I need to stop grumbling about 'the press'.
An odd observation perhaps from a writer of 'counter-propaganda' on the day the Sun leads with a story about a woman allegedly blaming her obesity on over-generous benefits funding her take-away habit (truly Goebbels would blush at the antics of the Murdoch press!) but there are reasons to be cheerful this week.
After having a good moan in the 'Sour Grapes' post about how benefits experts never get their voices heard, I managed two separate mentions - with quotes - in the Sentinel (our local paper) and a reprise of one of the stories (a demonstration outside the Atos assessment centre) made the Mirror. Sadly the photographer for the other story thought taking a portrait shot of a group with a fish-eye lens was a good plan and the resulting photo gives me a bigger head and scarier teeth than the 'Glenda the Lender' shark costume being modelled by a colleague at my side!
While at the Atos demo, I managed to get a few words with the local BBC political reporter and having agreed to do a longer interview by 'phone that evening, was subsequently called and asked to rearrange that to 7am the next morning in the studio. 'When was that again?' I asked, hoping I'd misheard him.
'7am'
It's still dark up here at 7am - isn't it?
You know that notorious George Osborne jibe about the people whose curtains are still drawn when you go off to work? Those curtains are mine! Luckily, I work quite flexible hours and as inspiration often strikes late in the evening, it's just as well I can get ready to go out according to Sally Archer's timeframe and come in to work at 9.30am.
Actually it is light at seven by this time of year, as I found out on Thursday. And they make fairly decent tea at Radio Stoke. They even made the estimated £50 million of unclaimed benefits in the city their top news story for a little while. But they don't warn you in advance that all they're after is a couple of minutes of chat and ideas to get a few people phoning in and that the crib sheet with all the benefit rates won't be needed, and you won't have time to explain why claiming Carers Allowance even if you won't be paid it makes sense. And you certainly won't have time to do the severe disability premium!
I also discovered that 7.15 on a drizzly morning was a bad time to find that my CAB staff pass wouldn't let me into the building before 8am - luckily our caretaker did (despite claiming to be a Portsmouth supporter).
What I failed to do, being a benefits specialist rather than a politician or celebrity, was to plug my book. I had an open goal to shoot at too. Asked a 'curved ball' question about what I would do if I had a clean slate and could start again with the benefits system, I trod water for a few moments discussing the difficulty of addressing people's complicated lives without an equally complicated benefits system, and when pushed for an answer plumped for a non means-tested Basic Income for all - 'like retirement pension, but for all ages'. Wrong answer! The practiced celeb/politician would have seized the opportunity to explain that their deliberations on the subject could be found in their latest publication, priced £20.99 and available from all good bookshops.
Limited Capability won't be £20.99, by the way. It should be under a tenner even at nearly 600 pages!
So that was a missed opportunity and sadly the media in my old home town (the Daily Echo and BBC Radio Solent) don't seem to have appreciated the PR copies of Severe Discomfort I sent to them a couple of weeks ago as nobody has been in touch. But one of the PR books made a happier landing - on a desk at my Union's head office - and I was invited to do a blog about the book for them, which you can read here:
http://www.uniteforoursociety.org/blog/entry/the-other-side-of-benefits-street/
Let's hope that'll keep the biscuits coming in!
Saturday 22 February 2014
Friday 14 February 2014
Have a heart?
Spoiler-free, despite being about designing the cover for Limited Capability.
I spent most of my lunch break yesterday looking for a Valentine's Day card - and not for my husband - and tomorrow I'll be forging a page or two of a set of Employment and Support Allowance appeal papers. Rest assured that this isn't the beginning of a life of crime with a 'seecrit admiorer' (see LC episode eight for the reference) - I'm simply working on the cover design for the paperback version of Limited Capability.
Having written the story and already described the card in question, I had to find something to match. Had I thought up the cover design before publishing, I could have tweeked the story to fit the cards available (I actually did do this for Lyn Walker's birthday card on the cover of Severe Discomfort which arrives in a yellow envelope in the first draft). But with inspiration following publication, this time I was stuck with tracking down a suitable card - not too expensive-looking or especially tasteful - with a 'sparkly heart' on the front. How hard could that be? You'd be surprised...
After visiting all the local newsagents, co-ops and card shops, it was starting to look like rewriting episode eight was on the cards after all, but luckily I got back to the office from my morning commitments early enough for a dash round Hanley and while the card I have isn't quite as I pictured it in my mind's eye, it does have the requisite sparkly heart.
I thought I had some ESA papers I could use - a set I used to use for training, with the client details blotted out - but after taking a few photos of key sections with unsuitable wording hidden under the card, I realised my old training 'bundle' used the pre 2011 'descriptors', so was no use. So one wet afternoon (tomorrow, perchance) I'll be using these as a template for a fabricated set. Geeky, yes - but when my keenest readers are advisers and claimants (if the reviews are to be believed) you can't afford to get stuff like this wrong!
I must admit I am a control freak where my books are concerned and I like designing the covers myself and setting up the photos. If you've got beyond the first couple of chapters of Severe Discomfort you'll realise that the cover reflects the key moment when Lyn Walker receives more than just birthday cards in the post one November morning. Continual Supervision has a cover based on what might be found on Hilary Carrington's desk as she sits down to snatch a quick lunch in the late summer of 2010 - a copy of the Guardian, a letter Martin Connolly needs her to check (written in haste - there is a typo) and a colour chart of emulsion paints in classic shades as she contemplates the on-going and unexpectedly pleasurable redecoration of her home.
Once the paperback is produced and when time permits, I'm planning to do some new covers for the Limited Capability ebooks. I already know what some of them are going to look like. The paint sample cards might make a reappearance, though for a good quality trade emulsion, and there will be at least one gloomy view across Southampton Water, but shopping for props for episode four's cover will be definitely be fun!
I spent most of my lunch break yesterday looking for a Valentine's Day card - and not for my husband - and tomorrow I'll be forging a page or two of a set of Employment and Support Allowance appeal papers. Rest assured that this isn't the beginning of a life of crime with a 'seecrit admiorer' (see LC episode eight for the reference) - I'm simply working on the cover design for the paperback version of Limited Capability.
Having written the story and already described the card in question, I had to find something to match. Had I thought up the cover design before publishing, I could have tweeked the story to fit the cards available (I actually did do this for Lyn Walker's birthday card on the cover of Severe Discomfort which arrives in a yellow envelope in the first draft). But with inspiration following publication, this time I was stuck with tracking down a suitable card - not too expensive-looking or especially tasteful - with a 'sparkly heart' on the front. How hard could that be? You'd be surprised...
After visiting all the local newsagents, co-ops and card shops, it was starting to look like rewriting episode eight was on the cards after all, but luckily I got back to the office from my morning commitments early enough for a dash round Hanley and while the card I have isn't quite as I pictured it in my mind's eye, it does have the requisite sparkly heart.
I thought I had some ESA papers I could use - a set I used to use for training, with the client details blotted out - but after taking a few photos of key sections with unsuitable wording hidden under the card, I realised my old training 'bundle' used the pre 2011 'descriptors', so was no use. So one wet afternoon (tomorrow, perchance) I'll be using these as a template for a fabricated set. Geeky, yes - but when my keenest readers are advisers and claimants (if the reviews are to be believed) you can't afford to get stuff like this wrong!
 |
| Spot the deliberate mistake! |
Once the paperback is produced and when time permits, I'm planning to do some new covers for the Limited Capability ebooks. I already know what some of them are going to look like. The paint sample cards might make a reappearance, though for a good quality trade emulsion, and there will be at least one gloomy view across Southampton Water, but shopping for props for episode four's cover will be definitely be fun!
Wednesday 12 February 2014
The Word on the Street
Another 'repeat' here - a post from my 'serious' blog about benefits looking at the phenomenon of 'Benefits Street', billed as 'showing the reality of life on benefits' by Channel 4, who also shamelessly wallow in its notoriety. It's due to finish on Monday with supposedly a 'debate' about our Social Security system; let's hope they can get a better quality of 'expert' than Channel 5 did when they brought in Edwina Currie and Katie Hopkins!
If a production team and camera crew followed you around for a year, what would the resulting documentary about your life look like? Here are a couple of possibilities for mine...
The first, portraying the delusional political activist, concentrates on shots of me hunched over my computer, trawling the national and local media for Social Security related news to share with my Facebook 'friends', doing battle with the 'trolls' on our local rag's website and writing desperately uncommercial 'Welfare Rights Lit' (ensure shots with alcoholic beverage on hand are utilised). A few shots of washing up waiting to be done, an overfull laundry basket and Himself cooking dinner convey failure to deal with proper feminine domestic chores. Cut to meetings with fellow activists in cluttered rooms bedecked with CND posters, a little sequence of us being ignored by passers-by when handing out anti-Bedroom Tax leaflets and some marching through the streets of London or Manchester against the cuts - again, splicing in some bored-looking members of the public to stress the irrelevance of it all. Any suggestion that I have non-leftie friends and non-political interests - in short, a Life - would go. And because the audience isn't supposed to approve of this idealistic and anachronistic politicking, they'd be a snarky voice-over and an ironic music score.
Another version follows the do-gooder adviser: it could be sympathetic, looking at the issues brought to the doors of advice centres in these tough times and showing how dealing with unremitting poverty and injustice can be demoralising, depressing and frustrating. A true picture would catch colleagues moved to anger and to tears. But why do that when you'd have enough shots of us gossiping with each other, eating biscuits and drinking tea behind the scenes to give the impression that precious little real work gets done without private sector commercial rigour? They might be lucky and catch some unguarded uncomplimentary comments about clients and funders to spice things up - indeed, if they had earned our confidence and become our friends, I'm sure they could elicit some with a couple of gently leading questions. So a thoroughly decent and highly committed team appears on screen as burnt-out, callous and lazy, and there's precious little public sympathy when a few 'characters' get their redundancy notices.
Of course I pose the question as 'Benefits Street' continues to make headlines. I have to be honest and admit that I haven't watched it, but I've caught a fair number of clips and trailers which appear intent on stirring up controversy by presenting deliberately negative images of James Turner Street, its residents and its piles of rubbish. As I've said before when discussing the 'On the Fiddle' type programmes, you never will get benefits reality in 'reality TV' as the most typical non-pensioner claimants are either too shy to step forward and face the perils of publicity, or their lives are too tedious to be entertaining. Television wants controversy and 'characters', not the quiet but dull life of the chronically sick middle-aged woman living in fear of the 'brown envelope' calling her for an Atos medical, and her year-long struggle on the minimum income for a fully-fit person while waiting for an appeal to put right the flawed assessment.
That's reality, but it's not television.
An aspect of all this that hit me today is that not only do these programmes hurt benefit claimants, by making it politically popular to cut Social Security and political suicide to defend it, they also make cuts in funding for welfare rights projects and law centres more palatable. There are already local 'trolls' who hurl the accusation 'Traitors' at my own workplace for having the affrontery to advise asylum-seekers and migrant workers, but if our 'indigenous' clients are perceived as 'scroungers', who will speak out against Legal Aid cuts, the loss of grants for benefits casework and the annual salami-slicing of our Council grant?
And so the luckless claimant looses again. Found fit for work when you're seriously ill? Paying the 'Bedroom Tax' when you should be exempt? Accused of benefit fraud when you've made a genuine mistake? That's just too bad, because there's no place for Justice on Benefits Street.
If a production team and camera crew followed you around for a year, what would the resulting documentary about your life look like? Here are a couple of possibilities for mine...
The first, portraying the delusional political activist, concentrates on shots of me hunched over my computer, trawling the national and local media for Social Security related news to share with my Facebook 'friends', doing battle with the 'trolls' on our local rag's website and writing desperately uncommercial 'Welfare Rights Lit' (ensure shots with alcoholic beverage on hand are utilised). A few shots of washing up waiting to be done, an overfull laundry basket and Himself cooking dinner convey failure to deal with proper feminine domestic chores. Cut to meetings with fellow activists in cluttered rooms bedecked with CND posters, a little sequence of us being ignored by passers-by when handing out anti-Bedroom Tax leaflets and some marching through the streets of London or Manchester against the cuts - again, splicing in some bored-looking members of the public to stress the irrelevance of it all. Any suggestion that I have non-leftie friends and non-political interests - in short, a Life - would go. And because the audience isn't supposed to approve of this idealistic and anachronistic politicking, they'd be a snarky voice-over and an ironic music score.
Another version follows the do-gooder adviser: it could be sympathetic, looking at the issues brought to the doors of advice centres in these tough times and showing how dealing with unremitting poverty and injustice can be demoralising, depressing and frustrating. A true picture would catch colleagues moved to anger and to tears. But why do that when you'd have enough shots of us gossiping with each other, eating biscuits and drinking tea behind the scenes to give the impression that precious little real work gets done without private sector commercial rigour? They might be lucky and catch some unguarded uncomplimentary comments about clients and funders to spice things up - indeed, if they had earned our confidence and become our friends, I'm sure they could elicit some with a couple of gently leading questions. So a thoroughly decent and highly committed team appears on screen as burnt-out, callous and lazy, and there's precious little public sympathy when a few 'characters' get their redundancy notices.
Of course I pose the question as 'Benefits Street' continues to make headlines. I have to be honest and admit that I haven't watched it, but I've caught a fair number of clips and trailers which appear intent on stirring up controversy by presenting deliberately negative images of James Turner Street, its residents and its piles of rubbish. As I've said before when discussing the 'On the Fiddle' type programmes, you never will get benefits reality in 'reality TV' as the most typical non-pensioner claimants are either too shy to step forward and face the perils of publicity, or their lives are too tedious to be entertaining. Television wants controversy and 'characters', not the quiet but dull life of the chronically sick middle-aged woman living in fear of the 'brown envelope' calling her for an Atos medical, and her year-long struggle on the minimum income for a fully-fit person while waiting for an appeal to put right the flawed assessment.
That's reality, but it's not television.
An aspect of all this that hit me today is that not only do these programmes hurt benefit claimants, by making it politically popular to cut Social Security and political suicide to defend it, they also make cuts in funding for welfare rights projects and law centres more palatable. There are already local 'trolls' who hurl the accusation 'Traitors' at my own workplace for having the affrontery to advise asylum-seekers and migrant workers, but if our 'indigenous' clients are perceived as 'scroungers', who will speak out against Legal Aid cuts, the loss of grants for benefits casework and the annual salami-slicing of our Council grant?
And so the luckless claimant looses again. Found fit for work when you're seriously ill? Paying the 'Bedroom Tax' when you should be exempt? Accused of benefit fraud when you've made a genuine mistake? That's just too bad, because there's no place for Justice on Benefits Street.
Friday 7 February 2014
In-jokes and Inspiration
A look at the intentional - and accidental - cultural references tucked away on Hilary Carrington's bookshelves and elsewhere. See how many you spotted!
This blog contains spoilers, so if you haven't finished reading Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision, you might want to look away now!
Once upon a time, an under-employed gardener and former benefits adviser resolved to write a book. An old-fashioned sort of book, with a chronological storyline, a big cast of characters and a strong message about justice and fairness. And, because that threatened to be very heavy going for anyone not already prepared to die for The Cause, it needed some laughs and a love story...
The principal love story in Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision is that between Hilary Carrington and Thomas Appleby; it's also the source of quite a few light-hearted literary references. Before we meet Tom, we know he's burdened with the nickname 'Heathcliffe' on account of his Yorkshire origins and somewhat dour demeanour, but that Hilary thinks this inappropriate for someone so 'dull'. As she notes in her wedding speech, that's only the first of a series of unsuitable literary comparisons applied to him.
However, while Tom tells Hilary she's his 'Bathsheba Everdene' - the proud and spirited heroine of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (and one of my all-time favourite books), it would be fairer to say Tom is her Gabriel Oak - patient and constant through the years while she dallies with far less worthy suitors. And he's 'no Angel' in the penultimate chapter heading of Continual Supervision - a reference to the faithless Angel Clare who deserts poor Tess Durbeyfield when she confesses her (supposed) shame. Hilary's late brother Aidan's old schoolbook is deliberately A Christmas Carol as she confronts the 'ghosts' of her past.
As Hilary takes centre stage on her return to the Solent Welfare Rights Project, there's more than a hint of the diva in her first appearance, and that was the cue for an operatic sub-plot. It's no coincidence that her fateful night out at the theatre with Tom is to see Tosca - the melodramatic love triangle tale of the beautiful actress, her artist lover and the dastardly chief of police who desires her. Hilary's seduction of Tom in her garden has deliberate overtones of the ill-fated Caravadossi's poignant aria at the beginning of the final act of Puccini's tragedy, but while Dr Appleby plays his part with due devotion and passion, Gary Pike is an unpleasantly twisted but spectacularly incompetent Scarpia. Like his operatic counterpart his lust is his downfall, though not by a knife in Hilary's hand - that does no more damage than to cut her wedding cake.
On a lighter note, there are the team's Lady Chatterley jokes. When I first drafted the story, Hilary's relationship with Tom was conceived as quite gentle and possibly entirely platonic, with the joke being that her team assumed otherwise. But this seemed at odds with Hilary's forthright personality, and it turned out to be much more fun inverting that theme to give Hilary and Tom a thoroughly steamy romance. Influenced by the very 'bodice-ripper' novels she derides, Hilary has a tendency to perceive their affair in somewhat Mills-and-Boonish terms, but she's the complete antithesis of the naïve and submissive leading lady of the typical 'romantic' novel, and of course modest, warm-hearted civil servant Tom is a far cry from the brooding mill-owners and multi-millionaires that traditionally cause our heroine's bosom to heave. But the biggest break with tradition is that they are - however Hilary might perceive herself - middle-aged!
Tom's artistic talents determined how another cheeky in-joke played out. Someone was always intended to have painting and decorating skills as a nod to The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the ultimate tale of ordinary people's lives told for a political purpose and very much an inspiration for Severe Discomfort. Tom was obvious candidate after the Tosca theme arose, although Toby was originally the nominee. The change of trade for Mr Novak allowed for Terry Walker's clumsy comments to him about 'Polish plumbers', and giving Tom the paintbrushes sets up a truly dreadful pun from Hilary.
It's no accident that tomboyish Sally Archer gets to quote To Kill a Mockingbird' in her first scene, since the nearest any of the team get to an 'Atticus Finch' moment in their tribunals is Sally's cross-examination of Andy Burrows. She's a 'chip off the old block' in this respect. Meanwhile, Daphne in Staffordshire had to be a fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's a nod to the benefits team at Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent CAB where a colleague joked (some years ago now) that you couldn't put two of the team together for more than five minutes without someone making a Tolkien-related remark. That was true, especially if you added beer.
One literary link slipped in quite by accident, though. I discovered only after publishing that Richard Parker, the captain who often seems at odds with his crew, shares his name with the Tiger in The Life of Pi. I gave that name to my Project Manager as it sounded uremarkable and - with all due respect to any actual Richard Parkers out there - a good name for a 'pen-pusher' (more on naming characters another day). But Richard's tendency to use nautical similies may suggest a sub-conscious recollection that I had heard it before. After all, a memorial to a local lad called Richard Parker stood in the churchyard of the chapel where I was married about 400 yards from my former Southampton home. The ill-fated cabin-boy of the Mignonette has an unfortunate place in maritime law and history as the victim of his shipmates' cannabalism after an 1884 shipwreck. No wonder his namesake is such a worried man!
This blog contains spoilers, so if you haven't finished reading Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision, you might want to look away now!
Once upon a time, an under-employed gardener and former benefits adviser resolved to write a book. An old-fashioned sort of book, with a chronological storyline, a big cast of characters and a strong message about justice and fairness. And, because that threatened to be very heavy going for anyone not already prepared to die for The Cause, it needed some laughs and a love story...
However, while Tom tells Hilary she's his 'Bathsheba Everdene' - the proud and spirited heroine of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (and one of my all-time favourite books), it would be fairer to say Tom is her Gabriel Oak - patient and constant through the years while she dallies with far less worthy suitors. And he's 'no Angel' in the penultimate chapter heading of Continual Supervision - a reference to the faithless Angel Clare who deserts poor Tess Durbeyfield when she confesses her (supposed) shame. Hilary's late brother Aidan's old schoolbook is deliberately A Christmas Carol as she confronts the 'ghosts' of her past.
As Hilary takes centre stage on her return to the Solent Welfare Rights Project, there's more than a hint of the diva in her first appearance, and that was the cue for an operatic sub-plot. It's no coincidence that her fateful night out at the theatre with Tom is to see Tosca - the melodramatic love triangle tale of the beautiful actress, her artist lover and the dastardly chief of police who desires her. Hilary's seduction of Tom in her garden has deliberate overtones of the ill-fated Caravadossi's poignant aria at the beginning of the final act of Puccini's tragedy, but while Dr Appleby plays his part with due devotion and passion, Gary Pike is an unpleasantly twisted but spectacularly incompetent Scarpia. Like his operatic counterpart his lust is his downfall, though not by a knife in Hilary's hand - that does no more damage than to cut her wedding cake.
On a lighter note, there are the team's Lady Chatterley jokes. When I first drafted the story, Hilary's relationship with Tom was conceived as quite gentle and possibly entirely platonic, with the joke being that her team assumed otherwise. But this seemed at odds with Hilary's forthright personality, and it turned out to be much more fun inverting that theme to give Hilary and Tom a thoroughly steamy romance. Influenced by the very 'bodice-ripper' novels she derides, Hilary has a tendency to perceive their affair in somewhat Mills-and-Boonish terms, but she's the complete antithesis of the naïve and submissive leading lady of the typical 'romantic' novel, and of course modest, warm-hearted civil servant Tom is a far cry from the brooding mill-owners and multi-millionaires that traditionally cause our heroine's bosom to heave. But the biggest break with tradition is that they are - however Hilary might perceive herself - middle-aged!
Tom's artistic talents determined how another cheeky in-joke played out. Someone was always intended to have painting and decorating skills as a nod to The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the ultimate tale of ordinary people's lives told for a political purpose and very much an inspiration for Severe Discomfort. Tom was obvious candidate after the Tosca theme arose, although Toby was originally the nominee. The change of trade for Mr Novak allowed for Terry Walker's clumsy comments to him about 'Polish plumbers', and giving Tom the paintbrushes sets up a truly dreadful pun from Hilary.
It's no accident that tomboyish Sally Archer gets to quote To Kill a Mockingbird' in her first scene, since the nearest any of the team get to an 'Atticus Finch' moment in their tribunals is Sally's cross-examination of Andy Burrows. She's a 'chip off the old block' in this respect. Meanwhile, Daphne in Staffordshire had to be a fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's a nod to the benefits team at Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent CAB where a colleague joked (some years ago now) that you couldn't put two of the team together for more than five minutes without someone making a Tolkien-related remark. That was true, especially if you added beer.
One literary link slipped in quite by accident, though. I discovered only after publishing that Richard Parker, the captain who often seems at odds with his crew, shares his name with the Tiger in The Life of Pi. I gave that name to my Project Manager as it sounded uremarkable and - with all due respect to any actual Richard Parkers out there - a good name for a 'pen-pusher' (more on naming characters another day). But Richard's tendency to use nautical similies may suggest a sub-conscious recollection that I had heard it before. After all, a memorial to a local lad called Richard Parker stood in the churchyard of the chapel where I was married about 400 yards from my former Southampton home. The ill-fated cabin-boy of the Mignonette has an unfortunate place in maritime law and history as the victim of his shipmates' cannabalism after an 1884 shipwreck. No wonder his namesake is such a worried man!
Monday 3 February 2014
Birthdays
Anyway, back to February 3rd: Aquarius, it seems. From a quick Google I got 'Those born under this sign have the social conscience needed to carry us into the new millennium. These folks are humanitarian, philanthropic and keenly interested in making the world a better place.' So that would be all of the staff at the Solent Welfare Rights Project and their principal allies - except Hilary Carrington, whose birthday is actually mentioned as being 20th November, exactly a week after Lyn Walker's.
There was no deliberate plan to make Lyn or Hilary a Scorpio, by the way - even if some alleged attributes of that sign aren't a bad match for determined, competitive and passionate Hilary, Lyn doesn't seem to fit the bill. The crunch factor for Lyn's birthday was the opportunity for it to be on a 'Friday 13th' with its traditional association with bad luck, and not too long before Christmas. Terry Walker also gets a birthday - in early May, branding him a Taurus and thus potentially materialistic and stubborn (again, a happy accident).
I don't think any of the other major characters have stated birthdays (so far). I'll be doing a 'what's in a name' blog one day looking at how the characters got their names, but what if some of their names fitted their star signs? Is Sally Archer a Sagittarius? 'Sagittarians are truth-seekers, and the best way for them to do this is to hit the road, talk to others and get some answers. Knowledge is key to these folks, since it fuels their broad-minded approach to life.' Not a bad fit...
Is Gary Pike the archetypal Pisces? 'The great strength of the Pisces-born is their compassionate and charitable nature. These folks love to help others and do so in the most imaginative of ways. It's their feeling sensibility that wins people over,' says the astrology site.
That'll be a 'No', then! In fact (without giving to much away if you haven't reached the end of Severe Discomfort or read Continual Supervision) that sounds much more like another of the guys from the DWP.
So 'Happy Birthday' to Severe Discomfort. A year on, things are unquestionably worse for the Lyns and Terrys of this world, and it's tougher for the Vaughans and Hilarys too. But there's some hope in a survey today suggesting that almost half of the people asked thought benefit claimants weren't fairly treated in the way the media portray them. Perhaps it's time the other half read Severe Discomfort!
13th November 2015 - Severe Discomfort Kindle version free for the last time this year on 4th December.
Sunday 2 February 2014
Sour Grapes
Time for a grumble...
Tomorrow, it will be one year to the day since I officially published Severe Discomfort. It's been great getting some really positive reactions to it, talking about the characters and issues and planning their next adventures, but I would be lying if I claimed it had achieved its goal of changing the tone of debate about Social Security. I've reached a fairly modest audience and, as far as I can tell, largely preached to the converted.
Lacking the funds or contacts for a good launch, it was a remarkable piece of self-sabotage to declare my arch-villain 'essentially the Daily Mail in human form' in my preface and still hold out any hope of our local Northcliffe Press owned paper taking an interest (keen though they usually are to support local authors). Meanwhile, the 'Welfare Reform' process grinds on, justified by vicious stereotypes of idlers and scroungers very different to poor Lyn and Terry Walker and the thousands like them at the sharp end of it.
Severe Discomfort's first birthday will be marked - entirely by coincidence - by the broadcast of something called the 'Big Benefits Row' on Channel 5. Well-informed rumour has it that on its panel will be Kelvin MacKenzie, discredited former editor of the Sun newspaper - arguably, someone who should be more of a pariah than the most blatant benefits fraudster after activities like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_MacKenzie#Invented_stories
If you're a benefit claimant, you get prosecuted for telling lies; if you're Mr MacKenzie, you become a very wealthy celebrity for doing so.
His partners in crime tomorrow night are apparently Katie Hopkins, herself another prime example of how sheer deliberate bloody unpleasantness can make you famous, and notorious former MP Edwina Currie, who grabbed the headlines recently after an outrageous statement on our local BBC radio station to the effect that people wouldn't need foodbanks if they hadn't wasted their money on dog food and tattoos. Whether Currie had her invitation from Channel 5 before or after her interview on Radio Stoke I don't know, but it certainly won't have counted against her. I suspect Hopkins may earned hers through a diatribe against the Social Security system delivered on late-night political TV show This Week, in which she theatrically acted out cleaning the BBC loos to show the sort of work she would do rather than scrounge off the state. I remarked at the time that we would have had a more informed contribution to the debate from her mop and bucket!
The only possible justification for putting them on the panel is to provoke cheering and whooping from those who share their rabid, reactionary attitudes, and booing and teeth-gnashing from those who do not. They can contribute nothing of real value. Even if you put them in a studio which wasn't intended to be a bear pit, they aren't equipped to have a sensible discussion. They have no knowledge of the day to day operation of the Social Security benefits system - for example, how tinkering with the points system for ESA has left chronically sick people destitute and vulnerable unemployed workers the victims of arbitrary sanctions. No-one they know will have experienced anything like that. Worst of all, they cannot imagine the infinite variety of circumstances that create the need to claim benefits and then shape the lives of those claimants. It's what makes Channel 4's claim that the excruciating 'Benefits Street' shows the 'reality of life on benefits' so disingenuous. There is no one 'reality' of life on benefits. Most claimants don't live on Benefits Street. They live on our street. They are our neighbours.
It makes no more sense to pack the panel with 'celebrities' than it would to ask the pundits from March of the Day to deal with audience queries on Gardeners' Question Time (though perhaps that's unfair - Gary Linaker might be an unacknowledged leader in the field of alpine cultivation, and Alan Hanson something of an expert on herbaceous perennials for all I know). The obvious reason for doing so is to win the ratings war, even if this stifles any chance of intelligent debate. In the interest of balance, I'm sure Channel 5 are looking for someone suitably shouty and strident for the 'red corner', but that's not what we need.
Meanwhile, having contacted Woman's Hour and dropped a spare copy of the book off at our local BBC regional news office last week - the latest in several failed attempts to get a little bit of publicity - I wait in faint hope of an acknowledgment. I suspect I'm not alone; there will be press releases from advice organisations and disability rights campaigners sitting in in-trays, letters correcting factual errors cluttering up wastebins. We aren't celebrities, so nobody's listening.
Tomorrow, it will be one year to the day since I officially published Severe Discomfort. It's been great getting some really positive reactions to it, talking about the characters and issues and planning their next adventures, but I would be lying if I claimed it had achieved its goal of changing the tone of debate about Social Security. I've reached a fairly modest audience and, as far as I can tell, largely preached to the converted.
Lacking the funds or contacts for a good launch, it was a remarkable piece of self-sabotage to declare my arch-villain 'essentially the Daily Mail in human form' in my preface and still hold out any hope of our local Northcliffe Press owned paper taking an interest (keen though they usually are to support local authors). Meanwhile, the 'Welfare Reform' process grinds on, justified by vicious stereotypes of idlers and scroungers very different to poor Lyn and Terry Walker and the thousands like them at the sharp end of it.
Severe Discomfort's first birthday will be marked - entirely by coincidence - by the broadcast of something called the 'Big Benefits Row' on Channel 5. Well-informed rumour has it that on its panel will be Kelvin MacKenzie, discredited former editor of the Sun newspaper - arguably, someone who should be more of a pariah than the most blatant benefits fraudster after activities like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_MacKenzie#Invented_stories
If you're a benefit claimant, you get prosecuted for telling lies; if you're Mr MacKenzie, you become a very wealthy celebrity for doing so.
His partners in crime tomorrow night are apparently Katie Hopkins, herself another prime example of how sheer deliberate bloody unpleasantness can make you famous, and notorious former MP Edwina Currie, who grabbed the headlines recently after an outrageous statement on our local BBC radio station to the effect that people wouldn't need foodbanks if they hadn't wasted their money on dog food and tattoos. Whether Currie had her invitation from Channel 5 before or after her interview on Radio Stoke I don't know, but it certainly won't have counted against her. I suspect Hopkins may earned hers through a diatribe against the Social Security system delivered on late-night political TV show This Week, in which she theatrically acted out cleaning the BBC loos to show the sort of work she would do rather than scrounge off the state. I remarked at the time that we would have had a more informed contribution to the debate from her mop and bucket!
The only possible justification for putting them on the panel is to provoke cheering and whooping from those who share their rabid, reactionary attitudes, and booing and teeth-gnashing from those who do not. They can contribute nothing of real value. Even if you put them in a studio which wasn't intended to be a bear pit, they aren't equipped to have a sensible discussion. They have no knowledge of the day to day operation of the Social Security benefits system - for example, how tinkering with the points system for ESA has left chronically sick people destitute and vulnerable unemployed workers the victims of arbitrary sanctions. No-one they know will have experienced anything like that. Worst of all, they cannot imagine the infinite variety of circumstances that create the need to claim benefits and then shape the lives of those claimants. It's what makes Channel 4's claim that the excruciating 'Benefits Street' shows the 'reality of life on benefits' so disingenuous. There is no one 'reality' of life on benefits. Most claimants don't live on Benefits Street. They live on our street. They are our neighbours.
It makes no more sense to pack the panel with 'celebrities' than it would to ask the pundits from March of the Day to deal with audience queries on Gardeners' Question Time (though perhaps that's unfair - Gary Linaker might be an unacknowledged leader in the field of alpine cultivation, and Alan Hanson something of an expert on herbaceous perennials for all I know). The obvious reason for doing so is to win the ratings war, even if this stifles any chance of intelligent debate. In the interest of balance, I'm sure Channel 5 are looking for someone suitably shouty and strident for the 'red corner', but that's not what we need.
Meanwhile, having contacted Woman's Hour and dropped a spare copy of the book off at our local BBC regional news office last week - the latest in several failed attempts to get a little bit of publicity - I wait in faint hope of an acknowledgment. I suspect I'm not alone; there will be press releases from advice organisations and disability rights campaigners sitting in in-trays, letters correcting factual errors cluttering up wastebins. We aren't celebrities, so nobody's listening.
Saturday 1 February 2014
The Long View
Another 'recycled' blog from January 2014 about the amazing place that inspired the Solent Welfare Rights Project.
In a residential Southampton side-street, a few hundred yards from the east side of the Itchen Bridge and next to the Masonic Hall, there's a grand old Victorian building with 'Public Baths' inscribed high on its facade. The 'Old Slipper Baths', built and managed by the City Council when none of the terraced houses in this ship-building district had their own bathroom became a 'Labour Exchange' when public health policy and home improvement made the original use redundant and, when the Department of Employment moved to new premises, in the dark days of Thatcher's Tory Government the Labour-led Council let it to a group of Trade Unionists, who founded the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre.
The Unemployed Centre did advice with a difference. None of this 'impartiality' malarky - it was the Tories who were cutting benefits and driving up unemployment with their attacks on workers' rights and privatisations, and at the Centre you got practical assistance with claims and tribunals (Social Security and Industrial) with a generous side-order of left-wing politics. They didn't generally do 'confidentiality' either, as there weren't individual offices: clients were interviewed en masse in what had been the waiting area, sitting on the wooden pews around the front bay where shipyard workers might have sat clutching their towels waiting their turn for a wash and brush up a hundred years earlier.
It fitted the ethos of the place to encourage people to share their misfortunes, listen to each others' stories and learn from the advice given to their fellow unemployed workers - to encourage solidarity. There was never any lack of that; with Southampton a marginal council politically and the Conservative group pledged to withdrawing funding and closing the place down within days if they got to form an administration, the workers' jobs seemed little less precarious than those of the people they were advising.
I joined the inspirational team at the Centre as a volunteer in 1985, becoming a paid worker in the Poll Tax era, before making a spectacularly ill-judged decision to become a Housing Officer for a neighbouring local authority. But I stayed in touch, doing a stint on the management committee and watching the place evolve into a slightly more conventional, less precarious and arguably more effective and professional advice organisation. I even got to work there again for a few months just before we moved north, refreshing my welfare benefits knowledge and tribunal skills and gaining a useful insight into Legal Services Commission standards and practices.
I went back just before Christmas to the organisation now known as the Southampton Advice and Representation Centre. The old interview area still has the wooden pews but is now the reception and waiting area and the workers have their own offices in which to interview their clients confidentially and do their work, but it still feels friendly and welcoming. The current staff team include a colleague from the 1980s (he did desert briefly, but couldn't stay away), but reminiscing we realised that fewer than twenty staff had worked there in over thirty years. The number employed fluctuates with funding but with an average of probably six or seven most of the time, it's an impressive indication of commitment. There's still the same mission - to help disadvantaged people get the advice and representation they are unable to afford from commercial legal advisers, and to as good if not a better standard - and the same small signs of appreciation help to mend the wounds when despite everything, justice is not done. While I was there, one of the workers who had apparently had a miserable outcome at an Employment Tribunal the day before had two grateful clients call in with Christmas treats for him and the team. You don't expect that when the people you work for have so little, but their kindness touches you deeply when it happens.
Sadly, one of our old comrades from the Thatcher era is currently terminally ill and while I had been shy of calling on him (both fearing to be a nuisance at a difficult time, and sefishly afraid to see an old friend so changed by ill health), the others encouraged me to do so. I was glad I had: he was still very much his old self, bright-eyed and full of fighting spirit both against his illness and the injustices he'd fought to combat all of his life. A former UCATT steward, he'd been our Industrial Tribunal champion in the early years with an impressive ability to think on his feet which made him a reassuring ally but a formidable adversary in the hearing room. If ever rebuked by a tribunal chair for a procedural faux pas he would turn on the Irish charm and ask for forgiveness on the basis that he was 'only a carpenter and joiner by trade' - if one who had apparently not just kissed the Blarney Stone, but made mad, passionate love to it!
What neither of us could have anticipated when we first worked together was how benign the Social Security regime of that era now appears. 'I never thought I'd say it,' said my former colleague, 'But this lot - they're worse than Thatcher!' I could only agree.
True, some changes came in with the introduction of Income Support in 1988 that set the tone for future cuts and a system that required little human intelligence to administer. Gone were judgments on whether a claimant was a 'householder' or 'non-householder', replaced by a clumsy 'under 25' or 'over 25' differentiation, and a system of flat-rate 'disregards' from earned income came in where previously actual work-related expenses, such as travelling costs, were taken into account. Crucially, under Thatcher's government, earnings-replacement benefits ceased to be uprated in line with earnings. Shamefully, the Blair/Brown governments didn't reverse this and the gulf between earnings and benefits has continued to widen despite propaganda to the contrary.
Back then, Invalidity Benefit didn't rely on a points system and poor-quality pseudo-medical assessments - a person was fit for work only if a real job existed in the local 'travel to work area' which he or she was capable of doing. This was a decision made by a Decision Maker worthy of the name, who had to weigh up both medical evidence and the local labour market when coming to a decision. Contribution-based Unemployment Benefit was paid for a year, not the current six months and while sanctions existed, the maximum (for losing a job through misconduct, for instance) was a six week sanction - and we used to appeal these to chip a week or two off, even though a full year's entitlement might still be paid from the end of the sanction. Now it's a minimum of 13 weeks and up to 3 years for another 'failure' and for claimants of contributory JSA, any sanction is deducted from the mere six months' entitlement.
'Foodbanks! I never thought we'd see such a thing!'
No, we never did. Thirty years ago it would have been inconceivable that churches would be putting together food parcels for families in or out of work who simply could not afford to feed themselves, and that there would not be public outrage. The generation that defeated the Poll Tax surely wouldn't have accepted the sudden imposition of Council Tax on people living on subsistence benefits which were never calculated to allow for it. But there isn't the sympathy for the Unemployed that there was then. Perhaps the saddest thought of all is that it's hard to imagine many current Labour councils finding funding and premises for an organisation like the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre. They would say there wasn't a 'business case' for it.
It really did seem for a moment as if we'd been fighting a long defeat, but then my friend smiled. 'We never thought the Centre would still be going after thirty years though, did we?' he said.
We never did and yet it is.
Here's to the next thirty!
I ought also to have mentioned our computers from the 1980s, which were cast-offs from the TGWU's office: huge things about the size of a fridge-freezer, which used 5 1/4 inch 'floppy discs' to 'boot up' and store data, and rattled and clattered like something from a 1960s episode of Dr Who. There was great excitement when we acquired an 'Amstrad'.
One piece of news from the current workers may come as a shock to readers of Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision - there's no longer a vending machine at the Southampton Tribunals Service venue!
In a residential Southampton side-street, a few hundred yards from the east side of the Itchen Bridge and next to the Masonic Hall, there's a grand old Victorian building with 'Public Baths' inscribed high on its facade. The 'Old Slipper Baths', built and managed by the City Council when none of the terraced houses in this ship-building district had their own bathroom became a 'Labour Exchange' when public health policy and home improvement made the original use redundant and, when the Department of Employment moved to new premises, in the dark days of Thatcher's Tory Government the Labour-led Council let it to a group of Trade Unionists, who founded the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre.
The Unemployed Centre did advice with a difference. None of this 'impartiality' malarky - it was the Tories who were cutting benefits and driving up unemployment with their attacks on workers' rights and privatisations, and at the Centre you got practical assistance with claims and tribunals (Social Security and Industrial) with a generous side-order of left-wing politics. They didn't generally do 'confidentiality' either, as there weren't individual offices: clients were interviewed en masse in what had been the waiting area, sitting on the wooden pews around the front bay where shipyard workers might have sat clutching their towels waiting their turn for a wash and brush up a hundred years earlier.
It fitted the ethos of the place to encourage people to share their misfortunes, listen to each others' stories and learn from the advice given to their fellow unemployed workers - to encourage solidarity. There was never any lack of that; with Southampton a marginal council politically and the Conservative group pledged to withdrawing funding and closing the place down within days if they got to form an administration, the workers' jobs seemed little less precarious than those of the people they were advising.
I joined the inspirational team at the Centre as a volunteer in 1985, becoming a paid worker in the Poll Tax era, before making a spectacularly ill-judged decision to become a Housing Officer for a neighbouring local authority. But I stayed in touch, doing a stint on the management committee and watching the place evolve into a slightly more conventional, less precarious and arguably more effective and professional advice organisation. I even got to work there again for a few months just before we moved north, refreshing my welfare benefits knowledge and tribunal skills and gaining a useful insight into Legal Services Commission standards and practices.
I went back just before Christmas to the organisation now known as the Southampton Advice and Representation Centre. The old interview area still has the wooden pews but is now the reception and waiting area and the workers have their own offices in which to interview their clients confidentially and do their work, but it still feels friendly and welcoming. The current staff team include a colleague from the 1980s (he did desert briefly, but couldn't stay away), but reminiscing we realised that fewer than twenty staff had worked there in over thirty years. The number employed fluctuates with funding but with an average of probably six or seven most of the time, it's an impressive indication of commitment. There's still the same mission - to help disadvantaged people get the advice and representation they are unable to afford from commercial legal advisers, and to as good if not a better standard - and the same small signs of appreciation help to mend the wounds when despite everything, justice is not done. While I was there, one of the workers who had apparently had a miserable outcome at an Employment Tribunal the day before had two grateful clients call in with Christmas treats for him and the team. You don't expect that when the people you work for have so little, but their kindness touches you deeply when it happens.
Sadly, one of our old comrades from the Thatcher era is currently terminally ill and while I had been shy of calling on him (both fearing to be a nuisance at a difficult time, and sefishly afraid to see an old friend so changed by ill health), the others encouraged me to do so. I was glad I had: he was still very much his old self, bright-eyed and full of fighting spirit both against his illness and the injustices he'd fought to combat all of his life. A former UCATT steward, he'd been our Industrial Tribunal champion in the early years with an impressive ability to think on his feet which made him a reassuring ally but a formidable adversary in the hearing room. If ever rebuked by a tribunal chair for a procedural faux pas he would turn on the Irish charm and ask for forgiveness on the basis that he was 'only a carpenter and joiner by trade' - if one who had apparently not just kissed the Blarney Stone, but made mad, passionate love to it!
What neither of us could have anticipated when we first worked together was how benign the Social Security regime of that era now appears. 'I never thought I'd say it,' said my former colleague, 'But this lot - they're worse than Thatcher!' I could only agree.
True, some changes came in with the introduction of Income Support in 1988 that set the tone for future cuts and a system that required little human intelligence to administer. Gone were judgments on whether a claimant was a 'householder' or 'non-householder', replaced by a clumsy 'under 25' or 'over 25' differentiation, and a system of flat-rate 'disregards' from earned income came in where previously actual work-related expenses, such as travelling costs, were taken into account. Crucially, under Thatcher's government, earnings-replacement benefits ceased to be uprated in line with earnings. Shamefully, the Blair/Brown governments didn't reverse this and the gulf between earnings and benefits has continued to widen despite propaganda to the contrary.
Back then, Invalidity Benefit didn't rely on a points system and poor-quality pseudo-medical assessments - a person was fit for work only if a real job existed in the local 'travel to work area' which he or she was capable of doing. This was a decision made by a Decision Maker worthy of the name, who had to weigh up both medical evidence and the local labour market when coming to a decision. Contribution-based Unemployment Benefit was paid for a year, not the current six months and while sanctions existed, the maximum (for losing a job through misconduct, for instance) was a six week sanction - and we used to appeal these to chip a week or two off, even though a full year's entitlement might still be paid from the end of the sanction. Now it's a minimum of 13 weeks and up to 3 years for another 'failure' and for claimants of contributory JSA, any sanction is deducted from the mere six months' entitlement.
'Foodbanks! I never thought we'd see such a thing!'
No, we never did. Thirty years ago it would have been inconceivable that churches would be putting together food parcels for families in or out of work who simply could not afford to feed themselves, and that there would not be public outrage. The generation that defeated the Poll Tax surely wouldn't have accepted the sudden imposition of Council Tax on people living on subsistence benefits which were never calculated to allow for it. But there isn't the sympathy for the Unemployed that there was then. Perhaps the saddest thought of all is that it's hard to imagine many current Labour councils finding funding and premises for an organisation like the Southampton and District Unemployed Centre. They would say there wasn't a 'business case' for it.
It really did seem for a moment as if we'd been fighting a long defeat, but then my friend smiled. 'We never thought the Centre would still be going after thirty years though, did we?' he said.
We never did and yet it is.
Here's to the next thirty!
I ought also to have mentioned our computers from the 1980s, which were cast-offs from the TGWU's office: huge things about the size of a fridge-freezer, which used 5 1/4 inch 'floppy discs' to 'boot up' and store data, and rattled and clattered like something from a 1960s episode of Dr Who. There was great excitement when we acquired an 'Amstrad'.
One piece of news from the current workers may come as a shock to readers of Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision - there's no longer a vending machine at the Southampton Tribunals Service venue!
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