A Thought-Provoking Reunion

Placard from last year's March for the Alternative

On Wednesday this week I kept a long-overdue promise to call in at my former workplace, Stoke-on-Trent Citizens' Advice Bureau, to give the back garden there a good weeding and trimming.  In practise not a great deal needed to be done except the removal of some pretty formidable brambles, and even some of these were best left untouched as a dunnock was nesting in one clump of ivy nearby.
I'm pleased with the way the ivy plants have clad the rather dull wall at the back and the astilbes were looking good too.  A lot of the shrubs could do with a serious prune during the autumn and I'll probably make a date to go back with the shredder then and turn the scraps into some much needed humus for the clayey soil.

Small sanctuary - the CAB garden

So that was all well and good, except that being back with my old comrades gave my conscience a damned good kicking.

Before I opted to take voluntary redundancy almost 15 months ago, I worked there as a welfare benefits specialist.  My job was to interview clients with benefit entitlement problems, assist them to make appeals against suspect decisions, gather evidence in support of those appeals and often to accompany them to their tribunal as their representative.  It was a type of work that I had been doing, on and off in between a variety of housing-related jobs, since I was a volunteer adviser with the Students Union at Sheffield University almost thirty years ago. 

I always knew I would miss it to some extent, but I also knew that I was in danger of getting 'burnt out'.  Not by the clients themselves, or even the sometimes horrible and distressing circumstances they were trying to cope with, but by the ever increasing workload and targets which became ever more meaningless as far as quality of work was concerned, and yet all-important in terms of funding.  A break, possibly a complete change, was the order of the day and so I jumped ship, signed up for my horticultural studies at Reaseheath and embarked on a new way of life.

And then the present government started playing the 'welfare reform' game.  Making Employment and Support Allowance almost unclaimable if you actually have a pulse.  Using the old cry of 'the system needs simplifying' to tear away rights and income from poor people with complicated lives.  Threatening to leave some of the most disabled people without the funds they need for care and transport with a punative rejigging of Disability Living Allowance.  Slicing the Housing Benefit budget to make both councils and their tenants poorer.  All this, and the threat of much worse to come.

It isn't easy watching from the sidelines.  Bizarrely, of course, I am actually freer to comment publically on it than I was while working for the CAB, as if I have a bloody good rant, either to the local paper or to my MP (both of which happen from time to time) it's no longer a potential problem or embarrassment to my employer.  So in that way, hopefully, I can do more to expose the lies and propaganda that makes this evil agenda 'popular' with the general public.

But it isn't the same as actually being involved, talking to the real people at risk from all this.  Right now, as I ponder whether to sign up for another year at 'Hogwarts' and if so, whether to pick RHS Level 2 Practical or Level 3, it does feel just it a little bit like deciding which corner of my tent I'm going to sulk in.

On the other hand, as I observed a few weeks ago on Facebook, one advantage of working in horticulture is that, when the peasants do finally revolt, you're never too far from a pitchfork if you want to join in!