Category Archives: ukcuts

Woman who ate catfood after care cuts now to get earlier meal

August 16, 2013   Blind, Carers, ukcuts

Suffers hypoglycaemia attacks due to dipping sugar levels causing her to pass out

A BLIND pensioner who claimed she begged strangers in the street to cook her food when her care visits were reduced is relieved her meal times have now been changed.

Jan Milne, a disabled diabetic, said she suffers hypoglycaemia attacks due to dipping sugar levels causing her to pass out.

The 71-year-old widow from Dormanstown, Redcar, receives daily meals when carers visited at 8am, noon, and then 8.30pm. From Monday, the last call out will be replaced with a tea time dish at 5.30pm.

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Enough is enough – carers need cherishing not cuts

August 7, 2013   Carers, ukcuts

 Spare a thought for the thousands and thousands of carers in Ireland

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Tom Curran and Marie Fleming

Miriam Donohoe – 07 August 2013

The death last week of popular RTE sports broadcaster Colm Murray at the age of 61 after a battle with motor neurone disease saddened the nation. It was impossible not to have been touched watching the repeat of the TV documentary on Sunday night on his valiant fight to find a cure for the illness that takes the lives of more than 100 people in Ireland each year.

Colm was diagnosed three years ago and in recent months was totally incapacitated and needed full-time care. He died peacefully at home in Dublin surrounded by his family. As well as the care of his medical team he was lovingly looked after by his devoted wife, Anne.

A case of another well-known broadcaster being cared for by his wife was highlighted at the weekend. The BBC’s political presenter and commentator, Andrew Marr, spent two months in hospital after suffering a stroke in January, and his wife Jackie Ashley became his full-time carer.

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Bedroom tax: families trapped with nowhere to move

August 5, 2013   Carers, ukcuts

Revealed: ‘Big lie’ behind the bedroom tax as families trapped with nowhere to move so cannot avoid new penalty for having spare room

Emily Dugan Author Biography

Social Affairs Correspondent

Monday 05 August 2013

96% of benefit claimants who will be penalised cannot be rehoused

The Government’s justification for its controversial “bedroom tax” has been debunked by new figures showing that up to 96 per cent of those affected have, in effect, nowhere to move.

The figures published today in The Independent expose the false argument behind ministerial attempts to spin the move as ending the  “spare-room subsidy”, and confirm campaigners’ claims that it merely penalises poor people.

The policy means that tenants have their housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent if they have one spare bedroom, and 25 per cent if they have two or more spare bedrooms.

Yet more than 19 out of 20 families  hit by the bedroom tax are trapped in their larger homes because there is nowhere smaller within the local social housing stock to take them. This is shown by figures provided by councils in response to Freedom of Information requests by the Labour Party.

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