Stonebird : a response to the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR)

Stonebird : a response to the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR)

Greg & Linda Crowhurst

21 October 2010

(permission to repost)

The back to work ethic that denies the reality of sickness, as a valid state and the covert message that if  you are sick your are scrounging., started by Labour , is carried to unprecedented new levels of denial,  by the CSR.

What is so shocking about the spending review is the almost complete lack of reporting , in the mainstream  media,  of  the impact of it , upon the sick and disabled. The elderly are seen as a source of votes, but the disabled are rarely represented  as a valid part of society. 

The latest move to undermine the sick, by  depriving  them of ESA if deemed "fit for work" ,  is particularly concerning for people with ME who are so often by negated by the system. The psychiatric lobby , far too entrenched in government and the media,   is virtually assured  under this CSR,  to have even more  influence in the continuing misinterpretation of the needs and capabilities of people with ME.

 With the psychiatric lobby going from strength to strength ,with  no unity of voice within the ME community and with no  consistent validation of what ME is , even within the charities, it  is a  frightening time indeed to be long-term sick and disabled with ME.

The patient voice, those  charities that  survive this spending review   have to start by  speaking  up for the right things; they must not sell people with ME down the river anymore , by going along with the vested interests that have done so much harm and which have now been given unparalleled free reign under this Coalition.

The ME community chose to rubbish the Gibson Report, rather than back its radical  call for an investigation into the vested interests.  Oh, if only that had happened back in 2006....now we reap the whirlwind.

There is no consistency in the ME community. You have those who love the clinics, who want CBT and Pacing, people who support and aggressively advocate for  the Lightening Process -  people who most likely do not have ME anyway. 

All the time the "CFS "label is rolled out,   instead of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, all the time that "Fatigue" is misrepresented as the primary symptom of ME, all the time a biomedical service is not a reality, there is little hope for justice and truth for the genuine sufferers of this terrifying  neurological disease. 

 The suspension, last week,  of Sarah Myhill  , is just  a taste of the wickedness that , after yesterday's spending review, now  reigns  supreme .

The only hope is the possible  emergence  out of all this, of  a much more coherent, assertive and radical patient voice .