Tony Cox is not Jimmy Saville or David Cameron

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

What does the charge sheet for Tony Cox of Scottish Unemployed Workers Network read? What was he charged with?

Scottish Unemployed Workers Network reported yesterday:

... if you’re fond of a joke, you might like this description of the SUWN from Tony’s charge sheet. Apparently we ‘solicit’ outside jobcentres and attempt to ‘coerce’ benefit claimants to get them to have us accompany them! You couldna make it up – but someone just has.

Higher up on the same blog post, I read:

Of course courts are inherently full of rules and controls, but the case took place amid tight security, there was a heavy police presence outside, and we were taken aback to be told that only three members of the public would be allowed in. When it was pointed out that courts are meant to be publicly accessible, they soon gave that one up.

 In that, I was reminded of how the Welfare Reform Act 2012's war of even greater attrition was smuggled through the House of Lords by Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud by staging a reading of the Bill in a Committee Room that had little space for wheelchair accessibility. The Broken of Britain blog called for its supporters to:

.... Highlight the injustice and hypocrisy of the government's behaviour in trying to sideline this important Bill into a room too small for all the Lords to attend and certainly too small to allow those in wheelchairs, or with guide dogs, the very people most affected by this bill to be able to observe from the public gallery.

If we make enough noise before 3.30pm today the government will have to drop this underhand tactic and the Bill will continue to be debated in the main chamber of the House of Lords where everyone who wishes to can attend and observe.

— Urgent appeal for action now!

And the matter of lack of witnesses is implicit in today's reporting on the Jimmy Saville abuses at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the 1970's. In the 1970's there was a huge PR machine behind Jimmy Saville amounting to a manufactory of consent for whatever he planned. Now in the 21st Century there is a manufactory of consent via The Sun, The Mail, and whatever, for the smear stories soliciting General Election voters to make life ever harder for the economically not so advantaged.

Disabled and disadvantaged people and their advocates need more witnesses and supporters, not fewer. Join the 38Degrees petition Advocacy is Not a Crime.