Please support me in trying to stop the government benefit reforms from labelling everyone on benefit as a lier or a cheat. Seven years ago I was dismissed from my full time employment because I have arthritis in my back and couldn't guarantee that I could manage to spend a full day in work everyday of the week. It was humilliating and degrading to be told at 46 years old that that is probably the end of your working life as no one is going to want to employ me with this disability. Having been put on the very low paying Incapacity Benefit (IB) I eventually came to terms with my situation and tried to make the best of it. Now, thanks to the governments latest attempt to reform the benefit system I find that I am once again been made to feel worthless and incapable of supporting myself, although as it turns out, not now disabled enough to qualify for the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA) which is the replacement for IB. I was reassesed by a doctor, who would have been retained by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) so no bias there, and because I was able to lift an empty box above my head I was fit to work! No account was taken of the pain I suffer when I have to sit or stand for more than about 30-45 minutes without being able to rest my back, or of the fact that I have to take the maximum allowed pain relief and feel drugged up to the eye balls sometimes as a result. Appeal after appeal and we arrive at Tribunal (18/03/13) where I finally get to put my own case forward. Once again I have been made to feel that I am worthless and have been put through the humilliation of trying to justify my need for the pittance that is the ESA benefit. If it wouldn't have hurt my knees so much I felt I needed to get on my knees and beg! Untill I was dismissed in 2006 I had worked full time for 29 years paying all my taxes and National Insurance contributions as everyone else, but now when I need something back from the system, getting blood out of a stone would be easier. The current government is fostering an attitude toward people who unfortunately have to claim benefits, like myself, that we are all a bunch of liers, thieves and cheats. The general public is being brainwashed that benefit claiments are no good lazy people who do not deserve any kind of help from the state and should get off their backside and get a job! WHAT JOB WOULD THAT BE? but thats another story. This attitude towards genuine deserving cases has to be stopped, I know how it has made me feel going through this process and while I am of fairly strong character and will not take all this lying down, not everyone is able to fight back and have their say. I still don't know if my appeal has been upheld, I doubt it as the decision was probably made before I even walked through the door, but hopefully with this petition I can make some people at least, aware of the reality of being on benefit and having to rely on the welfare state just to pay the bills. I am not a scrounger or a lier or a cheat but that is how I am being portrayed by this current government which is made up of "posh boys" who do not have a clue about life in the real world.