Soaring fuel bills will kill a pensioner every SEVEN minutes this winter, a new report reveals

The survey for the charity Age UK also warns that one in three pensioners now fear they cannot afford to heat their homes

A pensioner will die from cold every seven minutes in Britain this winter, a damning report warns today.
Soaring fuel bills and poorly insulated homes are blamed by Age UK for the tens of thousands of older people who die due to cold weather each winter.

A new survey for the charity published on Tuesday reveals one in three pensioners now fear they cannot afford to heat their homes.

In total more than five million people aged over 65 say the soaring cost of fuel is one of their biggest worries over the winter months.

Labour’s shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint raged: “Britain is facing an energy bill crisis. Millions of people - especially older people - are struggling to heat their homes.”

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The Conservative Party – nasty, stupid and clumsy

Independent luminary Andreas Whittam Smith reckons the Conservative Party in its current form is both nasty and stupid – and also clumsy, if his latest article is to be believed.

Nasty because of its aggressive behaviour – such as the decision to withdraw support for rescue operations that save thousands of migrants from drowning as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Or because of benefit assessment policies that mean people living with progressive and degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and rheumatoid arthritis are being subjected to what a group of charities describes as “upsetting and unnecessary” examinations to see whether they will recover enough to look for work in the future – a pointless exercise because their conditions are flagged up from the start as progressive and degenerative; they’re never going to get better.

Or because, after the Resolution Foundation found that one-in-five employees (4.9 million people) earned less than the living wage, George Osborne is promising that if the Conservative Party wins next year’s general election, then most welfare payments that the working poor rely on – including child benefit, tax credits, jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit and income support – will be frozen in April 2016 for two years. They are currently rising by 1 per cent a year. He will make the working poor poorer.

Clumsy because they have imposed unpopular decisions on the people in an unfair way. Mr Whittam Smith defines fairness in terms of “the four main elements that go into creating a sense of procedural justice: Those concerned should have been able to play an active part in the process. The rules should be applied with sensitivity to individual situations. Decision-makers should be impartial and fair. And the agents of the system with whom people have to deal should treat them with respect.”

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Are low-paid, outraged workers ready to fight back?

Wages have been falling for years and inequality is growing. But the dissatisfaction of workers may finally force a revolt

Del Boy does a bit of dodgy dealing. Some workers claim they have to do the same because wages are too low to live on.

It was all going to script until the rich guy in the pinstripe suit said young people should “get off their arses”. I was in a television studio for Channel 4, trying to explain French economist Thomas Piketty’s inequality thesis to a befuddled audience. But something snapped.

Wages as a share of UK GDP have fallen by around 10 percentage points since 1973. And we’re now in the seventh straight year of falling real wages. That means, when you tell young people to “get off their arses”, they have a strong incentive to move into the grey economy. If wages stagnate, yet everyone with money can demonstrably make money in the financial and property systems, the logical thing to do – if you are an 18-year-old on the streets of a British city – is dodgy stuff.

When I pointed this out, the audience exploded. One man yelled: “We all have to do dodgy stuff. Wages are not enough to live on!” – and he reeled off a list of dodgy activities he had taken part in. On top of this, he insisted, the entire country is run by corrupt people on the make, so why should ordinary people do different? He got the loudest cheer of the night from an audience that had just been let into the guilty secret of modern Britain: we are poorer than we think.

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Benefits: Tightening rules does not help people into work, say Scottish researchers

Increasing the conditions placed on people claiming benefits is unlikely to get more people into work, a new report suggests.

Researchers looking at the impact of the UK Government's welfare changes in Scotland say strengthening conditionality does not address the barriers some people face in trying to find a job.

Reforms have increased the requirements for certain people claiming out-of-work benefits, including lone parents and those unemployed due to a health condition or disability.

Professors at the Employment Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Stirling are following dozens of people from across Scotland to see how changes to the system are affecting them.

They interviewed 43 people between September last year and January, with 35 taking part in a second round of in-depth interviews between April and July.

A report on the findings concluded: "Participants with a health condition or a disability, and those who were lone parents, reported that they wanted to be in work but faced considerable barriers to doing so, which were unlikely to be addressed by increasing conditionality.

"According to the views of participants, stronger conditionality is unlikely to get more people into work, due to a lack of suitable work and barriers in the areas of education, skills, employability, childcare and health...

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500,000 sanctioned JSA claimants have disappeared

Originally posted on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR:

MP Debbie Abrahams has revealed that Oxford academics will report next month on what has happened to half a million jobseekers allowance (JSA) claimants who were sanctioned and subsequently disappeared from official employment statistics.

The Oxford University study led by Professor David Stuckler and Dr. Rachel Loopstra, is in the process of analysing what has happened to the 4.5 million people who have been sanctioned under the Coalition government’s sanctioning regime.

Their research will be published in full later this month for full peer review. According to Abrahams:

“Since the government’s regulations came into effect in October 2012 about half of all sanction decisions have led to people on JSA having their social security payments cut for a least 4 weeks, affecting over 2 million people.

“Of those sanctioned, one in four leave JSA, and their preliminary statistical analysis is revealing that most of those who leave do so…

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The Great Scam: work providers, ESA and A4E

DPAC received this email from someone who wanted everyone to know what was going on with ESA and work providers. We have had many similar emails, but we don’t publish unless the person is absolutely sure they are OK with us doing that. All names and dates have been changed to protect anonymity.

Here we see why we cant trust the DWP (again), yet also how disabled people are being used to make money for private contractors (again), and the continuing chaos of ESA (again). A4E hit the headlines a while ago for taking tax payers money in ways that constituted fraud-we see they are still playing this game and still being served with public money to persecute people that should be left alone . But the Coalition continue to focus on disabled people as the fraudulent people- When will the public see exactly what’s going on and how many lies this Government has produced to protect their wealthy corporate friends, while they destroy everyone else’s lives?

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UN scrutiny: possible human rights violations in UK of people with disabilities

The UK is under scrutiny by a UN inquiry into violations of the rights of people with disabilities. Skip to 1h 4 m in the video for the bit of info on this inquiry. The discussion also includes info on when to take a case to Strasbourg (European Court of Human Rights) and when to take it to the UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

See this article.


You may also want to read this (about a 2012 judgement by the court in Strasbourg against the Republic of Croatia for failure to protect the human rights of two people who were severely bullied).

Earlier this year, a UN rapporteur who is one of the world’s experts on violence against women as well a lawyer was highly critical of the situation of women in the UK (see UN web site, the Guardian, The Independent and the BBC’s web site).

Last year, another UN investigator criticized the bedroom tax and called for its abolishment.

Source

Assisted Dying

Originally posted on Hello from Raging Crip:

Today the assisted dying bill of Lord Falconer is returning to the House of Posh Fuck. But don’t be swayed by the pomp and the circumstance. Don’t be swayed by the pains of people who are depressed, in pain, or who simply cannot do what they did last year. They call this an assisted dying bill, but its class war, in the poisonous atmosphere of welfare reform, this bill is about legalising murder. Now the doughty ship Britannia is actually slamming into the iceberg, this bill is so bloody dangerous in these troubled times, that it infact heralds a human rights atrocity. The seething mamser Grayling cannot wait to get us out of the European Court of Human Rights. The present toolbox have total disrespect for human rights, rightly they are now under investigation by the United Nations for ‘grave violations': http://4bitnews.com/uk/united-nations-launches-investigation-grave-violations-disabled-britain/ The assisted dying bill has not simply appeared…

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Brussels burns as more than 100,000 protesters clash with police during march against EU austerity measures

‘Violence broke out on the streets of Brussels today as more than 100,000 people marched against EU-enforced austerity.

Water cannons and tear gas were used in the centre of the Belgian capital as riot police tried to bring the situation under control.

Fighting broke out soon after the end of a largely peaceful march organised by trade unions and left wing politicians.’

Read more: Brussels burns as more than 100,000 protesters clash with police during march against EU austerity measures

163% Surge In Food Bank Users Just The ‘Tip Of The Iceberg’, Says Trussell Trust

More than 900,000 adults and children received emergency food parcels from the charity Trussell Trust in the last 12 months, new figures show.

The shocking figure represents a 163% rise on the previous year and Trussell Trust say more people are being referred to the charity than ever before.

913,138 people received three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks in 2013-14, compared to 346,992 in 2012-13. This is just the “tip of the iceberg” of food poverty in the UK, says the Trussell Trust chairman, because the figure only accounts for Trussell Trust food banks.

Source: Trussell Trust

Low-income households and benefit claimants have seen their income squeezed under the Tory-led coalition government, by lower than inflation wage rises and devastating welfare cuts.

A new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warns there could be 300,000 more people living in “absolute poverty” than previously thought, mainly caused by rising food and energy prices.

According to the Trussell Trust, the primary reason given by users for requiring food aid is harsh and draconian benefit sanctions or payment delays, closely followed by low wages and benefit changes. 83% of Trussell Trust food banks have reported an increase in demand due to “sanctioning”.

Source: Trussell Trust

Trussell Trust say they are increasingly working with partners and agencies to provide welfare advice and budgeting advice to families hit by welfare cuts, or poverty wages. The charity is also providing essentials like washing powder, nappies and hygiene products to families in crisis.

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One In Five Young People Have Slept Rough In The Past Year

18% of young people have slept rough in the UK in the past year, a shocking new poll reveals.

A poll by the homeless charity Centrepoint found that nearly one in five young people have slept rough in the last 12 months, because they have nowhere else to stay.

The charity says 15,000 young people are facing homelessness this Christmas, with more than a 1,000 beds for homeless people lost in the last year.

Homeless people are twice as likely to die as their peers, says Centrepoint, and more than 80,000 young people are at risk of becoming homeless each year.

Thousands of vulnerable young people across the UK will bed down for a night on the streets this winter, subjected to freezing temperatures and unsafe surroundings.

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90,000 British Children Will Wake Up Homeless This Christmas

Around 90,000 children in the UK will wake up this Christmas morning homeless, official government figures show.

The figures also show that the number of homeless families living in B&B’s has more than doubled in only three years, with many forced to endure dangerous living conditions.

An in-depth investigation into 20 homeless families found that more than half felt their temporary accommodation was unsafe, with parents reporting their children were exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, fighting, swearing and racist behaviour.

The emotional impact on homeless children and their families is devastating, with more than a half of parents saying their children’s mental health had suffered as a result of the unacceptable living conditions, including depression and panic attacks.

With the number of homeless families on the rise, the charity Shelter say they are bracing themselves for a surge in calls to its helpline over the festive season. In response Shelter has launched an urgent appeal to help its services cope with the extra demand.

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MPs: Failure of IDS’s Work Programme is a scandal

Public Accounts Committee issues damning verdict

The companies running the Government’s flagship scheme to cut joblessness have backtracked on promises to focus on hard-to-help claimants, a MPs’ report published today says.

The Public Accounts Committee denounced the failure to target more help on the most difficult cases as a “scandal”.

Firms operating the Work Programme are spending less than half the amount they had originally pledged on claimants with disabilities such as mental health problems. Such groups are being “parked” as the firms focus on finding jobs for people considered easier to help into employment, the PAC said.

In a damning verdict on the programme, which was launched three years ago, the MPs accused Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of failing to give incentives to providers to support harder-to-help claimants to find a job.

Almost 90 per cent of claimants of Employment and Support Allowance, which is paid to the sick and disabled, who are on the Work Programme have not been found jobs.

Margaret Hodge, the PAC's chairman, said: “Evidence shows differential payments have not stopped contractors from focusing on easier-to-help individuals and parking harder-to-help claimants, often those with a range of disabilities including mental health challenges.


“Data from Work Programme providers shows that they are, on average, spending less than half what they originally promised on these harder to help groups.

“It is a scandal that some of those in greatest need of support are not getting the help they need to get them back to work and are instead being parked by providers because their case is deemed just too hard
“The Department must do more to encourage providers to work with harder-to-help groups.”

Mrs Hodge also warned that the DWP’s sanctions regime could cause “significant financial hardship” to individuals.

“Feedback from some constituents suggests the number of sanctions has been increasing, and some providers have been recommending sanctions more than others,” she said.

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Govt under fire for massaging unemployment figures via sanctions

Benefits sanctions are financial penalties that are given to people who are deemed to have not met the conditions for claiming benefits. The social security system has always been based on people meeting certain conditions – this has  been true for all working-age benefit claimants, with sanctions applicable to those who fail to observe those conditions. This has been the case since its inception.

However, the Coalition changed the conditions and increased the application, duration and severity of sanctions that apply to those claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) and extended the application of sanctions to those in the Work Related Activity Group of those claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Since 2012, benefit payments can be suspended for a minimum of four weeks and for up to three years where a person “fails to take sufficient steps to search for work”, to “prepare themselves for the labour market” or where they turn down an offer of employment or leave a job voluntarily.

It emerged during an ongoing inquiry instigated by the parliamentary Work and Pensions Select Committee that Research conducted by Professor David Stuckler shows that more than 500,000 Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimants have disappeared from unemployment statistics, without finding work, since the sanctions regime was toughened in October, 2012.

This means that in August 2014, the claimant count – which is used to gauge unemployment – is likely to be very much higher than the 970,000 figure that the government is claiming, if those who have been sanctioned are included.

The research  finding confirms what many of us already knew.

Labour MP, Debbie Abrahams, said: “Sanctions are being applied unfairly to job-seekers, as well as the sick and disabled.

The reason the Government is doing this is that it gets them off the JSA claimant figures, so it looks like there are fewer people unemployed.”


The Government claims that sanctioned claimants who leave the benefit system are going into work – they also claim that their punitive sanctions regime “works”. But the Oxford study found this is untrue in a “majority” of cases.

Debbie Abrahams asked the Tory Minister Iain Duncan Smith how many people were excluded from unemployment figures after being sanctioned but not going into work.

In an angry exchange, Mr Duncan Smith described Ms Abrahams’ claims were “ludicrous”.

But the MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth said : “People have died after being sanctioned, Minister.”

“No, I don’t agree with that,” Mr Duncan Smith answered. But he has yet to provide any evidence that supports his view.

Many of us have been calling for an inquiry following the death of diabetic former soldier David Clapson. He died starving after being sanctioned for missing a single Job Centre meeting.

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Work Programme adviser: ‘Almost every day one of my clients mentioned feeling suicidal’

Whistleblower says her job was box ticking, sanctioning sick people who had little chance of employment, and she wasn’t able to treat clients as human beings

Protesters demonstrate against Atos’s handling of work capability assessment tests in Manchester. Photograph: Steven Purcell/ Steven Purcell/Demotix/Corbis

A scandalous picture of suffering, trauma and destitution is painted by a former Work Programme adviser who was tasked with getting claimants off the employment and support allowance (ESA) sickness benefit.

Speaking to the press for the first time since she quit the job last year, Anna Shaw (not her real name) says: “Some of my clients were homeless, and very many of them had had their money stopped and were literally starving and extremely stressed. Many had extreme mental health conditions, including paranoid schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder and autism. One guy [diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and homeless] came to see me for the first appointment and mentioned that he had not eaten for five days. I offered him my lunch, thinking he would refuse it out of pride, and he fell upon it like a wild animal. I’ve not seen a human being eat like that before.”

Shaw can only speak out anonymously, because when she resigned, after just a few months in the job, her employer made her sign a confidentiality clause. She believed that the majority of her ESA caseload of about 100 clients were not well enough to have been on the government’s welfare-to-work Work Programme, but should instead have been signposted to charities that could support them with their multiple problems. “Almost every day one of my clients mentioned feelings of suicide to me,” she says. Shaw says she received no training in working with people with mental health issues or physical disabilities.

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Westminster child abuse scandal: 'Coalition minister drugged and abused me when I was 14'

Police refuse to quiz the unidentified MP, who allegedly gave a then school pupil a pill - when he awoke he was naked and felt he had been assaulted

The former pupil who claims he was molested by a Coalition minister revealed the alleged attack left him suffering a lifetime of depression and suicide attempts.

And he accused police of being scared to quiz the politician because of his position in today’s Coalition after they revealed they had no plans to investigate – a year after his allegation was made.

The alleged victim, who we are calling Thomas, told officers investigating historical sex abuse at his school that he was drugged by the minister when he was 14. He woke up naked in bed...

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Why has the recovery from the crash 6 years ago been so slow and feeble? by Michael Meacher MP

The ‘new mediocre’, as the response from the deepest recession in post-war history is now often called, is an anomaly that cannot be accounted for by the factors that mainstream economic models normally consider important.  

One explanation which is gaining currency is that excessive inequality is to blame.   Even Lagarde, IMF Director, admits that inequality is casting a ‘dark shadow’ over the world economy, on the reasonable grounds that the rich and particularly the super-rich tend to save a larger proportion of their income than the poor, so that the huge increase in inequality, at least in the G20 and OECD countries in the last 30 years, is not just a source of social tension but also a major drag on demand.  

That then invites the further question: why has inequality increased so much in the last 3 decades?   Probably the most powerful underlying factor is the rise of the neoliberal Thatcher-Reagan ideology which via untrammelled markets, deregulation of finance, widespread privatisations, and deep limitations on trade union rights which then allowed the rise of excessive corporate power to dramatically expand its share of national income.

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Green Party Slams ‘Unacceptable’ Government Attacks On Sick And Disabled

The Green Party has reacted furiously to what it describes as a ‘three pronged Government attack’, that could push thousands of sick and disabled benefit claimants into greater hardship and poverty.

Internal government documents seen by the BBC suggest that the government is considering cutting Employment and Support Allowance by almost £30 per week.

It has also emerged that thousands of people with degenerative and incurable diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis, are having their benefits slashed, because the Department for Work and Pensions believes that they will ‘recover’ enough to work.

Thirdly, the DWP announced last week that the highly controversial company Maximus is to take over Work Capability Assessments (WCA) for the sickness benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Maximus is replacing the disgraced French firm Atos, whose benefit assessors will be permitted to hold on to their jobs and transferred to the American firm.

The Green Party’s Work and Pensions spokesperson Jonathan Bartley said:

“The Government is turning the screw even more tightly on the sick and disabled.

“Cutting benefits for sick and disabled people, who have already been disproportionately targeted and are already more likely to be living in poverty, is completely unacceptable.

“The Work Capability Assessment has proved a very expensive disaster in both financial and human terms. It must be abolished and replaced with a system that truly reflects the needs and aspirations of sick and disabled people. Those who cannot work must receive the support they need.

“It is unnecessary to pay hundreds of millions of pounds to private companies like Atos and Maximus, when sick and disabled people, and their own NHS doctors, can tell us what they need.

“Public services should be run for the common good, not private profit.  Maximus has already been embroiled in controversy and should not be involved in crucial decisions as to what support will be offered to sick and disabled people in the UK.”

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DWP orders man to work without pay for company that let him go

Reposted from The Guardian
UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!

John McArthur makes his one-man protest outside LAMH in Motherwell after having his jobseeker’s allowance cut. Photograph: Alan Watson/HE Media/South West News

A man who was laid off at the end of his temporary job has been ordered by the Department for Work and Pensions to work for the same company for six months without pay.

Unemployed electronics specialist, John McArthur, 59, says he is living off 16p tins of spaghetti and has been without heating, after being sanctioned by the jobcentre when he refused to work without pay for Scottish social enterprise, LAMH Recycle in Motherwell.

While he says he was happy to work for LAMH under the now-defunct future jobs fund for the minimum wage between late 2010 and 2011, he now refuses on principle to do the same job without any pay.

McArthur says he is surviving on a monthly pension of £149 after the DWP stopped his unemployment benefit until January as punishment for refusing to go on the 26-week community work placement (CWP).

For almost three months, McArthur has spent each weekday between 7.30am and 9. 30am with a placard outside the plant reading: “Say no to slave labour”.

“It was simply a case of, ‘Go here, work for nothing and if you don’t we’ll stop your subsistence level benefit,’” he said.

McArthur, who says he has been applying for 50 jobs a week without joy, said the CWP programme was “entirely exploitative” and came at the “expense of poor people who’ve got absolutely no choice”.

“They [the government] deny it’s forced labour, that you can say no, but forced doesn’t always mean physical, it can be psychological or economic. The person who is trying to survive already on subsistence level welfare has absolutely no choice in the matter … especially if they’ve got young children to look after.”

LAMH confirmed it has 16 people working for six months without pay under CWP but added that since the end of June, six had progressed into paid employment.

The social enterprise, which repairs computers and recycles tin and cardboard, says it helps dozens of people each year who are long-term unemployed, many of whom have health issues.

Joe Fulton, the operations and development manager, said he believed the scheme “worked for people who want to make it work for them”. He added that out of the organisation’s paid workforce of 39, 25 had previously been unemployed.

McArthur said there were no jobs for someone his age in the Lanarkshire area. He said support for his placard demonstration had been overwhelming and just one person had objected.

Following conversations with local councillors, North Lanarkshire council passed a motion in October strongly objecting to forced employment schemes saying it would not get involved itself. “This council will not provide jobs or placements without pay as a condition of receiving benefits unless it is truly voluntary,” the motion read.

“We do not support any mandation of unemployed people to work without pay that puts their benefits at risk.”

The motion added such measures were ineffective and could “further stigmatise and demotivate” the unemployed in their search for work.

Last Wednesday, the DWP continued to battle the information commissioner and hostile judgments in the courts, ordering it to reveal where possibly hundreds of thousands of people are being sent to work without pay for weeks and months at a time.

At a tribunal on Wednesday, the DWP argued that if the public knew exactly where people were being sent on placements political protests would increase, which was likely to lead to the collapse of several employment schemes and undermine the government’s economic interests.

The DWP confirmed some of the UK’s biggest charities, including the British Heart Foundation, Scope, Banardo’s, Sue Ryder, and Marie Curie had withdrawn from the CWP scheme, causing a significant loss of placements.

Giving evidence, senior civil servant Jennifer Bradley confirmed that numerous charities and businesses were receiving cash payments as an incentive to take on the unemployed.

She said several DWP schemes used mandatory unpaid work as a tool to help people but stressed that it was written into the terms that charities and businesses could not use people out of work to replace their paid workforce.

The DWP said it could not comment on individual cases but added that community work placements “help long-term unemployed people to gain work experience which increases their confidence, helps them to gain vital skills and crucially, improves their chances of getting a job.

“We are not naming the charities and community groups involved in the scheme in order to protect them from those who seem intent on stopping us helping people into work.”

Work Programme Isn’t Working, Say Local Authorities

Originally posted on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR:

Local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales are issuing a call for a radical re-think of welfare-to-work policies.

The Industrial Communities Alliance, the all-party association representing more than 60 local authorities in Britain’s older industrial areas, says that welfare-to-work policies have nearly always been based on the false premise that there are plenty of jobs available.

The Alliance also says that the unemployed are now being blamed for their own failure when the true cause lies with the weakness of so many local economies.

the unemployed are now being blamed for their own failure - now ?  You mean like that hasn’t been government policy right from the beginning ?

Well its nice that they’ve finally caught up with reality, but I do wish they’d spoken out before… like several years ago.

In a new report (pdf), the Alliance highlights disturbing evidence on the failure of current…

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Benefit reform blamed for rise in youth homelessness in the North-East

Originally posted on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR:

Bedroom tax and benefit reform have been blamed for a rise in youth homelessness as parents struggle to accommodate their children.

A survey published this week found the primary cause of youth homelessness in the region was parents no longer being willing to house their older children.

Youth homelessness is continuing to increase in the region according to the third annual survey conducted by Youth Homelessness North East (YHNE) and published this week.

North-East local authorities are seeing at least one homeless young person a day, the research suggests.

Each month, hundreds of youngsters approach their local authorities for help after finding themselves homeless – mostly because of family breakdown.

The issue has been linked to changes in the benefit system as well as overcrowding, abuse and financial difficulties.

Bedroom tax, benefit sanctions and the introduction of universal credit are having a significant impact on the region’s young people, according…

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Benefits delays are main cause of foodbank use, experts find.

Originally posted on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR:

Food insecurity and malnutrition in the UK is a much wider problem than has been recognised, according to experts from the University of Manchester. They also found that the main reason for referring a person to a foodbank was a delay in benefit payments.

Dr Kingsley Purdam says the demand for foodbanks is underestimated with large numbers of people thought to be at risk of malnutrition in the UK. Many older people also face food insecurity. The rapid growth in the number of foodbanks and food donation points in supermarkets suggests a ‘normalisation’ of food aid.

The Government spends an estimated £13 billion on disease-related malnutrition each. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has identified better nutrition as one of the key cost-saving initiatives for the NHS.

Dr Purdam said: “In political and media debates foodbank users have been variously described as being: ‘opportunists’, ‘not able to…

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Ed Milliband: Tweet from @LabourEoin

 pic.twitter.com/AAvjApr8Y7

Permanent Workfare, Housing Benefit Cuts, Food Stamp Style Smart Cards And School Children To Face Jobcentre Harassment – The Latest Rantings From Iain Duncan Smith

Originally posted on the void:

School children will face Jobcentre harassment from the age of 15 whilst claimants thought to have drug and alcohol problems will be paid benefits on smart cards if the Tories win the next election said Iain Duncan Smith in his speech to the party’s conference today.

18-21 year old who cannot find a job are to be placed on permanent workfare, whilst further caps on Housing Benefits will see yet more cities become unaffordable for anyone currently unable to work – whether this is through sickness, disability, high unemployment or having young children to care for.  And if this wasn’t enough then benefits are to be frozen for two years, meaning a real term cut in the incomes of the UK’s poorest people, whether they are in or out of work.

The smart cards will be for people Iain Duncan Smith thinks have fallen into a “damaging spiral” and are…

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Access to justice is the foundation of democracy

Originally posted on Politics and Insights - kittysjones :

“Ministers keep using the mantra that their proposals are to protect the most vulnerable when, quite obviously, they are the exact opposite. If implemented their measures would, far from protecting the most vulnerable, directly harm them. Whatever they do in the end, Her Majesty’s Government should stop this 1984 Orwellian-type misuse of language.”  – Lord Bach, discussing the Legal Aid Bill.
Source: Hansard, Column 1557, 19 May, 2011.

The Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 was a British Act of Parliament which extended the welfare state to ensure that those unable to pay for a solicitor were able to access free legal help, it was designed and implemented to allow poor and vulnerable people to have genuine access to justice.

Massive funding reductions, implemented through the contested and controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, (LAPSO)removed in one fell swoop public funding for huge and…

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Keep your cats indoors. Halloween is a Time of Murder & Mayhem. Coincidence?

Animal lovers and cat owners: Better safe than sorry?

HEADS UP: Anton LaVey, founder of the neo-nazi Church of Satan, stated on record that his 'political philosophy' was based on the 'Objectivist' ideas of neoliberal sociopath AYN RAND.  

Also see:  Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, Anton LaVey and the Nazi Connection

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Halloween sex and violence-  Delusions, Dissociation, and Amnesia

Halloween originates from an ancient tradition of
satanic ritual sacrifice. Keep your cats indoors. 


"All you have to do is google 'Halloween' and any kind of rape, murder or bizarre crime and you'll find real life horror stories that have occurred on Halloween....The common denominators in non-cult Halloween violence cases are:  paranoid delusions leading to violence, dissociation, and amnesia.  "

by Richard Evans
(henrymakow.com)

Before the Romans, a mysterious priesthood of black magicians called Druids ruled Gaul and Britain through terror. They had people believing that the spirits of the dead could cross into this world for three days between Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice. The time was called 'Sow-een' (spelled Samhain in English).

According to Roman sources such as Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars, the Druid priesthood demanded every household give up a family member for sacrifice, or be cursed.  Every family that survived in Druid territory had to betray a family member every year. That's governance through extreme psychological warfare. Even the Romans found this so repugnant that they exterminated the Druid priesthood to extinction, burning them in the same style they'd burned their victim in mass sacrificial bonfires.

The media ridicules anyone who warns of Satanic activities during the Halloween season.  You'll see a plethora of articles in mainstream outlets like "Ritual Cat Sacrifices a Halloween Myth, Experts Say".  

Don't believe them.  More cats disappear between August and Halloween than the rest of the year.  In fact, most animal shelters suspend adoption of black cats two weeks before Halloween. In the 1990's, newspapers printed photos of cats cut in half or eviscerated on makeshift altars in parks or abandoned houses.

Since 1994, media and law enforcement decided not to report any pet abduction/mutilation as 'ritualistic' and never, ever, ever said 'cult' or 'Satanic'.  I talked informally with a police detective who said they still "see it all the time". 
"Cats, especially black ones, may be the target of pranksters. Black cat owners are advised to keep their cats safely indoors during the Halloween season."  Halloween Tips From The Humane Society

More cats disappear between August and Halloween than the rest of the year.  In fact, most animal shelter organizations suspend adoption of black cats two weeks before Halloween.

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Mr Bigot’s Halloween….

Originally posted on Paul Bernal's Blog:

Mr Bigot liked Halloween.

It was one of his favourite celebrations. Mr Bigot liked scaring people – it was one of his favourite activities. Only that morning he’d tried to scare all the listeners to a radio programme about how all those nasty immigrants were coming over here to take their jobs, to claim huge amounts of money in benefits, to destroy their health service, fill their schools, and much, much more. Just like every other morning.

Oh yes, Mr Bigot liked Halloween a lot. And this Halloween was going to be particularly special. UKIP had organised a very special party. Mr Bigot was really looking forward to it.

He didn’t really need a costume. He was scary enough as it was – and he knew it. Just a set of fangs and a cloak would do. He could put on a Romanian accent – everyone knew Romanians were scary…

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Labour MP links Leon Brittan to 80s child abuse claims: Amid row over historic sex crimes inquiry, former Home Secretary named in Commons

‘A Labour MP has used parliamentary privilege to accuse former Home Secretary Leon Brittan of ‘improper conduct with children’.

He used a Commons debate on the 1984-85 miners’ strike to suggest that those who took part in the industrial action will not be surprised by the allegations against Lord Brittan.

The remarks from Jim Hood, who said there were ‘reports about child abuse being linked with’ the Conservative politician, were criticised as ‘disgusting’ by business minister Matthew Hancock.’

Read more: Labour MP links Leon Brittan to 80s child abuse claims: Amid row over historic sex crimes inquiry, former Home Secretary named in Commons

UK Establishment running scared about historic sex abuse

‘Fiona Woolf, who has been appointed to chair the government inquiry into historic child abuse, was subjected to an interrogation on Tuesday. I strongly recommend watching the proceedings. They shed light on our weird current public culture.

Mrs Woolf appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons. She had a hard time. The essential charge against her was that she was a member of the “Establishment” and therefore (as if by iron logic) unsuitable for the task.

The committee thought she had a record as long as your arm. She is a former president of the Law Society. She is the current Lord Mayor of London. It was even held against her that she had recently led a Corporation of London delegation to Bahrain shortly after Amnesty International had published reports of child abuse in that country. (If such a visit was disgraceful, no delegations would ever come to Britain, since reports about child abuse here are published virtually every week.)’

Read more: Our Establishment is running scared about historic sex abuse

National interest? Cameron governs in his own – and that of the rich

We were discussing David Cameron and the respect due to him for his record in government.

You may recall that the phrase used most often when the Coalition was formed (publicly, at least) in May 2010 was “in the national interest“.

This week, his government’s work has included extending the amount of time new claimants will have to wait for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) from three days to seven days. This will be music to the ears of payday lender companies like Conservative Party donor Wonga.com, whose shareholder Adrian Beecroft has given more than £500,000 to the Tories since 2006.


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