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Bob Arctor

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About Bob Arctor

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  1. This is very true, and CAB themselves have had to make big cuts to wages, pensions and opening hours, as they get a lot of their funding from the Council, so this has made service provision worse at a time that it's needed most.
  2. If she's making a first claim to benefits then unfortunately it will have to be Universal Credit. CAB run a Help to Claim phone service - I don't know if this is what she tried or another bit of CAB. The other organisations mentioned may be able to help, but not Shelter if it's an initial UC claim. Before making a UC claim she should think about whether she can maintain an online claim or not. If not she can make a non-digital claim by phone but they don't make it easy. Edit: if she's been working but recently had to give up work she may be able to claim Employment and Support Allowance for a year based on NI contributions, after which she would have to move on to UC
  3. I think you have it wrong there. Bigotry is about making negative judgements about a heterogeneous group of people based on a superficial common characteristic. I hate white fascists and Islamonazis, but I don't hate white people or Muslims. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon hates all Muslims, so is a bigot. I'm sure you know this, but Muslims are such a disparate group of people. I know one Muslim who is fasting through Ramadan and one who isn't. The one who is fasting doesn't wear a head scarf, the one who isn't does. You get homophobic Muslims and Muslims who are gay, lesbian and bi. To try to turn people against Muslims is bigotry. But you don't get fascists who are not fascists, or hardcore racists who are not racist. There's your difference.
  4. I don't see why one form of bigotry is more acceptable than another. Branyy is obviously so full of bigotry that they felt the need to enter a thread about a Christian nurse being sacked and essentially say, "ah, but what about those Muslims, eh?" (the vast majority of whom are non-white). I'm sick of it, this constant drip, drip of hatred. Whether someone is a racist bigot or an Islamophobic bigot, or hiding one behind the other, it's all the same.
  5. Totally ridiculous. I have a staff member who takes prayer breaks - about 5 mins per time, a couple of times per day. They fit them in between tasks and it has zero impact on their work. In fact, it's healthy to take a few minutes out at various points during the day. What they don't do is proselytise to the people we work with, unlike the nurse who was rightly sacked.
  6. She had been warned not to do it again (several patients previously complained). She undertook not to do it again. Then she did it again. I'd have sacked her.
  7. 3 outfits per day. Mike Gapes leisure suit in the morning, South American dictator full army uniform in the afternoon, Nadia Popov / Cinderella combo of an evening. Then bear suit (real bear) in bed.
  8. No you wouldn't, because no-one has told her she can't be a Christian. They've just told her it's not ok to go on and on and on about your religion at work to people who are there to be cared for, not preached to, and that it's not ok to spend more time talking about religion than actually doing your job.
  9. Just imagine how bad the privatised probation service must be if the Tories are going to nationalise it. It must be absolutely terrible. Remember these are the people who also considered privatising child protection services in local authorities. Look out for that idea coming back around if Johnson becomes leader.
  10. I mean, one of the problems of the British left is that they are obsessed with Israel/Palestine, sometimes it seems to the exclusion of all else, and some of them go way too easy on Hamas, etc., but to accuse everyone on the left of being antisemitic because they support Palestinian rights, when we need as many people as possible to unite against a resurgent far-right, is really unhelpful.
  11. I've got a lifetime of anti-racist, anti-fascist campaigning behind me, have campaigned with all sorts of anti-fascists including Searchlight, Anti Nazi League, UAF, TUC, etc. I've got to say, the article you linked to is highly problematic. There is an awful lot of "reportedly" and so forth in there - presumably the observers had cameras which they could have used to back up all the claims. Lots of partial quotes without context. And clearly Corbyn wouldn't share a platform with the NF - the article tries to conflate Corbyn sending a message of support with the apparent presence of someone from the NF, as if these are somehow linked. Also, one person was wearing an antisemitic pin badge. So yes, they are a Jew hater. But how one person's discrete show of hatred is meant to reflect on everyone else there I don't know. Throughout my years of campaigning it's always been important to correctly identify fascists and Nazis so as to be able to separate them from others and isolate them. Pretending that some people are fascists and Nazis when they are not confuses the issue and makes it harder to identify the genuine article and is therefore dangerous.
  12. IAPT works for some people, but not everyone. However, an IAPT assessment also acts as a triage assessment and it can happen that someone who is not suitable for IAPT gets offered something else having had their IAPT assessment, so it's worth going for that. NICE guidelines are that GPs should try talking therapy before medication, but this doesn't prevent GPs prescribing anti-depressants at the same time as referring to IAPT, but some GPs are overly rigid in their application of NICE guidance. Again, standard anti-depressants (SSRIs) aren't particularly effective for everyone but work for some and it is worth considering them. A recent study of SSRIs found them to be more effective than previously thought. Also, there are many people with depression who know what they should be doing in their life to improve their mood, but can't summon the motivation to do these things because of the depression, so starting on medication can give people that initial lift which means they can then follow through on the non-medical things that help to improve and maintain mood. I resisted trying anti-depressants for a long time, but then it started to get too much and I figured that if I never tried them then I'd never know if they would work for me, so I gave them a go. And they have worked really well for me. I got lucky first time, some people have to try a succession of different SSRIs before they find one that works, some never find one that really works, but I would say it's worth a try. Side effects can be difficult for the first 2 - 3 weeks, and most people won't start to feel much benefit until 4 - 6 weeks in, so that initial period is difficult and it's good to have support from others and an understanding employer at that point.
  13. I'm guessing he didn't much appeal to the "enemy combatants" "raping their way through Britain", as one of UKIP's advisers described all Muslims.
  14. I see Jeffrey Shaw only managed to get 126 votes. Not even three times the number the National Front got!
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