Runnin On Empty

Ex Wat Obs Columnist. Wipe your feet, leave your ego at the door & come on in 🤓 #Watford #Writer #Music #PWME #Myalgicencephalomyelitis #Disability #Campaigner

[Disability News Service @johnpringdns]

An autistic circus skills teacher took his own life after becoming increasingly distressed by the bureaucratic chaos caused by his “migration” to universal credit, which led to him facing a new £500 monthly charge for his social care
#DWP #UniversalCredit
https://t.co/Bpx3fPw40j

[#MEAction Network UK @MEActNetUK]

More than light. It is a voice for the voiceless.

Last night, #MEAction UK took to the streets of London to ask @jamesmurray_ldn to listen to the very severely ill and & set up NHS care.

More locations, photos & videos coming soon!

Lobby your MP!

https://t.co/6q16UjbncX

[Runnin On Empty @RunninOnEmptee]

@Keir_Starmer Absolutely no faiths should be allowed to carry a knife on UK streets, it makes a mockery, when with one breath you're supposedly trying to rid the streets of knife crime to then legally let a group carry due to faith? Will you now call for a ban? 🤓 #HenryNowak

[Disability Rights UK @DisRightsUK]

🚨NEWS 🚨

"One in four of us is Disabled. It’s time the UK government heard us"

Labour needs a new direction. Its first step must be to stop treating Disabled people as a problem to be managed - DR UK Head of Policy, Fazilet Hadi for @openDemocracy 👇https://t.co/8Mff6yQBe3

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

The DWP have a compliant corporate media to breathlessly repeat their ableist propaganda -but here's what they missed from the Milburn report

By @RachelCDailey_
https://t.co/5KPJEv26lh

[Disability Rights UK @DisRightsUK]

🚨BREAKING NEWS 🚨

We have published our response to the Timms Review, backing calls for an Additional Cost Disability Payment (ACDP).

We demand an end to hostility, with a system based on support not punishment. Read the full response 👇
https://t.co/K1IwdtbIQQ

[Anton 🇫🇮 🇸🇪 @finnishgunner.bsky.social @finnishgunners]

Brilliant. Credit to themsbloke. Nice to see someone with another illness advocate for ME.

[Adam @ABrokenBattery]

George Monbiot describes the treatment of #MECFS as “The Greatest Medical Scandal of the 21st century”. Repost of the introduction to my 27-minute explainer video for #MEAwarenessMonth — now optimised for phones.

[Elizabeth❣️ @WorkElizab]

Do you agree?

[Channel 4 News @Channel4News]

The world's first genomic study into ME, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, has been announced.

Researchers are hoping that by building a genetic map of the illness, it will help pave the way for a future diagnostic test and even treatments.

But charities have warned that there is more to do and this must only be the start.

[Carole Bruce @CaroleBruce17]

‘The withholding of lifesaving care is not a theoretical concern: it is a documented, devastating outcome of misapplying psychosomatic models to a serious, organic illness.’
BMJ opinion piece on treatment of #ME patients.
Too many die Too many suffer for decades.
#MEAwarenessDay

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

NHS MADE HER SIGN A GAG ORDER. PARLIAMENT PROMISED TO STOP IT. BOTH LIED.

Sue Allison was a breast radiographer at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (@UHMBT) for nearly two decades. In 2012, she reported a senior radiologist who was repeatedly failing to diagnose women with breast cancer.

Two of those women died from cancers that should have been caught.

What happened next is the NHS playbook, start to finish.
She was ostracised. Bullied. Pushed out of her department. Blacklisted across the NHS so thoroughly that job applications in hospitals as far away as Kingston triggered questions about her whistleblowing.

She described her reputation as "absolutely destroyed."

After 34 years in the profession, she will never work in it again.

In 2015, with no legal advice, she was pressured into signing not one but two NDAs. The trust used those agreements to try to stop her from ever bringing a claim against them.

An employment tribunal later ruled both NDAs void. The judge found she had a clear case of whistleblower detriment.

By 2019, her case had reached Parliament.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) personally cited Sue Allison's NDAs in the House of Commons and declared he was "determined to end" the injustice of gagging NHS whistleblowers.

The ban was never enforced. Six years later, it still hasn't been.

She eventually settled her detriment claim in 2020 for financial compensation after admitting she would have had to sell her house to fund a full tribunal.

The trust thanked her for raising concerns. The same trust that silenced her for eight years.

She wasn't done. She became a governor of the same trust, trying to hold it to account from the inside.

In May 2023, she resigned. The bullying culture, she said, had never changed.

Governors asking legitimate questions about patient safety were being suppressed and eventually dismissed.

This case runs from 2012 to 2023. Eleven years. Same trust. Same culture. Same result for the people who spoke up.

The Morecambe Bay maternity scandal. The urology cover-up. The disputed emails. Peter Duffy. And Sue Allison, running through all of it, trying to hold the line, watching the institution close ranks every time.

Sources: @ComputerWeekly, @BylineTimes, Lancaster Guardian, @IndexCensorship,

[Lizzy H @hopefullizzy]

Today is #worldMEday and part of #MEawarenessweek

I’ve had this horrific disease since I was 14yrs old. A fit, health and active teenager, until I got a severe gastric flu, and never recovered.

For the last 7yrs in various ways my health has been declining, until near death

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

“Once again: Palantir fails the trust test. The government should cut Palantir out of our NHS once and for all.”
https://t.co/zAmQIuEgff

[Tom Kindlon @TomKindlon]

I'm one of millions missing from our lives due to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, each with their own challenges and losses.

Unlike Covid lockdowns, the lockdowns we have dealt with for years due to ME continue

#May12 #MEcfs

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

The DWP is an absolute clusterfuck.

This time they've been miscalculating payments, issuing overpayments, and demanding “repayment” from claimants who they blame. Sound familiar?

@RachelCDailey_ writes.
https://t.co/p3kLaCy7Hj

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

A leaked document reveals Palantir staff are being granted “unlimited access” to identifiable patient data.

Join us demanding this spy-tech firm gets out of our NHS 👇
https://t.co/JGcobrFyzb

[King Arthur Fan @brandilwells]

If you’ve ever applied for public assistance or disability then you know how true this is.

[Carole Bruce @CaroleBruce17]

Published in time for #MEAwarenessWeek
There are too few books that we are able to share with people to explain how it is for #pwME
Here is one. Available from all good bookshops and Amazon.

[Carole Bruce @CaroleBruce17]

'My daughter has #ME, she went into appointments walking and came out in a wheelchair' https://t.co/C6HMFuECST