Posts by BongoJoe

Re: a board game isn't just for Christmas

"Or even better - strip Twister."

And this is why I will never play the game with you in the pub.

Re: Our set

"Acquire" - goodness you're showing your age there.

I wonder if I've ever met you at some board game event or household way back when.

Re: A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn

It shirely has to be a 70s prog rock album...

Re: The reality

"he spare room subsidy (your use of the term Bedroom Tax shows your political leanings) can be alleviated by asking the council for a new home"

There are problems here. The first is that in a lot of areas there are no smaller houses available. Secondly, if a spare house does become available and you're on benefits just how are they, who have no transport of their own, going to afford to actually move house?

I wish your wife well for the up and coming interview.

However, please be prepared for her to be passed 'fit for work'. When we went some time ago I had to help my wife into the room as she wasn't able to walk unaided that day and she had her arm in a sling due to an operation that she just had.

The retired GP didn't examine her once, she didn't even look at the paperwork from her consultants that she offered him. In fact it would be correct to say that my wife, who was a nurse until her disease struck, was ignored by the ex-GP except when he wanted one word answers.

"Can you walk unaided?"

"Sometimes. But as you can see not today."

"Can you lift both arms above your head?"

"No"

"Can you lift one arm above your head?"

"Just, with great difficulty and a lot of pain"

Passed as fit to work. It seems that my wife is able to work holding a small empty cardboard box. Some days and for only a few minutes an hour. That is, without any trace of irony or exaggeration, what they are looking for. If your wife is able to sit or stand and move an empty box from a surface to her lap or to another surface then she's fit for work.

We got the score back saying how she's fit for work. We looked over the tick box list and we found that it was impossible for my wife to have entered that room and be certified as unfit for work. Well, there was one possibility and that my wife would have had to be double incontinent on the spot to fail the tests and that is assuming that the ex-GP would have reported it.

I am not lying about that previous statement. We've gone over her results and that was the only possible way for her to have got the required points. In short, these tests are designed to determine that everyone who enters that room passes fit.

I wrote a letter outlining the process and my wife's circumstances to the DWP complaining about the inhumanity of it all and how the results were flawed. Months later I received a very poorly photocopied reply from their 'Communications Team' no less saying that they refuse to accept any communications on this matter.

That was perhaps the largest insult of them all. I understand that there is now something starting up in the broadsheets about this whole business and I really hope that more people would learn what is going on.

My earlier post has received a number of downvotes. I have no idea why; whether that they are just trolling, employees of the DWP, have a political axe to grind or refuse to accept what is going on. Hopefully, soon everyone will learn that what happened to us could happen to anyone: before the disease my wife was a hard working senior nurse and was certainly not a dole-scrounger as portrayed by the press and the politcal parties. During the course of her career she looked after thousands of people, helped the dying, looked after the sick, had been attacked a number of times including being stabbed by a patient and when it came to her turn to ask for help no-one was there to help.

What happened to my wife could happen to anyone's. Four years ago she was healthy, fit and able to walk anywhere. Now she can't walk twenty yards and lives each day in pain.

Best of luck with the appointment. As I say, be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

Regards.

What about the Mark Wood case? That made national news.

Link 1 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mark-wood-death-government-admits-3298472

Link 2 http://samedifference1.com/2014/10/24/ian-mulholland-sanctioned-starved-jailed

Link 3 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/28/linda-wootton-dies-after-being-judged-fit-for-work_n_3346582.html

Link 4 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513284/Half-blind-woman-crippled-pain-killed-benefits-bosses-stopped-disability-payments--following-TWO-MINUTE-assessment.html

...plus countless of other suicides caused by benefits being withdrawn.

That I am able to show one link is one link too many.

Now how many more downvotes will this attract? It's a sad indictment that even one person downvotes these messages. I have no idea why unless its an unwillingness to accept what is actually happening to those deemed 'fit to work' by the Government's agents.

Yes, I have a personal interest in this because if something happens to me then my wife, for whom I care for 24 hours a day, who has a crippling and incurable disease and who spends most of each day in agony and is most unable to function is 'fit to work'. We both know that if something happens to me then she will be left to starve as she has no family other than myself.

I do wish that I were wrong and I would prefer that I was lying through my back teeth about all of this but, sadly, I am not. I feel ashamed at what this country has become and I am saddened to see that people see fit to downvote comments such as this.

Not AC because I am standing up for those like my wife who may be left to starve if things go wrong.

Re: Windows in kit form?

Are you describing an operating system or a Pay To Win MMO game?

Re: ISPs?

Why the ISPs? They're not hosting the stuff.

It's like asking newsagents to spot dodgy newspapers when it should be the publishers, if anyone at all. If I get something I don't like in the post it's not the postman's job or responsiblity it's the sender/host.

And with web pages I find that, as a rule, if I go to a web page then I usually wish to go there in the first place. So I am hardly likely to report it, am I?

If these web pages are freely available to be stumbled upon via the likes of Google (or even Bing! on a good day) then there is more than an even's chance that GCHQ has been there already. So there would be no need for a Jihad Button.

If the web page is on the dark net and I am wanting to go there then the Cameron Jihad Ahoy button won't be pressed at all.

None of what he says makes any sense whatsoever. Then again, he is a politician.

Re: Free and Open

"And no, I don't mean Russell "lets revolt, parklife" Brand"

Someone recebtly told me that he's a comedian. Honest.

Re: @ moiety

"And who decides what is extremist? That sounds like an idea that will go badly wrong."

We've got over 200 hundred countries using the internet in one way or another. Each will have their own view of extremist activity.

When one filters the internet through 200 sets of filters not even a picture of a cat will get through.

The day will come when there will be lots of different internets one for each of the two hundred filters. I dread to think what we would get if we left this to Cameron's chums; one of which is Ms Brookes.

Time to emigrate again...

Re: Downvotes

I would have thought that they still would have had one hand free?