Below is a response to Tomlison’s piece in Able magazine published earlier this week
The Minister for the Disabled People says:
“We should do everything we can to give people the dignity of a job, the opportunity to achieve their career aspirations and the security of a pay cheque. The focus should always be on what a person can do, giving them every opportunity to fulfil their potential. No-one should be written off to a life on disability benefits and it should always pay to work.”
The ‘help’ I have received to get work has been pitiful. I was on Incapacity Benefit due to degenerative disc disease and osteoarthritis – there is no cure, I won’t get better. I am in constant pain and have mobility problems. However, I was found ‘Fit For Work’ and now receive Job Seekers’ Allowance. I am £30 per week less well off, I can no longer afford taxis when I need them, can no longer afford better quality food, can no longer afford to pay my heating bills so spent the early (cold) part of this year with the heating off. This new-found poverty has impacted directly on my physical and mental health.
I now have to attend the Work Programme five days per week to ‘Job Search’. I am constantly exhausted, constantly in pain. After eight months on the Work Programme I have had no practical help in finding employment, unskilled and ignorant ‘advisers’ have in fact hindered my efforts. Their suggestions on how to get back to work have been risible and amateur. They have ignored my qualifications and experience and attempted to force me into unpaid work in completely inappropriate fields. Being subject to a hostile sanctions regime has had an impact on my blood pressure and I now suffer from stress and insomnia. Despite many hours of searching for work in the areas I have been mandated to search by the Job Centre, I have had no replies to my letters and CV – in EIGHT MONTHS.
Clearly, your definitions of ‘dignity’ ‘opportunity’ and ‘security’ come from a different dictionary than mine. I cannot afford new clothing, new shoes and I cannot even afford to put credit on my phone. My household is sliding into debt fast. I am dreading the winter. On the Work Programme I am in the company of many, many others in exactly my situation. They, too, are still disabled and unemployed months or even years after being declared ‘Fit For Work’. The only dignity we have is in our shared experience and defiance of your government’s attacks on us.
Minister, in short, disabled people can well do without your ‘help’ in finding us work.
Samantha Shelley
BA(Hons) PGCE
Perhaps the minister for disabled people would care to read the article below.
“At the same time, many of those commenting on the article, either publicly or privately, wrote that, while innovation is a nice thing and that JAWS releases were exciting for that reason years ago, the biggest problem with screen readers today is that they have deteriorated in quality, support fewer applications necessary at job sites and are often the barriers to employment and promotion.”
https://chrishofstader.com/screen-reader-failure-innovation-deterioration-despair/
Very sorry to hear about the terrible situation you’ve found yourself in through no fault of your own. It’s as if these Tory cretins have had an “empathy bypass” as part of this sickening ideological drive to purge the state of responsibility for the very people they should be looking after first.
The trouble is, this is now the establishment view. As we’ve seen in the few days since Corbyn was elected leader, even members of the Labour party are still willing to tow the line with this right wing nonsense and all of us that have disabilities are suffering for it in on form or another. The poisonous rhetoric from the right since the crash has been allowed to carry on pretty much unopposed until now, but at least we have an opposition leader who’ll stand up for us now (as long as he’s allowed to stay in office by his Machiavellian “colleagues” and the media).
The stress you mention that all of this has caused you I would imagine applies to all of us to some extent, and the pressure isn’t about to be lessened any time soon. People that aren’t disabled and haven’t been hit too hard yet are going to be in the next year or two though, and Osborne, IDS et al will be seen for what they really are- callous, short-termist opportunists. I know it’s a while to wait, and none of us want to see others suffering, but the tide will turn and it’s important that the opposition don’t disintegrate (we can live in hope).
Sorry to hear you’ve had such a hard time. But great article and really puts pay to the Tory lies and spin.
What can you expect from those who don’t live on the same world as us never mind the same planet. ..sooner Smith and his cronies leave the better.
I think what you are going through is nothing short of criminal and a grotesque cruelty. How can this be legal?? Your letter is excellent and I wonder what sort of reply you’ll get. The fact that you are a highly qualified person doesn’t seem to be of any interest to the Job Centre Plus, something that comes up time after time.
These idiots dress their piddly little fart of a “Work Programme” up with inflated rhetoric, that is fraudulent and as you say, “risible”.
I hope I’m not teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, forgive me if I am, but have you challenged the decision on the group you are in? I was lucky enough to be supported by a charity, Diverse Cymru, and eventually won 2 Tribunals, one for DLA and one for ESA- it was very very tough going but worth it.
Good luck and don’t give up- it’s what they want.
After many years of going through the system here’s the best and worst advice given by DWP.
The worst – ‘I have the perfect training for you. After only a few weeks you could be a Call Centre Worker’.
I did try to explain that using voice activated software at the same time as using a phone to speak was impossible – without success……
The Best – ‘OK Jon, I shouldn’t really say this but….. well….. I’ll have to wait untill I’m 65 to retire and you’ve got there at 28’. The best and most honest advice ever given over 30 years ago.
Jon
Jobcentre plus parked me because of similar conditions. Esa ran out 2 years ago. I have just had it reinstated because the Atos doctor said I was put in the wrong group. I retire next year but it saved the dwp 2 years benefits .
Tomlinson knows nothing, sees nothing, thinks nothing is nothing but a vile psychic thug like the rest of the vile Toff State Terrorist government he belongs to. When he is out of a job, which is inevitable, he should be put on his own slave labour regime.