An Anarch at the Job Centre

The Anarch’s logic triumphs over that of the State.

The laws of industriousness and charity govern Britain. Those of ample means and capital who do not work, do not get, while the poor, the infirm and the incapable have their inconsequential lives funded from cradle to grave. I sought to reverse this injustice.

Historically, my family has spent the main part of its existence writhing in feudal mud, subsisting on corn and developing mild to moderate gastroenteritis. Around the mid-18th century they got exceptionally lucky and began living on goose meat and wine. In both cases, they have suffered medical complications in middle age, usually dying before their sixtieth birthday.

This “premature ejaculation of the soul” as my uncle terms it, is what has kept us from escaping the confines of the lower middle-classes, limiting as it does our productivity and cumulative wealth. This tendency of the Guppy family to die prematurely does, however, confer certain benefits for the youngest among us. A Guppy male of some twenty-seven years will find himself surrounded by the caskets of various dead uncles, aunts and second cousins who, riddled with advanced stomach and pancreatic cancers, and robbed of their liberum arbitrium, have nothing more to do with their wealth than bequeath it, while those other relatives who, though still alive are nevertheless troubled with potentially fatal maladies, are looked upon with the hungry (but compassionate) eye of the investor.

On this basis I want for very little, and have enough written away in wills to pay the yearly rent of my bedsit forty times over. But in order to make a successful welfare claim in Britain, it is imperative that the individual have no more than £6,000 pounds in personal finances, either liquid or solid. This may have proved a problem, but in this and myriad other ways the Anarch’s personal logic triumphs over that of the State. Though my wilting Aunt Lilith will yield £15,000 alone when she goes, and Grandmother René (whose favour I have been diligent in currying) is said to be worth such a sum that she must juggle her finances between bank accounts, the State foolishly fails to consider these moribund relatives as investments.

Despite this, the yieldings from already defunct relatives pushed me far above the stipulated £6,000 limit, and action had to be taken to assure the Job Centre advisor of my relative poverty. This was achieved by sending the money which pushed me above the threshold to one of Mother’s secure accounts, while firmly instructing her not to touch it.

My bank balance now sat at £5,999, a quantity of liquid cash that, while it may raise suspicion, will nevertheless qualify the tactful Anarch for regular welfare payments. My sole source of income (this publication) might have harmed my claim had I alerted my adviser to its existence, but that was easy enough to hide. What proved more difficult was the existence of Mrs. Guppy.

There is in every good lie a grain of truth which renders it believable. Mrs. Guppy and I were married in a ceremony which was not officiated by the English State, nor by any foreign official. The ceremony took place in a remote village of Extremadura, and was officiated by a man who, though at the time I thought him a cleric, I later learned was a homeless man asking for change. He had presented himself as such in his native castellano, but the words for cleric (clérigo) and beggar (mendigo) being somewhat similar to the non-native ear, I confused the terms and crossed his palm with fifty euros in exchange for his marrying us. The ceremony was carried out with no witnesses besides a looky looky man, who briefly interrupted the ceremony to sell his wares.

To be wed with neither the consent of either the Church nor the State is to live in accordance with the Anarch philosophy, being as he is indifferent to the laws of man. By my personal ethos, I am indeed married, and that status is conferred greater significance by the State’s failure to recognise it. Besides, was not Jesus Christ himself a mendigo?

Using the State’s logic against itself, I was able to say quite truthfully that I was unmarried to the woman living in my bedsit. But irrespective of one’s married status, the Job Centre nevertheless denies claims of those living with “romantic partners” with a significant income from receiving any benefits, given that the bread-winner is expected to provide for the bread-eater. But what is to be called a “romantic partner”, and how does the State pretend to define Romance? I told the Job Centre adviser that the woman in my bedsit and I no longer shared any romantic feelings, that we hardly spoke to one another, and that we had long ceased to engage in coitus on account of my moderate asexuality. In every great lie, a grain of truth.

My claim was accepted. As my Job Centre adviser finalised the details on her ancient computer, I tapped out the rhythm to La Campanella with my foot, taking pleasure in the knowledge that I was performing the most complex operation which was occurring, and would ever occur, in that Job Centre. Around me I saw other men, needier than I, but with the misguided belief that the law was just and that it would favour them. Men with children to feed, and with some small dignity to uphold. Men who would have spent their welfare, not on duck breasts or bottles of Côtes du Rhône, but on the bare necessities to keep their children alive.

I saw their claims rejected, one after another.

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