No Match, Universally

This site really needs to be taken down. Look at this advert for example; since when did clothe stores ever use recruitment agencies? The only shops I have ever seen advertise in that way are mobile phone places. The advert also says, underlining to make the point, no telephone enquiries; why is that I wonder? I can't even ring - whomever - to find out where the job even is? Wouldn't that save time for people that, as it may transpire, can't get to the venue.

Look at the link to apply. There is no information of any kind as to who the agency or even the business concerned is. I certainly have never heard of Que Consultants before, though I suppose there is no reason why I should. All that's available is a simple form with an attachment facility to include a CV, below which is an advert for 'cv library' entreating the prospective and naive applicant to upload a CV to them, even though no link is provided.

If I go to the root web page there's a 'vacancies' link that simply points me to an email address to send my CV to reassuring me that they have plenty of vacancies, nationwide. They cannot tell me any of them, nor can I find any information on this particular vacancy. The link for uploading CV information takes me to CV-library.co.uk, which seems to be the ultimate goal of this site. This other site seems to have its own search facility, but, like so many of these sites, gives back a completely random, and therefore useless, result each time; regardless of your search parameters. All the jobs listed are sourced from other recruitment agencies, such as Randstad whose site I could go to directly and would have a much easier time sorting through, rather than diving into one big mess and having to upload my CV.

Is this really the way forward? I'm still none the wiser as to this particular vacacny. Not that I have any intention to apply, i just found the whole thing a textbook example of how useless Jobmatch is. It hasn't matched anyone with anything. It cannot even tell the user the name of a simple clothing store that's apparently looking for staff. I say apparently because I'm not even sure this isn't anything more than an elaborate fishing trip.

What an enormous convoluted mess.

No effort has been made to improve this site. Clearly the government has no idea how to address this issue. Again this is an example of the sheer incompetence and complete inexperience of Lord Fraud. This man is being paid a fortune in expenses and wages to play with people's lives, or at best to make people jump through hoops. Not only that, but on this site the hoops keep shifting. The site is so badly made that any attempt to navigate the pages of adverts completely reshuffles the adverts so that vacancies you've already seen get pushed to the front of the queue again, making everything twice as awkward as it needs to be. It takes some skill to produce so incompetent a design as this, but the Tories have managed it.

The Assessment Carousel

Three weeks ago I had a mental health assessment as the result of me asking my GP to ask the CMHT about a diagnosis for aspergers/ADD/etc. During that assessment I asked about getting a diagnosis and was asked whether or not it would make any difference to my life, which, really, seems a rather negative thing to ask. I said that, per se, it would not, but the purpose was in respect of ESA and benefits. Unfortunately I have to navigate the DWP whether out of work or even trying to find work and so I need to have these things looked into and, if possible, rubber stamped. That’s just how the world works. He said there’s a possibility they could do a diagnosis locally and look into it.

Three weeks passes by and I hear nothing, so I rang them up yesterday. I had to ring three times over the course of three hours because I kept getting the run around. The person that was supposed to call me back didn’t bother. In the end I get through and I’m told that he’d actually written to me 10 days previously; I have received no such letter. He then explains that I don’t qualify for ‘secondary support’, which means they don’t think I’m ‘ill’ enough for their services. That is not unexpected, though of course it’s another avenue of potential support that just doesn’t exist.

When I asked about the diagnosis it turns out that he hadn’t bothered to ask. He said ‘oh you said it wouldn’t make a difference’. But that isn’t what I said: he, like so many people in the system, just doesn’t listen. This outcome is so common it beggars belief; I had to explain to him, again, the whole point of this, that I’m dealing with an ESA appeal and getting this looked at would be a great help (assuming a positive diagnosis of course). Oh, he says, and then starts saying that I’d have to ask my GP to arrange it, despite that being how I ended up talking to him in the first place! He then says that they can’t do the funding. Essentially just a load of excuses when all I wanted to know was whether or not he had done what he promised me that he would do: look into the possibility of been able to get a local diagnostic appointment.

He actually rang me back half an hour later having done just that and told me that they are in the process of setting up a local service and that it would really be helpful to get diagnosed. Well duh! So it’s back to the GP to ask for what I’d asked for in the first place. The system is its own worst enemy, and mine.

Nick 'n' Marge: A New Low For Auntie

This is the message: no matter how crap one must do some work. No matter how much disarray society is in, just ‘et yer head down’ and do your bit: lie back and think of England. But things are falling apart! Is this how to address them? If so can you honestly tell me that it’s working?

Work should only be done if it is necessary. That would eliminate pointless busywork (like call centres dedicated to ‘saving Britain money’) and give people more time for their lives. Instead we have people that only see their families for nine hours a week extolling the virtues of this nebulous concept that seems merely synonymous with exploitation.

Work should only be done if it is necessary. I don’t spend my time polishing the dishes I clean the plates when they need to be cleaned. Once that’s done I don’t give it a second thought. While I’m doing it I do it as best I can and as efficiently as I can, but it is not something that consumes my time. Nor should it be. That is not what I was put on this earth for.

This programme is merely advocating economic serfdom. The only thing it is empowering is emasculation you have no choice in your life. It infantilises people and yet at the same time as it treats them as victims it talks up the supposed virtues of work. Qualities such as self respect and self reliance. But people are not self reliant, they merely exchange one master for another. People are taught to resent the unemployed for a variety of reasons, but the main one seems to be that they envy not having a boss, and so they want the ‘taxpayer’ to be that boss. They want to have a direct say in how much money the unemployed, even the disabled, receive and how they can spend it – even if that means restricting its flow back into the economy.

If we want to be truly socially responsible citizens, and I take that to mean doing what we can to make life better for subsequent generations, we need to reject the systems that don’t work. That is the purpose of science, philosophy as well as art and culture. Instead we observe our society as a patchwork of shabby short term principles overseen by selfish and hypocritical administrators and viewed through a squalid lens. That is my perfect description of Nick and Marge’s televisual outing and their, frankly scripted, narrative pieces. Are we to live our lives wedded to economic turbulence, blown by winds powered by forces beyond us? It seems we are to make a virtue of this. That we have to tolerate this, to tolerate greed and corruption. Some people think this is god testing us and that if we work hard now, if we don’t resist and just get on with it, like good little soldiers, then we are rewarded later, in heaven or in our sixties (or later). If we make it that far!

The programme’s nadir sees Stevie ask the patient, while Liam is right there, if she thinks that Liam is lazy. The patient, who is quite infirm, of course reinforces Stevie’s belief that Liam should be prepared to take any job (thereby wasting the money spent getting a degree – not that the university loses out). So of course Liam is stood there feeling two inches tall and looking utterly sheepish – what can he say? He’s hardly in a position to say ‘I don’t agree, you’re wrong! Fuck you!’ (Ok maybe not that aggressively.)

Sticking Liam in a situation where the patient he has to care for (a job he isn’t trained for and wasn’t looking to do) and then having Stevie ask her if he should be prepared to take any job is low. As if he can turn around and tell her, a disabled woman he hardly knows, that he disagrees.

But it gets worse when he (according to the BBC’s script) chooses to bow out of his next shift. Of course Stevie is mortally offended – as if she’s actually his boss and this actually is his job, which it isn’t. He’s let her down, he’s let them down, but most of all – groan! – he’s let himself down! It doesn’t get much more trite than that. Perhaps he just, gasp, isn’t cut out for carework. Don’t get me wrong; I respect Stevie for what she does; care work is a hard job for a pittance in many cases. That sad fact informs a lot of her prejudice. I believe that if she enjoyed what she did and was amply compensated for her time the Liams of the world wouldn’t even show up on her radar.

However instead we see her having to arrange cover at short notice. She now has to explain, apparently, to the clients Liam was helping her with, that Liam won’t be attending. This is disgraceful manipulation. Why do the clients need to be involved? Why cause them potential upset? These are seriously ill/infirm people. surely that is the consequence of being told your carer is being mucked around by her colleague. Naturally, and predictably, they are upset – angry, in once case. This is emotional blackmail of the worst kind, on the part of the BBC, to say nothing of the intrusion of filming all this into their lives, though presumably they consented. I certainly wouldn’t have! There is no movement to address the ridiculous hours carers have to face - including and perhaps especially unpaid carers and the risible amount they receive from the government (which they should be thankful for getting away with!).

Meanwhile Debbie has a quick moan about Kelly coping with work she doesn't find difficult. To her difficult work, as a cleaner, is scraping ovens clean. Fair enough. But what does this achieve? What is the point of her attitude? I couldn't work with her as a boss: judgemental, patronising and overbearing. Kelly, rightly or wrongly, is being set up to fail. So she can't cope with what might seem easy chores (I've done cleaning, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't easy), because she's 'had it easy on benefits' (that's the charge you see). So what conclusion are we drawing from this? Is this promoting workfare by the backdoor? I doubt she's lazy: she has kids and a house to run (and clean). That doesn't take care of itself.

This whole programme is wretched: whether it’s framing Liam, who may or may not be lazy (I frankly don’t care), in so negative a way, whether it’s Debbie patronising Kelly ‘ooh you missed a spot, whether it’s Luther cheerfully walking toward a potential pothole by appearing on this programme working (while claiming ESA), or whether it’s Chris and his 50-80 job applications a day so desperate to be part of this house of cards he’ll do anything but financially can’t. The world of work is presented through the narrowest range of jobs at the lowest end of the spectrum (as perceived in populist terms) possible: cleaning, plumbing, warehouse work, care work. That’s it, and if these scroungers dare to struggle with being thrown in a the deep end – no matter how they feel or how hard they try – they are to be mocked and belittled; witness Debbie criticising the folding of a bed and her assumption that Kelly was responsible for the slip in standards (it was actually her regular employer with whom Kelly was working). There is no discussion of support, training, opportunities, and careers. This is work, and you must do it to pay to prop up a system dying on its arse.

Everything was orchestrated to fit a narrative: the lazy student, the beleaguered but genuine family man, the bad back malingerer, the fat single mother. Who knows if the situation would have been different had they not even found completely different jobs – better jobs (in their eyes), but switched the partners around. Perhaps then Liam wouldn’t have been made to feel two inches tall while working with Stevie who obviously has a chip on her shoulder (to say nothing of her husband who…if looks could kill in response to Liam’s observation of her family life!). Perhaps then Debbie would have had to come up with different prejudices, etc.

These people have been thrown in right at the deep end and asked to work exactly to the standard of their taxpayer mentors. What was that ever to achieve? So people struggle. I don’t get how that is ever supposed to be a positive experience. Yet, as with all this kind of programming, people are put into a spin through a completely different experience of some kind and then the resultant cognitive disarray makes them think differently and that’s a success! But it’s just superficial. It’s not representative of anything: Chris says he’s had a taste of the working world and he likes it, but we knew he wanted to work. Yet how’s he going to cope 6 months from now if he finds a job and it’s a zero hours contract, or it’s temporary and his benefits get fucked up? Nick keeps asking ‘what if you had to take a job on lower wage than you currently receive through benefits?’ Well then he’d be homeless! Mission complete, BBC.

The capitalist system is dying. We are living in its death throes; certainly I hope that is the case. All of this division is the symptoms thereof. We are like ants scrabbling around a collapsing anthill; rearranging the proverbial deckchairs on the Titanic.

We need a different system. We don’t need prejudiced programming like this. People need help and support not to be bashed around the head with trite aphorisms and clichés about the world of work. I don’t care if work made you the man you are Mr Nick Hewer, you’re not the one scrubbing toilets 10 hours a day.But we daren't let unemployed people see anything other than desperation and struggle; they cannot be allowed to derive self worth from the pure fact of living of being a worthy being just because, not through someone else's narrow definition of 'work'. The unemployed must be kept miserable to be dependent on a system that needs them to keep everyone else in line. Meanwhile the master's dine on the division they sow; such fine vintage are the tears of a divided society.

Nick ‘n’ Marge went to find out about the reality of job prospects. To do this they asked one person who pointed out there is up to 45 people applying for every vacancy. Of course the programme does nothing to expose the blatant fraud that is the Universal Jobmatch system. They asked if Chris, having done a day’s work assisting a plumber, could retrain. But, and ignoring the reality of dealing with JSA and the nightmare that is JC+ (again not the subject of the show), that would, at best, mean there’s one more plumber in the neighbourhood. That’s bad news for everyone! It’s just more competition when there’s less money for people that might need a plumber to spare on such work (unless necessary I suppose). Chris’s existence as a plumber, were he to train, would not increase the demand for his services.

Meanwhile Debbie's delusions of grandeur threaten to plague the rest of Kelly's days: "lucky for her she's met me!"

Suddenly Kelly is now participaing in some bizarre makeover show. Nick asks if she'll 'slide' back to her old self if Debbie withdraws. What the fuck? She's only known her five minutes and hasn't changed at all. That is to say her old self and her 'new' self are no different. What the hell is going on?

And finally: for the BBC to use the elderly and the infirm, as it did during this show, leaves me cold. This really is a new low for this organisation. Not just peddling state and pro capitalist propaganda, but using this sector of the community; manipulating them into fighting your battles? That is a fucking disgrace! I wasn't going to watch this show again, but I'm somewhat glad I have; just to see this kind of behaviour. Appalling.

Employment Support Allowance Is Mismanaged.

Given the ongoing scandal ATOS scandal this may seem a redundant statement, however the problem isn’t just the mismanagement of the test, it is the entire benefit itself. According to the DWP overview ESA offers:

“personalised help so that you can work if you’re able to”.

And that:

“You can apply for ESA if you’re employed, self-employed or unemployed”. 

This, according to the DWP, means that, like DLA, ESA is not an out of work benefit. More importantly for me it means that ESA, as I have tried to explain to anyone that will listen, is not just for people that cannot work at all.

There was already provision for such people: Incapacity Benefit. Why would you rename and repackage that benefit if it wasn’t to help people (even if you believe that some of those people can’t be helped because they aren’t getting going to get better) that can work? Or at least need some help to ‘work if you are able to’? I don't think the intention was to put all people on Incapacity Benefit onto ESA. This was started by the current government (iirc!) and smacks of what Thatcher did with rising unemployment benefit claims in the eighties, migrating people on to the sick which triggered the perception of masses of people skiving on the sick. Perhaps this is classic Tory tactics; revisionism and mismanagement.

The problem is the WCA and the handling thereof. The ATOS test is not a medical test. I must assume that the intention was, as it was with the rebranding of the sick notes (now ‘fit’ notes), to assess what people can do. But that is a tricky prospect given how much bias there already was toward getting people into work, whatever the cost, whatever the work. Of course the WCA doesn’t even do that because it is totally unfit for purpose. A box ticking exercise that, particularly in regard to mental health, seeks to encompass a multitude of experience and difficulty in seven questions.

If we ignore the central premise as the government is doing and simply focus on trying to find reasons to assume people, regardless of condition, can work, then we might as well not bother with ESA. What is the point of spending money on administering this benefit if it is simply Incapacity Benefit by another name, and that it can only apply to people that cannot work – never mind how flawed the test.

I have yet to see any source cover this fact. Even the CAB doesn't see ESA as I see it (which doesn’t inspire confidence). Am I alone in my assessment? Have I misunderstood this? Even if it’s true, assessing what people can do and then just dropping them in at the deep end, sink or swim, is not enough. The clue is in the title: Employment Support Allowance. However with respect to the Work Programme, all this seems to mean is a slight loosening of the noose and no real help. Providers are not doctors nor are they even specialists, certainly not as a matter of course.

The whole thing needs to be completely rebuilt with a view to providing that support and accepting the problems that people have, not using the WCA to erase them from or lessen there impact on a person’s life experience.

We All Hate The BBC

Oh what did I watch on Thursday evening? More importantly, why!

We All Pay Your Benefits (which should more accurately be titled, We All Pay Each Other’s Benefits) was another example of how far the BBC has sunk in recent years, fronted by, of all people, Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford from the Alan Sugar Firing Squad. I’ve no real idea of what they actually do, but from Nick’s expression it would seem a career spent in sniffing malodorous substances. Margaret on the other hand has forged a persona that would seem at home teaching in a convent. They don’t strike me as a pair with any real knowledge of being poor and having to make ends meet however possible.

The premise involved a group of benefit claimants, presumably, though failing, to represent typical scroungers, paired off with an equal size group of taxpayers, ostensibly people on low incomes and low expectations. The claimant cohort featured a recent graduate with a lot of bling and a massive student debt, an overweight single mum that smoked and kept a home zoo, a couple in a large (not really) house with kids, and a single dad whose claim to infamy, in the eyes I’m sure of the Wailing Daily, would be that he hasn’t worked in 20 years. Twenty years! Jesus, call the priesthood! Call a wizard or something! Isn’t there a spell we can cast?

Frankly the whole thing was bizarre and ridiculous in equal measure. Its central premise seemed to ask, of the taxpayers, would they pay more tax to pay more benefits, or would they seek to trim the financial fat – the waste – as they saw it. Therein lays the problem: there is no context presented and this option is far from the only choice. Why no discussion of tax avoidance or evasion? Why no discussion of the disgraceful avarice of the people in power such as Mark Hoban’s recent windfall off the back of his taxpayer funded second home? Why was this not asked, as it never is: what are people meant to do otherwise? Starve?

The choice is deliberately limited to whether or not the taxpayer would pay more. In one case, the family in the ‘large’ house, the taxpayer astutely agreed that they should get more and that it shouldn’t have to come from increased taxes. However it took a lot of probing to get to that point suggesting again that the lives of those on benefits are like public accounts and should be available for anyone’s scrutiny: where do your white goods come from? (They were brought prior to unemployment.) Why is your house bigger than mine? (They have a disabled relative to take care of as well). Not “why is the government forcing you to depend on foodbanks?” or “why am I reducing you to tears by coercing you to try and conform to outdated notions of masculinity?” This was in respect of the taxpayer asking about how his kids feel about dad not working; even though the question was posed somewhat more delicately it was still pandering to the same tired nonsense. Why should his boy feel bad about one trivial aspect of his father’s life when all that matters is whether his dad provides for him and is a good person?

I’m not going to give a blow by blow account, but here are some highlights:

Whilst taking the kids around a supermarket to do the weekly shop the single mum picks up a whole chicken to use as dinner for the kids. Her partner asks if the kids eat at school; they get free school meals (as all kids should, surely). That means the kids eat two cooked meals a day? Do they really need that, she says? What an extravagance!

The graduate is partnered with a care worker who can work up to 60 hours a week for, judging by her reaction, is a pittance. He has lots of stuff; she doesn’t like that. I bet she wouldn’t like his £39k student debt either! It’s just stuff (mind you a nice new pc wouldn’t go amiss I can tell you)!

Later it transpires that he does a lot of hours volunteering. But this isn’t enough to justify his existence and so he is dragged, fruitlessly, CV in hand to all the local shops in order to apply for jobs he plainly isn’t interested in. He, quite rightly, remarks that he has a degree and wants to put it to use. Wouldn’t you?

The single dad has recently come on to ESA for a lung problem and a dodgy hip. Unfortunately next week’s show has the claimants work in the jobs their lab partners do. I fear this may affect his ESA claim and that participation in this show, however well intentioned, may not have been wise.

His lab partner has kids and a partner of her own. She also spent time homeless and on the dole, and currently receives child tax credits (correct me if I’m wrong). Yet she’s happy to judge this guy raising kids on his own despite that his kids are well behaved (from what we can see) and that, on a shopping trip of their own, knows how to spot a bargain. Of course this just invoked a similar prejudice from his own lab partner: wouldn’t it be cheaper to do something else, spend somewhere else? Actually in this case no, they were at a local market getting cheap fresh food, and that’s more important for the kids – a good diet. It just shows the ignorance of the priorities of the Wailing Dailies: money over nutrition.

The programme only really flirted with facts. despite ferrying Nick’n’Marge around the CBI only one appointment had any substance; a meeting that revealed out of work benefits to be a pittance in percentage terms of overall social security expenditure. Of course that expenditure is couched in the now depressingly common terminology of the ‘welfare bill’. It isn’t welfare, it is social security; welfare is an American concept born of the boardroom. It isn’t a bill either; a bill is what a waiter gives you after you’ve strangled your wife in a restaurant (or what he should call if you’re name’s Saatchi). If it is to be a bill then it should be willingly picked up by capitalism since there will never be full employment and big business does very well out it thankyouverymuch!

On the other hand #HappToPayYourBenefits is a real glimpse into a caring world.

Seven Questions

I checked my bank account this morning and noticed an extra twenty pounds that shouldn’t be there. Turns out that it’s the ESA I was owed from the date I failed my WCA, which I learn about when I contact them to find out why they are paying me this extra money. A letter to follow came through in the post shortly after.

This isn’t really news. There was no way I was going to pass this test, if you can call it that. No way at all. Now I will have to appeal, though I’m not entirely sure of myself in the process. I will also have to convince my GP to provide sick notes during the wait for any appeal I am entitled to, assuming there aren’t further requirements for making an appeal (providing further evidence for example) I can’t fulfil.

The whole process is antediluvian: does the decision maker speak with you? Your doctor or specialist? Anyone? Of course not. Their decision is based solely on what ATOS tells them. You can provide supporting evidence, but in all cases it is simply about scoring points. A letter that says the person suffers from X isn’t going to tick a box or score points unless it directly meets the criteria. When it comes to ‘mental, cognitive and intellectual functions’ (not emotional I note) these criteria are:

Learning how to do tasks – their assessment I can learn how to do new tasks. This of course is very simplistic. I see no division on the basis of complexity. It’s taken me 2 hours to read the letter; not because I can’t read or lack intellect, but because I find it hard to process information in one go. For example, if I read a book (and I do, frequently albeit painfully slowly) I always skip to the end of the chapter to see how long it is because my concentration and attention are terrible. I don’t enjoy this and it has nothing to do with my ability to walk and talk which of course are, essentially the superficial criteria for judgement. I am after all capable of writing all this right now.

Being aware of danger – I am aware of everyday dangers and can keep myself safe. Ok fine; I haven’t claimed otherwise.

Starting a task and finishing it to the end – I can usually manage to begin and finish daily tasks. I don’t know what constitutes a daily task or how that applies to a working environment, which is really the question. I can make cups of tea; I can cook food, etc. But again what constitutes a task; what level of complexity? Some jobs require lots of form filling, or report writing, or whatever. I would struggle meeting deadlines and working to another’s schedule, and this is not reflected in this assessment. Again it is a very superficial reading that does not take into account one’s capability to cope with a working environment. Given that I’d now have to compete for jobs if I am to claim JSA, assuming I cannot appeal, I would struggle. Where is the help there?

Coping with changes – I can cope with small unexpected changes to a daily routine. I’m not sure how representative this is of a working environment. If I’m in a job where I’m having my workload regularly increased and things put on top of me all the time what am I going to do? Small changes, such as running out of peppermint tea, are one thing, but that’s not the same thing. No part of this assessment is representative of a working environment.

Coping with getting about on your own – I can get to somewhere that I don’t know without someone going with me. I’m not sure what that’s based on and again it’s all hypothetical. Do they assume this based on my attendance? Probably. But then I know the area and have been there before. I knew what to expect – and I didn’t expect much, hence not being surprised at this decision. Having to attend an appointment on the other side of Bristol at a place that’s completely unfamiliar to me (where the mental health asperger’s team is base) is another matter entirely, as I tried to explain. But you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t: my not attending that appointment just proves that I’m a lazy shmuck. My attending that appointment proves I can cope. If I could work from home that would be a lot easier but that isn’t going to happen.  

Dealing with other people – I can deal with people I don’t know. Again this is based on the virtue of not freaking out during the assessment as I didn’t know the assessor. The same argument as ‘how did you travel here today?’ it’s a no win situation.

Behaviour with other people – I behave in a way that would be acceptable at work, whatever that means. Presumably anything that isn’t pants on head, poo flung at wall, crazy is acceptable. But it doesn’t get to the root of these issues. I don’t find it easy dealing with people often. It entirely depends on the working environment, so do I assume I can cope, or that I can’t. What do I do meanwhile?

I scored zero points. What a surprise. If people with serious physical disabilities score nothing lying on their deathbeds, there was no chance I was going to score anything.

The reality is this is an entirely superficial test based on reactionary principles. They assume that, because I can talk to the assessor and am not freaking out, that I’m fine. They can’t read my mind, or my emotional state. They don’t understand that I was familiar with the place and the area. They do not take into account the reality of the issues I describe and have no understanding of how they affect people, what to look for, or how to test for this. In fact no part of this is a test at all. If a GP examined someone in this fashion they would receive complaints. It’s like the old joke: “Doctor it hurts when I do this” and the doctor says: “well don’t do it then!”

B'boom tish!

Seven questions that are intended to cover the myriad aspects and almost infinite variety of mental health conditionality. These do not even address emotional issues which, in a working environment, are important surely.

The test makes simplistic assumptions looking only to score people if their answers or problems, if verified, fit those criteria. It is not administered in a specialist capacity by trained diagnosticians and such people do not decide the outcome. It is utterly ridiculous. I was never going to pass, but it changes nothing. I cannot cope with the systems that exist; the fact I can read and write and walk and talk, do not address the problems that I do have. Instead those problems are deemed relative and my needs addressed only in those terms. Furthermore because such stock is placed on people working you are assumed to have to be cold in the ground before you are ‘allowed’ to pass. It is a no win situation and the outcomes do not address your needs. I remain, my problems remain, however small they might seem, and they affect me, and I have no support at all. I am fit to work; only I can’t cope with work. I will have to “pull myself together”, like in that other old doctor, doctor joke.

Dog On A String Theory

Having just watched John ‘No Tommy, you weren’t there!’ Sweeney expose Trump on Panorama (in much the way Trump’s syrup exposes his vanity) I caught a trailer for the latest piece of BBC anti scrounger torture. On Thursday the Laura and Hardy of the Apprentice, Margaret Mountford (nee ‘Rodupyourarse’) and Nick ‘is it me or has someone farted’ Hewer preside over another slice of car crash TV, sympathetically titled ‘We Pay All Your Benefits’. The premise seems to be: gather a group of claimants and a group of taxpayers and…FIGHT!

I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The trailer featured a revealing interlude wherein, it was implied, at least one claimant was getting more than they ‘should’ by virtue of a household menagerie. They seemed to have a lot of pets: dogs, cats, lizard. Presumably this is the dog-on-a-string scam whereby people, according to urban myth, usually crusties, get themselves a dog with a rope for a lead and then claim more benefit. File under: girls get pregnant to get free housing.

What are we meant to learn from this? Are we to deny pets to people once they start claiming? Are we to ban claimants from having pets, as if they all stand outside pet shops with their JSAg’s eyeing the collection of staffies with a view to claiming more. This is patently nonsensical. What is the point of this? People of course are meant to think that benefits are, universally (on the basis of a tiny sample), too generous. But what does that even mean? Too large for what? Presumably people are meant to sit in a cold grey room on a milking stool staring out the window waiting for a job. No doubt some claimants will have modern looking TV sets, probably an xbox, a laptop, a smartphone, because we all do.

Even if the viewing audience comes to that conclusion, what are they meant to do? This is the problem: people are being conditioned to hate and resent with no outlet. This is extremely dangerous. This is why disabled people get hassled in the street. This is why people phone up the benefit fraud hotline to rat on their neighbours despite the overwhelming majority of such reports being unfounded.

Of course this will be predictable: what kind of people would apply to be on this show? What are the conditions set during the audition (where they decide who would make good tv)? Isn't it likely that the taxpayer contingent is going to be more biased toward the judgemental sort; the people already predisposed to believing the government line about the rate of benefit? This of course will be reinforced by who they picked to be on the opposing 'team'. Likely the claimants will be those that are less likely to resist - or so bolshy they are to be seen as representative of the perceived antisocial nature of all claimants, of course.

This reminds of the time Pig of the Dump (my name for Digby Jones, Lord of the Tax Avoiders) interrogated a couple of young unemployed me for Panorama. Had the show been mute I wouldn't have been surprised to see him hand them each a shovel and then wave a pistol at them until they started digging: he had taken them, bedecked like a gangster in some afghan coat, to industrial waste ground to basically call them scroungers. These kids obviously thought they were, in some way, doing the right thing participating in this BBC farce, but nope. Instead they got the honour of having to justify their already meagre existences to the country's top tax avoidance apologist and business popecunt. Unbelievable - and they were hardly a pair of rogues and rapscallions. They were quiet and thoughtful. They didn't spend their time robbing and a-stealing. But that's not good enough: WE PAY ALL YOUR BENEFITS!

I haven’t seen the show yet, as I can’t travel through time, but this guy’s none too pleased. One love y’all.

The Sporting Life

I’m not really a sporty person (though of course I am a sporting person!) it does nothing for me. I find professional sport faintly ridiculous: teams based around community and locality happy to employ anyone from anywhere if it scores them big. Insane sums of money that do nothing but keep players in arrested states of development. It seems as if sport only functions at the level the participants can be physically infantilised otherwise they are past it. Quickly they become heroes, an equally quickly they’ll be discarded.

Sport never meant much to me. I grew up in the typical nerd role and so the jocks were always my ‘enemies’; me and my NHS prescription glasses cutting a dreadfully cliché dash while dreaming of space and stars. that’s just who I am. I’ve never betrayed that fact. I’ve never had to give a long drawn out eulogy of my own performance to a cameraman from a company paying me sponsorship money and I’ve never been paid to sell mortgages after winning a medal. Is that what sport has become? A far cry from football in the park, jumpers in the goalposts (even then, whenever I joined in what that as a young ‘un, I felt out of place – everyone else took it all far too seriously for my liking).

I congratulate Andy Murray, though saying so means nothing to me; I have never met him nor intend to do so. I’m neither happy nor sad about it, my life is far removed from what the BBC and its sporting hysteria would seek to invoke in me. I congratulate him for achieving what he set out to, but not as some kind of hero. It’s the media reaction more than anything that bugs me: trying to fill my head with crazy notions. When someone fights for social justice they don’t get a massive golden teapot and a front page spread of them kissing it.

Our society seems so emotionally impoverished that in these creatively moribund and bereft times we’ll grab any icon and deify it. Andy hasn’t saved lives, created a cure for a disease, or unlocked a scientific paradigm. But that’s not what’s important. What he represents, as a gift to the ruling elite, is an ideal: he’s firmly in the strivers camp. That he will go on to make money from crass sponsorships won’t be seen as selling out, instead it’s part of the game. Make money, that’s what hard working people do. I’m sure he does work hard – but the key point is that he’s doing something he loves and being paid handsomely to work at it and do it. Not quite the same as 6 months unpaid workfare in Poundland, even if tennis is more physically demanding.

Still I guess this means the queen will be laying her sword on his shoulder in short order, like the rest of these sporting types. Are we so desperate to win at a game that we’ll elevate anyone that does anything to that level? Doesn’t that detract from the meaning of the award? I grew up thinking knights were heroes of old that slew dragons and represented chivalry and fairness. So shouldn’t today’s knights be the equivalent: heroes that slay dragons in the way teachers that defend kids from maniacs in classrooms. No, instead we are so miserable that we’ll take any ray of sunshine and pin a medal on its chest, no matter the achievement. And I’m not knocking this achievement, but it’s not the same as saving someone’s life and nor should it be – especially when you know that Lord Andy of the Tennis will be on TV in a few days hawking the latest brand of menswear grooming crap. It didn’t take long, for instance, for Jessica Ennis to sell her soul. Now I get to stare into her naïve mush everytime I use a Santander cash point. Is that what sport means? Perhaps I’m just naïve, but I find that sad. Would she be bankrupt otherwise?

I don’t mean to be unkind. I know a lot of people enjoy tennis and are happy that Andy Murray has won (him not least of all), and I don’t begrudge anyone their victory. The problem is that, as an unemployed person, this is just another way the media bashes us. As if to say: “look here’s someone winning at sport, you lazy bastard! Gerrajob!” When you conflate that with the continued cheapening of the word ‘hero’ you have a hollow social confection: a divisive ‘feelgood factor’ with all the value of a bag of sweets.

My Manifesto

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the Community Mental Health Team who, I imagine, will take one look at me and decide ‘huh, what’s wrong with you? You can talk clearly? You’re not flinging your waste at the walls; get a job!” Certainly their reputation, in the opinion of my not-particularly-aware GP isn’t great. Unfortunately while I’m happy to attend the appointment, I’m still dreading it.

I dread everything these days (except my treasured cups of Peppermint Tea: a true sign of my working class pretensions. Mmm…peppermint tea!). I am a nervous wreck; I had a panic attack on Sunday when there were helicopters flying over head. I have no idea who it was (I think it was the cops, though I couldn’t tell; I’ve no idea who else it could be). Three times they flew around during the day. It was too much!

I think what needs to happen in this country, particularly with regard to folk in my position, is this:

Firstly we need to take care of their financial needs. They need to get whatever welfare is required to keep them safe and secure. That needs to happen without question, not ‘handouts’ given begrudgingly by propagandists who abuse their ‘something for nothing’ nonsense to exploit them. That’s the first and most important thing.

We also need a government that is willing to stand up for these people against the likes of our disgusting media. Politicians need to be able and willing to tell the Paul Dacres, Kelvin MacKenzies and Richard Desmond’s of the world to fuck off, and that if they continue committing hate crimes their licenses will be pulled. That this isn’t happening is very telling indeed.

Secondly we need to make sure their health issues are addressed by a national health service. These people are not to be cash cows for the private sector to treat or ignore at their leisure. Mental health support in this country is woeful and anything that is perceived as getting in the way of your ability to work is of course an excuse. My doctor persists in the idea that ‘work cures all’. This is extremely dangerous: what does he mean by work? Does sitting in a call centre scamming the public count as work? He agrees with me that work should be something meaningful but of course has no ability or interest in helping find something suitable, not least of all because there are no such jobs.

Finally we should take advantage of the abilities and talents many people, particularly (I daresay) people with mental health problems. It might be a positive stereotype to say but I’m willing to bet that a large number of such people are creative arty types. I’d like to think that applies to me. Why don’t we make use of this? If their needs are taken care of financially then they are ‘earning’ their money in this way. For example we could institute community facilities or centres, even if just online, to represent and showcase this talent to the world – the whole world. From that could come all sorts of opportunities?

And it’s not just art: people out of work include many well read intelligent people with something to say, perhaps scientific, perhaps philosophical. Why not give them a platform to write articles or make presentations. If we can give column inches to overpaid politicians or think tanks to propagandise why not to someone out of work?

They could submit a piece of research, write a polemic, talk about their experiences, sing a song, or write some poetry! These schemes could be community based – local for example. Bristol is one of the most musical and creative cities in the country (compensation for that accent) and there are about 20,000 people out of work. That figure will never reach zero from here on out, but I’m willing to bet pounds to pennies there are a great many frustrated musicians or starving artists within that. Why do we assume that, because they need welfare, they are shit at what they like doing? That’s the assumption isn’t it – get a proper job. Why not help them?

Enough of the Pig Society, what about the so called Big Society!