There’s so much to protest against. How to keep up?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/24/cuts-protest-corbyn-tanni-grey-thompson

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The Disability Benefits Consortium, a coalition of disability charities, has written an open letter to the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, calling on him to drop planned cuts to employment and support allowance (ESA).

On the eve of a House of Lords vote, more than 30 charities, including Mencap, Parkinson’s UK and Mind, plus peers, including Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson, have criticised the cuts (which would in effect reduce ESA to ordinary jobseeker level), arguing that they would put the disabled under increased pressure and make it harder for them to find work.

The government calls this “scaremongering”, saying that the cuts would not affect existing claimants, nor those with severe disabilities; there’s all the usual blether about not “trapping” them on welfare.

Where is the helpful government update on the ongoing farcical situation, which is leading to great numbers of claimants successfully contesting unfair assessments of their fitness for work – or further information on how much time and money is squandered processing all these mistakes?

The good news is that this is a great joint letter, superbly orchestrated and timed, before this week’s Lords vote. The bad news is that, increasingly, in this climate, it needs to be in order to have – never mind hopes of success – any kind of impact at all.

Things are escalating out there: while cuts are nothing new, there’s a new pace in their implementation.

Time was when the government used at least to try to sneak things through or temper the flow, evidently wary about the reaction. These days, increasingly, this stuff just thunders through, shock-and-awe style, at such a rate that you can barely keep up. Overload is the new normal. Just as cuts are becoming normalised, so is the angry critical reaction, turning myriad individual outrages into the kind of political white noise that flourishes in blankness.

Whether you’re pro or anti Jeremy Corbyn, this could only be possible during an era of ineffective political opposition, leastways, opposition that is deemed ineffective by the opposed.

It doesn’t matter whether you think that Corbyn is a decent cove, getting in some good digs at PMQs; the Tories don’t take him seriously – and don’t think they’re in danger of losing voters to him.

This is what matters at present – however dutifully the Labour party opposes cuts, the Tories clearly feel “unopposed” and thus free to continue unleashing their bombardments.

People like me may also owe the shamed, battered Liberal Democrats an apology – during their time in coalition perhaps they did put the brakes on the worst excesses of Tory policy.

Their presence is missed, but crucially so is Labour’s where it matters most – in the Tory mind’s eye that should be endlessly fretting about how the opposition will react and recalibrating their own approach accordingly.

Until Labour sorts itself out, the only true opposition looks likely to come from another kind of coalition – formed by the public, the media, the Lords with “teeth” (such as those who grouped together to oppose tax credits) and deftly executed pressure group initiatives, such as this open letter from the disability campaigners. Indeed, this is beyond just a letter – it is a sign of the times. To fight the bombardment of cuts, this looks to be how the more successful resistance initiatives are going to happen from now on – in the form of collective, co–ordinated attacks. We are all the opposition now.

Let me shed light on the winter blues

Scientists at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, have cast doubts on seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the condition that suggests that some people suffer depressive episodes because of the lack of sunlight in winter.

Using data from nearly 35,000 phone interviews, the report concluded that the seasons appeared to have no bearing on when depressive symptoms were experienced, with the researchers noting that “being depressed during winter is not evidence that one is depressed because of winter”.

Have people sat in front of light boxes since the 1990s for nothing? I have sympathy for SAD sufferers, as I’ve long suspected that I have some bizarre reverse form of it, in the shape of profound melancholy during the hot summer months. Admittedly, this could just be me being a pale, sulky, life-sapping sad sack, or, to stray into medical jargon, a “bit of a goth”.

Joking apart, I genuinely feel a change of mood (dark, nightmarish, plummeting like a stone) when it’s bright and hot and tend to spend the summer scuttling from one patch of shade to another, huddled under sombreros, screaming, hissing and writhing every time the sun’s rays appear to be penetrating my slapped-on factor 50. Not that I make a big fuss about it.

If I can be so adversely affected by sunshine overload, then I tend to believe people when they say the opposite – that cold, dark, wintery weather disastrously affects their mood. Maybe it’s valid to query whether SAD is a stand-alone clinical disorder, but does that necessarily negate it as a sizable factor in making a depressed person feel even worse? Ultimately, people with depression would seem to be best placed to know what their triggers are.

Was this really This Morning after the night before?

Did Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby really “rock up” to present This Morning, after winning at the National Television Awards, still in their red-carpet togs, woozy after a night of knocking back shots at Ant McPartlin’s house?

A suspicious mind might wonder if they’d be allowed on our screens. Mind you, many of us have been there, when the previous night’s bravado (“Gahhh…what the hell!”) turns into gut-churning horror as daylight beckons and you have to do your job, even though you feel like a cross between Father Jack and Monty Python’s parrot nailed to its perch.

In my rock chick days, I once turned up to an interview so drunk I ended up lying underneath a table discussing life, the universe and everything with a cat. Though, in fairness, I could be unprofessional too. Holly and Phil did better but there was still the tell-tale flop-sweat, Velcro-tongued speech and sense of whirring mental tape loop (“Act normal… act normal”).

I hope it wasn’t fake, as it was one of the great televisual walks of shame or, considering the sofa, sprawls of shame. Shame indeed on McPartlin – as a Geordie, he should know that soft southerners can’t hack it.