Confessions of an Immigrant on Welfare

Opposition

2011-08-14T10:48:00.002+01:00

A number of voices are emerging which are critical of the welfare reforms:

Atos doctors could be struck off.
Twelve medics at the disability assessment centre are under investigation by the GMC over allegations of improper conduct. Guardian 14.8.11.

DWP admits disability reform based on dodgy figures, as reported by Left Foot Forward. 11.8.11

Statistics Authority steps in over disability benefits tests. Full Fact. 11.8.11.

These work capability assessments are a farce.
So, politicians designed an incapacity benefits system in which virtually nobody qualifies for help. How can that be justified?, Guardian. 26.7.11

Some of these via Benefit Scrounging Scum.

Meanwhile local housing charities, with encouragement our millionaire uni-student MP are taking it upon themselves to pre-empt the courts and punish rioters by evicting them from their houses. Apart from the alarming prospect of state sponsored vigilante justice (why not just lynch them and be done with?) we have to ask how evicting people who everyone acknowledges to have no stake in society is going to help?

Please write to your MP and ask them to put a stop to this madness and let the courts punish wrong doers. Let's tell David Cameron to just shut the fuck up. Cameron is not trained in law, or policing or any of the disciplines he is trying to micro-manage in the last few weeks. He's got a degree in economics, philosophy and politics, and work experience as a secretary. He is not fucking qualified to have an opinion, and that's why he has advisers. I was very pleased to see the police telling him to fuck off and mind his own business.

London's Burning

2011-08-09T12:51:00.001+01:00

Rioting for three nights running? WTF?

Digestion

2011-07-30T10:29:00.002+01:00

I can confirm that Boot's fig syrup with Senna extra is a prodigious laxative.

The Problem of Overview

2011-07-22T15:30:00.003+01:00

My health problems cover many areas.

I suffer from anxiety, and from mood problems - dysthimia or depression.
I have fibro-myalgia - widespread pain, fatigue, and difficulty concentration.
I have recently been diagnosed with a hiatus hernia and have complications from that - difficulty and pain swallowing, constant indigestion and acid reflux (sometimes accompanied by intense pain).

So I went to the doctor today to say that the treatment for the swallowing problem and eventually got referred back to the Gastro-enterologist. But part of my problem is that I'm in pain all the time and I have been taking Non-stroidal Anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID).

Now NSAIDs reduce the ability to protect the stomach lining from acid, and exacerbates acid reflux. So I've had to stop taking them. Which means I'm experiencing more pain. I can take less powerful NSAIDs (codiene/paracetamol) but it doesn't work that well. I need help with pain management, and I'm thinking of paying for a pain management course because the NHS does not seem to offer non-drug pain management. I can use my TENS machine, but it's expensive and not always effective.

All of this is making me pretty anxious about my health. I no longer take anxiety or depression drugs, and I try to manage without.

The GP manages to just about deal with the eosophagus problems, by getting me a referral. She glosses over the pain control problen, reassures me about the NSAIDs (I'm worried about my liver). But she doesn't really address my anxiety or mood, or overall pain problem at all. My quality of life is sucking at present. And no one amongst my medical support people have an overview of my health - not even my GP who is the generalist. The specialists only deal with problems in isolation - the are not able to link anxiety, FM, and other problems. So it's up to me to have my own overview, but I'm not in a good position to do that. I'm intelligent enough to understand medical jargon and concepts (I have a degree in science) but I don't have the resources and I don't have the emotional robustness.

Government delays Welfare Reform Bill

2011-07-15T16:34:00.001+01:00

The Government has been forced to delay the 2nd Reading of the flagship Bill in the Lords due to peers' concerns over the people affected.

DWP is suggesting other business has blocked progress but the surprise postponement till September from Tues will also give the Government time to lobby peers and answer the queries raised in DA's legal challenge.

from Disability Alliance, via Benefit Scrounging Scum.

And by Sunday 17th if I hadn't read this on BSS I would not have known about it, because it has not been reported in the mainstream media!

TENS

2011-07-15T16:28:00.003+01:00

Ahhh. I got out my TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) machine again the other day and wired myself up for a couple of hours. This is a very useful form of pain relief. I find if I leave it on for a hour or two I get lasting relief from aches and pains. I got mine from Boots - it was on special because they were updating the old model. The new ones are expensive. Pads for it don't last very long, and they cost about £7, so overall it's not cheap. But when you've maxed out the your paracetamol or other painkillers for the day, or like me you are starting to get stomach problems from your NSAIDs, and you need a bit more relief, then this is that something extra that has no evil side-effects.

Shaw on Money

2011-07-14T09:17:00.002+01:00

This quote is from a play by George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara, and it seems to sum up the Tory attitude quite well. It appears that Shaw did not intend this comment ironically and the protagonist of the play wrestles with her conscience of taking money from morally dubious sources for use in charitable work. In the preface he earnestly explains that "they would take money from the devil himself and be only too glad to get it out of his hands and into God's". This passage is also taken from the preface - again via the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations.

"The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilisation, the one sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honour, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness."

This could be read different ways, but I think the way that Tories read this is that poor people are a disgrace to themselves, not to the nation; that poverty is a product of laziness and weakness on the part of the poor. That is to say that the Tories blame the victims of greed and oppression for being poor and downtrodden.

We can see that this underlying view is moderated to some extent by the liberal zeitgeist, but they're like racists that have learned to hold their tongues in public for fear of disapproval, but in private still find foreigners hateful (and their is a lot more of this here than anyone is admitting).

So being ill, and poor, and requiring support, is not a situation which stirs the Tory heart, the way that it moves the Left. The Right would gladly sacrifice the weak few to make the many stronger. They probably would not put it in these terms, but it's what it boils down to. To the right self-sufficiency is the highest good. To have to pay taxes to support the weak is something they oppose in their bones. This is partly why they wish to privatise everything. For private companies and the competition of the markets represent to them the apotheosis of the Darwinian view of evolution - privatisation, be weeding out the weaker members of the species, by preventing them from reproducing, makes the species stronger. Sadly they don't seem to have updated their ideas about evolution since Darwin and the Victorians. They certainly haven't read any Lynn Margulis for instance. Competition always creates more losers than winners, by definition.

The right are also deeply influenced, it sees to me, by Ayn Rand's ideology of rejecting altruism and embracing selfishness. If only, she said, everyone rationally pursued their self interest, the the maximum Good would be produced. And her ideas where enthusiastically taken up by economists who are the only people in the world who still believe in human beings making rational decisions! The trouble is we aren't rational beings, and she certainly wasn't. Given the disastrous results of the "greed is good" view of life, it is surprising that anyone at all believes in it. Markets and competition produce one or only a handful of winners, and a large number of losers. Is this not a summary of the credit crisis we're currently in. No bankers have gone to prison for defrauding us; a few people have been enriched to an astonishing degree and most of us are worse off and will being paying for it the rest of our lives. In fact those greedy people are the weakest members of our species because they endanger the many, they impoverish the many, they degrade our societies and communities. We need to weed them out, and suppress their regrowth. They are parasites, feeding on our blood. We need to think more in terms of balancing cooperation with competition. Cooperation means we all win. Competition only allows for one winner in each race.

Unfortunately the people in government are not vulnerable to poverty, and never have been because they increasingly from backgrounds of hereditary privilege . They have enough money and assets already to never have to work again and still live comfortable. They'll pass that on to their children along with introductions into positions of power. And they are dismantling the system which might counteract that, which might democratise education. Britain's brief flirtation with a meritocracy, which allowed leaders like Margaret Thatcher to rise to power from humble beginnings, seems to be over. Money makes the world go around for these people. Money is the most important thing. And not having it, or relying on handouts is once more coming to be seen as morally reprehensible.

I don't want to advocate violence, but I think the world would be a different place if Cameron could just be viciously mugged and beaten, or have his home burgled. Maybe then he'd have a sense of powerlessness and vulnerability for a moment. The fucker is so thick skinned though that one wonders what it would take for him to empathise with someone dependent on welfare. Let him contract a wasting disease while still in office and have to resign to a life of doctors visits, humiliating tests, drugs with unpleasant side-effects. Let him be incontinent, or unable to feed himself. Let him suffer a mental breakdown. I don't exactly wish this on him, but how else is he really going to understand what effect his policies have on the rest of us?

Health

2011-07-13T22:14:00.002+01:00

So, my stomach problems turned out to be a hiatus hernia. But now I'm getting complications - constant indigestion, difficulty swallowing, and discomfort shading into pain in my throat. We're working on the theory that it's my oesophagus being irritated and going into a spasm. So beefing up the proton-pump inhibitors and gaviscon for a bit to see if that helps. But it all seems to be getting worse at the moment.

I'm constantly tired and while not house bound, I'm not able to get out very much. A longish walk in the weekend and I'm still recovering! A symptom of fibromyalgia. I wake up stiff and aching, and not feeling refreshed. I read, write a bit, get bored, watch TV, and wonder whether this life is really worth persevering with.

It's all very frustrating. And meanwhile I wait for the axe to fall on my welfare payments. Like others I'm not sure how I'll cope. Is anyone really interested in employing a 45 year old, with multiple mental and physical health issues? Is there any job I could even do? Honestly I find it hard to imagine.

Big Lies

2011-07-12T10:18:00.003+01:00

Who said this?

Die breitte Masse eines Volkes.... einer grossen Lüge leichter zum Opfer fällt als einer kleiner.
The broad mass of a nation... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Answer. Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. 1.x (via the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations - I haven't been reading Mein Kampf!)

I was immediately struck by the press releases from the Government since they took office. So many big lies. Perhaps the most relevant one here is that people who receive welfare payments are greedy, lazy, deceptive, and basically criminal. This particular big lie has worked better than some of the others because there has not been a media outcry over this lie, whereas other lies have met considerable resistance.

Corruption in medical research.

2011-07-06T10:00:00.002+01:00

Psychiatrists Who Accepted Millions of Dollars from Drug Companies Now Face Restrictions

Three child psychiatrists at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School who pioneered the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in young children failed to disclose that they had accepted millions in fees from drugs companies, Mass General’s investigation, which concluded Friday, has found. The three are now barred from participating in non-research activities sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry for a year, among other restrictions.

via 80beats.

Well that will learn them... NOT

British Media

2011-07-05T18:13:00.001+01:00

Hear that sound, news media?

That is the sound of inevitability

(and I don't think you'll manage to dodge it like Neo did).

Melancholia

2011-07-05T12:53:00.002+01:00

Via Neuroskeptic, from the British Journal of Psychiatry:

Melancholia - in 100 words
Max Fink and Michael A. Taylor

Melancholia is a classical episodic depressive disorder that combines mood, psychomotor, cognitive and vegetative components with high suicide risk. In the present psychiatric classification it is buried as a modifier in both bipolar and unipolar depressions. It is hardly used to characterise patients in the clinic or research. The syndrome is frequently recognised in delusional and agitated depression, and in the elderly. Cortisol or sleepEEG abnormalities are prognostically helpful. Melancholia is particularly responsive to tricyclic antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy but not to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or psychotherapy. Recognising melancholia as a distinct disorder improves clinical care and research.

Fibromyalgia Awareness Week, Sept 4-11

2011-07-05T12:46:00.001+01:00

www.fibromyalgia-associationuk.org

Caffe Nero

2011-07-05T08:21:00.003+01:00

I like Caffe Nero - or some of them. The new one in town is in a good location and is nicely decorated. Nero's coffee is OK - my expectations are pretty low 9 years after leaving Auckland with it's fantastic coffee culture. So I was in yesterday and got a little card inviting me to do a survey. I wouldn't normally bother, but they were offering a chance to win free coffee for a year.

So I filled in the survey which has some mental questions like: "did the barista serve you with pride". How the fuck should I know? And especially in this country where shop drones generally hate their jobs, and hate talking to people. The guy talked to me, and seemed less than averagely surly. Does that translate into pride? Can one feel pride working as a coffee machine operator for a huge chain, wearing a cheap company teeshirt, and earning minimum wage? Could I? Doubt it, Harry.

Anyway I got through and was dumped on the Nero homepage. Here it says

"Caffè Nero Group Ltd was founded in 1997 and is currently the largest independent coffee retailer in the UK, with over 400 stores in the UK."

What does it mean to be independent when you are one of the largest chains in the country?Independent of what, or from whom? Is this English idiom, or is it business jargon? Anyway I'm not impressed. The words "independent" and "over 400 stores" cancel each other out. They're just a large coffee retailer, with all that this implies. But I will drink a shit load of coffee if I win the prize.

Stomach problems.

2011-07-04T13:42:00.006+01:00

So I looked back on my posts and see that I haven't mentioned my stomach problems. About 3 or 4 months ago I had an attack of chest pain that was frightening. It started off a bit like heart burn, but it kept getting worse until I was in a panic. The NHS direct person, asked me all the heart attack questions, ascertained that my life wasn't in danger, and talked me down. After about 3 hours in total the pain eased off and I felt OK.

Then more recently I had another attack that again was very painful and frightening. This time I got to the limit I could bare and it kept getting worse. One of the MEBs called NHS Direct who then sent an ambulance. The paramedics checked me out and once again ascertained it wasn't life threatening and suggested going to the late night doctor - not to A&E because it can take many hours to be treated there.

Cut a long story short I kept having minor attacks and the doctor sent me to the specialist, who ordered some tests. The ultrasound showed no all stones. The next one was a gastroscopy. I knew this would be stressful, but getting someone to go with me seemed even more stressful, so I elected not to have sedation. I took some valium in the morning, thinking it would take the end of anxiety. This was foolish in retrospect. A gastroscopy is a very invasive procedure. My body rebelled and was actively trying to expel the scope throughout the whole 5 minutes. By the end I was in shock and non-responsive. It took a while to come around, and if I bring it to mind I can feel the panic starting all over again!

The moral of the story is that if anyone ever offers me sedation for a medical procedure then I should definitely accept.

The upshot is that I have a hiatus hernia - the sphincter at the top of my stomach doesn't close properly and part of my stomach is protruding up through it (or something like that). Stomach acid is leaking into my oesophagus, and the intense burning pain is the result. There was also bile in my stomach, but I put this down to my gut going into drastic reverse with the tube down my throat.

Treatment is Proton-pump Inhibitors (stomach acid suppressant) and Gaviscon^®. My problem is that I also take anti-inflammatory drugs for chronic pain. These drugs suppress the body's inflammation response, but problematically this is the same response that protects the stomach lining from acid - this exacerbates the problem by making my stomach more sensitive to irritation.

2011-07-03T10:18:00.002+01:00

The maxim of the British people is 'Business as usual'.

- Winston Churchill, Guildhall, 9 Nov 1914.

We're doomed.

2011-07-02T21:50:00.005+01:00

They're saying that Prince Charles pissed Tony Blair off with his interfering. I like Charles for having pissed of architects who make ugly buildings, and even more now that I've learned that he got up Blair's nose. Yay Charles!

In other political news in a leaked memo Eric Pickles has warned the current Prime Minister that welfare reforms could make 40,000 people homeless, and ultimately cost more money than they save. Some sense slipping through the blitzkrieg of propaganda from IDS's DWP.

One wag on the Guardian website has suggested the homeless move into vacated Habitat and Thortons. Habitat is already furnished as another commenter points out, though they doubt the homeless folk would appreciate the class of furniture in that now insolvent business. Both commentators seem to have forgotten that the government has just decided to make squatting illegal, so moving into unoccupied building is not on the cards. Besides have you seen the red tape involved in housing here? Hundred's of years of unscrupulous landlords have left the housing market massively over-regulated and hostile to most of their tenants. I was aghast to learn that you almost never get your bond back in this country if you're renting. In NZ you almost always get it back.

They just don't have a clue, do they? If ever there was an example of a university graduate being full of themselves, filled with theories and ideologies, but no practical understanding of how anything works it's David Cameron. He just has no idea what he's doing, no idea how to run the country or the economy. And, lord save us, the opposition are no better.

We're doomed! We really are doomed. Unless maybe Charles get's stuck into IDS and the ConDem coalition: "I say! Leave one's fucking people alone, you monstrous carbuncle!" (in my dreams, eh).

Chuggers

2011-07-01T08:14:00.003+01:00

I think I've written before about how and why I hate chuggers. The (southern) English norm is not to talk to strangers, not even to make eye contact. Walk around a typical urban mall (pronounced to rhyme with 'well') and you see a lot of people milling around like they're the only person there, carefully avoiding the human shaped objects in their path - and if you do happen to come to another persons attention, by being tripped over or run into, then the thing to do is apologise. I've started doing this! In shops the people behind the tills are like this as well - they'd rather not be talking to you most of the time. England is the ideal place for self-service checkouts. I've had conversations with strangers here, but not with English people, only with Kiwis, Aussies, Yanks, and more recently a Thai student.

What's more I'm 45 and chronically ill, so I don't look very attractive to a 20-something, and the young women especially just don't see me any more. It's one of the things about getting older, and I can see why men my age sometimes go wild and have a crisis! For myself I'm heading towards conscious celibacy, but that's another story.

Chuggers break these rules. They approach strangers in the street. Not only do they break the rules, but they employ very clumsy and obvious ruses. The men are suddenly a long lost friend, very pleased to see you. The women are similar except some of them flirt at the same time.

You see English people caught in this trap. Politeness dictates that when someone approaches you with this kind of ruse that you stop and make contact - they may need directions, or they may want to know the time. There's a tension because they may be a drug addict wanting "a pound for a cup of tea" (yeah, right!), but the chuggers are well dressed and smiling. Then they realise they've made a mistake and they can't be rude and just walk away, they have to explain why. It's not that English people are ungenerous. No. English people are incredibly generous and give huge amounts to charities, and the govt. has just committed to increase overseas aid at a time when it is slashing local spending. Often you'll hear the victim explaining that they support a number of charities already and I believe them.

Now a couple of days ago I was wandering home - tired, depressed, minding my own business (fitting in) - when a chugger approached me from behind. Normally I see them coming, make eye contact - I'm better than most English people at this game - firmly shake my head, and mouth the syllable "no". It works about 80% of the time. The more persistent chugger keeps on going like it's the most natural thing to talk to strangers, and that I seem like just the kind of person they want to talk to. But I give my initial response and just keep walking. Because under normal circumstances these scumbags wouldn't give me the time of day, let alone engage me in a pleasant conversation! But being approached from behind is something new. I had this young women tagging along behind me trying to get my attention. I'd seen her out of the corner of my eye as I'd left the shop, so I knew she was a chugger - fortunately they wear uniforms of a sort. So I just kept walking. I didn't want to talk to anyone, let along a chugger. And she kept it up, chasing me down the street for about 10 or 15 seconds. This is quite a long time if you think about it. If someone didn't answer their phone in this time, you'd think they weren't in and hang up. Then I didn't quite catch the parting comment, but the tone of voice was incredibly sarcastic. Like I was being an arsehole for not responding.

Chuggers: you guys are the arseholes. I hate been approached under false pretences, whether you be a junky, a politician or a charity worker. You don't want a chat, you don't think I'm interesting, you don't think I'm attractive, I'm not your mate. So please, cut the crap. Don't bullshit me. You approach me because you've done a calculation in your head that you might be able to get money out of me, and this is how you make your living. You are parasites on the generosity of other people. So just fuck off. If I was to give to charity it would be directly, bypassing the need for your salary to eat into my donation.

Marsha Linehan

2011-06-29T08:52:00.001+01:00

Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight - New York Times.

Long interview with some video of the pioneer of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - which I know from experience is very helpful. She reveals her own struggles with mental illness, her hospitalisation and treatment (including drugs and ECT):

Any real treatment would have to be based not on some theory, she later concluded, but on facts: which precise emotion led to which thought led to the latest gruesome act. It would have to break that chain — and teach a new behavior.
"I was in hell," she said. "And I made a vow: when I get out, I'm going to come back and get others out of here."

Tobacco pushers to sue government

2011-06-28T08:00:00.000+01:00

Philip Morris to sue if Australia puts all cigarettes in plain green wrappers

Tobacco firm claims Canberra's ban on logos and other packaging restrictions will lose it billions

Guardian.

Note that the UK govt is talking about doing this as well! As I said earlier.

"The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but theNHS reckons the deaths attributable to tobacco in England in 2008 was 84,000. That's about 236 a day, or 10 per hour! So 25 in 2.5 hours. Assuming the same smoking patterns in the rest of the UK that's about 98,000 for the UK, giving 268 per day, 11 per hour, and 25 in 136 minutes."

Tobacco is a killer. Just ban it. Just make it illegal and fuck the greedy bastards who supply it. Drug pushers.

Fibromyalgia Drugs

2011-06-27T15:49:00.002+01:00

Drug Class Review: Drugs for Fibromyalgia: Final Original Report [Internet].

Smith B, Peterson K, Fu R, McDonagh M, Thakurta S.

Portland (OR): Oregon Health & Science University; 2011 Apr.
Drug Class Reviews.

"We compared the effectiveness and harms of tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, noradrenergic and specific serotonergic reuptake inhibitor, norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor, serotonin receptor antagonist, antiepileptic drugs, and skeletal muscle relaxants in adults with fibromyalgia."

Abstract and conclusions online via PubMed.

Good article on so-called Chemical Imbalances

2011-06-27T08:46:00.002+01:00

The Brain Is Not Made Of Soup - Neuroskeptic

"Neither – in relation to the fastest rising [mental health] diagnoses – is there any evidence of chemical imbalances in the brains of patients. In other words, the problem the [psychiatric] drugs are supposed to solve is an illusion."

"No-one has ever measured the chemical composition of a living human brain."

Neuroskeptic compares the Brain to soup, and treating mental illness as tweaking the ingredients. He doesn't do this to belittle or trivialise, he does it to show what a blunt instrument psychiatry is, and how dosing people with chemicals that affect brain chemistry can be a very doubtful way to get results.

Cameron is a Fucking HYPOCRITE

2011-06-21T21:55:00.000+01:00

David Cameron intervenes over BBC plan to axe his local news service

Guardian.

There is NO BENEFIT to Being Debilitated!

2011-06-21T12:38:00.004+01:00

Glancing at the disabilities and welfare blogs I read I can see that the situation is dire in the UK. We're doomed basically. All kinds of other policy initiatives introduced by the manic phase new government are being reversed or rethought because they are incredibly unpopular. Welfare reform is not unpopular. And one has to ask whether this is because from day one, aided by a parasitic news media culture, the DWP waged a propaganda war against the benefit system, often stretching the truth to make their point, and making the most extreme abuses seem like the norm for all benefit claimants? Or is the popularity of welfare reform really what people want? I would argue that it is a clear case of manufacturing consent.

The very language here is fucked. The welfare payment is not a benefit, it's a fucking consolation for losing your job (so often because of economic forces outside your control) and/or becoming so ill that one cannot work. It's a minimal payment - and they reinforce the minimal in their communication with the applicant: "this is just enough to stop you dying, but don't get cocky".

There is no benefit to becoming so ill you have to stop working. Even Pollyanna would struggle to look on the bright side of debilitating illness - oh yes it's great not having to work, and the charity shops have the most intriguing range of hand-me-downs; if only I were not in constant pain and able to walk I would feel I was the luckiest person in the world. NOT. And welfare is not claimed, it is applied for certainly, but it is granted by the powers that be whose mercy we are at, and we are never allowed to forget it! Rather than a benefit claimant I would prefer to be known as a Consolation Grant Applicant, and the payment to be called a grant rather than a benefit.

The trouble is no one is listening to people who rely on welfare payments. All they see is someone getting something for nothing. So, even more than bankers, the system targets those who receive welfare, and the general population either supports the measure or quietly turns away and let's it happen. Pray you never get ill - all you able bodied people out there. Pray. Because once you do become ill, you become "outcast".

NHS Reform

2011-06-21T12:34:00.000+01:00

From Bananas in Pyjamas: Some free advice on achieving 'world class NHS productivity' McKinsey style.

No Sex is OK.

2011-06-10T16:51:00.006+01:00

So... it's been ten days since I stopped masturbating every day with the aid of fantasies and porn. I was only an occasional porn user, but I used both porn and pornographic fantasies to create desire in order to get to orgasm. You might not think this is a bad thing, but I got to reading about the effects of hyper-stimulation and the dulling of the pleasure response in relation to my long history of anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia and (these days) chronic fatigue.

And the result? Almost no spontaneous sexual desire. No daytime erections. Almost no thinking about sex. The urge to masturbate is not presently linked to physical desire. It is linked to habit, and neurotic pleasure seeking. Whether or not it is related I don't know but I am experiencing quite severe insomnia at present. I've cut down a little on chocolate as well (one 100g bar of 70% a day is limit!) and that may be it. I do notice that being in the presence of an attractive women - and I live in a University/tourist town so it's heaving with them - makes me feel uncomfortable or restless. But it's not a groin sensation at all. So I'm just looking away and trying not to think about it. And actually it's fine. When I'm not artificially stimulating my sexual desire, it's very low indeed - and well it may be as I'm in pain & tired most of the time. Actually I think I feel less lonely in the last week or so.

So this is something worth blogging about. There's a lot of political shit going on in the UK. A lot of stuff that I can't really keep up with - a constant barrage of propaganda from the DWP which is clearly designed to reduce sympathy for the beneficiaries of the nation. And it seems to be working as there are massive protests against heath and education plans, and policy U-turns, bu there is no organised response to benefit cuts. Of course those of us on benefits are not really in as good a position as educators and doctors to defend ourselves. But I find it all too much and too depressing. Others are doing a good job of commenting in blogs.

Still waiting for the Work Capacity Assessment axe to fall, and constantly anxious about that.

The Pleasure Response and Me

2011-06-04T22:17:00.002+01:00

After reading this article: "Day 64: Successful, great, normal sex" I started to think about my sex life, such as it is, in a new way. I use porn occasionally, but fantasize a lot. I've also been reading Keith Richards about Heroin addiction and why you suffer so much getting off it - it floods the endorphin receptors in the brain which then stops making it's own. So when you stop taking heroin it takes 72 hours to reboot the brain to make it's own endorphins. Something similar happens with orgasm and the pleasure processing circuits in the brain. I dabbled in the Gupta Amygdala Retraining program last year which is about treating an overloaded fight/flight response (as I understand it). So all of these are related to over-stimulation of various brain modules or circuits which interrupts natural functioning.

What occurred to me is that I cannot remember the last time I had a natural erection. I can give myself one, and I don't having too much problem reaching orgasm, but from day to day I don't get them spontaneously. From what I've read each orgasm has quite long lasting effects on the brain and especially the pleasure response. Even once a day orgasm with fantasy or porn to artificially stimulate sexual response dulls the pleasure response. The man in the article suffered from erectile dysfunction - and I gather this is quite common.

So at the moment I'm refraining from fantasy and masturbation. I'm not making a decision to be celibate, though I'm seriously thinking about it for the first time in my life. But I'm trying to avoid fantasising and artificial stimulation. Let's see what happens. After three nights of no fantasies and no masturbation, I still have not had a spontaneous erection during the day.

I'm also feeling more concerned about my addiction to chocolate now. If I cut down I get headaches and feel lousy and miserable. I got up to a bar and a half of dark chocolate (150g) for a while - and I'm paying for this out of my benefit. It's crazy. So I'm cutting down to one bar for a start. I can't tackle everything at once. I'll see how it goes, but I'd like to be free not to eat chocolate. Any reduction in my intake takes about 2 weeks to adjust to - it's much worse than coffee! (and coffee is no substitute)!

I want also to look at my food more generally. I've been having bad stomach problems including one ambulance call out because of extreme pain! I'm getting it all looked at, and being pretty careful about what I eat. But my diet succumbed some time ago (I never recovered from Christmas basically). High glycemic index foods cause a major impact on the body. I'm putting on weight again, because I'm over eating and not sticking the guidelines for healthy eating.

The trouble is getting through the stress caused by the change. So one thing at a time, and baby steps! But I'm concerned that this phenomenon of over stimulation might be having a major impact on me. Basically I'm easily stimulated. There's not a great deal of difference between the various kinds of arousal - difficult to physiologically tell fear from anger for instance as they involve the same hormones, and other autonomic responses. Perhaps if I can reduce the over stimulation from various sources I might find it has a overall beneficial effect on my Fibromyalgia too.

Depressing future for men?

2011-03-01T10:50:00.002Z

"Emory University experts predict that rates of depressive disorders among men will increase as the 21st century progresses."

http://scienceblog.com/43222/depressing-future-for-men/

but...

" new research by George Mason University psychology professor Todd Kashdan shows that being a mindful person not only makes you generally more tolerant and less defensive, but it can also actually neutralize fears of dying and death."

From Scienceblog

My family

2011-02-27T08:04:00.004Z

About 4 years ago my younger brother got drunk and was being an arsehole at a small gathering at his house down near London. He was being rude to my Mum and then rude to me, and so I said I'd prefer not to communicate that way and he told me to "Fuck off". So I did. But on the way out I made the mistake of venting my own spleen, and this meant leaving the house with my brother behind me screaming insults and abuse at me. It was all a bit distressing, and we haven't patched it up, or even tried. I don't want to be yelled at, and I suppose I haven't really forgiven him for some of the things he said about my mental health. Yes, Chris I am "dysfunctional" thanks for pointing that out! I am the one who's been in hospital, attempted suicide, on medication, and in therapy over the years. That's me. That's not you - you're the one who earns £60 per hour, has a wife, and three kids; you're the one who has something like a normal life. Yeah, mate, you got that one right.

Anyway one of me other brothers sent round a family email with lots of addresses on it. And Chris replied to all - so that I got his response which included a blurb about his kids and some photos. It was pretty weird to get this accidental update after years of being in Coventry. I felt uncomfortable and a little angry. I decided to block that particular email address - it was a work one and he changes his job every 6 months anyway.

Meanwhile my Mum is just back from another stint in Africa as a missionary. Safe and well, thank God. Conditions are primitive where she goes. I don't begrudge her doing it, spending my inheritance(!), but at 71 and with two artificial hips, I worry about her.

Back

2011-02-26T09:29:00.002Z

Well it's been a long while since I blogged here. Christmas was a bit of a nightmare - I tried to stay on my strict diet and went a bit mental. Couldn't do it and felt guilty. Got depressed. Fell apart. I never like Christmas anyway, but this one was the worst.

So now I'm getting back on my feet a bit. Diet kind of working again, though this week has not been as successful as last - dieting requires momentum, and having lost mine I'm struggling to get it back. Still I'm under 85 kg now, and my BMI is about 27.

A couple of nights ago I have terrible burning pain in my chest and thought I might have to call an ambulance. I did call NHS Direct who were quite helpful - thanks to Daren in Newcastle. It came on about 1.30am and lasted an hour and a half. I've had some blood tests done, and will have an endoscopy which will be fun (NOT). This is probably caused by long term anti-inflammatory use.

Otherwise my health is not too bad. Stable with some pain but not unmanageable. I don't know when my Work Capability Assessment will be, but it must be coming up. I'm terrified that they're going to try to force me back into work - I don't think I could do it. I still have no effective treatment for my fibromyalgia other than rest and not doing things that aggravate it. I really struggle with relating to other people, and get stressed very easily and quickly. With thousands of able bodied and sound minded people out of work who need jobs and who can't survive on the benefit I wonder what the point of me competing with them is.

I don't believe David Cameron - we are not all in this together. David is a millionaire who is not having to personally cut back. The rich have gotten richer during the financial crisis and the middle and the poor are paying directly for it. We're paying in reduced benefits, higher prices, in reduced local services, in lost jobs. They're getting million pound bonuses for fucks sake. How did no banker end up in jail over the fraud involved in sub-prime mortgages? If it were not for the fact that they'd just deport me, I might be up for some direct action against bankers. Those bastards at Barclays that made record profits and only paid 1% tax - how does that work? Royal Bank of Scotland makes a loss and pays the CEO a cool £2 million bonus for running the business into the ground. Something is rotten in the city of London!

The good news is that one of the MEBs is moving out. I found P quite stressful to live with. He is a noisy eater which I hate. I hate the sound of other people eating -it's like finger nails on a blackboard to me, and that's when everyone is eating with their mouths closed and not slurping. He's also a terrible cook, producing quite the worst food I've ever had served up to me in several decades of communal living. But the worst thing is that outside the house he's very active doing all kinds of things, but inside he's very passive. He'll go the extra mile to help someone with a fund-raising event, but does the absolute minimum around the house. And being passive he responds to feedback with passive aggression. So ask him to clean up the shit he's left lying around and he'll just sulk, and do the thing he should have done without being asked in the most ungracious manner short of telling you to fuck off. He won't not do it, but he'll let you know that it's only because you've been a dick about it. He's just a pain in the arse to live with - but not a bad person. Anyway I'm pleased he's going. We're replacing him with a guy who's also quite young (30's) but seems a bit less green.

One thing about English men that I find incomprehensible is the way they wash dishes - this seems to be almost universal. They seem to have a rule that one sink of water, with minimal suds, is the maximum and no matter how full of grease and food it gets, no matter how thick and soupy, that it cannot be replaced. Often the dishes are coming out with more grease on them than they went in with. So it's no surprise that I have to check every dish and mug in the cupboard before using it - about 50% of the time there is enough residue to make me less than keen to eat off it. And they get quite shitty if I suggest that they cannot clean dishes in dirty water. I suppose that's what they've grown up with? And P was one of the worst at this as well.

So hopefully I get back to more regular reportage of my life amongst the English and the MEBs, and dealing with mental and physical health problems, and living on benefits.

TESCO International Calling Card

2011-01-15T10:57:00.003Z

Beware of this international calling card scam. The rates look good but you lose it all after 90 days - the card expires after 90 days of purchase date and all your money goes with it. So I lost most of my £10. They don't warn you and it's only in the fine print.

If you ring the 0845 no there's nothing they can do.

The TESCO International calling card is a rip-off

I've asked the manager of the store where I bought my card to see what he can do. I want a refund! Then I'll be using a different card!

Festive Message from my Bank

2011-01-11T08:59:00.001Z

"The Clydesdale Bank would like to advise customers to be extra careful regarding the security of your Internet Banking access on the run up to Christmas. Always check your account transactions regularly, don't disclose your details to a third party and NEVER open, respond to or click on any links in emails purporting to come from the Clydesdale Bank or any other financial institution. Remember that the Clydesdale Bank would NEVER contact customers via a personal email address regarding Internet Banking. If you receive an email you believe to be fraudulent, please forward it to reportphishing-CB@CBonline.co.uk, for investigation, then DELETE THE EMAIL. If you are ever asked to answer more than one security question or asked to confirm full password please contact the Internet Banking Helpdesk on 08447 362616 immediately. Further information regarding security advice is available within the Internet Banking pages on our website www.CBonline.co.uk, look for the section entitled Security."

Thanks for that, and Merry Christmas to you to.

Why people blog about illness

2010-12-21T08:47:00.001Z

Hundreds of people blog about their illness or trauma every day. Sue Eckstein explains why - Guardian.

Weight Loss

2010-12-15T08:52:00.006Z

3 months ago I weighed in at 99kg, so at 177cm tall, I had a BMI of 31.6. Meaning I was OBESE. I've been on a diet since, and though it hasn't been easy I've been steadily losing weight. I reach an important milestone a few weeks ago - I was not embarrassed to tuck my shirt into my belt when I went outside!

Today I reached another milestone. I'm at the mid-point of OVERWEIGHT for my height 86.1 kg, BMI 27.5. My goal is 78kg just within the NORMAL range for my height. I haven't been that weight for 20 years.

My body has changed quiet a bit. I'm much less round. My inner thighs no longer rub together I walk which used to give me rashes and chaffing. My face has changed - my cheeks are now slightly concave instead of convex. I've had more holes made in my belt because I'm 16cm less in circumference. I don't get out of breath walking up our stairs. I can go for a long walk every day now. I've bought some new clothes recently without feeling like a fat pig - and I now look quite sharp in my black moleskin jacket, black jeans and Dr Martin's shoes. Well I fancy that I do.

Sadly it hasn't made much difference to my FIBROMYALGIA but I wasn't expecting it to. I feel healthier though, and a little less repulsive.

Proforma Press Releases

2010-11-30T12:46:00.003Z

I've recently been struck by how the Brits report what politicians are going to say in advance, "so and so will say blah blah about blah blah tomorrow". Once the so and so has said "blah blah" that is also reported. The so and sos get double the mileage from their PR budget, and the media seem to go along with it presumably because they also get twice the mileage from the story.

I wish they would focus more on what the so and sos are actually doing, and less on what they say they will say they are going to do if they can. Sadly the gap between what they say and what they do is often vast and it is only the light weight satirical media like Have I Got News for You or The Now Show that pick up on the discrepancies. The so and sos say so much, put out so many press releases - and as we have seen recently the press don't always bother to check their facts! - that the details become overwhelming. The media cherry pick according to their own agenda - which I think more or less consists in outraging as many people as possible.

It is good to have a reprieve from IDS/DWP press releases in the last week or two. They were coming thick and fast for a while and I was feeing suicidal trying to keep up and understand what it meant for me.

Some stuff

2010-11-17T07:55:00.003Z

I've now lost 10kg on my diets (in old money that about 1.5 stone). Feeling good, though it's more difficult now. Aiming to hit 80kg mid-Feb, and will be in the normal range for my height - it will be the most normal thing about me.

I've been thinking this morning. I'm not sure if people grasp the reality of the economic situation. What the govt are doing is lowering the standard of living for all lower and middle income earners. The rich will maintain their standard of living. On the other hand Cameron's initiative to measure happiness might be intriguing if I wasn't so cynical about the uses he'll put it to. Anyone with an interest in this stuff already knows that money doesn't make you happy, and I think DC will be using this fact to try to make us feel better about lowering our standard of living, while maintaining his own millionaire lifestyle. Someone somewhere pointed out that 23 or the 29 cabinet members are millionaires - "we're all in this together"? Fuck off.

Finally, we have a new Queen in waiting. I'm a subject, and I don't mind that much. Compared to politicians the royals are an honest and useful bunch. I'm a great believer in myth and archetypes, and we need someone to bear the archetype of ruler, because let's face it those dishonest bastards in parliament inspire zero confidence. People keep saying dumb things like Elizabeth II (peace be upon her) will bypass Charles and hand the crown to William. Duh. When Elizabeth dies or abdicates the crown goes to Charles unless he dies or abdicates. The Queen can't subvert that without subverting the whole principle of monarchy. Of course William is being groomed to be King though, because that's how it works - he has to be ready to assume his duty as King should he be needed.

Despite not feeling well enough to work I have no doubt that the WCA will judge me fit for work. In my experience of these tests they seldom actually test for what is wrong with me. I can do most things once (they make you do things like squat, push against things, grip things). Once is fine as long as it's not too vigorous. Twice, or three times even, but 10 causes me pain that takes a while to wear off and it's cumulative. Because no doctor has ever tested me for this, and really it is the central physical problem I have, I am starting to get quite nervous. Actually I started to plan on a massive drop in income - jiggling my budget around to see how I can live on what I'll be getting. It won't be easy.

It's a Sin

2010-11-11T10:05:00.002Z

Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said today it was a "sin" that people failed to take up available jobs as he prepared to announce a tougher-than-expected squeeze on the unemployed. Guardian.

So. Another round in the war on the welfare system. The rhetoric comes thick and fast, and now takes on religious overtones. I agree that it should always pay to work, but of course there are 3 able-bodied unemployed people for every job in this country, plus a few less than able-bodied; so I don't see how this is going to work. About 500,000 people are about to be culled from the civil service. Another few 100,000 will lose their jobs as down stream effects. Growth is only just above zero.

What we don't know is whether any of this going to help.

It wasn't unemployment which created the mess the country is in. It was bad financial management, and greedy rich people - compare the UK with Norway which has weathered the storm much better. China, and India do not have the same problems that we do either. Unemployment is a symptom. Massive numbers of sick and incapacitated people is a symptom of a broader malaise. This campaign is ideological, not economic, and not interested in the causes of our problems.

The people in this country who inherited money, whose family connections got them into the best schools, and whose old-boy networks get them into the best jobs are incensed that someone should get something for nothing. It is outrageous.

It seems to me that I must completely fail to understand the British public - presumably the PR people, who do understand them, have a firm hand on the tiller and all this rhetoric is deliberately crafted for the public, who are apparently lapping it up (except for a few students). But then back in New Zealand we voted for conservative governments for years as well. Maybe I'm just out of step?

I wonder how all this will look ten years hence? A brilliant stroke, or the beginning of a disaster.

New Glasses

2010-11-10T14:54:00.001Z

Just picked up my new glasses from SpecSavers. Awesome. I'd gotten what crisp vision was like. Thanks NHS! Thanks tax payers.

The Virtue of Modesty

2010-11-09T21:44:00.005Z

I've been listening to a woman on the radio who is a Muslim convert. She waxed lyrical about wearing a hijab and long dress which hide her whole body. "It's liberating", she said, "because as a woman you are judged so much on how you look". Fine I can understand that to some extent - men stare at women, and sometimes say things or worse (though certainly not that much where I live). But then she described the experience of wearing the hijab in public: she is regularly shouted and jeered at, insulted to her face, and spat at. Her children suffer the same. She has to be careful about where she goes because some places she is more likely to encounter that kind of hostility.

So this I don't understand. In what sense is she more liberated wearing clothing that attracts active violent hostility, than wearing modest western clothing which I imagine would not stand out, and not attract attention? Why choose to stand out in the crowd by dressing like an Arab, when plain clothes would be a far better way of staying incognito? An undercover cop takes off the uniform in order to blend in! She hasn't thought it through. If you dress to attract attention then that is vanity - whether you are showing off your body or your religion.

I've every sympathy with people practising their religion, though I'm not convinced by Western Muslims who want to look Arab, or Western Buddhists who want to look Asian, or Western Hindus who want to look Indian. If you dress different you attract attention. Religious people often remind me of people with tattoos. People with tattoos often walk around in clothing that shows their tattoo off. People with religious piety want everyone to know, which is in fact impious generally speaking. The whole point of the hijab is modesty. But it's modesty according to medieval Arab dress codes, not 21st century England, so it stands out like dogs balls!

I don't think that having chosen to mark yourself out as different you have much right to complain about being treated differently. You've stated your intention. Yet this woman was in tears because of it. I don't for a minute condone boorish or violent behaviour in others. Ideally we should be tolerant and accepting of difference, but the reality is that most people aren't. Yes, they are ignorant and stupid. But why bait them? If you bait an ignorant bully, you generally are asking for a punch in the stomach. That is also a form of ignorance and stupidity. In order not to attract attention one keeps one head down, one doesn't shout "look at me!"

I actually wish more women would dress modestly. It's horrible seeing all that flesh, the constant sexual stimulation and no outlet for me. Women simply do not look at me any more, but especially young women who dress to emphasise their erogenous zones. They seek to stimulate sexual desire in men, but at the same time complain about being seen as 'mere' sex-objects. I don't think women's liberation was all about women being able to dress like hookers, and star in their own porn movies. It was about (on balance at least) having equal dignity and respect, equal rights. So sorry, but if you dress like a hooker then I do not respect you for your intelligence because that is not what you are communicating. I don't like seeing men walking around with their shirts off either, or their trousers falling down. It is all saying "I don't give a shit about you or what you think, I'm going to do whatever I like and you can fuck off". And that is antisocial. So yeah, I do have a great deal of sympathy with those religious people who wish that everyone would think about the impact their choices make on others, and I am in favour of modesty as a virtue - in men and women!! But modesty means not attracting attention. The hijab cannot help but attract attention in Britain. Wearing a hijab in Britain you are never going to blend in. It is vain and immodest and stupid. Dress like a stereotypical librarian or a middle-aged woman - no one shouts abuse at them, because no one notices them (which is the whole point of modesty).

You will be assimilated.

2010-11-06T07:40:00.004Z

English people keep going on about how immigrants should assimilate. It's quite a big issue here. Though I don't hear it from the Scots nor the Welsh and that may be because they don't want to integrate either.

The English have mostly shrugged off the overt racism of the recent past, but they are still quite racist - but not just racist, they tend to fear anyone who is different. They don't like foreigners, generally speaking, even European foreigners who they superficially resemble, but they may like you on a one-to-one basis. Once they get to know you and relax you'll know because they start making ironic comments and jokes about race (the English have special jokes for Scots, Welsh, Germans, Belgians, French, Dutch, Spanish, Scandinavians and East Europeans; as well as race - i.e. colour - jokes though these have gone a bit deeper underground). Often the racism is quite casual and unremarkable. 'White' and 'black' are still acceptable, even politically correct, terms here. After 8 years I'm starting to get used to it, but I refuse to identify myself as 'white'. When they say assimilate, it means "don't be a foreigner, because we don't like foreigners." I recognise this to some extent because it's a feature of living on an island - and of course there is a long history of conflict with the mainland.

What the English fear, as always, is an invasion. They haven't forgotten for forgiven the Norman Conquest (though most have forgotten that William of Orange also invaded in 1688). They certainly haven't forgotten the Battle of Britain - and it has become one of the defining moments in modern British history. Not only is johnny foreigner a bit of a rum chap, but he bally well wants to take this green and pleasant land. The English fear foreigners en mass a lot more than individually - partly from having been at war with one nation or another for the last 1000 years. At the moment England has high immigration and it is a bone of contention. Having joined the European Economic Community and more recently the European Union Britain has tended to cut it self off from it's former colonies, the Commonwealth Games not-withstanding, and open it's doors to Europe (which is full of foreigners). It may well be that the present government is more able to deal with mass immigration than the last. Hopefully this will mean much less support for far-right groups!

English culture is complex. Life is lived according to a multitude of unwritten rules. To fully assimilate is very difficult. And I'm not saying they are bad people. They aren't. They're just being themselves, and I think it's similar everywhere. I try to take part in the life of the nation (to the extent I can) and I vote in elections both local and national. If I could afford to buy citizenship (£950 last time I looked) I would buy it, but I can't afford it. I'd be happy to call myself a citizen. But if I became a citizen what would I be? The usual overarching adjective for English, Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish is British. So I might become British to some extent, but I don't think anyone can become English except by being born and growing up here. One can only become a pale imitation, a mockery. And they'll only hate you for that. I might add that anyone who has met an English person abroad will know that they are often the last people to assimilate, because perhaps they still think you should assimilate to them even when they are a minority of one!

It's just not that easy to blend in as a foreigner here - any conversation with a new acquaintance lasting more than 5 minutes usually involves being asked if I'm an Australian! It says something that most English people are unable to distinguish between these two accents, or in some cases between either of those two and South African. They all know about the countries, and most express affection for one or the other, and a desire to go there, and they all know Kiwis and Aussies because we're everywhere. But they can't make a distinction between us - just as foreigners look the same; colonials sound the same. I'm constantly teased about my accent by my friends, who to be fair also tease the Mancunians I live with about their accents. I can't do much about my accent without becoming affected and inauthentic, which would probably be seen as an ever greater barrier to assimilation.

So yes we might try to assimilate, but there are always going to be limits - limits imposed by the English themselves which grow out of English culture. I only write this in response to the constant harping on assimilation - which as a foreigner begins to irritate. Although I'm kind of stuck, I do like living here for the most part, and given the circumstances have a good life. I have a great deal of affection for the English, and I suppose they are not alone in having blind spots.

My one suggestion for helping assimilation is make citizenship cheaper - it could be quite hard to get citizenship, and have all kinds of requirements, but don't make it so expensive. I don't imagine it costs £950 to process a form and do a CRB check. If it were a bank charge we could complain about it not representing the true cost of the transaction! Make it realistic. Having passed the Life in the UK test, and been a good probationary citizen for some years, make it easy to identify with the place as home, but easing the journey to citizenship.

Political Correctness...

2010-11-05T20:15:00.003Z

In Cambridge this evening we did not have Guy Fawkes Night fireworks; we only had "5th of November" fireworks. Just another day, no history involved apparently. Could we make it more prosaic please, I still felt a little magic. I'm not asking that we immolate a Catholic on the bonfire, but why deny history? It's a bit late to worry about offending Catholics, isn't it? Besides you'd think they'd be used to it.

My friends listening to the announcements before hand quipped: "wow they really did their risk assessment, didn't they!" After rain all day, and standing in pouring rain, for what were some very nice fireworks, we had some local radio idiot remind us to be careful on the way out as the ground was wet. No fucking kidding - it's pissing down with rain and the ground is wet? Well fuck me. Is it just me or does anyone else hate being spoken to like a child when they're over 40 (and rapidly becoming blind and toothless)?

Another couple of hours of the hideous noise of the 'fun' fair and then I can get some sleep - but first a hot bath is in order.

Eyesore

2010-11-02T12:57:00.005Z

My eye has deteriorated quite rapidly recently. I first got glasses about 15 years ago, and up until 18 months ago was about -1 to -1.25 strength. My eye test yesterday measured my required lenses as -2 . So quite a change in a short time. I'd noticed quite a bit of blur, but hadn't realised that it had got do bad. Apparently it is just my age. But if this keeps going I stand to lose a lot of vision in the next few years!

I went back to Boots Opticians as last time they were good and I got some nice frames with lenses for well within the value of the NHS voucher. This time, even though the optician knew I was an NHS patient, she kept on about vari-focal lenses, persisting after I said I wasn't interested. These are classes as a luxury item by the NHS and so are not covered by the voucher; and they cost about £120 (plus frames!). Looking back this is a bit rude. I also discovered that their selection of cheap frames has become deeply unsexy and dorky looking. So I took my voucher and went elsewhere. I'm waiting for my benefit to come tomorrow but will probably go to Specsavers who seem much more geared to low-income people and have a great deal on NHS vouchers.

Things neatly organised

2010-11-01T08:16:00.001Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/oct/29/things-organized-neatly-photography-blog

Mmmmmmmmm........

The Guardian recants, but the story has legs

2010-10-29T13:54:00.004+01:00

I haven't had a response to my email to the Guardian but looking for stories on Work Capability Assessment appeals I found this correction:

In a story yesterday headed Three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants are fit to work, says DWP, the headline and opening paragraph over-compressed findings issued by the Department for Work and Pensions....

It goes on to cite the actual figures. Interestingly it also says

Its section on appeals notes that of people found fit for work after making a claim for ESA between October 2008 and August 2009, 33% have had an appeal heard to date; of these, the original fit-to-work decision was "confirmed for 60%"; by implication 40% of fitness rulings were not upheld (27 October, page 12).

This is interesting - I overlooked it. So of the 39% found fit to work, a third appeal and 40% of those are overturned. So the number of people undergoing the WCA actually being judged fit to work is 33.8%. About a third. That's quite different from 78%! It would be interesting to see why people didn't appeal. Did they accept the decision, or did they not have the nous and resources to appeal it?

Meanwhile the Daily Mail (ever ready to outrage) reported this bogus story as:

75% of incapacity claimants fit to work: Benefits test weeds out workshy. The Sun also ran with it. The French Tribune managed the greatest distortion by claiming the figure was almost 90%! I didn't find any major daily newspaper who accurately reported the figures.

Stories of seriously ill people getting judged fit to work by the WCA:

A record of Wednesday's debate on Work Capability Assessments, Westminster Hall debates, 27 October 2010.

It is apparent that the appeal success rate various enormously from place to place - one MP saying that is was 95% from one advocate in his constituency - depending on what I wonder? We just don't know enough about what is going on when people are judged fit for work. How many of them are getting jobs?

Cancer patient faces tests on fitness to work

2010-10-29T09:00:00.003+01:00

"As Citizens Advice Scotland disclosed 70% of its appeals against "fit to work" judgments are successful, Stefan Morkis talked to one man who must constantly prove he is too unwell to work."

Story from The Courier.
Seen on Mind In Flux.

I wonder how representative this is? We still do not know what proportion appeal. Nor how many people's appeals succeed. To ask the DWP ministers about this, email: ministers@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Danny Alexander's comments on the ESA and WCA

2010-10-28T16:35:00.005+01:00

"The fact is that the process isn’t working and that genuinely vulnerable people are being denied money as a result." - Telegraph 26 May 2010.

So Danny... WHAT'S CHANGED?????????????????????????????????????????????

My letter to Danny:

Do you still stand behind your words printed in the Telegraph on 26 May 2010, regarding the Employment Support Allowance and the Work Capability Assessment?

"The fact is that the process isn’t working and that genuinely vulnerable people are being denied money as a result."

Would you have any comment on this YouTube video (6 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PBKrsOEV8g

I look forward to your response.

Matt

Why don't we all write to Mr Alexander about this?

Bendy Girl Strikes Back!

2010-10-28T16:15:00.004+01:00

This is brilliant! If you read the headlines about 3/4 of incapacity benefit claimants being judged fit for work then take 6 minutes out to watch this!

First seen on the Bendy Girl's blog: Benefit Scrounging Scum.

Please go to the blog and give BendyGirl your support!

I'm really struck by this - the measured tone, the background research and the referencing of Danny Alexander's previous opposition to the current scheme.

What ever happened to those 36% of people who dropped out of the WCA? Why doesn't the DWP know?

Being on Benefits

2010-10-28T15:59:00.002+01:00

I think with all the trauma of the impending cuts and worry about Work Capability Assessment (WCA) that it's easy to lose sight of the non-financial welfare. For instance I receive free dental care, free health care, free prescriptions, and what I need at the moment free eyes test and a contribution towards new glasses. So far no one has talked about taking away these benefits.

I'm no longer obese!

2010-10-27T11:49:00.003+01:00

As of today my BMI is 29.6. Which means I am merely over-weight rather than obese! I never thought I'd be so pleased to say I'm fat! The diet has been hell, and I have some months to go on reduced rations. But it does make such a difference.

Letter to the General Medical Council

2010-10-27T11:05:00.002+01:00

To Whom It May Concern

Yesterday the media were repeating claims (inaccurate as it turns out) that fully 78% of people on incapacity benefits were in fact fit to work. In fact the situation is more complex than that and the headlines were a distortion of a government press release.

But consider the implication. It is UK doctors, both GPs and DWP doctors, who are the gate keepers to incapacity benefit. I'm ill, my GP says so, my specialists agree, and the DWP doctor also agrees. And the headlines are saying that 4 out of 5 times they are wrong. The government are saying that UK doctors are incompetent and themselves unfit to judge whether a person is ill enough to need time off work.

Doctors are being undermined as much as the sick in this campaign. I wondered what the medical council thinks about this. The stories of seriously ill people being judged fit to work by the WCA are mounting up. If I am judged fit for work, which I fully expect to be despite both mental and physical health problems, then should I sue my GP practice? After all the government would effectively be telling me that my doctors are incompetent.

I look forward to your reply
Matt Black

Letter to the Editor

2010-10-27T10:50:00.002+01:00

Dear Chris Elliott, Reader's Editor,

I am writing with regard an article that appeared on your website:

Allegra Stratton.

Three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants are fit to work, says DWP.

As I pointed out in comments on the article, the headline is misleading. This is not what the figures and the press release from the DWP say. They do not mention Incapacity Benefit for a start. 39% of people simply drop out of the system once they begin to face the stringent Work Capability Assessment (WCA). But that 39% are not accounted for; we have no idea if they died, dropped out, or recovered!

Only 39% were declared fit for work, and anecdotes are already piling up of seriously illpeople being declared fit for work. How many of the 39% appealed the decision and won? How many are really fit to work? Oh, we don't know because it's not in the official figures, nor in the press release (funny that), and the reporter didn't seem to bother asking.

If 78% were claiming a benefit unnecessarily then that would be a scandal wouldn't it? Because that would mean that GPs, specialists, IB50 form assessors, and the DWP doctors who make recommendations on fitness, have been getting it wrong 4 times out of 5! They are clearly incompetent! Call the Medical Council because most of the doctors in the country are complete idiots!

Having realised that this so-called 'report' was more or less just a government press release I felt pretty disappointed with the Guardian. I hadn't thought that this paper would be doing the government's propaganda work for them, but I suppose that was naive of me.

Really what's happening is that a lot of sick people are being pushed from a higher benefit payment onto a lower payment because of a change in ideology. Thanks for supporting the government in this program by further spreading their ideology unchallenged. Not!

Do us a favour and look into the appeal rate on these assessments, and how many people get the decision overturned. Interview a few more seriously ill people judged 'fit to work'. Do some investigation instead of spewing our government press releases.

Yours sincerely
Matt Black

The DWP press release:

The DWP statistical report. [pdf]

To cut or not to cut.

2010-10-24T11:00:00.005+01:00

So the cuts have been announced. I am highly likely to be targeted for a shove towards employment despite the facts of my illnesses and lack of employability, to compete with 500,000 out of work civil servants. I'm still grateful for the support I get, and will continue to get even though I'm worried about making ends meet in the future.

Glancing through the media and comments from the public what strikes me is the level of polarisation between those keen to cut (whatever the social costs) and those unwilling to cut (whatever the economic costs). There is no consensus and no middle ground. Isn't that a worrying thing?

I suppose history will be the judge, but I do feel worried about being a pawn in this chess game between powerful forces that think in terms of 100,000's of people and billions of pounds. I've never felt more that society considers me a number, an unwelcome statistic, than ever before. At present I have no great hopes of the NHS coming up with any new treatment, so it looks like a very different lifestyle ahead.

TV Licensing

2010-10-17T09:10:00.004+01:00

As back home people here in the UK pay a license fee for watching "free to air" TV (which ironically means it ain't free). This fee funds the BBC which isn't such a bad thing - it's more of a BBC tax. But I absolutely love the BBC and won't hear a word against it. It is my favourite British thing.

But there is a difference between the NZ and the UK licensing depts. I don't ever recall getting a letter about TV licensing in NZ, and have to confess that I never paid it back home - there is no equivalent of the advertisement free, high quality programming anyway. Here I don't watch TV so it's not an issue. But our house which is shared between 6 of us regularly gets these threatening letters from TV Licensing (TVL). Here's how they kick off:

Now for the last 12 years or so no one here has watched TV at this address. But more than this I have several times contacted TVL to explain the situation. The best I got was a two year hiatus of these hectoring and threatening letters, after a long phone call (they more or less ignore emails or the form that they send you to fill in even if the situation has changed. The main thing about these letters is that they threaten repeatedly to visit your house - but the thing is that they never do. They say "your details will be passed to our enforcement team". If you contact them to say that you don't watch TV they say fine but, "we will also plan a visit to confirm the situation" [they won't].

And... "What if you don't respond by 27th October?" Under these circumstances they say "we will pass your details to our enforcement team. TV Licensing officers may then visit your address." This is followed by all the gruesome details of prosecution and possible fines. One wonders how many prosecutions they bring each year?

You'd think this would be small potatoes and not worth the effort (though of course this kind of computer generated harassment is pretty cheap). But actually the fees were £3.45 billion in 2009–10. This is not chicken feed by any means, especially when the BBC costs quite a bit to run and the government spends £150 billion more than it earns each year. One can understand the "we will never surrender" attitude of TVL given how much lucre is at stake.

There are certain circumstances in which the famous British reputation for politeness is undeserved. And TVL's take no prisoners approach is certain one of them. I note that the Wikipedia article on UK TVL suggests that enforcement officers receive a commission for obtaining licence fees from people.

Diet

2010-10-13T11:01:00.003+01:00

With all the spending cuts stuff I haven't written about myself lately. I'm going through a period of relative calm and stability and taking the opportunity to go on a diet. My weight has crept up due to reduced capacity for exercise (fibromyalgia affects my legs now as well as my upper body), over eating due to depression, and a while back a couple of months on the drug tegratol (which made me ravenously hungry all the time). I reached 99kg with a body-mass index (BMI) of 32. The official cut off for obesity is a BMI of 30. I'd become part of the obesity epidemic. It was a bit embarrassing and depressing.

So I've cut down drastically on what I eat, restricting fats and simple carbs, focussing on fresh fruit and veg, and trying to get out for a walk every day (though I've also started a Tai Chi class). I've been losing on average a little over 1kg (about 2.5 lbs in old money) a week for the last 5 weeks. My BMI is now just 30.02 and next week I'll only be fat and not obese!

I plan to keep on losing about 1kg a week until Christmas to get down to something approaching my ideal weight.

I have a new appreciation for how hard it is to diet. I sympathise with those people who continually fail. It takes a lot of positivity, determination, and perseverance - and until recently I certainly did not have what it took. Some positive things have happened to help create the necessary conditions. I don't think the advice on losing weight pays enough attention to setting up the right conditions, to the environment in which obese people live. Resisting craving takes a lot more than simply will power, especially when the habit is to give in to it.

One of my favourite Buddhist writers emphasises the problem of thinking that pleasure is happiness; or that maximising pleasure and minimising pain, maximises happiness. Actually as many chronically ill people will tell you it is possible to have a lot of pain and still be happy. Equally it is clear that people who pursue pleasure most vigorously seldom seem genuinely happy. My trouble is partly that I eat for pleasure, or because I feel emotional pain. Eating for reasons other than to sate hunger mean that eventually you get fat, like me. But you can't just give up an strategy for dealing with emotional discomfort, and food is actually quite effective for this, and expect there to be no reaction, no increase in discomfort. I could say a lot more about this, and perhaps I will, but that's enough for now.

Scandal

2010-10-10T08:18:00.002+01:00

Chris Grayling, the Conservative Employment Minister, produced figures showing that £133.7billion had been spent on those on Incapacity Benefit for the last 10 years. This was a "scandal" which must "stop now", Mr Grayling added. - Telegraph.

Dear Mr Grayling,

I agree it is a scandal that so many people are becoming ill long term. Why do people allow themselves to become ill, when with some blitz spirit they might carry on regardless? I for instance stopped work before the pain stopped me using my limbs altogether, and the anxiety and depression drove me to another suicide attempt. I see now, with illumination from your compassion Tory government that if I had carried on and then killed myself I would not ended up what I am now: a burden to society. I'm only sorry not to have had the fortitude that I sure you and your colleagues would undoubtedly had.

Facing drastic cuts is of course the right way to get me and other so reconsider our decisions to live with illness in favour of taking our own lives. No doubt weeding out such weak links will help the Big Society become the Big Strong Rich Society. I hope however that you will consider repealing the law on assisted suicide and broaden the conditions under which I might legally obtain, for instance a one-off payment for the procurement of an overdose of morphine or barbiturate, and someone to administer it in case I lose my nerve (again).

In the longer term I would think that instead of the NHS spending vast sums coddling people with incurable diseases, they will be directed to just quietly bump them off. That will save a great deal of money, reduce hospital waiting lists, and take the uncertainty out of when we are going to die. This would be a final solution to the problem of the lingering illnesses that make people such a burden to the Big Strong Rich Society.

Those people who have done so much to create wealth in this country - the bankers and financiers, the off-shore magnates, and the multinationals - cannot be expected to pay for those of us who have so little to offer can they.

As I'm unlikely to see the Big Strong Rich Society reach it's fulfilment, with everyone being millionaires together, I will take this opportunity to apologise for being ill and draining by coffers by as much as £9,000 per year for four years now. If only I had not contracted an incurable disease, or the NHS had been able to offer me an effective treatment (or even understood the nature of my illness), but I realise now that it was a lot to expect, and that once it was clear that I was out of action long-term I should have done the decent thing.

All the best

Matt Black

News Quiz Quip

2010-10-09T12:35:00.000+01:00

Tories... putting the 'n' in cuts. (Sandi Toksvig)

Cost of Benefits

2010-10-04T18:12:00.002+01:00

Guide to most costly UK benefits - from the BBC website.

Tax Credits: Currently, those with children and an annual income of £50,000 or less receive £545 a year, after which payments are tapered at a rate of £1 in every £15.

Whereas...

Child Benefit: All parents regardless of their income are currently eligible for this tax-free payment, with £20.30 paid a week for the eldest child and £13.40 for subsequent children.

Not having children, or having any UK friends with children I had no idea about these. You get paid to have kids in this overcrowded country! Potentially £30 a week!

Where the government's Priorities Lie

2010-10-04T08:23:00.002+01:00

Guardian headlines today...

Cameron caves in to Fox on defence spending after leaking of letter

After dire warnings of 'draconian cuts' leaked last week, PM and Treasury seem to have backed off from heavy cuts to defence

David Cameron's welfare reform to target middle class

Costly universal credit scheme covering all benefits to take two parliaments, with focus on unemployed in first four years

Argh!

2010-10-03T11:58:00.000+01:00

I'm not blogging about benefits and stuff because frankly I can't bare to think about it. I just don't trust these millionaire politicians to be sympathetic, and not when they are still trying to make up for not winning the election outright. When IDS says he wants to make it always worth working, I just hear "we are going to make you so poor that you'll want to pimp yourself out rather than starve". Of course they will save a lot of money. It's frankly terrifying to have my life in the hands of these people. I wish someone from a working class background, someone that had actual experience of not having enough, someone poor, someone who had something other than a highly privileged background was involved in this experience in social engineering.

Disability Now

2010-09-04T11:48:00.000+01:00

Just discovered this site Disability Now. Lot's of news and resources.

Benefit Fraud vs Tax Cheats

2010-09-03T11:18:00.005+01:00

I picked the following from the comments on an article in the Guardian by Peter Beresford: The Victorians knew a thing or two about benefit cheats. The leader says "David Cameron promised an uncompromising clampdown on benefit fraud, but what does this actually mean for communities?" and the article compares the actuality of the Victorian workhouse system to the rhetoric of the ConDem evil axis.

RosemaryUK comments...

Reform of the benefit system is needed, no one can deny that but not one where 'punishment' and sanctions' are used to 'threaten' disabled people.
As regards fraud...
Annual Benefit fraud estimate £5.2bn
Annual Tax fraud estimate £70bn
Spending on Tax evasion PR/advertising : £633,000
Spending on benefit fraud PR/advertising : £17.5 million
(both figures exclude VAT)
Figures from Hansard.
If any political party had any real morals , they would have condemned this 'campaign' by some media outlets that is raging against those on benefits.

Yes. A few of us have made the same point, though I admit I got it from the Now Show on BBC Radio 4. Another figure to compare is the £150bn that we spend over what is earned in tax. That is to say that is tax fraud were tackled with the same enthusiasm it would make a good contribution to reducing the deficit. Attacking benefit fraud is unlikely to make much difference, though it should of course be tackled. I've said before the noise is Cameron trying to make good with the Tory faithful who think he's a useless cunt who lost a sure thing election against a lame duck Labour government. The noise is out of proportion to the good that he can do - especially on the eve of making massive cuts that will result in 1000's of civil servants being made redundant.

One thing that would make a big difference would be to pursue the well known tax cheat Tony Blair our former Prime Minister who has tied his financial affairs up in such knots that it is very difficult to say for sure what happens to the tens of millions of money coming in from advising foreign investors, and giving lectures, and more recently setting up a bank for the super-rich. See here for instance: Tony Blair under pressure to explain if he is avoiding UK taxes. (Telegraph 3.9.10) and here: The mystery of Tony Blair's finances (Guardian 1.12.09). A good strong example might send a message about social responsibility to the rest of the rich who try to keep from making their contribution to society.

Diagnosis

2010-09-02T11:40:00.003+01:00

Had a long talk with my doc today. I have a friend who has Aspergers Syndrome. We have a lot in common and I have sometimes wondered whether I might be on the autistic spectrum. Doc was unconvinced. She thinks I have endogenous depression, though it's interesting that some websites suggest that this term is outdated. Perhaps I have dysthymia - I seem to fit the criteria.

With all the sabre rattling in the war on Benefit fraud and benefits generally I have felt that a clearer diagnosis of my mental health problems might be useful. I did a self-test for Aspergers and came out average for men my age. So that's unlikely then.

Benefit Changes and Fantastic English Weather

2010-08-25T17:01:00.003+01:00

This is the forecast for my area the next 20 hours from the BBC website. Basically it's heavy rain and 14C.

Meanwhile the government is denying that their massive spending cuts are not going to hit poor people worse than others. The government keeps saying "We're all in this together". Yeah right!

But they also keep saying "get people off benefits and into work" but once the cuts start to bite, it's going to be interesting to watch the unemployment rate.

I'm trying not to think too much about the cuts until more detail comes out. But the propaganda campaign is in full swing.

Living with English Bachelors

2010-08-21T14:51:00.003+01:00

I just overheard one of the MAEBs talking to someone while having a shower, yes, while actually in the shower with the water running talking on his cell phone. Lord, give me strength!

City of Philistines

2010-08-11T13:53:00.002+01:00

Cambridge City Council are going to cut spending on libraries by 30% over the next three years, in an attempt to save £20 million. CCC lost money in Iceland investments. This is a fait accompli. They are asking how we want to spread the cuts, but the cuts are a fact. The CCC doesn't believe in consulting people before making decisions. They consult once the decision has been made.

We've seen a series of book shop closures as well, Brown's, Border's and Galloway & Porter.

Outside the university the city is devolving, sinking into the fens.

Welfare Reform - Cameron

2010-08-10T17:02:00.002+01:00

So PM Cameron is going to get tough on £1.5 billion in benefit fraud. Firstly this figure contradicts the official figures from the DWP. Benefit Fraud is £330m, down from £850m ten years ago. So where is the PM getting his figures from? Where does the figure of $1.5b come from and why is it 5x the official figure?

According to a report in City Wire (Jan 22):

At £30 billion per year, fraud in the UK is more than twice as high as thought, with tax evasion costing the public purse over £15 billion per year and benefit fraud just over £1 billion.

... Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure.

Apart from the £1b figure (from where?) where is all the hoo-ha about tax evasion?

Again I ask why ordinary people, and people living on benefits are paying for the excesses of bankers and their reckless clients? I don't have a mortgage I wasn't involved in property speculation, or financial mismanagement. I wish the government would leave me the fuck alone and target the people who caused the problems in the first place!

What in reality has happened to the people who caused the financial crisis? Not a fucking thing. They are free to do it all over again, and on past form they will do so.

On the other hand will there come a time when they say "OK, we've cleaned up the system, and we'd like those people who genuinely qualify for benefits to relax and concentrate on getting well, or living well"? No of course there never will, because people everywhere hate the idea of charity which enables a person to live without working. People with that attitude should visit India and see what a society with no social welfare looks like. I'd be a beggar in India - begging for money on the street and living in cardboard boxes.

I don't get a huge amount in reality - just £9200 per year. It's enough to house, cloth and feed me and not a lot more. For which I am more grateful than I can say.

But the news is all about people on benefits being undeserving cheats and thieves. I'm not a thief. I'm genuinely unwell. I get so stressed listening to all this hard talk about people on benefits, it's so upsetting because the distinction between those who genuinely need help and those who don't is blurred. It makes it shameful to rely on the government, even when you have no choice. What David Cameron is saying is that receiving handouts is shameful. But he's a millionaire from a millionaire family - with every privilege provided. He has no idea what it is like to be chronically ill, or to lose the ability to work. He doesn't even need to work.

So watch out everyone on benefits. You are now being pursued by private companies paid to catch you out. You may say that if I'm honest that I have nothing to fear. But unlike an ordinary member of the public I am a suspect merely for claiming what I am entitled to claim. By accepting a benefit, I sign up to allow these private companies to investigate my life. Ordinary people have a right to privacy and are presumed to be innocent, even though there is a lot of crime in the country, the fact that they have possessions does not automatically make them a suspect in all robberies. As of today I am suspected of fraud, just because some people commit fraud. If all people were suspected of tax evasion because some people are guilty of tax evasion, and had to open up all of the bank accounts to private companies paid to expose them, how would they react?

Ha!

2010-08-01T11:42:00.002+01:00

For the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, to say that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might have "blood on his hands" [Guardian 1 Aug], is very much the pot calling the kettle black don't you think?

Benefit Levels

2010-07-31T22:39:00.002+01:00

People keep citing these huge amounts that people get on benefits in the UK. Single men getting £12-14,000 per year and having no incentive to work was being cited by some Tory on BBC's Question Time on Friday. Fucking hell! I get £4,800 in Income Support including the top-up for being ill. I get about £4,400 in Housing Benefit - about £9,200 in total. I don't know what people do to get so much more! I really don't. As far as I can make out there is no way for me to fiddle the system even if I did lie my arse off, and risk prosecution. I give the relevant agencies my information, they tell me what I get and I have fuck-all to say about it. I guess my accommodation is pretty cheap - £320 per month - but all of that goes directly to my landlord, and it is cheap because I live with five other adults (four middle-aged bachelors). My standard of living is determined by the IS. Out of that comes all my bills, telephone, food, clothes, everything. It's not exactly the lap of luxury, I get by because I walk everywhere, don't own a car. I don't have holidays. I don't have an ipod or a flash computer. I have a PAYG mobile I put £5 on every couple of months and only use it for texts and incoming calls. My luxury is that I buy second books to read, mostly from charity shops.

So perhaps a review is in order if people are getting so much more than me, but why do I have this sinking feeling that I'm the one who's going to end up with LESS!?

GPs suddenly competent

2010-07-12T19:37:00.004+01:00

The government, past and present, has never been confident that my GP is able to assess my fitness for work and has taken that responsibility out of their hands - so that the responsibility rests with a privately employed GP (salary?) who sees me once, for 45 minutes, prods me a few times and asks a couple of questions, and with no continuity or history, no x-rays or referrals to specialists or reports from psychologists (I repeated gave them the contact details for my psychologist and they have never contacted her) or any of that other broad base that my GP works from.

But now, now the GPs are competent to run the entire NHS!

NHS 'to undergo radical overhaul' (BBC)

Why not go the whole hog and let my physician make the decisions that so deeply affect my life rather than a stranger! They've been treating me for eight years now, they haven't always been able to help, but that very fact is an important part of the picture when it comes to my fitness to work. Give my GP the right to assess my benefit claim!

Could you live decently on £14,400 a year?

2010-07-09T12:14:00.001+01:00

Head line from the BBC.

A salary of £14,400 is the minimum a single person needs for an acceptable standard of living, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).

I which case I'm about £5,000 short of an acceptable standard of living!

Now Show - 31.3 Benefits

2010-07-05T17:50:00.005+01:00

>The Now Show last Friday opened with a segment on benefits claimants. As usual it mixed fact and funny. An mp3 of the segment is here...

They mention the two different forms for reporting tax evasion (to HMRC) and benefit theft to the DWP. Here's what they look like:

I'd like to try for a transcript at some point as well.

One gem: "tax fraud costs 15 times as much as benefit fraud."

The real cost of the Budget

2010-06-30T11:02:00.003+01:00

So the Guardian scoops today:

Budget will cost 1.3m jobs - Treasury Exclusive:
Leaked government data concerning next five years shows hidden costs of austerity drive.

So where are those millions of jobs for those currently on incapacitated going to come from?

The BBC has picked up on it:

Forecast suggests 600,000 public sector jobs to go.
Some 600,000 jobs are expected to be lost in the public sector over the next five years, the Office for Budget Responsibility has said.

Leaked Treasury documents had suggested last week's Budget could increase unemployment by up to 1.3 million.

A laugh?

2010-06-30T08:52:00.000+01:00

If you are in need of a laugh, and I know I do, then I recommend David Mitchell's Observer Column last week.

Whelk ice cream never meant we stopped being a Pot Noodle nation.
Our taste for fancy food that made us look like fine diners during the good times is now exposed as a canard.

It muses on the fact that being in a bust now, means we were in a boom before. Only none of us really noticed, did we? He pens this line wonderful:

We didn't really prioritise food. Like drunks at a urinal, we were splashing out because we were loaded.

Magic.

Millions of People Off Benefits?

2010-06-29T08:13:00.004+01:00

Heard on the radio this morning that the aim of the government is "to get millions of people off benefits and into work". Let's look at some more official stats: (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=12)

April 2010

employment : 28.86 million
unemployment : 2.47 million (7.9%)
claiming JSA : 1.48 million
unemployed 12 months+ : 772,000.
Inactive people : 8.19 million (i.e. working age, but not working)

That's relatively high unemployment - especially considering we've just had a boom. Has the bust affected us so much?

Now from the same page:

The number of vacancies for the three months to May 2010 was 492,000, up 7,000 over the quarter.

So for the 3 months to May there were roughly 500k jobs available when at any given time during that period there were roughly 1500k people seeking work, and another 1000k unemployed but not looking (bums like me). That's 3 people for every job going.

Now the government is pursuing a high unemployment strategy and expects (partially) incapacitated people to join the work force. My question is what the fuck are they talking about? Where are these millions of jobs coming from?

The government approach to benefits is to sweep it all under the carpet in a way that reduces welfare spending, but reduces welfare full-stop.

So, the Welfare Madness Begins

2010-06-28T18:55:00.006+01:00

News began to filter out today (strategic press releases by the government's spin doctors) about plans to target people on Incapacity Benefit. Anyone getting this benefit is suspected of malingering. Too many people could do some work and so all of us are going to be scrutinised more closely. By whom one wonders? Given that my regular doctors and specialists are at a loss to do anything about my symptoms I wonder how I will be judged by someone tasked at cutting benefits. What criteria are going to be applied? (And who the fuck would employ me). How are they going to test how anxiety and depression affect my ability to work? So far I have no confidence at all that my pain will be taken seriously by any doctor whose agenda is to force people back into work - my pain doesn't show up in the tests I've had so far because the tests are simply not geared for it. (I need to write about this, but some other time).

We need to be clear that the point here is reduce spending.

Budgets are being cut everywhere which will include the NHS. This is going to create considerable conflict. On one hand reductions in spending will cause unemployment to rise. They want this because it will force wages down (though not for senior executives or merchant banker, eh). More people will be 'signing on', and less people will be processing their applications. Overpayments will go up (currently official mistakes make up one third of benefit overpayments).

On the other hand the system for testing the incapacitated will have to be beefed up (paid for how?) and this will push people off the IB on onto Job Seekers Allowance (or what ever it is rebranded to), which costs a lot less (£25 per week in my case). These people will be entering the job market with some incapacity (though perhaps not enough to keep them out of full-time employment). They will not be able to compete with all the able bodied people in the high unemployment situation, and this means subsisting on JSA - which is considerably less than IB. This in turn will mean a higher demand on social services at a time when those services are being cut. Being a job seeker is demanding, so stress on the incapacitated will increase. Many people have been incapacitated by stress related illnesses such as depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue. So increasing the stress means more people will be in crisis, but now they have been judged fit to work so there is no safety net.

Another thing is that at present one has to be looking for full-time work to qualify for JSA. So these people who cannot, and won't be expected to, seek full-time work are going to be covered how? Presumably the details will emerge over time, but the next few days and weeks are going to be uncomfortable for many people, me included.

A lot of sick people are going to end up falling through the cracks. This is going to be a disaster for them, but the real costs will be hidden and it will be a PR victory for a government a wee bit short on popularity. Though the way they are covering up the massive reduction in benefit fraud may be cited as a counter-example.

BBC.

Q&A: Incapacity benefits explained.

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

Duncan Smith denies sickness benefit tests to triple.

"Iain Duncan Smith has denied reports that ministers are considering trebling "fitness to work" tests on people claiming incapacity benefit..."

Guardian

Welfare crackdown begins with drive to reduce incapacity benefit claims.

Coalition's plans include taking people off higher rate of benefits if tests reveal they are fit to do some work.

What we are up against

2010-06-24T07:58:00.004+01:00

I said to watch the Blue Blog. Watch the comments also. This is a comment from there, this what we're up against:

A good budget. I’m particularly pleased you are raising VAT the one tax we can decide to pay or not by limiting our consumption.

I can never understand why Labour say poorer people are most affected — do the poor regularly buy wide-screen TVs or state of the art consumer goods? I don’t think so, People make do and mend — in any case, everyday consumables such as food or children’s clothes are zero-rated.

Some Truths About Benefit Fraud

2010-06-23T13:04:00.006+01:00

In 2009 the DWP published some statistics about benefit fraud. These can be found in the document entitled: Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: April 2008 to March 2009. We are right to be worried about this as it depletes resources that should otherwise go to worthy people. There are three sources of benefit overpayment: fraud, customer error and official error. Here's the graph of the period 1997/8 - 2008/9 for Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance.

There are two main things to say about this. Firstly in the last 10 years there has been a massive reduction in benefit fraud overpayments. This appears to have bottomed out in 2005/6 and to have had a small increase since then. To be clear the reduction is from £850m to £330, with a low of £290m in 2005/6.

Fraud overpayments are less than half what they were a decade ago. How did this get lost in the discussion!?

Now notice that as fraud has gone up, official overpayments have gone up by the same amount. So 50% of the increase (more or less) of the increase from the low figure of £290m is due not to increasing fraud but to official errors (i.e. incompetence).

At the same time there the contribution from the customer has remained much the same -getting as high as £160, but presently at about the same as it was a decade ago.

As it stands about half of the overpayments are due to fraud, ie people deliberately misleading the DWP, and about half are due to mistakes by either the customer or the DWP (with the DWP making twice as many mistakes as the customer).

The DWP are responsible for one third of the overpayments - let's target them for efficiency savings!

Here are the figures from the report in a table:

Year	Fraud	Customer Error	Official Error	Total
1997/98	850,000,000	100,000,000	280,000,000	1,220,000,000
1998/99	780,000,000	90,000,000	330,000,000	1,190,000,000
1999/00	760,000,000	90,000,000	260,000,000	1,120,000,000
2000/01	690,000,000	80,000,000	200,000,000	980,000,000
2001/02	600,000,000	120,000,000	220,000,000	940,000,000
2002/03	570,000,000	110,000,000	250,000,000	920,000,000
2003/04	400,000,000	160,000,000	290,000,000	840,000,000
2004/05	290,000,000	140,000,000	250,000,000	680,000,000
2005/06	240,000,000	150,000,000	180,000,000	570,000,000
2006/07	300,000,000	110,000,000	170,000,000	590,000,000
2007/08	280,000,000	120,000,000	140,000,000	540,000,000
2008/09	330,000,000	110,000,000	200,000,000	640,000,000

The Budget

2010-06-22T16:27:00.003+01:00

Government opts for medical exams over form filling. Aims to put all people claiming Disability Living Allowance through examinations - presumably these examiners will be highly qualified experts in every kind of debilitating illness? Yeah right. Ha! not that I even qualify anyway.

Anyway. Comment here at Arbitrary Constant.

Housing benefit cap should not affect me either as I live in low cost housing. Note that the government is unable to reward people who save money, only to punish the profligate - and some people appear to have been very profligate indeed - if the stories can be believed!

Welfare Reform

2010-06-20T09:21:00.003+01:00

The Guardian are at it again today:

George Osborne to axe benefits in race to slash deficit

Welfare targeted in £85bn package, but safeguards for education, defence and transport

This is an article with no content. Don't read it. It is a lot of speculation and reporting on the opinions of Tory think tanks. Total facts? One.

The government is going to announce a budget on Tuesday in which welfare will be targeted for reductions in the amount spent.

Despite all the feverish guessing, the papers do not know what the government is thinking. Note the words here are slightly different from the previous headline I discussed. Now it's not war and bombs, it's axes and slashes - we will be maimed, but not killed, which is an improvement I suppose.

So what are the media up to when they do this? They have no information to present so they basically make stuff up. This is creative writing, it is not investigative journalism. No one can provide pre-emptive analysis. Or perhaps this is gambling. One makes a prediction on the basis that there is a pay off for getting it right (in terms of kudos and perhaps readership, which sells advertising).

Now you have to add to the mix that the Government employs spin doctors who purposefully leak drips of news to the media. They do this to mainly to sustain the media interest in the Government - in promoting a brand the main thing is to keep their profile high; and these days the government is a brand. It also helps to soften the blow of negative news, and drags out positive effects.

So why do the media buy into the government's spin program?

Why do we buy into the media spin program?

I will also point out that in making massive reductions in spending unemployment is going to to increase. Labour pursued a low unemployment/high borrowing strategy. It did work all that well. The Con-Dems are about to pursue a high unemployment/low borrowing strategy. So spending on welfare is only going to rise as many more people claim unemployment benefits.

BTW My prediction, for what it is worth, is that the government will try to rebrand unemployment payments - which are already called Job Seeker's Allowance, which fools no one but does expose the role of Public Relations consultants in the government.

Some random stuff

2010-06-19T09:18:00.002+01:00

"This time the oil is invading America" - a UK comic

UK World Cup. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. How do you spell schadenfreude?

Even if I do become a UK citizen (which I probably won't because it costs £750) I still won't be English.

I used to read The Times website now and then for a bit of balance to my left-wing habitual tendencies - now they want me to get ads and pay. No thanks. Now I wouldn't even link to it.

News Quiz is off, Now Show is on. Can we not have both? Have I got News For You is off, Mock the Week is back. What ever happened to I Sorry I Haven't a Clue? BBC comedies make life worth living. David Frost's doco on satire, mildly amusing.

Spotify offers £4.99 all you eat, but only at your computer (not portable to iPod), cranks up ad intensity as an incentive. The race is on to generate enough income to stay in business. It's tempting in many ways.

I'm homesick which is usually a bad sign. I day dreamed about going back to live in Taupo recently. Watched "There is no Depression" on YouTube. Then the AK79 reunion concert - Spelling Mistakes! Woohoo. Then the beached Whale clip - discovered there are more!

Still melting down

2010-06-17T18:09:00.002+01:00

Still feeling fragile and not wanting to talk. I have not been talking to anyone, staying in my room when anyone else is home. I'm dreading the weekend. I have talked to a couple of old friends on Skype which was OK.

Continuing to reflect on the motivations for my previous conscientiousness around the house, and how that is different from other peoples approaches. I care for different reasons and that had made me vulnerable. It's as though the other guys are not sure why they do what they do - things like cleaning - and are just going through the motions. So they do the dishes but don't pay attention to cleaning them, they continue on with water that is saturated with fat and has no suds left, they don't clean the outside of things. Similarly despite having lived here for 2 or 3 years they are unsure where to find things, and having taken an item from place, they put it back at random (so it's impossible to find things).

I would love to move, but I'm not sure how I would manage, nor how I would accomplish that. I hate feeling like this.

I have been continuing to read LeDoux's 'The Emotional Brain' and finally getting into the fear response and related brain mechanism. One has to overlook the fact that his results have come from vivisection of animals - deliberately injuring their brains and observing the effects; or from experimenting on them while alive and then sectioning their brains after they die. The knowledge gained is fascinating and perhaps invaluable, but I for one often find myself revolted by his methods. But I haven't put much effort into ART - I haven't given up completely, but I'm feeling wary of setting off something I can't handle.

Conservative Welfare Reforms

2010-06-15T08:17:00.004+01:00

It might pay to keep an eye on "The Blue Blog", especially if you are interested in welfare reform.

"If people genuinely can’t work, we’re going to look after them. But if they’re found fit to work, they will be transferred onto Jobseeker’s Allowance. From there, we will offer people targeted, tailored, personal support to get a job."

Pardon? How is this different from the current policy? In fact this is what happens now. These rich bastards have no idea what being incapacitated is like. Even if they were ill they would receive a much higher standard of care down at Harley St, have no fear of losing their homes, and know that they will never be forced to live on £9500 per year.

What we have here is rhetoric. Scary rhetoric because of course it will affect people's lives, and may of us will be anxious about being forced into worse straits than we're already in because some politician wants the electorate to think he or she is 'tough'.

I'd encourage everyone to comment on their blog - comment is free and most of the comments are by Tories so far. Let them know what you think!

Meltdown

2010-06-13T09:28:00.006+01:00

Yikes. The last few days have been a bit strange. I've been hypersensitive and reacting to everything with rage or tears - everything is a threat to my well-being! I get this occasionally when I'm overloaded. I've been getting a bit dissociative - just blanking out and feeling like I'm floating just slightly out of my body, observing but not participating in my experience. It's a bit mental, but it can make life bearable at times. I think having taken on the Amygdala Retraining Technique I have loaded myself up with expectations. I'd given up before. Now there's this. But it's quite demanding - lots of things to do, and especially one thing to do up to hundreds of times a day -100, 200 or 300 Ashok says. FUCKING HELL!

I've been on board because it all makes sense to my scientist brain. There is a rational basis for the explanation of fibromyalgia and a rational basis for the ART. But then he introduces stuff like "alternate nostril breathing" - deep breathing but alternately closing of the nostrils. And I'm sorry but this just seems like bullshit to me. It is not accompanied by the kind of well thought out and well presented facts that the first part of the program is. It's just a "powerful" technique. Powerful? What the fuck does that mean? What does it do? And why does it do it? Given that the answers to these two questions are available to the first part of the program it seems fair to expect answers.

I must also say that Ashok overplays his one peer reviewed journal article in 2002 (8 years ago) - it was in "Medical Hypotheses" not in the Lancet or Nature. There is a reason why you've never heard of this journal before - it is obscure. It appears that there has been no subsequent research on his technique, so the idea is hardly causing a medical revolution (it means that no one has been impressed enough by his hypothesis to set up a trial and test it). I don't doubt that research would be favourable and that the understanding of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia would be confirmed. I even think that the hypothesis will shed light on many forms of anxiety and depression - I clues into my own insights and into what people like Joe Griffin of the Human Givens Institute are saying. But only the uneducated are going to be impressed by what he calls his "medical paper".

One of the good things to come out of my ruminations in the last few days has been a realisation. I do stuff around the house. I do it with the expectation that others will appreciate what I do and like me for it. This is a mistake I've made before (to my cost). People I live with, some of them anyway, don't give a shit about me or what I do. They don't even notice that I clean up after them, or make an extra effort to make the house look nice. I can't always be good company, but I do more than my fair share. But if I'm doing it so they will like me (and hopefully not reject me) and they are even aware, then I'm knocking myself out for no good reason. They don't care. They don't even know it's an issue. So why am I putting myself through this?

Honeymoon is over

2010-06-11T12:08:00.006+01:00

Well that didn't take long. I've had a very difficult couple of days - swamped by disturbing thoughts and images and feeling ill equipped to deal with them. Swinging from rage to weeping. I came a bit unhinged at times. What set me off? Someone took two bites out of a slice of bread and then left it on the cutting board beside the loaf. I just went nuts - fucking slobs!!!! etc. But it did me more harm than good. I definitely need to turn the volume knob down, to be much less prone to these overreactions. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, but I live with slobs and I need to find better ways of coping. Maybe I should take up smoking pot again? I never bothered about a bit of mess in those days... [joke].

I see very clearly how ART is supposed to work, but getting on top is going to be difficult. I find myself doing the technique so often it's exhausting. My negative thoughts are largely NOT about my body and symptoms, but about frightening experiences past and (imagined) future.

I'm trying to read Joseph LeDoux's book The Emotional Brain. There is a long (I mean at least 5 chapters) introduction to the history of research into the neuro-anatomy of emotion which is dull at times. Hopefully we'll get onto his research into fear soon. There are two main points from the first 5 chapters. Firstly that the contents of the consciousness are largely the result of unconscious processes about which we mostly can't be conscious. We make up stories to explain how we feel based on previous experience etc. We can be completely wrong about the reason we feel as we do.

Secondly the idea that there is an 'emotional centre' in the brain is probably wrong. Specifically LeDoux demonstrates that the so-called Limbic System as defined by previous researchers (and still a feature of neuroscience texts being published today) doesn't really exist, or do what they say it does. An aspect of LeDoux's thinking is that different emotions are produced by different parts of the brain. Fear, and especially fearful memories, for instance are associated with the amygdala and it's interactions with other brain systems. This is the fact that Ashok exploits in the ART.

Anyway I'm fed up with the slobs and I starting looking into council housing and found that as a non-citizen I have to go the extra mile to prove I qualify. So I can't register online but must take my passport in. Registration takes 8 weeks to be processed (why does everything take so fucking long in this country!). Then the system has changed and one has to keep an eye on the listings and put in bids for desirable places. 3 bids per bidding cycle. So now I have to decide whether the slobs are bad enough for me to tangle with the bureaucracy and red-tape and all the stress that brings.

Welfare Reform

2010-06-09T16:37:00.003+01:00

The Independent's helpful headline: Osborne's Bombshell: Chancellor declares war on middle-class welfare (By Andrew Grice, Political Editor).

Great example of a paper going beyond commentary in order to provoke outrage and upset in readers. They all do this all the time. There is no simple reporting any more, if there ever was. All the media are striving with all their might to get an emotional reaction to the story, rather like the way advertising no longer informs you about the specifications or quality of a product but tried to create an image. Newspapers trade especially on stimulating our fight or flight response - driving us all towards anxiety, depression and the like. Note the language here: bombs, war, i.e. death, destruction, mayhem. Is this accurate or true? No. It is a lie. A lie designed to stimulate fear and keep you buying newspapers.

I need to be informed about changes in welfare because I am wholly dependent on it. Is there anywhere I can get the facts without the hyperbole and the emotional string pulling?

Have you tried...

2010-06-08T07:28:00.004+01:00

Earlier I wrote that I hate getting medical advice from ordinary people. Any sentence (let aone conversation) where the opening gambit is "have you tried..." is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Not interested. Actually I've noticed that very few people can take in the complexity of my illness. They tend to latch onto one symptom and ask about that. For the first 3 years people would ask about my hands.

"How are your hands?"
"My hands are fine. I've never had a problem with my hands. What hurts are my elbows, upper-arms, shoulders, my back, my neck, and more recently my hips, and thigh muscles."
"Oh...."
Then the next time I see them.... "How're your hands?"

The other thing that people can relate to is sleep. I've often in an advanced stage of sleep deprivation and struggle to know which way is up. So then I'll get:

"Sleep OK?"
"No."
"Oh."

"Sleep OK?"
"No."
"Oh."

etc for weeks on end...

I stopped joining my housemates for breakfast years ago. (besides they eat loudly which disgusts me)

I know it comes from concern but somehow concern for me gets tangled up in their own views of the situation. They'll ask my about a headache I had 3 days ago.

"Head OK?".
"What?"
"You had a headache..."
"Yes, on Monday I had a headache, it's Wednesday now. You saw me yesterday and I apparently did not have a headache then either."
"Oh".

It's like somehow humans lose the ability to communicate effectively with me because I'm in pain. They focus on the pain that they can relate to, and forget to relate to me as a person. Or something. Fucked if I know really, but it's frustrating. I know I'm grumpy and that doesn't help. So what is wrong with me?

Pain in the tendons around my elbows, the ends of my deltoid muscles and all of the muscles/tendons around my shoulders and shoulder blades. Pain in my mid, upper back and neck. Pain in my jaws. All of my muscles are quick to fatigue and slow to recover.

When I say pain it varies. It can be burning with aching (as now), or just a dull ache, or a deep unsettling ache as if in my bones. It can be sharp frightening pain as bad as any I've felt.

Frequent headaches. Migraine. Insomnia - trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep, early waking. Un-refreshing sleep. Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS). General fatigue. [I also have problems with my teeth, psoriasis, I'm obese - sounds attractive doesn't it?].

I have trouble concentrating and remembering things (I used to be clever). I am constantly anxious, sometimes to the point of paranoia and panic attacks. I experience repeated bouts of clinical depression with suicidal thoughts (I took an overdose in 1999). I'm given to bouts of (mostly internal) rage.

Along with all of this my marriage ended. I lost my job. I'm stranded on benefits in a foreign country. I'm unable to do things like play a guitar (after 25 years of it being one of my main interests). I've had many diagnoses such as: Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Fibromyalgia. Many people want to label me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - again it seems to be what they've heard of - and they're like people who's only tool is a hammer: everything starts to look like a nail. Though Mr Gupta acknowledges that the two conditions are different (there's no suggestion of a viral trigger for FM as far as I know) there may well be a similarity in the underlying causes - i.e. a badly trained amygdala.

My last girlfriend left me because I apparently complained all the time. But the cow was forever asking me what I was thinking about or feeling - every five minutes like a five year old "what are you thinking about?". I think about pain, I feel pain. That's about it really. She kept asking, I kept telling the truth. I'm glad she's gone.

I started off today thinking I would list the treatments I'd tried (other than recreational drugs and alcohol in my youth which didn't really work either). I trained in the sciences so I don't have that much time for the airy-fairy stuff - I have tried a few alternative treatments and they have one advantage over drugs. No side effects. However they have had no effect what-so-ever. To date I've tried:

Antidepressant drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-seizure drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs (now I'm a bit anti drugs). TENS, exercise (swimming, yes), stretching, heat packs, hot baths (with and without bath salts), hydrotherapy. Homoeopathy, acupuncture, kinesiology, vitamins, massage, deep tissue massage, shiatsu, osteopathy, active release techniques (McTimoney chiropractic). As a Buddhist I have been engaged in meditation, mantra recitation, prayer etc. In the last 10 years I've had 6 years of intensive psychotherapy - the Karuna Institute, psychosynthesis, body psychotherapy (disaster!). I started but could not finish a mindfulness based stress reduction course (the techniques activated my RLS and just made me worse, a lot worse).

At times some or all of these provided some short term relief. Nothing has made any long term difference.

Now I'm doing Tai Chi and the Gupta Amygdala Retraining Program (ARP). The Tai Chi is very helpful - grounding. Helping me with body awareness without sending me into the twitching hell of RLS, and without demanding the gut wrenching (for me) introspection of meditation. Getting onto the ARP has made me aware of some things. Firstly the grief of the last 4 years is massive and I'm not over it. I'm also terrified of getting a little bit better and then being thrust out of the system only to fall over and go through it all again. I had given up all hope of being well. It's so stirring to think I might get well - I swing from exhilaration to despondency. Big plans, to realising that nothing has helped in the past - or at least nothing has made a permanent difference. I've got slowly worse over my adult life. I'm operating at about 25% of what I might at the moment in my own estimation. It's very early days. I suppose deep down I do want to be well, but I'm terrified (really fucking terrified) of failing again. I was just coming to accept my situation - I'd stopped struggling so much, and was calmer. But now it's all up in the air again and I feel very anxious about it.

Food

2010-06-07T08:06:00.005+01:00

My housemates - mostly middle aged bachelors - are a reasonably cultured bunch. Most of us have a university education. They're always popping off to the theatre, to a dance performance or an arty film (where good photography outranks horrendous plots). They like Ted Hughes and Shamus Heaney. Indeed, not so long ago we were discussing our favourite 19th century novels (I had to wrack my brain to come up with a 19th century novel, but realised I've read the collected works of H.G. Wells some of which were written before the turn). They tend to scoff at popular music and Hollywood films. Get the picture? Not really snobs, but...

For all this sophistication the buggers have not educated their pallets. They poo-poo B movies and Big Brother, but would eat chips and beans, and fried egg sandwiches everyday if they could. We're all veggie, so no bacon butties. They serve up an unremitting diet of stodgy curries - often a potato curry with white rice which is about 95% carbs. One guy fries almost everything in an inch of oil and what isn't fried is smothered in an inch of mayonnaise, or covered in piles of cheese - and then everything is lathered with pickle. Another will carefully steam vegetables (using a different pot/steamer for each kind and thereby using every pot in the house) only to pour cooking oil on them "to make them tasty". I'm presently living with the worst cook I've ever lived with (and I've lived in many different set ups and many different people - over 30 houses, and about 100 people). I don't know what he does sometimes: often the food is undercooked (crunchy spuds), but usually it's just awful looking and tasteless. He himself has been known to wolf down plain pasta with nothing on it. He has no concept of what a balanced diet consists of. Ugh. I've started avoiding his cooking day whenever I can. Once a month is about as much as I can stand. I find it depressing and I've put on a lot of weight. Must write about my own eating habits some time.

The contrast between the attitude to food and the taste sense, compared with sight and hearing is astounding. I won't even get into smell - another pet hate! Maybe I should write about why I live communally at some point?

Since I'm doing the Gupta program I'm keeping track of my negative thoughts, and I have to say a lot of them revolve around this. Since I've recently stopped having psychotherapy I have a bit more money which I'm spending on olives, falafels, humous and sushi. Oh, and it's peach season, so lots of yummy peaches.

Amygdala Retraining

2010-06-04T20:40:00.005+01:00

So, I've started the Gupta program and I thought I could use the blog to keep track of it.

I find it all very emotional. Basically I had given up. I thought the rest of my life would just be pain, upset, disability, or at best severely limited by these. Never working again, always dependent on benefits, stranded in the UK for lack of money and an inability to handle the stress of moving after 8 years living here. There is so much of value that I've lost. I was understandably despondent about this. To hear someone give a rational explanation for the condition, and then a rational approach to treating it is like a dam giving way. I've wept more than once watching the DVD. But it is very early days.

Modern Maladies

2010-06-01T13:54:00.003+01:00

The medical profession has scored some astonishing successes in the last 150 years with the eradication of many deadly diseases, and advances in treatments which save lives everyday - one of the main things, of course, was hygiene and especially hand washing, but I don't want to be too cynical about that because I'd be dead without it.

However alongside this amazing success in treating pathogenic or physically-traumatic problems they have been abject failures to treat the so-called modern maladies: depression, anxiety, psychosis, chronic fatigue/ME, and my own malady fibromyalgia. Many more 'syndromes' which are simply poorly understood vaguely defined collections of apparently unrelated symptoms have been named. About the medical profession's ability to deal with these I think we should be profoundly sceptical and even cynical. They are floundering. Part of the problem is that doctors have become enmeshed in the net of big pharma and often seem unable to think beyond the possibilities of offering some drug or other. Not only are the drugs for modern maladies frequently entirely ineffective at treating the malady, they cause side-effects which themselves can be debilitating and must often be treated with more drugs. At best we get some little relief from our symptoms that outweighs the short-term side-effects, but often the long-term side-effects are more serious (like kidney damage for me)

If you suffer from chronic fatigue, from fibromyalgia or even chronic anxiety or depression then I would recommend taking a look at the website of Ashok Gupta - a medical researcher, not a new-age snake oil seller. He has some very interesting insights into our problems, having suffered and recovered chronic-fatigue himself. I'd recommend signing up for his free introductory video series and taking an hour to watch the first series. If you don't think it's useful after that then you haven't lost anything.

Personally he had me weeping copiously to hear my difficulties described in such accurate detail, but for the first time accompanied by a rational explanation based on solid research. He offers a non-drug program of treatment which is not free, but it is something you can do yourself at home if you buy the DVD. I haven't started it yet, but his insight into the problem has given me more hope than years of doctors, drugs and psychotherapy and I'm excited about getting started on it.

Perhaps there is hope of a normal life after all. I'd given up.

Mephedrone and the number 25

2010-05-30T19:14:00.009+01:00

This is how the saga played out in the news.

17 March BBC: How has mephedrone affected users?
17 March BBC: Review of mephedrone drug pledged.
29 March Guardian: Mephedrone to be banned and made class B drug after link to 25 deaths.
2 April Guardian: Mephedrone ban prompts latest drugs council resignation.
7 April BBC: Mephedrone ban backed by Commons.
16 April BBC: Drugs: The facts.
16 April BBC: Mephedrone ban comes into effect

Then this today from the BBC:

Teenagers' deaths 'not caused by mephedrone'

Back in March hue and cry over the possibility that 25 people might have died as a result of taking mephedrone, and another of the Govt drug advisers resigned in disgust at their advice being ignored by a Govt keen to curry favour with a disaffected public. Now it turns out that at least two of them had not taken the drug, but the law has still been changed.

23 July (Guardian) Mephedrone not to blame for death of teenager, say Cumbria police.

Let's compare with other mortality stats in the UK. The Office for national statistics tells us:

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, rising from the lowest figure of 4,023 (6.7 per 100,000) in 1992 to the highest of 9,031 (13.6 per 100,000) in 2008. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1091

That's 9,000 in 2008. That's actually 25 deaths definitely from alcohol per day, every day. And rising, having doubled in the last 16 years.

By contrast there were 2075 drug related deaths in 2008: some details include 897 deaths from heroin, 378 from methadone, 242 from paracetamol. On the face of it paracetamol is far more likely to kill you than mephedrone, but you need to take into account the vast quantities of it that are consumed each year. (Still it can kill you).

Deaths from road accidents:

The total number of deaths in road accidents fell by 7 per cent to 2,946 in 2007 from 3,172 in 2006. However, the number of fatalities has remained fairly constant over the last ten years.

That's almost 250 per month, or about 25 every 3 days.

The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but the NHS reckons the deaths attributable to tobacco in England in 2008 was 84,000. That's about 236 a day, or 10 per hour! So 25 in 2.5 hours. Assuming the same smoking patterns in the rest of the UK that's about 98,000 for the UK, giving 268 per day, 11 per hour, and 25 in 136 minutes.

So to summarise, in the UK, according to official statistics:

Tobacco kills 25 people every 135 minutes.
Alcohol kills 25 people a day.
Road accidents kill 25 people every 3 days.
Heroin kills 25 people every 10 days.
Paracetamol kills about 25 people a month.

Maybe we need to reassess our priorities? The question for the new government is given the policy on drugs which do much less harm to the population: why are tobacco, alcohol still legal? (Indeed given how many deaths are caused by cars, why are they still legal?) Why is there such a fuss about these small time party drugs which we have yet to prove harmful, when 11 people an hour, almost 1 every 5 minutes are dying from tobacco.

BTW I do not endorse drug use. I think taking drugs is stupid unless you have to for medical reasons, and even then they are problematic. But I also think it is stupid for taking drugs to be a criminal offence. Two stupids don't make a smart.

Welfare Review

2010-05-26T12:41:00.002+01:00

I feared that a conservative government would institute a welfare reform aimed at taking benefits away from people, and this seems to be the drift of the Queen's speech as it relates to welfare.

It's hard not to start feeling anxious before any details are announced. All I can think is "Oh God, they're going to take away my benefit and make me get a job." Who would employ me, and for what? How long could it possibly last when I could seldom work 2 days in a row (at present capacity)? If I do work part-time then that adds a layer of complexity to my dealings with other agencies like the Council (who pay my rent via Housing Benefit).

I hate being so vulnerable to the machinations of politicians and bureaucrats. I can't tell them to fuck off because I'm so dependent on the handouts they give. I had just started getting used to my situation and was beginning to cope a bit better, but it seems like I'm never allowed to get too comfortable.

Well who knows, perhaps simplifying the benefits system will be an improvement. But here is my prediction:

When it all shakes down a lot of us will be worse off, and we will be jumping though a lot more hoops to get our daily bread.

Election - bit of a non-entity from a health/benefits pov

2010-05-17T06:59:00.004+01:00

BTW... I found the election compelling and exercised my right to vote. Being used to PR back in the old country I had no qualms about a hung parliament. As much as I hate the conservatives, a change was very much needed. Who knows what the current government will actually do? The election gave me no fodder at all for this blog as no one mentioned benefits, or mental health, or chronic illness. The NHS was mentioned but only in terms of targets and finances.

I'm hoping that the rhetoric of "choice" with regard to the NHS will be dropped. I don't give a fuck about choice. I want treatment. I want access to a specialist or two. I don't much care who it is, as long as they're competent, I mostly care WHEN it is.

Re benefits: I guess I'm not the only person wholly dependent on state handouts who feels anxiety at the broad rhetoric of public spending cuts and the complete lack of detail. We wait to hear whether it's the poor and the beneficiaries who will pay for the excesses of the financial markets with a sinking feeling. Let's hope we don't see anything like the California solution! (i.e. having run the 8th largest economy into the ground Greek style, refuse to raise taxes, and slash welfare - Arnie surely won't be back after this mess).

On the up side Fentimans now make their ginger beer in quart (750ml) bottles, and is stocked in the local supermarket; and I finally found somewhere that sells Rochester Ginger.

Men and Depression

2010-05-15T18:03:00.004+01:00

I was very pleased to see this article in the Observer a couple of weeks back: Depressed men missing out on treatment. The problem is that the descriptions of depression and the diagnostic criteria are heavily skewed towards women's experience of depression. Men often do not experience depression in the same way. In particular while women tend to turn in on them selves, men by contrast "can become animated, aggressive and angry". This sums up my own experience of depression. The negativity gets played out! And no one seems to understand, least of all me.

The article came from a press release by Paul Farmer of the charity Mind, who have a campaign to try to improve access to mental health help for men.

Relationships

2010-04-05T12:30:00.002+01:00

Finding I have less to say than when I started - the way of most blogs I suppose. I'm not interacting with officialdom so much this year and so my quality of life is better and I'm less stressed. My landlord isn't due for the annual fucking-up of my rent and housing benefit for another few months. However I've also had a bad flare up and even had to stop my 3 hours a week of volunteering for a couple of months - which doesn't encourage writing. I'm trying to get into using Voice Recognition, but it's a bit frustrating.

Been thinking about the effects of being chronically ill on relationships. Not all of my friendships survived my descent into the the hell of chronic pain and tiredness. Last year I had a girl-friend for the first time in ages, but I'm difficult to be around at times: I'm in pain all the time and get tired quickly and the combination makes me less than gracious at times. I'd like to say I'm one of those noble souls who is stoical in the face of suffering, that never complains. I do my best, but actually pain sucks and I struggle to be upbeat about it. So it didn't last despite being quite delightful to start with.

Anyway I wondered if there was a dating site for people with chronic illnesses and struck this blog post: Chronic Illness and Relationships. So it's not just me. It's one of the things about chronic illness - it's isolating to the point where I often think I'm the only one living like this. But no.

I'd love to have a bit more companionship but I'm not exactly an attractive proposition for a women. And that doesn't help my confidence or self-esteem. Actually now I look into it there is quite a lot written on the subject - e.g. A Different Kind of Date. Not sure I want to self-identify as 'disabled' but I suppose there is some truth in that I am not as able as I once was - especially when it comes to repetitive motions with my hands and applying any kind of pressure or supporting my weight on my arms. Here's another take by Dancing with Pain.

Being old, or ill, or whatever doesn't make us any less human - we still have needs. But it gets gradually more difficult to meet. I sometimes go for weeks at a time without any physical contact with another human being. I try to keep myself busy with stuff so I don't end up feeling miserable about it, but at times the grief is overwhelming - not only have I lost my job, my ability to earn my livelihood, as well as all my hobbies (making music and art), but I'm increasingly isolated and lonely.

Payrise

2010-03-06T10:23:00.002Z

Income Support is going up in April by £1.65 per week, or about 2%. That's not bad considering the rate of inflation, and the shit interest rates offered by most banks, though I think food prices are gone up by higher than the average inflation rate. Thanks! Sometimes I do feel quite lucky to being so generously supported. It's probably a little better than most workers will get this year.

I should add that my lifestyle makes a huge difference: I live communally with five other men, I'm a vegetarian, I don't own a car and walk most places, I use my cell phone only for txt and incoming calls. I buy my clothes at Tesco. These are things I'd probably do anyway you understand. If I had a family or some other kind of normal lifestyle I imagine it would be more difficult. I don't see how anyone could live alone on what I get for instance.

Was dreaming of Piha Beach the other day. Doubt I'll ever see it again and find that thought sadder than I can say.

Govt Responds to the AA and DLA petition

2010-02-04T15:58:00.002Z

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to recognise the vital support that Attendance Allowance (AA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) provide to disabled people, and to ensure that these benefits are secured and are not removed as part of any future reform of the social care system in England.”

The government response to this petition has appeared on the No.10 website, here are a couple of quotes:

"In 20 years’ time, we expect over 1.7 million more adults to have a need for care and support. We need to reform the care and support system radically to meet these future pressures."

"These three aspects – a universal system that is consistent across the country, flexible methods of payment through personal budgets and investment in prevention – will all be important components of the new system."

Credit Card

2010-01-24T10:19:00.002Z

I use Amazon a fair bit - mostly window shopping, but I pick up the occasional bargain. Anyway they were hassling me to get their credit card and I though well it would be more convenient than using my BNZ Mastercard. I mostly use a UK debit card, but sometimes one needs a credit card! So I started filling in the form, but when it came to filling in the amount earned (I gross about £9000 per year with Income Support and Housing Benefit) it would not accept the amount I was putting in. Too small? That made me laugh. So I'm keeping my NZ card alive while I can because I'd never get credit otherwise.

My handy hint for operating a NZ card from the UK is that the cheapest and most reliable method of sending money back home is to use travellers cheques. I buy a £20 TC from WHS Smith for £25. Then it costs 65p to post it. No need to register it because with TCs they are automatically covered by a kind of insurance - if you lose them you can cancel them and have them re-issued. So if after a few weeks they don't show up on your balance then you can try again. But it's never happened that a TC I've sent didn't make it through. The bank cash it in and take a fee, but I usually find that £20 is about NZ$45 so the rate is pretty good. And doing a bank to bank transfer costs about £25 (last time I checked!). Sending money orders was also more expensive last time I checked, and more of a phaff.

Most depressing day of the year?

2010-01-18T12:25:00.005Z

The Guardian have dusted off a story about 'blue monday' - no, not the New Order song, but the idea that the post-christmas slump reaches a peak on the 3rd monday in January. That's actually today - I am a bit depressed and have been since Christmas, so there you go.

Meanwhile The Times suggests that "toxic society" is to blame for depression, well they would, wouldn't they. But apparently it's not genetic, and certain demographics, and those who had traumatic childhood's are much more likely to develop depression. Then at the end you find it's all an advert for some guy's book, which is a bit depressing - he's scathing of drugs and flogging CBT which isn't the ultimate answer I can tell you!

I really don't think that medical journalists have understood depression, let alone the medical profession. But it's a hot topic cos every other person has it, a lot of money is thrown at it and not much of it is any help! So it's 'a story' now.

Jargon

2010-01-12T12:38:00.003Z

One of the reasons for getting this blog going, apart from needing to spout off, was to get all the jargon straight. Was just looking at the subject labels or 'tag cloud' and wondering how any uninitiated human being could possibly understand it all. On it's own the welfare system jargon means absolutely nothing. It's a completely artificial language like Esperanto. After three years I'm nowhere near fluent.

Who does having an artificial language for this kind of thing help? Does it signify that being on a benefit is not natural and shouldn't be considered normal? Removing the human element is another aspect of making being on a benefit difficult and unpleasant - "we want to help you, but we don't want you to enjoy it, or take it for granted that we will help". Probably in fact it was done by degrees. Endless reviews and reshuffles and consultants (= con + insult) have gradually forced the welfare jargon away from natural human language and into this officialese bullshit.

With all political parties talking 'cuts' I assume that people on benefits in the UK are in for a tough time in the next few years. The fall-out from the rich getting richer is going to fall on the lower strata of society. With Labour talking about cuts to Education (whatever happened to "education education education"?) one can only quake in one's boots. And this cold weather has been very expensive for the welfare system - I like getting my £25 when it's below freezing and I imagine some people are absolutely dependent on it, but the last few weeks must have cost a fortune in cold weather payments.

2010 is probably going to be a year of anxiety for people on benefits - the chances are that the Conservatives are going to get in, and they will be cutting social spending more than the others, and making life more difficult for us. I know Labour are getting farcical, but do we really want the Cons back in? What this country needs is PR, but the pollies will never go for it because it reduces their power. Perhaps we should focus on getting citizen initiated referenda on the agenda first and then use that. Not that I have any time and energy for politics - I just stand on the sideline feebly hoping I don't get trampled. I call it my Hamlet Complex. And we all know what happened to him (or should do!).

Cold Weather Payment

2010-01-06T15:37:00.002Z

It's snowing and bloody freezing. Yay for cold weather payments!