You are quite right to point out that presentation and style now trump content. Sadly, however, there was nothing to recommend Ed’s speech. The presentation, style and content were bad – really bad. He is completely devoid of ideas and even if he had one he couldn’t present it. I can’t see him leading Labour into the next election. And I say this as someone who has always voted Labour but decided to abstain at the last election because of Brown.

I would go for his brother David, but Ed has sullied the Milliband name. Ed Balls?

Not a peep about the abolition of our most cherished institution …… curious?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5-hi4FG-dQ

It was largely dull and that which wasn’t dull was largely nonsense. The only thing this Ed has going for him is that he isn’t a bug eyed megalomaniac.

There were plenty of ideas and meat to get into it. If you’re going to criticise, at least find something interesting / constructive to say, NW

I still haven’t had answers to those questions I keep posting:

- When is it that Britain wasn’t broken – I think we should be told?

- Which other countries don’t have broken “societies” – whatever they are?

Sorry Sunny, it was just a bit depressing. Let’s take your talking points:

Media regulation – least said soonest 1984 will be forgotten about.
Energy companies – are they rent seeking or just passing on yet more taxes and subsidy costs or both? The real problem is that people need cheap energy to stay warm etc and this doesn’t fit with the Green agenda or short term shareholder returns.
Rail companies – rail just isn’t possible to run as people would like it to be run and make a profit, making it a prime example of something that should work better when the government runs it directly. Unfortunately that solution leads to union capture and gives terrible results as well. It’s a bugger.
“very active industrial strategy to create better jobs and re-balance the economy” – nice things are nice, have a biscuit.
“call for responsibility at the top and in business.” – I presume at least part of this refers to Ed’s ludicrous idea of having asset strippers identified and shot *may be exaggerated for effect* given that he has magical powers to tell who is doing what exactly with a company and business’ wont react to this uncertainty with terror and desperate attempts at corruption.

Sunny, as I was off sick today I watched it and I couldn’t find a single cohesive idea – never mind a good idea. Everything was half-baked and nothing would have inspired Labour voters.

The key points you mention were it. Bashing it that all he could think of? You can’t run a country by bashing people however much they might deserve it.

No cohesive policy proposals for a Labour government to implement?

There won’t be a general election until 2015 and much can happen between now and then. What Ed was doing was setting out the focal points of Labour concerns, the issues that will motivate Labour policies. Fair enough IMO.

What worried me is that we have had no apologies for electing Blair as party leader, from Blunkett for haveing had to resign twice from ministerial office in dubious circumstances, from Prescott when he was deputy PM for that Tracey Temple business, or from Yvette Cooper for screwing up the housing market when she was the minister responsible for housing 2005-2008. Remember all those 100% and better loan-to-value mortgages which stoked the house price bubble?

“Cameron of course prefers to blame people than institutions.”

Generally, people mess up and not institutions. “Goldman Sachs” didn’t muck up the economy, individuals playing fast and loose at Goldman Sachs did. “The NHS” didn’t give my grandfather MRSA, cleaning staff not doing their job properly did. It may be nice and guilt-free to blame institutions but generally someone within an institution is responsible.

As for the speech, the main message I took from it is that Miliband thinks there are “good businesses” and “bad businesses”. These won’t be defined by which break the law and which don’t, but whether companies acting within the law do things of which Miliband, or “the court of public opinion”, disapprove. He mentioned asset strippers, but we don’t know from his speech what constitutes asset stripping (is there a legal definition?), and one commentator afterwards raised the issue of asset stripping where a merged company turns out to be a bad strategic fit, so the assets are moved about and actually jobs are saved that way.

To me, it conjured up the chilling idea of Ed Balls in number 11, reading the tabloid headlines, and suddenly deciding that today Company X is hereby branded a “bad business”, and so will be punished by ex post facto legislation or ex post facto “action” of some sort.

This inane populism is dangerous in many ways. Either people will see it as rubbish, and Labour won’t get elected in 2015. Or else they will get in, and either have to drop this nonsense and disappoint/disillusion their supporters, or else will go through with it and get it overturned time and time again in the courts.

Urgh, why do we have to bother with all this “presentation” crap? Can’t we all just agree to sack the spin doctors and have politics only covered by the newspapers?

As for content, it wasn’t bad, but there was one part that I can’t let pass without comment:

“Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 percent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time.”

I’m sorry, Ed, but this is rubbish. The right to buy destroyed social housing in this country and reduced what was left to a charity for the poorest, viewed with disdain by too many. The tax cuts helped to make Britain more and more unequal, something I’d have thought a social democrat would oppose.

As for the anti-union laws, these were quite simply an attack on basic civil liberties, on the right of civil society organisations to govern themselves. I’d go so far as to say they were and are a breach of the social contract.

Labour was right to oppose these appalling policies and will continue to be under the spell of Thatcherism to some extent until we reverse them.

“Generally, people mess up and not institutions”

True enough but institutions, policies and social cultures can create situations which increase the likelihood of behaviour with adverse consequences.

To take an extreme example, the institution of concentration camps in Nazi Germany made some courses of action possible which would have been more difficult to achieve had there been no concentration camps. Indeed, the death camps were explicitly intended to avoid incurring costs of bullets for mass murder and to avoid the expected adverse psychological effects upon front line troops of murdering civilians. As I say, this is an extreme example but it does illustrate how institutions can be structured to achieve or permit certain end results.

@ Chris: “As for the anti-union laws, these were quite simply an attack on basic civil liberties, on the right of civil society organisations to govern themselves”

This is simply wrong. The union members, as with anyone else, have the right to withdraw their labour but they also had the right to do so arbitrarily, without any sensible process and their employer had no corresponding right to fire them for breach of contract. That had to change for the very blunt reason that people destroyed the places they worked at. You cannot have working business’, unless they have infinitely deep pockets, that are held hostage to a bunch of militant, posturing sods.

To claim that the scaling back of union privileges, (they do you recall still have special protections), amounts to an attack on civil liberties shows, at best, profound ignorance.

It was just a speech
It was made to a largely uncritical audience, desperate for their heroes to return to power.
Watching and listening, it seemed to me that many present would applaud their own execution if a Labour M.P. was holding the rope.
The Lib Dem Conference looked and sounded the same and no doubt so will the Tories.
Our political system is broken, in 2009 Westminster was revealed chock full of utterly worthless self serving scum.
Many still have their snouts deep in the Commons trough and those that don’t are either troughing in the House of the Living Dead or are enjoying fabulous pensions at our expense.
New Labour/Tories/ Limp Damns – they are all the same – get used to it.

Sorry been watching Man U – very disappointing.

Ed …. like a lot of politicians these days he’s never had a proper job and he has never had to hack it in the real world. Cameron and Clegg are cut from the same cloth.

I think he spends too much time worrying about differentiating himself from Tony Blair.

The speech screamed “New deal for Britain” when he talked about changing the fabric of our economy to make life and business fairer and better aligned with the principles of the British people.

But because Tony Blair would have said “New Deal” he went against it and tried “bargain for britain” instead – which just didn’t work.

I hear in the news that Lord Glasman has become a huge influence on Ed, his speech and on Labour thinking.

What really intrigued me was to learn of Lord Glasman’s new inspirational banner for the Labour Party on the themes of: Faith, Flag, Family

My trouble is that banner instantly reminded me of the inspirational banner of the Vichy government in France during the German occupation in WW2: Travail, Famille, Patrie.

I wonder why Travail got left out. Is there a hidden message in that omission?

A speech much better on paper than its delivery, I fear.

Yes, there are a lot of ideas. But these are impressionistic. They don’t reflect with clarity what many feel. He starts a train of thought, then flits. See eg. on the economy: just as he starts taking about debt, budgets, jobs and cuts, then he peels of to pat Balls in the back and in a blink moves on to his truth and values, Murdoch and phone hacking. Read it!

Sunny, you say “No doubt there are bits people on the left will dislike. But a Labour leader will not appeal to everyone.”

Yes, but a Labour leader has at least to appeal to a Labour Conference! Especially after a bruising year and in opposition. Besides, as Polly Toynbee writes “…Miliband spoke only what is commonplace among most people, centre-ground stuff…” Trouble is he did not say it clearly enough.

Blair did battle with the party carrying the conceit of power and popularity. Put up and shut up. That’s what many did. EM does not have that luxury. It’s not a battle he should seek. It’s a new relationship between the party and the leadership.

You quote Seamus Milne calling it the “most radical” speech from a Labour leader in generation. Yes, there are moments of illumination, however fleeting: “…we’ve seen decent people with the right values losing out to those with the wrong ones.”

That’s at least an alibi for the last 30 years. The start of a new narrative. Calling for an examination of history that Miliband Snr and Stuart Hall would nod to. But he doesn’t do it.

So what’s the ‘new narrative’? That the ‘system’ that has embedded itself since the late 1970s (1979? or could it be 1976?) has conspired against the interests of average communities and mindful individuals.

Instead this ‘system’ sought to trade with ‘the markets’ in such a way that the Government ceased to be the Servants of the People, but referees and brokers. Light touch regulation here, a bit more competition there. And if the cake was small, it was covered up with cream bought on the PFI. Money is as addictive as political power and we were intoxicated on cheap credit. In this state, we thought we could dance with the devil, but strictly speaking, we’re not dancers. Then we got the sack.

So, how now, Brown’s cow? Balls. Yes Balls. Because Balls is still talking old money and not the new reality. It’s the rumble in the jungle: Friedman versus Galbraith, perhaps Hayek versus Marx and other such mixed historical metaphors.

Against what has been seen as a left wing speech, Balls casts a modest Brown shadow. Do his five imperatives inspire?
*Reversing January’s rise in VAT, * A cut in VAT to 5 per cent for home improvements, * A one-year National Insurance tax break for small firms who hire extra workers,* Another bank bonus tax, * Bringing forward investment projects including schools and roads.

Not a lot, not a lot.

And yet, and yet, there is some hope. Many are convinced that EM has taken the party to the Left, and though I don’t like such simplistic caricatures, there is room for a reconfiguration and revival of the Left. It is that Global Capitalism has had its cake and eaten it. And what’s more it has raided our larder and left us with a bill for removal costs. Enough!

This is moral hazard gone mad. When international capital can muster squillions to bail out whole countries, not out of altruism, but self interest, they need to also learn to dance to our tune. The people’s tune.

I just hope that we can agree on a hymn in time.

Reminded me of Kinnock

>> Not many can accuse Ed Miliband of sounding the same as David Cameron. <> call for responsibility at the top and in business.<<

In the end it seems that Labour welfare policy under Ed is still locked into the view sponsored by James Purnell and Unum's spin-doctors that disabled welfare claimants are socially deviant and need to be punished into work, not supported in their need. And isn't that just shameful.

reminded you of Kinnock, actually Kinnock didn’t really believe in what he was saying in his second term in oppostion, although Kinnock had a rough idea of what needed to be done regarding Scargill and Hatton in his first term un opposition,it was his second one, where he really turned laobur around, Ed miliband should have criticised the audience for booing the name Tony blair, Ed needs to prove he has ideas and that he agress with competent members of his sdhadow cabinet like Cooper adn Burnham.

(Blast, I forgot angle brackets confuse the software, try again)

“Not many can accuse Ed Miliband of sounding the same as David Cameron.”

I’ll give it a try! The caveat is that I’m a single issue activist, disability rights and disability benefits, and on their attitude to benefit claimants, and particularly disabled benefit claimants, you can’t squeeze anything between them. As seen in todays:

“call for responsibility at the top and in business.”

– and from welfare claimants. Just as in his ‘I met a man’ speech, Ed spends the entire speech coming back time and again to the theme that if you’re stuck on benefits, you are somehow irresponsible and equally to blame, along with the bankers, for the state of the country. Needless to say this didn’t go down well with disabled people the first time, and it’s certainly not going to go down any better this time – I’ve already posted my analysis at Where’s the Benefit and it’s much less flattering than Sunny’s, but seems to be drawing agreement from other disabled commentators, I’ve just seen someone describe Labour’s policies as ‘hateful of disabled people’.

Even when Ed went onto other topics there seemed to be an inherent cluelessness about how his policies would disadvantage disabled people. Ed wants people to jump the housing queue or be otherwise advantaged if they’re active in their communities. I spend most of my life flat on my back because I can’t tolerate sitting or standing, how exactly do I engage with my community at all, never mind contribute to it? How does someone with severe mental illness? Or severe ME, or any of hundreds of other disabilities? No one has thought this through, or worse, they have, but they’ve decided we don’t count.

What really scares me about the speech, and I do mean ‘scares’ in the conventional sense, is that it seems to have been written with the intent of sounding good to the Little Englander Mail/Sun/Express readers he seems to see as his target vote. Yet when you look at the existing attitudes of that electoral segment towards disabled people on benefits – ‘they’re all at it you know’ – then the likely interpretation of his words becomes something not just scary, but dangerous. This is the leader of the Labour Party, at a time when disability hate crime rates are already rising, telling them that people who need to live on benefits because they are unable to work are clearly defrauding the system, because only the frauds can get a claim through, and disabled people will suffer for that assertion. No doubt he’ll swear blind that that isn’t what he meant, but that doesn’t matter, it is how it will be read, and he should have known that.

In the end it seems that Labour welfare policy under Ed is still locked into the view sponsored by James Purnell and Unum’s spin-doctors that disabled welfare claimants are socially deviant and need to be punished into work, not supported in their need. And isn’t that just shameful.

“Faith, Flag, Family”

That is the motto of the (Tory) Cornerstone Group. Is Blue Labour’s perhaps “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” instead? ;P

One of the more interesting responses I had to Ed Miliband’s speech was that it also said Britain has a broken society.

So Ed has finally noticed the obvious? Good for him.

The difference is that while Ed M pointedly said he did not want to dismiss parts of society as ‘sick’ and focused instead on how ‘vested interests’ were making life harder for Britons. Cameron of course prefers to blame people than institutions.

It is easier to blame faceless institutions. It takes more guts to blame people. That is why people can believe “the Jews” are really running the world while not actually hating their dentist. Not that Cameron is blaming people either.

- taking on vested interests of media conglomerates, of energy companies and rail companies

So he does not like the way they are reported and he was flick to switch to some cheap populism in the hope of getting some media headlines?

- having a very active industrial strategy to create better jobs and re-balance the economy

They are not better jobs. By definition. Or we would be doing them. They are worse jobs. What they mean is they want to restrict people doing the jobs that pay well and forced them into lower paid manufacturing work. Great.

call for responsibility at the top and in business.

I am sure he loves his Mother’s apple pie too. This is meaningless.

To no surprise, Seamus Milne calls it the “most radical” speech from a Labour leader in generation, and he is a hard man to please.

Not at all. Seamus Milne is one of the easiest people in British politics to please. He has rarely seen anyone with lips fleckled with spittle in their hate of the West that he does not really like. You don’t have to achieve anything.

No doubt there are bits people on the left will dislike. But a Labour leader will not appeal to everyone.

What? In such vapid statements what’s there to dislike?

The problem, as I keep saying, is that the communication is awful.

The Left keeps saying this even though they have a largely supine media on their side. The truth is that it is not the communication, it is the content.

Planning is chaotic. In the morning, DCMS shadow minister Ivan Lewis managed to annoy the entire press by floating an idea that media might have a ‘register’ where bad journalists could be ‘struck off’.

So Ed wants to tackle the irresponsible media, but not with anything that might actually work?

If Tony Blair was bad at content but incredibly good at presentation – Ed Miliband has the opposite problem. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the latter state of affairs either.

Where is the content in this?

21. David G

Ed spends the entire speech coming back time and again to the theme that if you’re stuck on benefits, you are somehow irresponsible and equally to blame, along with the bankers, for the state of the country.

Well they are. How can anyone argue with that? We are going broke because of massive welfare spending. Much of it fraudulent or at least unnecessary. Where is the controversy?

How does someone with severe mental illness? Or severe ME, or any of hundreds of other disabilities? No one has thought this through, or worse, they have, but they’ve decided we don’t count.

All the people with such disabilities in Britain put together probably amount to fewer than 100,000 people. The vast majority of people claiming disability for mental illness are doing so for things that weren’t even diseases 40 years ago. We are paying out for millions. You can’t hide those millions of people behind the tens of thousands with real problems – and you need to support any means by which the two groups are separated.

This is the leader of the Labour Party, at a time when disability hate crime rates are already rising

From nothing to negligible. Britain remains what it always has been – one of the most friendly and generous countries towards the disabled in the world. Nor do I think that smearing your fellow citizens is likely to be a productive approach in the long run.

telling them that people who need to live on benefits because they are unable to work are clearly defrauding the system, because only the frauds can get a claim through, and disabled people will suffer for that assertion. No doubt he’ll swear blind that that isn’t what he meant, but that doesn’t matter, it is how it will be read, and he should have known that.

No it isn’t. It will be read as every sane person on the planet sees it – that we have a system that gives too much to too many people who do not need it. And we need to tweak the system to screen out those that can and should work from those that cannot. Again, you do your cause no good whatsoever by refusing to accept that people with “agrophobia” are in such desperate need we should have to work for their leisure.

In the end it seems that Labour welfare policy under Ed is still locked into the view sponsored by James Purnell and Unum’s spin-doctors that disabled welfare claimants are socially deviant and need to be punished into work, not supported in their need. And isn’t that just shameful.

That is not what these programmes are about. Welfare remains available for every single person that demonstrates a genuine need. No one is even hinting at changing that.

@24 –
“Welfare remains available for every single person that demonstrates a genuine need.”

And not those, oh, with late-state chronic disabling diseases or a few days from death from cancer right.

Never mind that fraud in the welfare system is very low, and has been that way for a long time. Never mind that ATOS has quite literally harassed people to death. No, you have to pump out hate propaganda against the disabled.

(And, moreover, the levels of welfare available is bluntly miserly in many areas compared to the other civilised western nations (i.e. outside America and the UK))

@16 – The TORY Party banner, you mean, under a false flag of allegiance.

25. Leon Wolfson

And not those, oh, with late-state chronic disabling diseases or a few days from death from cancer right.

Precisely for them. Has there been a single documented case where such people have been denied welfare?

Never mind that fraud in the welfare system is very low, and has been that way for a long time. Never mind that ATOS has quite literally harassed people to death. No, you have to pump out hate propaganda against the disabled.

ATOS is showing that welfare is massively abused. It is too early to be sure, but the preliminary results are over half of all people on Disability of one form or another should not be getting it. This is not low. There is no evidence I know of that ATOS has harassed anyone to death. If you have evidence, produce it. It is laughable that you claim pointing out the obvious is hate propaganda. But then you are Leon.

(And, moreover, the levels of welfare available is bluntly miserly in many areas compared to the other civilised western nations (i.e. outside America and the UK))

And yet it is so high that people prefer it to taking the sort of jobs East Europeans are now doing.

@So Much For Subtlety –

My comments relates to yours No.24, which in turn is a response of sorts to David G at No.21. OK? It’s not to do with your comments at No.23.

So, let me put this in words of one syllable so that my meaning is clear. (Apols to Clegg)

@So Much For Subtlety – you’re a c##t, now f##k off! END

To all others reading, it’s comments from people like this ignoramus that reminds me of what the Right is truly like. They prefer to go after the weak, vulnerable and disadvantaged rather than the powerful, corrupt and cynical. Why? It’s not the money. So what is it? Thrills? Being the tough guy? Some notional moral high ground? Make up your own mind.

@So Much For Subtlety – a propos No. 26 – as I write you continue to spew out your bile.

I’m not even going to bother to engage with you about research into ATOS (pay £1.50 and get your own copy of Private Eye). . And no, I am not on benefits nor disabled. But that doesn’t stop me from having empathy or compassion. Or know when the taxpayer is getting really ripped off.

And as for your East Europeans comments, I know where this is going. I remind you that it was under Mrs T that we signed the Treaty of Maastricht. This locked us into a number of things demanded by global capital: free movement of goods services and capital. And oh by the way, labour.

And it was the Tories who opted out of the Social Chapter .All to fight the great evil of inflation. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland…et al That’s the price we are paying. And btw I don’t have much in common with Little Englander Euroscepticism either.

Oh, and while I’m at it, can I ask who benefits from paying low wages to the East Europeans? Do you even open your myopic eyes to what’s really going on?

@26 – Er…YES. There are multiple cases of ATOS ruling them fit to work!

Evidence doesn’t matter one whit to you, you’re here to disrupt the discussion.

27. @jayn19

To all others reading, it’s comments from people like this ignoramus that reminds me of what the Right is truly like. They prefer to go after the weak, vulnerable and disadvantaged rather than the powerful, corrupt and cynical.

Pointing out the truth is not going after the weak and vulnerable. Although I am sure you would like to hide behind them. Need to even. If you think my post was offensive, point out where.

28. @jayn19

a propos No. 26 – as I write you continue to spew out your bile.

And despite your promise to end the conversation you can’t help yourself. Odd.

But that doesn’t stop me from having empathy or compassion. Or know when the taxpayer is getting really ripped off.

No one is questioning your empathy of compassion. But thinking you are empathic and compassionate does not excuse anyone from rational thought, nor does it make them such special snowflakes the normal rules of logic, argument and even decent behaviour do not apply to them.

And as for your East Europeans comments, I know where this is going. I remind you that it was under Mrs T that we signed the Treaty of Maastricht. This locked us into a number of things demanded by global capital: free movement of goods services and capital. And oh by the way, labour.

So what? You don’t know where this is going, but let’s suppose you do. What relevance does your comment have? I also notice that it was Blair’s government that refused to impose even the minor restrictions we were allowed to impose – and which most other European governments did. They also then lied to us about how many people they expected to come. None of which I have much of a problem with. I am happy to see so many Poles in Britain. It is nice to deal with people who have standards, manners, a firm grasp of basic mathematics and can speak proper English. Unlike the feral products of our council estates.

Oh, and while I’m at it, can I ask who benefits from paying low wages to the East Europeans? Do you even open your myopic eyes to what’s really going on?

Who cares?

29. Leon Wolfson

Er…YES. There are multiple cases of ATOS ruling them fit to work!

Then it should be trivial for you to produce some evidence. No?

Evidence doesn’t matter one whit to you, you’re here to disrupt the discussion.

Produce the evidence and we will see how much it matters. So far you have not.

@30 – http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/

Now, watch as the right-wing shill tries to ignore the evidence and talk about how wonderful supply-siders are.

In Keynes’s General Theory, there was an aggregate supply function as well as an aggregate demand function.

Boosting aggregate demand won’t increase national output and employment if the aggregate supply function is inelastic – perhaps because capacity has disappeared in a recession or because of skill shortages in expanding sectors or because labour is immobile etc

31. Leon Wolfson

Now, watch as the right-wing shill tries to ignore the evidence and talk about how wonderful supply-siders are.

Sorry but in what sense is some anonymous anecdote on the internet evidence?

“Much of it fraudulent or at least unnecessary. Where is the controversy?”

I take it that ‘The Daily Stigma’ went right over your head yesterday as you’re still repeating the lies that there is a significant amount of benefit fraud. As for ‘unnecessary,’ by their words shall you know them.

“All the people with such disabilities in Britain put together probably amount to fewer than 100,000 people.”

Oh I wish. Try 25 times that and more. We have 40,000+ with spinal injuries alone, 300,000+ with Severe Visual Impairments, and so on.

“things that weren’t even diseases 40 years ago”

Yep, all those veterans with PTSD, clearly faking it. Which part of scientific progress are you having difficulty with? It took the medical establishment centuries to differentiate disabilities as immediately obvious as Down’s Syndrome (1866), that doesn’t mean that Down’s Syndrome didn’t exist before 1866, simply that no one had clarified a set of symptoms and given them a separate name. Is it really so surprising to you that new syndromes are being continually identified as we gain more and more understanding of how disability works and are able to more finely divide one set of symptoms from another? Personally I don’t even have a complete diagnosis, doesn’t mean that my consultants can’t point to a completely verifiable set of disabling conditions, and I’m far from alone in that.

“You can’t hide those millions of people behind the tens of thousands with real problem”

So now it’s tens of thousands, not even 100,000? Is it too much to hope for consistence in your disablism?

“”at a time when disability hate crime rates are already rising”

From nothing to negligible. Britain remains what it always has been – one of the most friendly and generous countries towards the disabled in the world”

I just spent the afternoon reading Katharine Quarmby’s ‘Scapegoat’, dealing with all those ‘negligible’ cases, like Francecca Hardwick (killed by her mother to escape the continuous torment of disablist thugs), Raymond Atherton (beaten and thrown into the Mersey to drown), Albert Adams (stabbed repeatedly), Keith Philpott (disembowelled), Rikki Judkins (beaten with a stone), Barrie-John Howell (strangled and set on fire), Shao Wei He (tortured, beaten and left to freeze), Brent Martin (beaten to death), Christine Lasinski (urinated on as she lay dying) and the list of shame goes on. If it is so negligible, how come I’m into double figures with incidents I’ve experienced personally? (And I really don’t get out much). How come disabled people report being increasingly scared to go out? How come the former DPP, Sir Ken MacDonald, says that the failure of the CPS to adequately deal with disability hate crime “is the one thing I’m really ashamed of”.

As for “has always been,” plenty of examples there, up to including the head of Bedlam being caught naked with his female charges and getting away with it. Britain isn’t generous towards disabled people, it mostly thinks it is, but the truth is it’s simply in denial of reality, and disabled people like me can’t afford the luxury of sticking our head in the sand and pretending that reality isn’t happening. If you want to persist in your denial then I’m sorry for you, but I’m certainly not going to enable you.

“It will be read as every sane person on the planet sees it”

If you think implying sanity is somehow more worthy is going to score you points, you really picked the wrong debate.

“you do your cause no good whatsoever by refusing to accept that people with “agrophobia” are in such desperate need we should have to work for their leisure.”

Hmm, hot button topic? You might want to check the double negatives in there as well. And personally, I’d definitely take my disabling levels of severe pain in preference to disabling levels of agoraphobia.

“Welfare remains available for every single person that demonstrates a genuine need.”

So why do over 30% of rejections for ESA by ATOS end up at Tribunal (at a cost to the taxpayer of £50m/year), with 40% winning across the board, over 70% when the appeal is assisted by CAB? Why do people keep reporting outright (and verifiable) falsehoods in their WCA reports? Why are 12 ATOS doctors under investigation by the GMC? Why did I have to force the ATOS doctor at my WCA to accept the evidence that I had an automatic pass against his refusal to ask the question that would bring it out and even though it was clear from the documents in front of him that he needed to ask that question? Why did the Select Committee on Work and Pensions just lambast ATOS and DWP over the current state of affairs?

“ATOS is showing that welfare is massively abused.”

Actually the evidence of systemic problems at ATOS is becoming so overwhelming that ATOS have resorted to legal action to try and shut down the disability sites which are critical of them while the complete breakdown of trust between ATOS and disabled people was recognised by the LibDem conference when they overwhelmingly passed a motion calling the current situation unacceptable and for the WCA contract to be taken away from ATOS and placed either into the hands of either a charity or government. Speaking as a former quality control specialist, the demonstrated failure rate at ATOS, as confirmed by Tribunal stats, would be considered catastrophic in any other industry.

34. David G

Oh I wish. Try 25 times that and more. We have 40,000+ with spinal injuries alone, 300,000+ with Severe Visual Impairments, and so on.

A term like “spinal injury” is so vague it is mostly useless. I am sure we do. That doesn’t mean someone claiming whiplash can’t work. The NHS keeps lists of the number of blind people:

“At 31 March 2006 about 152,000 people were on the register of blind people, a reduction of 4,000 (3 per cent) since March 2003.”

Notice that the leading cause of blindness is Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Not people who would be getting most forms of Disability anyway as they are old.

Yep, all those veterans with PTSD, clearly faking it.

There is a good argument about PTSD – and it does look as if it is a feature of the way psychiatrists assume veterans will behave rather than their actual military experiences. But something like PTSD has been around for over 100 years. There is no way that this is made up. But given the numbers are trivial we can see you are simply trying to hide behind the veterans. Big deal.

Which part of scientific progress are you having difficulty with?

What part of Drug-Firms-Artificially-Creating-Diseases-To-Sell-Drugs do you have a problem with? It has not been scientific progress that has caused such a massive expansion. It has been drug reps pushing their products.

Is it really so surprising to you that new syndromes are being continually identified as we gain more and more understanding of how disability works and are able to more finely divide one set of symptoms from another?

Yes it is because we are not gaining knowledge of how disability works, well how mental illness works. We know how disability works. We know about as little now as we did 100 years ago or even 1000 years ago. And it is not the case that people are more finely dividing the same pool of mentally ill – people may not have had a word for Down’s syndrome children but they knew they had a problem. We simply give labels to people because they are sad, or ill-disciplined or unhappy. Not because they are actually sick. Which has resulted in the massive and frankly ludicrous expansion of the numbers claiming to be ill.

So now it’s tens of thousands, not even 100,000? Is it too much to hope for consistence in your disablism?

100,000 would be 10 10,000s. Disablism? Nice term. Keep it up, you may get to bully as many people as you like with a term as socially disapproved of as homophobia. You can but hope.

and the list of shame goes on.

For all of nine names. None of which you have shown was a direct result of their disability in the sense that they were picked on for that reason alone.

If it is so negligible, how come I’m into double figures with incidents I’ve experienced personally?

You really need to ask?

If you want to persist in your denial then I’m sorry for you, but I’m certainly not going to enable you.

You even have the pop psychology vocab down nicely. Except I am not in denial. It is just true.

If you think implying sanity is somehow more worthy is going to score you points, you really picked the wrong debate.

I am not sure that is what I was doing, but if it was, worthy is perhaps not the right word to use.

So why do over 30% of rejections for ESA by ATOS end up at Tribunal (at a cost to the taxpayer of £50m/year), with 40% winning across the board, over 70% when the appeal is assisted by CAB?

Because suckers like me pick up the bill and so it costs them nothing to appeal. I am surprised that only 30% appeal. Which means 70% agree with the decision. Of those 30% only 40% win? That means 12% of the original decisions were wrong. Too high, I admit but it is not doing your case any good at all is it? After all it also means that 88% of them were right. 70% when the CAB gets involved? I assume that means the CAB has a lot of experience and can spot a genuine case worthy of support.

“Unlike the feral products of our council estates”

I was brought up in a council house. To be labelled feral is indeed an honour coming from you.Reading your posts revealed to me that you possess little knowledge ,uncivility and utilise a “passive/aggressive approach to people with disabilities.If I am feral what on earth does that say about you?

35. David G

Actually the evidence of systemic problems at ATOS is becoming so overwhelming that ATOS have resorted to legal action to try and shut down the disability sites which are critical of them

You take people’s honey pots away from them, they are going to get cross. They may libel you on the internet. That is not a sign of problems with the system but of its success.

while the complete breakdown of trust between ATOS and disabled people was recognised by the LibDem conference when they overwhelmingly passed a motion calling the current situation unacceptable and for the WCA contract to be taken away from ATOS and placed either into the hands of either a charity or government.

Yet again, the fact that the Lib Dems are making a fuss and demanding more of their clients get a slice of the pie is proof of success, not failure. When the Labour Party and then the Tories say it, then they have a problem.

Speaking as a former quality control specialist, the demonstrated failure rate at ATOS, as confirmed by Tribunal stats, would be considered catastrophic in any other industry.

Maybe so. But it is hard to correctly diagnose people when they have such a clear financial interest in lying.

37. hindle-a

I was brought up in a council house. To be labelled feral is indeed an honour coming from you.

That would be interesting if I did any such thing. Of course I did not. I certainly did not say everyone on a council estate was feral. But it is certain that those that can be reasonable described as feral come from housing estates.

If I am feral what on earth does that say about you?

I grew up on a council estate?

I can diagnose you, though.

Paid shill, one. Tell the master three doors down on the the right that I know what he’s paying you, and unless he cuts it out I’ll be filing a VERY embarrassing FOI request. His choice.

@ Chris

“Urgh, why do we have to bother with all this “presentation” crap? Can’t we all just agree to sack the spin doctors and have politics only covered by the newspapers?”

No. Spin doctoring and presentation are, alas, crucial.

The difference between “The NHS is wasting money on hiring more bureaucrats instead of more nurses” and “The NHS is spending its money wisely by hiring £15,000-a-year support staff to handle routine admin tasks, freeing up £30,000-a-year nurses to focus on patient care” is one of spin. It would be crazy to try and produce some sort of ‘neutral’ press release and entrust the press to report things fairly. (What would a neutral, just-the-facts press release even look like? Different facts will be relevant depending on what spin you’re wanting to put on the story – e.g. do you include the raw figures on the growth of the admin budget, or the figures showing the proportion of nurses’ time spent on patient care vs. admin?)

So Much For Subtlety obviously thinks he will never become sick or disabled and need to rely on benefits. He will never have a serious accident that will disable him or develop a chronic illness.
We all think like that, but shit happens.
I have an autoimmune disease which is very painful, i get around £90 a month DLA. Not a lot but it helps.
You may begrudge paying taxes for other peoples benefits but you are not the only one paying tax. My husband has worked hard and paid his taxes all his life and even now he has retired he still has pay tax on his private pensions.
We are getting back some of what he and others have paid in. That is what the welfare state is all about.
I certainly would not lose any sleep over benefit fraud, a lot of money goes unclaimed by people who are entitled to it.

Funny but from around @24 or @25 onwards, the discussion seems to have nothing to do with the subject! Or have I just flipped to a parallel universe?

¨Generally, people mess up and not institutions.¨. Yes, but what about Government sponsored institutions like Ofsted and the Child Support Agency which have driven (admittedly a small number) of people to suicide. I suppose in this case heartless folk blame the weak individuals involved! ¨It´s All About You¨ as those nauseating ads.tell us.

@Northern Worker – my intemperate comments at No.24 may not have helped matters. For this I apologise. I was very cross!

On re-reading and re-watching the speech, I think that I was possibly too harsh in my comments at No.17. Perhaps this is the start of something bigger.

Did someone say In Place of Strife? Well try this amusing diversion, that may or may not contain a kernel of just such a bigger idea …. http://www.newstatesman.com/drink/2009/07/british-pub-home-drink

And yet this morning on BBC breakfast show this is what Ed stated.

Welfare has to change due to the Banking crises,

So the sick and the disabled the poorest in society who have lost jobs are now the problem of the Banking crises.

Problem is of course Miliband was part of the problems around Brown

A term like “spinal injury” is so vague it is mostly useless. I am sure we do. That does’t mean someone claiming whiplash can’t work. The NHS keeps lists of the number of blind people:

My spinal injury paraplegia caused by damage to the spine at L5 C2 , I have had three disc in my neck fused, and I have had three disc removed from my back, I have lost the use of my bowel and my bladder, I had a morphine pump implanted beneath my skin so I cannot touch it.

I’m classed as Paraplegic.

To the labour WCA brought in by two great socialist nope not Bevan, Purnell and Freud , I’m not disabled because I can move a pound coin from A to B using any part of my body, and I can lift an empty cartoon or box, the problem is of course not to many jobs with empty boxes they are normally full, and of course moving a coin from a to B were is the paid employment with that

I now believe the communication and presentational problem outweighs the problem of content.

Yep, as I said the other day he comes across as a dork.

When he said he loved his family at the beginning, that was an attempt by the speech writer to make him seem more normal and human but how many didn’t squirm in their seat when he delivered the line?

Be honest!!!!

Weird doesn’t get elected and this guy is seriously weird.

@42 Yeah, bothering to engage with the deliberately obtuse Mr Subtlety does tend to have that effect on threads. Professional Troll that one.

Same wet and windy rubbish I’ve come to expect from Milibland. Barely any different from what Cameron or the other one would say in opposition. No policy details and still bashing the poor, Milibland remains committed to taking more money from welfare claimants than the rich, he didn’t even have the guts to oppose this http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/21/terminally-ill-told-benefits-cut

To no surprise, Seamus Milne calls it the “most radical” speech from a Labour leader in generation, and he is a hard man to please.

Seamus “For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality” Milne?

Genuine question:

Miliband said, “I knew when I said what I did that I was breaking rule number one of British politics. Don’t mess with Rupert Murdoch.”

In what way did Miliband “mess with Rupert Murdoch”?

I ask because ISTM he was largely if not wholly invisible (as opposed to, say, stalwarts such as Tom Watson who kept on and continue to keep on ‘messing’).

I think Mr. Finkelstein got it right .Ed is too left wing and no-one likes him, the rest is just noise. I was wondering myself if the Red Ed stuff which contained no real policies was there to disguise the only real promise .Not to reverse any coalition cuts So there you have it. The coalition have it right but if you want the same thing with noises about bargains and some exhumed gobbeldygook from the Old Labour library , vote for the Panda.
As ever the best comment from a left wing perspective is Hopi Sen`s whose quite brilliant piece is well worth reading.

51. He started to speak out against Murdoch in July, when Labour tabled a motion about the BSkyB bid.

Of course this was after his comments in December where he called for Vince Cable to be sacked for “declaring war on murdoch”, so his arrival was past even fashionably late to the party.

Miliband did mess with Murdoch, but only when it got to a point politically where it was safe enough to do so under the circumstances. Ed is a coward, but wants to rewrite history as if he’s brave.

Thanks Lee, that’s along the lines of what I suspected.

“A speech much better on paper than its delivery, I fear.”

It was as tedious on paper.

Ouch …. good aim Mr. Griffin

In the end, analysis and policies in politics matter more than personalities, which is why we still have a welfare state of a kind – as do other west European countries – long after Bismarck and Beveridge died. Any fool can fling mud or worse. Chimpanzees do it.

As Keynes put it:

” . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or ill.”

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money; (1936), pp. 383-4
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/keynes/john_maynard/k44g/chapter24.html

My apologies to everyone else for feeding the troll, but just as I wouldn’t let a Holocaust Denier go unchallenged I’m not about to let a disability hate crime denier get away with it.

“A term like “spinal injury” is so vague it is mostly useless. I am sure we do. That doesn’t mean someone claiming whiplash can’t work.”

Ooh, sneakily nasty, trying to imply spinal injuries=whiplash. But sorry, no banana,. The 40,000 figure was for spinal cord injuries involving paralysis. As for whiplash, ever had it? Some of what gets labeled whiplash by the general public is potentially very seriously disabling. For everyone who incurs a disabling spinal cord injury, there are probably dozens more who incur disabling back injuries of other kinds. I’m one of them.

“The NHS keeps lists of the number of blind people:

“At 31 March 2006 about 152,000 people were on the register of blind people,”

You forgot partially sighted, separate register with about the same number of people again on it, so my 300,000 was correct. And yes, some of these will be retired and some of these will have managed to find work, but a very large number of them won’t be able to work. And then we have to work our way through all of the other disabling conditions. No one on the inside of disability is surprised that there are so many people unable to work, but inevitably the deniers turn out to be those who won’t admit a whole range of disabilities exist.

“Notice that the leading cause of blindness is Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Not people who would be getting most forms of Disability anyway ”

Actually, they’d be perfectly entitled to be in receipt of DLA if the claim was started pre-retirement, or Carer’s Allowance if it was started post-retirement.

“There is a good argument about PTSD – and it does look as if it is a feature of the way psychiatrists assume veterans will behave rather than their actual military experiences. But something like PTSD has been around for over 100 years. There is no way that this is made up. But given the numbers are trivial we can see you are simply trying to hide behind the veterans. Big deal.”

Hide behind the veterans? Simply trying to pick an example even you couldn’t deny.

“It has not been scientific progress that has caused such a massive expansion. It has been drug reps pushing their products.”

Pushing all those clearly successful drugs for autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and so on? I’ll grant you ADHD is overmedicated, but that doesn’t mean the other complex developmental disorders and all the other newly diagnosed syndromes don’t exist. It can easily take a century or more for a disease to be widely known – take Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, potentially very disabling, even lethal in some forms, identified at the start of the 20thC, provable by genetic testing, but we still only have three specialist centres in the UK, it can take years to get a referral and the vast majority of the public have never heard of it. No drug treatment.

“And it is not the case that people are more finely dividing the same pool of mentally ill”

I can recite you the history if you want? It’s fully documented (and fairly unpleasant). Though of course with my example being Downs Syndrome we were dealing with a developmental disorder (technically a genetic disorder, but the distinction from other developmental orders wasn’t initially understood) , not mental illness. But even with mental illness we can see the progression from hysteria into the greater resolution of depression, the other mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, and the newer classification of personality disorders.

“We simply give labels to people because they are sad, or ill-disciplined or unhappy. Not because they are actually sick.”

Do you deny clinical depression exists?

“Disablism? Nice term. Keep it up, you may get to bully as many people as you like with a term as socially disapproved of as homophobia. You can but hope.”

Accusing the victim of being the aggressor, classic.

“‘and the list of shame goes on.’

For all of nine names.”

How casually you dismiss nine deaths, many of them people systematically tortured and then murdered. Those were simply the examples I picked from one page of Katharine Quarmby’s ‘Scapegoat’. From a media analysis Anne Novis of the Disability Hate Crime network identified 317 attacks and 23 killings in the first 6 months of 2010, 96 and 15 in 2009 and 76 and 14 in 2008. Those are just the ones judged worthy of a headline, in an environment in which disability hate crimes are still under-reported, with many classed as domestic violence or other forms of abuse. Disability hate crime prosecutions more than doubled from 183 in 2007-8 to 393 in 2008-9 and near doubled again to 683 in 2009-10. This last is a little over 50% of the prosecutions for homophobic crimes, but in some regions reports of disability hate crimes already outnumber reports of homophobic hate crime, the police and CPS are simply less successful at bringing them to trial (a problem the CPS admits). The newest figures, released a few days ago, report another 20% rise in reports of disability hate crimes.

The DPP in a speech this year noted: “The Disability Rights Commission’s Attitudes and Awareness Survey (2003) revealed that 22 per cent of disabled respondents had experienced harassment in public because of their impairment.”
And that “90 per cent of people with a learning disability had experienced bullying and harassment. Sixty-six per cent of people with a learning disability have been bullied regularly with 32 per cent stating that bullying was taking place on a daily or weekly basis”

“None of which you have shown was a direct result of their disability in the sense that they were picked on for that reason alone.”

Why is it so important to you that these not be disability hate crimes? Rather than me try to repeat pages of evidence, why don’t you just go out and buy or borrow a copy of ‘Scapegoat’?

“‘If it is so negligible, how come I’m into double figures with incidents I’ve experienced personally?’

You really need to ask?”

What exactly is that supposed to mean? (Apart from you not wanting to acknowledge clear evidence of the extensive nature of disability hate crimes).

“I am surprised that only 30% appeal. Which means 70% agree with the decision.”

Not at all. The system created by ATOS and DWP is extremely stressful, I came very close to abandoning my own claim due to mistreatment by ATOS, many people give up in disgust even before they get to to the WCA, it is likely many more do when rejected – the lack of data on this has been identified as a failure in the system by the independent reviewer, Professor Harrington. Many of the people who do fail the WCA are not in a position to understand that they may not have been assessed fairly and have grounds for an appeal, the way the information is presented is designed to persuade them that they will have better opportunities on JSA (whereas my experience of JSA ended in a complaint to the minister and an abject apology from DWP who admitted that they had not been able to deal with my disability). The Appeals Service is severely overloaded, it can take 2 years for an appeal to be held, during which people will be kept on the JSA-equivalent assessment rate. If you’re stressed, and stress is an aggravating problem in many disabilities, and getting JSA-rate, then there is a pressure to just give up and accept JSA to get away from the stress.

“only 40% win? That means 12% of the original decisions were wrong. Too high, I admit but it is not doing your case any good at all is it? After all it also means that 88% of them were right.”

Not at all, it means that 40% were wrong, and only that. And, as I said, success rates run as high as 70% with advocacy. The other cases were not appealed, there are clearly circumstances to say that people with valid claims may be giving up, and concerns about the lack of that data. It may be that if they had been appealed they also would have succeeded. Even if only 12% is wrong, can you point me out an industry in which a failure rate of 1 in 8 is remotely acceptable?

41. Lynne

So Much For Subtlety obviously thinks he will never become sick or disabled and need to rely on benefits. He will never have a serious accident that will disable him or develop a chronic illness. We all think like that, but shit happens.

And what would it matter if I did?

You may begrudge paying taxes for other peoples benefits but you are not the only one paying tax. My husband has worked hard and paid his taxes all his life and even now he has retired he still has pay tax on his private pensions.
We are getting back some of what he and others have paid in. That is what the welfare state is all about.

I do not mind paying taxes for other people’s benefit. I mind paying taxes for other people who don’t need it. I mind my money being wasted by people who have no idea what it costs me to earn and throw billions around like confetti. It is good to hear that your husband paid tax all his life. You may be getting some back. So what? A lot of people are not paying in but are getting stuff out. An ever increasing number. When they could and should be contributing. It not only killed Britain as a great power, it is not affordable any more. We have already cut important, basic, functions of the state too close to the bone and we have no cash left. It all goes to people who game the system. It has to stop. That is not a moral judgment, it is a simple statement of fact.

I certainly would not lose any sleep over benefit fraud, a lot of money goes unclaimed by people who are entitled to it.

Good for you. And you can keep doing that while the rest of us slide into Greece

45. Rob the crip

So the sick and the disabled the poorest in society who have lost jobs are now the problem of the Banking crises.

Well no. The problem would still be there even if the banking crisis did not occur. Ed just knows that deflecting blame on to bankers is popular. Well it used to work well when the politicians were Upper class aristocrats and the bankers were Jews so it may still work. We have an aging population with expectations of benefits that are not sustainable. Whatever happens, whoever was in power, something has to change. The only question is how much pain.

46. Rob the crip

I’m classed as Paraplegic.

And did ATOS send you down a coal mine? Did they insist you work?

58. David G

My apologies to everyone else for feeding the troll, but just as I wouldn’t let a Holocaust Denier go unchallenged I’m not about to let a disability hate crime denier get away with it.

You know, you would argue a lot better if you did not insist on (a) making such a fool of yourself through cheapening the Holocaust and (b) refusing to understand any argument put to you. It may make you feel self righteous but it is not going to help in the end.

Ooh, sneakily nasty, trying to imply spinal injuries=whiplash. But sorry, no banana,.

No. Pointing out that whiplash is a type of spinal injury. Don’t over do it.

You forgot partially sighted, separate register with about the same number of people again on it, so my 300,000 was correct.

No I did not. You claims Severe Visual Impairment. Which was just a sneaky way of blurring the boundaries of what the problem is. Sure, someone who is profoundly short-sighted probably should not fly fighter jets. But there is no reason why they can’t work in some other field. So your figure is meaningless until we know how impaired they are.

No one on the inside of disability is surprised that there are so many people unable to work

Of course not. They are part of a massive industry that relies on those numbers.

Pushing all those clearly successful drugs for autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and so on?

Really – there’s a drug for dyslexia and dyspraxia? For autism? Do tell.

I’ll grant you ADHD is overmedicated, but that doesn’t mean the other complex developmental disorders and all the other newly diagnosed syndromes don’t exist.

Dyslexia may exist – but it is massive over-diagnosed for middle class parents who don’t want to admit their children are thick. Likewise for dyspraxia – thick and badly disciplined. Come on, you picked these examples specifically knowing that I would challenge them didn’t you? Autism? The poster child of the over diagnosed illness? Oh joy.

It can easily take a century or more for a disease to be widely known – take Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, potentially very disabling, even lethal in some forms, identified at the start of the 20thC

So not a new disease. Even the label for it is over 100 years old. So not really a good example for you is it?

I can recite you the history if you want? It’s fully documented (and fairly unpleasant).

By all means. I will point out that in 1955 1 in every 468 Americans was hospitalised for a mental illness. In 1987 1 out of every 184 was getting benefits for being disabled by mental disease. The pool has expanded. In 2007 it was 1 in every 76.

Though of course with my example being Downs Syndrome we were dealing with a developmental disorder (technically a genetic disorder, but the distinction from other developmental orders wasn’t initially understood) , not mental illness.

And I am willing to bet that there was a modest increase in the numbers of Down’s Syndrome babies being born during the 20th century until the 1980s or so when parents were strongly advised to terminate. Caused by a gradual aging of Mothers. But no explosion. Because Down’s Syndrome is more or less unmistakable.

But even with mental illness we can see the progression from hysteria into the greater resolution of depression, the other mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, and the newer classification of personality disorders.

Not a greater resolution of depression but an ever large pool of people with what in the past would have been called perfectly normal responses to every day life, now being classified and medicated.

Do you deny clinical depression exists?

No. But then that is not the issue is it?

Accusing the victim of being the aggressor, classic.

You are not a victim here. Your behaviour has been rude, aggressive and bullying. You may be a victim in some other context, but here you are the aggressor. You may feel self righteous about it but you cannot deny it.

How casually you dismiss nine deaths, many of them people systematically tortured and then murdered.

I do no such thing. I simply point out how small the problem is.

From a media analysis Anne Novis of the Disability Hate Crime network identified 317 attacks and 23 killings in the first 6 months of 2010, 96 and 15 in 2009 and 76 and 14 in 2008. Those are just the ones judged worthy of a headline, in an environment in which disability hate crimes are still under-reported, with many classed as domestic violence or other forms of abuse.

So an entire network set up on the premise of such abuse, the existence of which determines it funding, can only find a little over a dozen cases where any disabled person was killed for what they, generously I imagine, think are reasons related to their disability, per year? Except for 2010 for some reason.

The DPP in a speech this year noted: “The Disability Rights Commission’s Attitudes and Awareness Survey (2003) revealed that 22 per cent of disabled respondents had experienced harassment in public because of their impairment.”

None of which goes to proving my point wrong.

Not at all. The system created by ATOS and DWP is extremely stressful, I came very close to abandoning my own claim due to mistreatment by ATOS, many people give up in disgust even before they get to to the WCA, it is likely many more do when rejected – the lack of data on this has been identified as a failure in the system by the independent reviewer, Professor Harrington.

A lack of data. Meaning no one has a clue. Either they do not need the money much or they know there is no point fighting because they have been faking. These are reasonable conclusions. Yours is not.

Not at all, it means that 40% were wrong, and only that.

40% of the 30% that appeal. That’s 12% of the original cases. High but not unreasonably so. It does not mean that 40% of the decisions were wrong.

And, as I said, success rates run as high as 70% with advocacy.

Which, as I said, just shows that the CAB knows how to pick its cases.

Even if only 12% is wrong, can you point me out an industry in which a failure rate of 1 in 8 is remotely acceptable?

Anything to do with disability? The mentally ill are not cured at that sort of rate these days. At least if they have been admitted once before.

“Dyslexia may exist – but it is massive over-diagnosed for middle class parents who don’t want to admit their children are thick”

Dyslexia does NOT affect intelligence. You’re a bigot and a vicious, nasty piece of work! Moderators, sort this out please.

61. Leon Wolfson

Dyslexia does NOT affect intelligence.

Leon, you might want to read that again. I specifically say it does not.

No, you said nothing of the sort. You said;

“it is massive over-diagnosed for middle class parents who don’t want to admit their children are thick.”

i.e. mental retardation, a *direct* attack on dyslexic people.

And fine, FOI request filed. Let’s see what your boss’s overall budget’s like then!

63. Leon Wolfson

No, you said nothing of the sort. You said;

i.e. mental retardation, a *direct* attack on dyslexic people.

So you do not understand. Fine. Doesn’t surprise me. If people don’t want to admit their children are thick and would prefer to think they have dyslexia, that does not mean people with dyslexia are thick. This is not rocket science Leon. It is simple English. They don’t want to think their children have dyslexia and so are thick. They want to think their children have dyslexia and so *aren’t* thick.

Thus I am specifically saying dyslexics are not, generally, thick.

And fine, FOI request filed. Let’s see what your boss’s overall budget’s like then!

Knock yourself out Leon.

I understand just fine, you’re trying to deny the fact that you clearly stated that dyslexic people were mentally retarded. Because it IS common, and diagnosis these days is reliable.

And again, we see violence is all that the right really think about.

Leon,

you’re trying to deny the fact that you clearly stated that dyslexic people were mentally retarded.

SMFS didn’t say that; you clearly need a course in reading comprehension.

Because it IS common, and diagnosis these days is reliable.

Please substantiate those two assertions.

@65 Not to mention him disparaging the work of educational psychologists up and down the nation as well, by implying that they only make an assessment to appease middle class parents.

@ Leon “I understand just fine, you’re trying to deny the fact that you clearly stated that dyslexic people were mentally retarded.”

You’ll be able to quote that from SMFS’s comment then? No?

Are you Sally in disguise or something?

65. Leon Wolfson

I understand just fine, you’re trying to deny the fact that you clearly stated that dyslexic people were mentally retarded. Because it IS common, and diagnosis these days is reliable.

No I didn’t and you are just making sh!t up. It is commonly diagnosed. Which is the problem. And there is no reliable test. In fact there is virtually no reliable tests for almost any mental disorder.

And again, we see violence is all that the right really think about.

Violence? I am not even going to ask where you got that from Leon. Keep on beclowning yourself.

67. Cylux

Not to mention him disparaging the work of educational psychologists up and down the nation as well, by implying that they only make an assessment to appease middle class parents.

Come on Cylux, you can do better than that. Keep above Leon’s level. That some, even many, do doesn’t mean they all do it all the time.

SMFS didn’t say that; you clearly need a course in reading comprehension.

Rather concerning that, from a ‘university lecturer’.

@69 I assume you have some evidence to back up your assertion that “some, even many” educational psychologists actually fudge the results on the behalf of middle class parents worrying over their “thick children”.

@66 – Yes, he did. And the gap between verbal and written IQ, combined with characteristic patterns of phonetic spelling and several other tests.

The tests haven’t materially changed in decades. What’s happening now is that they’re being applied widely enough to catch everyone with it.

So, screw you and your denial of dyslexia.

@70 – And of course you now are not only insulting me, you’re attacking the disabled and supporting a far-right toll in one, you bigoted piece of shit. What a surprise!

@SMSF – You’re denying you told me to knock myself out now? Right, thanks for the revisionism, another right-troll tactic.

@ 72 Leon

“You’re denying you told me to knock myself out now? ”

Wait. You’re seriously telling me that you’ve decided to misinterpret “knock yourself out” – an expression meaning something like “go ahead, please yourself” – as an actual invitation to violence? Wow. You really are a nasty little piece of work.

Now please, please go away. Grownups are talking on this site.

And of course you now are not only insulting me, you’re attacking the disabled and supporting a far-right toll in one, you bigoted piece of shit.

Ukliberty is about as far from being a right-wing troll as it’s possible to get, without falling over. And while I’ll cheerfully admit to insulting you (I’ve rarely come across anyone online who cries out to be insulted more than you do), I fail to see where I said anything about the disabled.

Thanks Tim J.