Tag Archives: encourage

If you’re long-term sick, brace yourself: Labour wants to send you back to work

Is Labour actually trolling people on long-term sickness and disability benefits?

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth has given a speech about “encouraging” people with medical conditions off state benefits and into work – at the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank founded by Iain Duncan Smith, the former WP secretary whose ‘reforms’ are believed to have killed off thousands of sick and disabled people.

He said Labour would abolish the requirement for claimants to re-take the hated Work Capability Assessment if they take a job that doesn’t work out for them and have to quit.

A Labour government would let them return to claiming benefits without reassessment if they do so within a year.

That’s all very well – but how much pressure would a Labour government pile on people claiming those benefits, to take jobs in the first place?

Read more here in the BBC article, here.

Notice there are no comments from anybody representing disabled people or those with long-term illnesses.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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Islamophobic crime is on the rise – because Tories support it? [WARNING: VIOLENT/DISTRESSING VIDEO]

Divisive: The row over Boris Johnson’s comments about women who wear the burqa looking like “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” has uncovered a deep vein of hatred for Muslims in the Conservative Party.

The manufactured anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party continues to shield Conservatives from justifiable criticism of their own Islamophobia.

Consider this incident, reported on Twitter but not (to the best of my knowledge) in the Tory-supporting press.

https://twitter.com/TheFieldMuslim/status/1039288979642822656

Sickening. Mrs Mike asked where the parents of the perpetrators were and why they weren’t around to stop this attack.

Answer: I don’t know. Perhaps they are Conservatives who support Islamophobic violence.

The backlash has been predictable. Aleesha, who tweets on politics and Muslim issues, makes the obvious connection between incitement to hate Islamic citizens of the UK and the violence it encourages:

And Aaron links this violence directly with the national media:

Why is it allowed? Ask Baroness Warsi, who was no good as a Cabinet member and is now being systematically ignored by her fellow Tories and the Tory-supporting press – for raising the issue of Islamophobia.

In the tweets below, she correctly identifies the problem – that her fellow Tories are happy to get on the anti-Muslim bandwagon because, thanks to the divisive attitude they have encouraged in the press, it makes them more popular with the public.

Speaking out against “Muslim bashing” leads to a sharp drop in popularity, as indicated by a poll on a pro-Tory website:

The ConservativeHome article states: “Finally, there are two particularly large losses in the table, which appear to be linked. Brandon Lewis, who was as high as +46.6 in June, loses a further 31.2 points this month, falling from -2.7 to -33.9. That is a brutal verdict from Party members on their chairman, and seems to be directly linked to his handling of the Boris Johnson burka row and the ensuing investigation. Similarly, Ruth Davidson’s normally quite unassailable rating has suffered, dropping from +54.4 to +33.8, I suspect due to her intervention in the same dispute, when she compared wearing a burkha to wearing a cross.”

The conclusion is clear:

If there is a problem with racism and sectarianism, it has its home in the Conservative Party. And we are all being distracted from it with spurious claims about Labour.

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Media propaganda exposed: Support this complaint against Channel 5

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Well done Carole Ford, who has complained to Ofcom about Channel 5’s misuse of the word “skiver” when referring to people convicted of benefit fraud in the programme Sick Note Skivers Exposed.

In the programme, broadcast at 8pm on July 15, she explains: “All the cases referred to in the programme were cases of criminal fraud. Despite this, the show continually used the term ‘skiver’ interchangeably with ‘fraudster’.

“In one case, the narrator said that the ‘skiver’ was found guilty of seven counts of fraud by the court and the judge told him he was a ‘common criminal’.

“The show had nothing to do with monitoring sick absence, which was only occasionally referred to.

“On the Department [for] Work and Pensions’ own figures, benefit fraud is a negligible 0.7 per cent. The effect will be to encourage public animosity to sick/disabled people. I contend that this is a misrepresentation of the subject of sick absence from work and/or fraudulent claiming of disability benefits.”

If you wish to support Carole’s complaint, Ofcom can be contacted via this link.

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Bedroom tax is not the way to cut the housing benefit bill

They've started: Vox Political has spent the last year warning the UK that the bedroom tax will lead to unfair evictions - now they are starting to happen.

They’ve started: Vox Political has spent the last year warning the UK that the bedroom tax will lead to unfair evictions – now they are starting to happen.

Before you all hit the ‘comment’ button to say the headline is stating the blindingly obvious – of course it is. But some of our public servants just don’t seem to get it!

Today we have learned about the first eviction directly caused by the bedroom tax making it impossible for a person to pay their rent.

Mother-of-two Lorraine Fraser, who has scoliosis, arthritis and is a wheelchair user, is being kicked out of her home by Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council, for failing to pay £248 in arrears.

The event will be considered a double victory by the Department for Work and Pensions. The eviction will be blamed on a council run by an opposing political party, even though it is being forced to push through changes imposed on it by the Conservative-led Westminster government (the majority of people will not see this). And it will remove another disabled person from the benefit books in a way that will not be blamed on the DWP (even though disabled people were supposed to be protected against the effects of the bedroom tax).

This is the sort of dishonesty that will go down in history as the Coalition government’s trademark.

It may also be the reason why grassroots members of the Liberal Democrats have tabled a motion to go before their party’s conference, demanding a review of the policy.

The motion states that most areas outside large cities do not have the diversity of social housing necessary to make moving into a smaller property, locally, a viable option. In the words of Lib Dem councillor Robert Brown, it is “damaging and unfair”.

It is.

It was always meant to be.

And it’s a little late for Liberal Democrats to be reconsidering their part in making it happen.

However, there are constructive arguments to be made. For example, the government has always said the aim is to get the housing benefit bill down. If that’s the case, then it should be encouraging people to get off it – and the best possibility for that lies with working people.

Indeed, government policy is to encourage working people to seek more hours of work, or higher pay, at every opportunity – and if they achieved these aims, it would be possible to wipe huge amounts of spending off the housing benefit bill.

But that isn’t happening. Instead, we have an environment in which top bosses pillage their companies, taking home 133 times as much as the average wage while their workers have to supplement the pittances they earn with taxpayer-funded benefits.

That isn’t right.

After all, the economy is said to be improving and – while that has nothing at all to do with any efforts of the Coalition government; George Osborne is a fool – every working person should benefit from the increased wealth that we are told is now available.

Perhaps it’s time to ask comedy prime minister David Cameron when he’s going to ‘encourage’ (he likes that word) business bosses to pass the benefits of their success down the line.

When Hell freezes over, perhaps?

No need for Ballsbornism, or: Who’s afraid of the big bad spending review?

Don't be complacent: It may seem as though the Coalition government that has blighted the UK for the past three years is marching willingly to its own demise - but that is by no means certain. We must all be vigilant against the apathy that allows them to spread their poisonous views and convince impressionable people that they are speaking common sense ideas that are held by the majority.

Don’t be complacent: It may seem as though the Coalition government that has blighted the UK for the past three years is marching willingly to its own demise – but that is by no means certain. We must all be vigilant against the apathy that allows them to spread their poisonous views and convince impressionable people that they are speaking common sense ideas that are held by the majority, when we all know that this is a falsehood.

I’m not!

So Gideon George Osborne is announcing £11.5 billion of cuts to be implemented from April 2015 to the end of March 2016 – so what? There will be a general election the following month and he would be delusional if he thinks his party will win.

Ed Balls has said Labour would match the Coalition’s spending totals for that financial year, but we should not be fooled into believing this means Labour would make exactly the same choices as a Conservative or Conservative-led government. It won’t.

For example, Coalition welfare reform policies currently cost us all £19 billion per year. That’s right – it costs us money to knock all those poor, sick and disabled people off-benefit, because we pay private companies to carry out the government’s dirty work. Not only are they doing a very poor job, but they are also charging us a fortune for it.

Ed Balls could cancel the lot and, working with a decent Labour Work and Pensions secretary (not Liam Byrne), install a new system aimed at the causes of unemployment, sickness and disability, and still pay less than the current government.

You see, Tories aren’t really about saving money for the taxpayer. They’re about making poor people pay taxes to support rich people who don’t need them.

That’s just one – extremely oversimplified – example of why I don’t think we have to live in a country dominated by ‘Ballsbornism’, even though I coined the expression earlier today in a response to a comment.

‘Ballsbornism’ implies a consensus economic policy, much like the ‘Butskellism’ of the 1950s that married the ideas of Tory Rab Butler and Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell, and recent announcements by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have stirred up fears that the Labour front bench has capitulated to the Tory economic viewpoint.

This blog has been part of that, and I make no apology for it. Like all political movements, Labour must be made to see that it cannot take the easy way out. People’s lives – no, I’m not making this up – depend on their decisions and those lives will be on their conscience if they cock up the system (as Osborne has been doing) or make lazy decisions.

The Tory-led Coalition likes to say its policies on benefits “encourage” people to sign off (and goes on to suggest that they then get jobs, although the evidence is overwhelmingly that they end up with no form of income at all); if we want better for our future, then the people of this country must similarly “encourage” Labour into policies that will genuinely improve our situation.

I have outlined my opinion of what those policies should be, in a previous article, so need not rehash them here.

And let’s remind ourselves of the absolute lunacy that could be foisted on us if the Conservatives come back into power: Tory backbencher Peter Bone, alongside similar-minded nutters, has compiled an alternative Queen’s Speech (or is it an alternative to the alternative, as Labour already produced one?).

This suggests restoring the death penalty for criminals (we all know this leads to injustice); privatising the BBC (more money for rich Tories who don’t deserve it, along with a diminished and politically-biased national broadcasting service), abolishing human rights legislation (to the huge detriment of all citizens and working people who rely on it, as discussed many times on this blog), and renaming the August Bank Holiday as ‘Margaret Thatcher Day’ (an insult to everybody whose lives were blighted by her policies).

Bone, whose bizarre pronouncements create semi-regular moments of comedy during Prime Minister’s Questions, told the BBC he was “putting forward Conservative policies” that would be “very helpful” to David Cameron.

This is an elected Conservative member of Parliament, remember – one of several who have drafted these proposals. And let’s not forget the Free Enterprise group of Tory right-wingers, whose book Britannia Unchained suggests (wrongly) that British workers are among the laziest in the world, and anyone unemployed for more than six months should do 30 hours’ community service and lose 10 per cent of their benefits, as if being forced out of work by (Tory) employers was a crime!

So let Osborne have his moment, when he announces his review on Wednesday. Then reflect on where you’ll be putting your vote in 2015 and enjoy the prospect that he will have wasted his breath.