6 July 2017 latest news stories from Disability News Service

Thursday evening is a good time to pick up the latest news stories from Disability News Service.

So, here goes with a copy-and-paste job:

Latest Stories

• 
  July 6, 2017 0 New disabled MP accuses government of ‘eugenics’
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Police watchdog criticised over investigation into murder of disabled refugee
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Disabled MP forced to miss Commons debates because he has nowhere to sit
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 New disabled MPs back fresh call to reopen access fund
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Years of austerity have left personal assistance in ‘very fragile state’
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Using personal assistants works, research concludes… but it can go wrong
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 PIP reassessments cause more than half DLA claimants to lose Motability rights
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Foodbank study suggests disability benefits should rise
   
• 
  July 6, 2017 0 Pub discrimination leads one year later to Disability Pride

Commenting on Kwug Blog contents

The Kwug Blog publisher feels obliged to publish the below as a Kwug Blog blog post in itself. That is because very few comments have turned up in response to Kwug Blog contents, despite a daily readership in the hundreds.

The non-appearance of readers' comments may seem suspicious to unfamiliar readers faced with hundreds or thousands of comments on, say, news items posted to the Guardian website or that of someone such as Kate Belgrave or Martin Francis. The only comments received on this blog that I have not uploaded have been inappropriate, such as an advert for a 'man and van' type business appearing in relation to a blog post about people being forced to move out of their existing accommodation.

It is also frustrating to the publisher. I have been advised that I need to get involved in Twitter to attract a much wider audience, as very few blog readers do leave comments directly and I need to increase the readership in order to increase the chances of receiving comments.

Yet I have such a slow reading pace resulting from very slow 'mental processing speed' that getting personally involved in such social media platforms as Twitter would require me to be active in social media to the exclusion of having a real life outside blogging, such as looking after my developing musicianship. (I also admit here to not looking into the e-mail account related to the blog, because of time and motion matters.)

Anyhow, the below has long been displayed on the right hand side bar of this blog for some years now, to little effect.

Commenting on Blog Contents

Comments are approved unless abusive, obscene, completely off the subject, disguised advertising or libellous. Publication of a comment does not imply that the blog administrator or KUWG agree with it.

Please note if I respond to comments it is in my Google log in — never 'Anonymous'

Commenters cause less confusion when they use their own names or pen names. A host of 'Anons' can give very mixed messages. Even if you use the technically easier 'Anonymous' button to make a comment you can still put your name at the end.

David Cameron's father and the Panama tax haven scandal

It strikes me that the news coverage of the fallout from the Panorama Panama tax havens disclosures
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b076vwwy
is descending into, "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine" on tax returns.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36010902

This Government is cutting disability benefits and sanctioning people. Even without that State terrorism,27 per cent of single parents have a disability, compared with 21 per cent of couple parents

http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/365/Statistics

Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty has already written regarding lack of adequate nutrition for pregnant parents in Tottenham, etc.

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-006&ei=utf-8&fr=ytff1-tyc&p=brain%20development%20site%3A%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk%2F&type=

By contrast, whatever the legalities, David Cameron's father had enough to live on to stash money away offshore and was a 'huge inspirational' 'glass half full,' inspirational figure, role model for the current Prime Minister.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310325/David-Cameron-loses-inspirational-father.html

Some people have much larger glasses than others, and yet still insist on depriving others of already inadequate incomes. Evidence-gathering for 'welfare to work' 'welfare reform', meanwhile, is policy-driven.

BBC1 tv's 'The Big Questions': Should a society be judged by how it treats its less fortunate members?

This was first broadcast on Sunday 20 March 2016. Panel members include Guardian columnist Owen Jones (a Labour Party member) and Green Party Work & Pensions Spokesperson Jonathan Bartley.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0755gl8/the-big-questions-series-9-episode-11

"Moral, ethical and religious debate with Nicky Campbell. Should a society be judged by how it treats its less fortunate members? Should climate change now be taken seriously?"

Coroner: 'Fit-for-work' cert. cued suicide

Placard designed by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Coroner's ground-breaking verdict: Suicide triggered by 'fit-for-work' test —
Disability News Service

Disability News Service reports:

Coroner's ground breaking verdict: Suicide was 'triggered' by 'fit for work' test

A coroner has demanded that the government takes action to prevent future deaths of disability benefit claimants, after concluding in a "ground breaking" inquest that a disabled man killed himself as a direct result of being found "fit for work."

Continue reading on Disability News Service website

Daniel Roque Hall's progress

Uploaded by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

KUWG veterans will recall that Kwug individuals were involved in supporting the disability access and human rights campaign for severely disabled Daniel Roque Hall from negligence amounting to abuse in 2012/13. That campaign was well covered by disability journalist John Pring on his Disability News Service website.(1)

Now well out of prison, Daniel is making far better progress in his rehabilitation than he ever would have done incarcerated. His mum Anne reports below on his progress, with a fundraising appeal. Kwug members can hardly help with donating, but we can at least allow some publicity space here for publicity and promotion; and I have reservations about the ethics of stem cell stuff, especially in China.

To all those who supported my son Daniel Roque Hall during 2012 in his fight against imprisionment, from Anne Hall, his mother.

Daniel recovering with TLC. (Caption by Dude Swheatie)

Getting Daniel released from his prison sentence - which caused him to be hospitalised for five months - saved his life and we are both forever grateful for all the efforts made on his behalf.  When Daniel came home from hospital in February 2013 he was very frail, mentally and physically, and it took a year for him to make a recovery.  Unfortunately Daniel’s heart has been permanently damaged by what happened in prison and he cannot recover from that, which causes more health complications.  However his spirit has got stronger and although day-to-day life is always very difficult for Daniel, he has begun to write a book about his experiences which he hopes will contribute to understanding what it’s like living with a very severe and progressive disability and illness.  He is also taking speech lessons with an actor to maintain and optimise his speech, and now that the weather is warming up, he is able to go out more and exercise. 

 

I am writing now to ask for your support again.  We are fundraising to enable Daniel to travel to China where he can have stem cell treatment, together with intensive traditional therapies including massage and acupuncture which can help maximise the impact of stem cell treatment.  There is no risk attached to this treatment (and no ethical issues as the stem cells are from umbilical cord blood) and although it is not a cure, it has been used successfully to alleviate some of the worst symptoms of Friedreich’s Ataxia.  This treatment is not available in the UK. 

 

If you would like to support our fundraising efforts, please go here to make a donation, and for more information about the treatment.

 

Please send this email on to anyone you know who might help.

 

Thank you again,

Anne Hall  

Notes

(1) http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=%22daniel+roque+hall%22

(2) http://www.gofundme.com/stemcellsfordisabl

Fiscal responsibility and social security

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Labour leader Ed Miliband has pledged his party to 'fiscal responsibility', 'accounting for every penny' with the launch of Labour's Manifesto for the UK General Election 2015.(1) I accuse his party's penny-pinching of complicity in

• the demise of real-terms value of social security payments(2) and 
• earnings disregards for people on unemployment benefits(3)

during its 1997 to 2010 time in office when I was a disabled jobseeker. That includes the times when I was in full-time study (on Mandatory Award that was even less than unemployment benefit/JSA levels [1994-1997], and JSA dependent part-time work at £7.81/hr as a social care worker with minimal in-service training [2005-2006]. (Zero growth budget increases under Labour central and local government for charities such as the one I worked for in 2005-2006 stemmed, I was told, from under-investment by central government in local authority budgets.) More in-service training might have permitted me to extend the range of my 'service delivery' to the array of 'adults with learning difficulties' that that charity was contracted to support; but my eventual experience was of walking six miles to to and from service users' houses for work each day contracted session even while I was getting less than Jsa levels. Through that I developed cystitis in my legs through a low-budget, high stress life-style realised that as an adult with a learning difficulty myself, constantly cost-cutting government policies ensured that I would never be considered 'hard working' enough to get the support I required.

DWP staffing cuts also screwed up the delivery of the JSA top-up to my part-time earnings of £7.81/hr.(4)

There is an obsession among the well-to-do and the middle classes through the failure of not only politicians such as Iain Duncan Smith to take up the challenge of attempting to live on £53/wk,(5) and the failure of politicians to internalise the challenge of 'accounting for every penny' in the delivery of public spending that they would get from say six months on JSA levels as their income parameters. And how about voters taking up that challenge?

A question for parliamentary candidates in the 2015 UK General Election:

Isn't it high time that the policies of parties standing for political office were led more by people with actual experience of poverty through being disabled people and carers themselves, than by bankers such as David Freud and Rachel Reeves, American private health insurance company Unum that has been advising successive UK Governments on 'welfare reform' since 1994, and Common Agricultural Policy beneficiary and land-owner Iain Duncan Smith?(6) (7) (8) (9)

Personal Note

The author 'declares an interest' in that he is a member of another political party. He is critical of that party's own practice of having everything for its own General Election manifestos costed while there has been no proper audit of the economics of poverty line living. Eg, unpaid family carers save the NHS more than the total NHS budget, and yet the conventional UK government response to that fact can be summarised by denial — through the introduction of Unum-inspired 'disability denial factory' techniques — of the disability or health condition of the person cared for.(10) (11)

As with specific reference to "inadequate funds" for the fullest inclusion/equality of American blacks/'negroes' in Revd Dr Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, disabled people who are poor have been cheated out of equal rights.(12)

Reference Notes

(1) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/12/ed-miliband-manchester-manifesto-labour-party-fiscal-responsibility
(2) Yahoo search: jsa levels real-terms site: http://www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk
(3) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/06/23/why-people-work-informally-while-claiming-benefits-special-report/
(4)  http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/11/16/jobcentre-plus-poor-service-continues/
(5) https://www.change.org/p/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week
(6) David Freud reference http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1577313/Welfare-is-a-mess-says-adviser-David-Freud.html
(7) Rachel Reeves reference http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1577313/Welfare-is-a-mess-says-adviser-David-Freud.html
 (8) Unum reference http://www.whywaitforever.com/dwpatosbusinessunum.html
(9) Iain Duncan Smith as Common Agricultural Policy beneficiary http://www.monbiot.com/2013/07/01/robber-barons/
(10) Carers save the country .... http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/12/carers-save-uk-119bn-a-year
(11) Unum and 'disability denial factory' techniques http://dpac.uk.net/tag/work-capability-assessment-wca/
(12) http://quotesnack.com/martin-luther-king/we-refuse-to-believe-that-there-are-insufficient-funds-in-the-great-vaults-of-opportunity-of-this-nation-martin-luther-king-jr/

Where does MPs' more-informed debate get us?

New post on Carer Watch's blog

Opposition Day Debate and disabled people

by Carerwatch

There was an Opposition Debate yesterday in the House of Commons – called by Labour on a motion to condemn the recent statement by Lord Freud about disabled people possibly working for less than the minimum wage. Lord Freud has since apologised and the motion was lost.

However for those of us who have been watching the debates on Welfare Reform since 2007 – it was chance to see how far in some ways we have come and how far in others  we haven’t moved forward at all.

For the first few years of welfare reform no one had a clue what it would be like in reality. All we had was Freud and James Purnell talking pure theory.

That has certainly changed. All MP's now have a deluge of disabled constituents coming in to their surgeries, and they have found out what it is about. So the debate is finally informed amongst MPs. Yet still they do nothing.

Fundamentally the big problem with Employment Support Allowance remains. Both Tory and Labour parties have not Read more of this post on the Carer Watch blog

carerwatch | 29 October 2014 at 11:33 | Tags: disability, employment support allowance, freud, work capability assessment | Categories: disability, Disabled, employment support allowance | URL: http://wp.me/pHmFD-15Q

Keep disability arts alive — Care2 Action Alerts

From Christina C., Care2 Action Alerts

action alert! The arts are for everyone. But Cuts to the Access to Work scheme imperil the future of disabled artists. UK Government, Don’t Cut Disability Arts Funding! please share it helps!     Artists with disabilities including actress Nicola Miles-Wardin were at center stage in the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Paralympics in London. At that time, many declared that disability arts had "come of age" in the UK. Two years later, all the gains made by disabled artists are threatened because of cuts to the Access to Work scheme. Just three decades ago, there was no expectation that someone with learning disabilities, autism or other disabilities could contribute culturally. Now, the UK is home to Graeae, a theatre company that champions accessibility, and Strictly Collaborative, an inclusive theatre company that disabled and non-disabled people can participate in. The UK has been called a leader in recognising and supporting disabled artists. Cuts to Access to Work will negate all that disabled artists have achieved. Reduced funding means that Graeae's artistic director, Jenny Sealey, who is deaf, and actors who rely on sign language interpreters will not be able to do their work. Sealey has even been told that only scientists and not artists can qualify for the highest level of interpreters. Theatre, dance and other arts are not only for the non-disabled. Tell the UK to support disability arts and not reduce their funding! Thank you for taking action, Kristina C. The Care2 Petitions Team

Equal opportunities monitoring and the dissing of single parents — invest in caring, not killing

Equal opportunities monitoring and the dissing of single parents and carers

By Swheatie of the KUWG

I am in the process of compiling returns on behalf of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, in response to an equalities monitoring exercise put out by Camden Council. (The Council funds the Kingsgate Community Centre in Kilburn Ward of Camden where we have our meetings.) I believe that there seems to be a serious omission or two, at least.

The categories Camden wants numbers for are:

• Female/Male
• Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, or Refugee
• Disabled
• Young People (18-24 yrs olds)
• Older People (50+)

Yet the very broad social group that is single parents is yet again seriously targeted by punitive 'welfare reforms' that ignore the fact that even the DWP recognises that

"Where single parents are not working, this is often because there are health issues that make work difficult: 33 per cent of unemployed single parents have a disability or longstanding illness (25) and 34 per cent have a child with a disability (26) "
See Gingerbread - Statistics

So a council's monitored categories pay no regard to the vital matter of parenting while the stress of under-provision that David Cameron and his wife never experienced while raising a very severely disabled child has a serious impact on family stability, especially when childcare funding is on the decline. (I have read previously on a Gingerbread factsheet around 2010, that overall in the UK, the figures relating to disabled parents and parents of disabled children as single parents was 1 in 7. It seems that the DWP regards disability as tantamount to fecklessness, perhaps?

;-)

Through the casework of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, I know that single parents — especially those who do not know their rights! — are most likely to be bullied at the jobcentre by threat of sanctions, even while the single parent concerned is doing what they can raising two children and attending a pre-university course with which they are making progress. It seems as a general rule that both single parents and people with poor command of the English language are especially prone to be targeted for excessive jobsearch demands that are really designed to break the person into burnout leading to sanctions, or to get so fed up that they recklessly sign-off the dole, than to ever help them get a job. (I have received anecdotal evidence that staff running 'Mandatory Work Programme' at Ingeus are especially hard on young Somali men, demanding that they apply for a minimum of 50 [yes, fifty!] jobs per week.)

At the same time, I also draw attention to the role of family-based carers that in some ways parallels that of single parents. It has been estimated that family-based carers' contribution to society saves the NHS more per year than the annual budget of the NHS!

Against this backdrop, there is a petition to invest in a caring society via a living wage for mothers and other carers. But experience suggests that even with a separate table being provided for single parent's children, it is difficult to accommodate single parents in a once-a-week business meeting. I believe that local councils need to consider this matter when they lay out their equalities monitoring schemes.

Some Thoughts on Context and Content for Budget Day

How a tale of a scientist and the performing flea connects to the backdrop of today's Con-Dem Budget*

By Swheatie of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group


On Budget Day, it's crucial to think in terms of 'first principles', what is the problem or what are the problems and therefore what are the solutions, says Swheatie of the KUWG

There is a story of a scientist and a flea, as told in Lyall Watson's book 'Supernature'. The scientist starts with an intact flea and tells it to jump and the flea jumps over the obstacle and the flea succeeds.

Then the scientist amputates one pair of the flea's legs and tells it to jump, and it still clears the obstacle.

Even after the scientist has amputated a second pair of the flea's legs, it still manages to clear the obstacle when told to 'jump', but removing the final pair of the fleas legs leads the flea to immobility and the scientist to conclude that removing all pairs of the flea's legs makes the flea go deaf.

That conclusion is somewhat similar to Tony Blair's investment banker turned 'welfare reform guru' David Freud — now Con-Dem Welfare Reform Minister and life-peer Lord Freud — reckoning that the way to solve the unemployment crisis is to 'incentivise' private companies with huge bonuses for getting disabled people off benefits and into waged employment, and then sanctioning benefit claimants who cannot 'make the grade' when physical, social and economic structures work against them. Also, of course, imbalance of bargaining power between employers and workers, coupled with shareholders' greed and alienation from workers leads to workers' burnout.

Parents' vital role in helping build society from the bottom up

And class and income hide the truths that disabled people have a real full-time job on their hands surviving against a backdrop of disabling structures, while every parent has a vital role in helping to build society from the bottom up. Using Department for Work & Pensions' own figures, single-parent families charity Ginerbread reports:

Where single parents are not working, this is often because there are health issues that make work difficult: 33 per cent of unemployed single parents have a disability or longstanding illness (25) and 34 per cent have a child with a disability

The late American educational psychologist Dr Haim G Ginott who was of Jewish extraction pointed out that the true role of parenting was not to raise children to 'make [attain] the grade [as set by others]'. He asked: "What have we accomplished if we have reared a child who is brilliant — at the top of his class — but who uses his intellect to manipulate others?

"And do we really want children so well-adjusted that they adjust to an unjust situation? The Germans adjusted only too well to the orders of the Nazis to exterminate millions of their fellow men.

"Understand me: I'm not opposed to a child being polite or neat or learned. The crucial question for me is: What methods have been used to accomplish these ends? If the methods used are insults, attacks, and threats, then we can be very sure that we have also taught this child to insult, to attack, to threaten, and to comply when threatened.

"If, on the other hand, we use methods that are humane, then we've taught something much more important than a series of isolated virtues. We've shown the child how to be a person — a mensch, a human being who can conduct his life with strength and dignity."

(Extract taken from Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish's (1973, 1990) 'Liberated Parent, Liberated Child: Your Guide to a Happier Family'.)

Of course, had the scientist not assumed the right to interfere with nature in the way outlined, and not assumed that everything depended upon the flea's ability to obey the scientist's will, the flea would have managed to continue to function as it was designed to do.

Note
* This blog piece stems from a comment Swheatie placed on a Reflective log item by artist Helen Mandley: Context is everything

Disability is not that simple

Inquiry — Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments

From CarerWatch's blog

With  reasonable adjustments many disabled people can work as productively as anyone else so that they can compete in the competitive  labour market on an equal playing field.
But many others can’t....

Continue reading at
http://carerwatch.com/reform/?p=1867

"Gove + DWP set kids up for life of misery," says Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Secretary

"Education Secretary Michael Gove's premature and relentless testing regime and the Department for Work & Pensions attacks on social security payments are setting children up for a life of misery," Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Secretary Alan Wheatley said today.

"When the market rules people's lives and workers become commodities, the market also colonises children and their childhood," he said. "Testing is used to measure the value or otherwise of children rather than monitor the support they require. Against that backdrop, successive UK Governments have sided with turning children's impairments into disabilities as money spent per child to support their development is cut and misappropriated by channelling it into endless testing. A June 28, 2002  Times Educational Supplement article by Ted Wragg is aptly headed 'Humane rights of the tested'.

"The impact of cuts in poor families' income is recognised in a Kellogs televised commercial that pledges to give money to sponsor poor children's breakfasts when people buy a Kelloggs breakfast cereal. Cuts in housing and council tax benefits also lead to disruptions in  children's home life as councils such as LB Brent have become renowned for implementing central government cuts. At the same time, overseas millionaires leave UK properties unoccupied as gambling chips in a bid to increase house prices beyond the reach of even public service workers such as teachers."

Details of the London teachers' march can be found on the Camden Trades Council website. "It is great that the teachers unions are co-operating in strike action," Mr Wheatley said; "in that, they have a lot to teach the jobcentre unions." PCS Union members in jobcentres take far more industrial action than the more-short-term-contract GMB members in jobcentres, and this lack of joint working has led to apparent apathy of even PCS union members at Kilburn Jobcentre who have demonstrated great reluctance to so much as form a picket line on an official strike day.