Start the day the false dichotomy way

[oursin]

Okay, I should not really be surprised, following Tanya Gold's saga of her dysfunctional 'love'-life in Guardian Weekend (snarked on Saturday).

In her column today she makes the basic error of assuming that things - in this case alcoholism - are either 'genetic' (so you can't do anything about it, poor you, you have a disease) or 'choice' (in which case you should pull yourself together and snap out of it).

There could be a good column to be got out of interrogating these assumptions, but this is so not it.

Plz to be designing a t-shirt (or maybe a postcard) with a codfish and text 'It's Always More Complicated' that I could send to people like this. (Also to D Cameron etc who are playing the 'personal responsibility' card on this issue.)

No cuddle for Ms Gold from me.

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Gold's original article - the looking up old lovers one - made me feel incredibly old and censorious; I really felt that if one was that much of a cheap drunken slut it would at least be better not to advertise the fact in the national press. She didn't even seem to be ashamed of the way she'd behaved. I think I'll practise to be a Grumpy Old Woman...

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Where has Tanya Gold been that she doesn't know that the world is full of people who think you can end diabetes or epilepsy or particularly schizophrenia (because that's 'all in the head', obviously, by their logic) if you just take the right kind of snake oil and/or pull yourself together?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

And those people who think that you can 'recover' from homosexuality via a 12-step type programme?

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. "Depressed? Pull yourself together!". That'll make the hypothalamus grow back.

I'm trying incense at the moment. Yes, I'm *that* desperate.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

The problem with Cameron's 'stop the malingerers' drive (and little James Purnell's greedy stealing of the ideas) is that, in theory, and in certain cases, he has a point. People need to try to stop drinking/get a job rather than just rely on the state to hand out benefits to them. (I have a massive issue with the obesity thing, because the 'science' surrounding the OMIGOD OBESITY EPIDEMIC - which isn't an epidemic because obesity is not contagious, morons - is pretty suspect).

BUT, it's not the 'genuine' malingerers, who could work but can't be arsed/are clever enough to work out they're better off on benefits than doing an incredibly boring job for a pittance that get worried and upset and scared their benefits are going to get cut off. It's the people who are really ill, who can't find jobs even though they'd like nothing more than to work. And in the current political/media climate, you just can't express a policy that's nuanced enough to deal with it.

IAMC t-shirts all round, I say. (Send some to the newspapers as well while you're at it!)

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Yes, but people can only end an addiction when they're ready--not when the state is ready.

I care far less about the state supporting a few malingerers than I do about them spending billions on the War to Create Terrorism, or on computer systems that don't work, or on ID cards, or....

/rant

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

That's true... it's one of those catch-22 situations, in some ways. It seems disempowering (and patronising, in some cases) to say 'oh poor alcoholics/drug addicts they can't help it, it's genetic and they're ill. They need help.' but you can't (not least because it won't work) say 'it might be genetic but they can overcome it with help if they wanted to, so they should pull themselves together.'

And yes, I agree that if wasting money was the problem (and whilst it may well be, that's not how it's being marketed at the moment - it's about a culture of poverty of ambition or something, which really starts in schools or before, but I suppose we've got to do something with/for/about the people the system's already comprehensively failed) there are several really very easy ways of saving a lot more money. Supercomputer schemes are quite often the worst (because they never work, they go over budget and then they're scrapped because... they don't work)

We could have decided to let Paris have the Olympics as well.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Hah, when the vote for 2012 came in, I said, "wow, I didn't think the French hated us THAT much!".

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Think of how much fun we could have if the French had won - years and years of semi-legitimate reasons to bitch about how we could have done it better and laugh when all the workers went off on strike! Plenty of scope for hilarious casual racism from the press.

Instead, we're lumped with it.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

And we'll have to pay for it...and pay...and pay....

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Research has been done on means-tested benefits which demonstrates that the real problem is that people who are fully eligible hesitate to apply for them. (Rather than cheating. Also, perhaps related: social security fraud - a drop in the ocean that is tax avoidance.)

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware of that, but it's not entirely surprising!

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

The research also shows that you save nothing with means-testing, as any savings get absorbed by administration, and that universal benefits are the only way to reach people who really need them.

But that doesn't go down well with the public.