Tag Archives: abolish

House of Lords: will Keir Starmer abolish it, or is it another broken promise?

Keir Starmer in a hospital: his policies belong there – on life support.

One of the (many) pledges Keir Starmer has made as leader of the Labour Party has been to abolish the House of Lords, to be replaced with an elected Upper Chamber (if I recall correctly).

It seems to be another pledge that he is breaking, though.

The Times is reporting that, rather than eliminate the Lords along with the archaic system of appointing them, Starmer now intends to stuff the already-overfilled Chamber with new Labour peers, in order to ensure that all of his legislation has a smooth passage through Parliament:

It’s true – you really can’t trust a single word that come out of Starmer or the Labour Party he leads.


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Ending the Work Capability Assessment means the end of its good features too

Smug: Jeremy Hunt’s decision to end the Work Capability Assessment could endanger the lives and well-being of many thousands of sick and disabled people. It isn’t even likely to get more of them into jobs.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcement – that the Work Capability Assessment for people claiming long-term sickness benefits is ending – provoked a strong knee-jerk reaction from many of us.

It is good that this tick-box assessment that has led to many thousands of wrong decisions (including in the case of the now-legendary Mrs Mike) is to fall out of use.

But we’re now starting to look at the underlying consequences – and some of them are not good, as a letter to The Guardian has stated:

The WCA has features that it is important to retain. One is the right of appeal to an independent tribunal. By contrast, there is no judicial oversight of decisions about work-related requirements made by work coaches; the new proposals leave claimants at the mercy of Department for Work and Pensions officials with no medical training.

Another is the regulation whereby someone who does not otherwise satisfy the criteria can be exempted from work if there is a substantial risk that working would harm their health. There is no equivalent provision in the rules for personal independence payment (Pip), the disability benefit that would serve as the passport to the health-related top-up.

The government’s proposals leave many questions unaddressed: about people too ill to work who don’t meet the criteria for Pip; people on contributory benefit, rather than universal credit; people with short-term conditions, not covered by Pip. Confusions and omissions abound. I can think of better uses for white paper.

In addition, I am told that the ESA regulations of 2008 included sections 29 and 35, which allowed GPs to deem a patient ‘unfit for work’. That is no longer included in the government’s new proposal.

Put it all together and we see that decisions on whether a person should be seeking work or not are to be removed from anybody with specialist understanding of the issues and denied judicial oversight.

People who may be endangered by being forced to seek, or go to, work will have their future decided by unqualified civil servants and will have no opportunity to seek reconsideration.

This is not an improvement. It is an escalation of the danger to the UK’s most vulnerable people.

Expect many deaths – and when they happen, blame Hunt.


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Labour grandee calls for abolition of the House of Lords

Gordon Brown has published a document calling for a wide range of reforms of the way the UK is governed, including better tax-raising powers for devolved governments and abolishing the House of Lords, to be replaced with an elected constitutional guardian.

Watch:

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As others see us: ‘racism is as British as a cup of tea’

Before you point out that tea comes from India and China – isn’t it ironic?

Here’s the UK’s first professor of Black Studies, Kehinde Andrews, talking about the differences in perception of the late Queen Elizabeth II within his own originally-Jamaican family, and concluding that the Monarchy is a symbol of white supremacy that should not be mourned, but rather abolished.

He says this is the perfect time to discuss whether and when the Monarchy should end – which is also ironic, considering the number of people who have been arrested for voicing their objection to it – and indeed the larger number who have been physically attacked for doing the same.

Here’s the clip:

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Bristol votes to abolish its elected mayor

Marvin Rees: Bristol’s elected mayor must hand over to a committee system in 2024.

Voters in Bristol have decided to abolish their elected mayor in favour of a committee system in which decisions are made by groups of councillors.

Incumbent Marvin Rees, of the Labour Party, will continue to hold the post until 2024 when he will hand over to the new system.

The BBC is reporting that the always-controversial mayoral system was undermined when Labour lost its majority on the city council, allowing Greens, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to co-operate to bring about a referendum, and they then campaigned hard to get voters to support their call for change.

That is not This Writer’s understanding of the situation because it suggests that those other parties nudged voters into doing what they wanted.

I’m originally from Bristol, and the impression I’ve had from my contacts there is that residents were unhappy that Mr Rees was making decisions unilaterally, that were often the opposite of what the majority of people wanted.

It was undemocratic.

That’s the drawback – or potential drawback – of having local authorities run by elected mayors.

With that system spreading across the country as a result of Tory government policy, it will be interesting to see how effective Bristol’s return to committee decision-making becomes.

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#ReesMogg is facing #sleaze #investigation by watchdog he tried to scrap

Shifty: Jacob Rees-Mogg is facing an investigation into his business practices outside Parliament – by a Standards Commissioner he tried to have abolished. Now, why would he have wanted to do that?

Karma comes around quickly these days, doesn’t it?

Remember how Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to shut down Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone after she found Owen Paterson guilty of corruption?

Now Ms Stone is investigating claims that he took £6 million of loans from his company, Saliston Ltd, between 2018 and 2020 – and failed to make an “open and frank” disclosure of them in the register of members’ interests.

The details are here:

It’s highly suspicious, isn’t it?

Rees-Mogg tried to have the Standards Commissioner’s role abolished, and is now being investigated by the Standards Commissioner.

Was he corruptly acting on his own behalf, rather than (as he undoubtedly claimed) in the interests of justice?

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Gavin Williamson scrapped dozens of protections for children – unlawfully

Williamson the dunce: I know it’s a duff image but it reflects this MP’s abilities so I’ll keep using it as long as he continues to be a dunce.

Tory Education Secretary Gavin Williamson stripped children in care of 65 legal protections illegally, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Judges said he should have consulted the Children’s Commissioner and other stakeholder organisations before inflicting such a “substantial and wide-ranging” “bonfire of children’s rights”.

The regulations affected included legal timescales for social-worker visits to children in care, six-monthly reviews of children’s welfare, independent scrutiny of children’s homes and senior officer oversight of adoption decision-making for babies and children.

The protections affected also cover disabled children having short breaks and children in care sent many miles away from home.

It seems Williamson did conduct a consultation but was selective about whose opinions he sought – adoption agencies, private providers and local government bodies.

But organisations representing the children and young people who were to be affected by the changes were not consulted and the Children’s Commissioner only found out about the changes after they had been forced through Parliament through the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) regulations in April.

We are told that all of the changes were temporary and have now expired.

We have yet to hear – may never hear – how many children were harmed as a result of them.

Williamson has been told to run proper consultations in future.

But will he? And doesn’t this simply reignite the debate over whether Conservatives should be allowed anywhere near children in care.

Source: Education secretary ‘unlawfully scrapped children’s rights’ – BBC News

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Selfish MP calls for Wales to be abolished so he can visit the beach – and Tories can take control

Daniel Kawczynski: you can tell just by looking at him that he’s another Tory berk.

What a selfish, entitled Tory git.

And the people of Shrewsbury have elected him as their MP continually over the last 15 years, with an increasing majority every time. What possessed them?

Daniel Kawczynski, Tory MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, has called for the Welsh Parliament to be abolished so he can visit the beach.

Wales has coronavirus-related restrictions that are different from those in England. In Wales, people are not allowed to travel away from their local area and most cannot, therefore, visit the beach; nor can English people travel into Wales to do so.

In any event, Kawczynski is a fool because his nearest beach is in the Wirral.

His words suggest he is trying to use the virus and the lockdown – that his prime minister Boris Johnson imposed, let’s not forget – to rekindle the debate about whether the UK countries should have devolved Parliaments.

“I am sorry, but the time has come to reach out as Conservatives to large numbers of like-minded citizens in Wales who like us believe in one system for both nations,” he said.

“We must work towards another referendum to scrap the Welsh Assembly and return to one political system for both nations – a political union between England and Wales.”

He means he wants the Tories to carry out a political power-grab and take control of Wales, so they can impose their disastrous coronavirus policies there and kill thousands more Welsh people.

Fortunately, his efforts have resulted in him being made to look the fool that he is:

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Labour announces it will abolish DWP and re-establish DSS – in Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency

I used to work at the Department for Social Security, many years ago, and I have friends from those days who are what you may consider experts on developments in the benefit system since then.

They say the problems with the Department for Work and Pensions, which replaced it, was that it took too much of its ethos from the Employment Service and those parts of the Department of Education and Employment that were also merged into the new department.

Apparently these organisations did not understand that some people simply cannot be shoehorned into any old job that happens to be available – especially if they have long-term illnesses and/or disabilities; it simply wasn’t part of their culture.

My friends said there was no way to make the service work for benefit claimants with such conditions while it was administered by the DWP.

They insisted that the only way to provide a service that worked for the people, rather than against them, was to restore the DSS.

So it is hugely to Labour’s credit that it has announced a plan to scrap the DWP and bring back the DSS – and the decision to reveal this policy in the Chingford constituency of Iain Duncan Smith, architect of so much misery for sick and otherwise-vulnerable people, was a masterstroke.

Addressing a rally in Chingford and Woodford Green, the Labour leader will say: “It’s time to end this cruelty. So today I can tell you that Labour will scrap Universal Credit. And we will replace the Department for Work and Pensions with a Department for Social Security – this will provide real security.

[Source: Labour will scrap ‘inhumane’ Universal Credit, Corbyn vows – LabourList]

You don’t have to look far to find hundreds of stories of people suffering because of the unmitigated disaster of Universal Credit. Single-mum Lauren and her baby who went without food, or Kirsty who had to walk 13 miles to and from work because she couldn’t afford the bus fare, or Philip who tragically committed suicide earlier this year while waiting for a Universal Credit payment.

Over half of the people claiming Universal Credit are going without food and losing sleep over fears about their finances, according to Citizens Advice, and the demand for food banks has surged in areas where families have been relying on the Universal Credit system the longest. Some women are even taking up sex work to make ends meet.

The next Labour government will scrap Universal Credit and replace it with a social security system designed to end poverty, based on principles of dignity and universalism. The next Labour government will take action immediately and end the worst aspects of Universal Credit and abolish the two-child limit, which under the Tories is set to push up to 300,000 more children into poverty by 2024, and end the five-week wait.

Labour will abolish the five-week wait and introduce an interim payment after two weeks, based on half an estimated monthly entitlement.

Labour will immediately suspend the Tories’ punitive sanctions regime that has eroded trust in the social security system and people’s right to support. Instead, we’ll replace it with a new system that emphasises tailored support, rather than meting out rigid requirements and punishments when they are not met.

[Source: Universal Credit has destroyed people’s lives – it’s time to scrap it – LabourList]

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#AbolishTheMonarchy – backlash against Queen for meekly rubber-stamping Johnson’s Parliamentary shutdown

The Queen: By backing Dictator Johnson against the people, she may have signed up for the abolition of the monarchy.

The Queen is back-pedalling hard over her agreement to prorogue Parliament for Boris Johnson.

According to the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, she has never refused to accept the advice of her ministers and always acted on precedent.

So when Jacob Rees-Mogg, for Dictator Johnson, demanded that she prorogue Parliament during a Privy Council meeting yesterday, he said she would have felt “boxed in”.

He added: “She and her advisors, I have little doubt, will be frankly resentful of the way this has been done and will be concerned at the headlines which say ‘Queen suspends Parliament.”

Rightly so – because, as current slang has it, the optics are terrible.

People are saying democracy has been denied by an unelected monarch acting on the wish of an unelected prime minister.

And they know she could have stopped him:

And it has focused the anger of the people on the monarchy:

That’s the nub of the matter, isn’t it?

And when this crisis is all over, with Dictator Johnson and his cronies banished to the waste-bin of history, it seems likely the people will want to seek assurances that this can never happen again.

We will need checks and balances to ensure that no unelected head of state can ever again deny us our right to representation.

It seems that, with a few penstrokes, the Queen may have put an end to the British Royalty.

Source: Queen and her advisers ‘resentful’ over how Boris Johnson handled prorogation – Mirror Online