Where's the Benefit? Podcast
By Where's The Benefit Team
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Podcast Description
Where's the Benefit is a collaborative blog and podcast, campaigning against the UK government's distressing war on disability benefits.
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WtB Podcast - 3. #myDLA | Transcript: On Friday November the 11th several of the right wing newspapers were running dubious stories about DLA; varying from slightly massaging the facts to suit their agenda to out and out bollocks. In response writer Lucy Glennon asked people on Twitter to use the hashtag #myDLA to tell their stories about claiming DLA and how they spend it. Inspired by this I asked WtB readers to submit short audio files with their DLA stories. This is what people had to say: Person 1: I get DLA as I am bedbound with ME. My DLA review was refused on paperwork and then it was stopped completely when I had a medical because apparently, I don't look disabled. It was reinstated at the highest rates after my MP became involved. The whole thing took 18 months to get sorted out and it shouldn't take an MP's involvement to get the basic rate of support in this country. Daily Mail articles are just full of lies and hate and I just don't understand why? What did we do wrong? We've done nothing wrong, it's just so pointless. Person 2: I have an invisable illness. It took me two years, a medical assessment, two appeals and a tribunal to get my DLA. It was highly damaging to my health. Because my illness is also variable, I let my DLA lapse when my health improved for a while and now I've relapsed, I have to go through it all again. Person 3: My DLA is how I buy equipment. It pays for the electricity that keeps my ventilator powered. It pays for the electricity that keeps my feeding equipment powered. It pays for my electric wheelchair, without which I would be completely unable to mobilise and it pays for other smaller things like incontinence pads or special cutlery, plates - all the things you can't really get from the NHS. Really, without my Disability Living Allowance, I wouldn't be able to survive and I would die without my ventilator. Martyn: Hello, my name is Martyn Sibley. I'm 28 years old. I've been disabled since birth due to a genetic condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I just wanted to take a little moment to share with you #myDLA, the way I use Disability Living Allowance. Due to my disability, I qualify for both the higher rate of care and the higher rate of mobility component of the benefit. Obviously the overall point of the benefit is that it recognises the additional costs that result from being disabled, living in a society that exists at the moment. The care part of my component enables me to employ full time care assistants to enable me with getting out of bed, general personal care, domestic chores and also getting out of the house and socially being active in the community. The mobility part of my DLA is also enabling me to drive my adaptive car, without which I would find it very very difficult if not impossible to get anywhere beyond the distance in a wheelchair. And because I have that adaptive vehicle, I am able to drive myself out for work, which means I am contributing to the economy, and also I'm able to get out and about and spend the money I have earnt, back into the shops and cinemas and bars, again, putting back into our economy too. So I hope that illustrates the picture that DLA enables me to live a very full and independent life. And if you want to look at it from a very economical perspective as some of the right wing press seem to want to do today, I am actually far more valuable to our society and our economy when I am able to be out there, living a great life, working and spending my hard-earned money. Thank you very much. Person 4: Without my DLA, I wouldn't have personal assistants. I would be stuck inside all of the time. I wouldn't be able to eat. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. I wouldn't be able to move around my house, go to the toilet or enpty my catheter bag. Without my DLA I would be moved to a nursing home. I'm 25 years old and that would be the end of my life. Jack: Hello, my name is Jack and my DLA supplies us with a reliable car and helps us towards essential costs such as energy, | 13 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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WtB Podcast - 2. The Emotional Business of Form-filling | Transcript: Deborah: Hello and welcome to the second Where's the Benefit? Podcast. The Where's the Benefit Podcast is now available on iTunes and if you've found us there, you may be interested in our blog at wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com and our twitter feed @wheresbenefit – no “the” in that. I'm Deborah, the Goldfish and today I'm talking to my boyfriend Stephen about form-filling. This last week we've been working on his Disability Living Allowance Renewal form. Disability Living Allowance or DLA is a state benefit which is supposed to help pay for the additional cost of being disabled, such as help getting around, preparing food, keeping clean and so on. DLA is probably the most difficult benefit to get and yet the government are wanting to cut the case-load by 20% and replace the benefit with something called Personal Independence Payment. Stephen, I wanted to talk to you about form-filling because this is something that I don't think many people understand, the sheer emotional weight of this process. Stephen: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? Everyone has to fill in forms at some point in their life, whether it be a mortgage application or a marriage certificate, application for planning permission or whatever. Forms are a part of life, but when people talk about the stress of form-filling, I don't think they've known stress in form-filling until they have tackled the monster Disability Living Allowance form. In previous years, I have photocopied my previous answers to keep track of exactly what I've said because you get lost, especially coming from someone with an invisible chronic illness. I have ME and as anyone with ME will know – and anyone who knows anyone who has gone through the process of living with ME, it's a condition which is, or has been and is still by some people, questioned. It's questioned whether people are actually ill, whether they're making it up, whether it's psychological. And I mean obviously, dealing with the DLA form, it shouldn't really matter if the condition is physical or psychological because either way you have symptoms and those symptoms need looking after. But that's easier said than lived by. It does feel like you're being judged and your entire life is being analysed to see whether you are worthy, whether you are sufficiently pathetic, whether you're doing all that you can possibly do to be as well as you possibly can be. Whether you are simply being lazy. All of those things are turned over and after doing even a sixth of the form, you feel like the next page is going to ask how you intend to top yourself. D: I think because of the way these forms are worded, there's this sort of mentality that you're guilty of fraud or you're guilty of trying to swing the lead until you prove yourself innocent. And I also I think you're drawn towards presenting yourself as a kind of archetypal “good cripple”. You've got to have the right dose of suffering and the right dose of possitivity, because you're describing you're life... S: And suffering and possitivity in the correct kind of way. D: Yes, it's not at all “Social Model”, is it? It's very depressing. Do you think the questions that are asked are relevant to assessing your functional impairment? S: The questions themselves seem designed for no-one and everyone. Do you know what I mean? In trying to cater for every single person, the questions about walking for example, nowhere does it simply ask, how do you have problems walking? It asks, how do you have problems with the speed of your walking? How do you have problems with the way that you walk? Do you walk with a slight limp, a light limp I think it says, a heavy limp? Or do you drag a limb – presumably after it's been amputated and you're carrying it around with you afterwards. Do you need physical support? It also goes on to ask about how fast you can travel a certain distance. It says, can you walk 40 metres in less than two seconds – or something like that, I can't re | 2 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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WtB Podcast - 1. Protest Against Atos Origin | Lisa's note: WtB has a podcast! I'm so very excited. I have to say a huge, huge, huge thanks to Goldfish for all her hard work this week making this audio file into a podcast by doing all the research as to how one actually sets up a podcast. She typed up the transcript that's beneath the jump too. I also have to say thanks to the people that spoke to me on Monday. We'd have no audio file if it weren't for them. You can find our podcast in iTunes here. The feedburner feed is here. Lisa: Hi and welcome to the first episode of the Where’s the Benefit podcast. I’m Lisa, one of the founders of WtB. This week from the 9th to the 15th of May is a “week of action against Atos” organised by the campaign group Benefits Claimants Fight Back. Atos Origin are the private company contracted by the government to carry out the medical assessments to determine whether or not a person is eligible for benefits. This includes the controversial Work Capability Assessment to deem if a person is eligible for Employment and Support Allowance. On Monday afternoon I went down to the protest and picnic outside Atos’s headquarters in London and spoke to some of the protesters. I asked people who they were and why they’d come out to demonstrate and this is what they had to say. Marmie: I'm Marmie. I'm here with the DPAC. I'm also here as an African woman with impairments and I'm really here to say that what Atos is doing against disabled people is inhumane, is outrageous and is quite barbaric. For years, they've been making huge amounts of profits on the backs of our oppression. It needs to stop. We're here to get the message across to Atos that we will not stand for this. We are very united as disabled people. We must keep up the pressure. We must continue the struggle. And eventually we will win. Our message to the Con-Dem government is you cannot carry on oppressing us. We are here to stay. We're going to carry on campaigning and protesting. And we hope that the whole of the UK will wake up to Atos Origin, as just another greedy multi-national company which is on the backs of disabled people, destroying our lives and more or less killing people! Because people are living in fear. They're living in fear of oppression. They're living, having their benefits cut. They're living against all these assessments. It's all injustice, it's all inhumane and it needs to stop. Carol: My name is Carol, I'm the mother of a disabled child. And the reason I'm here is because I want to show my opposition to the government cuts. I'm outraged by Atos and the methods that they're using to basically get people off disabilities. I think this “check-box” system where they invite people in for an interview and, you know, they have that computerised system which they just basically, uh. It's a really inhumane way to treat people and I'm outraged to hear people are being thrown off benefits,. It's almost as if the State wants to slough off a whole section of people and leave them to fend for themselves. It seems to be that that's what the purpose is; just to get people off benefits, remove them from public sight and just leave people, you know, without any support. Yeah, so that's why I'm here and, um, I intend to come to as many of these as possible. I hope that I can come to as many of these as possible. I hope the movements grows and we can link all these struggles together. I feel that disabled people are kind of at the forefront of the struggle. Really I just think that, you know, the way in which the government has targeted them, as if there would be no opposition. I'm glad to see that people turned up here today and I think the vibe has been very good and strong. Yeah, I just wanted to mention David Cameron as well because before he walked into Number 10, he had said that he understood the situation of disabled people and that he would make sure that they were protected and their benefits would not be touched and so on. And then for him to, you know, as s | 2 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 3 Episodes |
