DWP

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/19/benefits-unemployment

 

Work and pensions department's figures to show how many people have lost benefits under new sanctions regime

 

The Department for Work and Pensions has delayed publication of the first set of official statistics detailing the extra number of jobless claimants losing benefits as a result of a tougher sanctions regime introduced by the coalition in October.

 

The DWP said there were "some significant doubts about the quality of the new regime statistics" due to have been published this week, adding it was not possible to give a date when they would be in a form fit to print.

 

Ministers have also suspended publication of figures relating to employment and support allowance.

 

The DWP introduced the tougher benefits regime last October, including longer periods off benefits for failing to be fully available for work.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder why? Figures not looking to good perhaps? Need altering slightly?

[go.oot.by.dog]

Workfare placements must be made public, tribunal rules

 

New setback as DWP is ordered to publish names of businesses and charities hosting unemployed people on work schemes

 

The Department for Work and Pensions has lost a major court battle to keep the locations of thousands of workfare placements secret.

 

At the end of a freedom of information challenge that has lasted 15 months, Judge David Marks QC ruled that the DWP must publish the names of businesses and charities hosting hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who, in some cases, must undertake weeks of unpaid work as a condition of receiving benefits.

 

Full story here -

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/19/workfare-placement-published-court-rules

[go.oot.by.dog]

A guide to Employment and Support Allowance – The Work Capability Assessment

 

This guide gives detailed information about the ‘Work Capability Assessment’ element of Employment and Support Allowance. It is aimed mainly at professionals and contractors but can also be read by claimants.

 

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/@disabled/documents/digitalasset/dg_177366.pdf

[go.oot.by.dog]

A few of the headlines which i posted and were lost due to Shetlink having technical difficulties.

 

Dwp Just Can't Get Its Story Straight Re Fake Psych‘Test’

http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/dwp-just-cant-get-its-story-straight-re-fake-psych-test/

 

Fitness-for-work tests unfair on people with mental health problems, court says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/22/fitness-work-tests-mental-health-unfair

 

Duncan Smith to face grilling from MPs over misuse of statistics

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/duncan-smith-face-grilling-mps-over-misuse-statistics

 

Iain Duncan Smith To Be Taken To High Court Over Benefit Cap

http://welfarenewsservice.com/iain-duncan-smith-to-be-taken-to-high-court-over-benefit-cap/#.UZ8XGKLU_To

 

Why the Right could doom welfare reform

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10076095/Why-the-Right-could-doom-welfare-reform.html

[go.oot.by.dog]

Dr Greg Wood who worked for Atos doing the Work Capability Assessments but resigned due to the unfairness of the system has started a blog which can be found here -

 

http://worktestwhistleblower.blogspot.co.uk/

[go.oot.by.dog]

Atos strikes again......

 

Linda Wootton: Double heart and lung transplant dies nine days after she has benefits stopped

26 May 2013

 

She was told her employment and support allowance was being stopped as she lay dying in a hospital bed.

 

A double heart and lung transplant patient died just NINE DAYS after the Government stopped her benefits and ordered her to go back to work.

 

Linda Wootton, 49, was on 10 prescription drugs a day, suffering high blood pressure, renal failure and regular blackouts.

 

Yet Atos – the private firm carrying out the Government’s controversial work capability assessments – ruled she was fit enough to find a job after she was interviewed.

 

Full story here -

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/linda-wootton-double-heart-lung-1912498#ixzz2UVotuNmj

[go.oot.by.dog]

A 60-year-old man has begun a hunger strike in protest against Atos assessors who stripped him of his benefits.

 

http://welfarenewsservice.com/hunger-striker-con-dem-cuts-are-killing-me/#.UaI5ltLU_To

 

George Rolph, who has post- traumatic stress disorder, told the Star today how his incapacity benefit was suddenly stopped after Atos found him “fit for work.â€

 

He said: “I realised that this is it, there’s no way I can pay my rent or bills. I received a council tax bill requesting immediate payment but now I’ve got no money to pay it with.â€

 

Mr Rolph, who started his hunger strike protest six days ago, has received international solidarity with messages of support coming from campaigners across the world via social networking sites like Facebook.

 

Many supporters are urging him to end his hunger strike before he becomes another statistic on Calum’s list – a death toll of those who have died or committed suicide as a result of the government’s vicious welfare reforms.

 

“I really appreciate everyone’s messages but in the end Atos and this government’s policies are killing me slowly,†Mr Rolph argued.

 

“Soon I will be homeless and on the streets. While I am still in my home I will have no power or heating. I have no family left. I will go from poverty to extreme poverty and at 60 years of age I will not last long anyway.

 

“I’m not going to die quietly.â€

 

He attacked the “media chiefs who cosy up to politicians†by publishing anti-disabled propaganda that portrays them as scroungers and leeches on the system.

 

“Some of us are sick and we cannot work. That is the end of the story. Punishing us is morally reprehensible, as is forcing us to live in poverty.â€

 

Mr Rolph, who also suffers severe depression, likened current government policies towards disabled people to those of the nazis, who systematically murdered them.

 

“To think that in 2013 Britain we are fighting against this again after all the blood that was shed to stop this kind of discrimination,†he added.

 

Atos was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

[go.oot.by.dog]

And just in case you manage to get past the Atos assessment the Government are now considering a cap on the amount of times you can visit your GP........

 

Cap on number of GP visits being considered byTories

 

A cap on the number of times patients can visit their GP in a year is being considered by the Conservative Party, it emerged yesterday.

 

Full story here -

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cap-on-number-of-gp-visits-being-considered-by-tories-8632396.html

[go.oot.by.dog]

ATOS/DWP Hunger Striker George Rolph - Statement published today @ 2pm on 27th May 2013.

 

Love & Peace to all.

♥

~S

An Announcement About My Protest

 

When I began my protest my aim was not hurt or cause distress to anyone but those who should be hurt and distressed because they deserve to be. Neither did I intend to take my life, but to give it in the service of others also suffering under the brutal and cruel regime of ATOS and the DWP.

 

I did not ask to be placed on disability benefit. My doctor made that decision when he gave me a sick note to take to the DHSS as it was then. He gave me that note because it was clear I could no longer hold down a job. I wanted to work but I just could not do so. I have PTSD.

 

I sought help for the PTSD but It was almost impossible to find any. This country is way behind America in that regard. My doctor got me a counsellor. She asked me to lay on a couch while she played dolphin music to me. I left in disgust. I wanted help coping with the symptoms, not to be a part of some new age hippy experiment.

 

I found a psychiatric drop-in centre nearby and went in and poured out my heart to a bored looking man who said virtually nothing. At the end, he left the office and returned shortly after with a piece of paper. He handed it to me; made it clear it was time for me to leave and showed me the door. When I got outside I looked at the paper. It was a list of books to read. One of the titles I remember was “How to contact your inner child.†I was stupefied that this was the level of care being offered to the sick by people being paid very handsome salaries. Sheer, disinterested laziness lay behind that book list!

 

I took the list to the Library and the girl took it to see if they could order them for me. Some of them cost over £60 one of them was over £100. She laughed and said the Library could not afford to buy books like this and said I needed a specialist reference Library. I threw the paper in the bin.

 

The level of benefits I was getting placed me just above the poverty line and sometimes, when many bills came together, below the poverty line. I watched my life going down the toilet.

 

I was eating rubbish food. Wearing second hand clothes bought from charity shops. I was never totally on top of bills, so to pay them I would have to eat beans on toast every day for two weeks and vitamin supplements. In Winter I was frightened of turning on the heating. I had a fridge-freezer that I turned onto the lowest safe setting to conserve electricity. I would never have more than one light bulb burning and those were energy saving bulbs. When my hoover burnt out I could no longer clean the carpet and I watched as the grime built up. I could not afford a new hoover.

 

In time you become inured to living in filth. You stop seeing it because you can do nothing about it. You just try to keep yourself clean and presentable to the world. I wore a false smile everyday so people would not know the strain I was feeling inside. I felt like half a man; a failure; but I went on in the hope that the future may get brighter some day.

 

One day I saw a job advertised. Working from home in Telesales. I decided to give it a go. Maybe, if I was working from home, I could fit the job around my symptoms. It was a big decision. If I took the job and could not handle it, I would lose all benefits. I took the risk. I worked very hard for three weeks and then I fell apart. It is the nature of PTSD that routines can be almost impossible to maintain. You cannot go night after night with little sleep and remain a fully functioning human being who rises at 7am and works to 5pm. I quit and I lost all benefits.

 

When my last pay cheque ran out I sat in a house with no power and no food wondering if I would starve or freeze to death first. Finally I went to a local church and began to beg. I had never felt so degraded in my life. An old Scottish couple heard my pleas and came to my rescue. Out of their own pockets they began shopping for three and they paid my power bills too. I now had heat, food and light again. I then went to war with the DHSS, won the battle and my benefits were restored after three more weeks. God bless that Scottish couple. They were a model of what Christianity is supposed to be.

 

My life returned to a routine of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just trying to keep my head above water. I used to read reports in the media of people living a life of luxury on the dole and wonder how they managed it. I never read about what it is really like.

 

Of course, I saw through the government and media agenda on the subject. If they could blame those on the dole for daring to take it, they could hide the truth of what life was like for those honest people living on it. The government needed cash for wars, grand building projects, like high speed rail links and for fiddling their expenses. They did not want to give cash to the poor, but they also wanted to look like they did.

 

The art of spin.

 

Then one day the call came to visit an ATOS assessment centre in Croydon. I duly went along. I went without food for two days to pay for the train and bus fairs to get there, but they said I could claim those expenses back. I would have to wait three weeks to get those fairs back though.

 

I went, I sat through the interview. I passed.

Later I was called to do the same again.

I went, I sat through the interview. I passed.

Then again.

I went, I sat through the interview. I passed.

Then once more. Same questions. Same responses to those questions.

I failed!

 

They did not tell me there and then I had failed. I found out a month later at a compulsory job centre interview. I had drawn my last benefits that day. All benefits were now cut off.

 

I was in shock for three days. I could not read, let alone fill out the appeal form I had been given. I would stare at the form but the words would not penetrate my mind. My whole world was crumbling around me. The terrible implications for my immediate future were pounding at my mind.

 

Bailiffs banging on the door.

Power cut off.

No food.

Eviction for non payment of rent.

On the streets at sixty years old.

Dying in obscurity down an alley somewhere.

Why? Who did I hurt? Even criminals get a warm bed, three meals a day and clothing.

 

I was not stealing from anyone. In fact, when a friend gave me £20 for helping load a van when he moved house, I took £10 of it and handed it in the DHSS office in Bromley because I was not allowed to earn more that £10 a week. Why was I now being punished by ATOS for being sick and being honest?

 

How did I fail? There was no sense or logic to it. If I passed three times and nothing had changed, why had I failed on the forth occasion. This smelt of a whim. Someone at the assessment centre had made a decision that I was going to fail in order to meet their target. They met their target. I met horror.

 

How do they sleep?

 

I typed “Dealing with ATOS†into Google and I started reading. What I found horrified me. They had done this to thousands of people and people were dying!

 

Dear friend and supporter. I am going to make an announcement, but before I do so I want to strain your patience just a little longer. I want to show you what REAL criminal scroungers look like and then I want you to remember that this government and Prime Minister insists we remain a part of this villainous exercise, while at the same time they beat up the disabled in our own country.

 

This is part of a report from the Times newspaper.

 

February 22, 2009

 

By Jonathan Oliver (Times Online)

 

A LEAKED internal report has revealed systematic abuses by Euro MPs of parliamentary allowances that enable them to pocket more than £1m in profits from a single five-year term, writes Jonathan Oliver.

 

The auditor’s confidential report, suppressed by the Brussels parliament, discloses the extraordinary frauds used by MEPs to siphon off staff allowances funded by taxpayers.

 

It shows that some claimed for paying assistants of whom no record exists, awarded them bonuses of up to 1½ times annual salary and diverted public money into front companies.

 

An investigation into the abuses of staff allowances worth up to £182,000 a year — many of which are paid by MEPs to members of their family — was delivered in January last year but was not published.

 

A copy of the 92-page report, prepared by Robert Galvin, the parliament’s head of internal audit, has been seen by The Sunday Times. It reveals:

 

Payments were made to assistants who were not accredited with the European parliament and to companies whose accounts showed no activity.

End-of-year bonuses worth up to 19½ times monthly salary were paid to assistants to allow members to use up their full annual allowance.

Payments, supposedly for secretarial work, were made to a crèche whose manager happened to be a local politician from the MEP’s political party.

Payments were made straight into the coffers of national political parties.

Some assistants doubled their money by banking pay-offs from outgoing MEPs at the same time as receiving salaries from incoming ones.

One MEP claimed to have paid the full £182,000 staff allowance to one person, suspected of being a relative.

 

The revelations come as British MEPs look forward to an inflation-busting pay rise this year that could see their take-home pay rising by almost 50%.

 

In his report, Galvin said that overpayments of allowances were common, adding: “Remuneration paid may not always be justified by the real costs of providing parliamentary assistance.†He warned that abuses exposed the parliament to “financial, legal and reputational riskâ€.

 

The report was based on a representative sample of 167 payments — out of a total of 4,686 — made during October 2004. It suggests that Galvin unearthed only a tiny fraction of the many corrupt practices employed by some of the 785 members of the 27-nation parliament. His analysis of the 2004 figures then took years to surface within the secretive Brussels bureaucracy.

 

Dear friend. Can you see? We are being run by gangsters in expensive suits who are lining their own pockets while they strip all they can get away with from our own people. They are stealing your money while hypocritically blaming the poor for doing the same!

 

THAT is evil. No matter how you cut it, that is EVIL.

 

I fought back with the only weapon I had and decided to go on a hunger and water strike in protest and to try and alert as many people as possible to what is going on. I know that politicians willing to do these things are not going to listen to me. BUT I also know that if YOU raise your voices loudly enough they will HAVE TO listen to YOU!

 

However, there was a flaw in my strategy that I did not take into account. In doing this and making my time so short, I was actually going to be hurting the very people I needed to support me. I have been so moved by people who have been saying to me that they support me 100% but would I please just drink.

 

My dear friends Jess and Ian, who have been stalwarts in backing my protest have both carried a lot of anxiety about my health and I know many of you have also. One of the biggest problems has been the time factor that my hunger and water strike imposed. A maximum of just 12 days to live but probably shorter than that in reality.

 

After much soul searching I have decided to drink today, but I shall not eat until victory has been won. I gather I can expect to live for around 60 days without food. That should be enough time to mobilise a huge protest to get ATOS stopped and to demand retribution for the needless deaths that have already happened.

 

Murder is wrong! Officially sanctioned murder is just as wrong!

 

Please. Let us all fight back and for once, let the decent people be heard instead of those evil voices that con, deceive, lie and pervert our country and its values for their own ends.

 

We have to take our country back. This fight will be one step on that journey. I beg you. Help me to win it so we can help those who cannot help themselves.

 

George Rolph

[go.oot.by.dog]

^^^^^^^^^^

Absolutely devastating story and it is by no means a unique situation as the same is happening to thousands of sick and disabled people who are also wrongly being found fit for work by the inhumane corrupt Work Capability Assessment performed by Atos on behalf of the DWP. And yet the main stream media seem to give it no coverage at all

 

As MP Michael Meacher pointed out in a speech he gave in the House of Commons which i posted a video link to earlier 10600 people (at that point no doubt the number will be much higher now) had taken/lost their lives due to the system and it s incompetency and yet again that did not seem to warrant any sort of mass media coverage

[go.oot.by.dog]

Iraq Veteran Who Lost Right Arm To Bomb Asked During WCA If He Is Right Handed

http://samedifference1.com/2013/05/28/iraq-veteran-who-lost-right-arm-to-bomb-asked-during-wca-if-he-is-right-handed/

 

Iain Duncan Smith: cut welfare to fund police and Forces

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10083049/Iain-Duncan-Smith-cut-welfare-to-fund-police-and-Forces.html

 

Benefits crackdown ‘humiliates’ disabled Army war veterans

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/benefits-crackdown-humiliates-disabled-army-war-veterans-8633610.html

[go.oot.by.dog]

A well said piece -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY0LI7tuqlI

[go.oot.by.dog]

A phone Interview With George Rolph the man on hunger strike. I believe this Interview was given prior to the written update posted above.

 

http://dwpexamination.org/forum/political-soap-box/a-phone-interview-with-george-rolph/