Gone fishing

Hello! If you’ve just arrived here, please note, I’ve made this blog private for the time being, and won’t be updating unless it’s for a good reason. However, I am over at http://www.seaneenmolloy.co.uk, and I’ll probably be back eventually, returning the site to its previous form.

You can still contact me at anne dot elk at gmail dot com.

Thank you!

Comment is Free: Benefits helped me turn my life around

Hello chaps!  Crossposting this here.

At the recently rather badly organised protests against welfare and public services cuts, I ranted for a good…oh, three hours on the subject of what benefits can actually be good for.  The endless parroting of, “Sickness benefits?  Bloody scroungers…dodgy backs, a bit, “depressed” eh?” was either going to land me on an assault charge, or, more constructively, give me a kick up the arse to write publicly about why that’s rather often bullshit.

Anyway, I wrote to Comment is Free.  Here’s the link!

And here’s a sneaky, tarty little excerpt:

This week, people across the country protested against the cuts in welfare spending. Without a mobilising force such as the NUS behind them, it remains to be seen if they will dent the public consciousness as much as the student protests have done.

Much has been made of the benefits-dependency culture allegedly rampant in Britain; the image of those on benefits is one of people greedily pocketing cash then resigning themselves to lives beneath the duvet. But time on benefits does not have to be time in limbo; it can be a time of growth and recovery.

 

Sorry I’ve been abandoning blogging at the main site.  The rather dull reason is a total lack of sleep and a total avalache of school work.

The Secret Life/Goodbye

Hello!