Dying To Work

It seems cancer with a 3 month life expectancy is no barrier to the scumbags at the DWP. Dying is to be regarded as no real inconvenience to the determined jobseeker, thanks to these idiots.

And to round it off, there's a jobcentre adviser in Britain happy to tell someone, 23 weeks into their pregnancy, they are being sanctioned. All for telling a prospective employer at a jobs fair they are pregnant (as if they could forever hide the fact).

Welcome to Britain 2014.

Even Nature Can't Escape Cuts

The cuts seem never ending with the perennial promise of more, just in case we step out of line. 

Perhaps it's a sign of the times that I, out walking, find that the local council are happy to waste money on cuts that have acutely saddened me. I'm not talking about anything life threatening here, not the reduction of support to people that need it (as seems to be the case ongoing in the UK), but instead a countryside path/cycle route/bridleway. 

The council have sent in a maintenance team to basically cut the hedges/verges and treeline to nothing. First world problems certainly, but it's just sad to see such small minded attitudes. Granted this region isn't the Amazon or the Masai Mara, it's still nature. It's wild and it should be free. But instead council jobsworths with money that could be much better spent just to make sure some leaves don't land in the wrong place.

Unfortunately this area is also rich in wildlife; it has everything from birds and adders to deer and foxes. It seems all to typical of our attitudes these days; instead of letting something beautiful through being natural, it has to be artificially managed in order to be pleasing. None of this was causing a hazard nor in anyone's way. I doubt there was a crisis of sickness though I'm sure, when I can get hold of the right people (the parish council are completely in the dark), the reason will be to manage the land better.

Well in my opinion the land has managed just fine up until now. It doesn't need councillors with money to waste interfering. It just makes me sad to see even something as simple as a hedge along a country lane being fiercely cut back. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Not Much Help

So the Work Psychologist tried to speak to the asperger diagnostic person, but to no avail. That ends a five month diagnostic process ending in failure; a process that is deeply flawed when it comes to adult diagnosis. If you cannot or will not diagnose the individual as they are, then what's the point. Surely if I had what they wanted - a full developmental history from childhood - then I'd already have a diagnosis. Everything else would be anecdotal and probably dismissed, as I have been. 

The last conversation I had with the Work Psychologist, who has done nothing else, featured more of her telling me how great I am, which is of course no help at all. It's like telling the condemned man you cooked him the best meal he'll ever eat. Telling me how much you think I can do whatever I put my mind to doesn't actually tell me how I can do that without any support. 

All she could do was give me the number for yet another social enterprise, this time Alliance Homes, who, I'm guessing, are a housing association. There are a number of these organisations and I've spoken with a few of them, all to no avail. I do not imagine they will be any different. How can they be: they don't have any real power to change the system, nor any influence over decisions made within it. Like the Work Programme (these are the sort of groups that become providers) they can't create opportunities, and have no expertise in mental health, learning difficulties or autism spectrum issues - or anything health wise. 

I am meeting them next week, but I don't have any expectations anything will come of this. I am fully expecting things to be twisted and my position misrepresented. This is what happens now: the individual is always the scapegoat for his situation. He is either lazy, stupid, or ignorant. Always something of his own making. If society cannot get past such superficial attitudes then I don't see how anything can improve.

More likely they will recommend me to visit Positive Step (again) whom they, I'm sure, will know to be the local purveyor of mental health solutions. They will of course have no idea whether CBT, the only thing Positive Step offers, is suitable or even effective. In fact it seems CBT is being pimped by the Jobcentre.

I've tried the 'Beating the Blues' programme. This is what Positive Step offered when I first dealt with them (they have no in-person programmes I could get to, though it would be exactly the same curriculum). I seriously question the efficacy of this programme for anything except minor phobias: like dealing with a fear of spiders (unless you live on the Planet of the Killer Spiders or something). Dealing with more existential problems, such as depression in an era of crisis capitalism and neoliberal class warfare and social engineering overseen by cruel hypocritical greedy aristocrats, requires something else entirely. 

When I tried the course they featured a number of case studies to illustrate
each part of the programme and how it works. One of them was a struggling single mother who's biggest issue was her lacking income. It was quite telling that, in the end, the best they could offer, from her experience of the programme, was that she was reportedly feeling more positive. That's great (assuming it was true - never mind what became of her which we do not know, so how effective the long term prospects are is anyone's guess), but it won't pay her bills, rent or buy her food; exactly the sorts of crises that lead people to feel depressed in the first place.

Essentially the programme tries to teach that you need to develop an objective awareness, in the moment of crisis (such as when you have a wobble about not being able to buy food for example), so as to step outside of yourself and deconstruct your thinking. This is why I say it's useful for minor phobias because we know that, say, encountering a spider in the bath isn't a permanent crisis in the way being sanctioned is. Thus you can, after momentarily calming yourself, realise that the spider isn't a horrible agent of death out for and capable of eating you while you sleep. 

You cannot deconstruct what you can't control, and as the article linked says, you can only be taught to acquiesce. To accept your shitty lot and attempt to make peace with the agents of that system (assuming they aren't of the ilk that will sanction you at the drop of a hat) and take the banker's deal, Noel. Aside from how immoral that is, it's not going to help your self esteem. But they don't want you having self esteem (that breeds confidence which breeds independence of thought), they want your compliance. In that way you can be held responsible for all the failings of the capitalist system, as is the lot of the sick and the poor currently.

Oh and just to remind readers: Positive Step work with Atos (maybe that will change to the new guys, Maximus)!