Aha, mm hmm, ahuh, yes, hmmm.

I think it’s fair to say, now, that the poor have been completely disenfranchised from the system and thus from society. This was made clear, in my opinion, with the appointment of Rachel Reeves as shadow work and pensions secretary. Her opening statement clearly laid out Labour’s desire to distance themselves from the lower classes and to fight IDS at his own game, which is, in my view, a race to the bottom.

This was also further reinforced this morning, amid the monsoon we appear to have moved beneath, in another appointment with my GP. To her credit she has agreed to support me with sick notes, but at the same time isn’t really helping me at all. Not to be ungrateful but facilitating survival rations is hardly the support one should expect from a civilised rich post industrial nation. Yet we are lucky to get even that.

I say ‘expect’ because she raised the point that I was sounding ‘entitled’. This has become a dirty word these days. It is capitalism’s code for “expecting things to be given without earning them in a way acceptable to the status quo”. Welfare claimants are entitled because they expect to receive an income more than dire poverty. This is how far we have sunk, that people with nothing who want to live are branded as greedy. Her point was that by wanting support I was behaving thus, yet I have been placed on the Work Programme and have received no help. At all. Where is the entitlement? Is that not what is supposed to happen? After all Salvation Army Employment Plus are not participating in this scheme for free (even though they argue they get nothing, more fool them). 

I don't even really know what to think. All I know is that this world is a hostile place to me. I can't get on with it. Whatever I think seems to be out of sorts and at odds with the convention of the day. Whatever I say is misunderstood. I am not knocking people that work in shops; I don't criticise the person that does the job and there are plenty of venues that would probably be a lot more fun to work in than, say, Tesco. But you get no help to find such a job - unless it happens to show up on Universal Jobmatch (I even tried explaining how crap that was, but of course I just sound like I'm having a moan). 

Curiously she commented that I have a lot of 'wherewithall'. What she means is that I know my own mind. Good, but is she saying I'm being a bit disingenuous or even dishonest? That, because I'm smart and perhaps more capable than should be right for someone claiming on the sick, my claims to have problems are unfounded. Again assumptions.

Some of us need help. I’m sure it’s not easy studying to be or working as a doctor, but that is an acceptable profession that, resources permitting, one can reasonably expect to try for. Yet when I told her that having worked in retail and as a cleaner she again felt I was being ‘entitled’ when I said those were not jobs I aspire to as a career. It seems that not wanting a career in a notoriously low paid sector or a job clearing up after other people is unreasonable. Sorry, but I doubt she would want either of those as careers either, and aren’t doctors entitled? Don’t they get paid well? Don’t they expect decent terms and conditions, particularly when it comes to after hours work? Who isn’t entitled? Not politicians, businessmen, corporations, or bankers. It’s ok to be a snob if you are in that position, but not otherwise. That’s hypocrisy.

I have all but given up on my GP surgery now. They simply don’t listen. They don’t understand the issues. She even suggested that I might have some empathy with the opposing point of view. In other words, what about those poor taxpayers having to personally bail out the poor – as if there is a queue of hard working souls outside the expensive rented doors of paupers passing a bucket of money down the line like firemen of old. That isn’t the function of social security; it’s to keep society together and to protect people for the greater good. I’m not asking for a prescription I can take down Bright House for a massive plasma screen TV. But I’m supposed to empathise with the difficult position the government is in with a straight face while talking to a GP that clearly knows nothing about what is really happening. Of course if I make that point I seem to overthrow objectivity and thus destroy my own credibility. It is a no win situation.

I tried explaining that GP’s need to understand the benefit system and the motive of the maniacs in power. I fear it falls on deaf ears. She has this annoying habit of asking a question and then, before I can even respond, to start nodding and saying “Aha, mm hmm, ahuh, yes, hmmm.” as if she’s actually listening. It’s almost comical it’s so obvious. I wonder if she even realises she’s doing it. It comes to something when even the medical profession are swayed by the right wing ideas that dominate, but it is hardly surprising. The conditioning is everywhere and by not allowing me the space to properly express myself I simply do not get taken seriously. Consequently it’s easy to resort to stereotypes and lazy assumptions. For example she, like the rest of them, continues to make the point that living perpetually on the sick is undesirable. I have tried many times to explain how this is no longer possible. Eventually I will have a tribunal and at the very least the decision will be taken out of her hands. A year later and the ESA entitlement, if I make it into the WRAG, will end. Of course this is too much information to get across without her interrupting, which she does. A lot. Aha, mm hmm, ahuh, yes, hmmm.

Pride And Benefits

There was a programme called ‘On Benefits and Proud’ on, it should come as no surprise, Channel 5 this past Monday. I didn’t watch it. I didn’t have the stomach. Judging by the twitter feed, it was probably a wise decision. That of course will not stop me from commenting – much like facts and evidence do not stop the right wing trolls from braying.

The programme apparently focussed on a mother of 11 children, which, in the style of Chris Huhne, exceeds the legal limit for scrounger progeny. Unemployed people aren’t allowed to have children and the authorities should have the ability to travel backwards through time and, using knowledge of the future, enforce some kind of Philip K Dick dystopian prevention. Easy target number one. The other two case studies were a pair of single mothers who have the audacity to live in a high rent area, and a long term unemployed pair of Liverpudlians; those well known itinerants.

This is ridiculous; it seems, at the risk of sexism, very easy to pick on female subjects. Single mothers of course are easy targets indeed: they can’t reverse their situation and there is very little they can do to change it – not that they necessarily should. It’s fair to say that most love their children and look out for them as best they can. Why would you assume otherwise – because they are scroungers of course! Look she has 11 kids! Clearly irresponsible!

This article presents a fun deconstruction of what was likely a very predictable affair.

Central to the whole deal is of course the now-ingrained notion of ‘something for nothing’; that the unemployed receive life’s rewards without having to earn them. This message is intended to set those that do work against these people. Unfortunately those who buy into this message do not understand how they themselves have to tolerate increasingly harsh terms and conditions. Discussion of today’s strike by teachers puts this into focus: people bemoaning the ‘scrounging’ teachers for not being as compliant as they. This is the race to the bottom.

Ironically the best thing a ‘scrounger’ can do with their benefits bonanza (which is nothing but) would be to spend it. Yet this is seen as evidence of the overly generous amounts claimants receive. As if having enough to spend is having too much. But the money goes back into the system, which is the best outcome. The poor spend more of their money in this way than the rich, as well as paying a greater percentage of their income in taxes. Notice also the Tories speak about welfare – benefits – being out of control. This is their way of admitting they don’t dare just cut the amount received (yet): instead they say they have to reign in spending. It’s out of control, like a wild animal, and we have to tame it, unlike the opposition whose policies bred this feral beast. Nonsense of course.

Tragically the libdems count as evidence of their positive influence over their Tory overlords that they have lifted people out of tax. So instead of fighting for better and higher wages – they reduce the amount the government has to spend: nobody wins!

There’s nothing generous about benefits, and they are given out begrudgingly. Despite that they can be stopped at a moment’s notice on a whim. This is the reverse of most people’s working experience. But that’s the kind of work experience they don’t want people to have.

As people on benefits don’t have much of an income – particularly outside of cities where transport is relatively plentiful and human contact more accessible – they tend to spend more time ‘sitting on their arse’. I’m not sure how this is a different kind of ‘sitting’ than is performed by people working in offices, such as the staff of Saving Britain Money (or any of the other parasite call centres that ring every fucking day). It’s an easy way to stigmatise people, especially if they are also watching TV while ‘sitting on their arse’, or, shudder, playing a video game. It’s easy to show a snapshot of someone in this way and infer that is how they spend all their time. They clearly should be ‘doing something useful’ which is where workfare comes in. Get them off their backsides, something for something, get them contributing! However there is no support for the unemployed – that’s the plain cold hard reality. There is no support; the Work Programme is a dismal failure and I personally have had no contact from them in May (which will no doubt be my fault even though they have nothing to offer, by their own admission). If there was support and it was meaningful and properly helpful (not just stigmatisation and bullying) then people would struggle to find the time to attend a thirty hour a week unpaid work placement. Lucky then!

We do not have enough paid work for people to do. Unpaid work breaks the social contract and, worse, devalues the only thing some people have to sell, which is their labour and their time. They are forced into these situations by this government, and that is why it must be called slavery. This has negative consequences for everyone, including those in work whose own positions are jeopardised. There may be a space for a discussion on how unemployed people can spend their time and how communities – including employed as well as unemployed members – can contribute to the betterment of their corner of the country. But that does not negate the need for people, in this system, to receive an income. If you deny them that you deny them the means to not just contribute or participate, but to survive.

That brings us to the sanction regime. With the passing of Liam Byrne from the shadow DWP seat I had hoped for something more progressive. This it seems was not to be. Rachel Reeves, his replacement, appears intent on fighting IDS for the same votes and over the same proposition: who can be the toughest on scroungers. Aside from this being a hopeless position for any opposition politician (you might as well just join the bloody Tories), it tells me two things:

Firstly that Labour doesn’t care about me, my vote, my opinions, or my values. I do not matter to them or their plans for the country.

Secondly that Reeves believes sanctioning people is a productive course of action. why should people be punished for being poor or not seeking work in the required way – or indeed anything, as the DWP seems hellishly trigger happy these days (the PCS recently caught them out planning a week long sanction celebration).

How does Labour think this builds a society: pushing people beyond and stranding them there isn’t the action of a socially minded party? It is the action of a psychopath, and we already have one of those. Unfortunately he is egged on by the braying masses that think everyone on benefit should feel anything but pride. Channel 5 is the stocks; bring your own rotten fruit.

Into The Nightmare; the return of Workfare

I’m not really sure what to say here. I’m not entirely sure what I can add to the blogosphere that has already commented on the recent Tory onslaught. I suppose I could attempt to hint at possible division between Osbourne and IDS because of the former announcing welfare policy ahead of the latter. Maybe I could speculate on the reason for this hard shift further (as if that were possible) to the right as an attempt to win over UKIP voters who are at the swivel eyed edge of social policy.

So again the spectre of workfare haunts the unemployed. Thanks to the likes of the Policy Exchange and their odious attitude toward work and unemployment, it is back on the agenda, and how. Apparently from next April workfare will be part of a brutal and thus ineffectual package of measures aimed at the unemployed, again focussing on them as the composers of their own misfortune. Again avoiding blame for the failings of policy and an economic system that rewards the Tories and rejects the poor.

This policy doesn’t work. It cannot work. No pun intended. How can it? There are no vacancies. By virtue of existing it proves the failure of policy because if there were vacancies surely people would be employed and thus paid which would mean they don’t have to claim – something right wingers forget: workfare slaves still get benefits. This is just appeasement based on ignorance and prejudice. It allows the government to sound tough but not act, and we all know that Duncan Smith is not a man of action.

This ironically is just further admission of this miserable little tyrant’s failure and a projection of his own insecurity. He is an incompetent; a blustering hectoring self entitled hypocrite far too eager to point to the perceived failings of others in a bid to assuage his own. This package of hard measures has been hinted at before: the Community Action Programme for example announced months ago was intended to succeed the Work Programme for the ‘hard to help’. Again it implies that the fault of those ‘hard to help’ lies not with the Programme, not with greedy bullying providers, but with the claimant. This then is his punishment, which now includes, incredibly, a plan to force daily nine-to-five attendance at DWP facilities if not actual Jobcentres (even though the latter would be completely unsuitable). This cannot be seen as anything other than a brutal admission of the failing of every Tory welfare policy thus far, particularly the Work Programme.

How much tougher are the Tories – with the fawning assistance of their craven gutless libdem enablers – going to be on claimants, on the poor? How much harder? What happens next year when this latest round of changes produces no more a success than the Work Programme (failing for another year)? Will IDS return to claim his reforms are so successful that now the unemployed need sectioning, or sent straight to prison, or shipped off as conscripts to Afghan war zones? Yet another hammer blow to the face yet again labelled as ‘getting tough on the something for nothing culture’; a culture that only exists in palace of Westminster or the imaginations of those that read the Daily Mail.

How much longer are we going to tolerate the CBI running our lives? These so called business ‘leaders’ argue in favour of educational impoverishment by shifting the goalposts of employment. These people demean school leavers and teachers by claiming all schools nowadays (i.e. it’s all labour’s fault – an excuse I’ve heard more this week than in three years) do is teach people how to text and stab. These business ‘leaders’ raise the bar for any job, no matter how menial, by making increasingly ridiculous demands, in a conveniently hyper-competitive labour market, on individuals no matter how simple or menial the job. Then, when a kid fails to make this artificially high grade, he, like the rest of the unemployed, is to blame. It’s a disgrace, to coin a phrase.

But there are those that love the idea of workfare. People so bitter and twisted they want to see the knife stuck in the bellies of those they perceive are getting something for nothing. These are people that make a virtue of never having claimed – despite years of paying into a system that has given them nothing but insecurity and intellectual poverty. They are happy to tear strips off others over stuff – material goods that they aspire to owning but can’t because they earn too little. That is all the fault of the unemployed who must be made to work even if it means undermining the insecure jobs such people are doing. People are so invested in their experience that they cannot see another, better, way. I’ve worked all my life, they say, I’ve burned myself out, so, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, this can’t be just a ride! It must be real because my stake in this is too much to lose, even though I can’t take it with me when I die.

According to the Express mandatory jobcentre attendance will end the something for nothing culture. How? They will still receive the benefits that the likes of the Express moan about in the first place. It’s punitive. It’s about being seen to keep the unemployed in their place, hence community service as part of the proposed workfare package; I’ve no doubt the unemployed, thusly criminalised, will be made to wear hi-vis attire to broadcast the fact. 35 hours a day involving people cooped up in a facility (though probably not an actual JC as they haven’t a prayer of being fit for purpose – so that’s more money being spent pursuing this agenda). It is demeaning; infantilising people who will have to raise their hand and ask ‘please sir can I go to toilet!’ Adults will be reduced in the name of improving themselves. What kind of curriculum can possibly encompass a 5 day 9-5 routine? Even the Work Programme cannot provide enough resources. It will become a pressure cooker with mental health sufferers at the very sharp edge because you can be sure that, just as with the Work Programme, they will get no support.

I can’t think of any employer who would regard this as representative of a working routine: how many happy employees spend 7 hours a day looking for a better life?

Who speaks for us? There was a welfare to work conference, starring (of course) Mark Hoban, earlier this year (and probably every year). Representatives from all across the private sector were invited to discuss further means to screw the poor, but who wasn’t invited – the poor themselves. No one bothers to invite representatives from the unemployed community. No one thinks to ask our opinion as those affected by this policy. If they reject us, I say reject them. Let’s have more people quit their jobs. Let’s leave the economy in tatters then maybe they will listen.