Hell's delicatessen

Darcy and Hindenburg mooch, pheromoning and land-whaling, up to my desk.

Darcy is 30 years old and twenty stone of permanent dole culture craftsmanship. Round and unwashed, his circular turnip face stares at me uneasily from below greasy mop of blackish hair which appears to be void of either supercomputer or tiny wildlife The Lord be praised. He’s got the Super Economy Size dark blue tracksuit top and dark blue sloppy draw-sting trousers over whose straining waistband heritage Doritos hang in the elegant curve of a hairy white belly (mostly but not quite completely) hidden below an XXXL Asda T-shirt.

Have you ever heard of that TV sauce advertising slogan that goes: ‘I feel like Lettuce Tonight?’

Him neither.

He’s tall and afraid and about as cute as hemorrhoids.

Hindenburg is his girlfriend: his ‘partner’ in the box-ticking jargon of my grubby trade, and in the low twenties in both years and stones.

She’s a unique individual; a child of a benevolent Nature and loving parents; the peak of evolution’s finest experiment with a little spark of angel in there somewhere. She’s also a head shorter and therefore denser than Darcy but with the same mass. Whereas Darcy has his own atmosphere, Lump has a discernible gravitational field to which many, many cheap and brightly sparkling objects are attracted; never to escape.

This so isn’t going to be fun, I think; Clarice Starling mouth-breathing to avoid Darcy’s hydrocarbon-rich Ozone Layer and the happy couple’s micro-ecosystems.

‘You gotta help us, Mister Marlowe,’ they didn’t say.

Today was indeed going to be a murder mystery of sorts. No mysterious Egyptian assassins or American SAS veterans would litter the bathrooms of its brownstone tenements or huddle broken and gut-shot in alleys behind its cheap juke joint or uptown night-clubs.

‘Our benefit’s gone down, and we just can’t manage,’ he explains, logically enough.

Do not cheer, dear reader on the Right - for this is a tale of Mister Brown’s Britain, and little joy in it will last for long.

It appears that one gem in the tiara of benefits which adorns the lives of D and H has recently shrunk. By seven pounds per week.

They are childless; renting a four room flat in one of Castle City’s First Industrial Revolution suburbs, and on about two hundred pounds per week benefits in total. There is Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit and other bit and pieces to spend on treats and sweets and most of their rent and Council Tax are paid for by, well, you.

They aren’t disabled enough to be unable to reach the tobacconist judging from the coffee colour of their fingers. They probably get out and about to meet the happy owners of local convenience stores specializing in generic lager, saturated fats and refined carbohydrates.

But not, I suspect rather firmly, fresh vegetables or toothpaste.

And definitely not deodorant.

‘It’s getting too expensive to heat the flat. We can only afford to heat it for seven hours a day.’

Now my regular readers are aware that I have a mind like a steel trap. They’ll say you can tell that by the enraged squeaking of the mice trapped therein. I noticed immediately that seven hours of heating are about what a couple would need if they worked full-time. One hour for staying warm while getting up – and washed! – and off to work, and a further six hours from six till midnight after work.

But my job is to advise everyone who asks - but everyone - about their benefits. I’m supposed to help them get the most out of The System that can be got by honest and lawful means.

But here comes Magic Moment Number One.

‘It’s so bad now Mister Northwester that I’ll just have to go out to work. It’s the only thing for it.’

He’s got it! He’s got the idea that you can leave the house for something other than signing on and fetching groceries and cashing in Gyros! Despite a LONG time on the public teat, the descendant of Hengist and Horsa, Erik Bloodaxe and William of Normandy is going to stand up and fight for a better life!

My heart singing, I look on the computer screen for clues of previous employment before his whole income was purely benefits based.. Nothing in 2009 of course, or 2008. Let’s see, 2007? No. 2006, perhaps? Oddly, no. 2005. Nada. 2004…. I start to scroll rapidly down to find an unbroken record of solid and successful indolence all the way back to when he came to Castle City as a wee nipper with his old Mum who’d found a Council House and he was able to…sign on right after leaving school, officially, at 18 (poor bloody Sixth-form college that had him incarcerated in it!), and then his being booted out by Mum when his child-related benefits ceased to be paid to her.

Oh, no…nearly missed it. A two-month break when he went from Jobseeker’s Allowance to its training course version a few years ago. Ah, reality check. He went onto Income Support immediately after the course. That’s the benefit which you get for not having any disabilities as such, but where you are not expected to even seek work. Single mothers get it, and men with bad backs, and people waiting to get things like Disability Living Allowance or Incapacity Benefit.

To get the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance, your disability must be severe enough for you to have any of the following walking difficulties, even when wearing or using an aid or equipment you normally use:

…you need guidance or supervision from another person when walking out of doors in unfamiliar places.

There’s a git-harder version now, called Employment Support Allowance, but as it’s possible to ‘fail’ the fitness test and after a while they’ll put you on a rather watery ‘Well, what CAN you do?’ version intended to nag you a bit as to the likelihood of maybe thinking about considering the distant possibility of listening to someone talk about finding work.

It’s a nice thought but Labour’s running it so it’s probably going to be about as successful as Galaxy Celery Whirls.

Darcy gets ‘panic attacks,’ which are even more incapacitating than a bad back because they can strike unreliably at any time, for example when you find yourself in an enclosed space with strangers under stressful circumstances - such as almost any place of employment.

They’re difficult to diagnose because they’re unreliable and also hard for benefits tribunals to determine whether you’re really sick or just malingering.

Doctors can scan for bad backs now.

Here's Income Support:

If you're entitled to Income Support, you automatically qualify for:

free dental care free prescriptions free school meals Housing Benefit Council Tax Benefit

It’s not much. It’s not a fortune, and for the childless (thank Loki for tight underpants, generic vodka and Old Holborn!) it can prove quite a bit more lucrative to work even in Castle City’s post Housing-bubble economy. The benefits system is geared to large families and to the severely disabled and quite right for that latter group too.

And he realizes it!

I’m still staring at my PC screen chronicling an ‘adult’ lifetime of this chap sitting somewhere when Magic Moment Number Two arrives.

‘You’ll have to get a job at a nursing home again, Hindy,’ he remarks to his blushing ladylove and to our joint amazement.

A wave of golden nostalgia does not illuminate Hindenburg’s face like a bright new dawn. Painful recollections cross her face like the flitting shadows of a magic lantern show: thoughts of doing stuff someone else told her to do when she wanted to do something else. Anything else. For a moment she glares at Darcy with the cold, conscienceless, predatory eyes of a serial killer or an accordion teacher. It passes, and the word 'cud' fills my mind.

Little Hindy is a rugged individualist alright. On your tab.

Honestly, taking minimum wages at 38-40 hours each and they could probably look at £400-odd per week, ahem, gross. Even with Gordie’s cut to bail out the banks and gainfully employing Harriet Harman to disdain AA batteries and sending a roll of oven foil to Afghanistan once a year to keep the boys safe, they’re still looking at a hundred or so net above what The Social gives them.

The System’s fixed – I say again – fixed against childless couples.

So the mystery is, why don’t they?

Planning to shop properly in the various cheap and cheerful supermarkets – the Aldis and Icelands; the Nettos and Farmfoods they could eat better and more and free up pounds to add to that hundred or so and buy some soap. Or a book. Or a book which explains about soap. Maybe some more sparkly objects.

Hell, private pensions start at £50 net per month, I’m told, but don’t hold your breath; unlike me at the time. Three hundred quid’ll get them a six-months to the MOT or the scrapyard banger, and they could get out and look at a bit more of England.

Remember at the beginning and the tragic dilemma that faced them so painfully that they left their beloved home to come and see me? Seven measly quid goes down the chute and their carefully-contrived cycle of sign-and-cash-and-spend at the corner shop at top prices falls to the ground like MPs receipts?

Mrs. Northwester, bless her, complains that many working-class people have lost the knack of counting the pennies and putting so much a week away for rent and so much for ‘electric’ and so on, but these are smart Maryland cookies and they do.

These people can budget. They know how to match their expenditure precisely to what they have in their weekly purse. They even know; both instinctively and consciously, that working is a way to get more.

They know about work and, faced with the dreadful necessity to get some, Darcy is immediately prepared to volunteer himself (despite his phantom panic attacks), and also to offer his beloved Hindenburg’s services to the aged-people herding business (which is not too hellish around Castle City, I’m told, for pensioners or staff alike) which constitutes a considerable chunk of the employment in the city.

Six square-cut, crinkle-fried, cylinder-wrapped and exquisitely vacuum-packed meals and 40 satellite TV channels are enough for this pair of love-birds.

Talk about the banality of evil – this is the evil of the banal.The poverty – the true poverty - is inside the souls of two young people who should be out having proper fun and using their brains and bodies for something other than sopping up TV transmissions and ending forever and ever the freedom of movement of bag after bag of spicy corn chips.

But they won’t do anything of the sort because they don’t want to: someone somewhere lowered the bar on their dreams down to sofa level. Someone murdered their gumption and is keeping it dead - to everyone’s bitter cost.

Oh, and I was able to find their seven pounds – and then some – thanks to a trick of my trade which I’d much rather be directing to war veterans and spending on formerly runaway and abused kids getting a second chance at life.

But there you are.

For such as these, the Welfare State is a great big tube of Pringles, and once you pop, it’s damnably hard to stop.

Commercial break

Lenin boasted that capitalists would sell the communists the very rope with which the Reds would hang them.

Libertarians proclaim that the market can meet almost any demands if left alone by government.

They’re both right, and it’s almost impossible to parody. Er…
It does look, however, as if some very specialist businesses have been helping the pols put the boot in on our country all over the shop…

Are you the Leader Of The Opposition?

Is the governing party abject and in disarray at your feet and on its way out? Are you looking forward to a happy life in office: the interview with the Queen; the house; the flashy cars; the armed policeman standing at the door?

But do you still worry about underarm ideology?

Did you know that only B/O can keep you from office?

Are you aware that a last-minute accusation of political belief/opinion might steal that reward for your lifetime spent climbing the greasy pole and keep you out of Downing Street? B/O is bad because everyone knows that only bad people raise their arms; bad people and housepainters. And even some house painters were bad. Don’t be tarred with their brush.

Richard and Judy can protect you from accusations of controversial (or indeed any) ideas. The bland leading the blonde have interviewed over 1000 mediocre politicians in all the major parties and the top fifty interchangeable mainstream media pundits, and we think that under controlled conditions, no-one will be able to tell you apart from them either.

Let our middle-of-the-road gang give you a nonentity makeover and polish your image so brightly that it becomes the perfect mirror of the undifferentiated who govern Britain.

Don’t delay; call Richard and Judy on the freephone number or visit our website at www.richardardandjudy.co.uk

Richard and Judy: politics without punch for 20 years.

Are you dyslexic?

Take our easy test and discover the truth.

Which of the following is the correct spelling:-

A. Targetting women and children.

B. Going out of your way to avoid innocent deaths up to and including informing non-combatants well in advance about the targets of planned air attacks.

A. Militants.

B. Terrorists who deliberately attack civilian homes and businesses to cause the maximum death and injury by suicide bombings.

A. Pro-democracy demonstrators.

B. Nepalese Communist Party.

A. Independent watchdog.

B. Left-wing pressure group now given devolved legislative power by Parliament.

If you chose any ‘B’ at all, then you are dyslexic.

Let BBC English help you.

Once renowned worldwide for its stolidly impartial broadcasting and its high standards of spoken English, the BBC has diversified into learning support and can help you with your vocabulary issues. Let us expand your nomenclature and gild your perceptions with our 24/7 online English tutorials, and soon you’ll know exactly why it’s the correct thing to refer to all of the following: Soviet reactionaries opposed to democracy in Russia; ultra-purist Islamic theologians in revolutionary Iran and last-ditch Afrikaner proponents of apartheid as ‘conservatives,’ and why members of the British Conservative Party must always be called ‘Tories’.

BBC English: be the biased.

Work For Life.

It’s time for you to get on in life and get busy.You deserve a cosy little starter home of your own with its two or three bedrooms, a shower for cleaning the sick off and a nice big living room to keep your 50 inch Panasonic and unwrap your tea in.

You’ll need an independent income for up to three decades so you can grow (sometimes literally) as a unique and beautiful person and avoid becoming rigid and conformist in your thinking (if any). You’ll be provided with rent free accommodation (starting at the two bedroom rate of Local Housing Allowance when your career is just starting out but up to £2,100 per month when you really start to produce) and a tax-free income for the rest of your productive life, and then some.

So what are you waiting for?

Visit The Stork and Gooseberry Bush’s Under-16s Nite where we’ll provide you with cheap vodka shots and enough potent Alco pops to make our charming resident staff of Darrens, Lees and Kevs - whose surnames you’ll never need to know – potent and briefly acceptable to you down in front of your mum’s plasma screen on a bed of celebrity magazines and kebab wrappers.

Warning: sometimes the filth raid the place and card the punters so make sure you bring one of your sister’s Child Benefit books and remember to use her name. Join the mummy army and get work for life.
www.onyyourbacknotyourbike.co.uk

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Do you suffer from too much blood in your veins? Have you too few body orifices? Do you dread seeing your family at Christmas? Well, worry no more! Just stay in uniform and Ministry of Defence Procurement will make sure that nothing stands between you and life in a better world.

If you can’t find enough time to clean your moat or sell your publicly-financed houses to relatives at a paper loss because dreary old things like Magna Carta, national self-government and scrutinizing legislation just take up too much time, then simply subcontract your work to the European Union and you can get on with life.

The European Union: making MP’s lives simpler at no cost to themselves since 1973.

I stopped worrying about the high cost of stair lifts, hip replacements and funeral payment plans, noisy neighbours and intimidating young thugs hanging around Booth’s car park. Ask me how, or visit www.nhswillendallyourworriesrealsoon.org.uk

The seven percent no-brainer

Remember northern England’s reputation for hard-headed, no-nonsense practicality?

Remember when the police were recruited from the cream of the working class including many from the grammar schools?

Someone has to stand between the nut-jobs and our health and property, and I’m grateful that it’s still the police force that we have got rather than the gestapos they can be elsewhere, but sometimes the bleeding obvious is a tad over-employed…

READING body language and eye contact are a few tips licensees and door staff will use to prevent crime and disorder on nights out in Darwen.

Six-foot-two tall Burberry-capped, Kappa track suited Nike trainer-shod stranger: ‘Excuse me, sor, but would you be good enough spare the cost of a pint of this hosteler’s finest ale for a ‘umble solder late o’ the Afghan War wot ‘as fallen on ‘ard toimes - so ‘e ‘as - due to the vicissitudes o’ finance an’ the fickle fist o’ fate, if I may be so bold as to arsk?’

Doctor John Watson: ‘Why certainly, my good fellow.’ He hands him change. ‘I have served Her Majesty in those dusty mountains, and once took a Pathan ball in the Kyber myself.

But tell me; what sort of a gutter urchin from the public housing estates is so well nourished as to grow to six feet and two inches, uses words such as “vicissitudes” and sports tattoos whose legends proclaim their civic footballing enthusiasms and messages of filial affection in fine church Latin?’

Mister Sherlock Holmes (for it is he), removing baseball cap: ‘Why, I believe that I have made a detective of you at last, my dear Watson.’

Watson (astonished):’Good Lord Holmes! What are you doing here?’

Licensees and door staff in Darwen teamed up with the police to take part in conflict management training course.

Holmes: ‘Inspector Lestrade has sent me north to investigate some curious incidents of ribaldry and fisticuffs here in this most picturesque of the County Palatine’s mill-towns. It seem that neither he nor any but one of the local bobbies are having much luck in identifying the miscreants before mayhem ensues and the Queens’ peace-.’

Watson: ‘God bless her!’

The training, which was delivered by Sergeant Andy Maltman as part of Darwen’s Bar U scheme, gave licensees and door staff tips on how to spot and stop potential incidents of disorder and how to react to them effectively and safely.

Holmes: ‘God bless her indeed, Watson, - before the Queen’s peace is quite broken, with consequent costs, loss of revenues to Crown and Corporation alike, endless administration for the investigating detectives, and the very great loss of healthy sleep for the families of the stout taxi drivers, kebab delivery-men and mobile phone sellers who form the yeomanry of Darwen.

In the absence due to influenza of Sergeant Maltman, I am here to investigate what type of fellows are leading this rowdiness.

Let us see what deductive reasoning might do for us here.

Take that fellow over there, Watson. D’you see anything amiss with him?’ He points to a drinker slumped at the lager section of the Lord Roberts of Kandahar’s public bar.

Watson: ‘That chap? Why he is slurring his speech - which I note tinkles with the soft, musical burr of the Mersey - a tattoo collection so obscene that it would bring blushes to the face of a Yemeni Lascar with twenty years as a boiler man’s third assistant on a tramp steamer sailing the Bristol to Lahore route. From his rotund shape, broken-veined visage and cigarette-stained fingers, I’d say he’s a twenty-year Incapacity Benefit claimant and former dockworker who still blames his two decades of unbroken idleness and undiagnosed incapacity on the former Prime Minister and life peer Baroness Thatcher. Ah, I see that he has asked the potboy to justify his statement regarding who was responsible for the soccer disaster at the Hillsborough Stadium. Trouble, I’d think, Holmes. That game’s afoot, wouldn’t you say?’

Holmes (smiling kindly): ‘My dear chap, appearances can be so deceptive, and you have merely noticed the obvious. Let us examine him more closely. Do you see the neatly-ironed creases in the sleeves of the Henri Lloyd polo shirt, and the esoteric markings on the formidable gathering of gold-effect chains around his neck-?...’ he ducks as the pot-boy flies horizontally over their table towards the juke box. ‘Despite this vocal defence of his brother Liverpool supporters, I’d say from these simple observations that he is in fact an impoverished minor relative of the Royal Family and a freemason of the more liberal and outgoing sort-’ he swerves to avoid the topic of their conversation who is even now piling onto the barman with flying fists and stamping Rockports ‘And therefore he can pose little threat to life or property.’

Chair of BAR U Reg Gorton said they were trained how to diffuse a situation by remaining calm and bar staff would be encouraged to explain why they would refuse to serve someone instead of just saying no which may provoke some customers.

Watson (doubtfully) : ‘I suppose so, Holmes. But what of that young lady there? The one with the micro skirt, gilt boob-tube and JJB own-brand hooded fleece? She who has been arguing with yonder shaven-headed youth all evening – a youth who has been glowering at you throughout our conversation with an intensity I’d say was typical of unreasoning sexual jealousy and misplaced male pride? There’s danger there, I trust you’ll agree?’

Holmes: ‘My dear fellow, I think that I must tutor you a little more if you are to carry on my work. While it is true that the couple have indeed been talking intensely for some minutes now you can surely see that the young woman is a mother and several times over for all her tender years. Indeed, I suspect that she is the mother of those very ragamuffins outside to whom I paid a shilling each to mind my rented motorcar when I parked it this evening. There is a flash of light from the car park, as of an Avis Ford Focus bursting into flames. ‘But she is clearly also a devoted mother and her anxiety and her young man’s is almost certainly due to the modern habit -’ here Holmes sniffs disapprovingly ‘- of gentlemen no longer carrying either manly walking-sticks nor neatly-folded umbrellas as part of their evening costume. She is clearly concerned for the amusement of her multi-hued children outside, and is ruefully discussing with the man how sad it is that he carries neither cane nor brolly, so that sadly the scamps may not use her earrings for toys and roll them up and down the street as you and I were wont to do Watson when we ourselves were young.’

Shaven-headed youth ( to Holmes) : ‘Wot the ---- are you lookin’ at, you lanky bastard?’

He hoped the training would help keep customers and staff stay safe and encourage them stay in Darwen for a night out.

The training was organised after licensees expressed concerns about personal safety and incidents of violence both inside and outside pubs in Darwen. It was delivered to 46 members of staff from pubs across Darwen.

Later that night, outside the Come N Get It Niteclub

Watson: ‘Are you well now, Holmes, old chap?’

Holmes (holding a blood-stained handkerchief over his nose): ‘Why, never better my dear Watson, never better. Though a seven percent solution might calm me and help me to order my thoughts. Perhaps we should go inside so I can find such a dose through the good services of one of these fine porters here?’

Sgt Maltman said: “Hopefully this training will allow licensees to work in a safer environment as well as helping the police to reduce crime in Darwen.

“Whilst violent crime is down in Darwen, this type of training should demonstrate that the police work closely with licensees to make the town’s pubs a safe place to socialise.”

Later still, in the street outside the Come N Get It.

Watson: ‘I told you Holmes, most of these doormen are well-paid agency staff now. You can’t just ask them for cocaine as if it was the way to the cloakroom any more.’ He finishes wrapping the field dressing around Holmes’ arm.

Holmes: ‘No matter Watson, let us continue our quest to discover what dark secret burns in the breasts of so many of Darwen’s lusty youths and blushing maidens and bids them misbehave so remarkably.’

Holmes hauls himself up from the pavement and props himself unsteadily against a street sign.

‘That young lady, for example; a beauty for sure, if underdressed by several layers. What can you deduce about her existence and of the threat – if any – that she poses to life and limb in Lancashire?’

Watson, (musingly): ‘Well she looks twenty or twenty-two years old so I’d say she is in fact no older than sixteen. From the still-fresh stretch-marks on her midriff and the constellation of facial piercings I’d surmise that she left school no more than a year ago and furthermore that she left it bearing no certificates of achievement at all. From her teeth, her gait and the heelless state of her left plastic stiletto shoe, I’d say that she is fond of vodka-based sugary shots, and that she started drinking them between four to five hours ago.’

Holmes: ‘Very good, John; very good indeed. You are back on form I see. Is there anything else you can tell me about her recent activities and anything at all about the prospects for her future and its likely effects on the rest of humanity?’

Watson: ‘Well, I don’t expect her to put any upward pressure at all on the going price for illegal Rohypnol tonight, and I see that she is both a rapid eater and a connoisseuse of lamb kebab with garlic and chilli sauce, heavy on the onions, and curly fries.’

Holmes: ‘Good Lord, Watson, how do you know the latter?’

Watson points downwards.

Mr Gorton, who owns Roxy and Bar Java nightclubs, added: “The training session held by Darwen Police was a great success and I was really impressed with the attendance. This training is yet another tool that we as licensees can implement and ensure that we maintain the safety of our staff and customers at all times.”

Holmes (mopping his ruined shoes): ‘Finally, Watson, what can we conclude about public safety and report to Lestrade’s bumbling police colleagues about the best way to enjoy a healthy and enjoyable evening in Darwen and its sister towns in the Red Rose County?

Sunnyhurst ward councillor, Andrew Graham, who is on Blackburn with Darwen licensing committee, said: “I think anything that helps keep disorder to a minimal is a good thing.

“People want to feel safe when they are on a night out. If people know that licensees and door staff have taken the course they will feel more confident about going into the town centre.

“When there is an incident it is dealt with very quickly by police and the appropriate people. I hope this gives people confidence to stay or come to Darwen for a night out.”

Watson: ‘Put your foot down and head for Yorkshire?’

Holmes: ‘Quite so, John, quite so.I’ve heard that Dewsbury’s nice and there’s this little place where they do double shish with donner, gravy and shredded red cabbage that’s to die for.’

Watson: ‘Very likely it is Holmes.

Gluteus-ginglymus distinction

Sometimes I wish I’d put Devil’s Kitchen’s favourite present participle between They’re and Joking in my blog’s name.

This is from the Social Work Blog.

Well done to the child protection social workers of Cheshire West and Chester and their managers who gave the BBC's One Show access to film what they do.

Well done also to the anonymous parents who allowed some elements of their case to be shown on TV and who were willing to talk in a positive way about their experiences. Of course the report raised the Orkney, Cleveland and Baby P scandals, but only in context, and I think this was greatly outweighed by the day-to-day reality of a child protection office being seen on prime time TV, even if it was only for 5 minutes.
You can watch the report at the link above.

I wonder if they’re as competent in the sink estates and the satanic abuse-riven ‘respectable suburbs’ as they are at linking?

Hmm, when you wish upon a star…

I for one am not going to go to any great length to find a similarly in-your-face inquisition of our social worker pals from such a couple of catalogue-clad political mediacrats as Peter Capaldi got in this nail-biting and soul-searing interrogation.

Perhaps by the time you read this they’ll be interviewing Sarah Brown about her poetry or accompanying a Labour Minister in the One Show’s occasional series: A Day In The Life Of An Honest Politician And How European Directives Are Made Into UK Law Without The Use Of A Safety Net Or Parliamentary Supervision..

Oh, it’s Twiggy now, at the time of writing.

WARNING

People with pulmonary complaints and hernias might like to avoid following the link in the next paragraph as hysterical laughter has been know to worsen the effects of serious illnesses and to bloodily open old wounds.

Still, if social workers need to raise their profile in the wider context, and ignoring all those highly exceptional cases when they utterly ignore the evidence of their eyes and all advice contrary to their present beliefs about a given case, then why not nip over to their blog’s We Are The World happy page and read the Good News, O brothers and sisters?

Let’s see what they’ve got.

Ah.

There’s this cheerful notice:

There was a time when former prime minister Tony Blair could easily summon an interview with almost any leading media outlet around the world. Yet there was one vitally important publication that remained aloof: Take a Break. Now, the weekly real-life magazine is offering the social work profession an opportunity it denied the former PM.

Aside from perhaps a little vicarious snobbery there (interview the Prime Minister? Pshaw! Let’s go to Pampered Pets in the High Street for their take on the Iraq War), it’s irresistibly tempting to speculate here and now how the ‘mum’s’ magazine, consisting as it does of food voucher competitions, recipes and a bingo lounge, and which asks: Sell us your story! Complete the form below and you could earn up to £1,000! …Love and betrayal, loss and sin. Use our on-line story form as a guide. You only need to send us a brief outline, although you can include much more if you wish.. and which features such prestigious links: as Wedding Dress Day; Send us your Brainwaves (!) ; Breast Reduction Alliance; Toyboy Pledge; Fate & Fortune Website ; Spirit & Destiny Website, will handle some of the problems of the public’s perceptions of social work in today’s Britain.

Children dragged away in a pre-dawn raid? What to wear to look cool and professional at the committal sessions?

Reflex anal dilation: is it the new Reiki?

Washday Nightmares! We help you beat the most stubborn stains: blood, faeces and even chocolate.!

Onto a winner there; those media-savvy social workers.

With titans of the press like that on their side, why I expect that the career dreams of little Chevonnetta-Peach at Monteguano Towers and young Lucius at Badger Park will change from crack whore and First Minister Of State and into Cafcass drone and Abuse Co-ordinator any day now.

And then there’s this masterpiece, used quite without irony.

As Joanna Lumley will tell you following her recent success over settlement rights for Gurkhas, individuals can make a difference.

And you don't have to be famous either. From universal suffrage to the rejection of animal testing on cosmetics, many legal and societal changes have been a direct result of people power.

Public perceptions of social work are no different. Negative media coverage and low public esteem may seem ingrained. But they can be altered - if enough social workers speak out.

I can see it working straight away, can’t you? All they have to do is find is some magic ingredient that will inspire the British public to view the profession that helped Victoria Climbié to an early grave with the same gratitude and affection in which they hold those gallant Nepalese soldiers (and future citizens), the Suffragettes in all their tragic glory, and the people who kept Bright Eyes’ eyes bright without a shampoo dropper.

And that’s all it’s going to need, my proud beauties; (994 of you in the last month alone), to make us take to the streets with petitions and marching bands and loud cries of:

‘Ayo Haringey!’ and ‘Votes for lentils,’ and ‘What do we want? Dangly bead earrings! When do we want them? Right after decaffeinated Diet Coke break!’

With a reality-based profession as on the ball PR-wise as that, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, there’s this…

'Social workers betrayed me,' reveals foster mother who says they failed to mention teenager's violent past…

The day foster carer Maria Jones welcomed a troubled 16-year-old teenage single mother into her home, she had no way of foreseeing the devastating consequences...

Foster mother Maria Jones said her life was ruined after social workers failed to mention the violent past of of teenager she cared for…

But because of a devastating failure by social services, a baby almost died and Maria has lost the fostering job she loved….

Within a year of Jane arriving at Maria's three-bedroom house in the South of England in 2007, the baby of another teenage girl was critically ill in hospital.

Jane was arrested after police found high levels of table salt in the baby's powdered formula milk…

The records that were withheld from Maria show Jane was more than capable of the callous act…

One member of staff had recommended that a team of social services, police and medical health professionals monitor her closely because - in a chilling prophecy, given what happened just 12 months later - he feared she was capable of killing a baby…

'But all I was told when they asked me to take her was that she had a bedwetting problem - I later found out she did this deliberately...

'She'd threatened one resident with a knife and another with a fork. She was also suspected of spiking another resident's drink so she could have sex with him.

'Why wasn't I made aware of any of this? Why wasn't I told Jane was promiscuous and had slept with more than 100 men, had several venereal diseases and feared she had HIV?’

Order your Social Workers; Keeping it real since the last funeral badges at eBay now.

NNW

Oh, and as a special cut-out-and-keep Summer Special bonus prize, let’s see a very magical part of that Orkney child abuse thing again, shall we?

Objects suspected of being used in Satanic rituals were seized and 9 children were taken into care. One child was Jewish, and her parents requested that she be fostered by Jews, but the request was ignored.

Just think of the sheer genius it takes to find anyone Jewish at all on a tiny island in a remote sub-Arctic archipelago whose total population rose from 19,222 in 2001 to a round 20,000 in 2002 and then to foster them with Homer and Marge just in time for Pork Chop night.

First of 3 posts uploaded remotely from on holiday. Enjoy?