This is what cutting the benefits bill means...

[edam]

apologies to Thumbwitch who posted this on another thread, but I thought it deserved a threat of its own. Absolutely shameful that the government is employing people - giving an IT company a fat contract costing the taxpayer millions - to trick disabled people out of the support they need to survive.

Or a thread of its own, even.

She was in this job 3 and a half years ago? Hadn't realised the 'cuts' have been going in since that far back

The government is employing ATOS right now. I believe the previous government also employed them. And the London Organising Committee allowed them to sponsor the Para-blinking-lympics. Someone presumably had a particularly nasty sense of humour.

I'd like to know more of the covert criteria...

I saw a lady of approaching 60, on crutches, come out crying after being told she was fit to work at an appeal..apparently she was 1 point short of the criteria. The way they are treating disabled and unwell people is shocking!

Yes it's hideous, I'm safe at the moment but my time will come :(

No worries edam - didn't see this when you first posted it! :)

www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2012/10/the-atos-nightmare-gets-worse/ it's not getting any better. The toll will continue to rise. :(

The government are only concerned with saving money...

If your disabled,sick or a Carer no one cares. My ds has a dx of ASD &ADHD. Im up again with him&can't go to bed until he falls asleep. I need to be up at 7am to get other 2dc ready for school.

I was told by my housing manager last week that i will lose14% of my housing benefit from next April as i have a dining room!?!

To access education,health& respite services is a fight in its self but the cuts are almost like the final kick in the stomach...

I don't have any choices in my circumstances. I didn't chose for my ds to be disabled. I didn't chose for ex to leave.

There isn't any childcare for ds. I have no family to help. His father dosn't give a shit,won't/can't pay maintenance. So what do i do? Im mentally &physically exhausted...

The disabled &sick of this country are treated abhorrently.

It's absolutely disgusting that the goverment are treating the disabled and carers in such a way.
What happened to discrimination laws?
And where are these so called jobs for the disabled and where is the help for carers?

I find it absolutely shocking, but then again this is the conservatives we are talking off.
They have no qualms about cutting anything, none whatsoever

Disabled people are easy to villianise & victimise - people don't WANat to empathise, they don't want to think it could happen to them, easier to blame & ostracise. Disabled people aren't cute like animals or children either, so have a problem in pr too.

I speak as someone who is disabled & is fighting battles on all sides just to stay even vaguely being treated as a human. I hate it & am losing the war of attrition, why? Cos I am sodding ill & need help, not wars :(

I'm disabled too. The treatment meted out to us is almost sub-human. I used to be proud of our welfare state. I worked damn hard, paid taxes, and was a functioning member of society. Now I am not. It's not my fault; I didn't choose to be like this and I want - more than anything - for ms to go away and let me be me again. I don't need to be vilified and castigated and I don't deserve it.

I can't get past the fact that we are being treated like this, when the effort to close loopholes in tax laws allow the Chancellor and his millionaire ilk to sit pretty with no real money worries at all, paying less tax than they morally should, and that their tax liability has been lowered. It makes me sick. I could cry.

I remember reading that article when it came out. I am so thankful my family have good health. But at any minute any one of us could become ill or disabled. It scares me. I have a good friend who NEEDS a piece of medical equipment for her son, it costs £600 and the hospital won't give them out anymore because people don't bring them back. She can't afford it, apparently she can't get certain benefits or get a council house ( 5 of them are crammed into a 2 bedroom house, her mum and dad, sister, herself and her son) because her son is under 3 years old? Does that sound right as I don't know how it works. He will probably be die by the age of ten, is it really so fucking much to allow her and her son to be allowed to live as stressfree a life as possible? Shes a wonderful mother, she puts me to shame.