DWP and ESA - the final straw

This morning a conversation with the DWP and a look at my bank account knocked me back into depression and leaves me even MORE disgusted with the way that the ESA system treats claimants suffering from mental illnesses and breakdowns.

I was expecting the notification in the post that I hadn't got enough points on the medical assessment to be considered not fit to work.

I wasn't expecting a total ZERO score, based on the form I completed and the medical - it's just so nonsensical. Didn't they read what I said and listen? Even on the points where I KNOW I made it clear I had problems, there is still a zero score.

Next, I checked my bank account as my cash card was not giving me anything. I then found out that my benefit had already been stopped without any warning whatever. Good thing I still have some savings to fall back on, but will be a few days before I can organise to get it into my current account.

I called the DWP again. Apparently, they will re-start the benefit and backdate it but ONLY when I return the appeals form. Had they sent it out, as I asked yesterday? No. They say they have now. They have a two to three month queue for hearing benefit appeals, by which time I might just possibly be well enough to think about work again.

It is a very stinky and cruel system that withdraws benefits from vulnarable people, leaving them without any income whatever, and without warning. Had I gone through all this a few months ago, it might well have pushed me back towards the suicidal feelings I was experiencing at that time and could easily do so for someone else.

And then there's the council tax benefits section. Apparently the DWP managed to write to THEM before they wrote to me, so they were on the phone saying that I had to complete yet MORE forms.

At the moment I am drinking tea, later on it might be something stronger. I have a feeling it will be a sleepless night again, or I stay up and compose letters to Yvette Cooper, my MP David Willets, David Cameron and a few more blameworthy others.

Still off topic, but angrier

Q. How many Members of Parliament does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. MP's don't screw in lightbulbs, they only screw the taxpayer

See here

Resolving to be a statistic

I want to say here and now that in my entire working life, I have spent less than 6 months existing on any kind of state benefit. I don't count my student grant - not loans back in 1969/70. We are supposed to have free education in the UK, and hopefully we will again one day.

However, I am feeling very let down by the system into which I have paid my taxes and NI contributions since aged 21 and it's about time it gave me a little back. I wasn't at all in good health when my husband left, and I hadn't been for several years. He was happy to support me (so he said) for a long time, I was hoping to build a business online, and now I am beginning to get there, but have had a lot of false starts. However, it is barely feeding me, not enough to pay the mortgage or my utility bills and my savings have dwindled to below what I am told is the means-tested benefit threshold.

So, as of tomorrow, I am setting my sights on incapacity benefit, council tax relief, housing benefit, and anything else I can get my hands on to help me keep my home and pay my bills, until such time as my depression lifts enough to look for properly paid work again - if I can get a job without running up against the age discrimination I experienced the last time I was looking seriously.

I can see how and why people get into the benefits system and never escape again. As long as you don't actually have money in any kind of savings, you can get away with not working because the Job Centre system is, frankly a joke. Employers don't have to advertise every post with them, not even public bodies like local authorities. I told the Job Centre that IMO I had been discriminated against by our local council on one of the vacancies I applied for. I got no help, no advice, and they didn't call the council and investigate, even though the vacancy was one that had been on the Job Centre system.

Secondly, the training that the Job Centre can provide is very limited and if you go to them and say you want a couple of hundred pounds to buy online training that would give you a better chance of finding a job, they have no mechanism for doing this. I actually had to pull out of applying for a very good scheme that would have given me temporary employment at the end of it as well as some top class training because I found out that the Job Centre would not fund my travel. If I'd gone through with it, I would not in all probability now be a prospective drain on the state system.

They say glibly that you should be applying for 20 jobs a week - HUH? - in this economic climate ? I'm going to be 58 in a few months. In terms of the amount of administration that it is going to cost to get those benefits and do what I have to, in order to stay on benefits, the State would be better off giving me my retirement pension early and have done with it.

I hate begging, and I am going to feel a distinct sense of shame and failure about becoming part of the benefits system. However I am going to grit my teeth and say to the world, there were a lot of years that I contributed, I've never had a family to need educating and healthcare, never lived in publicly provided housing etc, but now I AM in need, I hope that I'll get some help. We don't have a 'work-fare' system in the UK as such, although there are mutterings it is on the way. If there was, I would be more than happy to do a job that was of benefit to the community in return for any hand-outs.

If you have any sympathy for me and my present predicament, I'm putting a Paypal donation button on this blog. I can promise you that it won't be puffed into the air in cig. smoke or swilled down my throat in cheap supermarket booze. I would very much rather you joined one of my online businesses (see the list of my other blogs), or even paid a paltry dollar or two to advertise your blog on mine, but will understand if you prefer to make a straight donation.

And if you want to offer me a job - I've got years of IT experience and a willingness to try any office-based admin job in my locality that anyone might suggest. If there is a way I can make my CV downloadable here, I'll do it, or you can ask for it.

Anger over possible mistakes in my medication

I learned today that the medication that I have been receiving for many years for hypothyroidism may not necessarily be appropriate or ideal.

A very good friend sent me a link to this site which reveals a deep controversy about the correct treatment which has resulted in the UK medical profession and our National Health Service virtually to use one treatment (thyroxine) to the exclusion of all others. Further research led me to TPA-UK which is also very helpful for UK hypothyroid sufferers.

From these sites, I discovered that the information being given to patients about their condition, the symptoms, possible helpful supplements and dietary advice is very variable. In my case this resulted in not being told anything about an inadequate dose causing severe depression, mood swings and anxiety on top of all the unpleasant physical symptoms like weight gain, chronic tiredness, loss of libido, poor concentration and memory loss.

When I was a child, I was treated with a natural thyroid extract. At some time the synthetic alternative (thyroxine) was developed, but it only provides one part of the two-part (T4 and T3) natural hormone. This is what I have been treated with for many years, I really can't recall when I switched, but it could have been as long ago as my 20's and I am 57 now.

The information I now have, answers many questions about what has been happening to my body and my mind over the last 9 years. It doesn't give much hope for the future though, as currently, the NHS doesn't seem to want to listen to the evidence produced by endocrinologists in other parts of the world. They are even trying to prosecute one doctor who has been treating patients with alternative medications, which more closely replicate the hormone the human body is supposed to produce.

The controversy is around whether the natural product and/or a combination of T3 and T4 synthetics is a better treatment than thyroxine alone and on the arguable risks of prescribing synthetic T3 at all. There are different blood tests for hypothyroidism and it also appears that the one most commonly used by the NHS in the UK may not accurately reveal the T3 level at all. Having looked at blood test sheets I have been given to take to the clinic, I know this is the test my current GP has been using.

I have unsuccessfully challenged my treatment before, but I am going to do so again and will be interacting with other sufferers on an online forum to find out if there is any hope of even trying something else to see if it improves my life.

For the time being, I will be going to buy some of the natural supplements I have found out about - milk thistle, valerian and St John's Wort.

The physical symptoms and depression played a big part in the breakdown of my marriage and have kept me out of the workplace for many years - could anyone blame me for feeling angry now?

Warning to USA voters - of whatever 'colour'

While I am very happy to see that a man of colour is very likely to be the next US President, I also fear for citizens the USA who may be in danger of losing other hard-won freedoms - regardless of who is in the White House for the next few years.

The US constitution supports the right to hold any religious faith or none and all that entails. However, the agenda of some ultra-Christian voters on BOTH sides seems to me to be directly AGAINST the idea of the right to choose - to love and marry whom you want and to choose to end a pregnancy.

I am referring to the abortion debate and also the tendency towards homophobia. I recently commented on another blog where the owner slams same-sex relationships and marriages. The blog owner didn't like what I said, but it had to BE said.

I'm not gay, but I have no problem whatever with anyone who is, and if what they want is to legally and openly commit to someone else of the same gender in a long-lasting relationship I celebrate their loyalty to their partner and what is more, I support their right to adopt children or to use IVF and donors to have a child that is at least partly biologically theirs.

Abortion has always been a difficult question for me. On the one hand, I feel incredibly sad that any life however humble should be ended - killing even an ant upsets me. Every kind of living thing has its place. But there are times, to prevent the birth of a seriously disabled child, where it would harm the mother's physical or mental welfare, or following rape or incest, where, surely it is better for abortion to be available in the safest and quickest circumstances.

In the UK at least, the law still requires the agreement of two doctors to an abortion, although the common availability of the morning-after pill has undoubtedly helped many women avoid a confrontation with their doctor or their family.

It isn't a perfect system and I truly believe that making it on-demand would be better, once a woman has made that choice, any delay, even days. is worse for her mentally and physically and worse for the foetus.

I would hate to think that this legal right to choose could be lost to American women and that in the 21st century there could be a regrowth of illegal abortionists with all the risks involved.

What is worse is that some of the same people who are against abortion are illogically also against teaching young people about contraception. An educated choice to be celibate is one thing, Do your best to pass on your personal morality if you wish, but don't take away their right to know how their bodies work and how to prevent unwanted pregnancies because not all of them will listen and follow what their parents believe.

Which brings me to this. Morality is not a mathematical axiom. What one person considers perfectly OK, may be horrendously immoral to someone else. Take for instance how Saudi Arabian tradition and law demands what a woman should wear in public, certainly not tight jeans, short skirts and midriff baring t-shirts, commonly seen on the street elsewhere in the world.

I don't impose my personal morality on anyone else. And if I lived in the USA, I would not appreciate my President - or Vice President - potentially imposing theirs on me.