In My Shoes

Money for nothing

2012-02-24T08:05:00.009-08:00

So Emma Harrison has resigned. For those of you who don't know, Emma Harrison was the woman appointed by our Prime Minister, David Cameron as "families tsar". That is, she was specifically put in Government in December 2010 to work with the estimated 120 000 families who the government regards as "problem families". These are families who have more than one generation who are what is termed welfare dependent - that is, not working.

That has nothing to do with why she has resigned. She is the head of a company called A4e. A4e are one of the companies who run Iain Duncan Smith's Work Programme. They run the Work Programme in five regions in the UK. They are also a Work Programme subcontractor in five other regions.

They are currently being investigated for fraud. Their head office in Slough has been raided by the police. In recent years they have been investigated by the DWP nine times.

Their work, providing the Work Programme has been called into question by many people, not just the jobless who are working with them. Fiona Mactaggart MP whose constituency Slough is where the head office for A4e is, has said due to the allegations of malpractice A4e are "not fit to receive a government contract". Margaret Hodge MP who is the chair of the public accounts committee has spoken of aspects of A4e's record on welfare-to-work as "abysmal". Ms Hodge goes on to describe A4e's habit of subcontracting, that it "seems like a scam,".

Emma Harrison hasn't done too badly out of the Work Programme. She paid herself a dividend of £8.6 million last year. She lives in Thornbridge Hall. This is a grade II listed mansion set in 100 acres of land. Margaret Hodge says of the dividend: "It's a rip off. Emma Harrison lives entirely on public contracts. She's got a load of contracts with the DWP."

Unhappy capping

2012-01-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

So there's all this hoo-ha about the benefit cap of £26 000 and how it's absolutely essential for the nation's financial well-being that we implement this benefit cap as soon as possible to prevent these feckless scroungers bankrupting the country any further.

As I understand, they arrived at the figure of £26 grand as it is the national average salary for 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics. In order to take home £26k you would have to earn £35k gross. (Which is not the national average salary - £26k is.)

To listen to those in Government indignantly bang on about this you would think that people sign on and are given a big wad of cash that adds up to £26k! This is just not the case.

This is a huge deception being played on the British public and it is a pernicious lie, it is a disgraceful sleight of hand on the part of the Government. What they are trying to get us to believe is that "THESE PEOPLE" are taking your money. This is bollocks!

If you are in receipt of benefit this is money to which you are entitled. The Government will ensure that you prove that entitlement several times over before you get any benefit.

Housing is a right. Also, we have no right whatsoever to interfere with people's right to reproduce.

So to return to this benefit cap: First off it is a national cap and does not consider the vast differences in rental costs depending on what part of the country you are living in. The rental cost of housing in London is so much higher than almost anywhere else in the country. London is my part of the UK and that is where I concentrate on. It is also the place where most of the people who are going to be affected by this benefit cap live. It is estimated thet there are 67 000 households who receive this sum due to their circumstances.

A cursory look at two or three estate agent's websites in my part of London and I discover that three and four bedroom properties start at £15 grand a year, most were over £20 grand, so it's very easy to see how a couple with two or three children would hit the £26 grand benefit cap.

So the real problem with the benefit cap is the cost of renting adequate family housing yet with all the fuss this week there has been hardly anyone talking about rent controls. (One exception was David Lammy MP on Question Time last night on the telly.)

As far as I'm concerned the Government are looking at this in a really cock-eyed way and being deliberately disingenuous in the hope that they can play one section of society off against another - the working poor and the unemployed.

Lost generations

2012-01-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

Just before Christmas, unemployment in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics hit 2.62 million. This is the highest recorded total since 1994. The unemployment rate in the UK now stands at 8.3%.

Within these statistics, the number of people aged 16-24 years old who are unemployed is now 1.02 million. This means that the unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds is 21.9%. That means that over one in five of our young people are NEETs. Not in employment, education or training.

Social commentators talk of a lost generation at times of recession and high unemployment. I heard on the Today programme this morning that unemployment won't peak until sometime in 2013.

It is well known and statistically borne out that if you suffer unemployment when young it drastically increases your your chances of being unemployed later in life.

Two professors in the west country have examined this in detail. Lindsey Macmillan - Centre for Market and Public Organisation in Bristol and Paul Gregg who is professor of economic and social policy at the University of Bath.

If you spend six months unemployed before the age of 23, it is statistically probable that you will spend 20% of your time unemployed five years later and 15% of your time unemployed twelve years later. These figures come from a study of two UK birth cohorts, which track babies born in a particular period for the rest of their lives.

I left school in 1982 - when the recession under the Thatcher government was in full swing and unemployment topped three million.

My first "job", which I didn't especially want and wasn't especially suited to was a YOP scheme as a builder. YOP is an acronym for Youth Opportunity Programme, basically a government job creation scheme and it certainly wasn't an opportunity. Sometime later I did another job as part of a government scheme in a college library which I loved.

It wasn't until I was 21 that I was able to land a proper job and that was a full four years after I finished school. I was only able to secure a job due to the fact I had done a full 12 months as a CSV. As a Community Service Volunteer I was paid £13.75 a week. (I lived in) This was 1985. There followed well over a decade of full employment.

I'm 47 years old, I should have been working for 30 years. When I look back over my life I've been working for 20 plus of those years so I'm living proof that if you experience unemployment when you are young it does blight your life.

Hiccups for the Welfare Reform Bill

2012-01-12T06:06:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday this week the Government's Welfare Reform Bill took a kicking in the House of Lords from crossbenchers and Labour peers.

There were three amendments that were passed AGAINST Government proposals. The Welfare Reform Bill is a huge piece of legislation and there is more of it to come. The Government are looking to cut payments of Employment Support Allowance. ESA used to be known as sickness benefit.

This is your caring-sharing coalition government, how could any of us forget - "we are all in this together."? Lady Meacher, the crossbench peer describes the proposals as "crossing the line of British decency."

ESA is a contribution-based benefit. So if you are young and disabled and haven't beeen paying in, ie too young or too disabled to work, the Government are suggesting you won't be entitled to claim ESA because you haven't been paying National Insurance contributions. So an amendment was proposed saying this was wrong and unfair and that young people should still be able to claim ESA regardless. This amendment was passed.

The Government were further proposing that you would only be able to claim ESA for one year and then be means tested as to further entitlement. An amendment was proposed that the time limit should be two years. This amendment was passed.

Under Government proposals relating to ESA, the same rules were to be applied to cancer patients. This was rejected by the Lords and cancer sufferers and stroke victims are to exempted from the time limit altogether to be means tested as to further entitlement.

ESA is subject to what are called Work Capability Assessments - this is essentially a fit-for-work test. These have long been criticised - even by those who devised them.

Here's what one woman, Chris Linacre, had to say to the Guardian when she was turned down for sickness benefits and passed fit for work, in spite of the fact she suffers long-standing spinal problems and arthritis: " I think they (the assessors) expect you to be a Beano cartoon character, complete with ouch bubbles above your head, but people tend to be stoic. I try not to labour the fact that I'm in pain. I wasn't going to tell them that some days I can't even put my knickers on I'm in so much pain." Ms Linacre is now appealing against the decision.

The Government has already said it is to continue with its plans when the bill returns to the Commons in spite of major misgivings expressed in the Lords this week. That remains to be seen as opposition to their plans is growing - people are beginning to see their plans for what they really are: cruel and attacking the rights of people who are not in a position to fight back.

The Children's Commissioner - Maggie Atkinson, has published an assessment of the impact of the Welfare Reform Bill on children's rights. This report says: "We have identified groups of children whose rights may be breached by the implementation of the Bill." The report goes on to say that "there are many areas of risks that are of real concern."

So that's what the Government's Welfare Reform Bill means to two groups of our population: the disabled and children - an attack on their living standards.

Sofa Surfer

2011-12-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

In My Shoes attended the launch of a short film, Sofa Surfer, at BOXPARK yesterday.

Watch the trailer

Sofa Surfer Trailer from Gaelle Tavernier on Vimeo.

Add your voice to the campaign on www.sofasurferfilm.com

40 years of Crisis

2011-12-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

This year is the 40th year that Crisis at Christmas has taken place in London. 40 years!

Crisis at Christmas provide food, shelter, somewhere to sleep and all manner of services for the homeless and the needy for many, many people at a crucial time of the year.

I thought this might be a good time to consider the question of homelessness and to give you a few facts. Homelessness isn't just the man outside the tube asking for money, it can take different forms. There are those who live in hostels and other kinds of temporary accomodation. It also includes those who are sofa surfing; sleeping on friends' and relatives' sofas in the front room.

Now for some facts, in 2010 Crisis at Christmas used nine centres:

Nearly 3000 people visited

500 people slept in one of the crisis centres

670 people had healthcare appointments

290 people saw the dentist

242 people saw the optician

231 people saw the podiatrist

In total Crisis served 25,000 meals.

In order to provide all of this Crisis at Christmas needed 8000 volunteers.

Shelter told us this week that this Christmas morning 70,000 children will wake up in temporary accomodation.

According to Government figures, the number of households declared homeless so far this year is up by 13 per cent from the same period last year. (Left Foot Forward blog provides some useful context).

In the news just this week from a study by the University of Sheffield commisioned by Crisis: Homeless people die 30 years younger than the national average. The report included people living in hostels as well as those living on the streets. Drug and alcohol abuse account for a third of deaths among homeless people.

Leslie Morphy, the Chief executive of Crisis commented: "It is shocking, but not surprising that homeless people are dying much younger than the general population."

The same report found that homeless people are nine times more likely to commit suicide.

One in a hundred young people experience some form of homelessness each year. That means that 80,000 young experience homelessness each year often through no fault of their own.

Crisis estimates there are 400,000 hidden homeless in the UK, of these it is thought 250,000 are under 25.

I'm not going to make any comment, I have just brought these facts to your attention and will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Youth crime and internet videos

2011-11-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

Labour MP Heidi Alexander’s campaign to have gang related videos removed from the internet might seem noble and just to some but for me it leaves two questions that I often ask myself concerning MPs.

1) Do they hate and try to destroy everything in this world that does not fit into their pretty picture of how they would like the world to be?

2) Are their actions motivated merely by the potential for votes and looking good in front of their constituents?

The motivation of the second seems to be even stronger than the unpleasant first.

Ms Alexander told MPs: "I am appalled by the proliferation of online videos which glorify gangs and serious youth violence. Police, by the courts and ISPs, need to be given explicit powers to get these videos taken down or access to them blocked.”

She is entitled to dislike the videos as much as she chooses. However her dislike of the videos is not in my eyes reason enough to change legislation to lead to the ban on the videos. I can only seee the justification for that type of interference if evidence is provided to show that the videos cause harm.

Ms Alexander claims "They lead to increased numbers of young people in our cities who feel they need to carry a knife for protection and they terrify any ordinary human being who watches them."

I would like to know where she got her evidence that these videos lead to children being more likely to carry a knife for protection. The idea that they terrify ordinary people who watch them is not something I can see as a possible justification because ordinary people are not forced at gunpoint to watch.

"It seems to me that the popularity and accessibility of the internet means it is inevitably one of the ways through which young people get caught up in the madness of youth violence.”

In the above statement she makes it plain that it is in her opinion that the internet influences children to get involved in youth violence. I do not believe that in a democratic society, or any other society, one person’s opinion should be enough to change legislation.

"These videos frighten me and they frighten young people too.”

Neither she nor the young people are forced to watch. Visions of fighting in Syria, Egypt or on the local high street that are shown on the television might frighten some people.

"Every one of us here today knows that carrying a knife is wrong. Some of us will also know if a young person carries a knife it is probably as likely to end up injuring them as anyone else. We also know that many young people carry knives out of fear - they may not start out to stab someone but as we all know, too often that becomes the tragic reality.”

I find that statement hard to deny but I do not see that carrying knives is necessarily influenced by the videos she wishes to ban.

"For many, the everyday fear of gangs and what they can do is far greater than the fear of getting caught and going to prison. Don't we owe it to the young people who are viewing this stuff online to make them feel safer?"

I ask myself why young people would choose to watch videos that frighten them. No statistics are produced to support the idea that removing the videos will make young people feel safer. Not even a single case study.

This article was not designed to defend the videos that she wishes to ban. It is designed to highlight the two charcteristics that I see and dislike in politicians that I mentioned above. Her words and actions seem to be geared towards appeasing the adults who will vote for her. She also has a wish to see something banned that she is frightened of.

I have no concern for her fears. I am more concerned about the children that I consider her to be attacking and dressing it up to look like she is helping them.

The vast majority of the videos under attack happen to be music videos. The vast majority of people who watch the videos are children who are into that type of music. If they were of voting age and made the majority of her constituents I am not so sure that she would be so quick to join a fight that will be in effect a battle against the music that the majority of her voters love.

Politicians have a habit of apologising when their voters go against them. How many times have you heard a defeated politician say that “I am sorry. We got it wrong.”?

I am not saying that she necessarily has it wrong. I would just like to see some evidence.

Ms Alexander’s Internet Regulation (Material Inciting Gang Violence) Bill will gain a second reading in March 2012.

Recession, what recession?

2011-11-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

"We are all in this together" is the often repeated government mantra that I'm sure we're all sick of hearing. Well clearly this isn't the case, as we all full well know.

This certainly doesn't apply if you work in the boardroom of one of the FTSE 100 companies. Last Friday one of the headline news stories told us just how far from the truth this really is. According to Reuters, the news agency who commissioned the report: "FTSE 100 bosses' pay leaps, outpaces share gains."

Now these companies are not called blue-chip for nothing, it stands to reason that they are going to be high performing and that they are going to weather a recession perhaps better than most. But average pay increases of 49%? It certainly isn't a question of performance related pay - in the same period that the report was talking about, (April2010 t0 the end of March 2011) the FTSE 100 index rose by just 3%.

For public sector workers, almost all of them have had their pay frozen. For people in the private sector, who aren't on the board that is, average pay settlements are running at 2.6%.

These eye-watering increases in remuneration take the average pay for a director of a FTSE 100 company to just short of £2.7 million.

And the reaction of the Prime Minister? He said the report was "concerning,"

Taxes, death and trouble...

2011-10-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

These words come from the title track of an album, Trouble Man, by Marvin Gaye in 1972, a soundtrack to the blaxpoitation film and are preceded by the words: "there's only three things that's for sure," maybe he didn't have tax havens in mind, which is what I want to bang on about today, but I'm hoping I got your attention. I guess none of us like paying taxes, but they are a fact of life, the dictionary describes tax as "a compulsory contribution to state revenue", it's the price we all pay to be part of society.

Do you ever listen to the financial news early in the morning? You're laying there in bed, not quite awake but you think you should pay attention in case it's something important. Then they introduce someone, sometimes with a double-barrelled name, who might be a market analyst, or something else that you're not entirely sure what they do, who proceeds to tell you what's happening in the world of finance. Even on the days you do pay attention you're always left with the feeling you don't quite understand.

Well that's the case with me but I caught some financial news just the other day that I understood only too well. I was having my tea and caught the back end of the Channel 4 news. The lead in to this bulletin that left me open-mouthed was: "98 of the FTSE 100 companies use tax havens." The FTSE 100 Index is a list of the top one hundred most valuable companies registered on the London Stock Exchange. This item stemmed from a report compiled by ActionAid , who were founded in 1972 as a child sponsorship charity that works in over 40 countries.

Before I go on to talk about what this report says, I must just say that what these companies and multinationals are up to is LEGAL. In fact this government is currently considering relaxing the UK anti tax haven rules, which according to Treasury estimates, will mean a tax break of some £840 million for the multinationals that use tax havens.

Definitions according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

tax evasion. n. illegal non-payment or underpayment of tax.

tax avoidance. n. the arrangement of one's financial affairs to minimize tax liability within the law.

So that means what these 98 companies are doing falls into the second category. What ActionAid are claiming is that the FTSE 100, the UK's most valuable companies, suffer from an "addiction" to tax havens; tax avoidance. Between them, the FTSE 100 companies have 34 216 subsidaries, of which almost 25%; 8492, are in tax havens.

Banks and the banking sector are making some of the heaviest use of tax havens. The "big four" (ie Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and the RBS group - which includes the Natwest and RBS) banks have a total of 1649 tax haven companies between them. However the biggest tax haven user on the FTSE 100 index is the advertising company WPP, who describe themselves on the homepage of their website as " a world leader in marketing communications". WPP has 611 tax haven subsidaries.

So it would seem everybody's at it and nobody bats an eyelid. In Jersey there are 600 FTSE 100 subsidiary companies, 400 in the Cayman Islands and 300 in Luxembourg.

In 2010 Corporation Tax was 28%, Chancellor George Osborne cut this by 2% in April 2011 and will cut it annually by 1% which will mean it will be 23% by 2014. Myself I don't really have a problem with big corporations, banks, including the "big four", WPP, whoever, paying tax. According to HM Revenues and Customs, one is only liable to the main rate of Corporation Tax when profits are at a rate exceeding £1.5 million. Like I said earlier it's the price we all pay to be part of society, particularly so one would think, when that is the society that you trade with.

The Angry Unemployed

2011-09-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Being unemployed can produce negative feelings related to low self esteem. These could come from things like not feeling like a fully contributing member of society, not being able to afford to do things other people can and not being able to give to others as you might like. These feelings could make you feel like an inadequate parent, sibling, child, (neither being mutually exclusive) or however you may relate to another. In some cases these negative feelings can be severe enough to contribute to the development of clinical depression. The Royal College of Psychiatrist’s report that “research has shown that up to 1 in 7 men who become unemployed will develop a depressive illness in the next 6 months.”

Being depressed can lead to feeling angry that things are going so wrong for us and being angry about the seeming hopelessness of the situation. From experience I can say that although being depressed can lead to feelings of anger your negative feelings do not need to be so severe to feel angry. The same thoughts that lead to feelings of low self esteem do at times lead to a feeling of anger and resentment about the situation.

I would not be surprised if this type of anger contributed to the riots that occurred in August. The Guardian newspaper claims that “Researchers found that in almost all of the worst-affected areas, youth unemployment and child poverty were significantly higher than the national average…”

Government and society’s negative attitude towards unemployed.

These negative feelings that accompany unemployment can be reinforced by the negative attitudes that the general public and government appear to express towards the unemployed.

There seems to be general opinion that people often choose to be unemployed. This idea can be reached when hearing often used comments such as “those lazy scroungers” and “…living off our hard earned taxes”. This idea that some people choose to receive benefits rather then work for a living seems to be reinforced by Alistair Darling’s initiative to pay incapacity benefits for a fixed period only. At the end of that period, if the claimant wishes to continue to receive the benefit, they would need to be reassessed and make a fresh claim to ensure that they are still entitled to the benefit and are not simply scamming the benefits system.

David Cameron says we will help the deserving but come down hard on the work-shy, again suggesting that there is a hardcore that chooses to not work.

I find it impossible to tell when government policies concerning us long-term unemployed are guided by the disapproval of the voters and when the attitude of the public is fuelled by the rhetoric of the government. It is my opinion that they feed each other. At times government policy and public opinion seem geared towards punishing those on benefits.

A drive to punish benefit claimants

The government is considering cutting the benefits of parents of children who regularly truant. They do not say what punishment they would mete out to the parents of children who constantly play truant but are not on benefits.

This idea of cutting the benefits of the parent is coming from the government of a country that is signed up to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. Each nation that has signed up to the convention is obligated to do their best to meet each convention, one of which is to take steps to end child poverty. It is curious that even though under an obligation to end child poverty the government is still prepared to speak of policies that will obviously increase the poverty of the children of some those who are claiming state benefits.

The apparent desire of the government to punish those on benefits seems to be echoed by the public. More than 100, 000 people signed a petition to have the state benefits of those found guilty of rioting cut. The works and pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith is considering cutting the benefits of anybody who is sent to prison for rioting. There is no talk of what will happen if that person happens to not be on benefits. Perhaps the public and the government are saying that it is only people who are on benefits that riot or they are saying that they will give preferential treatment to those who are able to keep themselves away from state benefits.

Request for a change of attitudes

Considering that there has been so much talk about rioters and their benefits it would be interesting to know how many rioters were actually on benefits. If the vast majority were on benefits it would be interesting to know how much society’s attitudes towards them had lead to anger that might have contributed to the development of the riots. I believe it would be safe to say that the majority of rioters did not know the man whose shooting lead to the original riot.

There must be some way to channel these emotions so they can become productive and not destructive. A change in society’s attitudes might help to cut down the possible incidences of anger and other negative emotions and the undesirable consequences that might come with them. I consider it to be better to focus on the solutions to unemployment than to point a finger at the unemployed. I do understand that there will be those who will wish to keep pointing a finger, because it helps them to feel better about themselves. I believe that it is better to search for a cure for the illness (metaphorically speaking) than to simply criticise the illness and those who suffer from it.

Welfare to work - the new way, with the new government

2011-09-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've spoken about the Government's much trumpeted Work Programme before, well the other day it was my turn. That's to say, I was asked to turn up for an interview with a training provider.

I was quite worried about this, having been through something very similar before: treated like I was a six year old, harried, badgered, and patronised by a government-appointed bunch of idiots who would have trouble walking an old lady across the road, never mind helping the long term unemployed to return to the world of work.

So I duly turned up at the appointed time, wondering quite what to expect. I had been assured by the dole office that I'd be able to continue with my voluntary work. This was after my adviser had consulted one of her superiors and they had deemed it "worthwhile experience". (their words not mine) So there I was, bang on time for my initial assessment armed with my CV and three jobs I was interested in, as requested and there was my personal adviser, suited and booted, all welcoming, so far so good.

Over the next fifty minutes he proceeded to bore me almost to tears. His need to record the most basic information took an age and then he proceeded to witter on about all the things he would be able to do for me. He then explained at great length the intricacies of how his company would be getting paid by the government. (As if I could give a stuff) One of the last things he covered was my CV. He said: "Don't worry about this, I'll re-do this for you for when you come in next time."

I'm not worried in the slightest about my CV, it's not bang-up to date, but it's quite well put together and says pretty much what I want it to say, on top of which if I wanted to improve it, he doesn't spring to mind as the first person I'd go to for advice. Relieved that the whole thing was over and done with at least for a fortnight, I trudged off thinking same-old, same-old and thinking that I'd have to put up with that sanctimonious tosser for goodness knows how long.

So that's kind of what I think but there's been plenty of other people with something to say on the subject. Take the Social Market Foundation for instance; this is the think tank who are widely regarded as being behind the idea of the Work Programme in the first place. On their home page of their website the very first item reads: "The Government's flagship back to work programme at risk of financial collapse, says think tank." They go on to say: "over 90% of Work Programme providers will be at risk of having their contracts terminated by DWP even by year three of the scheme," The SMF don't mince their words: "it is no great surprise that a department led by Iain Duncan Smith (Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) and Lord Freud (Minister for Welfare Reform) managed to introduce a multi-billion pound jobs programme funded on the basis of wishful thinking and over optimistic predictions."

Chris Grayling, the Employment Minister within the DWP describes the Work Programme as "revolutionary", the Government publicity is similarly upbeat: "the centrepiece of the most sweeping welfare reform for 60 years, restoring the system to its founding principles, the most ambitious back to work programme this country has ever seen." The Home Editor for the BBC, Mark Easton is more circumspect: "it will be in the fine print of the contracts that the grand claims for the Work Programme will be decided."

Suffice to say it isn't only me that has doubts about the Government's Work Progamme, I'll leave the last word, for now, to someone who I suspect knows quite a lot about this matter; Kirsty McHugh who is the chief executive of the Employment Related Services Association. "But what about the economy? Where are the jobs going to come from?"

Self mastery in the face of whatever?

2011-08-31T08:04:00.000-07:00

So I was blagging about Epictetus the last time I contributed to this blog. I'm not exactly a scholar of the ancient Greek philosophers, but I once saw this quote by Epictetus which has stuck in my head since: "No man is free who is not master of himself."

Every once in a while I stop and ask: am I a free man? Am I a master of myself, especially while I'm dependent on state benefits and not earning money? Surely, there are times when adversity hits us hard and we may need friends, family or a social safety net to support us for a while. Then there are vulnerable people who need all the help they can get. This makes for a compassionate society.

The wisdom and views of Epictetus fascinate me and give me a benchmark against which to check myself from time to time. And some of his quotes put a bit of steel in my backbone!

You see, ole Epictetus was an ancient Greek philosopher who belonged to the Stoic school. The Stoics believed in cultivating inner strength, in the face of adversity. To Epictetus and the Greek stoics, external events are determined by fate and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals can reflect on what happens to them and around them, and control their actions and lives through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering comes from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.

Epictetus started life as a slave. As a youth he found a passion for philosophy, studied under a Stoic master and eventually became a teacher of philosophy himself. Thus a lot of his teachings were derived from the school of hard knocks. He taught that: “People are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible … the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible.”

Training, self-discipline, practice, acquiring wisdom … these are the tools that the Stoics suggested for acquiring self-mastery. I think we need a good dose of that in modern times as in ancient times. Some things don’t change.

Of course, the real test in life comes down to how one behaves in the face of real challenges. For example, in the recent looting and rioting in London and other parts of the country, there were people who went out to rightfully protest against what they saw as an injustice, some went out to loot and pillage, some went to watch the looting, and some people to clean up afterwards. Epictetus would have had a stern word with those who thought they could use the excuse of anger or dispossession as excuse or reason to loot and wreak havoc in their own communities.

As I'm writing this blog now, I'm having an interesting challenge with the benefits system. My Job Centre sent me a 13-week work experience program which I went through with diligence and even got A* from my advisers. Even though it didn't lead to a job right away, the program has given me invaluable experience and put me on a road of going back to work – for which I'm most appreciative.

But next came the surprise: instead of transitioning me back to benefits, I got multiple letters telling me my JSA had been stopped and that my housing benefit had been suspended. Now I had to go through the whole rigmarole of re-applications even though my situation was perfectly known by the Benefits Office. Why put people through this excruciating process? Did some bureaucrat deliberately formulate the rules to cause the maximum inconvenience and discomfort to benefit claimants – in the hope that some of them will fall out of the system? When I spoke to Housing Benefit staff, I was told: "Oh we get this all the time. It may take a couple of weeks for your re-application to be sorted". Even with a good dose of Epictetus, one needs more than a strong stomach on these occasions to maintain one’s cool.

But there you go: who said life is a cake walk. I'm told that we grow by the stuff that challenge us, not the fun stuff. I do agree with Epictetus when he says: "The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things." Other than that, they or circumstances and have got you by the neck!

By Ready Ready, guest contributor

So what's it like when you do get a job?

2011-08-30T02:48:00.000-07:00

(No it's not me) I was watching the late night news, Bank Holiday Monday on the BBC, and there was one item on the local bulletin which really stood out. It was only a snippet, but it really struck a chord with me.

There was a short piece about a mother from East Ham who had just landed herself a job. This in itself isn't news, but this woman's reaction was, she was so clearly overjoyed. The job was at the new Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, east London.They have built a new shopping centre in Stratford right next door to the Olympic Park. This shopping centre will employ 10 000 people, as and when it's fully up and running. (I did send off CVs to several retail chains, but not a word back.) Anyway this woman had got herself a job in the staff canteen at John Lewis.

I don't know this woman, she seemed just like your average mother of teenagers. It was a delight to see her reaction that to most of us would seem like fairly mundane news. Her delight was something I entirely understood. It wasn't the job of her dreams but it was A JOB. She'd been out of work for three years and even her son had known she was depressed. Let's face it - teenage boys are not the most sensitive.

When she was interviewed this woman, Tina, told of her reaction when she received the letter with the news. The first thing she did was to pass the letter to her son to get him to read it back to her and to tell her what it said, and then she got him to read it to her again, and again just to check.

So Tina's first reaction was one of disbelief. To me this is completely understandable: you wonder if you'll ever work again, you make so many phone calls, you send out so many CVs ... on the phone the usual reaction is; "sorry the post has gone," or "sorry you haven't got the experience we're looking for". As for CVs, you very rarely get any acknowledgement that you have shown any interest.

So all I have to say is well done to this woman Tina and thank you for brightening up my week end.

Crime and Punishment

2011-08-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

So the UK has another of those moral panics it does so well. This time it's all about feral hoodies with absent fathers and unbridled lawlessness that's been sweeping the nation. Yep, that's right I'm talking about the rioting and the looting again. For my earlier thoughts see London's burning.

On Monday 22 August, the Metropolitan Police said they thought that 30 000 people had been involved in the recent troubles. 3296 offences have been reported, including 162 arson offences, 48 cases of serious wounding and 80 cases of assault with injury. So far there have been 1875 arrests and 1070 people have been charged.

Now I'm not for a moment suggesting these people shouldn't get punished for their wrongdoing. But is the response of the judiciary proportionate? David Cameron approves, last week he said; "they have decided to send a tough message and it's very good that the courts feel able to do that." So many people are getting remanded in custody, and so many people are being jailed for what seem fairly trivial offences. And whose benefit are we doing this for? To teach people a lesson? Or are we just doing this to make the British public feel better? It costs 40 thousand pounds a year to keep a male prisoner inside. On top of which the prisons have never been so full and they're well nigh fit to burst.

Another thing which I'm having trouble getting my head around is the notion that people who are convicted should lose their benefits and even lose their right to public housing! This is just bonkers. Nothing has been decided for sure yet but the idea seems immensely popular, especially with the general public to the extent that an on-line petition in favour, is gathering pace and has reached the numbers required to enable MPs to table it for debate it in the House. MPs reconvene sometime in early October. That's another thing I don't understand, I thought we did away with the idea of mob rule years ago? This idea that anyone with a bee in their bonnet can start an e-petition and persuade the government to debate it doesn't strike me as an extension of democracy, it smacks of a charter for all manner of odd-balls, extremists and assorted loonies to get their voices more widely heard.

I think most of us would agree that those who took part in the rioting and looting were people who live out their lives at the edges of society. Many unemployed, young, poor people took part in these disturbances. The Education Maintenance Allowance has gone, the Future Jobs Fund which had helped fund 100 000 jobs for young people since its introduction in 2009 went in March this year. Pretty much every social commentator you listen to or read will tell you that life for the majority of young people is grim right now and not about to get better anytime soon. If you want to a hear things from a young persons perspective please read YH World.

To think about taking away benefits and even housing from people who live on the periphery of society strikes me as utter madness. Then what happens? The people who are affected by these proposals, their quality of life will suffer, they will be further marginalised, they will undoubtably go on to commit further crime, their sense of social exclusion will intensify, it's a recipe for disaster.

Michael White of the Guardian (perhaps I'm showing my colours there) wrote in a blog of his last week: "It's the latest manifestation of an old problem. We all want to punish the seriously bad guys, but sometimes it's easier to make an example of the idiots."

This is my world

2011-08-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

Single bed

Sink

Chair - like you would get at a kitchen counter

Kitchen counter ( there is a kitchen cupboard on the wall above this)

Wardrobe

Bookshelf

This is my world, this is where I am when I am in. The room is 15 foot 10 inches long and 5 foot 10 inches wide. If I stand next to the bed and stretch out my arms I can touch both walls. I have lived here for six years and one month. This is where I eat, sleep, listen to the radio, watch TV and read. If I eat when I am here, I have a big tray which I rest on the bed. If I want to watch the telly I get it out of the bottom of the wardrobe and put that on the bed too.

I don't regard this place as my home - it's just where I live.

London's burning

2011-08-09T04:46:00.000-07:00

I had the chance yesterday evening to witness one of these street riots live (a ten minute walk away). There were two police helicopters in the air, and the whole neighbourhood was talking of nothing else.

The air of excitement was palpable. I shrugged my middle-aged shoulders and thought well, I'll see it better on the telly, and trudged off to where I live.

So what on earth is happening? "It's just criminality" is the quote so frequently trotted out. Well murder is just criminality for crying out loud. It's a phrase that means anything you want it to mean, but is guaranteed to garner popular headlines and popular support from an outraged if mystified public. This doesn't constitute informed opinion. For further thoughts on this, read Penny Red's blog.

Yesterday I had next to no sympathy for what these people were up to on account of the fact that they didn't seem to know what they wanted and were robbing phone shops and, for instance, Footlocker. I felt that in Tottenham last Saturday they had hijacked a grieving family's protest.

These people don't need a manifesto and, clearly, to take to the streets in such numbers and wreak havoc in the way that they have been, requires motivation a little stronger than the desire for a new Blackberry.

The Metropolitan Police have described the events of Monday as "the worst disorder in current memory". Condemnation is easy to muster. It is thirty years since we've seen riots on the streets anything like this (yes I do remember) and they were just not on this scale.

I'm old school enough to have marched in support of the miners. I've stood and shouted outside the House of Commons in support of, or against, one cause or another. Years ago I was part of a group who occupied the headquarters of the old National Graphical Association overnight in protest at Mrs Thatcher's attempt to abolish it. (The NGA was an old print union.)

But isn't this almost a new form of civil unrest? This is some kind of political statement. It might not seem like it and most of those taking part would be hard pushed to define precisely what it was. Partly, they are doing it because they can.

The art of looking

2011-07-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's quite an art to know how to look at anything when you've been unemployed for a while. Especially anything that relates to job seeking, or people giving you advice as to where to look and what options you might consider. Opinions are free and everyone has loads of them, especially if somebody else has to bear the consequences.

When you've applied for lots of jobs and not succeeded, that begins to chip at your self-confidence and hopes. You begin to become unsure of what you can actually do. It’s OK to keep a foot in voluntary work but you begin to think, they'll take anyone, won't they? The little voice in the head can get busy concocting all kinds of scenarios.

My friend John who is middle-aged, just like me, likes to believe he’s a realist: “Look at the facts,” he says. “Our skills are getting out of date with all this computer stuff. Nobody wants us for anything, apart from stocking up supermarket shelves.” And since he doesn’t want to stock supermarket shelves, John has concluded he’ll never work again.

I find that outlook rather pessimistic. I don’t want to believe my friend could be right. But I look at jobs on some job websites and despair (not just for myself) when I notice there are three hundred applicants for pokey little jobs that pay under £20,000 a year. I look at the Third Sector jobs site: I find myself hopeful that there are jobs for which I have the exact skill set, even when I get nada response to my applications.

I guess I’m keen to keep walking the fine line between realism and hope, while taking care not to descend into pessimism. Or worse, cynicism. I hang in there. I don't let the snipers kill off my hopes. I’m sure it’s better than looking backwards – to the good old days or how things have never worked out. Or looking around to notice evidence of the bad economy and the media and politicians arguing about where we’re at.

It takes something to master the art of looking and not letting oneself be pulled down by what one sees. Do you want to know my secret? I’ve picked a lesson or two from Epictetus. Epi … who? I hear you ask. I’ll tell you more the next time!

by Ready Ready, guest contributor

News of the World RIP

2011-07-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

As we all know by now Rupert Murdoch's News of the Screws is no more.

Now I don't for a moment wish to underestimate the enormity of what they have done, nor how repulsive their actions have been, not to mention the illegality and just how immorally they have behaved for far too long. Even News International are telling us there is more (and we can only presume, worse) to come.

I'm not going to do the outrage, I'm not going to explain the significance of it all, shit you can get all the stern disapproval elsewhere, about the collapse of society as we know it.

News of the World has been part of my life since I started to read it agog as a paperboy in the late 1970's. Even before that 13 year old boy became a reader, (and I admit, a fan) I had a vague sense of its national importance. Looking at the front cover on a Sunday morning is like looking at those smutty postcards at the seaside. You know, the "ooh-er missus" type of thing.

You might be wondering what on earth this has got to do with the unemployed and the benefit culture which is what I profess to bang on about? Well for starters there's the two hundred journalists who lost their jobs over the weekend. I must admit that they finished their last shift with some dignity, all leaving work together. I'm old enough to remember the huge fuss when Rupert Murdoch moved his News International set-up; lock, stock and barrel from Fleet Street, or thereabouts, to Wapping. This was 1986 when union bashing was very much in vogue.

I'm reasonably certain that it was journalists who worked for Murdoch who invented the phrase benefit scroungers, this alone speaks volumes about News of the World and their outlook, and I don't doubt their boss, Rupert Murdoch. I really feel that we have lost a piece of what can only be described as a part of the British establishment.

Street homeless numbers are going up but Mayor Boris is doing his bit

2011-06-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

Reports in last Monday's London Evening Standard and on the BBC's London evening news bulletin both spoke of the rise in street homelessness. I must say this didn't surprise me in the least, I see it as an inevitable consequence of the government's policies.

Chancellor George Osborne announced his Comprehensive Spending Review in October last year and in April this year local councils set new budgets, all involving cuts. These things always take time for the effects to filter through. As I'm sure we're all aware, people are consistently being put out of work due to the current economic climate. It is often said by those who work in the homelessness "industry" that we are all only two or three pay cheques away from homelessness.

So according to these reports, in just 12 months street homelessness in London has risen by 8%. Now these numbers aren't too dramatic, and in London the figure for 2011 so far stands at 3975. The worrying aspect of this was that 60% of these people were new to the street. This is according to Howard Sinclair who is CEO of Broadway, who are one of the organisations involved in what is esssentially an initiative led by the Mayor of London; No Second Night Out. Boris Johnson announced the scheme to loud fanfare in December 2010 claiming he was aiming to end street homelessness by December 2012.

So, in ten weeks, No Second Night Out has taken 135 people off the streets of London and this undoubtably has to be applauded. What concerns me is the fact that there is a need for such things in the first place. Street homelessness, to me, should be something that shames us a nation. I realise that there are a multitude of reasons as to why such things happen, I also realise that there are people who prefer to be on the streets for their own reasons, reasons I wouldn't pretend to understand. These people are in a minority but they prefer to live at the margins of society.

The people I'm most concerned about are those finding themselves homeless due to the cuts happening in the UK right now. I can only presume that over the coming months these numbers are going to grow. Street homelessness increasing by 8% doesn't sound like much but what are the statistics going to say in six months? Twelve months?

What I found most surprising about the publicity surrounding Boris' No Second Night Out campaign was a woman whose plight was being highlighted. She struck me as delightfully normal. A regular woman, pretty, with a regular job, well turned out, and now I'm going to sound like a bigot, but she really didn't look like the type who'd end up homeless. She lost her job selling for a medical supplies company, couldn't pay her rent and ended up sleeping outside a Sainsburys coffee shop! The woman concerned, Ms Karin Botha, who's 36 said: " It was the most scared I've ever been."

Right now she seems to be the poster girl for the No Second Night Out campaign. Which I think can only be a good thing because so many people think it'll never happen to them. Ms Botha seems a perfect example of how it just might. We are living in difficult times and we are going to be hearing more and more stories of people ending up without a roof over their heads.

Readying myself to get back to work

2011-06-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a Job Centre-prescribed training scheme to help me acquire some work experience and hopefully get me back into work. It’s four weeks into the programme and it’s giving me plenty of opportunity to observe myself, to see where I’m really at with regard to my employability. And not least of all, to get real information and genuine feedback from trainers, employers and job agencies.

Some of my findings have been shocking: first of all, I didn’t know so much of my confidence has been eroded over the four year I’ve been unemployed. In my first week at this training scheme, we played a variation of Dragon’s Den in which I was a job applicant and fellow trainees role-played the parts of prospective employers and interviewers at job agencies. At the first mock interview with my fellow trainees – I was shocked to see how nervous I was. I was all over the place, inarticulate like a child and clutching at anything like the proverbial drowning man! I couldn’t believe I was the same person who had been on interview panels to select employees for my organisation in the past. Little did I know that my experience had faded away and that I now need to retrain myself on how to handle job interviews.

The second thing that shocked me was getting how my daily disciplines and routines have been impacted by the long period of unemployment. I know folks who don’t like to get out of bed before midday … but that’s not me. I don’t have my son’s teenage thing of sleeping most of the day and being up most of the night. Actually, I like to get up at dawn and catch the dew on early morning walks or runs.

I realise I’ve now gone beyond the 9 to 5 and similar just show-up routines of certain organisations. I’ll do 12 hours of work straight when I have to get on with a project; I’ ll work weekends when I have to; I work long hours into the night when I have to deliver results by a deadline. But when I have to go and sit in an office for 6 hours and do what can be done in an hour or two in the name of a training scheme, something in me screams against the “system”. My challenge then is finding a work role that will focus on producing results, rather than conforming to old-style workplace routines that I hear are still rife in some places.

Now to my third insight: I’m finding it’s not easy to draw the line between being principled and being practical. From the do-goodie perspective, a training scheme to help me back into work may be just what I need … but it irks me to think there are people … officialdom, really … who want to move me from one set of statistics to another set of statistics without addressing my real needs and concerns. Even though I’m still unemployed, government statistics got improved by one person last month - by moving me from being in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance to being a Job Trainee receiving a training allowance.

I know I’m not one of the “I’ll do anything” brigade: I’m looking for a position where I can make a contribution and, at the same time, feel fulfilled to be using and developing my skills. I have no problem with motivation – it’s no big deal to show up on time and do above average work when I go to various volunteer jobs I do. But when somebody tries to fit me into a cookie-cutter pattern, something is provoked … a part of me just doesn’t want to do it! I question my own motivation though: am I being rebellious for the sake of rebellion or do I just shut up and be grateful for whatever comes my way?

I’ve been getting ready to move on for a long time. But now that I’m on the road, if feels like I’ve got concrete shoes on my feet and there are only muddy paths ahead of me. No one told me of these angles of being unemployed.

(Ready Ready, a guest contributor to this blog, is well educated with years of experience in the workplace. After four years of unemployment he's ready to move on, but how?)

The Government's latest wheeze

2011-06-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

So, late last week the Government announced its Work Programme. The Government is hoping that one million people who are currently receiving one of the out-of-work benefits will be moved from what is commonly referred to as welfare dependency (an ugly phrase, if broadly accurate) into work, within two years.

The Government is calling its Work Programme "revolutionary". Chris Gayling, the Employment Minister said it was: "revolutionary in the way it tailors support to jobseekers' individual needs and pays organisations primarily for getting people into sustained employment."

This doesn't sound revolutionary to me in the slightest, it sounds like the same old bullshit we've all heard before.

Another element of this Work Programme that the Government were boasting about when they announced it, was their hands-off approach to the companies they were asking to put it into practice. The Government calls it "a black-box approach". This apparently translates into; do whatever it takes and we're not going to interfere.

This is MY big worry, these contractors are being given carte blanche to get people into work. As every person who signs on knows, when you are offered work you are obliged to take it (however unsuitable it may be or however unsuited you may be in terms of being able to carry out the work.)

Mark Easton, the BBC's Home Affairs editor remarked: "concerns are that contractors might pressurise vulnerable people into taking unsuitable jobs." Surely we're not just talking about vulnerable people taking unsuitable jobs.

On the day the Government announced their Work Programme, Elizabeth Smythe of Randstad, who are a huge international staffing and recruitment consultancy wrote: "Payment by results has led some commentators to speculate that it might pressurise the approved providers to force claimants into unsuitable jobs."

Now, bear in mind the incentive for getting people into work for these contractors is £4k up to nearly £14k depending on who the jobseeker is.

So let's imagine you are coerced into taking a job you aren't suitable for, you stuff it up and they sack you and that's it. You can kiss your benefit goodbye for up to 26 weeks - that's six months! There is no way in the world they will let you sign back on. No JSA...no housing benefit. No landlord is going to give you six months grace until you can sign back on.

So you take a job you can't really do, lose it, lose any chance of signing back on, lose your housing benefit and you end up homeless. Now, I can see that happening. How many times it will happen who can tell?

A civil partnership made in heaven?

2011-05-11T07:30:00.002-07:00

This week saw the first anniversary of the Coalition government. So what are we to make of it all? Here are some of the highlights.

May

I vividly remember the day that Clegg and Cameron held that nauseous press conference in the garden at 10 Downing Street. There was a chap on the BBC London radio news in the morning of 12 May who referred to them as looking like an upmarket Ant and Dec. I could see what he meant inasmuch as there are times when you can barely tell which one is which. But then I was left wondering did he also mean that they talk drivel, aren't funny and are classed as light entertainment?

Rising star, David Laws, resigns after 17 days in the job, after allegations of financial misdemeanors. A year later he is suspended from the Commons, for seven days, for what are described as "serious breaches". This is from a man who is, in that age-old cliche, a self-made man. An ex-banker and a millionaire caught fiddling his expenses. It beggars belief, and he was being lined up to be the Chancellor's right-hand man!

June

George Osborne set out his budget. VAT increases from 17.5% to 20%. Child benefit and public sector pay are frozen. Housing benefit cuts are announced that will affect thousands. Personal tax allowances went up.

August
The Coalition passes 100 days in power. Samantha Cameron has a baby daughter.

September
The Liberal Democrats have their annual conference, which Nick Clegg comes through relatively unscathed. Telling the party faithful the Lib-Dems are doing "great things" in government and that the party should "hold its nerve" whatever criticism comes their way. As if to back him up MPs vote to scrap ID cards (which no government was going to fund) heralding it as fulfilling one of their coalition pledges.

October
This month sees George Osborne explain in detail his Comprehensive Spending Review. In June cuts to the welfare bill were said to be £11 billion. In early September he announced a further £4 billion, by the time of his Comprehensive Spending Review the total cuts to the welfare budget amounted to a total of £18 billion.

November

Student protests against tuition fees dominate the news. In the majority of cases fees are set to triple. The headquarters of the conservative party were beseiged and some gathered on the roof. An effigy of Nick Clegg was burnt.

December
Sure enough, in the commons MPs voted to raise the tuition fee cap.

January
After months of speculation about Andy Coulson's ability to be Director of Communications for David Cameron, he finally resigns. He had repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking in spite of being editor of the News of the World at the time it was going on. I don't think this tells us anything about the government, but to me it indicates an appalling lack of judgement on the part of the Prime Minister.

April
The Cabinet announces what it terms a pause, in their overhaul of the NHS. This, they say, is to consult further over the proposals for a shake-up. This is after Andrew Lansley became the first Health Minister to get a vote of no confidence from the Royal College of Nursing Conference. The whole thing strikes me as a fiasco.

May
The Liberal Democrats have a disastrous time in the local English elections and the national elections in Scotland and Wales, and what rankles them further is that the Tory vote holds up well. And to cap a bad night for Nick Clegg the referendum for AV was a resounding no.

So all things considered, what do I make of the Coalition's first year?
The way I see it the Tories spent a long time in opposition, so they had a long time to consider what they would do when they got back in power. The Lib-Dems are clearly the junior partner in this coalition and I think that shows. So the Tories have been able to pick on their long-standing bogey men; the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, these are the people who have borne the brunt of their economic policies. Sure, they inherited an economy mired in trouble, but they have chosen the direction to take the country in, all the while assuring us that their old friend, the free market will get us out of trouble.

Locked On, Radio Podcasts

2011-04-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

As I sit here writing this I am reminded of "What Is Wilderness?" one of the questions that make up the topic of Why Are We Here? This is the central theme of a series of radio podcasts I'm involved with from Camden Calling Locked On Radio.

The mission is to improve the access homeless and vulnerable people have to mainstream music, arts and popular culture. All the Camden Calling artists are unsigned and have had their own experiences of homelessness and other issues which are told through their songs which are planned, promoted and produced by themselves.

Through a series of 3-5 minute comedy episodes, different aspects of our daily lives are portrayed by three people from a know-it-all to a middle ground mediator, in a variety of different scenarios, such as the swinging sixties and a gunfight in the wild west. The characters find themselves in numerous situations and overcome challenges both emotionally and mentally. The scripts are conceived and collectively written by Camden Calling members and produced by Endell St studios, who are holding casting sessions to find the voices for the characters.

There will be music from Camden Calling (it was a difficult but enjoyable task researching bands and listening to a lot of music to find a song that mirrors the sentiments of why are we here) and some banter between musicians, interviews, music news and what is generally going on.

In order to better understand 'Why Are We Here?' - each letter represents a topic, for example the W from Why represents Wilderness, the H represents Happiness and the Y is Yearning - I decided to find out what people thought of the idea and if there was anything they would like to see in the shows. So, with a recording device I journeyed to London and asked the public what they thought of when they heard the word wilderness. Some responded, "in the middle of nowhere" and some said, "like a desert or a place where there is nothing".

To create a buzz about the shows a blog is being maintained with photos and videos from all involved as well as links to the Facebook and Twitter groups for people to follow. I am anxious to see the created shows, as I have written some of the material and would like to see the stories unfold and come to life. Based on the public responses so far, we are hopeful that it will be well received.

I am happy to be a part of this project because of the music and the people behind the music. When on stage they are passionate, singing or rapping about their own life experiences, issues around homelessness and other subject matter. What sets them apart from other musicians is that they are unsigned, all their material is self-produced, no involvement from a record label, and all artwork and album covers are designed, promoted and distributed by the artists themselves.

I finally feel a sense of belonging, I have a group friends who share a passion for creating and performing shows for people to enjoy.

Camden Calling is a social enterprise run collectively with homeless and ex-homeless people who put their problems aside to host live music events for a mainstream audience. Locked On is being produced with Endell St Studios.

The "fairness" poll

2011-04-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm certain I've mentioned before that sometimes I find the public's attitude to the unemployed a little disconcerting. In truth, I find some of the things I hear downright scary. Either way I was interested to see two articles in the Sunday Telegraph about the subject. The Telegraph, to my mind, is certainly on the scary side of right-wing politics but you can't be too fussy about stuff you find on the bus, so I read it nonetheless.

The first article concerned a YouGov survey about the public's attitude to the long term unemployed. This was only part of the whole survey, the survey was entitled Just Deserts? Attitudes to Fairness, Poverty and Welfare Reform. The survey was commissioned by the Policy Exchange think-tank. I've never fully understood quite what a think-tank is or does but Policy Exchange is rumoured to be David Cameron's "favourite ideas outlet" according to Janet Daley, a political commentator, columnist, and talking head for Radio 4's Moral Maze.

2407 adults were polled on-line in early March. "The figures have been weighted and are representative of all British adults." I think this is shorthand for them saying they have some extremely convoluted scientific way of making the opinions of two and a half thousand people representative of those of the British populace. Perhaps it involves logarithms?

These were some of the attitudes expressed:

Benefits are too generous or easy to claim 33%

There are not enough jobs available 20%

They do not have the skills necessary 16%

Rewards from working are too small 14%

They are lazy or lacking in willpower 12%

Don't know 5%

There was all manner of dreadful opinions in this survey, there was that old chestnut which is the statement that "some people who are poor are much more deserving than other people who are poor." 71% of the people polled agreed with this sentiment.

Then there's the subject of workfare, the notion that the unemployed should work for their Government handout. Now in this poll, 80% of those polled felt that: "people who have been out of work for twelve months or more, who are physically and mentally capable of undertaking a job, should be required to do community work in return for their state benefits."

Now IN THEORY I have no problem with this idea, I have no objection at all to me doing something useful for the community, in order to work for the money that the state gives me to put a roof over my head and money to live on. I think it's often referred to "as putting something back" and God knows, if there's one group of people who could do with putting something back, it has to be the unemployed. I think we all know that irrespective of what the Sun says about feckless scroungers, the unemployed may well be perpetually skint, but in the main they have, broadly speaking a fairly easy time of things.

Then there's the rub, this would have to be organised, and this job would fall to the same people who we sign on with every fortnight. The task of getting two and a half million people to contact the DWP once a fortnight to declare themselves without a job and subsequently pay them some money is something the civil service finds onerously problematic to organise without making countless mistakes.

So how on earth are they going to cope with organising things for, let's say, a million unemployed to do community work and keep track of what is going on? What about all those people who are currently doing this work as their (paid) job? All the people who currently pick up litter, run coffee mornings for the elderly, act as lollipop people, whatever is considered useful for the long-term unemployed to spend their time doing. This strikes me as one of those things that hasn't quite been thought through properly.

To me, I don't see anything wrong with people doing some kind of community work in order to get their benefits. As long as other people aren't losing their jobs as a result and as long as the government isn't getting their Big Society on the cheap.

Sick of this

2011-04-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of this, sick and fed up to the back teeth, as my father used to say. I'm just having one of those times when the repetition and futility of it all pisses you right off. What I mean is, the being without a job and seemingly getting nowhere with finding one.

Nothing's happening, it's all the same as it always is. The main thing that's the same as it always is, is that I'm always skint, always flat broke.

So, what to do...

Perhaps I should try harder to get some work, look harder, look more places, put in more applications.

By implication this must mean I'm not doing enough, surely? Believe me I'm doing loads, the previous paragraph is borne out of frustration.

The vast majority of people I apply to haven't even got the basic courtesy to acknowledge that I've sent the CV that they requested. I remember a few weeks back being so chuffed that a woman rang me up to give me a knock back that the next time I had to sign on I told the person signing me on.

So I guess that makes me what is commonly referred to as a lifestyle benefit claimant. This further implies that one can be a benefit claimant and have a lifestyle - I assure you, this isn't possible!

There is this popular myth that people choose to claim benefit as opposed to looking for work because the state subsidises some kind of lavish standard of living that people have no interest in seeking work. This is clearly because we're all living the life of Riley. This is another myth.

I'm not living in the lap of luxury courtesy of the state, I don't sleep all morning and then get up to watch Neighbours, I haven't got a plasma TV.

Claiming Job Seekers Allowance isn't a lifestyle choice, it isn't a choice at all.

I live a dull life on very little money. I walk almost everywhere. I'm not whingeing but it hacks me right off that the public (and Radio 5 Live) have so many misconceptions about the unemployed. To hear them talk, the hard working British public pay their taxes to keep the job-shy in clover.

The cuts - a look at some alternatives

2011-03-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

At a time when we're told there are no alternatives, here's a movement that's exploring them. See what you think.

It Cuts Both Ways...The Alternatives from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.

The government cuts

2011-03-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

Many people feel that the government has turned their back on them due to the massive cuts. On Saturday 26 March there will be a protest against the government’s cuts. This will see the UK’s biggest single protest since the anti-Iraq war march in 2003. Many people around the country will travel to London and make their voices heard at their anger of government’s cuts. The march will begin from London’s Victoria Embankment between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges at 12:00pm.

The cuts are absolutely ridiculous; they seem to be killing off young people when they are the future of the society. This is what, I think, the government doesn’t seem to realize.

My brother is due to begin university in September. He will be studying English Literature; his mind is set on going to university this year. To some extent I’m worried about the amount of debt he will be in at the end of his degree. Will there even be enough jobs available for university graduates?

I’m still considering going university, there is a lot I’d like to learn and there is no social life like university. But I have always been put off by the tuition fees – even before they put up the fees. I find university life rather interesting and it’s quite heart-breaking that I may have to forget about going to university all together because I’ll be drowning in debt by the time I graduate.

I know a few people that have dropped out of college because of the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) cuts and also the rise of tuition fees, they feel that it isn’t worth going to university and getting themselves in larges sums of debt. I know many young people were only attending college because of EMA but I suppose they could have come up with a better alternative rather than calling the whole thing to a close.

What I’m mostly upset about is them getting rid of the FJF Future Jobs Fund. My brother got his first job through the Future Jobs Fund and although the contract was only for 6 months, he got the skills and experience he needed that will attract potential employers. Now it is going to be tougher than it was before for young people with little or no experience to find employment. This is what happens when the government tries to fix something that isn’t broken. They are supposed to be creating more opportunities not taking them away.

Just because of the government, people should not give up on their dreams; there are other options than just going to university. This is the chance for people to think and be more aware about what is out there. There are apprenticeships where it is possible to earn money while gaining essential skills required in a working environment and I’m sure there are more choices out there.

Despite the government, my family still remain optimistic and believe that something better will come along. There is always an option. The cuts have made me think about how much we take for granted.

Me and My Unemployed Self

2011-03-03T02:57:00.001-08:00

You may think, just as I did, that getting up at a really early time to get ready to go and work for someone you don't like is just not worthwhile, doesn't feel worthwhile and doesn't promote job satisfaction. But being unemployed is not a case of "I can stay home and do whatever I want".

I, like most people, absolutely loved the idea of not having to work, staying at home and watching daytime TV. I quite enjoyed the idea of staying up late and waking up at some time in the afternoon. But that didn't last long because eventually my friends and people I knew all started to get jobs. They quickly took a dim view of the unemployed, and as I had been part of that club for some time, in their eyes I was dossing and becoming a scrounger. I was constantly getting pissed off with the same old spiel that came out of their mouths that I could recite it word for word. I became bored and regularly ended up sitting at home on my own watching crap TV.

Until my dad told me about it, I didn't even know that the job centre existed! That I could sign a piece of paper and the government would give me some money! I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to get some money for sitting on my backside. I thought I'd won the lottery. In the beginning it was great, just sign your name and get over £100 a fortnight! I could buy my tobacco, go out, buy games, it felt good. I had money!

But when you break it down and work it out, it's not nearly enough for you to live on. The government clearly have no idea what they are talking about. They worked it out wrongly at some stage. What if they had to live on £60 a week could they? What would they say then?

There is a requirement that the adviser matches a job to you. Now, you have to apply for these jobs even if you are neither qualified nor experienced. If you don't, then your benefits are stopped. This is something which all staff at job centres are pre-programmed to utter.
I soon had an internal battle of whether I could put up with the rigmarole of going to the job centre and having to put up with all the aggro just to get some money.

After some time you get promoted, the worst promotion ever, to "New Deal". It's centred around looking in newspapers, the Internet or using the phone to call employers whilst sitting in a room full of people tired and pissed off. Fail to attend, then - yep - your benefits get stopped. The only beneficial part is the chance to gain some skills from voluntary work. There are two ways out, get a job and work for your money or finish the program and start from the beginning.

These high and mighty advisers constantly shirking their responsibilities is a constant source of anger, but I still have to go through the motions or my benefits get stopped. I have been back and forth through this system so much that it felt as though that was my job. So I became trapped in this cycle of can't get a job due to lack of skills and can't learn the skills because no one is willing to teach these skills.

So, to recap, being unemployed lost its initial appeal long ago.

So I guess this is how it's going to be....

2011-02-24T02:29:00.000-08:00

Well, we all knew it was going to be doom and gloom since the Comprehensive Spending Review last autumn. I've been harping on about how things are going to be crap in earlier postings. Well earlier this week a few stories have emerged that offer some pointers as to how things are starting to pan out.

NHS

There is a report out produced by a trade-union-funded website that goes by the name of False Economy. (False Economy are funded by, among others: Unison, the Fire Brigades Union, TUC, and the Public and Commercial Services Union.) The report is claiming that job losses within the NHS are going to be double what the Government has claimed. False Economy used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data from NHS trusts nationwide. Their survey is incomplete because some of the NHS trusts didn't respond, and some are suggesting the final total may be higher than False Economy's estimation. False Economy predict that job losses within the NHS over the next four years, certainly including frontline staff. ie Doctors and nurses, will total 50, 000. The Government accused the report and the unions of scaremongering.

The Daily Mirror, Wednesday 23 February, helpfully provided us with the thoughts of David Cameron and the Conservatives from last year:

"It is there in black and white behind me. I'll cut the deficit not the NHS."

"We recognise its special place in society, so we will not cut the NHS."

Both of these quotes come from David Cameron in 2010, and from the Tory election manifesto:

"We're the party of the NHS. We back its funding and have vision for its future."

The General Secretary of TUC, Brendan Barber, said the research by the False Economy report, "gives the lie to government claims the NHS was safe in their hands".

Should the figures from the False Economy report turn out to be accurate the Government will no doubt be able to blame the health authority managers and trot out the familiar phrase, back office job cuts.

Child Poverty

Save the Children analysed data for local authorities from across the country and concluded that 1.6 million children are living in poverty and warned that the situation would only worsen as unemployment was set to rise. Ms Sally Copley, who is the Head of UK policy for the charity said: "It's a national scandal that 1.6 million children are growing up in severe poverty." Save the Children said their analysis showed that in 29 local authority areas, more than one in five children live in poverty. Nationwide the figure was one in seven.

We all know that benefits are frozen, food and fuel prices are increasing and VAT has returned to its full 20% rate since the end of January.

So things are getting worse and as time goes on this year they will deteriorate further for many people.

Sickness Benefit

Lastly, can I just mention what used to be known as sickness benefit. People will remember that the Government said at the time of the Comprehensive Spending Review it would review how it was evaluated. True to its word, the Government has been running pilot schemes under their new system.

One of the authors of the the review and someone who was crucial in devising the new medical assessment, Professor Paul Gregg, who is described by the Guardian (23 February) as an economist and a welfare expert, said: "the test is badly malfunctioning, the current assessment is a complete mess".

People with terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis and serious mental illness have been found fit to work. This was in one of the early roll out schemes, I must say I'm not surprised - these people couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery....

We are all in this together....

2011-02-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

Ten days ago there was an article in London's Evening Standard newspaper about a fraudster who managed to con his way into a job with a city investment bank that payed £165k a year.

After he hoodwinked a City headhunting firm, they put him forward to apply for a job as a deputy chief executive with this bank. He blagged his way through two interviews and Bob's your uncle. His scam only lasted a little over a month, by which time he fraudulently "earned" himself £14,500. His sentence was 100 hours of community service and 18 months probation.

In the Metro newspaper, Wednesday 9 February there was a story about another bloke, who was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for scamming housing benefit to the tune of £28 grand over the course of three years.

Both these individuals pleaded guilty to the offences they were charged with, which in layman's terms is theft.

The first man's lies were discovered after a month and he fiddled half the money that the second man fiddled, who kept up his lying for more than three years.

The first man stole from a Middle Eastern bank, the second man committed the cardinal sin of stealing from the British taxpayer. I think they both should have been locked up. But fiddling benefits is one of this country's sacred cows. Please don't misunderstand me, as I've said before fiddling benefit is cheap, shabby and just plain wrong. It's also taking the taxpayers' money.

Which brings me to another thing that is also plainly wrong - not paying your tax. On Newsnight, Monday 31 January they estimated that there is £15 billion of unpaid tax in the UK. At the moment Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is pursuing 22 companies through the courts for a total of £4.7 billion. Some are household names; Boots,Vodaphone, Barclays bank, and Topshop, to name but a few.

Later in the item they were talking about some of the protests against the cuts. Before I go further I must point out that I'm not, nor have I ever been a member of UK Uncut. This was the protest group that the report focussed on. They are one of the so-called new breed of protest movements who are now organising themselves utilising mobile phones, the internet, and social media.

UK Uncut's focus is unpaid tax and the effect the cuts are having on people's quality of life. The report looked at UK Uncut's protests on Oxford Street. They had protested outside flagship stores of the target shops and chains. And I think they have a point.

The basic point I'm trying to make here, is that things aren't equal, nor are they fair and some of us are suffering a lot more than others.

Blue Monday

2011-01-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

Depending on who you read, the most depressing day of the year is either Monday 17th or Monday 24th January. Quite how they work this out goodness knows! Suffice to say, I think for all of us it's a strange time of the year. It's the time of the year for resolutions, predictions and promises.

For this coalition Government it seems to be a time for broken promises. I don't know enough about it to list them all, but off the top of my head I can think of a handful: EMA, VAT, NHS, child benefit changes and student loans. To be fair, it was only the Lib-Dems who promised to do away with student loans. The coalition has put them up three times over!

The point I'm making is, as promises, they've all been broken.

The Education Maintenance Allowance
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said that the Labour lot were scaremongering when they said that the Tories would scrap it. It gets voted on today, (19th January) but it is almost a certainty to go through and they'll be abolished come the summer. Do we not want our population to be educated?

Child Benefit
David Cameron said he was going to leave it alone. Still it's only those who have one parent earning £40k or more that will go without - a broken promise nonetheless.

The NHS
The coalition said that there would be no top-down reorganisation yet even though medical bodies, the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association to name but two, are advising caution, Andrew Lansley the Health Minister, is boasting about the need for wholesale reorganisation and doing away with Primary Care Trusts at one fell swoop, another broken promise. The biggest shake up of the NHS in decades.

And then there's VAT
A month before the election, David Cameron said that his plans didn't involve an increase in VAT. Another broken promise. A two-and-a-half per cent increase in tax doesn't sound like very much (OK so the VAT doesn't go on food or children's clothes) but it's going to affect everything - all of the people, all over the country.

It is universally acknowledged that the cost of living is going up. I heard on the news one morning this week that Britain's rate of inflation is higher than that of Zimbabwe! The cost of food has risen, the cost of domestic fuel has risen and the cost of transport has risen. Both public transport and the cost of petrol/diesel.

But don't worry, you'll know just how unhappy you are
And this Government's latest wheeze to help us all to come to terms with this pain? David Cameron is going to spend £2 million and ask the Office of National Statistics to come up with a happiness index! I don't think any of us need £2 million to point out to Mr Cameron that if the cost of living is going up, we are all likely to be less happy.

Whatever next?

No-one seems to disagree that there are going to be huge job losses. Half a million in the public sector are to go in the next three or four years. The Government inadvertently owned up to this at the time of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010. They have not revised this prediction in the three months since. Local Government cuts will start to hit in April and that, presumably, is when job losses will begin to kick in.

It is widely predicted that alongside these public sector job losses there will be a further half a million jobs to go in the private sector over the same time period. I think we can all recognise that there is an interdependency that goes on between these two sectors. So I guess we can see unemployment figures rising but how far, who knows? For some of us, more blue Mondays are on the cards.

Waiting lists....

2011-01-12T03:50:00.000-08:00

I have lived where I live now for five and a half years. Six weeks before that my local council placed me on the housing waiting list. Due to fact that I am a single man and have no children I qualified to be on the list, but was not deemed to "be in priority need".

I feel I clearly understand this. It's bloody obvious that a single man in his forties is not in as MUCH need of housing as say, a single woman in her twenties with a toddler. Don't get me wrong, housing is a basic human need, we all need a roof over our heads.

I found out the other day, courtesy of Ken Livingstone in the local press, that the number of people who are on my local authority housing waiting list number 15,500. Is it any wonder that in the five-and-a-half years that I've been on that infernal list I've not heard a dicky-bird from my local council?

In the 2001 census the population of my north London borough was put at 202,824. Local estimates and surveys place a higher figure on that now. A study by the local council estimated it to be 223,171 in 2007. So I console myself with the thought that there are plenty worse off than me on that waiting list of 15,500.

Have you had similar experiences? We would like to get a picture of what it is like to be on the housing waiting list. Please post your comments below.

Being me

2010-12-22T05:45:00.000-08:00

Being unemployed is a very easy word to say but hard situation to be in. It’s a state of living that no one wants to be in but a lot of people are.

I’ve been unemployed for about a year and a half. I have been looking for jobs everywhere but there are none to be seen. Well, I am a student so it doesn’t really matter. On the plus side I do get the odd £30 a week from Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which this government is trying to get rid of.

But if you look at the surrounding parts of my life, not having a job is just the beginning of my desperate need of help. My mum is currently raising six children in a three-and-a-half bedroom house, and when I say three-and-a-half I mean the fourth bedroom is not even big enough to fit a single bed. On top of that she also attends college three days a week from 9am till 2pm, so a job is out of the question.

My step dad is 60 and retired, but wants to work again so in the near future he can start his own business; however the irony is that when my mum’s gone to college he has to baby-sit.

My aunty works Monday till Friday as a dinner lady but she doesn’t make nearly enough to help her with bills and to look after her 7 year old son.

I’ve got a set budget that I spend every week. As follows:
EMA payday- remember, EMA does not always come at a set date and it is not 100% that I will get it every week.
· Bus pass - £6.50
· Contribute to electric meter - £7
· Credit on my phone - £5
· Money that I save - £5
· Toiletries (deodorant and soap) - £3
· Cigarettes - £3

PROFIT-50p, LOSS-£29.50

So do you still think being unemployed is easy to say when you only live on 50p? Somehow I am still living. Sometimes I think of dealing on the other hand of the law but I don’t think I would be good role model to the younger generation in my family.

Being me is a way of life. Being me is being broke and angry. Being me is having to walk from Walthamstow to Clapton when you don’t have enough money on your Oyster (transport for London bus passes). BEING ME IS BEING UNEMPLOYED.

Bah, Humbug!

2010-12-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas is undoubtedly the time of year when it is easiest to feel inadequate and shittiest about yourself if you are unemployed.

Bear in mind I'm not a parent so it's not even a question of letting down sad-eyed children on the big day.

I'm a bit of an atheist so the religious aspect of the day kind of passes me by.

My big sister has got loads of children, some of whom are grown-up with children of their own. Her old man is a trained chef (although he no longer works as one). So, as I'm sure you can imagine, they have all the right ingredients for a proper Christmas.

Absolute pandemonium Christmas Day morning; children of all ages running to-and-fro, making all manner of noise. A big Christmas lunch. Lots of TV. Enough children around all day long to ensure lots of bickering and falling out. The whole nine yards. An ideal Christmas Day.

I know this because I've been up to visit for Christmas in the past. It's guaranteed chaos but it is also guaranteed to be a good time.

But I won't be going this year. It costs nigh-on sixty quid to travel up there, and that's using National Express, to travel out of London. This is without buying any presents. I'm a great uncle six times over, so that's six little kiddies who wouldn't understand. So I'll keep away, feeling inadequate.

Moving on up

2010-12-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

I’m at the job centre. My adviser tells me that I'm going to be put on a 13-week programme. “This programme aims to prepare you for employment and help you find work.” Since when did I become a mind reader? I knew my adviser would say those specific words. I've been told that ever since I have been claiming jobseekers allowance but there hasn’t been any progress.

Starting the 13-week program, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My first thought was this would be a waste of my time. It was going to be like the jobcentre. Walking into a room full of people with gloomy faces and downbeat attitudes, I thought this was a depressing atmosphere. I just felt like I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere but here.

After the first four or five weeks on the programme I met the placement officer. I was told that after being on the programme for a while I would be sent on work experience. The placement officer was really nice and supportive. When I said I wanted to be a writer I wasn’t put down like I was at the job centre or told I wouldn’t make it.

The placement officer referred me to Poached Creative (a writing and design company for charities and the social sector). She told me that if I worked hard a lot of positives would come from this opportunity.

I joined as a trainee at Poached Creative. I was there two days a week. I actually got a taste of what it was like to be a writer in a working environment. It was so much better than sitting in a room full of computers and job searching all day, which I had to do for the three other days of the week.

I feIt I was, for once, moving forward in my life. Learning new things about the creative industry, picking up new skills. This was a whole new experience for me. The people at Poached Creative were very positive and supportive. I felt that this would be a chance to really show what I have to offer.

It was getting frustrating, sending out dozens of CVs to employers. Not hearing anything back. Here I was actually learning new things and getting a taste of the real working environment.

Coming to the end of my six-week training programme, I got offered a job at Poached Creative as a junior writer. At first it took me a while to get my head around it. I didn’t expect to get a job out of it.

After a couple of days I got back to them. This would be my first ever job; I’d be doing what I wanted for a long time. I was excited. I eventually got back to Poached Creative and took the job. For me a job offer like this doesn’t come every day. I’d be crazy to turn this offer down and I would regret this later.

Cockroaches!

2010-12-02T04:36:00.000-08:00

I have got false teeth - only three at the front, a result of an accident on a pushbike. Night-time I put them to soak in water, in a little yoghurt pot on the side. This is on the dentist's advice to stop them from becoming brittle. The other morning I went to take them out of the pot only to find a cockroach floating in the pot right next to my false teeth, gross!

These things get everywhere. There was the time I was at college and I saw this big, shiny, brown, cockroach scurry across the carpet. I pointed this out and one of my fellow students shrieked. It was only on the lunchbreak that I realised I'd probably brought the thing along in my bag.

I have lived in London very nearly 26 years and in that time have had 11 addresses. That doesn't sound too bad, except on closer reflection four of those addresses lasted 22 years which means seven of those addresses lasted four years.

As I'm sure you can imagine these have varied hugely in quality. Of those 11 addresses, there's only been two premises that have had cockroaches. I think we all know that they say that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war.

Where I live now and have been for five years, is infested with cockroaches and I can hardly blame the landlord. Regular as clockwork, the bloke from the pest control people comes round and sprays some chemical gunk under the sink in my room and he visits every single room in the entire building.

The thing I wanted to mention is we get used to what life serves us up, we become inured, we become immune. This isn't right. But it is what you become accustomed to, so even though I now know more than I want to know about the life of a cockroach: I have seen them mate, I know how big their eggs are, I know the places in my room where they like to congregate, I even know that on occasion they will bite humans, I just shrug and put up with it.

People don't choose to live second class lives, but they come to understand sometimes they have no other option.

Money, money, money

2010-11-25T01:49:00.000-08:00

My fortnightly outgoings:

£50.00 - rent surcharge.
£22.50 - fags (3x£7.50, 2 ounce packets of rolling tobacco, duty free).
£10.00 - Money owed to my friend round the corner. (Nine times out of ten I owe my mate money).
£2.00 - Rizlas and filters.
£5.00 - phone.

Total spend - £89.50.

Given my fortnightly payment for jobseeker's allowance (JSA) comes to £130, the balance to last me two weeks is £40.50, this works out at slightly less than £3.00 per day.

I'm not angling for your sympathy here. You can call me scrounger, you can call me a lifestyle benefit claimant. You can think what you want. You can think I lie in bed til lunchtime every day and then get up and watch Neighbours. You can think I belong on the Jeremy Kyle Show. You can think I smoke too much. You can think what you want.

This is not a lifestyle choice, this is not enough.

£3 per day - how much pocket money do teenagers get?

As our cousins across the pond would say, you do the math.

Time management skills

2010-11-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

I think most of us realise that you mess the dole office around at your peril. For instance, if you don't sign on when they've asked you to, you run a serious risk of not getting your money. This is hardly surprising and it's guaranteed to take much grovelling and a kosher excuse to ensure that you do get your money, albeit a few days late. I guess that this isn't especially onerous, after all they only ask you to turn up once every two weeks!

Photo courtesy of Basher Eyre and licensed
for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

I sign on on a Monday at three-ish, which is hardly a struggle. A couple of months back they were asking me to sign on at 9.30am and travelling at that time of day is just.....worse. It's swings and roundabouts though; now, mid-afternoon, I always catch the schoolchildren and loud teenagers, who I find a little scary. The girls strike me as louder and scarier.

The other day, six days before I was due to sign on, the dole office rang me. They said I had to come into their office at 9.30 the next morning for some reason or other - I wasn't sure why, I'd tuned out by that point to be honest, but I'd written down the time and assured the woman that I'd be there.

So, up and out the next day quite early (quite early for the unemployed - as you know we have quite leisurely mornings) to walk to the dole office. I was walking due to the fact I can no longer catch the "free bus" because London Buses have discontinued the bendy bus on that route. This has inevitably led to a fitter local populace.

At the dole office I queue up, give my name and NI number and tell them about the appointment. "No sorry, Mr. ......no appointment for you here on my list." I knew that the woman who rang me the day before hadn't done so for her own entertainment and knew the consequences for missing an appointment meant that they would bugger up my claim and I'd not get the money due next week. "Could you please check on the system for me?" I asked. Much huffing and puffing and then the receptionist bod nipped behind the screen to ask one of her colleagues to look me up on the computer.

Then the landlord rings me up. I live in a bed and breakfast that has two managers; a kind of good cop, bad cop arrangement. This was bad cop in his usual shouty mode. Everyone who lives in the bed and breakfast pays a surcharge, if you're on jobseeker's allowance this is 40 per cent of your money. I always pay the day or the day after I get my money. I tried to assure Mr Shouty that I had done this, as usual, then explained where I was, he shouts that I must come back when I have finished at the dole.

By this time the woman who has looked me up on the computer is standing there. I explain the nature of the phone call to assure her I wasn't being rude. "Sorry Mr. ...... I can find nothing about an appointment, what was it about?" Obviously I feel a lemon because I can't tell her (I wasn't paying attention on the phone the day before). I mumble that I'm not too sure, look suitably sheepish and ask if I can have a receipt to say that I have visited the office for this appointment that now doesn't appear to exist. I am asked to wait and the woman goes back to her computer. A quarter of an hour goes by and the woman returns. "Sorry sir I can find no record of an appointment so I can't really give you a receipt, you could ask at reception."

I rejoin the queue, (at the back) it is now nearly 10.30. At 10.50 I patiently explain my situation all over again to the same woman I had spoken to at 9.25 and point out the last thing I want to do is mess up my claim and stress that this would be inconvenient for everyone as it would involve new appointments. The receptionist sighs deeply and says she'll see what she can do and disappears round the screen to speak to her colleague again. I go and sit down and wait, again. After another quarter of an hour this woman comes back with a slip of paper - my precious receipt. I tell her thanks very much and am apologetic for giving her extra work to do. I get out at 11.35. Something that should've taken maybe twenty minutes at most has taken over two hours and I have managed to piss off two of their staff.

All of this is normal for the dole office. If they were in any other line of business, they'd go bust within three months or sooner, and we'd all take our business elsewhere. Except we can't. We're a captive audience, to staggering levels of inefficiency and piss-poor organisation.

So I get back to the bed and breakfast and Mr Shouty says: "Sorry, I was reading the wrong line in the book, you're OK with your rent." I trudge upstairs and sit down, it's 12.15. What a complete waste of everybody's time. I'm worn out. Next Monday I sign on as per with my little receipt tucked inside my signing book. Nobody says a word about the appointment that never was.

Life in the hostel

2010-10-28T04:50:00.000-07:00

"There hasn't been a murder here for ages."

John (not his real name), who has lived here a good while longer than I have, trots this phrase out like he's talking about the weather. It's true, there's been the odd dead body but nobody got murdered. I've been here five years and a bit and I know of four corpses found on the premises, but no murders.

John has got huge muscly arms and tattoos all the way up his neck, as well as all the other places you'd expect. He looks like he could snap you in two. As far as I know, he hasn't killed anybody but there are people here who have. All sorts live here. I often read about ne'er do wells who share my address: in the weekly local paper, every Thursday, in the library over the road. This sometimes involves selling crack, or stabbing someone but there have been folk who have committed sex crimes.

Mostly there are three ways of coming to live here; just out of nick, just out of the local loony bin, or knocked back by the council. There are other folk; the very recently separated, even the odd tourist. I'm sure that statistically it shortens your life expectancy, living here.

I always said I'd stay here because it was a sure fire way of getting moved into social housing. I guess I can kiss that one goodbye now, thanks to our all-singing, all-dancing coalition Government.

There are 33 boroughs in London and I suppose there are places just like the place I live in, in every borough. The people that run my place have another one in the market, less than half-a-mile away, that's much, much worse than where I live. More junkies, more cockroaches, more grief generally, to the extent that if things go a bit wrong here, but not wrong enough for them to kick you out, they threaten you: "Any more trouble out of you and we'll move you to the market!"

It works both ways, the people in the market get told that if they keep their nose clean and up to date with their rent, (surcharge) "we might let you move over to ..............road."

There are umpteen stories I could tell you about this place, but let's leave that to another day.

"Back from the brink" or should that be over the precipice?

2010-10-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

The headline quote is from George Osborne and apologies for the cheap pun but it was a gift.

So we had the Comprehensive Spending Review yesterday which, to you and I, is known as "the cuts". We are going to have at least four years of these cuts.

This prospect makes me think of the eighties. I reached working age in 1982, I remember the eighties well. England was a miserable place. In large swathes of the country, thousands of people were out of work. It seemed that wherever you went you always found loads of places boarded up and shut down. Life struck me as bleak throughout most of that time. I'm worried these cuts will be worse.

I'm not planning to write an exhaustive study of what played out Wednesday 20 September. If you wish to read such a thing I'm sure you know where you can find it. But I want to comment on what I saw and heard and some of the implications I think it may have for those in receipt of benefit.

The cuts to the welfare budget have gone up twice since George Osborne's emergency budget in June. If you remember, he said he was going to cut £11 billion. On 9 September he announced a further £4 billion, by yesterday he announced in the Commons the total cuts to the welfare budget had risen to a total of £18 billion. Of this £18 billion, £2.5 billion is the cuts in child benefit announced a couple of weeks ago.

The contrast in the reactions to these different cuts has been startling:

Take £2.5 billion in Child Benefit off some fairly well-off folk (one parent earning over £44k). Reaction: General uproar in the House, lots of disapproving muttering in the press.
Take £15.5 billion of the poor, disabled and the out of work. Reaction: no-one bats an eyelid.

It is so difficult to find hard information right now. This will only appear over the coming weeks. I think a whole lot of people will be in for an almighty shock come next April. Here are just four shocks I noticed.

1. Anybody who is on long-term sick pay will lose a third of their money and be moved onto Job Seekers Allowance after twelve months.

2. My local MP, Meg Hillier, says anybody on Housing Benefit will see it cut by 10% after twelve months. There are a lot of worried people talking in the press about people being forced to move further out of London to cheaper areas.

3. Another implication for Housing Benefit claimants is that single people under the age of 35 won't be able to claim Housing Benefit for anything other than shared housing. So, if you work as a civil servant, are 30 years old, and live in social housing and the Government puts you out of work - for instance - is the Government saying you're going to lose your flat?

4. Future social housing tenants will be asked to pay rents at a rate of 80% of private rents in the area. Tessa Jowell, a South London MP, said on BBC London TV news (Oct 20), "This is the end of social Housing in London."

The implications of these vicious cuts are huge and very frightening for so many on benefits. None of us can know for sure what the ramifications will be.

Yesterday there was no mention of the VAT increase coming in January. Nor was much made of local government cuts. The suggestion yesterday was that these would come in as 26% over four years. This works out as 6.5% annually, so that's more cuts we will suffer.

The one cheery fact I learnt yesterday was that these cuts are the worst cuts since 1976, not since the second world war as had earlier been believed.

Future Jobs Fund and the careless adviser

2010-10-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

My jobcentre adviser is someone I wish I never met. Pushy, impatient and stuck up. Through my adviser I have occasionally been forwarded to various different FJF (Future Job Fund) jobs. FJF jobs offer community-focused jobs specifically targeted at young people. It’s a minimum of 25 hours a week, with a contract of six months and paid at national minimum wage.

One of the things I hate is I can only access the FJF jobs through my adviser. This means I can't access them through the Internet or though the jobcentre's job search machines. There are times when I go to the jobcentre to see my adviser to get an update on jobs and I'm told “We don’t have any jobs for you this week. See you next time.” They don’t care about their clients.

I want an alternative way to access available FJF jobs other than through my jobcentre adviser who rarely updates me. My adviser gets frustrated when I take my time going through the vacancy list. There is no rush. I made myself crystal clear about the jobs that interest me, yet I’m being forwarded for jobs that my adviser wants me to do.

Sometimes I get an interview. The interviewer expects me to have some company knowledge. This is when I have asked my adviser for additional information about the company and the sort of the questions I may get asked at the interview. Didn’t get anything back. From my point of view it seems that my jobcentre adviser doesn’t want to do the job. It’s like they love seeing me back there at the jobcentre week in, week out.

In May 2010 they began to cut the FJF programme from a couple of organisations and the number is increasing. According to statistics this was the most progressive employment scheme in the generation. This offers people from the ages of 18-24 a chance for a real job in a real working environment.

My brother who is 19 years old currently has a job which is an FJF job is a community arts worker. He tells me he enjoys his work, meeting new people and learning tons of new things everyday. Also adding "it's difficult enough as it is for people my age to find work, stopping the FJF programme just makes it harder for young people to get into employment."

Those who have not worked before or getting back into employment have a chance to train and also put something more on their CV and they are taking that away.

What people really think of the dole

2010-09-30T08:13:00.001-07:00

Over the past four and a half months I have posted 10 or 11 blogs. What I was wondering the other day was, am I coming at this subject from the right angle or am I being unreasonable? I wanted to know if I was being fair about my dealings with the people at the dole office. Or was I just whingeing and feeling sorry for myself and thinking that they're not very nice to me? So, in order to find out what others think about having to sign on, and how they are treated by the staff at the Jobcentre, I decided to do a survey. Now obviously I'm not IPSOS-MORI or YouGov and what I did was hardly scientific but I was interested in other people's points of view.

I set out with three fairly open questions and asked people to participate in my "survey" as they left the dole office. There are three offices where I live, (there's a lot of people out of work and unemployment is higher than the national average) and I decided to divide my time between two of them. I wasn't daft enough to stand outside the dole office where I sign on with a notepad, as that seemed to be inviting trouble if anyone had got an inkling of what I was up to.

I was very conscious of the need to be fair minded. I'm not sure if it's part of our national attitude but there were quite a few people who were just not interested in answering any questions at all.

So these were my 3 questions and some of the responses from the public:

A - Do you think the Jobcentre helps you?

"Sometimes, sometimes not, seems to depend on their mood."

"No, they're just going through the motions."

"No they see you as an inconvenience."

"Up to a point, but not as much as they say they are going to."

"No they're rude. They're stuck up."

B - Do you have any experiences, positive or negative that you think other people should know about?

"They can be a bit irritating, they don't do what they say they they're gonna do, they lose things, you need a receipt for EVERYTHING, they try to make YOU at fault for being slack and losing things."

"They love to claim you haven't done x, y or z."

"Bane of my life. Pain in the arse. How many times have you been in there and they're chatting away, going for a fag break together, sorting out their social life and completely ignoring you."

"Their resources have got better and their staff are better as well, less idiots. People don't shout as much."

"There isn't fucking nothing positive about that place except they're not as bad as they have been."

"Lots of pointless bureaucracy. Lots of window dressing and ticking boxes."

C - How do you feel about coming here?

"You have to just remember your manners though they don't have none."

"You have to so you just put up with it. None of them can tell the fucking time."

"They love to make you feel like you're less than them. Shit I'd be ashamed to have that job - wouldn't do it, would you?"

"No fun, but they're giving you sixty-five quid a week."

"They won't get you a job, they're rude and they lose stuff."

"Not happy, the right hand don't know what the left hand is doing."

"It's the grade of people they use, they love making you feel small."

"Don't do this, don't do that. One time they gave me a mop test! They made miss a course over a bus pass - two minutes of their time was too difficult!"

"It's fucking humiliating."

So what conclusions was I able to come to?

That the Jobcentre were spectacularly inefficient even though their job shouldn't be difficult.

At every given opportunity the staff would try to make you feel bad about yourself.

They would always try to avoid responsibility and pass the buck.

The staff seemed to have rudeness built-in as their default position when dealing with members of the public.

I must stress that some people were quite relaxed and said that the way they were treated by the dole was fine.

All of this I found strangely reassuring, it seemed to mean that I hadn't been banging on unnecessarily and broadly speaking I'd been right. One last thing I learnt was that there isn't a swear word in the English language that I didn't know, but they seem to be in more common usage than I'd first thought!

Now I realise that the staff at the Jobcentre are under pressure and don't have an easy time of things and there are lots of boxes for them to tick, etc. I hope one thing my survey demonstrates is that the service they provide falls some way short of what one might reasonably expect from a Government agency.

Labour Party - leadership news

2010-09-29T03:46:00.000-07:00

With thanks to Martin Rowson and the Guardian for the cartoon.

It quite probably won't make a jot of difference to the jobless nor to the looming cuts in benefits, but the Labour Party have elected a new leader.

My fervent hope is now the 4 (yes 4!) months of politicking within the Labour Party is over, that Ed Miliband and his new shadow cabinet can get their act together.

Let's face it, the coalition Government have been allowed to steamroller ahead almost unopposed in the House of Commons. Since the June Budget the coalition have been able to reel off a great big list of ALL these cuts they claim they need to make in order to save the nation. It seems there has been barely a peep of protest with the Commons.

I can only conclude that this is because the Labour Party have been looking elsewhere. They have been deciding who is going to lead the opposition. So while the Government has been lining up these huge cuts the so-called opposition has been navel-gazing.

So the very first thing I would like to have seen Ed Miliband and his new shadow cabinet do was to start to build a coherent, credible opposition to these vicious cuts. That would mean coming up with credible alternatives. I saw him interviewed by Paxman on Newsnight the day their conference finished, he failed to mention the Welfare State.

Right now I feel that the poorest and most vulnerable in the UK are crying out for someone to speak up loudly on their behalf. Cuts in benefits is State bullying of those least able to speak up for themselves.

Whatever happens come October 20, I'll probably be OK. (Depends how the Housing Benefit cap pans out.) I'm single and unemployed and I'm used to being skint and bitched at by the DWP. I've only got myself to look out for. But there are an awful lot of people who have more responsibility than me and are going to bear the brunt of this much more than I will.

Where do I go from here?

2010-09-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

I'm lost and I don't where I'm going. Being unemployed for a long period of time is depressing enough as it is. I have been unemployed for nearly two years. I had to occasionally sign off Job Seekers Allowance so that I could, sort of, get my head around things.

You see they give you up to six months to find a job before they refer you to New Deal. This aims to help you find work, giving you advice, training, and work experience. The benefits of this scheme are to give you more confidence and obtain new skills that employers are seeking. I had to visit my job centre adviser every week. We would try and search for jobs that would be of interest to me through FJF (Future Jobs Fund) but didn’t have any luck.

I was put on a 13-week programme by the job centre adviser. The programme starts from 9:30am to 4:30pm five days a week. They enhance job search skills, improve on your interview techniques, build your confidence and help you find employment I was told.

The first week when I began the programme, I sat at the computer and searched for jobs, which I thought was pointless because this wasn’t any different from what I was doing at home. This is a depressing environment for me and for everybody else I met there. Most of them were just sat at a table waiting for the clock to hit 4:30pm as they felt it was a waste of time being there. The facilities were not that great; the centre is always short staffed so the adviser available couldn’t see all the clients, meaning some were left out. At times we did some sessions such as watching a DVD about interview skills, improving your CV and cover letter and confidence building sessions. I had a lot of help with the content and layout of my CV; also learnt how employers examine CVs, which was very useful.

I do think it’s not in fact necessary to attend the centre five days a week. It’s like I’m being trapped from 9:30am to 4:30pm. There is very little to do there, hardly any attempt to help me find work. But at least I have a reason to wake up in the morning. I'm currently on a work placement at Poached Creative and I'm just glad to be able to do something I have wanted for a really long time. Who knows where it may lead from here?

The cuts....

2010-09-16T02:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we all knew it was coming sooner or later; news on the cuts. We get the full picture on 20 October. Details have been flowing out since the June budget, definite Government plans, so we've been told. These, and then non-stop speculation and conjecture from the written press and broadcast media outlets.

I've been expecting grim news for ages but that didn't stop me being furious on seeing George Osborne's pasty face on the BBC six o'clock news Thursday evening (9 September). He was telling us about an extra £4 billion in cuts to the welfare budget - I was seething. And then there's the look of utter distaste on his face as he patiently explains to the interviewer (Nick Robinson) why this situation just "cannot be allowed to continue". Apparently, he didn't even have the good manners to inform Ian Duncan Smith of what he was going to say. (Bear in mind that it's Duncan Smith's department that his latest announcement affects.)

He's making £4 billion in further cuts to welfare, in addition to the £11 billion announced in the June Budget. These are huge sums of money to cut from the poorest sector of our society.

The dole office always gives you a sheet of A4 saying "we have worked out how much money the law says you need to live on" so how come we all of a sudden need less? Is this bloke for real? How would some millionaire posh-boy have the faintest idea what it's like to get by on benefit? And then he's got the brass neck to say we're making a lifestyle choice!

Sure I can credit that some people will steer clear of shitty jobs being paid the minimum wage - it's a living wage that people need. In London the minimum wage is £5.80 per hour. The Living Wage Campaign have suggested £7.85. This has been set by the Greater London Authority. Were one to work a 40-hour week, the difference that makes to one's weekly pay is £82 gross.

It's just a fallacy that the feckless workshy have somehow bankrupted the country so therefore we must somehow claw back the money from them to prevent them making this "lifestyle choice".

So what's the Treasury doing to save money? I read in the Standard that they're getting smaller desks, so that they can squeeze more staff in - genius. "This is typical of the sort of savings we are looking for in other departments," a Treasury source told the London paper. In the same paper Nick Clegg further reassures us (Thurs 9-9) there is "no sword of Damocles that's going to come down straight away". This remains to be seen.

On the morning of 10 September it seems there were a few dissenting voices emerging after Mr Osbourne's appearance on the previous evening's news. The DWP said no agreement had been reached. In fact, Ian Duncan Smith was quoted on Newsnight on 15 September as saying he did not recognise the £4 billion cuts. Three Liberal-Democrat MPs crawled out of the woodwork vowing to vote against them and Bob Russell went on record as saying the Chancellor "was unethical". He went on, "it would be ethical to show an equal determination to tackle the cheats who avoid and evade tax".

This all seems a little late in the day, the saying; if you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas seems apt. George Osborne was unrepentant; "the welfare system is broken, we have to accept the welfare bill has got completely out of control."

Now, this statement baffles me. This man clearly has no idea how one goes about claiming benefits. He cannot know how many conditions one has to fulfil and prove umpteen times over to receive any benefit at all. I fail to understand how, when the rules are so stringent for every benefit one applies for, how it can get out of control.

Perhaps the figures are a little unpalatable to the Chancellor, but getting money out of the state in the form of benefits that one is entitled to is no mean feat. I think Mr Money-Bags Osborne should choose his words more carefully. Perhaps the phrase should have been: look this Government really doesn't like giving the state's money to the poor and needy and picking on them is a whole lot easier than getting big business to pay the tax that they owe us when they've got accountants and lawyers and stuff.

Google - a company so huge it has become a verb in the English language - doesn't like paying tax in England. They quite legitimately have managed to base their head office in Dublin specifically for the purpose of avoiding paying tax to the British Government. But I haven't heard George Osbourne on the telly telling us the tax system is broken. Vodafone, another company so proud about its connection to this country they used to sponsor both the English rugby union and cricket national sides, apparently owes £6 billion in tax. Question Time (23rd September) queried what Vince Cable was going to do about this.

The very morning that George Osborne was sticking the boot in to the poor, and the sick, and the elderly - again - there was someone on the Today Programme talking about tax. This person, who requested anonymity, worked for HM Revenues and Customs and was begging the Government to resource their department so that it would be able to do its job. Ie, to collect the tax, maybe not all, but so much more than they were able to at present. They iterated what I have said in my previous blog; that estimates of uncollected tax were upwards of £30 billion. And George Osborne wants £15 billion off the poorest! I only got an O level in Maths in 1981 so perhaps that's why none of this adds up to me.

I'm old enough, and perhaps old school enough, to believe in big government. I'm happy for the public sector to employ lots of taxpayers. It's an illusion that the private sector, (the Tories' beloved free market) is going to fill this upcoming gap in employment figures that will be directly caused by these "essential" cuts. (Let's face it, it's a moot point as to how much and how soon). And it's crass pronouncements like those from the Chancellor that inevitably raise class hackles.

What's the difference between a scrounger and a benefit cheat?

2010-08-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

I ask this question because the other day (Thursday 12 August) the Sun ran a "campaign" to get members of, what they usually term, the Great British Public to grass-up people who they suspected of falsely claiming benefit. Now I don't know if this is an example of the silly-season that traditionally runs in the British press at this time of the year but knowing the Sun as I do (a notoriously hate-filled rag) I suspect not.

There was a follow-up piece that evening on Newsnight. Now, I would hazard a guess that most of us would regard Newsnight as perhaps a more reliable source of journalistic information than the Sun. It must be said, I do quite like their football coverage and I understand their racing coverage is excellent - I couldn't really comment as I know next-to-nothing about the gee-gees.

So let's return to Newsnight. There is £5.2 billion wrongly paid out in benefit. Of that amount £1.5 billion is attributed to fraud. Now I can quite credit that £3.7 billion is wrongly paid out in benefit by the DWP. I think we all know they couldn't organize a proverbial piss-up....One of the more startling figures that was brought up that evening was the fact that there are £16 billion of benefits that go unclaimed! We've all heard about the little old lady who doesn't know what she's entitled to claim for and people who are too proud to ask for Government hand-outs, but £16 billion?

The Con-Dem coalition government (or whatever they are called, I never quite know how to refer to them) glibly claim, at every available opportunity, that what they are trying to do is sort out the appalling financial mess Labour left behind. Now I have no party-political axe to grind here, nor am I an economist in my spare time, but I was under the impression that the responsibility for this world-wide financial crisis lay, by and large, with the bankers. That is to say the roots of this recession lay in the shady dealings of the financial sector. In what Nick Clegg called in his article at the weekend (15 August-Observer) "reckless irresponsibility". You have to read deep into his Observer article to see his acknowledgement of this, get him on the telly and it's all Labour's fault. All over the planet an unfettered financial services industry have landed us all in an almighty mess, world-wide.

So how come, in order to rectify the situation, we start off by kicking the poor and then go on to slash services that huge numbers of the general public need and use? Mr Clegg put in the Observer: "this government doesn't expect anyone to reach their verdict after 100 days. We expect to be judged on what we have achieved in five years. That should be a relief." Well, all I can say is that after 100 days this government has scared the living daylights out of many, and that hardly counts as relief.

We cannot know for certain where the axe will fall because we have to wait until 20 October for the results of George Osborne's considerations. There's been enough signposting for us to know that all manner of things are on the list and some things have already fallen by the wayside.

This government seems to be lining up traditional old Tory targets, for starters what they call big government and the arts and then there's the poor and benefit cheats and scroungers, none of whom can be held responsible for the current mess. All this is being done with the active collusion of the Liberal Democrats, who should be ashamed of themselves as the people being lined up for cuts are people they have traditionally stuck up for in the past. One sniff of government and the Liberal Democrats seem to forget their principles. So as I say the government seems quite happy to pick on the poor and the jobless. I've heard no mention of taxation apart from vague noises about a banking tax which seems a sop when you consider that by their own admission HM Revenue and Customs readily acknowledge that there is £40 billion tax that goes unpaid.

While all this is going on what is the Opposition up to? Well instead of building some kind of coherent opposition to these vicious cuts, the Labour Party have been all wrapped up in their internal bickering over who they are going to elect as their new leader.

Have I become unemployable?

2010-07-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder about this. Nowadays I'm nowhere near as fussy as I used to be about the kind of work I apply for although there are areas of work I just don't consider, which must be true for us all. I cannot drive and don't consider doing anything that would be especially arduous physically. This is due to my age and the fact I'm hardly in good shape - I've never been what might be called fit.

Other than these considerations, right now I'm pretty open-minded about any options that might be open to me. I have a 20-plus year work history and although I don't have a trade, nor a degree, I do have recognisable skills. My strength, I guess, is dealing with people. The majority of my work background is in public service or the service industry.

The times I've not been working I've not sat at home watching daytime TV and I can clearly demonstrate this. I've been able to do several short courses over the past three years and have been involved in part-time voluntary work for six years and more.

I'm articulate and presentable (I can do collar and tie and I scrub up alright). I apply for all sorts of things, yet seem to get nowhere.

I've not done any paid work for over five years and it is this, I assume, that proves to be the sticking point. For 12 months of that time I did concentrate on getting myself healthy after a head injury. Otherwise, I've been reasonably active in looking for work, to no avail.

As a result of all this I guess you could say I've joined the underclass - that big swathe of the long-term unemployed who muddle by at the fringes of society. I know it's one of those tabloid phrases but it's not a figment of their fevered imaginations. There are huge numbers of people who struggle to get by who generally, through no fault of their own, have to exist on the miserly sums of money the state deems appropriate to give them in one form of state aid or another.

As a nation we seem to be in denial that these people exist. Or if, indeed, we acknowledge that these folk are out there, first we demonize them, then blithely assume that the traditional ways back into employment are enough for them to rejoin mainstream society. This is just short-sighted and downright naive.

Let's face it, any support on offer from the Jobcentre is minimal or takes the form of one-size-fits-all so-called training; courses run by agencies whose raison d'etre is to milk money from Jobcentre-Plus. Mickey-Mouse training - how to write a CV, Health and Safety, the Power of Positive Thinking, that kind of thing. Give people access to a computer and Bob's your uncle, whack in a bill to Jobcentre-Plus for a "class" of twenty and you're laughing. Sure, use of a free computer is helpful but this is by no means any kind of solution!

The alternative, getting to know the jobseeker, helping them target their jobhunting, or to access appropriate training, introducing them to possible employers, opening doors usually firmly shut to them, is costly and time-consuming and therefore a non-starter. It's there in theory, in reality it's a charade, an empty aspiration.

They say you get de-skilled if you're out of work - this is undoubtably true even if it is couched in a rather clumsy modern phrase. At the very least, one loses the discipline of maintaining attendance at the workplace.

So one is compelled to exist in a slightly otherworldly place; economically impotent, part of the society one belongs to but only on the periphery.

How do you find yourself homeless?

2010-07-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

How on earth did I become homeless in the first place? Even now several years after the event I look back slightly bemused that it ever happened. In retrospect it was a coming together of circumstances that led me to not having somewhere to live. I went from a settled, secure situation to a very precarious one in quite a short period of time.

The homelessness industry says you're only ever two or three pay cheques away from becoming homeless. There are different ways of getting there. The end result is the same. Its the path you take to get there that varies.

I've lived in London 25 years and in that time I have only spent 4 nights without a roof over my head. I was working and it was the middle of summer. I visited the swimming pool early in the morning and then went to work. At night I slept in a big wooden Wendy House in Highgate Wood. I stored my sleeping bag and clothes in a locker at the pool. It was a silly domestic argument that led to it. That and my pig-headedness. It was hardly destitution and I rejoined the housed population immediately afterwards.

Anyhow that was all along time ago, fast forward to a few years ago when I did become homeless in a much more real and enduring way. I had my own little flat. I lived there five years, I'd made it my own. It was the first time I'd ever lived in public sector housing and I'd anticipated being there for some time. I did all the things you do; decorated, put up shelves, furnished it, got it just so it suited me. Like I say, I made it my own little home.

Then the Housing Benefit went wrong - not unusual where I live, the money was paid direct to the landlord. So then it went to court. In fact it went to court 5 times in 9 months - I managed to get the housing benefit department to turn up on one solitary occasion. As far as I can tell I did everything I was supposed to do. The housing benefit people seemed to act in slow motion as if it wasn't going to amount to anything. Except 9 months at £65 a week mounts up and this was all on top of arrears of £500 to start with, by my reckoning that's a lot of any body's money! The magistrate ran out of patience. I remember my last visit to the HB office; "We can't guarantee we'll be able to get to court Mr..........but don't worry we'll write to you." " Write to me?" I exclaimed, "Where? I'll be sleeping in the park!" So as I said the magistrate ran out of patience and served a notice to quit.

I spent 6 months living in a squat, was assaulted, spent 10 weeks in a hospital and came out to live under the council's care in emergency accommodation, which they withdrew after 6 weeks. I wasn't "in priority need" so they said, so I moved to where I live today in a Bed and Breakfast.

It's not a bad place to live except I share my front door with 120 others. There's a roof over my head, hot water, electricity and my own room. I can touch both sides of my room if I stand next to my bed with my arms outstretched. There are 4 types of people who live here: folk like me who've been knocked back by the council, people just out of nick and people just out of the local psychiatric unit. Lastly there's a handful of transient types and the odd tourist.

Forty per cent of my benefit money is given over to the landlord as a surcharge to cover electric, hot water and heating. You also get a basic breakfast; 2 sausages, beans, toast and a fried egg.

So I have somewhere to live, I'm not sleeping in the park, or on the streets so I'm a lot better off than some. To you it might not seem too bad and I guess it's OK when you get your head round it, but it's not my home. The last thing I want to mention is that you don't need an awful lot to go wrong to find yourself without a home.

Handouts and soup kitchens

2010-06-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

I vividly remember the first time I ever visited a soup kitchen. I had not long been laid off from a job I really liked - company restructuring or somesuch meant they couldn't keep me on. So, a low point and no job and for whatever reason (I can't remember now), temporarily no benefit. I knew, more or less, where this church was that was giving out this handout but I truly didn't know what to expect.

I remember walking along the main road nervous, with so many questions. Did I look the part? Would I have to prove I was homeless? I wasn't. How did these things work? Was I going to have to queue up and then be given some food? What were the other people going to be like? My experience of homelessness was forlorn individuals sat in the underpass that leads to the tube with cardboard signs asking for money, written on the sign in marker pen.

Then there was the embarrassment - I couldn't for the life of me think of a time I'd asked for charity. Here I was, a middle-aged man begging - almost - for a meal. I was ashamed of myself.

As it was, it was fine: busy and welcoming, friendly even, everyone seemed relaxed. It was a little bit like a restaurant. Tables laid, you sat down and a meal was brought to you, course by course. The thing that struck me most was that all the punters - for want of a better term - were treated with the utmost courtesy and respect.

Inevitably there is a social side to such places. People who go are perhaps understandably cagey but personal stuff trickles through. Due to the fact that I liked this place I continued to go even though I couldn't claim to be in desperate need.

I've got to know (to varying degrees) many people who use this soup kitchen. People share stories about themselves, the day-to-day bits and pieces. I've made friends with some folk, even found real mates.

The place I'm talking about is used by a surprisingly large number of people from all manner of backgrounds and age groups. Each person who goes along has their own reasons.

There are dozens of stories I could tell you about his place, there's all manner of weird and wonderful people who go there.

There are two ladies of mature years who turn up without fail. Then they complain about it incessantly; the food, the other people who use it, non-stop moaning - they are always there nonetheless.

The place also has its own resident photographer: there's this one chap who comes along, an avid photographer and a charming fellow who always has a camera round his neck. He snaps everyone; volunteers and the other users of the soup kitchen. A selection of his photos cover a noticeboard in the hall and the place always uses his photos in their publicity and newsletters.

A tacit support network can develop. One example that springs to mind is an elderly disabled woman who uses one of those walking frames with wheels - anyway she took a fall and was hospitalized. When she came out she'd broken her wrist, couldn't use the rollator and the NHS couldn't provide a wheelchair although they did send a nurse every morning (that she didn't really want). It was people from the soup kitchen who managed to get her a wheelchair and helped her around North London for the next few weeks so she could carry on with her life.

But the most poignant example of the care that people show for one another concerns one of the users who passed away. A chap who was in his sixties and of poor health. He'd lived outside for more years than any of us could remember. At his memorial service there were a lot of people from the soup kitchen, staff and volunteers past and present and many of the users. The soup kitchen made up more than fifty per cent of the people paying their respects.

OK, I'm certain that not every soup kitchen up and down the land is like this but I'm sure that most have some of these elements. A welcome, good food, togetherness and support. These surely are some of the ingredients that make up what makes a community, which is an oft overused phrase.

The patron saint of the unemployed

2010-06-08T03:54:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened to me down the dole office the other day. The person I was seeing listened to, and heard, every word I said and was clearly engaged in our short meeting. She was unfailingly polite the whole time, didn't chat to any of her colleagues about her children, what she was doing that evening or where she was going on holiday. Didn't even mention her lunch.

When she asked me questions, they were pertinent to the scant information they hold on the screen about me. As opposed to the usual, "Well why won't you consider being a traffic warden Mr So-andSo?" (Do you mean why don't I want to walk 20-plus miles a day getting verbally abused throughout the course of my shift with the very real risk of assault?) Her suggestions were helpful "have you thought about..." and polite.

Now, I know these people don't have the most enviable job and they have to put up with a fair amount of crap from a bunch of unco-operative and surly people. However there are large numbers of us who push through the doors of the local job centre who, although we feel degraded by the whole experience, are polite, punctual and struggle to remain motivated in spite of our joblessness.

You see, I've always thought there's a special part of the training that the dole office provides that's called Three Days Intensive Training in the Art of Downright Rudeness including two extra modules in how to ignore members of the public and coming across as aloof.

Anyway, I got myself signed on and trotted out my usual question at that point: "So is everything OK with my claim then?" This woman didn't even sigh, she just tapped away at her keyboard. "Sorry to ask," I said.

On hearing her reply I nearly fell off the chair."Look," she said. "If I had to live on £65 a week I'd want to know if it was darn well going to turn up!"

This woman should be made the patron saint of the unemployed.

As if the experience of going into these places isn't bad enough, the convoluted system they use is specifically designed to confuse even the most clear thinking individual, chock-full of arcane and seemingly contradictory rules. I swear Dr Who would find it a test of his intellect to sign on. Obviously he's a Time-Lord so he doesn't have to, but I'm sure you see my point.

Then, then the Government has the gall to ensure that these places are staffed, almost exclusively, by some of the most wilfully obtuse people on God's Green Earth! If you feel you're being treated badly or you think they're being rude and have the temerity to query this (no swearing please, this is the dole office), invariably the response is: "Sorry, not my fault. It's the rules."

The recent incident I've recounted tells me it doesn't have to be like that. At my recent appointment the woman concerned was able to tick her boxes, meet her targets and treat me like a fellow human being - all at the same time.

MPs and Expenses

2010-05-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

I sat bolt upright in bed the other morning when I heard on Radio 4 that the new intake of Westminster MPs were complaining they were being "treated like benefit claimants " under the new expenses regime.

This complaint is wrong on so many counts. The first thing this implies is that it is fine to treat the poorest in our society, ie benefit claimants, like benefit claimants.

Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'd assumed that the unemployed, the elderly, the sick and the disabled are entitled to the benefits that they claim. I tend to be of the opinion that how a society looks after its poor and its disadvantaged is some kind of barometer of how civilized it is. Surely it's a measure of its national attitude, of how much it cares about its own.

So why then is it deemed fine to treat people who are in need of support from the state so poorly? To understand this I suppose we have to fall back on the vernacular of Radio 5 or the tabloids.

I'm certain we've all read those stories of Mr So-and-So, the scrounging benefit cheat. The man who runs his son's football team two or three times a week whilst claiming untold thousands from the state. He is able to claim this money due to his crippling arthritis which patently renders him unable to work. Now I'm not for a moment suggesting these people don't exist, but I feel they are very few and far between.

They run these adverts on the telly to phone this number and grass up your neighbour as a benefit cheat. I've yet to see an ad where you can ring up the taxman and tell him you suspect your neighbour of fiddling his tax returns.

Don't get me wrong, fiddling the social is wrong. It's shabby, cheap behaviour and the state should do what it reasonably can to prevent it. But that shouldn't give the state carte blanche to treat ALL benefit claimants as badly as it does. We do hatred so well in this country and benefit scroungers are up there in our national consciousness with illegal immigrants (if you listen to Radio 5, that is).

We should be glad of our Welfare State and we should have a drastically different attitude to paying taxes. I want to live in a society that looks after its citizens. Does my attitude sound too simplistic?

Another thing I learnt this week, courtesy of Miranda Sawyer in the Mirror, is that 18 out of 23 members of the cabinet are millionaires (23 people doesn't strike me as many people to be responsible for running the country but there you go). I just hope that none of those millionaires were whingeing about being treated like benefit claimants!

Rather than MPs complaining about expenses, somebody should be complaining about the abysmal way benefit claimants are treated.

Hamster on a wheel

2010-05-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten what it was like to be in the dole office. You see, for the last 13 weeks I've been doing something which is laughably called training (from time to time, the government sends the unemployed on training to improve their work skills).

One thing this involves is not signing on every two weeks, which is a good thing. Signing on is the ritual humiliation of queuing up and handing over a little pamphlet that has a record of one's efforts to find work. The state seems to take the view that we are all a bunch of freeloaders who are living the life of Riley and making no effort to gain employment because the state keeps us in such a luxurious lifestyle that there is no incentive to work.

I would take the view that the vast majority of us are happier people when we are working. Not doing any old job, but doing something where we feel we are useful, something that we might be quite good at and that would enable us to pay our way in the world. This would make us feel that we are part of wider society where we can buy our weekly shop, buy our children things they want or pop down the pub once or twice a week to bitch on to our friends about how crap the world is.

When you're unemployed the money that the state gives you means that doing the things I've mentioned is much harder to achieve. In fact, some of the things are out of reach. Your horizons shrink; when you are working you've always got petrol in your car or you've always got a travel pass. This means you can go places besides work. When you are on benefit you are constantly fussing about money. You don't always have a travel pass or petrol in the car so you can't just go places, see your friends, pop to the cinema, check out a shop or visit a gallery on the other side of town. Like I said your horizons shrink.

I was reminded the other day of what it's like to be in the dole office. Because of my "training" I had to do a rapid reclaim. My 15 minute appointment started 20 minutes late and took 25 minutes. No matter, well I say no matter, that's if the money comes through OK. The unemployment people have an unlimited number of ways to stuff up paying you your money.

Even when everything is in order, you've kept all your appointments, you've done all your paperwork and kept up your end of the bargain, things can always go wrong. And because you exist on so little money in the first place, when your money goes wrong it really does scupper your plans in a big way. You live your life to this two-week cycle. Things like keeping the electricity key charged, having food in the cupboard, the basics. At the end of the cycle these things run low.

In short, life for people claiming can seem like the hamster on a wheel. Run, run, running on that wheel and going nowhere, or at least where you've been before.

Post-election musings

2010-05-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

This is my take on the last six days, it's not definitive, just my impressions.

Election night
They shouldn't start these election programmes so early. They should put a couple of films on and start at 2am. Instead we get the problem of political journos queuing up to flounder about on the telly trying to make some kind of informed comment. They have such little information, that whatever phrases they manage to utter sound merely fatuous.

Waste of live TV. So-called heavyweight political journalists, all over-excited and twitchy, words tumbling from their mouths, desperately searching for something pertinent to say. They are entirely missing the point that most folk watching at home don't share their anticipation and are thinking: sod this I've got to get up in the morning.

Friday
Posturing on two sides, each making tempting proposals of what appears, to my eye, some kind of phony union. Being loved-up only seemed to last half the day. By the evening, as far as I could tell political pundits were thinking it too problematic to bring off. Financial pundits were talking of political fantasies with dire, ie more dire than widely held already, consequences. So what is to be done?

For Joe Public as an uninformed outsider looking on, witnessing these protracted negotiations unfold before our eyes is tortuous and tiresome. The political class seems to be as distanced from its electorate as ever.

Let's face it, we've been hearing for three weeks or more how this election was going to be so important, perhaps even change the face of British politics, yet 24 hours later who can safely suggest who's to be our next PM?

Saturday night update
70 minutes of one-to-one talks between two of the protagonists. So that must be alright then, sounds like the makings of a new government to me!

Then you've got all these other folk, who most of us have never heard of, sticking their oar in and it's startlingly obvious they're nobodies with an axe to grind who see their chance to get their face on the evening news for 20 seconds.

And every single one of them, from Cameron, Clegg and Brown downwards, without exception, fall over themselves to tell you that they're doing ALL of this for the good of the country. The thing that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth is that they, all of them, are just nowhere near being entirely honest with the British public, their electorate. We all realise it's a delicate situation but this disingenousness is repellent. It brings to mind the phrase "economical with the truth", most recently heard during the Thatcher years.

Three and a half days in

After we've had the numbers and we seem no nearer having a new government and I'm wondering what the rest of the world must think? They and we are used to rapid change after an election. In fact they probably aren't that concerned. To me it smacks of indecision and lack of leadership. The only noises I've heard today are bear with us and we'll get there. This is hardly sufficient given the pickle we're in. Perhaps we're so unfamiliar with it we don't know how to do coalition politics.

Gordon Brown speaks
I've been waiting four days for something to actually happen. Clearly I am not aware of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to it, but then a dignified, honourable, principled and rather awkward man made a short statement outside number 10. To my mind, Gordon Brown ignited this whole election business, thank heavens.

For someone who has been around public life for so long he just never quite got the hang of it. For that he seems to be reviled by so many. Gordon Brown strikes me as a tragic figure. Somehow I can't see him greedily hoovering up the cash on the lecture circuit - don't get me wrong' I'm sure he won't go short. A man out of his time perhaps?

I realise none of this has much to do with unemployment but I feel you would all agree events since last Thursday have been on such a grand scale so I'm hoping you'll forgive me such a digression.

Now there seems a faint air of panic. Goodness knows why anyone would want to run this country, we're mired in debt, swingeing cuts are on the cards, this year or next. So any government is guaranteed to be as popular as a national outbreak of the pox.

As soon as the dust settles on this saga I assure you I shall return to the plight of the unemployed, I like to think there's plenty I've not even touched on.

As regards the election there has been plenty to make me chuckle. Too much to mention here but I'll make a special mention of Lord Mandleson popping up all over the place dispensing his brand of wisdom to all and sundry like some sinister pantomime dame - priceless.

Wednesday morning, another country
So here we are, New Politics so we are told. That clearly remains to be seen.

It's new in as much as all three parties need to seriously re-evaluate where they are now and how they are going to put themselves across to their voters and the folk whose votes they didn't get. Boy do they need to reassess!

Everyone has adjustments to make, us as well, and how it all pans out has no doubt got to be worth watching.

The election and the unemployed

2010-05-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

I have a simplistic, prosaic attitude to politics. Some things are right and just and sensible, some things are unfair and wrong - or just plain wrong. Most of what's suggested is muddled and fudged.

The reason my outlook is simple is I believe in things. You so rarely hear a politician telling you what they believe in.

So is any of this going to make very much difference to me? Quite probably not. Other than in general; in difficult times it's the poor and the old and the young and those who are unwell who tend to suffer the most. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

You hear things said over and over again, the same topics, the same sentiments. Maybe it's my age, I've been hearing the same platitudes and soundbites for thirty years.

I don't think any of us like politicians. In part it's their hubris, the suspicion that they are all freeloaders and don't do a proper job. My local MP is hardly hard up and keeps the extra-curricular earnings well topped up. Quangos and TV, as far as I know. Always ready for a quote.

It's the snide, moralistic tone of voice that grates the most and they all do it; look at me: I'm the big I am.

It's a broken society, so we're told. This is cleary tosh, it's no more broken than it was thirty years ago. It's stating the bleeding obvious to tell us that shitty things happen and people do bad things. Let's face it, we're all struggling to be good people, but boy oh boy do we try? I believe that mostly we all do.

So you end up with this huge contradiction: I believe in voting, I don't like politicians. My local MP is a hypocrite and nailed on to get in, yet belongs to a party I historically believe in. It will stick in my craw but I will take up a pencil and mark my cross.

I like local politics even less.

I don't expect it'll make a huge difference to my situation whichever of the three parties get in, if indeed it is a three horse race. At times I do get excited at the prospect of a change in the way this country does politics, other times I'm filled with the faint feeling of dread.

Early experiences of being on the dole

2010-05-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

I'd become disenchanted, but after over ten years of solid work in the social care field I naively thought I'd have no problem finding work. I signed on in the meantime.

When the first money came through it took a full five minutes for me to realize the money was supposed to last TWO weeks, not one, as I had first assumed when I saw the giro. I did find work, although what followed was five years of sporadic employment, hardly any of which I liked especially. This was interspersed with periods of enforced idleness and being constantly broke.

I was a cycle courier, I ran a second hand shop, I worked for the local bus company. What was really happening was a gradual slide into full-time continuous unemployment, and when you're unemployed people just don't want to know.

You can bang in as many applications as you like, however the minute the prospective employer sees THAT gap on your CV that runs up to the present day you go onto the "not interested" pile. Maybe folk just assume you're sat at home watching daytime TV?

Then there's the rigmarole of signing on: endless form filling repeating information the system already has and blank-faced job centre staff who are trained to suspect you of trying to defraud the state. As if one would go to such extraordinary lengths, given the amount of time one has to spend in the job centre and the housing benefit office in order to obtain benefit. Benefit one is entitled to, benefit that will only cover your most basic spends, only if you are fastidious in your budgeting; writing detailed lists of all your necessities.

You give all the pertinent information to the first member of staff, you repeat it all to the person they pass you on to, they send you away so you can write all this information down on the relevant forms, you go back to the office a few days later and repeat it all over again and a member of the job centre staff will enter certain pieces of information into the computer. If all goes well you will get your money.

What this process does is, it takes up an inordinate amount of time to achieve a very simple outcome and is multiplied many hundreds of times all over the land. This generally leaves the customer - we're all customers now - feeling rubbish; left out, skint and on their own. The whole business is demoralising and dispiriting. It's not all bad, there are places out there: church groups, unemployed workers groups, places for the homeless, that very much give you the feeling that you're not on your own. I must say, there are not that many, but it's got to be worth looking.