Category Archives: Musings

who am I

October 4, 2014Musingsdiana Stone

I was thinking about the fact that having struggled with various mental and behavioral problems related to them for many years, in fact most of my life.

My first visit to an education psychologist was at the age of 8 and then followed several years until I was a about 14 when I opted out as I did not seem to be getting anywhere being a professional patient almost by that time. The reason I was sent initially was for a formal assessment as I was doing very badly at school. I had a formal IQ test and I think they were expecting me to be what in those days was referred to as ESN. The test results contradicted this.

From that point I was just tagged as lazy. For a lot of my life I did mentally non-challenging jobs, as I had low self-esteem, no formal education and was also somewhat dyslexic and not too good at maths either. This was compounded by depressive illness which hit at at puberty and has carried on to some extent ever since. In my twentys I often had severe anxiety attacks, which caused me to wake up around 03.00 with a rapidly pounding heart and a major sense of dread. Then I would be awake for an hour or so until it all calmed down. Getting up the next morning I would often be quite tired due to broken sleep.

I had a couple of brief Camelot moments when things looked up for a few months and it seemed there might be happy every afters including one job when I was 17 working at Hammersmith Odeon (Now the Apollo, in those days run by Rank Theatres) which had I been able to stay in it would possibly have given me a good career. In those days it was still showing films as well as having live music. They had a grand piano, which was the first time I had ever seen one close up, or attempted to play one. I did see a lot of very good bands then though. Unfortunately due to being bullied by some NF teenagers (who had also gained inspiration and nicked some ideas from the then recently released Clockwork Orange) and getting stalked and attacked on the way home I eventually lost that job. After this incident which involved going to court, my confidence was at an all time low. I don’t think it ever really recovered from that. I also had a particular drug experience which caused a permanent change (I had something put in a drink and ended up being dumped on the doorstep frothing at the mouth). My father seemed to think that I had brought all this on myself. I had too older sisters and he seemed to think that my behavior did not match up to his standards. Briefly before my father died at the age of 63 from cancer, we almost resolved our differences, but he was a product of his time or possibly a hangover from an even earlier time in many of his attitudes.

More time passed and I joined the Home Office and worked in various parts of the Criminal Justice system, for 13 years during which time I had more depressive illness and two major occurrences.

I got more med’s and managed to keep working through it though. I got in to IT by accident and started writing code and developing stuff, and made a very rapid rise from the bottom grade to a middle-manager. This pissed a lot of people off, particularly the graduates and some folks got a bit funny about it. Although I was capable of doing the work, my mental health continued to be an issue, and finally after starting to crack around the edges for the 5 time I resigned. One of the reasons for this was that I knew that I was not going to be able to keep it together much longer and I might well start seriously messing things up.

In truth I didn’t think things through and made a very hard landing. I did manage to do some part time IT related work, but at very low rates as I could not concentrate on complex stuff for too long. At the same time I was getting paid work as a musician, though this was very small amount compared to what I had previously earned.

These days I don’t pursue IT jobs as I can’t spend that long writing code and most jobs require hours of work, and my concentration span can only deal with short compressed bursts of concentration.

So I am stuck really, I can just about get by from month to month but at 57 with on-going mental problems its not that easy.

Recently having felt so low, I thought I would go back to the Dr’s but on reflection its always just med’s or CBT. Well CBT works to an extent, but my mood go’s where it will, so you have good days and bad days. The biggest problem is irritability though, and a certain amount of mild paranaoia.

The same as

September 15, 2014Musingsdiana Stone

It’s not been a good week for me. The sort of week when you smile at people when you really don’t feel like it, and to make it worse they are very pleased to see you and tell you how well your life seems to be going, but of course they really don’t have a clue how your feeling.
Not that you particularly want to tell them of course as really they wouldn’t want to know.

So you keep up the pretense as long as possible.

But the cracks start to appear eventually.

The thought of the future being the same old same old is not exactly inspiring whilst the fear of it is almost enough to keep ones head permanently under the bedclothes. You make a certain choices in life and then proceed to make the same mistakes over and over again. Every time you think you got it sussed its like a game of snakes and ladders, mostly you end up back where you started from or pretty close to it anyway. At which point you say “Well I tried” and if your lucky you get the consolation prize, which is actually not that consoling as it turns out. 4 steps forward two steps back so it almost feels like progress, but your never going to reach the that prize are you?

Somewhat disappointed about my own naivety. Doing favor’s and trying to be altruistic is seen as a sign of weakness by many it would seem. I will write on the blackboard 100 times “Must remember not to take things on trust as people are likely to abuse my good will”.

David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies

September 9, 2014MusingsArticle, Benefits, Comment, Conservatives, Economic policy, Frances Ryan, Opinion, Politics, Poverty, Social exclusion, Society, UK newsdiana Stone

Re-blogging this because its important. This kind of thing can happen to anybody at anytime…

This article titled “David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies” was written by Frances Ryan, for theguardian.com on Tuesday 9th September 2014 08.24 UTC

The coroner said that when David Clapson died he had no food in his stomach. Clapson’s benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the jobcentre. He was diabetic, and without the £71.70 a week from his jobseeker’s allowance he couldn’t afford to eat or put credit on his electricity card to keep the fridge where he kept his insulin working. Three weeks later Clapson died from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin. A pile of CVs was found next to his body.

I’ll resist calling Clapson’s death a tragedy. Tragedy suggests a one-off incident, a rarity that couldn’t be prevented. What was done to Clapson – and it was done, not something that simply happened – is a particularly horrific example of what has, almost silently, turned into a widespread crisis. More than a million people in this country have had their benefits stopped over the past year. Sanctions against chronically ill and disabled people have risen by 580% in a year. This is a system out of control.

A petition for an inquiry into benefit sanctions, started by Clapson’s sister, Gill Thompson, is now on the verge of its 200,000th signature. This Thursday there will be a day of action against benefit sanctions across the country. If inspiration is required, you need look no further than the latest Department for Work and Pensions pilot scheme launched last week. The unemployed are set to have their benefits stopped if they don’t sign in at a jobcentre in the morning and spend the whole day there, every day. Breach the rules once and you’ll lose four weeks’ worth of benefits; twice and you won’t be able to feed your kids for three months.

Yes, some reasons for sanctions are almost laughable: going to a job interview rather than a meeting at the jobcentre that it clashes with; not completing an assessment because you had a heart attack during it. But let’s not convince ourselves the rest are credible – punishment sensibly bestowed on the scrounging unemployed. A government that deems it a success to stop the money someone needs to eat is a government of the grotesque.

Sanctions are a product of an attitude towards benefit claimants that says they are not people struggling to find work but suspects: lazy, stupid and in need of a DWP-kick to get them out of bed. The lazy are going hungry. Eight in 10 Trussell Trust food banks report that benefit sanctions are causing more people to need emergency food parcels. This, I suppose, is what Conservatives call motivation.

It doesn’t matter that sanctions are disproportionately hitting the most vulnerable. Nor that the DWP’s own commissioned report says that they are being imposed in such a way that vulnerable people often don’t understand what is happening to them, and are left uninformed of the hardship payments to which they are entitled. Six out of 10 employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants who have had their benefits stopped have a mental-health condition or learning difficulty. Are these the chosen victims of austerity now? By definition of being in receipt of ESA, many will struggle to do things such as be punctual for meetings or complete work placements with strangers in environments they don’t know. It is setting people up to fail and then punishing them for it.

Sanctions are not an anomaly. Rather, they are emblematic of the wider Tory record on welfare: one of incompetence and, at best, indifference. The work programme fails to find work for 95% of disabled people, but enforced, unpaid labour or loss of benefits is the DWP’s answer. More than a quarter of a million people are still waiting for PIP, the benefit needed to help cover the extra costs of disability. Seven hundred thousand people have been left waiting for an ESA assessment. Locking people out of their rightful benefits is becoming a theme for this government. The consequences are human; the response from the government is inhumane.

Clapson had only left his last job to care for his elderly mum, and before that had worked for 29 years. On the day he died he had £3.44 to his name and six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines in his kitchen cupboards. Benefit sanctions are aimed at ending the “something for nothing” culture, as the DWP’s press release brags. I vote for ending the demonisation of the unemployed, disabled and poor.

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