sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com: Victorian Bastard Work Ethic

Tuesday 14 June 2022

Victorian Bastard Work Ethic

I have just ended a telephone conversation with a Department of Work and Pensions decision maker. She phoned me to inform me that if I didn't send in sick notes then I would not be receiving Employment and Support Allowance. An absolute whopping £77.00 a week.

My tall tale and watch my nose grow as I tell it. My Doctor's surgery closed down in February with all patients on the list being transferred to another local surgery. I have not had reason to visit them yet but I did ring the reception one morning to navigate the procedure required should you wish to avail yourself of NHS services. I wasn't wasting their time because there was an issue that could have led to a medical appointment but once the rigmarole was explained to me I decided that my issue was non-emergency.

What I do consider to be a waste of GP's valuable time is writing out sick notes for work shy malingerers like myself. On the DWP computer I am down as claiming Incapacity Benefit from 2006 to approximately 2011 when the Tory trough meisters came in and changed everything. Making the lifestyle choice of not wanting to work unviable. So many hoop jumps later I was on Employment and Support Allowance (Support Group)

Support group is where they treat you like a child, say "There There" offer you a soother and encourage you to get back to work. Even work that caused you to have a nervous breakdown in the first place, in my case teaching."Have you thought of going back to teaching?" "I don't think you can be a teacher if you've had a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder" I replied while sucking on the soother. "Sign there please!"

The DWP know that I am snooker loopy nuts, cuckoo, crazy. A cracked egg, but they are instructed in the morning briefing by that Karaoke loving Latin incantator Therese Coffey to get everybody and she means everybody back to work. That includes corpses. "What do you mean corpse, you haven't got a sick note?"

So in this conversation which was I might tell you held in 'the language of heaven' a dysgwr with a cold hard Anglo Saxon heart informing me the Celtic fool "No Sick Note, No Benefit". I'm not going in to a new Doctor's Surgery to ask for a sick note first off. "Those are the rules". I informed the cold heart that the Department of Pensions had blood on their hands because people had died after having their benefits stopped.

What I learned from that conversation is that it doesn't matter what language you choose to conduct your business in 'Rules are Rules' "Rheolau yn rheolau"

I informed the decision maker that a Psychiatrist had diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder in 2006 and that should just be good enough. I informed her that the French firm 'Atos' had interrogated me 4 times and despite none of the privately hired and paid medical professionals being Psychiatrists, one had the temerity to send me back to the Victorian Bastard Work House. "But don't you see that will make me ill again" "Begone wastrel and get back to the Dickension bottling factory and despite your degree and post graduate qualification we expect you to get any minimum wage job on a zero hours contract"

On the day that the bastard Victorian Tories are sending refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. On the 5th anniversary of the Grenfell murders, my little altercation with the gatekeepers of tax payers money is small potatoes. I am used to living off the scraps of the state after seven years of Carer's Allowance.

I am writing this blog post not to eek out any sympathy from the voyeurs of my blog but to highlight how once again institutions are instruments of injustice. From the Home Office to the Department of Work and Pensions, individuals are not seen as such, but are statistics. Incredible that Thatcher's emphasis on the individual at the expense of community should lead to individuals being treated like dirt.

Believe all that and you'll believe anything! FAKE NEWS.