Universal Credit waiting times plumb new depths of government depravity in stripping poor people of bargaining powerSt

Starvation of bargaining power is integral to modern slavery

There is an urgent need for real evidence-gathering re DWP practices, not dehumanising experimentation

Kate Belgrave's blog post Video: Learning and literacy difficulties and need to drop a sick note to the jobcentre? Too bad. You're banned. Get out (1) emphasises for me the need for real evidence-gathering regarding what the State is doing rather than swallowing the bullshit of think tanks such as Reform.uk. (2)

Meanwhile, there is a DWP consultation on regarding 'Universal Credit experimental statistics', (3) deadline 24 October, and a Dr David Webster analysis for Child Poverty Action Group, regarding the DWP 17 August 2017 sanctions statistics publication.(4)

An unconditional Universal Basic Income would boost workers' bargaining power.(5) 

 

The Department for Work & Pensions' benefit sanctions penalise the people lacking 'independent means' for non-compliance with contract terms that are unreasonable.(6) Meanwhile the DWP's 'Advance Payments' that are really repayable loans while claimants are kept waiting months for payments grind poor people into the dirt of an unfair society's making.(7) 

 

Together, the measures that go into the creation of Universal Credit and right wing welfare reforms in general grind people' noses into the dirt of slavery. At Kilburn Jobcentre, people not capable of work are maltreated institutionally by staff in ways that increase vulnerable people's likelihood of being hit by punitive sanctions for non-compliance with a 'Claimant Commitment'. At Kilburn and other jobcentres facing closure however, at least there is more 'access' for real 'evidence-gathering' than there would be in the entirely online world of the 'digital jobcentres' that Reform.uk and Accenture as principal contractor for Universal Credit implementation propose. 

 

Visible to supporters such as Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, jobcentre 'service users' are at least able to interface with prospective supporters. Where would they be with 'digital jobcentres'? (8)

Ironic, therefore that the same UK Government has ratified a treaty toward outlawing modern slavery!(9)

 

The text image from Freedom United to back its peitition against modern slavery

Conclusion

 Evidence of the kind Kate Belgrave presents at http://www.katebelgrave.com/2017/10/video-learning-and-literacy-difficulties-and-need-to-drop-a-sick-note-to-the-jobcentre-too-bad-youre-banned-get-out/ should help to make those responsible squirm with shame at their public exposure. Much as those responsible pride themselves on their statistics, the ways that they induce those statistics are obtained degrade and dehumanise not just the people who are the subjects of the sanctions statistics, but also for those institutionalised into excluding the wellbeing of 'service users'.

Blog post by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link references

1. http://www.katebelgrave.com/2017/10/video-learning-and-literacy-difficulties-and-need-to-drop-a-sick-note-to-the-jobcentre-too-bad-youre-banned-get-out/
2. http://www.reform.uk/ 
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/universal-credit-experimental-statistics-future-developments 
4. http://www.cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/17-08%20Sanctions%20Stats%20Briefing%20-%20D.Webster.docx
5. http://basicincome.org/basic-income/ 
6. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/benefit-sanctions 
7. http://www.katebelgrave.com/2017/10/universal-credit-advance-payments-fix-nothing-theyre-just-loans-and-another-debt-for-people-who-have-no-money/
8. http://www.reform.uk/publication/the-future-of-public-services-digital-jobcentres/
9.  

Conservative DWP calls pre-sanction interrogations 'Health & Work Conversations'

A conversation in theory involves balance of bargaining power and ability of both sides to discuss their concerns. If you follow the link http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bargaining+power, you will realise that such conversations with benefit claimants is not what this Conservative Government is about.(1)

'Austerity' driving Conservative Government — and its Blairite predecessors — are and have been far more about finding fault with claimants so that they can cut our benefits and/or sanction us in the name of 'protecting the public purse'. Their savings are not really savings and their lack of monitoring service provision and recruitment and retention of Disability Employment Advisers have long demonstrated that they don't really care for claimant or staff wellbeing.(2)

Now, it emerges via a Freedom of Information (FoI) Request that the Department for Work & Pensions intend to further weaken the bargaining power of disability benefit claimants by calling interrogations toward sanctioning Employment & Support Allowance claimants 'Health & Work Conversations'.(3)

I am reminded of Theresa May's insistence that those made homeless by the Grenfell Tower blaze in a Conservative-led local authority should be rehoused with supreme urgency. Such supreme urgency can lead to people being offered places that are unsuitable at the best of times, and for the places to be offered long before the prospective rehousing fodder are in an emotional state fit to make any long-term commitments.

The result would be that under long-established legislation, after turning down three offers, the rehousing fodder could be deemed to have made themselves 'intentionally homeless'.

What will the Department for Work & Pensions do to restore the trust of economically vulnerable people after successive Governments have screwed up on Disability Equality and Disability Rights issues for many people's life times? 'Care in the community', anybody?

Note

http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bargaining+power
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/private-legal-safeguarding-of.html
https://benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3647-being-asked-about-your-values-could-lead-to-an-esa-sanction

Abusive bullies avoid embarrassing questions

The scale of right wing 'welfare reformist' government abuses is now more mainstream than it was when David Cameron gave a speech in 2007 stating that tougher benefit sanctions were required.(1) The tactics and strategies of the abusive bullies are still very much the same, however.

Tory chief whip Gavin Williamson asks, “Is Jeremy Corbyn going to be the one who is going to stand up and get the best for Britain [in Brexit negotiations] or is Theresa May?” (Tories determined to follow 'get Corbyn' strategy, CNJ, May 4, 2017.(2))

Perhaps a lot depends on what he means by 'Britain'. Among the billionaires domiciled in the UK according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2017. there is "a record number of British billionaires - 134 - with 14 new ones emerging over the last year."(3) 

Yet Britain is very unequal socio-economically. In 2015, according to NHS figures, 7300 people were admitted to hospital with malnutrition — an increase of 50% since 2010. Homelessness is up 54% since 2010.(4)

Moreover, in negotiations bullies think that the bullying tactics used at home against those with no real bargaining power is 'strong leadership'. Among the tactics successive UK governments have used to deflect and pre-empt criticism of deteriorating services for benefit claimants have been the besmirching of the reputation and hence public goodwill toward those who have been abused by woefully inadequate and exploitative 'benefits helplines' as remote control has replaced face-to-face contact with decision-makers. In the mid-noughties while 21m calls to Jobcentre Plus helplines in 2004/5 went unanswered,(5) a Blairite government was running its Tory-lite 'Targeting BenefitThieves' campaign.(6)

Now, furthering the isolation and invisibility of benefit claimants while'benefits helpline' calls cost pay-as-you-go mobile phone users £33/hr, the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) has decided to close a number of jobcentres used by Camden New Journal readers, including Kilburn andHighgate (near Archway) to 'improve the service' without consulting service users.(7)

The EU's Chief Negotiator has more bargaining power than a DWP 'customer'.(8)

Now at this General Election time, the Tory chief whip's tactic of changing the agenda when faced with embarrassing questions gives rise to new meaning for a cartoon by Crippen the Disabled Cartoonist's 'Welfare Warfare' series.(9) The cartoon depicts a group of disabled people at a meeting presided over by the then Tory Prime Minister and Disability Minister who state: 

“Don't worry — when we want your opinion, we'll tell you what it is.”

Link references

1. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/benefit-claimants-require-firmer-safegards-not-tougher-sanctions.html
2. http://camdennewjournal.com/article/corbyn-wont-save-people-from-food-banks-warns-tory-chief-whip-gavin-williamson
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39830087 title: "UK's super-rich carry on making billions" 
4. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/civil-disobedience-fully-justified
5. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/11/16/jobcentre-plus-poor-service-continues/
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0zno5G3hw
7. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/terra-firma-benefits-services-closures-leave-the-economically-vulnerable-in-the-lurch.html
8. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-brexit-negotiating-draft-european-council-president-donald-tusk-union-latest-a7659316.html
9. http://www.crippencartoons.co.uk/wp-content/archive/cartoons/welfarewarfare/welfarewarfare12.shtml

Haiti's descent into destitution as a portent of why 'Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership' would be bad for Human Rights in the UK

Swheatie attended an International Women's Day fundraising event for Haiti on Saturday 8 March and learned why Haiti is such a poor land. Basically, before slavery was officially ended in the USA, former French colony Haiti was a haven for escaped slaves. And colonialist France thought that was very unfair to French slave owners and thus worked out means of penalising Haiti for standing up for Human Rights and opposition to slavery.

Thus, between 1825 and 1947, France forced Haiti to pay the equivalent of  £21.7bn as 'compensation' for slave owners' loss of their human 'property, paid over 100 years, impoverishing the country.* Leaving aside the matter of subsequent US intervention by way of coups in that land in support of murderous dictators and the ousting of Liberation Theologist President Aristide who pledged to "take Haitians 'from destitution to poverty', starting with women, children and subsistence farmers,"** let's turn now to the matter of the 'Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership' — aka 'TTIP' or 'EU-US free trade agreement'.

TTIP and TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership, that parallels TTIP in America's insistence that rights of corporations transcend democratic rights of citizens] will also include Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), allowing transnational corporations to sue governments directly for the loss of any future profits resulting from any government action, at any level, such as new legislation.  Where ISDS is already included in ‘trade’ deals, it is shown to lead either to big pay-outs from governments to transnational corporations or to deter governments from legislating – the ‘chill’ effect.

— Recipe for Ruin: TTIP the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership | Politics and Parasites

Thus, if a corporation does not like, say, a guaranteed minimum wage or any other such anti-slavery measure, we have some idea of what they will do to 'remedy' the situation. What do you think about that? And with EU elections coming up this May, what do UK political parties have to say about where they stand on the matter?

Why not ask them, or search for references to TTIP on their websites. Do not trust the BBC to give you the information you want on the matter. They seem to be only concerned with the UK's biggest political parties whenever they are not giving UKIP free publicity.

Wikipedia reports regarding Haitian history: "Fearful of the influence of the slaves' revolution [in Haiti], President Thomas Jefferson refused to recognize the new republic, as did most European nations." but Jefferson did leave us with a useful quotation to bear in mind when making democratic decisions: "Democracy presupposes knowledge."

PS: If you are in a political party, what does your political party say about its stance on TTIP?

* Source: Global Women's Strike factsheet 'Haiti: 10 Years of Resistance to 29 Feb 2004 Coup and its Bitter Legacy'
** Source: ibid

Telling it like it is

A person on a Government-sponsored scheme has set an excellent example of turning personal experience into a researcher/presenter's 'gold mine' by knowing his subject and knowing his audience.

What would the right wing gutter press say about the waste of Government money? "Beware the dreaded personalised anecdote" — a traditional dictum or taboo of academic research — has been used to socialise people into accepting tyranny. The law should enable, and it's really great when people think 'outside the box' in liberating ways!

Goodbye, former Disability Minister. You did more for this lifelong disabled person as a BBC Radio 2 Disc Jockey than as a politician

This current Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Secretary once sang to the now former Disability Minister Esther McVey. But that was in the days when she was a BBC Radio  2 disc jockey presenting a Sunday morning show and asking as a phone-in item one post FA Cup Final Sunday in the early 1990s, what audience members got up to on Cup Final Saturday. I told her I had been busking in suport of British Red Cross and singing a Matt McGinn song, 'Why Did I Ever Become a Footba' Referee?', and she helped 'warm me up' further to singing a few verses and choruses before I was timed out by the news.
 
But that was before she left the BBC to become a Tory Party candidate in Merseyside, in line with her accent by about the time of the 1997 General Election. Over ten years later and into a new Government, when she became new Disability Minister, she could hardly have been worse than her predecessor, Maria Miller, who was the first of the Con-Dems' Disability Ministers.
 
And now, in the promotion of women through ministerial office (which is not the same as promoting women's equality), Esther McVey is now the Employment Minister, and she has been replaced as Disability Minister by Mike Penning.
 
What will he do for disabled people, and what will Esther McVey do for workers' and jobseekers' rights while zero hours contract culture has already began to hurt many people, young people are being consigned by benefit changes to what might effectively become slavery through an emerging career of debt and 'work for your benefits' regulations and balance of bargaining power — never very strong for people on out of work benefits — becomes truly shafted.

Blogpost by Swheatie