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.
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 July 2017
Thursday, 13 July 2017
Unjustly treated Revd Paul Nicolson points to the mass-destruction perils of 'push button justice' over civil debt
Guest blog post from Revd Paul Nicolson
IT IS HIGH TIME THIS INHUMAN COMPUTERISED INJUSTICE IS STOPPED.
Today
Highbury Corner Magistrates court, as expected, issued a liability
order against me to Haringey Council adding £115 costs.
But far more seriously the magistrate issued liability orders plus costs against 510 Haringey residents
by signing a computer printout. That was a small number: sometimes it
has been over 2000 at one time by signing a print out. The total number
of summons issued by Haringey last year was over 27.000. Nationally
there are 3.5 million a year.
The
vast majority are issued by computer against local people who can never
afford to pay the tax because their benefit incomes have been shredded
by central government.
Haringey
Councillors ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting such an
oppressive law loose on the large number of vulnerable and
impoverished residents in the borough. It creates serious hardship.
Great
efforts by council staff goes in to collecting the tax from people who
cannot pay. No surprise that over £2million is left unpaid every year.
A computer will now send the following threats to residents of the borough vulnerable or not. It is an inhuman process.
Failure to contact
the council on receiving a liability order
will result in the council taking one of the following methods of recovery to collect the outstanding Council Tax
.
- Enforcement Agents (commonly known as bailiffs) They add £75 as soon as Haringey give them the case (over 11,000 times last year). They then add £235 if they have to make a visit and another £110 if they call to collect the furniture. Council tax is a civil debt so they are not allowed to break in to people's homes. Keep to door shut is the advice.
- Attachment of Earnings
- Attachment of Benefit
- Bankruptcy / Liquidation
- Charging Orders
- Committal to Prison
Monday, 26 June 2017
The Council leader and the unsafe cladding
In May,
Cllr Gould's 'coronation' as Camden Council leader came with plaudits
from Lord Mandelson and other local Labour Party luminaries. The
Camden New Journal reported: "Town Hall boss says she will be judged on her own merits and not 'New Labour heir' tag."(1)
Yet
perhaps both her backers and her 'performance on the job' betray an
alienation between her 'leadership' and Camden's tower block fodder?
Glaswegian
trade unionist Jimmy Reid said in his inauguration speech as Rectorof Glasgow University in 1972:
"Everything that is proposed from
the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the
people, to miniaturise man [sic]. I can understand how attractive
this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to
be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic
tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or
maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it
can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to
an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.” (2)
As a
newbie council leader Georgia Gould might not be personally
responsible for the Health & Safety failings of Camden's Tower
blocks that came to prominence in the wake of the Grenfell Tower
inferno. I would argue though that her 'swift and decisive' attempt
to remedy those Health & Safety failings by means of delegated
turfing out of people at unsocial hours without consultation from the
tower blocks bears evidence of bureaucratic tweezers more than a
friendly, “I am here to help you at this hour of danger”
handshake.(3)
Notes
- http://camdennewjournal.com/article/proud-lord-mandelson-hails-new-council-leader-georgia-gould
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/still-irresistible-a-working-class-heros-finest-speech-2051285.html
- http://camdennewjournal.com/article/georgiagouldexplanation
Friday, 23 June 2017
Jimmy Reid on tower blocks as 'filing cabinets'
In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, I'd say that we need to look again not just at the matter of the 'cladding' materials used, but moreover at the nature of people's living conditions,
Heed the words of the late Scottish trade unionist and Communist Jimmy Reid in his 1972 inauguration speech as Rector of Glasgow University:
"Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man [sic]. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.
"If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let's make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let's gear or society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity...."(1)
Also from Glasgow is Matt McGinn's 'Jeely Piece Song' aka 'Height Starvation Song'.(2)
Heed the words of the late Scottish trade unionist and Communist Jimmy Reid in his 1972 inauguration speech as Rector of Glasgow University:
"Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man [sic]. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under 'M' for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.
"If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let's make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let's gear or society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity...."(1)
Also from Glasgow is Matt McGinn's 'Jeely Piece Song' aka 'Height Starvation Song'.(2)
For more of how things could and should be, there is a Taxpayers Against Poverty series of blog posts about solutions to the UK's housing crisis.(3)
Blog post by Dude Swheatie of Kwug
Link references
Sunday, 18 September 2016
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,
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