One component of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) unofficial ‘toolkit’ we must resist is shame, a deeply felt anxiety that rips through the psychology of anyone who’s on the dole. It is used as a behaviour modifier that can be detected in the verbal and written discourses we have with the Jobcentre and the DWP, and can be triggered in various ways.

Due to joblessness and a bleak economy, self-immolations in industrialised societies are rising rapidly.

The men who set themselves on fire

On October 4, a man poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire in Washington DC. He committed suicide in the National Mall, the open-air park surrounded by national museums and monuments, now closed due to the government shutdown.

In shame ridden angst statement released by the PCS Union on the final day of the TUC conference, PCS president Janice Godrich speaking on “Standing up for the poor and vulnerable” in spearheading the defence of the welfare state said “The workfare schemes are a disgraceful stain on the welfare state our movement created” Which sees the “unemployed bullied” in a “society that can no longer call itself civilised when it refuses to support its most vulnerable”.

The unemployed have reason to look at the future as the stark privations that face us today are channelled by governments into an unrecognisable parody of welfare Hell. Out of this emerges a snapshot of week from a diary that takes a look into the future where work-camps have returned, food vouchers are the norm and privatisation has turned us into commodities.

As a humorous take on what life might be like, the writer Jimi known only by his forum pseudonym `Boltonmanc` at the Unemployment Movement website says his inspiration were the dire stories that confront the unemployed daily. Comments on it have nothing but praise for its imaginative narrative that connected with the websites members in a way that got them roaring with laughter but at the same time its impenetrable insight had many crying at just how real the prospects of it happening might occur.