Runnin On Empty

The longest serving worker  along Goodwood Parade shops on Courtlands Drive in Watford is about to hang up her hairdressing scissors  after sixty one years on the parade, that's sure alot of haircuts, so I caught up with Naomi Coyle to find out how it all started :                   "When I  was thirteen, I used to work Fridays and Saturdays at the Hairdressers , it was called "Malcoms" back then. When I left school at around thirteen/fourteen  I did my apprenticeship there before leaving for a short while, but then  I came back and the shop had a new owner and name "Richards" and I must've worked there for a good forty years.  When Richard retired and the shop closed  I moved over to the other side of the Parade  where owner Julie Allery had the Hair Tech salon and I've been here ever since" There has been alot of filming on the Parade over the years and some of you might remember the  Confused.co...

It may seem madness that as we start 2025 the DWP have already announced some of its plans to ramp up its intimidation and fear mongering of disabled claimants  and this is going to include using social media. They've stated they aim on hiring  teams of people to search social media for claimants and look for posts so that they can build a case against them. We're not talking organised  criminals fleecing the system of hundreds of thousands here although that's what they are leading the public to believe with one breath,  but in another they state they will be looking at peoples posts to see if they're  doing something they've perhaps said they cant do on a claim form, or any activity that could show they aren't as ill/disabled as they have stated. Now there's a huge problem with this...... Firstly as we all know, people can create false lives for different reasons, photos can be photo shopped,  someone bed-bound that never leaves their room can create...

  May is M.E awareness month, after 33 yrs of living with it & campaigning I kinda hoped we'd be somewhere by now where awareness wasn't needed, and I wouldn't be here again boring the pants off you, but unfortunately that's not the case,  there's still alot of ignorance surrounding M.E (No we're not a little tired)  and there's still no treatment and no cure, so here I am once again  to hopefully give those of you unfamiliar with the illness a very brief insight that I hope will help, next time you hear it mentioned. M.E known by it's medical name Myalgicencephalomyelitis (Yes I know, let's just stick to M.E)  is still classified by the World health Organisation as a neurological disorder, It's often referred to as a        "lingering death"  because quite frankly  that's exactly how it feels. The illness is a complex chronic one that affects the whole system,  physical and also sensory, from a whole body exhaustion, ...

Originally I was looking to write a piece for M.E awareness month in  May, in fact I started writing it three times and then deleted it (no mean feat when your primary symptom is exhaustion?) but I just kept getting frustrated by it all, and as I wrote I kept thinking what's the point? 31 yrs in,  still campaigning, still ranting, still writing and still have M.E? The injustice to M.E sufferers continues, I believe those with Long Covid are being treated in a similar fashion, and the  DWP have already been told not to accept Long Covid as a disability?  Maybe they need to refresh their brain cells as to what disability actually means?   "A physical or mental condition that limits a persons movements, senses or activities" you only have to type into a search engine "Explain the word  disability" for a whole heap of explanations to pop up and yet the DWP have a ( secret not so secret) list of illness they've been told  not to cla...

                                 Social media (Do we have to?) some of you may have seen a recent post about me contemplating or rather constipating over deleting all my social media accounts? This was posted in a moment of absolute loathing at Facebooks decision to change how we run our pages, which I wasn't aware of until I went to post the normal way and couldn't. It had come without warning, so thinking it was a browser error? Windows update error? Whatever error? I used time I'll never get back trying to sort it, only I couldn't of course because some pre-pubescent genius at Facebook thought it would be a great idea to change everything and make navigation and use like a challenge off the crystal maze. But  there was no prize, just a blood boiling frustration that was in danger of seeing my head explode (Not much to see there then?)       I very much have a hate/l...

Ever since the N.I.C.E (National Institute for Health and Care  Excellence) debacle over delayed publishing of the new M.E guidelines I've struggled to write this article, in fact I've buried my head and done everything possible to avoid it and I didn't know why? Until now that is, and while what I'm about to say is  incredibly hard to write, I feel I owe it to myself and the M.E community and to all those still uneducated and unaware of the magnitude of abuse dished out to sufferers by the medical profession, media and wider community. For many sufferers the abuse also came from family members and  so called friends and in many cases still does. I have suddenly realized, as an M.E sufferer of over three decades that I have become conditioned to the abuse, the government deemed it acceptable and therefore the rest of  society normalized it  and eventually I accepted it too. I'm not sure when exactly, there was no definitive moment, facing physical...

Some of you may remember that back in June, I went on a writing spree.?.....yes another one, I've lost count of the letters and emails written over the past thirty years in the very pin head size of a chance that someone, somewhere,  would see sense and  stop the abuse and manslaughter of  the sick and disabled. I also raised a number of specific concerns, the treatment of Sick and disabled under the present Government  via D.W.P, increase in Mental health and pushing people over the edge under the present  system which is ultra disablist despite their spiel.  I also criticized the loaded questions both on paper and also at assessment stage that are impossible to answer honestly and fairly  and yet people are forced to do so ?  As for  Myalgicencephalomyelitis (M.E)  I stated that  while M.E has been recognized  as a complex chronic disabling illness with multi symptoms & listed by the World health organisation as a ne...