NHS: will astronomical energy price rises create health problems – physical and mental – that could overwhelm the health service in the coming winter?
NHS leaders have warned that the rising cost of energy bills may trigger a humanitarian crisis that their organisation will be left to handle, if the government doesn’t do more to help.
The vertiginous rise in the price of energy may leave millions of people forced to choose between heating their homes and having enough food to eat – and this is likely to have consequences for their health, the NHS Confederation said.
Cold homes are already linked to 10,000 deaths per year; cold conditions can lead to a rise in respiratory conditions, and in older people can also increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and falls.
This winter, those problems would increase the strain on the NHS, whose bosses are already expecting to have to cope with flu, norovirus and Covid outbreaks.
And there would also be a major impact on mental health and well-being.
The government has protested that it is taking action over energy prices and that it is supporting the NHS.
But the payments of £400 to households in England, Scotland and Wales, rising to £1,200 for the poorest, were announced before it was predicted that energy costs may rise to around £4,200 per year.
The government also said it was working with the NHS to make sure it can accommodate winter pressures, including increasing the number of hospital beds available and recruiting staff from foreign countries.
No further action is to be taken until the new prime minister – either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss – is sworn in next month.
Considering the warning from the NHS Confederation, is the current offer too little? And will any extra help arrive too late?
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Boris the bung: Johnson has been splurging cash on the very rich for the last three years. Now, when the rest of us are suffering in a cost-of-living crisis he created, he has little for us other than excuses.
Remember when only benefit claimants had to choose between “eating and heating” – buying food for their families or energy for their homes?
Those were happy days for the small-minded Little Britons who merrily voted Tory government after Tory government into power to continue ruining the economy and siphoning cash away from people who need it.
Now, more than 60 per cent of the UK’s population are in the same position as those benefit claimants – and suddenly it isn’t quite as amusing to fling the old “scrounger” accusations around any more, is it?
Many of the same people who supported government benefit cuts that drove claimants to suicide or simply starved them to death are now begging the same government to support them through the current cost-of-living crisis.
And some – not necessarily the same ones – are having suicidal thoughts themselves.
This Writer has a certain amount of sympathy for those who didn’t vote Tory and never supported the victimisation of the vulnerable.
Those who did are finding it isn’t so comfortable when the shoe’s on the other foot, I suppose. I wonder whether they will learn from the experience, to be a little less judgmental about other people, now they have suffered just a little of what the sick and disabled (for example) have endured for more than a decade?
Well, the experience won’t do them any good if they give in to their more grim thoughts, so it is right that everybody who is suffering mental ill-health as a result of the government’s failure in its most basic function – providing affordable food and energy to the population – should get treatment for it.
Sadly (again) we have a government that is not up to the task.
The Tories are using the crisis to provide another subsidy for the rich, with people who own multiple houses set to receive £400 for each of them, no matter whether they are occupied all the time or not.
Landlords will be under no obligation to pass the cash on to tenants who actually pay the bills.
And mental health services have long been neglected by successive Conservative governments.
Now they are scrabbling to catch up, providing £2.3 billion extra per year to treat two million more people – that’s just £1,150 each for around 1/20 of those who need help, according to the Sky News poll.
And they have called for evidence from the public about what should be in a 10-year plan for mental health, that will not make any difference to people who are in need now.
Thomas Jefferson (or was it Benjamin Franklin?) once famously said, “We get the government we deserve.”
I just hope people who are going through hardship now realise that their choice of Tory rule has inflicted the same – and worse – on others for many years.
Suella Braverman: her appearances in the Commons made her look like a child showing off in front of her elders.
It seems there’s more in need of fixing than government working practices in Downing Street – including the mental health of members of the administration.
Here’s the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, apparently having a breakdown rather than answering a simple question:
Just have a listen…
It’s such a bizarre response from Suella Braverman to a normal, reasonable parliamentary question.
No wonder Rupa Huq was staring at her in disbelief.
Boris Johnson trampled on democracy almost from the moment he got into Downing Street with his illegal prorogation of Parliament – as Rupa Huq mentioned in her question – that was an insult to the Queen as it dragged her into his dishonesty.
His Brexit has been so successful that it costs the UK £727 per second. That’s £63 million a day, £440 million per week, lost because of him. It was supposed to deliver UK citizens a dividend of £350 million per week so, by his own standards, Johnson has cheated us of nearly £800 million per week.
And his response to Covid-19 has caused the deaths of at least 180,000 UK citizens, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Suella Braverman is the Attorney General – supposedly the government’s most senior legal advisor. She was talking utter rubbish in response to a legitimate question – and failed to answer the question itself.
This Writer’s opinion is that – given that Parliament does not accept that the government is capable of intentionally lying – the only possible justification for that failure is some form of mental ill-health.
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Despair: a lack of emergency hospital beds – due to Covid-19? – has had a knock-on effect on people who are mentally-ill, leading to deaths.
This is information I found before having to work on the Riley lawsuit.
The underlying story is clear: people with mental illnesses are being indirectly threatened by government/health service policy during the Covid-19 crisis; they are considered expendable – or they are not considered at all.
The Conservatives in government have known that the NHS was not prepared for a pandemic illness like Covid-19 since Operation Cygnus reported that such an event would overwhelm the health service. That was in 2016/17. They did nothing.
Now the consequences are making themselves felt. And it seems the Tories aren’t bothered. Why should they be?
They aren’t suffering.
A lack of emergency hospital beds for the mentally ill has led to one killing and a spate of suicides, an investigation reveals.
The tragedies happened after patients were turned away because NHS bosses failed to follow legislation to admit urgent cases immediately.
The British Medical Association probe found some had to wait up to a month for hospital admission – and many of the Clinical Commissioning Groups responsible for carrying out the Mental Health Act rule did not record the long waiting times.
In one case, paranoid schizophrenia sufferer Kierran Fletcher, 29, killed a grandad in a frenzied attack.
It was 24 hours after Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust put him in a queue with 23 others.
Coroners linked 11 deaths in a year, including suicides, to pressures on the Trust’s mental health services.
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Habitual cruelty: if you thought the Tories stopped persecuting people with long-term illnesses and disabilities during the Covid-19 crisis, think again.
The Department for Work and Pensions has employed its usual subtlety and tact – and has extended benefit sanctions against people with disabilities in time for the new English lockdown.
People with long-term illnesses and/or disabilities who fail to take part in telephone work capability assessments are now to be sanctioned. The change was brought in on November 2, days before the new lockdown began.
The change has been attacked by mental health charity Mind as an “abandonment of their responsibility to keep people safe”.
Mind’s Ayaz Manji said:
We need to see a compassionate response to this pandemic.
That has to mean removing benefit sanctions and cancelling reassessments for disability benefits so that people with mental health problems don’t face the prospect of going without income this winter.
Sadly, we are not going to see any compassion from the Department for Work and Pensions while it is under Tory control.
The Department has said nobody will be sanctioned without being contacted first – which raises interesting questions if assessors can’t even phone up a claimant properly:
People will be contacted to ask them to explain why they did not, or could not attend or participate in the assessment and where good cause is provided and accepted, support will continue.
We don’t want to sanction anyone and our absolute priority is to ensure people continue to receive the support they are entitled to.
We will contact anyone who hasn’t engaged in a telephone appointment and their support will absolutely continue if they have a good reason for not attending or participating.
We’ve heard it all before. Expect a slew of articles about the DWP failing to follow this simple routine.
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The health minister who is so stupid she said the November lockdown in England could only have been predicted with a crystal ball has struck again.
There’s a reason we call Nadine Dorries “Mad Nad”.
Over the weekend, the woman widely considered to be the stupidist Tory MP – against stiff competition! – admitted that she did not understand the information being received and used by her own department of government; SAGE had demanded a lockdown in September.
Now she has demonstrated that she does not understand that her government’s failure to get to grips with the Covid crisis in any meaningful way over a period of nearly a year is having a devastating effect on the mental health of people working in the NHS and in the care sector.
Labour MP Doctor Rosena Allin-Khan does – and appealed to Dorries no fewer than eight times to join with her in devising a mental health package that has cross-party support. Dorries rejected it in a manner that belittled not only herself but her entire miserable government:
I asked Nadine Dorries 8 times last night, if she would meet me and work cross-party, to discuss a mental health support package for frontline NHS and Care staff.
Given how many times the Government have asked for cross-party support – her response is completely shocking. pic.twitter.com/RJRWrYsiz8
We have a cabinet full of cocksure, deluded amateurs instead of brains, integrity or expertise. And that’s because the likes of the phenomenally f**king thick Nadine Dorries were taken on in the first place for one reason & one reason alone: their rabid fetish for a hard Brexit. https://t.co/9tyPuN2WhQ
This video actually made me feel a bit sick. @DrRosena trying to arrange a cross party consultation to discuss the best way to support thr #mentalhealth of NHS workers & Nadine Dorries (Minister for Mental Health) playing to the gallery for cheap laughs. https://t.co/yI0N5wFGV2
I say that not because the Johnson government has a huge Parliamentary majority – granted to it by a population that was desperate to resolve the Brexit crisis that the Tories had created and gulled by rabidly right-wing mass media into thinking the Tories were the only party that could provide a solution (which is lunacy, if you think about it for just one moment).
The reason condemnation won’t work on Tories like Dorries can be summed up in a simple, well-known saying:
No sense, no feeling.
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[Yes, this article comes with a trigger warning as it discusses matters which some people may find extremely upsetting.]
Dear Ms Coffey,
Please take a good, long look at the image accompanying this. It is the last photograph of Phillip Herron, taken minutes before he took his own life.
Mr Herron died because your employees at the Department for Work and Pensions could not be bothered to take their fingers out of their collective posteriors long enough to pay him the Universal Credit he was owed. He would undoubtedly be alive now if they had.
No doubt the DWP officers concerned would say they did not need to pay Mr Herron as Universal Credit is paid in arrears and his five-week wait had not yet ended. They were “only following orders”, they will say, echoing the so-called Nuremberg Defence that did not protect any German soldiers who were prosecuted for ensuring the deaths of so many people during World War II.
You, together with previous Work and Pensions secretaries, and many other Conservative MPs past and present, justify the wait with the mantra that delaying payment for more than a month prepares claimants for the world of work, but we all know that is not true.
It attacks their mental health. It causes depression and despair, and ultimately can lead to suicidal thoughts. Mr Herron’s death is a matter of Conservative government policy.
When he died, he had just £4.61 in his bank account and debts of more than £20,000 that were escalating due to that five-week wait for Universal Credit.
£20,000 is not a substantial sum of money in this day and age. I know you have said it is in interviews, but just take a look at your own bank balance. You probably consider that to be small change; the kind of pocket money you might spend on a night out.
It is one-sixth of the pay rise you will receive next year, just for being a member of Parliament.
It could have been handled. There are ways to ensure debt can be paid off within a reasonable period of time, no matter what the debtor’s means. But Mr Herron could not see that because your system forced him to concentrate on the negative aspects of his situation.
He saw no way out because you denied it to him. So he took his own life. His blood is on your hands. I understand DWP jargon describes that as a “positive benefit outcome”.
Now his three young children must go through life without a father – because that is what you demanded.
Their upbringing is likely to be a much greater burden on public funds than paying his Universal Credit claim – because that is what you demanded.
And there are countless others in the same predicament right now – because that is what you demand.
Your system does not help anybody. It pressurises them; it brutalises them; it forces them to consider the unthinkable – because that is what you demand.
It does not matter whether you spoke the words. You ordered the death of this man.
Please make a copy of his photograph and put it on your wall. Then, every day, when you come into work, you can spend time looking at it – and try to find a way to justify the fact that you caused him to die.
You can find more information – and more than 18,000 comments from members of the public – in this Facebook post.
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A British man tweeted that his mental health was suffering – and people from across the world responded with uplifting words, images and video clips.
It’s not clear exactly why Edmund O’Leary – a follower of This Site – was moved to express his distress, but living in a country that is shambling from one crisis to another under a government that is worse-than-useless, that takes money from people who need it in order to hand it to the very rich (in return for nothing), that has caused the Brexit crisis and worsened the Covid-19 calamity, might have something to do with it.
I am not ok. Feeling rock bottom. Please take a few seconds to say hello if you see this tweet. Thank you.
How uplifting, then, to see an international range of people using the often-abrasive social media platform to help – incidentally providing all of us with a bit of cheer on a gloomy October weekend:
Hello Edmund. I hope you are feeling better soon. This quote meant a lot to me. I hope it might help you too. ❤️ I leave you my love. pic.twitter.com/oejb0VCtYh
Hi Edmund! Sometimes this photo of a cow smiling helps get me by. So sorry to hear you’re feeling rock bottom. Sending you all sorts of good vibes, praying for you. Hope all these kind people are helping your day. Much love! 💚 pic.twitter.com/v6XuHUfTud
Hi Edmund. I bought my mom two kittens after her beloved cat of 19 years died. Here’s one of them, Lulu, playing. Things get better. They always do. pic.twitter.com/RK7ybWIWQk
Hi Edmond – here’s a duck 🦆 asking to play through. Hope it gives you a laugh. Also remember – if all you did was make it through the day I am proud of you! pic.twitter.com/ySjWoiZxUu
Hi Edmund. Sending love. Remember, the bottom of the valley never has the clearest view. You will not always feel like this. You will one day feel a lot better and look back and see the distance you made. X
Hi Edmund. Hope you’re feeling better. Look for the small joys in life – just look at how much happiness a packet of Malted Milk can bring! 😁 look after you x pic.twitter.com/3HkCRBhkLk
All the above (and more) being said, I have to agree with the following Twitter user, who makes the important point that, perhaps, we would not have to mount this ad hoc effort on Edmund’s behalf if the UK’s mental health care services had not been cut to the bone by successive political administrations who simply don’t care that they are driving people to despair:
This is great and everything, but instead, couldn't we properly fund, resource and organise mental health services so Edmund can get the help he needs?
Words of support are simply no substitute for good meds, good therapy, and good follow-up to check if it's working. pic.twitter.com/21qGRUZdNd
Let’s all try to do a little more to make sure people like Edmund don’t have to go to Twitter for help – and that everybody in need of mental health care can get it. I know Edmund will read this and I hope he’s feeling better. Send us a message!
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Abuse: the Tories have ensured that people can’t escape if it means claiming Universal Credit. That way lie only debt, depression and mental breakdown.
Twisted Tory rules mean that people are financially encouraged to stay in abusive relationships rather than claim Universal Credit.
The Conservative government has deliberately weighted the conditions under which the so-called benefit is paid to make it more difficult for people to survive by claiming it than by living with an abuser – even if this means endangering their own lives.
People with disabilities are particularly at risk. But then, those of us who are familiar with the Tory record on disability have come to expect that.
Unite the Union has provided the story of Emma (not her real name), who lived a life of psychological abuse, control and marital rape until she was helped to divorce her husband and strike out on her own.
She did not think there would be any hardship as her husband, it seems, was a genuine skiver who refused to work, meaning she had been the main earner – despite being able to work only 24 hours per week, due to a serious autoimmune disease.
But the Tories made sure she would suffer.
Previously, as a working person, she had been receiving tax credits, and would have been better-off had she continued to do so.
But the Tories used her change of circumstances to force her onto Universal Credit, leaving her £350 per month worse-off.
There are several reasons for this:
The disabled worker allowance she used to receive under tax credits was stopped. This is because the allowance can only be accessed through a work capability assessment, which grants benefits to people unable to work, rather than for disabled people who can work.
I bet if anyone tried to point it out, they’d have to fight an expensive court case before the Tories did anything about it, too.
Worse still, Emma ran into a problem that has now been challenged in court, with a ruling made against it:
Her wages are paid on the last Wednesday of every month rather than on the same date. This resulted in her claim being cancelled and her payments being stopped for three months. She was also ineligible to claim her entitlement back for the month in which the claim was ended.
This is a widely experienced problem for Universal Credit claimants whose regular wages are paid on different days each month and stems from an ill-considered policy stipulation that the benefit amount is calculated to a strictly defined time period.
Now Emma is among 85,000 people who should be able to claim compensation, after the Court of Appeal have ruled that it was “irrational” for the Department for Work and Pensions – and the Secretary of State in particular – to ignore the fact that computer systems would assume that claimant had received double the money expected and cancel their payments.
The Conservative government spent two years fighting this court case – indicating that, despite being well aware of the issue, Tories were determined to continue depriving some of the poorest workers in the UK of vital benefits – including victims of outrageous domestic abuse like Emma.
I asked in my previous article about the court case whether the Tories were sadists or perverts, commenting that “perverts” seemed closest to the mark as one of the judges had described the situation as “perverse”.
Considering Emma’s case, it seems they were sadists as well.
The court ruling came too late for her, by the way – forced into an ever-mounting debt crisis with not even an offer of support from the Department for Work and Pensions, the weight of a life suffering abuse came crashing over her and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
She is now diagnosed as suffering with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression.
After 22 years as a healthcare professional in which she had always paid her bills, taxes and pension contributions, she now says she is “mortgaged up to the hilt… living off a credit card and have taken out two personal loans”.
So Universal Credit has put Emma exactly where the Tories want her – deeply in debt and forced to work like a beast of burden in the forlorn hope of clearing that debt again.
Consider the fact that 85,000 people are likely to have been put in the same situation by the ‘pay date’ scandal alone – never mind those who lost the disabled worker allowance, and it seems clear that the Tories are trying to create a “zombie economy” – with working people forced to wear themselves out trying to pay off an impossibly-high debt while their creditors sit back and count their profits.
It seems a limited amount of help is available for people who have suffered domestic abuse – but anyone seeking it must provide “written evidence” (of what kind?) within one month of discussing it with a work coach.
Emma is clear about the end result:
“Had I known that I would lose my tax credits and be transferred to Universal Credit before I separated from my ex-husband, I most definitely would have remained in the marriage and that is a worrying thought.
“Universal Credit, I believe, traps people in unhealthy relationships and causes more difficulties to individuals who are already in a vulnerable and distressing situation.”
So much for Iain Duncan Smith’s brainchild.
The only way for vulnerable people like Emma to avoid its debt trap is to go back into domestic degradation and abuse.
And the only conclusion we can draw is that Conservative politicians have designed the system to achieve this.
So it would be fair to say the Conservative government – and every MP who is a member of it – in league with the worst kind of physical, psychological and sexual abusers.
If they try to deny it, let them explain why they designed Universal Credit that way – and why they fight court cases to keep it that way.
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Benefit sanctions lead to increases in claimants’ anxiety and depression, and a re-assessment of the role of sanctions is needed as the UK slowly emerges from lockdown – according to the London School of Economics.
According to a recent assessment, current sanctions policy can be considered to be ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’. Importantly, there are straightforward steps that can be implemented to minimise the harms associated with sanctions and to help realise the basic right to a social minimum.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) should … assess the impacts of sanctions on health and well-being. Mental health and labour market outcomes are likely to be interrelated; the adverse mental health impacts of sanctions could plausibly affect people’s ability to search for and attain paid work.
There is a need to reduce the length of sanctions and/or the proportion of benefit that is withdrawn… Sanctions are consecutive within Universal Credit, which means that some will be affected by penalties that last longer than the new apparent maximum of 26 weeks.
The hardship payments system is insufficient and also needs to be reformed… Adverse mental health impacts … are observed even though the rate of hardship payments [has] increased. Hardship payments within Universal Credit are awarded for a restricted set of reasons and are repayable, leading to even fewer claimants receiving them than in the past.
The application of sanctions should be limited to a last resort. Initially, Universal Credit operated with a very high rate of sanctions, though this has since been reduced. The low rate could be maintained by implementing a warning system; limiting the number of reasons for which sanctions apply; and establishing clear rules for what constitutes a ‘good reason’ for non-compliance.
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