What is help?

Over the last week I made a complaint to Second Step whose Peer Employability Programme I had joined last October. A programme that seems to offer very little.

What is telling about this process is the response. It was almost patronising. You think something has gone wrong, we MUST listen to you, we MUST learn. Tell us all about it! Sit down, tell us, tell us! It was over the top.

My issue was that, after ignoring three emails expressing my dissatisfaction, they didn't respond to me at all, just passed them on to the person running the course. I objected to that because I felt that would be construed as a personal attack. I have no wish for her to have her confidence undermined. At the very least surely you talk to me first to understand the issues. But, as they say, whatever.

The consequence of all this is that today her line manager has emailed to discuss whether I want to continue. The problem is that I don't know what I'm continuing with. I asked her what this course was meant to offer. That was the root of my complaint: I have no idea what this Programme is there to do.

I know what they say. They give me the sales spiel; we can work with you, we can do all the usual stuff (like print out cv's), and we can boost confidence. This is a familiar pattern to me. It's the same kind of programme that all these organisations offer. It's exactly the same.

The fundamental problem is that it isn't meant to challenge the status quo while ignoring the reality that the status quo, the economic system the nature of the society within which we find ourselves, are the cause.

People don't have low self esteem because they are lazy. They have it because their society and their environment beats it out of them. The confident people that I've known have all come from strong unified healthy family and social backgrounds. You cannot 'teach' self confidence; that just amounts to fakery. A few simply 'team building' exercises, we've all seen the sort, are not a replacement for a healthy environment. That's how we, as social creatures, are meant to live. Unfortunately the world doesn't work out that way.

Of course social enterprises can't single handedly change the world and I don't expect them to, but I am not interested in buying into the "only you can change your world" mantra. That's a severely simplistic worldview. By all means engage in healthy introspection - just don't believe that your problems are always or totally your fault. That is gaslighting. It also absolves the people who have power in our society - the psychopath ruling class - of their behaviour.

What these organisations should be doing is affiliating. They should link up and present a united front on behalf of the people. That at least would be a start. But instead they affiliate with the likes of the DWp and just end up further damaging and dividing people. For this reason I remain completely unclear as to what this Peer Employability Programme offers, nor whether it's worth my time continuing. What would I be continuing with? I don't want to just toss them aside because organisations like this are the only game in town. However what connections do they have with the labour market? Can they find actual decent jobs? Do they have any real influence. What good is confidence building if it thus leads nowhere?

I Hate The Cold!

I can't get on with this time of year. There's no getting away from it. The freezing temperatures are only a part of it. There is something that sinks during winter and for three months you feel like drowning. I don't like it at all. It's like the very world is conspiring against you; the hostile cold. It is very hard to stay motivated and energetic during this period, and currently I am neither. Bring on the Spring on, says I.

Thus have I been lax in posting here.

It's been almost a month since my Work Focussed Interview. Fortunately I was able to request a telephone interview, though why that should ever be an issue is beyond me. Typically DWP bureaucracy makes requesting one a pain in the arse; you contact your 'work coach' but you can't because they don't give you the details. Instead you have to keep ringing the call centre to finally get through to someone that will give that information. Sometimes they don't. It's a system that exists to make a rod for its own back - and thus makes those operating it difficult to deal with. Bureacracy begets pointless bureacracy.

To be fair, the woman - let's call her Tracy (because the DWP did) - was actually pleasant to deal with. I can't lie. However the whole thing is such a waste of time. It isn't remotely work focussed because, as we all know, the lsat thing the DWP does to help people find work is to help people find work. They have nothing to offer, but want to check up on you, every six months (so see you again in the Summer I guess), to make sure you're doing it.

That's all fairly banal stuff and mostly obbious to anyone involved with the DWP. We all know this. However what might not be known is that the system isn't just there to check up on you, it's there to make sure you are doing 'something', even if that is to agree to speak to your GP (no matter hiow pointless). If you don't, that is, if you are seen to refuse (it would be impermissible for the GP to say whether or not you have visited them, they aren't - or weren't - allowed to divulge that to anyone), they can stop your benefit.

What this means is that ESA (and probably UC) can be disallowed on the basis that, regardless of your health, you are not 'towing the line'. You are not seen to be 'moving forward'. Insert your euphemism of choice.

This is actually a pretty big deal. I explained the situation to her and she seemed to listen. I don't get the sense she's a troublemaker, like of the tinpot generals that work for the DWP. I explained that the local area has no mental health services and that ancillary organisations such as Second Step (who now comrpise the totality of 'support' locally) are essentially useless. I joined their Peer Employability Programme in October and have had next to no interacts with them nor have the anything to offer. These schemes are cheap to run and offer nothing. It's essentially a scam where they get service users to provide a non-existent service.

I did agree to go back to my GP, in regard of my ceaseless pursuit of an aspergers diagnosis. I couldn't explain to her that just wasn't going to get anywhere. GP's have no understanding of these issues and simply deflect any concern by saying "why do you need one anyway?" as if you can just function in our system the same as people who don't have cognitive/social differences, or that you can just positively think them away. It's a deflection from the reality that there is no help and that the local mental health partnership is, frankly, bollocks. I'm trying to pursue a case for advocacy but that again is difficult since finding people who can stand up and be counted on your behalf without tugging the bureaucratic or procedural forelock is nigh impossible.

So I had to agree that I would visit my GP or furnish the DWP with grounds for depriving me of an income. Does that seem reasonable? I'm essentially being forced to speak to a GP while I know full well that it will achieve nothing. Even if another diagnosis attempt can be secured it will be months possibly longer before anything can happen, with no guarantee it won't be the same people undertaking the same crappy process as before. That process was flawed and they ignored me explaining my situation. I even provided evidence from online tests (proper tests, designed by actual professionals, not just any internet nonsense, I should add) to the GP but they just lost it and gave up interest. There's a weird thing that happens with GP's: their interest seems to vacillate. One minute they offer to help asking to look at what evidence you have and seeming to agree in a way that suggests understanding. But when you return it's the opposite; you might as well be talking to someone else.

Of course I didn't argue the toss with the DWP. I haven't the energy for their bullshit. But I don't think it's right that people can be bullied into talking with a doctor. Nothing should surprise us about their attitude anymore. I haven't been though because there is no point. They can't help.

Fascists vs Fascists

In which you will see how I can turn every topic into being about me!

What is the world we are living in right now? I don't recognise it at all. I simply don't. Brexit has torn society in half. It's made Game of Thrones look sane. All so hamfucker Cameron could appeal to gammonatti of Britain and win an election. Well that worked out didn't it!

To be clear, I don't think Anna Soubry is a nazi. I do however think she's a fascist and, in common discourse, that's largely synonymous. I think this because she is a willing proponent of state force wielded with bludgeoning force against the rest of us. Let's look at her voting record on welfare, shall we?

You can check out the rest of her voting record while you're there. A few progressive decisions (pro gay rights, like the hamfucker himself) doesn't really excuse her being a willing member of the capitalist elite that uses violence and weaponises poverty against the poor. That is fascism. If she wasn't a Tory, and just an ordinary shmuck like the rest of us, she'd simply be a gobby parochial tedious daily mail reader type (one imagines).

In short: I refuse to defend her. I shouldn't have to defend her. The question isn't "is it ok for idiots to shout 'nazi!' at politicians'. The question should be "why are we tolerating a system that creates the conditions for this to arise". To be clear the idiots shouting at her (and Owen Jones - and probably many others) are by no means people I support either. This Goddard chap is a total fucking idiot with no understanding of the systems in play in our society. He's just blurting out , almost stream of consciousness, the tropes fed to him daily by the intelligentsia. That isn't to excuse it, but to explain it.

Defending an individual Tory, one who has an appalling attitude toward the poor, is addressing the symptoms of the problems in our society. What needs to be addressed is the root. The systems of hierarchy and oppression that allow two human beings, such as Goddard and Soubry (unless there's some genetic heritage I'm unaware of), not to be equals. There's a gulf between them and neither seem able or willing to understand why that exists. As a consequence there is the voice of a confused idiot with appalling views screaming because he feels something is being taken away from him. Yet I can guarantee he has not once protested at politicians for taking away the rights of the sick and the poor (more likely lumped them in with migrants as scroungers). Has he ever called IDS or McVey or, now, Rudd a nazi? Doubtful.

Should he? Fuck yes!

There is a lot of anger in our society and it needs channelling properly. Soubry makes no bones that she's pro-EU. A lot of Tories are, they didn't want Brexit, but the working class called their bluff - and not always correctly. The EU is a pro-capitalist neoliberal institution. THey are certainly not interested in emancipating the working class, just look at what they've done over the last eight years in response to Tory austerity. Nothing. A member state destriying the poor and savaging their lives. Nothing.

That's fascism. While there is a concern that idiots like Goddard (no doubt fed by the likes of Steve Bannon and the international dark money that funds the far right, which is a huge concern) are the tip of a deadly iceberg, the threat they pose needs to be addressed far more fundamentally. The discussion isn't about what's polite in discourse, it's about the working class and the ruling class.

Besides it's not as if Soubry can't dish it out!

Dis-Appointment

I'm sure that somewhere, in the temporal chasm between, there is a life. I just don't remember it.

That's the power the DWP has over your life. A cabal of people ill equipped and uninterested in actually doing the one thing they claim to be able to do. A bit like expecting a serial killer to explain human empathy or offer marriage counselling. How can they help? They are structurally not built for it. The system created them to gatekeep a supercilious bureaucracy that exists to deny you the one thing it exists for - and the one thing you need to live. Money isn't for you; it's for your betters.

How insane is that? We live on a world that, once upon a time before we fucked up the environment, was a corncucopia. We should be able to provide for people's needs. Unfortunately expecting something as simple and straightforward as that is less important than creating a vast bureaucracy to facilitae dealing with the people capitalism cannot cope with. The people surplus to its requirements. A steadily rising demographic, increased by automation (or, ironically, innovation).

Today, less than a week before Christmas (for what it's worth), I received another summons to a Work Focussed Interview. I must attend in three weeks at this time and this place on pain of...well of course they don't come out and tell you, which makes the implied threat all the more insidious. But we all know what happens if you don't attend.

What gets me is the total lack of flexibility. That just further proves how inadequate this system is. I have no idea who the appointment is with other than a first name, 'Tracy', but I am damned sure they are not in any way able to do anything. They will have no expertise in mental health and no understanding of the issues facing people with mental health problems today. If they did I am fairly certain they wouldn't be working with the DWP.

Could they not meet me somewhere less intimidating? You might be forgiven for thinking that people asserting they are there to help might be willing to at least meet me half way. Even though this entire undertaking is doubtless a waste of time I would feel measurably better were it held more conventiently, at the local doctor's surgery (issues of merging helthcare and welfare notwithstanding - and while we still have a surgery!) for example. But I somehow doubt that such options will be forthcoming.

So what message does that send? It tells me that people who profess they are there to help and  work with you are interested in neither. How can they be within a system that insists on mandatory attendance within the intimidating indiscreet halls of officialdom. How can they be when there is no opportunity (I imagine) for flexibility? This system isn't designed for help; it's designed for capitalist triage. Patch up the wounded and get them back at the coalface. Arm them with a telephone and have them wield it like a pickaxe to badger the elderly into buying insurance schemes or scams (more accurately).

It is such a small minded, unambitious process. More concerned with its own administration and bureaucracy than with actual help. If I were, and I might just, ring up (apparently I could email, but they didn't provide me with an email for 'Tracy') and say "i can't attend because I can't cope" I have no doubt they will view that, shall we say, suspiciously.

And that's the problem: rather than address people's needs purely and plainly, they view them with suspicion. Why? Because that's how they're trained. So tell me again how that is a helpful attitude.

Yet every six months these wheels spin and I, like everyone else in this position, has to go through this nonsense. A performance review where I'm expected to justify my life and my entitlement to draw breath before people who are, unwittingly or otherwise, merely gatekeepers for a system that cannot help and only serves to divide people and keep them from having their basic needs met.

Think how muhc better things could be otherwise.

Food FIght!

Note: I a not a vegan, I make no apology for that. However I believe that vegans have every right to eat what they choose and shouldn't be bullied or denigrated for that. I do not - at all- subscribe to the vapid misogynist 'soyboy' trope that has become quite popular of late. 

Now then it seems another section of the great and the good advocates for a tax on red meat. This is based on two reasons: first and foremost the alleged environmental impact of the current method of producing it, and secondly the alleged health issues.

I do not agree with this tax. It is, as it always is with this approach a blunt instrument wielded by those with no thought for the poorest who, as ever, will be hit the hardest. Red meat, in many forms, is a healthy staple. It is also more affordable than many alternatives advocated by the liberal intelligentsia. Beef, for example, is among the most nutrient dense food sources available to us, and, like all meat, has what we need in forms the body can better and more easily process. This, I'm afraid, is not the case with many non-meat altnernatives.

Offal has been demonised, along with fat, for many years. Meanwhile we are witnessing a sweeping health crisis in the western world casued by the standard western/American diet. We have tried the low fat approach and clearly it hasn't worked. Good fat is not just healthy, it is essential. Fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids are required for life. On the back of this, a concerted attack on red meat is of great concern to me. I eat a low carb high fat diet and it has been very beneficial. Meat has been a major staple of this diet, including pork and beef as well as liver, which is also one of the most nutritious foods you can eat.

Attempts to demonise red meat culminated in a report from the WHO claiming that it is a 'probable carcinogen'. This is not accurate. Even if the claims were true the relative risk is so small as to be insignificant. However the study is observational, based on highly debunked questionnaires. Can you recall what you ate accurately enough over a period of months and years? Look here for more information on this study.

The environmental impact is of course important. It is clear, by all the evidence, that we are facing an unprecedented climate crisis that, in all honesty, we are not going to be able to avoid. At this point it is merely a matter of how overcooked do you want your planet. Our leaders are not capable of addressing this and the change required is too vast for any of them to comprehend (even assuming they accept the science, which America doesn't) and too close to avoid without losing power. However the context within which the claims about red meat are made are based on the current model of farming. I do not necessarily agree with industrial capitalist factory farming, it turns cows into commodities and the alienation of the workforce is a breeding ground for the kind of disgusting barbarism vegan activists rightly point out as cruelty within the industry.

It doesn't have to be this way, even on a planet as densely populated as mother earth (a problem, one that we have created for ourselves unfortunately). Meat should come from animals raised in their natural environment and doing so allows soil to grow fertile which also helps deal with carbon emissions. Without the need for an alien diet, grains imported to feed cows that should be eating grass, land is freed up. Not all land is suitable for growing vegetables and fruits (and not all of us want to eat them!).

A world devoid of a meat industry, for all its problems (and there are many) would be impossible. It would not be a world free of animals killed in the name of food either, nor would it be a world free of industrial agriculture (pesticides and the like). Vast industrial infrastructure would be required to ship foods that can only grow in particular places (tropical fruits for example) around the world. Britain for instance would still need to import the majority of its food as it cannot produce enough. Likely, given the relatively low nutrient density of plant food, it would need to import more. Then there would be the effects of communities devastated by the removal of meat as their livelihood, such as nomadic or rural cultures forced into cities as a result (a problem climate change can only exacerbate).

This ius a very simple look at the issues. I don't have all the answers. I could very well be wrong. I am not gospel on this issue. All I know is that persecuting the poor, while maintaining the capitalist system that underpins these problems, is a terrible idea. But, for the ruling elite, it is the only idea they will countenance. If we don't deal with that and instead fall for bad science then not only will the climate continue its inexorable decline, but so will our quality of

Eat what you like, plants or meat. But don't fall for the propaganda of biased sources as well as the ruling class who don't know what it's like to eat frugally. I have long been sickened by the toff foodie culture that abounds - especially when, after a period of pretentious eating thanks to the likes of Heston Blumenthal, it came back around to try and co opt working class meals by way of venerating 'locally sourced organic food'. To these people that's just another fad, but to the rest of us eating locally is what we do naturally. It's not a cultural artifact to be commodified by poverty tourists and television stars.

Cold Days

And so it is winter again. A bit unexpectedly early, but then our climate is in meltdown so who knows what it will be like over the coming months.

As the world turns colder (or at least the northern hemisphere), it seems also to turn darker. Fascism, call it what it is, is on the ascent. One of the largest countries in the world, and a developing economic powerhouse, has just elected a human nightmare to lead it. All under the aegis of the Trump 'revolution'. Bolsonara in Brazil will set back the rights of those he rules a generation. Already there has been violence, the wiping out of an indigenous village. He won't care, and nor will the fascist's friend up north, Trump. I still cannot believe that man has power. He is a vicious self entitled spoilt child, surrounded by like minded people who care nothing for the common man except to deny them further access to the basics of a decent society.

What must it take for us to get a decent world? Liberals and centrists appeal to the democratic process, but what good is that? Do we tell LGBTQ+ people in Brazil - whom Bolsonara has directly targeted - that they should be good citizens and wait another term because that's the done thing? Hell no. Power is never given, it must be taken from those who seek to rule over us. Stolen from them and then smashed. No one must be in charge so that everyone can be in charge. In that way proper democratic processes can develop.

Meanwhile the Tories continue their assault against the lower orders. Universal Credit, like a raging beast, seems unstoppable, urged on by its maniac masters. It blows my mind to think that Esther McVey has power over the poorest in society. A vacuous airhead who thinks the worst kind of glib Californian business guru self help rubbish is the blueprint for a successful society. She loves the 'strivers and skivers' rhetoric, despite it being utterly meaningless. You can strive all you want, hard work guarantees nothing but tired hands and broken backs. If you capitulate to that idea you are giving your power to people like her and she will use it to break you. Universal Credit is pernicious poorly designed and thoroughly unworkable. As the death count rises the Tories will just ramp up the rhetoric even more.

All this against a backdrop of gammon-infused isolationism. Ridiculous old men and women who refuse to consider their time is all but spent. Having climbed the ladder all they wish to do is kick it away from those beneath them. There is no doubt the EU is a problematic neoliberal pro-capitalist institution looking after its own interests, but it is also the gatekeeper. It does afford the working class many benefits. Throwing those away resembles throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But worse of all is that there is no good option: if we leave all we do is cede power to the Tories. Their true blue rhetoric will count for nothing once they go full steam ahead and finish off the job austerity started. Then we can all look forward to chlorinated chicken and the complete prostitution of what remains of our public services once they are fully laid bare to the rest of the world. We will become a carcass for the vultures of the world to feed on. In the absence of a proper working class revolt against the EU - and all capitalist institutions (including especially the Tories) we must choose at this time to remain. I'm not prepared to throw the working class under the bus.

The weather is getting colder. The streets are full of souls cast off by the Tories; people whose lives have been violently rendered invisible to their concern. Life gets all the more frosty when few care. That's the world we seem to be building for ourselves. When I was a kid, I looked up at the moon and dreamed of the stars. My head full of sci fi speculation and Tomorrows World (remember that?). By 2020 we'd be living in bubble cities on the moon and jetpacking into work. How naive. Now it's all but impossible to do something as simple as see your doctor. I notice my local surgery has had to shut for two months (at least - I've no doubt it will extend, this is the beginning of the end). Already it's only open part time. They claim that with a number of doctors on maternity leave they can't adequately and safely staff the surgery. But they can't find locums? They can't hire more doctors in general (which is why they are only part time)? Something isn't right here, but then, in the post NHS climate the Tories are building it's open season for these people who run our local service to expand. This they seem to be doing while also struggling to find staff. Something isn't right. Only under the Tories coudl this happen, and it will only get worse.

The View from the Hill

I took the long way back from Tesco (Express - that means it's slightly and inexplicably more expensive than the traditional superstore, and less well stocked). A nice walk down the hill, you know, the one through the farmland, toward the river and by the weir.

The farmer died a few weeks ago. He was a nice fellow. Apparently a few months, perhaps even years, ago he'd sold his land. Developers have been sniffing around for a few years now. Across their number they have tried to acquire multiple patches of land so they can make a profit of course. It's not about building to meet a need. We obviously have that, but these will not be affordable homes, nor will they exist in sufficient number to meet any reasonable demand.

This is just about making money from farmers that can't support themselves. This isn't NIMBYism, the land is for everyone to enjoy. Not just rich homeowners (whose number will now increase). I enjoy that land.

Or I used to. I could walk down that field, look out across to the hill, past the church. I could see the line of electricity pylons across the horizon. You might not think something so prosaic and unnatural could broaden the mind, but they served to define the parameters of that horizon, to bring to life, after a fashion. You take what you can from the world around you.

Unfortunately so do the developers. Now that view was obscured by metal fencing, locking walkers and ramblers into a narrow channel while leaving the labourers unmolested to cut a swathe into the land and lay the foundations for the houses that will steal my view.

I thought to myself: this is the last time I'll see that clock that hill and those pylons from that hill.

Every day a little piece of us is forever stolen. This is how they win.

If we let them