You didn't think I'd gone away, did you? Well if you did think that, you were wrong, because I haven't. Periodically, in the interim since I last popped up in The Post, Raven and I have been sharing our thoughts with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He hasn't joined Bluesky yet, so we're forced to continue pestering him on the only social media platform owned by a man who has obviously decided that if he can't be the hero of his own personal Marvel film, he is going to be the villain. Anyway, and I apologise in advance for this one being rather Brit-centric, today the rivalry has rather ramped up. I say rivalry because I am determined that Keir will, at some point, come to regard as us his nemesis. At this point I don't think he knows we exist, but we're working on that. In the meantime, he's made the first move. The British Government has announced a Green Paper¹ on its proposals to change the benefits system. By 'changes' I obviously mean 'taking vital funds away from the most physically and financially vulnerable people in the country while simultaneously making them feel like they deserved it'. Maybe there are countries where this isn't the only way Governments change the benefits system, but the UK isn't currently one of them. In an attempt to make their actions appear to be the morally correct actions they have poorly disguised them as, Starmer's government are making the argument that they are helping people who have been 'written off' get back into work. Bless. I think we need to have a quick chat about that.

It's pretty dehumanising to talk about actual human people as being 'written off' in this way. It's worth remembering that even the Labour Government desperate to save a fortune still accepts that some people will remain unable to work due to their health, meaning, presumably, that these people will remain written off. Their whole argument rests on the assertion people who are unfit for work are, fundamentally, a failure. It may be their own failure, or it may be society who has let them down by. . . I don't know, allowing them to be disabled? But whatever the case, they are determined not to fail young people by allowing them to fall into the pit, while simultaneously shouting down into the pit, 'don't worry, some of you freaks will be allowed to remain in the pit, and we'll throw down some scraps of food'. The problem Labour have is that they can't openly admit people only matter if they're making money, while simultaneously talking as if anyone not making money was being allowed, no enabled, to fail. The irony is that they have conflated unemployed with destitution as an excuse for making the unemployed destitute.

They can make inept attempts to dress it up as the right thing to do all they like, but the reason they come unstuck trying to make this argument is that it isn't the right thing to do, there is no moral case for their plans. But it is, in a way, even worse than that.

Let's cast aside, for a moment, any questions about whether this is the right thing to do or not, and focus on what it is they are actually, allegedly, doing. The claim is that they are helping people back into work, and they are doing this, in the time-honoured way of British Governments everywhere, by taking away all your money so you'll have to work to live even if really you can't. I've talked about this previously, but if you're not talking at any length or in any detail about how you're going to support people back into work then you're not 'encouraging' or 'supporting' or 'incentivising', you're 'forcing' and 'bullying'. Let me give you a specific example. Raven wanted to find a voluntary role where we live, so she can be active and useful even if her health is not reliable enough for her to do paid work. Where she is at the moment they understand and accept that some days she will simply be unable to make it in to work, or will have leave early, or will have to take a great deal of time off for medical appointments. Even in this situation, looking around various charity shops on the lookout for volunteers, she had to reject around half of the options because somewhere on their premises they had stairs. Does the government have a plan to resolve this? Because if you want people currently regarded as unable to work back in action then you're going to have to find money somewhere for things like accessibility adaptations to enable people to get back into work, assuming they can overcome all the other obstacles that got them signed off in the first place. Because the reality at the bottom of all of this is that they weren't signed off on a whim by an idiot, but by medical professionals following what has sometimes been a punishingly rigorous process. People who are signed off sick are there for a reason, and changing the rules so that they no longer count or so that they no longer get the support they need isn't fixing the problem, it's sweeping them under the carpet so that you no longer have to remember to write them off.

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