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Monday, 18 December 2017

KUWG Christmas Party, Monday 18 Dec 2017, 7pm-10pm at Prince of Wales PH, 101 Willesden Lane, London NW6 7SD

(Blog post by a new blogger, represented here with permalink related to an actual post title)
TO FRIENDS OF THE UNEMPLOYED
"COME ON DOWN"

THE KUWG CHRISTMAS PARTY THIS YEAR
MONDAY 18TH DEC  7PM-10PM (SETTING UP FROM 6.30PM)
PRINCE OF WALES PUB,  101 WILLESDEN LANE, KILBURN, NW6 7SD
Reservoir KUWGS
WELCOME TO THE PLEASURE-DOME!
6.30PM SETTING UP, 7PM MUSIC STARTS, 7.15 SPEECHES-WELCOMES 7.45 ACTS UNTIL 9PM, THEN SECRET SANTA, THEN 9.30 ALTERNATIVE CAROL SINGING. 10PM TIDYING UP.
One free drink if you pick up a ticket, entrance free, food free...if you want to bring a delicacy for sharing please do. If you can sing, play an instrument, anything, please do.
Due to events last year, no TWERKING permitted before 9pm. No use of 4-letterish words like “Gauke”, “IDS” or “Tom Watson.” ALL FRIENDS OF KUWG INVITED!
Don’t the great unwashed know their place anymore? The Sin
PC gone BONKERS! Financial Crimes Unfair to the Rich! illuminati news

PRINTED BY THE KILBURN UNEMPLOYED WORKERS GROUP PROPAGANDA UNIT

Friday, 15 December 2017

KUWG to appear outside DWP HQ, Monday 18 December 2017, 2pm-3pm, proclaiming what we need for protection

Caxton House 
Federal government office in London, England
Address: 12 Tothill St, Westminster, London SW1H
 
This post was originally posted as:oops protest outside dwp Caxton House THIS Monday 18th December 2017  2-3pm
 
PS: Sorry for the late revision of earlier blog post 

KUWG Christmas Party, Monday 18 Dec 2017, 7pm-10pm at Prince of Wales PH, 101 Willesden Lane, London NW6 7SD

TO FRIENDS OF THE UNEMPLOYED
"COME ON DOWN"

THE KUWG CHRISTMAS PARTY THIS YEAR
MONDAY 18TH DEC  7PM-10PM (SETTING UP FROM 6.30PM)
PRINCE OF WALES PUB,  101 WILLESDEN LANE, KILBURN, NW6 7SD
Reservoir KUWGS
WELCOME TO THE PLEASURE-DOME!
6.30PM SETTING UP, 7PM MUSIC STARTS, 7.15 SPEECHES-WELCOMES 7.45 ACTS UNTIL 9PM, THEN SECRET SANTA, THEN 9.30 ALTERNATIVE CAROL SINGING. 10PM TIDYING UP.
One free drink if you pick up a ticket, entrance free, food free...if you want to bring a delicacy for sharing please do. If you can sing, play an instrument, anything, please do.
Due to events last year, no TWERKING permitted before 9pm. No use of 4-letterish words like “Gauke”, “IDS” or “Tom Watson.” ALL FRIENDS OF KUWG INVITED!
Don’t the great unwashed know their place anymore? The Sin
PC gone BONKERS! Financial Crimes Unfair to the Rich! illuminati news

PRINTED BY THE KILBURN UNEMPLOYED WORKERS GROUP PROPAGANDA UNIT

Leaflet for protesting and Alternative Carol singing by KUWG outside DWP HQ Caxton Hse, SW1H 9NA, Mon 18 Dec 2017

Leaflet for protesting and Alternative Carol singing by KUWG outside DWP HQ Caxton House, 12 Tothill Street, SW1H 9NA Monday 18th December 2017, 2pm-3pm

Still confronting the 'Rotten Rulers' ru(i)nning our lives, especially this Xmas. 

UPDATE ON THE DESPICABLE ‘IDEAS’ AND ‘POLICIES’ PUSHED THROUGH BY THE PYSCHOPATHIC HIERACHY AT DWP HQ CAXTON HOUSE, AND WHY THESE SHYSTERS SHOULD BE OUSTED.
Workers at the Rotten Caxton House have told us when we have leafleted that awful place that they are only pushing thru policies set by their bosses, and don’t agree with them. The Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group are on the side of Workers and the PCS Union, and know it’s the vile ‘ideas’ of people like IDS (who resigned due to his own rottenness being too much for his own Tory MPs) which are still being pushed hard by the likes of extremely ambitious planks like David Gauke. He is on Huffington Post video expressing his greasy desire to be Chancellor. Wotta Rotter!
He was a Parliamentary candidate for Brent East in 2010 and lost so he’s not a total ‘winner’ and amongst the proposed nationwide jobcentre closures, Kilburn and Neasden, which were in that old constituency, are included in the list, so proof he doesn’t form attachments to places which get in the way of his ambitions. His sidekick Damian Hinds-is booted into the Commons when Gauke is too ‘busy’ to show his face...not that anybody wants to see that face of his. When reading Hansard, one easily sees how Gauke and Hinds twist themselves into answers that are only logical to themselves. For instance jobcentres are being closed because Universal Credit online is such a success, not so many JCPs needed. But when people have problems with UC they say there will be “Work Coaches” in jobcentres on hand to help. Completely contradictory! They have no shame!! Numb-Skulls!!
On Universal Credit the Tories have put an extra £1.5 billion in to help, but the 7 day wait was the government stealing money from the poorest people in Britain...bit like a burglar being caught taking your goods & handing them back but saying they are giving them to you as they are so  kind.
Universal Credit Implementers like Janice Hartley and Neil Couling have actually been given CBEs! What sort of world is this? Harvey Weinstein has a CBE too by the way...so has the new Minister of Defence Gavin Williamson...he’s the guy whose CBE was controversially given to him from the coward David Cameron in his resigning Honours List...nobody seems to know why...although suspected of Cronyism. Williamson is now ‘confident’ enough to be claiming ISIS Terrorists (who kill people without due process) should be killed on sight (without due process). Does seem that this Tory Government is a group of Psychopaths, who make laws, while disregarding laws like the Geneva Convention. The United Nations have reported that Britain is treating disabled people in an awful way...wotta lorra rot we got ‘in charge’. Stingy Scrooges still only giving 10 quid extra for Xmas!
David Davis stutters on providing Impact Studies regarding Brexit...when any organisation researches possibilities that may occur in the future. Gauke and Hinds refused Equality Impact Studies on Jobcentre closures, stating they will produce them AFTER the closures have happened!? Gauke is also reluctant to hand over DWP analysis on the history of implementing Universal Credit to the public. It is the PUBLIC that pays his wages & has paid for the reports. Gauke, like IDS, should resign, with Hinds, Hartley and Couling, and CBEs should be stripped off the people mentioned, or do they want to stay in the same realm as Weinstein? And let’s stop Patronage and Cronyism which is NOT part of a real Meritocracy. Workers, whether waged or not, should stick together and next time Gauke is too busy to talk at the House of Commons, transport him there in a Gramsci Wheelbarrow!!
Imagine these Ministers’ Christmases, compared to Claimants on Universal Credit this year!

PRINTED BY THE KILBURN UNEMPLOYED WORKERS GROUP POLITICAL COMEDY WING

Tuesday, 28 November 2017

Child Poverty Action Group says cuts to Universal Credit push up child poverty

From CPAG enews

UNIVERSAL CREDIT IS POVERTY-PRODUCING

Evidence from CPAG's Early Warning System and analysis from our new report on the impact of cuts, 'The Austerity Generation',  helped secure important improvements to how Universal Credit is delivered in last week’s Budget. We’ve raised our concerns about the 6-week wait and the difficulty in securing advance payments extensively with the DWP, in Parliament and in the media. However, a key finding of our new report is that cuts to Universal Credit will push 1 million more children into poverty by 2020. To restore Universal Credit’s promise of greater rewards from work and to be poverty-fighting, not poverty-producing, we need work allowances to be restored and a triple-lock on child benefit and the child element of Universal Credit. The announcements in last week’s Budget are welcome, but they don’t go nearly far enough to make Universal Credit fit for families.
CPAG says cuts to Universal Credit will push 1m children into poverty, and
900,000 children including 300,00 under 5 into severe poverty by 2020


http://cpag-mail.org.uk/5MH-5AY6O-HLQZQ-2WINBV-1/c.aspx

A royal wedding announcement is a great time to bury bad news about benefit cuts

There is this from the Independent:

Government confirms freeze on working age benefits minutes after Prince Harry wedding news revealed

Freeze continues amid the longest fall in living standards for 60 years
"According to Clarence House, the wedding will take place in Spring 2018" — by which time many more parts of the UK will be experiencing the 'shock and awe' of 'Universal Credit full roll-out'. That in itself will be an opportunity to 'bury bad news'.

Meanwhile, there is this excellent Zoe Williams article from The Guardian:

Such is the poverty of Tory ideas that they deny poverty even exists

.... good intentions would manifest in curiosity about the lived experience of one’s policies, which would in turn entail figuring out what those policies amounted to in the aggregate. Failure to ask such questions is not born out of ignorance: it is critical to the Conservative narrative to deny, forcefully and sometimes gleefully, that anyone in the country is struggling.
The contrast between the royal wedding announcement and UK poverty reminds me of lines in a Harvey Andrews & Graham Cooper song, 'Targets' that was written to commemorate Margaret Thatcher's election as Tory Party leader in 1975:
We would have married long ago 
And we're still hoping one day 
Two up two down and a little lawn 
And time to rest on Sunday. 
I wish the ones who left us here 
Could live like us and borrow 
I'd place a pound for what it's worth 
That they'd be gone tomorrow
We'd like a yacht, some rooms to spare 
And horses in the stable 
We might as well believe that we 
Could buy meat for the table. 

Call us equal, call us proud, call yourself a liar 
No matter what the people do, they set the target higher
 
The Zoe Williams article even mentions nurses using food banks. So much for 'the pursuit of inequality'. Where has it got us?

Blog post by Dude Swheatie of Kwug 

Notes

  1. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefit-freeze-working-people-typical-family-300-real-terms-cut-inflation-a8079196.html
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpsSb8AHIQ4
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/27/poverty-tory-ideas-budget

Friday, 17 November 2017

Devisers of Universal Credit blithely wish claimants a rotten Christmas 2017?

Placard: "Government knows what it's doing."
Do you know what they are planning?
From Private Eye, 3-16 November issue 'In the Back' p37 (the one with a 'sex shop' photo on the cover):

With the opposition, the Commons work and pensions select committee and even universal credit's instigator, Iain Duncan Smith, lining up to condemn the minimum six-week which new recipients must undergo before they see any cash, pressure is mounting on the government to reduce the arrears period. But this initial wait for cash may not be the only period during which UC claimants go without funds.

For claimants who are in work and paid weekly (which is the case in many low-paid jobs that will qualify for UC top-ups), the small print of the benefit makes it clear that they will run into problems whenever they receive five pay packages withing the calendar months that are used to calculate their UC eligibility.

"When you have five weekly earnings payments within an assessment period, your income may be too high to qualify for universal credit in that month," say the DWP rules. "If this happens you will be notified that your income is too high and you will no longer ge universal credit. You can re-apply the following month as you should only get for wage payments in your assessment period then."

The vagaries of the calendar will not, of course, affect the amount workers are actually earning — but a month with five Fridays (this December, for example) will see them automatically lose their entire universal credit for that period. "You will need to be prepared for a month when you get five wage payments in one assessment period and budget for a potential change in your monthly universal credit payments," the DWP guidelines state blithely.

In 2018, March, June, August and November will all have five Fridays — so UC claimants who are paid weekly may have to budget for extraordinarily lean months for a third of the year. The DWP itself admitted in a report published last month that delays in UC payments were "a key factor" in claimants falling into rent arrears.

Given that UC has supposedly been designed to mimic standard work pay patterns, this fluctuation seems particularly cruel: no employer, after all, docks pay following every five-week month, or pays them less because they are on a weekly wage.

So, for those on UC and getting paid weekly this December, Christmas is cancelled!

I'm sorry to be a bearer of bad news, but maybe to be forewarned is to be forearmed?

Dude Swheatie of Kwug