The Top 10 Kwug Blog Posts for the past month

Entry	Pageviews
Terra firma benefits services closures leave the economically vulnerable more in the lurch 24 Apr 2017	339
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group's verdict on Donald Trump's US Presidential Pospectus 19 Jan 2017	304
A Universal Credit case study by Revd Paul Nicolsolson 17 Apr 2017, 1 comment	265
Polls close 5pm on Weds 19 April in Unite the Union General Secretary 2017 Election 18 Apr 2017	237
Revisiting Kwug Blog's 2015 UK General Election post 'Pollsters' vision excludes those offline ? 27 Apr 2017	236
National Society for Prevention of Cruely to Children and 'Crown Immunity' over Dept for Work & Pensions neglect 29 Apr 2017	206
Placard designs to help tackle and question the dominance of the pollsters 6 May 2017	194
Next KUWG meeting will be on Thursday 5 January 2017 20 Dec 2016	191
Abusive bullies avoid embarrassing questions 7 May 2017	171
Lowest-bidder-wins contract systems for vulnerable people's services degrade the skills involved and the service users 4 May 2017	157

Placard designs to help tackle and question the dominance of the pollsters

The placard designs below were inspired by a recent Kwug Blog post,(1) and further contemplation done for Kwug's leaflet that will be unveiled outside Kilburn Jobcentre on Monday 8 May from 11am till 12 Noon, in a limited edition batch of 100.

They have also been influenced by Kitty S Jones' blog post Political polls and propaganda: the writing on the wall.(2)

Don't let the pollsters grind you down!

Mercenary pollsters manipulate mindsets

Mercenary pollsters play mind games

A: "Five more years." Q: Who pays pollsters?

A: "Five more years." Q: Who does your thinking?

Does closing face-to-face-outlets-improve-service?

See also the Crippen the Disabled Cartoonist cartoon Welfare Warfare Series Number 12: Opinion.

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/revisiting-kwug-blogs-2015-uk-general-election-posting-pollsters-vision-excludes-those-offline.html
2. https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/political-polls-and-propaganda-the-writing-on-the-wall/
3. http://www.crippencartoons.co.uk/wp-content/archive/cartoons/welfarewarfare/welfarewarfare12.shtml 

Revisiting Kwug Blog's 2015 UK General Election post 'Pollsters' vision excludes those offline ?'

While republishing the below 2015 UK General Election posting from Kwug Blog archives, its author and editor notes that it is perhaps more clearly relevant today than it was in the 2015 UK General Election.

As stated below, opinion pollsters such as YouGov disenfranchise the digitally dispossessed from their reckoning, and digitally dispossessed folk are the most disadvantaged by Universal Credit claiming procedures.(1) The Department for Work & Pensions' premium rate tariff Universal Credit helpline exacerbates the poverty of those waiting at least six weeks for their first payment of Universal Credit; in the digital age, the phrase 'hand to mouth' has become "pay-as-you-go premium rate tariff helpline with 'I'll put you on hold while I speak to my line manager'" messaging.

Further, the now resigned from government and apparently not replaced Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud's attitude from the time that he was Labour's 'welfare reform guru' has always been that claimant error must be severely punished.(2) Global corporations with 'checkered pasts', however, have been recruited by UK Government to drive forward the implementation of Universal Credit.(3)

'Charitable status' and political bias

Clarity is further distorted by definitions of what is 'a charity' that can receive tax deductable funding and be subjected to the oversight of Charity Commissioners. In the run up to 2015 UK General Election period, the Charity Oxfam was severely censured for 'political bias' over its 'Perfect Storm' Twitter campaign.(4)

The Perfect Storm — Starring: zero hour contracts; high prices; benefit cuts; unemployment; childcare costs

Emerging in the wake of that controversy, 'think tank' Reform UK currently announces as an alternating message on its home page: "As a charity, Reform will not be publishing or tweeting anything until after the general election."(5)

Reform: "As a charity, Reform will not be publishing or tweeting anything until after the general election."

 Alternating plaudits at the foot of its home page include:

"The country's leading think tank on public service reform."

— Rt Hon. Theresa May MP, Prime Minister (6)

Prime Minister Theresa May's plaudit for Reform UK

 "It is a pleasure to speak ... at Reform's conference on welfare, especially as Reform has produced so much innovative thinking on welfare over the years."

— Rt Hon Damian Green MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (7)

Work & Pensions Secretary Damian Green's plaudit for Reform UK

Is not Reform UK too close to the Government from which those two plaudits come? Where is its public accountability, as what Damian Green refers to as "so much innovative thinking on welfare over the years" and its key ideas contributors include Accenture, the main contractor for the Information Technology implementation for Universal Credit?

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is not 'a charity' with access to tax deductable funds, and is made up of benefit claimants 'on the bread line'; but it has been greatly aided by meeting weekly on the premises of a charity, the Kingsgate Community Centre in Kilburn.(8) Thus our wellbeing as a group is very much tied up with that of our hosts.

Benefit claimants have been told — falsely — "you will be better off doing paid work and your big problem for too long has been a 'dependency culture' and lack of incentive to work." The same Conservative Government — in line with its cuts in public funding — has cut off community centres' purse strings and unrented access to space and resources from local government; this is designed to make community centres "think more like businesses and less like dependents." As a consequence, Kingsgate is being obliged to research the needs of its surrounding community and its current users, gathering data with which to make bids for funding from the Big Lottery Fund.(9) Such reliance on competitive, short-termist funding applications effectively puts community centres and their staff more firmly into a 'precariat position', just while jobcentres are being cut to add to the isolation of those that this Government would clearly like to 'disappear'

On that 'current state of play' note, I close this foreword to revisiting the Kwug Blog's 2015 UK General Election post, 'Pollsters' vision excludes those offline?'

Pollsters' vision excludes those offline?

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Pollsters exclude offline folk

Can canvassing methods used by opinion pollsters such as YouGov be linked to increasing disengagement of disadvantaged voters? I think so, especially after having attended over three years of weekly meetings of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group and read a recent New Statesman article that actually argues tha pollsters are not too powerful, Living by Numbers: YouGov and the Power of the Pollsters.(10)

Before online communication became more the norm than the exception, the opinion pollster companies in the UK used the landline telephone as their main interface with the electorate. That methodology excluded people for whom the landline telephone was not really financially viable and people whose security of tenure was also a major problem.(11)

Then came online canvassing of pollsters. That creates problems for something between 1/10 and 1/20 of people who come through the doors of a Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meeting who cannot access a computer because of, say, epilepsy.

Leading pollster company YouGov's modern canvassing methods are now exclusively online and government funding for charities and public libraries has plummeted. Thus accessing the interactive world has become increasingly more difficult for such offline voters.

YouGov's strapline is, "What the world thinks." (11) Its Mission Statement reads:

“It is our ambition to supply a live stream of continuous, accurate data and insight into what people are thinking and doing all over the world, all of the time, so that companies, governments and institutions can better serve the people that sustain them”

The proposed Universal Credit registration method not only cuts DWP staff, but also cuts off folk who cannot access the online only registration method that includes having to sit at a computer for however long it takes the claimant to complete the application to register for Universal Credit.(12)

So how inclusive is YouGov's vision of 'the world'? And what is their attitude toward people who cannot access Universal Credit online?

And will such blinkered vision and an obsession toward government cost-cutting lead ultimately to online-only voting, that excludes those who cannot access the online world?

How can we best mobilise the offline voters in the 2015 UK General Election to help create a less exclusive world?

2017 Post Script

For what users of soon-to-disappear-into-digital-oblivion-if-the-current-government-is-not-stopped-in-its-tracks jobcentres really think, Kwug Blog editor highly recommends Kate Belgrave | Talking with people dealing with public service cuts.(13)

And a charity that helps people pick up the pieces of their lives that have been adversely affected by the rollout of Universal Credit is food banks charity Trussel Trust.(14)

"The Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest food bank network, announced that it provided 1,182,954 three-day emergency food parcels to people in crisis in 2016-17, up 6.4% on the previous year's total of 1,109,000.

"In areas where the full universal credit rollout has taken place, food bank referral rates were running at more than double the national average.

"The trust said the standard six-week-plus waiting time for a first benefit payment faced by new universal credit claimants was behind the rise in demand for charity food. As well as reliance on food banks, benefit delays had also led to common adverse effects such as debt, mental illness, rent arrears and eviction, the trust said.

"The trust called for an immediate reduction in the minimum six-week wait for a first payment, saying debt and uncertainty caused by being without income was a source of stress and anxiety for many clients, and had led some to lose their homes...."

What will the Charity Commissioners make of that report, published only this past week — i.e., shortly after the General Election announcement was made? What will Damian Green and the charity Reform UK make of it?

Notes

1. http://camdennewjournal.com/article/universal-credit-claimants-stealing-food-to-eat-due-to-benefit-delays 
2. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/living-numbers-yougov-and-power-pollsters
3. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/terms-and-conditions-in-too-commercially-sensitive-for-public-access-contracts-between-government-departments-and-corporations.html
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11304223/Oxfam-rapped-for-appearing-to-be-politically-biassed-in-Twitter-campaign-by-charity-watchdog.html 
5. http://www.reform.uk/ 
6. http://www.reform.uk/
7. http://www.reform.uk/ 
8. http://www.kingsgatecommunitycentre.org.uk/
9. Information given by Charles E Small, Kingsgate's new CEO to a recent KUWG meeting at the Centre. 
10. Input from a business banker to a Business Enterprise Training course I attended as jobseeker around 1991 emphasised the importance of a loan applicant having a landline telephone when they evaluated a loan application. Their acronym for assessing the credit-worthiness of the applicant was 'PAPERS':
    Person
    Amount
    Period
    Experience
    Rate (of interest) and
    Security
    Possession of a landline suggested that the applicant intended to remain at the address serviced by that landline for some time, he argued, and that the applicant was thus less likely to be a 'fly by night' customer.
11. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/living-numbers-yougov-and-power-pollsters
12. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/10/universal-credit-benefits-disaster
13. http://www.katebelgrave.com/
14. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/25/food-banks-report-record-demand-amid-universal-credit-chaos 
15. https://www.trusselltrust.org/2017/04/25/uk-foodbank-use-continues-rise/

Vote Swapping and tactical voting

From Benefits & Work Publishing

Election special: should you swap votes with a stranger or support the enemy?

You can read this newsletter and add your comments online

This is an election in which you may have to make tough decisions about what to do with your vote, even to the extent of swapping your vote with a stranger or voting for a party that has helped to slash your benefits.

The polls, pushed by an endless stream of tabloid hate, may just have begun to move in the Conservative’s favour. The possibility of £12 billion in benefits cuts, hitting disability living allowance, personal independence payment, housing benefit and carers allowance is still very real.

The Tories themselves are pouring huge amounts of millionaire donors’ money into identifying and bombarding a tiny number of undecided voters – perhaps 40,000 – in key marginals. If they succeed in frightening them into voting Conservative, the election may well be theirs.

And this is a tactic that won’t even show up in the polls.

So, should claimants – who have the most to lose if the Tories get in - also be resorting to ‘under the radar’ tactics, such as vote swapping and tactical voting?

Vote swapping was credited with taking seats from the Tories in the 2001 general election, it could certainly do so again next week.

And tactical voting takes a strong stomach, but it can also achieve results.
Green/Labour swaps
Labour supporters in safe Labour and safe Tory seats are swapping votes with Greens in Labour marginal seats using the Vote Swap website.

This way the Greens still get the same share of the national vote, but by voting Labour their supporters also get the chance to prevent a Tory taking a swing seat.

It neatly solves the issue of whether to vote with your head or your heart.

Vote Swap claims to have arranged over 10,000 swaps already.

Lib Dem/Labour swaps
If you are in a Lib Dem/Tory marginal, you might be prepared to vote Lib Dem if a Lib Dem supporter in a Labour/Conservative marginal will vote Labour for you.

After all, every seat the Lib Dems take from the Tories reduces the Conservative’s chances of being the largest party. And the Lib Dems have said they wouldn’t support the full £12 billion in benefits cuts.

There are undoubtedly still some left-leaning Lib Dems left in the country. The Swap My Vote site gives you a chance to make contact with a potential swapping partner to check out their political opinions, because you can only register using your Facebook or Twitter login.
The tactical voting alternative
If you’re in a Lib Dem/Conservative marginal and don’t like the idea of trusting someone else with your vote, you can simply vote Lib Dem to try to deprive the Tories of a seat.
For many claimants voting Labour will be unpleasant enough, voting Lib Dem almost unthinkable.
But if it reduces the chances, even by a fraction, of massive benefits cuts it has to be worth considering.
You can read more about vote swapping and tactical voting on the Benefits and Work website.
If you have an opinion on this issue that you’d like to share, you can also complete our Vote Swapping and Tactical Voting Survey. It’s anonymous, there’s only 4 questions and the results are posted online as they come in. We’ll also be publishing selection of your comments.
All parties are not the same
However you decide to vote, please don’t fall for the fiction that we’re still hearing too often – that it doesn’t matter who gets in, all the parties are the same.
The difference is immense.
In a report published yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal studies (IFS) pointed out that the amount that Labour are planning to cut from the working age benefits bill benefits is . . . zero. This is because their 1% cap on child benefit uprating is unlikely to save anything because inflation is so low.
In addition, Labour plan to actually add to the benefits bill by abolishing the bedroom tax.
On the other hand, the IFS say it’s ‘disappointing’ that the Conservatives still refuse to say where their massive £12 billion benefits cuts will fall.
They described the cuts as ‘extremely challenging’ and ‘painful’ and once again listed some of the cuts the Tories would have to look at making, including:

• Taxing DLA, PIP and attendance allowance
• Making all housing benefit recipients pay at least 10% of their rent
• Abolishing child benefit
• Reducing the child element of universal credit by 30%

The Conservatives announcement today, that they will pass a law to prevent a rise in the rate of income tax or VAT in the next parliament, only makes it more certain that they will have to impose massive benefits cuts.

So, if you’re unsure how to cast your vote, check out our Election special: who can you vote for to prevent “life-changing” benefits cuts?

And, regardless of the urgings of Russell Brand, please don’t give up the fight. Instead, go out next week and vote for your life.

Good luck,

Steve Donnison
Benefits and Work Publishing Ltd
Company registration No. 5962666

Dude Swheatie of Kwug responds to "a Green vote in Hampstead & Kilburn may let the Tories in" arguments

The Kilburn Unemployed Worker's Group is non-party-political and is divided on the matter of whether to vote Labour to keep out Tories with £12bn further — and unspecified! — welfare cuts. So this is a personal view of a KUWG member who is also a Green Party member.

I say that as a lifelong disabled person in my 62nd year, I am tired of being serially let down by the other political parties. I have been a Labour Party member 1980-84, Ecology Party meber 194-86, Lib Dem 1996-98 and Green Party of England & Wales from October 2005 after voting Green Party in previous council, European Parliament and General Elections. My experience of a variety of political parties has taught me that each political party is a coalition. And yet with its smaller size for several years while developing policies that reach people the more-television-advertised parties have lost interest in supporting as they have sold their souls to global corporate backers.

Online self-help network for carers and its related Pat's Petition are also non-party political. They have now released a statement that makes plain that Labour are not supporting disability benefits testing fodder in General Election 2015 while Natalie Bennett is commended for doing so. Call for a Ceasefire for ESA. So will voting Labour in Hampstead & Kilburn ultimately do any better for vulnerable people?

Revd Dr Martin Luther King warned throughout his activism and in his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech against "the tranquilising drug of gradualism." My experience as a lifling disabled person has been that in many ways that 'drug' has led to allowing things to get so much worse for vulnerable people. And by contrast, today I heard that London now has more billionaires than last year.

I close this comment with a point about global warming. If and when the Thames flood barrier gives out, there is likely to be considerable flooding of homes in areas like Tottenham Marshes and Hackney Marshes. What would that do to London's housing situation?

— Comment originally posted in response to a blog post about
Hampstead & Kilburn candidate Rebecca Johnson (Green Party)()

To this I would add that my own home parliamentary candidate is Holborn & St Pancras. This seat is traditionally a strong Labour majority constituency but Labour MP for several years Frank Dobson is retiring and the Labour candidate standing as his successor is Keir Starmer, ex-Director of Public Prosecutions. Moving around the constituency, I have been concerned about the 'Vote Labour' posters  in the windows of estate agent 'HousePresso'. That seems to me to be a mutual endorsement that suggests that regarding housing, the Labour candidate supports 'exploitation of vulnerable home-seekers as usual'. 

I would not be comfortable about doing that. 

And ultimately, it is up to voters in their respective individual constituencies to consider their own voting priorities, and whether swapping votes will further proportional representation and an accurate picture of voter allegiances for the next UK General Election which may not be all that far away.

See also:

Vote for Policies interactive portal website comparing party policies with your preferences ()

Vote Match ()

Your Next MP ()

Pollsters vision excludes those offline? (On this blog) ()

Notes

(To follow)

Leave comments on a blogspot blog post

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/42399?hl=en

'Restorative justice' and 'key decision-makers'

 By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Service users and deliverers make best policies

Kate Belgrave first of all looks at the mess that 'those who give the order' leave behind them, and then says:

....

.... But here’s the thing. As we speak, the people who’ve created these places and these confrontational situations and/or support more of the same are prancing about the nation seeking parliamentary election. They slash services and funding, and then abandon people who use and provide those services to their hellholes to slug it out. The arrogance of the thing is quite amazing. They destroy a service, then leave. I don’t think they should be able to leave. I’m tired of the fact that they can. The truth is that all MPs who support a JSA sanction regime, or a cut to housing staff numbers, etc, should be forced to spend the rest of their lives either using or fronting the service that they’ve trashed. Their Spads should be shoved in there, too. Somebody suggested in a comment on one of my stories that I should take an MP or councillor along to each of these jobcentre or housing meetings, etc, once we’re delivered of whichever half-arsed administration ultimately takes the reins. I think that’s an excellent shout, you know. No more fancy dinners, or trips to property fairs, etc, for that lot. They can have the pile of shit they’ve left behind instead. Let’s see how they bloody well like it. (1)

But see also my prior posting, Pollsters 'vision' excludes those offline? (2)

How about more-informed decision-making at the 2015 UK General Election?

Notes
(1) http://www.katebelgrave.com/2015/04/all-prospective-mps-should-have-to-use-or-work-in-the-services-they-want-to-trash/#more-8193
(2) http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/pollsters-vision-excludes-those-offline.html

Leave comments on a blogspot blog post

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/42399?hl=en  

Pollsters' vision excludes those offline?

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Pollsters exclude offline folk

Can canvassing methods used by opinion pollsters such as YouGov be linked to increasing disengagement of disadvantaged voters? I think so, especially after having attended over three years of weekly meetings of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group and read a recent New Statesman article that actually argues tha pollsters are not too powerful, Living by Numbers: YouGov and the Power of the Pollsters.(1)

Before online communication became more the norm than the exception, the opinion pollster companies in the UK used the landline telephone as their main interface with the electorate. That methodology excluded people for whom the landline telephone was not really financially viable and people whose security of tenure was also a major problem.(2)

Then came online canvassing of pollsters. That creates problems for something between 1/10 and 1/20 of people who come through the doors of a Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meeting who cannot access a computer because of, say, epilepsy.

Leading pollster company YouGov's modern canvassing methods are now exclusively online and government funding for charities and public libraries has plummeted. Thus accessing the interactive world has become increasingly more difficult for such offline voters.

YouGov's strapline is, "What the world thinks." (3) Its Mission Statement reads:

“It is our ambition to supply a live stream of continuous, accurate data and insight into what people are thinking and doing all over the world, all of the time, so that companies, governments and institutions can better serve the people that sustain them”(4)

The proposed Universal Credit registration method not only cuts DWP staff, but also cuts off folk who cannot access the online only registration method that includes having to sit at a computer for however long it takes the claimant to complete the application to register for Universal Credit.(5)

So how inclusive is YouGov's vision of 'the world'? And what is their attitude toward people who cannot access Universal Credit online?

And will such blinkered vision and an obsession toward government cost-cutting lead ultimately to online-only voting, that excludes those who cannot access the online world?

How can we best mobilise the offline voters in the 2015 UK General Election to help create a less exclusive world?

Notes

(1) http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/living-numbers-yougov-and-power-pollsters
(2) Input from a business banker to a Business Enterprise Training course I attended as jobseeker around 1991 emphasised the importance of a loan applicant having a landline telephone when they evaluated a loan application. Their acronym for assessing the credit-worthiness of the applicant was 'PAPERS':

Person
Amount
Period
Experience
Rate (of interest) and
Security

Possession of a landline suggested that the applicant intended to remain at the address serviced by that landline for some time, he argued, and that the applicant was thus less likely to be a 'fly by night' customer.
(3) http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/living-numbers-yougov-and-power-pollsters
(4) ibid
(5) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/10/universal-credit-benefits-disaster

Leave comments on a blogspot blog post

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/42399?hl=en