Protest against 'Benefit Street'

Monday 13th Jan 3pm
Love Productions 43 Eagle Street London WC1R 4AT

Please spread this around other London groups.

Notice of a meeting on Citizen's Income, and of a petition deadline

Anne Gray, author of a book on workfare, writes:

 If you agree with national Green Party policy in advocating a citizen's income, please sign this international petition to ask the European Commission to study the possibility of a Europe-wide one. Deadline is MONDAY. Also a potentially interesting meeting on March 4.

 From: Citizen's Income Trust <info@citizensincome.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 9:54 AM
Subject: Notice of a meeting on Citizen's Income, and of a petition deadline
To: info@citizensincome.org

Dear Citizen’s Income Newsletter reader:

 

I normally only write to you when a new Citizen’s Income Newsletter appears on our website. As the next Newsletter will not be published until February I thought that you might like notice of a meeting date and also a reminder of a petition deadline.

 

Tuesday 4^th March: a meeting at the House of Commons

 

On the evening of Tuesday 4^th March there will be a meeting at the House of Commons on Citizen’s Income. This will be one of a series of meetings held as part of John McDonnell MP’s People’s Parliament initiative.

 

If you would like to attend then please let me know and I shall then send you further details as soon as they become available.

 

The European Citizens’ Initiative

 

Many of you will already be aware of the European Citizen’s Initiative on Universal Basic Income. This is a petition that asks the European Parliament to study a Citizen’s Income and the options for funding it. If the petition gathers a million signatures across the European Union, with minimum numbers in seven states, then the European Parliament is obliged to debate the proposal.

 

The deadline for signing the petition is this Monday.

 

You will find a link to the petition on the home page of our website.

 

 

I shall write to you again when the next Citizen’s Income Newsletter is available.

 

With best wishes

 

Malcolm Torry

 

Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director, Citizen’s Income Trust

www.citizensincome.org

Channel 4 (@Channel4): Stop broadcasting Benefits Street and make a donation to a relevant charity for the harm caused

Reverend Paul Nicolson writes:

Hi all,

I've just signed the following petition "Channel 4 (@Channel4): Stop broadcasting Benefits Street and make a donation to a relevant charity for the harm caused" and wanted to see if you could help by adding your name.

Our goal is to reach 7,500 signatures and we need more support. You can read more and sign the petition here:

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/channel-4-channel4-stop-broadcasting-benefits-street-and-make-a-donation-to-a-relevant-charity-for-the-harm-caused?share_id=rBixkKFZLg

Bedroom tax loophole for people with long tenancies

A Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group activist writes:

Hi

There's been some information circling around the internet about a loophole the government didn't spot in their bedroom tax legislation.

It seems that anyone who has BOTH been in the same property since 1996 AND been in continuous receipt of housing benefit during that time, should not have been paying bedroom tax.

The tories simply missed out amending the previous regulations.

You can read an explanation of this here: http://speye.wordpress.com/2014/01/

Here is a template of a letter for people to send to their local authority-
Dear Sirs,
I ask you to reconsider my bedroom tax decision in your HB decision notice dated DD/MM/YYYY in accordance with HB regulations and with regard to statutory instrument 217 of 2006 in terms of my protected “eligible rent” the Consequential Provisions Regulations 2006 holds as I maintain I have been in continuous receipt of Housing Benefit since at least the 1 January 1996 and have have lived at my current address in all that time.
Yours etc

The DWP has admitted the existence of this loophole and TODAY has sent a circular HB U1/2014 out to local authorities which you can read here:
http://speye.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/official-dwp-announce-pre-1996-position-is-true-and-thousands-have-had-bedroom-tax-imposed-in-error/

The ConDems are said to be working on rushing through an emergency piece of legislation to close the loophole which they will try to make retroactive, but at the moment there is a window of opportunity. for long term tenants to send off the letter and gain exemption from the bedroom tax.

From Cannon Fodder to Sanctions Fodder, 'Your Country Needs You'?

While the Royal Mint is releasing a 'your country needs you' coin to commemorate the start of WW1, I believe these words from an August 2010 blog post by Peter Beresford are highly relevant:

Fear and insecurity

These days as I listen to the radio, overhear conversations or have casual contact with strangers, I am increasingly hearing people highlight two targets from a growing sense of fear and insecurity. I am shocked at how often conversations turn to attacks on immigrants/asylum seekers and people on benefits and how much 'they' are costing 'us'.

These are both groups with more than their fair share of problems to bring to social work and social care, yet the prevailing response is increasingling negative and hostile. I have had to listen to such poisonous tirades when I've bough things in shops. I've overheard such rants from neighbours in a supermarket café, standing in a post office queue and sitting on a bus. Worst still are the radio phone-ins where tam experts who'll to the dominant line encourage callers who respond in kind. But perhaps worst and most irresponsible of all, are government websites that encourage all kinds of hate mail against people on benefits.

Grimly fascinating

There's something reminiscent of the mindless cruelty of first world war conscientious objector tribunals and medical boards set up to drive people into the bloodbath of the western front in these developments. With it comes a sense that it may be more and more risky and difficult to speak out against them....

Isn't it marvellous that instead of creating real waged employment for people, this Government is finding more and more stupid reasons to deprive tens of thousands of JSA claimants per month of an income?

Alan Wheatley

PS: Peter Beresford has since commented on my comments:

 thanks for this Alan, what a dreadful coin and how true your comment is. all v best peter

A current example of how the Government is maligning benefit claimants while letting extortionate landlords get away with robbing the public purse is this January 2014 headline from the Daily Mail: Revealed: How 33,000 families were claiming more than £26,000 per year in benefits before benefit cap was imposed.

Of course, as Mike McNabb pointed out in 2011, the Mail tends to focus on maligning vulnerable people rather than highlighting how offshore companies have been the ones really milking the system. And when I was interviewed by a Mail on Sunday reporter in February 2003 about something entirely different, I mentioned to the reporter that I was a disabled jobseeker who had applied to teach computing skills to [other] disabled people. So, presumably to give my witness account greater credibility to Mail on Sunday readers, the reporter stated that I taught computing skills to disabled people and did not mention my true source of income.

Alan Wheatley

Guest blog from CarerWatch

URGENT Call for information – Independent review of Jobseeker’s Allowance sanctions

We’ve had a request today for comments on Jobseeker Allowance sanctions, which is being carried out by Matthew Oakley.
He would like views from as many people as possible by 10 January 2014.  For further information, please click on the below link:   https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/256044/jsa-sanctions-independent-review.pdf
If you have any comments, please send them to sanctions.review2013@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Department of Work and Pensions is in denial about the strong link between ill health and the Government's benefit reforms

The Secretary of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group thanks Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty for his consistent work on social justice throughout 2013 so far and before, and looks forward to campaigning with him in 2014.

Paul Nicolson writes:

Dear all.

This is my last email before the New Year. It is a letter published by the Church Times yesterday 20th December.

It sets up a description of the gross injustices imposed on the poorest people in the UK by the coalition government against which all our efforts will be pitched in 2014. 

If you do not do Christmas have a restful and happy break and get ready!, 

If you do have a restful and happy break and take courage from Christian leadership in several denominations, who have seen that the current unjust laws and structures cause hunger in cold and too costly homes, or homelessness, and must be changed.

With very best wishes to all,

Paul

 Department of Work and Pensions is in denial about the strong link between ill health and the homelessness, debts, food and fuel poverty that are due to the Government's benefit reforms;

or deliberately making the poorest people ill. 
From the Revd Paul Nicolson

Sir, - Shortly after the British Medical Journal (News, 6 December) sounded the alarm about malnutrition in the UK, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its annual Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion.

One of its many important comments reads: 'The poverty rate for the whole population was 21 per cent measured after housing costs are deducted (AHC) and 16 per cent measured before housing costs (BHC) are deducted. This gap of five percentage points is the highest it has been for a decade, and has been growing, although slowly, since the middle of the last decade."

The steadily increasing price and rent of a home is partly to blame. The growth of the gap is being reinforced by the Government's caps and cuts, and council tax. The high retail price of meeting human needs, the rent of a decent home, and taxation in the UK are now crushing a healthy life out of the AHC incomes of her poorest citizens.

A typical example is a 60-year-old, who wrote to Taxpayers Against Poverty, telling us that he had become ill and unemployed after 40 years' unbroken taxpaying employment. The £71.70-a-week unemployment benefit was paid after housing and council-tax benefit, and untaxed, until April this year. He now has to pay the bedroom tax and the council tax, which leaves him in debt and with £53.20.

Robust research undertaken by nutritionists at York University for Rowntree, and checked with users both on and off benefits, shows that the minimum income needed by a single adult for a healthy diet is £50.11 a week. He will be both cold and hungry this winter while worrying about how to pay his inevitable debts.

The BMJ published concern in January about the relation between foetal malnutrition and chronic disease in later life. Low birth weight and the UK's poverty incomes of women are linked; but the Department of Work and Pensions is in denial about the strong link between ill health and the debts, food and fuel poverty that are due to the Government's benefit reforms.

PAUL NICOLSON

Taxpayers Against Poverty
93 Campbell Road
London N17 OBF




Please sign our petition celebrating Martin Luther King
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/53579
Parliament is asked to debate the speech made by Martin Luther King 50 Years ago in Washington USA on the 28 August 1963 and to note that it can be applied to circumstances in Britain in August 2013. He said “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”


Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
93 Campbell Road,
Tottenham,
London N17 0BF
0208 3765455
07961 177889
also at www.z2k.org
also at www.prohousingalliance.com
www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk
www.facebook.com/pages/Taxpayers-Against-Poverty/299911526728884