Self-help support vs ravages of 'welfare reform'. Never attend anywhere official alone!
This blog currently focuses on national policy matters that impact upon KUWG members.
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group as a group focuses primarily on combating benefits injustices locally through advocacy in individuals' benefit claims, and demonstrations that emphasise that there is hope when we come together. We are more angry than frightened.
In the wake of the UK's EU Brexit referendum debacle, the leaders of
the Green Party of England & Wales (Natalie Bennett)
the Green Party of Northern Ireland (Stephen Agnew, MLA) and
the Wales Green Party (Alice Hooker-Stroud)
together with Green Party of England & Wales one MP, Caroline Lucas, have jointly written an Open Letter to:
Jeremy Corbyn (Leader of the Labour Party)
Tim Farron (Leader of the Liberal Democrats) and
Leanne Wood (Leader of Plaid Cwmry [the Welsh Nationalist Party]).
The UK's biased mass media seem to be showing enormous glee at a Parliamentary Labour Party coup against a party leader chosen more by the rank and file membership than old-guard Blairites would like. Those Kilburn Unemployed members who are Labour Party members are in a different league from the Blairites that laid down foundations of the 'welfare reforms' that the Conservatives are now exploiting, and are generally much happier with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership than those Blairites who would look forward to high paid lobbying positions for global corporations on top of the prospect of seats in the House of Lords. Against that backdrop, it is not very likely that this letter would get much publicity from the BBC, say, or Sky News, and certainly not from the Daily Mail. So without further ado, this Kwug blog editor is republishing that 'Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, and Leanne Wood' here, while 'declaring an interest in that I am a member of the Green Party of England & Wales. Perhaps it speaks more for Kwug's Labour Party members than the coup leaders against Corbyn could possibly do?
Open letter to: Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood on behalf of Green Party of England and Wales In a spirit of openness and transparency, we are writing to you as Leaders of parties which oppose Brexit, to invite you to a cross-party meeting to explore how we best rise to the challenge posed by last week’s vote to Leave the EU. Britain is in crisis and people are scared about the future. Never have we had a greater need for calm leadership to be shown by politicians. We have a UK Government in chaos, an economy facing a crisis and people up and down the country facing serious hardship. There is an urgent need to make a stand against any austerity and the slashing of environmental legislation, human and workers’ rights, that may come with Brexit. With the growing likelihood of an early General Election, the importance of progressive parties working together to prevent the formation of a Tory-UKIP-DUP government that would seek to enact an ultra-right Brexit scenario is ever more pressing. This is an opportunity to recognise that a more plural politics is in both the Left’s electoral and political interests. This crisis exposes the absurdity of our first past the post electoral system. Just 24 per cent of those eligible to vote elected the government that called the referendum. The only fair way to proceed is to have a proportional voting system where people can back the politicians who they believe in, rather than taking a gamble and not knowing who they will end up with. The idea of a progressive alliance has been floated for several years, and proposals have once again been put forward in the context of the current crisis. We believe that the time has come to urgently consider such ideas together in the context of a Westminster Government. We recognise the very different political situation in Scotland, given the strongly pro-EU majority there. We hope that co-operation between progressive parties their can ensure that this mandate is respected, and we will support them to keep all options open. We look forward to your response, Natalie Bennett, Leader of The Green Party of England and WalesSteven Agnew MLA, Leader of the Green Party of Northern IrelandAlice Hooker-Stroud, Leader of Wales Green PartyCaroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion
The Labour manifesto stuff about 'fiscal responsibility' and 'hard working families' was nasty to a decades long disabled jobseeker, but today's launch of the Tory manifesto with its extension of 'right to buy' and housing extensions selling off social housing homes once tenants have been moved out is something I find potentially gut wrenching at a time when I should be nursing an injured finger from an accident this morning.
A
Conservative government would extend the right-to-buy scheme for
housing association tenants in England, David Cameron will say, as he
unveils his party's general election manifesto.
The PM will say up
to 1.3 million tenants could buy their homes at a discount as a result,
insisting the Tories are the party of working people....
The photographic backdrop to to the photo of David Cameron delivering the Conservative manifesto proclaims:
STRONG LEADERSHIP A CLEAR ECONOMIC PLAN A BRIGHTER, MORE SECURE FUTURE
The biggest problem there is that the 'clear economic plan' is built upon lies and half-truths and it includes a plan for the privatisation of what remains of the UK's social housing stock and placing it in the clutches of global billionaires.(2)
Clearly a 'corporatist' economic plan
The 'right to buy' extension is the 'carrot'. How much will taxpayers including those of us who don't pay income tax but do pay VAT be subsidising that instead of investment in green energy and home insulation against global warming and fuel poverty? But of course, according to the currently prevailing ideology, anyone who is not in waged employment or 'financially independent of the state' is a 'useless eater', aren't we?(3)
The 'stick' is more a stick extension really. The Cameron-Clegg coalition Government tightened the financial screws on 'social landlords' to the point that they were already keen to 'up stakes' in 'more desirable areas', selling off properties there and shipping poorer tenants out to areas where there were even fewer work opportunities.(4) (We now have school teachers priced out of living in Camden where they teach commuting in from Folkestone!(5))
The Conservative 2015 UK General Election manifesto — if accepted by the electorate — would
"force councils to sell properties ranked in the most expensive third of their type in the local area, once they become vacant."(6)
In conclusion for now, the UK's media and the majority of mainstream politicians have allowed the property market practices that were the real cause of the 2008 banks crash to get away with murder,
not only of poor people through disability benefit eligibility testing, benefit sanctions,
but also of truly civil society while hoodwinking people in waged employment to despise jobseekers and people incapable of anything like a 16 hour working week as undeserving.
David Cameron is for workers? Or is it 'David Cameron is for wankers'?
(Actually, the song video chorus line says 'David Camerson is a w@nker'.)
(2) 'Right to buy' is a means of privatisation very much in line with neoliberalism or 'corporatism's' 'holy trinity' as exposed by Naomi Klein in her incisive book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
(3) 'Useless eaters' is the term Nazis used to describe disabled people. And their extermination of disabled people was firstly through denial of services, secondly through forced sterilisation, and thirdly through making parents so desperate that a parent writing into Hitler's 'bright ideas' mailbag' was so desperate that he asked for the 'mercy killing' of his learning disabled son, and Hitler thought: "What a great idea!" (Memorised from a TV documentary viewed on daytime tv.)
