Monthly Archives: October 2014

Happier workers really do make more profit, report shows

More respect, please: If company bosses stop trying to wring every last ounce of profit out of workers while paying them a pittance, and start treating them well instead, they’ll be surprised at how well their firm starts to perform, according to a new report.

The nice folk at NIESR have produced a new report that supports something this blog has been saying for many years – that businesses make more profit if they take better care of their workforce.

The report is headed Happier workers, higher profits? and states: “We found those workplaces with rising employee job satisfaction also experienced improvements in workplace performance, while deteriorating employee job satisfaction is detrimental to workplace performance.

“Employee job satisfaction was found to be positively associated with workplace financial performance, labour productivity, the quality of output and service and an additive scale combining all three aspects of performance.

“Workplaces experiencing an improvement in non-pecuniary job satisfaction… also experience an improvement in performance.

“By contrast, there was no robust association between job-related affect (measured in terms of the amount of time feeling tense, depressed, worried, gloomy, uneasy and miserable) and workplace performance, nor pay satisfaction and workplace performance.”

The conclusion is that “these findings are consistent with the proposition that employers who are able to raise employees’ job satisfaction may see improvements in workplace profitability (financial performance), labour productivity and the quality of output or service [bolding mine, for reasons that will become apparent].

“Although we cannot state definitively that the link between increasing job satisfaction and improved workplace performance is causal, the findings are robust to tests for reverse causation and persist within workplaces over time, so that we can discount the possibility that the results are driven by fixed unobservable differences between workplaces.

“There is therefore a prima facie case for employers to consider investing in the wellbeing of their employees on the basis of the likely performance benefits.”

This ties in very closely with Vox Political‘s many comments on the Living Wage. The relationship is obvious: Pay somebody enough that they don’t need to ask for State benefits and their sense of self-worth increases hugely.

Here’s what this blog said on the subject back in April last year: “If a person receives enough, in return for their work, to pay their way in the world without having to take state benefits, several things happen.

“They feel valued in their position, and try harder. The quality of their work improves, along with that of the other workers in the company who also receive the living wage, and as a result, the employer is likely to benefit from improved orders. The company flourishes [increased productivity] and is able to take on more employees.

“As a result of this, the firm and its employees are able to pay more taxes and National Insurance contributions – not as a result of an increase imposed by an oppressive government, but because more people are employed there [and profits are higher]. The government therefore has more cash to fund public services; it has less need to borrow money and will not have to pay as much in social security benefits – in-work benefits will be unnecessary because working people will be receiving enough to put them above the threshold for that support, and fewer people will be claiming out-of-work benefits.

“The government can then pay off its debts and deficit more quickly, after which it can cut tax rates. This means everyone will have more money in their pockets – including employers, who can plough the extra cash back into the firm with infrastructure improvements and more employment.

“You see how this works?

“Contrast this with what happens when you employ somebody on the minimum wage, or abolish it.

“People on the absolute minimum do not feel valued. They consider their employers to be taking more than their fair share of the profits generated by the company where they all work together. They feel undervalued – and demeaned by the fact that they have to claim state benefits in order to survive. Their health may be put at risk, because they may find themselves having to work ridiculously long hours, just to make ends meet. Their work starts to suffer, and they may end up unemployed, either for health reasons or because the company is suffering (as a result of workers turning in substandard work).

“The company makes cutbacks. Its bosses don’t want to take a pay cut so they cut corners elsewhere. The workforce diminishes and the quality of the product suffers. In time, the firm’s contribution to the national economy dwindles – if it doesn’t go to the wall altogether. Its tax and National Insurance contribution plummets.

“The government finds itself paying in-work benefits for increasing numbers of people, and unemployment figures skyrocket. Employers and workers do not provide enough money in taxes and National Insurance to pay the bill for public services, so these are cut back and borrowing increases. The nation goes into a debt spiral.

“That is the current situation.

“Which of the above would you rather have?”

That remains the current situation, no matter what George Osborne may be saying today. The government would not be considering slashing the amount paid to ESA claimants if it didn’t consider the number of people claiming the benefit to be too high. We all know the number of people claiming in-work benefits has rocketed and that Osborne is facing a huge shortfall between the amount of tax he expected to receive this year and the actual amount. What is it – £5 billion? That’s not small change!

There have been huge arguments with right-wingers who have made spurious claims that employers can’t afford to pay more than the minimum wage – or that there is no incentive to do so.

This research provides an incentive to do so.

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Revealed: Cameron’s lies over Euro bill

– Verbal malfunction: “I’m not going to pay that bill on 1 December. If people think I are- I’m going to- They’ve got another thing coming.” Cameron can’t even announce his complaint properly.

David Cameron has lied and lied again about the £1.7 billion bill from the European Union, it has been revealed.

An investigation by Full Fact has shown that the UK has been taking part in an exercise to revise the way payments are calculated since at least May this year, meaning that discussions on the subject must have been taking place previously.

The Treasury must have known about these discussions, meaning George Osborne would have been aware of them – and this means that Cameron himself should have been told. If he had not, then his government has not been doing its job properly. He says he knew nothing until he was presented with the invoice this week.

Not only that, the amount does not reflect any increase in the size of the UK economy during the current Parliament, but – humiliatingly for Cameron – during the period of the last Labour government. He reckoned it was based on his own government’s (dubious) economic recovery.

The report states: “EU law requires that member states measure the size of their economy according to EU standards. The UK hasn’t been fully compliant with these standards, so statisticians at the ONS have spent the last year revising old estimates of the size of the UK economy. Some, though not all, of these changes have had a generally upward impact on the figures the EU uses to determine the UK’s contribution to its budget.

“The resulting increase in the estimated size of the UK economy relative to other nations – specifically between 2002 and 2009 – is what’s caused the EU to ask for more money. If the Commission had known the size of the UK economy at the time, it would have charged us more, so the £1.7 billion represents the ‘back payments’ following the counting changes.”

There is some good news for Cameron, though. As the bill is for ‘back payments’, it seems likely to reduce in future years – no matter how the economy has performed under his government. His claim that the bill is because his government has turned the economy around is simply balderdash.

And it seems the largest factor in the increased bill has been changes in measuring the contribution of the not-for-profit sector – mainly charities and universities. As universities are currently experiencing a fall in income as their intake from foreign countries drops off due to “unwelcoming” government policies, it seems reasonable to expect that the UK’s contribution will fall.

The best way forward now is for Cameron to accept the advice of Denmark’s prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, that he should swallow his pride and pay up.

There’s no reason the UK cannot amortise the amount over a period of time. If it does so in an agreed manner, it may avoid having to pay punitive 2.5-per-cent-per-month interest payments.

But then, Cameron has proven to be an economic idiot and may not understand this.

That’s what happens when you’re born into money; you end up with no idea of its value.

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Leaked document shows Tories think incapacity claimants aren’t ill

The only conclusion to be drawn from the “leaked internal documents” being quoted by the BBC today is that – if they think it is reasonable to cut the work-related activity group element of Employment and Support Allowance, the UK’s main incapacity benefit, down almost to parity with Jobseekers’ Allowance – Tories don’t think these people are really ill.

It seems likely the plans have been drawn up by people who have never needed to cope with fibromyalgia or myalgic encephalomyelitis, who have never suffered a workplace injury or who don’t understand the debilitating nature of the depression that often follows interviews with government employees who are determined to strip claimants of their benefits, no matter how disabled they are.

According to the BBC report, the Department for Work and Pensions has claimed the proposals in the documents are “not government policy“.

The papers show that the proposal to cut ESA(WRAG) by £30, making it almost the same as JSA at around £72-3 per week, is not prompted by any interest in reform, but is simply an attempt to save money.

It seems the government has been forced to hire many extra staff members to clear a backlog of ESA claims which has made it attractive for people who have previously been found ineligible for ESA to reapply, and for JSA claimants to try to move across. The proposed benefit cut seems to be aimed at discouraging such activities.

It is far more likely to encourage protest – possibly with violence, from the very last people who may be expected to respond in such a manner. Yr Obdt Srvt was discussing this matter with a friend who is on ESA, and he expressed a wish to visit Downing Street and make a flamboyant gesture – something as powerful as the event that set the Arab Spring alight (although not as final – the aim is to keep people in the best health possible, after all).

The proposal has attracted criticism from Dame Anne Begg, who chairs the Commons Work and Pensions committee. She said: “That’s not reform, that is just saving money. I hope that is not something the government is going to come forward with.”

And fellow Work and Pensions committee member Sheila Gilmore said: “When Labour created the Work-related Activity Group in 2008, the rationale was to ensure that sick and disabled people who couldn’t work in the short term but might be able to in the future weren’t simply written off.

“However we were clear that up until their next reassessment – which would occur at least every two years – these people were still unable to work. This is something Tory Ministers now seem keen to ignore.

“By cutting payments to those in the Work-related Activity Group by nearly £30 per week, Ian Duncan Smith is effectively saying that these people are only a hop, skip and a jump away from being a fully fit, able-bodied Jobseekers Allowance claimant.”

In fact – for most of these people – life is like having to climb a mountain, every day, with no pausing to catch their breath or massage tired and aching muscles and bones. It is an endurance test the like of which most MPs have never experienced.

As Billy Connolly once said of the Pope: “If you don’t play the game, don’t make up the rules.”

That is a maxim that applies here – and our ignorant ruling class had better realise that before somebody takes the law into their own hands.

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Their own ‘ridiculous conditions’ are ruining Tory plans

The Conservative Party is accusing its Coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, of playing “Westminster tricks” by scuttling a backbench Bill supporting an in/out referendum on the EU – but it seems more likely that the Tories’ own politicking is to blame.

The Yellow Party has retaliated by claiming the Tories were attaching “ridiculous conditions” to the Bill that made it unsupportable, and this seems much more plausible in the light of David Cameron’s reaction to the Scottish referendum debate.

Remember the morning after Scotland voted to stay in the UK? Cameron stepped up to the cameras and promised to deliver the new powers to Holyrood that he and the other UK political leaders had promised – as part of a package that included devolution for England.

Nobody had asked for English devolution to be included. He just inserted it into the deal unilaterally, provoking protest from many quarters (on the reasonable grounds that English devolution is an attempt to ‘lock in’ Tory control over England). This made it possible for him to claim that these protesters were holding up the devolution process when in fact he was the one who had thrown a spanner in the works.

Now it seems he has done the same with the EU referendum Bill. The Liberal Democrats had agreed to support a ‘money resolution’ to approve the costs of the referendum, in exchange for an agreement by the Tories to do the same for a Lib Dem backbench Bill that would modify the bedroom tax.

But the Tories had then insisted that the referendum Bill should be debated in time normally reserved for government, rather than backbench, legislation. The Lib Dems quite correctly rejected this as inequitable.

And didn’t the Tories squeal about it! Bob Neill, the former minister who sponsored the backbench Bill, which came third in the ballot for debating time and is therefore struggling, said the Lib Dems had done “everything they could” to prevent a referendum: “The Lib Dems have killed off our chances of putting into law, this side of an election, an in/out EU referendum by 2017. They didn’t have the guts to vote against an EU referendum in the House of Commons. Instead they have used Westminster tricks to try to deny the British people a say on their membership of the EU.”

In fact, the evidence suggests the only Westminster tricksters in this case are the Tories. And here’s another one: Mr Neill said the Liberal Democrats would be held to account by voters at the next election.

He knows – and we know – that public opinion of the Liberal Democrats has plummeted. They are currently polling behind the Green Party – not because of their attitude to any EU referendum (most of the public couldn’t care less about the EU) but because they have supported a Conservative government whose policies have been compared with those of 20th century fascists – if not Nazis.

The Tories must think we are stupid if they expect us to ignore the fact that they are the ones playing “Westminster tricks”.

Is ISDS the TTIP-ping point for Juncker?

Jean-Claude Juncker.

This is shaping up to be a very bad week for David Cameron.

Not only is his ‘welfare reform’ plan a laughing-stock after the DWP was revealed to be posting fake tweets about Universal Credit; not only was he struck by a passing jogger when he was in Leeds to discuss the (don’t laugh) High Speed 3 project (less than a week after a man threw a bag of marbles at hime during Prime Minister’s Questions); but now…

His much-cherished plan to ‘lock in’ privatisation of National Health services in England is in jeopardy after incoming European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker announced a review of the relevant part of a proposed trade agreement with the United States of America.

The decision must pile insult on top of injury for Cameron, who launched a famously lonely campaign to prevent Juncker’s appointment as president, attracting almost no support at all from his EU colleagues (only Hungary supported him) and confirming the catastrophic loss of influence the UK has suffered in the European Union under Cameron’s premiership.

Mr Juncker said the Investor-State Dispute Settlement scheme – a part of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement that critics say would make it possible for corporations to sue national governments for damages if new legislation was likely to affect their profitability – would be reviewed.

In a speech to the European Parliament, Mr Juncker said: “I took note of the intense debates around investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.

“My Commission will not accept that the jurisdiction of courts in the EU Member States be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes. The rule of law and the principle of equality before the law must also apply in this context… There will be nothing that limits for the parties the access to national courts or that will allow secret courts to have the final say in disputes between investors and States.”

He said he had taken control over the ISDS process away from Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and handed it to Frans Timmermans, the incoming, and first, Vice-President in charge of the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. “There will be no investor-to-state dispute clause in TTIP if Frans does not agree with it too,” he said.

The Financial Times has reported that Juncker made his decision “largely at the behest of Germany, which has turned sour on ISDS”. This will rub salt into the recently-opened wound caused when the EU billed the UK an extra £1.7 billion for membership, based on calculations of our economic improvement (Germany is getting a rebate).

“Germany’s misgivings have in turn fed into a more generalised distemper with global trade across the EU, encompassing the French far right and fringe parties elsewhere. They claim ISDS has morphed into a tool of multinational companies that use the arbitration panels to circumvent, or even alter, national laws at their whim,” the paper reported.

This is exactly what has caused hundreds of thousands of people to complain to the European Commission after details of the TTIP proposals were leaked from secret meetings.

Even now, TTIP remains largely unreported by the mass media here in the UK, which is mainly run by right-wing, pro-privatisation moguls. Mr Juncker announced his decision in a speech on October 22 – a week ago – but the only British newspaper to report it was the FT.

For Cameron, the humiliation is just as bad, whether the media reports it or not.

This is not a victory for campaigners against ISDS or the TTIP – although Mr Juncker’s decision may discourage the United States from taking the project further. It remains as important as ever that anyone with an objection needs to make that objection known.

But it is a good sign.

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Do you agree with VP that the government has earned our disrespect?

Keith Lindsay-Cameron writes the popular ‘A Letter A Day To Number 10’ and is a friend of Vox Political. His latest missive to David Cameron takes a similar attitude to that adopted by VP yesterday, regarding the respect we should accord to a prime minister – and a government – like David Cameron’s:

Dear Mr Cameron,

No party has ever brought politics into such disrepute as yours, the disrespect you heap on the nation on a daily basis is outrageous!

Such statements as – “people who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks” as they have “the least to lose” – David Freud.

Iain Duncan Smith – “But essentially Universal Credit as a benefit will be the benefit by 2016 and the remains of the vast, vast majority of the stock will be in place pretty much by the end of 2017.”

Iain Duncan Smith, mocking reporters over his avoiding the bedroom tax debate – “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!”

David Scott, a Tory councillor from Tunbridge Wells – “The other area I’m really concerned about is obviously the disabled. I have a number of mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the minimum wage.”

David Freud – “Now, there is a small… there is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour.”

Alan Mellins, a Conservative councillor from Maidenhead, on Travellers – “Execute them.”

Then there are the routine lies and falsified figures, election promise lies, welfare lies, economic lies, NHS lies, really, you name it and it’s doubtless been lied about.

Last week in Parliament Square should be held up and remembered as a beacon of what your party is all about, the oppression of the people.

Respect is earned, Mr Cameron, and by heaven the people of this country are due some respect, but you are not. You have earned all the disrespect that can be heaped upon you as a silly, ignorant, rich boy playing at politics, serving vested interests, robbing the nation and worthy of our greatest disrespect!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/23/lord-freud-welfare-poor-risk

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/universal-credit-iain-duncan-smith-2894737

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-fury-running-scared-2786058

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/15/welfare-reform-minister-disabled-not-worth-minimum-wage

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-mcsmiths-diary-exterminating-travellers–not-a-laughing-matter-9811864.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/pre-election-pledges-tories-are-trying-wipe-internet

http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/nhs-privatisation-compilation-of.html

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Whoops! DWP caught out posting fake tweets

What do you make of this?

The tweet seems to have been deleted by a DWP Press Office that should be deeply embarrassed (but probably isn’t). The tweeter quoted above is a person who is known to this blog and who may be trusted. It did appear; the DWP did send it.

It seems clear that the intention was, as Tentacle Sixteen sarcastically denies, to put this out from a fake account, complete with fake spelling mistake, to coincide with the barrage of pro-Universal Credit propaganda currently streaming from the @dwppressoffice Twitter account like a sewage leak.

Yet again, your government is lying to you.

It cannot go unnoticed that this has come to attention as the House of Commons debates the future of Lord Freud, who foolishly said that disabled people could be made to work for less than the minimum wage. As these words are being typed, employment minister Esther McVey is speaking – a woman whose own constituents have launched a campaign to remove her from government office.

This disgraceful Coalition government’s shameless and relentless attempts to brainwash us into believing its lies, while it continues its programme of harm against the unemployed, the long-term sick and the disabled, shames us all as a nation. It is a matter of huge regret that the United Nations has agreed to postpone an investigation into the behaviour of this government until after the 2015 general election.

Your comments and opinions are requested.

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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.

The Coalition also awarded a contract treating NHS patients with brain tumours to the private healthcare company Hospital Corporation of America, a firm that has been accused by the Competition Commission of overcharging for its services by up to £193 million between 2009 and 2011 – but that has also donated at leave £17,000 to the Conservative Party since it came into office.

According to the National Health Action Party, £10 billion worth of NHS contracts have been awarded to private firms since the Health and Social Care Act was passed in 2012. How many of these have donated money to the Conservative Party, and in what quantities?

Meanwhile, a record five million working people are now in low-paid jobs, according to the Resolution Foundation. That’s around one-sixth of the total workforce. This is a direct result of government policies that threaten people on benefits with the loss of their financial support if they do not take any job available to them – at whatever rate of pay is being offered. The insecurity this creates means firms are free to offer the bare minimum, and keep workers on that rate for years at a time, and pocket the profits for themselves – after donating money to the Conservative Party for making it all possible.

There has been no benefit to the national economy from any of these actions; the deficit that Cameron said he would eliminate is currently at £100.7 billion per year and the national debt is almost twice as high as when he first darkened the doors of Number 10. This is because any improvement in the national finances would interfere with his real plan, which is to dismantle all public services (except possibly national security and the judiciary – albeit a court system available only to the rich) and hand the provision of those services to the private sector in return for fat backhanders from the companies involved.

The evidence is beyond question. David Cameron said he would govern in the national interest but has used his time as prime minister to further enrich his already-wealthy business donors, and consequently his own political party, through the impoverishment of working people and those who rely on the State for support.

What sort of respect is due to a man like that?

By custom, here in the UK, the prime minister is given a degree of respect due to his or her position as the head of the government – but respect must be earned and we judge our politicians on their actions.

Cameron has earned nothing from the British people other than our disgust. He is a liar, at the head of a government whose mendaciousness seemingly knows no bounds. And he is a thief; every benefit claimant who has had their payments sanctioned or their claim denied had paid into the system – via direct or indirect taxation – and had a right to expect the support they had funded.

He should be in prison.

Unfortunately, we (the people) do not currently have the wherewithal to put him there. We have to register our opinion in other ways.

This means he gets no respect at all. He is not the prime minister – he is the Downing Street squatter. There is no need to make way for him when he passes – Dean Balboa Farley was right to run into him. There is no need to pay attention to the things he says – if you get a chance to talk to him, just talk over him as though he wasn’t there. He is a pariah; he should be shunned at every opportunity.

He has disrespected and dishonoured the highest public office in the land. He deserves no better.

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Peers defeat government over judicial review curbs – BBC

Cracked: Chris Grayling’s plan to stop ordinary people from demanding judicial review of crazy Conservative legislation has been defeated by the Lords. But does the Coalition have time to force them back into the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill?

Remember Vox Political‘s article last week, warning that Chris Grayling was trying to price judicial review out of the reach of ordinary people, in order to stop us challenging insane Tory legislation?

Yesterday a group of Conservative and Liberal Democrat lords rebelled against the government and voted with Labour and crossbench peers to defeat the plan.

Here’s how the BBC reported the events [observations from Yr Obdt Srvt in bold]:
The government has been defeated three times in the House of Lords over plans to limit the ability of individuals and organisations to challenge public decisions in the courts.

Former judge Lord Woolf said recourse to the courts was a key “last resort”.

Former Conservative ministers Lord Howe and Lord Deben and senior Lib Dems Lord Steel and Baroness Williams were among those to vote against the government, as it lost three parliamentary votes on the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill.

The rebel amendments to the bill maintaining the right of judges to decide whether to grant a legal challenge were passed respectively by majorities of 66, 33 and 33.

MPs must now decide whether to reinstate the measures when the bill returns to the Commons.

The government argues there has been a proliferation in the number of judicial reviews in recent years, with frivolous challenges being used to hold up policies when there is little or no chance of success. [What “frivolous challenges”? We’ve had many high-profile challenges that were upheld by the courts, with several against the Department of Work and Pensions including one that led to a hurried and highly dubious new Act of Parliament to legalise previously-illegal behaviour by the Conservative-led government.]

But leading crossbencher Lord Pannick said judges already had the power to dismiss “hopeless and abusive cases” and judicial reviews were vital to hold government to account and to ensure the legality of their decision-making.

“The risk of a public hearing before independent judges encourages high standards of administration,” he said.

Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, said the legislation was “worrying”, suggesting it was “dangerous to go down the line of telling the judges what they have to do”.

And former lord chancellor Lord Irvine said the ability to challenge government decisions in court was “indispensable in a democracy”.

But for the government, Lord Faulks insisted ministers were not trying to “fetter or undermine” the process of judicial reviews or circumscribe the discretion of judges.

In cases where the government had clearly followed due process, he said its time was “better spent taking forward the reforms the country needs” rather [then] defending decisions in the courts. [But the entire point of the findings of the judicial reviews mentioned above was to stop the government bringing in changes that were not only unneeded but actually harmful to the country and the public good!]

“The measures represent a sensible and considered package which will improve the process of judicial review for those with a proper case put well and founded on flaws which would have made a difference to the outcome,” he said. [Does that make any sense at all? The measures represent an attempt to price judicial review beyond the reach of ordinary people.]

The amendments, he added, would rule out any reform of the current system.

Good. Conservative ‘reforms’ would set justice back into the Dark Ages.

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Cameron’s engineered homelessness crisis must end

David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’: What a tasteless joke.

This was his big idea, when he forced himself on us in 2010: His Coalition government was going to thin out the public sector, sure, but don’t worry! The private sector would leap in, to fill the gap, and charities would be a major part of this.

Four years later we get this, from Pride’s Purge: Man dies after homeless[ness] charity makes him homeless

“Anthony Miller’s dead body was found two days ago washed up on a beach in Newquay.

“Just a few weeks ago he had lost his job as a roofer as a direct result of being evicted by homeless charity Chapter 1.

“He had even offered to pay higher rent but the so-called Christian organisation ignored his offers and turfed him out onto the street:

“Christian homeless charity says it has every right to make young Newquay man homeless.”

So much for charities stepping into the breach. What about the public sector, then?

As luck would have it, within hours of the Tom Pride article’s appearance, the above image flashed onto Facebook, along with the following message:

“SIGN OUR PETITION AND DEMAND CHANGE: www.crisis.org.uk/nooneturnedaway-fbook

“Simon isn’t the only one to be turned away when he asked for help. Our team of undercover researchers tested council homelessness services across England. In 50 out of 87 visits, they were turned away with little or no help.

“This is nothing short of a scandal. Homelessness is devastating and shouldn’t happen to anyone. The average age of death for a homeless person is just 47.

“Sign our petition to demand politicians review the help single homeless people get under the law in England. Because no one should be turned away when they ask for help.

“www.crisis.org.uk/nooneturnedaway-fbook #NoOneTurnedAway”

The first thing to do with this is realise and accept that publicly-funded local authorities are also turfing people onto the streets. Second is to accept that this is another charity, so they can’t all be bad. Third is to accept what this charity is saying – that it cannot cope with the numbers of people being made homeless by local authorities and other charities, and that this means something is badly wrong with the way the law says the State should deal with the problem.

Laws are enacted by the government. David Cameron leads the current government. We know that his changes have created the current situation.

It has to end, before any other bodies wash up on our beaches. So we come to the fourth thing, which is to ask yourself:

What are you going to do?

Vox Political

politics for the people

Monthly Archives: October 2014

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