Voluntary?

I feel like I'm probably repeating myself. In fact I'm entirely sure I have anything to talk about, which is, sort of, the problem.

Once again the lack of support is just deafening. Blinding.

In fact this situation is normalised to such an extent that the people who have undertaken (largely for profit) the responsibility to provide support are so ill equipped and so bereft that instead of addressing why, the client is held responsible.

As I've said before: gaslighting. Likely not intentionally, does it matter?

In fact, intent is important because it tells us those committing that behaviour just don't know better. That's a problem.

If they don't know why things are as they are (hint: capitalism) how can they possibly help? That's why gaslighting exists: they know they can't help, they know they have precious little to offer. Consequently their only recourse is to impugn the client. Intransigence: you don't want to be helped, you are resistant, you are "not engaging". You, not them. Never them, no matter how charmingly put.

I could understand if I had refused to take up services (colour therapy for instance), or if my ambitions were hopelessly outlandish - I want to be a premier league footballer or an astronaut!

Last time we spoke, now months ago (I've had just two appointments this year), I told to the adviser I was interested in writing; that I also liked music (which can encompass many things, not just some X Factor fantasy bollocks). She already knew of my interest in social justice/politics and that being involved in a good cause with good people (admittedly hopelessly vague, but important) would be positive. All a waste of time. They have nothing to offer other than a room full of computers.

So far the only thing that they have had to offer was to use the local voluntary work database. But what good is unpaid work? There is such a thing as Permitted Work: Under DWP rules, one can work a certain amount and keep one's earnings while still claiming sickness benefits.

Fat chance. Once you sign that form you surely sabotage any claim for ESA. The DWP will have a record (literally) stating that you are working. How can that square with a claim otherwise? An appeal to people who look for any reason to deny that claim. Another example of the perverse counter-intuitive incentives that exist in this ridiculous system. Who would dare take that chance?

While voluntary work is great and wonderful, people shouldn't be compelled into anything they are not comfortable with - just because it's voluntary. Quite honestly I feel that voluntary work is used as a stick - do it or else. Maybe because it seems 'easier', to find voluntary work - and of course the unemployed (for whatever reason) should be doing something. So by refusing such a 'noble' way to spend your time, you are doubly feckless!

All part of the current neoliberal paradigm: regardless how you actually occupy your time, you are still idling if it's not earning a wage. That is to say, if it isn't producing profit (since that is how profit is created).

Where once voluntary work might have been a genuinely social positive, for those so inclined. It's now another tool to be used against us - and the third sector is far from unprofitable!

They don't care about what you might actually be doing, or about finding something genuinely positive. Just get your arse down to your local charity shop and sort someone's old clobber and castoffs. Then you'd be doing something useful and we can forget about you, ticking the 'support' box.

Is this really good enough? You aren't being paid for it. How then do you live? You are being compelled for the sake of 'idle hands' yet you are no better off in any practical way at least. Sure it may have a more ephemeral benefit, but then it may not. Also, it has to be said, within a capitalist economy, there is no ethical consumerism; working in a charity shop, for example, is going to enable that charity - as a business - to profit. Rightly or wrongly, and regardless of the ethics of the cause, that is what is happening.

That's how capitalism works. A charity shop to can't survive unless it makes a profit. So the only staff getting paid are the managers the rest are volunteers. A whole culture has been built around this - for better or worse - and the danger is that it blinds people to the reality. Why is this a problem: because it distracts from the real problem.... the prevailing economics.

Capitalism.

I've worked in a charity shop before, it wasn't a glamorous job. It shouldn't be romanticised. It was somewhat boring - isn't most retail? Is charity a justification? We shouldn't need charity - we live in a world of plenty.

The staff were good people, including the manager. But the experience was largely meaningless: shopping that around on my CV was worthless. Prospective employers never never seemed to value that kind of experience; not compared to 'genuine' experience held by rival candidates.

Do voluntary work because you care about the cause and want to help out, or for a genuine personal reason.

Don't do it because you fell pressured by systemic propaganda from agents of a system who should know better.

Don't do it because the alternative is to make you feel worthless or even more so. This is wrong.

The agency I'm a client of (a terrible word) should know better. They weren't forced into this role. They set themselves up, with public (EU - ho ho Brexit!) funding. They should have the resources, and - frankly - the talent. That the best they can do is guilt trip you into using a freely available voluntary work website is pretty pathetic I think.

Saturday Bonus: The Gentleman's Guide To Free Speech and Pug Etiquette

If you say something that is unarguably contentious or provocative you must accept the consequences for that.

If you cannot justify a context for such speech then by default that speech is intended to offend and I question the value of such vacuous speech.

If you are simply out to cause offence then you are sowing division, particularly in the case of a racially motivated call to genocidal violence.

Therefore I assert that a community should have the right to rule on issues of free speech. This authority should come from the community and be directly answerable to the community, and not come from a top down hierarchical structure - i.e. a state.

The notion of free speech, per se, is meaningless. Humans exist socially, cheek by jowl, as communal animals. What we say is broadcast, whether directly or electronically, and thus impacts our neighbours and their neighbours. Thus to argue that speech should be free is no different than arguing I should be able to slap or punch you without consequence.

A case must be made for the speech in question. As communal animals our morals and rights are arrived at continuously through sustained conversation dialogue and agreement. This conversation cannot be maintained in the presence of unjustified hierarchical structures and authorities. If you assert the right to speak freely, I assert the right to impose consequences: to be offended and to impose or impart the consequences thereof (shame, for instance) upon you.

The idea that one cannot ever offend, that offensiveness is only perceived or taken, is arrant nonsense. Clearly I can intend offence with a particular statement: I can make a call for racial genocide to a person of said race and intend that person to be hurt or affected and traduced as a result. In response is he not free to give form to his displeasure? If not then we give up all pretence of rights laws and justice. Words, like actions, have consequences. Words give rise to actions.

"Free Speech" has become a shrill flag waved by a desperate, mainly online, community who wants to be taken seriously in public discourse. They appeal to a reductionist social dynamic that contends everyone is entitled to a seat at the table. What they actually advocate, surreptitiously flown in under the radar of "freeze peach", is enough to disqualify them. Why?

Because fascism - white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia and racism in general - is anathema to a functioning society. This is the paradox of freedom: there is no universal freedom for all. Where we bump shoulders against each other, as a communal beast, we must negotiate what's right. The idea of free speech is important, the reality of granting it to fascists is unreasonable.

They argue that everyone should be heard because they want a seat at the table, all the while advocating views that, are not only repugnant and destructive, but have already been defeated.

The conversation with and about fascists has already been had - including at gunpoint. There is no good argument for white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia and racism in general. We've had this conversation and we must not let those who think these things are acceptable take an inch on this.

But the internet makes this difficult. Now any keyboard warrior can be the equal of Chomsky by learning how and uploading basement invective with the merest nod to facts evidence or understanding. Then they can appeal to the confused bedraggled and misunderstood of this world who will fund their program of easy answers and simple explanations by giving them a monthly stipend in the thousands (if they're lucky) on Patreon. Those who administer that service seem to care little who they are enabling. Fascism is ok if it follows the rules? That's just an appeal to authority.

So when some wingnut from Scotland uploads a 'comedy' video where he repeatedly says "gas the jews" to a dog, we are meant to laugh, not be disgusted that someone thinks reaching for, of all things, that phrase, is acceptable. Because free speech innit. Comedy knows no bounds. Bollocks. Good comedy makes a point.

I refer to the case of Mark "Count Dankula" Meechan and his comedy racist dog.

And when you aren't a million miles away from people who do genuinely hold that view, you can't be surprised when people impugn your character.

It isn't a free speech issue when you seek, however misguidedly, to abuse it, and then claim it was meant as a private joke (uploaded on a private platform then later defended as a deliberate attempt to shock or offend).

There is no positive aspect to the phrase "gas the jews". It has only one connotation and only one, gruesome, historical context. To say it once might be forgivable - I don't think this guy should spend the rest of his days staring through bars - but to repeatedly say it with abandon and then argue, in his defence, that he should be able to say this consequence free is so childish as to be laughable.

But don't worry, gentle reader, those same people, the ones he isn't a million miles away from are happy to pay his legal bill in appealing a fine (a fine that, given what he's accrued thus far from said donors, he could have paid ten times over and just gotten on with his ridiculous life).

What these far right scumbags want isn't free speech, it's legitimisation. This is not a slippery slope fallacy to say: giving them that is the first step in the real curtailment of freedom. Maybe not for you, or me, right now, but in time. But certainly, initially, for a significant number of human beings, targets of their persecution based on ignorance sown by their ability to proliferate their views online.

Son of the Return of Everyday Capitalism - Agoraphobia

You'd think food shopping would be one of the most innocuous innocent, perhaps even friendly, experiences in modern life.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the vast emporia of corporate power that house the supplies we need to live on were any of those things.

Instead they are miniature warzones where we triage ourselves so as to be present for as short a time as possible. A bit like life really.

We subject ourselves to food hidden behind layers of propaganda. We allow, though not by choice, big businesses to push their agenda at the risk of our own health. We are encouraged to want what we don't need and buy more of it.

In fact we are so encouraged that these corporations have to divert their profits into hiring working class sympathisers as security. Think about that: we don't get access to food without the threat of punishment, if we violate the property rights asserted, forcibly, by the owner class. That's food! Meanwhile the need to maximise profit is such that the precariat paid to serve you is replaced by those self service machines. This is called innovation: an artifice of politeness designed to replace people's jobs. Violence clothed in programmed politeness and bagging anomalies.

Capitalism grants power for that ownership class to protect their profits from the threat of force initiated by those that need to eat - the rest of us, in other words! Think about that; that is the world we have wrought.

How does that not traumatise people? What is the effect of this environment on us. I said that shopping should be innocent and friendly. We aren't meant to be agoraphobic; we are meant to be social and communal animals. What then does it say about the agora when it's a high pressure environment guarded by our own used against us if we are impolite enough to need what we cannot pay for? Does survival not trump profits? 

How have we allowed supermarkets to own the things we need to live on?

But wait, I say, it gets worse (or just as bad but in different ways!) - those of us on low incomes find that everything costs more. Something innocuous and friendly becomes fraught in different ways: bus fares are such that you need to remember to buy all you need at once or it will cost you more. The poor spend the most as a percentage of their income; in effect they are the drivers of the economy. Yet there is nothing to support them in so doing. Bus fares are the same no matter who you are, forget to buy what you need and you have to make another trip.

Even something as simple as fares for public transport are all part of the system. Ever wonder why it isn't the norm for employers to pay for worker transport costs? They should: it's part of the cost required for them to do the labour you need doing. But that would eat into their profits. Not only that, but workers (especially the unemployed) are given no concessions.

This is why I call this everyday capitalism. We take it all or granted, and yet all of this informs an increasingly hostile environment. Is it any wonder we end up at each other's throats: divide and rule, family break up, etc.

It's the drip drip destructive drip of everyday capitalism.