The Schizo-Stroller

Since attending the Maastricht conference in September 09, I have been reading up on medication reduction, I have been reading Peter Lehmann’s excellent edited ‘Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs’ and the users experiences recounted in it.

Back in January 2009 I was still working as a taxi driver, I was working 6 days a week and long hours, I had been capitalising on the bank holidays to get extra money and was tired. Additionally family life was hard, familial visiting rites had taken it out on my spouse, to do with issues that I’d rather not go into, suffice to say that I saw by proxy, through the way my partner was treated, the way I was treated in the compex web of family relations and power plays, an interpersonal communicative diagram that I now believe led to my original breakdown and what I had assumed was recovery but had in large part been merely a maintenance, a subjection facilitated by medication. This experience gave me an awareness of a diagram that has given me a fresh perspective on and appreciation, or rather personal understanding, of Hegel and Lacan. In fact it is this awareness that has led to a self-understanding that has helped me understand my own crisis of being (what I prefer to call my breakdown rather than an illness) to the extent that I am in a position to have the strength, confidence and ability to recover enough to consider coming off medication.

Returning to my working as a taxi driver. I was working long hours, family life was hard, and I was taking 4mg of Risperidone nightly. I was knackered. However, I found that the concentration and hard work (stress?) helped reduce my voices (there was another factor that I shall come to that was helping but I wasn’t aware of it at the time). I went to the doctors. I couldn’t do anything about the hours, I had to earn £18500 a year to cover my costs before making a profit. Flexible hours and fixed costs meant that once I’d covered the costs, the more hours I worked the more per hour I was earning (if you ever see a job advertised as working the hours you choose, but that has such high fixed costs, i.e taxi driving, driving instructor. Laugh in their faces. Laugh hard). I couldn’t do anything about the (home) family situation, I can’t change my (birth) family. I could change my medication. I asked the doctor if I could reduce my dosage to help with the tiredness. He agreed that it might help and I was stable, my medication was reduced to 3mg.

I was still knackered. I had to give up my job. However, having decided to see if I could do a full time job after years of crisis recovery (illness) in the six months in which I did so, the government changed the law. From one of ‘we realise you have difficulties/ a disability and it would suit us if you worked so we will help you get one but you are entitled to support and welfare as a human right, one fought for for years, but no pressure’ to ‘we are getting pressure from the reactionary right wing and we want to show we are tough so although we will push even harder the veneer of no pressure/ support/ entitlement to keep the liberals happy in fact we will make the qualifying tests more punitive’. The law had changed from Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance and over a year later I am still battling with it.

So I was without a job and exhausted. I started looking for another one, because of my previous training as a mental health advocate I started looking for care work, even signing up to an employment agency. This was still January 09 and I hadn’t been to the conference yet, nor even knew of it. However I was at the time in the process of setting up a Hearing Voices Group, I had been seeing a psychologist through the NHS for what was supposed to be a mix of CBT and psychoanalysis but seemed to be mainly psychoanalysis, the attempts at installing a CBT regime early on had been dropped as I don’t behave. As a child my behaviour regime had been largely a form of guilt tripping – ‘Don’t do that or you’ll make mummy upset’ which any good therapist will tell you keeps them employed. The other form had been institutionalised discipline at my boarding school. Both forms of discipline I react strongly against, one with anger, the other with general refusal, hence my incompatibility with CBT but ease with psychoanalysis. I can talk about myself for hours as long as I have a trained willing listener, otherwise I feel guilty for wasting your time. I had previously attended one of this psychologist’s Hearing Voices Groups and had long talked to him about setting up another group, he had asked me to run one of his but due to the pressures and strains of NHS working practices this never materialised. Then one day he said to me, there’s an RMN at another centre who wants to start a group up, she’d like to talk to you. So I ended up helping set a group up. However to do this I had to run the gamut of NHS volunteer working practices which resulted in me seeing a support worker to get me work (technically within the NHS but a she helped me look further afield), this included advice on benefits including Tax Credits. I was advised not to follow the a path of the employment agency as to get Working Tax Credits I would have to work regularly over 18 hours a week, but due to my exhaustion and the difficulties I had been having with my voices ( my voices had got worse after giving up work) as well as the situation at home I probably couldn’t work more than 20,  keeping these narrowly defined hours of work regularly through an employment agency would be difficult and if I lost the Working Tax Credit I could be worse off than I would be claimimg benefits, it would be far better to look for a more permanent contract, so I went through the process of looking for  jobs.

I still had my taxi licence so there was the possibility of getting part-time jockeying although the pay-off I was learning would be worse than full-time taxiing. I was still looking for care work (and other jobs) but getting nowhere. However I had more free time and as the taxi driving had always been a means to an end, i.e. a means to fund my PhD, a means I was realising more and more was financially impossible, my partner and I decided I would focus on getting a proposal for that together whilst focusing on other things. One of which would be restarting the proof-reading training I had started but required an administration fee to continue as it had been so long since I’d let it slide… I still haven’t paid that fee. However I was phoned up by a guy from the local community radio, who offered me a show, I had sent a proposal in months ago and they liked it. So my life was working on the PhD proposal, co-facilitating a hearing voices group and doing a 4-weekly Contemporary Arts Show on community radio and looking for work. However family life was still hard, my partner was still having difficulties and giving her the time of day required to keep our family together was taking up a large part of the day, I knew why this was and knew why it was worth it but it was emotionally exhausting and my voices were haywire, sometimes I was far better, however at other times I was talking to myself more, even in the street, something I had only previously done before when drunk. But I had more energy and we agreed I didn’t want to go back to 4mg, not least as we were co-sleeping with our son and my partner was concerned about how heavily my medication made me sleep, he slept on her side, in a cot with the side down, so that he could roll over to feed without waking her too much but it was still a concern.

As it turns out this decision would lead to me making some self-realisations that would lead to me taking the path I am now on. My partner and i were arguing, I was giving extra support with child care because we were both exhausted, not least my partner was getting insomnia. The tiredness would also lead to distress for both parties, hence more anxiety, hence, in part, for me more voices. The other part was the reduced medication. Not though because I was getting worse again. I wasn’t in a crisis but I was getting in touch with emotions i had not had for years. I found myself crying, I had not cried except when drunk since I was first put on medication. I found myself getting angry, and I found myself realising this was because my needs were not getting met, they never had, I didn’t know how to ask for them to be. I’d never been given the skills, To help our situation my partner and I bought a book on Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, now I am not talking as a convert, I find the methods, awkward and unnatural but it did give me an awareness that I had difficulty expressing my feelings and hence getting my needs met. I also discovered that I was married to the only person who had ever listened to me, truly listened to me, and the arguments stemmed from communication breakdowns when we were both too tired to listen to each other and the old learned reactions to stress kicked in. But I had met some one who acknowledged me as me, hence, although at times of anxiety my voices got worse, in times of calm, things were better than they had ever been.

Through the Hearing Voices group I got to attend the Hearing Voices conference in Maastricht in September, I about the harm reduction method of medication reduction. I decided to do further research.

I also learned from the Lehmann book, reading the accounts of medication withdrawal that the emotions that I had been going through, were not just because of my home situation but that my medication had always smothered them.

However dues to family difficulties I missed the funding deadline for the year, I did however continue to apply for the PhD, I would do it part-time until the next round of funding when I would go full time, allowing me to work to pay for it. As it happens I did get accepted but I didn’t get a job in time and my grandmother helped with the fees.

Meanwhile I started to get used to the new emotions that I had been missing for the last 15 years, things settled down at home.

However I was having problems with my Employment and Support Allowance, I had failed my medical, I only received 6 of the minimum 15 points required, even though my legal adviser and I worked out that I could arguably have got 42, more than enough. I appealed. I went to tribunal i failed that, the GP and solicitor advising seemed to think a mental health problem was a learning disability and if I could do a PhD I could work, they never asked me about my voices so they never learnt how I use my voices as a form of Socratic method to help work out theory, what job can you do that in? They decided my exhaustion was all down to my family situation and should clear up. I get up at 6.30am, the mentally ill all get up late, negative symptoms are necessarily part of illness and have nothing to with medication as far as they’re concerned. I wasn’t allowed to speak long enough to say how it is the only time I get peace and is a necessary coping strategy to prevent me getting worse. I had written notes explaining my voices but was told not to use them, my short term memory isn’t good enough otherwise but I had no advocate to support me, the local Mind is oversubscribed as funding has been cut and my legal advisor is only paid for, according to government policy, by legal aid to help with drafting the appeal, there is no longer legal aid for the tribunal. In the meantime I was getting sick notes from my GP and he referred me to mental health services, after a long delay I saw a CPN. Initially I was to see the CPN for the allotted 7 sessions to help me deal with my family, or to stand up to them, but we ended up doing a talking therapy on my voices. My CPN was an older, experienced and highly trained CPN, stuck in the new bureaucracy doing short term maintenance work.

We discussed my voices, discussed where they came from, we talked about my boarding school experience, something I had never done before even though for 7 years I had seen a counsellor prominent with Boarding School Survivors, at the time I just had not been in the place to do so, I regret it now but he was a good counsellor and I think he recognised that it wasn’t the right time for me. We talked about my family, my relations with them and how that affected them. How the combination had led to my crisis of being. The CPN recognised that 7 sessions wasn’t enough but it was the best he could offer, before I left he told me my awareness of my issues was in advance of what the NHS could offer me, at least under current policies, and not in Sussex Partnership Trust (not that there aren’t staff with the skills in the NHS it’s just not policy to treat people long term anymore, which is what I needed. Short term CBT is the new ideology). However in the last session we discussed me reducing my medication and he referred me to a consultant.

On friday I saw that consultant. At first I though he was reacting negatively to my proposal, but as the session progressed I realised he was just covering his arse. I explained how originally, historically, medication was supposed to be temporary whilst other therapies took over it’s just that now with most research following the biological model for all the various reasons, there is no therapy now. He agreed. I told him my view on my situation, he accepted my level of awareness. He agreed to support me in reducng my medication, he even suggested he would like me to come completely off one day. In the meantime I am to take 2mg and 3 mg on alternate days for four weeks. Then reduced to 2mg daily until I feel comfortable reducing it further.

It can be done.

Have new blog for my PhD stuff: Madness and Theory

From now on, all my theory in that area will be published there. At the moment there is just the conference notes crossposted, some more will be added soon then we’ll see how it grows.

Everything else will remain on here.

If the Napoleonic code in 1804 was one of the first attempts to create a legal code that would introduce the notion of absolute ownership, and this in essence was an actual codification of an attempt to control the woman’s phallus, then can we allow capitalism to take a woman’s form as metaphor?

So what of late capitalism, in Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism he suggests that Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History was much derided but the message quietly assumed. I would like to play with this idea a bit further using the metaphor of Capitalism as a woman, and at that as an attractive woman who had been in an unhappy and antagonistic marriage with State Socialism.

We can see Fukuyama as the guy who realising she had won the divorce with what looked like a particularly fortuitous settlement, not least because it looked like she got all the kids (although Uncle China had an eye on the family), decided to fuck her. Unfortunately he suffered premature ejeculation and was widely laughed at. However others had always seen her beauty and progressed to sleep with her, many of these men, and women, were more virile.

Her orgasm increased, however due to the psychological attentions of so many abusive lovers she had a breakdown, many of these lovers tried to medicate her in an attempt to get her up and fucking again, but perhaps if we move the metaphor back to people, a woman who had been through so much abuse would require someone to treat her respectfully and listen to her, she may well be full of self-hatred form earlier abusive relationships, thinking she was worthless and deserving of such treatment. Of course, in a professional relationship, but the best care would come from those who don’t want to sleep with her lest the relationship become abusive once more, perhaps those who don’t find her particluarly attractive but respect her rights as a human being. But most of all from those who see her as just one woman among many, all of whom are equally worthwhile.

[Edit: The old link died, here is new link]

Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition

Can you make a living out of madness, out of being mad, not curing it?

Taking into account such a possibility I am currently trying to get a certificate of attendance from my psychiatric unit as evidence of a life skill at prospective interviews.

To show how tough one is (in case the burly working classes don’t know and to assess your outward signs of your salvation) when ill one must carry on working so that:

1. One may be less productive throughout the duration of the illness

2. Make the duration of the illness longer to continue this lower productivity.

3. Pass it on to your colleagues so they may continue the above tasks after one basking in how hard working we all are and isn’t that a priori what makes us meritous and proves we’re better than the next man (as we get paid more and in a meritocracy based on pay logically then if you’re paid more you’re better).

Thus the rationality of the work ethic is again proven.

Continuing the book readings I have been putting on, next up is a book reading by Mark Fisher aka k-punk, upstairs @ the Open House on Springfield Road in Brighton, next to London Road station. From 7.30pm on Thursday 26th November, entrance £2.

Mark will be reading from his new book ‘Capitalist Realism’

Here is publishers blurb:

• Capitalist Realism
  Is there no alternative?
• ISBN:
  [978-1-84694-317-1]
• Price:
  £7.99 || $14.95
• Publishing on:
  27 Nov 2009
• Pages:
  92
  Format:
  Paperback
• Size:
  51/2×81/2 in ||  mm
• Category:
• Political/ Popular Culture
• Author(s): Mark Fisher

• It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system – a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, films, fiction, work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas of contemporary experience. But it also shows that, because of a number of inconsistencies and glitches internal to the capitalist reality program – endemic mental health problems, the proliferation of new forms of bureaucracy – capitalism in fact is anything but realistic. How can capitalist realism be challenged, and can we begin to imagine the unimaginable: an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?
  Capitalist Realism includes striking new readings of Children Of Men, the Jason Bourne films, Supernanny and the fiction of Le Guin and Kafka.

• Mark Fisher writes for The Wire, frieze, Sight & Sound and New Statesman. He teaches philosophy at the City Literary Institute in London and is Visiting Fellow at the Centre of for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. His weblog, k-punk, is highly regarded.

• Endorsements:

  Let’s not beat around the bush: Fisher’s compulsively readable book is simply the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have! Through examples from daily life and popular culture, but without sacrificing theoretical stringency, he provides a ruthless portrait of our ideological misery. Although the book is written from a radically Left perspective, Fisher offers no easy solutions. Capitalist Realism is a sobering call for patient theoretical and political work. It enables us to breathe freely in our sticky atmosphere.

  Slavoj Žižek

  What happened to our future? Mark Fisher is a master cultural diagnostician, and in Capitalist Realism he surveys the symptoms of our current cultural malaise. We live in a world in which we have been told, again and again, that There Is No Alternative. The harsh demands of the ‘just-in-time’ marketplace have drained us of all hope and all belief. Living in an endless Eternal Now, we no longer seem able to imagine a future that might be different from the present. This book offers a brilliant analysis of the pervasive cynicism in which we seem to be mired, and even holds out the prospect of an antidote.

  Steven Shaviro Author of Connected and Doom Patrols

I have put up podcasts from the first three shows of the Contemporary Arts Show on Podomatic.

The first, orginally broadcast on 03/05/09, includes an interview with the artist Matt Robinson about his exhibition at the Phoenix Gallery for Brighton’s Fringe Festival 2009

The second contains a live performance from a Safehouse Collective Ensemble, compromising, Gus Garside, Annie Kerr and Dave Allen

The Third has an interview with academic Dr Katy Shaw, senior lecturer in literature at Brighton University on David Peace, author of GB84, Red Riding Quartet, Damned United and Tokyo Year Zero

I would like top thank all the guests for their sheer brilliance. I would also like to apologise to all listeners for my nerves. In later shows I learnt to write a script!… However again the guests are superb and that’s what the show’s about.

> Sent: 18 October 2009 17:44
>
> Subject: Why we are going on strike
>
> We think it’s fair to say that you our customers are not interested in why we
> are once again striking.It is also fair to say that some of the problems we are
> going through does not affect you either.
>
> What you are interested in is you getting your mail and whatever mail you send
> getting there within the allotted time depending on what service was paid for.
>
> But we do think that it is fair to inform you of part of the reason as to why
> we are striking as it affects you in a big way.
>
> But before we go on let’s get one thing out 1st,it’s not about a pay rise,far
> from it,a pay rise if we are to be truthful is in the mix but is not as a high
> priority as other concerns we have.
>
> Please just take a minute to see what we have to say.
>
>
> What’s affecting you then?
>
> In 2007 we signed an agreement with Royal Mail called the Pay & Modernisation
> deal,in that deal there are, amongst other things, a new working practice
> called ‘absorption’.
>
> This is one of YOUR biggest problems,whether you are a domestic or business
> customer!
>
> Before the deal any postal workers rounds that weren’t covered due to staff
> sickness,holidays,or general shortage would be covered by other postal workers
> on overtime.
>
> There would be no shortage of posties willing to do this,so there was never a
> major problem getting the mail delivered.
>
> But now we have ‘absorption’,what this now means is that any rounds now that
> does not have a postal worker allocated to it is now absorbed by the rest of
> the postal workers in the office.
>
> With Royal Mail insisting that mail volumes are falling they are under the
> impression that we know have a lot of spare time in which to absorb other
> posties work.
>
> This is not the case,not only have we lost 60,000 staff in the business in the
> last few years (our CEO Adam Crozier has publicly admitted this) but we now
> have a large proportion of part-time workers which affects the way the mail
> pipeline works.
>
> Mail is being delayed regularly and in vast amounts around the country in the
> name of absorption,so managers can report that absorption has happened and the
> savings have been made,some posties have to leave part of their round in the
> office,they also are being forced to ‘cut off’ or stop their deliveries as they
> have run out of time.
>
> Royal Mail drivers have been taken off their packet routes to help absorption,
> hence packets are left undelivered for days.
>
> This is a mass abuse of the deal we signed in 07,and posties are being bullied
> and threatened with taken off pay if they either refuse to do this or happen to
> cut off.
>
>
> Later deliveries
>
> A few years back Royal Mail ceased the 2nd delivery and you now only get one,
> but the truth is Royal Mail did not stop the 2nd delivery they cancelled the
> 1st.
>
> We now start our rounds at the time that we started the 2nd delivery years ago
> and now, Royal Mail want even later start times. So while today, if you’re one
> of the lucky ones, you might meet your postman before you go to lunch, you will
> soon be meeting him just before dinner. We are aware that this causes big
> problems for businesses all over the UK more especially those that work from
> home.
>
> But that does not seem to matter to Royal Mail, later start times and later
> deliveries are all down to modernisation, or in other words, new sorting
> machines being brought in which, would you believe, take even longer to sort
> the mail.
>
> This will also affect our own work/life balance and there are childcare issues,
> and school run problems, already rising because of it.
>
> You may also be aware before we went to Single Daily Delivery, you could pick
> up any packets or signed for letters left in the morning around 2 hours or so
> later at your local office. That, as some of you may be aware has changed, some
> places you have to wait 24 hours, most 48 but there are some where you can’t
> get the packet for nearly 72hrs.
>
> That’s if your office is local instead of on some industrial estate somewhere,
> and of course if it does not close before lunch.
>
> This is Royal Mail modernisation.
>
>
> If you don’t like your job,then leave
>
> This is what we read about all the time from alleged customers on the Internet
> news stories comment sections, and, regrettably Royal Mail management.
>
> But who says that we don’t like our job. You will find that most posties love
> their job, but are finding it harder and harder to provide the service they
> want and their customers expect, not just because of the work levels, but more
> so the bullying and harassment by managers at all levels of the business.
>
> Why should we have to put up with the constant B&H and worsening of our terms
> and conditions, when all we want to do is get on with our job and provide a
> service to our customers.
>
> We will not be hounded out of a job we love in the name of profit, or be made
> to feel guilty because we decide to defend our current Conditions of service,
> instead of allowing them to be decimated because of the inherently unfair bonus
> culture of Royal Mail.
>
>
> National strike
>
> The 1st strike was in London N18 Edmonton against introduction of part-time
> duties by executive action on 7th March. Cowdenbeath DO was the first among
> many in Scotland to strike against Executive Action on 27th March. The whole of
> London took action throughout June, and over 500 other offices around the
> country either went out on strike or requested a strike ballot.
>
> Previously to all of this some Mail Centres around the country took strike
> action over their closures, and the lack of real consultation.
>
> London, since June have taken over 16 days of action.
>
> During all that time we have repeatedly asked Royal Mail to negotiate with our
> Union about, not only the problems that you have so far read about and will
> read about below, but more importantly the fact that previous agreements are
> either being ignored or abused.
>
> It has now come to the time where enough is enough and now we have,
> unfortunately, the national strikes.
>
>
> No more efficiency changes this year
>
> This is what Royal Mail have claimed but this is not the case,there are many
> cases on the site where Royal Mail are still pushing ahead with with their
> changes. Including later start times,full-time positions going to
> part-time,Pegasus 2 revisions (flawed computer program),night staff being moved
> to days,full-time staff to prep part-time staff walks,more hours to go from
> delivery offices…
>
>
> You the tax payer
>
> You are being mislead by the media and the Government regarding Billions of
> pounds of tax payers money being used to prop up Royal Mail and our
> pensions,this is not the case and a blatant lie by all.
>
> For many years the treasury have taken our profits from us for their own gain,
> add nearly 13 years when due to tax reasons Royal Mail did not pay into our
> pension scheme, and yes the treasury got that money as well, you the tax payer
> owes Royal Mail Billions of pounds.
>
> Any money recently received by Royal Mail from tax payers has been a loan and
> has to be paid back at commercial loan rates which means that the tax payer has
> once again benefited from us.
>
>
> Privatisation
>
> This is a simple one,the Government have said that they will take over our
> pension deficit only if we get part-privatised.
>
> The crux of this,is that you the tax payer will pay for our pensions,but a
> private investor will not have to so they will just get the profits. Our Union
> Leader remarked on this at the Labour Conference by saying the Government were
> Privatising the Profit and Nationalising the debt.
>
> The tax payer will have the debt, while the private investor will get the
> profit!
>
> We, us the humble posties do not need to tell you what happens after a company
> is privatised, you only need to look at your utility bills, train fares and
> your bank statements for that.
>
>
> Mail volumes
>
> We agree that mail volumes are down,but not as much as Royal Mail say, we
> accept the recession has had an effect, but again, not as much that Royal Mail
> has said.
>
> With 60,00 jobs gone, bigger rounds,over 1 Million new homes built in the last
> few years with more to come, a few letters less in our post bag, when you add
> the mass increase in packets due to e-commerce,there is no leeway in our duties
> like Royal Mail think.
>
> Add the fact that Royal Mail now count the mail differently with an un agreed
> and flawed process,then you have false traffic figures.
>
> What is in the boxes that they send the mail down to Delivery Offices, is very
> much under estimated and has been shown to be so by royalmailchat members
> counting individual boxes.
>
>
> Independent report on Royal Mail
>
> Last year the Government requested an independent report on Royal Mail (The
> Hooper report) this found many flaws with the way the business is being
> run,including lack of transparency by the business with its figures and the
> fact that Royal Mail management were not up to the job.
> We are not against modernisation
>
> WE ARE NOT AGAINST CHANGE – We signed up to the Pay and Mod Agreement. RM
> ignored Phase 4 till we started local strikes.
>
> WE ARE AWARE THERE WILL BE JOB LOSSES – 60,000 gone in recent years.
>
> WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR A PAY RISE PER SE – We had a pay freeze this year which
> was imposed against the spirit of the 2007 agreement.
>
> WE ARE NOT AGAINST MODERNISATION – But we haven’t seen it in deliveries unless
> you count longer routes with heavier bags.
>
> WE OFFERED A MORATORIUM ON STRIKES IF ROYAL MAIL DISCUSSED CHANGES – Royal Mail
> refused saying it was a stalling tactic but now they want it when un agreed
> systems are in place.
>
> WE ARE NOT AGAINST WORKING HARD – The Union suggested having independent
> organisations help both sides come up with a fair and balanced way of measuring
> workload and standard – Royal Mail refused.
>
> The 2007 agreement allowed local units to have innovative attendance patterns,
> and these were agreed in some units with full Royal Mail involvement. Yet
> without consulting the CWU (as per the agreement) they unilaterally enforced
> change on these working arrangements.
>
> The agreement also allowed a local earnings package,this has been taken away by
> Royal Mail.
>
>
> We are and we will strike against – Bullying and Harassment such as
>
> • Being suspended for pointing out H&S concerns.
>
> • Being sent home without pay when we can’t complete a delivery in the time
> allotted especially if managers are not willing to walk test us or check
> individual posties frames to see how busy they are.
>
> • Genuine overtime being struck off when you go over your contracted hours on
> a busy day.
>
> • Being sent home without pay when you can’t do the half hour flexibility
> when asked – even though personal reasons are meant to be taken into account as
> per the 07 agreement.
>
> • When you do the 1/2hr flexibility not being able to claw it back or be paid
> it on overtime as per the 07 agreement. Or being given it back in 5 minute
> chunks.
>
> • Changing our start and finish times on a weekly basis without negotiation.
>
> • Using a flawed computer program to work out rounds with un-agreed walk
> speeds.
>
> • No independent H&S review after accidents at work – Staff being blamed for
> accidents without thorough and external review of all pertinent matters by an
> independent body.
>
>
> Spanish practices do not exist
>
> The reality in modern delivery offices is that the posties slogs their guts out
> everyday under the gaze of managers ready to sack them for the slightest
> indiscretion.
>
> Many many part-timers are bullied by managers into doing unpaid over time day
> in day out.
>
> All OT has to be OK’ed by management and most posties are too intimidated to go
> see their manager to ask for it.
>
> A lot of our guys do hrs of OT per week for nothing.
> Give the Public a service – Yep that’s Royal Mails job and guess how they do
> that
>
> 1. Close 3,500 Post Offices.
>
> 2. Reduce the service at 1000s of others.
>
> 3. Allow the Government to withdraw some of the services you used to be able to
> get at POs.
>
> 4. Ceased Sunday Collections (now for anyone to get anything on Monday you need
> to send it before 1230 on Saturday.
>
> 5. Cancelled Bank Holiday Collections.
>
> 6. Cancelled 2nd Delivery
>
> 7. Made the 1st delivery later than the 2nd ever was.
>
> 8. Laid off 60,000 workers through various means.
>
> 9. Close delivery offices and amalgamate them into Super DOs on industrial
> estates miles from bus routes.
>
> 10. Bring in a complicated and expensive postage system. (Pricing in
> Proportion).
>
> 11. Increase handling fees for Import from £4 to £8.
>
> 12. Increase the surcharge of underpaid items to £1.
>
> 13. Increase stamp prices above inflation.
>
> 14. Agree a price with DSA competitors to use our network which means we
> subsidise them to the tune of 2p per item.
>
> 15. Take 5 years to spend half of the 1.2billion the government loaned them,
> but we are still yet to see the machines in use on a UK wide basis even though
> trials are going well according to Royal Mail.
>
> 16. Removing Mail Cycles and replacing them with cars and then claiming they
> are doing everything to reduce carbon emissions.
>
> 17. Half day closing for all Callers Offices and a delay of up to 72 hours
> before you can collect parcels/letters after getting a “Sorry you were out
> Card”
>
> All of the above is not exhaustive, but we are, thank you for taking the time to
> read it.
>
>
>
>
> Please send this on to all your contacts ta very much.

I had an interesting moment. I was reading up on some theory, Habermas to be precise, and I had one of those moments where a lot of what I’d read previously slotted into place. Not just course work but pleasure reading. That moment where you get the point of not just what you are reading at that moment but the connections with all those other things – to be specific in this instance but not exclusive histories of social/ communal-religious puritan groups such as the Shakers and Weber/ modern thought – that you have read piecemeal in the past because they looked interesting. But of course unless you live in ‘I can be a purely objective scientist’ fantasy land, at least in the social sciences – Habermas again has something to say about that to do with the necessary use of the ordinary language being studied – you sometimes think how it relates to the evolution of your own thought, your beliefs (or you should – the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’). But that was not the breakthrough, it was a breakthrough, a minor one of sorts in my own theoretical preferences, but not the one this post is about.

As I was thinking to myself, ‘now I understand all those things I’ve read’, one of my voices spoke up: ‘You mean, we’ve read.’ At first I had my normal paranoiac/ telepathic moment – that’s someone telepathically linked to me letting me know they’ve read up on this too, stop fucking preaching (a weakness of mine) – but then I realised, no, for the first time, that I was aware of, or rather, or perhaps, the first time I was aware that, my voices were telling me they were a part of me.

Then I looked out of the window and a guy was walking past giving me the evils – did he know I was being so foolish? But no, he was the same guy who had been delivering leaflets while I was walking my son to sleep earlier, he was delivering pizza menus. He put one through my front door. I don’t eat pizza.

[edit] Rereading this I got a voice saying ‘Oh jeez, we’re not’  but was it telling me it was separate or was it the voice’s own terrified realisation that they are a part of me?