UK Internment Camps For The Disabled

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by aikiwolfie, Aug 20, 2013.

  1. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

  2. Princess Haru

    Princess Haru Valued Member

    This seems bizarre. It was only a year or so back that they shut down Remploy, which I thought was a factory type setup which employed some disabled people to build furniture. I only really know about the furniture bit as part of my job is in local government procurement
     
  3. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    The filthy scroungers would need benefit pay otherwise
     
  4. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Indeed. And just how sensible is it to take disabled people away from their day to day carers who know exactly what that disabled persons needs are and how to meet them and place them with complete strangers?
     
  5. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Surely this option isn't cheaper than day classes at a nearby outreach/community centre?

    People choosing not to work because they earn equal or more money on benefits is one thing (which I can see the logic behind but do not condone). But disabled people didn't choose to be the way they are, so why make them feel like they are being punished?

    As for Remploy being abolished, it seems like the current government is making a habit of closing existing schemes and simply reopening them under a different name. Trying to build points towards the next general election perhaps?
     
  6. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Well there's the thing. Why not have these camps for able bodied unemployed people. Imagine just how much nicer society would be without all the filth rolling around the streets and cluttering up job centres.

    We could have a camps for the professionally unemployed, the professionally high, the professionally drunk, the professionally pregnant, etc. And we definitely have to have a camp for anybody who can't send a text message using normal words.

    As a bonus, this will solve the housing crisis at the same time. It's a stroke of genius.
     
  7. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    "It looks at the possibility of Residential training provision for disabled people who are unemployed and looking for work."

    Is it really that terrible to provide additional help for disabled people who find it much much more difficult to find work?

    I think the way the government has treated disabled people in the last three years has been despicable in its malice and hilarious in its incompetence, but to compare this scheme (which hasn't even been announced as policy, yet) to concentration camps (as the article in the OP does) is absurd and offensive.
     
  8. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    Now that's entirely sensible.

    Mitch
     
  9. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Why can't that help be provided in the normal manner? The government closed Remploy because it wasn't profitable and argued disabled people would be better of working in mainstream jobs along with everybody else. Kids with learning difficulties are routinely pushed back into mainstream education. Parents have to fight for special help for their kids.

    But now we're suddenly sending disabled people to camps to learn how to find a job? Perhaps it has escaped your notice that ATOS has a habit of declaring disabled people fit for work who are clearly completely incapable of taking on any meaningful employment.

    Disabled people looking for work? That's pretty much all of them if ATOS is allowed to continue as it is now.
     
  10. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Ok, looking at the executive summary of the report, it looks like they are appraising existing residential schemes (Residential Training Colleges) and discussing whether they should be continued or modified in certain ways. They've found that these existing schemes have helped a significant number of disabled people and that they should be extended.

    Isn't that a good thing? They have a scheme that they believe has done some good, and they want to continue it? Isn't that the kind of special help you think should be available to kids?
    My family has had dealing with ATOS recently, so you'll find no argument from me on that point.
     
  11. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Why aren't we putting the professionally unemployed in camps?
     
  12. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    That's actually a recommendation of the report:

    "Increase numbers that use the residential element including reaching out to non-disabled people who are long term unemployed and would specifically benefit from the provision e.g. they would benefit from a holistic and intense approach."
     
  13. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Look a bit deeper.

    "With regard to Scotland, several years ago the Scottish Government undertook a feasibility study regarding the setting up of a Residential Training centre. However, they came to the conclusion that there was insufficient demand for such a centre, although Job Centre Plus offices in Scotland do refer a small number of trainees to RT providers in England."

    What happens when the Job Centre refer you to a training scheme and you turn it down? I know as an able bodied person looking for work years ago I was threatened with an end to my benefits.

    So what happens if you're disabled, "referred" and turn it down?
     
  14. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    Words...fail...me... :bang:

    My wife is heavily disabled. I myself have a mental health disability in remission, but not "gone". My mother-in-law and father-in-law are both disabled. My step-daughter and eldest boy both have their own disabilities.

    So for me, the whole concept of disabilities, benefits and the politics related to it is just...a very touchy subject that I'm going to have to tread carefully around.

    There's a government sales pitch right there.

    To answer the question you think you're asking, no, it isn't. But this is the coalition we're talking about. With a track records of the last few years for being monstrously bad towards the sick and disabled, publicity campaigns that have led to a significant increase in the rate of disability hate crimes and the stress of undue appeal processes by the hand of ATOS given direction by politicians with no clue as to the real world and an agenda to make the country as they see fit.

    Their idea of "simplifying the benefit system" is...well, you can google it if you don't already know.

    Do you honestly think it's going to be that simple? Taking people away from their natural environment and support networks, kept in a foreign place with pressure, targets, ideas and expectations put upon them? That somehow it's going to help some of the most unemployable people in the world get given jobs any more than night classes where they could get support they are comfortable with?

    These aren't people for whom the biggest obstacle is their lack of experience and a nicely padded CV. These are people who are stigmatised for being who they were born as. It's not the same.

    What happens when they're referred to a place the government considers "reasonable" but it turns out not to be and so they turn it down? Complete loss of benefits through little or no fault of their own? Who's going to run these places with the sudden increase in demand? ATOS?
     
  15. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    There's no evidence that anyone has ever been forced to attend one of these residential courses or threatened to have their benefits cut if they didn't. These RTCs seem to be completely voluntary and one of the report's recommendations is to restrict the referrals to those who show a commitment to finding work, so it would be against the panels recommendation (their first one) to bully people onto one of these residential programmes.
     
  16. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    You're jumping to a number of conclusions that aren't supported by the contents of the report, which was authored by a number of prominent disability and inclusion experts including the former Vice Principal of the RNIB college at Loughborough, the CEO of NATSPEC, 2 former directors of RADAR, the former chair of Disability Rights UK and a guy who works for Coca Cola.

    To argue this is another coalition attack on the disabled (of which there have been many) is to argue from a position of ignorance.
     
  17. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    What does a guy who works for coca-cola know of the lives of disabled people or party politics?

    You're also forgetting they're still in the sound-bite stages and haven't formulated a concrete plan. That at this stage they could promise the moon and it would make no difference, because the groundwork hasn't been set or worked out yet. And it would sure sound amazing. Hell, you only have to flick casually through google articles to see how wonderful the coalition has made all of their big changes, attacks on disabled people, spending cuts and everything else sound. And as per usual, it's all sound-bite politics. Sounds pretty, but doesn't work in reality. Because they people have no idea what normal people have to deal with, yet alone disabled people.

    Have they worked out the logistics of what they're suggesting? Money for accommodation? Additional staff? Quality of additional staff training for the companies put under pressure to find the numbers? People going in to help them find jobs? No. Given their track record, until the details have been released to this extent, the most reasonable assumption is to assume that this is going to be bad for disabled people.

    I'm arguing based on what they have already done with previous changes to the welfare system and schemes. Like the free employment one for people on JSA, who lose benefits if they refuse even if the job is absolutely ridiculous. Like the ATOS fiasco that has caused undue stress to thousands of disabled people already and there are more than a few reported cases of people committing suicide following poor ATOS decisions (and hilariously the sheer number of people who have died within a few weeks of getting a "fit to go to work" response). Including signing off a guy in a coma as being "fit for work" because he wasn't able to attend a meeting. Including asking my pregnant wife (at the time) to come in for a physical examination she legally should not have been asked to go to. And so forth.

    To assume it's ignorant to assume that this would probably be yet another poorly thought out scheme to win points with the electorate and make it look like they're doing something useful with our taxes given their track run is reasonable. Maybe paranoid at a push. But ignorant? No.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2013
  18. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    He's there as a HR expert who also helped to develop the Ernst and Young's Disability Working Group.
    No, RTCs are active and working at the moment, with almost 900 placements last year leading to 317 jobs. This is what I'm talking about when I say you're arguing from a point of ignorance. This information is all in the report, but it's so much more fun to just jump to conclusions.
    It has nothing to do with politics. There's not a single current or former politician on the panel who wrote this report. And I'm pretty sure the disabled members of the panel (at least 2 of them) know plenty about being disabled in the workplace. Again, your ignorance of everything to do with this report is on show right now.
    It's been worked out and the programme has been running with success. So I guess they sorted out the logistics.

    I'm not defending ATOS for two reasons.
    1) They're indefensible.
    2) They have absolutely NOTHING to do with this panel report or RTCs in general.
    I'm basing my assessment of your ignorance on the fact that you don't have a clue about this scheme or this report. That could be easily remedied, but heaven forbid you actually learn something about the scheme you are attacking when it is so much easier to just resort to boilerplate coalition attacks.
     
  19. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    I can't get the article to open on my phone. Does it say anything in there about whether this would be run privately? Only, anyone with experience dealing with ATOS will be aware of how badly that could turn out

    edit: Sorry Holy I skipped over your post
     
  20. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Could be worse, they could give the contract to CrAPITA
     

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