Next Stop Ducking Stool

I must confess I am afraid. I went with my neighbour Nobby for our usual trip to Costa Coffee Shop. I ordered my usual mocha freshcato (primo), a drink that I am convinced contains about two hundred million calories. The only newspapers in the rack were The Daily Mail and The Express. Both had scream-out-loud headlines about benefit scroungers.  Lately, the right wing press have been getting their jollies by excoriating benefit claimants and it feels like a witch hunt.  Their efforts to whip up the masses into a frenzy of hatred against benefit claimants appear to be working if the comments section of The Daily Mail online is to be believed.  Everyone hates The Daily Express so only a couple of people have bothered commenting there.

Today, both The Mail and The Express are aiming their vitriol at those who claim incapacity benefit.  It is alleged that approximately 900,000 people have been wrongly awarded this benefit.  Note that they do not use the word ‘fraud’ but it is not so subtly implied.

Now, as I understand it, in the past few years new and stricter rules have been introduced in order to make it more difficult, and in some cases, impossible to claim incapacity benefit.  Those who claimed before this point, under the old rules, acted in good faith and cannot be said to be defrauding the system.  It would be illogical, not to mention hideously unfair, to accuse them of this.

Here’s a useful analogy: take a sports game of two halves.  If the players adhered to rules enforced in the first half which were then changed in the second half, it would be unfair to retrospectively penalise these players for failing to follow the newly introduced rules in the first half.  This is, in effect, what these two tabloid ‘newspapers’ are doing to benefit claimants.

I am becoming afraid of my own species, paralysed  by terror.

Because this feels personal.

A Casualty of Care in the Community

Those Ubermenschen at the Mail on Sunday seem to believe that drug addiction and genuine mental/physical illness cannot co-exist.  I’d like to tell you about an old friend of mine: Karl, a tall, cadaverous man. I remember having to  crane my neck to talk to him.  I saw him as basically decent. I’ve never heard about him using physical violence on anyone.  He was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia in his teens and lived in sheltered accommodation for most of his adult life.  He was not terribly well educated but he can recite The Parrot Sketch word for word.  

On his fortieth birthday he decided he wanted to be completely independent.  This was probably the worst choice he has ever made. After red tape and bureaucracy were dealt with, the authorities moved him into a council flat.  On a sink estate with his fellow untermenschen. The local drug addicts homed in on him.  Those people smell blood and, like most predators, they hunt in packs.  They pretended they were his friends, they got him addicted to heroin at the age of forty, they used his home as a crack den.  It took a long time for the police to become involved.  Far too long.  They arrested the dealers and cleared Karl’s flat. They did not arrest Karl or charge him with any crime.  He was homeless for a while and then moved back into sheltered accommodation.  He is still addicted to heroin.

A poster boy for the failure of the Care in the Community policy if ever there was one.

Some Bloke Called….

…James Purnell is getting tough on benefit claimants (a.k.a: ‘untermenschen’) in an effort to win the votes of Mail On Sunday readers.  He singles out drug addicts for ‘special treatment’.  They will be ‘punished’ if they do not attend rehabilitation programmes.  He read PPE at Oxford. So he’s been there then.  ‘I know the bottom, he says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.’  Heroin addicts are currently weaned off their drug of choice with a substitute called ‘methadone’.  I can think of a more effective treatment: a cocktail of phenobarbitol and an anti-emetic.  A single dose will be all that is necessary and they will sleep the deepest sleep of all.

Mr Purnell, here’s a clue
No matter what you say
No matter what you do
Those Daily Mail Readers
Will never vote for you
So turn and watch the few
Who still believed in you
Walk away, saying, ‘Et tu’.

This could be the realization of a revolutionary’s wet dream. The bloodier the better, I say.

Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like whisper
Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like whisper

While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs

And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ ’bout a revolution. Hold on.
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ ’bout a revolution. Hold on.

Rest assured that if you declare war on me I will defend myself. By any means necessary.

Apparently…

…my ‘surfing habits’ are being scrutinised. And they are not those of a ‘normal’ person.  Hey, no shit, Sherlock!  I’m not sure what these people think that proves but I’ll tell them what it does prove. It’s quite simple: the meds I take fuck up my concentration. I do most things in 15 minute spurts, including browsing the web. A few pages here, a few pages there.  If you have a problem with this then feel free to say so. I could send you samples of the meds I take and you could take them for a couple of weeks and we’ll see if your reaction is any different. It won’t be. Here, some research. Here, have some more. The cure for ignorance is the acquisition of knowledge.  Try it some time.  Yes, I know, I’m probably shouting into an abyss.

I must learn never to underestimate the capacity of some people for willful ignorance.  I must also remember to never expect the conduct of those who claim to be superior to actually be superior even though that seems to me to be a perfectly logical assumption  to make.

Now, I’m off to see a war veteran about some interesting stories.

A final PS: A special ‘Hello’ to Dogbreath and Slapper McSquirrel (a middle aged woman who thinks that all references to middle aged women are about her.  Now, that’s not egocentric in the least, is it?  She also believes that mental illnesses are ‘self created dramas’.  I knew she was a Mail On Sunday reader.  Well, she seems to fit the profile: fingernail deep and as thick as clotted cream.)

Grace the Cat

My friend Andrew who works at The Blue Cross alerted me to this story.  He said ‘people suck’ and he’s right.  That is why I sometimes get more distressed by harm inflicted on animals than I do when I hear about harm inflicted on people.  I knew someone in hospital who was a vet who treated abused horses.  She felt exactly the same way because eventually people are able to express and deal with the emotional consequences of abuse in therapy.  Animals can’t do that.

A couple of years before Bella the Cat’s death Nobby and I found a kitten, terrified and shivering outside his flat.  I picked him up and held him while Nobby called Andrew.  He was taken to the Blue Cross.  Later the vet who examined him said his injuries were consistent with a fall.  They suspected, but could not prove, that he had been thrown from one of the flats. Andrew asked me if Bella ‘would like a little brother’.  But Bella was a bully cat and did not get along terribly well with other members of her species* so I had to refuse. They found him a home eventually.

Some chick called ‘dog ree’ (or maybe it was ‘dog breath’.  I can’t be bothered to go back and check.) called me ‘catty’ on a rather unpleasant blog.  Given that one of the definitions of ‘catty’ is ‘Catlike’ ‘Stealthy’ I’ll take that as a compliment. Oh, and the person who called me that is a mangey old dog.**

(Ouch, think I touched a nerve there.)

Lost a bunch of weight recently.  Still more rotund than I would like to be though.

*we had so much in common.

**I offer the most profound apologies to dogs.

Currently listening to

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet.

Farewell Angelina, Joan Baez

And this is how it begins.  They push you away and then they build walls around themselves. Anything to stop the deluge, the rising tide, the rot.  I am so afraid.

Bella’s ghost has departed.

And The Mail on Sunday…

…excels itself once again. My response: (which won’t be printed)

I receive supplementary disability living allowance* for a psychiatric disorder but I’m sure those principled, compassionate journalists at The Mail On Sunday will be pleased to learn that I am saving up for a one way trip to Dignitas. Perhaps they’d like to accompany me there to see a job well done. Thanks for reminding me that I’m not wanted. The Nazis had a policy called Aktion T4. Perhaps that should be the next step. We must deal with these people. (Myself included, of course). Grab your torches and sharpen your pitchforks, people, we’re going on a witch hunt. What fun!

DLA was originally introduced by the Tories with the intention of saving money. It was also a key feature of their care in the community policy. ** It was intended to keep people out of long term psychiatric facilities. If the Mail on Sunday have their way and this benefit is withdrawn then its recipients will probably face a life in institutions which, incidentally, will cost far more than the taxpayer is currently paying.

Of course, there is another alternative: government sponsored work placement schemes but these will never be implemented because they too cost far more than DLA.

Meanwhile I cling to this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost

*It really helps if, on a whim, the hospital in which you are incarcerated (AKA Section Three) decide to perform an EEG on you which detects ‘abnormalities’.  Most people aren’t so lucky.

**And, my God, they’ve got a nerve.

Redressing the Balance

Those who have been following the divorce proceedings in which Heather Mills and Paul McCartney have been embroiled (until a few days ago that did not include me) may be interested in this. Ms. Mills is ‘Lying, vindictive, scheming, manipulative’ according to many in the tabloid press. I take it then that their editors will be queuing round the block to offer her a job as these sound like ideal characteristics for a tabloid journalist. And before you start feeling sorry for ‘Sir Paul’ remember ‘The Frog Chorus’* . Now that was a true crime against humanity.

Another article that seeks to redress the balance can be found here. Joan Smith points out that none of the women who formed relationships with ‘Sir Paul’ were treated particularly well by the press and the public. Many seemed to see the Beatles as public property, incapable of determining the course of their own lives. According to Ms. Smith, Linda McCartney received her share of bad press. She was only elevated to the status of secular saint when she became ill. Even the tabloid press wouldn’t stoop so low as to attack a terminally ill woman. And, as the ‘Diana’ saga illustrated, everybody loves you when you’re dead. Finally, whatever Jane Asher’s reasons were for terminating her relationship with ‘Sir Paul’, it was probably one of the best decisions she ever made.

*Listen and puke.

Apparently I have Nothing Better to Do Than…

hang out at this blog.

punter (qual res) | 12.03.07 – 9:00 am | #

Louise, (for it is you), I have avoided addressing you directly before. Not out of fear but because mental illness is your thing and I tend to avoid accusing FJL directly of mental illness. I know too little about it and it does no good because she simply denies it and throws it back.

My thing? No, I never take credit when it isn’t due. Let these people take the credit for that:
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk…lower-a-flower/

Hmm, all those people lining up to kiss one guy’s ass. An epidemic of backache must have ensued.

But Jailhouse lawyer is not me. He, as far as I know, does not post here and has no need to, because he has his own blog, and he has no record of commenting anonymously. He may well have an ego of his own. He certainly isn’t afraid.

Message to Felicity: The next time you commit a crime, make it less serious. Don’t target the online world’s answer to the people’s princess, bash a little old lady over the head with an axe instead. (And remember to use the blunt end because that somehow diminishes culpability.)
It’s an excellent career move.

So – quoting what someone else wrote on JHL’s blog is a bit of an obscure thing to be doing here.

And I note that you commented 3 times last night and then immediately responded to the first comment here. Are you, as some have suggested, hovering over these pages?

Who has suggested this then? One of your alter-egos? I’m just waiting to see what you’ll accuse Ms. Lowde of next. Every misfortune this species has encountered since the fall? Or was she responsible for that too? That serpent was framed. On these pages it has been intimated that she is a prostitute, a holocaust denier and now this. Seriously, mate, are you trying to get her off? You know, if I were FJL I’d have started this blog myself, enticed my accusers (Victims, call them what you will) to comment on it and then induced the defence of provocation.

Please, comment under your own name and don’t assume (à la fjl) that this blog or its comments are written by JHL. I dare say he would take credit for his own work. He has done so far.

And your given name is ‘Punter’. And Shurly Some Mistake’s name is ‘Shurly Some Mistake’? Whatever.

I’m afraid you’re the one making erroneous assumptions. You may not wish to take credit for other people’s work but someone else certainly does. One of your…um…masterpieces was plagiarised on the comments section of my blog. The person responsible had Mr. Hirst’s portal on his blogroll.

If Ms. Lowde is an attention junkie, then you are her dealers.

Witchfinder General

I am the Witchfinder and I wander
Through a deceptively tranquil countryside
In which daemons, devils, Lucifer himself reside

I pursue them, they run, they hide
I hunt them down. I am the dark shadow
That hovers over them, wounded, defeated

We hunt in packs – my minions and I
We run them to ground. Young girls, their faces
Smeared with blood and dust. We corner our prey

Respectable farm-girls until the crops failed
And it was that bad harvest that brought them to me
Wild eyes blazing defiantly

They resist but we persist and in the morning
The villagers gather wood for the fire
But I am the one who insists on igniting the pyre.

It’s not the band we hate…

It’s their fans.

In response to this:

Don’t get too complacent. I’ve seen exactly the same behaviour by your compatriots on Usenet. But yes – these people are slightly deranged. Some of them actually believe that denigrating someone over the internet is more reprehensible than battering an old lady to death with an axe. Strange days indeed.

I recall one particular case in which the ‘culprit’ was a guy from Madison County, Wisconsin. However, I do not remember anyone criticising his physical appearance or suggesting that part of his rehabilitation should consist of performing sexual favours for the opposite sex.

I can’t imagine why that could be.

Can you?