Stockholm Syndrome Victim or Judas Goat...?

The Lesser-known Judatos Goat

So, a few weeks ago, I read a puff piece which begged for a rebuttal, and you can find it here, as well as the link to the original story:

Reply to Simon Stevens, author of "Atos Declares Coma Patients Fit' and Other Disability Related Welfare Urban Myths"

I am no hypocrite, and I didn't know Mr Stevens, so I set to educate him, in the hope that he would take on board what I had written, I sent him the link to my blog in the reply section of the Huff, and that was that.

Little could I guess that Mr Stevens would immediately take to his keyboard to write back. I can't say he answered my post, because you would be hard pressed to see the link between my post and his response. I hesitated long and hard before publishing his reply, which he'd sent on G+, because I was ashamed on his behalf, that he could spew such mindless vitriol, and I honestly thought that he may be suffering from some serious mental health issues, so I didn't rush in. If I am being completely honest, I also didn't want to give him the oxygen of publicity. Hey, I have never pretended to be a saint!

Sadly, far from being a one-off, it would appear that Mr Stevens makes a habit of expressing himself in such a reprehensible manner, and after reading his latest outpouring:

Why should disabled people who terrorise ATOS get support?

I have decided that there is no reason why I should stop the man from damning himself in his own words, so here is a copy of his reply to me. (I took a screenshot of it straight away in case he decided to delete it or deny these were his words, so there can be no doubt)

Simon Stevens

9 Aug 2013

Reply

 

You really hate disabled people, don't you?  You want real disabled people locked away and I guess you NEVER met a disabled people considering your ignorant stupid lies. You think pretendng to be disabled means you acan be a total bitch and hate crime as you harass anyone you dared upset your tiny tiny world. What do you want? Shall I kill myself so you can have my money? Have you ever been positive in your like. You rant and rant with  no facts because you are too arrogant in your utter hatred of disabled people to need to. If you represent disabled people, which i guess you never lifted a finger in your life, we should be killed, Hilter must be so proud of what you done to raise hate crime against us. Personal attack is fine as it shows how bitter and twisted and very unhappy are you and how jealious you are on so unimportant you wasted your time demonstrating how nasty you are and you prejudiced you are who think we are unemployable scum.. I hope you achieve your goal to have everyone around you as unhappy as you are.

Well, as you may expect, I was somewhat taken aback by his reply, not least because it seemed so, I don't know, random. But then, I got angry. It seemed to me that there was someone who would stop at nothing to portray himself as the victim even when he was in fact the attacker.

I saw earlier someone commenting on his latest hate piece, wondering he may be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, where the subject ingratiates himself to his captors in the hope that by creating a bond they will spare him, and even in some case, developing feelings of affection or love for them. It is of course a possibility, but I am inclined to believe that this is too generous a description. I think Mr Stevens is more a Judas Goat, happy to sacrifice everyone like him to his masters as long as he himself is spared.

I replied to Mr Stevens' hateful little rant on G+ and I am posting my response here in the interest of transparency:

Marie Pace

12 Aug 2013

Edit

 

Dear Simon,

Why so much misplaced anger?

Not that it really is any of your business, but I am disabled. I'm also the carer for my 16 year old autistic son. I run a support group for parents and carers of people on the Autistic Spectrum, out of my own pocket. I am a lay-advocate for people who need help with their DLA claims. And I live my life as much to the full as I can under the circumstances.

If you didn't want to appear you were launching a random attack on me, you could have asked, I would have told you this. As it goes, you are now looking really daft, because you see, I am as far away from the stereotype you portrayed in your spiteful little attack above as can be.

You can present yourself as a victim of disabled hate all you like, no-one is going to believe you. You wanted someone to give you facts to counteract the horrible piece of Tory propaganda you got published, I gave you either the facts or the ways to go get the facts. Are you even interested in those facts in the first place, or were you happy to be the token mouthpiece for your employers, I wonder?

One more thing: You can play the disabled card as much as you like, because that is so obviously what you are doing here, but here's a final fact for you - I had no idea you were disabled until you said so in your reply (not that it excuses your petulant behaviour, by the way). 

To date, I haven't had a reply, nor do I expect one. I think Mr Stevens knows he has found me to be someone he can't bully with his hateful words, and therefore prefers to move on to easier victims. I don't care, his opinion has no worth whatsoever and his rhetoric comes straight from DWP/Atos standard narratives, with not an iota of original thinking.


If being at the opposite complete end of the spectrum of Mr Stevens' rationale makes me an extremist, then I shall wear this badge with pride and honour, long may I continue to gather the opprobrium of his ilk.

Reply to Simon Stevens, author of "Atos Declares Coma Patients Fit' and Other Disability Related Welfare Urban Myths"

I wrote this to reply in the comments of the Huffington Post, but they limit the comments to 250 words, and well, I had a lot more than that to say, so here goes...

This is the article in question:

Atos Declares Coma Patients Fit' and Other Disability Related Welfare Urban Myths

And this below is my comment:


So much to debunk in this puff piece, where to start?

"I think we are being led to believe some health professional from ATOS has visited a person in a coma, took one look at them, and said yep, they are fit for work! I mean really?"

>> No-one has suggested that. But it is a fact, not an urban myth, that Atos have declared people fit for work because they didn't turn up for their assessment due to being in a coma or dead. Rather than ridiculing the reports, which are factually correct (no-one is being "led to believe" anything), you could accept that it points to a system which is so rigid, so computer-led, that it gives rise to ridiculous situations like these.

"Atos kills 40 people a week, or whatever it is currently." 

>> It doesn't do much for your credibility that you should be so dismissive of the numbers.
This isn't an urban myth either, although it would be if it were written the way you suggest. The reality is that many, too many people die within 6 weeks of being found fit for work by Atos. In this instance, I agree partly with you that *some* people have chosen to summarise it as you have, and this does do a disservice, IMO, to those who fight against this iniquitous system. However, yet again, it points to the implacability and rigidity of a system dealing with vulnerable humans which decides by clicking on this or that key whether someone is fit for work or not.

"It is clear to me it is not the Government nor the right wing media that ensures the language of benefit scroungers has been kept in the public minds but those who claim to be campaigning on behalf of disabled people, because it suits their agenda of victimhood and tries to close the debate of welfare reforms with emotive guilt tripping."

>> It may be clear to you, but you must live in a very sheltered and selective environment if that is the case. You will find that the scrounger rhetoric is in fact firmly embedded both in Hansard and the popular press, seldom a day passes without the Sun or the Mail (or both) telling the great British public at large that "75% of sick people are found fit for work", that "3 out of 4 disabled are faking" and so on. Please don't take my word for it, search the archives of these papers and see for yourself. These numbers aren't made up by the papers, they are passed to them by the DWP. The problem is that these statistics are false ones, based on manipulating the figures. (Please check the site FullFact for the correct ones, I'm not here to do the research you should have done in the first place before creating your piece of pro-Atos propaganda)

That this in turn should cause an increase in hate crime against disabled people is not something which can be categorically proven, of course. People don't get arrested for beating a guy in a wheelchair and say: "the Sun told me to", of course. However, it is a fact that it is rising, I see someone has already told you where to ask for further information, and it would be disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that there is no correlation between the increase in the attacks on the disabled in the papers and the attacks on the disabled in real life.

"The ILF closing and "The extremist groups would like the public to believe this will result in users ending up in residential care (where they are likely of course to be abused) without any evidence that this will be the case."

>> Your tone of derision towards disabled people shows badly in this paragraph, so let's break it down, shall we?

Which "extremist groups" do you refer to? I am not aware that Al-Qaeda has been bombing Atos buildings on behalf of disabled people. Have anti-Atos people in wheelchairs been setting Atos assessment centres on fire? Spread them with manure? Who are these extremist groups?

Do you perhaps mean groups which have been created out of the fear and despair following their Atos assessments? Groups of disabled people sharing the information to try and fight the system (legally!) when that system is already so skewed against them? Disabled people supporting one another when they get their few resources cut off at the whim of a faceless employee? Are these the extremist groups to which you refer? Yes, because nothing is more frightening than someone in a wheelchair or shuffling on 2 sticks, of course.

The users are likely to end up in residential care, that is a fact, and I fail to see how you can claim this as an urban myth. As the funds dry up and the local authorities have to find the money somehow, it is unavoidable that people will not be able to be supported individually in their homes and will instead be looked after collectively, which means residential care. I am at a loss how you can try to deny this.
Will they "of course be abused"? One hopes not, but your pitiful attempt at sarcasm fails in the evidence of the scandals which have emerged in the last few months. If you are not aware of them, I suggest you get out of your bubble and inform yourself. Or maybe you think Winterbourne is more of the "extremist groups" propaganda?

I wondered why anyone apart from IDS would want to try and dismiss the legitimate worries of vulnerable people, and then I read the comments, pointing out that you are in fact an Atos employee (dare I use the word "stooge"?) and at that point, it all becomes quite clear: This so-called article is in fact nothing more than yet another attempt to discredit disabled people at large, their carers, their support groups, and get them further marginalised and ignored.

I hope they pay you more than 30 pieces of silver for writing this. It will cost more than that to cleanse your soul, I fear.

Testing for Atos Miracles page...

Atos Miracles

Well, it seems to be working ok from here... 

I was just testing the link, but if you come across this post, you might as well go and visit them, they're a cracking page anyway!