The Guardian recants, but the story has legs

I haven't had a response to my email to the Guardian but looking for stories on Work Capability Assessment appeals I found this correction:

In a story yesterday headed Three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants are fit to work, says DWP, the headline and opening paragraph over-compressed findings issued by the Department for Work and Pensions....

It goes on to cite the actual figures. Interestingly it also says

Its section on appeals notes that of people found fit for work after making a claim for ESA between October 2008 and August 2009, 33% have had an appeal heard to date; of these, the original fit-to-work decision was "confirmed for 60%"; by implication 40% of fitness rulings were not upheld (27 October, page 12).

This is interesting - I overlooked it. So of the 39% found fit to work, a third appeal and 40% of those are overturned. So the number of people undergoing the WCA actually being judged fit to work is 33.8%. About a third. That's quite different from 78%! It would be interesting to see why people didn't appeal. Did they accept the decision, or did they not have the nous and resources to appeal it?

Meanwhile the Daily Mail (ever ready to outrage) reported this bogus story as:

75% of incapacity claimants fit to work: Benefits test weeds out workshy. The Sun also ran with it. The French Tribune managed the greatest distortion by claiming the figure was almost 90%! I didn't find any major daily newspaper who accurately reported the figures.

Stories of seriously ill people getting judged fit to work by the WCA:

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10945510
• http://www.ght.org.uk/news/article/39043/28/10/2010/Failed_Work_Capability_Assessments

A record of Wednesday's debate on Work Capability Assessments, Westminster Hall debates, 27 October 2010.

It is apparent that the appeal success rate various enormously from place to place - one MP saying that is was 95% from one advocate in his constituency - depending on what I wonder? We just don't know enough about what is going on when people are judged fit for work. How many of them are getting jobs?

Cancer patient faces tests on fitness to work

"As Citizens Advice Scotland disclosed 70% of its appeals against "fit to work" judgments are successful, Stefan Morkis talked to one man who must constantly prove he is too unwell to work."

Story from The Courier.
Seen on Mind In Flux.

I wonder how representative this is? We still do not know what proportion appeal. Nor how many people's appeals succeed. To ask the DWP ministers about this, email: ministers@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Danny Alexander's comments on the ESA and WCA

"The fact is that the process isn’t working and that genuinely vulnerable people are being denied money as a result." - Telegraph 26 May 2010.

So Danny... WHAT'S CHANGED?????????????????????????????????????????????

My letter to Danny:

Do you still stand behind your words printed in the Telegraph on 26 May 2010, regarding the Employment Support Allowance and the Work Capability Assessment?

"The fact is that the process isn’t working and that genuinely vulnerable people are being denied money as a result."

Would you have any comment on this YouTube video (6 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PBKrsOEV8g

I look forward to your response.

Matt

Why don't we all write to Mr Alexander about this?

Bendy Girl Strikes Back!

This is brilliant! If you read the headlines about 3/4 of incapacity benefit claimants being judged fit for work then take 6 minutes out to watch this!

First seen on the Bendy Girl's blog: Benefit Scrounging Scum.

Please go to the blog and give BendyGirl your support!

I'm really struck by this - the measured tone, the background research and the referencing of Danny Alexander's previous opposition to the current scheme.

What ever happened to those 36% of people who dropped out of the WCA? Why doesn't the DWP know?

Being on Benefits

I think with all the trauma of the impending cuts and worry about Work Capability Assessment (WCA) that it's easy to lose sight of the non-financial welfare. For instance I receive free dental care, free health care, free prescriptions, and what I need at the moment free eyes test and a contribution towards new glasses. So far no one has talked about taking away these benefits.

I'm no longer obese!

As of today my BMI is 29.6. Which means I am merely over-weight rather than obese! I never thought I'd be so pleased to say I'm fat! The diet has been hell, and I have some months to go on reduced rations. But it does make such a difference.

Letter to the General Medical Council

To Whom It May Concern

Yesterday the media were repeating claims (inaccurate as it turns out) that fully 78% of people on incapacity benefits were in fact fit to work. In fact the situation is more complex than that and the headlines were a distortion of a government press release.

But consider the implication. It is UK doctors, both GPs and DWP doctors, who are the gate keepers to incapacity benefit. I'm ill, my GP says so, my specialists agree, and the DWP doctor also agrees. And the headlines are saying that 4 out of 5 times they are wrong. The government are saying that UK doctors are incompetent and themselves unfit to judge whether a person is ill enough to need time off work.

Doctors are being undermined as much as the sick in this campaign. I wondered what the medical council thinks about this. The stories of seriously ill people being judged fit to work by the WCA are mounting up. If I am judged fit for work, which I fully expect to be despite both mental and physical health problems, then should I sue my GP practice? After all the government would effectively be telling me that my doctors are incompetent.

I look forward to your reply
Matt Black

Letter to the Editor

Dear Chris Elliott, Reader's Editor,

I am writing with regard an article that appeared on your website:

Allegra Stratton.

Three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants are fit to work, says DWP.

As I pointed out in comments on the article, the headline is misleading. This is not what the figures and the press release from the DWP say. They do not mention Incapacity Benefit for a start. 39% of people simply drop out of the system once they begin to face the stringent Work Capability Assessment (WCA). But that 39% are not accounted for; we have no idea if they died, dropped out, or recovered!

Only 39% were declared fit for work, and anecdotes are already piling up of seriously illpeople being declared fit for work. How many of the 39% appealed the decision and won? How many are really fit to work? Oh, we don't know because it's not in the official figures, nor in the press release (funny that), and the reporter didn't seem to bother asking.

If 78% were claiming a benefit unnecessarily then that would be a scandal wouldn't it? Because that would mean that GPs, specialists, IB50 form assessors, and the DWP doctors who make recommendations on fitness, have been getting it wrong 4 times out of 5! They are clearly incompetent! Call the Medical Council because most of the doctors in the country are complete idiots!

Having realised that this so-called 'report' was more or less just a government press release I felt pretty disappointed with the Guardian. I hadn't thought that this paper would be doing the government's propaganda work for them, but I suppose that was naive of me.

Really what's happening is that a lot of sick people are being pushed from a higher benefit payment onto a lower payment because of a change in ideology. Thanks for supporting the government in this program by further spreading their ideology unchallenged. Not!

Do us a favour and look into the appeal rate on these assessments, and how many people get the decision overturned. Interview a few more seriously ill people judged 'fit to work'. Do some investigation instead of spewing our government press releases.

Yours sincerely
Matt Black

The DWP press release:

The DWP statistical report. [pdf]

To cut or not to cut.

So the cuts have been announced. I am highly likely to be targeted for a shove towards employment despite the facts of my illnesses and lack of employability, to compete with 500,000 out of work civil servants. I'm still grateful for the support I get, and will continue to get even though I'm worried about making ends meet in the future.

Glancing through the media and comments from the public what strikes me is the level of polarisation between those keen to cut (whatever the social costs) and those unwilling to cut (whatever the economic costs). There is no consensus and no middle ground. Isn't that a worrying thing?

I suppose history will be the judge, but I do feel worried about being a pawn in this chess game between powerful forces that think in terms of 100,000's of people and billions of pounds. I've never felt more that society considers me a number, an unwelcome statistic, than ever before. At present I have no great hopes of the NHS coming up with any new treatment, so it looks like a very different lifestyle ahead.

TV Licensing

As back home people here in the UK pay a license fee for watching "free to air" TV (which ironically means it ain't free). This fee funds the BBC which isn't such a bad thing - it's more of a BBC tax. But I absolutely love the BBC and won't hear a word against it. It is my favourite British thing.

But there is a difference between the NZ and the UK licensing depts. I don't ever recall getting a letter about TV licensing in NZ, and have to confess that I never paid it back home - there is no equivalent of the advertisement free, high quality programming anyway. Here I don't watch TV so it's not an issue. But our house which is shared between 6 of us regularly gets these threatening letters from TV Licensing (TVL). Here's how they kick off:

Now for the last 12 years or so no one here has watched TV at this address. But more than this I have several times contacted TVL to explain the situation. The best I got was a two year hiatus of these hectoring and threatening letters, after a long phone call (they more or less ignore emails or the form that they send you to fill in even if the situation has changed. The main thing about these letters is that they threaten repeatedly to visit your house - but the thing is that they never do. They say "your details will be passed to our enforcement team". If you contact them to say that you don't watch TV they say fine but, "we will also plan a visit to confirm the situation" [they won't].

And... "What if you don't respond by 27th October?" Under these circumstances they say "we will pass your details to our enforcement team. TV Licensing officers may then visit your address." This is followed by all the gruesome details of prosecution and possible fines. One wonders how many prosecutions they bring each year?

You'd think this would be small potatoes and not worth the effort (though of course this kind of computer generated harassment is pretty cheap). But actually the fees were £3.45 billion in 2009–10. This is not chicken feed by any means, especially when the BBC costs quite a bit to run and the government spends £150 billion more than it earns each year. One can understand the "we will never surrender" attitude of TVL given how much lucre is at stake.

There are certain circumstances in which the famous British reputation for politeness is undeserved. And TVL's take no prisoners approach is certain one of them. I note that the Wikipedia article on UK TVL suggests that enforcement officers receive a commission for obtaining licence fees from people.

Diet

With all the spending cuts stuff I haven't written about myself lately. I'm going through a period of relative calm and stability and taking the opportunity to go on a diet. My weight has crept up due to reduced capacity for exercise (fibromyalgia affects my legs now as well as my upper body), over eating due to depression, and a while back a couple of months on the drug tegratol (which made me ravenously hungry all the time). I reached 99kg with a body-mass index (BMI) of 32. The official cut off for obesity is a BMI of 30. I'd become part of the obesity epidemic. It was a bit embarrassing and depressing.

So I've cut down drastically on what I eat, restricting fats and simple carbs, focussing on fresh fruit and veg, and trying to get out for a walk every day (though I've also started a Tai Chi class). I've been losing on average a little over 1kg (about 2.5 lbs in old money) a week for the last 5 weeks. My BMI is now just 30.02 and next week I'll only be fat and not obese!

I plan to keep on losing about 1kg a week until Christmas to get down to something approaching my ideal weight.

I have a new appreciation for how hard it is to diet. I sympathise with those people who continually fail. It takes a lot of positivity, determination, and perseverance - and until recently I certainly did not have what it took. Some positive things have happened to help create the necessary conditions. I don't think the advice on losing weight pays enough attention to setting up the right conditions, to the environment in which obese people live. Resisting craving takes a lot more than simply will power, especially when the habit is to give in to it.

One of my favourite Buddhist writers emphasises the problem of thinking that pleasure is happiness; or that maximising pleasure and minimising pain, maximises happiness. Actually as many chronically ill people will tell you it is possible to have a lot of pain and still be happy. Equally it is clear that people who pursue pleasure most vigorously seldom seem genuinely happy. My trouble is partly that I eat for pleasure, or because I feel emotional pain. Eating for reasons other than to sate hunger mean that eventually you get fat, like me. But you can't just give up an strategy for dealing with emotional discomfort, and food is actually quite effective for this, and expect there to be no reaction, no increase in discomfort. I could say a lot more about this, and perhaps I will, but that's enough for now.

Scandal

Chris Grayling, the Conservative Employment Minister, produced figures showing that £133.7billion had been spent on those on Incapacity Benefit for the last 10 years. This was a "scandal" which must "stop now", Mr Grayling added. - Telegraph.

Dear Mr Grayling,

I agree it is a scandal that so many people are becoming ill long term. Why do people allow themselves to become ill, when with some blitz spirit they might carry on regardless? I for instance stopped work before the pain stopped me using my limbs altogether, and the anxiety and depression drove me to another suicide attempt. I see now, with illumination from your compassion Tory government that if I had carried on and then killed myself I would not ended up what I am now: a burden to society. I'm only sorry not to have had the fortitude that I sure you and your colleagues would undoubtedly had.

Facing drastic cuts is of course the right way to get me and other so reconsider our decisions to live with illness in favour of taking our own lives. No doubt weeding out such weak links will help the Big Society become the Big Strong Rich Society. I hope however that you will consider repealing the law on assisted suicide and broaden the conditions under which I might legally obtain, for instance a one-off payment for the procurement of an overdose of morphine or barbiturate, and someone to administer it in case I lose my nerve (again).

In the longer term I would think that instead of the NHS spending vast sums coddling people with incurable diseases, they will be directed to just quietly bump them off. That will save a great deal of money, reduce hospital waiting lists, and take the uncertainty out of when we are going to die. This would be a final solution to the problem of the lingering illnesses that make people such a burden to the Big Strong Rich Society.

Those people who have done so much to create wealth in this country - the bankers and financiers, the off-shore magnates, and the multinationals - cannot be expected to pay for those of us who have so little to offer can they.

As I'm unlikely to see the Big Strong Rich Society reach it's fulfilment, with everyone being millionaires together, I will take this opportunity to apologise for being ill and draining by coffers by as much as £9,000 per year for four years now. If only I had not contracted an incurable disease, or the NHS had been able to offer me an effective treatment (or even understood the nature of my illness), but I realise now that it was a lot to expect, and that once it was clear that I was out of action long-term I should have done the decent thing.

All the best

Matt Black

News Quiz Quip

Tories... putting the 'n' in cuts. (Sandi Toksvig)

Cost of Benefits

Guide to most costly UK benefits - from the BBC website.

Tax Credits: Currently, those with children and an annual income of £50,000 or less receive £545 a year, after which payments are tapered at a rate of £1 in every £15.

Whereas...

Child Benefit: All parents regardless of their income are currently eligible for this tax-free payment, with £20.30 paid a week for the eldest child and £13.40 for subsequent children.

Not having children, or having any UK friends with children I had no idea about these. You get paid to have kids in this overcrowded country! Potentially £30 a week!

Where the government's Priorities Lie

Guardian headlines today...

Cameron caves in to Fox on defence spending after leaking of letter

After dire warnings of 'draconian cuts' leaked last week, PM and Treasury seem to have backed off from heavy cuts to defence

vs

David Cameron's welfare reform to target middle class

Costly universal credit scheme covering all benefits to take two parliaments, with focus on unemployed in first four years

Argh!

I'm not blogging about benefits and stuff because frankly I can't bare to think about it. I just don't trust these millionaire politicians to be sympathetic, and not when they are still trying to make up for not winning the election outright. When IDS says he wants to make it always worth working, I just hear "we are going to make you so poor that you'll want to pimp yourself out rather than starve". Of course they will save a lot of money. It's frankly terrifying to have my life in the hands of these people. I wish someone from a working class background, someone that had actual experience of not having enough, someone poor, someone who had something other than a highly privileged background was involved in this experience in social engineering.