Caption from my interview with NRK

Thursday the 22nd was a bizarre day for me, so unusual I simply have to blog about it now that I’ve had the chance to catch my breath. I ended up on the evening news and surprisingly enough, it wasn’t because I robbed a bank or threw a cake in the face of politician. I got to flash my questionable mug on NRK which is a national, state-owned TV-channel, basically a Norwegian version of BBC. Love it or hate it, the channel and its news is at least classic and not sensationalist tabloidish in style, they seem to try to keep a fragment of integrity and quality even these days. I was interviewed and brief excerpts where used in a case on a just released report on the condition of the social security system and a lot of other things. There where some heavy criticism, and I was apparently chosen to sort of give the victims of the issues at hand a face.

The quick and dirty story behind my role in this, is that I applied for disabilities pension back in 2007, due to my chronic and severe medical condition. This was the beginning of a personal kind of hell, an not-so-epic battle between man and the system. Basically “they” ignored my application due to practical bureaucratic issues internally in the social departement and certain political goals or ideas concerning who to give disabilities pension. I phoned, e-mailed and snail-mailed them to get some response and for a long time, was dreadfully unanswered or given very vague feedback always requesting more information, even if I’d already given them all they could honestly need. In fact I several times received a standard-phrased letter requesting the same information that I’d sent in several times before. Either they used this to drag out the case for a while longer, or they actually lost the papers due to internal mess. I must admit I wonder where these highly personal papers containing intimate details about me, got to..

I have to mention that it’s not like my medical condition was anything new to them, I’ve been getting certain benefits (educational support and so forth) from them for a decade and they’ve got a thick file on me. Now this quicksandish affair went on far beyond the given time limits for reaching a decision in matters such as my application. Eventually, I could not be ignored any longer, the “noise” generated by me and those assisting me (I where lucky enough to have some great people helping me, you know who you are, thank you!) must have got too loud to stand. A meeting was called and a deal was worked out, not for the permanent disabilities pension I’d applied for, but temporary disabilities pension with a maximum lenght of four years. Obviously a compromise and quite ironic, as my condition only gets worse, not better. Yet, that was all they could give me and I was in many ways forced to reach a conclusion to this case, financial issues being what they are, terribly hard to overlook when you’re staring into an empty fridge. So I got my stuff worked out, sort of, for a time, it only took a couple years when it should have taken four months. I do not know if it is possible to describe how it is, living on the mercy of some names and titles without faces, waiting, wondering, worrying, counting pennies, for weeks, months and years, but quite frankly, it burns the joy of living out of your mind. Contrary to what some right-wing politicians and economical liberalists seem to think, it is not fun, you don’t do it because you want to, you do it because you have little or no other choice. Period.

Now, it turns out I’m not the only one that’s had problems with the social department over the last few years. Due to a massive reorganization process, planned to take somewhere around half a decade, there are also (not so surprisingly) massive practical, ideological and bureaucratic problems internally in the department. Something that does not only affect rare, special cases such as me, but a wide range of groups. The classic issues are cases/applications taking far beyond any reasonable time limits to reach a conclusion, money not getting wired when and where they are supposed to, a lot of general confusion, misinformation, papers getting lost and basically people in need of help, suffering. It’s sort of a problem when the very system that is in place to help people, generates more problems for those seeking help due to an inhumane bureaucratic process. Obviously this is not acceptable and over the past year, year and a half, reports in the media have become more and more critical and unambiguous, and more money and efforts have been poured into the social department(s) to rectify the issues. This report I mentioned at the beginning of this post, was sort of the final straw, complete and brutal criticism from an organ appointed by the parliament/government to evaluate the financial situation in the various departments, organs and businesses of the state. Frankly, reading it’s conclusions on the social department creates an interesting mental image of an elephant doing riverdance on top of the corpses of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible, pretty damn crushing. I am very pleased, not because this matters much for me, my case is after all, sort of closed, but I know there are tens of thousands of other people having major problems and struggling with this. There’s no doubt now, they have to sort it out, you can’t ignore a splinter in your eye the size of a giant 2000 year old  Redwood tree.

So, if you still haven’t fallen asleep from boredom, how on earth did I end up in that TV-news report? The day it all exploded I spent the entire day in a planning meeting for one of my volunteer jobs, this job is owned/run by the Norwegian Association For The Hard of Hearing (HLF). One of the participants in this meeting get a call from a formed employee, now working at the NRK. They’re looking for a handicapped person who’s spent a long time in queue with the social department, awaiting an answer to their application. I offer my help in finding one, thinking I’d find someone on Facebook easily. I was and is  pretty sure there’s several battling with the social dep. Unfortunately there’s not much time and I get no responses within reasonable time, so in the end I call the journalist and apologize that I could not find anyone, but I also mention that I’ve been through such a process recently. I quickly shave and try to find some half-decent clothes as I don’t have many, which is a concern when you don’t want to appear as a hobo. Due to a limited budget I mostly buy cheap, solid and “work” clothes.  A few minutes later I meet the  reporter and her camera-man in a nearby park and we’re on. I had no wish to appear on TV, I’m a pretty private person, but the decision was made easy due to the importance of this report and the need to have an Joe Sixpack giving the criticism a face. Excerpts from the interview was used twice that evening, both on the 19:00 and 23:00 news, but with slightly different points of view to the report. First one angled heavily on the criticism, second run more about the problems the applicants for benefits face when dealing with the social department.

Well that’s the story. I had hoped the interview would be run as a case on it’s own, but it’s hardly surprising that they try to squeeze all they can into a limited time-frame. I had some fairly heavy-hitting comments with good points that where not used, but all in all I did at least not make a total jackass out of myself which is obviously something you risk to do when going on TV. If you understand Norwegian here’s a direct link to the news-report in NRKs archives.

Direct link to the case on the 19:00 news, 22th of October ’09 (Probably need Internet Explorer for the video to work)