Return of Delboy the Tory

I am fucking incandescent.

This morning, the BBC, the biased bullshit cronies, gave this fat cunt ANOTHER half an hour of free airtime on national media. This time it was a second dance with the useless skin-hogger Nicky Campbell on his laughable radio show. Half an hour, between 9-930am, to go, almost unchallenged, with his stupid half baked crock of shit idea. Half an hour to spout more hysterical anti-welfare crap including: labour fostered a 'culture of entitlement' (a phrase that is never defined let alone challenged), and labour engineered the welfare system for votes. Repeatedly these insane comments were allowed through unchallenged. Completely fucking unchallenged.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Call after call from idiots that fall for this anti-welfare claptrap paraded on to spout more bigotry and unfounded prejudice. All of it completely unchallenged. Not once did that fucking idiot Campbell bother to correct the stream of lies spewing forth on his watch. The most odious the most wretched and the most craven nonsense like some Hate Room, some Room 101, vented by people so deluded as to be embarrassing. How the fuck is this the objective unbiased state broadcaster?

Not only that, but after the half nine news/sport James fucking Delingpole rocks up. Now who on cunting earth in the editorial team decided to give this wanker a call? How does that happen? This lunatic is about as informed as a cat with alzheimers. He doesn't know what he's talking about and CONTINUED UNCHALLENGED to spew the same 'they're all on the scrounge' bullshit. Myth after myth, lie after lie, is put forward and left to take root. Sky tv, plasma screen, fags, booze, smartphones, scratchcards, you name it - we're all spending out £71 on some combination thereof. How? Fuck knows.

All of this becomes some insane echo chamber. Moron after moron is welcomed onto national radio to do nothing but claim this is true. Noone is challenged to provide evidence. Nothing. Even when someone actually managed to get through with a sensible question (not me though, I spent 40 minutes, in between tweeting like a furious masturbating bonobo on viagra, trying to get through only to vacillate between engaged and the dial tone of mental entropy), he's ignored. Some poor sod rang up and calmly asked how he'd pay for his car, which he needs to find work. He asks rationally and reasonably and for his effort some utter twat called 'Harvey', whom Delingprick decided was the voice of reason, launched into a screed about how he should instead make his own work and stop being a scrounger.

By 10 0 Clock I was climbing the walls. I had no luck getting my tweet, "how am i to pay for a bus ticket, Mr Shelbrooke?", read out, nor getting through on the phone. I started entertaining paranoid conspiracy theories that they had my phone number on record somehow and were deliberately ignoring me. I cannot have been the only one trying to get the opportunity to broadcast some reason into this toxic media vapour, now proliferating nationally.

This guy has to be stopped. His constituents cannot surely be as batshit insane as he. Fucking hell, please tell me there are some sane people in this country left.

Of course he's not batshit. He's in league with Mastercard. He mentioned that he's currently in talks with 'card people' about how to make this work even with market traders (I'm sure they'll love not being able to take cash, which means they'll just refuse to serve cardholders altogether). So this guy is spending public money to pursue his private Tory wank fantasy. What an astute use of his time as an elected servant of the people. He also gave the game away somewhat in two other ways, I shall now bullet point:
1. He insinuated that only people in work understand stress - in response to the question that shouldn't people be entitled to a relaxing beer now and again.
2. He said the card would function like a debit card and that it would save people money in fact, as well as help them budget (because nothing helps you budget like having nothing to budget with). He thinks he's reinventing the banking system.

Of course to avoid too much opprobrium, he rules out the disabled from this scheme. So they can drink and smoke themselves, including cancer sufferers that would end up costing the state more (bloody scroungers), to death as far as he cares. But he doesn't explain how someone with a wage and claiming tax credits is going to benefit from having a card and a wage. In fact he explains nothing at all, and neither does the BBC when I left a complaint about their vile propaganda.

The 5 live switchboard number is 01613356000, ring them up and tell them what you think. Frankly this kind of churnalism; this sneering voyeurism enacted to spoilt jaded grade types aspiring to emulate the support characters on the Thick of It full of Come Dine With Ennui needs to stop. Get real you fuckers, this is people's lives you're playing with!

Delboy the Tory

Last night's Panorama investigated the twilight world of disability vs. the Work Programme. For those of us in the know it merely confirmed what we already knew: a culture of incompetence, bullying, and disinterest from the providers. The parking of hard to reach clients, and the use of smaller, local, charities (such as, I'm guessing, the Salvation Army) as bid candy - some of whom are not even aware they've been used! Faced with all this, Mark Hoban, the (un)employment minister, decided to equivocate; no surprise there. The programme mentioned the difference in fees that providers could claim, at each stage (referral, placement, and overall success), for able/disabled claimants. Consequently I'm now beginning to see why, if you'll excuse the paranoia, the Salvation Army were keen to say I should go on ESA and that they couldn't help me, in respect of the issues they know I have, otherwise - they get more money. Or would if they were actually able to help. God only knows; what is clear is that these organisations can't be trusted. It's just about the money for them. Help comes a distant second, maybe as a convenient bonus. 

Yesterday I posted off my ESA50 form. It asked me for a phone number, so ATOS can contact me anytime any day between 9am and 8pm (no fucking thanks!) to book my WCA. That isn't remotely convenient (last time they wrote to me and told me I had to ring them to book it within a couple of weeks, which I would prefer) so I didn't provide a number and told them, as the DWP has my phone number anyway (which likely means ATOS has it as well), not to ring up. I'm sure they'll listen; they seem so helpful. I have a proof of postage; I've left it until the last minute to post it (and why not?) so if they moan I can prove it got sent at least.

So again the welfare reform machine, the insensitive Tory (forget the libdems, they are a done deal, gone and forgotten) juggernaut, rolls on. The Bedroom tax, along with other cuts including making councils charge claimants Council Tax for the first time, is looking to set the spring alight and could very well be the next Poll Tax moment. This is an easy, and it seems a popular, comment to make, however it is painfully obvious the government has not thought this through at all - as if they care. Pensions minister, and Coalition lickspittle, Steve Webb of the libdems blundered his way through a response to the select committee debate on this matter. Faced with a horde of angry opposition MP's recanting warnings of very real strife, including the notion that foster carers aren't exempt, all he could do was resort to the tired 'blame Labour' rhetoric, the usual bland sophistry of 'fairness', and to say that people 'could' find lodgers (oh how easy peasy, even though many housing associations don't allow it), or that, as we now, in his words, have record employment, people could easily pick up a few hours extra work a week to cover the cost to be imposed on them. At the very least why the fuck should they - and if they could, does he not think that they might already be doing just that? As if there is a surfeit of 2/3 hour a week positions (to quote his figures) that people can easily do on top their current responsibilities to make up the shortfall. 

All this came on top of Lord Fraud's inexcusable and flaccid performance a couple of weeks ago on 5 Live wherein a pair of tenants facing the likelihood of destitution put forward their circumstances, only to be rudely fobbed off by a blustering idiot. One lady told him her tenancy forbade taking in lodgers while her son, a soldier, was away on duty. Freud cared not simply asserting that she could just change her Housing Association's mind (why would they? What's in it for them to do so?) Another, a divorced father with three kids and joint custody who had already downsized and was now having to do so again, was told to get a camp bed in the lounge for his three kids. Maybe if they were really young they might think that a bit of an adventure (or they might go back to mum and say 'i hate it at daddy's, it's awful', destroying their relationship), but these are older kids and camping isn't really suitable - and why should it be? It will never cease to amaze and appal me how this creature, this shameful charlatan, has managed to inveigle himself into power. He is a lord (with 8 spare rooms of his own!) yet has served no time as an elected MP or official!

Finally the appearance of the ridiculous bloated wannabe Tory, what you might call a Delboy Tory - a 'made man' who fancies himself among the old guard, Alec Shelbrooke to defend his ridiculous welfare prepay card proposal. This scheme, as has been roundly debunked, has no credibility, is completely unworkable and, more importantly, is divisive and repugnant. He's just a backbencher trying to make a name for himself with the top dogs. What he doesn't realise is that they will look at him with as much disdain as the rest of us: who is this pretender trying to be an aristocrat? Who does this whelp think he is? They'll get some sport out of him, make a few headlines, and he'll be back running a second hand car showroom moaning about muslims before the next election.

This floundering elephant of ignorance appeared on The Big Questions on Sunday Morning on the BBC. Blustering his way through the usual 'we've spent beyond our means' and 'welfare is too high' bollocks he responded to accurate claims that his absurd idea was divisive by saying that everyone would receive a card so that, if they needed to claim, they could use their card. Therefore no one would be stigmatised for having to rely on this nonsense because we'd all have them. Totally missing the point. But of course it's self defeating when people who are on tax credits involved since they will have, in one hand, their wage, and in the other, their Universal Credit via a prepay card!?! Unfortunately noone seemed to spot this. 

Still it's big business for the likes of Mastercard. It was a laughable performance; this guy looks like he belongs on Eastenders as the latest dodgy wheeler dealer 'doing a bit o' business sonny', with his cheap jewellery and sovereign ring. Not a fucking clue about the practicality and the cost of implementing this madness.

He tried arguing this would help funnel the money to where it's needed the most - as if that was anywhere in his corporate addled brain when he dreamt this idea up. Of course it won't; processing payments and running a card scheme will cost the system more. For example, assuming bus fares are not on the verboten list of what claimants can buy, how would you use your card to buy a bus ticket? First, who runs our bus 'service' has never had the facility to pay for a ticket using anything other than cash. There's no card/swipe system. No room for prepay cards. What then?

Amusingly, on his left shoulder, was torture apologist and corporate excuse maker, David Vance, who sat there like a nodding dog arguing, tediously, that the welfare state comprises the usual suspects: feckless smoking sky watching drinkers and idlers.

Mid way through the discussion some 'entrpreeneur' (the new cultural heroes) called Deirdre Bounds (no, I don't know either) chimed in about her time on benefits. She made the usual mistake of saying: 'some people on benefits are scroungers, but not me; I was hard working and look at me now ma!'. Credible? Notsomuch. Again with the 'benefits culture' bogeyman; what does this mean? There's no culture of benefits: there are people that live on benefits, they have no choice - that's why they claim. They have a pittance to live on and are thus even more dependent on it (everyone is dependent on an income, it is capitalism: slavery to debt and credit and money). They are the least resistant to change and rising prices. To then stigmatise them for that. However she did make a good point about working from home and the lack of support for that. There was also an interesting acknowledgement of something I've recognised: that benefits include a large proportion that gets paid back into the system leaving a net cost, reportedly, of £25 billion. Not quite the shock figures the media likes to play with.

"if they don't smoke or drink, then there isn't a problem" to paraphrase the odious Vance. As if that's an argument. It's the same argument used to bring in ID cards. The Tories are meant to be anti-nanny state as they see it. Except only where it suits them. Everyone else? Too bad. What a disgusting argument: why should you moan about us controlling your lives and banning you from using currency? It won't affect you if you don't smoke or drink! Arsehole.

In Partnership

A GP (not my usual GP, because getting appointments with him is next to impossible) recommended I see a local service provider called Positive Step when I tald them about anxiety. Positive Step deal in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, that's their stock in trade. I have actually seen them before and frankly didn't really find it particularly helpful. I'm not knocking it, but CBT seemed to require a particular level of awareness that isn't commensurate with stress. In fact developing that clarity of thinking is half the problem, so it didn't work for me. The service is delivered in a specific way with no real on going support: I used their online provision. The alternative is a classroom environment that was not practical because of location (nothing local). 

I decided to go with the GP's recommendation more to avoid being seen as refusing help, but I don't mind trying it again maybe it will be a bit different. When an appointment will become available is another matter entirely. In the meantime I'm looking at their website and dicsover they are in partnership with, amongst others, ATOS! 

I'm not sure what this means. What does in partnership mean? I'd mentioned that dealing with the DWP and the incoming WCA I will have to attend is a major part of the cause of my anxiety (as anyone that's dealt with ATOS knows). Positive Step told me they can't get involved with this and that they can't help; all they do is deliver a programme of CBT. So what's the involvement with ATOS and can their partnership help people like me who have been successfully assessed by Positive Step as having problems (problems enough to green light access to their service - no doubt that's how they get funded) deal with the WCA? ATOS of course will say that it isn't down to them as regards the final decision, but everything that can be provided to help make a case surely has to be considered. I'm not sure how to pursue this.

Compare and Divide

This story in the Guardian presents another ridiculous example of the mistreatment of the disabled. I mention it for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it leaves me thinking "what chance do I have?" and leaves me questioning what I'm trying to achieve. 

I've been told by the WP that I'm on the wrong benefit and that, were i to claim ESA, I'd have access to more support (if and when that materialises). Consequently my GP has agreed. But compared to Mr Douglas I don't stand a chance. If someone injured in a warzone is getting his support curtailed (and I'm not exactly sure what he's being denied as it's not entirely clear, I think it's DLA) then someone like me, with much milder problems, doesn't stand a cat in hell's chance - and that's before you factor in the serving soldier aspect which is of course an emotive issue at the best of times (and that isn't meant pejoratively either).

I have always tried to be clear, in everything I've posted here, that I do not consider myself as affected as some. But that is the reason I'm posting: the system and indeed society thrive on this game of compare and contrast. My circumstances, by deign of the function of this crazy system, will be compared to standards such as this, and if support for someone like Mr Douglas is denied then people - particularly the DWP - will think I shouldn't get anything.

Worse, Mr Douglas appears to be working. This may well be the reason for the curtailment of support. Now it seems to anyone with a modicum of sense that this gentleman needs support. I have absolutely no problem with him getting whatever he needs (that's kinda my point). In fact, while I disagree with the profession of soldiering, I certainly do not agree that personnel should be denied support; only the most callous would think like that (hence the Tories). So again, if Mr Douglas can work (and the article doesn't really explain how) then naturally one might ask: why can't you?

But life doesn't work that way. I'm not going to make excuses; our two lives are entirely separate. There's little chance of me starting or running a charity or a politician. I wouldn't even know where to start or to afford to do such things. Maybe I should ask the Jobcentre! People's circumstances should not be compared and contrasted and what applies to one person's life cannot always be applicable to everyone and anyone else. 

I'm sure some people will think I'm just making excuses. I can't do anything to change that, but surely it's obvious? That's before we even begin to address the reality of securing a job, which is something the government, in all it's welfare reform talk, completely ignores. The coalition argues for its changes while completely failing to address how one, for example someone that fails his WCA, is then meant to find and secure work over the thousands of able bodied jobseekers also struggling. Ministers, addressing the Policy Research Institute (a convenient echo chamber), claim Universal Credit will directly lead to 300,000 people getting work but doesn't even begin to explain how!

People often resort to platitudes these days; we seem to live in an era of greatly reduced discourse, where folk have a small list of often trite statements. You will be told things like 'other people manage' or 'other people are worse off'. Of course these things are objectively true, but who really feels better for hearing this and how are these statements supposed to translate into action. If someone can't find work or needs help in their own life, no matter the degree thereof, implying that they are feeling self pity is no help at all. I don't believe in self pity; it's my assertion that those who say this are just being defensive. We are living in tough times and people are lonely, frightened and struggling in their own lives; hearing that other people are saying their lot is worse just serves, in some cases, to rankle them. That's why people will be dismissive of others thus. So the answer isn't to compare and divide, it's to come together and give people what they need on their own merit. It's only the lanugage of austerity and the poverty mindset  - the message of neoliberal economics it seems - that compels people to adopt these divisive attitudes. I believe that there is enough to go around, it's just the will to address that isn't there. Instead it's divide and rule.

Or, to quote someone called Karl Marx: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need

(yes, I'm sure that's incorrect, inaccurate and inappropriate. can't win 'em all!)

Howay The Lads

Over the past few days I've watched a couple of documentaries that show me a world I do not understand and have never understood. The first was a programme about drugs with a bunhc of 19/20 year old urban partygoers who all took drugs like Ketamine and MKat (which I believe is what the call meow meow) and something else called GHB. The second was an episode of a fairly ludicrous 'documentary' about kids of the same age going to the Balearic's or similar destinations called 'Sun Sea Sex and Suspicious Parents'. 

I just don't get the worlds I'm watching. I don't recognise these people, in myself at that age, or the lives they live. I've never been to any of these rather sordid looking holiday destination, I can barely hold my drink, and I don't do drugs. I guess I must be one of the most boring people that ever lived, certainly to people like this.

That's not to say I've never tried drugs. Like most people I've 'inhaled' on multiple occasions, but Cannabis has always made me feel pretty sick. Maybe I didn't get the good shit? I tried speed once, but didn't really feel anything, and have no real compulsion to try anything else. I wouldn't know where to go to get some drugs and I'd much rather spend the money on other things. I'm not in favour of prohibition even remotely, but I don't condone the use of any drug. I don't trust my mind to stay in one piece. But that's just me. I just don't see the point of taking this stuff; I'd rather remain in control of my faculties and enjoy myself that way. 

Similarly I've never really enjoyed alcohol. I'm not teetotal, although I can't remember the last time I drank anything alcoholic. I just don't need or even want it, and, as far as drugs go, it's a pretty pathetic excuse. There are much better things for people to take, but it's become the social lubricant that people rely on. Perhaps if I spent more time in pubs I'd feel differently, but I don't go pubbing nor clubbing. The pubs near me (which I couldn't afford) are insular sad places full of old boys who I'm sure drink and drive (I can't imagine people of that generation ordering a lemonade instead of a hearty point of grog on their way home from work). Clubs always seem to be places full of people I don't understand; image conscious judgemental tribal and intimidating. The few times I've ever been to a nightclub i have felt violently out of place. I don't adorn myself with faux tribal tattoos and I don't chisel my abs daily. 

When I see these kids in places like Magaluf or Aya Nappa necking insane cocktails and being forcefed everything from Sambuca through a pipe in a dentist's chair to inhaling gaseous alcohol I wince. That would kill me! Of course these kids would say 'they just want to have a good time' or 'you're only young once' (though I draw the line at drinking my own sick), which is conceptually fine, but when did all this become the norm? Why is this the accepted way to have a good time? Is our society now so far gone that people need to get so violently wrecked, so utterly drunk or stoned, even to the very real potential detriment of their health in order to feel alive? I'm not trying to be judgemental here; everyone wants to have a good time and life just gets harder on a daily basis it seems, but I look at these holiday destinations and it just looks like some grubby British seaside resort with a spray tan. The streets are coated with sick and the scenery is nothing but a row of charmless cheap holiday apartments, bars, fried food/gutbuster breakfast establishments and places to stock up on insane amounts of booze. The native culture seems to have given way to the English customer and his euros. Isn't that a bit sad? Lovely Mediterranean islands paved over by the British drinking establishment so blokes can feel up young women who themselves seem to end up lying in a gutter with their tits out.

It's a world I don't recognise. I'm not even sure it's a world I want to live in. I've never ever felt comfortable in that kind of 'howay the lads' social unit. But that's what these kids, particularly the boys, are defined by. Each of these lads looks a carbon copy of the other and, with the help of the programme maker's narrative, they are assigned a role in the group: the joker, the babyface, the mother, the virgin (who will get teased mercilessly for being a virgin in these places - probably not what he signed up for), the pro, the cool kid, and so forth. It's like they are positions in an RAF squadron, soldiers in Afghanistan, or football players in a team. So much for individuality. 

They are all toned and honed in a way I never was (and still aren't!), all preened and proper. When I was that age the last thing on my mind was buying expensive brands of aftershave and deodorant, or going to the gym and working out. That seems to have become popular with later generations; I don't even live near a gym. But nowadays it's all about qualifying for the master race it seems - not being a young person examining the world and finding about it. Instead of learning about life and the world in a more traditional sense - it's preening, getting preloaded, taking party drugs, seeing the world through the lens of some grotty britishcentric party destination and following some prescribed path of social evolution. Even the phenomenon of the gap year passed me by. I dont' recall it being something that anyone I knew did, nor was it ever discussed. I think the only thing was the Camp America stuff, and a couple of kids may have done that - working in summer camps in the US (and other countries I'm sure). 

Even back then I never had the money for such things - I still dont' even own a passport. Whereas nowadays these kids are all armed to the teeth with modern accouterments. They get smartphones and computers as a matter of course from their parents as birthday or Christmas presents. That's fair enough I suppose, although I question why young kids need the full reign of smartphone technology per se, but that's not my decision to make. These kids are all loaded and are all seasoned travellers as their parents are of the generation that could afford and avail themselves of the boom in cheap travel and less restricted world travel. The world wasn't that small when I was their age. 

It's just such a change from my generation to the present that I don't recognise the world these kids live in, yet I have to compete with them for work. These kids will have their gap year doing all sorts of amazing and outrageous things that I don't have the chance to. Again, fair enough - that's the way the world is now. But that will become the norm; that's the standard used for judging my application for jobs (never mind health issues) alongside these young dynamic upstarts. How can I compete with that? I'm not a lad, nor a bloke (except genetically of course!), I don't really enjoy football, I don't particularly want to drink alcohol nor take drugs. I dont' see any room in this society for me? It's just a society I simply don't recognise. Everyone seems to speak through the prism of football parlance. Everyone has to compete, and if you can't handle your ale you're a LIGHTWEIGHT!!!! Oy Oy!

I'm not pissing and moaning (well not too much). I just find myself surrounded by a massive cultural change I don't understand and am not comfortable with. I have a football pitch near enough that I can hear them scream (and I mean scream) and swear (including racist abuse ffs) whenever there's a match. It gets ridiculous: as if 11 men are going to benefit from a crowd of armchair pundits shouting 12 different sets of directions at them. Why does football attract this level of 'passion'? Why have people, especially blokes, got to be so leery? What has made us this way?

GBHRH

This week, runt of the royal litter and prince not-in-waiting, Harry Windsor talked to the media about his heroic efforts flying an expensive armed toy around a desperate theatre of war. The same Harry vaught cavorting around an expensive Las Vegas hotel in the buff (and presumably enjoying it), and dressing up in Nazi regalia for an equally enjoyable and probably expensive party. The same Harry, like the rest of these photogenic aristocrats, always caught in some luxurious sun trap with a nice piece of posh arm candy. Oh life is tough on the front line!

I'm not defending the media. In my view 99% of our media - the world's media, frankly - is scum. But I'm sure there are worse things than being caught in the buff and plastered on the front page of the press. Is it really fair to blame them when it's you doing that stuff in the first place? Or is it bitterness over the death of his mother - and even though chasing around people with cameras is a desperate and sad act was it not the fault of a drunk driver rather than paparazzi chasing them down like Bullitt?

There are huge question marks over the legality of our invasion, for that is what it is, of Afghanistan that no amount of football terrace or Dambusters bravado can alter. No matter how much people like to regard soldiers as heroes or say that it's not their decision as to where they go, people are still choosing to join or stay in service to this cause. This is pernicious: if you are happy to take up a gun in the service of the western military industrial complex then you must accept the consequences of that decision. Saying that you have no choice where you go frankly is a bit like saying that its ok to lose control of a speeding car. I'm sure it's not easy leaving the army, with all the military propaganda and esprit de corps, but surely people must know what they are getting themselves into.

Harry certainly does. He's not stupid; he's benefited from the best that our country can offer. The best education, the best home, lots of money and opportunity. Yet with all of that he chooses a career soaked in blood. He wants to be 'one of the lads', even though that means putting a high profile target (and propaganda tool, which is what this really is about) on the frontline. Does he think he's a hero? Does he actually want to be in a position where he has to pull a trigger and kill people, possibly innocent lives? Is this little boy delusional? It's not Call of Duty, it's a desperate battle in a desert, in a country that has a history of being unbeatable fighting a tribal ideology that feeds on ignorance and misery.

Now we have a red blooded aristocrat flying around the desert thinking he's action man. Just so he can 'serve'? Who is he serving? His mother? David Cameron? The reputation of this disastrous misadventure. Certainly not the people as most of us, those with some sense, aren't supportive of this mess. Originally the mission was to get Bin Laden, but that has changed - even though he is now dead - to facilitate regime change. Why? If 911 hadn't happened we wouldn't bat an eyelid about their awful regime. If 911 had happened elsewhere we wouldn't have followed the gun crazed yanks in.

I think this silly little prince has behaved appallingly. War is not a toy. It's not a pastime for the idle rich. Do something more productive with your life; you have way more opportunities than most of us ever will and yet you squander it on being a 'lad'. Pathetic.

Churning

IDS' ideology is bizarre - assuming he isn't dangerously psychotic. This is penny pinching of the most venal and odious kind: kicking people off ESA to save a few quid a week and forcing them to claim JSA. Of course it's more than a few quid, it's all the associated benefits that might be claimed as well. These are all immediately curtailed once ESA is stopped. At best the claimant then has to initiate a brand new claim, for JSA at least, and wait until all that is sorted out, putting further strain on the system. At least until Universal Credit takes over, which I'm sure will be even worse.

His rhetoric seems to suggest that what people need is to have their benefits stripped. As if there is some causal link between having no income and getting a job, when in all likelihood having even less (ie zero) money will impede the ability to find work even more. This is convenient of course because it allows the government to save money. How fortunate!

The right wing argument is based around the idea that people need to be encouraged to work, never mind that there is no work, and that the best way to do this is to cut their money. Even a child could destroy such a failed argument. So it's all about cutting costs. Forcing people to join the dole queue and compete for work against able bodied people, or people with way more experience, is nonsensical. But that's what the Work Programme is for, and so charities will be hit by the double whammy of cuts and being made the scapegoat for the failing of a scheme that was never going to work.

But the support isn't there. I'm still waiting, a week (snow notwithstanding) for the Work Programme adviser I now have to send me the information regarding creative writing courses she promised. This information isn't really going to help me get a job of course, the Salvation Army, like the rest of the WP, doesn't have that power. I was also promised, when I first spoke to her, that she could refer me to people that could help me with the problems I have, as they didn't have that training themselves. That has yet to happen, and I doubt it ever will.

People are being left, quite literally, out in the cold.

Universal Jobmatch is a disaster. It's a site that is even more disorganised than the previous incarnation. I have to routinely wade through twice as many pages due to it's failed filtering system. The jobs are just a collection of random crap culled from Monster's competitors that leave you having to google the full details (only to find out that the job is not just part time but only 10 hours a week which would cost you more than you'd earn due to bus fares for example). This won't get changed. In fact it's likely to be a staple of any Universal Credit claim. Unemployed people claiming UC, which is meant to be online, will of course have their claims checked not by their jobsearch booklet but how much they can show they've done online, ostensibly via Universal Jobmatch. If registration isn't mandatory now, it soon will be and there won't be a thing we can do.

Recently there was a shitstorm on Twitter in response to this article. Another mainstream hit piece against the disabled claiming benefits. I abhor this kind of 'churnalism'. It's the most wretched kind of prostitution: a media hack paid to print nothing more than flame bait. That's all this is. Facts dont' matter these days, just the ability of the writer to stir up shit and then, pathetically, claim that the shit he provokes is the nasty end of public discourse. This is bollocks; if you can't stand the heat Mr Hensher, stay the fuck out of the kitchen. I don't condone abuse, but if you wind someone up and they give you a smack on the nose...well that's your own fault. This is the new political correctness: witness another media hack, climate change denial fantasist James Delingpole: "My bad. I mistook you for someone who was disabled but not part of the shrill victim lobby." in response to criticism garnered for also traducing the issue of disability and benefits; his twitter feed is full of equally ignorant hurtful nonsense. He is another right wing crutch kicker happy to play the victim card when it suits him, but ridiculing others who have a legitimate claim to being oppressed.

These people seem incapable of accepting the reality that a growing section of society and activists are discussing - and have been for years. They cannot understand that a 'legitimate' organisation like the DWP or a company like ATOS can be so callous, yet they themselves behave no better. They resort to quoting figures, out of context, as if 'here's a big number' or 'here's a big percentage' means 'bad'! If a lot of public money is going to supporting people that is something to be championed in my opinion. But of course they never mention that half the welfare budget goes toward the pensions of the elderly who these cowards won't dare criticise (I'm sure that some will).

Then there are strawmen arguments such as conflating criticism of the system with criticism of the need to be assessed at all: 

But is it not reasonable to say that someone who can cycle the equivalent of a bus journey of more than 15 minutes should have their fitness to work examined?

Noone says that people should just be given sick notes without question. Not once. Not ever. Not even I have said this. What should happen is that their doctors and specialists - trained NHS personnel (whose expertise the public has paid for in their education) - should be all that's required. What reason is there for paying an IT company to do a redundant job if not to fulfill particular targets and an obvious government agenda. 

Again it's the just world fallacy, so beloved of the Tories, that makes up the bulk of their logic: if the process could be done properly then there'd be no reason for these tests. Well duh! So why traduce activists complaining that the system isn't done properly (to put it mildly)? The answer: so hacks like this can whore themselves out in the press, appealing the UKIP types, curtain twitchers and the terminally ignorant.

Is this person going to be hired to ride his bike for 15 minutes a day? That's a job i've yet to see appear on Universal Jobmatch.

It might, too, cut down on the unconscionable numbers now claiming these benefits. It’s not so long since doctors felt quite capable of saying “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you” to their patients, not “There’s no space for that on the form”. A little more robustness, and a little more flexible inquiry than a questionnaire permits, would have some very positive outcomes.

 

Unconscionable? If people are sick, and the evidence says they are in almost all cases, then what is unconscionable is the lack of support and the tendency toward biased hyperbole from churnalists like this. Why assume that a given situation, itself a simple objective fact taken out of the greater context (that of austerity, hate, division and cuts), is worthy of subjective judgement? That there are x people claiming is simply a fact. Yet it's treated as a personal slight - ostensibly against the 'strivers'. This is tosh, complete fucking tosh.

Doctors are still quite capable of saying 'there's absolutely nothing wrong with you'. They still, in the majority I believe (most least of all because they've been told to by the DWP), assume this. It's taken me about a year to persuade my GP to write a sick note. He isn't happy about it, but the problem isn't just my own issues, but the process by which I can access help. If I'm to fully avail myself of what the Work PRogramme claims it can offer, I have to claim ESA - their words! 

But if someone has problems, all the stiff upper lip stoicism and rhetoric in the world will not make the better, nor will government ideology, nor will wishful thinking nor pining for some yesteryear where everyone knew their place and worked. Even then, those that 'could' do something are treated as if they can do everything, and are forced to compete with those that have no periods of ill health and more experience that are already able bodied and compus mentus. Yet that is ignored; as if the will to work is enough to change the plainly obvious fact there, are, no, jobs!

This is beyond lazy journalism and it's beyond the point to call time on these lazy churnalist wankers. They need to be called out at every opportunity, and if they get a few insults on Twitter, well too fucking bad!