Middle Class Solutions To Working Class Problems Is Why Charities Like MIND Keep Getting It So Wrong

Reblogged from JohnnyVoid, with thanks https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/middle-class-solutions-to-working-class-problems-is-why-charities-like-mind-keep-getting-it-so-wrong/ Iain Duncan Smith must be pissing himself. A report released at the end of last year by mental health charity MIND could not have gone further in endorsing the core ideas that lie behind his bungled and brutal welfare reforms. The report is titled “We’ve Got Work To Do” and claims to demand ‘fundamental reform’ of the workplace and social security system to better support people with a mental health condition. Sadly it is calling for nothing of the sort and is underpinned by the exact same lies and toxic assumptions that have driven both Tory and Labour welfare reforms. Just like the DWP, MIND have adopted the flawed medical consensus that work is good for your health. The charity does acknowledge that this isn’t actually always true, but falls short of saying that work can be bad for your health, instead arguing that “inappropriate or poor quality work can have as negative an effect on people’s mental health as not being in work”. They base this opinion on research carried out in Australia that found that “the mental health of those who were unemployed was comparable or more often superior to those in jobs of the poorest psychosocial quality.” In other words work can be worse for your mental health than being unemployed, rather than just equally bad as MIND claim. It is not nit-picking to point out the discrepency between what this research found and what MIND say it found because it reveals the charity’s opinions to be based on ideology, not facts. This same factual slippage occurs elsewhere in the report when MIND begin by saying that most people with mental health conditions want to work, which later becomes everyone with a mental health condition wants to work. The truth, as revealed in the footnotes to the report, are that only around 58% of people out of work due to a mental health condition strongly agreed they wanted to return to work whilst 20% did not feel they were well enough. These two distortions – or let’s call them lies – have allowed the despised Work Capability Assessment, benefit sanctions and workfare all to be misrepresented as ‘support’ or ‘help’. In truth these measures destroy lives. The medical consensus that work is good for you does often not apply to those on the lower end of the income scale who face being forced by Jobcentres into the kind of work likely to make them ill. MIND’s Chief Executive Paul Farmer claims at the beginning of the report that there have been “improvements in how people with mental health problems are supported”, although it is unclear what they are. There then follows an emotive journey about someone’s journey through the benefit system after leaving work due to depression. This is actually where their journey would stop, because unless they could provide reems of medical evidence to the Jobcentre they would be disallowed benefits for giving up work. That this reports begins by misrepresenting the benefit system as it currently functions just shows how removed these giant disability benefits charities have become from the lives of those they claim to support. Instead the ‘fundamental reform’ they call for is actually more of the same or worse – such as the dangerous idea that sensitive health information from the Work Capability Assessment should be passed over to Work Programme providers like A4e and G4S. This is like your boss having access to your medical history and appallingly MIND relaxed about this as well. Much of the early part of the report is taken up by calling for improvements in the working environment for people suffering mental ill-health. Which is fine, everyone wants that, except greedy employers who worry it might cost them money or who harbour nasty little prejudices about mental health. According to MIND themselves this is about 40% of them. Yet one of MIND’s recommendations is that the Maximus run ‘Fit To Work’ service – the new telephone helpline which will be used to certify time off instead of GPs – should more effectively engage with employers. About the only decent thing about Fit To Work, which is designed to bully people back into the workplace before they are better, is that currently you have the right to keep your boss out of any discussions. The final part of the report discusses what future welfare-to-work schemes should look like for those with a mental health condition. The charity are calling for “new specialist scheme for people with mental health problems on ESA”. A scheme which should be run by those who “have expertise and experience of working with people with mental health problems”. And here lies the real reason for this report. It’s a fucking advert to any incoming Labour Government to give MIND a lucrative contract to run a new welfare-to-work service. There is no longer any doubt that endless Atos assessments, workfare and benefit sanctions are creating a crisis in the lives of those with a mental health condition. The tragic death toll rises ever higher. Yet nowhere in this report does MIND call for these brutal policies to be scrapped. Even if MIND were handed a contract to be nicer to people on ESA this would still leave those who have been found fit for work abandoned and dumped onto mainstream unemployment benefits alongside those whose condition is at yet undiagnosed. On twitter yesterday MIND claimed they couldn’t call for sanctions to be scrapped for people who are unemployed because it wasn’t a key issue. If your mental health condition isn’t bad enough to be able to claim ESA then tough shit seems to be the charity’s response if you get sanctioned. The thing is, naked profiteering aside, MIND are not bastards. They have dedicated front line workers who don’t get paid anywhere near enough and are sincere committed people. Workers who would probably agree that benefit sanctions and the Work Capability Assessment should be scrapped immediately. They see the carnage that is being caused everyday. The problem is that reports like these are overseen and commissioned by highly paid charity executives who live lifestyles that their service users and lowest paid staff can only dream of. These lifestyles lead them to make assumptions based on their own distorted experience of the world. Over time they become unable to avoid inflicting solutions to the problems faced by working class people based on their own middle class values because that is all they know. It is near impossible for someone on a huge salary who does a job they love to understand why someone may not feel up to working at present. That, to someone like MIND Chief Executive Paul Farmer, really does seem like madness. Likewise charity bosses have no real understanding of why it might be dangerous to allow other bosses to snoop around your health records. Bosses think bosses are lovely people who would never abuse their powers – or at least not without a damn good reason. And bosses know best, they tell each other that all the time. Charity bosses in particular have their own view of themselves as benevolent experts confirmed everyday by politicians and journalists who would far rather talk to them than someone on the dole. Their whopping salaries provide further proof of their own ability. As do arse-licking middle managers who continually tell them how wonderful and clever they are, to their faces at least. So Paul Farmer must be is right because he’s Paul Farmer and MIND are right because they are MIND and anyone criticising them just doesn’t understand. Because they are not experts. That’s how MIND alongside other disability and anti-poverty charities can so easily dismiss the demands of grassroots campaigns comprising of disabled people and benefit claimants. Groups which are more or less united in calling for benefit sanctions and the WCA to be scrapped completely. These people are not experts. At worst they might even be service users. And you don’t want them getting too uppity. Before you know where you are you’ll have working class people running organisations together to address working class problems. Then there’d be nothing at all for poor Paul Farmer to do. He might even have to get a real job. https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/middle-class-solutions-to-working-class-problems-is-why-charities-like-mind-keep-getting-it-so-wrong/

Order and discipline from the tories, unpaid work or loose your benifits

So. Now we have it. Both major parties in the UK, Labour and Conservative have outlined their plans for young people and entitlement to social security. Increased conditionality, ever more punitive and sorely lacking in any empathy. Less carrot and more stick. Albeit, the Tories undoubtedly are wielding a bigger stick. A much bigger stick indeed. David Cameron announced that ‘What these young people need is work experience and the order and discipline of turning up for work each day…a Conservative government would require them to do daily community work from the very start of their claim, as well as searching for work.” Far from considering the changing nature of employment (particularly youth employment) the talk is, for youth scholars, wearily familiar. ‘Discipline’ is what they need – not jobs. Because young people want jobs. They don’t want compelled labour programs. They don’t want the drudgery that will be thrown them, making them feel like cattle. This will simply heighten anomie, leading to increased problems – probably increasing their distance from the labour market, not bringing them into it. The end game here will be that young people will simply end up removing themselves from the job ‘market’ altogether. Some will choose to engage with the workfare, some will inevitably turn to alternative sources of income and many will be shifted into poverty as they forego the humiliation of this ‘work’ and elect to do without social security. But perhaps this is the aim in any case. As Guy Standing notes in his book The Precariat, rather than instilling ‘discipline’, these forced labour programmes: …do the reverse, making many people sullen and resentful. And doing an enforced full-time job will prevent people from searching for a real job. Workfare schemes do not cut public spending either. They are expensive, involving high administrative costs and low-productivity ‘jobs’. Their main intention is rather to massage the level of unemployment down, not by creating jobs but by discouraging the unemployed from claiming benefits. And therein lies the rub. These programmes do not create jobs, they simply park people (young people) for a period of time. And worse, they can actually act as a deterrent for young people in the labour market. Research by Robin Simmons and colleagues found that: …engagement in poor work can act in synergy with real and imagined barriers to participation and curtail the desire to work. As we have seen, chronic churning between repeated low-level training courses and certain forms of paid and unpaid employment, often characterised by insecurity and exploitation, was the norm for those participating in our research. Whilst official discourses about building work experience are superficially seductive, we found that disillusion engendered by continued failure to secure employment of reasonable quality set in sooner or later, often with negative consequences for attitudes to employment. There has been a multitude of research conducted into the attitudes of young people towards work. All point in the same direction – young people want to work. They don’t require discipline. They require work. Meaningful work which offers fulfillment, security and a sense that they are contributing to society. Furthermore, research has shown that marginality is the story of the youth labour market, not exclusion. It is not the case that young people are out of work for sustained periods of time, but rather drift in and out of work as opportunities arise (part-time employment, short-term contracts, educational opportunities etc etc). This is not the consequence of the poor work attitudes of young people (which Cameron’s language is seeking to frame it as) but of a fragmented labour market which is hostile to the presence of (primariliy working-class) young people. This further negates the requirement for the language of ‘discipline’. Young people will seize opportunities if they are there. They are no different to the rest of us. So why are we picking on them? Neither the Conservatives or Labour seem to have the answer to this. Easier to punish, or discipline. Sooner or later this will reach older age groups too, if we don’t assist young people to resist this. But who is speaking up for young people?

Benefits, tax dodgers and the media

Over the last week I’ve been thinking how much media attention gets given to benefit fraud and then to tax evasion both big issues at the moment but one is clearly bigger than the other yet you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. With the high profile account of Gary Barlow and his Take That band members avoiding tax to the tune of 20 million its worth looking at the perceptions and the realities of benefits and what goes where . So lets look at the benefits some not all can claim if they can get that far that is. Job-seekers allowance: 29 per cent of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs. £74.2bn). Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100. The problem is blaming people who are in a powerless position in this society is very easy and easily swallowed. Unfortunately we don't have a gutsy opposition ready to defend people on benefits instead Labour capitulates to the lies. The harsh realities of the benefit system don’t get headline news. The bureaucracy, the waiting, the never-ending form to complete, constant jumping through hoops (figuratively speaking), grinding poverty as the meagre amount of money you receive just JUST about keeps your head above water... and even then. And there's the conditionality and sanctions. Sanctions are unjustly used and used arbitrarily i.e. someone 5 minutes late for their Jobseekers interview. Work programme providers have been known to threaten people with sanctions which aren't sanctionable.....! Again this causes fear and if you experience sanctions ... even more grinding poverty.... The number of sanctions applied to ESA claimants rose 334 per cent between December 2012 and December 2013, according to new DWP statistics. In the May 2014 statistical release, 'Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance Sanctions: decisions made to December 2013', published today, the DWP sets out figures for both ESA and JSA sanctions. The report shows that since the new ESA sanctions regime was introduced on 3 December 2012 there has been a steady increase in the number of adverse sanctions decisions (ie a sanction was applied) made, from 1,102 in December 2012 to 4,789 in December 2013. The total number of adverse sanction decisions over the period was 28,702 with - • 5,889 applied for failure to attend a mandatory interview; and • 22,814 applied for failure to participate in work related activity. In addition the statistics show that of the 28,702 decisions - • 13,994 were reviewed - in 8,508 cases the decision was overturned; and • 331 were appealed - in 90 cases the decision was overturned. In respect of JSA claimants, the statistics show that 870,793 sanctions were applied during 2013, an increase from 804,866 during 2012, and from 650,577 during 2011. Since the new JSA sanctions regime was introduced on 22 October 2012 there have been a total of 1,028,819 adverse sanction decisions up to the end of December 2013, and of these - • 550,033 were low level sanctions; • 388,224 were intermediate level sanctions; and • 89,831 were high level sanctions. Of the 1,028,819 decisions - • 317,411 were reviewed - in 146,486 cases the decision was overturned; and • 34,503 were appealed - in 6,158 cases the decision was overturned. Furthermore 5.6 per cent of lone parent income support claimants were sanctioned in 2013, according to new DWP statistics. In 'Income Support Lone Parents Regime: Official Statistics', published today, the DWP sets out figures on income support lone parent work focused interviews (WFIs), and sanctions for failing to attend a WFI, for the period from April 2004 up to and including December 2013. The statistics include that - • between April 2004 and December 2013 inclusive, 9,779,200 WFIs have been attended by income support lone parent claimants; and • In the year up to and including December 2013, 597,000 income support lone parent WFIs were conducted. In relation to sanctions for failing to attend a WFI, the statistics include that - • between April 2004 and December 2013 inclusive, 597,100 sanctions were imposed on income support lone parent claimants; and • in the year up to an including December 2013 there were 43,800 sanctions imposed on income support lone parent claimants - some claims were sanctioned more than once, such that 40,400 individual claims incurred a sanction in this 12 month period, representing 5.6 per cent of the income support lone parent client base in that period. This all makes for grim and depressing reading yet the media doesn't splash these realities on their front pages instead benefit fraud is more of a sensationalist item grabber. Who cares if someone has been sanctioned and has lived without any money for weeks...? Freud, IDS and McVey (the trinity of evil) would argue that this was based on fairness and anyway just go out there and get a job... And we all know how easy it is to just get a job don’t we???

The true story behind Britain’s unemployment figures

We were told this week that official unemployment jumped-up this week to over 2.5 million in Britain but this is a false figure in many ways. You are classed as employed if you do two or three hours a week that is so called employment. If you are self employed and sell a few things a week that is seen as employed. Also if you don’t sign on for Jobs seakers allowance JSA you are not picked up by the system so effectively not classed as unemployed even though clearly you are the government simply are not aware of you. All this is designed to mask the true figures of unemployment in this country. For a long time the official unemployment figures have defied gravity with the real economic situation seeming to not fit with the labour market figures. I’ve blogged before how much business’s m may be hoarding labour as the cost of re hiring and retraining would be extensive. As the crisis deepens and no sign of a recovery of any real magnitude is forthcoming these workers will be let go. unemployment could be as high as 6.3 million in the UK if a different counting measure was used, highlighting the true scale of joblessness, according to a new report from the TUC. The TUC said the higher figure - more than twice the official total - was revealed using an American measure, which includes people in part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time work and recent redundancies. The jobless total increased to 2.5 million last week and is expected to rise again in the coming months as the cuts deepen. But the TUC study suggested the actual number of unemployed people in the UK could be 6.3 million, which would be higher than any point since the early 1990s. Under-employment, which counts those doing temporary or part-time jobs because they cannot find permanent, full-time work, has risen to a record 1.9 million, according to the research. The TUC said temporary jobs were better than unemployment, but added that they tended to be low paid, insecure and offered little or no career prospects. Officials called on the Government to acknowledge the scale of the jobs "crisis" rather than repeat the "ill-informed" claim that there were plenty of jobs available. This jobs crisis is not confined to those out of work. Nearly two million people are being forced to take low-paid, insecure, short hours jobs because of the lack of proper full-time employment. This means people are taking home much less pay, which is putting a real strain on family budgets. "When ministers say there are plenty of jobs out there, they are ignoring the sheer numbers of people looking for work, as well as the suitability and location of the jobs available. "Rather than seek to blame unemployed people for being out of work, the Government should start helping them by putting proper resources into employment schemes. The report followed a study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which showed that job prospects are set to worsen in the coming months as firms make workers redundant. A survey of 1,000 employers also revealed a further widening of a North-South divide in the jobs market. There are 600,000 more people working part-time who say they want to work full-time, compared to three years ago, said the organisation. Graeme Cooke, IPPR Associate Director, said: "Every month that goes by, the urgent need for the new Youth Contract continues to grow. It is now almost a year since the Future Jobs Fund stopped giving young people a job guarantee after a year of unemployment. "The next priority should be areas of the country experiencing the combination of both high unemployment and a low number of vacancies, while the prospects of those over 50 and unemployed for more than a year are also of serious concern. "The longer someone is unemployed, the less likely they are to ever return to work. Being out of work for more than a year can have a scarring effect, making it harder to get a job as well as having a negative impact on one's health and well-being. This means that even when employment starts to pick up again, they will find it hard to compete with other jobseekers and could find themselves permanently shut out of the jobs market.

Could you live on £53 a week?

That is the challenge for many people who are unable to find work in this recession. £53 is nothing really when you have to pay the b ills for gas, water and electricity not mentioning feeding yourself and heating your home. There is simply no way you can live on this alone. Yet Iain Duncan Smith is telling those who can’t find jobs that £53 a week is a cushty lifestyle and they should be grateful for even this. Putting it into perspective at how generous this really is JSA in the UK is 18% of average wage, compared to Germany's 35%, France's 47% & Sweden's 68% This is simply not a lifestyle you would choose if you had the choice. An incredibly fast growing petition has been set up by someone who thought they’d challenge IDS to live on £53 a week the link to this is below http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week Those who are on JSA take it as a way of getting by and getting by is all it gives you an existence not a life. You cannot live the life of luxury like the Tories seem to think. But then when you’re so disengaged from reality of life in poverty and have never had to struggle in your life then no wonder you’d think benefits are generous. It is a clear out and out contempt for the poor. This is blatant class warfare where we need the labour movement to answer this in a robust fashion drawing the links and common ground between that in work and out of work. Over 60% of those on benefits are actually in work according to the DWP taking tax credits to top up crap pay. We wouldn’t need working tax credits if we all had a proper decent lovable wage not just a living wage of a tiny bit more than minimum wage. But IDS people will not take this laying down the uptake in this petition now touching quarter of a million signatures shows the strength of feeling against the Tories and their attacks on the poor. Let’s not just call for IDS to try living on £53 a week let’s get rid of him and his government of millionaires once and for all!

Working for your doll ? join the fight for real jobs that pay

Over the past few months the government's work experience scheme has come under increasing scrutiny. The scheme attempts to introduce slave labour for the young unemployed, with young people working 30 hours a week for eight weeks and receiving no additional pay on top of their Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), which they are threatened with losing if they do not participate.

The case that has received the most media attention is that of Cait Reilly, a geology graduate who had been volunteering in a museum to try to get a job there, but was forced to work in Poundland.

The scandal reverberating from this has prompted Sainsbury's and Waterstones to pull out of the scheme.

According to the government's propaganda this 'experience' will give young people the skills to make employers take them on.

But there is no guaranteed job at the end of the 'experience'. Tesco has already taken on 1,400 'volunteers', but only 300 have received jobs and who's to say that they wouldn't have been taken on anyway.

Tesco has now started advertising jobs as 'JSA + expenses' in the job centre plus system, including one dated 9 February for night shift workers (usually premium rates) in East Anglia.

The truth is that this is a massive attack on pay, terms and conditions of retail workers. Instead of filling vacancies with real jobs, companies can bolster their profits by taking on conscripts for a month or two.

It is welcome that shopworkers' union Usdaw has now heeded the call made three months ago and has come out in open opposition to the scheme, with general secretary John Hannett being quoted in the press as demanding 'the rate for the job'.

Usdaw putting pressure on companies it has agreements with is a step forward, but it shouldn't be left there.

Activists and reps should link up with unemployed campaign groups such as unemployed workers' centres and Youth Fight for Jobs to build a campaign linking those in and out of work to scrap the 'work experience' scheme and replace it with real jobs with union rates of pay and conditions.

Youth Fight for Jobs is organising actions around the country for the 'Boycott Workfare' campaign national day of action on Saturday 3 March. Get involved if you can.

contact youth fight for jobs on twitter at @youthfight4jobs and on their website at http://www.youthfightforjobs.com

The hardest hit march, May 11th Disabled people fighting for dignity

This wednesday myself- hhopefully if i can get there and thousands of other disabled people will be marching in centrel London organised by several disabled groups including Scope, RNIB, MENCAP amoung many many others.

Disabled people will sadly be the hardest hit when these cuts start to bite. We are already seeing cases of some on disability support benifits being hounded to come off of their benifits to go ona much lower job seakers allowance. In some cases this is causing so much stress it is leading to patients wanting and in some rare cases taking their own life as they feel sucha burden to the state and others around them.

This i find absolutely disgusting and our polititains should be utterly ashamed of themselves. The rich greedy bastards want to make the people who are worst off in society pay for the mess they had nothing to do with creating. It is a outrage in my opinion and this government needs to be shamed. Not only this government but the one before was no better.
The previous labour government, the one who claimed to care so much for the poor and disabled people were the ones who started this ball rolling. The tories and the lib dems are just carrying this program through a lot quicker.

So if we want to look at who started this we can look no further than those smug labour MP's some who have gone on to get nice jobs in teh lords now for starting a attack on the working class and most notably the disabled of us out there.

I myself wrote a little piece in the socialist paper last week i do hope you can read it. It not only features me but has some excellent points in the article too.

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But as for the march on wednesday we aim to tell this government they are wrong and shame them for their inhumane actions of making the working class and the disabled pay for this mess while their rich friends in the city get off scot free and even get themselves tidy little tax breaks. How nice for them !!

So much for making those with the broadest shoulders shoulder the burden ay Mr Cameron ?

Everything that comes out of a tories mouth is a lie i'm afraid and they cannot be trusted so they must be opposed and stopped.

SO please do join us if you can on Wednesday 11th of May.

The march will begin on Victoria Embankment between Horseguards Avenue and Bridge Street and will assemble at 11.30. There will be a rally on Victoria Embankment with speeches between 12.00 and 12.30 before the march sets off. The march will then begin at 12.30.

The march will take about an hour. It will take in Victoria Embankment,Parliament Squareand Millbank and finish in Dean Stanley Street.

Methodist Central Hall, which is near the end of the march route, will be available as a quiet space during the day.
The lobby

After the march the group will be lobbying MPs as the Welfare Reform Bill reaches a critical stage in the House of Commons. They will be sharing their stories, making sure that Parliamentarians understand the combined impact of the cuts on their lives and futures. Crucially, they will be asking MPs to challenge policies that will push disabled people further into poverty and isolation. The lobby will take place in Westminster Hall and Methodist Central Hall between 13.30 and 17.30.