A very British Armageddon, Day 1

My last post was over two months ago. This is pathetic.

I actually find it genuinely difficult doing this, which isn't a good look for someone who wants to do this and thinks he's good at writing. But that's the nature of mental health and how it can affect people. It doesn't inhibit their aspiration, but their function. When that fact goes up against the prevailing culture, it's values of effort and particular work ethos, there is a disconnect. This doesn't help.

Anyway, if you're reaidng this then I'm very grateful.

Where are we now? Something big just happened, what was it again?

Oh that's right. Britain and the world continues its shift to the right. The collapse of capitalism seems historically commensurate with the rise of fascism. Or fascism and crisis are intertwined. A simplistic analysis to be sure, but one look at the Guardian video of Owen Jones' encounter with the Brexit Party shows this. Unfortunately Owen handles this poorly: he's easily rebuked (by idiots, to be sure) and doesn't really ask any insightful questions. Louis Theroux (or even Louis Thorough) he is not. But that's not really the issue: I'm pointing to the attitudes of these people. Their sense of oppression and highly emotive angular responses point to the same kind of attitudes you saw in Germany. Perhaps we aren't quite that bad, but the point is made. These people see 'the left' as a monolith, they all but use the phrase 'cultural marxism' (a code for anyone opposing their views). They feel beleaguered. The EU wants to do them down. The left wants to do them down. They can't speak their mind (say racist/regressive shit)?

These are not reasoned positions, they are the product of propaganda and coercion. The Brexit Party campaign was based around hysterical tropes, and the Brexit campaign was fought using lies and racism. There's no easy way out of this, but surely we don't have to support and give succoour to these deeply embedded roots. This very English racism.

I see this as a new start. Not perhaps in the positive way one normally associates with that phrase, but something has shifted. Not perhaps Brexit itself, which is still a monorail to disaster. I don't think we can realistically leave, despite recognising how dis-empowering the EU is. It's a bosses club - but look who we give power to if we leave. Look who it will be now that professional scarecrow and compassion-free reactionary, Theresay May, is on the way out; her demise greaased by a sudden, uncharacteristic moment of tears. Something must have gotten into her withered eye sockets, dust in a Dalek's eyestalk, because she found nothing similar when working class people were burned to death, nor at the plight of child poverty, nor Windrush. You get the (horrific) picture.

It's a new start, hopefully for this blog, and me. That's weird, but I'm trying to put words to a feeling. It's a bit like turning off the main road and coming on to the motorway. The final stretch you mght say. I'm alluding to Brexit, but also, perhaps, the demise of not just the Tories (please god), but our horrific political system. Something has shifted with these election results and it may get worse before it gets better. The centre is evaporating (which is amusing if you're a CUK schadenfreude enthusiast like me). Unfortunately though that does mean, it seems, an emboldening of fascism, of the rise of the far right.

It's happening in Italy it seems (where the EU has fucked over their budget, the sort of politics that plays into fascist notions of sovereignty and oppression). Here it manifests with the darkly fascinating rise of the Brexit Party. Specifically, who is funding them. I have no doubt Farage is being funded by some throughly dodgy specimens, one of which we surely know about, Arron Banks. A grotesque little tyrant. The sort that can only exist under capitalism.

We must resist. We must recognise that neither Westminster nor the EU are desirable options, and we must not give our power over to tyrants from either side. It's only the working class - the people - who can save us now. I think what Labour needs to do is fight for working class internationalist interests, a lexit. A second referendum will not produce a decisive result and further deepen an already wounded working class.

Strike Three?

Where to begin: it's amazing how nothing happening can produce such tension and thought.

So yesterday I was supposed to have a home visit from the WCA people - supposed to, guess what didn't happen.

This would have been their third attempt after initially telling me -at the assessment centre - I needed to be seen by a doctor because I presented with eyesight issues. No one showed up. It was only after I rang them I learned the assessor had called it a day for 'personal reasons'. In other words, we ain't telling you shit. That they knew this and hadn't bothered to let me know says it all really.

Imagine treating people like that. Imagine dealing with people with conditions severe or less so; people that suffer anxiety, stress, etc, and this is the best you can manage. Is that not unacceptable? It should be!

So let's unpack this. First some context: my first go was Autumn of 2017 Despite a summons, the assessment was cancelled on the spot; because I had reported eyesight issues a doctor was required. Of course there wasn't one available and nobody had bothered to read the case notes. I then asked for a home visit and mentioned that this would need to be carefully arranged due to my living arrangements.

I was summoned back just before Christmas. I just assumed they'd ignored my home visit request, but in fact I wasn't booked in at all: I was on the list for a home visit. Only no one saw fit to actually inform me. Dealing with the assessment centre is stressful. Not least of all because everyone else present is a mirror reflecting your own stress, while tinpot Hitlers press home minute issues. One poor guy was threatened with being sent back because he'd said the wrong thing in respect of being made to wait. And wait you will. Even the security guard ended up taking his side. Persuading the receptionist, a veritable human emotional Medusa, was like pulling teeth it seemed.

This is no place for the infirm.

So I've been waiting, suffering traumatic post stress disorder invoked by the sound of a letterbox. What could be more absurd? No idea when or where I'd be seen except a fortnight prior to the appointment. That's the notice you're given of an impending assessment at a time of their choosing. The appointments are block booked a month or so at a time (or so I was told). You are not a part of that process and yet you are the focus. We have no say in our fate today.

I got a phone call at 9-30am from the assessor asking if I'd like to be seen an hour early because her first appointment had already finished. I said no because I only had the house to myself from 11. She agreed and said she'd see me then. I then spend the entire morning stressing like a beast, climbing the wall and staring out the window like a caged animal or a kid on Christmas eve. This isn't a good place to be. In these situations your own home becomes a different place. It was only at 2pm that I rang them and discovered what I mentioned above.

I find myself sceptical about that phone call. Again, I don't know what happened, but had she seen me at 10am - as she requested - it's very possible that appointment would have had to be abandoned for the same reasons. What a mess. It's entirely possible of course her phone call was genuine, but my mind is racing and I'm joining the dots!

I mentioned above that I needed to be seen by a doctor. On the letter it tells me the name of the person that's coming to visit me. There is no prefix to that indicating a title of any kind. Now again this may be my racing mind, but I checked online to see if that person was registered as either a doctor or an optician (you can actually do this). I'm not going to mention her name here but it's not an uncommon name. I got zero results. I know the search facility works because I double checked using other names. Now this is hardly conclusive but I'm not convinced this person actually meets their own criteria for this process! I suppose there's little I can do about this.

So I'm having a conversation with their office about all this. Naturally this is an officious conversation; you can sense the attitude of the staffperson. They imperceptibly bristle when you raise a problem. You can hear it in the tone when they inform me that they can't inform me of what exactly has happened - not even in general or vague terms (if possible). They offer a perfunctory bureaucratic not-sorry apology. It's officious it isn't informative and it certainly isn't caring.

My only option is for them to rebook the appointment; to them I'm just a piece of dry cleaning. I have no more emotions than a dirty piece of formal attire. I'm a wedding gown with spilt wine. I'm not a human being repeatedly undergoing a situation I find very stressful. Let me also be clear: there are people far worse off than I that, in a similar situation (and there will be people in similar situations), will just shatter. The booking process is similarly mechanical: they seem to 'block book'. Staffperson tells me that all their 'doctors' are booked until April, so I don't anticipate (probably a mistake) hearing until the start of next month. But who knows? It's back to dreading the sound of the letterbox.

I tried explaining just how stressful this is and, in a supreme example of aforementioned superciliousness (beat that dictionary corner!), am asked: "so you want us to close your case and refer it back to the DWP?".

That is passive aggressive and disingenuous. They know exactly what happens them and I try to prise an admission of that from them. Of course their reply is equally non-committal: "it's up to the DWP what happens, we don't know". Yeah you do: if a claim gets referred back it will certainly be closed - who knows what reasons they will give the DWP for their actions? I tell the staffperson that three attempts is too stressful I can't deal with another (I doubt it'll be a year before they write back!), but that falls on deaf ears. What would the DWP make of that reason? What can they?

And that is the problem. What can they do? It's a machine. It cannot understand human capacity or feeling. That you find it stressful is totally irrelevant. You either go through it or you close your claim - thereby tacitly admitting you are work-capable anyway (proving the point in their eyes). This system does not work because it cannot work. It is inimical to the problems it's designed to highlight. In fact so far gone is this broken system that to even describe it thus is to imply it can be fixed - it can't. It must, immediately, be completely and utterly scrapped. Dropped like a hot plate.

Also, don't forget these assessments are carried out on the public purse. We already know that the cost is more than the savings in terms of means testing people's benefits. But the reality is that a large corporate entity receives hundreds of millions. A portion of that, called profit, is immediately trousered, beyond the minimum they are prepared to spend to run the scheme.

This is a perfect example of capitalism's failings: in order to maintain their bottom line, they will only invest the minimum they feel necessary to provide this service. I don't even know if they pay the assessor's mileage for home visits! It's a giant corporate scam, and the worst part is that the staff, all of whom will have some connection with the medical sector perhaps in a previous life, could be working for the NHS. They could actually be doing some good, but instead they are economically persuaded away. That is outrageous; it's gutting the health service to fund ideological means testing.

This post is already long enough, more on this as my mindpsace congeals into something resembling coherency.

Return of What Is Help?

It is pretty clear that what passes for support is nothing of the kind. It's nothing more than bootstrap mentality bolted onto American self help guru buzzwords granted the gift of funding from the likes of the EU Social Fund. I guess that won't be happening anymore!

Schemes that have go-getting names like 'Aspire', or use numbers instead of words, like 'Aim 2 Succeed'. It just sounds like self reassurance rather than actual positive support. Like an affirmation: say it enough times and you'll start believing it. That, at least, is the theory.

In practice it just amounts to industrial scale gaslighting. If you do not fit in with very narrow definitions of what support actually amounts to then expect to be held responsible: "we just don't know how to help you". Then why are you spending public money? Why aren't you addressing fundamental structural problems rather than blaming the individual for their circumstances when those circumstances are largely dependent on the environment?

For example, Second Step, another local provider, has been caught in lie. I applied to their Peer Employability Programme. In fact I met with the person running it. I explained my circumstances, but ultimately they had nothing to offer other than the usual vague talk of action plans and 'confidence building', which I think is their euphemism for everything else. I've no idea how that would address structural unemployment problems nor the conditions of the labour market that people out of work with mental health issues would have to face. How can it? It's the employer that will decide not to hire the person with such a 'colourful' history and there's nothing you can do about it.

So I complained a month or so ago that the scheme wasn't delivering what it was purported to offer. Subsequent to that the line manager for the person running it told me, emphatically in two separate emails, that the scheme wasn't intended for people with mental health problems. Something they neglected to tell me either at first contact or during the meeting I had with them. If you don't cater to that then surely you'd say something, right?

Last week I contacted Second Step's North Somerset provision (the scheme was run in Bristol - separate office, the usual nonsense). They said they had nothing comparable but might I be interested in something called the Peer Employability Programme being run in Bristol - because it caters to mental health sufferers! Here's what they told me:

I have just found this service that we have which you may find useful please contact them using details below:

For people with experience of mental health problems

We understand that it can be daunting to return to work after having time off because of mental health problems. That's why we're working with the Rank Foundation - a grant-giving charitable trust - to look at the barriers faced by unemployed people with mental health problems to get back to work.

The result of this partnership is a new project called the Peer Employability Programme which will support people who have experience of mental health problems to get ready to enter the job market once more. 

The project is open to people who have used health and social care support services and have been unemployed for at least three months. The idea is to work closely and collaboratively to help you become job-ready and maximise your potential for paid work.

Participants will be offered a combination of one-to-one support, employability workshops and help to explore work goals. Our highly personalised approach will mean we can work on the barriers people come across and do our best to overcome them together.

To find out more about the programme, which runs until September 2019, please contact 

Caught in a lie. Writ large: for people with experience of mental health problems. I emailed back and told them this. Their reply was to abrogate responsibility:

I have forwarded your previous email to our complaints officer. Please direct any future correspondence that you may have to her. 

This is help. The ability to take no responsibility once caught in a lie. All while dealing with vulnerable and potentially vulnerable people. Such as those suffering with mental health issues to one degree or another.

Brown Letter Day

Is there any other shade of envelope? Is there any shade more terrifying?

Yes, it's that time again.

You just know. You see the envelope and there is some barely perceptible quality your senses latch on to with predator-like accuracy. The summons from the Department for Work and Pain.

You will be assessed. And assessed. And assessed. Never helped. Always assessed.

This time it is a little different. Long time readers may dismally recall that last time I was told that I would be getting a home interview after they screwed up two appointments at the Misery Centre.

You might think that's a victory, but of course it isn't. My appointment is for sometime between 11am and 1pm on the 13th. They can't be accurate of course, but I guess that's to be expected. The problem is that I'm going to somehow either contrive to get the house to myself, which will be fun, or I will have to beg for a replacement appointment. Something that will not be easy. "Why?" they will demand - as I'm sure the phone will be answered by the hawkish old mare that works in the Misery Centre. Maybe it's the job that just leeches joi de vivre from your bones like rotting meat in the desert, or maybe they just have a knack for finding the most joyless officious miserable creatures and hiring them. But that woman is...not the sort of face you want greeting you when you're rocking up to be assessed by the DWP.

So that just happened. Nothing else to say really; I'm just venting. I don't expect to pass. That will mean having to deal with Universal Credit or somehow finding work before my savings expire. I've got £1300 in the bank. I've kept it back fearing that rainiest of rainy days. Sooner or later, in the welfare state, it always rains, if you catch my drift. What's sad is that I could have put that money to good use. Some people are very good at just buying a travel tick and buggering off and having adventures. Not me though, I've no idea how they manage.

Perhaps I should try it; leave a sign on the door telling the assessor "gone fishing"!

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!