There's still everything to play for, Lord Freud. We'll have you eat your false promises on toast!

Disabled people everywhere still reeling at the result in the Lords tonight.

Result: Contents (supporting Lady Tanni Grey-Thompson's amendment calling for a pause to the change of DLA to PIP): 213
Not Contents (voting with the Government) 229

Baroness Grey-Thompson refused to back down in the face of Lord Freud's bullying and haranguing, and took it to a vote. While that vote was narrowly lost, not least because of the Lib Dems (only two of them had the backbone, compassion and wisdom to vote against the Tories' speeding train of crushing Welfare Reform), the voice of the disabled, now focused through the breathtaking sacrificial efforts of all involved in the "Spartacus Report" has started to be heard. Started to rock the belligerent boat that is the Government's plan for the sick. The blundering amoral machinations of Lord Freud can temporarily muffle those clear, brave voices. We've seen that tonight.

But we will never now lie down and be silenced.
Now we know the score.
We can gradually, spoonily, make Lord Freud eat every single one of those ingratiating  false promises he made in order to "win" and keep us quiet tonight. As if!
For we are Spartacus.
We have one another and we are one another's strength.
We have the moral high ground the Government has long given away in its scramble to scratch its own back and feather its own grubby nest.

We won't give in.
We go on with gratitude and thankfulness to those who deserve it.
From our sickbeds and our forgotten corners, we can move forward in hope and determination to be exactly who we need to be. With fluctuating conditions, mental health issues, deteriorating and terminal illness, every type of disability and health challenge.

No. We might not fit in your assessment tick-boxes. We might not be conveniently "fit for work".
But we are here. One way or another, we won't be going away just because it makes you uncomfortable in your ivory tower!

There is still everything to play for! We are Spartacus, and we aren't about to roll over and give in. Disability means living with challenges every day, and the Welfare Reform Bill is yet another one to build up our wobbly muscles on!

We've so much to build on, now. So many new friends and champions.
Onwards and upwards, spoonie Spartaci! xxx

Today's the day! So will the Lords do the only right thing?

So today's the day. The last chance for the Lords to vote for an amendment to call for a pause to the proposed changes to DLA (Disability Living Allowance). If not it will be seamlessly morphed into the unfit for purpose PIP (no, not the dodgy boob implants, the equally dodgy Personal Independence Payment!) that may well make unbearable and unlivable the lives of the most vulnerable disabled citizens in our country. They were promised they would never be betrayed. Through the tireless efforts of the disabled through the "Responsible Reform" Report, a new amendment has been tabled.

Again this is the eleventh hour. Again the disabled are fighting for their lives.

With M.E., plus Type 1 Diabetes with frequent severe and unannounced hypos, it has taken all my strength and last shred of dignity just to be transferred from IB to ESA. Even though incompetent and duplicitous ATOS have now plopped me unceremoniously into the incorrect WRAG (Work Related Activity Group), I'm pathetically relieved and thankful they deemed me of limited capability for work at all, given the current level of wrong decisions going to appeal. When I turn up crashed, brainfogged and crippled in my dogcollar at the Jobcentre again, we'll see exactly where their areas of expertise lie.

I have never applied for DLA (Disability Living Allowance) myself, just because, although I have long periods when I seem to fit its most stringent criteria, I find it hard enough to claim the ESA I need to survive, without having yet another ongoing claim where officials can look on me as if I have crawled out from under a stone. If I can manage, I will. The criteria for qualification for PIP were released yesterday here.

I am often like Katy in Case Study 1, but living alone. In that scenario I would qualify for PIP with "enhanced rate Daily Living component" and "enhanced rate Mobility component". At other periods my health may mean I more resemble Rachel in Case Study 2 who qualifies for nothing. Sorry my fluctuating serious lifelong illnesses are inconvenient enough not to fit the tick boxes. Sorry my body refuses to a)recover or b) die for your convenience! No wonder I daren't apply!

The whole PIP assessment thresholds leave you confused and despairing at the sheer lack of coherence and understanding of disability. There is so much emphasis on the upper body that you have to ask yourself if the DWP think all disabled people are mermaids, without legs or crotch.

Ironically, if I can go back to work, the fluctuating and lifelong conditions I have mean I might probably need to claim DLA for extra transport and mobility costs, etc. One day, any one of us might.

So here's the email I've just sent to about 90 Crossbench peers, following a flurry of tweets last night.

If the Government don't tamper with any more balls, sanity and victory may be almost within our grasp!

Email to Crossbench peers:

This morning, the following amendment has been tabled :

Clause 80 - Amendment 50E
BARONESS GREY-THOMPSON
BARONESS WILKINS
LORD LOW OF DALSTON
BARONESS CAMPBELL OF SURBITON

Page 58, line 26, at end insert—

“( ) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament an independent review of the plans for implementation of the assessments under section 79 before the provisions are brought into effect, and such plans must in particular provide for—

(a) a trial period before any assessment process is implemented fully for new applicants and those transferring from DLA;

(b) disabled persons organisations to be involved in formulating the assessment process.

On behalf of all genuinely sick and disabled people, their families and carers , may I ask you to make it an urgent priority today to vote for this vital amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill?

Following the wise, compassionate and reasoned “Responsible Reform” (also known as the Spartacus Report), the rest of society is starting to grasp the deeply flawed nature of the proposed reforms as they stand. Without a pause today, devastating and unjust changes will be rushed into law. The amendment calls for a pause to reconsider and amend before it is too late. 

We all understand how essential is giving disabled citizens a life that is not just barely tolerable, but which gives them a chance to thrive and enable them to use all their gifts and talents to enrich society, while having quality of life themselves with all their added costs and difficulties in accessing what others take for granted. The Welfare Reform Bill as it stands, without serious amendments, will cost the country so much more in the long run than has been mendaciously suggested by some.

I respectfully beg you to help by doing your part to understand the real issues and vote for what is right.

Thank you so much for your time and attention,

yours sincerely,

etc

Sent to: andrew@amawsonpartnerships.com,
alastair@aberdares.co.uk,
adebowalev@parliament.uk,
afsharh@parliament.uk,
michael.allenby@btinternet.com,
altond@parliament.uk,
amosv@parliament.uk,
armstrongr@parliament.uk,
best@parliament.uk,
p.bew@qub.ac.uk,
abhatia@casley.co.uk,
bilimoria@parliament.uk,
birtj@parliament.uk,
BOOTHROYD@parliament.uk,
brabazoni@parliament.uk,
bramallen@parliament.uk,
lady.briggs@googlemail.com,
butlerslosse@parliament.uk,
campbelljs@parliament.uk,
carswellr@parliament.uk,
deechr@parliament.uk,
dafydd.elis-thomas@wales.gov.uk,
errollm@parliament.uk,
finlayi@parliament.uk,
freybergv@parliament.uk,
fritchiei@parliament.uk,
greenfieldsuuk,
greengrosss@parliament.uk,
greenwaya@parliament.uk,
greythompsont@parliament.uk,
crlguthrie@gmail.com,
halla@parliament.uk,
harriesr@parliament.uk,
hastingsm@parliament.uk,
haymanh@parliament.uk,
hennessyp@parliament.uk,
hoffmannl@parliament.uk,
HoggS@parliament.uk,
HOPEJAD@parliament.uk,
howarthv@parliament.uk,
howee@parliament.uk,
hyltonr@parliament.uk,
ingep@parliament.uk,
janvrinr@parliament.uk,
jaymh@parliament.uk,
listowelf@parliament.uk,
LLOYDAJ@parliament.uk,
kakkara@parliament.uk,
lowc@parliament.uk,
LUCER@parliament.uk,
lord.mackay@scotcourts.gov.uk,
mancej@parliament.uk,
McFarlanej@parliament.uk,
marm@parliament.uk,
martinm@parliament.uk,
mawsona@parliament.uk,
meachermc@parliament.uk,
mckeem@parliament.uk,
murphyel@parliament.uk,
neubergerj@parliament.uk,
nichollsd@parliament.uk,
northbournec@parliament.uk,
oloann@parliament.uk,
oneillm@parliament.uk,
ouseleyh@parliament.uk,
oxburghe@parliament.uk,
palmerad@parliament.uk,
patel_naren@hotmail.com,
pattenc@parliament.uk,
prasharu@parliament.uk,
ramsbothamd@parliament.uk,
richardsonk@parliament.uk,
rookerj@parliament.uk,
roperj@parliament.uk,
ROSSLYN@parliament.uk,
SaltounF@parliament.uk,
sandwichj@parliament.uk,
skidelskyr@parliament.uk,
dalrymplej@parliament.uk,
SternVH@parliament.uk,
dennis@hdstevenson.co.uk,
stirrupg@parliament.uk,
sutherlands@parliament.uk,
tanlaws@parliament.uk,
taylorjdb@parliament.uk,
tombsf@parliament.uk,
walkermjd@parliament.uk,
walpolerh@parliament.uk,
warnockh@parliament.uk,
watsonm@parliament.uk 

Spartacus Report gives disabled people a voice at the eleventh hour

#SPARTACUSREPORT Press Release


#SPARTACUS REPORT into proposed Disability Reform


Twibbon to support #Spartacusreport


The voices of those seeking to tip the genuinely sick over the precipice and down into the pit of contempt where human compassion and reason cannot penetrate, reached a deafening pitch long ago. Voices of politicians, tabloids, journalists, the media, even some less perceptive or cannily duped members of the public, clamoured to misidentify the 0.5% of benefit cheats with the 99.5% who have done nothing wrong but fall prey to illnesses that come as part and parcel with inhabiting the human body. These unfounded, murderous opinions have taken over the airwaves like white noise. Too long the truth about disability reform, told from the inside by disabled people themselves, has been drowned out.

But we are still here. With our complicated, messy lives, inevitably filled with fluctuating agonies, or mental illness, invisible suffering, lifelong and degenerative diseases. Plus our added struggles to access transport, public facilities, our careers, our friends and families, housing, mobility. We are still here, and the Spartacus Report, a clear, reasonable, passionate voice for all disabled people, is now here too.

At long last, at the eleventh hour, days before the final votes drag the Welfare Reform Bill, blindfolded, gagged and weeping at its own unfitness for purpose, through Parliament, we have found our voice. The Spartacus Report, funded, tweeted, shared, compiled, publicised, emailed, sent, advocated entirely by disabled people with the few energy "spoons" and fragments of healthy moments they have. Launched yesterday by the concerted efforts of a huge section of disabled voters with access to social media. Now backed by charities, celebrities, councillors, medics, along with so many disabled people and their carers and supporters who know this desperately needed Spartacus Report speaks for them as nothing else has been allowed to do in the current climate.

If time and spoons are scarce, please at least read and share the shorter press release on the link above, if it speaks for you too. Wear the publicity twibbon on your profile, as I am proud to do. If you can, share the full report to all who will listen, to help them hear the truth. It is entirely possible that the person you reach with the report may never have heard the full truth before. The government certainly hopes so. They have pulled out every stop to make sure the facts uncovered here about widespread opposition to their WRB proposals never come to light.

Or if, like I might once have done, you cockily think you will never need such a voice, because you are well, working hard, thriving and with a level playing field before you, think again. Disability is no respecter of persons. Neither is the system being put in place, dismantled, tinkered with and made a monster of; if the WRB goes ahead, we will all be at the mercy of its vicious disregard for human need in the years to come.

Spartacus was a famous leader in Roman times who headed an uprising of oppressed people, fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning oligarchy. We disabled people of the 21st century in the UK have no desire for violence, hatred, war, vitriol or physical weapons. Personally, I believe our armoury lies in reasoned argument, shared hope and encouragement, patience, resilience, persistence, humour, a holding onto the truth and a call to the deepest wells of the human spirit, that no regime relying on greed or propaganda can ever wholly crush.

I support the spirited, truthful voice of the Spartacus Report.
If you do too, please don't hesitate to show the world you too are breaking the silence with a voice that can no longer be ignored.

Blessings to you and yours.