Lambeth Pan Disability Forum Thursday 19th May

The meeting of the Lambeth Pan Disability Forum scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday 19th May, is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Please accept my apologies for the short notice and any inconvenience this may cause.

I will post a new date for this meeting as soon as I can.

In the struggle

Seán

The Lambeth People's Assembly

The

Lambeth People's Assembly

Is Holding a Conference on Cuts

In the Assembly Rooms

Lambeth Town Hall

SW2 1RW

On Saturday 21 May 2011 from 12 - 4pm

Lambeth Pan Disability Forum Thursday 19th May

Hello All

You'll be pleased to hear that the Lambeth Pan Disability Forum is holding its next monthly meeting on Thursday 19^th May. The meeting begins at one o’clock in the afternoon and we hope to finish two hours later at three o’clock. We meet, usually on the first floor meeting room, of the Lambeth Accord building (please, ask at reception if unsure where to go), which is at 336 Brixton Road, London SW9 7AA.

Please, try to come along. There are a number of important issues under discussion; these include the government cuts, transport, the Lambeth CIL and the Lambeth Country Show.

Hope to see you all there.

Sean

Chair of Lambeth Pan Disability Forum

Why I Missed 11 May 'Hardest Hit March'

My intentions were honest; but, the London traffic, and more annoyingly, my bladder, let me down today. Given that on a good day I can usually get over to the Victoria Embankment in around twenty minutes; leaving home at 10:50 am to get to the rallying point of the march seemed adequate.

Transport for All Director, Faryal Velmi, on the ‘Hardest Hit’ March, May 11^th 2011

10:30 took a whizz; in the car and off by 10:50, with 2.8 miles to travel. Piece of pie, I hear you say. Not so, rebuts I. Oh no; get to Nine Elms, and traffic is naughty, lots of the stuff, mostly impeding my efforts to get to where I’m hoping to get, on time...

At 11:35 we’ve remained static outside St Thomas’ Hospital for about twenty minutes; our position giving such an appearance of permanence that the road workers are nonchalantly weaving in and out of the traffic with fully laden wheelbarrows; even stopping for a tea break in the middle of the road – yes, they knew something we didn’t; they knew they controlled the temporary traffic lights.

Here I use ‘temporary’ in its loosest of senses. At least with temporary there is some promise of normalcy returning within a reasonable time frame. Not here, the wait was interminable.

By now my bladder is doing that thing it does when it wants emptying – getting on my bloody nerves! But, once it starts, my mind then becomes a slave to its needs; so I slavishly obey, and we’re forced to turn around to find a toilet. Within a couple of minutes we’re at Vauxhall; from here it’s as well I go home and use my own loo.

On the road again at 12:10, this time we take Vauxhall Bridge – those road workers won’t lure me into their ‘temporary traffic lights’ trap again! Now we’re doing well; past Millbank Tower (where I discover there is a cinema attached to the complex) we drive; and, suddenly the flow slows down. Here we go again, another traffic jam – seems there’s some kind of demo in the Westminster area (that’s what happens when democracy is extended to the masses – they clog up the roads with marches!’).

Being a bit slippery, as I’m wont to be, we slide down Horseferry Road, and I direct my PA to a shortcut; one that’ll take us around the demo bring us to the Methodist Central Hall, from here to Parliament Square, up Whitehall, do a right at Horse Guards, and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt and we have kippers for tea – it’s great when a well-executed plan slips effortlessly into action.

Doing a deft bit of navigating around the back of streets, mostly famous for Tory Party leadership challenge intrigues, we come out into Great Smith Street – time now is 12:30. Should make the march in another 10 minutes, or so I reckon.

However, I wasn’t reckoning on another set of temporary (for temporary read perpetual) traffic lights way ahead of us at the top of Great Smith Street. Once again the forces of the mighty utility companies and nature were joined to thwart my plans. By 12:50, and only having inched an inch or three, my bladder, bless it, made its feelings known to me.

Now I’m totally pissed off – pun or no. Again, there are places to pee in the vicinity; but, disabled parking in Westminster’s as rare as a compassionate Tory. Sure, I could get dropped off; however, if I needed any help in the loo there’s no one to assist. The Blue Badge scheme is great; I can park up in a town in a country hundreds of miles from my home; a country whose language is a, foreign language to me; but, I’ll be able to use the Blue Badge scheme. I try to park less than two miles from my home and Westminster make life impossible.

If you’ve got this far, well done. You have great perseverance; and, if perseverance was featured in the WCA you’d be on JSA. Needless to say, I didn’t make the march today. For all those of you who battled and fought their way from around the country, I humbly thank you for your tenacity; and, I hope you will find it within your capacious hearts to forgive a crip with a weak bladder for not being able to get there from a distance of three miles.

Is Atos Penalised for the Large Amount of Errors it makes in its WCA Assessments?

Given the number of successful appeals against Atos assessments for ESA is quite large; is Atos penalised in any way for the errors its assessors make during medical assessments for migration between Incapacity Benefit and ESA, or if unlucky, JSA.

If a building company made errors on the scale that Atos is making them they’d be subject to penalty clauses. Similarly, when we in the workplace mess up we’re, usually, disciplined in some way.

The Tories have for decades promoted private industry over the public sector. The disciplines of the market, we’re informed, ensure that the private sector is more efficient than its over indulged cousin, the public sector. Therefore, it is more economically advantageous for us to use private sector contractors, such as Atos, to carry out DWP medical assessments.

This is the same argument the Tories made when privatising our railways in 1993. Under private management we’d get a cheaper and more efficient service. Nearly twenty years later the privatised railways cost us more than under the old British Rail management – obviously, taking into account cost of living rises in the intervening years. The UK’s privatised rail system is also the most expensive in Europe.

Is it any surprise then that companies such as Atos bid tenaciously for government contracts? Where else, apart from the finance sector, can you expect to be rewarded for failure on such a massive scale?

Why aren’t the readers of the Heil and Telegraph dipping their pens into their wells of poison and scratching vicious letters off complaining about the millions of pounds that Atos is costing the DWP in appeals against their shoddy assessing.

Newspapers correct incapacity benefit claims after Full Fact complaint

Several newspapers, the Heil, Telegraph, and Sun, have, after much pressure, from Fullfact.com, finally admitted they ran erroneous articles relating to the numbers of IB claimants who failed the WCAs, and were thus deemed fit for work. The papers in question have agreed to print corrections.

Next stop the DWP. Much of the misreporting around the migration from IB to ESA or JSA via the WCAs was taken from DWP’s briefings. This in turn has led to lazy journalism. Newspapers appear to have forgotten what the role of a reporter is. It isn’t to take the word of an individual or government department.

No, such information should serve only as a source of information from which the reporter then goes and investigates. It’s called researching the story. In my trade union activities I get to talk to NUJ members. They are not happy with their colleagues in the Heil, Sun etc, nor indeed local newspapers, blithely returning copy that is little more than propaganda put out by government departments.

The media, including the press, is not there to serve governments. Quite the opposite in fact, they’re there to inform the public of, amongst other things, the excesses of government. Sadly too many of our newspapers are doing the governments bidding; acting as propaganda machines helping to drive forward draconian legislation.

CCTV Eyes

Look out for the camera

The government spy

Perched up high

The telltale eye.

Look out for the snitch

Whose curtain will twitch

As surreptitiously

And, viciously

They call the grass line.

Look out for the hack

From the Daily Heil

He’ll lie and dissemble

And, his copy

Won’t resemble

Your truth.

Look out for ATOS

Who may profess

To be fair

Yet will assess

You fit for work

Though you’re dying.

Look out for the MP

Who’s after your vote

He’ll promise

You heaven,

To float your boat;

For just one more term

The treacherous worm!