We who uphold the sanctity of social security for all are the real protectors of future generations

Those who take a stand for social security are the real protectors of future generations

Social Security is the only real 'life insurance policy'

Social Security is the only real 'life insurance policy'

Money Marketing reported in 2016:

1. Theresa May appoints L&G's Godfrey to No. 10 team - Money ...

   www.moneymarketing.co.uk/issues/21-july-2016/...Cached

   Theresa May has appointed John Godfrey as a director of policy in her special adviser team at Number 10. Godfrey joins the policy unit from Legal & General, where he ...

 Well, the Green Party of England & Wales reported in 2008:(2)

The Green Party is ... very concerned about the strong role of one or two private companies in advising the government about the development of welfare to work proposals, particularly in relation to the restructuring of incapacity-related benefits (see Jonathan Rutherford, https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/36/new-labour-market-state-and-end-of-welfare ) It seems extraordinary that so much attention has been given to the views of a company which is on record as saying that it sees the UK benefits system as one of its major markets for the future; one would expect advice to have been taken from a wider and more balanced range of sources. As Rutherford's paper shows, the credibility of Unum — formerly Unum Provident — has been badly damaged by having been prosecuted for fraudulent businesss in the USA

and independent researcher Mo Stewart later dug much deeper into the links between Unum/Unum Provident, the DWP and Atos and published her findings in the aptly named Cash Note Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state.(3)

Anyhow, since then daytime and night time tv in the UK have been largely colonised by 'life insurance' ads proclaiming that the only real way to protect one's grandchildren is via a life insurance policy, or at worst, a funeral protection plan for oneself so as not to leave one's loved ones enormous bills from one's parting. Of course, much of the daytime tv audience for such ads is made up of older people. The funeral protection plans especially carry the tag, "as long as you keep up the payments" — but what use is such a plan to those "of working age" when it comes to transferring us onto Universal Credit?

Reference links

https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/issues/21-july-2016/theresa-may-appoints-lgs-godfrey-no-10-team/
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/reports/GPEW_writing_off_workfare_final.doc  NB: The Jonathan Rutherford hyperlink has been updated, as its location on lwbooks website has altered in the nine years since the Green Party publication of its response to a Labour Party 'welfare reform' 'green paper'.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cash-Not-Care-planned-demolition/dp/178507783X

Benefit sanctions, social cleansing, the Shock Doctrine and loss of social security

Considering an apparent disinterest in the Conservative & Unionist Party Government toward benefit sanctions deaths — leading the DWP to cover up the benefit sanctions deaths enquiry results as best they can and continue to extend the sanctions regime to include low-waged people via Universal Credit conditionality sanctions — I thought of benefit sanctions as being in line with the torture element of what Naomi Klein exposed in her 2007 publication: The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism.(1) (2) (3)

So after looking up what outlining reviews I know of that book, I went to a Naomi Klein interview headed Naomi Klein: Climate Change "Not just about things getting hotter.... It's about things getting meaner". That interview was first published at Common Dreams website, and later republished on the London Green Left blog.(4) (5) It was there that I came across this extract:

Q: .... what brought you to this point? How did you become this articulate advocate of this cause? What changed you? When you say, this changes everything, what changed Naomi Klein?

A: I think my wake-up call was definitely [Hurricane] Katrina. And I was writing the book that I wrote before this, I was writing The Shock Doctrine. And I was in New Orleans during Katrina while it was still underwater and doing reporting. I was there when all the lobbyists were descending on Baton Rouge with their wish lists: Close down public housing. Privatize the school system. And New Orleans, it was just such a horrifying thing to witness first hand. To me, it’s one of those events that actually becomes more shocking with time. With some things you kind of get used to them, but I think actually what happened in New Orleans, it was so shocking that we couldn’t actually believe it or metabolize it, in particular the fact that African-American residents were given one-way tickets out of their city, forcibly relocated, at gunpoint, people were loaded onto buses. And there was no plan to bring them back. And while they were gone, their homes were bulldozed. I mean this is, to me, the more I think about it, the more shocking it becomes and there was so much happening in that moment that I actually think that we could not fully understand that this was — local residents were calling it genocide and I think they had every right to call it that.

I shall leave my readers to investigate further and draw their own metaphors and conclusions for what is really going on under this Government.

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/ministers-breach-foi-laws-by-delaying-release-of-fresh-benefit-deaths-reviews/
2. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/how-a-single-word-shows-dwp-has-finally-owned-up-on-benefit-deaths/
3. https://scottishunemployedworkers.net/2016/07/15/sharing-knowledge-in-the-face-of-further-attacks/
4. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/03/naomi-klein-climate-change-not-just-about-things-getting-hotter-its-about-things
5. http://londongreenleft.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/naomi-klein-interview-climate-change.html

Perhaps we should give our Labour MPs something more worthwhile to do than pick on the elected Leader of the Labour Party?

The Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG — affectionately known as 'Kwug') includes members of various political parties, including Labour. Kwug's 'heartland' is focused on the London Boroughs of Brent and Camden, separated as these are by the Kilburn High Road and Edgware Road; and all the Members of Parliament for the Parliamentary constituencies in these two boroughs are Labour:

• Tulip Sidiq is MP for Hampstead & Kilburn, which takes in the Kilburn wards of both boroughs and other wards from each borough, though mainly focused on the Camden side(1)
• Dawn Butler is Labour MP for Brent Central(2)
• Barry Gardiner is Labour MP for Brent North(3) and
• Keir Starmer is Labour MP for Holborn & St Pancras — the seat that comprises the rest of LB Camden.(4)

Declaring 'no confidence' in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Keir Starmer — with backing from Camden Council Leader Sarah Hayward — resigned from Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet; they and "a groundswell of Labour MPs" accuse Corbyn of "weak leadership" regarding the Remain vote in the UK's EU Referendum when he was only telling the truth regarding the demerits of a capitalist EU. Hampstead & Kilburn MP Tulip Siddiq has said that there must be another election for Labour Party Leader to take Labour into the next General Election.(5)

I am a Green Party of England & Wales member myself, but believe I speak for my Labour Party comrades within the KUWG in saying that Labour MPs would be much better occupied standing up for our rights than involving themselves in a coup against Jeremy Corbyn MP who was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015 by a very popular vote made up mainly of ordinary party members, including Kwug activists. That contrasts with the weighting of votes in favour of what members of the Parliamentary Labour Party over ordinary party members, and the weighting of incomes between Members of Parliament on £120K salaries compared with those on benefit level incomes.

The Camden New Journal (CNJ) comment observes that "the coup against Corbyn will leave a bitter taste."(6)

There is more to life than the Punch & Judy Show of political pantomime and MPs stabbing their leaders in the back

All that political pantomime within the Parliamentary Labour Party is a real distraction from representing the people these Members of Parliament are supposed to serve, as I am not the only person to observe. Kate Belgrave puts it very bluntly: While politicians amuse themselves, austerity runs rampant, etc ....(7) The CNJ reveals further that £150m worth of Camden Council homes [are] to be sold off every year under housing reforms.(8)

Against this backdrop, Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty gives priority to our democratically elected representatives securing 

• social security
• affordable homes and
• adequate incomes in work and unemployment,

and proposes a template for drafting "a letter to our MPs and the Councillors of Councils which are taxing social security with Council Tax."(9) Those who live in the boroughs of Brent or Camden have website addresses on this page to facilitate the MP correspondence bit. 

Regarding 

• Brent Council members and (10)
• Camden Council members, (11)

Web address details are given below. For everywhere else within the UK, there is They Work For You.com(12)

A few finer points regarding emailing your MP

• Getting your MP's email address via the Parliament website may have added advantages, in, say allowing you to Cc in Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader — leader@labour.org.uk (13)
• Remember, when writing your constituency MP, to include your postal address with postcode to help verify that you are one of their constituents! (14)

Link addresses

1. http://www.tulipsiddiq.com
2. http://www.dawnbutler.org.uk
3. http://www.barrygardiner.com
4. http://www.keirstarmer.com
5. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/corbyn-labour-crisis
6. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/comment-corbyn-coup
7. http://www.katebelgrave.com/2016/06/while-politicians-amuse-themselves-austerity-continues-rampant-etc/
8. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/council-home-sales
9. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/draft-letter-to-mps.-may-i-suggest-we-all-send-a-letter-like-this-to-our-mp
10. http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
11. http://democracy.camden.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
12. http://www.theyworkforyou.com
13. http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/
14. http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode

Social workers, Social Care Act and benefit cuts

This is the current 'Spotlight' article link on Community Care (online) mag's home page:

‘To take our Care Act duties seriously, social workers must understand the impact of benefit cuts’

A social worker assesses the impact of the benefit changes announced in the Budget on people supported by adults' social services

 

"Now that's something I call 'joined up thinking'! " says Dude Swheatie of Kwug. And the Community Care 'Spotlight' article even contains a link to something reasonably sensible from The Spectator!

A Budget to eliminate the safety net?

Things cannot get any worse

 By Joan Grant of the KUWG

The Tories said that they would make £12bn of cuts to social security, but would not tell us how. The one measure that we were told about was freezing benefits for 2 years. That saves £1bn. Reducing the benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 will save £100m a year. So that left £10.5bn of savings still to be found.

The Budget is just days away now. We still have not been told what is planned but the press are starting to discuss different rumours.

One of the rumoured cuts is to make everyone claiming Housing Benefit pay 10% of their rent. They well know but probably do not care that there are thousands of people who get £73 in JSA but whose rent is £250 a week. No one can afford to pay a third of such a low income towards the rent on a long term basis. People will get into arrears very quickly and then be evicted. The lives of people in the private rented sector are insecure enough as it is, without this as well. In a borough like Brent 100 people a week apply as homeless to the Council. A plan like this will just make things much worse.

The way to reduce the housing benefit bill is to have more social housing so that people are paying lower rents. However, one of the first things the Coalition did back in 2010 was to reduce the amount of money allocated to building social housing. Another short sighted move. Selling off housing association flats (which will ultimately end up in the hands of buy to let landlords) is another very bad policy.

The other possible cut that I have seen mentioned is to reduce the amount that people in the ESA-WRAG get from £102 to the same as JSA, i.e. £73. People currently in the ESA-WRAG face seeing their benefit reduced by £30 a week. In addition they may have to pay 10 % of their rent which could be £25 or more each week. So they face a dramatic reduction in their incomes

The Tories also plan to take away Housing Benefit from young people aged 18-to-25 who are receiving JSA. This is another pointless, petty and vindictive policy. 

 

I have no wish to scare anyone as these proposals are just rumours at this stage. But there will be more cuts after the budget on Thursday, so we may as well be prepared.

I personally do not expect any meaningful opposition from Labour. They may even support these measures to show that they can take “tough decisions”. But I’d love to be proved wrong. Only Jeremy Corbyn was on the anti austerity march two weeks ago.

These cuts will affect millions of people. The only thing that we down at the bottom have is numbers. We have to find a way to make our voices heard.

And all of this is in stark contrast to the inheritance tax cuts for homeowners which will “cost” a £1bn.

I will do another blog next week after the budget, when we will know exactly what we are dealing with. 

Related post

Benefits for people in work cost 6x as much as for people out of work

 

Further questions for MP aspirants

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

1. High interest rates and inequality
   In early 2005 pressure group Debt on Our Doorstep (DoOD) launched a campaign against the charging of wildly excessive interest rates to poor families who were declared 'high risk borrowers' by those banks who exploited their vulnerability with 50% interest rates for having defaulted in the past.(1) Since then we have had the bursting of a 'housing bubble' leading to general economic collapse and the rise of TV advertised loan shark interest rates alongside public spending cuts and punitive welfare reforms dictated by a millionaire political class who have been extremely stingy in the allocation of European Social Fund (ESF) assistance to poor people. Is this justifiable, and if not, what would you do about it?
2. Fiscal responsibility and equal rights
   A Labour Government signed Britain up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2007 and yet the prospects of a vast majority of poor disabled people and their carers have arguably been made much worse since, as if we have received a cheque marked 'insufficient funds'.(2) (3) (4) Is such equalities legislation useless and expensive red tape or a pathway worthy of investing in for the greater good of society?

Notes
(1) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2005/02/17/families-as-shark-bait/

(2) Re UNCRPD, see Disabled People Against Cuts Manifesto http://dpac.uk.net/2015/03/manifesto-asks/

(3) Re 'insufficient funds', see what Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jr said in his 'I Have a Dream' speech on the centenary of President Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address': http://quotesnack.com/martin-luther-king/we-refuse-to-believe-that-there-are-insufficient-funds-in-the-great-vaults-of-opportunity-of-this-nation-martin-luther-king-jr/

(4) For an individual case study on the cumulative impact of public spending cuts on one Kilburn man with learning difficulties, see Kate Belgrave's blog piece: http://www.katebelgrave.com/2015/04/update-on-the-house-mould-pictures-and-people-who-are-excluded-from-political-representation/

Social security and immunisation

A question for candidates in the 2015 UK General Election, by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

The Australian Prime Minister has declared that families refusing to vaccinate their children should have their childcare benefits stopped in a 'no jab, no pay' policy.(1) Given that vaccination actually lowers people's immunity to a gamut of diseases and that this combination of a chemical cosh with a fiscal cosh puts society more into the clutches of Big Pharma, would it not be better for national health to ensure that benefit levels are sufficient to resource people's diets sufficiently to strengthen their immune systems against a broad variety of diseases than to add to the risk of poverty?

Notes
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-32273992 accessed 13 April 2015

Fiscal responsibility and social security

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Labour leader Ed Miliband has pledged his party to 'fiscal responsibility', 'accounting for every penny' with the launch of Labour's Manifesto for the UK General Election 2015.(1) I accuse his party's penny-pinching of complicity in

• the demise of real-terms value of social security payments(2) and 
• earnings disregards for people on unemployment benefits(3)

during its 1997 to 2010 time in office when I was a disabled jobseeker. That includes the times when I was in full-time study (on Mandatory Award that was even less than unemployment benefit/JSA levels [1994-1997], and JSA dependent part-time work at £7.81/hr as a social care worker with minimal in-service training [2005-2006]. (Zero growth budget increases under Labour central and local government for charities such as the one I worked for in 2005-2006 stemmed, I was told, from under-investment by central government in local authority budgets.) More in-service training might have permitted me to extend the range of my 'service delivery' to the array of 'adults with learning difficulties' that that charity was contracted to support; but my eventual experience was of walking six miles to to and from service users' houses for work each day contracted session even while I was getting less than Jsa levels. Through that I developed cystitis in my legs through a low-budget, high stress life-style realised that as an adult with a learning difficulty myself, constantly cost-cutting government policies ensured that I would never be considered 'hard working' enough to get the support I required.

DWP staffing cuts also screwed up the delivery of the JSA top-up to my part-time earnings of £7.81/hr.(4)

There is an obsession among the well-to-do and the middle classes through the failure of not only politicians such as Iain Duncan Smith to take up the challenge of attempting to live on £53/wk,(5) and the failure of politicians to internalise the challenge of 'accounting for every penny' in the delivery of public spending that they would get from say six months on JSA levels as their income parameters. And how about voters taking up that challenge?

A question for parliamentary candidates in the 2015 UK General Election:

Isn't it high time that the policies of parties standing for political office were led more by people with actual experience of poverty through being disabled people and carers themselves, than by bankers such as David Freud and Rachel Reeves, American private health insurance company Unum that has been advising successive UK Governments on 'welfare reform' since 1994, and Common Agricultural Policy beneficiary and land-owner Iain Duncan Smith?(6) (7) (8) (9)

Personal Note

The author 'declares an interest' in that he is a member of another political party. He is critical of that party's own practice of having everything for its own General Election manifestos costed while there has been no proper audit of the economics of poverty line living. Eg, unpaid family carers save the NHS more than the total NHS budget, and yet the conventional UK government response to that fact can be summarised by denial — through the introduction of Unum-inspired 'disability denial factory' techniques — of the disability or health condition of the person cared for.(10) (11)

As with specific reference to "inadequate funds" for the fullest inclusion/equality of American blacks/'negroes' in Revd Dr Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, disabled people who are poor have been cheated out of equal rights.(12)

Reference Notes

(1) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/12/ed-miliband-manchester-manifesto-labour-party-fiscal-responsibility
(2) Yahoo search: jsa levels real-terms site: http://www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk
(3) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/06/23/why-people-work-informally-while-claiming-benefits-special-report/
(4)  http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2006/11/16/jobcentre-plus-poor-service-continues/
(5) https://www.change.org/p/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week
(6) David Freud reference http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1577313/Welfare-is-a-mess-says-adviser-David-Freud.html
(7) Rachel Reeves reference http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1577313/Welfare-is-a-mess-says-adviser-David-Freud.html
 (8) Unum reference http://www.whywaitforever.com/dwpatosbusinessunum.html
(9) Iain Duncan Smith as Common Agricultural Policy beneficiary http://www.monbiot.com/2013/07/01/robber-barons/
(10) Carers save the country .... http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/12/carers-save-uk-119bn-a-year
(11) Unum and 'disability denial factory' techniques http://dpac.uk.net/tag/work-capability-assessment-wca/
(12) http://quotesnack.com/martin-luther-king/we-refuse-to-believe-that-there-are-insufficient-funds-in-the-great-vaults-of-opportunity-of-this-nation-martin-luther-king-jr/

Unite Community events in and around London, early October 2014

From Unite the Union Community Section, London

Below are some of the events Unite Community members are involved with over the coming weeks. We are putting together a paper newsletter.

As always, it is great to see the developing work of Unite Community activists, that we are leading on or supporting in the wider movement, whether on Social Security, Housing, the NHS, TTIP and Mental Health. Please get in touch with Pilgrim and Robin if you want to get more involved or get things going in your area.

This month is Black History Month and attached is schedule of events that have been organised by The London and Eastern Region of Unite

Have a good weekend,

Pilgrim Tucker, Robin Sivapalan and Tony Winchester

Robin and Pilgrim can be contacted postally at
Unite Community Coordinator
Ron Todd House
33-37 Moreland Street
London EC1V 8BB
Tel: 020 8800 4281

 

Support Rev Paul Nicolson at the High Court: Legal challenge vs extortionate court costs added to Council Tax bills

Tuesday 7 October, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand (off Kingsway), London WC2A 2LL

9.30am -- Vigil outside

10.30am – one-hour court hearing. The more of us the judges see in the public gallery, the better!

Rev Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty is valiantly refusing to pay his Council Tax to Haringey, and is ready to go to jail because he objects to the poorest people being unfairly targeted.  This hearing seeks a judicial review of the Tottenham magistrates who repeatedly refused to tell him at his council tax hearing in August 2013, how they arrived at £125 costs for a summons to late and non-payers of council tax. (Swheatie adds: for more info on this, see Revd Paul Nicolson's Taxpayers Against Poverty blog posting Tottenham Magistrates asleep on the job...)

Sanctions Centres or Job Centres?: Day of Action, part of the Boycott Workfare Week of Action

The Unite Community Job Centre activists group agreed to hold a day of action on Wednesday 8^th October at different Job Centres — postcode link text gives links to map locations:

So far we have confirmed:

Barnsbury Job Centre, 1 Barnsbury Road, N1 0EX: 11am-1pm

Hendon Job Centre, Crown Building. 10 Finchley Lane, NW4 1DP: 9am – 3pm

North Kensington Job Centre, Quayside House Kensal Road, W10 5BL: 12pm-1pm & 3pm-4pm

Walthamstow Job Centre, Dansom House 656a Forest Road, E17 3SH: 9am-11am

Wood Green Job Centre, Granta House 1 Western Road, N22 6UU: 9am-12pm

The next Job Centre activists’ meeting is at 3pm, Tuesday 7^th October, Unite regional office, 37-39 Moreland Street, London EC1V 8BB. Materials for the day of action can be collected from there. If you want to set up a protest/leafleting on sanctions at your job centre, please get in touch with Robin on 07860 955 361 / robin.sivapalan@unitetheunion.org

For details of other events during the Boycott Workfare Week of Action see http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3736

No to MPIPM

The No to MPIPM public meeting on 16^th of September at Unite HQ was a great event, attended by representatives of dozens of live housing campaigns in London and beyond. Our Unite Regional Secretary Pete Kavanagh spoke, committing Unite’s support to the campaign. There’s a lot to be done to organise and promote the actions and events Wednesday 15^th October -1 Friday 17^th October. Please contact Robin if you want to get involved. The latest newsletter from the Radical Housing Network can be found here, including an update on the inspiring E15 Mothers campaign on the Carpenters Estate:   

http://us8.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9aa3abe72ff7ca4ad4f1cb9cc&id=143f17fda8&e=c86250a409

Student Workers:

We will be launching an initiative for our student-worker Unite Community members at the RHB Cinema, Goldsmiths University at 6pm, Thursday October 16^th.

Initially we will be training student-worker members in basic employment rights advice and will be holding weekly drop in sessions for student-workers based in campuses in NW, Central and SE London.

Speakers include;

Owen Jones (Author)

Pete Kavanagh (Regional Unite Secretary)

Shelly Asquith (President of SU Arts)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1558709464350952/