It says everything that we had wanted to hear from a Labour party genuinely interested in changing.

Everything but ‘Sorry’

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I met someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a decade.

He hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.

It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children.

But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.

- Ed Miliband, June 2011

Exactly the attitude of those who shout abuse when you use a blue badge parking space but don’t look disabled enough

Some of Labour’s disability team are talking about ‘reform’, Dame Anne Begg apparently understands the truth and she is right when she says :

“I am not 100 per cent sure that a different assessment would not be causing a lot of the stresses and strains that have been caused by the WCA.”

http://www.bhfederation.org.uk/federation-news/item/1668-labour-squashes-hope-of-u-turn-on-%E2%80%98fitness-for-work%E2%80%99-test.html

Australian Research from 2000-1

‘Our research has suggested that political, social and economic environments play a large role in determining who can claim status as having a disability, and who is eligible for government assistance. ‘

The report concludes

Individuals continue to be measured as to their functional capability, or incapacity for work; the capacity of social system to support disabled people in the work place is largely ignored.

http://unsw.academia.edu/HelenMeekosha/Papers/1132887/Disability_Policies_and_Programs_in_Australia

@1 @2

I see we’ve got the idiots out in force today.

I am not a member of Labour, or indeed any other political party. But well done Sue, and I hope you continue to campaign for many years to come.

We need people like Sue with her real world experience to counter the insidious tide of propaganda coming from the self-appointed and intolerant Right leaning Astroturf groups – and their allies in the press.

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Simon @4:

“Be kind, show compassion, don’t harm anyone, nor lie.”

And in all your preceding twaddle, in which you slagged off someone who has actually campaigned rather than sit carping, and accuse those who have actually done something – often in the face of great personal difficulty and pain – of being ‘Trots’ who should ‘go to Cuba’, you managed to break all four in record time. Well done. I’m sure IDS or James Purnell have a job for you in their think tanks.

I became disenchanted in recent years with Labour’s attitude, rhetoric and decisions towards sickness and disability. Jon’s article analyses their mistakes reasonably well. I welcomed his appointment as Policy Lead and I really hope it does signal a change of direction, they have my attention now, (cautiously sceptical/optimistic as it is)

I believe that what is happening to sick and disabled people in this country is now the civil rights issue of our time. The issues we’re facing now; about what kind of society we want to be and how we support chronically sick, disabled and vulnerable people to live independent and fulfilling lives without subjecting us to a constant cycle of tests, ever tightening criteria, reducing budgets, abusive language and public scorn, are the issues that should inspire politicians in the first place to enter politics and change things.

The last decade or so has seen a growing class of “professional” politicians, and I believe this has contributed to the attitudes leading to bad policies and legislation on welfare and disenchantment from voters like me. I’m disabled, working class and voted Labour all my life until 2010 when I abstained in protest.

We need politicians and their advisers who have directly experienced sickness, disability and/or poverty to be making policy and leading on developing it. It’s good that Anne Maguire is shadow minister, but it’s small numbers overall.

I think that Labour could also signal their intentions about a new way forward for disability reform by appointing a small number of disabled people in an as advisory or research capacity (e.g. part time, job share, home working). Sue Marsh would get my vote for such a role.

@Shatterface

If we never acknowledge when Labour change their attitude towards disabled people, then they will be less inclined to bother. Now we need to hold Labour to the comments they make in Sue’s post.

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It’s about time that politicians are waking up to the fact that this Tory Led Coalition is totally discriminating and brutalizing the sick and disabled.

What makes it worse is the fact that politicians have also ignored all the deceit and lies that the Tories have peddled to vilify the sick and disabled to justify the cutbacks against these most vulnerable people in society.

The Tories have pure evil running through their blood, the lot of them !

Deliver the nation from this Evil.

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Hi Simon

Could you kindly define what you mean by the following terms?

Cultural Marxism

‘Trot’

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13

Your ideas of marxism are interesting but I asked you to indicate where it has failed.
Trotsky was indeed a marxist, but where has there ever been a marxist state/country to determine that it has failed?

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This thread is a wonderful advertisement for those of us who are fed up with the people who seem to think the politics is more important than the cause.

I have been driven to tears and anger and despair by some of the things I see and hear.

Have a look at what you’ve written and then consider what it would look like as a screen shot on a Tory web site.

On Sue Marsh she has done some brilliant work but her opinions towards the Labour Party is where we diverge, I will not trust anything less than real action from Labour now, but it doesn’t stop me providing support / information / research.

I also have little time for terms such as ‘trots’, ‘ cultural marxism’ outside a research paper or a political pamphlet.

I’ve worked with / suppported WeRSpartacus, UKUncut, Anonymous, DPAC, Black Triangle, I’ve spoken to MP’s I’ve fired off FOI requests and put in hours on various media comments sections and my blog but it will all be worthless if the people I’m relying on to stand next to me fighting for disability rights are spending all their time swapping playground insults whilst Grayling, IDS, Fraud and Miller are carrying on with policies that are driving dozens of people to suicide.

You’re worse then the Dutch football squad.

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22

It is true that marxism, as an ideology, has had it’s peaks and troughs throughout the 20th century, but this is not the same as failing. The Labour Party was originally a socialist party (they have always rejected the notion of revolutionary action), however, since it rejected its’ socialist aspirations, it has lost a lot of support. You clearly support the current ethos of Labour, which is your choice, but their rejection of socialism doesn’t indicate that the idea has failed, it means that socialists need to construct another political party to replace the one that was stolen from them.

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The only problem with free speech is what people say.

As a tactic this could play out a couple of different ways:

Labour warm to the disabled, say some positive things and then crank up the negative rhetoric in response to events/more newspaper reports on the ‘scrounger menace’, and so can say that they’re listening to the ‘squeezed middle’, who are concerned about people getting a free ride from their tax money.

It forms part of a ‘Caring Labour’ platform, a bit like Obama’s ‘Hope and (very little) Change’. Something public with photo opportunities with disabled kids (because voters might think adults in wheelchairs are obviously faking it to get handouts like the Daily Mail says, but feel a sympathy towards disabled children that lasts until they hit 18). They might do a series of things, Ed Milliband standing next to a poor, Harriet Harman talking to someones elderly gran, etc, make it seem like Labour are standing up for the vulnerable. It’d help cover a privatisation and cuts agenda in local government (the Tories are making us do it, we’ve got no choice but to pass on the cuts in full) and make political capital out of slashing provisions for the poor. Go into the next election with a ‘Labour’s Listening’ or ‘Labour – for the little people’, then switch back after the votes are cast.

Demonising the disabled is too useful a tool to be permanently off the table for the Labour party. They could make very simply benefit from saying they won’t hit the disabled or carers are hard as the Tories, going for the old ‘lesser of two evils’ now the Lib Dems are out of the picture as a lesser evil.

Mr Grunt @15:

“What makes it worse is the fact that politicians have also ignored all the deceit and lies that the Tories have peddled to vilify the sick and disabled to justify the cutbacks against these most vulnerable people in society.”

Not just the politicians. Far more important and worrying is the part that the media (even the supposedly ‘balanced’ broadcast media) have played in promoting stereotypes and extrapolating from a few extreme cases to make it seem as if all welfare claimants are straight out of ‘Shameless’/

Ok this week Cruddas has stated Purnell will be helping with welfare and the review, ok that’s is not a good start.

Compass worked hard with Cruddas to try and stop Labour reforms, not to stop reforms but the WCA, he demanded that we all work hard write letters, go on TV if you can and I did, come the vote Cruddas did not turn up, he did not vote, he then walked away from Compass. We had the same problem with that other so called Lefty Trickett, he was fighting the 90 day detention, he made this big play about stopping it, when Brown offered him a job carrying his bag he told us sorry I’m leaving because well I’ve got to vote for it.

The fact is Labour still has not said what it will do about welfare, but my guess it will say and promise anything to get back into power.

I do not trust anyone these days within labour, and the chance to get back into power would mean they will say anything. Sorry you tell us first what your going to do, for Miliband the next time you knock on a door and see a disabled person you think can work as him first what is wrong with him

Sue and others have and still do sterling work on behalf of many, many 10′s of K’s of us, whether we are able or unable to add anything. I count myself extremely lucky that there are people like Sue doing what they do, even from their hospital bed.

Simon (of whom I have no knowledge save that above) has had so many comments deleted. Does this not show his way of thinking or the putting across of any comments or opinions he wished to be made public?

I wish Sue et al all, the very best and dearly hope that Labour now have found the footing that they should never have lost and continue in the way as Sue has described.

As things stand, I am finally convinced that Labour mean to change their attitudes and policies on disability and illness. The first step in re-building our trust was always to admit they made mistakes, and the article above does just that.

I think the current leadership are more likely to be sympathetic than the vile Blairite drones who now thankfully seem to be on the retreat within the Labour Party. I’ll start to really believe things are changing when the Labour Party starts to publicly speak out about the abuse of the disabled under this revolting government. That would of course require them to acquire a moral compass and grow a spine. They appear to have made a start on the former, but not much progress yet on the latter.

Purnell coming back to work on welfare is a bad sign. He’s basically the architect of the Work Capability Assessment, bringing ATOS in and ignoring specialist medical evidence, and an advocate of workfare.

That’s actually a sign that Labour don’t plan on changing, but might be humouring disabled people for a while, letting them get a false sense of security and blunting the protests to the hundreds of services for disabled adults and children that Labour councils will be closing up and down the country.

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The only problem with free speech is what people say.

But I can’t follow this thread because so many of the comments have been deleted.

So what did they say that was so terrible?

I don’t know.

The problem with curtailing free speech is we don’t know why it has been censored- all I can be sure of is that the censor is a tosser and hope that this comment will be deleted too- so that I can demonstrate solidarity with the deleted……….

Personal insults with some rant about trots and marxists which served no real purpose other than to hijack the thread.

Apparently some people are more interested in playing politics than getting the problems sorted, or so it would seem.

Stick to the topic please, I’m going to delete any comments that reference idiot trolls who try and hijack threads and attack writers.

Ok this week Cruddas has stated Purnell will be helping with welfare and the review, ok that’s is not a good start.

No he didn’t. He said he wanted to get his help to back Ed as leader, which is a different thing. Cruddas has, in his speeches of the past, taken a swipe directly at how Labour (under Purnell) targeted disabled people.

As i recall, attitudes towards the sick and disabled changed after New labour came to power. They claimed that there were all these people who had been moved off unemployment onto sickness benefit, to cover up the the number of people who were unemployed. There may have been an element of truth in that during the nineties, but that is certainly not the case today. The tories have continued labour polices and it has given the tories the excuse they need to cut the number of people claiming benefits. The tories are taking it much farther by demonising the sick, by implying they could work or they cost too much even though many sick and disabled people have contributed during their working lives. New labour may have been marginly better than the tories, but they were no friend to the sick and disabled.

Sorry Labour not the party of the sick the disabled or the poor not after thirteen years of the rubbish, I’m now going through my new medical the WCA.

No thanks thirteen years of Blair and brown is enough for me, would I vote Tory nope they are just the people who are carrying on with Labours reforms.

We just forget about Miliband conference speech, no why the hell should we.

Purnell is helping Ed is Ed that desperate.

Time for Ed Miliband to make a public speech on this issue so that the sick and disabled know where they stand and more importantly : will anyone stand up for them.

Remember what the Evil one David Cameron said during the Final Televised Electoral Campaign Debate 2010 live : I David Cameron believe that a good Government is judged upon how it cares for it’s most vulnerable in society in good times as well as bad times. The Evil one David Cameron then went onto say : If you are sick, disabled, frail, vulnerable or the poorest in society you have nothing to FEAR if he (David Cameron) becomes prime minister because he would protect that group of vulnerable people in society. Once in Downing Street Cameron done the complete opposite to what he promised those vulnerable people.

The sick, disabled, frail, vulnerable and poorest in society need protecting from this discrimination, abuse, persecution and outright lies. If Ed Miliband feels that these people need protecting then he should make his views known with a public statement.

Lets hope that it will not be more lies just like Cameron has subjected them to during the election campaign.

I appreciate it is a really significant victory to see Liam Byrne removed from his post overseeing the policy review, and I do hope it brings real changes.

But do I think Labour have left the the demonising of benefit claimants behind them? I’m afraid I’m less than convinced. It’s not politically useful to attack benefit claimants at the moment. The real test will be whether they return to the old rhetoric and policies when they next get attacked on the issue during an election campaign (or in office) by the Tories or the right wing press.

If they realise lots of potential voters believe benefits are claimed overwhelmingly by feckless illegal immigrant scroungers (because the newspapers have been promoting that idea) and are angry about this, will they try to push back against that false narrative, or will they announce a tough crackdown on benefit claimants? That’s when we’ll find out if Labour have actually changed tack.

Maria Miller

£600 million overpayment – lie
accepted all harrington proposals – lie
trustworthy? – http://t.co/3nrCQ6AI

while Labour were speaking IDS said, ‘nothing you say is interesting’ from sedentary position

I would hope someone will get Hansard and go through it because she has been told on more than one occassion that some of the figures and claims she made were factually incorrect and she must be called to correct the record.

Talking of this Hague at PMQ’s said 30% of houses were affordable to those on housing benefits – the DWP figure for expensive London areas was as low as 7%

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