French company Atos which has a £108 million per year contract with the government, in shocking news has failed to remove grossly missleading claims from its website, depite being ordered to do so by the Advertising Standards Authority http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2012/4/Atos-IT-Services-UK-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_180372.aspx ..... Their very fussy about their image, and like bullies can display a willful arrogance... their dodgy figures boast that
" Each year Atos Healthcare process over 1.2 million referrals for medical advice completing over 800,000 face-to-face medical assessments within our nationwide network of over 140 medical examination centres.' " All our 1700 + healthcare professionals are fully trained to undertake disability assessments."
But Freedom of Infomation requests by the website WhyWaitForever.comhttp://www.whywaitforever.com/dwpatoslettersgasa.htmlreveal that referrals averaged 751,000 per year and the number of healthcare professionals was just 848 - far less than claimed by Atos....... those bunch of *****.
Atos has refused to cooperate with the ASA investigation, and despite being ordered to make changes to theseunsubstntiated claims, the material is still up their on their websitehttp://www.atoshealthcare.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=23&Itemid=294 ... They also have a history of trying to silence their critics and last year forced a thriving support forum for disabled people to shut down after users had the bravery to critisise the company.http://www.latentexistence.me.uk/atos-moves-to-shut-down-criticism/..... In the real world, round my place, the word Atos is enough to put the fear in all and sundry and if I was not a nervous wreck in the first place, well I sure am, after just one whiff of the afformentioned.
And this story does not end there, yesterday's TheGuardian website had the headline "Disability right protesters bring Trafalgar Square traffic to a standstill, it was all over facebook and the internet media as well but watching the BBC news last night... nothing there, they'd rather tell us a little bit more about the bloody jubilee, not a report on hown the hardest hit are beginning to find it difficult out there, and the reasons why, and Atos's involvement......
Disabled protester at London Demonstration.
source The Guardian
Atos they really do care though.....I read that somewhere, on their website I suppose.....but many people up and down the country are unhappy with the treatment they have recieved from ATOs, who have been shown time and time again to be making huge numbers of flawed decisions, part of the growing misery for profit culture that we are getting from David Cameron's we definitely are not in it altogether government...... so it's a shame the BBC has been silent, but hey, their licence is up for renewal, and they want to bury bad news .... friend went for appeal theother day.... the assessment was over in less than 30 minutes! He didn't say much.... just nodded...... he was so bloody frightened, in 2010/11 their were 127,000 ESA tribunals...... working out at 350 per day..... of these, 47,600 were successful, ie, the client won! That's 37%, or 130 per day.... that's the numberof times ATOS have got things wrong.http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/tribs-stats/annual-tribunals-statistics-2010-11.pdf It would be nice to see the BBC reporting details like this.... but their probably scheduling a programme on stereotypical benefit cheats or lovely police people with smiley cameras. Oh and its's goin to get far worse George Osbourn has also mentioned that a new Comprhensive Spending Review would be tasked with finding between £10-11bn more savings in Welfare spending so a lot more work for ATOS or whoever is the scrupulous!! profitering operator by then, anyone heard of Serco http://www.serco.com/, such quality, the wonderful principles they bring to the world ...... think I've worn myself out, and will have to go for lie down, but even though the government does not care and the BBC is playing it safe...... their are good folks out their, who offer a bit of hope.... this link is particularly useful .... ever tried ringing ATOS.... it will take you quite a while....http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/home ..... Oh and ATOS if you're watching no malicious intent, just some honesty.
Today marks the occasion of Palestine Prisoners Day. It will see the Palestinian prisoners movement launching the Karamah (Dignity strike). They hope to place the oppressive nature of the Israeli state under the spotlight once again. In a brave move, highlighting the strength of Palestinian resistance to occupation, 1600 will embark on an indefinite strike demanding their basic rights as political detainess.
The Israeli state was created in May 1948, by a violent occupation of the land of the Palestinian people. This has been combined by a systematic policy of expulsion, persecution against the Palestinian people. Also since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem as a result of the six-Day War, the West bank and the Gaza Strip, some 700,000 Palestinians have seen the daylight from behind the walls of Israel's prisons, which works out at about 20% of the total population of the Palestinian authority. Israel seems to deny the Palestinians their very existence, and their most basic rights: land, housing, education and health. In the Palestinian authority practically every person has a relative or acquaintance that has spent or is spending time in an Israeli prison. They are considered by the Palestinian people to be freedom fighters, whether they are members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other Palestinian organisation.
The "courts" of the occupation are part and parcel of this denial of Palestinian existence. All forms of dissent are criminalised and there are thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. Also confessions allegedly obtained by duress are accepted as evidence, and Palestines in the Occupied Territories are subjected to Israeli military law, while Israel's ilgal settlers are governed by Israel Civil Law, a clear example of an aparthid system. And many would consider the Occupied Territories themselves as one giant prison camp.
It is in this context that Palestinian political prisoners, including children, will atempt to break this silence, willing to die in order to highlight this daily reality of their lives. The majority of the 4,600 Palestinians have refused their meals today, while 1,200 of them promise to hunger strike indefinitely. Israel also still uses administrative detention, a legislation that dates back to British protectionl of the region. This procedure allows Israel to detain suspects indefinitely without charges being made against them, simply by repeating the implied 6 month periods of detention time after time.
Today is specially symbolic, because it is also the day that Israel release Khader Adnan, who himself spent 66 days on hunger strike.
They have many from the international community on their side, hopefully questioning the impunity of the Israeli state and their own governments involvement, sanding together and expressing their solidarity. Already their have been rallies worlwide to support them with detained activists from the 'Welcome to Palestine' flytilla joining them on hunger strike in solidarity. Hopefully the issue of the Palestinian prisoners will be revived, and they are not simply forgotten, and Israels violations against them will continue to be exposed, personally I support their struggle as part of a universal struggle for human rights, respect and dignity.
Art is an important part of life. Friday was the anniversary of the death of Carlo Carra, the Italian Futurist painter, who tried to imbue his panting with movement and life.
At their best his pictures literally glow on the canvas,, he stated off in life as an anarchist, though unfortunately by the end of his life he had drifted far away from this pulse and had swapped it for an ideology of coldness and reactionary political views, but his art I can't really disagree with, and it is this that lives on.
Sometimes you wake up, and theirs nothing one can do, but grin and bear it, let the mind drift, expand, relax, wait. This morning, I felt the flame of indecision, it must have been the grass, but among the tangle of tendrils and foliage, I asked why does our world have to be so splintered, behind us a riot of protection.
Changing the subject Samuel Taylor Coleridge like the other romantics, worshiped nature,and recognised poetry's capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge's poems express a respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observations, great attention to detail, and precise descriptions demonstrate Coleridge's respect and delight with the 'immortal' joy of nature. I will end my musings with a poem from him that deftly illustrates this.
A Sunset
Upon the mountain''s edge all light resting,
There a brief while the globe of splendour sits
And seems a creature of the earth, but soon
More changeful than the moon,
To wane fantastic his great orb submits,
A distant hill of fire, till sinking slowly
Even to a star at length he lessens wholly.
Abrupt, as Spirits vanish, he is sunk!
A soul-like breeze possesses all the wood.
The boughs, the sprays have stood
As motionless as stands the ancient trunk!
But every leaf through all the forest flutters
And deep the cavern of the fountain mutters.
American, Poet...... her work was much influenced by the poetry of Chrisina Rossetti. She spent a lot pf her short life in ill health, and despite several men falling in love with her, she died after an overdose of sleeping pills. The following poem is from her 1920 collection, 'Flame and Shadow' which inspired and featured in a famous short story of the same name by the Science Fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. Bradbury published his story in the 'Martian Chronicles' in 1951, with the title 'August 2026: There Will Be Soft Rains' written in an era, like today when many people were concerned about the devastaing effects of nuclear weapons, the story depicts a world in which human beings have been destroyed by nuclear force. A cationary tale that followed the recent bombings in Agust 1945, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Russian animated film, from 1987 based on Ray Bradbury's story -Budet Leskovy Dozhd Director - Nazim Tylyakhozayev
They're closing our libraries, taking apart our N.H.S, taxing our elderly, causing fuel panic, giving bungs to the police, snooping on our e.mails and phone calls, attack the poor and generally stealing the future from our kids, and they expect us to throw a party for some old parasite. They really are taking the Mickey !!!
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