Where to begin with this one? First no names, probably. So…I went to a vegetarian cookery class on Saturday with mate, Gina (pseudonym). Two previous classes had been fun, hands on, chatty with nosh and a glass of wine at the end. All good. We thought.
LB was off for a lot of last week with a nasty cold. This week, he came down for breakfast on Tuesday complaining of a stomach ache. I told him to eat his breakfast and see how he felt. “Got a bad stomach, Mum,” he groaned. After a bit more questioning, he stuck to his story and though he ate his breakfast, he held his tummy throughout groaning realistically.
“Ok, back off to bed,” I said, “I’ll call the taxi and let ’em know.”
He disappeared, I called the taxi and went to make a cup of tea.
I turned round to find him sitting in front of the laptop.
“Whatthehellareyoudoing??????”
“I’m better now Mum.”
There’s been a right old push recently to present disabled people as a smallish group of The Truly Disabled (TTDs) and the rest, a bunch of scrounging bastards (BSBs). The proposed Welfare Reform Bill is currently being deliberated in the Lords. In response to measured, well informed authoritative arguments by several Lords and Baronesses, the Welfare Minister, Lord Freud, mumbles and fumbles his way through a load of ill informed guff. This guff is underpinned by a version of the ‘biopsychosocial model of health and illness’. I can’t be bothered to unpack this pseudo scientific model but basically, the government seem to be arguing that a lot of disabled people/people with long term conditions think (or pretend) they’re sick/disabled but they ain’t really. They just need a bit of a push to get ‘em off their backsides and back into the workplace. The ideal push is to overhaul the benefits system, remove the large numbers of people (BSBs) receiving lower rate of benefits and give TTDs a (slightly) bigger slice of the pie.
Sadly, it seems like a lot of the great British public are more than happy to swallow the ‘country is being dragged to its knees by this army of work-shy, thieving bastards’ line. Why that is, isn’t clear to me. But I bet anyone £1.20 that they’ve heard a version of the story “My next door neighbour is off sick… sick my arse” or “That toe rag from round the corner just got an enormous plasma tv and she ain’t worked for years” type stories on the bus, in the pub, at work, or pretty much anywhere. Any sign of flagging support for this thesis is quickly dealt with by sensational stories, such as Liddle’s ‘Pretend disabled really ARE sick’ (26/1/12, The Sun) or Dellingpole’s ‘The fake disabled are crippling our economy’ (Daily Telegraph blog, 26/1/12).
I’m sure some people do claim benefits/allowances when they shouldn’t. But I think it’s a very small number of people. We are social beings, after all. Work (whether paid or unpaid) is of central importance to our everyday lives. Not being able to work, through ill health or lack of jobs, is demoralising, depressing, frustrating, dissatisfying and can lead to feelings of meaningless. Here’s an extract from an interview with a man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome*;
What do you with your days now then?
Waste time. I feel that I am wasting time. Make things to do really. I make things to do. There is no structure in my life. There is no structure. I don’t have to do anything, you know. It is not laziness I mean people could think it is laziness but it is to do with… I walk around in a sort of state of muddle, muddlement, you know, I am very often muddled… It sort of paralyses you. I don’t know if there is a better way to put it…. it is a lack of clarity, lack of clarity of thought. It is like a lack of perspicacity in my thought even…. You know I manage to fill my days. I fill my days in bloody Tesco’s and wandering around and reading bits and not reading anything properly in depth but just reading bits of this and bits of that you know. As I said, I have got the French and German newspapers and that. But it is all bits here and bits there. It is not, there is nothing constructive about it. Nothing structured about it. Nothing, you know, it is just filling in time.
I could go on and on, chucking out stats, referencing the Spartacus report (funded, researched and written by disabled people) that lays bare the deceitful spin operated by the government in relation to the Welfare Reform Bill, ask how the BSBs will be distinguished from TTDs in practice, demand to know how a cabinet made up of 23 millionaires (and probably 3 ‘pretty damn rich too’ ministers) can possibly have any understanding of the lives of disabled/ill people, etc etc etc. But I won’t. I’ll just have a little thinky about how this will all pan out in the end.
According to Freud, getting back into the workplace (cough cough.. I know, I know… but let’s just pretend there are jobs for now, eh?) will ‘cure’ this group (AND help them bring up less feral children AND maintain their relationships). In practice of course, it will lead to (even more?) grinding, heartless, miserable, impoverished lives for a lot of people (and their families) and increasing health, social and economic inequalities between the rich and the poor.
And what about TTD? This gleamingly innocent, honest, worthy, hugely dependent group who will get a (well deserved) rise in their benefits? Well as far as I can see, they will be on a fast track to being patronised and pushed even further to the edges of society. After a few sensational, pathetic, heart wrenching stories are splashed across the media to make everyone feel better, of course.
*Interview extract from the Life on the Autism Spectrum section on Healthtalkonline.
There is something distinctive and stylish about LB’s drawings. I love em. And I love watching him sit, scribbling away so effortlessly.
School kids
Shoot out
I came across a notebook today in which every page, yep all 120 of em, included a picture of Tom Chaplin, from Keane, or the whole band (Rich, Tim and Tom). This was a moment (well quite a long moment) in time; his obsession with Keane is now over. But still spectacular, especially with the consistent backgrounds of robberies and CCTV.
Hilariously genius.
Postscript: Since I started this post, LB has been revisiting his drawings in the notebook and adding to them. Love him.
Rubbishy old rainy day. So here is some colour, vibrancy and music (use your imagination or here is a bit of magical louis if you want a helping hand) from last Summer….
Credits: Thanks to Horn of Plenty – a larger than life sort of band.
Had a walk about with Rich this morning. Dull old suburbia had its quirky pants on as you can see; a car cat, old cameras, posh fish fire and a pink hat and boots.
Updated on April 21st….
I’ve been ‘commuting’* for about six months now since our department moved into town next to the station. Twenty minute bus ride to the High Street and a 10 minute walk or a 30 minute bus ride all the way there.
Who’d have thought such a short, local journey could be eventful? First there was “Get off the bus, missus”. And here is the sequel. As usual, freshly hatched but, to keep things lively, a different bus company.
So I caught the bus to the station this morning. Sat upstairs, all cosy at the back. Busying myself on my ipad.
“HELLO! HELLO! Everyone on the bus! Hello, this the driver!”
Silence.
“HELLO! This is the driver speaking to everyone on the bus!”
Silence. Way too awkward to shout back “Hello”. Shudder.
“I’m running very late so those of you who plan to go to the station, it would be great if you could get off on the High Street and catch the next bus.”
Eh? What?
Two minutes later the bus juddered to a halt at the bottom of the High Street.
“HELLO. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? THIS IS THE DRIVER. GET OFF THE BUS. EVERYONE. OFF THE BUS NOW.”
Cripes. We all shuffled towards the staircase.
“GET.OFF.THE. BUS!”
“No. I won’t”, I said, jokingly to the people queuing up next to me.
Silence.
* Not sure if it counts as a commute when it’s about a 5 mile journey, but it’s a bus ride instead of walking.
Here’s some photos of geese taken during a holiday in Devon. I like geese.
Honk honk.
These photos are from a day when I decided to walk the long way to work, taking my (old) camera. It was sunny when I set off but as I walked down the hill, it became mistier and mistier. It got to the point where passing people were partial and incidental. And it became all about the trees.
Funny because I’m more a people than a tree sorta gal.
Family breakfast this morning to celebrate Rosie returning to Manchester. Regular readers will be relieved to know I’ve not blubbed (yet), unlike the first time. LB is currently obsessed with scrap. This obsession began yesterday evening when his new carer, Kevin, took him bowling in his car. His old car. LB got in the car, asked Kevin what kind of car it was – a Ford Focus – and why it wasn’t in the scrapyard. [Shudder] Within half an hour of getting back, a scrapyard was set up in his bedroom and the rest of evening, and a lot of the night, was spent dropping buses and lorries from some height. And talking about scrapyards.
So, back to breakfast, before the toast was even out of the toaster;
“What’s a scapyard, Mum?”
“You know what a scrapyard is, LB. Don’t ask me what it is.”
“What’s a scrapyard, Richy?”
“My friend’s sister’s hamster, Scrap, died,” interjected Tom.
“Awww,” we chorused.
“She’s got another one already.”
“Scrap 2?” asked Rosie.
“More Scrap?” I suggested.
“MINI SCRAP!” said LB, unusually animated for him.
“Mini scrap..” Richy chuckled.
“It’s called Squeak,” said Tom.
“What’s mini scrap, Richy?”
mydaftlife 