Evolution of benefit tv

In recent years there seems to have been a greater focus on programming that covers topics that involve illness, disability & social deprivation.

It’s not a new phenomenon, these types of programs have always popped up from time to time & it’s well known that what the media shows us of these times may not be the reality but often will instead show the attitudes of society.

I’m very divided on these shows, I love documentaries, I will watch documentaries that are controversial & opposite even to my beliefs. The reason why, is that I firmly believe that the instant we cut ourselves off from knowledge, from the possibility that we may be wrong, we will never learn anything new.

I know that some people didn’t like the way that these shows had been filmed, I know these ‘shows’ have ranged vastly from benefit bashing tv made solely for entertainment to valuable insights to what the disabled & disadvantaged are facing at that time but also the public’s perception.

Unfortunately through over reporting of certain issues, certain sections of the media have given the false impression that fraud is rife, that there needs to be a crackdown on the ‘wave’ of benefit cheats but ‘real’ disabled people will always be protected. Unfortunately there is also a further section of society that believe that benefits should only be given to the ‘housebound’ because if people can get out of the house then why don’t they get a job? People don’t understand how exhausting it is to function as a disabled person & that no two are alike. They look at the surface & no deeper.

I know that some didn’t like Channel 4 referring to Paralympic athletes as ‘Superhuman’. It has unintentionally, to a degree resulted in people becoming more misguided, believing that Paralympic athletes have got ‘passed’ their disabilities because they were just more determined to succeed. Whereas in reality these Paralympians rely heavily on support behind the scenes & benefits to get them where they are. And that it’s not because one simply tries harder but more that a disability can effect many individuals, in many ways & not even to mention the fact that disabled people may not want to do athletics but instead may be a talented writer or artist. I still however think they are awesome for what they do.

I really enjoyed The Last Leg, the hilarity & stupidity of things. I loved how the show tried to engage with people with the show’s “Is it ok ?” questions such as “Is it ok to punch their friend in a wheelchair if he’s a n00b ?”.

Then you have 999, What’s Your Emergency, that highlighted beautifully how much strain the ambulance service is under & how much more it will be in the future due to the significant NHS & welfare cuts which will mean that even more people will likely fall through the net.

But unfortunately any good work that is done on one show can be undone on the next.

BBC’s Saints & Scroungers always shows two cases of benefit fraud to the one ‘Saint’ helping those to get the benefits they need. Although it is great that these people help in times of crisis, there is no disclaimer to explain how low the rates of benefit fraud are & that the show’s ratio is in no way representative of actual statistics.

Then you have Channel 4’s programme “Benefit Britain 1949”.

Now I’m ‘sure’ that Channel 4 were trying to show that the welfare budget can’t be carelessly cut & that people have been & are being affected by cuts detrimentally. That although the original system was much more tailored towards the individual, a good thing, it was only supporting those they deemed ‘deserving’. Unfortunately when reading peoples’ reactions to these types of programmes on Twitter, this is a theme that keeps cropping up. Unfortunately I think this show whilst trying to show why we had moved on instead gave more titbits to those that believe all the inaccuracies.

Also it was a different system to today, a different time, society isn’t the same & so consequently, it was often out of context. I also found it odd that the show split the claimants into ‘sickness’ & ‘disabled’ categories as often these go hand in hand.

 Yes, it did not help matters that the sickness claimant came across as little miss gobby, very rude & aggressive, hardly the average claimant but this may have come across a lot worse due to editing. However I can not stress how much my heart sank when I saw how people with less visible illnesses were being portrayed through this women.

It’s a shame that they didn’t chose someone else that could have highlighted truly how debilitating a invisible condition can be, as this is something that it seems the general public fail to understand.

Then there was the programme ‘We Pay Your Benefits’ which saw tax payers following claimants to more or less ‘judge’ what they feel is acceptable for people to buy & do using their benefits. People now have obstinate objections to people having mobile phones, internet & family pets. These previously weren’t seen as a luxury with the exception of probably family pets but people seemed to understand that people mostly had family pets before becoming unemployed & understood they were a key part of the family & a massive comfort. Also mobile phones & internet were seen as a necessity & now people believe that they are a luxury. It seems so illogical in this day & age where mobile phones & internet are such an integral part in life that people can think this way. I found it sad that people seem to have lost sight that the system we have supports the people in our society who need it the most, that it is there for them in case the worse did happen & that fraud is low.

And finally we have Channel 4’s ‘Benefit Street’ which if you were to believe was typical representation of people claiming benefits, which by the looks of Twitter a lot did, the majority of claimants would be committing benefit fraud, shoplifting & growing cannabis in their spare room to pay the bedroom tax. There were death threats after the show on social media & the whole filming of the show lacked responsibility. However it did highlight how you can’t just simply beat people with a rod & expect them to change, people need opportunities & the right help, but also some people just won’t change, that’s human nature.

The second episode showed immigration in the UK. It highlighted the racism & the inaccurate beliefs like they can earn £2,500 a day. However it also showed how immigrates without permission to work are so easily exploited & how when they report this to the police, they fear major retaliation but many people on social networking sites again didn’t see this, instead fixated on inaccuracies.

The third episode followed a young family with children. It portrayed a young couple that seemed to struggle with parenting. Its not a surprise that the kids behaviour was challenging when given a sugar coated cereal at midnight, with one parent telling the other to f**k themselves & ‘Fungi’ & other drunken idiots outside the front door creating a bad influence.  But because of the way this documentary was filmed & because a proportion of society that seems to think if they witness one thing happening on TV, that this some how means that this is representative of everybody in the same situation. Just because a child has either a single parent or young parents does not mean that they’re not going to bring up their children correctly & the rest of parents out there have just as much chance of messing up the child’s up bringing or not as anyone else.

The episode did also show that the couple was trying to improve their child’s behaviour, although I doubt how much of the public remembered that as much & a later article stated that the couple have learning difficulties which isn’t mentioned in the show.

I understand why people are upset about about these “documentaries”, some are upset that documentaries on these topics happen at all, others are upset that a valuable opportunity to highlight a issue has been lost in favour of being exploitive & creating “entertainment” instead of a documentary. In these cases they usually lack the full facts, are shown out of context & people within the disabled community face the backlash as a consequence.

However if we don’t discuss these issues we will never move forward but the public needs to be more aware that it is impossible to produce a doumentary that isn’t bias in some way because the individual is bias & that viewers should show more common sense & take these shows with a pinch of salt. It is also up to film makers to always maintain a level of detachment in making a documentary & to make sure, as much as possible, that the topic is portrayed in a true & balanced light.

I think there were many failings in making Benefit Street, particularly the disclosure of the actual street name which made these people more of a target so much so that a number of the residents have been moved. Also that it was made by an outside third party company, that they obviously lost control over it but they had responsibility to air it or not.

With the airing of Benefit Street it has shown that certain sections of the media have become so toxic over the subject of welfare but this is only allowed to continue because people blindly believe in these misrepresentations.  If people on benefits & the disabled were instead an individual, in certain countries I have no doubt that they would be pulled up on slander or for liable way before now.

The fourth episode airs tonight to be followed by a final episode & TV debate which is supposed to let the participants have their say unfortunately we will have to wait to see if this is a intelligent discussion or if this becomes just more viewing fodder.

It has taken me a while to write this as I hadn’t intended on writing this much in the beginning but have been adding to it little by little as more and more shows have been produced. Originally it was supposed to be on the first ones I watched but as time goes on there seems to have been an increase in this type of programming & I thought it interesting to note the effect of all these shows combined . With this increase it seems like certain sections of the public have lost sight that the fraud rates are low & that this system is in place to assist in times of need, as it should be. They seem content on judging on face value & not realising they don’t have the full facts at hand, how would you like this if it was done to you?

Happy New Year

So welcome to 2014!

2013 was a odd year, lost my bunny that hadn’t been well for a while, we then got a beautiful mini lop that unfortunately passed away so young but the short time we had with him was so precious. Then we have our current mini lop Aslan who is so beautiful, even if he has issues (I think he thinks he’s a puppy). He’s such a content bunny.

Health wise it has been pretty poor, stomach bleeds which finally lead to me being diagnosed with bile reflux disease. I have got further tests to have on my stomach & throat & throughout the year doctors have suspected a range of pain disorders including Fibromyalgia to go along with the Arthritis, Hypermobility & such.

Also as with every year I have had to deal with something that I know I’m not alone with, that many people deal with the same but its also something that many people don’t understand is an additional complication in someone’s condition & how it makes a condition very unstable.

I have to take medication for my arthritis which means I’m immune suppressed, this means that I often get infections, so then I have to stop the medication, my arthritis flares up & the infection makes this worse, I get over the infection then I have to restart the cycle all over again.

Its frustrating as you never truly establish a plateau level with your condition but this for some is unrealistic & instead I’ve found my efforts are best placed trying to learn to live with a condition that is unpredictable.

This year this has occurred many times but the main occurrence was when I had to go over 6 months without meds, arthritis flared up pretty bad & later found out that I had a cyst in my face resulting in surgery.

2013 was definitely a year of what’s next in politics, knowing that some knee jerk reaction to put another poorly thought out ‘plan’ into action at the last minute would happen in response to something someone might have said or done & wondering how bad the fall out will be. The years of knowing nothing would happen until the budgets are long gone & it is sad knowing how much anxiety people are facing, knowing that the rug may be pulled from underneath them at any time. How do you relax? & concentrate on your health?

I also found such a massively determined set of people that won’t be silenced, that deal with a range of health problems & disabilities themselves but know how important it is that the facts reach the public and that people shouldn’t be scapegoated.

I have my own ideas & wishes for the year ahead & have learnt through the years that plans may get derailed or they may have to wait as my spoonie body takes over however frustrating that may be but things can get done with a little time & a lot of stubbornness.

Food banks, poverty & a parallel universe

So I watched most of the food bank debate. Not at the time as my bendy spoonie arthur body wasn’t playing ball.

It was a sad sight to watch as Labour passionately recalled stories of people, in desperate need in their constituencies. As Labour were trying to make their point the coalition benches laughed, brayed & tried to shout them down as they attempted to highlight the crisis that is unfolding in this country, one of the richest countries in the world where people are being propped up by food banks, charities as there government continues to fail them.

The coalition benches made the whole Charade feel like the Goverement was implying that poor people are just darn stupid, we’re beating them with this rod with all the welfare cuts & telling them to work so why arn’t they? Their problems would be resolved. If they are at food banks they deserve nothing more, it is of their own doing.

The coalition further blamed people for poor budgeting skills but didn’t understand that for many, when they reached the foodbanks they have fallen so hard & so quickly & for others they have already striped their outgoings down to the bone. If the end line is that you need £60 & you only get £40, how are you supposed to win? Just demonising people further isn’t the answer.

Most of the coalition MPs come from much more privileged backgrounds, that have never had to deal with these problems. These MPs live in a world where they get a food allowance, expenses & subsidised bars. They have never had to hardcore budget like the people that end up at food banks do. They’re in a parallel world were they constantly live with their fingers in their ears & take their party’s doggy statistics on face value.

The coalition put these policies in place & they’re just not logical. If you speak to most, they agree that the system needed reform but it needed to be fair, the coalition need to accept that there are people that are just not able to work & that working isn’t the only solution out of this kind of situation, that work doesn’t always pay which can be seen by the increased number of people in work, forced to rely on food banks as wages are low & commodities high.

The coalition throughout continued to state that the food banks began under the last government which is indeed true but the explosion in the number of food banks under this government demonstrates how much policy is not working & that the simple truth is, that if social policy was better there wouldn’t be anywhere near the demand that there is now.

If anyone agrees that its ok for people in this country to have to rely on food banks, for children to be so grateful that they were given chocolate because its one of the best things they have seen in a while & that for the red cross to be doing its first appeal since world war 2 for the people in the UK, then remember this; anyone can find themselves in this situation & if you’re saying to yourself not me? there have been many people before you that have said the same & yet found themselves in a position they would never have seen coming.

These MPs call each other honourable members, if this is honour, its not an honour I recongnise.

17# Weekend cute, humour & awesome

For everyone that feels this way this week.

My body has not wanted to do anything & hasn’t co-operated at all due to my arthritis flaring up & my hypermobility playing up. Don’t get my started on my stomach >.<

Hope everyone has a brilliant week to come

(I do not own the images but respect the awesome)

A Spoonie body, politics & a cute fluffy bunny.

So I haven’t been able to do much that I’ve wanted to do recently as my body has been taking its sweet time to decide whether or not to heal after my surgery & because I have been off my arthritis medication for so long my body is taking a real battering with a lot of inflammation in addition to what I normally have. Also with my arthritis flaring up the fatigue has been worse with it. Fatigue as always is so fricking inconvenient, with you not being asleep nor awake, losing hours at a time.

It’s not been made easier when I have had to go out, mostly to hospital appointments & such. It’s not like its a new thing, ever since just before the last general election this kind of occurrence happens quite often whilst we’re out. When I get on the bus people look at me & see a girl with a stick & more often than not will take more time to judge the legitimacy of my condition than see that I’m about to topple over because the driver hasn’t waited until I have found a seat & I’m struggling to find a seat, as someone is lounging across the disabled seat or the “i’d like a bit more legroom seat”

So often I see these judgmental faces of people that don’t know me. It is often that people won’t offer you a seat until they have seen you nearly topple over because the bus driver doesn’t see you or is impatient and even then it is often begrudgingly.

Often me & Mr TechieCarer will be sitting on one of the disabled seats just waiting for the glares, the comments & even altercations to occur. The glares always happen even though my stick is clearly visible. We have started to talk to loudly about my condition to each other which usually suffices to quiet them down & realise that their judgement is incorrect. We have now come to the point that we will stick up for ourselves, even though we shouldn’t have to because arthritis & all the other conditions I have are not my fault & I have nothing to be sorry about.

I know this isn’t just me & although I have had people be verbally abusive, apart from one guy threatening to sit on me, thankfully nothing physical has happened. I also am grateful that there are people that are kind & thoughtful & they restore my glimmer of faith in humanity every time. I know that other disabled people have delt with much worse, thankfully my local bus company have started a zero tolerance policy towards disability hate crime which is greatly needed to show that this isn’t tolerated.

Another topic I have seen people have a problem with is people on benefits that have a mobile phone &/or animals. I might go into more detail about this at a later time but some people are more obsessed about other people having mobile phones or pets than being happy in their own life.

They don’t understand that mobile phones keep disabled people in contact with the hospital, Doctors & Carers & let them stay in contact with the outside world when their condition doesn’t allow them to go outside. Similarly pets give people confidence, comfort & companionship. They can also greatly help a disabled person reduce their awareness of their pain, even if only for a brief moment.

http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/just-watch-this-please.html

This links in with an article where Sue Marsh highlights a film which shows how vital the Independent Living Fund is for people to provide basic things that able bodied people take for granted. It is also shown very clearly how much pets mean to disabled people & that no one should be this frightened of losing support.

I can also say after we sadly lost our bunny at such a young age, we did get another. Hes now about 7 months old & is doing really well apart from a very lucky scrape around a week ago.

We noticed his head was tilting to the side & one eye was rolling to the back of his head. I knew this wasn’t a good sign (head tilt) so we rushed him to the vet & the vet said it was either concision or Encephalitis (inflammation) caused by the parasite e.Cuniculi. They believe that over half of rabbits carry the parasite & are asymptomatic all their lives, with about 6% where the parasite becomes a problem causing inflammation. They think that its more likely to be e.Cuniculi because even if you held his head his eye still continued to move. He was given an anti infllammatory injection & panacur to control the e.Cuniculi.

Amazingly I can say that within 1hr & half his head tilt had resolved, as my vet said you wouldn’t know he had head tilt only hours before. He will still have his panacur for a while yet but with head tilt it is so vital that they get to the vet early. Although head tilt can be caused by a varying degree of underlying issues, for e.Cuniculi the quicker they get to the vet, the quicker they get anti inflammatory medication, the better the chance of reducing permanent damage.

So here is the little cutie




And finally the WoW Petition surpassed 100,000 signatures! I do not believe that the government will necessarily do anything positive that the petition asks for but the more we can highlight these issues & the more we can bring these issues to the attention of the general public, the better they will be informed of the injustices that are occurring.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154

Dr Who - An adventure through space & time *Spoliers*

So I’m a MASSIVE fan of Doctor who & on Thursday I watched “An adventure through space & time”. I can only refer to how the drama portrayed the people involved but I found it really interesting how the show was started & what a struggle it was for the first female producer & the first Indian director to make their way in the BBC at that time.

I understand that the drama came from a sentimental, idealist view point but Doctor Who has always retained a sentimental feeling throughout its long run. You only need to listen to the music to see it.
I found it incredibly touching how much William Hartnell grew to love the show even though he was known for his grumpiness & was described by some as being intolerant.

It was moving to see the first departure of a companion, the Doctor’s granddaughter’ leaving her in the serial “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, where she had fallen in love with a freedom fighter. Susan says she must stay with the Doctor to care for him but the Doctor wishing for her happiness leaves her. He says to her that one day he will come back and not to be upset at his departure.

It was particularly interesting that they chose to include the scene of Hartnell standing at the mantel piece in his home breaking down expressing greatly how he didn’t want to leave the show. I don’t know if this event occurred in reality but it must of been particularly upsetting regardless that he couldn’t carry on with the show due to him increasingly forgetting his lines. I also couldn’t help but think about the resemblance to the scene just before David Tennant’s regeneration where the Doctor expresses how he didn’t want to go.

The final scene of note was when they reenacted William Hartnell’s final scene as the Doctor in the serial “The Tenth Planet” before his ‘regeneration’ into Patrick Troughton, before it was known as such. You see David Bradley, portraying Hartnell looking beside the console to find Matt Smith smiling back at him. This was obviously added but represents how all the doctors are all connected to one another.

Yes I know its sentimental but this is one of the things I feel is so unique about Doctor Who & at the time William Hartnell wouldn’t have necessarily realised how unique the show was. The Doctor never ‘dies’ instead the next actor is regenerated into the role. It’s not a “replacement” in the conventional sense, the actor doesn’t have the role “taken away” from him (like in a remake), instead what ever the Doctor has done within the show remains the case, isn’t over written by the next Doctor & is still referred to in the show.

He will always be the Doctor of that time period & is simply passing the torch onto the next for them to add something special to the role, as the Doctor goes on ever evolving with a shared history between them all.

The Doctor is a select club in which they never lose their title, they are the Doctor of their time & aren’t restricted in the same linear line as us as the Doctor says “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey”

and I’m looking forward to the 50th anniversary show :)

A lack of understanding

So hi there!

So I haven’t posted in a while but with good reason as my health has taken a pretty big beating.

I’ve been off my arthritis meds for over the last 4 months as the medication I take means that I am immune suppressed & with my rheumatology team greatly concerned that I might have an infection, I haven’t been able to take it & they were right to be concerned.

I’d had a swelling in the back of my mouth. There was massive debate, a lot of to & fro, back & forth from the dentist to the doctor.Is it an abscess, sinusitis or trigeminal neuralgia?

My GP thought that It may be trigeminal neuralgia due to the intense brief but repeated pain I was having.

In the end? None of the above, instead a large cyst with a bucket load of infection thrown in for good measure. It also seems more likely now that it was the cyst pressing on the nerve than trigeminal neuralgia.

It took until I saw my hospitals maxillofacial team to find out what the problem was but even then I had seen a junior doctor & they didn’t fully understand how significant the problem was, even then initially thinking that I could have it taken out under local anesthetic & sedation.

Unfortunately though it seemed that the doctor underestimated how significant it was & with her trying to examine it, aggravated it further as when I woke up the next day the swelling had increased along with the pain.

So I rang up maxillofacial, & they advised us to go to the hospital which we did. When we arrived a triage nurse came over to me concerned how pale I was & what was wrong & sending us to wait in the waiting room. Eventually we saw a juniour doctor, tried to explain that I was immune suppressed, that I had arthritis, that I was in pain & It seemed that pus was draining from the lump (yep, sorry I know that ones a bit gross, I was there >.<)

Junior comes back from ‘consulting’ with his seniors saying I could go home. We re-emphasised that there is something really wrong, he goes back to his seniors, the answer is still no, you need to wait for us to do it routinely.

In absolute despair I tell the A & E sister whats wrong & she agrees that its not right & will do all she can. She asks the junior, he sticks with his decision but says a senior doctor is coming in & if that doesn’t work she said I could see one of the A & E doctors.

The sister was amazing running around & chasing up anything she could, she fought for me & for that I am truly grateful. She was like a bulldog that just wouldn’t let it go because she knew that I needed treating urgently.

So she gets the senior to see me before he has even taken his coat off & within about 5 minute he had admitted me for IV antibiotics with the hope of surgery in the next day or two.

So the next day the junior comes on the ward, you can go home, take your arthritis medication & if you want it doing quicker your dentist can do it (which isn’t the case)

By this point, I feel so ill that I cant fight but my partner takes over & stubbornly says we want to see the registrar.

So we wait, they take away my bed & then the registrar sees me. He examines it & then pokes it really hard resulting in me uncontrollably crying out in pain.

When the registrar finishes he tells me not to eat or drink because I might need surgery in the next few hours. He sits & explains, that the junior hadn’t told him that there was pus, didn’t tell him I had arthritis & didn’t tell him that I was immune suppressed which had he had known he wouldn’t have told the junior to send me home. The junior wasn’t seen on the ward after that.

In the end it was agreed that it was best that I went home with a strong dose of antibiotics because although the cyst could be removed in emergency surgery, the x-rays were limited in what they showed them. They also didn’t know if there was a hole between my mouth & my sinus & what amount of infection could pour into there, which wouldn’t have been good & they didn’t know if any restoration work would be needed that would have been difficult to perform on an emergency basis.

They agreed that having time to lessen the infection & having a full amount of staff would be the safest option.

So I told the nurses that I would need a bed & not a theatre trolley due to my arthritis as I was in enough pain due to being in a flare up along side the cyst.

However, this didn’t happen the ward sister tried to arrange a bed but the nurse that was ‘looking after’ me couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.

So very anxiously I went down to surgery, luckily the surgeons kept their word resulting in four surgeons doing my surgery. Three hours later, I was out & recovering on a very uncomfortable trolley with two teeth missing & two sets of many stitches.

The surgeon comes around tells me they got it all out but the cyst running out of space where it was had pressed upon the bone separating the mouth & sinuses destroying it as it was trying to push in leaving me with a hole into the sinus. For non immune suppressed people they can risk leaving the hole but for someone like me that is its simply too risky so they made a graft sealing the hole with tissue in the hope that bone will follow behind.

So whilst groggy from the surgery I had staggered over to my partner who was not allowed to sit with me, to get hair clips as I was conscious enough to know that I didn’t want the blood that was coming up going my hair. This staggered painful hobbling constituted ‘running off the ward’ so expressed one of the nurses. This was accompanied with one of the care assistants getting angry at me when I shied away from the ear thermometer, one of the other care assistants had tried twice to check my temperature with me shying away both times. The first care assistants tells the other, she comes in & shoves the thermometer in the ear stating angrily that ” You had surgery on your mouth, not your ears,” not realising that her shoving the ear thermometer in was creating unequal pressure in my ears & head as the graft they had placed over the hole hadn’t had enough time to create a complete seal.

So after some time we were about to go home when the nurse from before whilst discharging us thought it was perfectly ok to ask both me & my partner what we did & proceed to say we needed purpose & focus in our lives that only a job could give & that it was evidence enough that i was fine when i ‘ran off the ward’

I find it extremely sad that this nurse could both judge me quickly & be so ignorant to how disabling arthritis can be. It is after all the reason that I ultimately ended up in hospital. The medication I take means that I’m immune suppressed & much more susceptible to these type of things. This is what some people don’t understand the stopping & starting of medication & the infections & effects as result of it & that this isn’t even with trying to understanding my condition & that like many, I don’t just have one disability or illness but multiple.

The other factor I have learned living with a chronic condition is that doctors can get treatment wrong. It is expected that doctors know all & that the treatment they give is always in your best interests.

However more & more I have noticed that this isn’t always the case & I know more & more they don’t always know everything & that what they may prescribe may not be in my best interests & in this I know i’m not alone & there are many people with chronic conditions that experience the same. We’re also not allowed to question it, do & you risk becoming one of ‘those’ patients which may result in some nurses that won’t answer your call bell.

I’m now hoping that the wounds will heal but after I get the all clear I then have to start the process of seeing my rheumatology team to resume my arthritis medication along with other medical appointments.

If anyone reading this has ever had a go at a disabled person or is resentful its not as simple as you think. There are many complications that disabled people face from the side effects of there conditions, to the complications with treatment on top of dealing with the condition.

Anyway I hope that I can get back to normal posting :)