"Write what you know" they say.

Even of what you know is benefits advice work and writing stories about it only pays enough to keep your colleagues in biscuits!



Friday 30 December 2016

Coming Soon...


After much dithering (which sounds as if it should be a Cotswold village), I am almost at the point of releasing a second '4mph thriller', with doughty boat-dweller Daphne Randall again on the trail of modern-day villains, aided and abetted by some familiar, and some new, characters. 

The Kindle version of 'Daphne of the Four Counties' is available to pre-order here.  There will be a paperback version out soon too, subject to a final proof-read - which as always, I would urge people to buy via CompletelyNovel or your local tax-paying Indy bookshop, rather than Amazon.  I attack them with a clear conscience still, since I've noticed that, despite others being tagged more helpful and a more recent highly positive review, Amazon have a one-star slating of 'Severe Discomfort' pinned as top review for that book.  Not helpful to The Cause at all...

The question that arises whenever I finish a book is 'where to next'?  To which I have to add 'and with whom?' as, while I have notebooks full of navigational and nature notes for more Daphne Randall adventures, I can also imagine countless plotlines for the stalwarts of the Solent Welfare Rights Project.  I had resolved to keep on boating and leave the 'Welfare Rights Lit' be until Universal Credit was fully rolled out in southern Hampshire but it seems implausible that the team wouldn't be at least as busy right now, handling DLA to PIP migration and the cut to the Benefit Cap.  I'd also like to eavesdrop on their conversations about Brexit and The Donald, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May.  There are personal stories to pick up too, though I can't speculate on those without chucking spoilers about like confetti at a wedding (though that would have to be sustainable, bio-degradable confetti...).

Meanwhile, The Lady Eowyn is moored close by, waiting to cast off for more unexpectedly eventful cruises along ostensibly tranquil waterways.  I've a rough-and-ready plot sketched out for a tale with the working title All Along the Rochdale, with some more changes to the crew, and an equally lock-filled sequel crossing back over the Pennines on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, with Daphne falling in and out of work, and love, along the way.  Then she'll be off around parts of the BCN for a gritty little mystery, down the Trent and Mersey to Shardlow for something altogether lighter, and picking up clues to cold cases along the Llangollen.

If I stick to my one New Year's Resolution - of spending less time scrolling about on Facebook and/or Twitter and more actually writing - it's all possible.  After all, Grand Union was the work of just one month, in which I was working slightly more hours than I am currently contracted to do. 

I just need to get on with it...


Tuesday 15 November 2016

Saving Daniel Blake

In my previous post I slated the Toby Young/Daily Mail review of I, Daniel Blake, which was taking a bit of a risk as I hadn't actually seen the film then.  However, the odds of the Daily Mail being right about something multiplied by the odds of Toby Young being right about it too...  So not that much of a risk, eh?

Anyway, I have now seen Ken Loach's superb drama and cannot recommend it enough.  The film manages to be warm and uplifting, yet also strikingly bleak.  Unlike the hated Mail I'm not going to include spoilers, but will admit I'm not as brave when plotting my own characters' misfortunes as Ian Laverty has been here.  The performances from the two principal actors are outstanding - so convincing that you seem to be witnessing the real lives and conversations of friends and neighbours, as they spiral into despair and desperation.  You can see Daniels and Katies in the early morning queues outside advice centres from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Newquay; or rather you can where those services still exist. 

I expected to be moved to tears and to anger, despite knowing more than most about how benefit cuts and sanctions impact on the lives of sick and disabled people, and so it proved.  Stoke Odeon set the mood for the scenes of fuel poverty by apparently not bothering to put the heating on in tiny Screen 10.  Midweek, with little publicity, there was only a small audience, which was a pity as this film deserves to be seen by everybody.

Initially, the benefits geek in me was wary that some aspects of the story were going to be over-simplified.  The conversation heard in the background of the opening credits didn't resemble any Atos/Maximus medical assessment I've ever sat in on - our local Healthcare Professionals ask oblique questions about a claimant's 'typical day' rather than quoting the descriptors and infer their points and abilities from those answers, often entirely incorrectly.  But it works, of course, as a way of explaining the assessment criteria to the uninitiated.

As a benefits specialist, I wanted to see Dan's interview with his welfare rights adviser, to hear their conversation explaining how Dan's failure to score 15 points was neither here nor there, because Regulation 29 should allow him to be deemed of 'limited capability for work' due to the serious risk to his health of finding otherwise (a scene for the 'Director's Cut'?).  That's important, because the DWP's own investigation into claimants' suicides revealed systemic failures by Decision Makers in applying this regulation.

It was, however, a nice touch to make the adviser/representative a wheelchair user.  After all, nobody is saying disabled people can't work; the need is for the right jobs, in respectful workplaces, for those capable of and ready for them.  On the other hand, if there are real reps out there talking as confidently of success before tribunals as Dan's man, they are tempting the fates something rotten!

I knew Ken's team had really done their homework when the 'shite music' started.  No offence to Vivaldi, but you won't find a benefits adviser or claimant in the country who doesn't hate 'Spring' from the Four Seasons with a passion.  I have read bundles of appeal papers, drafted submissions, chatted to clients or colleagues and drunk gallons of tea to that soundtrack, waiting so long for someone to pick up that, when they do, I've almost forgotten what I needed to ask about.  It irritates and demoralises in equal measure.  How much worse it must be hearing it on an endless loop when you're down to your last couple of quid of credit and chasing a long-promised payment.  When (very minor spoiler) Dan's rebellion against the DWP included a demand they change the tune, I cheered quietly.  It's the little things, as much as the threats and sanctions, that eat away at the souls of real Daniel Blakes.

I have met many Daniel Blakes, like the man described in this post.  Although "Jeff" was fully fit for work and would never have declared otherwise, he too fell foul of a Jobcentre jobsworth who treated him with contempt as an unemployed, uneducated man, rather than respecting and supporting his efforts to find work in an unfamiliar and rapidly changing world.  Like Loach's hero, the system cut off his income before he could argue or appeal, putting him through hell before he got to tribunal. However we want to change the benefits system, that should change first.  

It isn't too hard to imagine how much less harrowing Daniel Blake's lot would have been if, after his 'fit for work' decision, he'd been allowed to stay on ESA pending his reconsideration and appeal.  Ironically, until October 2013, that was exactly what did happen if you appealed a 'fit for work' decision.  Then some bright spark invented 'mandatory reconsideration' and decided that, unless you had a new disabling condition or medical evidence of significant deterioration in your existing health problems, you would have to come off ESA at that stage and, in most cases, claim JSA instead if you needed an income. Since then, we've seen thousands of people wrongly assessed either compelled to 'do a Daniel' and go through the wearing motions of job-seeking when they aren't fit for it, struggle without funds because they can't cope with that, or get lost in the system because they think 'signing on' is an admission of wellness and will count against them in their appeal. 

If the DWP don't change the decision and your case goes to appeal, it is then possible to go back onto ESA - so why force the break in claim at all, except to drive sick people off of ESA or discourage their appeal?  Needless stress for claimants and pointless work for DWP staff could be avoided, if ESA remained in continuous payment throughout the whole process.  While I can dream of an unconditional Citizens Income, in the short-term, perhaps we should campaign hard for this simple reform. 

I watched I, Daniel Blake with my husband.  Twenty-five years ago, he claimed Invalidity Benefit after a heart-attack ended his career as an ambulanceman.  It came through, without a glitch, on the basis of a GP certificate, until he felt well enough to end his claim and seek lighter work.  There was no half-baked assessment by someone completely unqualified to offer an opinion, no hasty totting up of points by a harassed Decision Maker, no bullying at the Jobcentre, no suggestion from Government or media that he was 'scrounging' - in short, no needless, dangerous extra pressure during his convalescence.  Seeing, through Daniel Blake's eyes, how much things had changed, upset him deeply.  He too would have been found fit for work long before he actually was.  I'm sure he would have tried, just like Dan to meet his Claimant Commitment.  I don't like to think about how his story would have ended.

#WeAreAllDanielBlake

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Saints, Scroungers and Movie Reviews

I shouldn't have done that. You know how if someone says 'don't look, it's too horrible!' you instinctively do, and then feel sick, repulsed or degraded and can't get the vile image out of your mind?  That's what reading Daily Mail articles is like.

Why, then, did I give the tiniest, weeniest damn what Toby Young had to say about I, Daniel Blake in his review for that ghastly rag?  I've read and heard plenty of positive, promising reviews and it's not as if the Daily Heil was ever likely to do anything other than a hatchet job on it.  Indeed, Young went out of his way to slate the film and - the bastard! - put in a load spoilers without any prior warning too.  Why would he worry about that, though?  His readership won't go to see it anyway; they'll draw their conclusions about it from his own wise words and insightful analysis (clears throat ironically...).

I'll pick the bones out of Young's critique shortly but I should start by confessing that I haven't actually seen I, Daniel Blake yet.  It isn't showing here in Stoke during its opening week which is odd, when we probably have a disproportionately high number of 'Daniels' here and a growing number of displaced 'Katies' too.  I'm sure one of the multiplexes will squeeze it onto one of its smaller-than-your-own-TV screens in due course.  The excellent Stoke Film Theatre at the University has it later in November, probably just before it's out on DVD or on Film 4.  In the meanwhile, I wait in anticipation (and with almost unrealistically high expectations) to see it.  Welfare Rights Lit - the Movie.  Go, Ken Loach!

But back to Toby Young and the Daily Mail.  Apparently, Daniel Blake isn't a 'real' benefit claimant because we don't see him 'drinking, smoking, gambling or even watching television'.  In short, he's too 'good', too far removed from the Benefits Street stereotype, to be credible.  Young also can't believe that someone recovering from a major heart attack could be found 'fit for work' (happens all the time, dude) and he doesn't believe Blake can't immediately appeal when he gets the decision (he can't - see below).

I'm guessing it may be some tome since Toby Young was last employed assisting clients with ESA appeals (me too, actually, thanks to the removal of Legal Aid funding for us pesky do-gooders), but there really are a great many paragons of hard work and respectability who fall ill and are, quite wrongly, found 'fit for work'.  Some of them don't drink, smoke, gamble or even watch much TV.  Some of them have hobbies like carpentry, tend nice gardens, help their neighbours, volunteer for their communities and dress smartly for their tribunals.  They maintain the standards we are encouraged to believe only 'hard-working people' care about.  I even met one chap on incapacity benefit who spent the years of his enforced early retirement building a fantastic model railway while campaigning tirelessly, and ultimately successfully, for better full-sized rail services for his community.  To nick a classic line; 'Reader, I married him'!

Some people wrongly denied their benefits are Daily Mail readers.  Yes, even they could be Daniel Blake!  When I was doing regular appeal casework, I was always being told ''They're right to clamp down on all those shirkers, but I've worked all my life and I'm genuinely ill!'.  They had seen and believed the 'Saints and Scroungers' and 'On the Fiddle' programmes about benefit claimants swindling their way to a life of luxury because the system was too soft, so how the hell could this be happening to them?

How indeed?  (Clue - it isn't the fault of immigrants either...)

Confidentiality rules prevent me sharing too many details of my Daniel (or Daniella) Blakes' health problems but they included people trying to recover from heart attacks and strokes, serious brain injuries, complex fractures to their limbs, progressive conditions such as MS, as well as profound mental ill health.  I assume that Mr Young's knowledge of the ESA system is so good that he's already aware that you can have completely lost the use of your dominant arm and hand - or even actually have lost the arm and hand entirely - and still not have 'limited capability for work'?  'Common sense' - that precious commodity of which the Right believe they have a monopoly - may tell you a person is not fit for work and never in a hundred years is going to be offered a job, but the Work Capability Assessment's points system, devised by Civil Servants with secure, steady, office-bound lives, tested by an ill-trained, hasty or bigoted 'health care professional' and considered by an over-worked, under-trained Decision Maker, insists they are.  Time and again, the DWP fails to properly consider the 'exceptional circumstances' route to entitlement - Regulations 29 and 35 to those in the know.  Both medical assessors and Decision Makers frequently overlook their power to declare that a claimants health at serious risk if not found to have 'limited capability for work' if they slip through the awkward gaps in the points system, Daniel Blake style.  Real people have died as a result and DWP internal enquiries flagged this as an urgent training need, and yet it is still happening.

Of course the hundreds of Daniel Blakes I've encountered in my years as a benefits adviser haven't all been likeable, upright characters.  They've included addicts and thieves, child abusers, wife-beaters and neo-Nazis but, however unsavory their past or present, if they had been wrongly assessed as 'fit for work' when proper analysis of the facts and application of law said they were not, I would advise and represent them accordingly.  Justice and the means to live are not, at least in a civilised society, the sole preserve of 'nice' people. Sadly, after years of claimant-bashing TV, it's difficult to imagine a cinema audience taking too complex a character to their heart so, if Daniel Blake does prove on viewing to be a little too saintly to be 'typical', I can understand why the film-makers might have erred on the side of niceness.  When I wrote Severe Discomfort I tried to make Lyn and Terry Walker, my central claimant couple, slightly flawed yet still sympathetic.  Anyone who reaches the end of that book and isn't rooting for them has failed my Empathy Capability Assessment.  While most reviews suggest it worked, others felt their negative views on claimants vindicated by the characters' shortcomings.

I'm bracing myself for some necessary over-simplification of the benefit regulations in I, Daniel Blake, something you can avoid with 500 pages of a novel to play with, though too much legal corner-cutting leaves a get-out for defenders of the current system - that the film is inaccurate so can be disregarded.  Unsurprisingly, this is part of Young's attack.  He is critical that the film suggests say Blake cannot appeal his 'fit for work' decision without first getting a call from the DWP decision maker and says this is false.  It is, but not in the way Young wants us to believe.  The reality, since October 2013, is actually worse than this.  Prior to appealing to an independent tribunal, a claimant has to request that the DWP 'reconsider' their decision.  Only when the 'mandatory reconsideration' has taken place, perhaps weeks or months later, and the claimant has written notice of the outcome from the decision maker, not just a phone call, can s/he lodge an appeal with the Tribunals Service and, with a 'sick note', go back on ESA at the basic assessment rate.  ESA claimants found 'fit for work' can only 'sign on' for JSA during the reconsideration, unless signed off by their GP with a completely new medical condition or by providing medical evidence that their existing condition has significantly deteriorated.  As DWP cut-backs remove skilled staff, 'reconsideration' is becoming little more than a rubber-stamping exercise or worse, a delaying or deflecting tactic.  See this blog for an in-depth critique of the process.

It's also troubling me that the movie might lay the blame for all this misery at IDS and the Tories' door, when ESA was actually a New Labour creation.  Even the stricter descriptors and 'migration' of Incapacity Benefit claimants to ESA which started in 2011 was signed off when Yvette Cooper was still Secretary of State at the DWP.  When, in 2015, Rachel Reeves said Labour wasn't the party of 'people on benefits', she wasn't kidding.  They hadn't been for years.  Ironically, then, Toby Young is cheering for measures to supposedly put the 'workshy' back to work which were none of his party's doing. 

Young is quick to point out that cuts to 'welfare' are popular and mocks the film for suggesting communities might co-operate to support claimants.  Paradoxically, both are true.  I've advised in Foodbanks and met helpers who are fully behind both austerity and benefit cuts, in principle, but appalled by what they add up to in practice.  Even people who get riled up by stories about benefit cheats will willingly rally round friends and neighbours who fall victim to those cuts, just as someone might express strongly prejudicial and negative views about 'immigrants' and yet get on perfectly well with a Polish work colleague or have the greatest respect for their Syrian cardiologist.  When the abstract 'them' becomes someone you know, everything can change - but only if people appreciate that their mate isn't the exception but the rule.

Or, to put it another way, that #WeAreAllDanielBlake.

Friday 29 July 2016

Fifth Friday (and Saturday, and Sunday...)

This is one of those rare weekends when, even if you aren't sure Welfare Rights Lit is your thing, you can stockpile the entire Social Insecurity series on your Kindle for nothing, just in case it is.


Severe Discomfort, in which you're introduced to Lyn and Terry Walker - who are neither heroes, nor anti-heroes, merely disabled people getting on with their lives until someone decides they're benefit cheats - is free today (29th July), along with the sequel/second half of the story, Continual Supervision.  If you enjoy these, or if you have genuine, constructive criticism you would like to share, please, please do a review - either on Amazon or Goodreads.  You might also like to track down the Solent Welfare Rights Project on Facebook and say 'hello' to the (entirely fictional) team. 


Do tell your friends about the books, so they can download them free too - next on 5th August for SD and 12th for CS.  You could even suggest your MP reads them!
You can catch up with the Walker family and their advisers a couple of years on in Limited Capability - a sometimes grim but ultimately uplifting tale of Employment and Support Allowance assessments - with all three episodes free on Saturday, and individually on consecutive Saturdays throughout August.


The last in the series, Claimant Commitment, in which the characters find themselves in the Coalition-era of sanctions and the Bedroom Tax, is free on Sunday, and in individual instalments on successive Sundays throughout the month, except for Part 2 which I can't programme free that day as it starts a new Kindle Direct term that day, so that one will be free on Saturday instead this time!
Grand Union, the 4mph thriller, isn't free, as the (real) benefits team need biscuits more than ever right now as we go onto short-time working and await the outcome of another funding bid.  Depending on the weather, I may get a lot of gardening done in the next few months, or a lot of writing, or a little of each.  Either way, a new Daphne Randall adventure is well on its way.

Thursday 28 July 2016

Benefits, Books and Brexit

Waking up to a changed world...?
I realised a couple of days ago that it's over a month since my last blog post. It's not that I have writers' block or nothing to say.  On the contrary, there is as much to talk about as ever, whether it's the apparently increasingly unstable and disquieting state of the world or, more happily, the progress of my latest Daphne Randall adventure (working title now Daphne of the Four Counties).  The problem is more that things have been moving so quickly that, no sooner have I started to collect my thoughts into a post, than events seem to have overtaken them. 

The Brexit vote was certainly a shock and not the result I had hoped for.  Whatever the flaws of the EU, the principle of European unity and co-operation is something I have long held dear.  That the Leave campaign succeeded on the back of a staggering weight of untruths is, perhaps, every bit as depressing as the actual result.  'Post truth politics' is, apparently, this season's look.


We'd voted postally several days before and cleared off for a week afloat, mooring at the glorious Bugsworth Basin on the Upper Peak Forest Canal on the day of the Referendum.  After a busy day cleaning and painting our boat we had an evening stroll around the basin, listened to the Radio 4 ten o'clock night-time news, including a report that Nigel Farage had conceded that the Remain camp had probably managed a narrow victory, and settled down contentedly to sleep.  Early the next morning, I put the radio on again, to news was of crashing stock markets.  A crowing Nigel Farage declared it 'Independence Day' but appeared to have not a clue what to do next.  Tim Farron of the LibDems decided it was somehow all Jeremy Corbyn's fault.  Before breakfast, the Prime Minister had signaled his resignation.


In the run-up to the vote, and since, I started to pay more attention to these little blue plaques...

With UK politics still running in Game of Thrones mode, this one seemed a good example to share although I could have used the one from Bugsworth Basin, or one of several scattered along the Ironbridge Gorge or even the one in the Citizens Advice Bureau building where I work.  I'm sure the Brexiteers will be quick to point out that if we aren't paying in to the EU, we'll have more of our own money to spend on projects of this kind.  Really?  They've already admitted there won't actually be £350 million extra per week for the NHS, so where exactly are the funds going to come from now for regional cultural development?

Perhaps I should ask the new Culture Secretary?  After all, she is the MP for our neighbouring Staffordshire Moorlands constituency! 


Sunday 19 June 2016

For the 'Do-gooders'

I would have been fifteen when I made up my mind that capital punishment was a 'bad thing'.  It happened quite suddenly at the end of a house assembly at secondary school, in which a fellow pupil and I had been chosen to debate the whether it was right or wrong.  I had never really given the subject much thought although both of my parents thought it should never have been abolished - which it finally had, about ten years earlier.


I let my opposite number pick her side first - she picked 'against' so I got 'for' by default.  Our house-master, who I will call 'Mr Curry', although that wasn't his name, primed us both with arguments and evidence to support our cases.  From the start, I felt that he gave my opponent more and better ammunition, including details of the Derek Bentley case.  I started to wonder if I had ended up on the wrong side.

On assembly day morning, my classmate and I delivered our little speeches to the bored hordes of our house with all the awkwardness self-consciousness you might expect from a couple of fifteen-year-old girls and absolutely no rhetorical skill whatsoever.  Mr Curry thanked us both and sent us back to our seats where I waited to hear him give a better explanation of why capital punishment was wrong.

He didn't.  Instead, quite unexpectedly, he launched into an emotive argument about why it was right and just, focusing on how he would feel if anyone killed someone close to him, especially his own young children, and how he would want that person dead.  I waited for him to qualify that with an observation that law shouldn't be made on the basis of raw gut instinct, except he seemed very much of the opinion that it should.  There was no attempt to present a properly balanced, reasoned argument; no comparison of murder or violent crime rates in countries with or without.  There wasn't even a feeble, faith-based 'Eye for an Eye' attempt to do so.  It was an ugly appeal to embrace revenge.  Coming from a teacher, it seemed completely wrong and shocking.  I expected adults in positions of responsibility to present logical arguments supported by solid facts or moral ones exhorting us to be better humans.  Naively, perhaps, I still do. 

Back in the 1970s, our politicians were passing anti-discrimination and equality laws which put them well ahead of public opinion, just as their predecessors had been when they abolished Capital Punishment - and corporal punishment in our schools - despite being derided as 'do-gooders'.  Fortunately for many innocent people wrongly convicted since, and many guilty ones willing and able to rehabilitate, MPs in the 1960s didn't wait on the whims of focus groups.  They argued and legislated out of conviction.  MPs still do, of course; the introduction of Civil Partnerships and, more recently Equal Marriage, being cases in point.  However, there are also times when principles are sacrificed to perceived political expediency; the Labour Party I joined in 1987 jettisoned so many that, even before the Iraq War, I had left it.

As campaigning in the EU referendum restarts after the respectful pause to remember murdered MP Jo Cox, I can't help but be reminded of that 1970s morning assembly.  Too much of the campaign has looked and sounded like Mr Curry's ranting.  With staggering hypocrisy, the usual suspects in the right-wing press filled their front pages with tributes to Jo Cox, nudging their anti-immigrant stories to the inside pages and muzzling Katie Hopkins and Richard Littlejohn for a moment, lest one of their bile-filled rants against 'lefty do-gooders' spoil the mood.  They will have every intention of resuming normal service as soon as possible but, perhaps as a tribute to Jo Cox, perhaps for the victims of the Orlando shootings, or simply to show that we are better than our capacity to hate, we must tell them we want better.  If you see hate speech against anyone lurking in the comments column of your local paper, on social media, in your workplace or down the pub, don't collude with it, call it out.  Support your local 'do-gooders' - better still, be one.

Monday 6 June 2016

A watched pot never boils...

Biscuits are back on the menu!
I've posted previously about both my ineptitude at marketing and my general awkwardness when it comes to self-promotion, so I should probably celebrate the fact that I seem to sell or give away more books when I don't try to promote them that when I do.  I seem almost to have a knack for 'anti-marketing'.  Events this weekend have made the point rather dramatically.


I've been away from home and regular Internet access for a few days which, as luck would have it, coincided with the 'first Friday' (and Saturday and Sunday) when the first episodes of the 'welfare rights lit' stories are free to download, and also with a 'Grand Union' giveaway to coincide with the Etruria Boat Festival.  I managed a few tweets from work lunchtime Friday that 'Severe Discomfort' was free and a couple of friends kindly shared the usual Facebook/Amazon link but, otherwise, marketing was even less organised than usual.  So you can probably imagine my surprise, when checking sales figures on my return home, to find that on Saturday - the day after a 'Severe Discomfort' freebie day which shifted only single figures - more than thirty people decided to actually buy the book.  Hardly a level of sales to make the best-sellers lists but, for a three-year-old self-published novel in an obscure genre that can go weeks without a single paid download, that's both quite encouraging and completely inexplicable.  I hadn't even linked my tweets from the day before to topical hashtags so, even if #universalbasicincome or #don'tbelievetheDailyMail were trending, it wouldn't have helped.


I had a Google about to see if there had been some unexpected kindly review or reference, or even a slating from the Daily Mail Book Club (a truly terrifying concept in itself), but I've seen nothing to explain this little flurry of sales.  I can only hope that some of them turn into reviews and recommendations.  At least Stoke-on-Trent CAB's beleaguered staff can look forward to biscuits for what remains of my current contract, after a few months of relative drought.  Since that's possibly as close as six weeks away, success as a writer would be both welcome and well-timed, though I'm not relying on this trend to continue or planning to give up the day job - not if the Big Lottery gives us a reprieve, at any rate.


While not remaining at such dizzy heights, sales of 'Severe Discomfort' are now at 45 for the month, about 44 more than average, after just six days.  Quick readers amongst them can grab 'Continual Supervision' free of charge this Friday.  I should probably be generous and tweet this fact widely, even if it has a detrimental effect on the 'Beverage Fund'.  Either way, I shall be shopping for treats for my colleagues tomorrow!

Wednesday 25 May 2016

I, Lyn Walker...?

It's hard to describe just how excited I am that a film about a bloke wrongly found fit for work and struggling with the bureaucratic demands of the DWP has won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year.  Ken Loach kicking the arse - and conscience - of the Establishment, 50 years on from Cathy Come Home, really couldn't come soon enough.  I could be be sulky and say that there's probably nothing in "I, Daniel Blake" that I haven't been writing about for almost five years, but that's to miss the point.  Without a massive lucky break, as an unknown writer I was never going to do much more than preach to the converted and make a few people stop and think - Ken Loach's movie might just convert mass public opinion and change Government policy.


If it doesn't, things will continue to get harder for benefit claimants.  As if the current sanctions regime isn't cruel enough, under Universal Credit sanctions can become twice as punishing, with 'hardship payments' now loans and recoverable at the same rapid pace from regular monthly payments as overpayments due to fraud.  'In-work conditionality' extends the relentless pressure to search for work on pain of sanctions to our lowest- paid, part-time workers, recently cynically repackaged as an inducement to help them 'progress' in their careers.  The lower 'Benefit Cap' will mean that most jobless families with three or more children will receive too little housing benefit to cover their rent, even in areas where housing costs are cheapest.  And benefits for disabled people continue to be cut too, both by changes to the law and through what sometimes appear to be deliberately vindictive medical assessments.


Worst of all, the DWP management appears to learn nothing from human tragedies.  Having spent much of last week looking through the heavily redacted internal enquiries prompted by benefit change-related deaths, I didn't expect to find identical mistakes still being made in a recent set of appeal papers - but they are.  Decision-makers are still overlooking basic legislation, failing to consider medical evidence from previous claims, failing to request additional medical evidence where contractors' assessments are inadequate or contradictory.  It is only a matter of time before this claims more vulnerable victims.


I would love to leave my fictional characters where I left them at the end of 'Claimant Commitment' and concentrate on narrowboat thrillers for a while, and I shall, for now.  But, if they were real claimants, at some point quite soon they would have to grapple with PIP, Universal Credit and further WCAs, with a new contractor using the same staff and software as Atos. 


Perhaps someone could persuade Ken Loach to put his retirement plans on hold so we can make a mini-series?


Severe Discomfort is currently free to download for Kindle on the first and fifth Friday of every month and the rest of the 'Social Insecurity' series to a regular timetable.

Saturday 21 May 2016

Amicus Curiae (or 'Would the real Tom Appleby please stand up?')

I unexpectedly found myself wearing my 'tribunal suit' yesterday, appropriately (if accidentally) accessorised with a ladder up the left leg of my tights in proper Sally Archer style.  I don't rep for the CAB in my current role and it must be at least five years since I was last at our local venue; I was stepping into the breach as a favour for another organisation and, to be totally honest, grabbing an opportunity to see a PIP appeal in action. Confidentiality demands that I share no more details and anyway, I don't know the result, though I'm cautiously optimistic.

I had wondered whether there might be a Presenting Officer in attendance, since the rep who had asked me to help out with this case had encountered one at another recent PIP appeal.  This was unusual as POs tend only to appear for especially contentious cases, although there was a recent DWP announcement of  extra funding to provide them specifically for PIP appeals.  Understandably, reaction from the broader welfare rights lobby was hostile - this article from the excellent Dr Frances Ryan encapsulating the general sense of unfairness.

I'm inclined to share this concern although, if these new Presenting Officers adopted the ethos once prevalent in the role, they could be more of a help than a hindrance to unrepresented appellants, denied properly-trained advocates by cuts to Legal Aid and advice service budgets.  Although it suits my stories to (minor spoiler) cast PO Tom Appleby as one of the DWP 'good guys' it involved no great leap of the imagination for me to do so.  When I first started representing at appeals in the later 1980s, POs weren't simply the DWP's man (or woman) at the table.  Their role was to be a 'friend of the Tribunal' and they could - and often did - speak up for the appellant's case.


In response to a comment I made on Dr Ryan's article that POs could be a force for good but I feared the new intake might be cut from rather different cloth than their predecessors, I was pleased to see the following:


"I was a PO in the 80s and my training stressed that the role was one of amicus curiae. I would review the papers for every case and if I was confident the law had been applied incorrectly to the facts I would tell the tribunal so, referring them to the appropriate law, including case law if necessary. If there was time I would speak to the original decision maker and ask them to revise their decision to save time. That's what POs were supposed to do. I'd probably be sacked for it these days."


The writer's nom de plume xck33l gives no clue as to his/her home town or gender but I couldn't help imagining that it might be a softly-spoken Yorkshireman.  Or, alternatively, a well-spoken protocol droid.


If the new breed of POs are to bring consistency and fairness to PIP hearings, it is vital that they be allowed to exercise the freedom and integrity of the old guard of POs and not be fettered by targets for tribunal 'wins'.  On those terms, it would actually be rather a good job for some of the many benefits specialists thrown out of work by the loss of Legal Aid - as long as they could stay one step ahead of the Social Justice Ambassadors, of course! 





Friday 8 April 2016

Flower Power?

I'd love to be more like my 'strong female characters'; full of confidence and never afraid to face up to a challenge.  Unfortunately, I'm not really like that at all, especially when it comes to competitions.

Take the next 6x6 Reading Cafe, for instance.  Entries are now invited for the summer event on the theme of 'Blossomings'. Anyone who knows me or follows this blog would be forgiven for thinking that, for someone with my background, this should be the short-story scribbler's equivalent of a well-attended home fixture against already relegated opposition with no travelling support.  When I'm not doing the current day job (or the half of it I'm currently sharing with a colleague, while we wait to see what becomes of a vital funding bid) I'm not just a writer of 'welfare rights lit' and 4mph thrillers - I'm a gardener too!  So a six minute shortie with a hint of the horticultural would be right up my street - or garden path.

But it ain't so. I do have the germ of an idea for a story where plants play a part (and no, it doesn't start with a guy waking up in hospital with bandaged eyes, concerned that a day he knows is Wednesday sounds like a Sunday) but it needs more than six minutes to tell it well, has the potential to be a plot twist in a Daphne Randall mystery and doesn't really fit the 'Blossomings' brief.

Of course, to a truly creative writer, the 'blossoming' concept may have no floral connotations at all.  There are various episodes in the 'welfare rights lit' stories where characters might be said to 'blossom', both in their personal and professional lives.  I could, perhaps, try to rewrite one of Sally Archer's key Social Security tribunals, neither of which currently happens from her perspective nor is a major spoiler for the rest of the Severe Discomfort/Continual Supervision story.  It's an appealing prospect.  I like writing Sally - a much younger, even geekier, slightly taller and funnier version of me who, being a Hampshire lass, speaks like me too.  No more trying to inject a hint of Geordie into the reported speech, the inevitable pitfall last time around of picking a Daphne episode! 

On the other hand, there's something slightly lazy about sticking with tried and tested characters when the opportunity is there to find a new voice or experiment with an unfamiliar genre.  I have until 30th April to get my act together, so there is time yet for inspiration to strike, especially with most of my seed potatoes still to plant.

If I do get an idea, it will have to be an exceptionally good one and will need executing to a very high standard to earn a place.  I was proud to be selected to take part in the spring event and delighted that the slimmed-down version of Pots and Locks was so well-received by an audience which included some extremely accomplished local writers.  It was also a confidence-booster after my unsuccessful efforts for the S-o-T Literary Festival competition, which is coming up soon - might it be third time lucky?  Do I care enough to find out when they put Kirsty Allsop above Professor Mary Beard in the billing?  We'll have to see...

I haven't yet been brave enough to join the Wednesday evening gathering of the Renegade Writers, despite loving the group's name and feeling flattered at the invitation, though I should, both to listen to other writers and, in due course, get encouragement to raise my own game.

Maybe once the taters are all in...

.

Saturday 2 April 2016

Nobody likes a Show-off!

Last week's Special Offer!
Probably for spring-cleaning the warehouse reasons, last week Amazon briefly discounted Grand Union to the point where it would have been cheaper for me to order from them rather than direct from my printers/publishers.  Being a stubborn old lefty, I still didn't and, while I usually direct people to Amazon only for the free Kindle downloads and encourage them to buy paperbacks from real, tax-paying bookshops, I shared the link for this offer as widely as I dared, partly in the hope that a flurry of simultaneous purchases would plunge the notorious tax-dodgers into financial ruin and partly to bolster the Stoke CAB biscuit fund.

Neither happened, not least because I was still rather timid with my marketing, even with the new medium of Twitter to experiment with (#stillnotreallygotaclue).  I know it's silly but I have never been able to shake the feeling that there is something slightly vulgar about plugging your own books.  Of course that's a ridiculous position to take when you're self-published as no-one else is going to do it for you, except a few very good friends - and thanks as ever to all who have shared links and publicly reviewed my endeavours. 

Although I've recently had a couple of opportunities to read extracts of my work - including this one at a local International Women's Day event - I'm still no better at doing a book plug than I was a couple of years ago, when a friend actually shouted "plug your book!" at me as I sat on the panel of a People's Assembly debate on benefit cuts.  I did, a bit, but felt bad about it as I was only there as a late sub for our local CAB Chief Exec.  Similarly, I brought some spare Grand Union copies with me to IWD but was too shy to get them out of the bag and wave them under people's noses.  Despite a major purpose of writing at all being to change people's minds about benefit cuts, it still feels cheap to spot a Twitter trend on the subject and 'hashtag' a link to a blog post or one of the books.  I suspect my childhood as a tall, clumsy girl and a bit of a clever-clogs, simultaneously encouraged to do well but reminded not to be a 'show-off', accounts for at least some of this reticence.

I'm sure I'm not alone.  A local author I'm privileged to know has been asked by his publisher to host an on-line launch party for his latest collection of dark fiction short stories and his latest blog on the subject betrays a hint of reluctance.  Dan writes for a living - it is his proper job, rather than a form of non-violent, biscuit-generating revolution - and he's steadily building himself a sound reputation on both the printed page and the stage.  He promotes his work honestly, modestly and directly, with generous and courteous words for everyone who supports and encourages him and, because of this, I'll happily spread the word about his writing despite the fact that I'm generally too much of a wuss to read many of his stories myself!


By contrast, the way some people market their work makes my skin crawl.  It puts me off even picking their book up for a quick browse while I'm sheltering from the lunchtime rain in Waterstone's or queuing at the till in Sainsbury's, let alone actually buying the damned thing. Taking a recent high-profile example, and setting aside the details of the case, who could fail to be utterly repulsed by ex MP Harvey Proctor's shameless plugging of his released-that-very-day book during interviews on Channel 4 News and Newsnight, concerning the 'Operation Midland' investigations into alleged child sex abuse in the highest echelons of the Establishment?  Even if the guy is completely guiltless and has suffered greatly from having such heinous crimes ascribed to him, in which case he would be deserving of pity and compassion despite being a Tory, the manner in which he attempted to flog the book on air was tawdry in the extreme. 

It happens time and again, though: someone gets onto The Today Programme or similar in their capacity as an alleged authority on a topical issue and, before you know it, there's a shameless, unsolicited plug for their latest book thrown into the debate.  I'd be inclined to forgive a relative unknown snatching at their one chance but the majority are already well-connected enough to have access the broadsheets' literary reviews and magazines, or Radio 4's own book review shows, without displacing a less mercenary 'expert' from the news programme. 

Another regular trick I'm tired of is manufactured controversy.  I was reminded of how this is done when Facebook decided to pitch Maestra by LS Hilton at me a couple of days ago and I remembered seeing this article by the author, which illustrates my point perfectly.  Supposedly grumbling about British reviewers' and readers' prurience about female sexual desire and insisting it's time to be 'grown up' about it when it appears in books, her article was clearly framed to draw attention to the fact that there is explicit sex in her book and drops frequent teasing hints about it.  Serious discussion on modern feminism or poorly disguised clickbait article plugging the book to Fifty Shades fans?  You decide; I wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole!  Which reminds me, I have a narrowboating thriller sequel to write. 


Friday 18 March 2016

The Domino Effect

Most of my 'welfare rights lit' characters are having a well-earned break while I plot and draft another '4mph thriller' for Daphne.  Readers might otherwise think it too far fetched that the same disabled couple - namely Lyn and Terry Walker, first met in 'Severe Discomfort' - keep getting hassled and reassessed; that no sooner have they sorted out one benefit appeal, than there's some new problem.

Except, of course, that is what it's like.  Take the proposed changes to the PIP assessment announced just before the budget.  You might wonder how changing the score for a couple of descriptors from 2 points to 1 could possibly impact over 600,000 disabled people and cut the PIP budget by a predicted £4 billion.

Here's one scenario:

Barry lives alone and no-one claims Carer's Allowance for looking after him, although his grown-up children take it in turns to take him shopping, do his housework and check on him.  He gets PIP at the standard rate for daily living of about £55 per week.  He scored 8 points because he needs an aid or appliance to safely and reliably prepare a meal, wash or bathe, dress/undress and use the WC. Although his gadgets weren't expensive, his PIP money helps him keep his house warm and pay 'petrol money' to his carers.

Getting PIP for daily living bumps up Barry's other benefit entitlement.  In addition to his ESA (Employment and Support Allowance), paid at the 'support' rate of about £108 per week, he gets an 'enhanced' disability premium of £15 and a 'severe disability premium' of about £62 per week.  Altogether, he's on around £240 per week.

If we reassess Barry under the planned new rules, he gets only 6 points, no PIP and no 'severe disability premium' - a cut of £117 per week, or about half of his income.

And it's not only disabled people who stand to lose.  Carers are also at risk.  Belatedly, the Government have agreed to exempt carers from the 'Benefit Cap'.  So here's Stella, a widow with four children who has been caring for her disabled sister Juno, many of whose supervision needs aren't addressed through PIP.  Because Stella spends over 35 hours a week doing so, she gets Carers Allowance and Income Support - worth about £106 per week, Child Tax Credit for the children and full Housing Benefit.

In the autumn, the Benefit Cap falls to £385 per family outside London and, if it wasn't for her carers' exemption, Stella's Housing Benefit would be cut to only £20 per week.  Stella isn't Juno 'carer' for DWP purposes if Juno doesn't get PIP, but Juno too could see her points dip below 8.  Depending on the age of her children, Stella might have to claim Jobseekers Allowance instead of IS and be full available for work, despite her caring responsibilities.  JSA is £73 per week - a cut of about £30 per week - but Stella's family would also be affected by the 'Benefit Cap' if she ceased to be a 'carer'; depending on the level of her rent, this could cost them well in excess of £100 per week.

As for our Lyn Walker, she has a dilemma.  If, like many people, she's still on DLA and waiting to be 'invited' to claim PIP, her current care needs should get her 8 'daily living' points, maybe more.  However, she would score two less if the current proposals went through.  Should she report a change of circumstances for an early assessment under the 'old' rules, or hold her fire?  If we look at all the implications of that, not only will there be spoilers for anyone not familiar with the 'Social Insecurity' series so far, I could be giving away the plot of the next 'welfare rights lit' book, though I'm already not short of material for other scenarios if Gideon and IDS are thinking of backing down. 

Severe Discomfort, the first book in the series, is usually free to download on the first and fifth Friday of every month - plus tomorrow (19th March 2016) - find the link here.  If you've already read and enjoyed it, or have helpful, constructive criticism, please leave a review!

Friday 4 March 2016

The 'March for the Alternative' alternative story.


This is the other possible for tomorrow's International Women's Day event, staring a couple of the 'bit part' characters.  It's an edit and slight rework of the first part of this short story

Jenny Morris woke up when the coach came to a halt.  She had been out seriously late last night.
‘You so don’t want to bother with that stupid Union thing tomorrow!’ Sita Rai had grumbled, as they had staggered back to her flat after Jen’s hen night. 
But Jenny did want to bother, at least for a little while. 
After that, they could go off and buy shoes.
She had joined the union a year ago, shortly before Andy Burrows, a skinny bloke about 7 feet tall, had taken over as Branch Secretary.  He didn’t dawdle about reading through wads of ‘Minutes’ at the start, or get hung up about whether something was a resolution for voting on or just a comment for discussion.  That stuff did Jenny’s head in.  Instead, Andy organised speakers, including a man from the Solent Welfare Rights Project who had talked about how benefit cuts hit vulnerable people, which had made Jen think hard about the work she did.
Andy came through the coach, handing out information sheets about the route of the march, where the coach would pick them up, what time they had to be back to it, and what to do if they got arrested.
The last part had freaked Sita out completely, until Jen reminded her that they were actually going shopping in Oxford Street. 
Jen watched as lanky Andy made his way to the front of the coach.  He took up the microphone. 
‘We’ll all stick together,’ he said.  ‘But if you take a flag each it’ll be easier for me and the other stewards to spot you all.’ 
Jen almost expected him to organise them into pairs and make them hold hands.  As she got off of the coach, Andy passed her a bright yellow flag with the Union’s logo in the middle. 
Sita didn’t take one.  
‘It’ll get in the way going round the shops,’ she said to Jen, once they were out of Andy’s hearing.  ‘And you’ll have to bin yours before we get to Selfridges or they’ll think we’re going to break their windows or whatever.’ 
At the Tube station, the lady waved them through the barrier without any tickets.  When the train ran in, it was already packed with people bearing banners and flags. 
The ticket guy waved them all through at the other end. 
‘Excellent!’ said Sita.  ‘We can use the money for a latte and a blueberry muffin in Starbucks!’
Jen wasn’t really listening because, now they were right out of the station and onto Waterloo Bridge, she could see the huge crowds gathering along the Embankment.  Their group were following a mass of people with blue flags and among those was a massive inflatable bubble with something inside that looked like a big grey fish. 
‘Oh.  My.  God!’ said Sita.
‘That’s us!’ shouted Andy, pointing across the river to a sea of yellow PCS flags and a big yellow balloon.  Jen wasn’t the only one struggling to keep up with his long strides although, once they got among the other demonstrators, Andy had to slow right down.
Jenny looked at the people around them.  She had expected most of them to be students and young activists but there were loads of people as old as her mum, or even older.  Some had lollipop-shaped placards with a row of little stick people and the words ‘Coalition of Resistance’ on them; others had anti-cuts slogans and ‘Socialist Worker’ or ‘Socialist Party’ on, but most people carried Union flags or banners and they were from all sorts of different professions.  The blue flag people turned out to be teachers and the thing Jen had mistaken for a fish was a gigantic inflatable pair of scissors representing education cuts. 
‘Oh my God, Jen!’ Sita suddenly grasped her arm.  ‘Don’t look at them, not so it’s obvious, but there are some of those anarchists over there!  We should go now, before it all kicks off!’
Jenny stole a cautious glance in the direction Sita had indicated. 
‘You are well stupid,’ she said.  ‘Just coz they’re wearing black!  They’re junior doctors dressed as undertakers because the A&E at their hospital is going to be closed.’
‘That’s well bad.’  For a moment, Sita actually sounded as if she cared. ‘But there are still loads of people here, Jen.  Andy won’t notice if we go shopping.’
‘Not yet,’ Jenny said.  She had never been on a demonstration before and thought it might be cool to walk a little bit of the way with the others, at least as far as Big Ben.  She just wished people would stop waving all these bits of paper at her with political stuff on. 
‘Aren’t some of these old banners nice?’ she said to Sita.  ‘There’s one with a lovely painting of a cruise liner on it.  My granddad used to go to sea.’ 
‘What’s that one with the flames on?’ Sita asked, as they came round past the Houses of Parliament.
Jenny couldn’t see which one she meant, for all the people packed around her.
‘It’s the Fire Brigades Union,’ explained Andy, who had come back through his group to hand out little cartons of fruit juice, as if they were on a school trip.
‘No way!’ Sita gasped.  ‘God, Jen!  You didn’t tell me there would be firemen on this march!  I might be staying now!’ 

Strong Female Characters


I have a six-minute slot for a 'lightning talk' at this weekend's International Women's Day Festival in Hanley, and am torn between a shortened extract from an earlier tale and this snippet, in which we eavesdrop on some of my favourite imaginary friends discussing 'strong female characters'. Between novels, I tend to let my characters adjourn to an imaginary pub but it’s rather early in the day for that, so you might like to picture them in a cafĂ© setting instead...

  ‘It’s really rather inspirational to be surrounded by so many strong female characters,’ declared Hilary Carrington proudly, surveying the unlikely sisterhood gathering around her. ‘We’ve known each other for almost four and a half years – counting from when our author started writing us.'
  'In real time it's well over forty,' said Lyn Walker, propping her crutches against a spare chair and easing herself slowly into her seat. 

  'Is it as long as that?' Hilary's tone suggested she wished to believe not. 
  'Oh yes, luvvie,' Lyn confirmed cheerfully. 'Me and Terry were going steady during that really hot summer and you and I started at the same school long before that!'
  'And it's over thirty years since we left University,' Daphne Randall reminded her, with a shocking lack of sisterly solidarity, pulling off her knitted hat to reveal a neat bob of purple hair. ‘But we're hardly your typical strong female characters, are we?'
  'Not in the killing aliens with flame-throwers sense,' noted Sally Archer, shooting a long arm right across the table for the teapot and knocking over the dainty vase of daffodils. Lyn stood it back up and mopped the table with a paper tissue, as she might after one of her grandchildren.
  'I fancy you'd be the one to do that, if you didn't set the whole spaceship ablaze in the process!' laughed Daphne. 'But what I'm on about is how strong female character usually just means one who starts the story hating some bloke's guts and spends the rest of it falling in love with him!’ 
  ‘Whereas you would never do anything like that!' Hilary raised her elegantly arched eyebrows.
  Daphne shrugged. 'At least little our little chats always pass the Bechdel Test.'
  'What's that?' asked Sally. 'Is it like a Turing Test for characters, to see if readers see us as real people?'
  'It's a feminist way to assess films,' Hilary explained. 'To pass, there must be a scene where two named female characters have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Alien is often cited as an example, as Ripley and the other woman...
  'Lambert...' said Sally. 'She was the navigator.'
  'Indeed,' replied Hilary, who hadn't actually dared watch it since cowering with her college friends in a long-demolished cinema. 'And they talk to each other about the alien.'
  'The alien's a male, though. Like a drone insect. There are queen aliens in the later films, and...'
  'It still counts,' Daphne interrupted. 'He’s a monster, not a fella. And the Bechdel test remains relevant. Think about all the female characters who still don't get lines and don't get names, they just get...'
  'I know,' said Sally. 'Whereas with you and Hilary, if there is any sex, it's because you started it!'
  'You can talk, pet!' 
  'Absolutely!' Hilary agreed. 'Which reminds me, what happened on Monday?'
  Sally grinned and turned pink. 'He said "yes!"'
  'Oh how lovely!' Hilary threw her arms around Sally's broad shoulders.
  'Bechdel Test failure alert!' sighed Daphne.
  'I'm still not clear how it works,' said Sally. 'You and Hilary are always talking about men. George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith, Tony Blair..., though I suppose Daphne's get-out about the alien covers that.'
  'How's that then, luvvie?' asked Lyn.
  'It's irrelevant that they're male – it’s their risk to humanity that matters, which makes Margaret Thatcher the alien queen!'
  'Mind your language, pet!'
  'I've never really bothered with feminist politics,' Sally said. 'Men act differently towards you when you're one-point-eight-five metres tall. They don't open doors for you - they teach you to hang doors. They don't throw their cloaks over puddles for you - they get you to fetch a bag of gravel to fill in the hole. Dad and the lads have always treated me like one of them - they call me an honorary bloke!'
  'That's all very well,' said Hilary. 'But what would the lads say if you called one of them an honorary lass?'
  'It would depend who I said it to but the second word would be "off"!'
  'Exactly!' said Daphne. ‘They see your strength as a male trait, but wouldn’t accept any of their strengths as female ones.’
  Sally looked a little crestfallen.
  'I'm sure Sally is literally the strongest of all us!' said Lyn, in an effort to cheer her up.
  'I might not be.  Daphne's worked her boat through hundreds of locks so she might beat me at arm-wrestling!'
  'Let's see about that, shall we?'
  After a closely-fought challenge, Lyn mopped the table again and straightened the stems of the bruised daffodil blooms as she stood them back in their little vase.
  'It's not about physical strength, really,' a victorious Sally said magnanimously. 'Hilary couldn't arm-wrestle either of us but she's been fighting for her clients for almost twenty-eight years.  I think she's brilliant - for her age!'
  'Thank you, Sally.'
  'We haven't had to balance our careers with raising kiddies, mind,' said Daphne. ‘Unlike Tricia, who's a mum and carer as well as an adviser, or Lyn's daughter-in-law Paula, mixing parenthood and politics. They've had to be both strong and organised!'
  'Talking about being organised,' Lyn said hastily. 'I've really got to go now. I've got a tribunal now and my taxi's waiting!'
  'Is Hilary representing you again, Lyn or one of the others from the Project?' asked Sally.
  'Neither of them, luvvie.  I'm not the one appealing, this time.  I'm representing a young lady with a PIP appeal.'
  The others watched as Lyn hoisted herself out of her seat, accepting Hilary's help with her crutches before picking her way between tables and chairs and out of the door.
  'She wins!' said Sally. 

Severe Discomfort, staring Hilary, Lyn and Sally, is free to download every first and fifth Friday of the month.

Grand Union, staring Daphne Randall, is free at random times, including today (5th March 2016) and International Women's Day on 8th March 2016.

Paperbacks can be ethically sourced from CompletelyNovel

Sunday 28 February 2016

Telling Stories

#OweninResidence at Staffs Uni
If you can't help chuckling at the meme that juxtaposes a photo of Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Jones with one of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, yet still find it genuinely comforting that these two are on the side of the Rebel Alliance, you would have enjoyed last week's lecture on 'The Politics of Hope' (or was that 'A New Hope'?) at Staffordshire University, delivered by Owen Jones with his customary optimistic, self-deprecating eloquence.

One point he made that struck a particular chord was how we on 'the left' tend to fight our corner with facts, figures and statistics, while the Daily Mail et al make their case by telling stories - generally of the teenage single mum with eight kids gets £10,000 a week in benefits or illegal immigrant housed in £20 million castle variety.  I made those up, just to be clear about that.  You'll see why that's important later.

Owen's point about stories was that we should, in the best possible way, be less like the QI Elves and more like the Daily Mail, and tell more stories of our own.  He cited the example of the man sanctioned for not being 'available for work' because he was selling poppies for the British Legion, which arguably did much more to make the case against JSA sanctions than any set of stats.  There are plenty of others, about people sanctioned for attending job interviews which clashed with Jobcentre appointments or for having the temerity to be in hospital after a heart attack or RTA when they should have been on a Work Programme course. A DWP officer once insisted to me that 'we don't sanction people, they sanction themselves by their own behaviour.'  No quantity of stats can refute that claim.  A single good case study shoots it down in flames.

Stories are also damned difficult to counter without seeming to call your opponent, or their unimpeachable source, a liar.  Many years ago, a client at a project I worked for in Hampshire insisted that New Age Travellers got extra benefits for their dogs.  Not true, I laughed.  Is true, she insisted - her friend told her so, and her friend's daughter worked for Social Services. Similarly, a family friend recounted one day how a friend's son or daughter worked in a mobile phone shop and had to give out top-of-the-range mobiles to asylum-seekers after they refused to take basic models.  I knew full well that this was an urban myth straight out of the BNP book of bedtime stories, but there was no persuading our man - after all, why would his mate at the pub make something like this up?  More recently, I had a skirmish at a country park tea stall with a lady sat at the next table, who was telling her friends that smokers on benefits got extra money for their fags.  I politely introduced myself as a CAB benefits specialist and assured her this was not so, only to be told that her friend had seen it on her son's benefit letter.

In each case, although I had the facts at my fingertips, and my professional role to lend them credibility, it was difficult to deploy them without seeming rude.  I found myself making excuses for the 'friend' - they must have misunderstood what they had seen or heard - to allow the story teller to save face and not appear a gullible fool.  A 'counter-story' might be easier to deliver and at least as effective a tactic.  Instead of 'Excuse me, but that's wrong because...', an approach based on 'Really?  I'm surprised to hear that, because I know someone who...' might get a more sympathetic hearing and make the point just as well, only there is client confidentiality to consider, of course, and stripping out personal details can leave your own story sounding unconvincing.

On the subject of unconvincing details, I was stunned to see that almost 90% of tip-offs to the Benefit Fraud Hotline have proved baseless.  I would have guessed quite a high BS factor, but for more than 8 in 10 to be without justification is staggering.  Of course, this risks ending up as just another statistic bandied about by us leftie benefits geeks if we aren't careful.  What people need to make this sink in is a real-life version of Severe Discomfort.  Unless a real 'Lyn' or 'Terry' is brave enough to come forward to tell their story of what it's like to be an innocent person on the wrong end of a DWP investigation, to the neutral, it's all just numbers.