Obsidian

You have to be kidding me.

This is the guy whose desk my case has landed on twice this year as part of an Ombudsman investigation into local authority's negligence over social care. Now you see why.

From the Worthing Herald. (original article)

If only most people knew of the corruption, negligence and incompetence he's paid to manage. I'm disgusted, if I werent up to my neck in their filth myself already.

Well guys, this is what a well-AIME'd arm gets you.

...Still cant get my name right ;-p

There is of course no admission of error or mention of compensation here, although they have acknowledged ongoing financial support.

During the meeting I brandished

what's left of the AI I began building almost a decade ago, that caused all this nonsense in the first place.

I guess it must have terrified them enough... I told them at this juncture it might be an idea for them to employ me in some capacity, neatly avoiding litigation and providing me with security and an income.

Quite what magnificent title this will turn out to be remains a mystery, but they have hinted at it.

There was also discussion of compensation, but I did not expect this to be referred to as they have classed their recent foul treatment of Bea, and indeed myself, as a fresh case to be considered on its own merits - knowing that the Ombudsman can only look at that case.

And we still have the Ombudsman's adjudication to go. I suspect this will form the bulk of the negotiations regarding compensation for their decades of negligence and corruption, and I know it will go down hard too.

Get an authority to admit guilt? And publicly? Yeah I didnt think so either. But they do at least acknowledge it, and its a start.

Dear Mr Ozymandias
Your replacement legs are in the post.

Customer Service Manager

I should think so, too.

<Roar, Froth, Etc>

<Beat Chest, Roar, Destroy Vegetation, Etc>

Well those are the issues that are going to be addressed. All of them... Denial will result in highly lucrative legal action and scandal, mitigation will result in security and opportunity.

Never gamble with a man with nothing to lose.

- MorningStar 2018

I have also been given some funding, and permission to list Carer's Support UK as a sponsor for my upcoming entry into the Prize 2018.

Spectacular, it is a few times the resources I had available to me last year, in advance as capital. This years entry will not be made from scrap, or open-ended, and I know the pitfalls and the criteria.

Muahahahah! HackaDay, MorningStar is in the Prize to win this time, not just for the lulz. Put the kids to bed early and polish your armour til it shines. ;-)

I'm sure you guys think I'm making half this up just to be annoying. I can assure you I'm not, this is what Bea had to walk through this morning.

WSCC: If you believe this is how we want to live, you dont deserve your jobs you pack of bastards. Put on a boiler suit instead of that finery and get your lazy cosseted arses round here and clear this up.

Honestly, fuck this, animals live better. They certainly eat well enough around here.

As I crossed the railway bridge a loud and irritating voice cut through the ambience of my headphones.

"Someone needs to do something before he goes too far"

[No shit, Sherlock] Congratulations, sir, a critic I can agree with. I'll be sure to pass that sentiment on to the social worker then, being as that someone would be him.

I cannot begin to describe how incompetent this is.

Her superior sent her a case he'd been handed by the LGO to sort out because of the mess. Her response was to completely ignore the investigation and respond to a letter sent to one of her underlings.

That letter does not even refer to the bulk of the complaint, and is the only one that does not, she's carefully chosen it to respond to instead so she can just bullshit.

This is the Ops Manager for the county-wide Learning Disabilities Team. I used to think this meant they are IN CHARGE of Learning Disabilities, it appears to mean they cant learn to tie a shoe-lace.

What are these people doing, are they all completely daft?

And then she insults me by apologising for adding her own uselessness to the pile. You can bet that I AM going to send this straight back to the Ombudsman, which completes the complaint procedures and releases me to litigate. Until these utter morons either refused to help like she just has, or kept me in their interminable tangle of Red Tape, I couldnt access Legal Aid.

Now I can. She's just closed the investigation without doing a thing, ignored the LGO's recommendations before they even took the case formally and didnt even meet her own deadline for doing so.

If I was her boss, I'd discipline her before my ass caught fire too.

Straight to Coventry. But not before I straighten her out on a few things. I really am getting tired of repeating myself...

You'd expect the county-wide Operations Manager to behave with a bit more regard. Even if I were just some carer, thats just disgraceful.

I doubt she'd understand the pun. ;-)

Well the Ombudsman was at pains to remind both me and the county CEO if I wasnt satisfied to get back in contact. Their favourite trick of stalling wont help her either, I've already personally annoyed her superiors for starters and I've never just threatened litigation like a bully. So I annoyed them again, and copied that to them.

I dont like credit or gambling, so borrowing the funds I'll need to obtain justice - in the form of money, the only kind of justice authority understands - is distasteful and risky. But, seeing as I cant raise or earn it legally, I can still resort to their tactics, and finance it with credit.

Until now that hasnt been an option, I cant afford to pay it back so I dont borrow it. Besides, its taken me three years to clear my debts so I owe no-one a thing. Anything less is irresponsible, thats how I was brought up. These days, everything's on credit and I get told I'm a fool for missing out...

Well the distaste I have for credit is now about equal to the distaste I have for living like this, pride or no. All it will take is motivation to change my opinion.

I frequently get accused of being mad.

Hmmm, now hand-delivering that letter to the woman, with a presentation. A signed hand-painted portrait of her being tentacled and drooled on by a pissed-off Obsidian, accompanied by some vitriolic poetry set to music, posting it on social media and sending it to Channel 4's The Last Leg for the lulz springs to mind.

Now, just because I have the resources for something crazy, doesnt mean I'll do it. I'm not mad enough...

Yet.

Utterly brilliant. I honestly can not make up the catalogue of complete and utter stupidity that runs through my life. Not much of it mine either, I have to say. Some of my decisions were questionable lol.

It seems that at every major turning point, there's been a balls-up. Feels like I'm on Candid Camera, so long now I've lost any paranoia I might have had. One of the psychological team from before explained it so;

paranoia
ˌparəˈnɔɪə/
noun
noun: paranoia
a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically worked into an organized system. It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality.

unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people.

I dont know about a persecution complex, I have been bullied rather a lot and six inches of sharp Sheffield steel would make anyone nervous in the wrong hands. Thats no delusion, nor was losing everything I had. And as for my inconveniently bulging portfolio... To fake that lot would require even more skill than producing it, and an extensive team of secret collaborators willing to work without credit or payment.

Would the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Now, if I were schizophrenic then I'd have the most profound personality split in history. An artist, a musician, a mathematician, a designer-engineer and a computer programmer all arguing with each other in one skull? Each gifted enough in their own right to be egoists. That would be an interesting conversation I'm sure. Enough to drive a bloke totally bat-shit crazy. He'd talk to himself in conversation with others, refer to himself in third person and be unable to function properly. He would not be able to care for himself, let alone be responsible for another human being.

I cant argue over the obsessions. So I'm obsessive? I can live with that...

Narcotics and alcohol. Yeah sure. If I knew about a drug that gave me my superpowers I'd share it with you lot for starters. Think about it, if I wanted to take over the world an army of super-nerds is exactly what I'd choose to do it with. Reality: If I didnt get off my face every now and then there would indeed be something wrong with me.

Megalomania. Yeah, I'll just tiptoe past that one and not wake it up either. Any dreams of grandeur I may ever have entertained are long gone.

By definition I dont have Monomania, unless you count Holism.

And as for an unjustified suspicion, I have evidence, and disclosure is not the action of a man terrified of consequence.

Why am I analysing all this?

Well, I uncovered more tentacles, thats why. For the last three years, as a carer, I've been entitled to funding for things like holidays. Its called the Carer Wellbeing Fund, and any full-time carer can apply for a grant of up to £300 annually. Needless to say, I'd never heard of it. Despite it being the social worker's job to signpost things like this for me, it's taken him until now to put me in touch with Carer's Support who administrate it.

Worse, their records indicated I am an ex-carer, a result of the above accusations, which is why they have not contacted me in all this time. More denial of service; social services provided them with that horse-shit in the first place, and Carers Support were more than happy to clean that up. In fact, I'm being given VIP treatment because there is little else they can do but give me a big hug. And a holiday. Thank you :-)

One wonders how many other tails this snake has.

Typically, I ran into more stonewalling over my dox. Un-fucking-believable. For starters they gleefully forwarded me a link to an application form. Yeah, they charge for information they hold on you without your knowledge or permission like the thieves they are, and they spread it over so many departments that getting hold of it costs a fortune. Each request has a £10 charge on it, and its a useful way of making money for them. This is reprehensible, its like FaceBook charging you a tenner every time you read your wall because you didnt open the account.

It is illegal to falsify records, and to store and distribute false information. Add libel to the list of offences that would be addressed in court if I litigated.

1. I dont want to see my records, the social worker does, I'm not paying for that information.
2. I'm correcting the information held. Its under investigation, and under transparency laws thats done openly.

And they want photo ID from me to access it.

Here's another interesting fact about me. My name isnt Jez, even though thats the name on all my identity. Bank, hospital, local authority, everything except my birth registration is effectively a legal fake ID. That came about because the year I turned 16, National Insurance started issuing plastic ID cards. In keeping with the myopic bureaucracy of the time, they sent out forms to school leavers and asked them for their names and addresses, dates of birth etc . I hated my given name, and wrote Jez on it instead. Then when I turned 18, that card authorised my entire adult life. I've never had a full passport, my driving license pre-dated photo ID by decades, and I've never applied for a photo ID anywhere.

Now I come to apply for one, I cant. It requires my birth certificate or deed poll document, which I dont have. I'm not alone in this, there must be hundreds of people who got early NI cards, before they started asking the individuals to verify instead of supply their ID.

Whats interesting is it will likely cost me less to change my name by deed poll, than request and correct all the records myself, at £10 a throw.

Probably worth it so I dont have to refer to MorningStar in third person. Its pissing me off. ;-)

Thank the stars for (near) perfect recall. I dont have the ability to snapshot pages of information just by looking at them. But, information does persist for a very long time nonetheless.

It's handy sometimes. ;-)

Destination: Hackington

I was at college a few years before the Millennium, doing an NVQ3 in IT. That's a fairly comprehensive qualification, I'd already aced the first two modules and was about to secure the Prize... That was an actual job at the end of a placement, teaching mature students how to use computers.

I'd been given a room with four students and access to a bunch of second-hand machines which turned out to be pretty worthless, I had to scrounge up a fair bit so they ran WordPerfect for DOS, and some spreadsheet and database software. The students were PACT Trainees, Placement, Assessment, Counselling, Training - former manual labourers retraining because of injury to do office work, and all I had to do was teach them the basics. Their certificates gave me mine when they completed the course.

Flying colours, I had a basic teaching qualification under my belt and a position within the agency itself to take up, and then the agency was sold to Thompson, the cruise ship holiday people to use as in-house staff training. They didnt need a green IT teacher and I got booted unceremoniously back in the Dole queue. Real nice, but that happens...

Anyway, this was before the Millennium Act and Digital Rights Management had been ratified, but I studied them as part of the IT in a teaching role...

The Data Protection Act had a paragraph buried in it which read something like this.

• An individual has a right to the information held on him/her by an organisation at request.
• The organisation must comply with the request, and return a copy of that information on paper or CD.
• The organisation may charge up to £10 for the media and recovery costs, unless that organisation is a government agency, in which case it is free.
• The documents may be redacted to conceal sensitive information, but must be full and complete.
• The request is to be made to the Data Protection Officer of the organisation in writing.

That lot is now law, but it isnt well-known and organisations dont advertise who their DPO is. You have to ask, and then write to them.

The meeting

Well, the social worker looked a bit stressed, I dont think he was enjoying the meeting at all but I wasnt giving him a hard time myself. He made the mistake of admitting information exists; until now he's maintained that Social Services dont have any records. I'd warned him about the pile of ammunition I had that wouldnt shoot him, but fall on him if he didnt move a bit sharpish, and he still hasnt read this lot. Tch.

Informatics Andrew, I specialise in information itself, and the Truth is indeed Out There.

Apparently he has been denied access to the records, they are Archived and not for his eyes - or his supervisor's either from the looks of it.

Just wow, but like I said that information is mine, so I'm putting in a request for it so that the social worker can see whats in the box for himself. He seemed genuinely pleased about it too. Lol...

Ironically this isnt even the first time I've done this to them, but they dont learn very fast. Last time I went on their computers and downloaded the entire National Disabilities Act, which goes back to 1947 with all its amendments, and scoured it for the single sentence;

A disabled person has the right to a say in the manner and location of their care...

Which I then waved under their noses, along with a doctors report and AIME, which eventually led me to today, being dumped with all the responsibility and with no assistance or recompense.

Honestly, what a f*ing mess. Only a government organisation can let it get to this, any other profit-making organisation would have gone broke long ago no matter how entrenched they are.

Have you noticed there's also only one Monopolies Commission?

This is from around four years ago, written just after Psalm for the Insane. it didnt mean anything at the time, a random thought I couldnt get rid of so I wrote it down. I'm glad I did.

Today I speak to a psychologist. I'm beginning to wonder what the point is, it's doubtful they'll have the training for this, and why should I speak to psychologist about other people's behavioural problems? And no, I'm not talking about Bea, she has an excuse for acting like a child.

This is in itself a bit pitiful. The social worker wants me to convince the psychologist that I'm disabled, when its patently obvious it isnt me who is, but him and his emotionally crippled colleagues. This is so his department can carry on ignoring me, use me as free care and neglect their duties to my daughter. That isnt going to happen, the same as last time, and now the world can see it too.

The social worker still does not read my blog, has his fingers in his ears going La La La, and doesnt believe that the CEO of his parent organisation is signed on the case. He truly believes they have done no wrong and he's doing his best to help, and that the LGO will side with his department.

Perhaps I should send him one of these, so he can discuss his delusion with a professional instead of me.

I'm not even going to dignify that last section, I'll just have it out with the psychologist.

When I said "From a great height..." Thats exactly what I meant.

It feels like many years ago, and it might well be by now, that I told an enthusiastic-sounding social worker if he didnt want to listen I'd just go over his head, and over their successive heads, those who wouldnt do anything.

The Ombudsman still cannot intervene, because the Council tried to tie me up in Red Tape, but they really have exhausted the roll by now, decades of it. So, he landed this on the desk of someone who will.

Outstanding, thank you Mr Pettigrew of the LGO, you Sir are a gentleman and a scholar.

The county CEO probably does not take kindly to seeing letters like this, he handles a massive budget and only talks to men in suits. One can only guess his expression upon handing it to an underling to make it go away.

However it then landed on the desk of an underling of theirs, who obviously has other things on their mind at the moment. Typical... Well, the Piste is probably booked, you go enjoy your holiday love and dont worry about MorningStar and Bea. Doubtless you took one look at the top of the paper trail and didnt dig any further.

That, or you dont trust your underlings to handle it in your absence. Hell, I wouldnt, look at the mess they already made...

So, I wait patiently until the 9th March to see what they come up with. It'd better be good, or there'll be scratching of the Quill again.

And you can keep your leaflet. If I wanted to punish the frontline carers, who are inundated, underfunded and understaffed, I'd have annoyed one of your underlings with this in the first place.