Transcript:
On Friday November the 11th several of the right wing newspapers were running dubious stories
about DLA; varying from slightly massaging the facts to suit their agenda to out and out bollocks.
In response writer Lucy Glennon asked people on Twitter to use the hashtag #myDLA to tell their
stories about claiming DLA and how they spend it. Inspired by this I asked WtB readers to submit
short audio files with their DLA stories. This is what people had to say:
Person 1: I get DLA as I am bedbound with ME. My DLA review was
refused on paperwork and then it was stopped completely when I had a
medical because apparently, I don't look disabled. It was reinstated
at the highest rates after my MP became involved. The whole thing took
18 months to get sorted out and it shouldn't take an MP's involvement
to get the basic rate of support in this country. Daily Mail articles
are just full of lies and hate and I just don't understand why? What
did we do wrong? We've done nothing wrong, it's just so pointless.
Person 2: I have an invisable illness. It took me two years, a medical
assessment, two appeals and a tribunal to get my DLA. It was highly
damaging to my health. Because my illness is also variable, I let my
DLA lapse when my health improved for a while and now I've relapsed, I
have to go through it all again.
Person 3: My DLA is how I buy equipment. It pays for the electricity
that keeps my ventilator powered. It pays for the electricity that
keeps my feeding equipment powered. It pays for my electric
wheelchair, without which I would be completely unable to mobilise and
it pays for other smaller things like incontinence pads or special
cutlery, plates - all the things you can't really get from the NHS.
Really, without my Disability Living Allowance, I wouldn't be able to
survive and I would die without my ventilator.
Martyn: Hello, my name is Martyn Sibley. I'm 28 years old. I've been
disabled since birth due to a genetic condition called Spinal Muscular
Atrophy. I just wanted to take a little moment to share with you
disability, I qualify for both the higher rate of care and the higher
rate of mobility component of the benefit. Obviously the overall point
of the benefit is that it recognises the additional costs that result
from being disabled, living in a society that exists at the moment.
The care part of my component enables me to employ full time care
assistants to enable me with getting out of bed, general personal
care, domestic chores and also getting out of the house and socially
being active in the community. The mobility part of my DLA is also
enabling me to drive my adaptive car, without which I would find it
very very difficult if not impossible to get anywhere beyond the
distance in a wheelchair. And because I have that adaptive vehicle, I
am able to drive myself out for work, which means I am contributing to
the economy, and also I'm able to get out and about and spend the
money I have earnt, back into the shops and cinemas and bars, again,
putting back into our economy too. So I hope that illustrates the
picture that DLA enables me to live a very full and independent life.
And if you want to look at it from a very economical perspective as
some of the right wing press seem to want to do today, I am actually
far more valuable to our society and our economy when I am able to be
out there, living a great life, working and spending my hard-earned
money. Thank you very much.
Person 4: Without my DLA, I wouldn't have personal assistants. I would
be stuck inside all of the time. I wouldn't be able to eat. I wouldn't
be able to get out of bed. I wouldn't be able to move around my house,
go to the toilet or enpty my catheter bag. Without my DLA I would be
moved to a nursing home. I'm 25 years old and that would be the end of
my life.
Jack: Hello, my name is Jack and my DLA supplies us with a reliable
car and helps us towards essential costs such as energy, special diet
foods, medication and travel to appointments and many many more
things. Without my DLA I would be less independent and not more. This
would force me to be more reliant upon my partner and the social care
system. It took me six weeks of all my useful hours to fill out the
application form. That is 36 hours and resulted in a form including
evidence that was hundreds of pages long. I would hardly call that a
simple form.
Louise: My name's Louise and I'm a working claimant for Disability
Living Allowance. I receive middle rate care and lower rate mobility.
I have epilepsy which means I don't have a driving license any more
and haven't done for the last 15 years because my seizures are
uncontrolled. I use the mobility allowance mainly for taxis because I
am a working journalist, I am out and about a lot and sometimes it's
quite difficult for me to get around. Sometimes journeys would take
for example an hour, and hour and a half whereas by car they might
only take 20 minutes as I am reliant on public transport so that's
where the money goes on taxis. For the care allowance, which I get the
middle rate I use that to buy in meals for after I've had seizures and
I'm not well enough to get out of bed and cook for myself, or
sometimes I'm just too tired from the medication and just don't want
to make the effort, so on those days I will do something like order a
takeway over the internet and have it delivered.
I also occasionally use my DLA for things like buying in the
assistance of a cleaner for the days when I'm too tired and too ill
tobe able to do things like vacuuming my home. For me it is an
absolute lifeline. I really wouldn't be able to manage without because
of the things I am able to do with that extra money. I don't earn a
lot of money for my work. But the DLA helps me with all those extra
costs and if I was to stop receiving it under the proposed changes, I
would probably have to stop work, that would mean I would be thrown
back completely onto benefits whereas while I'm working and receiving
DLA which enables me to keep working, I'm actually paying back into
the pot, I'm paying my taxes and my National Insurance. For the state
that's actually a lot cheaper than taking away my DLA and stopping me
from working.
Person 2: My DLA form was so overwhelmingly
long and difficult that I had to get a charity to fill it in for me.
Eleanor: Hi, my name's Eleanor. I use my DLA to help me with
transport, to get train tickets. I also use my DLA to get support for
doing housework that I can't do, to get some shopping. I also use my
DLA to help to adapt my flat so I can negotiate my everyday living.
And I use my DLA to help me buy equipment.
Pippa: Hi, my name's Pippa, also known as Incurable Hippie. I'm one of
the bloggers with Where's the Benefit? I get DLA for my mental health
problems. The difference it makes to me is massive. I can get very
extreme anxiety which will stop me from going anywhere or doing
anything and I use my DLA for things like taxis or my telephone bill
to help me get support, taxis to appointments for instance. Another
thing it's very helpful for is that sometimes when I'm unwell I'm not
safe to use things like sharp knives and heat sources and I can use my
DLA to spend the extra money on things like ready meals which make it
a lot easier to be able to eat. Without my DLA I would be a lot more
isolated, I would have less contact with my friends, which is a very
important part of me staying as well as I can, I would miss
appointments, which are also clearly important in helping me stay
well. And I would overall become a lot iller, which would of course
cost the government a lot more in treating me, perhaps in hospital or
certainly more intensive treatment. So not only does DLA help me, it
also helps the government save money, because it reduces the risk of
me getting so ill that I would need a lot more expensive care.
Lisa: You can read all the My DLA tweets Lucy collated at http://storify.com/LucyTweeting/mydla
There’ll be another episode of the WtB podcast… Eventually. In the meantime you can find our blog
at wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com, you can ‘like’ us on facebook by going to www.facebook.com/
wheresthebenefit. You can follow us on twitter @wheresbenefit (there’s a character limit on twitter
usernames and we didn’t have room for the “the”. So we’re just @wheresbenefit) or if you’ve got
anything you want to ask us, or you’d like to pitch us a guest post for our blog then you can Email us
at wheresthebenefit at gmail dot com
Thanks for listening!
Transcript:
Deborah: Hello and welcome to the second Where's the Benefit? Podcast. The Where's the Benefit Podcast is now available on iTunes and if you've found us there, you may be interested in our blog at wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com and our twitter feed @wheresbenefit – no “the” in that.
I'm Deborah, the Goldfish and today I'm talking to my boyfriend Stephen about form-filling. This last week we've been working on his Disability Living Allowance Renewal form. Disability Living Allowance or DLA is a state benefit which is supposed to help pay for the additional cost of being disabled, such as help getting around, preparing food, keeping clean and so on. DLA is probably the most difficult benefit to get and yet the government are wanting to cut the case-load by 20% and replace the benefit with something called Personal Independence Payment.
Stephen, I wanted to talk to you about form-filling because this is something that I don't think many people understand, the sheer emotional weight of this process.
Stephen: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? Everyone has to fill in forms at some point in their life, whether it be a mortgage application or a marriage certificate, application for planning permission or whatever. Forms are a part of life, but when people talk about the stress of form-filling, I don't think they've known stress in form-filling until they have tackled the monster Disability Living Allowance form. In previous years, I have photocopied my previous answers to keep track of exactly what I've said because you get lost, especially coming from someone with an invisible chronic illness. I have ME and as anyone with ME will know – and anyone who knows anyone who has gone through the process of living with ME, it's a condition which is, or has been and is still by some people, questioned. It's questioned whether people are actually ill, whether they're making it up, whether it's psychological. And I mean obviously, dealing with the DLA form, it shouldn't really matter if the condition is physical or psychological because either way you have symptoms and those symptoms need looking after. But that's easier said than lived by. It does feel like you're being judged and your entire life is being analysed to see whether you are worthy, whether you are sufficiently pathetic, whether you're doing all that you can possibly do to be as well as you possibly can be. Whether you are simply being lazy. All of those things are turned over and after doing even a sixth of the form, you feel like the next page is going to ask how you intend to top yourself.
D: I think because of the way these forms are worded, there's this sort of mentality that you're guilty of fraud or you're guilty of trying to swing the lead until you prove yourself innocent. And I also I think you're drawn towards presenting yourself as a kind of archetypal “good cripple”. You've got to have the right dose of suffering and the right dose of possitivity, because you're describing you're life...
S: And suffering and possitivity in the correct kind of way.
D: Yes, it's not at all “Social Model”, is it? It's very depressing. Do you think the questions that are asked are relevant to assessing your functional impairment?
S: The questions themselves seem designed for no-one and everyone. Do you know what I mean? In trying to cater for every single person, the questions about walking for example, nowhere does it simply ask, how do you have problems walking? It asks, how do you have problems with the speed of your walking? How do you have problems with the way that you walk? Do you walk with a slight limp, a light limp I think it says, a heavy limp? Or do you drag a limb – presumably after it's been amputated and you're carrying it around with you afterwards. Do you need physical support? It also goes on to ask about how fast you can travel a certain distance. It says, can you walk 40 metres in less than two seconds – or something like that, I can't remember the speed at which they want you to be travelling. But what if you can't travel 40 metres? What if you could travel 40 metres if you were pushed down a flight of stairs quickly or you know. The lack of sensibleness in the questions, the lack of care in the questions, means that you're constantly feeling battered down by the answers. And battered by the questions. And it is amazingly depressing.
D: You almost feel like your particular condition doesn't count, because it doesn't fit.
S: Yeah, yeah, quite.
D: It strikes me that the process of this form-filling is the polar opposite to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a sort of applied stoicism which teaches you to avoid negative thoughts and avoid negative behaviours which lead to those thoughts. And yet, there couldn't be a more negative exercise for focussing on your symptoms, your limitations, the losses of your life.
S: Exactly, it's exactly the same set-up as when we learn as good poorly people, not to answer “Hello, how are you?” with any sort of truth. You say, automatically, “I'm fine thanks, how are you?” Now, there are negatives to this. You do find yourself in a position where you are not able to be honest with others, but on the flip-side, you do find a certain positivity in...
D: I think after you've been ill many years, you forget that you're ill, effectively.
S: Especially if you're able to construct a life, carefully, in which you're able to achieve and be happy whilst minimising the damage done to you by poor health. And this is where you need Disability Living Allowance or any sort of disability benefit because you need monetary support in order to function in a way where you're not miserable all the time. I like to read very much. I've done a degree recently and that required a huge amount of reading. In order to achieve this, I bought myself a book-holder which means I can set up a book, lie in bed and not end up with pain in my arms and hands and shoulders from holding said book while I read. I still am limited, I can't read for a great period of time without my eyes getting sore and you know, various other depressing stuff that I don't like to go on about but which I've had to go on about in the form. As it is, I've got the benefit, or have had the benefit – I might not have by the end of this form-filling process – but I've had a benefit which allowed me to buy that book-holder and be able to read and be happy and productive without moaning.
D: As somebody with chronic illness, you don't wake up every morning thinking, “Goodness me, I'm an ill person, I'm out of work, I can't walk down the garden, I need a wheelchair, I need this equipment.” It doesn't actually occur to you and if it did, your life wouldn't be worth living.
S: Exactly. And not waking up thinking, “I'm a poorly person.” is a sign that you're doing well. That you're using your resources, that you're balancing your life, especially in the case of chronic illness. I imagine that it might be very different if you're only problem is that you're paralysed and wheelchair-bound, in that you might not be able to avoid thinking, “I'm paralysed” but I'm not sure that's true, I should imagine that people just get on. And the point about a disability benefit is that it's there to allow you to get on. It shouldn't have anything to do with how miserable you are unless you're claiming because you're so miserable you can't get out. And if a form makes you feel so miserable that you have to thump a pillow, or that you end up crying, then you end up having to claim for psychological reasons as well as the other ones that got you there in the first place.
D: We all pay National Insurance, so in many ways claiming benefits is claiming on that insurance. Everybody's entitled to it when those circumstances arise, just like any sort of insurance. But I can't really imagine an insurance claim that would be so emotionally loaded as this.
S: Well indeed. Recently my father was in a car accident and had to claim on his insurance. He had to even say that it was his fault the accident occurred even though it was quite obvious to everyone that the other driver was speeding. But because my father was in such a state that he wasn't able to call the police, it meant that he had to accept blame. But no-one, no-one on the insurance team, no-one in his home, no-one in the streets, no-one in the newspapers, no-one in parliament, talked about him like he was some fraudster, or liar, or even a bad driver.
D: Many years ago, my sister had to make an insurance claim on the grounds of a broken nose. It wasn't very badly broken, but it was broken and it wasn't like it was before. But she didn't have to write an emotional essay about how her broken nose had effected her. She just needed the medical evidence, she needed a photograph of before and after. So even with a medical thing, it wasn't loaded with the sort of emotion that these claims are.
S: And this is where I think that there's an error in relying on a form for these things, like this form. I'm sure a form could be created, but there needs to be more trained, professional and caring human interaction with people – which would also cut out the vast majority of these frauds that go on. Because any form, when a form is the one thing that is relied upon, can be used incorrectly. If you know how to fill in a form. It's like my exams when I was doing A-Levels, I knew exactly how to fill in the exam papers in order to get an A, because there was a set response, that if you went through the right process, then you got it. And we know, through filling out this silly form, that if you stick to just ticking the boxes - which is really all you ought to need to do if you're going to have some other, further response - then you don't get the benefit. Because you need to write in these horrible big boxes, “Oh my life's so awful, I can't do any of this, eugh!” otherwise they don't listen to you. And it's a war of attrition.
D: I should point out that the benefit isn't granted on the grounds of merely the form, but they do contact your doctor and so on, always. And very often they send out an independent doctor to check you out.
S: But that doctor isn't always that good. I've never – the one time I had a doctor visit me at home, he merely filled out the form again, but just asking my opinion about things at the same time. He was useless.
D: But it is, as you say, very much a matter of attrition. So many people I know have been turned down for DLA at some point for no particular reason. There's no pattern when it comes to conditions or mistakes they could have made. They simply test you, really, to see if you're prepared to fight for it. And of course the most vulnerable people, the people in most need of this help, are the least able to fight for these things.
S: Indeed and the least capable people, in this sort of situation where a form is so destructive, mentally – I mean, it's been destructive to me, physically and the amount of pain it caused is unbelievable. And that was with huge amounts of help from Deborah.
D: And your Mum!
S: And my Mum. And all of the times that have gone before, doing this form, means I've got all this experience to work on. But it's a huge amount of hours and pain and whatever. I didn't sleep properly last night, I have forms flittering through my nightmares. And that's coming from someone who claims at least to be relatively mentally capable and mentally healthy – although I do get a certain degree of anxiety from the pain and symptoms. But we have seen, at Blogging Against Disablism Day, we saw someone who had mental illness who hadn't reapplied for her – I think it was her benefit, it was a lady – she reapplied for her benefit because it was too much for her. How can that, how can that be? How can we look after people if we're looking after them with a form they're incapable of dealing with?
D: Of course, you've filled in your renewal form now, I filled in my DLA renewal form at, well it was Christmas by the time I sent it off, it took me a couple of months. But in the next couple of years, we'll both be facing the Employment and Support Allowance assessment and if the proposed changes go ahead, we'll both have to fill in the forms for Personal Independence Payment, which is going to replace DLA. So we're going to have to go through all this, all over again.
S: And the problem, it's not just the form. It's the process of filling in the form, of feeling judged and then, of actually being judged, of receiving a letter – Deborah received one saying that the fainting that she suffers from is something that she can “make reasonable measures to guard against”. Which yeah, it's fine, she can do that. If she doesn't ever get out of bed, or, et cetera. We're all judged, in the process of gaining benefit. And it's a soul-destroying process. And it changes us from being people to being a set of conditions, a set of problems and so this makes us disabled. We become worse off, through seeking help. Deborah will be all right if she only stays in bed, she doesn't have to worry about fainting. And that's not what a benefit, a disability benefit is meant to do for people. It's meant to help them. It's meant to make things possible that weren't previously possible.
D: Thank you very much for talking to me, Stephen. I shall see you later! And thank you for listening. As I said at the top, but I'll say it again, the Where's the Benefit Podcast is now available on iTunes and if you've found us through iTunes, you may be interested in our blog at wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com and our twitter feed @wheresbenefit
Lisa's note: WtB has a podcast! I'm so very excited. I have to say a huge, huge, huge thanks to Goldfish for all her hard work this week making this audio file into a podcast by doing all the research as to how one actually sets up a podcast. She typed up the transcript that's beneath the jump too. I also have to say thanks to the people that spoke to me on Monday. We'd have no audio file if it weren't for them.
You can find our podcast in iTunes here. The feedburner feed is here.
Lisa: Hi and welcome to the first episode of the Where’s the Benefit
podcast. I’m Lisa, one of the founders of WtB.
This week from the 9th to the 15th of May is a “week of action against
Atos” organised by the campaign group Benefits Claimants Fight Back.
Atos Origin are the private company contracted by the government to
carry out the medical assessments to determine whether or not a person
is eligible for benefits. This includes the controversial Work
Capability Assessment to deem if a person is eligible for Employment
and Support Allowance.
On Monday afternoon I went down to the protest and picnic outside
Atos’s headquarters in London and spoke to some of the protesters. I
asked people who they were and why they’d come out to demonstrate and
this is what they had to say.
Marmie: I'm Marmie. I'm here with the DPAC. I'm also here as an
African woman with impairments and I'm really here to say that what
Atos is doing against disabled people is inhumane, is outrageous and
is quite barbaric. For years, they've been making huge amounts of
profits on the backs of our oppression. It needs to stop. We're here
to get the message across to Atos that we will not stand for this. We
are very united as disabled people. We must keep up the pressure. We
must continue the struggle. And eventually we will win.
Our message to the Con-Dem government is you cannot carry on
oppressing us. We are here to stay. We're going to carry on
campaigning and protesting. And we hope that the whole of the UK will
wake up to Atos Origin, as just another greedy multi-national company
which is on the backs of disabled people, destroying our lives and
more or less killing people! Because people are living in fear.
They're living in fear of oppression. They're living, having their
benefits cut. They're living against all these assessments. It's all
injustice, it's all inhumane and it needs to stop.
Carol: My name is Carol, I'm the mother of a disabled child. And the
reason I'm here is because I want to show my opposition to the
government cuts. I'm outraged by Atos and the methods that they're
using to basically get people off disabilities. I think this
“check-box” system where they invite people in for an interview and,
you know, they have that computerised system which they just
basically, uh. It's a really inhumane way to treat people and I'm
outraged to hear people are being thrown off benefits,. It's almost as
if the State wants to slough off a whole section of people and leave
them to fend for themselves. It seems to be that that's what the
purpose is; just to get people off benefits, remove them from public
sight and just leave people, you know, without any support.
Yeah, so that's why I'm here and, um, I intend to come to as many of
these as possible. I hope that I can come to as many of these as
possible. I hope the movements grows and we can link all these
struggles together. I feel that disabled people are kind of at the
forefront of the struggle. Really I just think that, you know, the way
in which the government has targeted them, as if there would be no
opposition. I'm glad to see that people turned up here today and I
think the vibe has been very good and strong.
Yeah, I just wanted to mention David Cameron as well because before he
walked into Number 10, he had said that he understood the situation of
disabled people and that he would make sure that they were protected
and their benefits would not be touched and so on. And then for him
to, you know, as soon as he walks into Number 10 that completely
changes. And it's like there was this language where they say one
thing and then they do the complete opposite as if we're too stupid to
notice that they're basically making these cuts. And considering that
he had a disabled child, he also relied on the state for basic
services. How can he do this to a whole swathe of people? It's just
hypocritical.
Adam: My name's Adam Lotun. I'm here for myself personally, and also
to represent those people who can't be here because of their
disabilities. I'm here to try and further the argument and raise the
voice of the disabled community against the use of the Work Capability
Test by Atos and their involvement in the whole process of assessing
people with disabilities. And also, the non-consistency in how Atos
operate. You have assessors who are nursing officials, nursing
practitioners. You have doctors – who may be medical doctors – or you
have “medical professionals” who could be a podiatrist, could be an
optician or could just be an ENT person. And they're going to talk to
you and make a ruling on you as a disabled person even though they
know nothing about the disability they're looking at or how
disabilities effect people in their lives today. So that's what I'm
here for.
Also to have a go at the Con-Dems today, about their policies of
discriminating against people with disabilities. The one thing I
cannot understand is that we do have the Equality Act and the DDA but
still the government break that. That's about it.
Eleanor: Hi, I'm Eleanor. I'm a co-founder of DPAC and we're here
today to protest about the Atos Origin and the 300 million pounds they
got from the DWP. But basically we're here to protest about what Atos
is doing and about the assessments which has created an environment of
fear for a lot of disabled people. So much so that some of them are
thinking of committing suicide because they are at great risk of
losing the support system which has been what is, for many of them,
what is used to keep them going.
Sam: My name's Sam, I'm nineteen, I work on organic farms. I've got a
friend who uses a wheelchair and claims Disability Living Allowance.
She lives in Leeds so she can't be here today but she uses on-line
disability forums and she told me stories of people who are waiting
for the day that their letter arrives to be reassessed on a system
that's not basing the decisions on facts but simply on targets for
random cuts they've been told to make by the government. And some of
these people who are waiting for their letters to arrive are
contemplating suicide and serious consequences in their personal and
family lives based on whether they can get the disability benefits
that they've been claiming for years and that they're entitled to.
Keith: I'm here because of the systematic abuse of disabled people.
Our people are disabled by society. One of the lies put about by the
Daily Mail and the other yellow press is that disabled people don't
work. The reality is that most disabled people I know do work, they
just don't get paid for their contribution to society. Obviously,
within their resources, and many conditions are you're better some
days than other days and when you're not well, it really effects you
far more. Everyone has good days and bad days. The differences is for
people with impairments is the bad days means they can't go out or
they can't function at all. Impairments effect us all. And if you've
not now got an impairment, bare in mind that in the future you're
likely to, statistically speaking, to have an impairment and to be in
the same situation as the people being cut off now.
Let's say no to Dignitas, Atos and the stealth culture. We're the forth
richest country in the world, one of the smallest rich countries in
the world and we can afford to give civilisation and dignity, because
the two main aspects of equality are dignity and respect. And we're
neither getting dignity nor respect from this government, in order to
support their tax-fiddlers in the multi-national companies. .
Amx: I'm Amx Waters, I'm here from Queer Resistance which is an
anti-cuts group, an anti-cuts collective made up of LGBTQI people.
We're fighting the cuts and also defending the right to protest. A
lot of queer people are suffering from the cuts to benefits at the
moment, especially cuts to HIV support services and mental health
care. Basically, Queer Resistance is here to stand in solidarity with
all of those people.
Sam B: My name is Sam Brackenbury. I'm here to defend benefits. I'm
here to defend independent living. And I'm here to defend people who
can't speak for themselves because they are locked up in nursing homes
and they're being deprived of DLA.
People think direct action means hitting it on the streets and
blocking roads. It doesn't. It means picking up the phone, writing
to your MP, writing to the papers, phoning your local radio stations,
saying that you're not going to put up with this. Right. People
voted for a government that's let them down. The government has let
us down systematically, doesn't matter what political colour they are,
they have let us down systematically throughout the years. Right. It's
not governments that make the difference, it's people that make the
difference. As has been proved in Egypt, it's been proved in Yemen.
It's been proved all over. So if disabled people really want to change
things, it's up to them to get out on the street. They can't write to
their MP, expect an able-bodied MP to understand what they're going
through. If they're really irritated about something, it's up to them
to get out on the street, start picking up the phones and asking
awkward questions.
Lisa: For more information on Benefit Claimants Fight Back their
website is at benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com or they tweet as
@claimantprotest
We’ll be back again next week, or sometime around there. With us all
being sickly types we can’t promise we’ll be able to keep to a strict
schedule of weekly podcasts. But we’ll try our best.
In the meantime you can find our blog at
wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com, you can ‘like’ us on facebook by going
to www.facebook.com/wheresthebenefit. You can follow us on twitter
@wheresbenefit (there’s a character limit on twitter usernames and we
didn’t have room for the “the”. So we’re just @wheresbenefit) or if
you’ve got anything you want to ask us, or you’d like to pitch us a
guest post for our blog then you can Email us at
wheresthebenefit at gmail dot com
Thanks for listening!