30 / 10 / 00

To Whom It May Concern

Please note: (This document is a somewhat reworked letter to a government body; I hadn't intended it to involve so many personal details and may abbreviate some in the near future.)

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.)