Tories, Why run when you can make a U-turn on nasty policies?

Tories, Why run when you can make a U-turn on nasty policies?

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

Value your vote!

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Those who prefer the policies of the smaller political parties are often told, "Don't waste your vote. They'll never get in! Go for the safer option that is backed up by the opinion polls."

Well, if you don't like the impact of opinion polls that say opposition parties must kowtow to 'get tough on claimants' ideology, and you barely have enough money to bankroll your own campaign to live more fully — eg, eat a healthy diet and keep abreast with your rent payments, 'bedroom tax', etc. so that you don't get kicked out of the place you live in — there is still a value in voting for policies you believe in. The more votes an opposition party gets in a General Election, the more chance it has of doing something more financially than keeping the deposit money that candidates have to pay in order to stand for election in a parliamentary constituency. (They have to get at least 12.5% of the vote to retain their deposit.)

Pardon the pun, but while you may be 'short on cash', you can still help to finance your favourite political party with your vote. 'Short money' is a long way from the kind of reform to this country's politics that proportional representation could bring about, but it can help fund your favourite political party.

Find out more on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia article Short Money (Parliament U.K.).

'Savings' for taxpayers - who pays?

The following poster picture and screenshots were received via the PCS Twitter feed following broadcasting of the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Britain's Benefits Clampdown.

Conservative, Lib Dem and Labour leaders on that documentary trumpet being hard on benefit claimants. Those same 'leaders' elsewhere proclaim the virtues of the UK having 'free speech'. Exposure of these documents helps point to these leaders' hypocrisy. Who gives the orders? Do they give a damn what happens to claimants dispossessed  by their sanctions and clawbacks?

Jcp staffroom poster 'Benefit Savings from Sanctions' — charted against claimant age-band and sanctions duration

'Team manager' email exorting 'team members' to issue more sanctions — aka 'DMA referrals'

Email from manager expresses 'disappointment' at [only] 7 DMA referrals (across all areas)

Manager 'very pleaed to see perfomance has increased across the team' [but disappointed at those that 'have not sent any DMA referrals'

Managers are under pressure in a chain of bullying

The ex-jobcentre staff interviewed in the programme state that management policy was the key driver of benefit sanctions. The above images substantiate that claim.

Let us ensure that it is not only the secretly funded taxdodgers' alliance (sorry, Tax Payers Alliance [sic]) who are interviewed on the programme that have a voice. Some of us receive 'silent screams for help' via frequent phone calls from vulnerable claimants.

While maintaining confidentiality, we can help to get the voting public and at least some parliamentary candidates to think how they would respond to having money clawed back out of their bank accounts, leaving them in over £300 rent arrears in very little time as the jobcentre tells the council's housing benefits people to stop sending the claimant HB on account of their 'change'. Such claimants feel extremely frustrated by processes of 'mandatory reconsideration' and the 'top down' nature of telephone contacts with the Department for Work & Pensions.

They are not statistics or percentages. They are human beings and should be treated as such,

— Dispatches: Britain's Benefits Clampdown 

as Gill Thompson, the surviving sister of deceased JSA sanctions fodder claimant David Clapson, says; and a mother who was sanctioned says in the same programme:

I don't think pregnant mothers should be sanctioned, because it's not just you it's affecting, it's an unborn child.

— Dispatches: Britain's Benefits Clampdown

"An unborn child" — into what sort of world and what sort of distorted 'public opinion'?

See also:

• Taxpayers Against Poverty references to low birth weight
• Dude Swheatie on smear stories that skew public opinion
•  

VOTERS OF ALL PERSUASIONS WANT THE ISSUE OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY ADDRESSED

Guest blog by Rev'd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

LETTERS IN THE OBSERVER 26TH January 2014

How does any government start to put growing inequality into reverse? One answer is to reverse the decisions in the 1980s to deregulate lending, abolish rent controls and allow the free flow of cash in and out of the UK. The result is a chaotic housing market sucking billions of personal income away from the shops, building and maintaining infrastructure and from investment in companies that create jobs. International speculation in UK land and homes is forcing house prices and rents upwards. Meanwhile, landlords, who treated housing benefit like a cash cow for decades, continue to profit from a housing market in short supply while the poorest tenants are punished with three caps on the housing benefit.

High rents, now unpaid by housing benefit, are enforced against the tenants’ incomes, which were entirely available for food, utilities, transport and clothes up to April 2013; since then, council tax, plus court and bailiff costs has begun to wreak havoc in the tenants’ lives.

Reversing inequality requires statutory minimum incomes in work and unemployment, after rent and council tax have been paid, to be enough to ensure a healthy life, and to diminish the billions paid by taxpayers to the NHS to treat poverty-related physical and mental ill health, and to the schools to cope with poverty-related educational underachievement.

The Reverend Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty

​PS ​

A worrying graph from an LSE blog

​

about​

inequality in land ownership.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/38973


Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty