A recent issue of the Camden New Journal, our crusading local paper, was enough to make one forget, at least for a while, about Trump who – a doctor friend thinks – could have a major cocaine habit as he (the Commander in Chief) apparently displays all the standard symptoms: the sniffles, the wakefulness, the paranoia . . .
Be that as it may (or may not), we have problems enough on our own doorstep.
A few weeks ago, a man dropped dead in the street. He had just left the local Job Centre where, since July – when he had been deemed Fit to Work and his benefits had ceased – he had been going each week to ‘sign on’.
It was as if I, Daniel Blake was being given a live performance.
Anyone in their senses would have recognised that 56-year-old Lawrence Bond was not Fit to Work and had no hope whatsoever of being offered a job. Just as it must have been obvious that P*** (see previous post On Being a Landlord) was also unemployable. Not only did he weigh 20 stone but he had major health problems, a prison record and was barely literate.
On one occasion, by which time, with the help of a wonderful social worker, I had managed to get him re-housed, I returned from a summer away to find he was starving. His travel card had been cancelled and he couldn’t walk as far as the nearest Food Bank.
This kind of thing must be happening all the time. And we can’t blame the people who work in the Job Centres. They have to sanction a certain number of applicants every week, or they will lose their jobs.
But we can blame the government and the U.S. firm employed by them to carry out ‘work ability assessments’. It seems that in ‘assessing’ a woman so disabled by depression that she was barely able to walk, they asked ‘How come, if she was so depressed, she hadn’t killed herself?’
And passed her Fit to Work.
You can read the original Camden New Journal report here: http://camdennewjournal.com/article/man-ruled-fit-for-work-dies-from-heart-attack-on-way-home-from-job-centre?sp=1&sq=LAWRENCE%2520BOND
