Thank you for your recent letter and questionnaire regarding the
Government’s New Deal Programme: I should certainly like to take the
opportunity to try and answer some of the points raised in some depth.
The first point I should like to make is that just because the Government has
found it an easy matter over the last four or five years to make up some
agreeable slogans about the question of unemployment and spend money on some
training schemes of questionable value this does not alter the fact that the
very same individuals have plagued myself, and no doubt many others with
completely contrary policies and slogans for the previous fifteen.
I was about fifteen years of age when I first ran across the recently
deceased Member of Parliament for the Borough of Ipswich. I was subjected to much and
many requests and assurances: in general that the state was able to look after
my health, housing well being and that in principle the drive to strip the welfare
state of much of it’s 1970’s magnitude was wrong and should be resisted to the
bitter end etc. I was even persuaded to concur with the resurgent CND campaigns
of the early ‘80’s, a move which was rapidly discarded by the high minded career
politicians who make and break the kind of policies that have resulted in the
‘New Deal.’
The following summer I was refused entry to a 6th form ‘A’ level course
despite having made the minimum entry requirement and having been given no
indication that anything else was required. The ostensible reason for this at
the time was that I had no family to support me in these endeavours and could
not afford to, therefore I should seek work.
I don’t really want to go into the background to all this but the point is
that I was without friendly support of almost any kind and that such relatives
as I had were either almost as impotent as I was at the time, or what it has
become fashionable to term dysfunctional, or both; the point here is really to clarify
what the intention(s) of new Deal actually are. If the intention is to, ‘get
people back to work’ a phrase which the Prime Minister is increasingly fond of.
it is an immediate and irresistible observation that I never have had a Job as
such and that if his colleagues, fellow party members and office holders had not
complained so bitterly about the Thatcher government and its’ policies that they
have now aped and adopted with such electoral effectiveness, and incited so many
to not co-operate with it that this would almost certainly not have been the
case.
If we put a more general interpretation on the intentions of New Deal as
being meant to target the least able, (as presumably those unemployed for more
than three years are considered) for training that would normally cost money
with the intention of giving them some advantage in the labour market then it
has, in this case failed particularly badly and seems only to exist to keep
people in jobs with training companies where achievements and targets are rubber
stamped whether anything has been done or not.
It seems impossible to explain adequately why I personally should be without
a Job without referring again to the fact that if we do indeed live in an
altruistic society where wealth and opportunity are at least meant to be ‘re-distributed,’ according to notions of social justice and fair play, for the usual sorts of reasons
such as in mollifying the discontent that leads to wars and revolutions; I have to
reiterate that I qualified for all the sorts of state assistance that one could
think of though I have to reiterate that the services and amenities that are meant to be provided all too often serve only to line the pockets of those who are supposed to have
purveyed these services. I have been refused the right to a defence in a court
of law and have had good teeth deliberately removed and disfigured by
‘professionals ‘who have been utterly outraged at finding someone who seems to
think he/she has a right to do something other than to sign claim forms and
invoices for them !
If I may briefly elaborate : I had been taken by my Father as guardian after
his marriage broke up at the age of six ; he was an irresponsible drunkard who
lost his job by the time I was nine; between the ages of ten and sixteen I was
transported around various dwellings (mostly his sister’s) with different
stepmothers and girlfriends. In general I was mostly kept like a dog, my Father did actually regularly boast of this and the distressing situation was only
worsened by the family Counsellors and psychiatric people at the School
(Copleston High) who sought to lull me into what was a false sense of security
by promulgating a vision of society as caring and responsible and so on. The
truth was that they could not or would not do anything of any real value and only undermined such will to self help as I had.
Whilst I was doing ‘O’ levels I was getting violent hints from my Father that I should ‘be nice,’ to his new wife in ways that were basically illegal for a fourteen or fifteen year old. This was at about the time that I was becoming acquainted with members of the present Government.
It remains a particular grudge, that I had been routinely cursed by my head of year a child refugee from the Heinkel armaments manufacturing family in Nazi Germany interestingly enough; and that as a matter of fact he had once sworn venomously in front of thirty odd pupils that he hated me and sincerely hoped that I would end up on the ‘scrap heap,’ he had violently assaulted me within minutes of my having started at that school as a matter of fact.
After a period of time approaching approaching three years since being refused entry to the ‘A’ level course, I had predictably done little or nothing about my long term future and had, after living a rather hand to mouth existence in squats and so on, moved back to the Council maisonette in a squalid and poverty soaked corner of Chantry estate in a building recently demolished due to complaints about Junkeys and Prostitutes.
The maisonette was rather too late to be of assistance to me in the matter of my education, as was the fact of my Father having got his first job for six or seven years, he chose to spend what he’d earned on Thai girlfriends’ one of whom he married and moved
abroad with, rather than on myself or his maisonette. This is one particular reason
why I am so aghast to see the kind of resources that are being consumed so
pointlessly by various persons and agencies connected with New Deal because I
have had immense trouble finding the resources in the recent past with attempts
to get things like a car license for which I desperately needed comparatively
trifling sums; this is of course relevant also to the fact of my having been
exposed to politicians like the MP for Ipswich who spent a lot of time
telling people about how they can manage without things like cars in the modern urban
environment. As far as I am aware his first act as MP was to rush out and buy
himself a sports car so large that he looks ridiculously petite like a child’s
doll whilst sitting in it.
One of my Father’s jaunts abroad in November ’83 was intended to last three
weeks, he did not return for fifteen years sending me only vague instructions
that I should ‘take over the flat,’ which were the best part of a year in coming, and was a pointless request without funds with which to do so and only serves to illustrate his delusory and duplicitous thought processes.
The third or fourth person who came to stay in that flat (one or two people
had stayed for a couple of weeks) during the almost year that I remained there
was someone I had known at school and was in the Territorial Army and pursuing a
career as a musician for which he had purchased a significant array of equipment.
As the Christmas of 1984 drew on he was refusing to contribute anything to the
expenses of running the flat: he had been there several months by then and it
was only after prolonged arguments the upshot of which was that he refused to
produce as much as twenty pounds that I sold a couple of trifles from his
collection of electronic gear, and someone, presumably the mutual acquaintance I
had sold the trifles to, it became apparent by mid January, had taken the
rest.
I had been under pressure from my mother’s family to do something about my
future, providing that it didn’t involve the kind of investment that would be
reserved for her husband’s eldest son, and so had sought by that time
alternative accommodation of my own it being the case that my Father's communications made little sense. I wasn’t the responsibility of anyone else
by then and didn’t expect any help. Even when an Uncle died in 1989 from
primary liver cancer (he was suddenly given a month to live following severe
stomach cramps) which I had correctly diagnosed as a blood defect requiring
investigation and analysis, whilst still at Northgate 6th form in 1980 which
was to the outrage of my Mother’s husband who has never even proffered an
apology for having castigated this as ‘useless book knowledge,’ and escaped any
formal censure when there were some ‘misunderstandings’ about Wills in the
family of the deceased which involved a modest Police investigation and deprived a poor Aunt of a modest five figure bequest.
Charges of burgling what had been my home (this is all I know about the
allegation/accusation, brought against me by June of ’85) by which time I was
working. If only part time and temporarily it was a reasonable white collar job for a first time employment quite suited to my abilities at the Archives department and should have led to something better.
I was abused in uncompromising terms by the Solicitor Anthony Smythe of Bates
Wells and Braithwaite who told me that he couldn’t defend me, moreover that he
wouldn’t. He went off to Court and entered a Guilty plea against my every stated request having conferred with my Mother and Stepfather. I don’t even know to
this day what I have exactly been charged with, nor do I know what happened to
items of my own that were taken and I have been consistently refused any
explanation by all parties for reasons which quite escape me as there is
definitely nothing to be gained from such a refusal.
At roughly the time the New Deal people started plaguing me to turn up for
interviews to discuss what I was doing about seeking work some ten years and more after this I had been doing voluntary work for the WRVS for several years on a regular basis as part and parcel of seeking to draw attention to these injustices and had managed to acquire a motorcycle license as well as a Computer on which I had been learning some useful skills.
By the year 1999 I was trying to attend a course at Bury College having been barred from the Suffolk College in 1992 after attending a course under the auspices of the Father of another
potential suspect for the ‘Burglary’ of my Father’s maisonette: this was on the
basis of an unsubstantiated and false claim that I had sent threatening letters
to the staff there which had not apparently been ‘realised’ for some six
months, and subsequent to the local Police having had me ‘sectioned’ as the culmination of by then many fruitless years of requests for information about the precise nature
of charges which had been brought against me by them in 1985, which related to events
of the previous winter.
During my years at school I had been consistently bullied, after the demise
of my parents marriage and in my Father’s care I was as I say kept like a dog ,
he would often boast about this actually, (I still carry scars from wounds he
had neglected to have treated, the result of labouring on the louse ridden
smallholding he held for two years in the North, which was in defiance of every
known statute on the subject). In seeking to substantiate that I have been
illegally refused a defence against criminal charges, and in general to refute
the suggestion that I owe such a nakedly hypocritical and exploitive society
anything in the way of duty I have to reiterate the allegation that a certain
teacher deliberately encouraged this unpleasant bullying. Something which many
would have trouble doubting, especially the witnesses to my four years of
compulsory education. This is to say that not once have I ever been accused even
informally, of being even slightly inclined toward violence, not once in 36
years. As a matter of fact it was something of a talking point among the town’s
down and outs with whom I became acquainted whilst still rather young, one could
justifiably say largely at the instigation of the champion of the oppressed our
local MP, and the kinder among them would often tell me that I was too easy
going and needed to be more aggressive if I was to survive.
Since my nightmarish days at Copleston High I have been: quite seriously assaulted by two
dozen heavyweight Negro sportsmen; been stabbed and nearly murdered; been
robbed in my own home; been mugged and beaten several times; had other
property arbitrarily confiscated by the local Constabulary; all perpetrated by
known individuals, all unprosecuted and all before I took the step of calmly
poking in a College Counselor’s window which was intended to provoke the
attention of another Solicitor pending a simple case of criminal damage and
which instead gave rise to the Jason Mitchell affair when a foul smelling
Spanish social worker was persuaded to say I had mental trouble of some sort
which remains quite undefined she really spoke only pidgin English. As regards
the MP’s concerned involvement, his wife seemed to have binned my letters once
they had milked the business for all the publicity they could via the Ipswich
Evening Star.
So as regards the New Deal: from my point of view the matter of planning for
any kind of future is fatally flawed whilst I lack even the basic rights
outlined in Magna Carta. No course of action other than to enlighten me as to
the facts about those charges which were brought against me in 1985, and one or two other things, to begin with, is in the least bit likely to have any useful consequences for any of the living, least of all those who are British taxpayers and even less so is any
other kind of deal, new or otherwise. I mean, what is the point of seeking to
acquire fresh material wealth if that which was already supposed to be mine is
being shared out amongst God only knows who by the extempore actions of the
local Police who have since the Jason Mitchell affair refused to hear any
reports of robbery and theft perpetrated against me and had arbitrarily confiscated at least one valuable item themselves. Now if they have neglected
to inform any of the requisite government agencies about any of the
improprieties relating to social security fraud that I have sought to report
since 1986 it may be something to do with the fact that one of the Officers who
investigated the apparent attempt on my life in 1986 was a friend of an accused
party, or it may be simple ignorance: I really don’t know and have long since
given up seeking to fathom the iniquity of my fellow Englishmen who are so proud
of their reputation for fair play and justice.
In particular I resent being targeted as some sort of shiftless moral
imbecile because I don’t have a Job and as I have said, before the Careers
people involved with New Deal were asking me to attend interviews and so on was
managing to do a significant amount of voluntary work which required real
composure: a mere moment's inconsideracy is all it takes to kill a frail pensioner. Just the decision as to whether I was allowed to attend the course at
Bury College, which I had in any case started by then must have wasted
approaching an entire week at least, as the Careers Office at Bond Street and the
Jobcentre couldn’t make their minds up: that was merely the waste of resources
involved in one small detail. Prior to this I had attended a CLAIT course at a
training centre behind the local Soccer stadium. Whilst not all the staff there
were cynical or unwilling they took three weeks to impart what I should have
been able to learn, given the headstart I had through working off my own bat, in
about three days at absolute most. This unfortunately occurred during the only
three weeks of good summer weather we had that year, there were too many people
cramped into the rooms, and, as I cannot afford the software to practise with have
almost entirely forgotten what I had learned.
This brings me round to Pelcombe training where it was being demanded that I
start turning up to listen to fresh loads of seemingly fictitious rules
and protocols to do with my status. The course at Bury College broke down for a
variety of reasons. I was quite shocked by the expectations and complacency of
staff there who despite earning several times the average, took every
opportunity to use hours of lesson time to tell us how we could ingratiate
ourselves ie by offering to carry out their more mundane responsibilities: this was
despite the fact that I was still working for the WRVS and had also started helping
out occasionally at a Riding School for the disabled, at Hadleigh. They weren’t
happy that I could actually do the work involved to a high level of competence
and insisted that I had to be there to listen to every basic lecture about
things that I had known since the age of about ten and failed to keep proper order in the lecture room. I think that many sycophants in the educational establishment who have acquired qualifications practise this sort of arrangement but I think the usual obfuscations were in this instance exacerbated by the fact of one of the Senior Lecturers being seemingly perhaps Lesbian and showing disinclination to maintain order among female students: I wouldn't bother mentioning this were it not for the fact I considered this so whatever the reason. By the end of December they had neglected to tell me how to make a University application and I had been bled white of resources (it cost £15 a week in fuel to get there). I spent Christmas day that year pondering the price of parts for my motorcycle with only cheap Muesli for sustenance.
Pelcombe wanted me to do various things like sit in one of their rooms going
through their the ads in a collection of old newspapers looking for work. I
have seen lots of documents detailing rules and regulations, many of which were written in
fairly bad English with numerous spelling and grammatical errors, all of which
seemed superfluous. I did get some money from them which I was told
was from a European source of funding so that I could go back to Bury and
inquire as to the possibility of going back to the course and acquiring the
University access qualification: I was deliberately kept waiting for two days
to be told no, they then refused to sign the timesheet/record that I had
optimistically been issued by Pelcombe: by the time that they had decided that I
could do the ITB2 course is it which is one step up from CLAIT (Computer Literacy and Information Technology) I was fairly disenchanted with the whole New Deal business and had added considerably to the years of wasted time that I put in protesting about the abuse and confinement I had endured at the hands of the incompetent and duplicitous staff at St Clements Hospital who had indeed threatened me with six months strait jacketed detention
and forced me to undress for injections etc.
The upshot of this, was that the last regulatory body that I communicated with admitted the justice of my claims but stated falsely that they were outside the time limit of one year for making complaints which I can prove as I have a collection of original documents.
I did attend a day of the ITB2 course during which time I managed to learn
despite the awful din of some middle aged woman making dirty jokes and laughing
loudly that the gentleman in charge of the computer room couldn’t answer my
questions about the databases and spreadsheets. I was due to get an imminent
date for a further corrective operation to my nose which had been shattered as the
result of an unprovoked attack in 1986 and asked a GP to put me onto sickness benefit a few weeks early so I wouldn’t be bothered with further pointless demands on my time prior to this stressful procedure and because after some years of using keyboards that I was having a certain amount of strain trouble with my hands which now have to be treated with some circumspection as they could quite easily become virtually unusable.
To get back to the question of employability and so on ; my best asset
remains, as I have spent years studying subjects that would best be described as
Arts or Humanities a great deal of intellect, literacy and excellent
communication skills and I cannot at the age of 38 seriously contemplate trying
to learn engineering or work in any other sphere in which I have no specialist
knowledge having never scored higher than a D grade in any technical subject.
There is no doubt a great deal more that could be said but experience doesn’t
tend toward any belief that words, written or spoken really carry much weight
except insofar as the Politicians behind New Deal have managed or are managing
to persuade the Media that they are doing something responsible. I really don’t
imagine that anyone is going to take any notice of what I have to say. I had to
go to Court regarding technicalities on my Motorcycle documentation about 18
months ago and had a signature extorted from me by a duty Solicitor on the basis
that he would look into certain of these matters and he then sent me a rude
letter telling me not to bother contacting him again once he had claimed monies
for writing an unnecessary letter about the bike technicalities which I made it
plain that I wanted to do myself: which is to say that he duped me into signing forms to give him money on the basis of malicious lies. I flopped out of voluntary work having also by then massive problems with my Father who had returned to the country requiring various medical treatments with an adolescent half brother who was predictably enough displaying quite severe behavioural dysfunction including continual thefts and acts of violence.
(It is hoped to continue this document with some constructive suggestions in the near future: it being the case that it is easy to criticise.)