I have previously noted on this Web Log that journalists in the National Union of Journalists have a code of conduct or ethics about truthfulness. Yet it strikes me from the way that the hegemony of televised adverts for what can be euphemistically called 'the Financial Services Industry' by strength of repetition, repetition, and repetition contribute to 'manufacturing consent'(1) for what Mo Stewart refers to as 'the corporate demolition of the welfare state'.(2)
One of the biggest UK-based branches of the 'Financial Services Industry' is Legal & General (aka L&G), that has extremely close links with UK Government L&G's 'For a more colourful retirement' adverts targeted at homeowners aged 55 or over for Equity Release [sic] are repeated ad nausea on daytime TV, alongside adverts for various charities' downsized versions of Lotto.(3)
It is little wonder to me that the paid actors involved in this TV commercial are so jaunty: Think of the millions of pounds they are likely to be making in repeat fees while these commercials are shown again and again.
Likewise there are the presenters of TV commercials for 'funeral protection' schemes. I have already commented via this News Forwards site about Alan Titchmarsh's involvement with 'Sun Life', and of course there are other paid presenters. Do these 'celebrities' give a damn about those of us who cannot afford such payments on our ever diminishing State Pensions after decades of under-supported jobsearch?
And do they really consider properly researching the 'services' or 'products' they are promoting?
I look forward to hearing from others, including members of the acting profession, on this matter, and how the funding of Culture, Media and Sport can be addressed properly so that culture, media and sport are not forced into a kind of 'prostitution' that serves the interests of institutions that make society more unhealthy, such as
'Big Soda' that has replaced tobacco advertising and sponsorship, and adopted the strategies and tactics formerly adopted by the tobacco industry, and
Junk food manufacturers with their industrial impoverishment of workers via zero hours contracts and the like.
(1) Manufacturing Consent was the title of a book by American Noam Chomsky, and while our welfare state is being increasingly demolished under successive neoliberal governments, so too does daytime and even evening television advertising financing become more and more dominated by those who stand to gain considerably from ever-increasing privatisation and deepening social inequality.
(2) I highly commend the research by Medically retired RAF medical veteran Mo Stewart into how the American Health Insurance giant Unum Provident/Unum pioneered the 'disability denial factory' regime of UK government disability benefit testing and became principal advisers to successive UK Governments in steering the corporate demolition of our welfare state, even while it was outlawed in several US states and nations.
(3) Lotto has long been 'a tax targeted at poor people', while community
centres have become more and more reliant on The Big Lottery Fund,
while they have become increasingly involved with 'data mining' on
behalf of the Big Lottery Fund.
American Academic Author, Community College Counsellor and Private Practitioner Left with > $114K medical debt to pay off after drunk driver incident
"You don't know what you've got till it's gone" — Joni Mitchell
As a disabled lifelong learner determined to make the most of my possibilities on a limited income and now a pensioner, I have a lot of decluttering to do. Thus last night I returned to a printout of publisher's information on a book, Moving through Life Transitions with Power and Purpose, 2nd Edition, by Cara DiMarco, Ph D of Lane Community College, Oregon, USA.
As can be seen from the above screen capture taken from Waterstone's Bookshops website, the book costs £42.49 — that's about 1/4 of my weekly State Pension in the UK (that is paid monthly), and a much more sizeable portion of a UK jobseeker's income. I had kept the original publisher's information from Pearson's for something like 20 years, as the very idea of the title inspired me, but not got into purchasing the book.
Yet with advances in home computer technology since I originally saved the Pearson publishing page as print-out and going through my decluttering, I looked up Cara DiMarco, Ph D on youtube last night and came across the video of a training session that I present above. In the videoed session, Cara DiMarco talks about student's capacities to rcover from 'developmental trauma' (relating to early socialisation, as I would describe it, family influences as she puts it), and 'shock trauma' (relating to later life incidents). She observes that the intakes of American Community College students, being largely for poorer students, generally have much greater levels of 'developmental trauma' than students at universities.
(Meanwhile, those rejected by the admissions system and/or those turned off by the prospect of student debt are presumably left to flounder.)
Yet she notes that Community College students probably have greater coping strategies than those who get turned down for places at Community Colleges, and humour in responding to students' distress helps them progress. None the less, I was struck by the nonchalance with which she stated in response to an audience member's question about what she meant by "Stop waiting for motivation"? that starts at about the 10 mins 16 secs mark of the 22 mins 50 secs video.
"Oh, yes, if you want the full chapter, from my third book, I could e-mail it to you; it's about three pages, it's not very much. But it's part of the example I explain in there is, I work a 15 hour day most days [as a hit-and-run driver] that didn't stop left me a million point three and medical debt and so I work a full-time faculty position and a nearly full time private practice in order to pay $3,000 a month on the medical debt which will be gone in 38 more months, which is, yes, there will be a party you're all invited and then I will sleep for two days...."
"So, I never feel like working a 15 hour day. I don't think many people do, even though I love my work and to get in exercise I get up at this time of year around 5am and go into the dark rainy cold Oregon weather and go for a run, and no part of me goes, 'The alarms can go up at 5am, I get to leave this warm bed and put on 10lb of rain gear and run with a miner's light on my head flopping around my neighoburhood and then come home and get ready for my and if that was the case I'd never work out right.' No part of me at the end of the evenening goes, 'It's going to be so good to floss my teeth and clean the cat box or ....'"
The recording was uploaded in January 2017 [the month of President Trump's inauguration], and I believe that it helps to set the backdrop to the extent of Covid-19 pandemic in the USA, as student debt and medical debt etc. can be regarded as forms of debt slavery.
In the UK, we still have some level of 'free at the point of delivery' health care, though that does not apply to social care. For further information on the erosion of our welfare state, I refer my readers to the website of medically retired RAF medical veteran Mo Stewart, Mo Stewart Research.
In 1982 the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called a
special Cabinet meeting to discuss the future demolition of the UK
welfare state. With cross-party agreement, every government since
Thatcher has worked towards that ultimate goal without the mandate of
the British people.
In 1992 the John Major Conservative administration invited the
American corporate giant UnumProvident Insurance to consult with the UK
government regarding future welfare claims management, for claimants of
long-term sickness and disability benefits.
By 1994 the company were
listed as official government advisers, and by 1999 UnumProvident
Insurance were identified in a Parliamentary debate as refusing to pay
income protection insurance policies to genuine claimants. Yet, this
American corporate giant’s influence with UK social security policies
helped to create the agenda for the future demolition of the welfare
state, with a 2005 official corporate document quoting Unum’s Chief
Medical Officer confirming that the future UK welfare reforms were ‘…to a large extent being driven by our thinking and that of our close associates ’.
There are unaccountable drunk-drivers, and there are ideologically driven governments.
For information on how things could be in terms of Basic Income, I refer my readers to the work of Prof. Guy Standing and Basic Income Earth Network:
The justification for basic income is ethical
In conclusion, I state here, that my insights as a disabled person combine with my drive to fulfil my potentials, in order to help create a more humane world.
To parody Phil Ochs' song 'What — and Who — are You Fighting For?' that was addressed to willing draftees to the Vietnam War, 'What are You Working For or Toward?' What is precious in our lives?
The following was originally published on February 5, 2004 in Camden New Journal (CNJ) under the heading 'Disabled are role models' — accompanied by an advert for disability-friendly adaptations! (The CNJ is a local 'freebie' newspaper and thus very dependent on advertising.)
Along those lines, I would argue that the dynamics and ergonomics in jobcentres changed drastically around 2003, imposing the presence of G4S security guards. I would ascribe that to a perversion of 'Scientific Management' and of the 'Hawthorne Effect'.
There was, of course, also the distortion of public perceptions via Government-funded advertising campaigns proclaiming a supposed 'need' for and existence of 'thousands of benefit fraud investigators', while Disability Employment Advisors amounted to a 'workforce' of 650 UK-wide, under-trained with frequent rule changes and an under-recorded high burnout rate.
Mo's research has been highly illuminating. Speaking out and researching from experience can help illuminate what is really happening and has happened, so that the electorate can make wiser decisions. Likewise for Kate Belgrave's research that focuses on post-2010 Government.
Alan Wheatley
Screen capture of original publication in Camden New Journal, accompanied by 'Elderly/Disabled Facilities' advert
Speaking out can be empowering and helps keep me going
Some readers might find your publication of Christine Brody’s letter, ‘Hobson’s choice for our disabled pupils’ (January 8) depressing reading. I didn’t. It helped to put me in mind of a network of human survival rather than a league-table of suffering.
In the year when the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act becomes fully law, her letter can be viewed as expert witness testimony to room for improvement; your publication of it an act of empowerment.
While I have heard that the amount of teacher-training time allocated to addressing ‘special needs’ issues is derisory, I draw attention to statutory under-provision of Disability Employment Advisors.
As a disabled job-seeker, I commended Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson Steve Webb’s denunciation of Alistair Darling’s 2001 call for Work Test interviews for claimants of Incapacity Allowance.
Further, I suggested a parliamentary question on provision of Disability Employment Advisors. (DEAs). That there are just 650 DEAs for the whole of the UK partially explains why the Acting DEA for Kentish Town Jobcentre has been based at Marylebone Jobcentre since October and burnout seems to be an occupational hazard among DEAs.
(Meanwhile, adverts on commercial radio celebrate the existence of “thousands of benefit fraud investigators,”)
A letter from Camden Financial Services dated January 12 and received January 18 urges me to re-apply for Housing Benefit asap. (My ‘entitlement’ expires of February 8, and the new form calls for ever more proofs of ‘entitlement’ to help prevent benefit fraud. My last housing benefit claim was made in October!)
Administrative stigmatisation coupled with mounting interest on 1997 graduation debt can be very dispiriting for the over-50s.
I commend Christine Brody’s aversion to ‘Maximising Disabilities’. Too often, news stories talk of a person’s life being ‘ruined’ by an incident that left them with an impairment. A more helpful focus would be the social construction of enablement.
Children and adults need a healthy self-concept in order to give of their best, and I would argue that a greater threat to society than ‘benefit fraud’ comes from the denial or diminution of disabled people’s potential to share their potential with the world around them.
I can be, and am, a role model, and that thought helps keep me going.
Alan Raymond Wheatley, BA in Interdisicplinary Studies (Major: Sociology) Writing in early 2004
A local Green Party colleague sent me pdf [Portable Document Format] e-copy of what Boris Johnson had written MPs today toward suspending UK Parliament.
Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p1
Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p2
My colleague noted,
see attached for his dreadful letter, which unsurprisingly fails to
mention climate change, inequality and child poverty in his list of
what needs to be done (add your own 'burning injustice)
I responded:
I don't generally get around to read BoJo's literary output, and now I feel more justified in that omission.
Re Bojo's "bold new agenda," I guess that with Gove as Brexit Secretary, Gove's back story as Education Secretary
gives us a foretaste of how being more Trump-trade deal friendly might fit in with such a 'bold agenda'.
Beyond
that, I append text from my reply to someone's rather misinformed
reference to Blair's welfare reforms being worse than his Tory
predecessors got up to.
Best Wishes
Alan
[Someone wrote]
----extract starts----
i know the torys have taken things to extremes but it was labour that
started the welfare reforms and a lot of the people are still there in
the background
----extract ends----
"The
people still there in the background" include senior Civil Servants,
ex-Civil Servants, and a continuum of Government ministers and
opposition spokespersons, as can be deduced from this article outlining
the research of a medically retired RAF veteran, Mo Stewart.
the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
on 15th September 2016
A string of activists,
academics, politicians and journalists have welcomed the publication of a
new book by a disabled researcher which exposes how successive
governments have planned the “demolition of the welfare state”.
Mo
Stewart has spent eight years researching the influence of the US
insurance giant Unum over successive UK governments, and how it led to
the introduction of the “totally bogus” work capability assessment
(WCA), which she says was designed to make it harder for sick and
disabled people to claim out-of-work disability benefits.
Stewart’s
book, Cash Not Care: The Planned Demolition Of The UK Welfare State,
published this week, argues that the assessment was modelled on methods
used by Unum to deny protection to sick and disabled people in the US
who had taken out income protection policies.
She
says in her book that the WCA was “designed to remove as many as
possible from access to [employment and support allowance] on route to
the demolition of the welfare state”, with out-of-work disability
benefits eventually to be replaced by insurance policies provided by
companies like Unum.
She warns that the UK is now close to adopting that kind of US-style model.
Stewart
is a former healthcare professional and a female veteran and
self-funded her six years of research, which has been repeatedly
referenced in parliamentary debates, and has been highlighted by Disability News Service (DNS) for nearly five years.
She
describes in her book how Peter Lilley, secretary of state for social
security in John Major’s Conservative government, hired senior Unum
executive John LoCascio to advise the UK government on how to cut the
number of claimants of long-term sickness benefits.....
----extract ends----
Further
on there having been a continuum of Tory and Labour politicians
involved in the corporate demolition of the welfare state, the changed
'descriptors' for disability benefit assessment tests that the Tories
piloted in 2011 had actually been signed off by Yvette Cooper as DWP
Secretary in April 2010, as this article shows:
Even harsher new ESA Medical approved''(warning very bad news inc)
Even Harsher New ESA Medical Approved Tens of thousands of claimants facing losing their benefit on review, or o...
Yvette
Cooper is the kind of Labour MP who would come more to the fore again
if Labour right wing MPs managed to oust Jeremy Corbyn as that Party's
Leader.
