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Common Gastro Disease Occurs Even With High-Fiber Diet
"Eating a high-fiber diet does not lower a person's risk of diverticulosis, but a low-fiber diet might, according to a new study that contradicts what doctors have believed for decades."
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Cameron – Capping Banker’s Benefits At £26,000 An Hour “A Basic Issue of Fairness”
"People living in benefit dependent households, such as bailed-out bankers, have been urged by the Prime Minister to “go out and get proper work” rather than complain about the loss of state handouts to pay for their bonuses."
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"Today we are seeing a modern day version of Roman decimation by our government. As in ancient Rome, a majority of us are being enlisted to turn on a minority – and relieved it’s not happening to us, many of us are willing participants – by accepting government attacks on some of the most vulnerable members of our society – the sick, the disabled, the unemployed, the very young and the very old."
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BBC News - Welfare Reform Bill prompts protest in London
"Activists and disability campaign groups are staging a demonstration in opposition to the government's welfare proposals. "
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"A group of people from Disabled People Against Cuts(1) and Disabled People’s Direct Action Network(2) will today be joined by UK Uncut(3) to occupy an area of central London in a ‘daring and disruptive’ act of civil disobedience in opposition to the government’s Welfare Reform Bill."
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URGENT! Write to your MP NOW « We are Spartacus
"We have recently found out that the government intends to debate the Welfare Reform Bill on Wednesday 1 February and to seek to overturn the Lords’ amendments on that day."
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‘Pretend bigots’ really ARE sick.
"There’s lots of money to be made from being a bigot. If you can reliably work the readers of a tabloid into a lather with a mixture of baseless opinion and made-up statistics, the editors will literally chuck money at you until you can afford to go and live in Florida like Littlejohn."
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Personal Independence Payment: assessment thresholds and consultation - DWP
"The Department is keen to hear views from all interested parties but in particular from disabled people and disability organisations."
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Links of the day 01/28/2012
Friday, 27 January 2012
Links of the day 01/27/2012
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Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: What can we do Now?
"... the welfare reform bill will go back to the Commons on Wednesday 1st Feb. That's just one day after the third and final reading of the bill in the Lords."
tags: uk cosmos benefits disability
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Attack on the disabled: Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole joins in
"the Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole has waded into the “pretend disabled” debate – siding with, erm, Rod Liddle and adding an attack on charities for good measure."
tags: uk cosmos benefits disability
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Tom Greatrex MP informs me of Debate on WCA/Atos on 1st feb 9.30am – 11.00 – Westminster Hall…
"Next week a debate is to be held on the WCA & Atos, Tom Greatrex has informed me he will try to get a question in about the recording of assessments"
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Links of the day 01/26/2012
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Statistics watchdog raps Tories over immigration spin
"... actual figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions don’t back this up. In fact they show that “non-British” workers are far less likely to be drawing benefits than workers classified as British."
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How to Help Your Doctor Understand ME/CFS Disability
"The reason for this restriction of activity might be fatigue, but by showing the effect this symptom has on their life the symptom becomes meaningful. The tired physician who works 16 hours a day will stop and listen about fatigue so severe that it prevents a person from going out of the house."
tags: cosmos disability me_cfs
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Rod Liddle attacks “pretend disabled” in Sun column
"the most disgusting attack on disabled people yet"
tags: cosmos uk benefits disability
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How incompetant can Atos get – They really are taking the piss with this one…
"If getting shot and suffering multiple strokes and heart attacks doesn’t get you disability benefits and into the support group God knows what will?"
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"Since the chemical imbalance theory is often presented as a rationale for taking SSRIs, such patients now understandably feel lied to by their clinicians."
tags: cosmos depression fibromyalgia
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Changing Dietary Sensitivities With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
"This is one of the areas of our illness that we don't know a lot about, other than that it's really common for us to have food sensitivities."
tags: cosmos fibromyalgia me_cfs
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Busting the means testing myth
"Using analysis of the level of expenditure, the degree of targeting and the amount of poverty alleviation associated with 11 OECD welfare systems at different times between the 1970s and the 1990s, the data shows, counter-intuitively, that the more you means-test, the less poverty alleviation you achieve."
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"Outcomes of completed initial assessments for claims started from March to May 2011 show:"
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Quote of the day: Castro blasts Republican nomination race
"“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalised and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”"
Snicker. Castro nails it with this astute observation!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Links of the day 01/25/2012
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Where's the Benefit?: And in the news...
"Whenever there's a benefit-related news story the DWP are always given a right-to-reply in which they invariably tell a pack of lies. "
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Where's the Benefit?: Finally!
"It's taken more than a year of begging but: 38 Degrees have finally decided that welfare issues are sexy enough to support. "
tags: uk politics benefits disability cosmos
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Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Sacrifice More!! Hang the "Cheats" out to Dry!!
"So here's the problem. No matter how hard they try, no matter how cruel the policies they design, no matter how many rocks they search under or plugholes they peer into, no Government has ever been able to find this mythical army of feckless, workshy sick and disabled people. Well, not until they designed ESA obviously, where they just defined everyone as fit for work and had done with all that silly evidence nonsense."
tags: uk politics benefits disability cosmos
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UKuncut to join disabled to oppose Welfare bill
"On Saturday 28 January, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts, Disabled People's Direct Action Network and UK Uncut will occupy an area of central London in a 'daring and disruptive' act of civil disobedience in opposition to the government's Welfare Reform Bill which is currently being debated in the Lords."
tags: uk politics benefits disability cosmos
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MPs laugh as government minister nearly votes against his own bill
"Prompting laughter from colleagues, the image above captures the moment when local government minister Andrew Stunell was caught in the "no lobby", seemingly attempting to vote against his own bill in committee stage."
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Lyme disease risk from dogs 'higher than thought'
"Ticks that can transmit Lyme disease may be more prevalent in the UK than realised, say researchers who have found out how many dogs harbour them."
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Matthew Norman: Cameron is the David Brent of welfare reform
"Whatever damage peers inflict on this snarling Pitbull of a Bill, however many of its teeth they remove, its advancement has taught us something chilling about the Prime Minister. For all his personal experience, expressions of paternal goodwill towards the disabled and fraternal concern for their carers, at the first clanging of the alarm bells his instinct was to scarper, and leave them in the stairwell to burn."
tags: uk cosmos benefits disability politics
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ME/CFS Warrior: "I Never Thought My Sister Would Die...from ME" by Roisin Wilson
"Sophia’s death from ME made news around the world, but it hasn’t changed how people with ME get treated in Britain – well not yet it hasn’t."
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"‘Voices from the Shadows’ is a breakthrough event. In a compelling and intensely moving one hour feature documentary these hidden voices can at last be heard. It is an act of witness, supported by concerned professionals who illuminate an injustice hidden in our midst. "
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Links of the day 01/24/2012
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'The disabled and sick': a breed apart?
"Everywhere I look I see this phrase - “The Sick and Disabled”. It is as if somehow 'these people' are a separate commodity - other than us. A breed apart. And of course seeing ‘them’ like this is what allows politicians and journalists and everyone else in the end, to discuss ‘their’ future in terms of statistics and graphs and percentages. Talking of ‘them’ in these terms makes it easier for people to dissociate and thereby give consent for actions which will have an adverse effect. "
tags: uk cosmos benefits disability
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"... while Cameron is clamping down on benefits, he doesn’t mind giving handouts to his banker pals."
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"I thought we all need a good laugh now and again, problem is this video isn’t that far from the truth, please enjoy….."
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Hospital checklists for common conditions 'cut deaths'
"Checklists that spell out exactly how to care for patients with common conditions have dramatically reduced hospital deaths, say doctors."
What is wrong with this picture? Surely, if such checklists are needed this merely indicates that staff are not qualified and are inadequately trained to do their jobs. -
Pegby is a Free, Web-Based To-Do Manager That Keeps Your Eyes on Your Next Actions
Looks worth a try.
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Benefit cap to see rise in applicants per job from 23 to 2.68 million
"Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith insists that the current system means that there is little incentive for people to seek employment, but critics have claimed that actual jobs being available are also vital when it comes to finding work."
Many a true word and all that ...tags: cosmos
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Welfare cuts: now they’re slamming the door on the truly desperate
"Social fund crisis loans were supposed to save people from using the likes of Wonga, whose interest rates can soar to more than 4,000%. With the social fund gone, there’ll be nowhere else."
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House of Lords debates - TheyWorkForYou
"About 60,000 people with ME are either bedbound or housebound. To go to a face-to-face interview would cause enormous stress and probably exacerbate their symptoms. Will that be taken into account? They cannot provide medical evidence because there is no treatment; yet they cannot come out of their homes. How will the Minister deal with that?"
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Is David Cameron actually sane?
"And bear this in mind – there will be barely a single extended family which does not have at least one member whose life will be wrecked by this over-privileged, detached from reality, shitweasel. So don’t think for one moment it’s not your business, because even if it’s not right now, odds are it will be at some point."
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Fibromyalgia & Falls: Why We're Prone
"People with fibromyalgia are known to be prone to falls, and new research may provide insight into why."
tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
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"Whilst the Tory led coalition government are serving the NHS on a platter to the private health care industry, and taking a hatchet to the welfare state, they are also channelling ever greater sums of money to the corporations which dominate the retail trade. Some of the most 'successful' UK businesses in this field have the tax payer to thank for their profit margins, which since the turn of the century have risen to levels which would have been unthinkable in the 20th century."
Monday, 23 January 2012
Links of the day 01/23/2012
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My life as a (legally) homeless child | Make Wealth History
"... our government minister in charge of homelessness doesn’t seem to understand it very well."
tags: cosmos
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Where's the Benefit?: ♫...Here in my car I feel safest of all...♫
"The government only care about business and profits, not people. They're not listening to the human case for not taking benefits, so I think we need to try another tack: The business case. As I understand it; Motability was effectively the only thing that stopped the car industry from caving in."
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Four patients die thirsty or starving EVERY DAY on our hospital wards show damning new statistics
"Officials who compiled the figures pointed out that not all deaths could be directly blamed on poor care. Some illnesses such as Alzheimer’s or certain forms of cancer make it very difficult for patients to eat or drink. But campaigners said that no one in this day and age should be dying hungry or thirsty in hospital, regardless of the circumstances."
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Exposed: The six myths of IDS’s benefits cap
"The government faces a battle in the House of Lords today over its controversial benefits cap, with bishops joining Liberal Democrat peers – led by former leader Paddy Ashdown – in opposition to the plans that will push 100,000 children into poverty. In 2012. Under this cabinet of millionaires."
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Offshore tax-dodging makes a farce of austerity
"We are told that money is so tight that the cap on housing benefit and the cutback for families of disabled children must be maintained whilst the super-rich are laughing all the way to their offshore bank."
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"To contravene these established compassionate norms, then, requires a compelling and strongly persuasive argument, one which is capable of overturning common sense conceptions; that work can cause further difficulties for the sick and disabled, or indeed that work has played a significant part in contributing to illness in the first place. "
tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Links of the day 01/22/2012
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Paddy Ashdown takes on coalition over benefits cap
"The peer, who has consistently voted with Nick Clegg until now, said on Sunday that he could not back the plan for a £26,000 annual limit in a vote on Monday without greater measures to ensure that children living in poverty are protected."
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Terminally-ill man offered `return-to-work’ advice – Have the DWP no F###### compassion…
"A MAN in the final stages of a terminal illness has been offered the chance to meet with a Jobcentreplus return-to-work advisor."
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Why do smells make some people sick?
"Do you get a headache from the perfume of the lady next to you at the table? Do cleaning solutions at work make your nose itch? If you have symptoms prompted by everyday smells, it does not necessarily mean you are allergic but rather that you suffer from chemical intolerance. According to Linus Andersson at Umeå University, this hypersensitivity can be the result of an inability to get used to smells."
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The Jobbing Doctor: Please E-Mail - send Bill to the dustbin of history.
"It will not take long to email the Acadamy of the Medical Royal Colleges and your specific Royal College President to pressure them into opposing the Bill, so get emailing and do it now:"
tags: cosmos
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Links of the day 01/21/2012
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eReader Benefits for Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
"I got an eReader for Christmas, and not only do I love it, I've discovered several benefits for someone with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome."
tags: fibromyalgia cosmos
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The human cost of the government’s inhumane welfare reforms
"The horror of the welfare reform bill continues to loom large, with the stress and fear engendered by the government’s inhumane reforms taking an ever more worrying toll."
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Message from the Invisible: scrap the Welfare Reform Bill!
"On Saturday 28th January in central London, a brave group of disabled, sick and elderly people are going to engage in a daring and disruptive act of civil disobedience – and they’ve asked for our support. Meet at 11.30am at Holborn tube station with a charged Oyster card, ready to travel to a secret location."
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Surviving the Winter with Fibromyalgia
"When you have a chronic illness like fibromyalgia, every season has its challenges, but I think winter is the hardest to cope with. Not only is it cold, which tenses up muscles and increases pain levels; but there are so many other issues as well. "
tags: fibromyalgia cosmos


