2015 is a year of possibility, the chance to change direction - Ed Miliband’s New Year Message

“I want to wish you a very Happy New Year, from my family to yours. This is the season for new beginnings and hopes for the future. And Britain is ready for a new beginning. Because I don’t have to tell you that all over our country today, there are people working harder and harder, but standing still: families struggling with bills that are growing faster than their wages; young people, taking on mountains of debt to get a proper education, only to find themselves with no job at the other end; and an NHS where people are waiting longer and longer to get the care they need.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. As this New Year dawns, we have the chance to change direction; a chance to build a recovery for all of Britain; to fight for policies that actually honour and reward hard work; and hold the banks and energy companies accountable. We have the chance- all of us together- to fight for a new plan that cuts our deficit responsibly, without threatening our NHS or short changing our children and their future. This year, we have the power to bring about the change working families all over Britain need. This isn’t about idle dreams or empty promises. It’s about a real, concrete plan: a plan for a recovery which reaches your kitchen table.

“In the coming months, I look forward to sharing our ideas with you about how we raise wages, give our young people a proper chance to get on, set fair rules for immigration and rescue our NHS. None of this will be easy or instant. But it is possible if we run the country in a different way: with a different idea, a different plan: putting working people first. And I know we will be a better, stronger and more prosperous country for it. So this is a moment of possibility for Britain. We have it within our grasp not just to see out the old year but to see out the old ways of running the country. Can we do it? Of course we can...

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Portrait of Iain Duncan Smith uses images of those who died in his war on the poor – Pride’s Purge

Click on image to enlarge:



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Two more UK MPs accused in sex abuse scandal

Scotland Yard has been given the names of two more former government ministers accused of sexually abusing children, who are now added to the 22 others already involved in a high-profile pedophile scandal, according to Press TV.

The two additional names were reported to police after Labour MP John Mann was approached by a victim claiming to have been abused by the politicians...

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Forget immigration, the big issue in 2015 should be the death of social mobility

By accepting vast inequalities of wealth, the political class has acquiesced in the continual erosion of opportunity. 

Eton boys, perched on the wall, watch the traditional wall game. Photograph: Getty Images.

"In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power…are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class." 

Which radical scion of the establishment could have said such a thing? Tony Benn? Dennis Skinner? Or even Leon Trotsky perhaps? The answer is former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major, that well known scourge of capitalism and tribune of the working class. When the man who privatised British Rail and launched propaganda campaigns against single mothers believes society is insufficiently meritocratic it ought to be clear that the UK is heading in the wrong direction.

And a closer look at the top of British society demonstrates that, rather than turning into a bleeding heart in his retirement years, Sir John is simply stating the obvious. Just 7 per cent of Britons are privately educated yet, according to a government report published in August, 33 per cent of MPs, 71 per cent of senior judges and 44 per cent of people on the Sunday Times Rich List went to fee-paying schools. If you were waiting for some sort of media outrage about such an appalling state of affairs then you may have to wait a little longer: 43 per cent of newspaper columnists and 26 per cent of BBC executives hail from the private school system too.

Even the grittier sections of the music industry, which once gave expression to working class authenticity, are increasingly dominated by the affluent. In 2011, music magazine The Word found that the majority of UK chart acts were either privately educated or from exclusive stage schools. This compared with 1990, when it found that nearly 80 per cent of artists in the Top 40 were educated in state schools...

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Top pay unrelated to performance, just greed – official

The end of 2014 has certainly brought home some hard economic truths.   Osborne told us he had a long-term economic plan and it was working because the UK had the fastest-growing economy in the G7.   Well, it isn’t: the UK economy is now growing at only half the rate of the US economy,...

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Less Than Half of Antipsychotic Prescriptions Given for Actual Psychosis

‘Less than half of UK prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs are being issued to treat the serious mental illnesses for which they are mainly licensed, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Instead, they may often be prescribed ‘off label’ to older people with other conditions, such as anxiety and dementia, despite the greater risk of potentially serious side effects in this age group, the findings indicate.’

Read more: UK: Less Than Half of Antipsychotic Prescriptions Given for Actual Psychosis

Bank chief admits recession not caused by Labour

In a blow to Tory Prime Minister David Cameron former Bank of England chief admits that Labour were not to blame for the recession

Warning: Lord Mervyn King

The Labour government was not to blame for the financial ­meltdown, the former Bank of England chief said yesterday.

Mervyn King, now Lord King, said “no government” could have prevented the recession which followed the global economic crash in 2008.

He said: “The real problem was a shared view across the entire political spectrum and the financial markets that things were going pretty well.

“I don’t think it is easy to go back and say any one country on its own could have found their way through it.”

Lord King was the Governor of the Bank of England from July 2003 and July 2013 and his comments will come as a bitter blow to David Cameron.

The Tory PM has frequently accused Labour of “crashing the economy” while in power in a bid to scare voters into backing the Tories instead.

But Lord King, a crossbench peer with no political allegiance, insisted: “We as one country could not have stopped the financial crisis.”

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Merry Christmas one and all. The baby that survived his mothers sanctioning

I look at this photograph of this baby and I see a miracle. This is the baby born to the lady who was sanctioned whilst she was 23 weeks pregnant. Ashton Under Lyne Job centre told her that it was tough she was pregnant and not ill so she should just get on with it. Luckily his mother didn’t starve, although if it wasn’t for the kindness of others she would have done. She was traumatised. It wasn’t bad enough that she was forced to attend a totally unfair workfare placement whilst she was 23 weeks pregnant… nope Ashton Under Lyne Job centre had to go that step further and sanction her for not breaking the law.. for confirming the fact that she was pregnant with B&Q when they asked her. This sanction was totally illegal and contravenes every human rights law that exists. She was left without heat, food and the very basic elements needed to live. And as a result of the stress I am sure her baby was born 5 weeks early...

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A Christmas Cruel: Spirit of Scrooge lives on at DWP

Take a look at this Christmas card to the Department for Work and Pensions, discovered by the Facebook page Atos Miracles:



When you’re tucking into your turkey (or whatever), please take a moment to think of all the people who won’t be having a merry Christmas – not because of any wrong they have done but because of the arbitrary cruelty of a Godless regime with no mandate for the misery it is creating.

Think how you can change that...

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A year in pictures – ones that tell a thousand IDS lies

Let’s start with the regrettably seasonal-only bonhomie we have for those roofless and homeless



Soon to be followed by those soon to find out what Universal Credit really means – Yes just another one of IDS’s lies




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God stresses his commitment to David Cameron’s values in Christmas message

satire?)

God has stressed his commitment to David Cameron’s “Tory values” as he delivered his Christmas message to the country.

In his Christmas message, the man who many believe created the universe, praised the work of the coalition government and said cutting healthcare for the poor, making people homeless and increasing child poverty by 300,000 would make people reflect on the “very Christian values of giving, sharing and taking care of others‘” over the Christmas period.

The heart-warming statement from God came in reply to prime minister David Cameron’s own Christmas statement to the nation in which he emphasised his Christian values.

Through a spokesperson, God explained:

“Yeah. I can do sarcasm as well.”

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Good will to all men? Shop worker disperses homeless with freezing water, witness says

‘A shop worker has allegedly hosed homeless people seeking shelter outside a shop front with ice cold water to prevent them sleeping there. Police investigated the incident after a local woman reported the alleged assault on social media.

Tammi-Lee Connor, who lives in Canterbury, says she saw a shop worker at the local Wilkinsons using a hosepipe in an attempt to remove a group of homeless people. The force of the hose reportedly caused one man to fall over and hit his head.

Connor says she confronted the shop worker, who apparently told her: “How else am I expected to move them?” She then phoned the police who arrived at the scene, but didn’t arrest the man.

Wilkinsons deny the worker was ousting the homeless, maintaining they were simply cleaning the shop front.’

Read more: Good will to all men? Shop worker disperses homeless with freezing water, witness says

Love Activists turn former RBS office in London into housing protest squat

‘A prime, five-storey Victorian office building off Trafalgar Square in London has been taken over by a group of squatters who plan to open the building on Christmas Day and provide a free festive lunch for homeless people in a protest against the housing crisis.

Calling themselves the Love Activists, a group of 20 people on Saturday took over the grade II-listed building on the corner site of Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane which has been empty for 18 months.

Previously leased by the RBS group and housing a branch of National Westminster Bank, the squatters say that the building has “been taken by the people” in a statement posted on their Facebook page. The current ownership of the corner site is unclear: Land Registry records show that the owner is Greencap Ltd, a Jersey company that appears to have been dissolved.’

Read more: Love Activists turn former RBS office in London into housing protest squat

Osborne’s boastfulness comes back to haunt him - Michael Meacher MP

Osborne is now in trouble.  

One after another, all the things he so confidently promised 5 years ago have now turned to dust.  

He pledged then that the deficit would be down to £37bn by the end of 2014; it is now actually about £100bn.   He said that with economic growth real...

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DWP Admin And Salaries Costs Nearly Twice The Dole: Sack The Managers And Save Us All A Fortune

Originally posted on the void:

The DWP spent almost twice as much on salaries, welfare-to-work schemes and administration last year than they did on unemployment benefit.

The department’s latest six monthly report shows that £7.7 billion was spent on administration costs in 2013/14 compared to £4.3 billion on Jobseeker’s Allowance, othwerwise known as the dole.  In the current year administration spending is expected to hit £8 billion, whilst spending on JSA is forecast to fall to £3.7 billion as hundreds of thousands of people are bullied off benefits with sanctions and workfare.

The DWP is a big department, and this colossal spend also includes administration of pensions, sickness, housing and disability benefit spending.  But with around 750 Jobcentres around the UK and 78,000 employees, (according to The Guardian in 2010) it seems likely the biggest bulk of this spending goes on paying the salaries of Jobcentre busybodies and their happy clappy over-paid managers. …

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Government slammed over decision to reject EU hand-out while folk go hungry

‘The North’s poor are going hungry after the Government rejected a £22m food fund from Europe, it is claimed today by the region’s Labour MEPs.

David Cameron has been criticised for allegedly failing to take the money, which could directly go to foodbanks in the region, over fears it reveals the UK’s dependency on the EU and weakens his position.

However the Conservative Party have dismissed Labour’s claims, saying people are not missing out on the EU cash and have £2.9m to spend.’

Read more: Government slammed over decision to reject EU hand-out while folk go hungry

80,000 families face benefits cuts this Christmas as further sanctions are introduced

‘Around 80,000 families face benefit cuts of £250 this month in further sanctions against the jobless and ­disabled, it has been claimed.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said data provided by the Department for Work and Pensions showed 74,000 would lose more than £19million in Jobseeker’s Allowance.

And £700,000 in employment and support allowances are being taken away from 6,800 disabled people.’

Read more: 80,000 families face benefits cuts this Christmas as further sanctions are introduced

Scotland Yard is probing five VIP paedophile rings after Labour MP hands in dossier naming six serving politicians and Lords

‘Police are investigating claims that at least five paedophile rings operating at the heart of Westminster were covered up.

Labour MP John Mann has submitted an explosive dossier to police naming 22 politicians – including three serving MPs and three serving members of the House of Lords – linked to historical child abuse.

Last night, he said the complexity of the criminality at the heart of the Establishment during the 1970s and 1980s had been underestimated.’

Read more: Scotland Yard is probing five VIP paedophile rings after Labour MP hands in dossier naming six serving politicians and Lords

Poorest households are the most heavily taxed

‘Britain’s poorest families hand over a bigger proportion of their income in taxes than better-off households, research published today discloses.

They are hit particularly hard by VAT, the Treasury’s second-biggest source of revenue, according to a report by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

It warns that any increase to the 20 per cent standard rate of VAT would pile further financial pressure on struggling households.’

Read more: Poorest households are the most heavily taxed

Recession and austerity ‘have provided a deadly mixture’

The combination of the recession and the coalition’s austerity programme is likely to have been responsible for hundreds of suicides in England, a researcher at Oxford University has suggested.

Dr Aaron Reeves, a sociologist at Oxford University and part of a group of researchers investigating the effects of recession and austerity, told a seminar organised by Disability Rights UK in London that there had been at least 10,000 “excess” suicides across Europe and north America as a result of the global recession from 2008-2010.

The seminar – sponsored by Joseph Rowntree Foundation – was addressed by four leading academics, and explored how to develop economic policies that would support disabled people into employment

Reeves said: “We are saying broadly that we are seeing a rise in mental health issues, and a symptom of that is the rise in suicides.”

He said that the recession had made things difficult for “vulnerable populations across Europe”, while austerity policies introduced by governments had made it even worse.

But he said the steep rise in suicides during the recession had not been seen in some countries which had done more to invest in programmes to support those who were out-of-work.

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IDS's Work Programme STOPPING people with mental health issues getting jobs

A survey by mental health charity Mind has found that a whopping 83% of people who lost their jobs die to mental illness got worse on the scheme

  

Scheme: Iain Duncan Smith devised the Work Programme, which is said to be failing

The Government’s Work Programme STOPS people getting back to work.

A survey by mental health charity Mind found 83% of those who lost their jobs due to mental illness got worse on the scheme.

Three quarters – 76% – felt less able to work, and 81% who were mentally well when they lost jobs felt ill afterwards.

The Programme, devised by Iain Duncan Smith, is delivered by private firms.

Mind chief executive Paul Farmer said: “If someone is depressed and out of work a CV course won’t help.”
There is also evidence the Work Programme costs the taxpayer. Of 640 unemployed polled, 86% said they needed more support from mental health services.

And nearly one in four – 24% – had been hospitalised or sectioned due to a mental health crisis.

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What will it take to see them? UK’s 93,000 homeless at Christmas

‘A stirring social campaign to highlight the issue of homelessness at Christmas has launched by making those who so often go unnoticed impossible to miss.

A video circulated by Adot.com begins with homeless people rummaging in bins only to find what appears to be pieces of wire, which they then wrap around the arms, faces and bodies.

But to the strains of a choir version of Radiohead’s Creep the wires turn out to be bright Christmas lights and transform the images of desperation into something disturbingly beautiful.”

Read more: What will it take to see them? Heart-wrenching advert highlights light of UK's 93,000 homeless at Christmas

Shameless health authorities keep pushing flu vaccines even after openly admitting they don’t work

‘The shamelessness of vaccine pushers knows no limits. Even when the vaccine admittedly doesn’t work — as the CDC has openly admitted — the mainstream media, drug companies and vaccine zealots keep pushing it on everyone.

All those same people and institutions are simultaneously attacking Dr. Oz, primarily because Oz refuses to promote pharmaceuticals as the answer to everybody’s health problems. Dr. Oz teaches people how to eat healthy, make informed choices and prevent degenerative disease. In response to that, the Washington Post shamelessly posts a hit-piece story on Dr. Oz entitled, “Half of Dr. Oz’s medical advice is baseless or wrong, study says.”‘

Read more: Shameless health authorities keep pushing flu vaccines even after openly admitting they don't work

Brain Abnormalities Discovered in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

An imaging study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators has found distinct differences between the brains of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and those of healthy people. he findings could lead to more definitive diagnoses of the syndrome and may also point to an underlying mechanism in the disease process.

It’s not uncommon for CFS patients to face several mischaracterizations of their condition, or even suspicions of hypochondria, before receiving a diagnosis of CFS. The abnormalities identified in the study, to be published Oct. 29 in Radiology, may help to resolve those ambiguities, said lead author Michael Zeineh, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology.

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2014: Is This The DWP's Annus Horribilis? by Work Test Whistleblower

January

• PIP fails in its primary purpose. The scheme to reassess most of the people already on DLA, with a view to cutting their benefits, sinks without trace. Not even the DWP pretends this one's on track.
• A growing backlog of claimants forces the DWP to stop repeatedly assessing people on ESA. Another welfare 'reform' bites the dust.

February

• Atos quits! After months of secret talks, Atos reveals that it wants nothing more to do with the WCA process, partly because the WCA itself doesn't actually work.

March

• No one else seems to want the WCA contract either. No company put in a bid to work alongside Atos in 2014, so the DWP withdraws the invitation it put out in September 2013.
• When the Coalition "inherited" it, the WCA process was "riddled with problems", the Disabilities Minister now declares. 'So why did they expand its use to test the millions of people already settled on IB?' nobody in public life seems to ask.
• The reassessment of established IB recipients is put on hold.

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Tory election win would ‘end local council services’

Another Tory-led government would spell the end of local services as we know them, a Labour council leader has claimed.

Durham County Council chief Simon Henig issued the stark warning as his cabinet discussed making another £16.2m of cuts next year, taking the total imposed at the North-East’s biggest council between 2010 and 2018 to around £250m.

Around 2,000 jobs have been lost.

Read more on the Unemployed in Tyne and Wear blog site.

Problems At Work? Contact A Real Fighting Union And Stuff Your Boss!

To hear the current government talk you would think the business community are paragons of virtue – nobly trickling down wealth to the rest of us whilst sticking to the rules and giving us poor plebs something to do in the daytimes.

The reality, as anyone who’s ever had a real job knows, is that most businesses are a bunch of crooks, happy to rip off their workers, customers or even the state as long as it lines their filthy pockets.  And small businesses are often the worst despite the shrill calls from many well meaning folk that it’s just the bankers, or multi-national corporations, that are fucking up our lives.

Whether it’s rogue landlords or bent bosses, the only way to beat these bastards is through sticking up for each other and acting together – as workers, claimants or tenants.  As the working class, and don’t let any fucking idiot tell you that no longer matters – everytime a liberal says class struggle is over a stockbroker cracks open another bottle of champagne.  They know exactly what the game is, and they are terrified of us remembering we can fight back and win if we act collectively.

The Newcastle branch of the radical Solidarity Federation union have a track record of succesfully taking on exploitative employers and beating them.  They have just launched a new campaign to highlight worker’s rights and give support to local people being screwed over by their boss.  In their own words: “We specialise in the cases that other unions leave behind, and will show solidarity to all workers in struggle regardless of membership. SolFed has an excellent track record of winning case work. If you or anyone you know have a problem with your boss, get in touch.”

You can find more details on their website, please share and spread the word: http://www.stuffyourboss.org.uk/

Reblogged from: The Void

On torturing the poor and hungry #ToriesMustGo

Originally posted on pawprintsofthesoul:

I wrote the following blog after reading Jack Monroe’s account of her experience of giving evidence to the All-Party Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty. Before I continue, I would like to make it clear that Jack has not seen, nor given any consent to my posting this and therefore bears neither responsibility nor blame for its contents – that is wholly and entirely mine. I stand by my blog and I’m grateful I’m not the only one to have had a powerful response to the piece. Nevertheless, she only has to ask and she’ll have a no-obstruction removal. Her needs take precedence to mine and I do not want to add to her problems.



Jack Monroe has been fair game for politicians, especially the Tories, since she began using her platform to speak for the hungry poor. In that time, Edwina Currie has reduced Jack to tears…

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Benefit deaths: Man was crushed to death by refuse lorry while scavenging in bins

‘Bin diving': It is likely that the man who died while looking for food in a Wirral rubbish bin looked very similar to this man in Chelyabinsk, Russia, before the refuse lorry scooped him up and crushed him to death. Your Coalition Government will try every trick in the book to deny responsibility for it.

“One of our clients was sanctioned. He had
no money for seventeen weeks. He was
scavenging in a bin, the lorry came, picked
him up and he was crushed to death.”

The above is a statement by Vince Hessey, a member of the board of trustees at Birkenhead YMCA (listed as YMCA Wirral), given in evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom, printed in the section entitled The vulnerability of people relying on food banks...

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Dying woman ordered onto the Work Programme

The following message appeared on the Vox Political Facebook page. It is reproduced in the hope that somebody from Prospects might have the courage to explain their organisation’s behaviour – and in the hope that this further evidence of the Coalition Government’s inhumanity to the citizens it has a duty to protect may encourage anyone who still thinks it’s a good idea to vote Tory or Lib Dem to think again. Here’s the message [boldings mine]:

I have terminal cancer. My prognosis is 0-3 years and I was diagnosed in March 2014 with my brain stem glioma.

In April 2014 I was placed in the support group for three years and I have gone from being able-bodied to hopelessly disabled. I have many neurological deficits including diploplia, dyspraxia, dysarthria and dysphagia. To save you Googling, this means that I have double vision and am going blind, I’m very clumsy and most days I drop everything I pick up, my speech is failing and one day I won’t be able to communicate verbally at all and I have such difficulty swallowing that I now have a feeding tube. I cannot leave the house alone and I’m at risk of choking and need 24 hour care. They speak of me going into residential care, but they hope to keep me in my own home for as long as possible.

The trouble is degenerative, nothing will get better, only worse, the cancer can’t be cured. I’m 37.
Now, I can deal with all that. I’m alive! And I can still do stuff!

What I cannot deal with is that I am on the work programme! I received this letter today (too late to ring the WP) demanding I come to an appointment with the Work Programme on Tuesday or they’ll stop my benefits....

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As Hunger Soars Iain Duncan Smith Is Still Hiding The Existence Of Emergency Benefit Delay Loans

Following last week’s food banks report, which found delays in processing benefits are one of the key reasons for growing hunger in the UK, Iain Duncan Smith said to Parliament:

“Today I have announced that we shall be doing much more to raise awareness of interim payments for people who need them, particularly those who are in difficulty.”

These payments are called Short Term Benefit Advances (STBAs).  These are repayable loans that can be accessed whilst waiting fot the Jobcentre to get round to processing a benefit claim.  And the shameful truth is, that whilst the number of people using foodbanks has soared, the DWP have done everything they possibly can to hide their existence.

There is no mention of these payments on the section of the gov.uk website which provides information on “Jobseeker’s Allowance and low income benefits”  or the section on “Benefits for families”.  In fact there is no mention of these loans on any government website at all except buried in policy documents.

This is not surprising.  When Short Term Benefit Payments were introduced, the jobcentre worker’s PCS Union warned that the DWP did “not intend to advertise the availability of STBAs to the public.”  When guidance on the Social Fund was later published, detailing the kind of help available from the government in an emergency, there was still no mention of these loans.

Short Term Benefit Payments were brought in to replace Crisis Loans which Iain Duncan Smith scrapped in April 2013...

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The low levels that Ashton Jobcentre will go to to sanction people.

Originally posted on The poor side of life:

23 week pregnant woman sanctioned.

The above woman (wearing costume so the Jobcentre staff don’t recognise her) was sanctioned when 23 weeks pregnant. The reason you may ask…. for attending a work fare interview (work for nothing) at B&Q.
Whilst at the interview they noticed that she was pregnant and they said yep we will put you on light duties…. The jobcentre decided otherwise… in their words “we are sanctioning you because you told them that you were pregnant”.

So in other words she was meant to break all health and safety laws in the uk and not declare that she was pregnant. How on earth can this be right? It isn’t. She was heartbroken. She had walked a few miles to this workfare interview and she saw it as her last hope of not being sanctioned.

Ashton Under Lyne Jobcentre knowingly target pregnant women. On one of our demonstrations…

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IDS's 'fit for work' projections in tatters - Sickness benefits claimants were not 'faking it'

Figures released today by the Department of Works & Pensions reveal that 93% of long term sick claimants have qualified for Employment & Support Allowance following stricter 'Work Capability Assessments'.  81% have qualified for intensive support on the grounds of severe health problems.  The latest figures make a complete mockery of earlier claims made by the right wing media that the assessments showed 75% of incapacity claimants were 'fit for work' and 'weeding out the work-shy'.  

The latest figures from the DWP publishing 'scores' for Work Capability Assessments carried out between January and March 2014 show that 93% of longer term incapacity benefit claimants qualified for Employment & Support Allowance with just 6% being found 'fit for work' - a large number of whom will appeal.

Similarly figures for the same group of claimants show that in preceding quarter from October 2013 to December 2013, 90% of claimants qualified.

The figures for what are designated 'new' Employment & Support Allowance claimants show that (for the same quarter up to March 2014, large percentages of claimants are qualifying with 77% qualifying under the strict assessment regime. The new claim group is one where large numbers of claimants appeal a fit for work decision, the 23% found fit for work is likely to fall even further when the results of appealed decisions are made public.

Claimants from either the new claim or ex-incapacity cohort who find themselves 're-assessed', qualified at a rate of 93% over the most recent quarterly figures.

Not all the results are in...

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DWP urged to publish inquiries on benefit claimant suicides

Department has carried out 60 internal reviews following deaths, and campaigners say those cases likely to be tip of the iceberg


The Department for Work and Pensions has been urged by mental health and disability charities to publish its secret investigations into suicides that may have some link to benefit changes, following revelations that it has carried out internal reviews into 60 such cases.

A Freedom of Information request by the Disability News Service has revealed that the DWP has carried out “60 peer reviews following the death of a customer” since February 2012. A peer review is triggered when suicide or alleged suicide is “associated with a DWP activity”, according to its internal guidance.

Despite growing concern over the way benefits are administered in relation to vulnerable individuals, and amid a number of reports of related deaths, the department told the Guardian it had no plans to publish the reviews.

Disabled People Against the Cuts said that, because of the way the reviews were carried out, the DWP figure was likely to be the “tip of the iceberg”.

Tom Pollard, the policy and campaigns manager at Mind, told the Guardian the figures were a concern. He stressed that suicide was a complex problem but added: “It would be helpful for organisations to see what things could be going wrong in the benefit system that could lead to these tragic situations.”

Sue Bott, director of policy and services at Disability Rights UK, said DWP reviews should be transparent.

“There have been allegations and anecdotal evidence for a while that the benefits regime has tipped people over the edge. It should be looked into in a transparent way,” Bott said. “This is not just about the nature of the decision taken as to whether it was right or wrong. It’s also about the process and there is a lot of concern about the way benefits are administered.”

The DWP’s latest figures show that sanctions to punish disabled ESA claimants had risen by 470% in 18 months, from 1,096 in December 2012 to 5,132 in June 2014.

According to DWP figures released as the result of an FoI request, 62% of adverse ESA sanction decisions in the first three months of 2014 were made against people with mental or behavioural problems (9,851 out of 15,955).

The calls for transparency from the DWP come after a number of reports of the deaths and suicides of vulnerable individuals after adverse benefit decisions...

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Court case aims to restore legal aid

Victims denied justice after coalition cuts, say campaigners


Campaigners and trade unionists protested outside the High Court in London yesterday ahead of a legal challenge against the government’s draconian legal aid cuts for domestic violence victims.

Rights of Women is bringing the challenge, which argues that large numbers of survivors are being denied justice because new rules brought in by the coalition prevent them from obtaining legal aid.

The charity is disputing the legality of the changes, which set out mandatory evidence requirements for a victim seeking legal aid for a private family law case.

Lawyers for the charity say that large numbers of victims are being turned away “at the first hurdle” as they have no permissible evidence, and are left with the choice of paying a solicitor privately, representing themselves, or doing nothing and continuing to be at risk...

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Labour Challenges Nick Clegg To Back ‘Bedroom Tax’ Axe

Labour is putting massive pressure on Lib Dem MPs to get the hated Bedroom Tax scrapped before the General Election, writes political editor Nigel Nelson in the Sunday People.

In a final push before Britain goes to the polls in May, the Commons will vote on Wednesday on repealing the cruel charge.

And Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves says if there’s a majority for abolition, David Cameron must admit defeat.

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Put Blair and Straw on trial for torture, says diplomat who was fired when he warned Labour Government of UK collusion with US abuse

‘In the summer of 2004, I warned Tony Blair’s Foreign Office that Britain was using intelligence material which had been obtained by the CIA under torture. Two months later I was sacked as the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan on the orders of Downing Street, bringing to an end my 20-year diplomatic career.

When I then went public with the news that Uzbek territory was part of a global CIA torture programme, I was dismissed as a fantasist by Mr Blair’s henchmen. Now finally, a decade later, I have been vindicated by last week’s shocking Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Over 500 pages it details the CIA’s brutal abuse of Al Qaeda suspects, who were flown around the world to be tortured in a network of secret prisons. One of these was in Uzbekistan, where the US had an air base.’

Read more: Now put Blair and Straw on trial for torture, says diplomat who was fired when he warned Labour Government of UK collusion with US abuse

Terminal Cancer Patient Harassed by Work Programme Provider

The abuses of work programme providers have been blogged many times before but I am sure many of you agree all abuses must be blogged time and time again until these providers leave those in the ESA Support Group alone and more so if they have a degenerative condition that has a terminal prognosis.

So with the above in mined I turn to one lady from Bristol who has terminal cancer at just 37 years old and has a life expectancy of 0 – 3 years so it is sad indeed that she can expect just half her life lived, she says in her facebook message that she has come to terms with what will happen (very brave indeed) but the short life left would be much better if she was not harassed by work programme provider Prospects Group @ProspectsGroup and I for one agree.

It is hard enough having to deal with a bombshell that has hit her and the health conditions that terminal illness throws at her without having the wrath of DWP and Work Providers at beck and call too.

She needs her family around her and her life filled with happiness and memories not some Govt and Work Provider totally devoid of any compassion and empathy...

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Scrooge: Iain Duncan Smith's Inspiration

Sanctioned Homeless Man Dies of Hypothermia

... After talking to this lady I was stopped by a homeless chap who wanted to congratulate us on our hard work. He said that he hated this Job Centre. His friend who lived on the streets with him had been sanctioned after being taken off the sickness benefits that he was on and was put on Job seekers Allowance. He had severe mental health and addiction problems. He was sanctioned, and without warm clothes and very little food he fell asleep on the streets and never woke up. He died of hypothermia. People had passed him and thought that he was asleep. He didn’t stand a chance. And what do the Job Centre staff say? “We are only following orders.” Most don’t feel any guilt or remorse. And we know that this government doesn’t either.
We are holding a memorial service outside Ashton Under Lyne Job Centre next Thursday. We will be laying a wreath and we are desperately in need of funds to do so. We ill be doing this in memory of every person that has died as a result of this governments war against the poor. We wont forget them. Please come, bring a flower, bring some words to say but more importantly bring yourself...

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Inequality takes a hammer to a country’s growth

The sickening theory of laissez-faire capitalism finally died with the recent report from one of the West’s leading think tanks. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that income inequality actually hampers economic growth in some of the world’s wealthiest countries, while the redistribution of wealth via taxes and benefits doesn’t.

In a nutshell: the reality of what creates and reverses growth is the exact opposite of what the current right-wing, neo-liberal agenda has been espousing ever since its rise to power under Thatcher and Reagan in the eighties. Perhaps worst of all, the report showed evidence that the UK would have been 20 per cent better off if the gap between the rich and poor hadn’t widened since the eighties.

To those of us who have only just survived the credit crunch and recession, this evidence will be welcome, but hardly surprising. The surprising thing is how it took this long. To extend a metaphor, why didn’t we realise the patient had already died more than half a decade ago?

Didn’t anyone who is sane and have any common sense realise this was the case after the crash in 2008? Haven’t there been hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating on the streets about the abuses of bankers and the wealthiest 1 per cent? Haven’t we seen almost seven years of unprecedented economic woes because of this very reason – that the current system is bankrupt, in every sense of the word?

Why then have we spent such a long time ignoring the obvious? The answer is of course because the current economic philosophy benefits the all-powerful financial and business elite. But also, in this country at least, because David Cameron’s Conservative party got into power off the back of the 2008 crisis with the clever trick of rewriting the causes of that very crisis. And what did they blame? Prepare your (now factually justified) facepalm: they blamed it on too much state spending.

Before the 2008 crash the Tory strategy to get back into power had been to match the then-Labour government’s state spending and perhaps even further it. However, when the crash happened a sudden opportunity presented itself to demonise the over-bloated public sector and blame Labour‘s public spending for the economic downturn. Did it matter that evidence of the crash being caused by recklessly unrestricted banking practices was writ large over the whole world economy?  Of course not, this was cheap trick politics, and it worked. The Tories got into power and we all bought into the narrative of austerity.

Now after five years of being forced to tighten our belts, we are finally waking up to what that narrative actually was. Thanks to the OECD report, we find that the very thing that the sacrifices of austerity were made to preserve – the growth of the economy – is the very thing they are destroying. Neo-liberal, laissez-faire capitalism extends inequality, we already knew that. But now we have the evidence that inequality harms, rather than encourages growth.

Like a sick patient being given the wrong drugs, it is the very thing we thought was curing us that is actually killing us. And all the while we are told to Keep Calm and Carry On taking our medicine by the government, to keep on swallowing the same old propaganda.

What new narrative will the Government spin now?

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Auschwitz photo-op visit reveals Cameron at his cynical worst

‘Arbeit macht frei': Roughly translated, it means ‘Work makes you free’. 

David Cameron will be familiar with that phrase as it is a favourite of his 

Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith. 

Is this writer the only person who finds it more than a little sick that David Cameron visited Auschwitz on the International Day of Human Rights? What was he doing – taking notes in order to ensure that he can do a better job?

The parallels between what the Nazi regime did there, to anybody it considered subhuman, and what Cameron’s government has been doing to anybody it regards similarly are becoming so obvious that you would need to be a deaf-blind animal to miss them.

It is physically sickening to read about him lighting a candle at a memorial for holocaust victims and promising that proposals for a permanent British memorial to victims of the Nazis will be revealed next year, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp, while his government continues to deny the fatal consequences of its own policies.

In Nazi Germany, people who were sick, disabled, or belonged to a foreign race were deprived of their human rights and shipped off to concentration camps like Auschwitz, if they weren’t “euthanized” at home under the Aktion T4 programme.

Here, people who are sick or disabled are subjected to a humiliating test intended to deprive them of the financial support they need to survive, and to implant the suggestion that it would be better all around if they simply took their own lives...

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People With Mental Health Problems Hammered By Sickness Benefit Sanctions

More than 60% of adverse Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) sanctions decisions made during the first three months of 2014 were against people with mental health issues or behavioral problems, new figures show.

Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in response to a Freedom of Information Request, show that 9,851 adverse benefit sanctions decisions were made against ESA claimants with mental or behavioural disorders between January to March 2014.

This compares to:

• 508 adverse sanctions decisions against ESA claimants with diseases of the circulatory or respiratory system.
• 1,598 against those with diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue.
• 571 against people with diseases of the nervous system.
• 714 against people with injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes.
• 2,727 against those with other health conditions or disabilities.

A DWP official said benefit sanctions are used to encourage people to “engage with the support being offered by Jobcentres, by making it clearer to claimants what they are expected to do in return for their benefits”.

However, charities and medical experts say people with mental health issues, learning problems and behavioral disorders often struggle to understand what is required of them in return for their benefits. Following strict requirements can prove to be more difficult for these groups of people, without additional support and guidance.

Commenting on similar figures from November 2013, Tom Pollard, Policy and Campaigns Manager at the mental health charity Mind, said:

“We’re very concerned that an increasing number of people on ESA are having their benefits stopped, despite the fact that there are now fewer people in the WRAG (Work Related Activity Group).

“We know that around half of people in the WRAG need support because they have mental health problems, but over 60 per cent of sanctions are imposed on this group.”

“It is unjustifiable that people with mental health problems are being disproportionately affected by this increasingly punitive system. This confirms our fears that people are being pressured to undertake activities that are inappropriate for them and are not having their mental health properly taken into account.”

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Does the Upper Tribunal says EVERY bedroom tax decision was unlawful? Yes!

Originally posted on SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites):

Is every single bedroom tax decision wrong in law and does every single bedroom tax affected household have legitimate grounds to appeal it?  I posed those questions almost 2 years ago and was accused of talking nonsense and of stirring up a direct action campaign.  Yet that is what the Upper Tribunal lead case decision says – I was right all along and that the bedroom tax decision-making process is and always has been an unlawful sham and ALL decision made are official errors or unlawful.

Remember I drafted a standard letter which was downloaded over 200,000 times which asked your council how they made the bedroom tax decision with 6 questions.  The answers to those confirm your council made official errors / errors of law in making the original bedroom tax decisions by not defining bedroom and by simply choosing to believe the myth that a bedroom is up to…

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Senior DWP Manager Congratulates Staff For Hitting Sanctions Targets

Source

Have You Seen This Man?

Barton Moss Woman Arrested and Beaten at Anti-Fracking Protest. Police thugs grin as woman is beaten

Vanda, the mother of four who made headlines last month after her brutal arrest by officers from Greater Manchester Police Tactical Aid Unit, was again arrested and beaten at Barton Moss this morning in the full gaze of the media – and Happy Mondays star, Bez, who was on the front line of the anti-fracking protest.

“I got sent to prison for being accused of doing that shit. Three grown men battering a woman on the floor…I’m in shock.” Bez

“It’s a disgrace” he told the Salford Star “A peaceful protest and… to arrest someone, smashing their head on the floor is not right is it? Especially a woman…”

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Poor People Forced to Bury Relatives in Back Gardens - Labour MP

Others are trapped by spiralling debt after taking out pay-day loans

Rising funeral costs mean tens of thousands of poor people struggle to pay for services, with some so desperate they are resorting to bury their loved ones in their garden, MPs have heard.

Labour backbencher Emma Lewell-Buck urged ministers to tackle “funeral poverty”, and said that people are being forced to sell their belongings or falling into debt by taking out high-interest payday loans to fund a decent send-off for their relatives...

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Steve Bell on food poverty – cartoon

Dennis Skinner Question to IDS about Zero Contract Hours - 08/12/2014 .

When you see news about US torture, remember this...

The news at the moment is full of the ‘revelation’ that the ‘enhanced (or coercive) interrogation’ techniques used by the CIA on so-called ‘enemy combatants’ amounted to torture.

These techniques, including waterboarding, extreme sleep-deprivation and forcing people into contorted ‘stress positions’ for hours on end, were devised by a US psychologist who has been called a ‘torture guru’.

When you see these reports, remember this: psychologically-coercive techniques devised by this same individual and his team have been forced upon British benefit claimants at the behest of David Cameron’s ‘Nudge Unit’, via a bogus ‘psychometric test’ that they had to take or else lose their benefits.

Remember this, too: the DWP’s abuse of claimants using this test was so unethical that the ‘torture guru’s organisation objected to its use – use that they had never authorised in the first place: the Nudge Unit had basically stolen parts of the material and cobbled it together in a completely untested, unethical way that had the British Psychological Society (BPS) up in arms and formally investigating the psychologist responsible.

What’s even worse is that this abuse has not stopped. Quite the contrary, in fact.

As this blog by refuted.org.uk shows, the government is planning to extend the reach of the Nudge Unit even further – as part of a package of abusive measures that will allow the DWP to abuse working claimants in exactly the same way as jobseekers...

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A Message From The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come…

Originally posted on Still Oaks:

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
The MP’s were feasting on subsidised grouse.
Their expenses claims hung, by the chimney with care
knowing the taxpayer would pay for their fare.


Outside the poor were frozen, even in bed
While visions of food and heating, danced in their head.
Their children with rickets, malnourished, no bread
For them Christmas, another day of going unfed.


Dad has been sanctioned, Mum has TB
The New Year she will not see.
No NHS, no money for treatment or care
They place their last hopes, in silent prayer.


The Wonga collectors bang on their door
The children lie quiet and still on the floor.
Dad borrowed money he can no longer pay
The landlord says they can no longer stay.


30 Thousand dead from the cold
In the 11^th richest nation in the world.
50 Thousand dead from austerity measures...

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Savage Cuts To Benefits Go Ignored In Flagship Foodbanks Report

Originally posted on the void:

Huge cuts to benefits are virtually ignored in the report into foodbanks published today by an unholy trinity of opportunistic Labour hasbeens, out of touch Bishops and austerity cheering Tories.

The growth in foodbanks dates back to before the current Government weren’t elected as Labour’s decimation of the social security started to take its toll.  The rise in benefit sanctions also began in the dying years of Labour’s administration as did the introduction of the despised Atos run Work Capability Assessment, designed to strip sickness and disability benefits from one million people.  Alongside this Labour’s normalisation of workfare led to unprecedented numbers of people forced to work without pay.
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, along came Iain Duncan Smith.  With him came the bedroom tax, council tax benefit cuts, the benefit cap, housing benefit cuts, freezes of almost all in and out of work benefits, more…

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Shock New Figures: UK Spends Less On Healthcare, Benefits and Pensions Per Head Than Any Other Northern European Country

Originally posted on the void:

The UK spends less on social security benefits, pensions and healthcare combined per head than any other northern European country figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal.

In news which has sent the Daily Mail spinning out of control, the UK’s spending on ‘social protection’ is lower than France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and in fact every country in Northern Europe, as well as Italy.  These figures are based on spending per person from 2012, before many of the benefit cuts were implemented.  With even more savage cuts to social security threatened, then the UK could soon slip even further down the ranking behind the beleagured economies of Greece and Spain.

Social protection covers a wide range of spending including benefits, pensions, healthcare and social exclusion.  In a worrying trend the Daily Mail has decided to lump all thse vital services under the banner of ‘welfare’ suggesting…

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Shame of MP who played Candy Crush in Commons … but authorities only care about finding out whoever filmed him

‘A Tory MP caught playing a computer game during a meeting in Parliament is to escape punishment – but the whistleblower who exposed him could lose their job.

Nigel Mills admitted having a ‘game or two’ of Candy Crush and promised not to do it again after footage emerged of him playing on his taxpayer-funded iPad.

But while he will face no further action, the person who filmed him looks likely to lose their job after Commons authorities launched a mole hunt to find the culprit.’

Read more: Shame of MP who played Candy Crush in Commons … but authorities only care about finding out whoever filmed him

Vaccine zealots refuse to accept the truth about CDC whistleblower’s apologetic texts to Dr. Wakefield

‘Controversy has erupted on the blogosphere after a screenshot of an alleged text exchange between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) whistleblower Dr. William Thompson and gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield went viral. The vindictive “skeptics” crowd was quick to denounce the screenshot as fake, but Dr. Wakefield says he really did receive an apology from Dr. Thompson for his role in covering up the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.’

Read more: Vaccine zealots refuse to accept the truth about CDC whistleblower's apologetic texts to Dr. Wakefield

What Lies Behind The Archbishop’s Demand For State Run Foodbanks Is Every Bit As Nasty As Iain Duncan Smith

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will launch a report in parliament this week which calls on the government to fund the growing network of foodbanks – many of which are coincidentally run by churches. 

This is his toxic solution to the growing hunger crisis which has emerged after the string of vindictive and bungled welfare reforms implemented by Iain Duncan Smith.

It is shameful that so many people are now dependent on foodbanks just to be able to feed their children, but to enshrine this charity within the social security system would be a disaster.  What poor people need is more money, not more foodbanks.  This is just common  sense.  But you won’t hear calls for an end to vicious cuts to social security from the clowns behind Welby’s report...

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If you’re not shocked by these facts about our firefighters, you don’t understand them

Originally posted on Pride's Purge:

(not satire – it’s the Cameron government!)

In 2011, the Cameron government decided that …….

• Firefighters will only get their full pensions at 60 instead of 55.
• All firefighters of any age will undergo regular fitness tests.
• Firefighters will be made redundant if they fail the fitness tests.
• The government’s own report found that the effects of ageing will prevent 66 per cent of firefighters over 55 from meeting the fitness levels required for the job.
• Firefighters who lose their jobs will not be eligible for their full pension they have paid into.

60 is too old to be fighting fires.  The government knows that. This is simply a way to make huge numbers of firefighters redundant and deny them their pensions.

And while the public is not aware of it – the government will get away with it.

.

Here’s a petition to the Department of Communities and Local Government:

DCLG must improve its unworkable…

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The WCA and suicide – a.k.a. ‘chequebook euthanasia’

Too ill to work means too ill to live: Work capability assessors have been asking people with serious illnesses and disabilities why they have not committed suicide.

A new phrase has entered the Vox Political lexicon following yesterday’s article on an Atos work capability assessor who asked a woman suffering with depression why she had not committed suicide: ‘Chequebook euthanasia’.

The article prompted Earl Appleby to tweet, in response: “Little surprise here, alas. The able-bodied driving people with disabilities to suicide is a hoary form of chequebook euthanasia.”

He added: “Binding & Hoche advocated chequebook euthanasia nearly a century ago.”

They certainly did. Professors Karl Binding and Erich Hoche raised the case for chequebook euthanasia in Germany’s Weimar Republic, 80 years ago, in their seminal work The Destruction of Life Devoid of Value.

This article reveals the worst about Binding and Hoche. It states that they considered people with disabilities (and would probably have added those with long-term illnesses) to be “‘useless eaters’ whose ‘ballast lives’ could be tossed overboard to better balance the economic ship of state. In speaking of those with disabilities, and explicitly advocating involuntary euthanasia, Binding and Hoche wrote:

Their life is absolutely pointless, but they do not regard it as being unbearable. They are a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole. Their death would not create even the smallest gap—except perhaps in the feelings of their mothers or loyal nurses.

“Just like today!

Furthermore, Binding and Hoche drove home the economic argument by calculating the total cost expended in caring for such people. They concluded that this cost was ‘a massive capital in the form of foodstuffs, clothing and heating, which is being subtracted from the national product for entirely unproductive purposes.’

Now look at the case of Abi Fallows, as reported yesterday. This is a person who has asserted that she is unable to work – certainly for the foreseeable future – and has medical evidence to support this. The Atos assessor seized on her admission that she suffered with depression and asked why she had not committed suicide.

Not only was this a device to put the idea in her mind, it also indicates government thinking – one less mouth to feed is considerably less expense on, as Binding and Hoche would have it, “their relatives and society as a whole”.

It should be noted at this time that Ms Fallows’ case is not unique – by any stretch of the imagination...

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David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies

The coroner said that when David Clapson died he had no food in his stomach. Clapson’s benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the jobcentre. He was diabetic, and without the £71.70 a week from his jobseeker’s allowance he couldn’t afford to eat or put credit on his electricity card to keep the fridge where he kept his insulin working. Three weeks later Clapson died from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin. A pile of CVs was found next to his body.

I’ll resist calling Clapson’s death a tragedy. Tragedy suggests a one-off incident, a rarity that couldn’t be prevented. What was done to Clapson – and it was done, not something that simply happened – is a particularly horrific example of what has, almost silently, turned into a widespread crisis. More than a million people in this country have had their benefits stopped over the past year. Sanctions against chronically ill and disabled people have risen by 580% in a year. This is a system out of control...

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Work experience schemes: Commons Library Standard Note

"Conclusions

In general, evaluations of welfare-to-work policies and workfare schemes have found that the strictest schemes are less likely to work, largely because they can deter all people from claiming benefit, even those most in need, without improving their chances of finding employment.  The OECD, in a 2005 review of welfare-to-work policies, concluded that moderate workfare requirements resulted in better results.

Research from the countries with experience of workfare schemes, particularly the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, show little evidence that workfare raises the employment prospects of participants.  There is also some evidence to suggest that workfare is less effective in getting people into employment when the labour market is weak.

However, workfare can, via the motivation or deterrence effect, reduce the number of people claiming benefits."

www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN0624...k-experience-schemes