Mental Health : Breaking Health Illusions

Karl Linx's Wisdom ?

The Dept of Health and Govt approved back door fox-trot on patient and public involvement (PPI) has resulted in a dubious and sloppy new set up in Local Involvement Networks (LINks) across the UK .

So far we are aware that Statutory Overview Scrutiny Committee's (headed by local councils to oversee changes in Health Services ) are also slopping around in the LINks splashing too as some kind of Linky-kinky-form tries to swim here and there - added to that the Foundation Trust 's have become mysterious and poor at producing a view in onto them . We are not sure what the LINks splashing form is though because occasionally a watery arm is seen then a brick around the neck of something, then different conflicting cries and maybe a screeching cat in a sack ...

Hang on maybe its a drowning we are witnessing ! We THEREFORE give thanks to our readers for being there because YOU MADE US THINK and decode the new DOH pushed and distorted symbolism ....Or is that embolism we mean ? Maybe they will use formaldehyde soon and PPI as an ethos will be well and truly pickled as well as trickled ...?

Ex Commission for Patient and Public Involvement Types are turning up at the National Centre For Involvement (funded by the Dept of Health ) apparently and we see they lately want someone with press experience . Ahhh the image game ...The love of arts everyone has would be amazing were it put to the use of integrity ..

They want a "Director of Communications NCI" for £19645 - 22765

"Job Purpose :

To provide professional communication/ press office function, administration support as well as provide advice and information on the NHS Centre for Involvement, its partners and available resources to contacts from patients, the public, patient and public involvement professionals, voluntary organisations, working with both internal and external customers"

The new year is a-coming but accountability in health that might lead to better reform is unlikely we think, not least because all across the UK we are seeing a trend of LINks having a kind of authority-core which will dominate its working groups - you know the people that have to see and experience the health and social care bullshit going on . We have seen this trend in places like Bristol and Birmingham and we really wonder what Hampshire is doing too - its almost as if the PCT and Council there had it all arranged behind the scenes and stitched up appearences of a few concerned citzens with a dominant shadow of NHS/Council bureau-fear behind them ready to run and control the agenda. Without sure footed independence LINks will be slurried into partnership sliding about ...

We think LINks is doomed to failure because its already being observed to be internally centralising and creates a pyramid core group tendency who are not necessarily patients and the public with that hard edge of patient and public experience gained by some in the in the PPI forums . We are also in possession of evidence that shows some alarming views that LINks appears to attract those who are authoritarian in their approach .. Oooo lets see more of you lot - bring it on ... We is the Multi Media cheeksters and do not expect any mercy from us .. Satire is our game and we will give you fame ...

Instead of using the strategic power of some wisdom gained by those lingering on from PPI days - LINKs here and there are already behaving like mini versions of a mis-shapen political puppet of the Dept of Health . It seems the DOH puppetmasters have done well .. What power LINks have at the moment is dubious. Certainly no greater that the Freedom of Information Act and worryingly some have no indemnity (as PPI Fora previously had from the Secretary of State) . Yet the confidence in them is not great either since the Govt has trashed and bashed the sharp little teeth that some previous PPI Fora were developing and that is making ex-health-activists give their own opinions in the UK amongst their peers ..

So what is more positively going for the UK Government is the current trend in widened opportunities for administrators and the players it backs through the NHS link in the bureau "partnership game" ... Yet this is now in the uncertain context of an altering economy with no bullshit financial sector to keep any surpluses acruing ...

Frankly we have never agreed with the idea of User-Voice in any part of medicine without USER CHOICE being a parallel purchasing power more immediately owned by the patient and we wonder what would have happened if all the expensive bureaucracy around PPI and so on had been converted into straight forward personal health budgets locally driven in truer linked partnership with GP's .. The real LINK has been denied we think . Its about de-bureacratisation of health , Patient Choice, and losing the false illusions that are chaining patients lives ......

But watch the Govt carefully for how it has undermined the local connection between GP and patient claiming better health accountability - new forms of super practices (led by PCT planning) are springing up here and there but they are not local enough and are not seriously humanly friendly enough....The NHS was at its best with the GP connection and long term relationship - System driven analytics which is undermining human connections in health has to stop because its driving money up its own bureaucratic performance loving arse and undermining the human connection and real patient-link in health.

We advise - Watch the Trusts and PCT's - that is where the chaos and the dirt under the carpet is . They know it and they are paranoid about being found out which makes LINKs all the more designed and influenced to be soapier .... Moral sliding is the greatest skill you will ever see in the NHS ....

See the debate below about GP's Opposition To Polyclinics

From June 2008 Parliament Debate Re : Local Scrutiny

Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative) Link to this | Hansard source | Watch this

My hon. Friend has said that the situation is absurd, but there is a further bizarre twist. Is he aware that the Darzi clinics will not be subject to monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees? The Government are introducing a two-tier NHS: parts of the NHS are subject to scrutiny by health overview and scrutiny committees, whereas independent treatment centres and Darzi clinics will not be subject to scrutiny and monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees, which seems fundamentally wrong.

Andrew Lansley (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; South Cambridgeshire, Conservative) Link to this | Hansard source | Watch this

I agree with my hon. Friend. Pulse recently looked at the proposals in PCTs, and only a tiny proportion of those that it looked at had been subject to even a semblance of a public consultation. The reason is precisely the same as the reason that my hon. Friend gave: the Government are determined that the proposal should not be subject to scrutiny. Why? Because it will not stand up to that scrutiny, it is not locally determined, it does not arise out of the needs and circumstances of the area and, on the quality of care that will be provided, it is not even evidence-based.

LINKS :

Polyclinics BBC

Hansard GP Links Undermined

Theyworkforyou . com Polyclinics Debate

Mental Health Disablement, Arts And Empowerment

How to Use Photoshop - A Tutorial

Courtesy YouTube

Those who have severe Mental Health (MH) problems and like the arts are often up against the wall in terms of being able to get out and get some help to improve one of the things that will aid their lives into creating a few more coloured islands in amongst the fire and fear seas . The services offer limited support and UserWatch is as readers will know very critical of the ways they have -re-institutionalised arts in mental health. There is a clear need for better grants for User-chosen mentoring both in truly User controlled space and money should reach patients and stop creating bureacracy.. However that's a doomed hope . The NHS thrives on staff and patient de-individuation too much , conformity and personal betrayal of even the Self ....

So buddies , "you is" in street terms "on your own" - but not quite WE ARE HERE biting as usual .. And so is the NET ! When you can get to use it (and we know that's hard sometimes) get onto YouTube and look at what's available in tutorials for using "Blogger" and learn learn learn ...And make mistakes , yep make em and learn , and forgive yourself for them and stroke yourself and your bruised computer too ...

Getting more to the point of this post we show a "Photoshop" tutorial above - which gives 30 minutes of tips and help for using "Photoshop"....

Users interested in the arts have contacted us and the Great KAKATOO and mangy Silvis Rivers and other disruptive artists have advised Users to FIRST - scan in line drawings done with good lining pens and colour with photoshop. You can even recolour after using markers of pencils but MAKE SURE your lining and lines are joined up and well defined otherwise when using photoshop to colour fill you will find colours chosen will flow into other areas where you did not want it to go ...

You can trawl YouTube yourself though - looking for tutorials -

Here are some more on Photoshop

The Christmas Gift Of Post Trauma And Red Snows

For Yasser And Ariel ..

Post trauma can generate its own repeat impetus by a process labelled as "acting out" or "projection" where the victim tries to blame the world for the victimisation of the victim . It gets more damn complex when the social world is actually shit too .

"Acting out" needs no great science to explain it - its a reflex to protect from an inner past that is over at one level but its also an overload from past events that were not fully resolved into a painful but necessary emotional integration ... Easy to state isnt it ? . Its very hard to unravel emotionally without serious help and by god you'll pay for any wisdom often with tears of acid .

But "post trauma" is not all not purely in the realms of some inner disorder people can easily pathologise and label quickly like the usual mental health-parrots .. Survivors genuinely need a very powerful form of hearing and for as many years as they do need it . You'll be lucky to get that kind of hearing and the right of explosive grief anywhere in the world. The UK for instance is upper-lip-deadland mainly and thus craziness, repression and self distortion without emotional straightness is encouraged ..

Survivors of great pain and trauma have wandered either through childhood or adult survival only by being partly dissociated ghosts and sometimes its a case of woe betide anyone who should act remotely abusive to them . They are both the victim and the victimised rolled into an energy loop ready to be uncurled but rarely helped to a cure - systems of health care would rather they were pilled or injected and that is measure of the systems encouraged lack of human depth. Feelings are seen as "risk" areas ...

The combined triggers for revenge and self protection are there in post trauma survivors ...Its not just Israel and the Palestinians that are locked into this cycle . Its a wider global and social truth . Of unheard people, listened to the bones of their damages. The post traumatised have acute sensitivity and vulnerability and are overprotective so much they will force onto others unreasonable boundaries and forms of "war" over their "security" .

Security, that actually means underneath something precious and real was either anihiliated or the threat is it will all happen again ... Imagine if you will, many people who were shaped from post trauma events . Imagine a nation of them and you come close to a cycle of events that has so many internal weaves and layers of collective inner life and fears, and outer social projections and repeated acting out on others who also now are the dreaded shadows. So you have arrived in Post-trauma-tradition-land and all that is left is a moil of social sickness, suicidality and despair with cornered selves .

Hitler would be pleased wouldn't he .... ? Its snowing red over Gaza ..

For Further References See :

Palestinian Media Center

The Jewish Virtual Library

Mental Health Self Anihiliation Compulsions ?

In Gaza despair is normal. Other people with shared religious illusions and claims on lands have progressively and compulsively stretched out into Gaza lands . Their object appears to have been to silence the claims for the cornered and violated voice of Palestinians who are now a concentration camp shadow of Israel's past and its paranoid construct re-shaped by its neighbours into a seige mentality .

Self anihiliation or threatened anihilation of the Self can beget an explosive mixture of behaviours into which final suicide wanders and the voice of suicide is a social critique on everyone. Very few want to hear it thoroughly though . Death as a force too can become so large sometimes that what constructs the suicidal narrative is wiped out - history is lost in the explosions and counter explosions of shells - rage/counter rage violates all - even the ears ... For a time ... God help Gaza and all who live in her ...

We oiled ourselves
With David's star
And worshipped at the
God Of Car

And Mordecai blew
The nuclear whistle
And the world's eyes
Closed on his epistle

They'll flame the Gazans
For being Guy Fawkes
Pretend to open more
Non talks

Its easy to give death's tanks and ferry
When you know
You're Tom
And your weight and claws like
Shredding up the ghosts of Jerry

Ref: Mordecai Zanunu Israels 200 Atomic Weapons

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Blairing Out The Mental Health And Benefit Lies One Year On

One Year On and in between where bankers with incapacity are now a benefit class relying on the UK Taxpayer what would Tony say :

"Ah its a gliche in the markets"

Yeahhhhh "Tone"..... So much for your policy dream of supporting the growing UK middle classes who simply borrowed more than they could afford in order to support well pensioned lives - kids at university - ever rising property values and many holidays a year as well as early retirements. Of course they could only do this on a credit boom because the UK lost most of its ability to produce anything but administrators of other people's lives and the vacuum of industrial productivity was taken up by the financial sector .. So much for that sector "Tone" ..

Plundering the benefit classes is left though, so we can see that the middle class dream in the future will be buffered partly by that. Its a question of a "welfare raid" being done , and it will happen ..

At least some "buffering" mentally speaking, is underway too, because the strident screams about scroungers have been waiting in the wings have come out from roost to caw in the anti-underclass press. So if politics is about illusions then that is another one that shows that press and politician-led false catharsis is underway at someone else's expense ... Scream and scream again but never at your own folly in the mirror of bugger my neighbour over decades eh?

This brings UserWatch to the false mental health service delivery that was shaped by middle class policy thinkers like you "Tone" who wanted to play the middle ground of softly softly alter the NHS because so many of "our buddies" are working in it and profiting from it . Like the NIMHE Uni-Users who have progressed on to being top-down delivery staff . A few staff do give a damn about patients but the majority are part of the illusory life of being picked off by their own self interest and keeping tactically dumb . Thus the land of the patient is shut up and marginalised and shut off apart from the in-house glove puppets and User-Pinnochio groups .

Anyway "Tone" over to you ... And do us a favour and stop preaching about the Middle East - lets see someone real like Gerry Adams giving advice to both parties and please will you piss off back to some boardroom and be the banker you are - after all one way or another you have lined the poorest up for the Tories and their 19th century love of the moral whippery of workhouse logic .....

Tony Blair takes on Wall Street advisory role at JP Morgan

Source : http://www.fairinvestment.co.uk

11/01/2008 nearly one years ago :

"Former prime minister Tony Blair has agreed to take on an advisory role at Wall Street bank JP Morgan. According to reports, he will earn approximately £2 million over the next year from the part-time position, in addition to earnings related to his memoirs, lectures, other advisory roles and public service allowances.

Mr Blair, who started his career as a barrister before embarking on a political career, will offer the investment bank strategic and political advice and will also take part in various client events. He stepped down from his role as prime minister in June 2007 and, according to The Telegraph, is "well on course to becoming the richest former prime minister in history".

Although he is not paid for his position as Middle East envoy, Mr Blair's income from his combined roles which is estimated at more than £10million, is likely to far outweigh his outgoings, which are thought to be approximately £600,000, including mortgage payments and office costs. He will be called upon only when needed, and will most likely give advice by telephone. According to reports, he is planning to take on similar roles with other companies from a range of industries.

JP Morgan operates in more than 50 countries worldwide and its assets are said to total approximately $1.5 trillion. According to the company's CEO, Jamie Dimon, said Mr Blair would be "enormously valuable" because of his vast knowledge and relationships. French president Nicolas Sarkozy is also backing Mr Blair to become EU president next year."

Mental Health Incapacity Dogs Defend Dogland

The discovery of explosive Dogpowder made of dog nitrates and collected from the bottom of pissing poles frequently used in NHS mental health establishments by "chemically intelligent" Incapacity Dogs has meant a new rise in attacks on staff ....Yes maybe they were right : "Its something in the water"

Bin bag doggerism as it has been coined emerging with the power of piss though is set to increase as the DWP and NHS combine to create more "crufty" little performance ways to create new scraping around binclusions for mental health dogs....

In a move that resembles the tit for tattery of the Middle East, Incapacity Deputy Dog the self styled leader of ID teams has claimed :

"The Spite is On"

"After all, its all we get from a system that sees poodles at the top of it getting combed and having their arses newly powdered with more expenses at Foundation Trusts pamper-offices...."

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Will Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health User Voice Grow And Become Truly Independent And Help Users Outside Of The Trust Too?

We have heard yet again from a number of unhappy sources that Users are fed up of current in-house "User Voice" arrangements inside the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust. We wont be boring about this - there are some new facts to be considered on the financial side too .

The underlying problem is one and always has been of "separation and independence" and a feeling that a "real" User Voice actually does not properly exist in Birmingham .

More Users are sensing "User-Voice's" compromised position within the Trust .. Could it be made independent ? After all Autumn's "Label Free" - a magazine subsidized by the Trust and Birmingham City Council creates focus about better advocacy and how it does not always exist .. They are right - it does not, and it should .. Oh for sure, advocacy of Users exists in patches - but User's Voice "group advocacy" role is very weak and uses money up that could support honed up training and a better User Voice form ..

Taking this point on - it was the case that an Independent User Voice (with better powers of advocacy) was put forward as a feasible structure by the late BSMHT Patient and Public Involvement Forum. The Trust have never been keen on this even though they are absolutely aware of the nearby Debyshire Voice - an independent User Voice which has charity status and it own Trustee Users ... Derbyshire Voice is financed directly through Primary Care Trusts (PCT's) and therefore at a better "arms length" from the Trust it views and works with . The PCT's like it that way - the appropriate tension for accountability is better .

The way User's Voice within the BSMHF Trust is managed and financed gives overwhelming control of the User Voice direction to the Trust. People know its oppressive - they cannot lie about their experiences. It also helps crush the patient voice into something resembling sweetened up but rather brown sniffy fudge .... User Voice workers know it, but the local mental health User-economy which has provided economic positions for some of them has sadly also compromised them ....Enough of them might make a difference to plan a better future if they had the will . Or will they be bought off ? The Trust you see have very cute and long distance ears about all of this ...They watch UserWatch. They do not want an autonomous User Voice any more than they want autonomous Governors who are also feeling pissed off for being like ritual democrats with no real and deeply linked purposes .....

Well they played the game of NHS command and control politics where the bureau-cats prowl oh so very stealthily in the BSMHFT .....And the scratches of being overcompromised become oh so invisible until you meet patients with X-ray integrity eyes..Of-course they see right through it .

Is There A Way Out ?

There is a way out of the Trust's overarching rule . It has to be healthy to want that . Compromise is the nature of the game here because whatever is organised re: User Voice if it becomes independent it has to satisfy some NHS probity. But it can independently exist by pumping up its income base differently and re-constituting and by taking on more skilled advocacy and becoming Third Sector workers that organise outside of the Trust. This role, ordinary well informed Users have argued, is in keeping with PCT's locally financing User Voice directly . But will they ? Curiously there is no perfect reading of this situation in which PCT's in Birmingham seem keen to create more serious autonomy for patients in mental health .. Which leaves patients to either petition them or say nothing and go back to a quarter of a voice ...

And perhaps that is the point . Do patients who are inside a context in which their damages make them like slaves to a system accept that ? Or do they consider vision and more recoverable autonomy that paradoxically must be assisted in the right way ? The Trust have traded on that equation badly - namely the paradox of dependency and assisted growth. The one where autonomy is under command and control and the agenda of what is meant by recovery is still overwhelmingly set by the State .. This is a serious core problem because until Users can create more consumerist type freedoms they are trapped inside managerial command and control equations - a bit like User Voice, that fears seperation because its not being assisted into independent growth properly . Its a question of hanging around the back door of the Trusts body and fearing what is beyond . User Voice is not alone in that - Users with long term damages have talked about this NHS social trap on their lives too ..

At UserWatch we have seen the local Trust continually and easily dominate from the centre and top . We have learned also recently the Trust has £800,000 of funds from the Trust Charities to disperse at rate of 200k per year over the next 4 years . User Voice think on this opportunity - Or is this a step of freed up faith in the Patient Voice that is far too challenging ?

Will you accept the status quo ? Where does it go ? Does it reach into a future in which more damaged people can use a new User Voice company to reach outward into grants for training and special help ? Or does it die in the shadows of poor prospects for all ? ... Who and what vision will you serve User Voice ?

Oh it can be done okay - the creation of a New Independent User Voice we mean .... The vision is there its a question of developing it into a business case - like the PPI partly did and that paper and those ideas still exist ..

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Mental Health Arts And Crufts

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Meanwhile In Ye Olde Mental Health Santa Ward

Mental Health Incapacity Dog Wins Dept Of Work And Purnell Award

A Mental Health User-Dog known as "Incapacity Dog" has invented a butcher and dinosaur friendly ECO-BONE Chair . Said to be particularly useful in areas where human massacres have occured or the UK has been to war, the "Eco-bone Chair" is good for disability dogs everywhere and helps cleaning up here and there and employment of otherwise bone-idle dogs ..

James Purnell on hearing of this wonderful invention and the multi-layered benefits it can have to disabled dogs everywhere, is rumoured to be creating special grants for disabled dogs in the UK on Incapacity Benefit, to travel to places like Iraq or Rwanda and even as far afield as Afghanistan.

"I agree these beasts need to be put to useful work where there are plenty of bones"

He said when UserWatch asked him what he felt about this important job creation innovation.

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Now The Health And Overview Scrutiny Committees Have Building Concerns Across the UK About Foundation Trusts

A USERWATCH EXCLUSIVE

It is surprising that Health Journalists in the UK have not picked up yet on the anti-democratic tendencies of the NHS Foundation Trusts. (take note Health Service Journal)

Are these new types of UK wide NHS Trusts : expansively involving with good feedback ?

Good at sharing information ? In control of their own finances ? Democratically engaging ?

No they are not, in anything but mists and paper dreams ..

These new types of Foundation Trusts were supposed to replace the old ones and have new batches of Governors made up of public and service users and staff

The idea was one of more “stakeholder accountability” in the NHS UK – re-linking to the public partly , but the truth is the democracy bone is bare and the arrangements are ritualistic and out of touch with all but a bubbling glass sphere of meetings and lunches ...

The other beneficial claim was the FT's were supposed to plan the use of their own services by what amounted to shaving costs from their own services for “efficiences” and then “ideally” they could divert them to new forms of local beneficial health spends .

Well the Treasury is set to claw back 500 million of those autonomous plans

But equally bad is the emerging truth that as Health-Overview Scrutiny Committee's , appointed by Councils, but who work under statute to check NHS service alterations start to question FT Governors, they can find little that is healthy in the way of quality work and use of influence by Governors

Several concerned sources contacted USERWATCH and have revealed across the country there are few minutes shared or much evidence of FT Governships “working” .. In the north of the country one source close to local government claimed – “there is no evidence at all” .

Another source in the east of the country was asked by UserWatch if they had been in the usual shared information loop of Trust Board Minutes from the local NHS Trusts that had now converted to Foundation Trust status ? After all that had been the historical practice .

The answer was :

“No ! This has all dried up HOSC's don't appear to be in that loop now either – its all gone dry at the information well “

UserWatch checked other sources and sure enough HOSC's with a statutory duty to view services and be abreast of potential changes are not getting Trust Board information of deeper quality from the Foundation Trusts since they became FT's

Naturally you cannot hold anything to account if there is no transparency to see into it, yet the Foundation Trusts were supposed to be better democratically linked - better informing etc to encourage local re-engagement . The truth is, the NHS FT Trusts have slunk back into defensive information management and an iron curtain of information shuffle muffle .

Anyone in the UK or world can try a comparative search method of NHS Trust Board minutes before and after each Trust was granted its FT status by the so called “independent Regulator” MONITOR and what disappears from view is massive amounts of Trust Board information .

This is not wider accountability its an iron fishbowl that only looks transparent by some clever reflective metal tricks

The pattern resembles a kind of equivalent to an anti-information meteor impact too that has caused a large UK wide crater and wiped out the old UK Trust dinosaurs – and no-one is sure that what has evolved is truly linked or useful .

On a parallel note, concern has been expressed in the Lords about the new Health and Social Care monitoring “Local Involvements Networks” - some of which have become cumbersome and bureaucratically crawling . These LINks groups at local levels are not inspiring any but the few and monitoring of the Health and Social Care Services has dropped to an all time low .

The Dept of Health however behaves as if all is rosy in the crater and sips tea with those it tries to convince with its own ideals of brown muddy fudged reality ......

LORDS HANSARD (See Below too) 11 Dec 2008 : Column 499

However, there will probably be some aspects of the Government’s approach that we shall want to examine carefully. There does not seem to be much point in drawing up a set of regulations containing what everyone accepts are already the responsibilities and functions of the NHS and saying that the NHS must have regard to them, unless we see how this will add value to patient care. I need to understand rather better than I currently do what the practical implications of applying, or failing to comply with, the constitution will be for patients and staff and what “having regard to” will really mean.

It is certainly helpful to articulate and assert NHS values. There are those who are apprehensive that, with the private and voluntary sectors playing an increasing part in the provision of NHS care, those values may not always be to the fore and who believe that we need the constitution for that reason if for no other. The trouble is that NHS values, as such, are apparently not to be included in the constitution. Nor are there any proposals to enshrine the principle of independent regulation of healthcare, which is so important if we are to have a genuinely patient-centred service. Rather mysteriously, two of the principles set out in the NHS plan have gone missing, including the principle that the NHS will support and value its staff. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comment on that.

We are told that one ingredient of the health Bill will be to strengthen public involvement in the commissioning arrangements of primary care trusts. It will be interesting to see what these provisions consist of. I say this with some degree of concern. Noble Lords will remember that, last year, we debated and passed the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act, which abolished patients’ forums and made provision for local involvement networks. LINks are meant to be in place and fully functioning across the country by the end of this month. Personally, I would be amazed if that happened. Everything that I and other noble Lords predicted during the passage of the Act has come to pass. There were meant to be transitional arrangements for patient and public involvement following the abolition of forums. Many local authorities have quite simply failed to understand the legislation properly and, in consequence, have failed to put in place those transitional arrangements. Information about the levels of service that host organisations have been contracted to deliver is being withheld, which makes it impossible to assess how well or badly they are doing. Many local authorities appear to believe that once a host is in place they have fulfilled their duties under the law—exactly the misconception that many of us fought so hard to avoid when we persuaded the Government to build transitional provisions into the Bill.

The Government have made public money available to fund such arrangements. Despite that, many local authorities have refused to reimburse volunteers their legitimate expenses. The net result of all this is that many committed and talented people have given up the struggle and are now lost to the system. It is the perception of those who represent LINk members that Ministers are in denial about how bad the situation

11 Dec 2008 : Column 500

is in many areas of the country. If the health Bill is to depend on LINks to deliver the promised strengthening of public involvement in commissioning, we really must have greater confidence than many of us do have that they will be up to the task.

Mental Health Incapacity Dog Named Two Pins Starts A Social Doggerprise

Cartoonery By KAKATOO

In an effort to copy James Poodell's bottom scent from the Dept Of Woof And Pensions - Incapacity Dog AKA "Two Pins" set up his bone-stall today and we at UserWatch interviewed him.

"Innovation is the key" Says Two Pins

"Bones that light up and show other dogs how to collect bones are my invention . I have not sold many because I can hardly get around and have to eat most of the bones I find ...."

"Now there's a credit squeeze, dogs everywhere are going into the local dustbins with torches too"

James Poodell is well fed though " ... Two Pins Snarled.

"To be honest most of the bones I have here are from dead dog friends killed or starved by the UK Fat National Health Dog Services that made them even more mental than they were - some used to see scratchy cats everywhere - even in their baskets ..

I hate selling my dead friends out - but what's an Incapacity dog to do ... ? "


Guest appearance toon below :

Mental Health Two Legged User Dog Tries To Outrun DWP Benefit Tsunami

Cartoon By Kakatoo Dec 2008

TwoPins - the disabled User-Hound that all Mental Health Users know and love at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust UK was sketched by KAKATOO outrunning a Dept of Work And Pensions Benefit Tsunami .....

They do say these giant DWP waves withdraw the benefits from the dogger-sands first then lash in with raised splashes of impossible bluish tons of expectations .

The tsunami was concocted up by a few bad twisty watery magic spells - very bad dog meat policy-belches, and a posh doggy bunch of New Slavers headed by the privileged James Poodell ...

Poodell it is claimed, is really just a face painted onto the dogger-sands to frighten puppies into being trained and crapping properly known as : "doing their bit"....

Bitches with puppies are very scared around pictures of Poodell ..

Yessss "bit" in "doing their bit " does rhyme with something - but we at UserWatch are very very good as you all know .

We will keep you in touch with how two legged dogs fare and TwoPins especially in the new Wavey-World of goodbyes to stability of all sorts - unless you are banker, then your incapacity will certainly be given benefits ..

UserWatch - loves dogs by the way...

Extra Feature Below : Stuart Butterfield -

the guy who founded Flickr.com

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Mental Health Voluntary Death Centre Policy Unveiled As Labour Develop New Logo From "L's"

In a bid to save the country (UK) from keeping long term Mental Health Users on benefit the "Assisted Suicide" Law is to be repealed so the Govt can employ new classes of ex Service Users and NHS Staff to help those who wish to claim a new death benefit ..

Fred Froyd of the New Labour Progressive Policy Unit along with Jimmy Arseknell has claimed that not only will the country save money in the longer term but those choosing a way to help the country will have 2 years of all welfare beneits given to their dog , budgie or the the upkeep of the graves of their dead friends and family ....Or they can donate it back to the Govt ..

Gordon Brown is hailing this as a New Economic wave of thought : " Goodbye to failure"

"A changing of no hope into no life is now valuable for the community .."


All of this fits into a new drive by the Labour party in the UK to get "tough and real with zeal " and even to change its logo by smart use of a rightward circle of "L's" ...

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Incapacity Parrots Get Expanding Jobs In Mental Health Trusts

Fairness to User Parrotkind is almost a policy of UserWatch .....Almost, because too much fairness weakens the power of cheek and you know us ..

Meeting Users in Manchester UK recently saw two of the UserWatch team hearing them talking about the usual NHS and Mental Health (MH) Charity orthodox anti-stigma-awking and other awkings which are awked out by awking Users at their Trust as though they are original awks .....

"Society is to blame for not accepting us AWK AWK ... " "Society , AWK ..Employers are awkward AWK AWK......."

Most of the awking by fit User parrots at their Trust was about getting jobs and mini careers in the Trust itself and few awkings were about patients getting better treatment choices that might be possible were it not for so many fit parrots getting NHS jobs awking about this and that in awking meetings ..

It appears in MH its quite an awful awking world ....The job promo advert above shows the latest NHS policy . Its urges User-Parrots to become Parrot-trooper Guards ... In fact in Britain everyone needs guards and performance checking and general intrusion dressed up as democracy and usefulness because in truth its the only illiusion that makes people believe there are awking jobs or roles to be had ..


UserVoice Rebel .