Two Plus Two = Five

By William Morton

The book is a sometimes funny insight into the machinations of the mind during a typical day in 1994 from five in the morning till eleven at night. It describes just how the author gets through a day when actively seeking employment, preferably employment which is permanent as it was temporary work that was usually on offer in post that cherite Britain. A Britain that was paranoid about union loving lefties ". Any hint that a person might be of left wing persuasion and there was no chance of a careerist position. You may, after reading think the writer is actually paranoid but his thoughts are really quite revealing about benefits Britain ". The book was in fact an attempt to prove that the author was not mad but just a typical victim (one of millions) who ended up described as mentally ill by an uncaring government. Governments that would sooner pay people to wallow on benefits than partake in something useful. Governments that simply did not understand what it is like to be out of work and to look for work or what to be out of work did on the physical and mental health of a person. Also, it is a look at how education is dismissed as worthless, even though governments constantly harp on about the need to get education. Hopefully the book will show that we are all individuals, unique beings that do not all live for the profit motive of big business. That some people are quite happy doing relatively non-pressurized jobs in manual work or as clerks. There is no edict that states a graduate must further qualify as a chartered accountant with the hundreds of hours of learning to pass yet more examinations. A person has a right to do what work he thinks he is capable of. The books conclusion is really quite sad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456785239

William Morton

William Morton was born in 1958 in a town called Clitheroe, near Manchester, England and after grammar school went to Warwick University where he successfully studied for a degree in Environmental Sciences (1980). Because he took so many exams at University he decided to take it easy after leaving university, travelling through Europe by Interail and eventually working on a Kibbutz in Israel. Returning to England, he did work as a fruit picker, and returns clerk ending up in London. Here he learned about the great British benefits system which dominates so much of life in Britain both in the eighties, nineties and today. He met many types of travelers from all over the world all, it seems, bent on claiming benefits. He did, whilst working in Soho, London as a road sweeper,(1987 ) decide to use his education and apply for secure long term employment, but was unsuccessful. He returned to the North of England where he was eventually diagnosed with the mental malady schizophrenia. He was sectioned to a hospital for 6 weeks (1989) and defying all the doctors diagnostics found work afterwards as a temporary telesales clerk! The doctors had told him he that he was mentally ill for working as a road sweeper when he had a degree, even though the job was only temporary ( and paid well ).To prove the doctors wrong he wrote a book about the thoughts he had during one day in his life in 1994. It was rejected by many publishers and once again (1997) he was sectioned. He has been on benefits ever since.

Book preview

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

Epilogue

I

Five a.m.

It is 5.00 a.m., the third of December 1993. I have spent one year on benefit cheques administered by the Department of Social Security. I am asleep it seems, fully clothed under my continental quilt. As of yet, I have not managed to get hold of a bed, and have been using an old sleeping bag and blanket, purchased from Help The Aged, as a mattress.

But this morning I am not asleep. I am not free of worry. My mind turns over in a manner not suited to the administrators of power. It is a restless, malcontented mind. This cannot be helped. It cannot be stopped. Today, at the unearthly hour of 5.00 a.m., my mind decides to think about just one day out of the 365 spent on social security. Scrounger’s paradise. That’s what some people think. It is also what most newspapers think. My mind turns over to face the carpet on which I lay. It is not what I think. I think that my carpet needs a really good hoovering. But I have no working hoover. Old ones are often on sale at the local car boot sale, looking dilapidated and antique. Besides, should I buy one of these, I do not possess sufficient practical skills to maintain or repair one. Yet the carpet is not dirty. Nor is it worn out. It just needs a good hoovering. It is like the car assembly line. Bolts need putting on the assembling cars. People not on the social do those jobs. Proper people doing proper jobs. With me, I do not get the opportunity to do such jobs. It is one year in which the mind begins to know that it is one year out of work. Thoughts like these quickly pass, for at 5.00 a.m. my bedroom is awesomely cold. We are all aware of the cold, but cold whilst living on the social is something else. More than a passing sensation. Nightmares of still being on the social in one year’s time, let you know that it is the cold keeping you upon the social. It is not like when you have been on the assembly line all day or in the office. Then you can come home turn on the telly and the heating and relax. You don’t think about the cold because quite simply you are not on the social. But right now at 5.00 a.m. it is cold. As my mind tries to keep sane I notice that the radio is still playing. There is an advert on the telly which indicates that when the Manchester Evening News drops in through the letter box it is like a friend dropping in. The same analogy with the radio. It’s been on all night. It helps me feel that I am not alone in this world. Atlantic 252, the radio station that plays nonstop hits. It also features a £1000 cash call every hour for the phrase that pays. You are able to tell that you have been on the social a long time when you begin to take the voices and chat of the disc jockeys too seriously.

Being out of regular employment subtly alters the mind, but there is no point getting upset because the government has introduced a whole new philosophy, known as Mental Health to deliver its free market ethics. More precisely, I should say that it is the side effects of the free market that has brought about the phrase Mental Health. It is widely accepted now, in 1993, that organized labour has been destroyed. To argue or complain in today’s world can be construed as Mental Ill Health. Can you imagine that? Do you think that I am lying or am attempting to defend the life of the scrounger? Likely many of you will have forgotten just how long the Conservatives have been in power. But I like my mind. It is unique, but I find myself in bed knowing that to complain is useless. The introduction of the 1983 Mental Health Acts puts this governmental administration into perspective. It is the ammunition that they need to smooth out the problems. And to go with it is a whole hoard of people loosely titled as carers. These people take their newly created jobs with glee, ever ready to pounce on those reputed to be suffering from the symptoms of Mental Ill Health. Caring health professionals in a new dynamic type of job created by the political wizardry of the politician. An indication that their policies have created a boom economy. What I find is that I now think twice before I think. These caring professionals with their big cars and bright eyes are no doubt related to the car assembly workers. Glorified social workers in neat jeans and casual wear, talking of treatments and pills. Worst of all, they talk about periods of enforced detention within psychiatric hospitals. Enforced removal for enforced treatment. So I guess my mind is really quite afraid. What is that to a care worker with a C.S.E. in Domestic Science? What is that to anyone? A year on scrounger’s paradise.

5.00 a.m. Dreams and semi-dreams. Half-thoughts and chains of thoughts. I lie on my back, prostrate, listening to the tunes on the radio. And if the current tune is not one I like, I pray for the next one to be a favourite. I am inert. It is the room temperature that is cold and uninviting. Igloo-like, rendering me immobile, lacking in actions and will. I have no assembly line job to look forward to. No office job either. I find that a major problem is that time can cease to have any meaning and days simply become weeks. I am fully clothed, whether this is to stay warm or a sign of mental ill health, I cannot say. But as I lay in the cocoon of my quilt I am free of carers and their tentacles. Free temporarily of the administrators of power. Free to think about the 1983 Mental Health Acts. I am a baby, a hibernating animal, for now I know what it is like to be on the social for one year. Maybe I am still asleep. This makes life far more simple. Consciousness is done without. I do not have the awareness to know that I am missing out. I feel that life gets like that whilst living on the social. It is deceptive the way life alters. You evolve into a new life-form. I think of the life of a squirrel and its similarities with me. I too, look forward to the spring, when the weather is warmer and will penetrate my bones putting new life and hope into me. But right now I exist for no real purpose. A mere statistic. A nothing, save a socially engineered tool for the tricksters of power.

Soon the daily traffic will start up. Those fortunates off to their routines. The drone increases steadily and the mind gets used to guessing what will be next. There are motor bikes, cars, vans, buses, lorries, people, milk floats, the lot. However, it is not a noise that I like. Maybe that is another reason I leave the radio on. I find, that as I lay there, prone like a semi-invalid, the drone of noise becomes nauseating like a form of air pollution. A chemical in the air that irritates the ears and won’t go away. It cannot be escaped and although you cannot see it, you are able to imagine some of those on their way to work. Alone in their nice worlds of work. Perhaps also, listening to Atlantic 252. But by now, the background noise is something that has been absorbed. The start to the day that you yourself cannot have. I sometimes wish I could turn it all off and sleep forever. That noise signifies other people, other life-forms on the assembly line of life. In permanent and secure work with all that that brings. Children, girls, homes, pensions. You name it. I have got none of that. Just subtle changes of memories over the past year. The transition to long term unemployment.

The endless succession of hits, your favourite tunes plays on. There are occasions when I get the urge to turn it off. The radiogram that is. But it is located two feet behind my head and sandwiched between two speakers, emitting a soft and gentle stereo sound that is comforting to my dreams. Standing on two grey legs it is as much a part of the furniture as I am. My room becomes one in which it is easier to live. The metal grey legs of its stand could well indicate that I am on similar wavelengths to those in their shiny cars. And so I suppose, as my day too begins in its own peculiar way, yet one more phrase, I listen to, long wave radio, Atlantic 252 comes over the air waves. The phrase that pays. Callers into the show are supposed to remember this, for it is the phrase that pays. The radio station never stops reminding you of this. One person who called in was a worker on an oil rig. Oil, the fuel of the benefits system. Without its revenue I doubt very much if the government could deliver the present welfare state. However, with me it took months to remember the phrase that pays. Things in the constant background can be like that. You can get so used to what is going on that you forget. Like signing on. Or a walk to the job centre. Additionally you get so used to the modern large Japanese vehicles of today, that you begin to think that it is normal not to have one. That there is nothing wrong with your life. Being in receipt of benefits is, as far as I am concerned, like the phrase that pays. It says nothing about the music, and nothing about what you will never have. I think about turning the radio off. Of putting the grey legs into silent mode, but decide the effort is not worth it. That the disconnection is too great a shock for me. Also, it is cold outside my quilt. My skin head lets me know this. It is like absolute zero. I just cannot make the manoeuvre that is required to turn the radio off. So on it plays. Disco music at 5.25 a.m. Music that allows the mind to dance in a series of dreams, putting the senses into new areas of as of yet undiscovered areas of psychiatry.

Books and files litter the floor of my bedroom. I read a lot and this time until 3.00 a.m.. A book of science fiction about billionaires living on an island space colony. It is set around an artificial world created in space. It is not as way out as you may think. Many people today are billionaires and no doubt they want a piece of the space exploration research. For those firmly cemented upon mother earth, there is always Atlantic 252 to listen to. This station will probably continue playing hit singles even when nuclear weapons finally cause oblivion. Also upon the carpet lie numerous empty cups or mugs. In fact, there are three to be precise, scattered about my head. They too, share my floor space. My environment. My life. I drink tea and coffee by the gallon or perhaps I should say barrel, that is in order to show solidarity with the passing motorists. They are using x amount of barrels of oil as they drive to work whilst I use x amount of barrels of tea to get me through the day and night. There has been a new water charge introduced so it is even more like petrol. The water bills always go up and above the quoted rate of inflation. It is strange how the party that pledged itself to ending union monopolies, should allow a massive monopoly on water. Maybe the price will rise to bring it into parity with petrol. Back room boffins can get to thinking like this. State monopolies were the scourge of Thatcherism, yet the current water companies are as much a monopoly as ever. Tory policy is to destroy such evil empires and along with it the National Peoples’ Scargill Army. I do not regard myself as a scrounger, but to part with over £44 a year in a brotherly manner to some Isuzu Trooper driving director for the privilege of making tea raises concern. But still I won’t complain. I’ve got freedom and democracy guaranteed by democracy and freedom. You may, or at least some of you may, think that £44 is not a lot of money, but it is when you live on benefits and is for something as ubiquitous as water. This country has plenty of water. The high flying civil servants have not allowed the scroungers of this world to claim it back off the benefits system. It is not like having a company car. Many claimants sit back and take the view that our beloved civil servants know best. It is a bit like our Arthur Scargill. He knew best too. That’s the difference, I guess. One of tenses. Arthur no longer is a force. Thinking about water bills does not do me any good. It gets me thinking politically. Basically my present position is how best to survive. I have no bed and no hoover, so water charges mean more than most people would think. But all the while the car factory exists and the saga that is life goes on. I have grown up as a new generation. A generation that exists for no one.

A generation that knows nothing (and perhaps never will). A generation classified as being in poor mental health. Along with the creation of this new generation comes a whole new economy. Drug companies are foaming at the mouth as they concoct all kinds of pills and potions designed to cure the likes of me that are not upon the assembly line of life. You see if you do not know anybody you can always take a little comfort in a pill. Then all dreams of an Isuzu Trooper can be eradicated.

But returning to my empty tea mugs, I note that they are all badly stained. A thorough cleaning is needed. My mouth and breath are stained too with this elixir of the people. I think of visiting the dentist at this godly time of the morning. It is strange how the mind operates. Who wants to think of dentists at this time of the day. Maybe this IS the onset of mental health problems. Thinking whilst living on benefits. A deadly mixture. Clothes are littered everywhere. An assortment of pant bottoms, tee-shirts, jumpers and jeans, all in need of a very good clean. But that, I’m afraid to tell you, is a long way off. Too costly by far. Sometimes I do washing by hand but it is ultra hard work. On my curtain rail hangs, via a coat hanger, a dressing gown. And there is directly behind my head a small, brown bedside table. It contains one small drawer in which I keep cheque books and things like that. I swore that I would keep my bedroom tidy and not save unwanted items. Maybe I’ll find time to give it a thorough cleaning. Maybe. I keep an ever increasing pile of magazines because there are so many articles to read. I have to keep my knowledge increasing if I want to have any hope.

On top of the table is standing a lamp by which I read. I purchased it in a car boot sale. Only 50 pence too. I thought it a really good buy. It is made of pottery shaped into a bottle and painted brown. The shade that makes up the light covering is constructed of white silk with orange braid rims. As I re-enter the immediate world I let forth a groan for I have little to motivate me. No job. No social life. No routine. No meals even. They are a thing of the past. Just lots and lots of tea (and coffee). This along with Turtle-shell crisps and packets of biscuits. This is what I have become