A challenge to Tulip Siddiq — stand up for claimants, not just the camera!

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Tulip gatecrashes the Tory party. Photo: Camden New Journal

The Camden New Journal reports re the photo-opportunity vying of Tory Hampstead & Kilburn (H&K) parliamentary hopeful Simon Marcus accompanied by London Tory Mayor Boris Johnson, and Labour hopeful for the same parliamentary seat Tulip Siddiq near her constituency office in Kilburn High Road:

"As the Tory 'Blues' marched closer to this nerve centre, the Labour' Reds' radar bleeped and a defence system kicked in. Tulipistas were sent to cut the Mayor down, drawing their line in the pavement halfway down the road, outside the Classy Chicks clothes shop." (CNJ April 9, 2015)

Electioneering politicians seem to think it their democratic duty to stand up and be photographed in places of prominence. What about helping people who have been highjacked by the unfairness of the way that public servants seem to follow orders to "cut the welfare bill" etc? Is it dangerous for politicians to support benefit claimants? Do politicians fear the censure of a mistaken public opinion that has colluded with Benefit sanctions [as] Britain's secret penal system?

Some of our members had recently dropped into Tulip's office in getting from A to B and told her office of the situation of one of the people we support having had her benefits stopped for allegedly making herself 'unavailable for work' while the part-time course she's on is only 5 hours per week but cost her £4,000 to get onto. Down the road a bit from the Labour offices, Kilburn Jobcentre said that the person would have to give up her course in order to get her Jobseekers Allowance back. (While Parliament is dissolved, jobcentre customers have no MP, yet when Glenda Jackson was their MP many felt unrepresented all the same.)

On Tuesday April 7, 2015 we supported such sanctions fodder at Kilburn Jobcentre and commemorated the 3rd anniversary of the sanctions and eviction-related suicide of a former Kilburn Jobcentre customer from the South Kilburn Estate and were joined by members of one of the other parties contesting the H&K seat. link As we were packing up to leave the jobcentre for Ngell's former address, the police turned up, saying that jobcentre management had called on them because the noise of our megaphone was upsetting their customers and staff.

We would have loved to have been joined by some of Tulip's team if not Tulip herself yet understand that Labour's Work & Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves is an ex-banker who has said that Labour has nothing to offer people who are unemployed. But what does Tulip say?

Meanwhile it seems to me from walking down one of the Kilburn High Road side streets on the Brent side last night that no party's posters were displayed in the windows I saw. But I was not surprised.

It can take a lot of persuading to get a poster displayed in someone's window, and in the first place it can be difficult to persuade people to go out knocking on strangers doors along unfamiliar streets. Yet I have read by email that in at least one constituency the more televised parties have felt so threatened by the record of the MP standing for re-election that they have attempted to get residents to remove the posters for the person standing for re-election and have it replaced by one of their own.
 
I wonder whether those arrogant and apparently fearful persuaders were unpaid volunteers or paid employees of the party concerned?

Paradoxes of welfare reform under capitalism

By Swheatie of the KUWG — writing in a personal capacity*

An alternative to means-testing claimants?

Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) has broadcast a 'mass call out' for the sacking of Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud. This follows a statement Lord Freud made at a recent Tory Party conference fringe event, when he told a Tory councillor that some disabled people are "not worth the minimum wage," and that he would "have to go away and think about" how to get away with paying "some disabled people could be paid as little as £2 an hour." (Independent article Lord Freud: Tory Minister apologises after saying disabled people are 'not worth' the minimum wage includes an actual voice recording of Lord Freud saying that.)

David Cameron later apologised for the former investment banker Lord Freud's remarks, saying that they were not a true reflection on the views of the Tory Party. A Yahoo search and my long term memory bring to mind and historical record Philip Davies MP (Tory) using disabled people's potential lower productivity as an argument against the use of minimum wage legislation:

A Tory MP has sparked anger by suggesting that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage to increase their chances of being taken on by employers [see footnote].

Philip Davies told the Commons: "If an employer is looking at two candidates, one who has got disabilities and one who hasn't, and they have got to pay them both the same rate, I invite you to guess which one the employer is more likely to take on.

"Given that some of those people with a learning disability clearly, by definition, cannot be as productive in their work as somebody who has not got a disability of that nature, then it was inevitable that, given the employer was going to have to pay them both the same, they were going to take on the person who was going to be more productive, less of a risk.

"My view is that for some people the national minimum wage may be more of a hindrance than a help.

"If those people who consider it is being a hindrance to them, and in my view that's some of the most vulnerable people in society, if they feel that for a short period of time, taking a lower rate of pay to help them get on their first rung of the jobs ladder, if they judge that that is a good thing, I don't see why we should be standing in their way."

— Tory MP Philip Davies: "Disabled people could work for less pay."

And I note that under the original 'descriptors' for the 'Work Capability Assessment' through which I won a tribunal for Employment & Support Allowance eligibility in 2009, I scored 15 points — the full threshold amount! — for a descriptor regarding time taken to execute tasks. That factor had been a major bug bear and cause of friction between scapegoatist co-workers and me in my first waged job, as they complained that the amount of time I took to complete tasks was so slow that the section manager assigned tasks to them instead of me, and that I should be forced to take a wage cut to compensate them!

And note also that it was Labour DWP Secretary who signed off the authorisation for the 'harsher test' in 2010 before the General Election of that year to 'simplify' the 'Work Capability Assessment'. (Sheffield Forum: Even harsher new ESA Medical approved.) And so under such legislation, slower disabled workers are not protected against the potential financial abuse that they could be exposed to by being short-changed under quantitative 'piece rate' that epitomises capitalism's orientation toward only valuing people in an instrumental sense — as means of production.

What about an hourly rate that is laid out on the basis of valuing people in terms of their commitment to taking part?

Yet what does Lord Freud's talk of paying disabled people as little as £2 per hour and compensating them through Universal Credit say regarding the matter of juggling 'protecting the vulnerable' with the Tory mania for an 'overall benefit cap'?

So, maybe, yes Lord Freud should be sacked, but who is going to replace him and what will they espouse as the future for disabled people in a capitalist system under which people are only valued in terms of their quantity of output?

* The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group