Another Url, Another Planet

Over two months ago on 10 February (in my current depressive state it has taken me all of some of this time to put this post together) I had the unpleasure of the virtual company of the Minister for Employment, Chris Grayling MP, on the subject of welfare reform and how the Work Programme will support people to move off benefits and into employment. Along with other Rethink members and people with a shared interest in mental health I was invited to 'Grill Chris Grayling.' Oh, and remember to see the fnords.

First, a little background. The 'new' government's proposals for a new and improved Work Programme to get people off benefits and into work (not all of which are too dissimilar to the 'old' government's abject failure of a programme to get people off benefits and into work, at least for people with mental health problems, Pathways to Work) are a cause of much concern and anxiety among people who depend on the social security safety net to live and particularly so among those with disabilities and illnesses which make it difficult if not impossible for them to work for a living.

Seaneen Molloy, a mental health activist, blogger and someone with a mental illness herself, was with Chris Grayling in person as he read the questions and typed in his responses, no doubt salivating like a muzzled Pavlovian political attack dog at the prospect of doling out his prescribed answers to assuage the anger and the mistrust evident from me and other mentalists.

If you're interested in the Minister's responses to the huge range of questions on the intricacies and insecurities of returning to work while living with the effects of mental illness I strongly recommend visiting Rethink's question and answer session itself. I will highlight here, however, a few of what I consider to be his most significant statements.

'The most important thing to say is that those people with the most acute problems will not have to attend an assessment - if they provide written evidence of the seriousness of their condition, then we work to ensure that the most seriously ill are not asked to attend an assessment.'

Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be current practice. Nor is it clear what, if any, criteria will be used and by whom in order to implement this hypocritical and discriminatory crusade to abandon to a lifetime on further whittled down 'what you need to live on' benefits those with the most severe illnesses and the greatest need for help. And it simply parrots the current failed policy.

Just to answer some questions about Atos. They have no financial incentives whatsoever to find people fit for work. They will not take the decision about whether to find someone fit for work. They will have a network of mental health champions so those doing the assessments have a reference point where there is a difficult judgement to make.

Atos may not have any direct financial incentive 'to find people fit for work'. How could they? As we are reminded, they are not the decision makers. Jobcentre Plus staff are the decision makers. What financial incentives, if any, do they have to meet government targets to move people off benefits and into work? Again, in practice, it does not seem to work like this. I can only speak about my own Atos medical assessment, but from the way I was treated and spoken to, it seemed that being declared fit for work was a formality I had to go through, such was the repetition by Atos staff of my 'right to appeal' the 'decision'. Indeed, historically, 'fifty per cent of IB [Incapacity Benefit, now rebranded as ESA] appeals against the refusal of claims found in favour of the claimant. In 80 per cent of these the problem was poor assessment of mental health problems.' Maybe I'll write more about that and Atos's cosy three-in-a-bed relationship with the DWP and the discredited, fraudulent US health insurance company Unum another time.

'What I'm not prepared to do is write off a particular group because everyone is different. There are no financial targets to hit to force people back into work, this is about doing the right thing for people.'

I will let Chris Grayling disabuse himself of his own delusion/disingenuity:

'A number of you are asking questions about the one year time limit on ESA contributory payments for those in the WRAG. As you will know, we have had to take some difficult decisions as a result of the major financial problems in the public finances. This is one of them.

And, just in case you have recently returned from an unplanned visit to one of the many other galaxies supporting human life, Gideon had this to say:

'The government is planning to reduce the annual welfare bill by a further £4bn, Chancellor George Osborne has told the BBC.'

Indeed this is all a wonderful opportunity for some people to make, in Chris Grayling's own words, 'shedloads' of money.

This is not a process designed to do you down. Every organisation I have ever worked with, and the people I have talked to with mental health problems, would like to be in work and living a normal life. It's not always easy, and it's not always possible. But surely we should try to get there. Sometimes it will involve giving people that extra push - I remember talking to one man a few years ago who had taken the jump into work himself and said he wished someone had given him a push years earlier. This is not about financial targets. It's not about forcing people off benefits. It is about trying to help people with mental health and other problems do more with their lives. But we won't know who can be helped if we don't do the reassessment.

No one is arguing that we shouldn't find a better way to help everyone who wants to work to find and keep work. What we disagree on is how it's done. (That's assuming that anyone actually cares how it's done, anymore.) It's reassuring to know that Chris's policy is based on sound research and not just some anecdote about a black man he met in Plymouth, though. And remember, when your benefits are cut because you didn't get better in time or you failed to jump through the Jobcentre's back-to-work hoops correctly, it's not about you doing your bit to live on less than you need to live on for the greater good, it's about giving you that extra little 'push' you need to motivate yourself to get out of bed with your severe depression and 'jump', you good-for-nothing lazy fucker. And 'we won't know who can be helped if we don't do the reassessment' does seem to indicate that everyone will be reassessed regardless of Grayling's assurances that 'people with the most acute problems will not have to attend an assessment' stated above. Nor is it 'an attempt to push the long term claimant onto a lower benefit, via a failed attempt at gaining or keeping work' thank you very much. End of fnords.

Now, I'm all for the health benefits of grilling over frying, but you can't beat a good fried egg (unless you want it scrambled) in the morning. So, I wanted to delve a little deeper into who this Chris Grayling person is and his qualifications for the job at hand.

According to Wikipedia, Chris is Cambridge-educated former social democrat and management consultant (rhyming slang?), now known as an untrustworthy, 'political buffoon', expenses fiddler, and self-styled homophobe.

Ming Campbell discusses Chris's form as the then Shadow Home Secretary:

Chris has the misfortune to mishear a question on a live news broadcast:

Chris has mean-testing explained to him by Andrew Neil:

Rather than getting the job of Minister for the Home Office and Equalities for which he'd trained for so long, he was demoted to the Department for Work and Pensions, where, presumably, it's still OK to discriminate against groups of people you hold prejudices against.

Still, he knows how to wind up Scousers.

So forgive me if I'm a touch cynical about his suitability for this or any government post.

This is me (from 0:32 to 0:37 in the video below - literally my five seconds of fame) in the middle seat of my first band's blue Toyota Hiace, which we converted into a tour bus and living accommodation with a sheet of plywood. The rest of the video is where I grew up and went to school. And, more importantly, where I started drinking.

Although I don't appear 'In The Talbot' in this video, that's usually where I started my Friday and Saturday nights out, on and off for a good number of years, although it's also a good number of years since I've been back now, too. The Talbot Inn, my hometown's oldest pub, is now a Co-op Foodstore, sadly, although I believe the old pub sign is still in place. This is how Google's Map van saw it a few years ago:

And this is how it was in its pomp:

Like many of the old regulars, I suspect, it's past its prime. Indeed, I discovered while researching this post that some of them had been found after a particularly heavy session during excavations looking for Roman remains:

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say thank you to the internets for providing a little and a lot more of what we had back then. I rarely go to the pub these days and while it's nice to go with a couple of friends occasionally, it's not the same. And I'm glad about that, too. I never really felt like I fitted in as everyone else seemed to be in the pub every night of the week and Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well. So I'm happy to sit here with my glass of lemonade knowing that no one else knows and that I can chat to people in real-time on Identi.ca talking like a drunk madman without fear of getting punched in the face for shooting my mouth off or of waking up on some strange floor in my clothes stinking of cigarettes, alcohol and vomit the morning after the party the night before.

I had a big idea once. Maybe twenty years ago I dared to share this vision with one of my drinking buddies whom I considered to be much more open-minded and receptive to crazy thoughts. My idea was for beer to be delivered to the comfort and relative safety of our individual homes in pipes and for us to communicate with each other via multi-channel interactive TV screens. I called it Cable Beer. 'That's way out' I heard him say as he headed for the exit and on to the Red Lion (now flats) across the road. I have kept this to myself all of these years until last night when I was reminded of its potential by my friend Luke on Identi.ca who was out of beer and out of money.

I'm not sure how the sausages got in there, but thanks to Bruce for reminding me that I had some in the fridge, too, which I had for breakfast.

Now, I say that it was my idea for the World Wide Pub, but it looks like some sleazeblogger beat me to publishing it. Damn.

Oh, well. Here's the second and final video of my hometown including New Year's Eve 1987. I'm not in this video as I was on another gig at the time entertaining the Queen, or something. Memories, eh?

Just one final backwards trip to 1978. Here is the beginning of the end of Scottish football:

If you want to find out more about the World Wide Pub in its Identi.ca incarnation, please visit This is not a podcast.

In 1997 the UK government was spending an annual £24 billion on sick and disabled benefits.  

In 2010 it was spending an annual £24.6 billion on sick and disabled benefits. 

Some 2.6m people claim incapacity benefit, or its successor, the employment and support allowance, at an annual cost of about £12.5bn.

There are now 3.16 million people receiving DLA and forecast expenditure on the benefit for 2010-11 is £12.1bn.

There was a £93 billion total welfare benefits cost in 1996-97:

Now, that has more than doubled, pretty much like everything else:

In 1998, the government claimed that £4 billion was fraudulently claimed.  

In 2009, £0.9 billion was due to fraud. (Of course, the figure we're most likely to be familiar with is the £5.2 billion spun by David Cameron, which included tax credits and bureaucratic errors.)

It was a 'previous' government which introduced Incapacity Benefit as a cost-saving measure in the 1990s, yet spending on disability benefits doubled during this time:

And so we have a 'new' government introducing 'new' welfare reforms to save money, reforms which are ideologically based rather than evidence based and, ironically, likely to be at a the cost of the well-being of the people who do move off benefits, forced into low-paid and insecure jobs or sanctioned with loss of benefits if they don't.

Yet, it makes sensational headlines and presumably makes some people feel better to scapegoat people worse off than them for the nation's ills. Especially so, when every day we seem to be subjected to political rhetoric labelling benefits claimants as 'scroungers' and 'cheats' living off hard-earned handouts from the better off (after all, that's what the Welfare State is for, isn't it?), words which could equally and more fairly be used to describe those same mostly Christian and church-going politicians' expenses claims and their rich friends' tax avoidance and evasion. Who better to target than the sick and disabled who are well used to it, after all?  

That sickens me more than the people who choose not to work even if they are mentally and physically able to.  

A couple of weeks ago I phoned Jobcentre Plus to inform them that although I had returned to work at the beginning of January as expected, my depression had returned and I was now off work again as a result. This is how it went (and yes, as if by magic, they answered the phone first time - when I originally applied for Employment and Support Allowance they never answered the phone at all):

You went back to work in January, but you are informing us at the end of February, Mr Marsden?

Not the 'Oh, well done for going going back to work after your serious illness and I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out for you this time' kind of supportive response I wasn't expecting.

Yes.

Why didn't you tell us in January that you went back to work?

I could almost hear the cogs in motion.

Erm, well, I did tell you in my original application for Employment and Support Allowance that I was expecting to return to work in January and I didn't receive notification from you that I would receive any benefits at all until 21 January. I didn't get paid until mid-February and I wasn't sure that I would be able to sustain my return to work, having been off for so long, which turns out to be the case. It's all been very stressful. Also, I needed to pay my rent, buy food to eat and keep warm during the cold weather, as I don't want to get another chest infection and go through the same problems I had with my lung last year again.

Mr Marsden, I'm looking at your account. We paid you up until the end of December but we haven't paid you anything since. You haven't sent us any more medical certificates since then. Do you want to start a new claim?

Oh, right. I didn't realise I had to keep sending in medical certificates, although that seems fair enough. I don't think it says that anywhere in the letters I received. I guess I just assumed that you would keep paying until I notified you of a change in my circumstances, like for Housing Benefit. Well, I have medical certificates from January saying I'm fit to work two days a week and I'm going to see my GP to get signed off again. Hmm.... So I'm not late in notifying you that I returned to work after all? That's a relief. Do I really have to start a new claim and fill out that fifty-seven page form again?

Yes, although as we have your information already it's only twenty-seven pages this time (I could have heard that wrong. My mind was glazing over. Form-filling does that to me.). Or we could carry over your claim, which would be easier. What other benefits are you receiving and how much did you earn for January?

I took home just over £1,000 as I didn't pay any tax or NICs because I've been off for so long. I get Housing and Council Tax Benefit.

OK, in that case I'll send you a PW1 form for you to fill in.

Wait. A PW1? That's a Permitted Work form, right?

Yes.

I have a Permitted Work form, no need to send me one. That's what I do as part of my job, when I'm working.

OK, well just fill that in and send it back to us with your medical certificates.

OK, thanks.

What she didn't tell me on the phone and I only worked out in my head afterwards, is that if I follow her advice I will be financially much worse off than if I fill in the twenty-seven page form again effectively starting a new/carry-over claim. Permitted Work means that you can keep only £20 pounds out of any weekly income earned if you are also receiving Housing Benefit.

Who's defrauding who?

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” 

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.” 

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!” 

Humpty Dumpty from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll