Cosmos

Links of the day 01/27/2012

2012-01-27T22:31:00.001Z

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
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
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"

tags: uk cosmos benefits atos

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

Links of the day 01/26/2012

2012-01-26T22:30:00.001Z

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."

tags: cosmos uk benefits politics
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
Rod Liddle attacks “pretend disabled” in Sun column

"the most disgusting attack on disabled people yet"

tags: cosmos uk benefits disability
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?"

tags: cosmos atos uk benefits
Psychiatry’s Grand Confession

"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
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
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."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
New claims for ESA

"Outcomes of completed initial assessments for claims started from March to May 2011 show:"

tags: uk benefits cosmos
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!

tags: cosmos politics

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

Links of the day 01/25/2012

2012-01-25T22:31:00.001Z

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. "

tags: uk benefits cosmos
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
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
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
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."

tags: uk politics cosmos
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."

tags: uk cosmos health
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
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."

tags: uk cosmos me_cfs
Voices from the Shadows

"‘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. "

tags: uk cosmos me_cfs

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

Links of the day 01/24/2012

2012-01-24T22:30:00.001Z

'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
Bankers are real scroungers

"... while Cameron is clamping down on benefits, he doesn’t mind giving handouts to his banker pals."

tags: uk cosmos benefits politics
I need a good laugh….LoL,LoL…

"I thought we all need a good laugh now and again, problem is this video isn’t that far from the truth, please enjoy….."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
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.

tags: cosmos uk health
Pegby is a Free, Web-Based To-Do Manager That Keeps Your Eyes on Your Next Actions

Looks worth a try.

tags: cosmos tools
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
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."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
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?"

tags: cosmos uk benefits me_cfs
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."

tags: cosmos uk politics
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
Whilst ruthlessly cutting the Welfare State, the coalitions policy of subsidising private business goes into overdrive.

"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."

tags: cosmos uk benefits health nhs politics

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

Today's Bargains 01/24/2012

2012-01-24T08:31:00.001Z

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

Links of the day 01/23/2012

2012-01-23T22:31:00.001Z

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
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."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
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."

tags: uk cosmos health
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."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
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."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
With its continued demonisation of the sick and disabled the UK Coalition is engaged in the same ideological process which led to the Nazis euthanasia program, with its accompanying defamation of the sick and disabled.

"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

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

Links of the day 01/22/2012

2012-01-22T22:32:00.001Z

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."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
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."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
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."

tags: cosmos mcs
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

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

Links of the day 01/21/2012

2012-01-21T22:30:00.001Z

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
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."

tags: uk cosmos
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."

tags: uk cosmos
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

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

Today's Bargains 01/21/2012

2012-01-21T08:31:00.001Z

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

Links of the day 01/20/2012

2012-01-20T22:30:00.001Z

The Mental Clutter Scale for Fibromyalgia

"Cognitive dysfunction, often called fibro fog, is a major and debilitating symptom of fibromyalgia. However, it's been difficult to measure clinically because the specific dysfunctions common to fibro fog are different from those of established learning disabilities."

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Cardiac autonomic impairment and chronotropic incompetence in fibromyalgia

"Patients with FM who undertook a graded exercise test may present CI and delayed HR recovery, both being indicative of cardiac autonomic impairment and higher risk of cardiovascular events and mortality."

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: So How Am I?

"This is the reality of sick and disabled people fighting back. I can put it in very stark, unemotional terms, but that is what it takes. There is no doubt at all that some of us did this knowing that our lives were at risk. What on earth is happening in 2012 when sick and disabled people will go to such lengths to be heard???"

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Where's the Benefit?: Just a form - some benefit myths

"Here are three myths that have been annoying me recently, the first two repeated constantly by government ministers."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Disability: man in coma declared fit to work

"... as he has failed to return the ESA50 without good cause and is therefore capable of work and no longer entitled to ESA…"

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Yes, but are you REALLY disabled?

"You’ll have to be beyond hope if you want any charity from us."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability

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

Today's Bargains 01/20/2012

2012-01-20T08:31:00.001Z

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

Links of the day 01/19/2012

2012-01-19T22:30:00.001Z

Do disability rights cost too much?

"A struggle for rights which began half a century ago is threatening to go into reverse."

tags: uk disability cosmos benefits

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

Links of the day 01/18/2012

2012-01-18T22:30:00.001Z

Why you can't sleep when you're in pain

"Patients with any pain syndrome often come in complaining of fatigue or tiredness. Their bodies have trouble falling and staying asleep. Sleep and pain are both ultimately controlled by the central nervous system. Poor sleep and pain form a vicious cycle - uncontrolled pain makes sleep difficult (if not impossible) and, in turn, the resulting poor sleep makes it more difficult to adequately control the pain."

tags: cosmos pain
Welfare Reform Bill: Where is our national conscience?

"I look forward to the moment in all these proceedings when David Cameron and his team who are pushing for these draconian measures – Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud – are held to account for their acts against the disabled."

tags: uk benefits disability cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: Can't walk more than 50 metres? Under PIP I'm not disabled enough

"Under the new rules for PIP if a disabled person CANNOT walk more than 50 metres but doesn't need a wheelchair then they will no longer be entitled to higher rate mobility"

Which simply doesn't make any sense at all.

tags: uk benefits disability cosmos
The government's replacement for DLA is not fit for purpose

"There has been widespread criticism of the ESA assessment system, yet the government seems determined to repeat the same mistakes. "

tags: uk benefits disability cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: PIP and passport benefits - who are the losers?

"there are other, unforeseen, side effects of this hateful, unwanted legislation. People who are removed from DLA and fail to make the transfer to PIP because they won't clock up enough points on the tick-box assessment won't just lose the money - they will also lose their eligibility for passport benefits."

tags: uk benefits disability cosmos
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: A PR win for the Government but an Actual Win for Disabled People

"This is crucial. It means that all the details still missing on assessments, weightings and entitlement criteria will have to be agreed by both the Commons and the Lords before they can go ahead. This is what we most needed and is a huge concession. It means the Government cannot sneak unfit plans through without the agreement of parliament. I can't stress enough what a win this was and how resistant ministers had previously been to the demand.
"

tags: cosmos disability uk benefits
Welfare reform bill delay blocked as coalition wins vote against amendment

"The government fought off a fresh challenge to its controversial welfare reform bill on Tuesday night, when peers rejected a proposal to delay the full introduction of slashed new disability payments after ministers offered concessions."

tags: cosmos disability uk benefits
Bid to halt DLA cut falls short but campaigners claim victory

"Sixteen votes. That's all it took for the government's reforms to disability living allowance - which will see 500,000 people lose out on the benefit - to stay on track. However, campaigners say they have won significant concessions from government."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
Worrying developments for freedom of expression in the UK

"This thread combines a number of examples where atheists, humanists and/or secularists have been threatened or coerced into silence, both by Muslims and by institutions or other groups apparently subscribing to the view that 'If someone believes it, you must respect it'. All these examples have happened in the UK in the course of the last week or so."

tags: cosmos uk
Do I Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

"First, you need to know that this illness isn't just about being tired, in spite of what the name suggests. Second, it takes a lot to come up with a solid diagnosis, so no web site can give you a definitive answer. However, there are signs to watch for that can help you decide whether chronic fatigue syndrome is a possibility. "

tags: cosmos me_cfs
The truth about food additives: how they threaten your health

"In an extract from his new book, The Power of Self-Healing, Dr Fabrizio Mancini explains why sugar and food additives - from aspartame to trans fats - could have a severely detrimental effect on your health"

tags: cosmos food
FoE: Support solar to help low-income families cut energy bills

The big six energy companies have kept cash-strapped households hooked on expensive and dirty fossil fuels for far too long. It’s time to give power to the people to enable more of us to benefit from lower fuel bills. Expanding the subsidy scheme for clean energy would guarantee us a brighter future.

tags: cosmos environment
Exercises To Tighten Your Body After Weight Loss

Need to lose the weight first, but it's as well to know this now and some of these exercises are gentle enough that I could manage them.

tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/17/2012

2012-01-17T22:30:00.001Z

'Welfare reform has us terrified' – families facing the worst speak out

"As the Lords prepares for another debate, people facing impending disability cuts wonder how they will cope"

tags: cosmos uk disability benefits
Spartacus Stories: H's Story #spartacusstories #spartacusreport

"We feel like we are at the bottom of the heap. The government and the media are making us feel like scum. We have huge dreams - I am an artist and photographer, my husband a writer, yet we are barely able to move from the bed/sofa to pursue these passions of ours. Why should we be punished by the benefits system just for being ill? "

tags: cosmos uk disability benefits me_cfs
We are right to fear proposed changes to the disability living allowance

"The key issue for disabled people – who are the ones who will again bear the cost of ill thought-out reforms – is not whether the government suffers another defeat in the Lords but whether the right safeguards are in place for the new system."

tags: cosmos uk disability benefits

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

Links of the day 01/16/2012

2012-01-16T22:30:00.001Z

Neurobiology Underlying Fibromyalgia Symptoms

"Together, the experimental evidence provides strong support for the idea that FM symptoms are related to dysfunctions in the central nervous system. The cause of these changes cannot be deduced from the available evidence, as it is correlational in nature. Did long-term ongoing pain cause the changes or did the changes cause the pain? Without a relevant animal model or long-term longitudinal studies, we cannot answer these questions. Nevertheless, we can at least say that fibromyalgia is real and that it is associated with multiple changes in the brain."

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Differences in metabolite-detecting, adrenergic, and immune gene expression after moderate exercise in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, patients with multiple sclerosis, and healthy controls

"Postexercise mRNA increases in metabolite-detecting receptors were unique to patients with CFS, whereas both patients with MS and patients with CFS showed abnormal increases in adrenergic receptors. "

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Atos/DWP hiding report into pilot study of audio recording of WCA Assessments… « ATOS REGISTER OF SHAME

"Atos & the DWP for whatever reason don’t seem to want us to see that report, obviously they are fearful of us recording assessment because it will show Atos HCPs and the DWP for what they really are, a bunch of liars and cheats."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Guest post: Last chance to save Disability Living Allowance

"We need you to email and tweet at Lords tonight, particularly Lib Dems and Crossbenchers, so that their inboxes are full before the votes on DLA tomorrow. "

tags: cosmos disability uk benefits
Wikipedia will go dark to protest SOPA/PIPA

"Jimmy Wales has announced that Wikipedia will join Reddit, Boing Boing, and many other sites around the Internet in going dark on Wednesday to protest SOPA/PIPA, the pending US legislation that would make it impossible to run any website that links or allows commenters to link, by making us liable for copyright infringement on the sites we link to. "

tags: cosmos copyright
Welfare reform bill faces Lords rebellion

"Government proposals to cut spending on working-age disability living allowance criticised in House of Lords"

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
The ESA Saga: The Culpability of a DWP Decision Maker - not as simple as it seems

"If a DM judges someone fit for work and they are wrong and their error has serious repercussions, they must face the consequences. They cannot assume the authority without also assuming the accountability."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
The ESA Saga: Surreptitious Assumptions made by Atos/DWP in a WCA - BEWARE

"The answers given to a variety of seemingly innocent and innocuous questions posed within a WCA can have a very precise interpretation by Atos and/or DWP. Some quoted examples are:
· Visiting a supermarket: ability to walk unaided, without pain or exhaustion for 800m+
· Driving a car for 10 – 15 minutes: ability to self-propel in a wheelchair 200m+ without pain or exhaustion.
· Walking 30m: ability to walk 60m on the basis of 30m outbound + 30m return journey
· Use a bus: ability to stand in a queue for 30+ mins.
· Watch films on TV: ability to sit continuously for 90+ mins.
· Watch soaps on TV: ability to sit continuously for 30 mins.
· Holiday to Cornwall: ability to sit for 3 hours at least.
· Appointment 30 mins late: sat in the waiting room continuously for 30 mins."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Where's the Benefit?: The Big Guns...

"Clearly the government are worried enough about tomorrow's DLA vote to call their buddy Rupert to get him to spin some propaganda."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Where's the Benefit?: Guest post: Lords vote tomorrow, Jan 17th

"We have to stop PIP, it has no foundation and many people will be financially penalised for not being the "right sort of disabled"."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Lord calls for abolition of ‘unjust’ time limit on expat voting

"Expat Britons campaigning for the permanent right to to vote in UK elections were delighted last week when the Conservative peer Lord Lexden said he supported their fight "

tags: cosmos expat
Concessions offered over disability benefit changes

"The government is backing an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill halving the time seriously ill or disabled people will have to wait to be eligible for Personal Independence Payments (PIPs). "

tags: uk cosmos disability benefits
UK education minister: times are tough, let's spend £60M on a new yacht for the Queen!

"Britain's flamboyantly weird education secretary Michael Gove sometimes seems to me to be some kind of secret saboteur, bent on discrediting Tories as out-of-touch rich nutjobs."

For which he deserves some credit for accuracy!

tags: uk cosmos politics
The Jobbing Doctor: This is the future.....

"So let me get this straight. They use inferior products (see posts passim about breast implants); they employ surgeons who are not sufficiently good; and they expect the NHS to clear up the mess afterwards."

tags: uk cosmos health nhs
Where's the Benefit?: The Good, the Bad and the unnecessarily expensive

"So not only would the government find themselves shelling out more on people that had become more impaired but wouldn't have reported it, they'll also be haemorrhaging money to pay for these new reviews. Mr Badman says "but ducking decisions simply because constituents won't like them is scarcely a noble motive." I concur: But I also think that wanting to stump up more money for no other reason than to persecute disabled people is a rather overpriced way of proving that he is an odious little man. "

tags: cosmos uk politics disability benefits

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

Links of the day 01/15/2012

2012-01-15T22:30:00.001Z

Ignoring Britain's poor is not only morally bad, it's economically unsound

"For two reasons, economic weakness has made tackling poverty more important, not less. Firstly, the solutions to Britain’s economic malaise require the inclusion of people on low incomes. Secondly, poverty in Britain is caused by a dysfunctional economy, and in this financial crisis, this underlying dysfunction is dragging down the living standards for growing numbers of people."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Conservative Manifesto 2010 - Disability & Care

"Quite apart from the appalling betrayal of carers highlighted in this afterthought of a manifesto entry, does anyone notice anything? Anything huge they forgot to mention?

Oh yes, silly them. Not a peep about scrapping DLA and replacing it with PIP. Well, except this of course :

“Conservatives have pledged to preserve Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance as cash benefits.”

Makes it sound like there's nothing to worry about doesn't it?
"

tags: cosmos disability uk politics benefits
Ampligen for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Still a Possibility

"After being rejected 2 years ago, the drug that many thought would become the first FDA-approved treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) apparently isn't off the table. Hemispherx Biopharma Inc. says the FDA has granted an extension that could allow them to make another run at getting Ampligen (rintatolimod) approved."

tags: me_cfs cosmos
Work will set you free: from welfare to workfare

"Publically available work fare and work for your benefits successes appear to be confined to those who are profiting from the contracts offered to provide the schemes, and those using the free labour supplied by them. "

tags: uk benefits cosmos politics
Nicky Clark: No Prime Minister

"If a civilised society is judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable members then currently the fairer Britain, which David Cameron is hoping to promote, seems by his own, hurtful and denigrating language broken beyond repair."

tags: uk benefits cosmos politics
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: No Data Protection for Sick and Disabled

"We call on the Government to make an urgent statement on this issue. We ask them how our rights under the data protection act are affected by this sharing of information without our consent or knowledge and whether they are able to lawfully take this step before the welfare reform bill is passed?"

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: Ministers getting ahead of themselves

"Apart from my immediate revulsion at them penalising people for making mistakes on a very complex form at a time when they are vulnerable, and actually spending that quantity of money to enable them to do so, what makes me the most outraged is that they are spending this money when this bill hasn't even become law!"

tags: uk politics benefits cosmos
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Not Scroungers Any More

"That was the great triumph of this week. Finally, after all the months and months of patient reminders, people thought about disability. They questioned the wisdom of sending terminally ill people to the jobcentre. They rejected the idea that illness or disability magically disappear in a year. They were amazed to find cancer patients were expected to look for work on chemo and that disabled children were to become chattels dependent on goodwill, no longer entitled to independent means."

tags: uk politics benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/14/2012

2012-01-14T22:30:00.001Z

Britishness and anti-intellectualism

"As I hope to show here, anti-intellectualism is deeply rooted in the political history of Britain and has long performed a strategic conservative ideological function – which is to shield the status quo from systematic criticism."

tags: uk politics cosmos
Nick Clegg unites with Lords in battle to alter benefit cuts

"Lib Dem peer Lord Phillips of Sudbury told a meeting of legal experts they could "reasonably expect major changes to the bill". He added: "There is no doubt that, if the government doesn't make major concessions, there'll be votes on amendments in the House of Lords and the government will lose. I can promise you that.""

tags: uk politics benefits cosmos
Chronic Pain Prolongs Postsurgical Pain

"According to recently reported research, patients with chronic pain require special consideration for pain management following any type of surgery."

As I've been saying for years and why I've walked out on surgery in the past because the matter was dismissed by medical staff who would not make any special considerations.

tags: pain fibromyalgia cosmos
Why Antidepressants for Fibromyalgia?

"The most common type of drug doctors prescribe for fibromyalgia is antidepressants, and that confuses a lot of patients. Why would their doctor give them antidepressants for a pain condition? Does the doctor think the symptoms are all in their heads? Does he/she think they're "just depressed"? Or is there some scientific reason behind it?"

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Work Programme contract is putting providers out of business

"A Letter taken from the Guardian, makes fascinating reading…"

tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

The world …

2012-01-14T21:04:00.001Z

Source: kendrahartigan.tumblr.com via Pamela on Pinterest

Links of the day 01/13/2012

2012-01-13T22:30:00.001Z

Buy a home on Facebook

"A new app on Facebook will allow you to use the social media site to to buy a home or check out your future tenants, and use your friends network to sell a room or property."

tags: cosmos uk property letting
Letters: Morality and the welfare reform bill

"... one might suggest Trident could be cut and spending on the Olympics and the jubilee reduced or cancelled rather than making the most vulnerable in society pay for the bankers' crisis."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
XMRV & the History of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"Written by a Columbia University professor, this article supports most of the claims made by people in the ME/CFS community in a way that's much harder for people to discount."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Benefit Scrounging Scum: Day 5 #spartacusreport

"This week we have been able to demonstrate to the wider public something we all knew. That we are not ranting for the sake of it, but that we have detailed evidence and clear alternatives to the government's proposals. Sue's appearance on Newsnight last night shows that the media are finally starting to understand that, and see us as a credible, powerful community.
"

tags: uk cosmos benefits
"Demonising the government": Sue Marsh v Chris Grayling (and Emily Maitlis)

"Disability campaigner Sue Marsh appeared on Newsnight last night to debate the education minister Chris Grayling – and, at times, the presenter Emily Maitlis as well."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
UK battery farms break EU rules

"Up to 500,000 hens are being kept in battery cages on farms in the UK despite an EU-wide ban which came into force at the beginning of the year."

tags: uk cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/12/2012

2012-01-12T22:30:00.001Z

Where's the Benefit?: Government filthy tricks subvert parliamentary process

"If anyone had previously thought that the government were simply misguided as to what their policy would do they should revise their opinion. This government is corrupt.
"

tags: cosmos uk benefits politics
B-Cell Discovery Suggests Why Women Suffer More Autoimmune Disease

"Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a type of cell that may contribute to autoimmune disease. The findings also suggest why diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis strike women more frequently than men.
"

tags: cosmos
Government defeated on time limiting of ESA | The Hardest Hit

"DLA and PIP will be debated next week in the Lords and we will again be asking campaigners to “Tweet to Defeat.”"

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Three ways in which inequality causes financial instability

"The lesson – for the right as well as the left – is that capitalism that shares its output proportionately between profits and wages, and fairly amongst all citizens, is not just likely to be politically more stable, it will also deliver a more productive economy, faster growth and less turbulence. "

tags: cosmos
Which chemicals are making us fat?

"In her book 'The 21st Century is Making you Fat' former Ecologist Editor Pat Thomas details the full range of industrial and everyday chemicals known to encourage us to get fat"

tags: cosmos
The mother who exposed the links between obesity and common chemicals

"My hypothesis is that chemicals are the basis behind the global epidemic, because at the levels of chemicals we are being exposed to, they’re poisoning our weight control systems, which is damaging our ability to lose weight and make us fatter."

tags: cosmos
£1.6bn black hole in benefit plans after Lords throw out key reform

"‘The Government has been defeated tonight because quite simply they tried to cross the basic line of British decency.’"

tags: disability cosmos uk benefits
Benefit Scrounging Scum: Our Response To Govt Today - #spartacusreport #wrb

"Today, you have truth and justice on your side. The Government do not. No Government is defeated on the scale we saw last night, with the very strong majorities we saw, by accident. It was the undeniable injustice of the Government's plans that convinced the Lords. "

tags: disability cosmos uk benefits
Lords inflict triple welfare bill defeat on government

"Campaigners win House of Lords votes on Employment and Support Allowance"

tags: disability cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 01/11/2012

2012-01-11T22:30:00.001Z

The Green Benches: Government report concluded that Workfare reduces chances of Future employment

"A 2008 government (DWP) investigation into workfare programmes in the USA, Canada & Australia concluded that unpaid Workfare was ineffective, unsuccessful and should not be replicated in the UK."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
The Spartacus Report – the easy read version

"And do pass on the word to anyone who can benefit from this - we believe everyone should have the opportunity to be informed about politics and have a say in the decisions that affect them – and creating accessible formats is an essential step towards this goal."

tags: cosmos disability uk benefits
United Response

"United Response is a national charity that supports people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and physical disabilities to take control of their lives."

tags: cosmos disability
Benefit Scrounging Scum: Joanne Harris, best-selling author of Chocolat, supports the principles behind the #spartacusreport

"One of the criteria for a civilized society must surely be how we support the most vulnerable people among us; the elderly; the disabled and those who have long-term illnesses. I’d like to think that this country is civilized enough to do that, and that its leaders are humane enough to consider their responsibility fairly. Sometimes, however, our leaders can be curiously hard of hearing. Let’s hope that this report helps them to hear the voices of those who need to be heard.

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, the Runemarks series, etc"

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Tips on garden design for disabled people

"Avoid large lawns and lawns with sharply curved edges as they will be more time consuming to maintain. Consider having a semi-wild lawn with mown paths to save time and effort. Lawns are difficult to manage so consider replacing some or all of the lawn with a hard surface. "

tags: cosmos disability garden
The Low-Maintenance Garden

If you want a garden that looks after itself but which is not entirely concreted over, the first and most valuable lesson you must learn is to garden with nature, not against it. All growing plants make some demands, but these demands are reduced if the right plants are chosen for the conditions. You also need to abandon previously held notions about what constitutes a garden -- that all gardens demand a central portion of grass with flower borders around it -- and start to look at other alternatives. The options open to you are varied, but the following features all contribute to a generally low-maintenance approach.

tags: cosmos disability garden
AFTER ATOS | Counting the Disabled Back In

"Since 2008 Atos Healthcare have been assessing millions of disabled people off their benefits and declaring them fit to work. There has been no accounting or auditing or assurance of what happened to the disabled next. After Atos seeks to remedy that by providing an online rolling feedback survey for the disabled to collect their facts, statistics and feedback witness."

tags: cosmos disability uk benefits
10 Things to STOP Doing to Yourself With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"When you have a chronic illness like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, you've got enough working against you - you don't need to make things worse for yourself!"

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia me_cfs
Where's the Benefit?: What's wrong with time-limiting Contributory ESA?

"There's no condition in the world, physical, sensory, mental or intellectual, which might benefit from a ticking clock."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
Why Boris is right about this

" the revelation that London Mayor Boris Johnson submitted comments to the consultation on Disability Living Allowance reform prompts an unusual response."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
Big Society's verdict on Cameron: Incoherent and unpromising

"Whether or not Cameron believes at all in the big society anymore, it has given up on him."

tags: uk politics cosmos
We’re all desperate for welfare reform, Mr. Cameron, but hiding the truth is not the way to achieve it

"Christ almighty, the “Daily Mail” coming out and defending the disabled, surely this must be a April Fools day joke? "

tags: uk benefits politics cosmos dailywail
We're all desperate for welfare reform, Mr. Cameron, but hiding the truth is not the way to achieve it

"I BELIEVE that there comes a point in the life of any Prime Minister when the electorate is entitled to ask - and loudly - does this person actually know what they are doing?"

tags: uk benefits politics cosmos
Cancer patients' welfare cuts set for House of Lords challenge

"Lord Patel, the crossbencher and former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians, has won the support of the Labour party for his amendment to the bill aimed at watering down the government's proposal to change welfare payments."

tags: uk benefits politics cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: A Topsy-Turvy World

"Those who do the right thing." There's a "right" way to be ill in order to claim ESA? How does that work? Am I supposed to look and act like I've just rolled out of a Children in Need appeal in order to claim DLA/PIP?"

tags: cosmos uk benefits
The Jobbing Doctor: I'm Spartacus

"I strongly support this action against the way that central Government, through their appointed private agents Atos, whose actions I see every day in my clinical practice."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: THE IMPACT OF TIME-LIMITING ESA

"It is a disincentive to work that goes against everything the coalition says they want to achieve. "

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Inaccuracies dog ‘fit to work’ test

"The study, Right First Time?, is the latest in a series of reports highlighting the unreliability of the complex new system, which is meant to determine who is sufficiently fit to work and who is eligible for state benefits. However, the Citizens Advice report is the first attempt to follow a group of claimants through the process, looking in detail at the way they were treated by Atos, the firm contracted to carry out the work capability tests, and analysing how its report matched up with the claimants’ assessment of their medical state."

tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 01/10/2012

2012-01-10T22:30:00.001Z

Disability minister ignorant on how legal aid cuts affecting disabled people

"Even Tory grandee Lord Newton has called the cumulative impact of the government’s legal aid and welfare reforms a “pincer movement” on disabled people.

Miller’s comment on Radio Five exposed that the left hand of government doesn’t know what the right is doing. Worse, it highlighted that despite being the minister for disabled people, she is blissfully unaware of the impact of government policy on disabled people."

tags: disability cosmos uk benefits
Furor in Greece over pedophilia as a disability

"The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance."

Seems the UK is not the only place where disability benefits are being shaken up. Perhaps we should all head for Greece - I'm sure most of us have one fetish or another that qualifies! And, seeing that kleptomaniacs are also included, there will even be a place for Antony Worrall Thompson.

tags: disability greece cosmos
Places to Avoid With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"If only pain and fatigue were the only symptoms we had to deal with! Anyone with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome knows that's not the case, though. We can generally count symptoms by the dozen.

One set of symptoms involves environmental sensitivities, which can mean:

Noise & light sensitivity
Temperature sensitivity
Fragrance/chemical sensitivity
Sensory overload"

tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/09/2012

2012-01-09T22:30:00.001Z

New hope as Cameron fails to insult a minority sector for 24 hours

From the Many-a-true-word department:

"One of the Prime Ministers closest aids commented ‘You have no idea how difficult our job is when faced with somebody of his background and upbringing. His Bullingdon background has shielded him from exposure to minorities and part of his psyche does not accept their existence. That belief, together with his strong sense of superiority makes it so difficult to temper his outbursts."

tags: uk politics cosmos
Right to Parody

"Some people can’t take a joke. Parodies of films and music need to be protected from legal claims by copyright owners who want to shut people up. Copyright law needs a sense of humour"

tags: uk cosmos copyright
Disabled people listened to on welfare plans? It's a government sham

"Agree completely: the government's policies on disability have been disastrous.
It accuses other people of being fraudulent, when they themselves do little else but lie and cheat people out of social security. I think the report holds a mirror up to Parliament, and shows its treatment of the disabled up for what it really is."

tags: benefits uk cosmos
Government acknowledges Atos are failing in their contract…

"We can now see that the government acknowledges that Atos are failing in their contract, appeals are increasing, the company is cutting costs and it’s the public who is suffering, not the politicians who introduced this mess, we need to increase our joint campaigning powers to get the government to end this farce of a contract."

tags: benefits uk cosmos atos
Disabled people say that government welfare reforms are a 'sham'

"The author of a hard-hitting new report says government consultation on 'disastrous' welfare changes has now been shown to be 'a sham'.

A leading disability campaigner, author of a hard-hitting new report on Disability Living Allowance reform, says government consultation on 'disastrous' welfare changes has now been shown to be 'a sham'.

The report 'Responsible Reform', published today (9 January 2012) finds that government has misled MPs and peers over the hostility to disability benefit reform.

It is being presented to parliament as members of the Houses of Commons and Lords return to Westminster to debate the final stages of the controversial Welfare Reform Bill."

tags: benefits uk cosmos
Benefit Scrounging Scum: Responsible Reform? #spartacusreport

"Responsible Reform? #spartacusreport
Timed to coincide with the return of the Welfare Reform Bill to the House of Lords, today sees the formal launch of the report 'Responsible Reform'. Written, researched, funded and produced by sick and disabled people, our friends and family, Responsible Reform is a detailed investigation into the government's consultation on DLA reform which ended in February 2011. "

tags: benefits uk cosmos
Tory quits in cuts protest

"A disabled councillor has decided to step down in protest at Government plans to abolish Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
Ollie Flitcroft, a wheelchair-user, is one of the first Conservatives to criticize ministers publicly for targeting disabled people disproportionately with cuts."

tags: benefits uk cosmos
Mayor Boris Johnson victim of DLA con trick

"London Mayor Boris Johnson is just one of thousands of individuals and organisations whose overwhelming opposition to axing disability living allowance has been grossly misrepresented by the government in an effort to force through the highly controversial change. "

tags: benefits uk cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/08/2012

2012-01-08T22:30:00.001Z

The Broken Of Britain: Six days to get rid of the 12 month time limit to ESA

"
At the moment, if you receive contributory ESA (based on your NI contributions), you get around £90 a week and are eligible for that until you reach State Pension age. Now, you will lose your entitlement to it after a year. So, if you work for 40 years and pay tax and NI for all that time, you will only, when you need it most, get a year's support if the Government plans become law."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Where's the Benefit?: What's Wrong with Personal Independence Payments?

"If disabled people don't get the help we need to pay for support, appropriate equipment, transport and so on, then depending on our cirucmstances and personal priorities, then we will be forced to

Do much less. Go out less, have less social contact, quit our jobs, get less exercise, shop less, cook less, maybe eat less and certainly wash less. None of this is good for our physical or mental health. Our worlds will shrink and our health, happiness and life expectancy will adjust accordingly. "

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Revealed: Why Tories lack compassion …

"The Tories know that what they are spouting is economically and politically untrue. The Tories want to create a nasty narrative of hatred towards the unemployed, to blame individuals for their situation, despite global economic problems, and to divide and rule workers. This is easier than creating jobs and helps justify the vile decisions they’re taking which plunge individuals and families into abject poverty."

tags: cosmos uk politics benefits
Post Status Updates And Videos To Your Facebook Wall After You Die

"An Israeli company named Wilook thought that if users have spent their entire life on Facebook, they have the right to post their last status update or publish a sweet video message to their friends and followers. The Facebook app “If I Die On Facebook” is the first and only Facebook application that lets “you” create a video or a text message that will only be published after you die. Super creepy!"

tags: cosmos
Social Media Storms & Boris’s Sense « 2020UK

"“The Mayor is opposed to using independent healthcare professionals to provide advice on an ‘individual’s condition’. Supporting evidence should only be sought from healthcare professionals who are familiar with the individual, for example their GP or Consultant. They will be familiar with the claimant’s case, the barriers they face and will be much more aware of their particular circumstances.”"

tags: cosmos uk politics benefits
Welcome to 2020UK

"A group seeking to see UK politics with the clarity of 2020 vision."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Low vitamin D levels linked to depression, psychiatrists report

"Low levels of vitamin D already are associated with a cavalcade of health woes from cardiovascular diseases to neurological ailments. This new study -- published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings -- helps clarify a debate that erupted after smaller studies produced conflicting results about the relationship between vitamin D and depression. "

tags: cosmos depression
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Cameron Disability Gaff

""This comment comes in the middle of a piece about a fairer Britain. How fair is Britain going to be for disabled people if this is the lead we get from Downing Street?""

tags: cosmos uk politics disability benefits

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

Links of the day 01/07/2012

2012-01-07T22:30:00.001Z

Flaws in research affect treatment, Bristol Evening Post, 5 January 2012

"The serious concern of people with ME is that, unless these fatal flaws in research are pointed out, they will be missed by doctors, especially GPs. It may be, therefore, that a treatment which may be beneficial for someone with a chronic fatigue condition might be ill advised for an ME sufferer."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
UK Govt Turns New Leaf (Why the UK Loves ME/CFS More)

"Post Traumatic PACE Syndrome? Something has changed, however. Whether it’s due to the poor PACE results, the Rituximab finding or interest stirred up by XMRV the MHC is brewing a different cup of tea this time around."

tags: uk cosmos me_cfs

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

Links of the day 01/06/2012

2012-01-06T22:30:00.001Z

Boris Johnson attacks planned cuts to disability payments

"Johnson is concerned that the changes could lead to financial hardship and social isolation for chronically ill and disabled people, and push an already disadvantaged group deeper into poverty."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
31 deaths whilst waiting for benefit judgements

"Last night Labour called on the Tory-LibDem Coalition at Westminster to get a grip on the situation before it spirals “completely out of control”."

tags: uk benefits cosmos atos
Comparison of UK benefit rates compared with our EU Neighbours…

I agree that you probably have to pay more to get better benefits in other countries, but it's all relative. I think the real value of the benefits - relative to the cost of living - is also much lower in the UK. And in other countries there seems to still be respect for one's rights to receive the benefits that one has paid into the system for.

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Leaked memo: USA blackmailed Spain into passing brutal, censoring copyright law

"On the eve of the enactment of Spain's harsh new copyright law, El Pais has published a leaked letter from the US Ambassador to the outgoing Spanish president ordering him to enact the copyright law America's industry wants to see, or face trade sanctions. "

tags: cosmos spain copyright
Let Them Die Because It’s About Money, Not Lives

"Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday. "

And it's all too apparent to all (except to those who do not want to see) that current policies are creating exactly the same scenario in the UK and not, IMHO, entirely accidentally.

tags: cosmos uk health
Study Demonstrates Glutamate Dysregulation in Fibromyalgia

"A new study provides further evidence of high levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate in fibromyalgia and suggests that lowering glutamate levels could help alleviate symptoms."

tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/05/2012

2012-01-05T22:30:00.001Z

Pain-Topics.org News/Research UPDATES: Harms of Epidural Steroid Injections Examined

"A surge in epidural steroid injections to alleviate back and neck pain in the United States is bringing with it an increase in severe and unexpected complications, including paralysis and death, according to a report in Bloomberg News"

This, my consultant Rheumatologist suggested is the only treatment left for my spinal arthritis. And this - and my propensity, because of ME/CFS to have bad reactions to drugs - is why I refused it.

tags: cosmos pain arthritis
Epstein-Barr virus tricks the immune system into triggering inflammation and nerve cell damage which is known to cause MS and ? ME

"Dr Meier and her team of collaborators found that, although the virus was not actively spreading, it was releasing a chemical message into areas of the brain nearby. This chemical message - made up of small RNA molecules - was activating the body’s immune system, causing inflammation. This damages nerve cells in the brain and causes MS symptoms."

tags: me_cfs cosmos
Supermarkets gearing up to offer alternative to Dignitas

"“Or for a fiver, one of our security guards can suffocate thrifty consumers in the lobby, with a carrier bag. Every little helps.”"

tags: cosmos
Swiss man to travel to England to end life in NHS hospital

"shunning the local suicide clinic a few minutes drive from his home. ‘I want to end my life,’ said Max Friedland today, ‘but I don’t want to actually commit suicide. Which is why I have chosen a routine minor operation in an NHS hospital.’"

tags: cosmos
An Easy Recipe for Traditional Spanish Holiday Bread: Roscón de Reyes

"Roscón de Reyes, a ring-shaped loaf of slightly sweet bread, is traditionally eaten in Spain on King's day, January 6th, and the night before"

tags: food recipes cosmos tenerife
38 Degrees | Save Legal Aid

"Legal aid is under threat. The government is planning to change the rules so it cannot be used to help people challenge welfare benefit decisions when mistakes are made. Inaccurate benefit decisions can see people pushed into poverty. Expert advice allows them to challenge these decisions and make sure they are right."

tags: cosmos uk
Re-living Liam Byrne & Labour’s failed past on welfare reform

"Three successive Labour majority governments enthusiastically pursued what Byrne is suggesting as a priority, to no avail. And yet we get this old, out of date idea from the man in charge of Labour’s policy review – well over a decade behind the evidence."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Exercise is good for your waistline -- but it's a writing exercise

"Is losing weight as simple as doing a 15-minute writing exercise? In a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, women who wrote about their most important values, like close relationships, music, or religion, lost more weight over the next few months than women who did not have that experience."

tags: cosmos

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

Roscón de Reyes

2012-01-05T17:20:00.001Z

Here’s something I knocked up this morning from this recipe at Simple Spanish Food and it’s a pretty fair imitation of the real thing, if I say so myself and certainly not at all bad for a first attempt.

Links of the day 01/04/2012

2012-01-04T22:30:00.001Z

In Defense of Facebook | Psychology Today

" In my opinion, the Internet's hidden treasure for those suffering from chronic pain and illness are these Facebook Groups."

tags: cosmos health
Weymouth Olympic Tower photos

"YOU are viewing the big hole in the ground which will become the Weymouth Sea Life Tower. The rotating tower will provide views over the Olympic Park and the waters of Weymouth Bay where the sailing competitions will be held. Either that or else the big Olympic hole will be filled with your tax money…"

tags: cosmos
Can becoming a vegetarian help save the planet?

"Deciding whether or not to eat meat or fish is ultimately a personal choice, although working out where the food you eat has come from is key to understanding your personal environmental impact. What remains a fact is that over-consumption of meat has significant ramifications, not only for the environment but also for our health"

tags: cosmos food environment
10 myths about simple living

"Simple living isn’t about ‘giving things up’ and adopting strict rules about what we can and can’t have."

tags: cosmos
Why staying positive WON'T speed your recovery

"The study, in the American Journal Of Epidemiology, looked at 4,600 people with cancer over 30 years, and found that whether they were extrovert or neurotic, their attitude to life had no relationship with how long they survived their illness."

tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/03/2012

2012-01-03T22:30:00.001Z

Rip-off Britain: Our train fares are triple those on the continent

"European comparisons highlight just how expensive commuting by rail has become."

tags: cosmos uk
New poll: Big majorities for fairer capitalism - The Fabian Society

"The growing gap between rich and poor is bad for ordinary people, is felt personally by almost half the population and allows the very rich to use their power to harm the majority, according to new polling for the Fabian Review."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Records reveal how Christmas was once cancelled

"In accordance with their Puritan views, strict rules were drawn up banning all familiar festivities relating to Christmas, including feasting and carolling. The restriction also meant that worshiping idols and using the word 'Christmas' became serious offences. "

tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/02/2012

2012-01-02T22:30:00.001Z

2012 to contain exactly same shit as before

"The 366 days that will make up 2012 will inevitably consist of the varying degrees of misery and disappointment that have shaped previous years, it has been confirmed."

tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 01/01/2012

2012-01-01T22:30:00.001Z

Housing benefit cuts: 'It's not as if we're living in luxury'

"Whoever is making these decisions has obviously never been in the position of being poor."

tags: uk cosmos benefits
Where's the Benefit?: Oh but it's an honour, your Majesty.

"At a time when DWP employees are screwing disabled people so hard that it's resulting in numerous suicides their being rewarded makes a mockery of the whole system."

tags: uk cosmos benefits

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

Links of the day 12/31/2011

2011-12-31T22:30:00.001Z

Corporate Control of People with Disabilities

"If you do not have a disability, it probably does not occur to you that you need permission from someone in authority to take a bus, to read a book, to go to the bathroom, to talk on the phone, to leave your house, to enter a public space, to choose how to treat your medical condition."

tags: cosmos uk disability
As the cuts bleed harder, the cruel Tory truth will emerge

"The year ends with the country in a worse state than the government’s severest critics expected. Yet worse is to come, as 2012 slides towards the second recession in three years. Virtually everything David Cameron’s government has done has made matters worse; most policy initiatives are creaking while others are mere words without substance. In my political lifetime there has been no more callous or inept crew in charge – nor a government more skilful at disguising its nature."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Illness Clusters: The Reason Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome "Bring Friends"

"In a review of FMS literature, noted researcher Dr. Muhammed Yunus presents evidence for the cluster of illnesses we generally see all having a key feature in common: central sensitization (CS). As a group, they're called central sensitivity syndromes (CSS), although some of the conditions are classified as diseases."

tags: cosmos me_cfs fibromyalgia arthritis

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

Links of the day 12/30/2011

2011-12-30T22:30:00.001Z

Expect the government to shrink the banks? Think again. But the markets….

"The feebleness, impotence and tardiness of the Government in dealing with the banks could hardlybe more starkly highlighted. Everyone (almost) agrees that the UK finance sector is far too big – its liabilities equal 5 times Britain’s GDP – and the economy urgently needs to be rebalanced away from the City towards a revival of manufacturing. So what happens? The Government sets up the Vickers Commission which takes a year to come up with the wrong policy and then the Government takes another 6 months to confirm the wrong Vickers conclusions. "

tags: uk cosmos politics
Professor Simon Wessely once again attempts to defend the indefensible

"Professor Simon Wessely once again attempts to defend what has already been shown to be indefensible, namely his own beliefs about the nature of ME/CFS, including his belief that graded exercise therapy (GET) has “an impeccable safety record” (Simon Wessely; Health in mind and body; The Journal of the Foundation for Science and Technology: 2011:20:7: 9 –11).
"

tags: cosmos uk me_cfs
The abolition of the NHS. That’s what is happening

"In a speech on exports and growth on 10th November 2011, David Cameron went “off-script” and revealed his government’s true agenda for the NHS. "

tags: cosmos health uk
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)/Myalgic Encephalopathy (M.E.) - Symptoms, Diagnosis, Causes

"It is clear that there are a large number of abnormalities in multiple body systems in ME/CFS patients. These abnormalities centre around the nervous, endocrine and immune systems and the way these interact with each other. Although these abnormalities have been identified it is still unclear which are causes and which are effects. New research will hopefully shed more light on this but until then doctors who are seeing the best results with patients seem to be those who take a multifactorial approach and try to correct as many of the abnormalities discussed as they possibly can, using currently available treatments."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Government caught out on DLA statistics … again

"Serious doubts have emerged about crucial statistics used by the minister for disabled people to justify the government’s sweeping disability living allowance (DLA) reforms."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Pacing as a strategy to improve energy management in ME/CFS

"Conclusion: Pacing offers practitioners an additional therapeutic option which is acceptable to the majority of patients and can reduce the severity of the exertion-related symptoms of ME/CFS."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
How to Turn Your Dumbphone Into a Smartphone Using Nothing But SMS

"If you want to get email, Facebook, driving directions, and other web features on your phone, you can cheat a little bit and get them through SMS messages. Here's how. "

tags: cosmos
Managing ME

"People often assume that medicine can cure M.E, or at least keep it under control. Unfortunately, they are wrong. "

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Government’s Use of Atos to Combat Benefit Fraud Is Flawed, Costly and Counterproductive

"Despite the hype, the figures show the claimants in a different light. According to the government, who should know about these things, the Incapacity Benefit ‘Fraud and Error’ figure is 2.4%. Of this 2.4%, only 0.3% is down to fraud. This amounts to a loss of £20m. The rest is down to customer error (0.9% or £50m) and official error (1.2% or £70m). It would appear that not that many people are faking a sore back or depression after all."

tags: cosmos uk benefits atos
UK to relax pet quarantine rules

"The requirement for a blood test after a rabies vaccination to prove it has been successful will be dropped for those travelling within the EU, although both they and travellers bringing pets back from other countries with "robust" veterinary systems such as the US and Australia will still have to wait 21 days after vaccination before departure."

tags: cosmos uk tenerife

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

Links of the day 12/29/2011

2011-12-29T22:30:00.001Z

Who's to blame for supermarket rejection of 'ugly' fruit and vegetables? - The Ecologist

"Fields of wasted crops lie testament to our fussy shopping habits and the refusal of supermarkets to stock edible but less-than-perfect-looking food"

tags: food cosmos

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

A Very Furry Christmas

2011-12-26T08:00:00.001Z

Really, people who dress up their cats should be taken out and shot.

But when they look this cute …

And the “Sloppy Kisser” t-shirt speaks the truth?

By the way, Balu made no attempt to take that off and just went about his business as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He cuddled and purred and eventually, fell asleep in it all afternoon, on his back.

What else do you get Canarian cats for Crimbo? Catnip bananas, of course!

We had a minor tantrum at dinner time when there was a mass walk out over the content of their dishes. The “tinned crap” they had been served, they claimed, bore no resemblance to the stuff they could smell and they refused to eat until I’d carved them a slice of turkey each.

Oh and not enough to get stoned on catnip, Balu also lapped up brandy-laced cream with unseemly gusto. I think they had a good time!

Links of the day 12/23/2011

2011-12-23T22:30:00.001Z

The prevalence of fibromyalgia in other chronic pain conditions

"An important recent recognition is an increased prevalence of FMS in other chronic pain conditions with structural pathology, for example, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus, and inflammatory bowel disease. "

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
MSPs refuse changes to the UK benefits system.

"It is important to be aware that whilst Holyrood cannot prevent Westminster changing the welfare benefits system. The UK government needs Holyrood to allow it to change the law so its reforms would fit the Scottish system."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: God Bless us Every One!

"The change in attitudes and confidence is remarkable. Something seems to have convinced you all that we CAN do this, and the more of us that believe it, the more chance there is of it coming true."

tags: cosmos uk benefits disability
Heart Abnormalities in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"The leading causes of death were heart failure, suicide and cancer.
All 3 were were more common than in the overall population and happened earlier in life."

tags: me_cfs cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/22/2011

2011-12-22T10:31:00.001Z

Holiday Eating Tips

"“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand and wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”"

tags: cosmos

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

Merry ‘effin catmas

2011-12-21T13:07:00.001Z

… from the disgruntled elf.

Links of the day 12/19/2011

2011-12-19T10:31:00.001Z

A-Z of medical conditions - DWP

"This medical guidance for Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance Decision Makers has been developed by the Departments Health and Benefits Division with help from experts involved in patient care. It contains background information on the more common medical conditions in DLA/AA claims, their treatment, the likely disabling effects together with the likely impact on ability to self care and get around. "

tags: cosmos uk benefits health

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

Links of the day 12/18/2011

2011-12-18T10:31:00.001Z

Raising the pension age will be a public health disaster

"Looking at the evidence, one begins to wonder whether Osborne has understood ‘the response to rising life expectancy’ as meaning that life expectancy must be reduced."

tags: cosmos uk health benefits
Nick Clegg mocks Conservatives over '1950s view' of British family

"Fallout over EU treaty escalates with deputy prime minister lambasting Tory view of 'suit-wearing dad' and 'aproned' mother"

Oh, looky, Nick Clegg's balls have finally dropped! Bit late, innit?

tags: cosmos uk politics
Bible similar to Tory policy if you skip stuff on helping the poor and sick, says Cameron

"Prime Minister David Cameron has revealed that he is committed to Christianity apart from all the bits about helping the poor and sick, and definitely excluding the part where Jesus throws the money-lenders out of the temple."

tags: cosmos uk politics
Benefit Questions, Disability Benefits, Benefit Questions Answered

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Life as we know it: Vitamin D for flu

" Vitamin D increases the immune system by 3-5 times and is better than any vaccine at helping the immune system beat the h5n1 (bird flu) virus."

tags: cosmos
Secrets of the 'sleep hormone': Discovery leads to novel melatonin drug with potential to treat insomnia

"A team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University has made a major breakthrough by unraveling the inner workings of melatonin, also known as the "sleep hormone." "

tags: cosmos
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome vs. Depression: One Doctor's View

"I really think the doctor summed it up perfectly. In the 4 years I've been hearing personal stories about ME/CFS, I've come across a lot of people who say they miss the things they used to do, that it hurts them to stay home when everyone else is off having fun, or perhaps that they've given up trying to participate because they pay so dearly afterward. However, I just don't hear people say that they don't want to do things anymore."

tags: depression me_cfs fibromyalgia cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/17/2011

2011-12-17T10:31:00.001Z

Chronic fatigue syndrome scientist finds a new home

"Lipkin came to Mikovits’ defence in her latest troubles. He says that she should be entitled to keep a copy of her laboratory records and lamented her arrest. “It’s very, very ugly and the sooner we put all this behind us the better off we’re all going to be,” he says."

tags: me_cfs cosmos
Cold Hands & Feet: Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Raynaud's?

"Since I've had fibromyalgia, my hands and feet have been prone to getting cold. I'm not just talking a little bit chilly - I mean intensely cold to the point of being painful, and really difficult to warm up. That's part of temperature sensitivity, which is a pretty common symptom of fibromyalgia and also of chronic fatigue syndrome."

tags: fibromyalgia me_cfs cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/15/2011

2011-12-15T10:32:00.001Z

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: We Won Something!!!

"In plain terms, it means people in social housing with a spare room cannot be forced to downsize and the government have to go away and come up with a better plan. This is particularly important for disabled people who may have had adaptions made to their homes to live independently or who need a second room for a carer. "

tags: cosmos uk disability benefits
10 Things NOT to Say to a Person with Migraines

For *Migraines* you can substitute pretty much any chronic illness. The key is understanding.

tags: cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: Press Release: Welfare Campaigners to Hold Xmas Party Outside Atos HQ

"Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters will be holding a Real Victorian Party and Picnic in Triton Square, home of disability assessment company Atos, this Friday 16th December from 2pm."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Music industry admits: ‘We’ve run out of songs’

"The music industry has today conceded that the reason all modern songs sound the same is because they ran out of new songs more than a decade ago."

tags: cosmos
Dr. Ian Gibson on BBC radio: Prof Simon Wessely has been blocking proper research into ME for years

tags: uk cosmos me_cfs
DWP announce new benefit rates for 2012-13

"This publication gives the full list of proposed social security benefits rates for 2012. The annual up-rating of benefits will take place for state pensions and most other benefits in the week beginning 9 April 2012."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Research Fund - Fighting Disability Cuts

With just a few weeks to go before the welfare reform bill becomes law, please help sick and disabled people to present vital research to MPs, Lords, the media and the public. Thank you.

tags: uk benefits disability cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/14/2011

2011-12-14T10:31:00.001Z

Eugenics – a new government policy?

"We – the chronically sick and disabled – are officially-sanctioned, government-sponsored, hate figures, and the parallels with the plight of the German Jews in the mid thirties are, as I’ve been saying for over a year, all too real, and with the rise in disability-related hate crime, getting closer all the time.

Is it any surprise, then, that the public, on the whole, don’t give a shit about disabled people, including children?"

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Now it's Real. First Cancer Patients, Now Government slash benefits for Disabled Children

"You might wonder what possible argument a government who promised to "protect the most vulnerable" could possibly make for this change. I myself was fascinated to see how on earth they had justified throwing disabled children to the wolves."

tags: uk benefits cosmos disability

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

Links of the day 12/13/2011

2011-12-13T10:31:00.001Z

Why do people defend unjust, inept, and corrupt systems?

"When we feel we can't escape a system, we adapt. That includes feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable."

tags: cosmos psychology
Chronic fatigue syndrome 'affects one in 100 pupils'

Are the numbers growing, or just more being diagnosed - clearly wrongly

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Cutting dole for those who fail to take up jobs ‘goes against human rights’

"... taking away jobseekers’ allowance from these people could plunge some families into destitution – something which would amount to ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Conflicting Approaches to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Mayo Clinic "Goes British"

"For example, based on research I've seen, I believe there's a group of people with a chronic viral infection (such as Epstein-Barr), people with a combination of viral and/or bacterial infections (such as HHV-6 and Lyme disease), people whose immune systems are damaged by a hit-and-run infection, and people who have something possibly akin to post-traumatic stress disorder that causes immune-system dysregulation. Each one of these groups, and possibly others, would require a different treatment."

tags: cosmos me_cfs

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

Links of the day 12/11/2011

2011-12-11T10:31:00.001Z

The Broken Of Britain: Time Limiting ESA - Template Letter to Lords

"For every peer who receives 5, 10, 50 template letters, at least they get to see the strength of feeling people have over an issue."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Why Sugar Makes You Tired (and What You Can Do About It)

"Those sugar highs you think you get are likely a figment of your imagination. In reality, they're more like sugar sedatives. Jonah Lehrer, writing for Wired, points out that orexin—a brain chemical that keeps you feeling awake—is inhibited when you consume sugar. Fortunately, there's a fix. "

tags: cosmos
Where's the Benefit?: Crimestoppers

"This week Crimestoppers launched a new campaign to "fight benefit fraud". They say this is in response to benefit fraud being deemed the third "most worried about" type of crime in a poll they ran this year."

tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

We haz a Christmas Tree

2011-12-11T09:53:00.001Z

It’s the first time the kids (the fur ones) have had a proper big Christmas tree, so I was wondering what they’d make of it. Would they turn into 10 year-old kittens and try to climb it and bat all the decorations off?

I was also prepared for the opposite alternative that they just totally ignore it, as Balu has, but what I didn’t bargain for was calm contemplation.

Kitty really seems to enjoy the tree and has spent most of her time sitting beneath it, apparently transfixed, from as soon as it went up. WIN!

Links of the day 12/10/2011

2011-12-10T10:31:00.001Z

The Broken Of Britain: Time Limiting ESA - We MUST stop it.

"Just to be clear, this means that if you have worked and paid national insurance contributions you will face an assessment. If that assessment finds that you are indeed unwell, but may be able to do some work at some point, you will only qualify for support for a year."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Muscle Fatigue & Brain Function in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"In a trio of studies out of Switzerland, researchers discovered changes in the brain that appear to be tied to muscle fatigue during exercise."

tags: cosmos me_cfs

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

Links of the day 12/09/2011

2011-12-09T10:31:00.001Z

Battersea Dogs Home to start taking in abandoned pensioners

"‘By giving them a large cage, food three times a day and a walk at lunchtime, we are providing a standard of living way above that provided in a care home.’"

tags: cosmos
A Rolling Festive Phone-in to Atos 'Healthcare'

"Beginning on Monday 12th December and running up until Christmas benefit claimants, disabled people and supporters will be ringing both local and national Atos Offices to complain about their obscene treatment of sick and disabled people."

tags: cosmos
Pain-Topics.org News/Research UPDATES: More About Vitamin D3, Rather Than D2, for Pain

"We have long advocated for the potential benefits of supplementation with vitamin D3, not D2, in persons with musculoskeletal pain. While some authors claim the formulation of vitamin D does not make that much difference, recent feedback from an UPDATES reader, plus a research summary by two experts, point toward D3 as the definite choice."

tags: cosmos pain
Disabled people on benefits shouldn't have to fear being active

"Many people are ignorant of disabilities, and many disabled people have fluctuating conditions that have a huge effect on how much they can do. Most people with chronic or painful conditions have to weigh up the costs of doing any activity. For some, managing at home is tiring, and just trying to cook or look after themselves can be exhausting on bad days. On rare good days, going out and doing things like going to the pub, playing outside with the kids or spending a day out with friends – even in a wheelchair or using crutches – can cause pain and fatigue the next day and beyond. Someone in good health can go outside on a whim, but for some severely disabled people many factors must be taken into account first, including the weather, the terrain, the amount of sleep they've had, the balance of their pain medication and the equipment and assistance from people they need to get around."

tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Flokati rugs have many uses

2011-12-08T21:23:00.001Z

Folded, they make excellent – if rather expensive - cat beds.

Links of the day 12/08/2011

2011-12-08T10:31:00.001Z

Arthritis Care : Work Capability Assessment Year 2 review recommendations: Arthritis Care response

"Arthritis Care welcomes the publication of Professor Harrington's report regarding the second year of his independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The report acknowledges that while progress has been made against the recommendations from last year's WCA review, there is still significant work to be done to produce "a fairer, more effective and more humane process", and emphasises the importance of the "need to move away from concepts of 'passing' or 'failing' a WCA, which are unhelpful and often cloud the evidence linking health and work.""

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Tedious people still getting cancer

"New research showed that over half of cancers are completely unrelated to lifestyle, proving that it doesn’t matter how tediously healthy your existence has become, you can still get cancer."

tags: cosmos
Radar | The disability rights people, our strength is you.

"Radar is the UK’s largest disability rights campaigning network, with a membership of 800 organisations and individual campaigners. We are a pan-disability organisation led by people with lived experience of disability or health conditions. We work in broad partnerships to have the widest impact."

tags: disability cosmos
New guide to help disabled find adequate transport

"written by and for disabled people and is full of real-life experiences of using trains, buses, coaches, undergrounds, light railways, ferries and more. It also tells people what to do when things go wrong."

tags: cosmos disability
Educating Your Doctor (& Others) About Fibromyalgia

"I recently came across a review of physiological abnormalities tied to fibromyalgia that's not only phenomenal, but is fully available online. That's a rarity. If you're trying to educate a health-care provider, I highly recommend sending them the link or giving them a printed copy."

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Daily Mail: Britain turns to conservative values as recession bites: We want the State to stay out of our lives and sympathy for benefit claimants has evaporated

"More than half of us - 54% - think unemployment benefits are too high up from 35% in 1983. Workshy parents are to blame for child poverty, say 63%""

tags: cosmos uk benefits dailywail

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

Links of the day 12/07/2011

2011-12-07T10:32:00.001Z

Cancer patients to face welfare tests during chemotherapy, charities warn

"More than 9,000 cancer patients were placed automatically on the welfare payment from October 2008 to June 2010. However, the expert report says this "automatic entitlement" has encouraged dependency on benefits, "encouraging wrong behaviours from employers and stigmatising cancer as something that can lead to unemployment or worklessness"."

WTF happened to compassion in this country?

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Greenest government ever? This lot is deepest brown

" When Osborne said in the Autumn Statement: “We are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers”, that’s the authentic voice of brown-nosed anti-environmentalism retoxifying the Tory party."

tags: cosmos environment politics
Fibromyalgia is associated with multiple changes in the brain giving the long-held “it is all in your head” view, a new meaning

"Together, the experimental evidence provides strong support for the idea that FM symptoms are related to dysfunctions in the central nervous system. "

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia

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

Links of the day 12/06/2011

2011-12-06T10:31:00.001Z

Modern-day nativity ruined as Mary and Joseph submit online tax return

"... instead of being visited by three wise men Mary and Joseph were doorstepped by three paparazzi who were guided to the newborn infant’s home not by a star, but by hacking into his parents’ voicemail. "

tags: cosmos
Sophia Mirza and Lynn Gilderdale who died of severe ME had dorsal root ganglionitis - infected nerve roots

"When her body was examined by the pathologist who specialised in M.E, he discovered “dorsal root ganglionitis” - infected nerve roots – and nodules of Nageotte, which are little tombs of dead cells, in her spinal cord. These would have caused her terrible pain and sensory nerve damage. They found similar cells in the body of Sophia Mirza, an ME sufferer who died in 2005 at the age of 32, and I believe in other sufferers. "

tags: me_cfs cosmos
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Care in the Community

"Mr Duncan-Smith your weasel words on Care in the Community belie your actions. Cutting almost every vital aid to independent living will only send us back to the 50s. You acknowledge the problem. Now address it. "

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Cameron to sell NHS on eBay

"This would be a great opportunity for anyone interested in business, health care or screwing up something big without having to become a politician."

tags: cosmos
DWP get sums wrong on ESA - By 1 Billion!!

"This implies that thousands of sick and disabled people have been wrongly denied ESA over the last three years and thousands placed in the Work Related Activities Group who should have been put in the Support Group and given unconditional support"

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Anticardiolipin antibodies in viral infections, may reflect a chronic stimulation of the immune system

"antiphospholipid antibodies, mainly anticardiolipin, are frequently associated with viral infections. Their presence may probably reflect an intense or chronic antigenic stimulation of the immune system. "

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Structural Brain Changes in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"A new study suggests that structural brain changes may be responsible for some symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Cameron is giving away YOUR medical records – object now…

"The release of such highly personal records must surely be a breach of the Data Protection Act, so please, register your objections with the Office of the Information Commissioner at this email address:-"

tags: cosmos uk

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

Links of the day 12/05/2011

2011-12-05T10:31:00.001Z

Benefit Scrounging Scum: Please Sign Pat's Petition

"Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families."

tags: cosmos uk benefits
Welfare reform will reduce poverty? Purleeease

"Perhaps no coincidence that just yesterday I read that they were thinking of re-defining poverty altogether. After all, if you haven't got a hope in hell of meeting a policy objective, the best thing to do is move the goalposts eh?"

tags: cosmos uk benefits
How one IBS sufferer beat ATOS and the UK benefits system

"Can you get sickness benefits in the UK if you suffer from IBS? The answer to that is yes…but not without a fight, it would seem. One of my lovely readers, Luci, has very kindly shared her experience of applying for employment support allowance (ESA), the sickness benefit that replaced incapacity benefit in 2008."

tags: ibs cosmos uk benefits
New IBS Book - Sophie's Story: My 20-Year Battle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

tags: ibs cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/04/2011

2011-12-04T10:31:00.001Z

Patients' NHS records could be shared with private firms

"Private health firms could be given access to anonymous NHS patient records and other NHS data, under plans to be unveiled by David Cameron."

tags: cosmos uk health politics
New green alliance in savage attack on George Osborne

"Coalition on path to becoming most environmentally destructive government to hold power in the UK, say campaigning groups"

tags: cosmos uk politics environment
Gov't plans allowance cuts for the disabled

"The Labor Ministry is planning serious cuts to allowances and benefits for disabled people, according to the head of the Confederation of Disabled People."

tags: cosmos Greece
Sleep Apnea: Adjusting to CPAP With Fibromyalgia

"Sleep disorders are common enough in fibromyalgia that I believe we should all have sleep studies as soon as we're diagnosed, and possibly even as part of the diagnostic process. Chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause fibro-like symptoms, so an early sleep study could save someone years of debilitating problems. (The same goes for chronic fatigue syndrome, which shares many symptoms of sleep disorders, especially narcolepsy.)"

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia me_cfs

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

Links of the day 12/03/2011

2011-12-03T10:31:00.001Z

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Feckless Parents - Oh IDS, you Tool!

"All the while politicians just see an amorphous mass of scallies, all the time they allow headlines to reinforce their prejudice, we will continue to see "scrounger" headlines, continue to see rising hate crime and division."

tags: cosmos uk benefits

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

Links of the day 12/02/2011

2011-12-02T10:31:00.001Z

TGF-β in blood cells is significantly elevated in patients with ME/CFS

"It has been shown that the abnormality in immune cells in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients is closely associated with the participation of TGF-β."

tags: cosmos me_cfs
Krugman: Coalition is "bleeding" Britain dry

"It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding."

tags: cosmos uk politics
To those Newly Diagnosed With ME/CFS: Four Things I Learned the Hard Way

"“If I had been told by my doctors that by pushing my limits, and burning the candle at both ends, would destroy my vascular and heart systems, I would have listened.”"

tags: cosmos me_cfs
With the British public being softened up so NATO can bomb Iran; Robert Fisk points out the Iranians have good reason to hate the UK State

"It's a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits. "

tags: cosmos

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

Links of the day 12/01/2011

2011-12-01T10:32:00.001Z

Herbal Beats Pain Medication in New Arthritis Study!

"A new study reported at this year's annual Arthritis World Congress showed that a natural remedy — a special mix of the anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving herbs curcumin and boswellia — was much more powerfully effective at relieving arthritis pain than the medication Celebrex. "

tags: cosmos arthritis
8 Things That Will Make Fibromyalgia Worse

"Do you do everything you can to ease your fibro symptoms, and wonder why you don’t feel better? If you’re being exposed to the following substances, you may be undoing all the good you’re doing with your diet, medications and alternative treatments."

tags: fibromyalgia cosmos

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

Links of the day 11/30/2011

2011-11-30T10:32:00.001Z

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

2011-11-30T09:17:00.001Z

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

2011-11-29T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-28T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-27T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-26T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-25T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-24T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-23T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-22T10:31:00.001Z

'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

2011-11-21T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-20T23:56:00.001Z

Links of the day 11/20/2011

2011-11-20T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-18T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-17T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-16T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-15T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-13T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-13T08:01:00.000Z

Source: Uploaded by user via Marcy on Pinterest

Links of the day 11/12/2011

2011-11-12T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-11T10:30:00.001Z

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

2011-11-10T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-09T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-08T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-07T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-06T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-05T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-04T18:38:00.001Z

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

2011-11-04T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-03T10:31:00.001Z

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

2011-11-01T10:31:00.001Z

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.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T06:38:00.000Z

Links of the day 10/30/2011

2011-10-30T10:31:00.001Z

Symptom fluctuations and daily physical activity in patients with CFS

"The more patients with CFS are sedentary and the better activity is dispersed, the fewer symptoms and variations they experience on the same and next day. Inversely, more symptoms and variability is experienced when patients were more active that day or the previous day. "

tags: cosmos me_cfs
New study adds nothing to the world whatsoever

"The work, undertaken by a six-man team at a university, used new techniques and innovatively low sample sizes in order to draw dubious conclusions from fundamentally flawed research and is expected to be of no benefit whatsoever to anybody other than desperate science journalists trying to fill empty column inches."

Ha ha, we see loads of these!

tags: cosmos
Scheduling Difficulties With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

"We can't count on our brains to hold onto that information until it's convenient to write it down. We can't even take a reminder card and count on remembering that we have it."

tags: fibromyalgia me_cfs cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/28/2011

2011-10-28T11:31:00.001+01:00

Don’t Fear The Greek Default: It’s A False Alarm

"There are real economic problems out there to do with the eurozone but Greek default just isn’t one of them."

tags: cosmos
Why it’s ludicrous that making it easier to fire people will create jobs

"In the context of the most severe economic crisis of living memory it is absurd to believe our employment problems will be solved by this proposal. It is irrelevant. "

tags: uk cosmos
Private rented sector statistics

"... it is worrying that the private rented sector, which is becoming so important for housing poor and vulnerable people in our society, is largely owned by part time amateur landlords who have little or no relevant experience or qualifications."

tags: uk cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/27/2011

2011-10-27T11:32:00.001+01:00

Top five reasons why you can’t protest (according to the right)

"Maybe it is time to stop attacking the protesters for silly side-issues, and start dealing with their concerns. Hundreds of people are camping in London to express legitimate grievances with the state of global capitalism today; maybe it is time we started listening to them."

tags: uk politics cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/26/2011

2011-10-26T11:31:00.001+01:00

Is your world awash with germs?

"Only one in 10 of us wash our hands after going to the toilet"

Ewww. Britain, still a nation of soap dodgers!

tags: uk cosmos
Arthritis Care : SCOPE report: PIP eligibility assessment 'flawed'

"Arthritis Care is particularly concerned by this danger, as the Government’s own figures show that people with musculoskeletal conditions are the least likely of any type of medical condition to pass the WCA"

tags: uk benefits arthritis fibromyalgia cosmos
Disability Sanctuary

"dedicated Online community for people with Physical, Mental, Cognitive, Developmental, Emotional & Sensory Disabilities. Find and ask questions, offer advice & information about health, work, benefits & disability insurance issues."

tags: cosmos disability
Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: The Invisibility Cloak

"In a year or two, stories like the one's I write for this blog will be news. But by then it will be because people see the effects of these changes all around them, every day. Because they see people dying, or see them going hungry or left in their own filth for days at a time unable to get the care they need."

tags: uk health politics benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/25/2011

2011-10-25T11:31:00.001+01:00

Morning Symptoms & Fibromyalgia

"How did you feel this morning? If you have fibromyalgia, odds are you had a hard time waking up, didn't feel refreshed, and were stiff and achy. You may also have had puffy hands, feet and eyes. Right?"

tags: cosmos fibromyalgia
Reduce the cost of disability – end pointless reassessments…

"bloody-mindedly reassessing people who are never going to recover, or are only ever going to get worse as time goes by, must cost millions"

tags: uk benefits cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/24/2011

2011-10-24T11:32:00.001+01:00

Immune system defect may cause ME

"Mr Fluge said: "I think the fact that patients responded to treatment, improved cognitive function, fatigue and pain makes us believe we're touching one of the central mechanisms."

tags: me_cfs cosmos
Money woes hit cancer patients, says charity

"Financial problems affect more than two-thirds of cancer patients, with some going without food because money is so tight, a charity has claimed."

tags: uk benefits cosmos
Wow, there are some sick puppies out there....

"Course the word to describe these bullies is actually "Nazi" as it was people acting in collusion with a disgusting, disablist agenda in the 30s that allowed sick and disabled people to be the first to be sent to the gas chambers. "

tags: cosmos
Norway's Directorate of Health Apologises for BAD Treatment of ME Patients

"A statement from the Norwegian Directorate of Health has been received where they apologise for not having provided the necessary and proper health services to persons with ME.
Such a public apology from a governmental health agency has never occurred before."

tags: me_cfs cosmos

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

Links of the day 10/23/2011

2011-10-23T11:31:00.001+01:00

Cold homes will kill up to 200 older people a day, warns Age UK

""And the fact that other, colder countries have lower excess winter deaths means that there is no reason that they are not preventable.""

tags: cosmos uk
10 Reasons You’ll Actually Be Happier In a Smaller Home

"Less time spent cleaning. And that should be reason enough…"

tags: cosmos

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