THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

A new dispute has broken out over the fate of the Northern Ireland border following Brexit and there’s an enormous disparity about a hard border, enterprise, a customs union and more.

All this is extremely technical, it’s easy for the contention to appear a tad confusing even tedious. However, it’s essential to millions of people’s livelihoods and if Theresa May doesn’t solve it, her effort to move on to trade discussions with the EU will be screwed.

So how has this latest dispute started, and what does it all mean?

Theresa May wants to bypass a hard border between Northern Ireland, which is leaving the EU, and the Republic of Ireland, which isn’t, and at the moment the border is frictionless, and she wants this to continue.

That’s because border checks would create tremendous disorder and many fear they’d trigger a return to the dark days of the Troubles but even though dodging a hard border is the Prime Ministers highest priority, she hasn’t guaranteed it.

That’s because, on the one hand, she has to obtain a means of retaining a frictionless border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. This would protect items like prescriptions and the energy market, which currently operate both sides of the border.

Yet at the same time, she further needs a new set of border controls between the United Kingdom and the EU.

To make things more problematic, she’s further threatening to leave the EU with no deal at all in 2019 if Brussels declines to give any ground and some worry this will lead to a hard border.

The EU needs to sort out three things before it moves on to talk about Britain’s future enterprise with the Continent. They are the citizens’ freedoms, the divorce bill and the Northern Ireland border.

The Prime Minister wants trade talks to begin following a crunch December summit but if there’s no consensus on the border, the rest risks being held up.

Ireland has rekindled the discussion with a climactic intervention. The dilemma could be resolved by staying in the customs union or single market and it’s a very simple fact that if the United Kingdom or Northern Ireland continued to be in the EU customs union, or better still the single market, there would be no border problem.

Plus we should continue to be astonished at the blind faith that some in London place in theoretical future free trade treaties.

The Tory government has already ruled out the chance of Britain staying in the customs union or single market and Ministers say we can have a connection with these groups but staying in completely would have so many precepts that it would primarily be like staying in the EU.

This is where Mr Hogan’s three little words or Northern Ireland come in.

He knows what the UK government’s position is. Therefore he’s primarily suggesting there be one set of trading practices for the mainland and a different one for Northern Ireland.

Remember the DUP, whose 10 votes the Tories required to stay in control?

The unionist party has made it clear it won’t allow any circumstances where Northern Ireland and the mainland have different trade dictates and they will not back any arrangements that create obstacles to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any proposal that Northern Ireland, unlike the remainder of the United Kingdom, will have to mirror European statutes.

Furthermore, Tory Brexiteer MP Owen Paterson, a former Northern Ireland Secretary, accused Irish politicians of blackmail and that discussion of a separate settlement for Northern Ireland is completely ridiculous and dangerous

The notion that Northern Ireland’s going to be taken out of the single market of the United Kingdom where it does 87 percent of its commerce is crazy and it’s especially irresponsible of politicians to make a remark like that, saying they are going to force and bribe the United Kingdom into giving a special status for Northern Ireland outside the rest of the United Kingdom.

The notion we’re going to go back to old customs posts with customs officials is like attaching a spoon into a vat of treacle and that is entirely out of date.

Despite the unfolding dispute, the government is declining to give a final answer until after a settlement with the EU. The next EU summit is in mid-December, but there’s no guarantee the matter will be resolved then.

They don’t want there to be a hard border but the United Kingdom is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market.

They have always had exceptions for Ireland whether it’s in their voting rights or our rights of residence in the United Kingdom, they have always allowed a certain asymmetry and that will have to be part of whatever compromise they come to with the European Union.

However, they can’t come to a conclusive answer to the Irish problem until they get a conception of the end state. Plus until they get into negotiations with the EU on the end state that will be quite difficult, therefore the faster that they can do that, the better and they are still in a situation where the EU doesn’t want to do that.

One thing that they don’t want to do is endanger any movement suddenly because they require action to allow them to get into the proper trade agreements and they’ve got to be pretty cautious about not losing any of the gains from the peace process.

Both Ireland and Northern Ireland face a likely power vacuum that could string this out for months and the Irish government is on the verge of destruction following reports Fianna Fail, the opposition, would produce a no-confidence motion in the Deputy Prime Minister.

The dispute rotates around the handling of a police whistleblower case. In the meantime, Northern Ireland had been run since the Good Friday Agreement through a power-sharing arrangement that let unionists and Republicans hold office together.

However, that power-sharing collapsed in January and numerous efforts to revive it have crashed.

The British institution is inherently bipolar and maybe they don’t remember the shocking stuff that occurred in the disturbances in Northern Ireland and should this appalling Government be permitted to ruin Ireland as well as the balance of the United Kingdom?

It looks like this can’t be settled. The DUP will only accept that Northern Ireland has precisely the same requirements as the rest of the United Kingdom and no border which indicates staying in the single market/customs union and Brexiteers will only accept that they completely leave the single market and customs union which has to mean a boundary between Northern Ireland.

Given that we know that the Brexiteers knew this would be a problem before the election, John Major and Tony Blairs address before the election simply states this will happen, what does it tell you about how far they will go in pursuing their absurd low tax, non-existent public services, a welfare state, low wage, corporate subservient, and environment slaying crazed beliefs.

Clearly, they and the media they manipulated don’t care about their own people in the United Kingdom and even less about the Irish and if Berlin wants to force taxes on UK goods the Irish will be required to get them and it will be up to them how they do that.

Ireland had the Lisbon treaty referendum and their people declined it. The EU wasn’t happy as they wanted an agreement, a tiny piece of fearmongering and then they redid the referendum and they succeeded, a charming bit of EU bully boy democracy.

Therefore Ireland will do as the EU orders or it won’t give them any more money when they require another bailout.

The United Kingdom needs a Free-Trade Agreement that is not conceivable or on offer. The EU stated 5 years ago what the possibilities were if the United Kingdom left, they stated it before the referendum, during and after.

The United Kingdom is living in an illusion that it can enforce a separation on the EU or furthermore, 27 member nations, which cost them billions following 40 years of giving the United Kingdom awesome deductions, then get to be friends with benefits, wanting a deal that doesn’t exist.

Then on top of that, the UK media overlooks the fundamental truth that the United Kingdom following discussions commenced, still has not announced what it requires. The United Kingdom attends gatherings with no minutes, no paperwork or suggestions, hinders every exchange then stands before it’s media talking rubbish, stating growth is coming forward when nothing has been accomplished.

The United Kingdom is the one not settling, it doesn’t want a compromise, it doesn’t want a return to a European Free Trade Association arrangement it is saying stuff incompatible with what is plausible.

The United Kingdom has been fooled by far-right Brexiteers, they will move their money out through the collapse and scoop profits after, and they will move the United Kingdom closer to US control.

Seventeen million people have driven a society of 65 million to ruin, on a hope and a prayer and the United Kingdom is committing self-destruction, gradually.

It’s Brexit insanity that will destroy us all and poverty Britain will be poorer now by a hundredfold. We have no industry, we control nothing, marketed off to Europe by the Tories.

We required new hospitals so where was the money to come from? We were too hospitable and we overspent. What will surely make us destitute is the millions of low paid, low skilled immigrants, that will decrease Britains average salary and we will be poorer and poorer if that doesn’t end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may believe that giving up your seat to someone elderly on public transport is a polite thing to do, but experts have reported that doing so could actually impede their well-being as they age.

In fact, old people should be encouraged to stand and discouraged from taking it easy in order to keep themselves fit, an Oxford professor claims.

Sir Muir Gray, a clinical adviser to Public Health England, has spoken out to declare the elderly should attempt to walk for ten minutes a day and should be encouraged to take the stairs rather the lift or escalator.

Apparently, we must be stimulating exercise as we age not telling people to put their feet up. Don’t get a stairlift for your ageing parents, put in a second bannister and think twice before giving up your seat on the bus or train to an elderly person. Standing up is an excellent activity for them.

A collective endeavour to support older people to keep mobile can benefit them to live more independently and overcome the demand for social care, however additional experts argue this in a new report in The British Medical Journal.

Evidently, an activity can change the deterioration and keep a person over the threshold for requiring extended care and Health authorities claim that the results of ageing are frequently mixed up with lack of fitness and it’s actual lack of fitness that raises the prospect of requiring social care.

In fact, evidence notes that middle-aged and older people can increase their fitness level to that of an average person a decade younger by regular exercise and investigations have additionally shown that keeping fit can increase cognitive capacity and decrease the chance of dementia.

The current belief that activity is for young people while elderly people should be urged to decompress needs.

Gyms, walking groups, gardening, cooking clubs, and volunteering have all been shown to enhance the vitality and wellbeing of people at all ages with long-term conditions and rather than lying in hospital beds whenever they’re sick, the authors are requesting for a higher focus on rehabilitation and support.

And that people need to learn their purpose in diminishing demand for social care by being productive and that the gap between the best achievable level of ability and actual ability can be conquered at any age, no matter how many long-term ailments the person may have.

Evidently, the improvement in the level of ability may not only alter the person to the ability they experienced 10 years earlier, it may make the fundamental distinction between living well at home or being reliant on social care or residential care.

However, most of us and not only kids now are so engrossed in their Smartphones that they don’t recognize what is going on around them. Others tend to look out of the window when they notice a senior boarding a bus expecting that someone else will volunteer their seat.

I have noticed often that seniors are not offered a seat when they board the bus. We should not be told by experts what is good for the aged and what’s not. It’s just nice to offer but it’s not an order.

This is stupid information, people stating that the public should stop helping others. There are loads of people, the ageing, people with Chronic Arthritis that like getting out and about, although it would be impracticable without a bus pass, particularly in towns.

Nevertheless, even though they do get out and about, after a few hours, their bodies are on the brink of collapse and I am certain they are thankful to anybody who does volunteer their seat to them, it’s pure respect and we should not be making this nation needlessly more sadistic and more selfish.

You might decline to give up your seat for kids on the bus, but one should always get up for an old person and expecting women, it is simply the common practice that appears to have vanished.

Have these authorities on health ever been on a bus half full of overweight school children who wouldn’t give up their seats to their mother let alone an oldie? Have the authorities not heard of child obesity.

Maybe they’ve got the wrong target because many old people have lived for countless decades without requiring help and some of these young overweight kids will mature into adults who will require help a lot earlier than that, although obesity is another bone of contention.

All this is information from shallow minded people who do not know what it’s like to be old, not all aging people experience good health, they need to learn what it’s like for old impaired people and maybe they should be fitted up with devices that simulate arthritis et cetera and made to stand on buses, walk up stairs, walk regularly, before they mouth off about what elderly people can do.

And perhaps when they get old and have to stand at a bus stop, they will know what it’s like to be elderly and weak, but of course, I won’t be there to see it…

Support this information and I can see a lot more broken hips, if an elderly person has made it to the bus stop they are being active in getting there but balancing while standing on a bus is dangerous for an old person, and falls are bad news for them.

They may lose stability when a bus sways and they are then likely to sustain an injury as they may not be so quick to improve their gait so let’s stop being ridiculous and protect elderly passengers.

This is just another controlled mandate to be narrow-minded and not think of others. Even the most robust older people can suffer from arthritis, osteoporosis et cetera, the latter particularly could prove catastrophic if they fall over.

It is the proper thing to volunteer your seat to someone who may require it more, be they old, expecting or disabled and it seemingly does no harm to young people with no impairment to stand up. They can always decline if they don’t want to sit down.

The only great thing about having grey hair is when someone grants you a seat on the train and I’m convinced an older person would sooner get exercise swimming or walking, rather than swaggering around on public transport, carrying a bulky shopping bag.

Not all ill health is created by inactivity, only the uneducated believe that. Even the young can have arthritis and to be standing on a bus after a long and hectic day can be very painful.

Most people have lived pretty productive lives, they have danced, skied, maintained their gardens and had a healthy lifestyle and diet but then they get unwell with illnesses such as osteoarthritis and other infirmities, so these people who say that old people should stand on a bus shouldn’t be so superior and should merely be thankful for their good health while it remains.

This authority has spoken out to state the elderly should attempt to walk for ten minutes a day. How long does he believe people walk to get to a bus stop? When they get to where they are going do they get off the bus and simply sit down for a while before getting another bus home? No, they walk to a store, post office, bank, library. Then back to the bus stop and then from the bus stop to their home.

This man needs to do a training course where he and a gathering of Tories like him are taken on a sample shopping journey. He probably has a wife or secretary who does it all for him. His handcrafted footwear will barely touch the ground to walk from car to doorway.

I guess exercise is taken in a secluded club with soft music playing while he’s swimming in a heated pool, a jacuzzi splashing, massage on tap if he wants it, downy towels provided, and a bar waiting to invigorate him when he finishes his quiet splash.

Has he ever really been on a bus?

A huge amount of people over 60 have arthritis or other ailments that hurt. A little exercise at a time can be quite effective. For example, the walk down the lane to your car is great. Although you might need to sit in your car to recover before you can drive off and the supermarket is excellent because you can hang onto the trolley to walk around.

But this man has no idea what the daily fight for mobility is like.

A person with a disability is a really proud person and will attempt to walk whenever possible, providing they have both legs or any legs at all, but the pain is at times virtually unbearable, and a seat on the bus that is given is a genuine blessing.

This kind of opinion is harmful in a time when people already lack compassion and this is merely another instance of a world turned upside down and the times that we live in, a land in spiritual decay that’s unavoidable.

It looks like the prosperous are exempt, much as they are from the useful psychiatric assessment of course.

When standing on a bus or subway and it stops or breaks abruptly, people are usually launched across the aisle or even fall. Maybe this method has been proposed because it may result in broken hips for particularly weak seniors and we all know what that points to.

Again, like the closing of senior meal places and elderly day meeting programs, it results in social withdrawal, hopelessness and desperation which again influence an untimely death and this is seemingly what the government wants.

A new inquiry ordered by the Tories has determined that it is advantageous to the elderly and weak to end their benefits and boot them out on the street to fend for themselves. You have to be ruthless to be kind and what doesn’t kill them will make them stronger or something like that anyway.

These studies frustrate me, young people presumably need to stand more too but if I see an elderly or frail person standing on the bus, I will get up and give them my seat even though I am disabled myself, but solely out of courtesy and that it’s the politically correct thing to do, and it’s seemingly not good for me to sit on my arse either, but then that’s probably another study altogether…

It’s pretty mean information, and it takes a borderline sociopath to come up with something like this. Good intentions, completely empty of understanding and older people aren’t simply older people, they are human beings.

We should all have respect for older people, although there will always be morons out there and it doesn’t say much for society when old people are not treated as equal citizens and I wish I were young and could watch you as you age.

Simply standing up is not an activity, walking is. An older person could experience more if made to stand in one place, putting additional stress on joints, and maybe creating difficulties with the circulatory system.

I am not old, I will be 56 next year, but I have much wrong with me, but I will always give up my seat who may be in greater need than me. I don’t travel the bus much because I use a mobility scooter, but on the odd occasion when my scooter is in the workshop, I have to take a bus to town using my walking stick and from town, I hire a scooter to get about.

Usually, I don’t get a seat on the bus because by the time it gets to my stop it’s packed and no seats. I don’t expect anybody to give their seat up for me, but because of the stress on my joints and muscles, it would be helpful if they did, although that doesn’t occur much!

This is really brutal and will stop a lot of the elderly going out at all. They find it challenging enough to get on and off moving transportation nevermind being made to stand their entire trip. This is evil and prejudiced and teaches younger people to disrespect the elderly community.

Giving up one’s seat to an elderly person is not only about their physical state, it is about the state of a society that is caring and which holds its elderly with respect. When I think about this, I can only understand even better the Western paradigm is doomed.

The country is no more than the total of its parts, and it has been successively taken over by people who do not care to help but to profit.

Scores of disabled people and welfare advisers have told a Commons interrogation that disability benefit assessment reports made on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions are filled with lies and misinformation and the Work and Pensions select committee is carrying out an inquiry into the assessment method for both Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

More than 1,800 people had presented testimony to the inquiry through an online forum, which ends on 10 November, although not all the posts were about dishonesty and several were about the work capability assessment, the eligibility examination for ESA.

The forum posts provide additional corroboration for the testimony gathered by Disability News Service (DNS) throughout a year-long inquiry into allegations of fraud at the core of the PIP assessment system.

DNS announced that criticisms about the PIP assessment method increased by approximately 900 percent last year from 142 in 2015-16 to 1,391 in 2016-17 and Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Debbie Abrahams, stated that the huge increase confirmed that the healthcare professionals who carry out the assessments must be held to account.

Post after post on the forum details how assessors acting for the outsourcing corporations Atos and Capita distorted reports they prepared for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) following face-to-face evaluations.

One PIP claimant stated the report created after his face-to-face PIP assessment was a complete fabrication but he was fortunate in the fact that the person who brought him was also a healthcare professional and they made notes on his evaluation.

The full account of his evaluation had been written up by his escort of the day in question and it supported his disagreement that the medical report is to all intent a trumped-up story, an examination that is described really never occurred.

Despite attending the evaluation in his wheelchair, the report detailed how he was viewed walking normally.

He never imagined he would see the day when a doctor told blatantly and thought out falsifications about a sick and disabled person for their own financial advantage and the advantage of both ATOS and the DWP and that’s what happened to him.

It is his mind ATOS acted in an illegal way when managing his assessment and further committed perjury at his appeal by inserting falsehoods and inaccurate testimony about him which was endorsed by the same seedy doctor.

He won his appeal and the opinion that the supervising judge gave him, before even talking to him and upon seeing how he mobilised, was why on earth has this guy been made to enter into an appeal process.

Pam Stock, a disabled, retired DWP employment adviser, explained in her testimony to the hearing how she helped two friends with spina bifida appeal against their PIP decisions after both had had their mandatory reconsiderations refused.

In both instances the argumentation given on the reconsideration request was refused and yet as soon as it became transparent to the DWP that these applicants planned on going to a tribunal, the judgment was further examined and swiftly they agreed the applicants were correct.

She continued that she was also extremely concerned that in both instances, critical information addressed at the interview, did not appear on the subsequent evaluation report, and also some details were obviously distorted.

One applicant stated that they virtually failed to recognise themselves on the report.

It said in the assessor’s report that he had no breathlessness or wheezing, he does both constantly with him having emphysema/COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and the assessor even stopped the evaluation approximately three or four times due to his breathing and asking if it was okay to carry on.

 

 

 

 

Nurses have been told they already get paid more than most working people despite the pay cap and Eddie Hughes, Conservative MP for Walsall North, stated public sector workers already have a great deal opposed to hairdressers, plumbers or carpenters in his constituency.

And he stated it was his responsibility to stick up for everyone, not simply people in the public area.

Mr Hughes spoke out as MPs argued proposals to stop the public sector pay cap for the NHS.

A Labour motion asking an end to the cap, which restricts yearly pay increases to simply 1 percent, was passed collectively by the House of Commons after the Government decided not to fight it rather than risk a humiliating downfall.

Some Conservatives have further requested an end to the pay cap, and Ministers have already announced it will be raised for police and prison officers.

However, Mr Hughes stated the normal income in his constituency was £23,000 a year which is really the starting salary for a nurse.

He stated that like everyone who has spoken, he absolutely embraces the arduous commitment that is done by NHS workers up and down the land but wanted to bring some meaning to the discussion.

The average income in his constituency is £440 a week, which is around £23,000 a year.

He plans to support on behalf of all his constituents, not simply those who serve in the public sector because the normal pay in his constituency is £23,000, which is approximately the equivalent as a qualified nurse starts on in the NHS.

Numerous workers in his constituency are employed as hairdressers, plumbers or carpenters, and what pay increase do they get every year on an incremental basis? Well, they do not get one. And most employed people in Walsall further enjoyed nothing like the plentiful subsidies awarded to nurses.

They have had to fight hard each year for their salary, and when you make the comparison utilising other factors, such as pension schemes, you understand that in order to receive the same kind of pension a plumber would need to be putting away 43 percent of their wages.

The public sector in this country is admired, but the Conservatives seemingly appreciate all the workers in this country, which is why it will be pushing that they proceed with a Conservative Government in the future.

The remarks seemed to disagree with the path used by another Black Country Conservative, James Morris, the Tory MP for Halesowen and Rowley Regis.

Mr Morris stated the NHS was finding it difficult to hire and employ workers to work in mental health services, continuing that not enough people want to go into psychiatry or mental health nursing, and we must find methods of incentivising people to fill those jobs.

The stretch endeavour to get 20,000 extra people working in mental health is a considerable hurdle.

He stated it was necessary to incentivise people to work in mental health, and stated that he really welcomed the Government’s decision to allow Departments more adaptability on public sector pay.

After the proposal, requesting an end to the pay cap was passed, Labour shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth called on ministers to make clear whether they planned to disregard the clear will of the House or take action to stop the pay cap in the NHS.

It’s extremely rare for the Government not to vote down an opposition motion and the only solution is it dodged a vote because it knew it would lose it.

The Labour Party is no longer simply the official opposition, they are a government in waiting, eager to properly invest in the NHS and its staff.

Throughout the discussion, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt labelled the Labour motion as bogus and stated it was absolute nonsense to suggest the cap over the last seven years as part of an ideological mission to decrease the proportion of the country.

Yes, of course, hairdressers, plumbers and carpenters are worthy, and we need the Government to make their life more satisfactory. Nevertheless, nurses are vital and we must keep them alive.

A qualified nurse does 3 years of intensive training and when he/she begins work he/she is lawfully accountable for her patients, he/she can’t afford to make any blunders, both for the patient’s well-being or her own as she could be struck off.

This means he/she would never be able to nurse again, not simply jobless but unemployable in her preferred profession, and this would never happen to say a hairdresser, plumber, carpenter, et cetera.

It’s because of this that nurses have to be extremely alert at all times, no matter how hectic and stressful the workspace is.

If your hairdo goes awry or your broken faucet is still dripping all it implies is you can have it rectified the next day or with another worker.

If you are sick it can’t be corrected the next day because the nursing care has to be given right away, no second opportunities.

And as for the pension granted it is a good one, but to state, a plumber would need to pay 43 percent is a ludicrous example, and if the government believes there is too much of a gap why don’t they devise a pension body not merely for public sector workers but all others with equal pay?

Sadly, most of the Government are nincompoops, totally divorced from reality. No wonder why MPs are usually looked at with such disdain.

How brave of nurses to demand more money, if they had an increase then our hard working MPs would not be able to have their 11 percent increment. We could live pretty simply without these foolish out of touch parasitic loafers of Westminster – Nurses – Not so much.

As usual, MPs are out of touch with the actual world and I bet he has private health care and wouldn’t use the NHS with the working people while our taxes sweeten his earnings and expenses.

How often are nurses assaulted, slobbered on, cussed at, and generally berated, for simply doing their job? How often do they have to clean up when people have soiled themselves or thrown up?
And they deal with bereaved families or support people when they are often going through the worst experience of their lives.

Numerous people in the public sector are woefully underrated and underpaid considering the roles they have to do, Nurses, Emergency personnel, Police, Armed forces and they often have to deal with some of the most challenging or dangerous jobs imaginable.

Without people like this willing to work in the public sector, life would be much different in this country and it’s about time their devotion and value to society is rewarded. It’s about time someone stuck up for those who work in the Private Sector. Well, there is someone, they’re called unions but join quickly before they get legislated out of existence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Hunt appealed for more time to fix the mental health disaster in the NHS five years after he took custody of it.

Rome wasn’t constructed in a day and there is injustice and a lot more to do.

Mr Hunt’s remarks brought attacks after a number of mental health nurses nosedived by 5,000 and the NHS lost thousands of mental health beds and he acknowledged the decline in workers was an unintended outcome of requiring nurses on vulnerable hospital wards following the Mid Staffs embarrassment.

However, he rejected Tory-demanded efficiency savings were to blame and said that England has 11,000 more nurses in the NHS as a whole.

The NHS was moving towards treating mentally ill people better in the community, lessening the requirement for beds, and there were extra talking therapists.

And if they were going to reach Theresa May’s hope of full equivalence between mental and physical health, then they were going to need to train up much more people to address that and that’s apparently what they’re doing, and they’re definitely determined to stop this injustice that is going on at the moment.

Apparently, they want to stop the horrifying injustice of the reality that if you break a leg you get treated promptly in an A&E, but if you have a mental health emergency you might have to wait weeks or months to be seen.

To improve that it’s going to take a bit of time but supposedly they are making headway in the right direction but there’s a lot more to do.

Jeremy Hunt became Health Secretary in September 2012 and if he is still in his post next June, he will claim the ownership of longest-serving Health Secretary since the NHS started.

Technically he is now the longest-serving, but simply because the job title also included social services until 1988.

He must serve five years and 272 days to defeat Norman Fowler, who famously founded the “don’t die of ignorance” AIDS operations and is presently Speaker of the House of Lords.

Inside months he will exceed NHS founder Nye Bevan, who worked for five years and 167 days according to GP Online.

Labour Shadow Mental Health minister Barbara Keeley alleged Mr Hunt’s comments bear no resemblance to the reality of our mental health services and Tory Government’s experiences on mental health has been horrible.

Mental health nurse numbers have declined, more than a quarter of CCGs underspent their mental health resources for 2016/17 and some children are waiting as long as eighteen months to be treated.

But it does seem as if Jeremy Hunt has chosen to clean up the mess made by Jeremy Hunt.

However, it seems what this evil minister is doing is twisting the facts again. What do these uncaring and brutal Tories do to the people they take out of wards? That’s right they find them fit to work, and because of staff deficits they are taken off of the care register, and they use it against them and suspend their welfare payments and they end up living on the streets begging.

Maybe they should get a mental health bed for this delusional excuse of a person, preferably in solitude. Of course, there will be no staff to attend to his needs. But who cares because he doesn’t.

Most mental illness is treatable, but ego, sociopathic mindset, and the distortions that pour out of the mouth are not.

What a delusional moron this man is. Since he has held his office the NHS has got worse. Waiting times are still growing, doctors and nurses are dropping, including GP’s. There are fixed contracts on Junior doctors to accumulate funds, putting patients in danger.

All he requires is five more years to totally annihilate what is left of the NHS.

Currently, nurses that are studying have to decide when they qualify whether they are going to leave this country and settle in another in the same role where the wages are much better than here, in fact almost double what a nurse earns here.

At the rate this out of touch Tory government are going there will be no one that was born in this country here to train as nurses or doctors.

You have to spend money to make it and if you don’t invest in people, like raising the pay cap and paying people their dues, they will move on to brighter futures in other lands. You will not attract students to take up doctors or nurses positions at universities if they are going to be paralysed by low return and unreasonable repayment fees on their Uni loans.

It’s all part of the drive to extract affordable healthcare and substitute it with a pay as you use system similar to the USA. Where they closed services, get rid of workers, make it difficult for workers to train and make the pay rubbish.

Then they will tell you that the NHS isn’t working so our private backers will come and fix it for you and before you know it you’re spending a bundle simply to see a GP or get treatment.

The Conservatives have a distinct plan of aspiring to privatise the NHS and to establish US-style private healthcare which costs the earth and gives a pretty feeble service and as soon as an ailment goes on for a longish time the cover runs out and people have to sell their homes to finance the treatment.

They will take your home and leave you with scarcely enough to pay for your funeral and a bit left over for the children.

This person is useless, much like the woman he defends. There has been no change in our NHS since he seemingly took charge.

Therefore precisely what would Labour do, to make it any better?. Would they wave a magic wand and imagine up doctors and nurses although it would be an incredible thing if they could.

A good idea would have been to not cut a number of mental health nurses and mental health hubs to save money but that’s precisely what the Tories did.

They keep advising us what a rich nation we are but they manage the NHS like a liability. The NHS is actually pretty poor in World norms and in the United States it’s double what we pay and pretty poor if you don’t have rip off coverage.

 

The House of Commons is, in principle, a workplace. MPs turn up, debate, assemble on committees and propose motions. This isn’t regular work, but it is their work and it is important. It’s for this reason that it’s worth questioning why MPs have access to subsidised alcohol and 8 bars.

These bars differ in character, from the bawdy sports and social club to the more reserved Stranger’s bar. Nevertheless, they are coupled by two elements. They are the cheapest place to booze in Central London and they would be improper in virtually any other workplace.

A pint of Stella Artois will cost you £3.70 in the Stranger’s Bar, across the road it would cost you like £4.60 for a 330ml bottle. If you fancy Ales then you can find one of the guest ales for as little as £2.80, across the road this would be £4.50.

Gin is half the price it is across the road and wine is about a third.

All of this is conceivable because we are financing our MPs food and drink to the tune of about £6 million a year. This was the total for 2014. More current figures imply MPs have decreased their expenditure, spending only £3.7 million of taxpayers’ money.

This is money that is allegedly spent getting drunk at work, something that most of us would get fired over.

It does better describe a bit of the culture inside Westminster. In the dodgy dossier, various MPs who are affirmed to have drink difficulties and the recently discredited Michael Fallon has been associated with a few alcohol-fuelled eruptions.

The unfortunate demise of Charles Kennedy declined to change the commons association with alcohol. The actual measure of the dilemma is further difficult to know given that the Speaker, John Bercow, quashed a report into the dilemma.

This does not imply we should have no compassion for people with drink problems, guidance must be made accessible, but we should be outraged at the culture that’s been permitted to develop and various women journalists have made comparable points.

They have demonstrated that the hard-boozing practice in Westminster is a dilemma and an obstacle that permits the degradation of women.

When you have characters like Michael Fabricant using drink as a reason, and an insignia in one bar emphasizing that “what happens here stays here” it’s difficult not to scrutinise our MPs. They have decided to waste our money licensing their immoral habits.

Whilst Michael Fabricant has been scrutinised and the insignia has been removed, development is achingly sluggish. MPs must acknowledge that the House of Commons has a drinking problem, a dilemma that feeds an astonishingly lethal lad culture.

When a number of MPs are implicated in sexual rape and lurk behind the alcohol when David Davis can supposedly rape Dianne Abbot and laugh it off, and when a much-respected ex-soldier like Kennedy is annihilated by drink, it’s time to ask serious questions.

Would we allow it in our workplace? Would we permit bars in our office? Would we advocate boozing at work?

Of course not and Westminster must change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The government has been accused of an outrageous broken promise after declaring that thousands of life-long sick and disabled people will no longer face cruel re-tests for their benefits and people with a severe, lifelong disability, illness or health condition who it is doubtful will ever work again will be spared from reassessments for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

The move came into power for all assessments, nearly a year to the day after it was agreed by then-Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green. However, Labour announced the move fell short of what the government had agreed and was too questionable.

Only people thought unfit for the work-related activity in ESA, or its equivalent in Universal Credit can claim the exclusion. Those thought to be fit for the work-related activity will still have to undergo retests and this is an extremely fractured promise.

Sick and disabled people have been anticipating the Government to announce specific conditions that would be exempt from punitory reassessments, ultimately presenting the certainty many have been anticipating.

Instead, they have been given vague statements with no particular guarantees at all, but the Government must publish a complete inventory of the requirements that will automatically be excused from reassessment immediately.

This should have included all disabled people on ESA, including people with learning disabilities in the work-related activity group.

And as normal, the DWP is attempting to claim prestige for doing less than agreed, later than agreed.

These new rules are an important move in the right path, but it is still not apparent on how many people with Parkinson’s disease this will now help.

A dilemma still rests with the assessors’ really jumbled understanding of Parkinson’s disease. About a quarter of people with Parkinson’s disease have been put in the back to workgroup for ESA despite the fact that their situation will not change, which is simply ridiculous.

Until this situation dramatically changes, it is feared that multiple people with Parkinson’s disease still won’t be shielded from the ordeal and insult of unnecessary ESA assessments.

But for countless people, they do not address the heart of the dilemma.

The Work Capability Assessment remains basically flawed and in need of radical overhaul and two-thirds of ESA, settlements are currently overthrown at appeal and this is a long-awaited move towards making the welfare system make sense and people with Multiple Sclerosis should be able to rely on the support without the perpetual anxiety of having it taken away.

This decisive move ensures that the right protections are in position. People with severe health infirmities or disabilities that are not going to change will no longer be required to attend regular assessments.

For anyone who ends up losing their home because of DWP penalties that eliminate their JSA and ESA. We must ensure that anyone we know and who has been sanctioned knows that there is help. If your money is withdrawn you can go to the council and fill in a Nil Income form.

That will reinstate rent and council tax and give access to additional relief like meter credits, foodbank vouchers and emergency cash payments. This information is not readily accessible sadly and it should be.

The authorities will only deal with you if you ask specifically which is a disgrace, therefore if your benefits have been sanctioned then bear in mind assistance is still accessible.

Decision makers are challenging GP’s experience when they should be co-operating with one another in the affairs of that person instead of exercising their authority and control because the decision on that one person could be catastrophic.

People that have health conditions that can’t be reversed, yet have been stuck on the Work Related Activity Group and still, they can’t walk the obligatory 20 yards required for the Support Group without pain and have to stop, yet were regarded by the Decision maker to not be qualified to continue getting Mobility Allowance.

The reason, a Work-related activity could be something such as walking to the garden gate or strolling to the shops, resting on walls to relax.

If the genius at the DWP states you’re okay to go into WRAG then there you shall stay, and those broken government promises will never be of any use to those of us who would benefit from it. The problem is no matter what evidence you have it’s overlooked, if not by ATOS, then the DWP Decision maker.

What is required is a settlement method like that employed by MP’s, when determining whether an MP’s request for his/her £100 pen holder is needed, or their 100-yard travelling expense is deserving of the £40 a day they have claimed.

What are we going to do without ATOS’s wonder cures that doctors and consultants never knew about when examining their patient and here is the ATOS health professional with a couple of months experience in medicine repudiating doctors, and professionals are going to become a thing of the past, are they?

And then are those with Rheumatoid Arthritis and other Autoimmune diseases, are people with these ailments still going to be overlooked by the government?

It seems they’re not doing a damn thing to support people with disabilities.

The difficulty with the WRAG group in ESA is that you are classified as sick or disabled by the DWP but they state you are not ill or disabled enough to go into the support group.

The additional point’s to take into account concerning the applicant being put into this group is it has been done solely on the say-so of a person with medical knowledge, not by someone who has experience of that claimant’s problems.

The last point is you are put in the WRAG group for one year and then all your payment’s end in that year, you have to frequent training at the jobcentre plus and also if asked have to go and get work experience unpaid with a company without no extra benefit’s.

The claimant’s who do not comply with the process defined above stand a good possibility to be sanctioned and have all their benefit’s discontinued entirely.

The DWP do not tell claimant’s about such thing’s as having barely 30 Day’s to lodge a compulsory reconsideration against the award or your appeal cannot begin, also you are allowed to see and cross-reference what you said and what was recorded at the assessment, could this be a tactic to prevent a failed claimant’s appeal and if you appeal you get no benefit’s, deceitful or what?

It definitely doesn’t benefit somebody who is brain damaged and has to go through the pressure of examinations, it’s simply a misuse of time and money.

When Remploy was about, there were countless disabled people that worked, although some could not work there as it was not a safe environment for them particularly if they suffered from seizures.

It’s a bitter pill but not everyone can contribute to society, and to force them to only ever makes them worse.

This dilemma will endure until the government see that subcontracting out ESA/PIP assessments to a third party firm is just not working.

This dilemma is glaringly evident to anyone and to get a really detailed assessment of how a person’s sickness or disability affect’s them on an everyday basis you must have a medical expert with a full understanding of that illness or disability and to carry that out you need to get the actual picture.

The government must by now recognise that there is a dilemma with the number of appeals going to tribunal and the judiciary overthrowing the DWP’s judgment not to grant the benefit to the claimant this is now for both ESA/PIP and over 50 percent for both benefit’s.

The cost’s of these successful appeals is paid for by the taxpayer so you can see that the promise made by the government that these benefit reforms will release money is extremely controversial and the cost to the taxpayer is about 10K for each tribunal, how is this saving money?

Indefinite DLA should have continued as Indefinite DLA and should not have changed over to PIP at all, and should not require an assessment at all. Indefinite DLA should tell the government about the nature of their health, and the reality that it doesn’t should leave us speechless.

Those that are having their money taken from them are presently being left isolated and overlooked, suffering from anxiety while the government appear to be raking it in, brushing any liability under the carpet.

People who have been awarded a lifetime award of DLA, then the Tories got into power and those that have been awarded a lifetime award are now having to have more assessments, so clearly this was not a lifetime award.

Some of these people are suffering from degenerative conditions and unquestionably won’t improve, so why the retesting? Furthermore, some people that are being evaluated, are being evaluated by ex-dentists, therefore when you have a muscular syndrome, it’s upsetting, if it wasn’t so hilarious.

People who specialise in bending the facts and everything you say makes you feel insignificant and this is how the Tories handle people and people are unfairly being put into the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) on the basis of an evaluation that they’ve never been informed of and never been seen by anybody at a testing centre.

Fortunately, some people are great at retaining accounts of everything, but if you communicate with the DWP they attempt to displace the culpability, essentially stating that you’re lying.

If some of these people were not so clued up and mentally competent they would be in a situation where they would seemingly be sanctioned every other month as their health wouldn’t allow them to do anything that is expected of someone in the WRAG to do and consequently be in a hell of a situation.

But how many people does this happen to who don’t have the strength to dispute it?

All I can answer is, thank goodness able-bodied people have no concept how terrifying the evaluations are, and then to be evaluated by someone who hasn’t a clue about long-term conditions, who essentially accuse you of putting it all on.

Many disabled people have a difficult enough time as it is without the added strain of regular examination, attempting to catch you out and assuming that you are a deceiver.

Of course, there are thousands that try it on and that further is a disgrace when the money could be going to were it truly is required, but if a consultant at a hospital states you are suffering a disability they should welcome that diagnosis.

While thousands may try it on, the figures show that much more don’t claim at all or are unjustly eliminated from a government support system than those who claim fraudulently.

It’s horrifying that people have to be evaluated by someone who doesn’t know their ailment or how it affects them, then manufactures lies about what they have said. The fact that proof has to be sent in from doctors, consultants and specialists and then they entirely dismiss it because they don’t understand that person’s symptoms and how it destroys their life.

Another thing they dismiss is the GP’s evaluation and how they disregard the doctor’s knowledge of health issues that impair a person’s life.

 

 

Keeley Sheppard who is 20, and is 29 weeks pregnant and about to move into a new home has had her Universal Credit payments cut without her knowledge and will presently have to survive on a penny a month.

She expected to get £500 per month but was crushed to discover that her payments had been suspended almost entirely and without notice.

Keeley Sheppard and her partner Dan Pye, 25, are awaiting the delivery of their first child at Christmas and moved to live with her dad and step mum in the Cotswolds in May when they changed to a joint Universal Credit claim.

At the moment Keeley Sheppard doesn’t work and partner Dan is looking for work.

They were both on single universal credit claims before and everything was fine, they went to appointments, and did all the right stuff but they went onto a joint claim because they were moving in together. However, it wasn’t until last month when they logged on to their UC account to find out they were only getting paid a penny.

If a claimant hasn’t done one of the activities in their claimant commitment they could be sanctioned, indicating their UC payments will be briefly reduced. Nevertheless, Keeley Sheppard was given no reason for the penalty and has been forced to take out a £300 Recoverable Hardship Loan from the job centre.

Since then, their UC payment has risen to £40 but is still well under what was expected.

Keeley Sheppard has been told, because she is 29 weeks pregnant, she can only be sanctioned up to 20 percent, if she is sanctioned but she’s been sanctioned a sizeable amount.

Keeley’s step mum Billiejo has got Fibromyalgia so is no longer working, while her 16-year-old sister also lives in the same flat so it’s all five of them on their dad’s salary. Clearly, their UC supports them a tiny bit and their dad can’t support all of them, and he’s trying his hardest, and they’re making it work to a certain point but it is difficult.

The DWP won’t give them an explanation and Keeley has been prescribed anti-depressants due to the magnitude of the situation.

It’s utterly sickening that they are setting them up, a young couple, about to have a baby at Christmas and now going into their first home, into debt and to fail already and the DWP is not giving them any explanations and it’s an outright scandal.

Universal Credit is a monthly payment to assist with living expenses for those who have low income or are out of work and it is currently being launched across the United Kingdom and supersedes Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Working Tax Credit and income-related Employment and Support Allowance.

The Government has come under heightened tension to pause the rollout of UC, which critics maintain puts defenceless families in danger and Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke announced that the questionable 55p-a-minute charge on the welfare helpline would be abandoned, but denied proposals for a pause in the rollout.

However, Theresa May will not hesitate on the rollout despite Labour gaining a House of Commons majority requesting a pause in the introduction of the flagship benefit reform and the DWP has been approached for an explanation.

 

There are young people out there that have diabetes, coeliacs disease and other illnesses that have missed appointments, or are ten minutes delayed because of public transport and have ended up with precious little to live on a month because they have been sanctioned.

Some of these people have to have a special diet and if they don’t that could be life-threatening to them, this is inhumane and animals are treated better.

There are a number of people out there who will say that this chap must get off his behind and go and look for work however you require money to find work.

You require money to eat food so you can be equipped for a job. You require bus fares or petrol to get to interviews. You require money to write and post letters. You require money to purchase work clothes. Doing this sort of thing to people makes it much harder to obtain work, the notion that the Government are doing this to encourage people into work is sheer propaganda.