Lots of us about - politicians take note

Drives my mam mad

Oh feetlebaum you've reached the 'dear' stage. As in 'Are you all right dear,' and 'Do you need me to cut that up for you dear.'

@AlisonMA

I was surprised to read recently that 'elderly' is used to describe people of 50 or over! At 75 I wonder what they call me? Decrepit?

I'm dreading it. I have to reapply for DLA in November and the whole sorry sage will start again.

Just wait for the change-over from DLA to Personal Independence Payment (aka PIP). Our area is one of the pilots and I am not looking forward to the queues at our CAB when this happens.

Yes, jeni that is what I thought vampire was talking about. I didn't say the DWP had been outsourced!

I agree that unions allow public sector workers to have their voice heard Alison, but I don't see people being protected from pain. My former team has been cut from thirty to eleven and people have taken cuts in pay and pensions. This is typical of the picture right across local authorities.
I am afraid I am a bit more cynical about the reasons for the government and the press attacking the public sector.

The DWP haven't been outsourced. Only the HEALTH CARE PROFFESSIONALS aka ATOS!

Mamie I suspect that the reason we have heard so much about the private sector and their 'battering' is because they have been so reluctant to accept changes to their pensions, redundancies and a pay freeze. A great many people in the private sector have been in the same situation for rather longer than 2 years, taking pay cuts, working short time and having their pension schemes changed to much worse conditions. It is therefore understandable that such people would feel strongly that the public sector should not be protected from the pain. I was made redundant in 2004 when my job was outsourced to Poland and prior to that my pension scheme reduced the benefits and increased the contributions. I know many in similar situations.

Vampire I thought this had been outsourced?

I'm not saying the DWP isn't do it's job properly but their goalposts have been moved. They can't look at someone's application complete with medical reports by experts and accept that person is ill as they have in the past because they've been told to reduce the number of people of sickness and disabilty benefit. So they make it more difficult to succeed in a claim. They try to put you off by turning you down and then, when you appeal, giving you the lowest level of support. A lot of people will have given up but if you appeal again you stand a good chance of getting what they should have given you in the first place. Sick and disabled people should not have to fight for something they are entitled to. I would not have been able to fight them alone but fortunately had support from my husband and a disability rights group.

The DWP are hitting their targets of reducing the number of people receiving sickness and disability benefits at the expense of those least able to fight back.

No Alison, I don't think people are saying that. Of course, there is lots of good in the private sector, plenty of hard-working, ethical companies around. The problem is that we have had two years of battering of the public sector from the government and the press. The private sector seemed to have been spared that, indeed has been held up as a model for the public sector. Now we have scandal after scandal in banking and the latest G4S debacle. I don't think you can blame people for pointing out that the private sector is not as wonderful as some newspapers would have us believe.

vampire are you saying the DWP are not doing their job properly? On another thread it seems that the public sector are good and the private bad! OK, I'm over simplifying but that is how it feels when I try to put a different point of view.

Yay go for it. Make his life a misery. Make him earn his keep.

My MP was very sympathetic to my problems but was totally unable to help...it was with the DWP who are a law unto themselves but I know from other people that he is one of the few who actually put themselves out to help. He's old school though. Came up through the ranks. Did a proper job before he went into the cushioned world of Westminster. Unfortunately there is talk that he will retire at the next election then we'll get one of the modern professional politicians who wouldn't recognise a real job if it came up and hit them in the face. I don't think you can go from school to university to researcher in Westminster to MP and have any real understanding of the lives of ordinary people.

Poor man! He won't know what's hit him!

Have now tracked down my MP on Twitter so will be able to harass him that way as well.

Alison The article was mainly about retired folk. Penelope Lively is in her late 70s and was speaking mainly about how she was enjoying life. An interesting and entertaining article.

Jess I've not contacted my MP as I've not been impressed with the last 3 MPs from my area regardless of whether they have been red/blue/yellow I just did/do not have a lot of time for them. Being a bit of a cynic, I don't think any letter from me would make the slightest difference.

As for 'expectations', what I meant was a general feeling (from friends/colleagues) that the coalition would be a vast improvement on the previous government .............. perhaps naive in hindsight!

Did not mean to upset anyone.

Politics, eh!

jess I have written to my MP on a number of occassions and I don't think she has actually read them because the replies all seem to be set paragraphs picked out by an assistant. Not one of them has been an actual reply to what I have said and in the last one I asked that she did not just tell me how the system worked as I already knew that. Guess what, yes, she wrote and told me how the system works! One she didn't even reply to.

Maybe one day I will go to her surgery but you can't just drop in, you have to make an appointment in advance. I would have to steel myself to broach her in person.

There is no evidence she has passed anything on to the appropriate minister even when I have asked her to.

She is however very good at getting her face in the local paper most weeks.

I am sure my MP is getting thoroughly fed up with my letters and emails! I wonder if he's on Twitter...

Thatcher may have started it but Tony Blair did his best to complete the task, but we haven't all given in yet.

Yes I know, but there have been a particular couple of examples where everyone is saying something is a complete disgrace....
Occasionally I think that our generation were all battered into feelings of powerlessness by Thatcher, never to recover.

JessM It is possible that Gransnetters do contact their MPs about the issues that exercise them on here but don't bother to post that they have done so. After all, the most interesting thing on these sorts of threads is reading the opinions of other Gransnetters.

@ mrshat - re coalition not living up to expectations. Love to know what those expectations were. Mine were that just maybe the Libdems would be a slightly tempering influence on the outer reaches of "we've never run anything but we are filled with reforming zeal madness" of the Dave and George show. Not to mention Gove. This expectation has not been met.
One thing that has frustrated my on GN is that when everyone has got very exercised about a particular topic there has been very little enthusiasm for exercising that other big demographic right: contacting your MP
In my experience MPs always contact the minister involved and always reply.
Ministers take notice.
If you want to influence a minister this is the best route.
And you can always go and see MPs in their "surgeries" if you are really cross.
The website www.writetothem.com makes it incredibly easy to email your MP.

I certainly think the French way of everybody being registered to vote automatically is better. Voting isn't compulsory, but at least you don't have the additional problem of getting people to register in the first place. I have a friend who works with communities, trying to get them to vote and he says quite often only 30% register and then only 30% of the 30% vote. Very sad, I think.