A weird turn of events

The most weird thing happened to me recently – I became a ‘professional’ (for want of a better word), although still unpaid, journalist with a news item I wrote regarding the presentation of a report to Thurrock Council’s Audit Committee being posted on the Your Thurrock website.  I got my own ‘by line’ and everything.

I have to admit that it was not my best work but due to the over running of the meeting, there was not a lot for me to write about.  I am, however, rather chuffed that my ‘boss’ thought it worthwhile posting at all.  I also have to admit that it was not my first ‘by line’ as such but it was the first one that was for a purely news piece.  My blog on Your Thurrock means a lot to me and to see my name on the site makes me feel a little pride but it is really just me putting my opinion across whilst annoying as many people as possible.  Having a ‘straight’ news item posted makes me feel more like a ‘proper’ journalist.  Not bad for a man with no journalistic qualifications and is merely an enthusiastic amateur.  I have to say that that single posting has done more for my self-esteem than anything has in recent memory.  It is a kind of ‘professional’ validation, even if it was only posted because it was needed to fill up space on the Your Thurrock website.

That said, however, I am a little upset that I was not able to provide a more riveting read.  The piece did not exactly contain any revelations or ‘big break’ moments and, in that respect, my regular blog column is more fulfilling as it provokes debate, polarises the public into their political camps and I am either liked or loathed based on what I wrote.  My critics love to hate me and hurl accusations of me being a left-wing supporter.  And I love it!  Quite frankly, I do not care whether people like me personally or not and the back and forth of insults and accusations between my critics and myself gives me a little thrill.  I also like making people think about things in a different way, whether they end up agreeing with me or totally disagree.

I do not know whether I will ever be asked to cover another news story in the future, all I know is that it was nice to be asked this time and to have my efforts rewarded with my first ‘professional’ ‘by line’.  It is something I can add to my portfolio of work so I will take it for the gift it is and dream of future offers.

http://www.yourthurrock.com/2012/09/21/2-million-care-costs-scrutinised-by-audit-committee/

Until next time...

The biggest crime

This entry is my latest submission to Your Thurrock although I somehow doubt it will be posted (for obvious reasons) so I have decided to post it here - just in case.

Following my enforced break from this column, due to putting work in on trying to set up a new project for mental health service users and carers in Essex, I have returned to expose the biggest crime perpetrated in the UK.  I like to believe that my column always makes my readers think and this column will do so by presenting you with some questions and some definitions in order to engage you actively in the process.  About 99% of my readers will be astute enough to work out where this piece is going before I get to the destination, but for the 1% who cannot, I will spell it out in big, bold letters at the end that you will be able to see all the way from One Tree Hill.  Let us begin…

Question: Is it acceptable in a civilised society to accept crime directed at a specific group of people based on gender, age, religion, sexuality, ethnicity or physical or mental disability?

Definition: Crime – an act that is against the laws laid down by the government of the country.

Fact: Slander is a crime.

Fact: Libel is a crime.

Fact: Incitement to hatred of a group based on their gender, age, religion, sexuality, ethnicity or physical or mental disability is a crime.

Definition: Disability – any physical or mental problem that affects an individual’s day-to-day life.

Definition: Hate crime – an act that is directed at an individual or group based on the victim’s gender, age, religion, sexuality, ethnicity or physical or mental disability; to persecute an individual based on their gender, age, religion, sexuality, ethnicity or physical or mental disability.

Definition: Persecute – (1) subject (a person, etc) to hostility or ill-treatment; (2) harass, worry.

Question: Should a civilised society allow crime to go unpunished?

Now we have set the scene with our questions, facts and definitions, we shall start our journey in earnest, filling in extra facts and posing extra questions as we go…

The current administration of this country, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition or ConDums (yes, I did mean to call them ConDums), in the interests of cutting the budget deficit, have instituted the largest plans for public spending cuts in living memory.  These cuts affect many of the people who rely on welfare benefits to survive day-to-day.  Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the people who are reliant in disability and health-related benefits.  The ConDums, however, allow the richest people and companies in the country to get away with tax avoidance on a huge scale and refuse to institute a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on banking transactions all of which would obviate the need for such savage cuts to the welfare budget.

Question: Who should carry the burden of deficit reduction plans – the rich or the poor and most vulnerable?

Part of the welfare shake-up involves taking claimants off benefits such as Incapacity Benefit and putting them on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which has two sub-groups – the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) and the Support Group.  In which group a claimant is placed in is determined by putting them through a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by a company called Atos, who have no healthcare experience but who are paid approximately £150 million to administer the WCAs.

Fact: The changeover from the old benefits to the ESA is highly cost-laden.

Fact: The WCA has been proved to be ‘not fit for purpose’ for those claimants whose ‘disability’ is a mental health problem.

Fact: A high proportion of WCAs have resulted in a successful appeal overturning the findings of the WCA, costing the country money in legal expenses.

Fact: Calls are being made with the express intention of getting the WCA criteria changed so that they are deemed fit for purpose.

If a claimant is put into the Work Related Activity Group, the claimant will be asked (or forced, depending on who you ask) to undertake activities in order to prepare them for getting into work, some of whom will actually be unfit for work due to their disability but wrongly declared fit for work by the WCA.

Fact: If a person fails to comply with a work-related activity, their benefit will be reduced or temporarily withdrawn.

Question: If an individual has to stop a work-related activity due to their disability, how are they expected to survive on reduced or no income?

Fact: The Government plans to cut the benefit of a disabled claimant by £71 per week for failure to comply with a work-related activity.

Fact: Plans are being put in place so that the disabled and those on health-related benefits will be forced to do unpaid work placements for an unlimited time. 

Fact: People claiming JobSeekers Allowance (JSA) are only expected to work in unpaid work placements for three months.

Of course, all of this is academic as the Government are proposing to abolish ESA and all other benefits and combine them all under the umbrella of Universal Credit (UC) at a huge expense to the country.

Fact: Proposals for Universal Credit are, at present, vague and ill considered.  They are also, at present, highly prejudicial to people with disabilities and health-related incapacities.

The ConDum’s austerity measures have barely begun to bite with currently mentioned figures being mentioned of only 6% being made so far and the Government is, in fact, increasing the budget deficit rather than reducing it.  The UK is in the grip of a full-blown double-dip recession, something the austerity measures was meant to prevent and yet the ConDums have given tax breaks to the rich and fail to collect the vast amounts of unpaid/avoided tax money.  The poor, on the other hand, are bearing the brunt of the cost of an economic disaster not of their making and the disabled and those on health-related benefits are being hit the hardest.  All the while, companies are failing causing more unemployment to add to those in the publicly funded sector who lost their jobs due to cuts in public spending.

Fact: One of the victims of the austerity measures was an organisation called Remploy, a company that employed hundreds of disabled people.

Question: Why have the public accepted such prejudicial tactics to be used against the disabled and those on health-related benefits?

I will answer this question for you.  The public have accepted such measures because they have been subjected to hours and hours of ConDum propaganda designed to make the public think that the disabled and those on health-related benefits are the cause of the problem rather than the victims.  They are seen as leeches on the belly of society, sucking away millions of pounds from the public purse.  By demonising the target group, the public are less concerned with the affect the cuts to public spending are having on that group.

Fact: For an extended period, Iain Duncan-Smith and Chris Grayling have demonised the disabled and those on health-related benefits in the media.  David Cameron allowed this.

Due to the highly prejudicial view of the disabled and health-related benefit claimants promoted by the ConDum administration, the levels of hate towards those groups has risen and will continue to rise in the future.

And so we reach the case against the ConDums on the charge of the greatest disability hate crime in the UK.

“If it pleases your Honour, based on the evidence presented above, I would like to proceed with the case for the prosecution of Her Majesty’s Government on the charge of hate crime against the disabled and health-related benefit claimants of the UK.

It has been established that hate crime is wrong and unlawful.  It has further been established that slander and libel are crimes and that persecution of or incitement to hatred of an individual or group based on gender, age, religion, sexuality, ethnicity or physical or mental disability are likewise crimes.

On behalf of my clients, I wish to submit the following evidence -

Fact: According to Government statistics, less than 1% of claims for health-related benefits are fraudulent.

Her Majesty’s Prime Minister has allowed speeches and comments of a highly prejudicial nature to be given by certain ministers of his administration giving a view of my clients as being work-shy or fraudsters.  This amounts to slander against 99% of my clients.  These speeches and comments have made their way into the printed media, which amounts to complicity in spreading libellous statements about 99% of my clients.

Further to these charges, the current and planned legislation of Her Majesty’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government are highly prejudicial to my clients as are the cuts to public spending that are currently underway.  I refer, of course, to the closing of Remploy establishments, the excessive punishments incurred for failing to comply with work-related activities and the unlimited duration of unpaid work placements for disabled/health-related claimants.  These amount to persecution of my clients.

Finally, thanks to the slanderous and libellous statements, my clients have been seen as figures to be hated by the rest of society.  It is true that many held this view before the current administration took power but the statements given by Ministers of the Crown have acerbated the problem.  This amounts to a hate crime against my clients, made even more offensive as it is against a group who are among the most vulnerable in society.

I submit to you that the current Government of this country is guilty of all charges and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The case for the prosecution rests.”

Fact: David Cameron called himself a ‘compassionate Conservative’.

Question: If Cameron really is compassionate, why would he allow such disgusting tactics and policies to be used?

There are other regimes who probably have similar hostile views of the disabled and those with health-related incapacities although one springs to mind immediately – the Nazi Party of the 1930s and 1940s.  If you were disabled in any way, physically or mentally, your life expectancy was not going to be long.  You would not have been sent to the gas chambers with the Jews who were mercilessly persecuted but your life would have been curtailed in some other way – lethal injection.  Like the Jews, Romany gypsies and homosexuals, the mentally and physically challenged were persecuted as not being Aryan material.  They were demonised by the Nazis and turned into figures of hate, much like the disabled and health-related benefit claimants of the UK today.  At least, however, Hitler and his party were open in their hostility and did not hide behind the lie of trying to help the vulnerable whilst enacting legislation designed to kill them.

Fact: There have been many deaths directly attributable to the changes and cuts in welfare benefits for the disabled and those on health-related benefits.  A lot of them have been covered in the media.

With so many deaths directly attributable to benefit changes, perhaps we should add manslaughter or murder to the list of charges against this Government.

Things are not going to get any better whilst we have a corrupt, dictatorial regime in place that will push through legislation regardless of its detrimental effect on the citizens it is supposed to protect.  How can you call this a dictatorial regime, you may ask; it was democratically elected.  So was Hitler, I would counter.  And he had a greater share of the vote than the Conservatives did in the last General Election.

For some dark reasoning, the ConDums have it in for the disabled and those on health-related benefits.  The economic strategy that was built on adherence to austerity measures has failed.  The economy is in decline where under Labour it had started to grow.  The ConDums have no plan for economic growth and Cameron has been recorded as saying that he sees no end to the austerity measures that were originally meant to last only five years, the longest term for austerity measures in living memory.  The Government is increasing the deficit it had promised to get rid of within its five-year term.  The ConDums strategy seems dependent upon convincing the Great British public that the disabled and health-related benefit claimants are the cause of all the ills the UK is facing whilst letting the rich prosper and avoid paying their due taxes.

Why are the rich being molly-coddled?  Because they are the ones who vote Conservative and because they are the ones who are in power.  Why are the poor and disadvantaged being hurt the most?  Because they have no voice.  The people in the middle-income bracket hate the poor and disadvantaged because they fear becoming poor and disadvantaged themselves and because the ConDum administration instils hatred towards them to ensure their monstrous plans go ahead unchallenged by the public. 

The only step that Cameron and company have not taken is the one where the State institutes a campaign of forced euthanasia against the mentally and physically challenged – yet.  One wonders if this is to be the next step in the persecution of the disabled and health-related benefit claimants though.

Anyone for a waterless shower?  Cameron’s Final Solution.

Until next time…

Letter to Jackie Doyle-Price (MH debate)

Below is the full text of my latest letter to my local MP, Jackie Doyle-Price.  I shall, of course, post any reply I get - right here on my blog!

Dear Ms Doyle-Price,

I am writing to you, as my representative in Parliament, asking you to attend the debate on mental health due to be held on Thursday 14 June.  Mental health is an important issue for society with one in four people falling foul of some kind of mental ill health.  This is, I believe, a very conservative estimate, as there are many people who fail to seek help due to the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness.  I, myself, have experience of mental ill health, having suffered with major depression for the last 34 years.

My illness came upon me at the age of seven years old and I was left undiagnosed until I was 26 when I had a breakdown at work.  My full diagnosis is Recurrent Depressive Disorder and Adjustment Disorder (Depressive Type).  I have been out of work since a further crisis came upon me in 2005.  I have not, however, been idle in that time, having undertaken courses and voluntary work to improve my job prospects and to keep busy.  Unfortunately, the voluntary work I have undertaken to make me more employable has made me toxic to most employers because I cannot hide my mental health problem from them as prospective employers can Google my name and find video clips and articles associating me with mental health.  The statistics bear out the fact that most employers would turn me down for a job even if I were the best candidate and that mental health sufferers are the group who are the least likely to be in paid employment despite being the group who are most eager to find work.

You may not have experience of depression yourself and it is difficult to express how it affects a sufferer to someone who is not a sufferer but I will try to do so.  Imagine how you would feel if you had lost someone very close to you, now imagine that feeling magnified a thousand times.  That feeling never leaves me for a single moment and, on top of that, add the feeling of utter hopelessness you would feel if you saw someone you loved dying very slowly and painfully.  Imagine all of that with the feeling of utter darkness and despair and the feeling that things will never improve no matter how hard you try to make them change.  That is depression.  That is what I, and many others, have to live with.

The following list covers the points most needing of being covered in the debate (in my opinion):

• Mental health service
• At the moment, mental health services are at their most needed and, therefore, need more funding to cope with the demand; however, they are being forced to make cuts they can ill afford to make.  Mental health has always been the least well funded sector in the NHS and will probably always be the poor relation because most mental health service users are the least likely to make a fuss.
• In Thurrock, Grays Hall has the highest staff turnover in the whole of the region covered by SEPT, the local NHS provider.  High staff turnover means that the service suffers and is a key indicator of a sick organisation.
• Giving more money to the mental health service providers will actually save money as there will be fewer suicide attempts and fewer hospitalisations due to better community-based care.
• Benefits
• The changes to the benefits system and the associated cuts in the welfare budget are causing a huge amount of fear, stress and anxiety to people already in a highly sensitive state of mind.
• Every brown envelope that comes through the letterbox only heightens the fear that a mental health service user feels.  These people already struggle to survive day-to-day on what little welfare they receive and the thought of losing even that lifeline is almost paralysing.
• There are very few, if any, people with mental health issues who are getting more than the very basic amount of money on welfare and considerably less than someone on the National Minimum Wage.
• The fear, stress and anxiety generated by the changes and cuts in the benefits system will only make the mentally unwell less able to find paid employment.  This will end up costing the country more in NHS treatment and benefits than it will save with the proposed cuts.
• The Work Capability Assessment
• The WCA has been unanimously condemned by GPs as not fit for purpose as it is heavily weighted towards physical disabilities and takes little, or no, account for the mental health issues that are just as debilitating but are unseen.
• Many mental health service users are being found able to work by the WCA but are soon back on benefits due to a crisis brought on by work.
• If the WCA is not changed to reflect the debilitating nature of an individual’s mental health problem, the strain on the mental health service will be even greater as more and more people fall to mental ill health.
• Stigma and Discrimination
• Funds are needed to educate the general public and employers about mental health problems so that the stigma and discrimination faced by mental health service users is dispelled.
• The media need to be encouraged to portray people with mental health issues more realistically and with fewer negative stereotypes.  This needs to be supported by Government.
• Employers should be encouraged to employ people with mental health issues and to offer flexible working hours, time off for hospital and therapy appointments and offer in-work support.
• The Disability Discrimination Act does cover people with mental ill health but it does little to protect them properly because it is so easy for employers to find other excuses to get rid of mentally unwell employees or to deny an opportunity to an unemployed person with a history of mental ill health.

These are only a few of the issues that need to be debated on Thursday.  I hope you will attend the debate and put some of these points across on behalf of all the mental health service users in your constituency.

I am happy to talk to you about any of these issues with you should there be any other future Parliamentary debates on this subject.

Regards,

Myles Cook

Letter for a friend

Here's the full text (anonymised) of a letter I wrote for a friend.

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to you to ask you to reconsider your decision, if you have not already done so, not to prosecute the case regarding the act of arson that claimed the lives of four canines and destroyed the home and possessions of Ms __________.

Although Ms _____ is a friend, I am writing as an animal lover and as an advocate for justice.  I believe that this case should be prosecuted because, as a species, the human race has a special duty to protect the lesser species we have domesticated and made our pets and companions.  The loss of home and possessions is a tragedy but they can be replaced over time; the loss of an animal cannot.  Individuals who take animals into their homes as companions form deeper attachments with them than they do with their human family as they have chosen those specific animals and those pets have as great a need for their owner as a child does for a parent.  Ms _____ did not just lose her home and possessions that day; she also lost four members of her family, just as dear as any human family she may possess.

It is distressing to think that the four dogs died in fear and pain, their fur burning and their flesh seared, unable to escape from a place in which they had felt safe in the past and had the right to feel safe and secure.  Even if Ms _____’s dogs had survived the cowardly act of arson of which they were victims, they would have been unable to demand justice for themselves so it is the duty of your office to be their voice as it would be for any victim of murder or manslaughter.

I realise that there are financial considerations regarding which cases you can or cannot prosecute; however, for justice to be done, there are some cases that must be prosecuted.  This case is one such case.  It is not whether you win or lose the case, it is whether, morally and ethically, you fight the case to send a message to the world that acts of animal cruelty are abhorrent to us as a species, that spiteful and cowardly acts such as this are not to be tolerated by society.  It is only by fighting such cases that society’s ethical and moral standing can be raised to the point that crimes such as these are eradicated.

As a society and as a species, we must show that animals we have domesticated have a special place in our culture and must therefore be given certain inalienable rights befitting that place.  If the victims of this crime had been human children, the case would have gone to court.  Ms _____’s dogs have a right to justice, equal to any human victim and perhaps more so, because of our responsibility to them as their guardians.

I hope this letter will change your decision and that you will prosecute the person accused of this heinous crime.  Be the voice of the innocent victims of this tragic event.  Be the true agents of justice that you entered your profession to be.  Win or lose be damned; do what is right, morally and ethically, and justice will be done.

Regards,

Myles Cook (Mr)

And here's the reply...

Thank you for your input. The decision not to pursue this case is based entirely on the law, applicable to the admissible evidence - and the fact that animals perished does not change the rules of evidence, or the law.

Our decisions are based on facts, evidence that is admissible under the rules of evidence, and the existing law - not emotion. The decision will not be reconsidered.

Gary Beatty

Birthday blues

I really do not like my birthday.  Like most men in their late 30s and early 40s, I get the blues around the very thought of my birthday and the reflection on one’s lack of achievements.  I wanted to have achieved so much by now and I have achieved very little.  Each birthday just brings that lack of forward momentum into full focus, in crystal clarity so that even the most unobservant person could not fail to miss it.  As a result, I do not bother celebrating my birthday.  My family are not so obliging though and I am forced to sit through a ‘party’ and the gift-giving that I have expressly asked they do not do.

It is nice to see the birthday greetings on my Facebook profile, simply as it is recognition that I have somehow made it onto someone’s radar as a blip worthy of noting, but Facebook is the exception to the rule.  I find some comfort in the fact that I have been acknowledged in some small way but, although I am not against people knowing of my birthday, I would rather the event be ignored by everyone.  Perhaps one day, when I have earned some acclaim, I will change my stance because my birthday will not be such a glaring display of my complete failure in life; for now though, let me be the miserable old fart who hates his birthday.

Until next time…

An Open Letter To The Leaders Of The Three Main Political Parties

Here's the full text of a letter I have sent to a number of UK newspapers, Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband. I couldn't find an e-mail address for Mr Cameron.  I will, of course, post any replies I get right here!

Dear Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband,

I am writing to try to convince you all to put aside your ideological differences and work together to solve the financial crisis that the country finds itself in at the present time.

I am sure that I am not alone in being sick and tired of the constant blame game, buck-passing and excuses that the political parties in this country engage in.  They do nothing but stall any hope of getting any real progress made.  Yes, Labour left a financial mess when they left office but it was not all their fault as the major global banking crisis too its toll as well.  It would be nice if Labour held their hands up and accepted some responsibility but I believe we are passed the point of apportioning blame.

It angers me that the Coalition keeps on blaming Labour for the financial mess they left when the country has been under Coalition control for two years and the country has dropped into the double-dip recession the austerity measures were meant to avoid.  The Coalition cannot blame Labour for their own measures being ineffective; that is the Coalition’s fault and their fault alone.

Is it any wonder that the voters of this country are disaffected with politicians?  All you seem to do is compound each other’s errors and barrack each other like schoolchildren, playing the blame game and making excuses.

Surely, in a time of crisis such as the one the country finds itself in at present, you could forget your petty differences, look at the expertise within all the political parties and offer individuals with specialist knowledge or interests positions within a larger Coalition encompassing all political creeds?

I am not suggesting that members of opposition parties are given ministerial positions; it is only right and proper that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Coalition takes the lead.  I am suggesting, however, that members of opposition parties may have knowledge and ideas that may be of great value in solving the country’s troubles.  I am suggesting that even the smallest parties should be utilised in the collaborative undertaking; for instance, Green MP Caroline Lucas could be offered an advisory position on energy and environmental issues.

I believe that there is a time for party politics and there is a time to put party politics aside.  The current crisis is a case for the latter.  The electorate is disaffected with politicians and the only way to re-engage voters in the political process is showing them that, when it really counts, you can work collaboratively in the interests of the entire population.  Only then can you start to address the trust issues the electorate have with politicians as a group.  Only then, will the public start to engage with politics again.

I am not a politician.  I am not an expert in politics. I am an ordinary member of the public who is tired of this country as a whole suffering, of the poor and disadvantaged suffering whilst the rich prosper.  I am an individual who finds it distasteful that politicians deal in the politics of fear and scape goating instead of dealing in the politics of aspiration for all.  I am a man who wants to have respect in the people who are supposed to represent me and my views in Government.  I am a person who sees what UK society is and what it could be and weeps to see the enormous gulf in-between caused by the inability of politicians to put aside their ideological differences for the greater good.

Yours sincerely,

Myles Cook (Mr), Grays, Essex

At last! Jackie Doyle-Price replies.

Here are the scans of the replies I got from Jackie Doyle-Price on the last three subjects I e-mailed her on.  The only thing missing is my address and that is because I get enough hate mail in the mail as it is! LOL



Make of them what you will...

Until next time...