Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Wed Jan 01, 2014 4:07 pm  

I used to work with a guy who was assessed (presumably by a Doctor?) as 60% disabled due to a back injury incurred in the Paras.
Now he was regularly reassessed, and guess what people?.....yep, the 60% was signed off every time, and he continued to receive a pension which reflected this.

Oddly enough, he played a better game of golf regularly than most people I know.....

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Wed Jan 01, 2014 4:12 pm  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

I used to work with a guy who was assessed (presumably by a Doctor?) as 60% disabled due to a back injury incurred in the Paras.
Now he was regularly reassessed, and guess what people?.....yep, the 60% was signed off every time, and he continued to receive a pension which reflected this.

Oddly enough, he played a better game of golf regularly than most people I know.....

So just how disabled do you have to be to get the pittance we get? Quadruple amputee in a vegetative state probably be passed as fit to work by you - well you are a Doctor aren't you and you were at your colleagues assesments with him I presume?

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Wed Jan 01, 2014 10:56 pm  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

I used to work with a guy who was assessed (presumably by a Doctor?) as 60% disabled due to a back injury incurred in the Paras.
Now he was regularly reassessed, and guess what people?.....yep, the 60% was signed off every time, and he continued to receive a pension which reflected this.

Oddly enough, he played a better game of golf regularly than most people I know.....

All that proves is you know a lot of crap golfers

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Thu Jan 02, 2014 8:26 am  

Hull White Star wrote:

So just how disabled do you have to be to get the pittance we get? Quadruple amputee in a vegetative state probably be passed as fit to work by you - well you are a Doctor aren't you and you were at your colleagues assesments with him I presume?

There is an unfortunate, but understandable attitude amongst many who are on benefits, in that they should be receiving much more than the system provides. They may well be occasions when this is justified, but I suspect no amount of money will compensate anyone on disability for the loss of their health.

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Thu Jan 02, 2014 8:19 pm  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

There is an unfortunate, but understandable attitude amongst many who are on benefits, in that they should be receiving much more than the system provides. They may well be occasions when this is justified, but I suspect no amount of money will compensate anyone on disability for the loss of their health.

...which isn't actually what most seriously ill (temporary or otherwise) and disabled people are asking for, I've yet to see a newspaper report where a person in any form of disability benefit is asking for compensation from government funds - not that such a thing exists anyway - and if the newspapers, especially the Murdoch Press haven't got around to inventing those stories yet then they must be far fetched indeed.

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Thu Jan 02, 2014 9:03 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

Please point to anyone, either on here or even in the general population, who has advocated self-certification of claimants.

I didn't suggest anyone had. I was expressing bemusement at the stance taken by some regarding ESA claimants being independently assessed on their disability.

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Thu Jan 02, 2014 9:05 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

I didn't suggest anyone had. I was expressing bemusement at the stance taken by some regarding ESA claimants being independently assessed on their disability.

Who has?

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Fri Jan 03, 2014 7:15 am  

SaintsFan wrote:

I didn't suggest anyone had. I was expressing bemusement at the stance taken by some regarding ESA claimants being independently assessed on their disability.

No-one has expressed any such stance at all, this government (by their own statements) had a figure in mind of one million claimants who they "believed" were not incapacitated at all and so set themselves and their sub-contractors a target of finding them, where appropriate then independent assessments should be a part of that process.

You just don't get the ice cream man to check out your faulty gas boiler though.


For some research may I suggest that you look at some of the claimants undercover videos filmed at their own ATOS assessments (on Youtube), ignore the commentary and viewer comments and make your own mind up as to whether the assessors in those videos are looking at medical issues or simply ticking boxes in order to justify another refusal - one in particular is for a man who discloses right from the start that he has mental health issues and so he asks the assessor what experience she has in the subject, she is very reluctant to discloae "any personal details" (her quote) but eventually admits to being a "general nurse who covered some mental health topics during her training" (her quote), in other words not a mental health specialist.

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Fri Jan 03, 2014 9:45 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

...which isn't actually what most seriously ill (temporary or otherwise) and disabled people are asking for, I've yet to see a newspaper report where a person in any form of disability benefit is asking for compensation from government funds - not that such a thing exists anyway - and if the newspapers, especially the Murdoch Press haven't got around to inventing those stories yet then they must be far fetched indeed.

Hull White Star's response....So just how disabled do you have to be to get the pittance we get? would at least suggest that she at least is not happy with the amount of help she receives. And I doubt it would be too much of a surprise to find that she is not alone in feeling this, and as I have already said, with some justification at times.

And aren't all benefits dependent on the Government fiscal Policies?

Re: A Contemporary Christmas Carol : Fri Jan 03, 2014 9:55 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

<snip>

An interesting comment from the twittersphere