How Will Support Be Next Year/2018?

As this year ends and the consumerist oblivion that is Christmas is a memory ago I have to ask this question moving forward. This is likely to be my last blog post for the year (a statement as melodramatic as it is vacuous).

Right now I'm waiting for my third attempt at the spectacular shit show that is the Work Capability Assessment. They have had two chances to do their job and failed each time. While the stone-faced receptionist was on the phone the HQ to find out why my second appointment had been cancelled, it didn't cross her mind to perhaps arrange someone there and then to see me. Whatever; they didn't. So now it's back to sitting by the door looking at the letterbox as if Jack Nicholson was about to smash his way through it and stab me to death. It doesn't feel much better.

In the midst of all this, where is my support? I work with (as a client, or 'customer', or whatever the correct term de jure is) a group who seem increasingly to fade into the background noise, like all the rest. The saddest part of all isn't the dismal predictability they might be just as useless as every other funded group, but that, despite offering increasingly less, they are still better than nothing.

To be fair, I don't think they are as bad as some groups (Working Links for instance). They haven't been hostile, though that could easily happen as so many of these groups are incredibly thin skinned and brook absolutely no criticism. I don't dislike my advisor, I think she means well - now that really is the saddest part of all. Good intentions don't mean shit in this society.

This is by far the biggest problem: they have such a limited array of support that the only thing it can produce is a victim blaming narrative. For example I suspect I will be 'encouraged', following my meeting with the not-a-colour colour therapist, to join in their wellbeing programme (which was meant to happen a few months ago, only they forgot to tell me it had actually started running, despite my asking). As it turns out this programme is very basic which means it will of course ignore the wider context people like me (and indeed everyone without a stable income to cushion the fall) find ourselves in. That context is the structure of a capitalist society run by an elite.

Absent of an understanding of that - class consciousness in other words - how can any attempt to provide 'wellbeing support' ever hope to do anything successful? Sure there is a time and a place for 'goal setting' (the same lexicon used by the Salvation Army, way back in the day when I saw them) or 'motivation', or, as one part of this curriculum asks, 'what makes you happy'?

The focus is on the individual. That's fine, but when it ignores the wider context how can it possibly do anything other than create a violent disconnect? People can set all the goals they like, but how will they feel about themselves when they can't accomplish them because the DWP has taken away their income or left them for months struggling with no Universal Credit? How are you supposed to motivate yourself then? How will positive thinking break through the very real wall of crushed opportunity and empty stomachs? I guess all those homeless people that I now see on the streets, where town centres are now campsites for the increasingly marginalised and dispossessed, are just lost in their own 'negative thinking'. Come on!

As for what makes me (or you) happy? It is entirely contextual. One day I might enjoy a piece of music, the next I might be in no mood for it at all. One day I might receive a letter telling me I have passed my WCA, the next I might be called in for another. This is such a trite question as to betray the utter uselessness of such services.

Now I'm not saying those that provide them don't mean well, or that they aren't nice people. This is another pernicious element of the system. It creates this assumption that criticism of the service, of the lack of understanding of the broader reality (the context I've been referring to), means that I think ill of those providing that service. This is something I find desperately tedious as I cannot bear having to constantly make this point. It's like being interrupted all the time - and it is used to control the conversation, to keep critics off point and unable to make their criticisms.

And now I have forgotten what I need to say next - which is the point.

It would be naive to assume these organisations are suddenly going to turn into revolutionary cells, but if they don't or can't accept the level of awareness that is required to really make positive change (and where we go with that is another struggle entirely) then how can they ever expect to help? When they are unwilling to refund my bus fare to the WCA, an demonstrate a fundamental lack of awarness of the nature of these tests, what can they possibly achieve? My advisor agrees that I'm not fit for work, she even offered to write a letter to that effect. Unfortunately that letter said "...needs to be challenged", in reference to helping me move forward. What she fails to understand is that saying anything like that will be taken as testimony that I can work - that work will heal me, the pernicious arbeit macht frei paradigm at the heart of this system.

The doublethink involved in what she has done is, with the greatest of respect, completely beyond her, just as is the notion that if I ask the WCA people to refund my bus far, it will confirm to them I am capable of work. We all know that is part of the test, they ask it to everyone who attends ("how did you get here today?" - it's not an innocent quiestion, Leon). How can people so ignorant of this reality ever expect to be helpful?

So That, Too, Just Happened...Again

Ah, sweet memories.

Remember the good times we had when I attended my WCA way back in the day (or at least November)? All the stress and anxiety worrying about coping in the waiting room, being made to wait for ages to be seen by someone who, despite not being a mental health professional, would ask a series of questions ignoring your health all just to find a tiny sliver of capacity they can use to completely deny you an income? Those good times?

Well...they're back!

So the not-a-doctor who saw me back then had decided that, in case she got sued or something, I'd have to be seen an actual doctor (but still not-a-doctor, because if you were a doctor you'd be a proper doctor, not working for the Gestapo here). Consequently, despite attending in good faith, and ignoring all the ensuing anxiety and dress, I had to tootle off back home like nothing had happened (which ironically is what happened). 

She did say that she would try and get me a home appointment, but I had assumed that wasn't going to happen as a couple of weeks later I got a letter for a new appointment at Gestapo Central - not a home visit. Well that appointment should have been today.

Should have?

That's right! They fucked up again! So my appointment, much to the perfunctory hard-assed stone-faced bemusement of the desk droid, had been cancelled. She had to ring HQ to get the correct programming in order to deal with this second clerical error.

To cut a long story short: it was cancelled, though no one bothered to tell me (despite them having my phone number, which she confirmed as part of establishing my ID), because I was supposed to be getting/going to be getting a...home visit!

So that's another load of stress for precisely fuck all. What do I get for this? I get to go home and wait for yet another envelope of doom to fall through the door and wait afresh. 

What a wonderful system. Clerical errors ohdearhowsadsorryaboutthat. Bullshit, this is people's lives!

"I'm not a colour therapist, I'm trained in the therapeutic use of colour"

Yes, that's what she said when I went for my social enterprise-booked appointment with a colour therapist (or not, as she seemed to say - presumably to come across more amenably). A colour therapist who was dressed completely in black.

So what is colour therapy and why am I doing it?

CT proper is pseudoscience. It's a 'complementary therapy' (which means it isn't therapy) based on the existence of Chakras, the ancient Indian metaphysical system of bodily energy points. Each has its own colour and so the purpose of CT is to balance and align them. Only problem is that there's no evidence Chakras exist. It's a lovely worldview, but I see nothing that makes it real. Sorry. I can't afford to invest in fictional ideas.

CT as advocated by a colourless, if friendly (and she was, don't misunderstand me), not-a-therapist therapist involves the notion that we respond to colours in the way people respond to horoscopes. They make us feel good (which in reality is a rather prosaic truth), and, like horoscopes, they associate with a range of personality traits: creative, spiritual, assertive, etc. All the usual tropes. Supposedly.

I'm just not sure what I'm meant to do with that; we all know horoscopes are essentially meaningless precisely because they are statements constructed to appeal to anyone. We've all seen the experiments and tricks done (by the likes of Derren Brown) where the same horoscope is read to a person from each of the different signs, with each person claiming that was a unique fit relating to their experience. I think these are called Barnum statements, after PT Barnum the circus guy.

It's harmless enough, and, like so many beliefs, it contains a kernel of truth. We like colours and respond to them in different ways. But whether that can determine personality traits? In reality people are complex with ever shifting characteristics that derive from circumstance and environment, all of which shift. The archetypal phrases associated with colours and horoscopes are what we'd like to think we are; they are aspirations. Some of them are true, but they belie the act we change. Today I might not be assertive, tomorrow...?

So I'm presented with a pile of photos; each a picture of a scene in nature: a forest, the sea, the sunrise, some flowers, etc. I'm told to pick my favourites. These then represent colours I somehow in some way identify with. But the problem is that I'm not just responding to the colours, but the image as well. For example, I pick a striking image of a purple violet sunset over the sea. Had that been a purple violet piece of dog turd it would have been a different story. No one would pick that!

Next I'm invited to sift through a series of cards, each naming a colour and listing it's associated personality traits/characteristics. It's like being asked to pick a horoscope - I'm a creative person (or so I'd like to think, which, as I say, is the point I think) so that means I'm...purple? What does that mean? This is the question I didn't ask because I knew no answer would be forthcoming. Am I to surround myself with purple? If I buy lots of Prince albums will that make me more creative? I don't get it. Purple is a nice enough colour, I guess. I mean it's existence doesn't offend me, but I wouldn't want to live in a sea of it. Unlike Prince.

All of this exists within a certain context: this 'intervention' was recommended to me by the social enterprise, funded by the lottery, that are meant to be helping me. I only agreed to this because I feel obliged to. When you are offered next to nothing you have to realise that when you refuse something, no matter how rubbish it might be, you are seen to be refusing 100% of what they have to offer. Consequently you are subsequently accused of not engaging with the service. This is lazy. If all they can offer is colour therapy then perhaps they need to consider what they can offer, but anything for a quiet life I guess.

Colour therapy of course doesn't begin to address the deep seated social reasons why people struggle. Look at the society we live in, look at the structures that exist over which we have no control, yet they in return exert unjustified ocntrol over our lives. Look at how we depend on them for food, clothing, shelter, and all that good stuff. Look at the demands placed upon us by an economic system that is increasingly running on empty - falling wages, increasing workloads, longer hours.

Is it any wonder people are stressing to the point of pills and suicide? Half of all ESA claimantrs have attempted suicide. A situation completely unnatural that should not exist, but it does. Yet it is within this context that colour therapy is offered to me. Now, perhaps they recognise that it isn't meant to be a great panacea and merely 'something to think about', as the colourless therapist said to me. Ok, that's fair enough, but it's still not really any kind of help is it? Who doesn't find some colours more pleasant than others; who doesn't enjoy a still life or a natural vista?

What I resent is being placed into a situation where I feel obligated to accept help even when I know it won't. That isn't fair, that's how the Jobcentre operates - only there it's calcified into the cruelty of sanctions. Here it becomes a more spectral phenomena: am I letting my advisor down? Is she genuinely trying to help? I have to wonder - and that wasn't helped by the fact she didn't bother to tell me that the 'wellbeing' course they were setting up started without telling me...

So she had told me about this right from the off. I said this was something I'd be interested in doing (info pending) while she said, several times, that they were still getting it organised while waiting to get someone in to run it. Next thing I know I'm talking with that someone only to find that course had been running for almost 3/4 it's duration and that I was too late. Moreover, yesterday, the colourless therapist (she looked like she was going to a bloody funeral!), mentioned that next week the people from that course, along with the staff of this social enterprise (some of them at least) would be meeting for an Xmas get together. Ok, she did invite me (unlike my advisor who so far hasn't mentioned any such thing at all, despite knowing I suffer from social isolation). What a kick in the teeth: I'm not told about the wellbeing group and then find they are all having a Christmas get together! Not sure I want to attend as I won't know any of them, they, having already met and worked together, will know each other. I won't.

That well being 'course' starts again next month. The Colourless Therapist showed me the curriculum and, dismally, it's more of the same mundane self help nonsense. I shouldn't say that, if it helps people then fair play, but again - context! The sessions are weekly for an hour and a half and feature such topics as "what makes me happy". Maybe I'm just a massive curmudgeon, but I just don't see how this can help except on the tiniest level. I said I'm interested and I'll probably give it a go because there's no alternative, but it's the low level simplistic approach that bothers me. What makes me happy? Moaning on the internet apparently. Ok, so we focus on these things (perhaps not that)
 and then what? How will that address the fundamental concerns that are being ignored by the Tories as they rip society in half? Purple rain, purple rain.

Loneliness

There may be a ton of other, perhaps even more serious, subjects that do not get discussed. But in my view, and or the purpose of this piece, there aren't many quite as pernicious as being alone. Whether in a crowd (which can sometimes be worse) or genuinely alone.

In fact now that I reflect on this, I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. In so many ways this is something that feels, to me, something that one cannot admit. Whether or not this is a cultural attitude, or an expectation born of gender ("boys don't cry y'all").

The truth is.

Insert enormous pause.

That I am lonely.

It has taken an awful lot of effort to type this, of course that will not come through here.

I am not sure I should be posting this. But if you are reading it then you know that I have and the hell with it.

I have no idea what I want to achieve from this. It is seen as the least attractive thing, it seems to me in our culture, to admit this. In so many ways it is the ultimate sign of weakness.

Or am I wrong? Oh well in for a penny, in for a pound.

You see, I never did well in this area. That's just how it is; some of us shine socially always find someone to share their lives with (for better or worse). Others don't. I think that's how it is with everything. For some people life comes up heads, for others it's tails. Were I a philosophical man I might say it's yin and yang.

What do you do when the options to meet people aren't there? What can you do about a society that seems to place so much stock in being a 'winner' and on superficial things like crafting an appearance of wearing the pointiest shoes. These are the values people admire, because that's what we are taught matters and being lonely is to be a loser. It is the antithesis of those values and to show that weakness is to piss in the cornflakes of society.

We don't teach relationships at school. You sort of have to learn how to deal with people, how to interact with them. You are meant to figure that out the way animals learn things: by observing and copying. But that isn't always possible: what happens when your role models are themselves dysfunctional and you don't know any better? What happens when you gro up in a family where the very word relationship is anathema, where parents and siblings fight because that's all they seem to have known?

It can take lifetimes to break free from that. Yet in the meantime, because of society's demands, you must put on a brave face. People will comment on how great or nice your parents are, and you nod because you know enough not to speak the truth. That would be unthinkably awkward and impolite. You are left screaming inside your skin while a little piece of you dies inside.

Then, as you grow up, you life passes you by. All the things you should have been doing; all the people that you should have met, the experiences you should have had and the relationships you should have formed... they never happened. Life has passed you by and somewhere there's a scorekeeper looking at you disapprovingly tapping his watch and shaking his head.

You get one shot at this life, but you can't force love out of life. You can't make it happen. It's the sole purview of trashy lit and self help guide that there's someone special waiting for everyone: a soul mate just waiting to be found. Life doesn't work that way. There are just people; they walk around blinkered by the expectations of the environment they've known, programmed into them. They will walk right past that person blind to a smile or a casual kindness and never know if that was indeed their soul mate. Life will go on. The pain will go on. It may even become a friend of sorts: a companion that reminds them they are alive.

We shoudln't have to live like this. Our society should be free from aspirationally charged norms. No one should judge each other for their clothing choices or whether their appearance fits a certain profile. They should be valued for who they are. But that's just a pipe dream isn't it. Only it isn't, if enough people believe it - that's my self help book.

And yet here I am. No one will ever notice and it will be too late.

And I am not alone in this.

Insultation

Government harassment continues unabated. There's this, apparently.

It is a strategy called, ironically, Improving Lives. It seems to be another effort by, ostensibly, the capitalist class, to prod and poke at the sick. It will, it seems, never end. I don't see any input from those it affects - as per usual. What does that tell us about these people? They can talk about us, over us and speak for us. But not once do they deem it necessary to actual ask us or even listen.

It sets out the steps government will take to transform disability employment over the next decade and progress so far as we build a country fit for the future. 

Steps that will of course not include any compulsion to employ people and treat them properly since that would immediately be shouted down as threatening profit. What does a country fit for the future look like? Is it built on the frozen corpses of the homeless, whose number has exploded in recent years? Is it built on the single mothers who starve to feed their kids? Is it built on foodbanks that are now running out of food while Tories claim prestige for opening them?

Is it built on the fucking stolen valour of soldiers who earned medals in war that now end up as baubles to adorn the fetishes of rich tax dodging Tory peers; to be bandied about on televised auction house game shows in an effort to bolster ego and image?

Let's try and find out.

Extending fit note certification beyond GPs to a wider group of healthcare professionals, including physiotherapists, psychiatrists and senior nurses, to better identify health conditions and treatments to help workers go back into their jobs faster. Fit notes are designed to help patients develop a return to work plan tailored to their individual needs.

Immediately I ask: what is the point of this? What does it matter how many more people are empowered to write 'fit' notes? They only lead the individual to the same point: the waiting area of the Work Capability Assessment office. At that point the note is irrelevant since the test doesn't look at what you can do and grade you accordingly, like some kind of medical GCSE (and just as pointless). Either you score the arbitrary 15 points, at which point you might make it into the support group, or you might as well score nothing (and likely will).

This makes a complete mockery of the notion of a fit note since, without ESA, you will need to sign for unemployment benefit (Universal Credit) and be treated as though you are in no way limited in what you can do. If you claim you are limited, well it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the consequence will be.

Even if you were to find a Work Coach, on Universal Credit in such circumstances, who accepted your limited conditionality, what difference would it make? Sooner or later you will still come up against the hurdle of conditionality: you will still be compelled to 'broaden your parameters'. This looks likely to be the remit of the DWP's infamous 'nudge' unit; the department tasked with managing your attitude to work. In other words you will be sent to Room 101 wherein Dr Psychobabble, some shamed therapist having given up on being an actual professional and thrown all scruples at the window, will tell you that you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and take some responsibility. All the usual victim blaming crap I've spoken about before. Magic thinking self help guru bullshit. All designed to carefully distract from an imploding capitalist economy you, the claimant, have no control over.

2,000 work coaches have received training since 2015 to help them work with benefit claimants with mental health conditions. The government is committed to building on this with the introduction of an enhanced training offer developed with a national mental health charity.

This just trivialises mental health. How much training does a Work Coach receive? It takes longer than two years to learn to be a doctor, never mind this is the time they claim it's taken to get everyone up to speed. I guess it amounts to some vague notion of "don't mention suicide!" as if they were Basil Fawlty neurotic about some German guests.

The only thing this government is committed to is maximising the profits and minimising the support. If someone has a meltdown in front of their Work Coach what will happen? Will they be sanctioned or allowed to go home un-financially-molested? We know where this leads by looking at how the WCA works: if you have to attend on of those godforsaken offices as a sufferer of anxiety/depression (like yours truly, to pick a cloud out the sky :D), no allowances are made for your needs - even though there must be implicit acceptance of your condition - otherwise you wouldn't be there. But if you can't attend, or do and have to leave beforehand because you can't cope, that acceptance will do a complete volte face and you will be deemed to be a piss taker and...no more money for you. This is the very definition of doublethink: we accept you are ill, but if you act like it we will treat you as a malingerer or, worse, a conman.

£39 million investment to more than double the number of employment advisors in an existing NHS programme treating people with depression and anxiety disorders.

Um, what NHS programme? Does anyone know? I need to find out because no NHS source has ever told me about such a programme. At all. I may have to edit this if I find out.

Or is this referring to some co-DWP nudge unit bullshit, the sort I've just alluded to.

Responding in full to the 40 recommendations of the Stevenson/Farmer Review of mental health and employers – including reforming Statutory Sick Pay, improving advice and support for employers and encouraging transparency. The government is also encouraging other employers to take forward these recommendations.

This would be Paul Farmer, the compromised head of Mind who chose the DWP over his own service users and the mental health community. Only the other day he was bemoaning the lack of support for mental health from the budget. Quelle surprise Paul!

Over 5,000 companies have signed up to the Disability Confident scheme to promote disability inclusion and government is encouraging more companies to sign up.

Great, won't mean a thing. What power will a disabled individual have against an unscrupulous or exploitative employer - especially given the Tories have done their level best to diminish workers rights across the board, including access to tribunals?

Appointing an Expert Working Group on Occupational Health to champion, shape and drive a programme of work to take an in-depth look at the sector.

See what I just wrote about Paul Farmer. That's what this will be; another group of delusional third sector heroes who are either ignorant or arrogant enough to believe the DWP actually cares and won't screw over those they claim to represent.

It's all just the usual nonsense. They know people are angry, so let's get the great and the good to talk about and around those whose lives their decisions will impact, as if they were sitting up on Mount Olympus. Nothing will change because fundamentally what needs to change will be forever off the table. This is why we are the only people who can effect change. Even Labour are too scared to call for the utter abolition, the scrapping, of Universal Credit. It cannot be saved, must not be paused, and won't ever be fixed. Certainly not without further devastation. It should never have been born;destroy it and salt the earth from which it grew.

But the system does not work as well as it should, and employment outcomes for those on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) are very low. We want to improve the contact we have with disabled people and those with health conditions, join up with health services, and achieve better outcomes and the right support for those who cannot work.

That's from the report itself (Page 16). Listen to this shit: the system doesn't work well - they claim (just not the way they think it should) - because only 4% are finding work (that's the figure referenced in the footnotes). That's because these are people that can't work! Why are they expected to secure work at all when they are ill? In other words, their aim isn't to support people who are ill, primarily at least in dealing with that reality, but pushing, nudging and compelling them into work. One way or another until eventually they either find work, dsiappear down a deep dark hole, or give up on their claim altogether.

What did I say above about training Work Coaches?

44. Work coaches currently undergo a three-week learning process and accreditation. This includes training on health conditions and disabilities, and how to tailor service delivery according to needs. Since the Green Paper we have rolled out new training for work coaches as part of the Health and Work Conversation (HWC). This new training builds skills of empathy, active listening, and helping people respond resiliently to challenges and overcome fixed beliefs about their abilities.

Three weeks to learn about, what would appear, not just mental health, but disability as a whole. Three fucking weeks! As if you were training to referee your local Saturday league soccer team. Here's your cards, here's your whistle, that's the offside rule, good luck!

And it includes training on health conditions and disabilities - almost mentioned that as a footnote!

Apparently these people have to learn how to be human beings, skilled in such foreign concepts as empathy, active listening, and helping people.

But what's that? Helping people respond resiliently: that's the nudge unit talking. That's the self help victim blaming crap. So nothing changes.

We will also look to further improve the quality of working relationships between work coaches and customers by exploring the use of a ‘Working Alliance’ measure, adapted from mental health services, to examine what factors improve or inhibit positive relationships, and how work coaches can be supported to foster them.

Now what on earth is a 'Working Alliance' measure? This is nothing I have ever seen that I'm aware of from any mental health service I know of.

However, there were differing views on what the core elements of employment support should be, including support for provision such as Individual Placement and Support (IPS), Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Peer Support. 

IAPT is basically the mindfulness/wellness advisor stuff I dealt with earlier this year. I know this because that is the phrase the 'wellness advisor' used to describe it. Needless to say it was no help at all. No support was offered, no diagnosis was undertaken, and all they were interested in was having me fill in a form each week to record my mood, deciding that, even a 1 point incremental shift in one category was enough to claim success, despite not actually doing anything.

IPS just sounds like nudgespeak for work related activity - in other words, having your Work Coach bully you into unpaid work at the likes of the Salvation Army or some other self aggrandising outfit.

The report is a lot longer and I'm not going through it piece by piece. The last part worth mentioning here is:

Supporting those furthest from the labour market (Support Group)

Our vision

70. We want everyone in the Support Group to have the opportunity to access personalised, tailored and practical employment support on a voluntary basis - when they want or need it.

People in the support group are those that can't work. They aren't 'farthest from the labour market'. Just listen to this language. They can't let it go. Sooner or later, no matter if you're dead or dying, you will be graded by this system in terms of your distance from the labour market under the assumption that distance can be closed; that some form of 'work related activity' can be performed.

You aren't worth anything to these people unless they can wrong a mote of profit from your withered ailing corpse it seems.

Wonderful.

So That, Too, Just Happened

And so another DWP letter comes through. Again, I knew it as soon as I saw it from across the floor. I just fucking knew.

So they've given me another appointment, this time a week before Xmas - because nothing says festive spirit like being made to wait in a hostile environment for god knows how long before someone, hopefully qualified, sees you.

Ridiculous. I was told I would get a home visit, but that obviously hasn't happened. I suspect that, if I try and ask for one, they will just say tough shit.

Because that's how it is isn't it. Tough shit if you're struggling. Tough shit if you've already turned up, in good faith doing what was asked of you. Tough shit all round. Now the stress begins again.

This is our world. A system that can't and won't care. If you get screwed up because of some 'adminsistrative error' oh dear how sad. Do was we say and if you can't then tough bloody shit.

Well fuck this. I'm seriously tempted not to go. I can't face sitting in that place for hours on end.

So That Just Happened

Or didn't.

Woke up stressed because I was supposed to be haveing my WCA today.

Yes, you heard that right. Supposed.

So what actually happened: turned up at quarter past nine for a 9:25am appointment. During the subsequent 35 minute wait (because they refuse to book accurate appointments), a guy with crutches has to beg to be seen and not sent away because of some confusion regarding his ability to safely exit the building. Two other people leave for a time because they realise they are going to be waiting for ages.

It's not a happy place. The guy with crutches says his appointment was the same time as mine, so I guess they are double booking people as well. They know how long the appointments take (on balance, of course there are always exceptions), yet they still adopt a completely unworkable structure: without thought for the fact people attending do have problems, particularly with mental health and the stress of appointments and waiting rooms.

So when I'm seen, the assessor introduces herself as a registered nurse (presumably not actually practising). Says it all that people who could be serving in a real capacity within the NHS proper would rather take Mrs May's silver coin to bother the sick.

She then mentions that I can't be seen because, due to having an eye condition called a Nystagmus (involuntary eye movement and difficulty focussing, had it all my life), I need to be seen by an actual doctor. By which she means an assessor who is registered as a doctor (again, Mrs May's shiny silver).

I could go on about how this is bullshit, as these are not properly diagnostic appointments and it' snot the job of Maximus or the WCA to actually diagnose conditions. Apparently it's a rules thing: the DWP guidelines (so I'm told) require this. Nystagmuses (nystagmi?) are on a list of conditions that require the individual be assessed by a doctor. She didn't say optician, which makses the whole thing suspect. What does 'doctor' mean? We have specialisation for a reason; if you go to a GP and report the symptoms of such a condition you'll be told to see an optician.

In the end it makes (and made) no difference. I had to leave pending a new appointment, and a big fat reset on the stress-O-meter. There is the possibility of a home appointment, although I'm not sure that would be workable; however I suspect that was mooted just to appease me. I doubt they have any intention of honouring that. Apparently my case was initially examined by a doctor, but then incorrectly assigned. So well done.

It's a shit show. They don't care for the consequences they inflict on people. This is not just a simple clerical error to those of us who have to endure this process. I spent two weeks stressing about it from the moment the letter arrived. I never stopped thinking about it and now I have to go through that again. They have no answer for this and no intention, I suspect, of mitigating their process accordingly - or offering anything else. Maybe they will offer a home appointment, but that doesn't make the waiting game any less sharp. I have no idea when they will contact me again or what they will offer. It's entirely possible I will have no choice but to reattend the stressful assessment centre. Even though I had to wait 35 minutes an earlier appointment is all the more preferable, now there is no guarantee my next time will be thus.

Welcome to the circus where the dancing elephants of tory ineptitude trample over your life for the amusement of the rich.

Into the Mirror

So tomorrow morning is my WCA. Needless to say I am not looking forward to it, and that would be an understatement. It's currently sitting in my mind, refusing to leave, cooking up a stultifying negativity. That's the thing with depression; it's a presence that, even if you manage to distract yourself for a time, it returns with hammer-like vengeance. That feeling alone is enough to make the problem of depression the horrible reality it is. Sucker punched by your own thoughts.

Logically - as if we live in a logical society - I should pass. My situation is unchanged from last year. However that is exactly why I won't pass. You might think it reasonable to simply report that fact, but the simplicity of doing so, the ease of process, is exactly why you can't. Instead I will be seen, likely by someone different, and asked the same questions; some of which will not be relevant but part of the deceptive nature of the process. For example, being asked 'how did you get here today' in an effort to prove that you can function independently because you can handle half an hour on a bus when it's not too busy.

It's a test, but unlike determining if I'm a replicant, it's to determine whether I'm human. Which, on reflection, is sort of the same thing.

Honestly the questions they ask are meaningless anyway; diagnosing mental health requires trust. This is why gaslighting is such a big issue: if you are doing to assume people with invisible incommunicable problems are faking it then you are already failing them. But then this process is not one of diagnosis. It isn't even really interested in that; instead it's to establish - no matter how marginal - that you are capable of work: some kind, any kind. Even for one hour a week. This is why it is important to relay your symptoms and difficulties at their most serious (and they may try and persuade you otherwise).

I know this. I might even seem like someone who has 'cracked' the system and thus certain to succeed. But that couldn't be further from the truth. This is not a problem that can be solved because it is based on an adversarial structure. The 'healthcare professional' (ie not a doctor) isn't there to help you, they are there to catch you out. One slip, that's all it takes. Does this really seem a good way to run a welfare system? If you fail, that's it. You can expect the letter to come through telling you that you failed; by the time you'll be reading it you'll have already lost your income. There is no transition period, no support during it, nothing. We wouldn't expect a hospital to treat people that way, but a welfare state seems to be a different matter.

So in theory my chance of succeeding should be the same as last time. But I cannot believe lightning will positively strike twice. I can't assume that outcome, although there is very little other than steeling myself mentally, that I can do anyway. I will have to hope that, whoever sees me tomorrow, will report what I say, believe what I say, and that the DWP bureaucrat they pass their report on to, will draw the same conclusion as last year.

Unfortunately I have no supporting evidence; it is impossible to be seen or diagnosed by a mental health specialist here, because (like everywhere it seems) there aren't any. There are 'wellness advisors', because we don't like to label people as 'depressed' etc: a statement of intent that does more harm than these people can possibly imagine. By not giving people a diagnosis you are depriving them of the truth of their situation - and without a diagnosis you deprive them of chips to bargain with against the DWP. Against; that's the problem.

GP's are no better. They will claim they don't like the 'medicalise' mental health. They will point toward positive thinking outcomes, like mindfulness, where they believe that if you just adopted a positive attitude problems would melt away, like a lovely butter. Again this is depriving the patient of vital support. It's also a sign of the ignorance of the medical profession and their unwillingness to stand by patients. They have been brainwashed into thinking the WCA is a diagnostic affair, thereby relieving them of any responsibility. They will believe it delivers appropriate outcomes.

It's also a form of gaslighting.

Fundamentally, regardless, this is the composition of our society right now. This is what welfare looks like. A hall of mirrors that hides its true nature behind misguided and beguiling forms. Everywhere you turn you are shown a potential outcome that is an ugly reflection of your own life constructed from deprivation and judgement. It is a system based on harsh principles: we don't help people, we don't trust people, and we don't want them to survive.

That Word That Begins With S

This isn't an easy topic, and so given the nature I'm giving a trigger warning for discussing suicide. It is not my intention to make people uncomfortable, god knows there's enough of that in the world already; but I'm not one of these right wing blowhards who thinks 'triggering' people is funny either. Please be careful.

Essentially what I want to say is as follows, and it is not based on direct experience. It comes from what I have observed about how mental health support works in this country, plus the role of the police in dealing with the collapse of support structures.

It seems to me that, if you present with what I believe is termed 'suicidal ideation' then you run the risk of having your problems ignored in favour of preventing harm - ostensibly to yourself. Conventional wisdom posits this is a favourable outcome - generally speaking we don't want people doing themselves in. But in the context of an authoritarian society that thinks it knows what's best for people while simultaneously offering no real solutions what does this mean? 

I think it means people are afraid that, if they so present, they will be betrayed. Instead of really listening to a potential cry for help, they assume that sectioning them, sending the police around (potentially jailing them in unfit facilities for an undisclosed period of time), or otherwise taking control of their lives - perhaps even forcibly medicating them, is the right thing to do. 

I cannot say whether it is or it isn't in any given case. But my fear is that in scaring people off you are forcing people to downplay their symptoms. This is because, IMHO, our system is locked in a state of triage. Due to budget cuts it's in crisis mode; this means if you present feeling 'down' you will be asked about suicidal intention and one of two things happens:

Either you say yes (assuming this is the case of course) and hope the healthcare professional you are seeing chooses to deal with this appropriately (and that is entirely subjective). 

Or you say no, in which case a state of mind that might be very serious indeed is dismissed. They don't have the resources, so you'll be sent away with very little to help you. This just feeds the problem of isolation and abandonment and depression etc even more. 

If it takes the threat of suicide to get help, something is very wrong.

The point I am making, and likely very clumsily (precisely because we have to dance around this issue), is about trust. 

If someone is suicidal it's not hard to see why (in the main): look at the material conditions in our society. People like this aren't even guaranteed an income, yet denied any access to positive opportunities without one. But unfortunately medical orthodoxy seems to assert that 'being a risk to oneself or others' overrides the need to change our approach.

And of course those are important considerations, but I cannot tell you how many times I've spoken to healthcare professionals who read that boilerplate script out before even addressing the reality of the situation. That tells me that, while they care, they do so in a perfunctory impersonal way. That is not what people need.

If people can't trust their support professionals, how can they ever get help? What we need is a society that cares; compassion must be the bedrock to any healing approach. If people feel they cannot be honest it cannot be right that they don't get the support they need just because, by not being suicidal, they are not serious.

I hope this makes sense. Once again: it is of course important to take safety of self/patient and others seriously. But something seems wrong in our approach to me; the aforementioned binary seems inevitably to set patient against support in a way that cannot be positive. Consequently suicide - specifically feelings of suicide - are not properly discussed and people are not helped. 

No More

Today on the TV you can watch a live performance around the Cenotaph, because it's that time of the year. You will watch, as if it were spectacle, the current elderly representative of a monarchy hopelessly entwined with the fascists of Europe. You will see politicians, who claim to represent us, lay wreaths of plants at the foot of a statue before returning to the business of depriving the heirs to the legacy of those they just 'remembered' and selling arms to other despots because profit.

So watching this morally bankrupt spectacle serves what purpose? Are we so far gone that we cannot see the rampant hypocrisy on display?

This spectacle will be, as it has been for decades now, repeated up and down the country. The great and the good, who otherwise care little for the lives of people around them, will participate in this process. For the most part they will be throwing their weight behind a moral ritual rather than living out any lesson one might learn from the sordid business of war. That lesson being: no more.

A simple lesson that is quietly ignored because the moral ritual absolves one of doing more. It's a process. It's also a process that is deeply embedded into the structure of our society: the ruling class demands it of us while dressing up kids in 'future soldier' t shits and having 'armed forces day' events where bouncy castles sit next to howitzers.

This is no longer a day to memorialise and educate people on the only lesson the survivors of the first world war wanted us to learn - "never again" - it is a tawdry festival designed to shore up support for the ruling class and its agenda. The British army - as an institution - isn't a heroic bastion of freedom, it is a reflection of the racism, self important superiority, and thuggery embedded in the establishment. When we conscript children - for that is what the 'recruitment' of a 16 year old is - we do not represent anything positive.

And you'll note that the same ruling class suppressed, through filibuster, an attempt to allow those same people the right to vote. This is so emblematic of the reality: they want your blood, they don't want you to vote with it. A nation can bleed all so the ruling elite can dine in luxury another day. A ruling elite that supported and endorsed men like Hitler when it suited them.

Never is the brutality of the ruling elite more apparent than in the casual threat that one must not discuss these issues at the time most apposite to do so. The message of the poppy is buried in the trite cliché trotted out by our masters that "now isn't the time". Just like every time there is a horrific mass shooting (using weapons of war) in the US and NRA apologists decry any attempt to speak out, right there and then, as being disrespectful. It is alleged to be disrespectful to the 'fallen', or those who 'gave their lives', to question how remembrance is now conducted.

That is disrespectful.

What are we remembering? Again the 'fallen' - nobody fell, they were butchered; their lives tossed aside callously and quickly. Again they 'gave their lives'; I'm sure they didn't! This is propaganda. It is an attempt to both pretty up the brutality of armed conflict, and to show the place the soldiery has in the eyes of the ruling class. Their lot is to lay down their lives, only it's sold as 'in the name of freedom'. What freedom: poppy fascism has risen to absurd levels as to render the poppy itself vacuous.

Or perhaps they mean the freedom for people to live under economic tyranny such that economic conscription is a reality. Now we have armed forces days and the presence of the military in schools. A creeping normalisation of war.

These are not the realities we are to remember. Instead we are taught to 'remember' as a nebulous concept. For some there will be a terrible reality; a loved on who never came home from a theatre that should never have existed. A child deprived of a parent. Such a waste. For most of us it will simply be the notion itself; we 'remember' because we are taught to. Giving thanks to some notion in the name of a freedom that doesn't exist because we are still oppressed by a ruling class that created the mess to begin with.

Al enshrined in a small plastic poppy that will be tossed in a trash can a week later. Joining the detritus of life that is slowly choking the world. Meanwhile the institution of the army - despite the best, misguided, intentions of some who join up - will continue to be a force for destruction in the world.

For me, the poppy is lost. The sentiment is real. No more war. But by wearing it that sentiment and my autonomy to voice it will be stolen to give succour to causes I abhor. Well, no more. Do not trivialise the sacrifice of those who genuinely fought for honourable intention against those no worse than our ruling class by giving in to their propaganda.

The Frame (edited)

I spent much of the other day refreshing the stupid news sites in the hope that a pro-torture, pro-murder politician had been sacked by a useless PM. Said politician also went on record calling the British workforce, by default the entire cohort, "lazy". A statement so egregious that it is as offensive as it is stupid. A statement that could only come from a cosy member of the ruling elite.

How do we live in this world? These people are our gods, if not by choice. Certainly by their incessant demand for fealty. The rest of them seem to have their own private foibles and scandals; whether economic or due to some weird repressive trait. When they aren't putting it away in a tax haven nowhere British, they seem to be putting it away...well you get my drift.

However, the rest of us have to slouch along only to be told we shouldn't slouch. Shoulders back stand up straight and look the world in the eye. Big boys don't cry, they just shoulder the increased burden of the master while thanking them with glass eyed innocense for any scrap from the table - ignorant of who built the table and prepared the food.

How many people in Parliament serve with mental health conditions? How many of them can honestly speak to the lived experience of such conditions? Maybe a great many; people secretly filled with self loathing desperate to stuff their conscience into a bureacratic box. In this way they become the suited and booted intellectual sausage meat that remains from the Westminster soul grinder. Puour that substance into a box marked 'political party' and let ideology do the rest. A receipe from hell for human misery and the assertion of unjustifiable authority. All dressed up in the facade of a thousand year legislature.

Everyday it's like there's a frame around my mind. A frame filled with snakes and arrows; the demons of my thoughts. They aren't so much seen as heard; a hissing noise that always sets the parameters of my mood. Sometimes the frame gets bigger, and sometimes it stays the same. Sometimes it's hard to tell the frame from reality, and those are the worst days. Listening to the monsters in Westminster reminds me how difficult life is; when people who might genuinely want to do a good thing are given no power and are shut down by those who want to keep things as they are. Yet even the status quo is a lie; things don't remain the same they seem to be getting steadily worse.

Every moment life is as good as its ever going to get because every subsequent moment things seem to get worse. I joined a Facebook group for people 'surviving' on Universal Credit; I joined because I'm likely to soon be joining them. Surviving; that's what it's come to. A fight for existence amid the jungle vines of boarded up shops and humans abandoned to sleep in their doorways on beds of anti-vagrant spikes.

The posts are a patchwork of misery and fear. This is what has become of the social safety net. Instead of a comfortable reassuring bedrock of support, it's as hard as crazy paving and just as lunatic. The bureacracy equally unyeilding, seemingly implacable in the face of an unfolding disaster. This is the new normal: this is as good as it's going to get because in the next moment you're going to be skint.

Somehow through all this fog I have to live. I don't have a navigator nor a chart. There is no map nor a compass. Whatever assistance there is, a sometime lighthouse, never seems to live up to expectations, but I cling to it because I have to. Mental health is a slippery phrase so even communicating these problems becomes difficult: what does mental health mean when really we mean mental unhealth; and what flavour of unhealth? What is the acceptable illness de jour? Is it depression? Schizophrenia? What will the papers accept today: will they be sympathetic to the former because an ex-SAS 'hero' took his own life? Or will they think "pull your socks up" while commenting from their editorial tax haven. Where do you even begin to explain a pain as old as life itself; an anguish that goes beyond words when only words will do?

Nobody who doesn't experience this can understand it; this is the curse of mental health. It is a language that cannot be learnt only experienced and if you speak it, you too are cursed. The people in power do not speak it, but they try and control it. They try to change the meaning of its words to fit their broken agenda. Then they use it against you.

This is what will happen next Thursday when I have to negotiate their world and dance at their pleasure, like a monkey selling teabags, to continue to exist, even if I am not currently existing very well. It is a grotesque truth that, despite the poor quality of the lives of the poor (fashioned by the elite), that they have to jump so many hoops just to continue to enjoy that poor quality. The alternative is so much worse.

How did it come to this? What did I do that led to this point? I do not know. You're taught to have aspirations but never how to achieve them. You aren't meant to; it is enough to have them because that is what the ruling elite believes is enough to keep you functional. Should you achieve them you would likely no longer be trapped within their system, and so you are kept compliant to the capitalist system by aspiring to be in the capitalist system but never achieving enough (by design) to succeed in the capitalist system. This is not your (or my) fault; it is by design.

I have come to realise that mental health, for some, is also a horrible legacy. We inherit a propensity or a tendency for a state of mind, just as we are also socialised to it. My parents, I believe, were sick people. They may have married in love, I will never know, but they ended in bitterness and dispute, yet never truly a resolution. A cold war fought between two damaged people, touched by neuroses and obsession. I cannot diagnose them, but on reflection I recognise behaviours. Unfortunately society around them did not. They would never agree that is what they were (are), but to me it is so clear. If there is one thing depression can provide it is a clarity about what constitutes a healthy state of mind.

So we are where we are. Broken and lost. Around us the systems that we depend on are falling to pieces, like watching scenes from an earthquake. Only this isn't some far away fault-stricken country, it's our society and it's disappearing down a very deep sinkhole. There is no money to cushion its fall, only the spectacle of the great and the good as they themselves dissemble revealing the truth of their culture and their own behaviour; a product of a world gone mad.

But don't worry, there's the Brexit soap opera to keep us all distracted!

After the Trust Has Gone

I feel I should play something sickly-sweet by Peter Cetera to underline so melodramatic a title.

Maybe not, I don't think my psyche could cope with that level of schmaltz.

Why has the trust gone?

It's about a relationship with the people who support you. So far the people I'd been seeing at Team North Somerset had actually turned out to be pretty helpful - certainly compared to the dismal experiences with other agencies and social enterprises (or however they identify themselves). This must be understood of course within the context of the prevailing systems that dominate our society (insert standard reference to capitalism). In other words, they can do something, but not really enough because they can't change the government, it's ideology and it's policies to that end.

Initially I was told they (the North Somerset people, not the bloody government) were hoping to get a 'wellbeing' programme of some kind in place. I was told this a few times since I started. However it was only last Friday, after my advisor returned from being sick, that I found out that programme had been running for eight weeks, had only a couple more weeks left before starting again in the new year. Nobody saw fit to tell me this and I was told that the group that had started there were already pretty close (in other words, no point joining at this late stage).

Now I have no doubts this programme will be the usual ineffectual 'feel good' bullshit that ultimately permeated the mindfulness course. It's cut from the same cloth: focus on the subject, not the cause. I don't blame the tutor, who seemed friendly enough (and I've no reason to assume otherwise). But it's better than doing nothing, and, at this time of year, the black dog of depression is even closer to the door than the rest of the time. This is not a positive period and I could use all the help I can get - who knows the group might well comprise good people. We're all in it together of course.

So that's a thing that didn't happen.

Another thing that didn't happen is that I didn't get a letter from the Jobcentre telling me I have a work focussed interview on the day after my WCA. Fortunately it will be by phone (if I can be bothered, because honestly right now...), and doubly fortunately it's in the morning. I'm off to a writing class in the afternoon and the JC can fuck off if they think I'm missing that just to have a conversation that will prove completely pointless given the timing.

You might think that they, when booking this, might use a system that shares information such as when the 'customer' (I'm buying nothing) is having a WCA. What's the point of discussing anything work focussed when I might not even be on ESA any longer? It's not as if they can help anyway, what can some random advisor do over the phone? Can he magic up some paid work that's suitable for someone with depression?

I think we know the answer to that.

Meanwhile over the weekend a bunch of people in town protested the closure of Weston super Mare's accident and emergency department. Yes, from July, you'd better not be sick ill or dying between the hours of 10pm and 8am because you'll need an extra 45 minutes and an entirely different hospital to help you not die. Well done to our useless pillock of an MP, John Penrose, who just so happens to be married to Baroness (oh my!) Dido Harding, another revolting strand of Tory DNA.

She's the newly appointed chair of NHS Improvement. We live in times that look at irony in the rear view mirror.

Journey to Jabba's Palace

Sometimes I think living in the Star Wars universe would be more appealing than this shitty old world; despite the prevalence of death stars.

So today is the day. I knew it as soon as I saw the postman hand me the letters. One of those 'I just knew it' moments that represent a sort of mundane clairvoyance.

They don't use brown envelopes anymore, I guess. But the big black "THIS IS NOT A CIRCULAR. THIS IS IMPORTANT!" slogan emblazoned on the front confirmed it; the same as the ESA50 form when that came a few months back.

The 16th of November is the date for my next WCA.

Curiously, and likely the only positive thing so far, is that I now no longer have to dread the post each day - until the next time, when I have to wait for the result of the assessment. A pointless affair really since the outcome is 99.9% preordained. I'm only surprised I passed last time, I certainly can't see lightning striking that favourably twice - and I have to act as if it won't.

It's a bizarre feeling to have to fear something as mundane as an envelope, but the sound of the letterbox snapping and post slapping the carpet has engineered a fear reaction in me. For the rest of my life I suspect that is how I'll react. It could be someone breaking into my home and that wouldn't be as stressful. One sound and that's how your life can change.

Now for the next fortnight I have to live each day as if it was my last because there is a very real chance it could be. I have £1200 in savings, which has meant, for the last couple of years, I have been unable to spend that on things that might actually help me - a decent computer or even a trip to somewhere new. The sorts of things that people who don't worry do - the sort of things that move a life forward. The money is there, but it has to wait for this situation, because if I fail - and I think it highly likely - I will need it to live, if only for a time.

That's the tragedy of it all; those savings won't last very long. A few months at least. Inevitably I would have to go to the Jobcentre that wasn't recently closed and make a claim for Universal Credit and hope that even £1200 is enough to tide me over until that claim comes through - if it does at all.

And then the fun really begins: dodging the conditionality and playing footsie with a psychopath who's only interested in causing problems for people who already have them.

All this begins with a journey, on a November morning, to an assessment centre. I feel like C3P0 and R2D2 in Return of the Jedi as they head to the impenetrable fortress of scum and villainy (not unlike the DWP) that is the sanctuary of Jabba the Hutt. Just like that place, the assessment tower is impenetrable: one must have the proper access codes - and I only have two thirds of what they want, so this could be a very short interview. In lieu of a driving license (I do not drive) you are told to bring 3 forms of ID. I do not have three, I have two: birth certificate and bank statement. That isn't going to change so they will have to accept it. What else can I do? I don't make the rules.

However unlike the two lovable robots, I am aware that I am walking into a trap. Threepio might not have known that he was to be handed over to a master of interstellar infamy, but I do.

Doesn't help me though.

The Fucking Cosh

This is the fucking cosh.

Over our heads, for the sake of some dosh...

What agitates me the most: the thought of losing my income and having to go to the local foodbank. I would starve. I can't eat that kind of food, no matter how kindly the hand that gives it to me. Even then their packages are only intended to be an emergency stopgap for a few days. Sugar is no answer to a nation starved by a ruling elite that doesn't give a damn.

I don't even think they could, were they so inclined. Stones don't bleed.

The local foodbank. Hah! Even that's a lie: without an income how do I get to the foodbank? is the bus service going to be made free for victims of Tory sanctions? Somehow I don't think so.

If this happens I am fucked. That would be it.

This is the black hole people like me - the thousands facing this ruinous pernicious government - face. If you stare into this hole, something very dark stares back and it is the shape of a non existent future. It's a void that consumes you such that there is only one way out.

And we can't talk about that.

Everyday I now have to wait for that brown envelope - or maybe it's camouflaged: the last one was white instead. I knew what it was. I recognised the shape of the enemy. They can't hide from me.

That will be the envelope telling me it's time.

Time to go to that place: the Mount Doom of our time. Here the receptionist ringwraith lives. I shall not pass without three forms of ID. Opening a bank account would be easier. I don't even have three, as I don't own a passport nor do I drive, so she will have to let me pass or...well there's that void I mentioned above. The DWP, compassionate in its wisdom, doesn't care about that kind of situation. Neither does it care if the forced waiting that follows becomes too much for you. This is how the sick are treated. This is the new normal.

The waiting is over when the not-really-nurse-Nazgul calls you in for the interview. At this point it's almost a relief. You no longer have to hide your shame from the strangers in the waiting area, while hiding from theirs, all of us together, huddling in uncertainty to the point of exploding.

If you weren't stressed before, you will be now.

All of this awaits; coded in a few lines of simple text printed on a sheet of paper. There are more warnings and threats than there are instructions and support on this paper. It is not an invitation to attend something positive; it's a road map to your own destruction. It's a constellation of misery that stays in your sight - until the next time, when it happens again.

One letter that changes the world, the outcome of which is largely preordained, insidiously; designed to leave you with nothing. It would, I think, be less arduous to put us in a plane, take us up to altitude, and simply through us out the door. Good luck!

This is the future for people like us. This is what it looks like. Staring into the sun would be less painful.

There is no future. If you can't find anything to help you with this, oh well!

Unfortunately that support simply doesn't exist. For all the kindly intentions and positive rhetoric of those who work in this sector, they have precisely no power. Can they intercede with the dark lords of the DWP? What light do they wield to shine on the shadows within? Would a 'work coach' listen?

Do I even need to answer? Perhaps some might, but that isn't the norm.

If you can't find your own personal Gandalf, to accompany you on this unwanted quest, you will fail. The system will swallow you up and spit out your bones, recycling them for the paper needed to write the incantation of invitation to destruction for the next poor soul. It is every circle of hell in perpetual endless motion.

It will never end. There is no hope this system will change in the foreseeable future. No pause will call a halt to this. The likelihood of a general election is slim, and even that is no guarantee Corbyn will get the 60+ seats he needs for a victory - and that would only be the start of his troubles.

We have to set fire to this world or it will not change. That is the only answer, take it however you want.

Universal Chaos

You sometimes think it can't get any worse.

Universal Credit proves you wrong.

What more evidence is required to show, clearly, that we are not governed. We are oppressed.

This is beyond hypocrisy. This transcends incompetence. This is ideology.

Way back when IDS was at the levers of control he was told that this system would not work. It cannot work: how can you possibly combine, into one single system, a variety of different benefits each unique to specific circumstances. This cannot be done in any way that could possibly simplify the system. All that you would do is make claiming for one reason, whether unemployment or sickness, as difficult as claiming for ALL of them at once, since that is effectively what you are doing.

And consequently the system has failed. As, over four years, since that man promised - with fist pumping certainty - that it would be delivered "on time and in budget". That date was October 2013.

Quelle surprise; it never happened and now, after a slow rollout, it is a walking disaster. It is a pestilence of bureaucracy and indifference. It's Typhoid Mary spreading poverty instead of cholera and patient zero, the new IDS (same as all the rest, probably awakened from a vat where they keep his evil DNA), is nowhere to be seen.

What do the Tories have to offer, as they cling to this like desperate apes: to cut the six week wait to four? How bloody generous! As if that two weeks will make all the difference. Six weeks is the minimum many are having to wait. The system is in such choas it takes way longer for many, not everyone survives either.

The notion this is meant to represent the "world of work" implies this is a positive thing; a transformative (ie corrective) thing. It's about control, but it rests on a fallacy. The implication being that the way the "world of work" operates is itself problem-free. It isn't, never has been; the waiting period when people stop claiming upon starting work and have to wait until their first pay cheque has always been a problem, never addressed. The advice was always to beg borrow or steal from friends/family. Or, if you were 'lucky' enough to have the opportunity, to take a loan!

Apparently you still can. This, if I've read correctly, is about £150. This has to cover at least 6 weeks and so at best is £25 a week for upwards of one person. Even for just a single person that is still painfully little. My weekly budget is upwards of £30 not including bus fares, at least one of which is required to get me to the shop. I need at least 2 bus journeys a week which comes to £13. So we're almost double that.

And it has to be repaid; this means, at best, the claimant, while struggling, has to have the presence of mind to budget the loan, work out how much they will have left even though they cannot possibly know because they won't know when they will get their money, and then budget that, taking into account the repayment. Does this sound reasonable? Of course not and the disaster is playing out all around us: poverty increases, rental arrears, foodbank use.

This leads me on to to the topic of foodbanks. This is a real problem. While there is no doubt those who donate and work in these places are good people, what they give out isn't. Even for three days, people are receiving parcels of complete rubbish. Who is deciding that a bag of sugar, some margarine, a box of sugar pop cereal, some tinned veg and tuna (probably the best you'll get out of it if you're lucky) and some horrible refined carbs in the form of pasta and rice, is healthy? It isn't! People shouldn't have to tolerate this.

No one's expecting haute cuisine, but this is a recipe for blood sugar instability: hypoglycaemia and diabetes. What have we come to when this is how we treat our own?

We have supermarkets, places with security guards because poverty is such a force in society that multi million pound profiteers like Tesco are afraid the masses might want to eat rather than die, that collect donations. Yet they bin huge amounts on a daily basis. Why is it down to the individual customers, already making them their money (often at the expense of farmers and food producers). Why are we content to give away a tin of blue stripe carbohydrates or sugar pops for the poor? This is a horrible situation. They deserve decent meals the same as everyone else. We won't get that while the rich can claim thousands in attendant allowances for not actually attending.

This society is dying on its arse and nobody seems to have the answers or the means to sort this horrific mess out. A pause will do nothing and if that's the best Labour politicians can manage then what good are they? A pause, in the form of no money, is exactly the problem.

I'm afraid that Universal Credit cannot be solved in this manner. But what won't happen is an immediate, charge free, gratis payment to all those affected. These sorts of situations, IT gone awry, take ages to clear up. This all assumes the government has any desire to actually even try and fix this mess. Instead they will cling to their ideology and hope that the situation resolves itself. That won't happen without more misery blood and tears, and lives being lost. That this situation has been allowed to get to this point, when everyone knew it would roll out this way, is beyond scandalous, but there will be no accountability. IDS has gone, the civil service got paid off (unlike those claiming, ironically).

The only answer is to take to the streets. Democracy has failed us, utterly. Relenting on the 55p/minute phone line (if and when that materialises) isn't even the least they can do - and they've given that phoneline to G4S to control! The same people beating refugees behind close doors and raping immigrant women in detention centres. So if you're lucky your Universal Credit claim might end up with a midnight raid from some private goons dragging you off to a secret flight to Somalia or something!

Fuck!

Mental Health Manifesto 1

It seems apposite that I set out what I think should be done regarding mental health and the wellbeing of our society, instead of simply bemoaning the lack of either. Ok fair enough, says I.

Anyone else that wants to add to this list, a set of ideas that will have zero influence politically and will be read by precisely no politicians ever. Oh well!

The support that exists, that I have experienced, feels like it is intended simply to keep people "off the streets". It borrows from the "idle hands" model: keep people occupied to keep them out of trouble, specifically keep them from realising the truth of their reality. That life in modern capitalist western society is, for the vast majority, shit. This is what I mean when i say that these places institutionalise people. Out of sight, out of mind - literally!

Now clearly there is a place for peer support, but that must not be at the expense of providing proper support, by which I mean offering a framework, or at least guidance from properly trained and motivated facilitators. Not just button pushers and bean counters who, at best, might offer some cheap (not really cheap) counselling or the odd mindfulness course.

A structure is needed that recognises the social model for mental health. This means educating people on the truth of the society they live in. This is intended to emancipate people from the oppression of magic thinking which is nothing more than tacit victim blaming.

In my experience, peer support groups are shackled by restrictions on these discussions. You aren't meant to talk about controversial issues because it might lead to bullying. That's understandable, and no one should be bullied obviously, but it ignores the reality: we are ALL being bullied, and those of us who suffer for it need to learn why. The purpose of this is to build networks of support and empowerment.

Why do I want this? Because knowledge is power. It might sound conspiratorial to say, but once this starts happening this power can be directed against our hapless state mechanisms to force change - or at least try. Anything else, in my opinion (and at the risk of being far too reductionist), just maintains the status quo.

Look, I get that a Tory voter with mental health issues deserves support just the same as some wordy and suave anarcho-blogger. But they will need to learn that the Tories they may genuinely support for honest reasons are not their friend. Surely this can be done with kindness and respect. Such a person is not my enemy; the people he supports are. They are clearly not supporting him or her.

We also need to recognise that, while medicalising people who have mental health problems can be counter productive, providing diagnoses is sometimes necessary in the system as it stands. It is not good enough to pretend you are helping someone who needs that diagnosis to interact with the likes of the DWP. That isn't helping them, it's hindering them.

No one should be frightened or stigmatised by a diagnosis. It is not intended as a label, that's just how our shitty system operates. This is all part of the propaganda set by the state that turns the provision of a medical 'sick' note into a 'fit' note; the purpose of which is sinister. It is to ignore the problems you have under cover of a 'can do' self help attitude (see magic thinking above). By ignoring problems we can decide more easily that you don't need help, and by help I mean income.

This is a capitalist society: people need an income. Bottom line.

That provision must be fought for. Going back to services and peer support groups. The staff working for these organisations must stop being neutral. There is no such thing. If you cannot help people deal with the DWP and, if you can't help them fight their case for ESA/UC, then you need to be able to help them find something else. We cannot have people starving to death for god's sake. In this there is no neutrality; by not helping people - or whatever reason - you are part of the problem. I say the same to DWP staff; it might sound simplistic but if you are pushing people into poverty because you are afraid of losing your job then you are part of the problem. This must be resisted and such people must be given all the support and tools they need to empower them to actually help people and resist becoming another tool of Tory cruelty. I say again: we cannot starve people.

That's all I have for now. More to come - possibly. This is a work in progress.

Eleanor Rigby's Lament

As the Chancellor dines with business bigwigs and mandarins, at a £400/head function, I am left wondering how different our worlds are.

How can anyone fail to notice the cracks in our society? The streets are like a warzone now; there's bodies littered all over the place. These were real people once, they still are despite what austerity and capitalism has done to them. Yet, despite their increasing presence, they are growing ever more invisible. I've never seen anything like it.

And yet everywhere I go there is damage and suffering. I attend a mindfulness class with people that also have the scars of a life forced upon them by this miserable system. People like this are everywhere that it seems the norm. It's only the rich ruling elite that seem to be the exception. Unfortunately they have power; the power to ignore us.

I have a facebook and twitter feed full of the casualties of this war on humanity, waged by profit. At what point does enough become enough - for all sides? We can't take anymore, and surely they can't make anymore. We are destroying the planet and in the process losing ground in our own lives. I have never seen anything like it.

What will future generations say about this? How long will it take for the scars of this strange and miserable period to heal? There is so much pain everywhere and nobody has any answers. It becomes a part of you that you have to wear like a heavy winter coat. People are smothered in fog and the grey clouds of opportunity stolen, all to save people who have the most a tiny bit more. Ours is a world where the most popular form of banking is the kind that feeds people - where supermarkets are proud to collect donations from other people but not themselves. Yet this isn't even real food; it's sub-bully beef ration book crap that the desperate must feel gratitude for. I'm not criticising foodbanks, by the way, but the quality of fare certainly isn't healthy - tinned muck, sugar, empty carbs. That would kill me! But what else can these people offer? Good people who have to prop up society on the basis of dietary advice sponsored by biased big sugar! There's no respite for anyone.

And yet these people are lionised in the media. Are we so broken that we continue to buy into the rubbish spewed by the press. Today's Daily Mirror headline cast shame on Wayne Rooney, an overpaid ball kicker, for falling from grace such that he had to work in a garden centre. What does that say about people who do that as a genuine job? Is this the same press that speaks of the unemployed as being ungrateful for not accepting such work?

These are the end times - for something.

Something is dying and it's taking a part of each of us with it. Hopefully there will come an end to this, but it won't be without a fight. The problem is most of us are beaten down and punch drunk. The strength isn't there when you have to fight conditionality laid down by government departments who wield bureaucracy as a weapon clothed in a notion of support. This has to end. It has to die.

Mindfulness

I have a feeling this may drag on. I want to be concise here because there's a lot to cover and, unfortunately, my concentration fades easily.

Mindfulness - the fashionable practice of meditation on the breath or other sensation (hands in the lap, movement of the belly, sensation of body on seat, etc) to stimulate well being, but ultimately the process of becoming aware of the present moment. At the fullest it is rooted in a worldview I'm not entirely sure is as helpful as it is positive sounding. It is my understanding it stems from buddhist meditation practises along with the accompanying worldview of compassion. That's a lovely quality to have, but, at the risk of being crass, it doesn't pay the bills.

Breath meditation is something I have tried for a while, on and off. I usually do it in the morning for about ten minutes. Recently I signed up for a Mindfulness class and the experience of it is oddly more formal than I would like, and I'm not sure that's for the best.

Firstly it's important to state that the person running the course is a well meaning kindhearted person, I feel she is bringing some baggage to this course as she believes in a lot of new agey practises I personally am sceptical of: Reiki, guardian angels, energy healing and crystals. Now, I do have a problem with this because I think it's potentially muddying the waters. I have no problem with people wanting to do any of these things if they feel it helps them - but there's a difference when you bring it into a classroom context. This is because we start conflating the practical reality of mindfulness as a practise, with the new agey belief structures which ultimately, in my humble opinion, leads to magic thinking.

Magic thinking is where we believe our thoughts can change reality. I don't think this is very helpful when dealing with a society that treats mental health abominably and where the government spits on the disabled. It gives way to victim blaming as well as (and this is the crux of this article) being an excuse to deprive society of vital mental health support.

This is exactly the problem with CBT, as experienced by me in dealing with the local CBT peddlers called Positive Step who did precisely nothing to help. Both CBT and mindfulness seem to have a lot in common. They seem to be about deconstructing your perception of the situation, with associated baggage and weight of expectations/assumptions, and seeing things as they are. This means they can be delivered on the cheap with no real thought to long term support. If the process is found wanting by the patient, well it's because they aren't doing it properly. It is no substitute for a decent caring society that helps people find purpose and community.

My problem is that it is too easy to sell this as self help in place of real help. This is why I say magic thinking: if we could just learn to live in the moment then all our problems disappear. But they don't. I will not stop being isolated, unemployed and alone. What will this do to fund the NHS, to bring a vital sea change in society re: mental health. What will it do to reorder society away from capitalism, greed and profit, toward what is good right and vital for a progressive world?

So I'm sitting in a classroom still waiting for the date to be called in for a WCA being told lots of dreamy wonderful fluff about how life will improve if I manage to learn mindfulness. I'm being given handouts which are filled with simple puns and worldplay designed to make me thing "ah, buddha!" (for example: Mind full or mindfulness, was the slogan that accompanied a picture of someone thinking cluttered thoughts alongside someone thinking about a lovely clear blue sky). Each class is ultimately the same because mindfulness isn't something you can expound on indefinitely, nor is it complex - the point is that it is experiential. Telling people that it is important to see things as they are is not a difficult concept, it is however difficult to develop that degree of mental clarity.

In fact I'm not entirely convinced it's possible. Certainly one can, and indeed should, learn how cluttered our minds are - as products of a deeply screwed up environment. We should also probably try practice ways to clear that mind and develop better attention and awareness. But IMHO that is really all it is. It's just way harder to do because of our minds, but noone's really 100% clear and focussed 100% of the time. Again that's magic thinking. It's unrealistic and it is bound to create unrealistic expectations.

So what happens when the course ends? The tutor has a 'teaching assistant', a guy who's been through many of her courses, including multiples goes at Mindfulness! Again he's a nice guy and I hope his experience has been a positive one, but if you have to do these classes over and over because your experience, in a shitty seaside town in a shitty little England shire with no opportunities or support, is such that you need to - doesn't that tell you something?

Aren't these problems that should be solved by fixing our broken society? I fear Mindfulness, with its spiritual veneer, is a sticking plaster, or at least has become one.

For what it's worth, I have a different take on the word 'spirituality'. I am not religious, I do not believe in a supernatural component, be it energy healing or angels. But I do believe that we should develop a relationship with the living world. What do I mean by living world? I speak of the natural flow of life on earth: the seasons, the warmth, the cold, when things grow, when they die. We are not in tune with that and I think we should be. Developing that relationship makes use of methods I would regard as the proper meaning of the word spiritual - and they may embrace methods seen as traditionally spiritual or even religious (though hopefully not dogmatic). So we may mark the passing of seasons or the change of the year or a birthday, or something more esoteric. No angels required.

I'm not sure this article conveyed what I wanted it to, but I'm posting it anyway - as you have no doubt noticed. Enjoy.

Everyday Crapitalism 1: The Guy on the Bus

Isn't it fun when there's an awkward bugger before you in the queue for the bus? Wouldn't life be easier if these difficult people would just disappear? Well now there's a means to that end, friend: it's called CAPITALISM!

So there I am with my bus ticket and the guy in front of me, with a pair of crutches, presents his ticket to the driver. Unfortunately it appears it's the wrong ticket. He wants to get back to Bristol, but the driver is having none of it because - according to him - the ticket is not valid in Weston super Mare. It's a Bristol zone ticket which doesn't cover the journey he's making. In response the guy makes an appeal to ignorance: why was he sold the wrong ticket then when he asked to go to somewhere that the ticket he was sold won't allow.

It doesn't really help that First Bus' ticket system is a complete nightmare. But that's the price of profit I guess. You might reasonably think the solution would be to just have one ticket and allow people to travel with it - after all it's not as if there's a whole raft of people just waiting to abuse this by spending all day making frivolous journeys. Even if that were the case, so what? It's not as if the buses aren't running and there aren't seats.

I digress.

You see this is a problem that only exists because of our economic system. I have no idea whether the guy was trying it on or not, I couldn't see the ticket. In the end he had to pay the difference and required the help of someone generous enough to give him 70p to do so. The driver was having none of it.

It's a problem because the driver is placed into a position where he has to assume the worst. It's his job that will be on the line once the accountants notice a shortfall in that route's takings. I did note that he seemed a little too eager to reach that conclusion, mind you.

There's no system in place for what happens to people left in that situation. What if it had been a school pupil? A person of limited capacity or old age? First doesn't care because...profit. They have to assume that guy is trying it on or tough shit. The only reason this situation exists is because First wants to make a profit. Despite the fact they are running what is essentially and entirely a necessary public service, their only priority is to ensure that they are not down £2.70. If you b the wrong ticket by mistake (yours or the drivers) that's too bad and you can expect, along with your crutches, to toddle off to who cares.

This everyday example, something we see all the time I would assume, is a perfect example of just how capitalism poisons us. In any other world those two people would have been birds of a feather. In fact they likely are: two members of the working class. I doubt that guy was the Secret Millionaire or something, or Undercover Boss. No, he's just trying to get by having to depend on the value of his labour, just the same as the driver, but the capitalist class, through the mechanisms of the system, set them against each other. It's another day at the master's table, count the crumbs plebs.

Welcome to Little England Where I Ride The Highest of Horses!

I think that's a suitably pretentious title. Also note, this is (and not for the first time) the pettiest and shrillest of rants you are likely to ever hear from me. Enjoy.

So I take a walk usually two or sometimes three times a day. I follow the same route which takes me across the local cricket pitch. Technically this field is privately owned, though I don't respect those rights. Why: because I don't agree that the earth should be subject to private property rights and because these are communal resources. That's not an invitation to vandalism or neglect of course.

I walk across the middle of the pitch and someone shouts at me. I can't hear him, which no doubt provokes him. Apparently he's 'scarified' that part of the field, despite it looking like a muddy puddle with no fence, signage or obvious indication of groundwork. Had that been the case I'd have avoided it, it's not an imposition to do so.

What then ensues is a ridiculous argument that, in my opinion, betrays the attitude of the Little Englander and his 'my home is my castle' mentality, so prevalent hereabouts. I think it's a fascinating insight into the mind of Middle England, carefully disguised as a petty article on a cheap blog :D

So I have no idea what he's talking about, though I later discover, after his passive aggressiveness gets turned all the way to 11, it's seeding new grass. There's no indication of this at all, they couldn't be bothered to put up a sign saying 'mind the square', which would have taken five minutes to do.

This is all red rag to me, stupidly of course. All he had to do was walk over respectfully and politely warn me off explaining what was happening. That would have been fine, I've no desire to cause a problem. So I'm on the square at this point and he's getting angry because he couldn't say prior to me entering the forbidden zone to mind where I was walking. This is after he repeatedly flounces off, waving his arm at me muttering 'forget about it'. Stupidly (more) I keep pushing him on this. Why: because I know what these people are like. This is the local recreation club/sports club people and they swan around like they own the place.

This is the Little England: it's where these long standing cliques assert their authority. My problem with him wasn't that I was doing something I shouldn't, it's that he assumes that I should know this, and, that my response isn't a grovelling forelock tugging apology to the local village godfathers, I'm in the wrong immediately. It doesn't seem to cross his mind that all he had to do was walk over politely and ask me to watch where I was walking. No problems mate.

Instead he points out that I've walked into the forbidden zone as if I've deliberately set out to vandalise this sacred space - and believe me that's how these people behave: it's their land and woe betide anyone else who dares use it. There's a sign on the fence at the edge warning people to keep their dogs on leads. Nobody does, including members of this group. This is their world and what they say goes; recently they held a referendum which successfully granted them permission to build a massive new clubhouse right onto the adjacent recreation field. The result of this will be to impede the view across the entire field (which is something I consider important), and deny a huge chunk of it to the community at large. Regardless of legal rights, these fields are enjoyed by lots of people.

The most telling statement though was him pointing out that he's seen me do this many times before, which is true: I always walk across that part of the field (unless it is obviously being worked on or fenced off). So he's had ample opportunity to speak to me to make sure there isn't a problem. Why then hasn't he? Does he not care? No, what he expects is for me to say how high when the village mafia demand that I jump.

I point out his attitude is terrible, my dander is up at this point. Not a terribly productive way to behave, but I feel like I'm being held hostage by his passive aggressive attitude. He does that think where he walks right up close and then waves his arm and walks off saying 'forget it', as if to say "you're a moron". Nope, I just expect a bit more respect from people demanding the same of me, especially without precedent. If you can't signpost your intentions to work on the field, I can't divine them.

He ends by saying "fucking asshole" (I'm sure I'm that, for all sorts of reasons!) but not before informing me, right in my face, that he was a local copper for 26 years. So what? Is he going to use the police powers he no longer has to arrest me for a crime that hasn't been committed?

Why is all this relevant? Because it shows how these people think: they expect you to comply to their rules in the community they perceive to be theirs. Rules you don't know that would be upheld as 'common sense', because that's how people think these days. Common sense is appealed to and invoked all the time by those who struggle against the ghost of political correctness and the Daily Mail infused spectre of "health and safety gorn maaaaaad!". When you fail to comply to the village mafia a blunt and boorish appeal to authority is issued, no matter how crass or irrelevant. What the fuck do I care you were a policeman; this isn't a legal matter and you ain't no copper anymore!

This is the ugly face of Little England. This is their fiefdom, carved from linseed and willow, cricket stumps and cucumber sandwiches. A world where local cliques run rackets around everyone else because that's the tradition. Now I look forward to an afternoon of swearing little league soccer players in the field nearby kicking the ball at my window without a care. Pip pip!