TRY NOT TO VOMIT. THIS IS A POST ABOUT IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

Is it just me or do others agree that Iain Duncan Smith’s Department of Work and Pensions descending into a very unfunny farce?

We've long known that Smith himself is a figure of fun. That was never in dispute. The Quiet Man...his University of Perugia degree (or not as may be the case), his management diploma at a posh college (or the two day course he did there), his expenses for underpants and wet wipes, his wife's salary for being...erm... his wife, his sick leave... The list goes on.

We have known too about the wasted money, the inefficiencies, the lies about sanction targets, the gross inefficiency of Atos, the computer programmes that don't work and the deadliness that have not even started to be met. We even know that Cameron tried to reshuffle him away from the DWP, and failed. 

That should tell us something!

But in the last few days we have heard that the DWP have invented characters and situations, and then used “stock pictures” to make posters that support the idea of a caring sharing DWP. 

People, they implied, were actually being helped by his department. 

Of course there aren't any real success stories so they have had to make them up. Of course it wasn't IDS. His officials are to carry the can. Whatever happened to the buck stopping here?

Then we heard that, having just made 3824 people redundant, they seem to have suddenly found a need for 2,800 new staff (which the unions claim are to do approximately the same jobs and the redundant staff, but on temporary contracts of 18 months).

That's just plain rotten. IDS wastes millions on computer soft wear that isn't worth diddly, and they make up the money by paying off staff, then taking on temps.

Additionally, they listen in to staff on the telephone and nit pick when they treat clients like human beings.

But worst of all, yesterday we were told that call centre staff have been sent a leaflet on how to deal with suicide threats from “customers”.

The article in the Sunday Herald, where I originally learned of this, suggested that most of these staff earn around £15,000. That is to say they are junior admin staff.

Dealing with people who are so distressed that they may be contemplating suicide is a job for a professional with a great deal of training in how to read the situation and respond to it. Getting it wrong can make a bad situation 100 times worse, and in this case, lead to deaths.

En passant a little story. I recall a colleague in a place I worked in many years ago, was sent on a “counselling” course. It lasted a mere 2 days, and upon her return to work aforesaid colleague thought she was the very dab at counselling.  

Indeed within days she had put her new-found “skills” to work. 

However, it seems that a two day course doesn't provide quite all the skills required to do this kind of work effectively in real life situations...and, long story short, the client got very disturbed. This upset provoked a relatively dormant (and unknown to the colleague) heart condition the client had… and an ambulance had to be called.

My colleague had had 2 days’ instruction in dealing with difficult situations complete with role playing exercises. The DWP staff are getting a leaflet to read, and wave in the air if they require supervisor support! I wonder what training the supervisors have had.

According to the  Guardian: "Absolutely nobody has ever seen this guidance before, leading staff to believe it has been put together ahead of the incapacity benefit and disability living allowance cuts."

Making a mess of the staffing levels relatively incompetent management; making up names and success stories is pathetic… but suicide counselling with no training is altogether another kettle of fish.

Firstly from the point of view of the staff it is utterly ridiculous to demand untrained junior staff deal with potential suicide threats as part of their call centre work. That’s WAY above the £15,000 pay band responsibility.  How traumatised is a member of staff going to be if the client ends the call with: "Right, that's it. You can bin my claim. I'm dead by 5 o'clock!"

From the client’s point of view it is nothing short of criminal to leave untrained staff to deal with them. If you are taking away the last vestige of their humanity and leaving them to starve, the least you could do is to provide someone with a bit more than a typed out instruction list to deal with them. Surely they deserve at least that.

Then again, when you consider that paramedics and nurses in Atos have been allowed to override diagnosis made by specialist and professors of medicine, who would really be surprised at how low IDS will stoop to save a bob or two, and who could doubt that he doesn't give a damn about the people who use his "service"?

BEDROOM TAX DRIVES WOMAN TO SUICIDE

It is a tragedy that had to happen, but none the sadder for that.

Not content with creating a situation where some people on Incapacity Benefit find that taking their own lives is an easier option than trying to cope with the UK government's heartless policy is forcing upon them, the Mirror reports the first suicide of someone who couldn't  afford to pay her bedroom tax.

Mrs Bottrill was going to have to find an extra £80 a month, and she simply couldn't.

How much was it that Mr Duncan Smith, well known for claiming expenses for his underwear and telling lies about how efficient his department's schemes are, claimed for a lunch a few weeks ago? Wasn't there some figure of £75 mentioned?


Proud of this scheme's outcome for Mrs Bottrill then, are you, Mr Duncan Smith?

Still you can't be held responsible for what the people will do when faced with not being able to feed themselves? Maybe she should taken a leaf out of your book and put her lunches on expenses?

Enjoy your Sunday, and don't spare a thought for this woman's plight or the misery of her family.

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This is worth reading too. What are we becoming?

NADINE WOULD RATHER DIE....

Lordy, oh Lordy. Nadine Dorries ^^ is a corker.

At a fringe meeting at the Tory conference she announced that she would rather die than fight the next election with the Liberals, whom apparently the dear old soul has been fighting all her life.

She went on to describe her latest Liberal opponent as being like a Japanese prisoner of war...still fighting the war. I thought that prisoners of war didn’t actually fight any more, but it’s a small point.

She said that there was no future after the next election for a Liberal-Conservative alliance, however, I suspect that she may change her mind if the Tories require the Liberals, once again, to keep them from opposition or minority government and continual defeats.

Still Nadine is a bit of an old drama queen. You’ll remember she promised us suicides over the expenses scandals.

Suicides? Nah, I should say not. They might have been miffed that they had been caught out and even angrier that the gravy train had been temporarily halted, but most of them had loads of lovely lolly to spend... ours... They weren’t about to top themselves!!

Known variously as "Mad Nad" and the Conservatives' answer to Heather Mills or Sarah Palin, Nadine doesn't like Cameron as party leader: "He represents everything that through my life I'd been suspicious of." she said of her new leader.

Ew er... I'm sure not "everything" Nads. Most people are suspicious of second hand car salesmen, and people trying to sell double glazing on the phone.

Dorries's somewhat inventive interpretation of "facts" undermines causes supported by Cameron. In her fight against late-term abortion, she propagated an internet rumour that a 21-week-old foetus could punch through an incision in a womb.

And boy does she hate John Bercow, which is pretty much at odds with the Tory leader's recent support for him.



So maybe Cameron is hoping that this time she actually means it.... and he and Nick are plotting a long term relationship.

SUICIDE ..... MURDER ..... SUICIDE? ONLY IN AMERICA!

As it is Easter holiday, I thought you might prefer something more lighthearted than the politics that dominates our lives at the moment and fortunately a mate sent me an email with this weird true story from Associated Press (reported by Kurt Westervelt) from the land of weird stories, America:

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:


On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus, and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly.


Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers, and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.


"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "Someone who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide."


That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.


The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife.


They were arguing vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun!


The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.


When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B." When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant, and both said that they thought the shotgun was not loaded.


The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, assuming the gun had been accidentally loaded.


The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now for the twist... Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder.

This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window.

The son, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself. So the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide. As "Letter From America" Danny is forever saying to me....Only in America!

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