Help defeat Government over their proposed tax credit cuts! Write your MP!

Guest blog post by 38 Degrees — by way of copy and paste of e-mail content

Next Wednesday the government could go ahead with plans to cut support for hard-working families. The support - called Universal Credit - is supposed to help people earning low wages get by. [1] But the cuts could mean families having to choose between eating or heating their homes. Right now, the new Chancellor Philip Hammond is finalising his plan for the economy - he’ll announce it next week. [2] He could decide to reverse the cuts - and MPs are already demanding he does. [3]. If thousands of us sign a huge petition, the added public pressure could convince Philip Hammond to scrap the cuts. There’s only a week until he announces his plan so we haven’t got long. Please can you sign the petition now? It takes less than a minute: Sign the petition These cuts will see some families lose £200 a month. [4] That’s an entire month’s food shop. [5] And if they go ahead, it will mean if you get a promotion or do more shifts, your family could end up worse off. It just doesn’t make sense. Together we’ve stood up to cuts like these before - and won. [6] When the government tried to cut tax credits for hard-working families last year, we forced them to back down. It started with a huge petition, signed by people like you. It ended with relief for thousands of people across the UK. Philip Hammond is already feeling the pressure over these cuts. If one of us asks him to reverse them, it might not be enough to convince him. But if thousands of us add our names to one huge petition, it’ll be hard for Philip Hammond to ignore. Can you add your name to the petition now? Sign the petition Thanks for being involved, Trish, Lorna, Charlotte and the 38 Degrees team PS: PS: If you’re not sure if you’ll be affected by cuts to Universal Credit, you can find out more at Citizens Advice: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/citizens-advice NOTES: [1, 4] Universal credit cuts to lose low-income families £1000 a year: The Independent: No U-turn on benefit cuts that will take £1,000 a year off three million families, says Government: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no-u-turn-on-cuts-that-will-take-1000-a-year-off-three-million-families-a-cabinet-minister-has-said-a7388661.html [2] The Telegraph: What to expect from Philip Hammond's first Autumn Statement: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/0/autumn-statement-what-is-it-when-is-it-and-what-will-philip-hamm/ [3] The Guardian: Theresa May faces Tory backlash over planned cuts to in-work benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/21/theresa-may-tory-backlash-cuts-in-work-benefits-universal-credit [5] Daily Mail: Thrifty mum reveals how she slashed her food bill to just £40 a week for her family of four: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3654238/Thrifty-mum-reveals-slashed-food-bill-just-40-week-family-FOUR.html [6] 38 Degrees: Tax credits win: https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2015/11/25/tax-credits-win/

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Statement against reduced overall benefit cap, 7 November 2016

The following statement was delivered by leaflet and read out over 'bullhorn' outside Kilburn Jobcentre on Monday 7 November, the day the reduced overall benefit cap came in.

Reject the weak and rotten ideas of Tory hypocrites!

We say: No to caps on welfare — yes to rent controls

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group are protesting 11am till Noon Monday 7 November 2016 outside Kilburn Jobcentre, as it's the first day of the welfare cap limiting families to a maximum of £20k a year in benefits (£23K if in London), which includes Housing costs.

Originally under David Cameron and George Osborne, a cap of £26k pa was introduced as it was the "average wage" .. the latest are "the average wage AFTER TAX" ... what will be the next excuse to bring it down? Please note that MPs when asked to just take the average wage themselves, have stuck to their £74,962 per year of TAXPAYERS money (PLUS generous expenses) ... so one rule for the sufferers of laws, another for the lawmakers! Sheer hypocrisy! Happily Cameron out of Parliament and Osborne shunted out of cabinet. Ha ha!

Most of the benefits money goes to private landlords, so the claimants never see most of that money. If council houses were available with low-cost rents then the Housing Benefit bill would be cut at a stroke and there wouldn't be such a hoo-ha about it. Houses ARE being built... but so call 'luxury flats,' by big private developers; and that is causing 'legal' 'Social Cleansing'. We should be taking these properties over for our own class, not for the rich. Public buildings and land should not be sold off on the cheap... National and Local Government deliberately allow the shutdown of public Fire Stations, Libraries, Hospitals, Community Centres, etc,, so we have no places to meet, to not be safe and educated, while the Rich can build their gated communities. Even they are being ripped off... boo hoo.

At last, Sir Phillip Green is being chased legally for taking workers' pensions... the Olympic Stadium was for instance sold to West Ham Football Club for practically nothing and now the TAXPAYER has to pay an additional £50 MILLION to compensate for ill-designed so-called 'retractable seats'. What an oversight by so-called Overseers of the public purse! A resignation has at last occurred. These Private 'Wealth Creators' must be laughing their heads off at your average person. Don't let them divide us ... let's imprison the REAL thieves and take their properties and land back. They are ok with chucking us into underfunded and dangerous jails!

The destructive lingering ideas of Iain Duncan Smith should be dumped. He had to resign in humiliation as Secretary of State for Work & Pensions as he had planned to take money off sick people who need higher toilet seats ... yes this is how they look for savings... instead of stopping the White Elephants of HS2 for example £60 BILLION), Trident (£100 BILLION) etc.

Jeremy Corbyn has promised to allow council housing programme, and to scrap the Work Capability Assessment. The SNP and Green Party voted against Welfare Reform & Work Bill 2015. Before Corbyn's leadership, Labour abstentions allowed that Bill to be passed. Waiting for a 2020 election isn't plausible... we must find parties and organisations NOW that oppose rubbish views and thieving laws. Theresa May is a very weak Prime Minister who doesn't show she knows what she is saying and doing... probably why she won't give a "running commentary on Brexit" for instance... a Government that won't explain itself isn't government. The legal challenge in the High Court may have scuppered her plans. Hee hee!

Let's have an opposition with clear thoughts and reasonable goals FOR US! Workers whether employed or not, must stick together and fix OUR housing problem, not accept Private NON-affordable housing. Let's dump the unravelling right-wing views of the real skiver — the Lazy Rich! An early General Election may rid us of MPs like already dumped Esther McVey!

WE, DANIEL BLAKE

National Day of Action Against 'Personal Independence Payments' regime Wednesday 13 July 2016

Reminder: The national day of action against the new Personal Independence (PIP) regime occurs two weeks tomorrow.(1)

Command click on the London demo poster photo to access more detail from the DPAC website

This is being called by Disabled People Against Cuts, the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and WinVisible (Women with visible and invisible disabilities). PIP figures from the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) suggest that the change from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to PIP has been a cost-cutting-by-cutting-number-of-claimants exercise.(2) That echoes the 2007 move from Incapacity Benefit (IB) to Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) was.

The two companies that deliver the DWP's eligibility testing regime for PIP are Atos and Capita. When Atos was gaining notoriety for its administration of the Work Capability Assessment by which ESA eligibility is underscored, Glaswegian GP Dr Margaret McCartney in 2011 that they treated people like "claimants, not patients," inferring that normal medical ethics need not apply to their profit-oriented, payment-by-results activities.(3) So it does not look as if they have changed the error of their ways.

Claire Glasman of WinVisible told Disability News Service:

“[The change from DLA to PIP] is impoverishing people, trapping people in their homes, making their lives a misery.“We have no confidence that people’s situations are being properly assessed.“There were problems with DLA as well but that was a lot more responsive to people’s situation.”(4)

How will you respond?

Link addresses

1. http://dpac.uk.net/2016/06/pip-fightback-national-day-of-action-against-pip-13th-july-pipfightback/
2. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/pip-figures-fuel-concerns-over-cuts-while-activists-plan-day-of-action/
3. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/sickness-benefit-clawback-firm-tells-1096774
4. http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/pip-figures-fuel-concerns-over-cuts-while-activists-plan-day-of-action/

Official spin and fraud investigations attack the vulnerable

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Given the orientation of much UK reporting output toward demonising poorer people while venerating wealth and property market 'entrepreneurship' since the 2010 General Election, the emphasis of your print edition cover story "Probe into 'Council Flat Hotel'" — CNJ, January 22, 2015 does not surprise me. But with about 100 days before General Election 2015, is this story representative of the state of social housing in the UK?

The predominant narrative of state broadcasting programmes that masquerade as 'public service broadcasting' compared to the casework of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) gives out the message that:

1. There is a huge problem of benefit claimants making fraudulent claims as evidenced by the 50:50 bias of BBC's 'Saints & Scroungers', compared to the KUWG experience that vulnerable people experiencing extreme hardship as a consequence of 'welfare reform' policies and cuts in council funding increase social inequality is much more the norm;
2. It is socially laudable for people to buy up properties for the 'buy to rent' market (eg, BBC's 'Homes Under the Hammer'), while central and local government policies such as 'Right to Buy' and evictions resulting from the privatisation of social housing and 'welfare reform' related rent arrears deny poor people the right to rent; and
3. Global 'investors' have the best of motives, while it's okay for political parties to promise ever deeper cuts in welfare spending regardless of how those might be implemented in terms of ridiculous benefit sanctions, a daily signing on regime for Jobseekers Allowance claimants, and the kind of fiasco of abusing vulnerable people that Atos has become infamous for.

Moving into a new job and/or moving home have long been identified as stressful for anybody. When social housing tenants are obliged to relocate because of a new job that might or might not work out, what can they do to protect their social tenany, especially when the narrative of people subletting induced by the orientation of fraud investigator conspires against the financially vulnerable tenant and jobseeker getting any real help?And what of the social housing tenant's capacity to enlist in something like Voluntary Service Overseas or a Community Service Volunteers placement or degree course as a mature student away from home? Is that only the prerogative of the home owner?

When will fraud investigators tackle politicians' broken promises to protect the vulnerable?