What's new
PNE Online
Welcome to PNE-Online. Why not register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox! You can also join up as a forum Patron to help support in the running costs of the forum.

I Daniel Blake

raefil;n3425317 said:
The middle are programmed to believe that Labour will tax them heavily. The £80k figure quote for slightly higher tax must really impact on them.
Click to expand...

And house prices - vote Labour and the value of your property will plummet, apparently! :)
 
I finally watched this last night, it was a hard watch really particularly with having 2 young children similar to Katie. The young girl in it playing Daisy was exceptional. The wife was in floods of tears by the end.

I think it's dropping off the iPlayer this weekend if you still haven't watched it.
 


I seriously do despair, yet according to the latest poll the Tories are gaining support.
 
Well it certainly appears our tory friends have given this thread a very wide berth.



I decided to write this letter because a few days before Christmas I served seven women in a row at a Foodbank session - they all had young children and all of them were facing Christmas with no food, no presents and some of them with no heat. It is utterly avoidable.



Dear Mr Field and Ms Allen,

My name is Joanna Young and I am Chair of Trustees at Morecambe Bay Foodbank. I am sorry not to be with you today but I am at work so I thought I’d write to you instead.

I have spent the last two years composing carefully constructed press releases that stick to the line, avoid controversy and don’t get too heated. But now it’s time for me to tell you what I really think, especially as you have come to listen, so here goes. These are my views, not those of the Foodbank.

Here’s the headline.

The numbers of people without enough to eat in Morecambe continue to go up, and this is directly and absolutely caused by the deliberately hostile welfare policies that have been introduced since the roll out of Universal Credit. This includes the current rate of benefits, zero hours contracts and the changes to, and caps on, disability and other benefits over the past five years. Last year (January - December 2018) at Morecambe Bay Foodbank we distributed over 7,000 emergency three day food supplies. The population of Morecambe, where the majority of our clients live, is around 40,000 people.

Here’s what matters.

I have met mothers with children the same age as my own, who have had to ask me for a toothbrush for their child; women who regard sanitary towels as a luxury; and mums for whom deodorant or shampoo for their partner or teenage son is a treat. That’s degrading, but it’s nothing compared to what it’s like to be given food that you didn’t choose and aren’t sure what to do with, with which to feed your children.

I have met dignified gents my Dad’s age who have been ground down by a system that has refused to recognise their talents, their potential or their experience and that treats them like failed economic units of production when things go wrong. Even when they’ve paid their taxes, sometimes for forty years or more. All they want is a bit of help and instead they get a kick in the teeth and they can’t believe they’ve ended up in a Foodbank.

I met a magnificent lady who drew herself up to her full height and eloquently described her professional life before she got sick, and her anger when she got judged to be well enough to work. She paid into the system all her working life and then got nothing back when she needed help. She packed her tins of donated food neatly away, straightened her back and went away, her head rightly held high. She should not have been in our Foodbank because the state should have been helping her when she was too sick to work.

I meet ex-cons who are released from prison having been ‘rehabilitated’ by doing nothing inside, who are given forty six quid and told to go away, with no phone, no idea how to use the internet, no skills and no home, and who are expected somehow to contribute to society shortly thereafter.
I have met pregnant women who have not eaten for a while, and who need money for nappies, because the baby is about to arrive.

I have met people who were sanctioned because they were having chemotherapy and missed a DWP meeting. I met one man who walked from Carnforth, eight miles away, in the rain to get to our Foodbank because had no other means by which to feed his family.

I have met people who are so ashamed and upset that they won’t meet my eye, and I don’t blame them a bit. Some people come in and cry when you offer them a cup of tea or a biscuit because no one has been nice to them for a long time.

Now, I am starting to meet people who think that it’s normal to be in a Foodbank. Those are the ones that I find the hardest to serve. This is not normal.

This is what it means

We have a welfare system that regards those who ask for help with suspicion and derision. A culture that assumes that if you’re not earning, you have no value, and if you ask for assistance then you are weak, helpless, lazy or stupid and that it is definitely your fault.

We have a system that is so mind bogglingly expensive I can’t even start to imagine the cost. The cost of a cohort of children who have been raised to think that it’s normal to attend a foodbank. Kids who have to sellotape their shoes together, have no coat in winter – in Morecambe – and get in trouble for it at secondary school. A generation of people who are growing up in a culture that doesn’t treat them with potential, excitement, creativity and encouragement but that punishes, demeans, demands and then blames them for their own miserable shortcomings when they can’t magically summon up the social capital to succeed.

The price of this in mental health, low educational attainment and expectations, poor physical health and lack of aspiration is astronomical. How can you expect people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if you take away the boots and the straps?

How can a single mum even think about an education course or a different career when she can’t feed her child? How can a growing thirteen year old boy concentrate on his homework if he’s hungry and doesn’t want to upset his mum by asking for something to eat?

How can you expect people to plan and take responsibility for their finances when zero hours contracts treat them as dispensable economic units rather than people with rent to pay, homes to heat and children to care for? That’s not socialist talk, that’s just real life.
The haves and have nots are now divided by a wafer thin bit of paper - between those who are just about making it, and those who by sheer bad luck, bad judgement or both, are not. When you don’t make it, the ladder is kicked out from under you and you fall to the bottom, and sometimes you just can’t get back up, however hard you try.

Our donations from the general public, our Facebook comments and our surge in volunteer numbers are showing that people now understand this. I would suggest that electorally speaking, it’s an unwise course.

From a conservative point of view, not investing enough money into these communities is fiscal madness. You are piling up years of economic sluggishness and depression into the future. Where will the bright lights of economic growth, entrepreneurialism and nurtured talent come from if you treat people like this? Children in this kind of poverty can’t aspire - they are too hungry! Ask the amazing teachers that you will meet today whose jobs have morphed from being educators to being triage on the front line of a need that isn’t letting up and has no end in sight. They are unlikely to attain Mr Gove’s exacting grammatical standards in key stage 2, not because they aren’t trying but because Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is so obviously getting in the way.

So, to paraphrase Bob Geldof, who confronted a very different kind of hunger but who had the same kind of indignation that I (a devoted political centrist and usually reasonable human being), feel about the current situation in England: please, just give them some fucking money.
This is so utterly avoidable, so pointless and so costly. If you leave people with no money in a situation whereby they have nothing to survive on for five or more weeks, that there will be a major crisis in their lives and the lives of the people who depend upon them.

Isn’t that obvious? How would you cope if that happened to you? I couldn’t walk a day in the shoes of our clients and I challenge any politician to try it.

As I hope you will know, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed and ratified by the UK and effective since 1976, regards access to adequate food (as well as social security) as a human right. The state is currently, according to our evidence here in Morecambe, in contravention of this to the tune of the 1229 families with children in them that we helped last year. You must do something about this, if you can.



A word on our sixty magnificent volunteers who give their own precious time to help people they don’t know every week. They are the demonstration of all that is right in our society. They show kindness, determination, love, great character and huge compassion. All of these things have been lost in the culture of our welfare state and I heartily hope that this will change in the future. Since when did we think it’s normal to punish people who ask for help?

Thank you for coming to listen to us today, thank you for being willing to hear what we have to say and I hope that it has been useful to you. If you have any questions of us please just ask. We are committed to doing anything that we can to change this situation and to make our welfare state more kind and more compassionate for those who are already at the bottom of the social pile.



A final thought. After a busy listening session at the Foodbank I go through a small but important ritual.
I pick my kids up from school, sometimes letting them have whatever snack they want from the corner shop on the way home. Getting home, I turn up the heating to dangerously luxurious levels, let the children relax and do what they want, put on my slippers, make a cup of tea and then I sit on my bed for a few minutes on a soft wool blanket that was given to us for our wedding, and I just have a moment to myself.
I am so, so lucky. These simple pleasures - a snack, some free time for the kids to play with their toys, a cuppa, a warm, comfortable house, a soft clean blanket - these are, for many of our clients, things they don’t have. In 2019, in England, it seems that I am rich indeed.

Yours sincerely

Joanna Young
Click to expand...
 
I've had a personal experience of this today. My cousin has had benefits stopped.

I'm not going into any details as it's personal, all I will say is they want to work, they do work, they need mobility allowance to get to work. No longer valid for mobility, so can't get to work......

Just after a scan confirms thier life threatening condition is getting worse.

Fuck every single one of you wankers that defends this government, I hope you suffer the same. If you vote for Tories I hope you get similar.
 
Nobber said:
I've had a personal experience of this today. My cousin has had benefits stopped.

I'm not going into any details as it's personal, all I will say is they want to work, they do work, they need mobility allowance to get to work. No longer valid for mobility, so can't get to work......

Just after a scan confirms thier life threatening condition is getting worse.

Fuck every single one of you wankers that defends this government, I hope you suffer the same. If you vote for Tories I hope you get similar.
Click to expand...

Couldn’t agree more but I hope your cousin gets back what he deserves - appeal it all the way, the system is designed to put you off appealing and at the same time they deliberately turn you down knowing many would win appeals.

PIP mobility is unbelievably biased against those with physical disabilities, just look at the criteria for scoring points based on ability to get around. Qualifying for PIP mobility is ridiculously harder than it was under DLA if you can walk more than a few metres but if you’re unable to plan a journey yourself it becomes much easier. Again, it was designed that way on purpose, the pressure the DWP and government was put under from certain groups led to a conscious decision to slant PIP mobility away from those with physical towards those with mental health issues, autism etc - I’m not incidentally saying those with mental health issues, autism etc don’t deserve it but instead of being an either or decision, both should get it.
 
Written yesterday, by Tessa Gray a welfare rights adviser in Newcastle:

Spent an afternoon waiting for a capability for work assessment for a client. Our appointment is for 2.15. we are told they are running 30 minutes late but we are eventually seen at 4.15.

The room is chock full of wheelchairs, crutches and walking sticks. It is so crowded that there is a wheelchair jam at some point. As well as the mobility aids there are also at least 3 people obviously suffering a mental illness, including one man shaking uncontrollably and crying.

All these people are here for a capability for work assessment. I look round the room and I cannot see anyone who looks remotely capable of work. I want to say to all of them go home, take care and rest.

Suddenly I don't give an eff about brexit, the endless votes, the tactics. All I want is for someone to stop this madness. I want to say this is the real emergency, this is the great betrayal.
 
raefil said:
Written yesterday, by Tessa Gray a welfare rights adviser in Newcastle:

Spent an afternoon waiting for a capability for work assessment for a client. Our appointment is for 2.15. we are told they are running 30 minutes late but we are eventually seen at 4.15.

The room is chock full of wheelchairs, crutches and walking sticks. It is so crowded that there is a wheelchair jam at some point. As well as the mobility aids there are also at least 3 people obviously suffering a mental illness, including one man shaking uncontrollably and crying.

All these people are here for a capability for work assessment. I look round the room and I cannot see anyone who looks remotely capable of work. I want to say to all of them go home, take care and rest.

Suddenly I don't give an eff about brexit, the endless votes, the tactics. All I want is for someone to stop this madness. I want to say this is the real emergency, this is the great betrayal.
Click to expand...
It’s seems wrong to ‘like’ your post, but it just fucking stinks. Why oh why is this allowed to happen? I wish he had videod that waiting room and distributed it on social media.

There’s going to be a long queue in hell in a couple of decades when the few creating this to line their own purses deservedly end up going south.

Bastards.
 
'He can put one foot in front of the other...' -

What DWP told family of disabled Leon, 6, before stopping his £4k-a-year benefits and taking away their special car, and Theresa May just tweeted her parties policies are “decent & patriotic”!

www.stokesentinel.co.uk

DWP strips Leon, 6, of £4k-a-year benefits and takes special car off the road

Leon Beamon has a condition which means his left leg doesn't grow properly
www.stokesentinel.co.uk www.stokesentinel.co.uk
 
Although I’m acutely aware this awful shit happens, I refuse to make outright condemnation until I know the full facts of these cases.

90% of the time they are never as cut and dried as the anti government noise makers portray.
 
MJB said:
Although I’m acutely aware this awful shit happens, I refuse to make outright condemnation until I know the full facts of these cases.

90% of the time they are never as cut and dried as the anti government noise makers portray.
Click to expand...
No disrespect but I know that they are. Whats even worse there are the tip of the iceberg.
 
MJB said:
Although I’m acutely aware this awful shit happens, I refuse to make outright condemnation until I know the full facts of these cases.

90% of the time they are never as cut and dried as the anti government noise makers portray.
Click to expand...
Raefil says no disrespect above. I’ll give you full disrespect regards the fact of what happened to my cousin.

It’s called burying your head, or I’m alright Jack. Tell you what instead of dismissing it why not investigate it further?
 
This is one story from somebody I know who visits Ashton u Lyne jobcentre weekly to help clamants and hand our food parcels.

We then spoke to an older man who had been claiming Severe Disability Payments. Basically he’s in poor health and certainly isn’t fit for work.

All was going ok until he asked for his PIP payments to be increased due to needing a mobility scooter to get around.

They refused, sent him for a medical assessment and his Severe Disability Payments were also stopped.

He’s now been without money for 13 weeks.

A very vulnerable disabled man has been without any money for 13 weeks.

We signposted and helped him as much as we possibly could, but it left me feeling sick in my stomach. Before anyone says that thousands of people are suffering just like this man is, I already know this. I speak to people in this position all the time.

Some days I get upset, but I’m human with a heart and compassion something that the DWP don’t have.
Click to expand...
 
Nobber said:
Raefil says no disrespect above. I’ll give you full disrespect regards the fact of what happened to my cousin.

It’s called burying your head, or I’m alright Jack. Tell you what instead of dismissing it why not investigate it further?
Click to expand...

I do investigate further if it’s something that doesn’t sit right, and like I said in my post, I don’t knee jerk react to it, a lot of the time things are not what they seem.

It seems you have similar problems to raefil, you read what you want to read and not what it actually says.

So many times stories like this are down to missed appointments (sometimes the fault of the claimant, sometimes not) forms not filled in correctly, process not followed etc. And a lot of the times the problems are rectified. The system ain’t perfect, and neither are humans.

Before you come back at me accusing me of being a cunt, note that I have not said that all cases are false or the fault of the claimant, there are some truly tragic cases.

But I said that in my previous post....
 
MJB said:
I do investigate further if it’s something that doesn’t sit right, and like I said in my post, I don’t knee jerk react to it, a lot of the time things are not what they seem.

It seems you have similar problems to raefil, you read what you want to read and not what it actually says.

So many times stories like this are down to missed appointments (sometimes the fault of the claimant, sometimes not) forms not filled in correctly, process not followed etc. And a lot of the times the problems are rectified. The system ain’t perfect, and neither are humans.

Before you come back at me accusing me of being a cunt, note that I have not said that all cases are false or the fault of the claimant, there are some truly tragic cases.

But I said that in my previous post....
Click to expand...
You said you were acutely aware of it.......then you went on to virtually dismiss it.

That's your choice.

Meanwhile I've seen first hand how it is affecting a member of my family. Looking into it, it appears that there are thousand, if not tens of thousands of similar cases. You cite forms not filled correctly, as though that's a fault of the individual, have you seen the forms? You cite not attending appointments, there are many that are physically unable to attend. Tell me which process, because I know that they make this as difficult as they can.

The system isn't perfect? The system is a fucking disgrace, especially for a country with the fifth largest economy on the planet. No excuses, its is completely shit.
 
MJB said:
I do investigate further if it’s something that doesn’t sit right, and like I said in my post, I don’t knee jerk react to it, a lot of the time things are not what they seem.

It seems you have similar problems to raefil, you read what you want to read and not what it actually says.

So many times stories like this are down to missed appointments (sometimes the fault of the claimant, sometimes not) forms not filled in correctly, process not followed etc. And a lot of the times the problems are rectified. The system ain’t perfect, and neither are humans.

Before you come back at me accusing me of being a cunt, note that I have not said that all cases are false or the fault of the claimant, there are some truly tragic cases.

But I said that in my previous post....
Click to expand...
No disrespect MJB, but where did you pluck the 90% figure from? Is it a verifiable number?
 
Top