Warning: This article mentions suicide
As someone who built a solid work history of over 20 years from nothing, who was forced to give up working due to severe chronic illness 15 years ago, and who has been trapped between a rock and a hard place ever since, I feel entirely qualified to speak on the effects and human cost of our inhumane and counterproductive benefits system.
A Thatcherite upbringing
Raised by self-righteous boomer Thatcherites, I knew my place. Children were to be seen, not heard. If you can’t afford to send them to boarding school, rule them with a rod of fear. Defer to everyone with a university degree; you are an idiot in comparison. This while being raised neglected, in a poverty my parents did not endure themselves.
They drank scotch, ate steak, smoked like chimneys, while desperately failing to keep up with the middle class ‘Joneses’. Their kids were a burden.
Something was off; even as a child I knew it. As the odd one out in the family, I was chastised for persistently asking difficult questions. I was insolent, precocious and rude, with queries such as “Why is Scargill an idiot?”, “What is a Poll Tax?”, “Why are dockers greedy?”, “Why are miners lazy?”, and many more delicious irritations besides.
Nonetheless I feel privileged to have been raised in Liverpool, where I could see the duplicity play out in real time.
Struggles in life and career
I left my comprehensive at 15, two years after I had checked out mentally, for things at home had reached fever pitch and nobody cared, so why should I? I was always a doer, capable of so much as a kid; proving it was the only way to gain attention. Lauded for high intelligence in public, lambasted at home for stupidity and insolence: incredibly confusing for a child. At this point my parents had divorced and dad died of cancer. Soon after, I needed money.
I dragged what I now understand to be a shattered nervous system through life and various careers, collecting chronic illnesses as I went. Here we have another issue. I presented to my GP from about 14 years old. I knew I wasn’t right or well, I just didn’t know why. Have you ever experienced raging anxiety and depression? That’s what it was, driven by a nervous system that hadn’t had time to develop properly, and was already burnt out.
For 14 years of increasing desperation I was labelled a liar, an attention seeker – not only by the medical community, but by friends, colleagues and family. Between 25 and 28-years-old, following a suicide attempt designed to either put me out of my misery or get the help I’d been perpetually denied, I was finally diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis, and degenerative disc disease, on top of the depression and anxiety.
At this point I’d forged myself a good career as an executive PA. However, most employers regretted employing me. I was very good at my job when I was well and reliable. As time went on, my unreliability became untenable. I was either in too much pain, or too dosed up on painkillers to be of any use. This had the knock-on effect of making me despise myself – for who was I, if not the people-pleasing independent superwoman I was raised to be?
Dehumanisation by the DWP
My fight with the DWP took many years, at great cost to the little quality of life I had, but that is another story. Yet again, I knew my place. As my father would have described me, a member of “the great unwashed.”
Even today people will deny the dehumanisation by the entitled and stupid establishment. The ignorance and arrogance is breathtaking, literally. By 2019, and after years of fighting for PIP, being awarded it, being stripped of it, undergoing cruel and manipulative assessments, reapplying, experiencing immediate denials, my health and quality of life were in the gutter.
Unbeknown to me, the incredible amounts of pharma I’d been prescribed were now fighting my brain; I would later discover I had akathisia. Cue another suicide attempt. Except this time I wanted only one conclusion. I was beaten. Living in pain on a daily basis, with no assistance, very low self-worth, while in poverty, will do that to any person. I genuinely believed at that point my son would be better off without me. For reasons I’ll never understand, it did not happen.
A wounded campaigner
I woke up absolutely furious with nothing to lose, and ever since I have actively campaigned against people in power who, if the science of psychology holds true (I believe it does), are absolutely parasitic to humanity.
I went through life with the consequences of having deeply insecure and toxic parents, who felt righteous purely based on ‘vibes’ towards somebody they wished they could emulate. A tale as old as time.
One of my many PA positions involved working with the wretched Boris Johnson. Knowing what I knew even then about ’followers and leaders’ I knew his stepping into politics would lead to incredibly dark and devastating times for our society. There was just no metric to gauge the potential damage such a “committed husband and father” could create.
Not rescued by Labour
Now here we are, with a Labour government extolling exactly the same politics, but with a veil of respectable statesmanship. Still the fur coat, still no knickers. Still deliberately driving people over the edge in an unspoken process of enforced counterproductive Darwinism. You are economically active, or you don’t matter.
Except it’s 2025; humans are supposed to evolve, not devolve. Let’s institute mandatory psychological testing for predatory psychiatric conditions before people can take up positions of power in the public sector. Let’s make politics functional and boring. Let’s make life liveable for everyone. It’s absolutely possible, but it won’t make politicians popular with offshore-banking or traitorous media magnates. However, these oligarchs are not democratic, nor a majority.
In simple terms, poverty induces stress, stress creates illness. We’ve had 15 years of austerity: murder by political choice. You or I would go to prison for starving or mentally torturing someone to death, yet there seems to be an invisible force which negates responsibility for politicians. It’s their job to look after our best interests, not the nefarious interests of ’Big Corp’.
The monster in the room
Do you know what happens when the poorest have enough to live on (as opposed to just surviving)? The economy is boosted when people have money to spend. There is an immediate boost to peace of mind, and therefore improvement in mental health. There is a reduction in chronic illness, which takes pressure off the NHS. Fewer people will go out stealing and becoming violent, reducing police, legal system and prison pressures. Fewer people will feel the need to abuse substances, because they begin to feel like valued human beings with hope. The list is endless. Which makes neoliberalism a predatory and humanity-damaging toxic theory. Fascism in a Savile Row suit.
Yet the current powers-that-be are still deliberately choosing unnecessary cruelty and eugenics under cover of austerity. They are still breaking international human rights law and the Equalities Act. This in a ’Christian country’. What the hell is going on? Why are we allowing this monster house room?
If you are having thoughts of suicide or need emotional help, you can phone (NHS) 111 or The Samaritans 116 123, or any of the other numbers on this page.
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