Come Autumn Term 2016/17, good reason for Kwuggies to leaflet outside a Wembley Park 'free school'

Thanks to Wembley Matters blogger Martin Francis for bringing this Daily Mail story to the attention of non-Daily Mail readers:(1)

"Michaela Secondary Free School punishes children for having hard-up parents
"I suspect not many of my readers also read the Daily Mail so here is a brief summary of an on-line story carried by the Mail LINK.(2)

"Katharine Birbalsingh who hit the headlines when she became Michael Gove's darling after she told a Tory Conference that the education system was broken based on her experience at a London secondary school, is head of Michaela Secondary Free School in Wembley Park.  The school advertises its strict discipline policy and 'private school ethos' and has a laudatory comment from Boris Johnson hanging on its exterior.

"The Mail story is not about the school's strict umbrella code (black or navy blue only) or its service to parents whereby they can text pictures of school shoes they are about to buy for approval LINK, but about its attitude towards the children of hard-up families.(3)

"Superhead who claimed Britain's education was broken puts pupils in detention at lunch and restricts food if their parents have failed to pay for school meals

"The Mail reveals that children whose parents are behind with meal payments are put in lunch isolation, being made to sit on their own for the whole lunch hour, and are given a sandwich instead of a hot meal with dessert.

"The Mail quotes a letter from the deputy headteacher, Barry Smith, to unemployed care worker Dionne Kelly. Dione had paid by the time she received the letter but her child was punished anyway:

'The deadline for this term's lunch payment was 1st June 2016. You are currently £75 overdue. If this full amount is not received within this week your child will be placed into Lunch isolation.

'They will receive a sandwich and a piece of fruit only. Only when the outstanding sum is paid in full will they be allowed to eat lunch with their classmates.'

"Birbalsingh told the Mail that the letter was sent in an attempt to encourage the parent to change her ways and support her son by paying for his food.

"Sam Royston of the Children's Society said, 'No school should punish and potentially stigmatise a child because a parent has not paid for, or is unable to afford, school meals.'"

Dude Swheatie of Kwug comments: Because this school head was such a darling of a previous Conservative Party Conference, maybe we should hold a demonstration of some sort outside that school during the week of Conservative & Unionist Party Autumn Conference 2016, and get the Brent & Kilburn Times involved?

Source link addresses

1. http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/michaela-secondary-free-school-punishes.html
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3713583/Superhead-claimed-Britain-s-education-broken-puts-pupils-detention-lunch-restricts-food-parents-failed-pay-school-meals.html
3. http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/will-breathing-be-allowed-in.html

Taxpayers Against Poverty asks Bishops, Councils and Company bosses to get their heads round the depths of poverty in the UK

From the Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

A TAP letter was published in The Guardian on Thursday 16th June. 

They added the helpful headline.

"Councils or company bosses have a duty of stewardship". (1)

In the photo with the letter I was at a demonstration for people whose relatives had died or committed suicide after their benefits were stopped by a benefit sanction. I said this prayer at the demonstration, which was written for them. (2)

The first paragraph draws on the work of Psychologists Against Austerity (https://psychagainstausterity.wordpress.com/) who have listened to low income people sanctioned and in debt. (3)

The following TAP letter was published by The Church Times on Friday 24th June.

The Church Times added the headline. 

Flaws in Bishops’ analysis of the welfare state 

Sir, — By adding a sixth giant, “isolation” (News, 10 June) to Beveridge’s “five giant evils” of want, disease, squalor, ignorance, and idleness, in their report Thinking Afresh about Welfare, the Bishops have gone a very long way towards describing the dilemmas of poverty in the UK faced by politicians and the electorate, but never reached its depths.

They rightly set a goal of “enhancing the well-being of the whole nation”, but I searched in vain for a description of the impact of debt on mental health reported to governments of all hues by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (4) and the Government Office for Science, (5) and of the creation of debts by welfare reform; and of the lifetime behavioural problems of too many low-birth-weight babies born to impoverished mothers who cannot afford a healthy diet, before and while they are pregant, described by the Institute for Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition; (6) of the 17-year and increasing gap in life expectancy between some rich and poor areas; (7) for an understanding of the socially divisive and growing inequality of wealth accumulated over the past 30 years by land-owning home-owners, corporations, large builders, and landlords, including the Churches, while the landless tenants, with diminishing security of tenure, have rent and council-tax arrears enforced against their low benefit incomes because of cuts in their housing and council-tax benefits.

Perhaps the most serious omission is the failure to mention the deliberate reduction of access to justice by pricing it out of the reach of the poorest citizens and reducing legal aid. The administration of welfare involves millions of decisions to be made by national and local government officials every week. Parliament has passed an immense amount of welfare legislation, the just interpretation of whose practice inevitably requires the courts.

Benefit sanctions, which stop benefit incomes for one month, three months, or three years, are cruel and disproportionate punishments. They create hunger and crippling debts, which pile up during the sanction and have to be paid off over even more months when it ends. The Bishops suggest: “Our approach to sanctions should focus on how they are administered whilst supporting the principled option of using sanctions where they are demonstrably effective in changing irresponsible behaviour.”

No punishment should be left to Jobcentre administrators. They should be proportionate to income and handed down by the magistrates after due process, including independent representation.

PAUL NICOLSON

Taxpayers Against Poverty

93 Campbell Road

London N17 0BF

from the Reverend Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty

No citizen without an affordable home and an 

adequate income in work or unemployment. 

93 Campbell Road, Tottenham, London N17 0BF, 0208 3765455, 07961 177889, 

https://www.facebook.com/Taxpayers-Against-Poverty-299911526728884/

https://twitter.com/taxpayers_a_p www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk, 

www.z2k.org, www.prohousingalliance.com

Link addresses in printable form for archiving

1. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jun/16/councils-or-company-bosses-those-in-power-have-a-duty-of-stewardship
2. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/A-PRAYER-IN-A-TIME-OF-AUSTERITY-final-final.pdf
3. https://psychagainstausterity.wordpress.com
4. http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/debtandmentalhealth.aspx
5. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/292453/mental-capital-wellbeing-summary.pdf
6. http://www.ibchn.org.uk/team.html
7. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/church-of-england

From ignorance to hope

Martin Francis of the Wembley Matters blog writes:

We must release passion and creativity to produce an alternative vision of society after the Tory victory

As I left the Civic Centre in the early hours this morning, sickened by the thought of five years of Tory government that will dismember the welfare state, continue the ideological war on the poor, disabled and migrant, and overcome by the sheer ugliness of the Tory's vision for the country, I was arrested by the pure beauty of the song of a blackbird as it opened the dawn chorus in the shadow of Wembley Stadium.

Yes, life goes on and so must the struggle....

Continue reading at http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/we-must-release-passion-and-creativity.html

Open your eyes to NHS sell off!

From Bob Steel

(Dude Swheatie of the KUWG looks forward to the video of sell-off of our welfare state to global corporations. That particular privatisation has been happening for years now. Perhaps as long as it has been since disgraced US Health insurer Unum Provident/Unum became an 'adviser' on welfare reform to successive UK governments in 1994. See Mo Stewart's 4-page pdf document research paper: The Hidden Agenda: A research summary. Final, March 2013.)

NHS sell-off: Watch this film and spread the word!

 This powerful new film is a blockbuster which shows how our public NHS is
being eviscerated and parcelled up for sale to US corporations in front of
our eyes. It's too radical for the moribund mainstream news media to touch,
but is already on YouTube. Make time to watch it, and spread the word to
everyone you know. It needs to be seen - most people still have no idea
what is happening. This film will open their eyes.


Duration: 67 mins 08 secs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ultKvnw2h3Q&feature=youtu.be

War preparations in themselves cost lives

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)

Swheatie of the KUWG writes:

President Dwight D Eisenhower — former WW2 Commander of American armed forces that he was — became cynical toward 'the Defence industry' during his Presidency of the United States. He referred to the dangers posed to society by a "militaryindustrial complex."

Now in the UK with a Cabinet of millionaires, there is a reactionary drive toward war while poor people are being blamed for their/our own poverty, and American left-wing luminary Noam Chomsky has referred to what Eisenhower called the 'militaryindustrial complex' as welfare for the rich.

Lobbying of government by megabucks corporations is one thing; public protest another. My knowledgeable friend Noel Lynch has told me that at the height of the Vietnam War, President Johnson admitted to the value of protest when he told his generals who wanted to 'nuke Hanoi', that demonstrators would respond to such a ploy by going from demonstrating outside the White House to climbing the walls.

The following comes from People's Assembly Against Austerity:

No to NATO protests

60 world leaders, including Barack Obama, meet in the UK for the NATO Summit on 4-5 September to plan their war on the world.


At this year's summit the US will be pressuring Western powers to increase their already huge military budgets at a time when poverty and inequality are soaring. The world's 85 richest people have as much as poorest 3.5 billion. Money into war is money out of our communities.

In the UK, 500,000 people had to resort to food banks last year. None of the cuts would be necessary if the sums Britain spends on its military and armaments were invested in social need instead of the war machine.

From 30 August protesters will flock to South Wales for international actions including a national demonstration, counter summit, and week-long peace camp. Transport is being arranged from across the country. Full details...