Doctors have not heard of pip

poppy123456

Thanks @Username_removed much appreciated! Thank you also @Government_needs_reform

Yadnad

Tardis said:

You certainly seem to mix with a lot of fraudsters Yadnad.  I guess that must have affected your outlook on life.

You could say that - all 44 years of them. Cases ranging from multi million £'s involving money laundering, drug dealers, so called professionals who decided that working was not for them as fraud was much more lucrative, a convicted murder who was also involved in a high value gold bullion robbery, a public school bursar that defrauded the school account and my favourite a twice convicted paedophile who just couldn't stop making and downloading child **** and then selling it to an internet site (the nearest I ever came to knocking him from one wall to the next in the interview room - and oh yes a well known TV & music personality - out of a girl band.
Most of those few cases hit the TV and the newspapers one way or another.

Yep it's no wonder that I find it difficult to accept anything anybody says as being the truth having spent most of my life dealing with those types.

Tardis

Yadnad said:

Tardis said:

You certainly seem to mix with a lot of fraudsters Yadnad.  I guess that must have affected your outlook on life.

You could say that - all 44 years of them. Cases ranging from multi million £'s involving money laundering, drug dealers, so called professionals who decided that working was not for them as fraud was much more lucrative, a convicted murder who was also involved in a high value gold bullion robbery, a public school bursar that defrauded the school account and my favourite a twice convicted paedophile who just couldn't stop making and downloading child **** and then selling it to an internet site (the nearest I ever came to knocking him from one wall to the next in the interview room - and oh yes a well known TV & music personality - out of a girl band.
Most of those few cases hit the TV and the newspapers one way or another.

Yep it's no wonder that I find it difficult to accept anything anybody says as being the truth having spent most of my life dealing with those types.

Weren't you medically retired after the armed robbery in the mid 90s?  That must have been quite an early internet crime case.  And please don't try and minimise it by using the term child ****.  It's images of child abuse.

Yadnad

Tardis said:

Weren't you medically retired after the armed robbery in the mid 90s?  That must have been quite an early internet crime case.  And please don't try and minimise it by using the term child ****.  It's images of child abuse.

No I wasn't 'medically retired in 1995, I went on unpaid sick leave In 2000 I went back to work only because of after 5 years of seeing the insides of mental institutions I had had enough and besides which I was bored stiff with inactivity. I worked during the day and eventually started to mix alcohol with the anti psychotics and anti depressants at night in order to shut off the mess in my head. I dropped off the radar of the CMHT so as to avoid any more contact with them.

Then in 2004 I went down with Acute Pancreatitis which developed into full blown Chronic Pancreatitis because of the amount of booze I was consuming.

After spending months in hospital I went back to work until 2008 when I turned 60 and retired permanently.
 
Then in 2011 I restarted my DLA claim (the old one was closed down in 2004 as I did not send back the renewal form). 

Now looking back I didn't do myself any favours in the way I acted. The demons came back with a vengeance hence why my GP treats part of the problem (depression) with the max dose of Sertraline. I need to get what is in my head out and accept that when I had the chance to do that previously I turned it down.

My changed personality (from the brain damage caused at the same time of the robbery) is my worst enemy - too late to treat it now - I discharged myself from hospital when I was flown there by HEMS in South London. 

Tardis

That doesn't sound like it was an ideal working environment to return to after those experiences.  You sound like you need a new project.  How about campaigning for a welfare advice service in your area?

Yadnad

Tardis said:

That doesn't sound like it was an ideal working environment to return to after those experiences.  You sound like you need a new project.  How about campaigning for a welfare advice service in your area?

Depends on how you view it. If you are a person that has never seen or experienced large scale trauma then yes I can understand what you say. But having been in the forces in the late 60's+ and having experienced what went on in NI then it was nothing that unusual - been shot at many times before. It's people that make it worse by panicking.

That really will put me up against over 50% of the local population and not do much for my popularity at the forthcoming elections next May.

The main question to solve is who is going to pay for such a service? The Council Taxpayer?

When my council axed their in house welfare rights advisory and support service a few years back, there was little support in wanting it to change it's mind and retain it. More concern was raised over the state of the local council gardens not being replenished during the seasons of the year due to the cuts in staff and cost of plants

Yadnad

Username_removed said:

Things have moved on considerably. UC, food banks, street homelessness. Most LAs are waking up to the fact that a web page with “information” or “signposting” won’t cut it and councillors are largely ignoring officers who claim otherwise. 

Councillors in the main and I include myself in that rank just accept that what is will be. At the end of the day money is in short supply - cuts have to be made that will have to be accepted by the majority.

Not good I know, but it is reality.

Being in a fairly wealthy area, my ward consists of, in the main, the retired, professional middle aged  and a small enclave of those in Social Housing.

Whilst I would love to be able to signpost those who needed welfare advice to an officer but I have to consider what the majority of the area would want their money spent on.

At the moment it is off street parking, travellers (the legal costs of removing them) and the redevelopment of the council offices and the community centre that takes pride of place for the available funds.

Yadnad

Certainly not - would you?
We are looking to extend the Public Space Protection Orders, They already cover the city centre and most of the wealthier suburbs now we are looking to include the areas around the two universities as well as anything within the ring road.

Obviously I have reservations about this as all that will happen is to move people on to other areas which will cause problems for those residents.

Yadnad

Username_removed said:

But those are all the things you get when people find themselves wrongly removed from benefits! Local economy loses money; gains crime; destitution; homelessness and so on. For every £1 spent on welfare rights between £4 and £7 is created for the local economy. You actually damage the local economy by not having such a service. It thus pays for itself

I cannot see many that would agree. There just isn't the stomach to put money into welfare rights in the belief that the council taxpayers would be directly funding people who are aiming to maximise their welfare entitlement. In that way the welfare budget would be a problem for the Chancellor being caused by taxpayers funding it.
Besides which many sectors of society see their own environment as more important than paying for such a service. If that environment is being plagued by rough sleepers, crime, drugs etc the majority would want that sorted as a matter of priority - enforcing a PSPO is what they would want - move them on to someone else's patch! As an example you only have to look at Blackpool. A once middle and working class town and popular holiday resort. Get behind the sea front and what do you see - deprivation on every corner. Why? because the council allowed it to happen - it is now a haven of bedsits and squalor. It is normal to see people queuing outside the ATM in the middle of the night waiting for their money to be paid in from the DWP. Then they do their 'shopping' at the many all night supermarkets or maybe scoring for drugs from the many dealers that are hanging around.

As I have said I am not in full agreement with these proposals, but it's the electorate that dictates the policies.