RizzyKing

Mr Angry something you have to realise about ATOS is that not all it's personnel doing assessments are lets be polite and say not of good decent charector and have had problems in the past with various medical oversight groups. Being specific to me i something called ankylosing spondylitis which both my gp and consultant class as chronic.

My current pain medication is 120mg of codeine a day, 30mg morphine patches a day and i take 1500mg of anti inflammatory medication as well. That is not as much as some people are on and the codiene part is being looked at and i may be moved to a much higher painkilling tablet. Yet on a good day i might be able to use a keyboard for 30 minutes then requiring an hour before i could start again on a bad day i might be able to use it 15 minutes and that would be it for the day.

As things are looking now i could be classed as fit to work in an office despite the fact that unless it moves in across the road anymore then 50-60 metres causes me severe pain which can sometimes take hours\days to recover from. Atos assess on the very best circumstance that you as a patient can have not even the average and certainly not the worst you can have giving a very false impression of what you can actually do. While i helped with an organisation that dealt with disabled people i heard what i can only describe as horror stories about atos and their ways of doing things and examples of some of the stupidest decisions i have ever seen that included one man with terminal cancer being classed as fit for warehouse work.

Do i fear being fairly assessed and judged hell no i have no problem with that and in my ideal world i would find an employer that would be flexible enough to accomadate me and my limitations even though being realistic as i have sadly had to become no such employer exists. Do i fear an atos assessment yes i do because whatever their concern is it isn't for me or even for any company that might get landed with me.

Despite my medication i spend everyday in pain to varying degrees and will do for the rest of my life and i am ok with that there are people far worse off then me but then there is that massive majority that i want to be part of and never will be the working population that bit i am not ok with but am slowly learning to come to terms with it. I have always said there were that small group of career "won't work, cannot be bothered to work" and damn right we have to grab them by the scruff of their neck and do something with them.

But the way this government is going that group will slip through the cracks again and the ones that will be hit yet again are the genuine and legitimate is it really fair to keep doing that i don't think so and i think there are better ways.