Tag Archives: loss

Government loses infected blood vote | Politics Live

Blood: As many as 30,000 people became severely ill after being given factor VIII blood products contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C imported from the US in the 1970s and 80s. Others were exposed to tainted blood through transfusions or after childbirth. On average one person is dying every four days, with approximately 3,000 haemophiliacs having died to date.

The UK’s Tory government has lost a vote on a plan to set up a compensation scheme for the victims of the NHS infected blood scandal.

The plan was to compensate victims of the scandal – but to wait until an inquiry into the scandal has concluded before doing so.

But in the first loss of a whipped vote for the Tory government since the general election of 2019, rebel Conservatives voted with Labour and the SNP to establish a body to administer the compensation scheme within three months of the Bill passing into law.

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The vote was discussed by Tory Tim Laughton and Labour’s Rupa Huq on the BBC’s Politics Live show.

This Site has discussed the infected blood scandal on multiple occasions over the years – most recently in this article from two and a half years ago.

In it, discussing compensation, I wondered “if any of the victims will see a single brass farthing before they die”.

How said that, so long after those words were written, these people are still waiting.


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MP severance pay to double as hundreds of Tories face losing their seats. Coincidence?

Okay, it’s not a backhander… in fact it looks like a bung to Tory MPs facing ejection from Parliament – in plain view of the entire United Kingdom.

Is anybody not calling ‘foul’ on this one?

Here are the headlines:

The details, from The Guardian:

Departing MPs will get bigger payouts for winding up their offices, with the sum doubling to £17,300, the UK parliament expenses watchdog has announced.

MPs who lose their seats or choose not to stand will be paid for four months after leaving office to enable them to wind up their casework and other duties – doubling from the current period of eight weeks.

MPs who lose their seats also qualify for “loss of office payments” – at twice the rate of statutory redundancy pay – and the winding-up payments come on top of this.

They have to demonstrate that they are using their time to work on winding up their offices. MPs’ staff can also qualify for such payments. Ministers get different severance payments for loss of office, with a cabinet minister receiving £16,876.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) made the change after reviewing arrangements for payments following the next election… prompted by the boundary changes and end of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2022.

Some doubt the sincerity of IPSA’s behaviour:

… and This Writer is one of them.

I’d say IPSA has just delivered proof that it is not fit for purpose.


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Economists please note: high inflation may be A POLITICAL CHOICE

This is fine: the image above was originally about climate change but it may be applied equally well to Rishi Sunak’s attitude to the economy. Political policy in the UK for the past 40 years and more has been to impoverish you, together with all the poor people who voted for him and his ilk, thereby allowing it to happen.

All the Tory talk about getting inflation down seems to have confused some people who have failed to consider that high inflation may actually be Conservative government policy.

Look at the usually-excellent Simon Wren-Lewis’s latest Mainly Macro piece, in which he takes issue with left-wing opinions about his current diagnosis of the inflation problem.

He reckons the answer is for private sector wage rises to come down, probably by way of reducing economic demand which will lead to a reduction in the workforce – and, thereby, a recession. This opinion appears to be shared with the Bank of England, whose continual interest rate hikes seem to be an attempt to force the UK’s economy to go backwards.

The problem with that is simple: ordinary working- and even some middle-class people are struggling to make ends meet. Many simply can’t and are going into debt. His solution to the inflation problem will bake that inability to afford the cost of living into the UK economy.

With the Tory government lying to us that workers’ wages are the cause of high inflation and the Bank of England doing as described above, there seems to be only one logical conclusion to draw:

High inflation is a Conservative government policy. It is intended to drive the UK’s lower-paid citizens deep into poverty so you cannot afford the necessities of life.

Just roll that around your mind for a moment.

Think about the real causes of inflation: huge increases in the prices of energy and food, and huge increases in the salaries of FTSE100 executives.

The government could, in theory, neutralise these inflationary pressures through taxation – but the theory fails in practice: as Professor Wren-Lewis notes, the energy firms are multi-national corporations whose profits are received overseas, so there is nothing the government can do about them.

Looking back through history, we see that the reason overseas shareholders have been able to take control of our formerly-nationalised utility firms (energy isn’t the only subject area to have been treated this way, of course; water springs instantly to mind) is privatisation.

The answer should be re-nationalisation – but the Tory government (and also Keir Starmer’s STP – Substitute Tory Party) won’t countenance that; it is against their ideology. This indicates, again, that high inflation that drives you into poverty is a political choice. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer want you to starve.

In the private sector, we see that the salaries of FTSE100 executives have risen by an average of 16 per cent in the last year alone, despite the fact that there has been no real growth in production in the last 15 years since the Great Recession. The money for their pay rise has to come from somewhere and the logical source is the pay packets of employees; they are taking the rises that should go to you.

That’s if they haven’t increased the prices of their goods or services, of course. If they have then they are still taking the rises that should go to you, while also increasing prices so you can’t afford what your employer sells.

The answer – the way to stop this irresponsible upward drain of corporate funds into executive bank accounts – is to tax executive pay at a rate high enough to make this practice unviable. Again, both Rishi Sunak’s Tories and Keir Starmer’s Tories have refused to do this so – again – we must conclude that the executive wage inflation that puts us all into poverty is a political choice.

Professor Wren-Lewis rightly points out that, where employees have won wage increases intended to match inflation caused mainly by high energy prices, their employers have put prices up; this indicates that shifting the real-terms wage cut onto the profits of other firms won’t work and just generates more inflation.

Professor Wren-Lewis goes on to discuss the reason real wages in the UK have not grown in the last 15 years. As already mentioned above, besides the energy and food price hikes, it is the fact that productivity growth has been extremely weak. There have also been two large devaluations of the Pound.

The low productivity – and one of the depreciations – were caused by Brexit. This is another political policy of the Conservative government that is also supported by Keir Starmer’s STP and may therefore be seen as further proof that the party of government (and that of Opposition) intends to impoverish you as a matter of policy.

Brexit also makes causing a recession more attractive to the government and the party that wants to form a government. Neither of them want inflation to continue running rampant forever; it would eventually wipe out the gains they have made for their very rich friends, so they’ll want to bring it down.

The way to do that, according to Prof Wren-Lewis, is to reduce the demand for goods produced by most firms, as this will lead to a reduced demand for labour; firms then lay off workers, meaning more people are seeking employment, meaning in turn that jobseekers will be more likely to accept a job that pays lower wages.

Before Brexit, politicians could always rely on an influx of cheap labour from Europe. That isn’t available now, so they consider recession to be the only alternative. Remember: their future is safe.

Demand is already coming down because people simply can’t afford to buy as much as they used to, due to the real-terms wage cuts they have suffered. The Bank of England’s interest rate rises are hammering that change home.

We may therefore conclude that recession, job losses, further deprivation and misery are all policy points of the Conservative government, and of Keir Starmer’s STP.

Professor Wren-Lewis ends his piece by quoting Bertrand Russell: “Ask yourself only what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed.”

Sadly, he fails to follow his own (and Russell’s) advice.

The truth that the facts bear out is that privatisation, executive pay rises, Brexit, austerity (the other driver of the Pound’s depreciation) and interest rate rises are all intended to push the majority of UK citizens into poverty.

Other solutions besides reducing demand by causing a recession and mass unemployment are available – but the low-quality politicians with whom we have accepted that Parliament should be filled are not interested in them; their only concern is filling their own bank accounts.

Our concern must now be to put a stop to this.


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Is latest council loss REALLY a ‘bounce’ against Labour’s attack on workers’ rights?

Let’s answer the headline question straight away: This Writer doesn’t think so.

Keir Starmer’s announcement that he’s abandoning yet another pledge – this one to strengthen the rights of UK employees – probably came too late to influence the results of last week’s council elections.

It’s more likely to be part of a long-term shift towards Independent candidates that we saw enacted across the country at the local elections in May.

For clarity: the Ayresome ward in Middlesbrough has been won from Labour by an Independent candidate:

This Writer knows little about the winner apart from her name: Jackie Young. From what I can see, she is not a former Labour Party member, as so many of those who took seats from Keir Starmer’s party in May were.

My guess, then, is that she was offering policies that voters in Ayresome actually wanted, as opposed to the current Starmer Party we-do-what-we-want-because-you-have-to-vote-for-us nonsense. I’m willing to stand corrected if necessary, but experience suggests that’s how it is.

Remember what happened in May, when and expected Starmerite landslide turned into a trickle of extra seats for Labour while the Green Party and a large number of Independents who had been booted out of Starmer’s party (or had left of their own accord) cleaned up?

Here’s a reminder from Vox Political‘s article of May 5:

But the biggest kick in the teeth for the main parties – especially Labour – is the strong performance of councillors who have been expelled from that party for being too left-wing (other excuses are available).

Usually when a person leaves a political party – or is, as in these cases, removed – and stand as an independent, they sink without a trace. Look at the performance of the Labour quitters who formed Change UK while Jeremy Corbyn was in charge, and then lost their seats in the 2019 general election.

Instead, independent left-wing candidates are retaining their seats across England.

Here are a few examples:

This is in Portsmouth:

This is in Windsor:

To me, this indicates that people are starting to give up on political tribalism – they’re not all voting for candidates just because of the name of the party those people represent.

Instead, they are voting for the people they know will represent them.

We should bear in mind that these are council elections in wards with low electorates and low turnouts.

But council election results are regarded as forecasts for general elections.

The times are changing. The Parliamentary elites have tried to dictate the policies we can support and the people available to get our vote – and across the country, people are saying they’re not going to put up with it.

It’s the way we are. We’ll put up with a lot – but there come a point when someone will try to tell us what to do and we’ll say: “No.”

Keir Starmer won’t learn any lessons from this. My impression is that he’s too deeply into the pockets of right-wing donors to hear the pleas of those who actually vote election candidates onto councils and into Parliament.

Let us hope they make their message clear when the general election is finally called.


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Is the Bank of England trying to force the UK into austerity? Why?

The Bank of England: don’t believe its claims about inflation.

If the Bank is trying to force the government into austerity by selling government debt at a loss, isn’t that political interference?

And isn’t anyone – of any political organisation – going to ask the obvious questions about it?


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People over State Pension age with eyesight issues could be due up to £407 each month | Daily Record

Public service announcement:

Across Great Britain, there are around two million people living with a sight loss condition or degenerative eye conditions. Some 57,180 working age adults under 65 are receiving extra financial support through Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Adult Disability Payment (ADP) while 44,614 people over State Pension age are getting weekly help through Attendance Allowance.

If you, or someone you know, under State Pension age has a sight condition, you should consider making a new claim for PIP or ADP – find out more here.

If you, or someone you know, is over State Pension age and living with a sight condition, even really high myopia, you should consider making a claim for Attendance Allowance.

New claimants of Attendance Allowance could also qualify for the £150 Disability Cost of Living Payment due to be made this summer by the UK Government to help households with the increased cost of living. No qualifying period has been announced yet, so the sooner a new claim is submitted the greater the likelihood that it will meet the eligibility requirements.

Source: People over State Pension age with eyesight issues could be due up to £407 each month – Daily Record


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Murty’s meltdown? Firm connected to PM’s wife loses millions

Akshata Murty and her husband, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak: has she been using her connection with a leading UK politician to gain advantages for her firms? Is she now losing support after Sunak fell under investigation for a possible conflict of interest? Or is it all just coincidental?

A firm connected to Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty has lost a fortune on the stock exchange.

The losses are being reported on the day an investigation was launched into whether Sunak failed to correctly report a conflict of interest; Ms Murty is a shareholder in a firm that will profit from a Budget incentive to recruit childminders.

It seems another of her investments that made the headlines because of government policy has taken a major loss on the stock market.

Remember Infosys, the company that carried on trading in Russia after the government sanctioned such firms?

Infosys claimed in April last year that it was closing its office in Russia – providing a lucky escape for the then-Chancellor, who had refused to take any action about the company’s continued commercial interest in a country that the UK should have been shunning.

Then – exactly a month ago – we discovered that Infosys was still operating in Russia, eight months after it said it would withdraw, and had been given a £1.8 million government contract in spite of this.

Now:

So her shares, which were worth £400 million this morning, are now worth £351 million – in a company for which, like Koru Kids, Sunak broke – or at least seriously bent – government rules.

Had she been using her connection with a leading UK politician to gain advantages for her firms? Is she now losing support after Sunak fell under investigation for a possible conflict of interest?

Or is it a coincidence? It will be interesting to find out.


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WASPI women win victory over Ombudsman in pension-age change row

The campaigning group Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has won an out-of-court victory in its battle to get compensation for women born in the 1950s whose pension age has been raised by government decision.

WASPI is not arguing that the pension age should not have been raised, stating that this was done by democratic government decision – but that the way the Department for Work and Pensions provided information about it meant that women were unable to make appropriate choices that they would have made if they had known earlier that their State Pension age would increase, and that this has had emotional and financial impacts on their lives.

The group is arguing for fair, fast and straightforward compensation for the emotional and financial losses – both direct losses and lost opportunities – that women have suffered.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has been charged with producing three reports. The first was to establish whether there was maladministration by the DWP in failing to inform affected women that they would not receive their pension when they expected to do so, and that they should make appropriate financial plans.

That report has been published and has stated that there was maladministration.

The second report was to establish whether six sample complainants had suffered any direct financial loss because of DWP maladministration, or any loss of opportunities to make different financial choices.

That report was published and stated that none of them had suffered any such losses.

WASPI argued that the Ombudsman’s reasoning was legally flawed and this would impact on decisions affecting all 1950s born women who were victims of the DWP’s maladministration and said it would bring a judicial review if he would not withdraw the Stage 2 report and think again.

A decision last week means the Ombudsman will indeed withdraw that report.

It is now considered to be legally flawed, and a court will be asked to make a quashing order (because the Ombudsman has no power to withdraw a report that has been sent to complainants and MPs).

The Ombudsman will then reconsider the question of injustice in a re-written second report that must be changed to accommodate the agreement that the original report was flawed.

When a new second report is accepted, the process will move on to a third report which will consider what remedies are necessary for the injustices done to 3.6 million women.

It must also consider whether such remedies should be given to the estates of women who have died in the time since the change to their state pension age was announced.

You can find more complete details here.

This Writer’s view is that this is not a total victory; the Ombudsman may merely seek – and find – another excuse to deny women born in the 1950s any compensation for the injustice they have suffered and campaigners need to be aware of that.

And WASPI accepts that it doesn’t speak for all women who have been disadvantaged by the pension age change. Some are campaigning for full compensation – payment of the amount of pension they would have received if the age change had not happened. WASPI does not think the government will accept such demands.

It is a step forward – but the battle for compensation is a long way from being over.


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No honour in Labour: Ed Miliband backstabs the man who defended his late father

He’s got your back: Ed Miliband is pictured behind Jeremy Corbyn – presumably working out where to put his knife.

Ed Miliband, whose father was defended by Jeremy Corbyn when the Daily Mail said he “hated Britain”, has shown his true colours by stabbing Mr Corbyn in the back.

In October 2013, after the Mail ran an attack piece against the then-Labour leader (Ed Miliband) by accusing his father, Mr Corbyn appeared on BBC News to defend him – as you can see:

Note also that Mr Corbyn was the only Labour MP to defend Miliband’s father publicly.

Today (March 28, 2023), as Labour’s NEC considers a motion by current Labour leader Keir Starmer to ban Mr Corbyn from ever again standing for election as a candidate for that party, Miliband also made an appearance on the BBC – to trot out yet again his leader’s tired and ridiculous whinge about anti-Semitism.

He said:

It’s about one thing, which is about Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the EHRC report on antisemitism and his refusal to apologise for that reaction. That is the background of this. I don’t think there’s any mystery about that.

There’s one problem with that: Keir Starmer’s motion does not mention anti-Semitism at all.

It is, therefore, entirely inappropriate for Miliband to trot it out as a reason for denying the members of Islington North’s Constituency Labour Party their democratic right to choose their candidate for Parliament.

Remember: Keir Starmer is on the record as saying he wanted to end NEC interference in local selections of Parliamentary candidates:

The move to bar Mr Corbyn is a clear betrayal of that promise.

So we see an honourable man – Mr Corbyn – backstabbed by not just one but two betrayers who are members of the Labour Party leadership. Doesn’t that tell us that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not worth your time? That it should be shunned, avoided, and vilified wherever possible?

Ironically, Miliband’s ill-intended comment about Mr Corbyn came the morning after his victim was outside Parliament, speaking at a rally against racism:

Finally: the reason that is actually given by Keir Starmer’s motion, for wanting Mr Corbyn’s candidacy to be blocked, is the fact that Labour lost an election under his leadership.

By that standard, Ed Miliband should also be barred. He was the leader in 2015 when Labour won a much smaller share of the national vote than in 2017 or 2019, when Mr Corbyn was in charge.

But he is a member of the Shadow Cabinet.

The double-standard could not be clearer.

Miliband’s treachery has certainly provoked a strong reaction from the public. I provide a selection below, for those of you who would appreciate further depth:

The facts are clear – and they mitigate against Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, and all the other fetid liars infesting the corpse of a once-great political organisation.

I don’t think the NEC’s decision will even matter now. The damage has been done.

Starmer, Miliband and the others have shown that Labour will betray anybody.

If that party – in its current form – gets into government, that is exactly what it will do to you.


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Is the DWP deliberately disallowing PIP claims by losing or delaying forms?

The problem with fighting the government to protect the vulnerable is that the government can keep attacking relentlessly.

Years ago, I ran a successful campaign that showed that thousands of people had died because the Department for Work and Pensions had denied them sickness benefits for no apparent reason.

It raised awareness that DWP decisions could be wrong and could be challenged, and I hope it saved a few lives.

Now, it seems the DWP has been quietly running a new scam – denying claims for the disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) by claiming to have lost the forms, or falsely recording that they have arrived after the deadline for returning them has passed:

Up to 42,000 claimants had their Personal Independence Payment (PIP) award stopped in 2021, an increase of almost 300% in just two years. 25,400 claims were disallowed in 2020. The figures were revealed by Tom Pursglove, DWP minister for disabled people, in response to a written parliamentary question.

The figures refer to people who allegedly failed to return their AR1 PIP review form but it is not known whether non-return includes forms that were returned late. It is also not clear how many people challenged the decision that they had failed to return their form on time.

Mr Pursglove’s response shows that the number of claims disallowed each year for non-return of the AR1 review form have increased steadily year on year since 2017, when there were 7,500 claims disallowed.

The DWP has come out with its usual flannel about helping millions of people every year – as though that is some kind of huge achievement and not its job.

It says only a small proportion of claimants are penalised for non-return of forms, as though 67,400 people in two years is a small number and not more people than live in entire towns the size of Taunton or Hereford.

I tend to agree with the website Benefits and Work, which has stated:

The number of claimants allegedly failing to return their forms seems to be far outstripping any rises in awards that had taken place at the time. We know that the DWP’s post handling and call management is dire and getting ever worse. It seems very possible that many disallowed claimants are returning their forms on time, but the DWP is either losing them or taking far too long before recording that they have been received.

“We have no way of knowing how many of the 42,000 claimants appealed or how many simply gave up in despair, even though they knew they had returned their form on time. Other claimants may have failed to return the review form because of the effects of a physical or mental health condition.”

The DWP reckons it ‘watermarks’ files on claimants with serious mental health or cognitive conditions who have difficulty communicating or engaging with the process as Additional Support (AS) – meaning they will be asked to attend a PIP assessment even if they fail to return their form.

And claimants who are identified or deemed as vulnerable – due to their circumstances, not just their condition – are watermarked ‘Additional Customer Support (ACS)’.

But I can’t help remember how Mrs Mike was ‘watermarked’ when she appealed against a decision to put her in the work-related activity group for Employment and Support Allowance. Her file was marked ‘Do Not Contact’, and we knew nothing about it until we were notified that her year on the benefit had expired and she was no longer entitled to it.

As is well-documented in previous articles on this site, I went through the roof and the government department backtracked rapidly. Mrs Mike is now in the support group, where she belongs.

So I have doubts about DWP ‘watermarking’ claims.

As far as lost or delayed forms are concerned, I recommend that anybody claiming benefits from the DWP make a copy of any forms they send, and post the forms using a system that requires a DWP representative to sign for them. This evidence can then be copied from the Royal Mail and used to show exactly when the DWP receives the forms.

Alternatively, if the DWP doesn’t receive the forms, claimants can get in touch, say their forms have been lost by the Royal Mail, and request a new set of forms and an extension to their deadline. The forms can then be duplicated, using the copies of the original that have already been made.

Does that seem fair? Does anybody with experience of the current system have any other ideas?

Source: DWP PIP warning with thousands of benefit claimants having payments stopped – Chronicle Live


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