Jeremy Hunt: this image is from his financial statement last autumn but the suit is the same, apparently.
This is just to provide a little depth to the Budget coverage yesterday:
£9 billion in tax cuts to corporations, £6 billion cuts to fuel duty & at least £2 billion tax cuts for pensions of highest earners & yet nothing from Hunt for teachers, lecturers, nurses, junior doctors & health workers & civil servants striking against low pay today. Appalling
Does that give you a clearer picture? There will probably be more of this over the next few days, weeks and months.
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Sanction centre: people paying back debts to the benefit system are being penalised for being poor by the current Tory cost of living crisis because their situation forces them into the hands of high-interest doorstep lenders who will make their situation worse. Isn’t the benefit system supposed to keep people out of debt?
It is amazing that this has to be spelt out for people but, with us all having to deal with the Tory squeeze on our incomes, this may have evaded a few people.
The cost of living crisis has hit the poorest people and families worst, with people on benefits suffering the worst after 10 long years of punitive Tory cut after punitive Tory cut.
The Resolution Foundation has already pointed out that the poorest households are facing a higher rate of inflation than richer people.
This is because the rising cost of home services (like energy bills), transportation and food is having a greater effect on people with less income and fewer savings to pay for them; it’s not rocket science.
So the headline inflation rate for the lowest tenth of families is around 10.3 per cent, while it is 8.7 per cent for the richest tenth. This is the greatest disparity since cost of living data began to be collected at the start of this century.
Now the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has produced a study showing that a decade of social security cuts, underfunding, and punitive government debt collection terms are pushing low-income families – particularly benefit claimants – into financial crisis.
In many situations, people were forced to choose between feeding their loved ones and making their rent payments on time, as described in the study. 2.3 million homes had already gone without both.
Low-income individuals have resorted to borrowing, adding £12.5 billion in new debt in 2022 out of a total of £22 billion. They owe high-cost lenders, such as doorstep lenders and illegal loan sharks, a total of £3.5 billion, which jeopardises their future financial stability.
Families are already having a difficult time making their payments. Since October of last year, total personal debt arrears have more than quadrupled from £1.8 billion to £3.8 billion, and JRF anticipates that these arrears will continue to grow as interest rates rise.
Unsettlingly, the research discovered that the government is making life extremely difficult for people by exploiting the benefits system to collect some debts, sometimes at exorbitant rates. Families receiving assistance without these “debt deductions” suffer less than those who are obliged to have them.
JRF has suggested a simple way to ease the burden on these claimants: allow them to repay their debt more slowly while the cost of living crisis is ongoing, rather than cutting their income by a quarter every month.
And Universal Credit entitlements should increase to ensure that – at a bare minimum – people are able to afford the essentials when they fall on hard times.
This is, of course, entirely logical. The benefit system is intended to ensure that people don’t fall into debt at all – not simply to make them prey to loan sharks at a slower speed.
But we’re seeing no announcements about this from Rishi Sunak or Therese Coffey.
All we’ve had are big headlines about payouts to everybody, including £400 for every house – meaning people who own multiple dwellings receive that amount many times, in comparison with the poor who only have one.
This Site has stated it before: it’s a big subsidy for the rich. And the fact that the poor are being driven to loan sharks makes it all the more obscene.
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This is brilliant from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC):
Here are the details:
The government isn’t listening to what people are saying when we say Stop The Cuts to Universal Credit and give #20MoreForAll
So we need to start an #AudioRiot to make them hear us.
On Tuesday 28th September 11:30am Kings Cross Station (Courtyard in front of station) Euston Road London N1 9AL
Join our #AudioRiot and make some noise about the devastating changes to benefits which will have a huge impact on millions of peoples lives, including disabled people.
Bring everything you can that makes noise.
DPAC will be providing materials for you to take part too – but don’t let that stop you bringing:
Drums
Whistles
Cymbals
Bells
Klaxons
Loudspeakers
Everything you can!
Make some noise about the £20 cut to Universal Credit coming in September.
Make some noise about the reintroduction of sanctions and conditionality returning in October.
Make some noise about the discrimination against those on legacy benefits who never got the £20 to begin with.
Make some noise about the minimum income floor, the local area housing allowance and so much more
Make some noise about the disgraceful state of benefits in the UK overall.
This action will round off a series of events to raise awareness about the coming changes to benefits.
These include
Saturday 25th September 2021
Local Actions Nationwide
We are calling on all DPAC members, local groups & allies to mobilise is their areas to create an #AudioRiot of your own to resist the coming cuts and invite others to join the campaign.
Create your own orchestra with homemade instruments, create your own playlists and play them through phones/speakers, form a samba band – whatever works for you!
Send us details of your planned action, and we will promote it through our website, email network and social media channels.
And
Tuesday 28th September 2021 09:15 – 10:00 am
Vigil in support of those taking a Judicial Review of potential discrimination by DWP towards disabled people on legacy benefits.
Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2A 2LL
NEAREST STEP FREE STATION: Westminster
Online action
Details to follow
DPAC is aware that many of us in our community are still isolated, shielding, or even just protecting themselves and their loved ones; and cautious about taking part in public activism.
This is no barrier to taking part!! There will be online actions you can take
However, as our collective experience through since Covid entered our lives has taught us – disabled people need to have a central role in the discussions about how we build a future for us all that has a place for us all. That begins with defending what we have and building on it.
We have seen under successive governments of all stripes that the only way we can have any chance to secure that central role is to oppose government policies in the streets. We have been demonised, targeted and brutalised by attacks to our rights , services, living standards & working conditions for decades.
It is only by mobilising our community and allies in the face of theses attacks that we have been able to raise awareness and resist them.
And, that will be how we will continue to progress from here. With a view to reshaping the world to meet our aspirations.
Today – July 1 – conditionality and sanctions return to the UK’s benefit system.
This means the two million people who signed up for Universal Credit because of the Covid-19 crisis will now be expected to show they are looking for work, and will be sanctioned if they fail to do so.
For the first time, they will experience what – for example – people with disabilities have suffered under the Conservatives for the last 10 years.
Some people are about to be rudely awakened from their previous complacency, I reckon!
Perhaps they would like to take part in this national day of action, organised by one of the larger representative organisations for people with disabilities, DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) under its banner of the Scrap Universal Credit Alliance (SUCA).
Here’s what they’re about and what you can do:
There is now overwhelming evidence of both the serious harm that the sanctions regime inflicts on the most disadvantaged members of society and the fact that sanctions are punitive and counter-productive to the aim of getting people off benefits and into work.
Join the Scrap Universal Credit Alliance in our demands to:
Write to your MP asking them to put pressure on the government not to restart conditionality and sanctions.
We encourage people to write to their MPs.
Write to your local paper
If you think you may be affected by conditionality restarting and putting your safety at risk because you still need to shield, it may be worth gathering what medical evidence you have (for example if you received a letter or correspondence from the NHS telling you to continue shielding until the end of July) and pro-actively sending it in to your job centre/adding it in to your Universal Credit journal. It is difficult to know what to do given the complete absence of information from the government.
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Jill Woolley: This former NHS worker, who has dementia, was forced to wait six hours for treatment on a trolley inches away from overworked NHS staff. That is what Tory cuts have done to the UK’s once-proud health service.
A dementia-sufferer taken by ambulance to A&E at an over-stretched hospital endured six hours on a trolley as Tory austerity continues to wreck the NHS.
Photos show 88-year-old Jill Woolley – who worked for the health service as a doctor’s secretary – with other frail and elderly patients waiting side-by-side on trolleys crammed into the department.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth described Jill’s visit to A&E as “heartbreaking”. He added: “She should never have been treated like this. Boris Johnson should be utterly ashamed.
“Sadly, this is not a one-off case. This is happening to thousands of patients all the time. This is what happens from cutting 15,000 hospital beds, starving the NHS of cash and failing to recruit doctors, nurses and staff.
“This is not a winter crisis, it is a Tory-made crisis.”
And it is a crisis that will continue as long as we have a Conservative government.
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These snow effigies of homeless people were created in 2018 to demonstrate that rough sleepers were freezing to death [Image: @TrevorCoultMC on Twitter].
A record 726 homeless people died in 2018 due to Conservative government policies – and Tory mouthpieces Therese Coffey and Danny Finkelstein are still pretending their party cares.
The novice Work and Pensions Secretary and the former Tory speechwriter professed outrage at claims that the Conservatives were not compassionate (remember “compassionate Conservatism”?) and didn’t care in a stomach-turning display of hypocrisy on the BBC’s Politics Live.
Ms Coffey tried to blame the 22 per cent increase in deaths since 2017 on drug use. But why do people take drugs? They do it to escape the hell of their existence – a hell into which they have been forced by Tory policies.
Universal Credit, the Bedroom Tax, and cuts to sickness and disability benefits have all been engineered to make it impossible for people to afford to pay for their accommodation and to eat.
Have no doubt about this – the Tories have been deliberately levering poor people out of their homes. The evidence is in the policies and in their result.
If they really were trying to solve homelessness – as they vowed to do in 2017 – there would have been a 100 per cent fall in homelessness-related deaths, not a 22 per cent increase.
A record number of homeless people died last year, marking the biggest increase in deaths since reporting began, official data shows.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show an estimated 726 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2018. This is a 22% rise from 2017 and the highest surge since the data was first collected in 2013.
Drug-related deaths saw the biggest increase, rising by 55% since 2017.
Charities called for an urgent investigation into the deaths of vulnerable people, saying it was heartbreaking and that they should not die “unnoticed and unaccounted for”.
The mouthpieces rushed to cover their political rears on Politics Live, provoking a predictable reaction from This Writer:
I see @theresecoffey is on #PoliticsLive, talking utter drivel claiming that @Conservatives have a "caring" benefit policy. They have sent hundreds of thousands of people to their graves – gleefully.
Now Danny Finkelstein is taking issue with the claim that the @Conservatives don't care and aren't compassionate. Let's be clear: THEY DON'T. THEY AREN'T. They hate poor people and love torturing them by withholding benefits – until they die. THEY LOVE IT. #PoliticsLive
Even The Guardian‘s Helen Pidd was finding excuses for the Tories, with a claim that defied reason:
Who is this silly guest on #PoliticsLive saying homeless people are dying because of problems that started "in the womb"? Homelessness has risen because of #Tories and that's why the deaths have risen.
And the simple fact is that deaths will continue to rise until homelessness becomes an automatic death sentence.
I said that was the plan when the Conservatives announced their plan to halve homelessness by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027 – and this is more evidence that I was right.
The answer to homelessness, and the problems that come with it, have been known for years – give these people a place to live! That would relieve burdens on the health service and also on the police and justice system – as has been proved in Utah.
The Conservatives know this but refuse to take the appropriate action.
Therefore we may conclude that they are deliberately driving people to their deaths.
And there’s only one way to stop it – unless you are one of the thugs who consider rough sleepers to be targets for violence and would rather pour petrol on them and set them alight than help. And I don’t think Vox Political readers are thugs.
We need a Labour government, as soon as possible – or these Tory policy deaths will only increase.
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If you think Department for Work and Pensions staff in Wolverhampton, Walsall and Stockport are striking over the appalling state of the so-called ‘benefit’ they are employed to enforce… think again.
They’re striking to get an improvement in their own working conditions.
Apparently people being forced to suffer because of the conditions forced on them will just have to fend for themselves. Charming!
According to Welfare Weekly, “Universal Credit staff working at two centres in Walsall and Wolverhampton will take two further days of strike action this week, after losing patience with the government in their campaign for more staff and better working conditions.
“The walk-out will take place between Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29, after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to meet the demands of workers.
“Staff walked out in March 2019, accusing the DWP of treating them with “utter contempt”.”
So they should understand how UC claimants feel, then.
The Mirror has said the strike will be joined by workers at a call centre in Stockport.
Organiser the PCS union has said the action has been motivated by cuts, workload increases and the victimisation of union representatives.
It says this is making it impossible for its members to properly support UC claimants.
The DWP, on the other hand, has said staffing levels are sufficient but it will monitor the situation and hold regular meetings with the union, in order to resolve the issues.
Meanwhile, UC claimants will undoubtedly continue to suffer with benefit claims rejected on false pretences. Will the DWP try to use employees’ claims of overwork as an excuse?
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Yes, it’s time for the ‘liar liar’ image again: Theresa May is being economical with the truth regarding her ‘Stronger Towns Fund’ – again – it seems.
What do you think will happen to anything created via Theresa May’s ‘Stronger Towns Fund’?
Mrs May has announced that she is giving £1.6 billion to deprived towns whose electorate voted for Brexit – apparently independently of whether their predominantly-Labour MPs support her Brexit deal, in a bid to avoid criticisms that it is a bribe.
Big deal.
It isn’t as much as the EU funding that these areas are going to lose; it doesn’t cover the amount that the Tories have cut from local budgets; and it is to be spread over a six-year period, meaning the amount likely to be spent per area is a pittance.
It isn’t even as if ordinary local – poor – people will have a say in what happens with what cash does become available to them.
The money will be allocated according to the wishes of Local Enterprise Partnerships – committees composed of local councillors and business representatives.
And what will happen to whatever results from this funding?
People have been suggesting capital projects such as new sports centres could result.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I know what has happened to sports centres here in Mid Wales after the Tories took over in Westminster and cut funding to local authorities:
They’ve been sold off into private hands.
So I tend towards the belief that Mrs May is leading us all down the garden path.
It seems this is just another way of handing huge profit-making cash cows over to rich private businesspeople at the expense of the poor.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg and his nanny: The parents should take the blame.
Remember Tory darling Jacob Rees-Mogg’s appearance on Good Morning Britain, when he tried to justify his opposition to gay marriage and abortion – even in cases where pregnancy has occurred after rape – by referring to his Catholic Christian values?
Here’s the clip again:
Well, Iain Rowan of Sunderland had the perfect answer.
Writing in a newspaper (the name of which I don’t know because it isn’t mentioned in the following tweet, he stated:
For clarity, that’s: “Rees-Mogg justifies his opposition to gay marriage and abortion even in cases of rape on the basis of his Christian beliefs (Report, 7 September). So where is his opposition to welfare cuts on the grounds that Jesus went out of his way to demonstrate his compassion for the poor and the lame? When Jesus says ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, how does that fit with Rees-Mogg’s consistently voting for military intervention? Where are his statements on executive pay, reminding other MPs that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? I thought being a committed Christian meant following the teachings of Jesus, rather than standing at the pick-and-mix counter in a sweetshop, only choosing the fizzy snakes.”
Strong words – and accurate.
And you know what?
If you take them from “Where is his opposition to welfare cuts”, they could be used to apply just as easily to that other well-known Tory “Christian” – Theresa May.
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This Writer knows a couple of people who have been victims of stalkers – both women.
Both have withstood their ordeal well enough – at least if one is judging by outward appearances. But asking the right questions revealed that at least one of them is having to deal with long-term psychological issues as a result – and isn’t coping very well.
In both cases, the police were a dead loss.
Perhaps it is hardly surprising. Funding cuts by the minority Conservative government mean that there are more than 21,000 fewer police officers in England and Wales than in 2010. That cut alone is equivalent to 18 times the number of police officers in This Writer’s force area (Dyfed Powys).
The police officers who remain are said to be under extreme stress – so much that some are being driven towards suicide.
So they don’t investigate stalking properly, even though 94 per cent of murders are said to have involved stalking of some kind.
The money that is no longer being spent on policing has been turned into tax breaks for rich people and donors to the Conservative Party; the UK as a whole does not benefit from them in any way.
So much for the Party of Law and Order. Under the Conservatives, you are less safe than you have ever been.
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust estimates there are about 1.1 million cases every year in which victims are harassed, intimidated or made to feel unsafe by a stalker – many of which are never reported to the police.
In 2015/16, there were just 753 prosecutions for stalking offences, with 529 ending in a conviction – around 0.04 per cent of the total number of estimated incidents.
a study by the charity, set up in memory of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared without trace more than 30 years ago, revealed stalking behaviour is present in the background of a huge number of cases in which women are killed by men.
Of 358 murders examined during a three-year period from 2012 until 2014, the killer was found to have engaged in some form of stalking in 94 per cent.
Labour MP and former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said cuts to emergency service budgets made it harder for the authorities to tackle incidents.
“The police need the resources, capabilities and training to prevent and prosecute this crime. At the moment this simply isn’t the case – and victims are being let down.”
If you suspect you are, or know someone who may be a victim of stalking, call the helpline on 0808 802 0300 or visit the Suzy Lamplugh Trust website for more information.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
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