The face of the problem? It must be hard to clamp down on racism in government when the prime minister is a man who (allegedly) danced around in front of a black woman, waving a banana at her.
This may seem like a good result for Olivea Ebanks – but is it? Does the money really compensate for 20 years of racist abuse in the Ministry of Justice – of all places! – that she says broke down her body and mind?
And how is the government acting to end the racism that, it seems clear, is rife in all the corridors of power? Have the Tories lifted a finger to improve matters?
Let’s see what Ms Ebanks had to put up with…
She was called racially insulting names by a manager, prevented from progressing her career, and had her out-of-work activities monitored.
Ms Ebanks said working in an “abusive” environment led to her physical and mental health suffering.
“The first time I went to court, I lost my good mental health… The second time I decided to go to court, I lost my marriage and the third time, I lost my job.”
Ms Ebanks alleges managers blocked access to career-enhancing opportunities and training open to colleagues.
She says her work was unfairly scrutinised and managers began to “constantly” pick at her work, and claims her concerns about this were routinely dismissed.
One day after asking her manager why she was being treated differently to other members of the team during a meeting, she was shocked when the reply was: “Are you accusing me of racism?”
An internal probe, which pointed towards institutional racism within the MOJ, was triggered soon after.
She decided to write a book about her experiences – she says with her managers’ blessing. But Ms Ebanks found herself the centre of investigation and suspended from work for “bringing the organisation into disrepute”.
The former civil servant claims she was called racially offensive names by senior staff and was subject to privacy breaches, alleging her out-of-work activities following global Black Lives Matter protests was monitored.
Ms Ebanks says she complained about the incidents numerous times but claims she was ignored.
She resigned in June 2020 after the “situation became intolerable” and then began her third case against the ministry which was settled last year.
Ms Ebanks says she applied for upward of 40 promotions without any success and experienced a manager refusing to provide essential backing for a senior role because she “couldn’t see” Ms Ebanks thriving in such a position.
Reflecting on her ordeal Ms Ebanks described it as “exhausting” and said she suffered loss of appetite, insomnia and panic attacks.
“With the accumulation of illnesses, my body and mind were breaking down and I started to feel so unwell that I had to keep going back to the doctor.”
Her account of what happened when she tried to complain is particularly damning: “As a Black person, you complain to a manager, who has no understanding of racism.
“They then say there’s no merit to your complaint. You unpick their reasoning and appeal, and then your manager’s manager will then tell you – the only person who’s experienced the racism – that what you experienced was not racism. It’s torture without the bruising.”
The comment from the MoJ is risible:
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We have a zero tolerance approach to discrimination of any sort. All allegations are investigated fully and action taken where necessary.”
I have a few doubts about that, considering Ms Ebanks’s story.
So let’s think: why would a government ministry make such a claim, in the face of evidence from a victim of sustained racism over a period of 20 years that has resulted in that ministry paying out a six-figure sum of money to end court proceedings?
(And let’s bear in mind that this is not the only case – the source story mentions Kay Badu, who also received a six-figure sum over racism claims.)
Well, isn’t it true that sustained racism of this kind has a “chilling” effect on people of the ethnic group against which that discrimination is being shown?
In other words, aren’t people of the same ethnic group put off applying for government jobs?
So by claiming not to tolerate discrimination – while actually perpetrating it time and time again – the government and its departments ensure that they remain the playgrounds of privileged white boys and girls.
Isn’t that the aim?
If not, then let’s see some evidence of good conscience. How many people have been sacked for perpetrating this “insidious” and sustained racism? What measures have been put in place to monitor it? What is being done to ensure that complaints are taken seriously?
I think we can all guess the answers to those questions: none, none and nothing.
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It’s no surprise: the UK has a prime minister who showed his contempt for the armed forces by laying a wreath face down one year. The Ministry of Defence spitting on injured veterans is par for the course.
After a weekend in which Conservative politicians across the UK stood in all their hypocrisy and mouthed empty words of thanks to soldiers they despise… this:
Former members of the forces say they have been left ‘suicidal, homeless and let down’ by a system of payouts that is tough to navigate and appeal, leaving many feeling betrayed by the government they once served.
Thousands of veterans are struggling to get government payouts for injuries caused in service, with some facing poverty and suicide over the issue.
These veterans overwhelmingly report the same things – not getting the level of payment they need and then facing lengthy and complex battles to get an increase.
Does that seem familiar to you?
Payments to injured veterans come in war pensions and the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) – both administered by the Ministry of Defence which, it seems, couldn’t care less.
Anyone physically or mentally harmed during service before April 6, 2005, should receive war pension payments. Those injured after that date must apply to the AFCS.
But in practice, getting what they are owed seems impossible.
According to The Mirror,
Many former soldiers … report that vital medical evidence proving their claims is removed by the time their appeals are heard.
If veterans are unhappy with their war pension or AFCS payment, they can appeal. But for many the appeal process is complicated and long.
Veterans will often give up on the system or – tragically – die before they get any payment increase.
The Mirror‘s article features accounts by, and about, a large number of veterans who have been struggling to receive benefits they deserve after suffering injuries in the name of their country.
It seems to be unspoken Conservative government policy – consider the policy of the Department for Work and Pensions to deprive sick and disabled civilians of the payments they need if they’re to live lives that are close to normal.
This Writer has to ask what the legions of flag-waving patriots who observe Remembrance Day in good faith think of this betrayal.
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Robert Jenrick: he reckons it is ‘perfectly normal’ for ministers to corruptly funnel money from their own department’s funds into their own constituencies.
“Perfectly normal” is it, Robert Jenrick?
If you are utterly corrupt, it might be perfectly normal to allocate millions of pounds from a regeneration fund to your fellow MP’s constituency in return for him giving £25 million to yours. Not if you’re honest!
Jenrick tried to brazen out the Labour Party’s accusation against him when he appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show:
Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has dismissed Labour’s call for an investigation into the award of a £25m regeneration grant to his constituency.
He told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show the decision to give the money to Newark, Nottinghamshire, had been taken by fellow minister Jake Berry.
Mr Jenrick said he had himself decided to grant funds to a town in Mr Berry’s constituency under the same scheme.
He called this “perfectly normal” and accused Labour of “distraction”.
The £25m was awarded to Newark under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s £3.6bn Towns Fund, set up last year to help places that had “not always benefitted from economic growth in the same way as more prosperous areas”.
Here’s a clip of him doing just that:
#marr – Which minister decided that your constituency would get money?
Robert Jenrick – Jake Berry#Marr – & Jake Berry also get money for his constituency… & who decided that?
Jenrick is the Secretary of State for Housing and Berry is a minister within the same government department.
The public has already passed its own verdict on whether the decisions were corrupt – and both Jenrick and Berry have been found lacking:
Oh wow, Robert Jenrick just admitted that he allocated funds to Jake Berry's constituency, and Berry allocated funds to Jenrick's. Another example of #oneruleforthem corruption to add to the ever growing Conservative pile.#Marr
What Jenrick said about he and his Junior Minister Jake Berry deciding to give money to each other's constituencies only passes the sniff test if Covid has taken away your sense of smell. #Marr
I can’t believe that anyone from a working class background in the North would vote for this millionaires boys club effectively handing them the keys to the safe, they are lining each other’s pockets and sticking two fingers up at the rest #ToryCorruption
There will be no inquiry into this and neither Jenrick nor Berry will face the sack, or even any disciplinary action. Boris Johnson’s government doesn’t believe it is accountable to the public.
They’ll probably divert attention by claiming the controversy is about something different. Jenrick has already tried:
He added: “This is perfectly normal. Ministers don’t get involved in making decisions for their own constituency.
“But neither should their constituencies be victims of the fact that their MP is a minister.”
That is not the issue. Just to spell it out so it is perfecly clear: The issue is that ministers from the Ministry of Housing have colluded to funnel cash from that ministry’s Towns Fund into their own constituencies.
Jenrick’s passion for corruption is already well-established – remember the controversy over his decision to help Richard Desmond avoid paying £50 million to a community where he wanted to build a new development that did not conform to planning rules.
Now we may add Berry to our ever-growing list of corrupt Tories.
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Just remember that, when confronted in Parliament about the effect of her policies on the people of the nation she claimed to love, Theresa May laughed.
She laughed.
Surge in prison deaths & record levels of assaults and self-harm
Homeless people's deaths up 24% over five years
3,000 Britons dying each year because they can't heat their homes
Malnutrition deaths in hospitals in England and Wales at highest level for a decade
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 28, 2019
Universal credit leaves food bank with empty shelves: 'We just can't keep up. The conditions people are living in are scary. People are basically being left to rot"
Patients dying after having to wait because A & E too busy
Male suicide: Calls to helpline rise nearly 300%
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 28, 2019
@Alston_UNSR said Austerity could easily have spared the poor if the political will had existed to do so. Resources were available to the Treasury that could have transformed the situation of millions living in poverty, but the political choice was fund tax cuts for the wealthy
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 28, 2019
Windrush: at least 11 people wrongly deported from UK have died
Suicides in immigration detention centres kept secret by Home Office
More than 17,000 people died while waiting to hear whether their claim for disability benefit had been successful
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 28, 2019
University analysis has found that Government efforts to reduce the number of people claiming disability benefit have driven 590 people in England to suicide and have put 725,000 more on antidepressants.
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 29, 2019
40 people with a profound learning disability or autism have died in assessment and treatment units over the last 2.5 years, including nine aged under 35
Suicides amongst Firefighters & Police has doubled: blamed on cuts, redundancies, unpaid overtime & high levels of stress
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) April 30, 2019
The growing funding crisis in adult and children hospices is forcing 1 in 3 to cut end of life treatment.
Councils spent £750m less on homelessness-related activity than they did in 2008-9 due to Government cuts – homelessness has soared and 600 people died on the streets
— Judy Hamilton #ShieldingFor6Months&Longer 😷 (@secretspartacus) May 8, 2019
Yes, Theresa May laughed.
But don’t think for a moment that any of her possible successors would have behaved otherwise.
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Some commentators thought there must be a connection between government ministers and G4S shareholders – but that seems not to be the case.
So that leaves us with the question: Why does the Conservative government keep employing these utter incompetents?
Is it because they want to sabotage the services that G4S provides?
For the sake of privatisation?
But, if privatised, how would the service get better? We know that private providers are utterly inept!
Global security giant G4S faced a record £2.8m of fines for breaching its contract with the Ministry of Justice last year, HuffPost UK can reveal.
The huge sum collected in 2016/17 was higher than the previous three years combined, with two prisons – HMP Parc, in Bridgend, and HMP Rye Hill, in Warwickshire – forced to pay the highest amounts.
G4S’s justice contracts include five private prisons, a secure training centre and two immigration removal centres.
The latest figures mean G4S has been fined almost £7m since 2010, but the firm has refused to say how many separate fines that represents or what they were for.
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Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston in Berkshire [Image: PA].
Here are another couple of arguments against privatisation: Private firms raid your pensions.
Oh, and a Tory government will always make promises about the conditions in which privatisation is taking place – and then those promises will be broken.
Usually at huge cost to workers, the state… anybody apart from the people responsible.
Nuclear workers will go on strike after this month, Unite union has confirmed
Workers at the Atomic Weapons Establishment are to stage two 48-hour strikes in a long-running dispute over pensions.
Unite said 600 of its members at AWE’s two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire will walk out for 48 hours from January 18 and 30.
The union said workers felt “deeply betrayed” as promises made a quarter of a century ago guaranteeing their pensions, when they were transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the private sector, have been broken.
The union is protesting at plans to close the defined benefit scheme at the end of the month and replace it with a defined contribution one.
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David Cameron loves selling weaponry to foreign countries. What a shame he doesn’t want to look after his own country’s disabled war veterans.
At any given opportunity when in front of TV cameras, David Cameron waxes lyrically about what this nation owes to British Military Forces, with special consideration given to disabled veterans, writes Mo Stewart.
But it seems that he means modern disabled veterans who, since 2005, have benefited from the more generous Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.
Until April 2005, members of the armed forces who suffered a permanent disablement due to service life were awarded a War Pension, with many awarded access to Disability Living Allowance (DLA), for life, to help to fund the additional costs of disability.
Without warning, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has sent letters to working-age War Pensioners advising that access to DLA is about to be stopped and that disabled veterans may, if they wish, apply for the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – with no guarantee that it will be awarded.
DLA for care at the highest rate is the monitor used by local authorities to provide home care services that permit disabled people to enjoy independent living in the community. Without DLA, or its equivalent replacement, the care services will be removed.
Older War Pensioners, over 65 years of age, are permitted to retain access to DLA for life. Modern disabled British forces have access to the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and are unaffected by this unacceptable change as they have access to the new Armed Forces Independence Payment, introduced in 2013.
However, an estimated 80,000 disabled working-age War Pensioners, disabled when in service to the nation before April 2005, are about to have their DLA removed with a guarantee that many will not be awarded PIP, which continues to cause concern with less than 13,000 decisions from more than 220,300 applicants as of May 2014. PIP has a 12 month waiting list for assessments.
This is yet another cost cutting measure by the Prime Minister and the DWP, without consideration for the unacceptable price in human suffering, leaving 80,000 working-age disabled War Pensioners at risk of imminent destitution if PIP is not awarded.
All War Pensioners should be permitted to retain access to DLA to acknowledge their much proclaimed “service to the nation” as constantly mentioned by the Prime Minister – but only when in front of the TV cameras.
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The death of Mark Duggan (inset) led to the riots of 2011 [Image: Daily Telegraph].
The Ministry of Justice has admitted that data from three semi-secret inquiries has gone missing on discs that were – get this – lost in the post.
According to the BBC, the missing material – which the Ministry of Justice says went missing after being sent in the post – relates to three investigations that examined the roles of police in the death of members of the public.
Two inquiries relate to fatal police shootings of crime suspects in London – Mark Duggan and Azelle Rodney. The third relates to the 1997 murder of Robert Hamill in Northern Ireland, which campaigners allege involved the collusion of police officers.
In each inquiry there were witnesses, including police officers, who were given anonymity because of possible threats to their safety – but officials have refused to confirm whether any of the missing documents include personal information relating to these witnesses.
This is yet another bungle by a failing Ministry of Justice under a failing Justice Minister – in fact, his nickname is an admission of this: Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling.
The Azelle Rodney case involved a mid-level career criminal who was shot dead by armed officers of the Metropolitan Police on April 30, 2005. In July 2013 a judicial inquiry found that the Authorised Firearms Officer who fired the fatal shots had “no lawful justification” for opening fire. The case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether a prosecution should be launched. On July 30, 2014, the CPS announced that they had made the decision to charge the officer with murder.
We should all remember the case of Mark Duggan. He was the young man whose death sparked the riots in London – and subsequently across the UK – in the summer of 2011. The official story of Duggan’s death has undergone numerous changes, drawing criticism and suspicion from Duggan’s family, residents of Tottenham, and other supporters. These critics accuse police of misconduct and of failing to cooperate with investigating Duggan’s death. Shortcomings in the police response have also been blamed for stoking the riots, and for fueling ongoing discontent, with Duggan’s supporters stating “there can be no peace without justice”.
(Information on both these cases is from Wikipedia).
If this writer was entrusted with the delivery of documents that may include material identifying key witnesses who had been given public anonymity, the last thing I’d consider is sending it via the recently-privatised Royal Mail!
There is huge potential for – let’s call it – mischief in this matter – and we cannot discount the possibility that the Tory-run Ministry of Justice is behind some of it.
We may await the ‘outing’ of some of these anonymous witnesses with a sense of inevitability.
Remembrance: Former servicemen and women took part in the formal Remembrance Day parades across the UK earlier this month – but many of them, and many more of their colleagues, are being threatened with the loss of the benefits the country owes to them, thanks to the heartlessness of an ungrateful government [Image: Associated Press].
The following article by disability researcher Mo Stewart was intended for publication in tandem with a story on the same subject in a national newspaper, to coincide with Remembrance Day – but the newspaper concerned got cold feet at the last minute. Don’t all leap up and shout “What else can we expect from the right-wing media?” at once.
Mo has agreed to let Vox Political publish it here. Over to her:
The hypocrisy is breath-taking…
At the annual Conservative Party Conference in October, the Prime Minister offered a very warm and welcome salute to the British Armed Forces.(1) This included the veterans from both WW1 and WW2, an acknowledgement of outstanding efforts 70 years ago when they had fought on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, and a tribute to modern British forces who fought in the Gulf.
Prior to the PM’s conference speech, contact had been made with approximately 80,000 disabled older veterans, advising the annual increase in their monthly Disability Living Allowance (DLA) but warning that this vital benefit was about to be withdrawn. Yet there is no information about this unexpected threat to British War Pensioners on the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) website, or on the MOD or Veterans-UK websites. The DWP’s threat to the financial survival of these older disabled veterans included a suggestion that working age War Pensioners may wish to apply for the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) that has replaced DLA. This suggestion was accompanied with a stark warning that the award of PIP is not guaranteed, regardless of previous payments of DLA awarded to British military forces who were disabled for life in the service of the nation with a permanent disability that can’t possibly improve.
PIP has a 10-12 month waiting list for new applicants (2) and the government’s own figures predict that 600,000 people with permanent disabilities will lose their entitlement to financial support when they lose DLA and attempt to make a claim for PIP.(3) Many experts have already identified the risk to disabled people as the new PIP benefit is rolled out and DLA claimants are reassessed. Richard Hawkes, the Chief Executive for the charity SCOPE remains concerned:
For months now we have been saying the Government’s assessment
for the new Personal Independence Payment is deeply flawed. It looks set to repeat the mistakes of the Work Capability Assessment.(4)
The removal of DLA guarantees that thousands of War Pensioners, permanently disabled whilst in military service, risk the possible loss of their homes and access to their home carers. This significant risk to older disabled veterans is also in breach of the principles of the much-hallowed Armed Forces Covenant.(5) Working age War Pensioners will now live in fear of the loss of this essential benefit, originally guaranteed for life, as their personal sacrifices when serving this nation are totally disregarded by the DWP, despite the PM’s constant public claim of admiration for British forces and disabled veterans.(6)(7)(8)
The unconditional support for British disabled veterans was exclusively reported by The Sun in May 2012 when Political Editor Tom Newton Dunn ran with the headline: Wounded heroes beat MOD in benefits battle. His strong piece expressed concern that disabled veterans had been expected to subject themselves to the same [bogus] assessments as civilians: (6)
Wounded war heroes are to keep their disability benefits for life after the PM stepped in to halt a bid to cut them… Incredibly, MOD bureaucrats were insisting that wounded heroes get the same grilling as suspected cheats and scroungers – because they feared their cash-strapped department would be left to pick up the bill for administering the pay-outs. (6)
When visiting Camp Bastion in July 2012 the PM made a very public promise, as reported by the BBC News and the national press (7)(8). David Cameron claimed that ‘disabled veterans’ would not be adversely affected by the welfare reforms and could retain access to DLA for life, without the need for any reassessment, in recognition of their ‘service to the nation.’ Yet, the PM forgot to mention that this decision only applied to modern disabled veterans (9) and the DWP have now covertly threatened the financial survival of a minimum of 80,000 disabled older British veterans by the planned removal of DLA from this nation’s working-age War Pensioners.(10)
This disturbing threat to the welfare of older disabled veterans is despite the fact that this researcher received a personal telecom from the Cabinet Office last year, as witnessed by care staff, confirming that ‘…the Cabinet has just agreed that all War Pensioners can retain access to DLA and will not be reassessed as an acknowledgement of their service to the nation’. During the same conversation, the caller asked what this decision would mean for the research.
Evidence from the self-funded independent research, demonstrating American corporate influence with the UK government’s welfare reforms (11), has been used in every welfare reform debate in the House of Lords and the House of Commons since 2011. The research exposed the fact that the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), as conducted by Atos Healthcare and used by the DWP to remove vulnerable people from long-term sickness benefit was a totally bogus assessment using a manipulated bio-psychosocial model.(11)(12) The research further exposed the enforced welfare reforms as being totally unrelated to the banking crash that had created the need for austerity measures, yet the national press refused to publish the research findings. In reality, the eventual demolition of the welfare state is the long-ago planned Thatcher legacy, inherited by her devoted disciple David Cameron. The PM waited for a plausible excuse to introduce welfare reforms as this nation moves ever closer to the removal of the welfare state with welfare and health care, eventually, to be funded by private insurance (12) as the national press help to undermine the welfare state with increasing numbers of adverts by private health insurance companies…
The same research evidence was accepted by the United Nations (UN) and it is widely believed that the UN are to investigate the UK government for the abuses of the human rights of sick and disabled people.(13) The many victims, survivors and bereaved relatives of claimants of long-term sickness benefit, who didn’t survive this government-funded medical tyranny masquerading as welfare reforms, are waiting to learn when the Coalition government will eventually be investigated for crimes against humanity.(14) Meanwhile, Lord Freud, the Minister for Welfare Reform, continues to refuse to publish the annual death totals of sick and disabled people, removed from long-term sickness benefit and forced to apply for jobs their health will not permit them to tolerate as the DWP finally admit to reinvestigating 60 suspicious deaths following the WCA.… (15)
At the time of the phone call from the Cabinet Office, the caller was advised that DLA for War Pensioners was totally unrelated to the research, which would continue. However, with this recent reality that removes DLA and threatens the welfare of 80,000 working age War Pensioners, it seems that the call was an attempt to incentivise this veteran to end the research. It was an attempt to prevent more detailed research that had already exposed the authority of a notorious American healthcare insurance corporate giant, whose representatives happily boast of their influence with successive UK governments regarding the UK welfare reforms.(16)
The recent justification for the shocking and unexpected threat to this nation’s working age War Pensioners, as provided by the poorly-briefed Defence Personnel Secretariat, is that disabled War Pensioners have access to the more generous constant care allowance, which is a supplement added to the basic war pension that replaces DLA for care. This statement is not only misleading but totally incorrect. It is disregarding the fact that War Pensioners need to demonstrate an 80 per cent disability or higher to access the constant care allowance; whilst disabled veterans with less than an 80 per cent permanent disability were awarded DLA for life because they would be disabled for the rest of their life – something that the PM, Iain Duncan Smith and DWP Ministers still fail to grasp.
This latest DWP decision is a betrayal of working age disabled War Pensioners by the Coalition government as David Cameron continues to make supportive speeches and to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, knowing his government has jeopardised the future survival of 80,000 disabled veterans who willingly risked their lives for the nation in years gone by.
Many War Pensioners have the additional unemployability supplement added to the basic pension, which identifies a profound disability and confirms that they were not expected to work again, so why are they being threatened with destitution, or worse, at the same time as the Prime Minister pays tribute to the British Armed Forces in this the 100th anniversary year of WW1 and the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings?
It is unprecedented for any UK government to threaten the welfare of one generation of disabled veterans over another, yet members of the Coalition appear to do it with ease. They are no doubt confident that there is no authority in place to prevent this unacceptable reality. It remains unclear as to how many politicians are aware of this decision that will negatively impact on their constituents who were disabled when serving this nation when in uniform in years gone by. Once again the DWP has taken a decision based on costs alone, without any apparent consideration of the inevitable dire human consequences. Of greatest concern, the loss of DLA for care at the highest level will remove access to funded carers in the home as supplied by the local authorities. The award of DLA for care at the highest level is the tag used by local authorities to justify the costs of providing home carers to disabled people in the community. Without it, the care will be removed and there is no guarantee that those now in receipt of DLA for care at the highest level will be awarded the equivalent level of PIP or, indeed, any award of PIP at all. (17)
The Defence Personnel Secretariat don’t like being challenged and claim even more justification as approximately 50 per cent of the 166,000 surviving War Pensioners are now over the age of 70 years old, will retain access to DLA and, happily, this callous decision will not affect them. Modern British forces already have the Prime Minister’s guarantee of permanent access to DLA so someone, somewhere, should be asking why approximately 80,000 working age disabled War Pensioners are now being targeted by the DWP when all other disabled veterans are permitted to retain access to DLA with all the financial security attached to it.
Are they really being punished because my integrity is not for sale?
vhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgs4UjwWtow – video
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His words were echoed by another commenter described only as ‘Squiggle Diggle’, who said: “Legislation only has the power of Law when consent is given by the governed… You need to know the difference between Legislation and Law, if you do not, then you are consenting to all Legislation. If you know the difference, then you can remove your consent by not allowing the powers that be to have jurisdiction over you. I really recommend you read up on this, as so good as this article is, you really don’t seem to know what the difference between Law and Legislation is, which is one of the most empowering things you can ever realise.”
My reply was that legislation is the act of making law; law is a rule or guideline set up by government to control behaviour. Consent is not implied, other than that of the electorate in voting in a government that enacts and enforces these laws. I said there is absolutely no leeway in UK law for a citizen to remove his or her consent to be governed by the laws of the land.
That was where we left it – until today, when Mike Colbourne (his name as used on Facebook – commenting here, he just used a bunch of capital letters) raised the subject again. He said: “If a Statute Act is given the force of Law by the Consent of the governed and we don’t consent then it does not apply to you! When injustice becomes Law rebellion becomes duty!”
In a nutshell, all three have been saying that if you don’t want to accept that a law applies to you, the government can’t make it apply to you.
In the United Kingdom this is not only nonsense; it is dangerous nonsense. What if somebody hears it, believes it, acts on it and gets arrested? They could be in prison for a long time because someone else didn’t understand the difference between a political theory that informed the US Declaration of Independence – in an entirely separate country – and the laws of the United Kingdom.
Let’s make the law of the United Kingdom perfectly clear: There is no option which allows members of the public to choose which laws they wish to apply to them or to obey.
That response also states: “If you wish to ask whether all members of the public must obey the law, then that is certainly the case.”
There is no room for manoeuvre; the law is the law.
Mike’s comment suggested that he thinks statute law has less validity than, perhaps, common law. If so, he’s got it the wrong way around, as this response to a Freedom of Information request of 2009 clarifies: “Statutes can amend or replace common law in a particular area, but the common law cannot overrule or change statutes. A statute can only be overruled or amended by another, later piece of legislation. This reflects the legal and political doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty – the recognition and acceptance that Parliament is the supreme law-making authority.”
If anyone reading this thinks the situation detailed above is morally wrong or otherwise iniquitous, you need to look at ways of getting Parliament to change the law. Good luck with that. Simply saying that the law doesn’t apply to you without your consent isn’t worth the time you spend doing so.
Let that be the end of the matter.
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