Comment spam filtering seems to be working. Comments are now far more likely to be noticed and published providing they pass the spam filters. There was such a deluge of spam comments that it wasn’t read.
There is a comments policy. It is roughly no commercial endorsements and promotion except for ethical enterprises, no bots and some relevance. Commentators are not expected to agree and I have allowed the one dissenting comment that I’ve received.
This article describes how the Atos Work Capabilities Assessment (WCA) and associated appeal system works and how the system is unfair and biased. A further article will look at how to appeal against a decision and use the appeal that I am doing soon as an example. A final article describes the appeal hearing.
Firstly, you have to realise that there is nothing fair, balanced or just about Atos assessments and appeals. They are about attacking the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves people in society – the sick and disabled. They are not about ensuring that only ‘real’ disabled people who deserve it get benefit – they are all about denying benefit to those that deserve those benefits and are very seriously ill.
Larry, was found fit for work after an Atos assessment. After a long career in work, he had developed a serious lung condition, his weight had dropped from 10 to seven stone and he had trouble walking and breathing. In order to qualify for employment and support allowance (ESA), the new sickness benefit worth £95 a week, he needed 15 points in the test; he was given zero. He was dismayed to note a number of significant inaccuracies in the Atos report, and decided to appeal, but died from lung problems, before the appeal was heard. One of the last things he said to his wife before doctors put him on a ventilator was: “It’s a good job I’m fit for work.”
Last year the Guardian reported on the case of Ruth Anim, who was told after an Atos assessment that she was capable of finding work in the near future, despite the fact she needed constant one-to-one care, had no concept of danger and attended life skills classes to learn practical things like how to make a sandwich or a cup of tea. She was also described in the Atos report as a “male client”. Atos apologised for “any discrepancy in our report and any distress this may have caused”.
Disability benefits claimants are regularly reviewed and are therefore repeatedly subjected to Atos assessments and subsequent appeals – even in cases where their medical condition is very unlikely to improve. Vast sums of money are wasted on this unnecessary harassment of vulnerable and disabled people. Clearly, people with serious conditions which are not going to improve do not need to be repeatedly assessed every year or so.
The procedure starts with a questionnaire about medical conditions and activities of ‘daily living’. The claimant has a month to return the completed questionnaire.
The questionnaire is mostly ignored and an appointment is made for an assessment by Atos within a further month or so.
Atos conducts the Work Capabilities Assessment. It is mostly a question and answer affair with the Health Care Professional (HCP) inputting answers into a computer. There are a few physical examinations of the stand up, lift your arm above your head, touch your toes type. The HCP is often foreign and hard to understand. Foreign doctors and nurses who are not qualified to practice in UK are acceptable as HCPs.
The Work Capabilities Assessment consists of categories of activities for which points are awarded. For example there is not being able to stand or sit still for so long because of pain or discomfort. Less than 30 minutes is 9 points, less than 60 minutes is 6 points. Another example is walking within a reasonable time with the assistance of aids or a manual wheelchair. Less than 50 metres is 15 points, less than a hundred metres is 9 points, less than 200 metres is 6 points. 15 points are needed to be awarded – or continue to receive – a disbility benefit.
How can the Atos HCP decide that you’re able to walk over 200 metres without stopping due to pain or discomfort within a reasonable time? They ask you ridiculous, ‘opaque’ questions and draw ridiculous conclusions. How did you get to the test centre? You drove? Then you can walk over 200 metres without stopping due to pain or discomfort within a reasonable time. What’s your favourite television programme? Eastenders, eh? Watching Eastenders means that you can sit for 30 minutes and can even concentrate! or focus your attention! for 30 minutes. How many people just have the television on in the background?
The Decision Maker is advised of Atos’s conclusions and usually stops or refuses benefit.
The claimant has within a month to appeal. Asking for a statement of reasons for the decision extends the time to appeal to a month from receiving the statement of reasons. [28/07/13 1.40pm Looks like this has changed & you have to appeal within a month of the decision. Check for yourself.]
The claimant must appeal within a month. The claimant can ask for a paper appeal or an appeal in person.
The appeal is delayed for many months. A month or two before the appeal date the appeal ‘bundle’ of papers will be sent to the appellant. This is the Decision Maker’s legal argument and all relevant papers on which the decision was based.
The appeal is heard. Appeals are nowadays heard by a tribunal which is part of the Court Service. The tribunal is supposed to be independent and impartial and follow the rules of natural justice (procedural fairness). The Decision Maker’s position is argued by a practising solicitor or lawyer. [30/07/13 10.10pm This appears to have changed now. Often there is no Presenting Officer present. The Presenting Officer nowadays seems to be a different Decision Maker to the one that made the decision.] The claimant has the opportunity to argue against the Decision Maker’s case.
I haven’t been to an appeal for over a decade and the system has changed since. The Appeal Tribunal may tell you their decision on the day or make you wait. I have been to one appeal with such good legal argument that it was unchallenged. You need to argue law and on the basis of previous decisions.
If you win at appeal you look forward to doing it all again soon.
I’ve got a few ideas about how it’s unfair and biased against the claimant. No doubt I am also missing many.
It’s unfair because it’s intended to be unfair. The Decision Maker and the Atos Health Care Professional are not about being fair. Their whole purpose is to refuse benefits. They might pretend to be fair but they’re not.
Everybody involved except the claimant is trained, professional and experienced. There is nobody to assist or represent the claimant while he or she may be very ill and unable to prepare his or her own case.
The case is decided on the basis of law while this is not even made clear to the claimant. While claimants are advised to seek assistance from Citizens Advice Bureaus, Law Centres or Welfare Rights Advisors there is actually no help available. A claimant will be very lucky to even have the near useless help of a law student.
The Decision Maker can prefer Atos’s Health Care Professional’s opinion over that of the claimant’s GP. How on earth can that be fair?
[28/07/13 3am
The strange conclusions drawn from ‘opaque’ questions seem very unfair.
[28/07/13 12.30pm
There is a problem with the ‘opaque’ questions since they are taken to mean something other than what they actually mean i.e. they are interpreted in a certain way like a topic-specific discourse, a subset of language, a mini-language if you like (I’ll probably return to improve this when I have the correct term or phrase). Tribunal participants other than the claimant will be familiar with these alternate meaning while e.g. “can sow and knit” may be taken by the claimant only to mean that he or she can sow and knit.]
In the appeal I’m looking at both the Decision Maker and Atos’s HCP have avoided assessment of one descriptor completely. This is because my client didn’t complete the questionnaire very well. It is quite clear that this descriptor applies but it’s raised as an answer to a different question. It’s also blatantly clear in the request for appeal.]
Essential resources are the Welfare Benefit Handbook, the Decision Makers Guide and previous decisions. Use the web.
May be revised
I can do that. Gizza. Gizza.
…
Thank you for that discussion all those years ago at the launderette MB.
Good that you spies have washing too ;)
Thank you
XX
3321
(Now is time for NWO)
There is not necessarily a plan but an outcome. It is the destination that is important.
Yes, I will soon be doing an appeal. I haven’t done one for years or to be more accurate a decade. I find it very strangely different now. I used to go to appeal with the whole day allocated to the appeal. This one’s scheduled to start at 3.30 p.m. That’s crap, it’ll take me an hour or so to even get warmed up…
I will be representing a friend who is disabled at an appeal soon.
I intend to publish some before the appeal. It will be along the lines of how to do an appeal …
UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced steps to further censor the web – amoung other things – in a speech on Monday 22nd, July. The speech confuses and conflates many issues and appears intended to appeal to sexual prudes and religious bigots. Cameron’s proposals are half-baked and show a fundamental ignorance of internet technology. It’s all a bit disappointing and surprising because you’d expect his speech writers and researchers to do a better job – he is UK Prime Minister after all. It’s almost as if these researchers and writers don’t have any experience of porn but that can’t be right.
Many issues are confused and conflated: pornography, pornography depicting rape, child pornography, child abuse, childhood ‘innocence’. The speech even starts confused intended to appeal to prudes and bigots that believe any expression of sexuality is as bad as biting apples: “I want to talk about the internet the impact it is having on the innocence of our children how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.”
It’s confused, isn’t it? By innocence he means ignorance as if ignorance should be encouraged and lauded. How is online pornography corroding childhood more than any other pornography? Children do not have access to online pornography. Adolescents probably doo but not children. And so what? Is it that much worse than war films or everyday violent television, television where people are getting shot, murdered and maimed?
“… in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.” If they’re in the darkest corners of the internet they’re not any danger to your children. Cameron is trying his hardest to scare you. Is this taking over now that terrorism BS is discredited and wearing thin?
“I’m not making this speech because I want to moralise or scare-monger, but because I feel profoundly as a politician, and as a father, that the time for action has come.
This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.”
I think that’s exactly why Cameron is making this speech: to moralise and scare-monger. Protect our children and their ignorance innocence. Oh please stop it.
“The internet is not just where we buy, sell and socialise it is where crimes happen and where people can get hurt and it is where children and young people learn about the world, each other, and themselves.”
It is where SOME crimes happen. People can get hurt? Well not physically. Where children and young people learn about the world, each other, and themselves? Oh don’t be so stupid. The internet is only a small part of childrens’ world. They go to school because they’re children. They interact with other children. They watch telly. They are members of families. The internet is only one part of their lives.
“The fact is that the growth of the internet as an unregulated space has thrown up two major challenges when it comes to protecting our children.”
Here it comes …
“The first challenge is criminal: and that is the proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the internet.
The second challenge is cultural: the fact that many children are viewing online pornography and other damaging material at a very young age and that the nature of that pornography is so extreme, it is distorting their view of sex and relationships.
Let me be clear.
These challenges are very distinct and very different.
In one we’re talking about illegal material the other legal material that is being viewed by those who are underage.
But both these challenges have something in common.
They are about how our collective lack of action on the internet has led to harmful – and in some cases truly dreadful – consequences for children.
Of course, a free and open internet is vital.
But in no other market – and with no other industry – do we have such an extraordinarily light touch when it comes to protecting our children.”
Cameron says that these two issues are distinct and different … but I’ll conflate them anyway.
The ‘proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the internet’ is a myth. Cameron is quite simply making it up. The Internet Watch Foundation collates sites containing child abuse, tells ISP and the ISPs block them. That’s happening now. It’s difficult to find child abuse imagery, you have to make deliberate efforts.
Are many children viewing online pornography and other damaging material at a very young age? Is that pornography so extreme, that it is distorting their view of sex and relationships?
They’re unlikely to be that young. I would expect that they would certainly be in their teens and post-puberty to have an interest in it. Is pornography that extreme? It is certainly posed and acted but then the BS they see on telly will also distort their view of sex and relationships. It’s dead easy to distort childrens’ view of sex and relationships come to think of it. They will have one main, overwhelming model for a start: their very own parents.
Cameron’s on a roll now, there’s no stopping him. “My argument is that the internet is not a side-line to ‘real life’ or an escape from ‘real life’; it is real life.
It has an impact: on the children who view things that harm them on the vile images of abuse that pollute minds and cause crime on the very values that underpin our society.”
The very values that underpin our society. That will be page 3 then, that’s no problem. Somehow objectifying women is not distorting childrens’ view of sex and relationship? Oh that will be because it’s owned by Murdoch.
I’m getting tired of this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying sex and the sooner young people become aware of their own complex being, the better it is all round. To Cameron there is only one type of porn: evil, and I’m surprised he’s such a prude but then he’s probably not. [26/07/13 On reflection, I think that he probably is. He’s certainly no John Major, eh? Gizza. Gizza.)
25/07/13 Addendum
There is child pornography on the net but you have to look for it and will not stumble across it accidentally. There is some confusion amoung commentators on Cameron’s speech who should know better. Paedophile imagery is on hidden services, part of encrypted, anonymity networks. I would be surprised to find any on peer-to-peer (p2p) networks.
I would much prefer that Cameron and the government pursued real paedophiles abusing real children. I have stumbled across a real paedophile and have a pretty good idea who they are and why they are not pursued.
Cameron’s speech supports the why we must all be spied on agenda of covert spying agencies. If we are spied on as much as has recently become apparent, shouldn’t far more paedophiles be in prison?
25/07/13 Addendum 2
“And today I can announce that from next year, we will also link up existing fragmented databases across all the police forces to produce a single secure database of illegal images of children which will help police in different parts of the country work together more effectively to close the net on paedophiles.
It will also enable the industry to use the digital hash tags from the database to
pro-actively scan for, block and take down these images wherever they occur.”
That will be incredibly easy – trivial – to avoid.
Cameron continues his speech talking about default-on ‘filters’ and outlawing extreme pornography. Filters are going to further censor the internet. The internet is already hugely censored in e.g. libraries and workplaces, through Microsoft produced censorship software. Some forms of extreme pornography is already illegal.
“Once CEOP becomes a part of the National Crime Agency, that will further increase their ability to investigate behind pay walls to shine a light on the hidden internet and to drive prosecutions of those who are found to use it.”
This is a clear mistake. There is nothing illegal about using the so-called “hidden internet” and no possible prosecutions per se. I’m running a hidden internet server FFS. This speech is a mess. I’m looking for work.