Let's not get carried away here.

The Baroness Warsi.

I applaud her courage and display of integrity. Her principled stance is commendable and has sparked some useful debate within the government and Tory Party - indeed within the country. Her stand on the Gaza massacres marks her out as a Tory with a heart. An extremely rare animal indeed. She has done far more than many others who are wringing their hands and making muted protest or shedding crocodile tears such as that great champion of human rites, Nick Clegg. Well done girl! It was the right thing to do, but.....................

Is this the very same Baroness Warsi that I have seen on Question Time defending the austerity measures imposed by a government of millionaires? Is this the same Tory Party member and life Peer who has defended and spoken in favour of; The Bedroom Tax?; sanctioning benefit claimants?; whipping the unemployed into zero hour contracts?; workfare?; cuts to this and cuts to that? (Only for the poor, the disadvantaged, and the vulnerable of course!) Is this the same Baroness Warsi?

I started this blog by raising her sleeves and patting her on the back for her reaction to Cameron's inaction. However, where was she when the DWP confirmed that in 2011 no less than 10,600 people on Disability Benefits died, and many by their own hand, when their legitimately claimed benefits were reduced and/or removed completely? Maybe not as many dead as due to the pogrom being pursued by the Israeli's in Gaza but a significant number of people none the less, and all living under her government's cruel regime. Where was she when the Work Capability Assessment carried out by a darling of the Tory Party machine - Atos, was finding people who were terminally ill 'fit for work'? Not just once or twice but multiple times. People that died within weeks if not days of that lunatic decision?

I could go on and on and on and on, but you'd get bored and you know exactly what I'm getting at anyway. 

Honesty; integrity; empathy; sympathy; and indeed just about every positive human emotion is usually for sale with a Tory. Remember 'Cash for Questions'? or 'Peerages for Sale' (which is still happening); or 'Expenses Scandals'?; or Maria Miller MP?; and so many more shady if not downright criminal behaviours? I look around the government benches and wonder how many of them have portraits up in their attics.

So let's not go overboard eh? What she has done is good and right, but please keep in mind she is a Tory with all the negative connotations that implies and that are displayed daily by people that are still her party friends and close colleagues. Leopards simply don't change their spots.

The Government-vs-The Depressed. A Panacea? Maybe not.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is;

"a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviours and cognitive processes and contents through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures." Wikipedia.

So CBT addresses and overcomes the dysfunctional through reasoning and reality checks and if the practitioner is properly trained and qualified, skillful, and experienced it's good therapy that can work very well believe me. It is said to be time limited in as much as it is often claimed it can work to relieve and/or cure a problem of the psyche in a set number of sessions. It is therefore cost calculable. If each session is charged at £100 and it is estimated that the problem can be overcome in 10 sessions then the total cost is £1,000. Simple. Or so it seems. Read on.

Now from here I would like you to keep in mind that anyone can set themselves up as a Psychotherapist. They do not need any academic or practical qualifications 'proper'; if trained at all many are churned out by quack-factories that rely on gullibility and lack of regulation; there is no official state licensing; there is no meaningful regulation other than voluntary regulation; 'training and accreditation bodies' they may join could well have been set up simply as a way to add street cred to their claim of being qualified; - or they simply may read a book, take an on-line course lasting a couple of weeks, or just merely have business cards printed and get on with their version of the job. Again, simple.

But let’s say that you’ve sourced a properly trained, properly qualified CBT practitioner who is a member of a well respected exemplary and unimpeachable organisation. Good stuff to come no doubt. And if you form an efficient working partnership with the therapist, commonly known as the ‘therapeutic alliance’ then good things may very well come. However, there is a potential down side.

As much as CBT is heralded and touted as being a ‘one-size-fits-all’ form of intervention it simply does not suit some. Not all people react in a positive manner towards CBT and come out at the other end ‘cured’ or even feeling that they have improved in any way. In fact, if it fails after them being told by all and sundry and especially by those that should know better that it is the only way forward and that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach works universally then it can well add to their feelings of negative self-worth and actually deepen the problem – “I’ve failed again. I fail at everything.” I’m afraid the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not much good then, indeed potentially counter-productive. People are individuals and react to CBT (indeed all forms of therapy) in different ways. Sorry, but that’s just a matter of fact. Being a CBT practitioner myself I would love to tell you otherwise, but that would be a lie.

However, one of the reasons CBT is latched on to as ‘super therapy’ by those with an eye more on money than anything else and who would like to convince themselves but more importantly the general public that it is the magic bullet of therapeutic interventions is that a cost per head can be calculated in advance and a spending limit can be put on it. 

As an example let’s just take what has been called “the common cold of the psyche” – Depression. (By the way I would describe it in far more serious terms but this is just a working definition ok?) Thus, if it can be said by the CBT therapist that he/she can raise someone out of their depression in 10 sessions at £100 per session then the spend will be £1,000 and to get that back from taxes and NI contributions when they then return to work post treatment will make that treatment ‘cost neutral’ within months. Once again – simple eh?

Now please don’t get the wrong end of the stick at this point. I am not criticising CBT. It can be one of the most effective and efficient therapeutic intervention strategies on the face of the planet. All I am saying is that it is not efficient and effective with everyone that walks through the therapist’s door. Now and again it just doesn't work and if that’s the case it should be substituted for a more appropriate patient orientated, tailor made therapeutic approach that suits the individual seeking help. It's the patient and their needs that should be at the centre of any therapy. Not trying to force fit them into a rigid therapeutic straight-jacket (excuse the pun) that isn't fit for purpose.

The problems that I see at the moment are rooted firstly in the idea that this government are looking to make therapeutic intervention mandatory (a bad idea in itself) for people unable to work due to mental health issues (let’s stick with depression) and the idea that, if after a short course of CBT, their depression has not lifted then they will be stripped of all and any state benefits on the then ‘proof’ that they are/were faking it. And that because, based on recent experience, it seems to me that this is the kind of flimsy ‘evidence’ this government would be looking for in order to justify to Joe Public that ‘these people’ are ‘scroungers’ and ‘benefit cheats’ and that really there’s nothing wrong with them and they should ‘get out and get a job’. More hate, more division, more grist for the propaganda mill.

Secondly that, in the spirit of the neo-liberal god of ‘competition’ this will be offered out to the private sector where firms like Atos will be able to apply for contracts to deliver this ‘service’ to those that are suffering mental health problems and, again keeping in mind recent experiences, in concert with the fact (above) that anyone can set themselves up to be a Psychotherapist the temptation would be to employ the badly (if at all) trained therapist at say £40 per session (the unqualified work cheap), cut the session numbers to the bone, and make huge profit not only from the surplus charged to government but at the very same time shovelling people out in to the workplace declared as ‘fit for work’ on the word of a quack not properly qualified to pass judgement after delivering a therapeutic intervention they were not qualified to administer in the first place.

Perhaps though I am being too cautious, even maybe suspicious, but sorry as I may be about that it sounds so plausible to me as a way forward for this government to justify even more cruelty that I am leaning more and more towards this as the minutes pass.

Is it me?

Look out - the people are coming!

The 'system' is beginning to crumble. Not just here in the UK but it seems to me world-wide. 

With easy access to alternatives and to reality via the internet rather than the propaganda that they've force fed people for centuries then I think it's time has just about come. I sincerely hope so anyway.


Social media is packed full of anger, frustration, and daily justified rants from credible, even unimpeachable sources about rising inequality and the oppression of the poor world-wide. Easy access to increasingly hungry mass markets for people like Robert Reich and his video 'Inequality for All'; or Woody Harrelson's documentary on youtube, 'Ethos' and many more are beginning to stir even the sleepiest. It's a growing hunger for truth and alternatives that the people in power do not want but can't really stop. The Genie is out of the bottle as it's said.


Instead they are now beginning to go down the 1984 route predicted by Orwell. I always thought it was a warning of possible horrors to come but (especially) this government and the American political elite seem to see it as a service manual. 


Snooping on the citizenry; water cannons at the ready in London purely to suppress the civil unrest to come; police brutality; CCTV on every corner watching your every moment and movement outside your home; location information on your mobile; and so much more designed to keep us in line and on message. The fabrication of 'terrorists' and 'threats to our national security' all around us to worry us continuously and constantly be at war with. People living in fear and under the gaze of security services are far easier to control. Why not a war on poverty and inequality eh? Or on individual and corporate tax dodgers or famine or disease? 


But people are beginning to ask "why not?" and the thinly veiled synthetic replies and excuses that have worked so well in the past are not working as well any more. The ruling elite and their plutocratic governments are slowly losing ground and I firmly believe that's why there is such a huge rush on their part to transfer as much from the poor to the rich as possible before it crumbles and dies. I just hope to live long enough to attend the funeral but I doubt it.

The Deception.

Y'know people on their blogs, on FB, Twitter and everywhere 'social media' keep posting that this government, and especially George Osborne are stupid, or blind, or that they just cannot see the folly of their ways as far as austerity is concerned. This seems always to be based on the premis that austerity doesn't work. Hmmmm!

Well actually - it does! And it works very well, but when the excuses above are applied it can be made to look as if it's all just a bit of an unfortunate mistake, a bit of an error, a slip of the pen, and can therefore be put down to incompetence and/or ignorance. It isn't! This government is one of the most competent and determined in many a generation. Stick with me.

In just four short years, they have managed to shift enormous amounts of money (£Billions actually) from the pockets of the poor to the pockets of the rich. They have, and are, daily it seems, forcing poor people in to abject poverty; beggary; indigence; and even to deaths' door. At the same time the UK has seen an increase in riches for the top 10% in the £Billions, and it's multiplying. We now have more Millionaires and Billionaires per square mile than ever before in our history. More Ferraris are imported to the richest parts of the UK now than any other country world-wide and Rolls Royce has just announced an increase of 33% in orders for the UK market alone. Multi-Million pound homes in London have queues out through the doors to buy them and yacht sales at the upper end of the market (£2 million+) have never been so good, as it is with private aircraft in the form of luxury small jets. Incompetent?! Mistaken?! Stupid?! Misguided?! Please let's think again eh?

Whilst more than a million people are forced to use Food Banks daily; when 300,000 children live in absolute poverty and even more in comparative poverty; when 10,600 disabled people died within six weeks of having their benefits stopped in 2010/11; when every year older people die (around 30,000 per year) in their own homes from a combination of malnutrition and the inability to heat that home; when benefit sanctioning numbers are going stratospheric and people are left with absolutely nothing to live on; when children are setting up Food Banks in their own schools to feed their mates coming to school (and going home) hungry; when homelessness has seen an increase unknown since records began; all through this the rich sit on golden thrones raking it in and living a life of luxury. Don't believe me? Check it all out - the information is freely available, and it's not even hard to find.

So what to do? OK, first things first, let's get rid of the ConDems. But please nobody fool themselves by thinking the Labour Party 2014 is anything like the Labour Party 1944. They are most definitely not and have been following and voting in favour of the Tory agenda ever since they lost the last election. They are becoming a brighter shade of blue every day. They were once the political party of hope. It's hope that they buried along with their founding principles many years ago. Now they just look the best of the worst.

In my opinion this UK of ours is in dire and absolute need of a new political agenda - and it looks as if that means a new political party. One that actually addresses the needs and wants of the public in the majority instead of slavishly following the neo-liberal lunacy of 'trickle down economics' (if you give the rich enough they'll give some back - yeah right!), which has been a 30 year plus Reagonomic experiment that has proven itself to be a total failure for everyone except the rich.

Anyway, let's please dispel this myth that this ConDem government is "incompetent" or "misguided" or "stupid" or indeed anything that excuses their deliberate, and very successful attempts to asset-strip the poor for the benefit of the rich.

Graeme.