Links of the day 03/02/2012

• Engelbert Humperdinck to Represent UK at Next EU Summit

  "The 75-year-old Mr Humperdinck, dubbed the “King of Romance”, is thought to be much more effective at negotiations, mainly because he is a likeable, charming crooner best known for his repertoire of inoffensive, middle-of-the-road string of popular hits, unlike Cameron who is a toffee-nosed, arrogant tosser best known for his repertoire of offensive, extremist string of popular failures."

  tags: uk cosmos

• Public’s inability to calculate how poor they are is saving lives, claims charity

  "The group, National Innumeracy, says that the millions of people struggling to comprehend the sheer nakedness of their bank accounts, who also have difficulties in understanding just how much they are being ripped off by utilities providers, are at a distinct advantage to those who fully grasp the mathematical futility of their plight."
  
  -- There's an element of truth in this!

  tags: uk cosmos

• THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG: ME vs CFS: More than just a name

  "If you’re not angry about the invention of CFS as a diagnostic wastebasket, you should be. It’s not just the human cost. Even if you’re completely unaffected by CFS or ME, the cost to the state is screwing you, too. Your tax money is paying for pseudo research that is of no real benefit to patients, and that could ultimately make patients sicker and more costly to the state."

  tags: me_cfs cosmos

• Disabled people have come so far – don't undo all the progress

  "The UK is at risk of breaching international obligations to disabled people, so I'm proud to help safeguard independence"

  tags: uk disability benefits cosmos

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 03/01/2012

• Millions of sick & disabled to be injected into economy to stimulate growth

  "While some people are ‘celebrating’ the withdrawal of large firms from the government’s work experience scheme, please remember the government has also just passed legislation which allows them to send terminally ill patients as well as registered disabled people to work as slave labour in private companies for indefinite periods of time."

  tags: cosmos uk disability benefits

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/29/2012

• Welfare Reform Bill Passed Into Law After Lords Back Down

  "The House of Lords has passed the Welfare Reform Bill, having withdrawn its only remaining objection to the government's flagship piece of legislation. "

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Grayling – Benefit sanctions to be dropped. Even though they don’t exist.

  "The removal of the sanctions which never existed was a key demand of employers, some of whom said they would withdraw from the scheme unless significant cosmetic changes were made to prevent them being accused of employing young people as slaves when they were employing young people as slaves."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Sick and Disabled people shouldn't have to partake in work placement schemes

  "Disabled people and those with long-term illness should not be required to participate in work placement schemes in order to keep receiving any state benefits."

  tags: uk cosmos disability benefits

• Overhaul in approach to elderly care 'needed'

  "Being compassionate should be as important as being clever when it comes to the recruitment of staff to care for the elderly, experts say."
  
  What alarms me is that this even needs to be said. Compassion should never have stopped being the primary requirement. And this certainly shouldn't be news. Sad that we've stooped so low as to prompt these needs.

  tags: uk cosmos health

• No ESA For Claimants Who Want To Appeal | Social Welfare Advocacy

  "Employment and support allowance claimants who want to appeal against a decision they are capable of work will be forced to claim jobseekers allowance or go without benefits, possibly for many months, under a clause in the welfare reform bill currently going through parliament. Astonishingly, the government is already consulting on whether their harsh changes to the appeals procedure go far enough. We are urging readers to respond."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Work experience is now voluntary, but the government still forces unpaid work

  "Workfare, however, remains an issue. Of the five schemes that the government runs, this change affects just the work experience program. As far as we know, the other four of them still have an element of forced, unpaid work."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Where's the Benefit?: Sanctions removed from work experience - but only a small victory

  "As it stands then, the removal of sanctions from the work experience scheme is a minor victory but the danger is that it will convince the public that all is well once more and the anger over people being made to work without pay may cool. Jobseekers and sick people can still be referred to the work programme where companies such as A4e can send people to do unpaid work experience or face loss of benefits. In the case of those who recieve ESA there is no limit to the length of time they may be made to work without pay."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Government U-Turns Over Work Experience Plan After Objections From Tesco And Other Employers

  "Despite all evidence to the contrary, Employment minister Chris Grayling said it wasn't a climbdown. "

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Ministers drop benefit sanctions threat from work experience scheme

  "Department for Work and Pensions confirms that unemployed will not have benefits docked if they leave work placements"

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Rare Disease Day

  "My hope for rare disease day is that any doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, or OT's out there reading this might think to use the Beighton Scale as a 2 minute test to see if the patient in front of them labelled with ME, CFS, or the less polite 'heartsink patient' has joint hypermobility."

  tags: cosmos

• Half of Britons consider 'Marigold Hotel' retirement overseas

  "Almost half of Britons are considering retiring to a cheaper country in order to have a better standard of living when they stop working, according to new figures from the pensions industry. "

  tags: uk cosmos expat

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Never doubt ...

Source: Uploaded by user via Karen on Pinterest

 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Links of the day 02/28/2012

• Decent welfare and good-quality jobs …

  "Out of 27 EU countries, only Estonia has a higher level of poverty among unemployed people than this country. This is because the benefits paid here are among the lowest in Europe. "

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• We won't work for nothing

  "Millionaire hypocrites are behind hated workfare scheme – but they won't work for nothing"

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• The ESA Saga: Atos or DWP - who is to blame???

  "It is perfectly clear that Atos is doing exactly what DWP wants it to do in precisely the way it has asked them to do it."

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• DWP letters say “voluntary” workfare scheme is compulsory

  "Backing up what workfare campaigners have been saying for some time, the programme had obtained multiple documents threatening claimants with losing benefit if they do not undertake a placement they have “volunteered” for. "

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• The benefits Britons want to save are the ones the Tories want to cut

  "Thus, while the coalition aims to cut Disability Living Allowance expenditure and caseload by 20 per cent, the poll shows the majority want expenditure to stay where it is or increase – even if that means higher taxes – while only 11 per cent favour cuts."

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• ShopCurious: Biba's everlasting appeal

  "Little did the architects of the Big Biba store in London’s Kensington High Street know they were helping to create a legend. During its brief existence from 1973-75, the opulent emporium was hailed as ‘the most beautiful store in the world’."

  tags: cosmos

• Dorsal root ganglia channelopathie associated with severe fibromyalgia

  "A consistent line of investigation suggests that autonomic nervous system dysfunction may explain the multi-system features of fibromyalgia (FM); and that FM is a sympathetically maintained neuropathic pain syndrome. "

  tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

• Common Painkillers for Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

  "For people with fibromyalgia and those whose chronic fatigue syndrome comes with pain, painkillers are a part of everyday life. We need them to function, to sleep, and sometimes to protect our sanity as pain levels soar out of control and we establish a new 10 on the pain scale."

  tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

• Mentally ill 'at high risk of being victim of violence'

  "People reported every kind of harassment from being stalked, verbal harassment in the street, having their homes vandalised and physical and sexual assault."

  tags: cosmos uk disability

• Carbon tax scam robs the poor to subsidise big organisations

  "The "Independent" keen to keep its anti-business, anti-energy, eco-loony credentials intact forgets to mention that the $4bn of carbon taxes primarily affect the poor. This is a tax on the poor and it is causing fuel poverty. Only the Middle Class and Corporations purchase solar panels with subsidies. These genocidal Marxists who would tax the poor to save the planet are also destroying the free market mechanisms that would come up with alternative fuel sources and pensioners and children are freezing in unheated homes in a Country which claims to be developed."

  tags: cosmos uk

• Rat attacks man in Surrey hospital – NHS says it’s a mouse

  "Nurses knocked the creature off and killed it. Hospital bosses claimed it was a field mouse."

  tags: uk nhs cosmos

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/27/2012

• Tories’ savage disability benefit reform in chaos as two in five appeals

  "New figures show that 65,600 claimants went to court last year and 25,700 – 39 per cent – won back disability allowances which had been wrongly taken away."

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• Spartaci – we need you – to get the message out…

  "… that our PIP Consultation Guidance is available"

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• DWP reveals billions in benefits unclaimed each year

  “The Government needs to start an awareness programme and move more towards a system where the DWP pay entitlements rather than an individual having to work their way through the benefits maze."

  tags: cosmos benefits uk

• What is THE Cause of Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

  "What factors do you think caused your illness? Has it been hard to identify the possible causes? What causal factors do you think medical science has overlooked?"

  tags: evernote cosmos

• Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan

  "Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans. "

  tags: cosmos uk

• Stop government snooping on email and Facebook

  "The government has announced that it will be developing new ways to snoop on email and web traffic.
  
  This Kafka-esque “Intercept Modernisation Plan”, was stopped near the end of the last government, but was quietly revived in the 2010 Spending Review (read more here) as the “Communications Capabilities Development Programme”. Now, closed-door discussions have been revealed: legislation will be proposed in May.
  
  We need to tell the government to stop this wasteful, intrusive plan for wholesale snooping on our daily lives. 10,105 people have signed so far
  
  Please sign our petition – and tell your friends"

  tags: cosmos uk politics

• The government’s got big plans for workfare – don’t expect them to back down easily

  "Despite great progress against workfare, the government has more in store for young people; Izzy Koksal investigates the Youth Contract, aka ‘workfare youth’"

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• McDonald’s Spends £10m From Employment Scheme Without Creating a Single Job

  "Instead, the multi-national fast-food giant has spent the whole sum on ­“career progression” for 18,000 existing staff. "

  tags: cosmos uk

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/26/2012

• Is Cameron a Secret Stalinist? Or just a Toffee-Nosed Pillock?

  "A secret investigation by our fearless reporter Tom Pride has, for the first time, uncovered shocking evidence of a possible plot to undermine the democratic foundations which underlie the British state."

  tags: cosmos uk politics

• Fibromyalgia and pelvic floor disorders: incontinence, frequency, urgency, prolapses

  "While there is little written about the actual cause of fibromyalgia and its relationship to pelvic floor disorders (PFD), it stands to reason that given our lack of muscle endurance, difficulties with irritable bowel (IB), inability often to keep up with the exercising needed for muscle toning and stress in general we would be prone to various conditions involving the pelvic floor."

  tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

• Workfare – it works if you want to drive more people to crime

  "It’s really an impressive system, if you couldn’t give a damn about whether Britain is a pleasant place to live or not. If your ideal scenario is a country dotted by gated communities full of Croesus-rich suburbanites, surrounded by a great roiling ocean of resentful wage slaves and feral scumbags, then the present government’s strategy is working like a charm."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos politics

• Tories order police to halt workfare demos as MP makes formal protest to BBC over bias in favour of hard-Left milit

  "A police crackdown on anti-capitalist extremists who invade shops to sabotage the Government’s work experience programme has been ordered by Ministers."

  tags: uk benefits politics cosmos

• Cross channel ferries are part of the governments work experience scheme

  tags: uk benefits politics cosmos

• New figures show low level of benefit fraud

  " Retirement Pension 0.0 per cent;
  Incapacity Benefit 0.3 per cent;
  Disability Living Allowance 0.5 per cent;
  Council Tax Benefit 1.3 per cent;
  Housing Benefit 1.4 per cent;
  Pension Credit 1.6 per cent;
  Income Support 2.8 per cent;
  Jobseeker’s Allowance 3.4 per cent;
  Carer’s Allowance 3.9 per cent.
  
  Look at the figures for disability benefits, see how low the figures are.
  
  Remember them next time the BBC is running one of its 30 minute hate programmes, pushing the idea that every disabled person on benefits is a fraudster."

  tags: uk benefits politics cosmos

• Disability Benefit Reforms: The Government Are Causing Unnecessary Anxiety and Suffering

  "The government are putting tens of thousands of disabled people through unnecessary suffering and anxiety by casting such uncertainty about whether or not they will be able to continue to live independently and have the vital resources that they need. All of this for, what adds up to be, a drop in the ocean of the country's deficit. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits disability

• Learning to work for nothing

  "With their 'workfare' schemes getting some overdue bad press, government ministers have counter-attacked with a campaign of misdirection to convince us things aren't as bad as they look. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/25/2012

• The Case of the Disappearing Workfare Documents

  "Well yesterday’s revelation that the DWP seem to have been altering documents on their website to cover for Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith’s lies seems to hold weight. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits politics

• Hack Your Brain to Use Cravings To Your Advantage

  "The goal of the exercise is to rewire your memory and tie the craving with the consequence, not the reward."

  tags: cosmos health psychology

• Low dopamine levels during withdrawal promote relapse to smoking

  "Dopamine is a brain chemical messenger that is critically important in reward and motivation. Some research suggests that one of its central roles is to send a signal to the brain to 'seek something enjoyable'. Indeed, dopamine is released during many rewarding experiences, including taking drugs, smoking, having sex, and eating food."

  tags: health cosmos

• Jobseekers forced to clean private homes and offices for nothing

  "Unpaid jobseekers have been forced to clean private homes and offices for more than a month at a time under government employment schemes, despite mounting evidence that the controversial policy is reducing the overall availability of paid work by replacing temporary jobs and overtime for other staff."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Workfare need not be slavery…

  "Despite what numpties like @EstherMcVeyMP seem to think – that objecting to workfare means that “This knee jerk, cheap political point scoring from those opposing work experience will have a negative effect for our youth,” workfare is simply slavery by another name. Dress it up in rhetoric all you like, a pig in a tux is still a pig."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/24/2012

• Campaigning bloggers – want a louder voice?

  "Why not try to enlist our friends, subscribers, Twitter followers, and other readers to spread the word? I suggest, on appropriate posts, adding a footnote along these lines:-"

  tags: uk health benefits nhs cosmos disability

• These companies use Workfare – help us tell them to stop using it

  "Below are companies still part of this slave-labour scheme. "

  tags: cosmos

• When did looking down on others become the national pastime?

  "I struggle to recall a time when so much of the weekly schedule was filled with programmes designed to allow us, the public, to look down with disdain on other, more marginal groups; and usually under a pseudo-progressive guise of empathising with those on the receiving end of our spiteful laughter."

  tags: cosmos

• Workfare versus compulsory work: When is it right and wrong to mandate labour?

  "... one day the business lobby is going to work out that workfare threatens the free market."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• Grayling’s Lies Will Come to Haunt Him

  "Workfare is only one aspect (albeit a vital one) of the government pernicious welfare reforms. The abuse of sick and disabled people carries on unabated and must be resisted with equal ferocity. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits disability

• DWP sabotaging right to record ESA medicals

  "The DWP are hoping to end the right to have your ESA medical recorded by not informing claimants that the option exists and then claiming that take-up is too low to be viable. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• No ESA for claimants who want to appeal

  "Employment and support allowance claimants who want to appeal against a decision they are capable of work will be forced to claim jobseekers allowance or go without benefits, possibly for many months, under a clause in the welfare reform bill currently going through parliament. Astonishingly, the government is already consulting on whether their harsh changes to the appeals procedure go far enough. We are urging readers to respond."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• UK Uncut podcast #1: Interview with disability activist Anne Novis MBE

  "in this interview she describes the harrowing rise of hostility and abuse that disabled people face as the government and the media pump out more and more rhetoric about 'scroungers'."

  tags: cosmos disability uk benefits

• Rich people are not like the rest of us

  "Rich people have a harder time connecting with others, showing less empathy to the extent of dehumanizing those who are different from them. They are less charitable and generous. They are less likely to help someone in trouble."

  tags: cosmos

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Links of the day 02/23/2012

• Let’s tell RBS how they can cut their losses by half (and net me a million or two in the process)

  "It’s clever, it’s neat – it’s simple even – but no-one in the banking industry seems to have thought of it."

  tags: cosmos

• Public pressure against Coalition governments workfare is growing and having an impact

  "It would be interesting to know whether any of the businesses who are currently benefiting from unpaid labour under the workfare schemes have donated money to the Tory party in the last few years. "

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.