Here They Come To Save The Day! AKA Andy Burnham’s Speech

　
Never having been a fan of Andy Burnham’s I am even less of a fan after reading his speech at Labour’s conference.

Lets go through a few points of his.



AB- “I know there will be families and carers out there watching us today wondering whether anyone really understands what their life is like”

Me- When it comes to carers they don’t just wonder if anyone really understands what our life is like, they know full well that politicians haven’t a clue what our lives are like!

AB- “Soldiering on from one day to the next, feeling invisible and taken for granted, ringing the surgery early in the morning but unable to get through, telling the same story to everyone who comes through the door”

Me- Yup, that is right, and it was the same under the Labour government Andy Burnham was in last time.



AB- “You feel no one listens”

Me- Well Labour certainly doesn’t! If you ask any Labour politician on Twitter to say ‘sorry’ for being the first party to set Atos on the people we care for, to apologies for setting Lord Freud on them, for starting the closure of Remploy factories or for introducing the very first type of bedroom tax, or why haven’t they stood up to the Tory attacks on disabled people and they block you. No one listens? Well you certainly don’t Andy as you haven’t replied to my email asking you the exact same questions.

AB- “I want to speak directly to you”
Me- Okay, my email address is ‘clivegsd@gmail.com’ and I’m ‘clivegsd’ on Skype. Now speak directly to me. What, you won’t? Well there’s a surprise




AB- “My message is simple: Labour is with you; your worries are ours”

Me- If that was true then why the hell did Labour sit on it’s hands and do NOTHING while IDS and the Tory propaganda machine lied and vilified the people we care for? What the hell have Labour done about the fact 25,000 carers will be losing their Carers Allowance when PIP is fully rolled out? Labour certainly are not “speaking to me” when I emailed to ask them about those 25,000 carers. Worried? You could not give a *toss (*edited for family viewing)

AB- “No longer ringing the council for this, the NHS for that. But one service, one team, one person to call”

Me- What, you mean like a ‘Universal Credit’ sort of one stop shop? Well that’s great news because UC is doing really well isn’t it?

AB- “How much longer will society send out the message to young people looking after someone else’s mum, dad, brother or sister that it is the lowest form of work, lower than the minimum wage because it doesn’t pay the travel time between the 15 minute visits?”

Me- (*takes a deep breath, counts to 10 to avoid the temptation to swear) Okay Burnham you are really taking the **** now! Your speech has failed to mention the large number of carers who look after their spouse/siblings/parents/friends, you have concentrated on young carers. Do we rank and file grunt carers not exist in your happy little bubble? You think it’s unfair on child carers but us adult carers are coping? Thriving? Having a bloody good chuckle at what we do?

I was one of the leading voices when Labour were in power asking, pleading, demanding that Carers Allowance was set at a decent level that reflected the importance of the role we play. You, Anne McGuire, Ivan (let me text you) Lewis, Maria Eagle, in fact every Minister for Care and Disabled people ignored us. From the day Labour took power they continued the exploitation of us carers, in opposition Labour have done nothing to protect us from the Tories. If they get into power we are supposed to expect Labour to do a complete u0turn and “care”? It wont’ work Andy mate, we carers aren’t stupid, we know what you are lining up to do.

AB- “So today we announce new support for carers: protected funding for carer’s breaks; the right to ask for an annual health check; help with hospital car parking for carers; and we will go further. We will give all families the right to care in their home, if they want it.”

Me- Heard it all before, the breaks won’t happen, the right to ask for an annual health check won’t address the needs of a carer, help with hospital parking doesn’t say “no hospital parking fees” which would be a great help, the right to care in their home. We already bloody well do this you fool! And notice any mention of raising Carers Allowance? No I didn’t either. The single most important thing that any government could do would be to raise Carers Allowance and stop classing it as an ‘overlapping benefit’. The latter would mean that people who claim the State Pension would not get ripped off by having their Carers Allowance removed when they draw the state pension. It’s outrageous that you can be a pensioner-carer and then have that allowance stolen.

AB- “A national health and care service”



And here it is, ladies and gentlemen (*fanfare please*) Andy Burnham’s vanity project the Nation Care Service (*fanfares going off, confetti blows into the air, disabled people and carers fainting due to the excitement, those that didn‘t faint will genuflect tugging their forelocks as they do so*) Great idea Andy, and how will it be funded, lets think now, will he resurrect his idea of stopping DLA for over 65’s? You can bet your bottom dollar (or few pence in the case of those disabled people and carers that have been legally mugged by the ConDems) he will.


Labour seem to think disabled people and carers are so simple, so broken down by the ConDem government that we won’t forget what Labour were truly like when in power. Andy mate, we are not so feeble, our minds are sharp and to quote Christopher Walken from the film Click “something stinks like stale French fries”, that ‘stink’ is Labour.

And I’ll close this entry with one more quote, a lyric from the Who, “won’t get fooled again”

Labour, Kate Green, They Never Learn

I emailed Labour's Kate Green regarding some stupid new taskforce that- as usual, didn't include any disabled people or carers other than those that are blinkered loyal Labour supporters. The title of this little group is/was called The Disability and Poverty Task Force


It was the brainchild of Liam Byrne and Anne McGuire. Disabled people and carers may remember these two incompetent Blairite arseholes, both were roundly disliked/hated individuals who did nothing to help disabled people and carers, they were the Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey's of the Labour party. Those two are bad enough on their own, but they had the nerve to put Sue (I want a new computer but I don't want to pay for it) Marsh.
There were no rank and file disabled people or carers let alone any of the many independent campaigners that are online. Labour decided to go down the route of having people they can control and charity employees. It seems Labour haven't learned that they are as trusted by disabled people and carers as the Tories are.


Still the only bright spark on the political horizon is Star Etheridge, I can't praise her enough for the work she is doing. Kate Green has shown she hasn't a damn clue about the feelings of disabled people and carers and will be another stupid Labour politician who won't help us.


Labour, as usual you have screwed us over, and that's before you get back into power!


 Kate Green saying "Ensuring that disabled people's voices are heard as we take forward our thinking in response to the taskforce's report and recommendations and develop Labour's policies goes to the heart of inclusion and equality for disabled people" is ridiculous because they are using people who have little support online but are  Labour supporters but not those who are independent, want the best for disabled people and carers and are not 'in it' for personal gain. Labour have actually excluded many hard working campaigners because it can't handle people who don't agree with their view.


Well done Labour, keep on ignoring us at your peril.

Neil Crowther - Patronising Dickhead?

It appears Neil Crowther didn't like the fact that I called him a "patronising dickhead". lets try to explain things to him as Twitter is a useless medium for holding a conversation or debate.

The background is that the Labour Party Disability Task Force Report that was released and the fact that it effectively was 78 pages of garbled bullshit. Oh, and as usual it failed to include anything about carers. Carers are an integral party of things that relate to disability benefits. Not that you would notice as almost everyone from Labour to the WOW Petition Group to the Spartacus Group failed to mention carers till they were reminded.


The 'task force' was set up by Anne McGuire - hated by most disabled people and carers when she was Minister for Disabled People, and Liam Byrne - equally hated when Minister for Care Services when Labour were in power. Both Blairites who totally ignored everything disabled people and carers wanted.


So why "patronising"? Apparently according to Neil Carers UK 'have done many things to better the lives of carers'. Strange that because a look at that charity's forum shows the same things being asked for now as was being asked for as long as their forum has been running.
Has Carers Allowance improved significantly? No.
Are respite breaks easily accessed? No
Are carers the main priority of this vile charity? No


As a carer for about 20 years now I can tell Neil nothing has changed for the better. Hell even the present governments 'extra room for a stay over carer scheme' isn't being properly implemented by councils.


Lets move on to the fact that an employee of this charity can make false reports to police forces, have a restraining order against them for harassing a woman and to have taken part in an internet stalking campaign and STILL be working for Carers UK and perhaps Neil can get a little bit of an idea of why many carers do not trust Carers UK. Then we have the case of Lesley Gross Someone that actually stood up for carers but was chased out of the charity by lies and smears. And Neil wonders why I hate this self-interested money grubbing charity.



And thanks Neil, thanks for thinking carers are such simpering idiots that they are charity cases that need a charity to speak for them. We don't, got that clear?


Why "dick head"? Where do I start? A report he helped formulate comes out, written by a bunch of people who have no mandate to speak for disabled people. Ignores the fact that carers are part of what is going on in the lives of disabled people. When asked about it says "what would you like put into the report"? It's already out there, would it be changed if people wanted to add to it? "No"  So what is the bloody point of asking the question!


On being told that the only disability spokesperson who replied to disabled people was UKIP's Star Etheridge, Neil replied- sucking up disillusionment from all quarters. Lots of positive policies for carers & disabled people alike http://www.ukip.org/issues


Which totally ignored what I had said. Disabled people and carers should be the only people who make up these 'task forces' as we know full well the results of past, present and- no doubt, future governments impacts on OUR lives.


The Standing Commission on Carers is an excellent example. There has never been a single carer involved in that "Commission". Loads of charity workers or titled nonentities, but one actual 24/7 carer? Nope.


He obviously thinks anyone who doesn't bow down to these "disability experts" are simpletons who have no right to an opinion on what is blighting their lives. Well Mr Crowther, until you have lived the life of a disabled person or carer through the shit-storm that Labour started and the ConDems have taken on then you don't have a right to speak for us. You know nothing of our lives and neither do 90% of the task force. "NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US" Well this report was done "without us".


The report was 78 dull, boring ramblings of a  task force with no mandate, just a few people threw together by two politicians who totally ignored disabled people and carers.


The report should have said "DLA worked mostly. It had little fraud (approximately 0.3%) so if Labour get elected the PIP descriptors should be scrapped and replace with the old DLA ones. It wasn't an "out of date benefit" and that message should be made clear to the public.


But that's too easy, people like Neil, Massie, Byrne, McGuire (thanks for starting the Remploy closures Anne), Liz Sayce (who betrayed those who worked at Remploy) to ignore what we grunts want and decide on our behalf, THAT is why I called Neil Crowther a dickhead and did so openly. You have contradicted yourself by saying "nothing about us without us" because you had no input from anyone but the task force.


As for Kaliya Franklin being part of it? Pfft, she has little to no support at all from disabled people. Another person who thinks she knows what is best, and she doesn't.

All Things Shite And Screwtiful

Interesting Twitter row with the sheeple that make up the WOW petition group.



They ran some petition that got just over 100,000 names on it (many likely to be aliases to help bump up the numbers as they were struggling to get their target) which amounts to barely 1% of people registered to be claiming DLA, PIP and Carers Allowance- I've excluded the people on ESA to lessen their embarrassment.
The Labour Party use it to get debates going in Westminster for something that will affect all disabled people and carers.
When told that the WOW group have no right to speak for all disabled people and carers they say they aren't doing that!




The WOW petition group claim they are a democratic group and if people had issues with what they were doing they should have spoken out earlier.


Great idea, except the WOW petition group, like the Spartacus group actually block any comments that oppose what they are doing.


Democracy in action eh? Everyone can have an opinion as long as it agrees with theirs.


I never actually thought I would every agree with Simon Stevens (Mr Atos) but as he clearly doesn't like the WOW or Spartacus groups then in this case I do, for differing reasons though.


I spotted Sue Marsh's Twitter feed where she was asking if the researcher for channel 5's Big Benefits Debate were going to cover her travel and hotel costs for her to appear on the show. That's sort of odd because as she states in her blog she was in London on that day anyway-


As it happened, I also had a hospital appointment in London yesterday at 3pm. As only us sick people can really know, that is traumatic enough in itself. It takes 3 hours for Dave to drive me to central London and 3 hours to get home. Ordinarily, that alone would exhaust me for days after the actual event but instead, yesterday, I chose to wait 6 HOURS for the Big Benefits Row to start. By 8pm, every one of my loved-ones know not to phone me or expect intelligent reponses. Waiting up to do a show that starts at 9pm is significant in my world.


could this be the reason she was dropped? Did the programme makers find out that she was trying to get money from them under false pretences?


She has stated recently that she won't do anything now unless she gets paid for it, was this one attempt to line her own pockets too many?


Then when you look at the WOW petition's web site there is a donation button, so how much has been raised and where has it gone?


WOW is one of the least transparent campaigning groups around and Labour are happy to work with them?


Having finally gotten Labour to talk to me regarding carers issues thanks to a friend on Facebook, and being offered the chance to speak or meet Kate Green I turned it down. I've no intention of having anything to do with the WOW or Spartacus groups and if that means not getting the chance to put carers concerns to Labour then so be it.


Seems like there will never be unity between different online disabled people and carer communities, the problems run way too

Don't Make Our Job Harder

People realise and acknowledge that the government and media make the lives of disabled people difficult and miserable but what they don't take into consideration that it makes our role as carers equally stressful.

Our role tends to be a firewall, standing between a vicious ideologically driven coalition, the media, and people who have fallen for the anti-disabled propaganda tactics used by all of them.

The Huffington Post is the latest "newspaper" to allow disabled people bashing, but they have included a neat twist on things. Their disability basher is Simon Stevens. He is know to many online campaigners for his vile attacks on people who defend the government's cuts to disability benefits. If you show him proof that someone has taken their own life because of cuts to disability benefits he calls them "Nazis" or "murderers".

He also defends Atos, who almost everyone knows is a government driven disability denying organisation, but he would defend them because he has or is working for them as can be seen here.

I asked the Huffington Post for a right of reply to some of the more disturbing and offensive piece he has done for them. But like the Daily Mail, the Sun etc it seems like the HF only allows people to reply if it suits their 'agenda'.

The Huffington Post defends Simon Stevens right to attack disabled people with impunity.
There is no balance except for when the dull and boring Owen Jones chips in to speak up for people on benefits. But that's the thing, Jones isn't disabled or a carer to my knowledge, so why the hell should he be speaking for us? Carers and disabled people can speak for themselves, it's just that the media aren't listening to anyone that doesn't fit into their neat little boxes.

Huffington Post still won't allow a right of reply to someone that thinks he is the only disabled person worthy of disability benefits and that everyone else is workshy or a scrounger.

Why anyone takes that online rag seriously while it maintains the governments stereotypes is laughable. It has failed disabled people and carers in the same way the government has.

So stop making carers jobs harder by piling the shit Simon Stevens shovels onto the people we care for

UK Carers Update

Well the website is back up at our old URL (ukcarers.net) and contrary to what some people are saying I have never "been away".

Even though I having further health problems I have been had interesting contact with Labours Liz Kendal's office, which showed that Labour are still not able or willing to stand up for disabled people and carers. It would have been good if they understood the overlapping benefit rule when it came to Carers Allowance and the state pension, but it seems not.

The Lib Dems Norman Lamb was another of the main parties that won't work in the interests of carers. His siding with the Conservatives over the scrapping of DLA in favour of the cost cutting exercise that is PIP appear to indicate he is more interested in keeping his position rather than defending disabled people and carers.

The Tory response was to be expected.

UKIP surprised me though. They have a disability spokesperson that is disabled, replies to emails herself and takes on-board what people say. She also fights hard on disability issues. I have been very impressed by her even though I told her there is no chance I will be voting at the next election.

There have been other things like reminding various campaigning groups that carers exist, because the likes of the WOW petitions and Spartacus groups didn't mention carers till they were reminded about carers. So much for 'together we are stronger'.

There have been countless reports to the Press Complaints Commission about Daily Mail articles. Freedom of Information Act Requests that showed hardly any people managed to access the governments 'extra room for a stay over carer' payment.

This group http://www.dwpexamination.org/ showed promise when it first started, but it's similar to what UK Carers was doing years ago to be honest.

So yes, I am stepping up what I am doing, I certainly haven't been hiding or lazy, it's just that the game has changed, forums aren't 'productive'  anymore, social media has been useful but things change so quickly you have to react as quick as possible.

So that's the start of a new phase. There are still fighters out there which is good to see, but the same old boring people are still trying to do the same old boring things, perhaps- like Carers UK's Gavin McGregor - they will land up with a restraining order on them?