The Baguette Problem

I’m waiting to part cook a baguette. I’m feeling very faint. This is not new for me, I’ve had this particular issue for around 15 years – at least I can’t now remember not having it. Whenever I get hungry, which unfortunately can be very quickly after eating during the day (night time is ok – mostly), I need to eat. If I don’t the feeling of faint, sweatiness (like when you blush, as opposed to running a race for instance) and the accompanying sensory overload make it impossible to function. I’ve never pursued what happens if I deprive myself of a meal, and I don’t want to.

I have no idea what this issue is; it has been diagnosed – sort of – nominally as hypoglycaemia, but in truth I don’t think that’s accurate. For instance experts say that eating foods like porridge are good if you have this because it gives a slow stable release of blood sugar. Unfortunately about half an hour after a bowl of porridge I feel ill again. More so than if I eat something else (like another cereal, or toast).

The first GP I spoke to about this, years ago, just dismissed it saying that he has similar issues (I can’t imagine him being very effective in his job then; if he had to deal with an emergency while feeling dodgy it would be totally unacceptable). His solution: take a packet of biscuits and have a snack. In other words, snack on junk food when you feel a bit peckish. I can’t really imagine that being tolerable in, for example, a customer facing role.

More important, though, is the effect of the condition. The GP’s attitude is par for the course: it’s the usual dismissive crap I’ve since come to expect (one GP years later said that, because it hadn’t killed me, it wasn’t an issue). They just don’t get it – and being related to food/eating it becomes a joke. In this society hell bent on demonising people who don’t quickly and meekly respond “how high” when the bosses demand you jump, this sort of condition is just seen as a joke; an excuse to get out of a day’s graft. How can I convey the reality of how my metabolism operates – and it would seem this is just a part of my physical body, it’s just how I am? Do I have to collapse faint, sweaty and shaking? Would that even be believed? Again I’d rather not put that to test. perhaps that’s what’s required in this age of ATOS.

But the problems aren’t limited to the public perception of wellness that abounds thanks to the right wing media and Tories such as this clown who thinks, for example, aspergers is a ‘sob story’. That’s half the battle, truly, but as someone with health issues that do affect how I go about my day, who is there in the DWP that takes this seriously? Either one can work, completely in any job at any time at the drop of a hat with no health restrictions, or one is completely incapable of anything. There is no accepted middle ground. For instance were I to say that working from home would be a much better proposition, what help would I get? In fact the response would more likely be to assume that, if I can work from home, I can work…period! The machinery of the DWP lubricated by the ignorance of right wingers and capitalism informs the attitude that anyone who can do anything can do everything. See a person going to the shop to spend his benefit on XYZ (booze, fags, smack, dope, dvd’s, smartphone contracts, xbox games, unacceptable clothing – you know, all the proscribed items) and you’re looking at someone who can hold down a full time job without problems – because in their mind life is just that simple, discussion over.

In a society where full employment is not only impossible, but undesirable, what is the sense of pursuing the weaker members to work no matter the cost? The tragedy is that the machine of right wing capitalism has a ridiculously limited outlook and, where such people could contribute (I’m thinking in terms of culture and creativity, not the conventional workaday world), they could be helped to do so. But instead that limited outlook prevents people from contributing and achieving in favour of chasing a goal they cannot reach, nor could they sustain. All so rich people can profit further.

This is the problem right there: no matter how one tries to interact with the mechanisms that exist supposedly to help, be it your GP or the DWP, one is always, to put it bluntly, kicked in the fucking nuts. There is a quality of bias to the relationship between the individual and the representative of the machine that has all the power (!). it is an unbalanced relationship, hence using the word ‘power’. Instantly I, the individual, the patient with no real influence or power, am assumed to be in the wrong: I am a malingerer, a scrounger. I am someone to be viewed with suspicion; guilt precedes innocence. That is now a literal part of the apparatus of the Jobcentre. What chance do I stand when even my attempts to engage are further dismissed? Work from home? Beggars can’t be choosers! Get off your arse, it’s just a ‘sob story’. That’s the attitude, and the saddest part of all is that it just doesn’t have to be this way.

They associate wealth with morality and character: that wealth must be earned, not acquired. Ironic

Speak Out!

There exists, in the public arena, a cabal of right wing thinkers often feted by the likes of the BBC to inject ‘robust’ discussion into various ‘debates’, usually on programmes such as Question Time. Lightweight so called political affairs where an audience of wannabe Tories, students, and self appointed community leaders and business representatives applaud contrived propaganda.

In other words, gossip merchants and shills who, among other things (such as denying anthropogenic climate change), propagate the insidious notion that poverty is impossible in Britain because it isn’t a third world country (at least nominally). The people aren’t brown babies with distended bellies surrounded by a cloud of flies and dust, they have smartphones and tattoos, and ergo they live in fucking paradise. They now point to places such as the Middle East and the reality of life under ISIS (or whatever they call themselves). Look at the poor people being beheaded and crucified, you scrounger, you think you have it tough!

This is deeply offensive and pernicious: poverty is poverty. It is disgusting wherever it is found – and wherever it is found it must be challenged fought and eradicated. A starving human being is no less in need of food whether he lives in Africa, Palestine, or Peckham.

Of course there are differences between our country – what is left of it under the Tories – and places like, for example, Gaza, Somalia, or Syria. We are a wealthy nation and we do cleave to greater values than believing in tribal ignorance and superstition. Or at least we should be. The wealth in Britain is bound up in land owned by the aristocracy having long since stolen it from the people as well as usurious systems of finance invented by clever rich people to protect other clever rich people. The values of democracy tolerance and freedom are continually eroded by a right wing press that abuses those freedoms to shock people into accepting policies invented by their backers and supporters.

But even so, we hold to these values. Consequently it is all the more important that, when poverty rears its ugly head in modern Britain, we speak out against it. When injustice manifests around the world we speak against it (those of us that do not profit from it, that is). This is because we have the privilege of knowing a better system and so we have a duty to speak out.

It is no different when it comes to the injustices created by this government of rich fools who are exploiting the poor and carving up society for personal gain. In fact I would say it is all the more important we do speak out because the cost of losing these precious rights is too great. If what little freedom still exists in this world is snuffed out, it will be gone forever, consumed by a seemingly rising tide of greed, institutionalised corruption and ambition, and superstition.

Whenever the likes of Peter Hitchens claims poverty doesn’t – indeed cannot – exist in Britain, he must be corrected sharply, directly, and accurately.

Return of the Work Psychologist (she's been on her hols!)

I spoke to the Work Psychologist today (WP). I needed to tell her the best time to contact the aspergers doctor (AD) that has not provided me with the diagnosis I feel I need. The WP is, in her own peculiar way, helpful, but there's always a sting in the tail. It was her that suggested contacting the AD, her idea. I agreed and signed the consent form she sent me to that end. Now she is saying that, while she is happy to do as suggested, it won't make any difference. This is what she does: on one hand she will suggest things or offer help, then later on decide not to bother. She did it at our initial meeting by saying she could undertake such a diagnosis herself, then decided she couldn't, and subsequently when I started on the Work Programme she offered to write a letter to support my case from a mental health perspective and then backed out saying, again, it wouldn't make any difference.

She remains broadly supportive, but the biggest problem I have is that she just doesn't understand the reality of the experience one faces dealing with the DWP as it currently is. The DWP is weaponised to be used against the poor, against anyone that claims benefits. This is a thing, but of course such political concerns are not her remit in much the same way that having to deal with the DWP is not part of the remit of the AD and the NHS at large (ie my GP). It makes it rather difficult to deal with the WP because she doesn't see the totality of my experience. Again she mentioned claiming PIP: i find this curious because the PIP system is in absolute meltdown and people that are on their last legs are finding their claims going awry. In light of that it seems somewhat almost irresponsible to suggest I claim it. She argues I should on the basis of paying for a 'community mentor' to help me...somehow. This is a suggestion that she made in her initial assessment of me two years ago. Nothing was done then (I don't even remember reading that part) and the DWP certainly didn't follow it up - for example by suggesting I claim DLA (as it was) or tell me what a community mentor actually can do. Unfortunately I didn't think to ask.

Any such claim will fail, I'm sure, without proper evidence to back it up, so we come back to the point of a diagnosis. Interestingly she agrees that getting one is important and proceeded to explain that the system of diagnosis is very rigid, at least in the UK. I explained what I thought about the testing done, that it seemed more oriented to a younger person, and that the tests were too specific and ineffective (I've already covered this in an earlier blog suffice to say that they aren't representative of real life experience). She agreed that this was a problem saying that it was clear that, as an older person, I had the life experience/intellect to 'see through the test' - but that argument is countered by saying that same experience/intellect means I can function and compensate for any difficulty caused by an autism spectrum issue. Whether that's reasonable or not I don't know, in fact not knowing is the only thing I can be certain of because I do not have access to anything that can provide certainty. That's the problem!

So I'm left with waiting for her to speak to the AD, whatever that will achieve. She offered words of support that are all very complimentary, and taken in the spirit intended. But they don't translate into actual concrete support and that's the issue. That's why i need a concrete diagnosis because the system needs proof and certainty that my word alone won't provide. Yet every attempt to find that certainty is met with the kind of questioning ("why do you need a diagnosis?" I'm asked) that I'm accused of myself as a means of not engaging with help that's offered. It is very frustrating. The only people left to ask for help seem to be the National Autistic Society, but they really aren't going to be able to sway the AD surely?