Revd Paul Nicolson on Appeal to Appeal Court, EU referrendum, housing crisis, caps, cuts and council tax, and Mail columnist's change of heart

APPEAL TO APPEAL COURT - I have been given until the 25th April to file my skeleton argument when the court will decided whether to allow the appeal be heard. I am hoping to be represented through the Par Probono Unit. Meanwhile I have posted on the TAP website the issues which I hope will be included in my appeal and an extended TV interview with "Windows on the World". 

TO ALL WHO SUPPORT BREXIT it is wrong to blame EU for all UK's woes when the British Parliament is responsible; something Cameron, Blair and Brown might find difficult to say. It does not appear in the Government's leaflet which arrived in Tottenham this morning. CAMPAIGN TO REMAIN is also posted on TAP website. 

Housing crisis, caps, cuts and council tax are all home made. 

PETER HITCHENS change of heart is important and unexpected in the Daily Mail. 

All good wishes, 

Paul

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-extra-220051591678621/

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

www.z2k.org, www.prohousingalliance.com

David Cameron's father and the Panama tax haven scandal

It strikes me that the news coverage of the fallout from the Panorama Panama tax havens disclosures
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b076vwwy
is descending into, "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine" on tax returns.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36010902

This Government is cutting disability benefits and sanctioning people. Even without that State terrorism,27 per cent of single parents have a disability, compared with 21 per cent of couple parents

http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/365/Statistics

Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty has already written regarding lack of adequate nutrition for pregnant parents in Tottenham, etc.

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-006&ei=utf-8&fr=ytff1-tyc&p=brain%20development%20site%3A%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk%2F&type=

By contrast, whatever the legalities, David Cameron's father had enough to live on to stash money away offshore and was a 'huge inspirational' 'glass half full,' inspirational figure, role model for the current Prime Minister.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310325/David-Cameron-loses-inspirational-father.html

Some people have much larger glasses than others, and yet still insist on depriving others of already inadequate incomes. Evidence-gathering for 'welfare to work' 'welfare reform', meanwhile, is policy-driven.

Kilburn Ward By-Election on London elections day

Kilburn ward (LB Brent) Cllr Tayo Oladapo who at least attended a public meeting called by KUWG in 2012 died in March after a long illness.(1)

Thus there will be a Kilburn Ward by-election on 5 May, alongside London's City Hall elections.(2)


Notes
(1) http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/kilburn-councillor-tayo-oladapo-has.html
(2) http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/six-candidates-will-fight-kilburn-by.html

Paula Peters of DPAC at KUWG

Paula Peters from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) came to speak to KUWG this week. She talked about their actions against benefit cuts, ATOS and Maximus over the past 5 years. DPAC have got results. ATOS no longer does WCA (Work Capability Assessments) assessments. Ester McVey is no longer an MP.

DPAC have reported the UK to the UN on the grounds that benefits cuts especially axing the Independent Living Fund breach the human rights of disabled people.

Paula also looked towards the future. All the signs are that Stephen Crabb will try to make cuts to PIP (Personal Independence Payments) after all. He is due to make a speech on 12^th, which we will watch with interest.

DPAC's website is at http://dpac.uk.net

Knife and gun crime as consequences of deprivation

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

I seem to have heard a lot lately about youth knife and gun crime in London. (E.g., New Cross murder probe after teen stabbed to death.1)

Against that backdrop, I believe it relevent that I share these paragraphs from an August 2009 blog piece by Jennifer Harvey in Community Care magazine:

....

Paid holidays have been a basic right of the employed for many years.It’s widely accepted that people perform better for them. But the people least likely to take a holiday are among the most vulnerable.They are also the people who may already have health problems which will only be made worse by not having a holiday – or a night on the town, a day out, or a walk in the country. These are all deemed to be not as worthy of funding as a supported supermarket shop or employment project. It seems the old protestant work ethic still exists and extends to people with learning difficulties, mental health problems and autism and anyone who needs support.

Although the vulnerable may receive funding for a roof over their heads and food on their table, going on holiday is too often seen as an unnecessary luxury. Wrong. We all need bread and roses, green space and clean air.

Concrete and the built environment contribute to problems with mental and physical health, and can lead to aggressive behaviour. I wonder how many of the young people in our cities who are caught up in knife and gun crime enjoy an annual holiday.
....

Notes
1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35956857
2. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-care-experts-blog/2009/08/a-holiday-in-the-rain-lucky-yo/

Imbalance of bargaining power in DWP benefit agreements and software licensing agreements

I believe an excellent analogy for the lack of bargaining power that benefit claimants have in what they/we get signed up to is in computer software licensing agreements. If we do not agree to the latter, we cannot get the benefit; and if we do not click to say, "I have read and agree to the terms of the [software in question's] License Agreement..." we cannot install it to our computers.

Faced with loads of gobbledygook such as the labyrinth of languages beyond the labyrinth of irrelevant-to-the-current-upgrade other software licenses that, say, Adobe Flash Player presents the reader/user with beyond the 'Read the license here' presents one with, I would not be surpised if most users resign themselves to signing without reading what they are supposedly agreeing to. 

Pressed for time as a person with a learning difficulty — resulting in extremely slow reading speed — anyway I have mostly not bothered to read the damned corporate legalese. Yet today I decided to have a go at the challenge presented by the 'Read the license agreement here' clickable link, with the aid of using the 'find' key combination at the eventual multilingual 54 page pdf document for Adobe Flash Player http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/licenses-terms/pdf/Flash_Player_21_0.pdf

And there I found this item:

7.3 Local Storage. Flash Player and Adobe AIR may allow third parties to store certain information on your Computer in a local data file known as a local shared object. The type and amount of information that the third party application requests to be stored in a local shared object can vary by application and such requests are controlled by the third party. To find more information on local shared objects and learn how to limit or control the storage of local shared objects on your Computer, please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/flashplayer_security.

What would those 'third parties' stand to gain from such data collection? What safeguards would operate to ensure that the user is not abused through such agreed snooping? Why should anyone be obliged to sign up to such a contract clause? Maybe it's time for me to uninstall Adobe Flash Player and thus rule myself out of receiving online video content?

The title of a 1990's book by David C Korten comes to my mind: 'When corporations rule the world'.

Porn magnate shelves 'adult tv' to focus on promoting other kinds of abuse

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Part of my political education in the late 1970's while I was in my mid-20's was an anecdote regarding Lord Beaverbrook's purchase of Express Newspapers or the Daily Express decades before. Someone challenged the newspaper magnate as to why he spent a lot of money on buying such a 'tatty little rag'. Beaverbrook responded saying that rather than buying a 'tatty little rag', he had "bought a million minds."

In the 21st Century the Daily Express is now owned by Richard Desmond and is one of the main proponents of propaganda that has led to increased hate crime against sick and disabled people and benefit claimants in general, as well as asylum seekers.

So now it comes as no surprise to me that he has little spare energy to devote to 'adult tv' channels. Under the current UK Government, disability hate crime has greater 'respectability' than 'soft adult porn'.