{"id":12560,"date":"2014-10-16T23:29:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T23:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=12560"},"modified":"2014-10-16T23:29:31","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T23:29:31","slug":"blog-action-day-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=12560","title":{"rendered":"Blog Action Day &#8211; Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag14\/14063001.jpg\" alt=\"Blog Action Day - Inequality \" \/><br \/>\nPictured at the height of summer, Mark&#8217;s wildflower meadow, at the bottom of St Ethelwold&#8217;s garden, was named after a young man who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxfordmail.co.uk\/news\/yourtown\/witney\/11112129.Government_admits_Mark_Wood_s_benefits_cut_before_he_starved_to_death__was_wrong_\/\"> starved to death<\/a> after his benefits were cut.<\/p>\n<p>Atos, the company  in charge of assessing whether a lot of vulnerable people like Mark should return to work or loose their benefits, lost their government contract by mutual consent. Atos could not make a profit from the contract, and the government received too many complaints about the way cases were handled.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag14\/14101601.jpg\" alt=\"Blog Action Day - Inequality \" \/><br \/>\nAutumn is now here and just a few flowers remain among the fallen leaves in Mark&#8217;s Garden.<\/p>\n<p>The contract will go to a new company in the Spring. A private company needs to make a profit. The government has a political agenda and targets. So it will always be difficult to assess individuals like Mark, who have complex needs, within such a set up where time is money.<\/p>\n<p>This is a contribution to the Blog Action Day on the Theme of Inequality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pictured at the height of summer, Mark&#8217;s wildflower meadow, at the bottom of St Ethelwold&#8217;s garden, was named after a young man who starved to death after his benefits were cut. Atos, the company in charge of assessing whether a lot of vulnerable people like Mark should return to work or loose their benefits, lost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}