Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group — the Kwug Blog: I Daniel Blake

Showing posts with label I Daniel Blake. Show all posts

Thursday, 2 February 2017

'I, Daniel Blake' for 21st Century enlightenment

The 'branding strapline of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is '21st Century enlightenment'.

Thus it is highly appropriate that the RSA will be screening the Ken Loach film 'I, Daniel Blake', and has tagged the promotional blog about the screening: employment, public services, social justice.(1)

RSA Screens: I, Daniel Blake

Tuesday 21st February 2017 at 18:00 - 20:15

Great Room Auditorium, RSA House

Tagged with:

Employment

Public services

Social justice

For further details go to https://www.thersa.org/events/2017/02/rsa-screens-i-daniel-blake

Reference link

https://www.thersa.org/events/2017/02/rsa-screens-i-daniel-blake

Sunday, 18 September 2016

People's Assembly Against Austerity presents I, Daniel Blake: Special advance screening for supporters

The People's Assembly is pleased to announce an exciting addition to our programme of events as part of our weekend protesting the Tory Party Conference on 1 & 2 October in Birmingham. We will be hosting a special advance screening of Ken Loach's latest award winning film, 'I, Daniel Blake.' The Screening is exclusively available to attendees of The People's Conference on Saturday 1 October.

The weekend of action includes:

The People's Conference - Our Alternative to Austerity
Saturday 1 October, 10:30am, Birmingham Town Hall, B3 3DQ

Special Advance Screening, 'I, Daniel Blake' (with introduction from Ken Loach)
Saturday 1 October, 7:00pm, Cineworld Broad Street, Birmingham, B15 1DA
NOTE: Spaces for the screening are limited, please book early. This screening is available exclusively to attendees of the People's Conference

Book tickets from http://www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/peoplesconference

Special thanks to Ken Loach and his team for the opportunity to show this important film in advance of its official release.

Check out the Guardian review of the film at https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/12/i-daniel-blake-ken-loachs-welfare-state-polemic-is-blunt-dignified-and-brutally-moving

Revd Paul Nicolson comments on preview of Ken Loach's Palme D'Or winning 'I, Daniel Blake'

Guest blog post by Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

Dear all,

I went to a preview of Ken Loach's very necessary Palme D'Or winning new film I, Daniel Blake; I wept. I am so glad

a special screening has been

arranged

by the Peoples Assembly

in Birmingham and sorry I

cannot be there

Life was bad for the unemployed prior to Iain Duncan Smith's reforms, when I was working with and for benefit claimants in debt. Parliament did not, however, permit jobcentre officials to stop unemployment income for one month, three months or three years with a benefit sanction.

I reflected at the preview that I, Daniel Blake describes only one of three nightmare bureaucracies which require officials to implement oppressive laws that impact on the mental and physical health of our poorest fellow citizens and their children by creating debts, hunger and homelessness.

Now, when the jobcentre stops an income with a benefit sanction, local authorities continue to enforce rent and council tax arrears; magistrates enforce fines for poverty related offences such as TV licence or fare evasion, both adding court costs and bailiffs fees. Those debts have often arisen because benefit and other incomes in and out of work have been shredded since 2010. The debts pile up while the unemployment income is stopped by the sanction and are then enforced for months after it ends.

The poverty crisis is even deeper than the tragic circumstances accurately captured by Ken Loach.

In solidarity,

Paul

from the Reverend Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty

No citizen without an affordable home and an

adequate income in work or unemployment.

93 Campbell Road, Tottenham, London N17 0BF, 0208 3765455, 07961 177889,

https://www.facebook.com/ Taxpayers-Against-Poverty- 299911526728884/

https://twitter.com/taxpayers_ a_p www. taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk ,

www.z2k.org, www. prohousingalliance.com

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Internet searchers like welfare advocacy and Tony Cox — DWP clearly do not!

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

In his 2009 speech to Green Party Trade Union group fringe, Peter Allen (Advice Worker and a member of UNISON) advocated Green Party members holding something like 'advice surgeries' for economically vulnerable people, to help inform them of their rights. (Post title Welfare Rights and Advice, Friday 27 March 2009 (1) Further video parts at that Green Party Trade Union Group blog post, which is on the old Green Party Trade Union Group blog. The videoing was done by Peter Murry [no 'a' in the spelling of his surname] of Neasden.)

Since then, against a backdrop of ever greater Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) nastiness against benefit claimants, there has been an upsurge of self-help groups offering advice and advocacy to benefit claimants and others. These include the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) in North London and the Scottish Unemployed Workers Network (SUWN). (2) (3) The advertising 'strap line' of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, "Never attend anywhere official alone," and that imperative has certainly helped validate claimant's vulnerability when they attend disability benefit assessments. KUWG is affectionately known as 'Kwug' and its caseworkers — through diligent persistence and becoming informed — have helped people get the benefits to which they are entitled.

Too often, the stage at which people have come to Kwug with their cases have already been turned down for the disability benefit for which they have applied — and they have not been accompanied in their original benefit assessment 'medical', nor received proper advice about what documentation to supply in making their claim. The more 'lead time' between their appeal to a Kwug meeting for assistance and their assessment or tribunal, the greater their chances of a successful outcome, generally. Partly for that reason, Kwug meets every Thursday a community centre that is very accessible.

What happened to state benefits after someone who did not even do a Google search for 'Incapacity Benefit test' declared the majority of Incapacity Benefit claimants bogus?

Tony Blair appointee 'welfare reform guru' and former investment banker David Freud's February 2008 ill-informed and badly researched statements about 'benefit fraud' seem to have signposted the 'norms' by which the DWP cuts benefits by cutting the number of disability benefit claimants and more perceived to be 'legitimate'. Then head of Child Poverty Action Group Kate Green — now a Labour MP — observed that Freud had clearly not done a Google search on 'Incapacity Benefit test'.(4) He is now installed in the House of Lords as Conservative Welfare Reform Minister and benefits sanctions often hit very vulnerable people who are not only not fit for work, but also unfit for the Jobseekers Allowance 'conditionality' that being turned down for Employment & Support Allowance has forced them into.(5)

The conditionality attached to 'entitlement' for benefits is now extremely hard and demeaning as blogger and NUJ member Kate Belgrave | 'Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts' has discovered through talking to and accompanying benefit claimants.(6) The extent of benefit sanctions and the way that they have been administered without the decision maker facing the claimant have been highlighted respectively by U. Glasgow Law Professor Dr David Webster and by Kate Belgrave.(7) (8) "Those who give the order seldom see the mess it makes" and the DWP clearly do not want the public to know that mess and how it was caused.(9)

DWP on the hunt for much needed welfare advocates — and not to give them paid work doing what they do so well!

Now, it is not just claimants as claimants that the DWP is attacking, it is also the advocates of DWP claimants that they are attacking, as evidenced in the case of Tony Cox of the SUWN, as outlined at The Crown versus Tony Cox — and welfare activists everywhere: Part 2, Round 1.(10) Observing and listening to Tony Cox's input at a meeting served as part of screenwriter Paul Laverty's research for Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or winning film 'I Daniel Blake', directed by Ken Loach.(11) (12)

I believe I am not suited to doing the direct advocacy stuff, but have empathy in talking to fellow claimants and an understanding of what they are subjected to. That and Internet and writing skills help me blog while I have never been successful at jobsearch enough to get more than 'precarious' positions from the time I became a jobseeker in 1977 till the time I claimed ESA in early 2009 — which I later won through tribunal in December 2009. The extent of 'precarity' in people's socio-economic status has now become so widespread that Prof. Guy Standing has declared 'the precariat' a 'new dangerous class'.(13)

As a jobseeker with an invisible disability, I was all-too-frequently timed out of what 'supports' were available to disabled jobseekers even before these much harsher times. Through all those years of diligent jobsearch and skill building — largely without official support and much official hindrance by ignorant government employees — my sum total of waged employment amounted to a grand total of 17 months, the last 11 months of which was so part time that I was still claiming Jobseekers Allowance and submitting part-time earnings forms at the jobcentre at my fortnightly signing sessions. The stinginess of the '£5 earnings disregard' badly impacted on me in those 11 months.(14) Stress led to weakening of my immune system to the point that I suffered cellulitis in my legs and became increasingly forgetful at just 52 years old.(15) (16)

As a result of Kilburn Unemployed blogging, I have been able to observe a huge interest in the case of Tony Cox. Since I uploaded a blog post on Thursday 17 June in the evening about Tony Cox and welfare advocacy, that blog post has attracted enough viewings to make it the #5 in the 'All Time (May 2010 to June 2016) Most Viewed' blog posts of the Kilburn Unemployed blog.(17)

Posts

Entry	Pageviews
KUWG with Simon of Occupy Highlight What Goes on a... 1 Apr 2014	3285
Unite Community-sponsored Inequality Bus Tour goes... 23 Apr 2014, 2 comments	1026
Harlesden Neighbourhood Forum Launch - Weds 15 Apr... 3 Apr 2015	690
12 month investigation exposes stark reality faced... 4 Feb 2014	574
Roll up at Kilburn Jcp on Thurs 23 June, 09:45 to ... 17 Jun 2016	446
What councils don't tell you about the enforcement... 20 Mar 2013	443
Benefits sanctioned? Take mass action! Write your ... 14 Nov 2014	405
Our Work Capability Reassessment Workshop 11 Nov 2011	353
High Court challenge vs WCA, Monday 21 October 201... 21 Oct 2013	351
The Council Tax scandal 12 May 2015	297

The price of liberty is constant vigilance!

Amendment to the above regarding sourcing of viewings for

The presupposition of the author is at fault in identifying the source of viewings for Roll up at Kilburn Jcp on Thurs 23 June, 09:45 to 10:45 in support of Tony Cox and welfare activists everywhere as based on Internet searches. Internet searches have indeed sourced most of the viewings for Kilburn Unemployed blog posts in the previous six years of this blog, as this 'All Time Stats' copy and paste illustrates:

Traffic Sources (May 2010 to June 2016)

Entry	Pageviews
https://www.google.co.uk/	3455
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/	1030
http://www.vampirestat.com	405

A look at the viewing sources for the blog as a whole reveals a break in that trend not only for the past week but also for the past month:

Traffic Sources (24 May 2016 to June 2016)

Entry	Pageviews
http://m.facebook.com/	325
https://www.google.co.uk/	96
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/	61

That revelation, however, does not invalidate the importance of supporting Tony Cox and welfare advocates everywhere. There has been a huge take up of viewings from one Facebook source.

Links

Benefits sanctioned? Take mass action!

Commenting on Blog Contents

Comments are approved unless abusive, obscene, completely off the subject, disguised advertising or libellous. Publication of a comment does not imply that the blog administrator or KUWG agree with it.

Please note if I respond to comments it is in my Google log in — never 'Anonymous'

Commenters cause less confusion when they use their own names or pen names. A host of 'Anons' can give very mixed messages. Even if you use the technically easier 'Anonymous' button to make a comment you can still put your name at the end.

How to post a comment on a blogspot blog piece.

Contact us:

Facebook: Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KUWG1

Telephone: 07724 843 973

Meetings: 3pm - 5:30pm
Thursdays, Kingsgate Community Centre
107 Kingsgate Road, London, NW6 2JH

Meeting structure

Helping you feel at home: We meet weekly in the Small Hall at KingsgateCC and start gathering from 3pm, attempting to start the meetings at about 3:15pm and definitely before 3:30pm.

Bring and share refreshments are included. We are not like the 'No eating or drinking on the premises' jobcentre.

The formal meetings start with firstname and what benefit we are on or a one-liner about what brings us to KUWG. (Pensioners and other allies welcome.)

We then ask for casework from those present, arrange who will help with what case, and go onto discussing campaigning leafleting and such outreach activities. We also arrange who will do the chairing or facilitating and note-taking for the following week. Rotating these roles helps minimise the risk of being dominated by one person and helps us build our skills as we share the workload.

Meetings actually finish at about 5:20pm to allow for putting tables and chairs back and leaving the kitchen facilities ready for the next group.

KUWG on Twitter