Disabled people wrongly denied benefits by New Labour

Thousands of seriously ill and disabled people who are unable to work are being wrongly denied benefits, a report by Citizens Advice Bureau has claimed.

This only serves to highlight the extent to which New Labour during the course of the last 13 years has travelled along the rocky road of running a capitalist state in the interests of the capitalist system. I will spare the lambasting or bawling out about the trillions received by the banks, but this really gets my goat that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and under Labour can swoop so low in an attack and pounce on those with conditions such as autism, learning disabilities and Multiple Sclerosis, when in a sane society these very people would be looked after.

Backed by 18 other bodies, the bureau says people are "effectively being written off" as the government's aim is of moving people into low paid work.

DWP figures revealed that of those who applied, 68% were considered fit for work.

Meanwhile, between October and December last year, 22,618 people sought advice about ESA, Citizens Advice says.

The DWP said that from next year, doctors would assess 10,000 claimants of long-term sickness every week according to what they can do, not what they cannot.

Have you got a light boy!

Today we can all see the smokers standing outside the pubs, clubs and places of work grabbing a quick smoke. I happen to live near a large NHS hospital and drive past regular, along with the fact I’m a regular visitor attending for treatment with my partner being an out-patient. I just get wound up, every time I drive past or visit, why? Well because I am witness to the young, middle aged, old, male, female, the walking, and the wounded, standing, sitting, pushed, and held up in good or bad weather, sunshine, snow or frost. I’ve seen ladies in there long night gowns and slippers, people of all ages in wheel chairs, even a middle aged man standing, holding a chrome gadget on wheels with a drip, all, not at the same time of course. At the main entrance's to the hospital, doing what? Having a ciggy, one more coffin nail, they no longer are allowed inside NHS property to have their puff.

I am not a smoker anymore, but I think that this treatment just stinks!

This is my line of thought: All this is good for the non smoker's and I respect all there wishes and displeasures; passive smoke, bad smells and so on. But the National Health Service still belongs to the people that pay for it, the tax payer; I know certain political parties are trying their best to get it into private ownership. But that word is still there ‘National’ so would the majority of people in our democracy follow government guidelines and ostracise the smokers… Well yes we have done, and just to give you all a thought, the average age or life expectancy for a man is 77 and a woman is 81, and yet the inequalities in life expectancy are persisting across the UK, as figures from the Office for National Statistics have revealed. The South East, South West and East of England continued to have the highest life expectancies at birth, the statistics for 2006-08 showed.

Figures are lowest in Scotland and in the North West and North East of England.

For males, there is a difference of 4.2 years between the South East, which had the highest life expectancy (79.2 years), and Scotland, where life expectancy is lowest (75 years).

For females, the corresponding gap between the South West (83.1 years) and Scotland (79.9 years) is 3.2 years.

The area with the lowest male life expectancy was Glasgow City (70.7 years), 13.6 years lower than Kensington and Chelsea.

This gap has widened by 0.7 years from 12.9 years in 2005-07.

For females, Kensington and Chelsea also had the highest life expectancy at birth (88.9 years), 11.7 years higher than Glasgow City, the area with the lowest figure (77.2 years).

This gap increased by 1.0 years from 10.7 years in 2005-07.

Smoking like it or loath it is one thing, but what about poor diet? It is estimated that almost 70,000 deaths could be avoided every year if Britons followed healthy eating guidelines government reports have stated in the past. The nation's poor diet costs the economy £10 billion, of which £7.7 billion comprises NHS treatment. Obesity in Britain, with 60 per cent of the population expected to be overweight by 2050, compared with 28 per cent today, and 70 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys expected to be overweight or obese in 40 years' time that could be avoided if people cut down on fatty and salty foods and ate more fresh fruit and vegetables, but the problem is affordability!

The problem is having the money to pay for this healthy food and lifestyle?

Those who die prematurely would have lived for almost 10 years longer if they were able to adhere to a healthy food intake, and then there’s obesity in Britain, with 60 per cent of the population expected to be overweight by 2050, compared with 28 per cent today, and 70 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys expected to be overweight or obese in 40 years' time.

With the recession in full swing and a government that has failed to tackle the real courses of child poverty, it would not surprise me in the least if the life expectancies of our children, began to full. And I started off whining about the so-called nanny state and smoking, twenty years ago did anybody care about smokers, think about it, who brought this segregation on and what’s the real reasons if it’s not control, who will be next as we watch the onslaught on the beer and wine drinkers. Whose next; people suffering and fighting a drug addiction, perhaps those with HIV or Cancer, and why stop there, why not attack the unemployed, the homeless for this is not hypothetical or conjectural…It’s happening now!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Inequality In Life Expectancy Still Persists (news.sky.com)
• Healthy living is cut short by 17 years for poorest in Britain (guardian.co.uk)

Post by: Brian Hopper or In the Box

Do or Die!

I resolved to stay up last night and watch President Obama address the joint houses of Congress on his healthcare plans, a keynote speech in what they say is a bitter American heath provision debate.

I found it fascinating although I am not familiar with all the issues, it seems that the US has a very un-healthy (unless accomplished and able to pay) health provision for its inhabitants. Many millions are unable to afford or even pay for simple medical treatment. The row in the US over President Barack Obama’s health care proposals; for the most part, is motivated just as much by prejudice, political posturing and outright deception, much attention has focussed on groups such as Conservatives for Patients Rights, who charge the Obama administration with seeking to introduce a “socialist” health care regime like the National Health Service in Britain, can you believe it?

The accusations made in several advertisements and articles run in the US are grave. They charge the NHS, and by dint the British establishment, of setting an “Orwellian” cap on the value of human life. The British system, they contend, routinely rationalises health provision, condemning many to painful waits for treatment, denying medicine and even operating “death panels” discriminating against the elderly and disabled.

The Investor’s Business Daily suggested that leading physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, “wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Hawking, who is a British citizen, repudiated the claim, stating, “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS.”
And to think that we have a special relationship with our cousins on the other side of the big pound is it healthy?

On Sunday the New York Times ran a story that was not only interesting but a certain condemnation of American Capitalism, certification without incertitude that the system is rotten to its very core. After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one it reported:

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them – what vulgarisation of these albatross’s complete head and neck bare of feathers, hoarding, greedy grasping and feeding on the dead.

The speech was an effort by Mr. Obama to regain his political footing on health care, the centrepiece of his domestic agenda. After months of insisting he would leave the details to lawmakers, he presented his most detailed outline yet of his own plan, which he said would provide "security and stability" to those who have insurance and cover those who do not, all without adding to the federal deficit.