Radio Bristol vs. DLA

I didn’t sleep well. Consequently I woke up ‘hanging’, in the popular parlance of the day, so I suppose hearing Mark fucking Littlewood, frog faced lead vocalist for the populist shriek combo, the Institute of Economic Affairs, spouting lies about disability benefits isn’t a good start. BBC Radio Bristol claim to be discussing welfare this morning so I’m tuning in with great trepidation. 

Already they’ve misfired inviting this libertarian shit stirrer on to an early and brief discussion about the changes to DLA. This was preceded by a soundbite from local Tory MP Chris Skidmore who disingenuously said these changes were about getting people back to work. This was not corrected, predictably, by the presenter: DLA is not an out of work benefit. Part of the reason many are scared about losing it is precisely because it helps them get to work. Instead we get the usual two pronged attack:

1. Moan about reassessing people. Fraud is less than half a percent, yet the aforementioned ‘think’ tank want this to be better policed. Think about this; it’s policed effectively enough that 99.5% of potential fraud (if we assume fraud could ever be 100%) has been eradicated. That’s how effective the system currently is – for all its faults, fraud isn’t an issue. Many DLA claimants have lifelong conditions: what is going to be achieved throwing money at ATOS (of all people) to determine if they’ve magically somehow been cured?
2. Use big numbers to scare people. Littlewood is always doing this. He constantly uses the fact that the welfare bill is, per se, a big number to bash welfare, referring to the usual nonsense about how it’s a big part of public expenditure (no mention of pensions of course). He went one step further: he divided the figure, without context, between the umber of households in the country and decided that each was paying eight grand to those in receipt. Therefore ‘it is right’ (that phrase again) people should be policed – to use his words.

It’s easy to say the welfare bill is high. It’s equally easy to misrepresent the expenditure (just under 4% of total expenditure at 12 and a half billion quid), and it’s easy to say that people should be reassessed. But there is nothing to stop people ending their claims unless you assume they are dishonest, or that their GP no longer supports the DLA claim. Factor in the negligible fraud rate and you can see that people are not being dishonest, so clearly people need the help this gives them.

People are always reassessed: they see doctors and specialists regularly – assuming of course they have a condition or issue that is changeable. The fact of the matter is that now, as compared to when DLA was first introduced a couple of decades ago, there is more awareness of what people are entitled to claim, disability itself and the conditions involved, and of course there are more, and older, people in society!

So what is the problem with DLA?

The question posed by the radio this morning, in its ‘informed’ welfare discussion, is: “are you entitled to benefits without being assessed”. None can walk into the DWP and just ask for money and get it on a plate. Yet again with the BBC bias – why do I bother.

The problem with the BBC is that they want to appeal to everyone and so think they have to be inoffensive. I don't suggest they ought to start effing and blinding, but their non committal stance, their so called objectivity, merely becomes submission to the wisdom of the day. Now we have a brutal government whose viciousness is unmatched in living memory, they are utterly wrong footed. This is made worse by their belief that balance is achieved by giving the same credence to all points of view. While I passionately support freedom of speech, it is absurd to suggest that all views are equal; they view that it's acceptable to treat the disabled with contempt cannot be seen as equal to the view that the disabled deserve equality respect and dignity. While you can hold either view freely, do we not want a society where the latter is preferred? The BBC won't commit to making that kind of choice and so it fudges and fusses while many of its presenters and staff are ex politicians (Michael Portillo is ready to bemoan the BBC's apparent lefty bias while happily appearing on their politics shows to spout his odiout crap unchallenged), or ex political scriptwriters and spin doctors (people like Andrew Neil who's bias is naked and sarcastic, or Nick 'Blue Robbo' Robinson, so called from his Young Conservative days). In these days of 24 hour media insanity we need a decent credible and upstanding representative.

Skills

I've just been having a look at te training websites the Work Programme recommended (tabs-training.com, alison.com, and vision2learn.com). I was told there are loads of these organisations, but when I asked for a comprehensive list I was told by the Adviser that she didn't have such a thing, however I can be sure that there are loads, despite being given only three. 

Alison.com is a strange one with an equally strange name. It seems to be a bunch of higher education courses, but without the qualification. In other words you can be an 'amateur' student and do the learning for its own sake, just without the official reward. Not entirely sure what to make of it really, nor how I could use it on, say, a CV. The list of courses is not huge, but somewhat diverse - I could study for a 'diploma' in Human Resources, or Environment Science, or study Arabic (I'd prefer Mandarin, as it goes, but that's a personal thing).

The other two seem to be carbon copies and are really why I'm making this post. I've noticed, among the success stories workfare providers put out, a lot of similarity. Most of the providers have a couple of these 'personal testimonials' on their website, usually featuring young women who have ended up working in one of the caring professions. Great, if true, and good luck to them. However when you look at these training sites you see that 'health and social care' is one of the (few) categories that they offer, so it's easy for young women, usually those that don't have much of an idea of anything else, to end up in or end up wanting a career in health and social care. 

The provider can then foot the bill (probably a couple of hundred quid, nothing huge) for them to study what isn't likely to be too taxing a curriculum. Let's be honest, these courses are not there to be arcane, inaccessible or hideously complicated. They are entry level courses. So it's probably easy to produce a success story from this situation with no real effort (from the provider). The real question is whether these people end up in a stable career as a result. Of course we hope they do, providing it's something they wanted and not something the provider persuaded them to do (under threat of non compliance perhaps) or that they felt obligated to do by virtue of no alternative.

Other courses are similar: IT Skills covering basic word processing, a bit of Excel, 'Life Skills' encompassing numeracy and literacy, 'Employability' which translates as construction card training, and, similar to health and social care, training in being a trainer in one of these 'Learning Centres'. So maybe if that's your thing, you could work in one of these places. It's all a bit of a closed circle really and, I fear, a bubble that, one day, will surely burst, if only through changes in technology/accessibility rendering them redundant. There are lots of these sites and places now; it's easy money for the likes of the Work Programme who doubtless get funding/payment each time they get someone on to a Health and Social Care course. But is this really going to address the problems in society of unemployment, underemployment, skills and knowledge? Or is this another example of big business dictating or running things: these courses for example don't cover art, culture, philosophy (what gave us democracy: thought or big business?), and creativity.

The Phone Call To Nowhere

Yesterday was telephone appointment time with Mrs Adviser at the Work Programme. With dismal predictability no one called so I rang them half an hour ago; they don't understand that it's difficult for me to have to sit and wait for people to contact me. Yet another waste of time. This is really starting to piss me off now because what can you say? 

I won't go through the whole pointless affair but it's the usual crap. I'm told that the Work Programme is a two way street but when I reaffirm that I'm interested in writing she tells me that she doesn't know of anything. I'm supposed to pick something that she is able to offer help with, but I don't have an answer. It's a stupid game: guess the one or two things they can help with and bingo! Pick something else and be labelled as non participatory. 

She tells me that she knows of loads of courses, but they are all basic level/NVQ stuff (they dont' fund above 'level 3' apparently - whatever level 3 means). You can't get a proper education, like a degree, out of this, even though it's probably cheaper than paying these clowns. There's loads of places, including online, that do training. Great, so what do I train in? I've no idea. How to be a drone? How to press buttons on a till? How to please a given corporate employer as the only real future in this country now seems to be wageless work for big businesses like Poundland? What about a better level of education? What about going to a university or somewhere that can lead to proper opportunities, not some 'customer service' NVQ that, ultimately, won't mean anything - especially if everyone else in my position is doing this?

It's all so depressingly predictable and so lacking. Even Mrs Adviser agrees that the provision is rubbish; weirdly the tone of her voice is somewhat resignatory. They just have nothing to offer; at best they can tell you about some websites or, if your ambitions are mundane enough, a suitable entry level course. Nothing to build a career or move forward. 

But what annoys me the most is how you are told they can help. I didn't bother to argue over her telling me back in December that there are places she can refer me, as an ESA claimant (a major part of the reason for making the claim). It was made quite clear to me that, in lieu of their not being trained in medical matters, they could instead refer to specialists. This turns out to be a list of the local NHS services, which of course are lacking. There are no diagnostic services. She tells me explicitly they can't refer people. I'm then resigned to the realisation, once again, that this whole thing is a total farce and a waste of time. The really weird thing is that she agrees with me. 

What else is there to say I haven't said a hundred times before? I actually made the point that her organisation must have known they would have to deal with ESA claimants. I'm told that yes that's true, but the whole thing wasn't thought through and is a giant exercise in trial and error. It seems that if you want nothing more than access to a computer to jobsearch, some basic printing, maybe some stamps, or a list of local courses (as opposed to more specialist or advanced education), or medical/health support, you'd better forget it. 

Now I have to wade through a bunch of websites to find something that appeals to me (which may or may not be possible) just to please the Work Programme, meanwhile there is no discussion of my needs or my skills or abilities. Just posting people toward community courses or compelling them to 'jobsearch' is no use at all. What people need is more fundamental and requires a great deal of specialisation experience and proficiency; something the Work Programme isn't remotely capable of. 

It's all about buzzwords and rote processes: 'jobsearch', getting people 'job ready', 'building confidence', and a whole raft of bland empty unspecialised procedures and schemes that achieve nothing more than a homogenisation of the same number of people forced to apply for the same few jobs. The blind leading the blind and the tail wagging the dog. Meanwhile nothing improves or changes.

Useless: Coda

The lack of opposition to the government's retrospective legislation has revealed two truths:

1. Welfare laws, and therefore those that need them, are not worthy of the protection of Parliament. If that is not the definition of social divide, no that's not strong enough - economic apartheid - then I don't know what is.

2. There are not enough opposition MP's that understand the precedent they have unwittingly set. Some of these people are thick as pigshit. Those that did oppose are a sad minority - and that they didn't include the shadow welfare minister, nor a single Libdem, is a disgrace.

This is a watershed.

Useless

We are living in one of the most insecure periods I have ever known. People don't know where to turn or even, quite literally, who to talk to. Perhaps it's naive to say, but you would think politicians would be a pillar of consistency in the lives of communities. A point of reference and support. Of course that's long been a myth, and last night's disgraceful performance from Labour in capitulating to Iain Duncan Smith's retroactive 'emergency' legislation proves the point. I'm sure he slept like a baby last night, in his father in law's ancestral million pound home, having got his way in rewriting both law and histroy. I'm sure those that fell foul of his malicious bungling, now denied any chance to get what they are owed, didn't. Some justice.

Not all the opposition disgraced themselves and you can find a list of those with the courage to vote with their conscience here. Notable by his absence on that list is Liam Byrne who seemed to spend much of the debate, that i could stomach to watch, staring into space; as if a colourful insect had caught his eye. Other opposition MP's spoke about how they found the proposals disgraceful, but, when faced with continued pro-workfare straw men from Mark Hoban, admitted they had no problem sanctioning people into poverty and despair. Not once did anyone ask of Hoban, McVey or IDS, what someone sanctioned was actually meant to do. In the minds of these nastyocrats, in the perpetual boarding school of their minds, a period of sanction is akin to sending Billy Bunter to the dunce's corner for scoffing too much tuck. Greedy people should know their place! Well it seems their place is to be denied the money they were rightfully owed by deign of law.

The point of the discussion wasn't to talk up the merits of workfare, I'm sorry, 'work experience', or talk down the lazy scum that can't be bothered to work for nowt. The point was to discuss the rights and wrongs of retroactively legislating to avoid the consequence of the government's hamfisted and malicious proposals. These only exist because IDS fucked up and, perhaps more pertinently, because he doesn't like having to apologise. What a magnanimous attitude to have as a millionaire living on the taxpayer in the lap of luxury.

Labour chose, in the main, to either abstain in favour of this legislation. Utter cowardice. Apparently the alternative - ie paying people their due - is worse than abstaining. How telling; that Labour agree that it would be inconvenient to compensate people nothing more than what they are legally owed; instead it is preferable to revise history and law to deny these people any justice. Not even an apology. IDS hasn't even said sorry he fucked up, of course he won't. Never mind that this is money that will go directly and immediately into the economy: those compensated will most likely have moved on and as such this will be a small windfall they will quickly enjoy (and why not!). So it will be spent where the likes of IDS, Hoban (silk cushions aside) and McVey don't spend: the economy.

On Saturday I attended the Bedroom Tax protest in Bristol where Bristol Labour MP Kerry Mcarthy spoke (mumbled rather, refusing to commit to repealing this awful stupid tax). Turns out she too abstained. I've sent her a tweet reminding her of the fact. Clearly it's all about the publicity for the likes of her, and right after she spoke she and her well heeled SPAD (I presume - she stood out like a sore thumb to be honest) left. Is this what we can expect going into the next election from our moribund opposition? What is the point of you?

UJM, IDS, IOU.

Everyday I try and use the Universal Jobmatch site, even though I claim ESA. I don't have a problem using the internet once a day just to see what's around; isn't that what they'd want me to do in the Work Related Activity Group (if I ever get that far)? Unfortunately it's still a giant fucking mess. In fact the quality of advertising is so lazy it beggars belief these are professional companies (even the recruitment agencies) using the site. It is like wading through treacle having to deal with that site. They haven't obviously bothered to sort it out and make it at least user friendly.

McDonald's has traditionally been the poster boy for crap jobs, hence the phrase 'McJobs', yet rarely do I see them actually use the DWP machinery to advertise. A good thing, I think, since working there would be the death of me. I couldn't handle the environment; I hate the food and even the threat of sanctions couldn't persuade me to lie thoroughly enough to convince Ron that I was made of the right (non horse) stuff.

Now I don't know if they are associated with any of the government's workfare schemes, but in the interests of being thorough I followed a link on today's UJM roster for 'crew members' at Maccy D's. Took me two attempts though as the link was incorrect (it's not complicated either).

Best part is that they had to film a short promo clip convincing potential applicants that society won't think less of them if they ended up working there! The clip (SPOILERS!) is hosted by a young woman doing a quick vox pop; turns out she's studying for a law degree. Is this really a good advert for our society: someone smart enough to study has to flip burgers for a toxic shit food chain in order to pursue their studies? Own goal?

Anyway, to the point. the job is for a crew member in Portishead (the town, not the band), yet if you look at the list, the same venue, Portishead (the town, not the band), also has vacancies for 'work experience' crew members. Now why would anyone choose to apply for an unpaid position over the paid position when they are both the same? In fact there are more listed 'work exoperience' opportunities, which also include full time, than there are paid regular opportunities - both of which are part time!

Workfare? I'm not loving it (sorry).

On another topic I got charged for postage on a DVD I ordered from Amazon Marketplace (don't worry Alec Shelbrooke, it wasn't expensive). Seems the guy forgot to buy enough stamps. It annoyed me a fair bit, it's true to say, so I left some negative feedback. I emailed the guy as well to ask what had happened. Turns out, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he made a mistake. I believe him; he offered to refund me the fiver I spent and I removed the feedback.

Why do I mention this? These are tough times. I think he's just an ordinary guy trying to make a few quid on Amazon. What's wrong with that? I'd do it if I could (and I tried getting advice from various Work Programme type providers over the years, none of whom were interested). So we need to stand together and not let capitalism and money divide us. It costs me nothing to give him the benefit of the doubt and if he does right by me and refunds me then all's well that ends well.

Contrast Iain Duncan Smith who will tomorrow seek the approval of Parliament to push his latest, nastiest, piece of legislation through - possibly with the support of Labour, definitely with the support of the Libdems. Even if Labour vote against this, they won't win alone. There's no fucking justice in IDS' world, and I'm sure retroactive legislation goes against the ECHR - no wonder the scum in government loathe it so much. Disgraceful.

Two Stupid Stories

Recently there was a story about a gentleman named Paul Marshallsea from Wales who was 'caught' wrestling a shark while in Australia that was near to attacking kids in the sea. That's not the interesting part about this story for people like us, however. You see Paul was in Australia, apparently staying with friends, because he and his wife had been advised to take a break for health reasons. Paul had been working running a youth centre for many years prior to the involvement of the private sector and a boss culture that had led him to physical sickness due to stress. That he happened to be on the beach when a shark was spotted while on sabbatical is irrelevant. 

Unfortunately Paul's mistake was claiming ESA while away. He's paid into the system, so why shouldn't he. Upon his return, and having heard about his herculean sea-bound exploits, his new bosses decided that he wasn't genuinely off sick, but was larking about under the sun, despite the advice of his doctor. His services were, predictably, no longer required. 

This story made the news, for obvious reasons. I heard about it on radio 2 when Jeremy Vine, an increasingly shrill man with no patience for facts, figures or for giving interviewees time to properly tell their story. Paul was talking to J-Vi and explaining the situation. He was also followed by a psychotherapist who spoke of her utter incredulity at the decision and that undertaking physical activity shouldn't preclude stress. Besides he was on holiday to get well, so why would it be uncharacteristic that he should therefore get better while on holiday? Isn't that a bit like saying that, because someone has a plastercast on their foot, that there's nothing wrong with it?

What was really sad about the whole interview was the predictable audience reaction. However the level of nastiness from the judgemental curtain twitchers that bothered to text and email their 'thoughts' was nothing short of appalling. Who takes pleasure in calling for the dismissal of someone from their job? Who would want this man who, upon returning home, was eager to get back to work? Do they want him to be a burden on the state.

A couple of days later, on the same show, J-Vi had what I can only describe as one of the most bizarre guests. Former Tory Mike Buchanan (no, I've never heard of him either) has set up a political party under the tired misapprehension that men and boys (his party is called, rather eerily, Justice for Men and Boys!) are now the losers in post-feminist Britain. 

I don't think I've ever heard such a vacuous load of misinformed rubbish in my life. It blows my mind that people actually think this, in an age of lads mags, sexualisation and misogyny and chauvinism. Men are still dominant in society and people still think women should be seen and not heard - preferably with their knockers out on page three in some cases.

Again there were plenty of people calling in to agree with this clown. Plenty of people brainwashed by the tired reactionary media that they, as white men, are the oppressed minority. If it's not women coming to stop them from doing whatever they want (which is to say selling Keep Calm and Rape Her T Shirts, looking at page 3, or generally being sad misogynists), it's foreigners, muslims and gays, probably. 

Something has gone terribly wrong in this society and it's the media that's to blame. Once upon a time it was easier to ignore the machinery of the likes of Murdoch and the print media. Nowadays these people not only own the print media, despite it's apparently parlous state, but they have 24 hour rolling news channels. They are ubiquitous and they are courted by those willing to sell their principles to sell these repugnant values for a sniff of power and some cash. Whether it's the tedious arrogance of Dickensian businessmen like Farage, or Prime Ministers from Eton, the message is the same: be afraid, they're out to ruin your life. Doesn't matter if it's people fighting for their rights or actual terrorists. The media plays you against yourself as it does you against everyone else.