Blogging Fusion

Click the rainbow squid below to see my complete guide to making chutney and other pickles.

The moon is apparently going to be a super perigee moon tonight which happens about once a year, this means it's at it's closest to the earth so will appear really big.

Hopefully it won't be as cloudy later as it is now and I'll be able to get some photo's. Above is a picture of last years perigee moon on 5th May, when it was about 50 miles closer to the earth when it will be tonight.

Since this blog has become quite depressing of late with all my posts about welfare reform and it's impact on all of us, particularly the disabled, I've decided to start sharing some of the many humorous pictures I've hoarded up. This week I shall begin with the cats :).

We are hated in the media, by David Cameron too,
He loves the D.W.P. and what Atos puts us through
They do not see the constant daily illness fights,
Yet, I still stand up for what I beleive to be right.

They do not see the dark thoughts that really dwell
They think nothing's wrong with us, that we're really well,
They do not see the battle from morning through to night,
Well, we need to hit back at them, we need now to fight.

They do not see the battles raging in my head
Or the constant daily battle just to get out of my bed,
The hospital I've stayed in, wanting to die,
I see those media stories and I cry why, why, why.

For R.A. I have, yes, it's really true,
To all my fellow disability campaigners I am standing with you
For now is the time to fight, that we won't go away,
The time for this is now, the time is now today

We are uniting, we are fighting back,
We are standing together, campaigning, rallying, a fact
We are not going to lie down and we won't go away
We are fighting back, and we will have our say.

They do not want our disability stories to be told,
They want our groups to fizzle out and fold,
We are not going to lie down, we really won't you know,
They are going to hear from us, and will put on such a show

We are standing up and we will be heard,
They are thinking the media won't hear our stories,
That is really absurd
For we gathering, we won't be held down,
We will tell our stories of tears, fears and all of our frowns

They and their departments cover up truths with lies,
They and thier departments do not want to hear of benefit suicides
We are standing up and we are fighting back,
We will be a thorn in thier side, we will be their torture rack

They think they can hold us down
Sorry that's not so
They will hear our stories and voices
Our shouts of GO,GO,GO!

Let us raise our voices, let's raise them to a shout
Let them see us all together and they know what we're about
Let them hear our voices that we want them out
Do you hear us Mr Cameron? We want you out, out, out!

Do not get too comfortable behind that famous door
For we the disabled have had enough, we don't want you anymore
We are fighting back, we are calling time to the rot,
This is our referendum we will keep going to you stop

You should be afraid of everyone of us
We are standing up to you and making lots of fuss
The time has come to stand up to you and fight
For we will stand united, and we will be a sight.

Mr Cameron and crew there is something you need to get
You have blood on your hands they are wringing wet
So many stories of Atos mistakes
You should be scared of us, we're gunning for you mate.

There's something you've forgotten on your persecution trip
A huge loss of insight, a massive thoughtless slip
All of you in government and Atos doctors too
Are not immune from having disabilites it can happen to you,

When it does I willl look away
For then you will know our battles, our struggles every day
Our referendum is we will fight until you STOP
We want you and Atos out, you have had your lot

I will finish this and I have this to add,
Let's stand together, let's hit them hard right in their gonads!

Now is the time. Let us unite and fight. We fight until they stop.

Copyright Paula Peters.

Today I attended a successful peaceful protest Starting in Leicester square in London, then we marched round to Trafalgar Square, where we blocked traffic for quite sometime. I was representing Disabled People Against Cuts, but other organisations were there too. Including The Black Triangle Campaign , and Boycott Workfare.





That's me in the green coat holding the DPAC banner with Terry outside McDonalds where the protest started. The top photo was taken by Sinister pictures, the rest of their photo's of the day are here and you can see Paul Davey's photo's of the day here. You can find a comprehensive list of all the articles/photo's/videos we can find compiled by Ania here, still being updated so check back.

The protest went very well, the Police were wise to the chain this time and quickly cut it with bolt cutters, but we still refused to move and significantly disrupted the traffic in Trafalgar square for hours. Drawing much needed attention to our causes.

The Police were generally very nice and did all they could to enable our protest, though one or two made insensitive comments and did push us a bit. But generally they responded very well to our passive resistance and didn't try to carry any of us away as far as I am aware. No one was arrested, we were very peaceful.

Update: Just seen this footage, seems the Police did push people around quite a bit in fact. This was just after we arrived at Trafalgar square and part of the group were already there and chained across the road, but the Police quickly cut the chain with bolt cutters and tried to make us move out of the road, once the rest of us got there.
I didn't see this scuffle, as by this point I had snuck round to the other side of the road (they tried to stop me and the other lady carrying the banner with me from crossing the road when we had been asked to to give support to the other protesters over there, they failed you can see our banner over there, we made it) but did hear the chant of "Shame on you" going up. Quite rightly too, shame on them! And society for letting this happen to us in the first place.



And on a personal note I was very pleased with my own attendance of the protest, I traveled all the way to London by train, and used the underground all on my own without any panic attacks, despite my anxiety based depression and social anxiety disorder. With a little help from some valium I hasten to add, but it was worth resorting to such a dangerously addictive drug I hate using, to be able to take part in such a successful and peaceful demonstration, I will take part in more in the future.

After conversations I have had on twitter I feel prompted to write this post about the current situation of thousands of mentally ill people in the UK. Regular readers will know I have been very vocal about my own situation and how welfare reforms are effecting me, for anyone who hasn't read it please see my old post "My Spartacus Story, How Welfare Reform will effect me" (simply click the words to open it in a new window).

For a while now I have felt that the current main 3 mental health organisations/charities have been letting down the mentally ill community by not doing enough to campaign on our behalf about welfare reforms and promoting how the mentally ill are being effected by what is happening. After discussing this issue on twitter it seems I am not alone in this opinion either, many other people particularly feel let down by the charity MIND. It seems they (and all the others I have found) do a lot to campaign to end the stigma surrounding mental health problems, which is important work that needs to be done so fair enough.

What these charities are missing however is the fact it's not just stigma that is preventing people like myself from finding jobs, it is the fact unemployment is at it's highest for years. Employers are receiving hundreds, sometimes even thousands of applications for every job they advertise. So now there is a situation where employers can cherry pick from all these hundreds of applications, they can choose the best of the best even for jobs like shelf stacker's. So what chance does a person like myself who hasn't worked for 10 years have of getting a job, no matter how low I aim despite my many qualifications in this current economic climate? Almost zero is the answer. Yet the current government is going ahead with it's plans to move all of us onto 1 year of ESA then onto job seekers and start applying for jobs, along with thousands of other job seekers all fighting for the same few jobs. The impact this will have on our mental health will be devastating, it already is, I'm back on anti-depressants on an increasing dose and losing weight already. I talk to people on various social networking sites daily who are also being devastatingly effected by changes to the benefit system, many of whom have suicide plans. The current number of people with disabilities who have already committed suicide as a result of welfare reform stands at 150 as far as I am aware.

So what are the mental health charities meant to represent us doing about it?

MIND


MIND are the charity that is also government funded that is meant to be helping us, you know the confusing advert where a guy asks his mentally ill colleague how he's feeling and you see a weird of montage of possible ways he could react that doesn't really help end stigma as it doesn't make the point clearly enough? That was made by MIND, they spent a lot of money on that advert and it doesn't really do much to help does it?
The president of MIND is Stephen Fry, before I go on I want to make it clear, I love Stephen Fry and have a lot of respect for him as a person writer actor and presenter. He also maintains a media presence despite suffering from bipolar disorder, he always appears calm and is an inspiration to us all.
Having said that I feel that he has not done much to draw attention to the suffering of the mentally ill in the UK since welfare reform began. He did some things to promote the spartacus campaign, but tweets more about petitions to save tigers and Rhinos than he does to help the mentally ill, which increasing numbers of us are getting rather annoyed about since he is the president of MIND. He doesn't even live in the UK anymore he's lived in New Zealand for years, making us feel perhaps he has become a bit out of touch with what is actually going on in the UK and should perhaps step down as the president of MIND and allow someone who does live in the UK and could more adequately represent the mentally ill in this country to take over.
So what else does MIND do for us? They run a number of campaigns to end stigma, and have put up this page "Benefits And Welfare Reform" as you can see it sounds good, but if you analyze it's just a further campaign to end stigma for mentally ill people claiming benefits. They aren't actually lobbying to halt welfare reforms which is what we really need, they consulted with people over the work capability assessment and how unfair it is to the mentally ill, but nothing has actually changed, we are still all being moved over to ESA and many people trying to make a new claim because of mental illness are being refused ESA.
It also transpired recently that MIND employed workfare people in their charity shops, people were disgusted and a high ranking guy quit over the matter.

SANE

SANE is affiliated with Ruby Wax's site "The Black Dog Tribe" and have a very nice looking website you can join if you need support with mental health issues. That's nice for those of us who have an Internet connection, but what about the thousands of mentally ill people who don't have 24 hour access to the Internet? Would be my first criticism. The campaigns they front all appear to be about ending stigma which MIND is already doing, and there's nothing I can see about welfare reform and the impact this is having on us all. It's a such a huge issue at the moment it should be in capital letters on their front page, but I can't see anything. Again, they aren't lobbying for a halt to welfare reform as they should be. There's a campaign about cuts to mental health services which needs to be campaigned about, fair enough, but nothing about welfare reform. A list of their current campaigns is here http://www.sane.org.uk/what_we_do/campaign/campaigns/

Rethink

Again have a nice website you can join if you need support, nice for those of us with the Internet, I notice on the first page there's a big banner asking us to give them more money to "help them do more". And an examination of their site shows an old article about welfare reform from 2011 "welfare reform bill 2011" but little else on the matter.

I see nothing of any of these charities where I live on the Isle Of Wight, the suicide rate is higher than the rest of the south east of england so we really need them, but get nothing. If you have had a good experience with any of these charities please let me know in a comment as I'd love to hear about it. I think it is fair to say though, none of them are doing enough to help the mentally ill with the situation regarding benefit reform, they all have phone lines you can ring if you need help as you are losing it with anxiety, but that's it.

So What Are We Going To Do About It?

A number of us are starting to feel we need to form our own lobbying group as we clearly can't rely on any of these organisations to do it for us. There are a number of groups campaigning for disabled rights which I am involved in and will continue to support, but many of us feel we need one specifically for people with mental illness. We need our own voice too as well as being aligned with these other campaign groups, and are looking into what legal action we can take as I write this.

Update April 10th: I have now started a forum where we can discuss how to move on with our campaign, click here to join and discuss further what we can do to sort out the mess that welfare reform has left us all in if you are interested in helping. Or even if you just want to share your own experiences with mental health charities and services, the more information we have the more we can focus on what to do next.

I'm concerned by one of the comments left on this post already, if you commented here about your experience with MIND please create an account at the forum and tell us more, what you said is very worrying and needs addressing. I will update the forum with more information about what we are doing over next few days and hope to see you all there.