Links of the day 11/30/2011

• Europe Calls on Governments to Protect Disabled Citizens

  "The European Disability Forum (EDF), the voice of 80 million persons with disabilities and their families in Europe, calls on all the Governments of the European Union to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities and their families are taken into account all the way through economic, political and social policies."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits disability

• Government to scrap disability mobility allowance cut - reasons to be cheerful and wary

  "But before we get the champagne corks popping, it's worth spelling out the following:-
  
  The Treasury has budgeted for the cut in the benefit, worth £160m a year.
  This money will have to be found from somewhere and there is a significant danger that it will be found from disabled people's pockets.
  The government is already planning to replace DLA with the less generous personal independence payment and it could be that the £160m is found from making that reform even less generous (apart from for people in residential care)."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits disability

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

Party Animal

Really have done this (drunk or sober) at parties on numerous occasions – mostly coz the company and the conversation is better!  

From: Eatsugarspeaksweetly via Catatar

Links of the day 11/29/2011

• Tool Alert! Create a Twitter Digest to Easier Keep Up with Your Closest Friends

  "Twitter Digest is an interesting tool that (as the name suggests) allows to create a digest of tweets from your favorite Twitter users to more efficiently keep up with them."

  tags: twitter tools cosmos

• UK growth - bottom of the table, wallowing with the PIGS

  "among developed countries, UK growth has been far behind most of our competitors. Among this morning’s output from the OECD was an estimate of British growth for 2011 of a meagre 0.9%. The only European countries that produced less growth according to the organisation than the UK are so-called PIGS – Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain:"

  tags: uk cosmos

• Are People With Fibromyalgia Faking?

  "It's a sad fact that some people think we're faking it when we say we have fibromyalgia. Sometimes they say it's because they can't see it, but really, that's about the lamest excuse I've ever heard - can you see cancer, or HIV, or diabetes? Can you see Alzheimer's or heart disease? No. At least, not without sophisticated medical equipment. And do those fibro-doubters demand to see scans and test results from people with those illnesses? Of course not. They simply believe them."

  tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

• Media criticised by academics for disability benefit claims

  "There has been an increase in both the total and proportion of articles that discuss benefit fraud and the 'undeserving' poor. The article attributes this to greater support for the current Coalition government among the tabloid press than was felt for the previous government."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits politics

• Appeal backlog reveals false economy of the welfare cuts

  "even if it ran smoothly, this remains a system which seems positively designed to put the heaviest burden on those least able to bear the pain. It is an embarrassment for us as a nation."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• Daily Mail Apologises For Blaming Cancer On Immigrants And Attractive Women

  "Well, maybe not. "

  tags: cosmos dailywail

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

Links of the day 11/28/2011

• UK women celebrate ‘fattest in Europe’ title with a slice of cake

  "“For years when people talked about fat European women you would automatically picture an elderly Greek women celebrating a family wedding, or an Italian family matriarch berating her grandchildren – but now you can legitimately picture British women walking up the High Street in shell suits.”"
  
  LOL Or preferably don't try to picture that!

  tags: uk cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/27/2011

• How Sarcasm Can Solve The World

  "….scientists are finding that the ability to detect sarcasm really is useful. For the past 20 years, researchers from linguists to psychologists to neurologists have been studying our ability to perceive snarky remarks and gaining new insights into how the mind works. Studies have shown that exposure to sarcasm enhances creative problem solving, for instance. Children understand and use sarcasm by the time they get to kindergarten. An inability to understand sarcasm may be an early warning sign of brain disease."

  tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/26/2011

• Expats denounce Government over voting rights

  "The world has changed and being a 'good European' should not mean disenfrachisement. "

  tags: expat cosmos

• Employment Minister accepts Harrington’s recommendations on Work Capability Assessment

  "Chris Grayling has announced that following an independent review, there will be changes to the Working Capability Assessments (WCA)."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Macmillan takes fight to government over sickness benefit test

  "I've never seen Macmillan Cancer Care as a particularly militant charity but it is shaping up for a fight with government over reform of the work capability assessment"

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/25/2011

• Benefit Scrounging Scum: The Benefits Scandal - Soundings

  "The government is withdrawing the support that enables disabled people to work, while simultaneously arguing that more of them should be working"

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Accepting Chronic Illness - It's NOT "Giving Up"

  "The first step toward acceptance of a chronic illness is admitting that I’m powerless to make that illness go away, or to force my life back to the way it used to be. If I deny that I’m ill, or refuse to admit and adjust to my new limitations, I eliminate possibilities from my life."

  tags: cosmos

• A Robin Hook tax would be immensely popular, yet still the coalition refuses to act

  "Why on earth is our coalition government so opposed to the introduction of a Tobin or 'Robin Hood' tax on transactions made in the world of high finance? Not of course that Cameron, Osborne and Cable are honest enough to admit that they are. Oh no, they say, we're all in favour of such a tax at a global level. But anything less than global - across Europe, say? No, no, no - quite out of the question. So we are invited to believe that they are in favour of the tax - as long as no serious attempt is made to introduce it. "

  tags: uk politics cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/24/2011

• Death Panels? We Already HAVE Them!

  "What it all boils down to is a committee deciding who lives and who dies.
  
  In an ideal world, everyone who needs a life-saving treatment would get it, but we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world with limited resources, and a profit-driven society that is controlled by people, institutions, and corporations that care only about making more and more money."

  tags: cosmos health

• Britain's property market: house prices will fall

  "If the coalition really wants to help, they'd let prices fall. Of course, that's not a vote-winner, so there's no chance they'd endorse that policy."

  tags: cosmos uk politics

• Workfare to be challenged in the courts

  "The levels of unemployment we see today are not the result of laziness, or a welfare system that is too comfortable to live on, it is the result of 30 years of neo-liberal policies that are directed towards big business and economic focus on inflation and interest rates, rather than full employment."

  tags: cosmos

• Eating canned soup 'poses a chemical risk'

  "Tests on 75 volunteers revealed the compound bisphenol A (BPA) was readily ingested and detected in large amounts in the urine, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. "

  tags: cosmos food

• Fibromyalgia: Bad for Your Heart?

  "New research suggests that fibromyalgia (FMS) may be tied to cardiac abnormalities tied to the autonomic nervous system."

  tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

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

Links of the day 11/23/2011

• Benefit Scrounging Scum: The Hardest Hit Christmas Card Campaign

  "A giant Christmas card has been organised by the Hardest Hit campaign group (DBC (Disability Benefits Consortium). The famous cartoonist and illustrator, Gerald Scarfe, is illustrating the card. We have 2 weeks (deadline 6 December) to gather 10,000 signatures before the card is presented to the Government in early December. "

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

• Democracy can still leave you with a government no-one voted for, UK electorate warn Egyptians

  "Egyptians protesting against military rule have begun wondering whether democracy is all it’s cracked up to be after UK voters highlighted that it can still leave you with a government that absolutely no-one voted for."

  tags: uk cosmos politics

• Committees to take up job of declaring people dead

  "‘Only those who are genuinely deceased are allowed time off work,’ said a spokesman from the Department of Health. "

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/22/2011

• 'No security scan, no fly' policy to remain in force at UK airports

  "Brussels has halted all new trials of the machines while a safety report is compiled because of concerns that they could cause long-term health damage including cancer."

  tags: cosmos uk tenerife

• Tory sub-prime mortgage scam exposed

  "What is absurd about this approach is that, as was supposed to have been learnt from the Wall Street sub-prime crash, the lowest paid quarter of the population cannot, given their poor pay and intermittent unemployment, afford home ownership. But the neoliberal capitalists never learn, like the Bourbons. So the Tories are having yet another try."

  tags: cosmos uk politics

• Benefits appeals system 'on brink of collapse'

  "The government's drive to cut Britain's multibillion-pound welfare bill by moving long-term unemployed people off sickness benefit and into work is at risk of descending into chaos, according to a Channel 4 news investigation."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 11/21/2011

• Public spending is an investment, not a debt

  "We are told there is a deficit crisis in the UK. We are told that we are spending beyond our means. We are told that the solution to this deficit crisis is to cut public spending. Public spending is an investment, not a debt. "

  tags: cosmos uk politics

• We need you! | Cut don't Kill - Our Solar Future

  "On Tuesday 22nd November we need you to come to Parliament and add your voice to many others calling for a rethink of the Government’s crazy FITs proposals. The more people there are, the more chance we have of buying the time the industry needs to adjust, and the better our chances of getting a FITs scheme that gives us a sustainable, growing industry for the future."

  tags: cosmos

• RIP Democracy

  "Yesterday I looked at my life and this is what I found: our schools are owned by corporations, our government officials are slaves to corporations, our children are taught to worship the celebrity cults manufactured by billionaires. There is no democracy left, there are only holograms, reflections, emptiness, resonance that takes us to our spiritual death."

  tags: cosmos

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

Mah New Sofa

Links of the day 11/20/2011

• Mental illness: Early-life depression and anxiety changes structure of developing brain

  "New research identifies the brain chemicals and circuits involved in mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, giving potential new directions to their treatment. In addition, research with children shows that early-life depression and anxiety changes the structure of the developing brain."

  tags: cosmos depression

• Millions of people may be 'allergic to their own home'

  "At least 12 million Britons now suffer from allergies caused by dust mites, The Independent has today reported. The newspaper says that a report by the charity Allergy UK has revealed an epidemic of “home fever”, a range of symptoms caused by dust mites and other triggers around the home."

  tags: cosmos

• How ATOS could be put in charge of GP ‘sick notes’

  "the same GPs who are to be entrusted with the £80bn NHS budget from April 2013 may be stripped of their role in telling people whether they are too sick to work or not:"

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• Emotional Distress in Fibromyalgia: A Question of Subsets

  "For decades, the medical community has debated whether fibromyalgia always involves psychological disorders. Now, a new study suggests that 2 distinct subsets exist; type I does not involve psychological disorders, while type II does."

  tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

• Where's the Benefit?: Sick? No you're not!

  "Strange. The government trusts GPs to run the NHS but not to decide who is too sick to work. Yet they trust Atos and Group 4 who have a proven record of ignoring evidence and making wrong decisions. I wonder which company the government will outsource this "independent" assessment service to?"

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 11/18/2011

• Aspartame has been Renamed and is Now Being Marketed as a Natural Sweetener

  "Artificial sweeteners especially aspartame has gotten a bad rap over the years, most likely due to studies showing they cause cancer. But not to worry Ajinomoto the company that makes Aspartame has changed the name to AminoSweet. It has the same toxic ingredients but a nice new sounding name."

  tags: cosmos food

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

Links of the day 11/17/2011

• Telephone-based therapy and exercise appear effective for reducing chronic widespread pain

  "Telephone-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy and an exercise program, both separately and combined, are associated with short-term positive outcomes for patients with chronic widespread pain, and may offer benefits for patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals."

  tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

• Do Sleep Problems Cause Fibromyalgia?

  "A study just published in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism suggests that sleep problems are a risk factor for fibromyalgia rather than a consequence of the illness."

  tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

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

Links of the day 11/16/2011

• Feeding the five thousand « Make Wealth History

  "The event is to highlight the ongoing scandal of food waste in the UK. Despite the rising price of food, the average British households still bins £5o worth of food every month. Add together the food wasted by households, supermarkets, or rejected by retailers at the farm gate, and we throw away around half of the country’s food. In a world with a billion hungry people, it’s a crazy situation to be in."

  tags: cosmos uk

• NHS Scotland recommends to diagnose ME with the Canadian Criteria and separate it from CFS

  "The Scottish government commissioned the Scottish Public Health Network to undertake an assessment of services for those with ME and CFS. The end result is that ME be separated from CFS, with ME sufferers being diagnosed using the Canadian Consensus Criteria and those with CFS diagnosed using the NICE Guidelines. This is what ME advocates have screamed out for and is a major shift within the government-medical establishment."

  tags: cosmos uk me_cfs

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis:

  "The Government's contract with Atos Healthcare requires that doctors are used to assess claimants with conditions that are likely to have complex central nervous system examination findings.
  
  The majority of claimants with CFS/ME do not exhibit such signs and therefore CFS/ME is not on the list of conditions that are required to be assessed by a doctor. However, if a claimant with CFS/ME has neurological signs, they will be passed to a healthcare professional with the requisite expertise."

  tags: cosmos uk me_cfs benefits atos

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

Links of the day 11/15/2011

• More on impact of legal aid cuts on disabled people

  "Disabled people make up 58% of those who receive legal aid for welfare benefits cases, Scope said. This translates to over 78,000 disabled people each year who will be denied specialist legal advice if these measures go through."

  tags: uk cosmos disability

• Almost 90% would 'consider moving abroad' for better financial prospects

  "The current recession combined with the perception that property is cheaper overseas and job prospects better collectively accounted for nearly a third of all reasons for emigrating, according to a survey by Skyscanner. "

  tags: uk expat cosmos

• Currie v Jones: Do people go hungry in Britain?

  "Disgraced former Conservative minister Edwina Currie continues to insist that no one in the UK is ever starving, even after spending three hours last night in a food bank in Birmingham being told just that."

  tags: uk cosmos politics

• Osborne has put Britain in an economic death spiral: Here’s how to break out | Left Foot Forward

  "George Osborne’s grand theory that the public sector was crowding out private sector growth and that an aggressive deficit reduction programme would spark stronger growth has been exposed as the biggest mistake in British fiscal policy since the austerity Budgets of the 1930s."

  tags: uk cosmos politics

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

Links of the day 11/13/2011

• Expats Brits don’t want to return to unsafe, costly UK, study suggests

  "Around 825,000 expats have cancelled their plans to return to the UK in last 12 months and 69% say they will stay abroad indefinitely, an increase of 13% in a year, the research from Lloyds TSB International also found."

  tags: uk expat cosmos

• Holidays & Food Sensitivities With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

  "This time of year, with all the traditional holiday foods, poses a real challenge for those of us who pay consequences for eating the wrong things."

  tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

• Working while claiming DLA…

  "Contrary to what the cretins at the Daily Mail and the Torygraph seem to think, DLA is not an unemployment benefit. "

  tags: uk cosmos benefits disability

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

Capitalism has a lot to answer for

Source: Uploaded by user via Marcy on Pinterest

Links of the day 11/12/2011

• Committee (3rd Day) (Continued): 7 Nov 2011: House of Lords debates

  "The trouble is, they are blighted with the distinction of being yuppie flu sufferers-people who swing the lead. They are not: this is more and more often now being proven to be a physical disease with mental side effects, as cancer and MS and a whole lot of other chronic diseases are. It is time the inequality of treatment for people with ME-CFS was obliterated."

  tags: uk cosmos me_cfs

• Where's the Benefit?: DLA: just a form filling exercise? If only it was that easy!

  "How dare the Mail suggest that we “just” fill out a form! That form and notes comprise 55 pages – 38 of which have to be completed by the claimant. This involves a lot of writing, and having to be able to think straight and focus over a long period of time. It can require a huge effort, particularly if you have disabilities which affect communication, or your physical ability to write or type. Also, as the form focuses on activities which you can no longer manage, or need help to achieve, it is a depressing process – making you realise how disabled you really are. It can be soul destroying. "

  tags: uk cosmos disability benefits

• Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Know Your Enemy

  "If it wasn't for the welfare state, I would be dead.
  If that's what they want they should have the guts to shoot me in public. "

  tags: uk cosmos disability benefits

• Council's social care cuts are unlawful, high court rules

  "Two disabled people win case against Isle of Wight council, which planned to reduce its adult social care budget"

  tags: uk cosmos disability

• Expats in Spain fight for increased pension

  "... pressuring the Government to introduce a non-means tested state pension of around £174 a week – which they say is the minimum income required to keep a pensioner out of poverty – and to bring its spend on pensions more in line with other European countries."

  tags: uk pensions benefits expat cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/11/2011

• Benefit delays forces people to use food banks, charity says

  ""There's a huge need in our country at the moment. "We have people who are going without food in order to feed their children sometimes for days, for all sorts of different reasons, but fundamentally because their incomes are too low to support their basic needs of housing, clothing and food. "

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Cameron and Osborne want the unemployed to work for £1.78 an hour

  "Under a government scheme set to begin in 2013, the long-term unemployed will be required to do at least six months of community work or lose their benefits."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/10/2011

• An Irish parent describes how the dehumanising austerity programe is impacting on their child

  "What is happening to our country is not economically necessary in many respects. It is, rather, a vicious exploitation of the banker-caused and privately owned recession of the very richest people – used as an excuse to entrench the same ideology that got them into trouble in the first place while ruthlessly landing us with the bill. It’s very lucrative and risk-free for them, this ‘socialising the debt’. They are intentionally destroying much of what is left of our civil societies, the better to monopolise our wealth and resources in future. The recessions they create are also their gold and silver-lined clouds of opportunity. I read about that in an IMF document: it said the crises they cause are a chance to push through ‘reforms’ they couldn’t get away with at other times, under the guise of pretending they are unavoidable. It was down there in black and white, I tell you."

  tags: cosmos politics

• Not In My Name

  Organisations ostensibly to represent and fight for the rights of disabled people ... aim to profit from labour which is unpaid, unfair, and is carried out against a threat of a loss of benefits.
  

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• Do conservative governments make people want to die?

  "In total, the paper argues that the 17% excess suicide attributable to Conservative governments is equivalent to 35,000 extra suicides over the past century. Or, to put it more bluntly, 2 suicides for each day that the Tories are in power."

  tags: cosmos politics

• Workfare: Exploitative and cruel, especially for disabled people

  "Workfare is exploitative and unfair to everybody who is forced to do it. For disabled people it has added layers of unfairness, which have the potential to leave, yet again, the most vulnerable abandoned without financial support."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• BBC bashes benefit claimants two weeks running

  "What makes this all the more disgusting is that excuses are being manufactured to “cut the benefits bill” at a time of scarcity when many people are falling into poverty. "

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

• Doctors and Bankers: Unaccountable Professions?

  "Yet again, chronic fatigue has been confused with the chronic fatigue syndrome. This Daily Telegraph article conveys harmful misinformation because the two are not the same; however, such confusion seems to serve the purpose of those who wish to conflate the two disorders and who insist that chronic fatigue is the same as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)."

  tags: cosmos me_cfs

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

Links of the day 11/09/2011

• Welfare reforms could force hundreds of thousands out of benefits system

  "Government welfare reforms would force 600,000 people to disappear from the benefits system altogether, causing many to rely on family for financial support"

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 11/08/2011

• Where are the world’s safest banks?

  "Care to guess where Britain comes in? 111th
  
  That’s behind such financial titans as Madagascar, Ethiopia, or Cambodia. I should add that that’s 111th out of 142. "

  tags: cosmos

• PASOK, PSOE: the suicide of social democracy

  "Given the choice between acting in the interests of those upon whom their existence depends and acting in the interests of the financial elite, they have chosen to follow the latter course. Indeed, they do not appear to have even considered any other strategy."

  tags: cosmos politics

• Brain parasite directly alters brain chemistry

  "Research shows infection by the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, found in 10-20 per cent of the UK's population, directly affects the production of dopamine, a key chemical messenger in the brain."

  tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/07/2011

• Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) an Auto-immune Disorder?

  "Could chronic fatigue syndrome be an autoimmune disorder? The Fluge/Mella Rituximab study was effective in at least temporarily reducing the symptoms of about 60% of the chronic fatigue syndrome patients in the study – a fact that no doubt shocked many who considered CFS purely a neuropsychiatric disorder."

  tags: cosmos me_cfs

• Spain’s official electoral campaign kicks off

  "The official campaign for the next Spanish elections began last Thursday night with many looking at Catalonia, which is set to be a crucial battlefield. On November 20th Spaniards will elect the new Spanish Parliament, which will then elect the new President of the Spanish Government, equivalent to Prime Minister. All polls indicate that the People’s Party (PP) will win the elections in Spain, and will very likely get an absolute majority. In addition, the same polls indicate that the Socialist Party (PSOE), the party currently running the Spanish Government, might face its worst defeat ever. The votes from Catalonia, on one hand, are essential to guarantee the PP’s absolute majority. "

  tags: cosmos Spain politics

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

Links of the day 11/06/2011

• 10 Things I’ve Learned From Living With Chronic Illness

  "8. Never, ever, compare my pain and illness to those of others. My illness is mine, and mine alone. I’m completely entitled to feel everything–emotions, symptoms, and otherwise–that results from living with my illness. (I’m entitled to feel everything, that is, except shame.)"

  tags: cosmos

• Fibromyalgia, 'No Startling' & Other House Rules

  "When someone in the house has fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, it's something everyone in the family has to help manage. Whether that means helping with laundry, taking care of the bills, giving you quiet time when you need it, or following some house rules like "no startling" and "nothing spider-like," it's necessary for everyone. After all, if you're incapacitated on the couch, it's harder for them."

  tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

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

Links of the day 11/05/2011

• Lavengro in Spain: Eurodoom or perhaps not

  "Obviously the markets do not see the state of the euro in such dire terms as the British media do. Or perhaps sterling is just as doomed as the euro."

  tags: cosmos

• George Osborne – benefits cheat?

  "Osborne pegged benefit upratings to CPI, to save £6bn at the poor's cost. Now it seems he wants to impoverish them further"

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

• The BBC has gone over to the dark side…

  "Then, last night, we had Panorama – Britain on the Fiddle, in which pretty much the only true words were Good evening and welcome to Panorama… a cavalcade of lies, distortions, and disinformation from beginning to end."

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

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

How to look good over 50

We’ll there’s some pretty good good motivation to give up the healthy diet and take up smoking and drinking again!

Links of the day 11/04/2011

• Women's equality: clock is turning back as cuts bite, says Fawcett Society

  "Women's financial security and human rights are under attack on a scale not seen in "living memory" due to the coalition's austerity measures, according to a report released today."

  tags: cosmos

• Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Complaint to BBC

  "So at a time of the worst recession for a generation, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  With Sickness benefit fraud at just 0.5%, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  With Disability benefit fraud at just 0.3% the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  With government overpayments actually costing the country more than sickness/disability benefit fraud, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  At a time of rising disability hate crime, stigmatisation and abuse, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  At a time of the biggest erosion of welfare provision in our lifetimes, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?
  
  At a time of corruption of MPs, corruption of our media, corruption of our police force, the BBC make another programme about benefit cheats?"

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/03/2011

• Life as we know it: Financial Struggles And Losses When Diagnosed With A Chronic Illness

  "To anyone who accuses a patient of "faking" for the financial benefits, get out the calculator to see how much those "munificent" sums we receive from Disability REALLY cost us in the long run, and then tell us we're "doing it for the money"."

  tags: cosmos benefits

• Osborne plans huge cut to benefits again

  "The FT has learnt that Mr Osborne has asked officials to provide models for a range of alternatives models, including raising benefits in line with average earnings growth of about 2.5 per cent or even freezing some payments altogether."

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

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

Links of the day 11/01/2011

• Psychological traumas experienced over lifetime linked to adult irritable bowel syndrome

  "The psychological and emotional traumas experienced over a lifetime--such as the death of a loved one, divorce, natural disaster, house fire or car accident, physical or mental abuse -- may contribute to adult irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), according to the results of a study unveiled at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC."

  tags: cosmos ibs

• Immunological Similarities between Cancer and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

  "Malfunctioning of natural killer (NK) cells has long been recognised as an important factor in the development and reoccurrence of cancer, and has been documented repeatedly in CFS patients. "

  tags: cosmos me_cfs

• Where's the Benefit?: Threat to legal aid for disability benefit appeals

  "The nature of disability can be such that it makes it hard to complete benefit application forms. People can have memory problems or find it hard to concentrate. They may have physical problems with writing or typing, or they may not be able to construct clear sentences. I know that when I am struggling with pain I find it harder to think, and this affects my ability to write coherently – it is clear to see when I review letters I’ve written, I can easily tell which were done on a “good pain day” and which on a “bad pain day”. But some people don’t get good days, only bad ones – and yet through this they are expected to complete long booklets explaining why they are entitled to benefits."

  tags: uk benefits cosmos

• Lord Young “resigned” but then worked for Cameron in secret

  "Same old Tories, same old lies."

  tags: uk cosmos politics

• Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: We all know someone who could work but doesn't - Don't we?

  "We already have one of the toughest welfare systems in the developed world with the toughest sanctions and among the lowest rates of fraud. But you will never hear that from these documentaries. You almost certainly won't believe it now, but it's true. Pesky evidence."

  tags: uk cosmos benefits

• How the BBC and others fail to understand housing benefit

  "This is the reason why the Welfare State doesn’t “work”. Benefits are supposed to be there to provide workers with a safety net; they were never meant to compensate for low wages simply because employers cannot be bothered to pay more."

  tags: cosmos uk benefits

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