“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

(Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter)

Well, I doubt that it’s much of a secret. I know that many of my fellow bloggers know who I am. Indeed, I’m told that many worked it out easily, but were too polite to say so. After all, how many female academic lawyers are there in Melbourne who are simultaneously obsessed by property law, restitution and the Talmud? At least two of my former students guessed it! (*waves to former students*) So here I am, Katy Barnett, a.k.a. “Legal Eagle”: lawyer, blogger, mother, almost-Dr-Katy.

Why have I chosen to come out now? The answer is threefold. First, there’s no real point in keeping one’s identity secret if most people know it. Secondly, it looks like I have ongoing employment in the bag at last (hurrah!) Thirdly, I will be appearing on SBS’s Insight program in early August in an episode about “Climate Sceptics”, so I thought I’d better come out prior to that point.

I was pseudonymous in the first place because I was still on maternity leave from my firm. In fact, my first blog, The Legal Soapbox, started out as a record of my thoughts on law firms and the problems with the law. I think it had a grand total of about 5 readers, two of whom were my mother and my sister. One day I rang my sister with excitement. I’d had two comments from people with different names. “Umm,” said my sister with some embarrassment, “that was actually me under two different pseudonyms.” It seems quite astounding to think how the blog has grown in four years.

I kept the pseudonym after I resigned from my firm because I only had sessional lecturing work with the university. It probably would have been fine to “come out”, but hey, I’m a lawyer, so I’m neurotic.

In addition, I was worried that students might find the blog and feel constrained by my political or legal beliefs (as I described on this post on lecturing and ideology). Note to students: I definitely do not want you to parrot back my beliefs to me. I welcome political views which are very different from my own (which is why I blog with two women who challenge my views constantly). I encourage students to take a different approach to the law than my own if they wish to do so. Within reason, I don’t mind what a student believes; I judge a student on how convincingly he or she justifies that belief, and how much the student is prepared to enter into a dialogue about that belief. It doesn’t matter to me whether a student favours equitable interests in Torrens or whether she thinks all unregistered interests should not be allowed, as long as she explains why.

I’ve always written as if I were writing under my real name. I don’t ever want to write something that I am ashamed to acknowledge as my own. Still, it’s a relief to “come out” and be me.

This is going to be a longer and much sharper post than I had originally intended. What first came to mind was an open letter to the new Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, pointing out a simple £50 million cost saving to the welfare bill, but then yesterday the new coalition government handed down its emergency budget [PDF] to tackle the massive deficit facing the UK.

Underpinning the Goverment’s approach is a commitment to fairness. The Government will ensure that every part of society makes a contribution to deficit reduction while supporting the most vulnerable, including children and pensioners. The Government will also seek to build over the long term a fair tax and benefit system that rewards work and promotes economic competitiveness.

Unfortunately in their attempt at “fairness” the government has ensured that 1.25 million people with disabilities, generally considered one of the most vulnerable groups in society, is set to be hit twice as hard as anyone else.

As with my previous posts on Welfare in the UK, I’ll begin with a declaration of interest. I am one of those 1.25 million who stand to be particularly disadvantaged by the new Conservative/LibDem coalition economic policies. Please forgive my frankness about my financial situation, but as most of our readership tend to be employed professionals it will help to explain why the current choices will actually raise welfare costs rather than reducing them. As someone on benefits my right to privacy is generally considered moot anyway.

I have peripheral nerve damage with symptoms that prevent me from working. Because I was employed for several years prior to becoming disabled I was eligible for taxable Incapacity Benefit to replace my income up to £91.40 a week. Due to the limits of my disability this was not considered “what the law says you need to live” and disability premiums meant I qualified for additional means-tested Income Support up to a total of £147 per week. This is higher than the basic rate of Jobseekers Allowance (£65.45 per week) due to the added living costs related to travel and personal care, but is slightly lower than the minimum wage. It meant submitting extensive medical evidence from my Neurologist and GP together with satisfying a Work Capability Assessment in order to qualify. For several years I was then required to submit evidence of my continuing incapacity (using form IB50) on an annual basis. I simultaneously qualified for Disability Living Allowance at the Higher Rate of Mobility and Middle Rate of Care, money meant specifically to meet the additional costs of disability – for example, buying a car or wheelchair (mobility scooter in my case) for those who are virtually unable to walk or pay for assistance with personal care such as meals or help with laundry. After several years of reapplying on an annual basis (requiring the completion of 60 pages of intrusive personal detail each time) AND failing the medical first time around, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) eventually accepted that my physical problems can only get worse and made the DLA award permanent.

That was then, this is now.

One of the first acts of the coalition after the general election was the announcement that they intended to continue with the abolition of Incapacity Benefit, begun by the previous Labour administration. Eighteen months ago, new claimants began to apply for the Employment and Support Allowance, targeted to those with disabilities and long-term health problems and paid at two levels. The Support Group are accepted as being unable to work and receive a means-tested income indefinitely. Those placed in the Employment Group are thought capable of rehabilitation to employment within 2-5 years so they receive a lower income and are subject to compulsory workfare and ‘support’ programs. Eligibility is currently determined by a new, far stricter Work Capability Assessment and cursory “medical assessments” conducted by the private company ATOS, which has resulted in huge numbers of appeals of which 40% are successful. The new government has already vowed to accelerate the process of forcibly migrating existing recipients of IB across to ESA (or Jobseekers Allowance) from October this year. There are presently 2.65 million people in receipt of IB and even if the appeals rate only equals that of new applicants, and appeal times remain in the six-month range, the entire system is liable to collapse.

For me, the move from Incapacity Benefit/Income Support to even the highest earning Support Group for ESA means reducing my income by £28 a week, plus I’ll get hit with the consumption tax (VAT) rise to 20% on most of my living costs. The DWP will need to calculate very carefully how much of this potential £3.5 billion saving will actually survive once appeals are added to the budget for administration costs. (And believe me, I DO expect to appeal.)

My cheat to saving £50 million pounds (and possibly the system) comes from DWP research that shows there are 1.25 million people just like me who currently receive Incapacity Benefit AND Disability Living Allowance. This is significant because the Work Capability Assessment used for the various health-based benefits has pretty universal parameters that assess claimants ability to walk, sit, lift and rise etc. to a standard points system.

Even with the significantly tougher WCA standards required by ESA, people who now receive the Higher Rate Mobility and either Higher or Middle Rate Care components of DLA should still qualify. All have had to submit extensive medical proofs of their condition from both personal GPs and specialist consultants, most have to reapply or submit proof of continuing disability on a regular basis, and since the early 90′s many have already been subject to a medical assessment by the same company now responsible for ESA examinations, ie. ATOS. Simply accepting that those in receipt of DLA have sufficiently proven their medical status and transferring them to ESA would save at least £50 million pounds. This is achieved by multiplying the £40 ATOS pays its ‘medical professionals’ for each assessment by the 1.25 million people who are already receiving DLA on top of Incapacity Benefit. Savings would obviously be much greater than this given the difference between what ATOS actually charges the DWP per assessment and what they pay the doctors, nurses, midwives and physiotherapists currently doing the interviews (no vets as yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time). Not to mention the significant reduction in appeals that would result, even if the auto-migration was only to the Employment group of ESA.

That seemed a pretty easy £50 million to me, and a neat solution to the administrative nightmare and potential cost blow-out that haunts the promised migration process.

I decided to reserve my post until the emergency budget was announced in case a similar thought had already occurred to our cash-strapped government. Instead we got THIS:

From 2013, those seeking disability living allowance (DLA) will have to go through a strict new medical assessment to help “reduce dependency and promote work”, with many current claimants set to lose out under the new regime.

The benefit will not be reduced but the government estimates the move will save £1.4bn by 2015, suggesting many of those seeking support will be turned away.

Some 2.9 million people are currently eligible for DLA, three times as many as when it was introduced eighteen years ago, chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne said while delivering today’s budget, at a cost that had quadrupled in real terms to over £11bn. The medical assessment would be a simpler process than the “complex forms” claimants must fill in at present and would allow those with the greatest needs to continue receiving the benefit, while “significantly improving incentives to work for others”.

That’s right. Having put the 2.65 million people who receive Incapacity Benefit through this particular wringer once, the 1.25 million of us also receiving DLA get to do it all over again in 2013 which is when the ESA migration is meant to be completed. Like a guess as to who gets the contract?

No, actually I DON’T think that is fair. “Grandfathering” those of us still on IB and allowing a million of us to age out of the benefit naturally over the next decade would be fair. Reducing my income by £28 a week is NOT particularly fair but I accept it as my contribution towards reducing the economic deficit. Forcing me to jump through the ATOS hoops twice is not only incredibly UNfair but extremely expensive. Surely an honest admission that we can’t afford the bills and a 15% cut in everyone’s benefits would be a far cheaper route to large scale savings?

This retroactive redefinition of disability by the DWP has already proven to be a raving nightmare. The ATOS medical interviews have been the subject of widespread criticism over the questionable accuracy of a 20 minute “assessment” that consists of ticking boxes on a computer program with at most a cursory physical examination, taken without reference to the medical documentation from the patient’s own doctors. The first year’s statistics as of April 2010 show that only 5% of new applicants have been qualifying for the Support group, and only 13% are accepted into the Employment group. As the professor who helped design the system has pointed out, at least 39% of all those claiming have been dumped straight onto Jobseekers Allowance without access to the specialist support programs they’re likely to need in order to facilitate a return to work. 8,000 appeals are already being heard every month, each requiring the assistance of voluntary sector organizations who specialise in Welfare Rights such as Citizens Advice Bureaux. Continuing this process is going to hammer the unemployment figures as well as raising costs, especially as existing IB claimants have effectively been ‘shortlisted’, possess well proven health conditions and are experienced at both applying and appealing. We’ll be a lot harder to discourage than the quarter of newbies who presently abandon their application mid-process.

There are big scary alarms flashing for me just at the budget wording itself:

Disability Living Allowance
1.103 The Government will reform the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to ensure support is targeted on those with the highest medical need. The Government will introduce the use of objective medical assessments for all DLA claimants from 2013-14 to ensure payments are only made for as long as a claimant needs them.

MEDICAL need. Hmm. Is needing to eat but being unable to cook a meal for oneself a “medical” need? Perhaps not, given that help with housekeeping already isn’t covered by DLA even if the reason you can’t do the housework is a physical disability. If cleaning isn’t considered a “special” cost of disability will eating continue to be? Does my indefinite award of DLA now end in 2013? Having to reapply every year or two isn’t going to alter my permanent nerve damage, and has anyone in government considered what this will do to the viability of the Motability Scheme that provides finance for those on the Higher Mobility rate of DLA to buy wheelchairs or lease cars? With the financial crisis, easy credit isn’t exactly widely available to those living on welfare.

Local councils have already restricted their definition of “personal care” to bathing, laundry, heating up food and a light tidy in order to reduce their social care budgets. Does this announcement simply foreshadow the resurrection of Labour’s discredited plans to abolish DLA and divert the money directly to councils?

The benefits bureaucracy is so complex that it seems deliberately designed to make it impossible for an individual to negotiate independently. (If the DWP is seeking third-party assurance that I’m actually disabled this is not a cost effective way of going about it.) A “medical need” certainly doesn’t sound like one that can or ought to be defined by people with disabilities themselves. In my experience the use of “medical need” is deliberately used to minimise the support afforded to disabled people. When unable to walk the “medical need” is for a manual wheelchair. Even if a powerchair would significantly increase the disabled person’s independence and employability (thus reducing social care costs) they’ll have to pay for it on their own dime. Given this kind of policy direction, deciding that individuals are less capable of designing and paying for their own care package than suitable professionals from the local council doesn’t seem so much of a leap.

And as for those “objective medical assessments”? A BBC Scotland investigation “Who’s Cheating Who?” recently interviewed Vikki Bell, a former DWP benefits advisor whose ATOS workplace medical determined that she was too sick to continue working for the department. Three weeks later her claim for ESA was rejected at another ATOS medical that decided she had no health problems at all!

Bureaucracy costs. Tax Credits could be discarded entirely (at a saving of £23.7 billion) by raising the personal tax threshold immediately to £10,000 a year rather than the derisory £1000 increase to £7475 – £170 a year for basic rate taxpayers – that we’ve been offered in this budget. Migrating disabled people directly onto ESA based on their DLA qualifications saves another £50 million. Both are fair on the poorest in society – unlike what the coalition’s current proposals have in store for people with disabilities.

Like me.

===

My original comfort book, of course, was Lord of the Rings, which I have read many, many times. I’m not sure how many. At least 50 times, if not more. I have difficulty reading it too often these days because I almost know it off by heart. I tend to find genre writing comforting, too. Detective novels, science fiction and fantasy are my favourite three genres. The comforting aspect is that authors must follow certain lineaments; the interesting aspect is how authors choose to invert or subvert the genre without ruining the novel. I think the other comforting thing about genre writing is that there is often some kind of a resolution: the murderer is unmasked, good triumphs over evil, the Empire falls, and there’s usually some romance which coalesces as the book continues too.

My sister and I have “comfort films” too. Among my personal favourites are the original Star Wars trilogy, The Princess Bride, the Indiana Jones series and Moonstruck. I’m afraid that I know certain chunks of these films off by heart, and sometimes I might even drop a quote into conversation expecting others to know the references (eg. Those were the droids you were looking for), but then sadly I find that other people are just not as nerdy as I am. Or that I’m getting old, and youngsters these days just don’t get the references. Sigh.

So – do you have comfort books or movies which you like to watch whenever you feel down or stressed or just like being perked up? If so, what are they? And why do you like them so much?

One thing I have really enjoyed since I’ve had my son is being reminded of  great things about blokes. Sometimes male figures in popular culture seem to encapsulate the negative aspects of masculinity (think of Sam Newman, for example – sexist, disrespectful of women, braying).

My son can be very gentle. He really loves babies and animals. He met a friend’s baby for the first time today and told her she was “lubbly” (lovely).

Yet he is fundamentally different to his sister. For one thing, he has an obsession with wheeled and motored things which has never been matched by his sister. (An acquaintance called this tendency the “wheel gene”). This morning my son saw the garbage truck unload our rubbish bin. You would think all of his Christmases had come at once. He stood at the living room window and shouted, “WOW! Truck-garba!” (garbage truck). He is constantly observing planes, diggers, trucks, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and lawnmowers.

My son also likes to take things apart and to tinker with them. If he can’t work out how the thing works, he bangs it on the floor or on the wall. He loves bats and balls. When he burps, he smiles hugely and says proudly “BURP!” (just in case we missed it). Unlike his fastidious sister, he has no problem with being totally filthy, and will quite happily roll in mud. He’s direct and very physical. Sometimes the latter is hard to deal with – he’s very strong – and restraining him to take off his nappy is challenging.

Nonetheless, my boy is in touch with his feminine side – he has a penchant for his sister’s My Little Ponies ™ – and the pinker and more glittery they are the better. I bought him an orange one, but it really didn’t cut the mustard and he still attempts to get Princess Pinkie Pie when she’s left within reach. (Believe me, that will come out at his 21st.)

Of course, the stereotype of masculinity is a generalisation, but sometimes boys will be boys. And there’s a lot to celebrate about masculinity. It’s not all negative.

ANZAC day is about remembrance. It is about remembering those who died fighting under the Australian flag, and those who were wounded. It is also about honouring those who came back safely, and saying that we appreciate their sacrifice. While we may be able to see with hindsight that a particular war was not a good idea, or was motivated by improper political motives, this does not mean we should dishonour the people who fought and died in them. Part of the message of ANZAC day is that war is a terrible thing. Certainly, my forebears seemed to have been indelibly scarred by it.

ANZAC day tells us that we wish for peace in all areas of the world where war rages. …

Anyway, this ANZAC Day, my ire has been raised by Catherine Deveny and her inane twitters on the subject. To wit:

I came across Deveny’s twitter via Pavlov Cat’s piece at Still Life With Cat. Black Dog also has a great response to Deveny. Go read both posts, they are very well written. They say it better than I can. But I will say a little bit.

Of course some people enlisted because they wanted adventure, or because they wanted to be a hero. That’s the kind of thing which is attractive to idealistic young lads and lasses, and that’s part of the tragedy of it – they wanted adventure; many got death, injury and horror instead.

I understand on one level where Deveny is coming from. She’s having a knee-jerk reaction against the popular media coverage which portrays the ANZACs as unalloyed heroes. So instead, she reacts against this by saying the opposite: that the ANZACs are racist, homophobic and misogynist, as well as rapists and bullies. It’s trite and ill thought out. Like much of Deveny’s writing, it attempts to be iconoclastic and witty, but it fails miserably and ends up being offensive.

Just because the ANZACs fought in a war doesn’t mean that they were bad people. Not every ANZAC was a hero, but not every ANZAC was a monster either. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of them were just ordinary people, with normal foibles and flaws. That is precisely one of the sorrows of war – decent ordinary people go and kill other decent ordinary people.

On a day like this, we should not glorify war. We should stop and think about the horror that war wreaks. It doesn’t just result in physical injury and death, but it leaves mental scars which continue on for a long time afterwards, in individual and collective psyches. Ordinary, decent people die because of war, they are injured or suffer for long afterwards. It’s something we want to avoid, if we can. But nor should we just forget war, or insult those who fought, died, or were injured in wars.

For some reason, red hair is something people love to talk about. On my old blog, only a few posts still get comments – and they’re all on the subject of ginger hair.

Personally, I love red hair. I think it’s beautiful. I’ve always wanted hair the colour of my daughter’s hair. My grandmother had long auburn hair as a girl, and her hair has still mostly kept its colour even now. I hope mine is the same.

Anyway, Vicroads in my home state of Victoria has raised a furore by an ad which makes fun of people with ginger hair:

[It's a bit of a failure from my point of view - if the premise of the ad were true, from a personal perspective, I'd hope more people use their mobile phones while driving...!]

For some reason, advertising people seem to think that it’s funny to make jokes about red hair (I’ve noted ads insulting red headed people before). Why is it that people feel like they can freely abuse people with red hair? They wouldn’t abuse someone with dark skin these days (and thank goodness for that).

I think I’ll leave the last word to Australian comic Tim Minchin. (We were supposed to see him a few weeks ago, but unfortunately that was the week we all came down with gastro). Please do watch this sketch, it’s one million billion trillion times funnier than the Vicroads ad. And remember Minchin’s message – “Only a ginger…”

Update:

Apparently there have been complaints to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and the Advertising Standards Bureau about the ads, which really doesn’t surprise me.

Human Rights Commissioner Helen Szoke said more than a dozen people had also complained to the commission because they were distressed at the portrayal of redheads.

”They are particularly concerned that the ads might encourage further bullying of people who are singled out because of the colour of their hair,” she said.

”It would be very unfortunate if an initiative designed to change irresponsible behaviour on the roads had the effect of encouraging bullying.”

Thank you, Ms Szoke, my thoughts exactly.

The ads are reportedly the brainchild of Dan Ilic, who is a presenter on ABC’s Hungry Beast. I’ve only ever watched Hungry Beast a couple of times, but had to turn it off after about 10 minutes on each occasion. It’s a really weird mix of mocking satire and serious stuff. Personally I found it so unfunny my teeth hurt. Just like the ads, really.

The beach plays such an important role in my childhood memories. My parents are both Sydneysiders, and we used to visit their childhood holiday venues. We would go camping with my grandparents near Nowra, south of Sydney, or visit my great-aunt’s holiday house, north of Sydney.

I love the soft susurration of the waves on the shore. In the morning, there is the ritual of getting “creamed up”, until face and limbs are sticky with sunscreen. Of course this is particularly important for my pale skinned family.

Swimming in the sea is so different to swimming in a pool, as well. A few years back, my sister and I were watching some poor American tourists swimming at the beach at Port Douglas. They kept getting smacked in the face by waves, or waves would break on top of their heads. We weren’t sure whether they would get offended if we told them to turn side on to the oncoming waves, and to duck under the big breakers. I guess we’ve been swimming in the sea since we were small, so such things are second nature. My father and grandfather taught us how to body-surf, and later my sister and I got boogie boards.

When you are catching a wave, there is a delicious anticipation. You watch the swells building, and try to get into the right place at the right time. It’s a fantastic feeling when you catch a wave; like riding a roller coaster. It’s not so good if you get caught in a “dumper” which pushes you down into the sand. Sometimes the wind would blow the stingers or bluebottles in. Then you had to take care.

We also loved exploring the rock pools. We’d find shells of all sizes and kinds, crabs, seaweed, starfish, cunjivoi, sea anenomes. We loved to shoot the “popper seaweed” at one another (really an algae called Neptune’s Necklace). We could spend hours pottering around the rockpools, making new discoveries even in places which had been well explored before. Sometimes we found fossils in the rocks too. I’ve still got a number in a box at my parents’ house.

My father and grandfather loved to go fishing for blackfish. One year we were watching Dad and Grandpa fish and they were cheerfully waving at us. Suddenly, they started to run quickly in to shore, with bags of live fish strapped to their ankles. A very large shark had just gone by, and given the bags of fish a considering look, and neither man felt like chancing it. Sometimes we’d fish ourselves. One year I developed a qualm about killing fish. My grandfather asked, “But will you still eat fish for dinner?” Of course I did.

Grandpa did manage to put me off oysters, however. I must have been about 8 or 9 when he cut an oyster off the rocks for me to eat. After I’d gingerly swallowed it, he said conversationally, “Did you know that oysters are one of the only animals we eat when they’re still alive?” That was it for me. I ran off to throw up, and have never really liked oysters since.

One year there were many rabbits, and accordingly, the number of small boobook owls grew exponentially. Every time you went out after dark, you could see yellow owl eyes watching you (often with heads turned backwards).

There were also other families who regularly visited the same holiday spots. We’d run around in a large gaggle. These children were the children of my parents’ childhood friends. There were three generations at the camping ground: my grandparents’ generation, my parents’ generation and the kids. Usually the one time we’d all unite was on New Years’ Eve.

One time the kids put on a “play” for the adults. One year some of us had a craze on role playing games (the only character whose name I can remember is Sagard the Barbarian). Another year, the craze was a card game called Warlords and Scumbums.

These times were idyllic. When I was 19 and had to decide whether to come back to Australia or stay in the UK for university, I am sure that my beach holiday memories were highly influential in my decision to return to Australia. The beaches in England just hadn’t been the same, even the pretty ones down in Cornwall and Devon.

I’m so glad that now I can share the beach with my kids. I hope their memories will be as good as mine were.

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

From the BBC News website.

Exam marking is a gruelling process. For one thing, I need to be able to decipher 100 different sets of handwriting. I have had a few exams which literally take me over an hour to mark because I have decipher each word. I really do not know how some people read their own handwriting. Then there’s the frustration of seeing students make the same mistake over and over. It’s particularly disheartening when you’ve told your students not to do a particular thing and they do it nonetheless. You start to wonder sadly whether anyone listened to anything you said. At least I’m not lecturing this year so I haven’t had to suffer that feeling. When I get a good exam paper, I’m so pleased and excited. I put ticks all over it and and write Excellent repeatedly. And occasionally I come across some corking statements (intentionally or unintentionally funny? – sometimes it’s hard to tell).

Anyway, Dave sent me this interesting post from PrawfsBlawg about whether law exam marking is best approached as a marathon or a sprint. The author of the post marks exams as quickly as possible. Personally, I can’t do the sprint. If I do too many papers in a row, I find that I get really jaded and can’t concentrate. So I have to take a break every 4 – 5 papers.

Luckily my two tiny tots force me to take a break. Eaglet No. 2 is walking around now, and has taken to dropping things into the toilet bowl if I’m not careful. Nothing will break your concentration quite like Eaglet No. 1 calling out in horror, “MUMMY! He’s dropped his dummy into the toilet!”

It’s sometimes painful, always inconvenient and inclined to bite gaping holes out of your self esteem. Most people are pretty reliable: they get up in the morning, go to work or school during the week and kick back on the weekends doing activities they enjoy once the daily maintenance tasks (literal and financial housekeeping etc) are complete. However once you are disabled, you are no longer ‘most people’.

Supposedly the most damaging aspect of Disability is isolation. Sometimes this is physical – when a disability limits your ability to get out of the house; other times it is social – when you are so busy meeting the additional needs of your condition/illness/injury that there simply isn’t time or energy left to maintain relationships properly.

As a society we are at least beyond the stage of say the 1930s where those with disabilities were considered “socially dead” and restricted to a role of utter dependency and silence by the conviction that physical handicap was somehow a sign of intellectual damage.

What I’ve personally found most isolating about being disabled has been the change from working full-time to relying on benefits. As a benefits claimant I’m “politically dead” and restricted to a role of utter dependency and silence by the conviction that the source of my income is somehow a sign of moral damage. Once you rely on welfare you’re no longer ‘most people’.

IF I’M A WELFARE QUEEN, WHERE’S MY CROWN

Thanks to SL I had unprecedented access to a senior politican last week. Vicariously of course, but then these days most of what I consider my “life” is experienced vicariously, either online or through friends. You’ve read her piece David Cameron Visits Brasenose? Well that was MY question she was kind enough to ask.

I though it was important to ask because the question itself reminds policy promoters that their rhetoric effects real people. The idea that people commonly fake illness or injury to go “on the sick” isn’t in itself new, I ran into it personally ten years ago as my mobility declined and I started my grand tour of neurologists: my landlady decided that I was too young to be really disabled and evicted me. Unfortunately this story has been used deliberately as a tool to silence criticism of the welfare reforms forced through over the last two years, particularly the abolition of Incapacity Benefit.

It’s hardly coincidence that the government has been rolling out a massive national advertising campaign against benefit fraud during the same period. The BBC’s “Saints and Scroungers” series which followed the work of fraud investigation departments – three convictions an episode for thirteen episodes – simply offered a new placement for the same government advertising. So much for editorial independence.

Now you wont find me defending dishonesty or denying that benefit fraud exists, what I will question however is the differing treatment people receive and assumptions made about their character based on the source of their income. The creepy 1984-style “we’re closing in” adverts made a point of emphasizing the surveillance powers available to both local authorities and the DWP. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act that gives them the right to covertly follow and photograph suspects and commandeer their banking and utility records, was passed into law with barely a whimper in 2000 as an anti-fraud/anti-terror measure. It only aroused popular criticism when the same powers were used against parents gaming the “catchment area” system for school admission.

If it is acceptable and desirable to use this level of surveillance in the fight against benefit fraud why aren’t these powers available to the Inland Revenue when investigating tax fraud? Why is self-assessment considered an acceptable basis for a tax return but an unforgivable invitation to fraud when the application is for a disability-related benefit?

MORAL HAZARD IS FOR POOR PEOPLE

This double standard isn’t imaginary, though it doesn’t tend to get much coverage beyond left leaning publications like The Guardian .

Research earlier this year conducted by the Fabian Society and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked people to estimate the social cost of benefit fraud relative to that of tax evasion – and their answers misfired by an order of magnitude that was laughable.

The majority thought benefit cheats cost more than tax evaders; in fact benefit fraud is estimated by the Department for Work and Pensions to cost £800m a year, while personal tax avoidance was thought to be running at £13bn.

This misconception is more troubling than assumptions about middle-class honesty: if the taxpayer is thought to be broadly honest, while society’s net recipients are all crooks, then clearly that will have an impact on our readiness to pay tax and support even the most modest redistribution.

It’s hard to argue that fraud is only a minor problem when the latest DWP estimates for 2008/09 suggest that £3 billion of total benefit expenditure was overpaid due to a combination of fraud and error… unless you also notice that this constitutes only 2.2% of the overall benefit bill. [The fraud estimate for Incapacity Benefit in isolation is only 3.5% - the lowest of all the continuously monitored benefits - while Pension Credit is put at 5.1%. No mass public condemnation of rorting wrinklies seems imminent but perhaps they’re saving that for when the pensions crisis really bites.]

Not that the Guardian hasn’t joined most of the press in drawing a very long bow over the applicant failure rates for the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA) – now replacing Incapacity Benefit – in the course of its first year. Despite their Society section having one of the best articles describing the intricacies and contradictions of the new medical assessments, it didn’t stop political editor Patrick Wintour attempting to apply ESA failure rates to migrating IB claimants without considering IB failure rates …

More than two-thirds of applicants for a new sickness-related benefit are failing in their claims, suggesting many of the 2.6 million existing incapacity benefit claimants will be forced on to a lower level of benefit when they are assessed over the next two to three years…

Overall, the research found only 5% of those seeking ESA were thought totally incapable of being ready for work and so entitled to the full benefit of £108.55. A further 11%, thought potentially capable of work, were put on a rate of £89.80 a week, and were expected to co-operate with efforts to ready themselves for work. A third of the initial claimants dropped out before completing the claim, and a further third were seen as fit for work.

… but at least the broadsheets acknowledged that the whole definition of “fit to work” had been changed. At the tabloid end of the spectrum, editors were a bit clearer about the message these results sent to them..

75% ON SICK BENEFITS ARE FAKING
LABOUR’S failure to crack down on scroungers has let three-quarters of incapacity benefit claimants get away with faking their illnesses.
- Daily Express

Just one in six incapacity benefit claimants ‘is genuine’ as tough new test reveals TWO MILLION could be cheating
- Daily Mail

HEAD, MEET DESK

At the time ESA was launched I wondered why the government was needlessly duplicating the cost of privatized medical assessment in setting up a whole new benefit when they could have simply used the receipt of Disability Living Allowance to determine whether an IB claimant was genuine or not (DLA has had privatised medical inspections for over a decade and is paid alongside most income benefits to meet the additional costs of care and/or transport incurred when you’re disabled.)

Even if the numbers were still too high they could restrict eligibility further by dropping out those who only received the lower-rates of the two components… but that would have been validation of one of the benefits it has since turned out they were also planning to scrap (a fact not openly admitted until ministers changed their minds).

Though impressed by some of the Conservative moves towards openness about their priorities, I find Mr Cameron’s agreement that politicians need to be more careful with their statements to be somewhat disingenuous. Politicans are very careful with their statements. These are carefully scripted by an army of special advisors… take this choice nugget from Theresa May, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The Government needs to get to grips with Britain’s benefit culture and radically reform our welfare system. It’s hardly surprising that so many people spend their lives on benefits when in some cases they can get as much money from benefits as many people earn in work. Things really have to change.

Hard to argue with that one as most people would agree that people who work should end up with more money than people who don’t, but the solution is left carefully unstated.

The Right hear, “The unworthy poor are receiving too much money. Cut their benefits!”

Libertarians hear, “Low income earners are paying tax too early. Raise the personal threshold over £10,000!”

The Old Left hear, “The minimum wage is too low. Raise it with new legislation!”

The New Left hear, “The minimum wage is too low. Raise it by restricting low skilled immigration!”

This is why you hear so much about the problems and so little about the solutions when parties are campaigning. The problem alienates no-one whereas the choice of solution may.

I’M THE KIND OF POOR ALFRED DOOLITTLE WARNED YOU ABOUT

The Conservatives recently published a cheeky little league table that “ranks constituencies according to the proportion of working-age adults receiving incapacity, lone parent or jobseeker benefit”. 189 of the 200 seats with highest rates of adults on benefits for being incapacitated, unemployed or single-parents are held by labour, only 4 by the conservatives. It was accompanied by the Theresa May soundbite I’ve just mentioned. Though the right wing press cheerfully pounced on the idea that Labour was in power thanks to the “Welfare Vote”, actual Conservative statements seem to have left this very carefully unmentioned.

Here’s a tip: if you genuinely think a particular selection of the electorate has control of a particular seat, it might be a good idea to not insult them during the runup to a general election. If not, then you have no right to use the association with them as a smear against your political rivals. This ‘nod and a wink’ politics is extremely annoying. A smear inferred is no less a smear, particularly if not especially, when it’s against you as a person.

If Mr Cameron really believes that there is a “welfare vote”, then how about publicly acknowledging the electoral significance of that section of the British electorate in receipt of State Benefits in a positive way? After the party conference rhetoric where Tories claimed to be the “party of the poor” I’d rather hoped this would be the new direction they were taking but that might be the residual middle-class expectation of fairness showing.

I receive benefits because I can’t work full-time not because I lack the education, intelligence or skills I had when working full-time as a journalist (though sure, the ability to walk and remain upright is pretty much a goner at this stage). I may be overweight and live in social housing but the accent is unmistakeable.

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IS A BITCH AND SO AM I

SL always says that her “libertarian exception” is compulsory voting. Having grown up in Australia she has decided that it discourages politicians from demonising any particular minority group by making them pay at the ballot box and that it is unfortunate this mechanism isn’t available in the UK. But Britain got rid of Census Suffrage and the property qualification in 1918 for men and 1928 for women, so I’d like to end my post with this timely reminder for Mr Cameron and other politicians of whatever party.

We listen.
We remember.
We vote.