Monthly Archives: January 2018

In the crap-ita: Government contractor responsible for benefit assessments is in deep financial doo-doo

Capita runs London’s congestion charge scheme [Image: Reuters].

Of course we shouldn’t gloat about financial troubles that will affect thousands of people’s jobs.

But Capita is responsible for assessing the fitness for work of thousands upon thousands of benefit claimants, with targets (hidden by the government) to knock a huge proportion of people off the books, so maybe we can be forgiven in this instance.

At mandatory reconsideration, we know that the Tory government set an 80 per cent target for refusal of benefits.

That means thousands of innocent people have suffered for no reason – many of them to their deaths. If the current situation means the assessors who inflicted that suffering get to experience some of it, who can call that anything other than poetic justice?

The company has announced plans to add £700 million to its bank balance. Is this to make up for the now-axed dividend scheme that gave £500 million to shareholders?

What were company execs thinking, when they devised that scheme in the first place? That the government’s magic money tree would keep producing the cash they were funnelling to their rich shareholders?

And was Capita carrying out the same wheeze as Carillion – under-bidding for new government contracts and using the money it received to pay for the old ones?

And what about the firm’s pension fund?

Here‘s Frank Field, chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions committee:

“Another day, another outsourcing firm with massive debt, a huge pension deficit, a KPMG audit and the Big Four popping up at every turn in the company’s chequered history.

“Sadly, Capita goes on the growing list of firms we are investigating to see if their conduct has endangered current and future pensioners’ rights.”

So: First Carillion collapsed. Now both Interserve (remember them?) and Capita are in trouble.

Who’s next? And what will happen to public services while the Tories dither over this crisis?

More than £1bn was wiped off the stock market value of the government contractor Capita on Wednesday, sparking fears of job losses.

Capita, whose major contracts range from collecting the BBC licence fee to electronic tagging of prisoners, saw its share price nearly halve in a day following a grim financial update that reignited concerns over the outsourcing industry and the stability of public services.

Capita’s shares plunged 47.5%, cutting its stock market value by £1.1bn, after new chief executive Jonathan Lewis stunned markets by admitting the company’s finances were in a dire state and announcing drastic measures to repair them.

Lewis, appointed in October last year, downgraded Capita’s profit forecasts and announced plans to raise £700m to shore up its balance sheet. He also axed a dividend that had been worth more than £500m to investors over the past three years.

A cost-cutting programme is expected to result in job losses among Capita’s 67,000 employees, 50,000 of whom are in the UK, while parts of the business will be sold to raise cash.

Source: Capita: almost £1bn wiped off value of UK government contractor | Business | The Guardian

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Tories prepare to squander more billions by selling off “surplus” NHS land

On the day the government admitted it bungled a property deal involving Ministry of Defence homes, ministers have announced a plan to sell off NHS land.

Do they plan to lose billions of pounds on that, as well?

It should be clear to everybody by now that the Conservative Party does not have the wherewithal to conduct transactions involving public property in anything like a responsible manner.

With the NHS plan in the Naylor Report, we know that the service is starved of resources and it is madness to take even more away from it.

Worse still is the fact that the Tories aren’t interested in getting a good price for the land. They’ll sell it to some friends of theirs at a preferential rate and pass any losses on to the taxpayer, as they usually do.

It’s the same old Tory story – privatise the profits and nationalise the debts.

The Tories have officially backed a controversial report which critics fear could lead to the biggest sell-off of NHS property in history.

The Naylor Report recommended selling around £2 billion of “surplus land” owned by the health service to build 26,000 homes.

It attracted grave concern from campaigners when Theresa May suggested she would back it last summer. And today, health minister Lord O’Shaughnessy gave the report the official government seal of approval.

The announcement came just hours after it was revealed bungling Ministry of Defence chiefs have lost billions of pounds in a disastrous property deal by selling off thousands of homes – then renting them back from the buyer.

Source: The Tories have backed a report recommending a huge sell-off of NHS property – Mirror Online

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Tory MSP’s aide sacked after sex attack conviction. What does that say about the Conservatives?

Conservative aide: Greg Jamieson hid the charges from his new employers [Image: PA].

This won’t play well for the Conservatives – perhaps unfairly.

The story suggests that a man facing trial for carrying out a sex attack thought that the Conservative Party would be glad to give him a job.

It casts the Tories’ recent attempts to de-toxify themselves into question, after the series of sex scandals that rocked the party last year.

But here’s the thing: We’re told the Tories acted immediately after they found out about the trial – suspending him until after the verdict was known, and dismissing him after he was found guilty.

Considering the fact that the man in question did not divulge details of his trial when he applied to work for the Tories, one wonders what more they could have done.

But the fact still remains: A sex attacker thought the Conservative Party would employ him. What does that say about the Tories?

The Scottish Conservatives’ justice spokesman has sacked an aide after he was convicted of carrying out a sex attack.

Greg Jamieson, of Dundee, was found guilty of touching a work colleague’s breasts whilst he was previously employed as a police officer.

Shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr sacked Jamieson following his conviction, after the 33-year old initially hid details about his upcoming trial from the party.

Source: Tory MSP’s aide sacked after sex attack conviction

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Gavin Williamson used to know details of every Tory’s intimate affairs. What about his own?

Lawyers for Gavin Williamson have refused to answer questions from the Guardian over his departure from the firm [Image: Vianney Le Caer/Rex/Shutterstock].

Theresa May’s reluctance to support Gavin Williamson’s story about his departure from a previous employer after an affair speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

The timing couldn’t be worse, as a Tory employee in Scotland just got the sack for a sexual assault on a fellow worker in his own previous job. In light of this, Mr Williamson cannot afford any doubt over his own behaviour.

But that is exactly what he has created.

We are told that Mr Williamson attended a meeting to discuss his future at fireplace firm Elgin & Hall after a “flirtatious relationship” that he says amounted to a couple of kisses. It occurs to This Writer that, if those moments were consensual, it wasn’t a lot of the employer’s business.

If they weren’t, then a huge can of worms is open. That’s why the Guardian wants to know whether the woman involved in the affair reported Mr Williamson’s behaviour to her line manager, and the nature of the terms in which he left the company.

If there is anything dodgy about Mr Williamson’s past behaviour, then other Tories may feel justifiably aggrieved that he has been privy to the details of their own indiscretions.

Could he have gained high office by exploiting his knowledge of their behaviour – while hiding information about his own?

It’s an uncomfortable question – but one that Mrs May’s reticence forces us to ask.

Theresa May repeatedly declined to say she believed her defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, told her the truth about why he left a fireplace firm after a reported affair with a colleague.

Sources close to the company, which employed Williamson as a managing director, [said] he attended a meeting to discuss his future after colleagues became aware of his relationship with a junior member of staff.

The former chief whip, tipped as a possible prime minister, took the extraordinary step of giving an interview to the Daily Mail to talk about the “flirtatious relationship” he had with the woman when he was at Elgin & Hall, based in North Yorkshire.

Williamson told the Mail the fling “never went further” than sharing a kiss with the woman “a couple of times” and that it “stopped as suddenly as it had started”. It is understood he informed the Cabinet Office before deciding to speak to the newspaper.

Lawyers for Williamson have refused to answer questions … over whether the woman reported his behaviour to her line manager, the terms on which he departed and whether he received a payoff.

May, who was speaking to reporters during her trip to China, was asked whether she was confident Williamson had told her the whole truth about his departure from the firm. The prime minister declined to answer directly.

Source: Gavin Williamson: PM declines to back his account of ‘office affair’ | Politics | The Guardian

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Esther McVey advises The Samaritans. Why is nobody making the obvious comparison?

[Image: Evolve Politics].

Esther McVey is the real-life equivalent of Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf.

Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), the incompetent chicken soup vending machine technician, managed to kill the entire crew of the mining ship Red Dwarf (barring his nemesis, Dave Lister (Craig Charles)) by exposing them to lethal radiation. He denied that it was his fault.

Ms McVey, was a part of a team of Tories who devised policies to deprive sick and disabled benefit claimants of the payments to which they were due, leading to thousands of deaths – many of which have been recorded on This Site. Like the rest of the Tories, she denies that it is her fault.

Now we find that Ms McVey is a member of The Samaritans – as was Mr Rimmer.

In the Red Dwarf episode The Last Day, he has the following conversation with Lister:

Rimmer: I used to be in the Samaritans.

Lister: I know. For one morning.

Rimmer: I couldn’t take any more.

Lister: I don’t blame you. You spoke to five people and they all committed suicide. I wouldn’t mind, but one was a wrong number! He only phoned up for the cricket scores.

Rimmer: Well, it’s not my fault everyone chose that day to jump out of buildings. It made the papers, you know. “Lemming Sunday,” they called it.

The announcement that Ms McVey had been named Work and Pensions Secretary, on January 8, received a similar reception from the people of the UK. It wasn’t quite “Lemming Monday” – I’m not aware of anyone actually taking their own life (and I know lemmings don’t actually behave as they did in that old Disney movie) – but I understand that many had to be persuaded out of it.

The operative question now is whether she has any other traits similar to the Red Dwarf character.

I suppose we’ll find out if she turns up at Caxton House in a blue Gingham dress, saying from now on she’ll take all her advice from her favourite sockpuppet, Mr Flibble.

She says people having to go to foodbanks is ‘positive’. She justified huge cuts to disability benefits by saying that ‘bodies heal’, and she used misleading statistics to ‘stoke up antagonism’ towards disabled benefit claimants. Does this sound like the kind of person who should be advising a major charity which supports people in severe emotional distress?

And yet that is the case. It has been revealed that Esther McVey, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and cheerleader for some of the most brutal welfare cuts of recent years, is an advisor to the charity Samaritans

Source: Tory DWP Secretary Esther McVey advises The Samaritans whilst bringing misery to millions of benefit claimants | Evolve Politics

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Double-standards of the anti-Semitism trolls who denied facts to attack Corbyn

Hate tweet: Danny Cohen’s attack on Jeremy Corbyn was undeserved and vile.

Here’s another perspective on the vile manipulators who tried to use Holocaust Memorial Day to make a political attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

These people have got off very lightly, considering their despicable behaviour.

When Esther McVey made a political attack during the memorial service for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, she was met with more-or-less universal disgust.

Why do Danny Cohen, and those who sided with him, get a free pass?

January 27 was Holocaust Memorial Day, a time to remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust. Various politicians wrote messages to mark the day. But former BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen used the occasion to imply Jeremy Corbyn was being antisemitic. He claimed, twice, that Corbyn left out mention of the Jewish people in his Holocaust Memorial Day message. He was wrong.

Cohen claims that Corbyn omitted mention of the Jewish people in his message. The Campaign Against Antisemitism said Corbyn should make an apology after leaving out mention of the Jewish people in his message in the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) memorial book. The group described this as “appalling” and “disgraceful”. The Jewish Leadership Council argued it showed “a complete lack of sensitivity” on his part.

Corbyn did include mention of the Jewish people… Theresa May left out mention of the Jewish people in her Holocaust Memorial Day message. As did Lib Dem leader Vince Cable. They did not come under similar criticism. Interestingly, the UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis didn’t explicitly refer to Jewish victims in his Holocaust Memorial Day statement. Yet the media did not criticise Mirvis or accuse him of antisemitism. It seems Corbyn has been uniquely singled out in these accusations.

Source: Former BBC chief caught in fake smear on Jeremy Corbyn refuses to apologise [TWEETS] | The Canary

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Tories have been breaking the law by rejecting vulnerable benefit claimants

This could have serious repercussions for the Conservative government.

Suddenly, instead of dismissing appeals for mandatory reconsideration from people who were not able to submit them in time, ministers have been told benefit claimants must have a right to a tribunal.

It’s a game-changer, and it could save lives.

What does that tell us about the Tory policy that refused people this legal recourse?

Senior judges from an Upper Tribunal have ruled that Theresa May’s government has been acting illegally. And once again, those affected by the ruling are some of the most vulnerable people in the country. The judgment means that the government has likely been screwing over thousands of disabled people who will now potentially be affected by the ruling.

The case was brought by two people who failed to appeal the decision to stop their Employment and Support Allowance in time. Current Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) rules state that the first stage of appealing a decision – a mandatory reconsideration – needs to be lodged within a month.

These claimants didn’t make the deadline because of their “extenuating circumstances”; both have mental health issues along with other problems. But the DWP initially refused to hear their appeals or allow them to present their arguments to a tribunal. So with the help of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), they took the case further.

The problem with strict time limits for people with health conditions should be obvious. They may have issues that do not always allow them to appeal quickly. And this is something the Upper Tribunal judges thought should be “obvious”.

They ruled that: “We have concluded that as a matter of statutory interpretation a claimant in such circumstances has a statutory right of appeal to the first-tier tribunal.”

Source: Senior judges rule that Theresa May broke the law and probably screwed over thousands of people | The Canary

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If Theresa May’s ‘fake news’ unit is a fake, will it only deal with ‘fake fake news’?

Grin and bear it: The revelation that her ‘fake news’ task force doesn’t know what to do can only be more humiliation for Theresa May [Image: REUTERS].

If so – once it’s got its act together – we’re all in trouble.

That’s because ‘fake’ fake news is real news.

Yes, it’s a lot of fun laughing at the fact that the Tories can’t get anything right, but they have announced a unit dedicated to tackling and silencing anything calling itself ‘news’ that they don’t like.

The operative line in the statement from Theresa May’s spokesman is: “It will more systematically deter our adversaries.” “Our” adversaries, not “the UK’s” or “the nation’s”.

He meant, very clearly, opponents of the Conservative Party. That is who the members of the National Security Communications Unit will target.

And, sooner or later, they’ll get their act together.

Theresa May’s ‘fake news unit’ was itself branded fake news today, after the government was unable to provide even basic details of how it will work.

Downing Street last week announced the creation of a specialised Government team dedicated to tackling fake news and disinformation.

The new National Security Communications Unit, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said, would be tasked with: “combating disinformation by state actors and others. It will more systematically deter our adversaries and help us deliver on national security priorities.”

The announcement followed claims the Russian government had made attempts to meddle in British democracy – including the Brexit referendum by spreading fake news and disinformation online.

But despite announcing the creation of the unit to the press, the government has been unable to reveal even the most basic details of how it will work.

Source: Theresa May’s ‘fake news unit’ announcement has itself been branded ‘fake news’ – Mirror Online

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PIP u-turn is Tories’ chance to tell us how many people have died because of their murderous policies

Judge Death: Esther McVey’s Department for Work and Pensions will evaluate the PIP entitlement of people who have died since claiming – including some whose claims were refused altogether [Image: PA].

It’s brilliant that Esther McVey has seen sense and the Department for Work and Pensions is to re-evaluate all 1.6 million claims for Personal Independence Payment.

It’s amazing that the Department is preparing to spend £3.7 billion putting right the wrong that the government deliberately inflicted on these people – even though it took a court ruling to make it happen.

But I have a question:

If the government is starting with claimants who have died – or had their benefits denied entirely, will the DWP take this opportunity to find out how many PIP claimants have died after being told they did not deserve the benefit?

Long-term readers will know it took me two years to get an answer from the DWP on the number of people claiming the other benefit for people with long-term illnesses or disabilities – variously IB, SDA and ESA.

That answer was miserably inadequate because the DWP does not monitor what happens to people who have been refused benefits.

They are simply left to fend for themselves – and This Site has run article after article detailing how many of them have died as a result.

Now, the DWP has to find out what has happened to everybody who has claimed PIP over the period since it decided to restrict payments. That means civil servants will know how many people have died and what proportion of all claimants they represent.

I want those numbers published for everybody to see.

We need to know how many people are dying because of Conservative government policy.

The DWP said no one will have to endure a fresh face-to-face disability assessment.

Instead case managers will review people’s claims using existing information, and bump up their benefits if appropriate.

Case managers will contact claimants or their GPs if they need to find out more.

Priority will be given to claimants who have since died, and those who had their benefits denied entirely.

Officials will then move on to those who were paid PIP but got less than they deserved.

Source: Tory government will reconsider 1.6MILLION people’s disability benefits after offering higher payments in huge U-turn – Mirror Online

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Stephen Hawking will finally have a chance to debate health privatisation with Jeremy Hunt – in COURT

Worn down: The Health Secretary has faced a barrage of criticism over the performance of the NHS during the winter [Image: PA].

Will Professor Hawking take the opportunity to make a few of the points that Ralf Little has, in his Twitter dialogues with Mr Hunt, I wonder?

It would be a hard blow for the Health Secretary, who has sidestepped attempts to get him to account for his failures – which are legion – online, only to have to provide evidence about them in a court of law.

Whatever happens, this will be humiliation for Hunt – and it can’t come soon enough.

Professor Stephen Hawking has won permission to take Jeremy Hunt and NHS England to court over controversial proposals to restructure the health service.

Mr Hunt has tabled a plan which could allow commercial companies to run health and social services across a whole region in what critics have described as allowing back-door privatisation.

Leading healthcare professionals and Professor Hawking have argued an act of parliament is required, allowing MPs and Lords to scrutinise the proposals, before the policy is implemented and any changes to regulations are made.

Lawyers from the Department of Health and NHS England have rejected these claims but a court has now ruled that a full judicial review will be granted to determine the lawfulness of Mr Hunt’s proposals.

Source: Stephen Hawking and leading doctors taking Jeremy Hunt to court over NHS ‘back door privatisation’

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