Tag Archives: problem

‘Crap parenting’: Rishi Sunak doesn’t get that his government is the problem

‘Crap government’: James Daly (left) and Rishi Sunak.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has stuck his oar into the debate on ‘crap parenting’ that Tory MP James Daly foolishly started last week.

Daly sparked an outcry when he said “crap parenting” was the cause of many young people’s problems in life.

Members of the public were quick to point out that government decisions have played a huge part, with the axing of Sure Start, abolition of youth clubs, reduction of resources for child and adolescent mental health teams, austerity coupled with rising food costs and exorbitant rents, budget deficits for special educational needs and children with disabilities, the crisis in teacher retention and decimation of learning support staff, a level of impoverishment that food banks cannot alleviate, and dwindling nursery and pre-school provision.

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The sharp rise in adolescent knife crime has been linked with massive cuts to youth services.

Asked about Daly’s comments, Sunak went off on a tangent about poverty. He said:

“All the evidence and the research shows that the best way to ensure that children don’t grow up in poverty is to make sure that they are not growing up in a household where no-one is working.”

“No one wants to see any child grow up in poverty. I certainly don’t.

“The best way we can help families is to make sure that those parents are in great jobs and are well-paid and that we are cutting their taxes.”

No individual family can use wealth to rid itself of problems that are caused by failings in society.

This Writer personally knows plenty of young people from rich families who are dysfunctional at best.

And Sunak’s government has cut wages, year on year, since it slithered into Downing Street in 2010. Junior doctors are the current classic example, with a whopping 35 per cent pay rise needed simply to bring them back up to parity with their 2010 level.

So in 2019/20, 18.8 per cent of children and working-age adults in poverty lived in families where all adults were working and at least one was working full-time. This rose to a whopping 65.9 per cent in families where at least one adult was working part-time or more.

Furthermore, if taxes are cut, Sunak will say there is no money to restore the vital services listed above, that young people have lost.

He’ll be the first to bemoan adolescent knife crime if it hits the headlines again – and the last to admit his government caused it by cutting youth services.

Source: No one should grow up poor, Sunak says after Tory MP’s ‘crap parenting’ remark


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James Daly: Crap government is the problem facing young people, not crap parents

‘New Conservative’ James Daly: his ‘crap government’ is to blame for young people’s problems more than ‘crap parents’, it seems.

Remember when Tory MP James Daly told us all that young people face a lot more problems these days because they have “crap parents”?

This Site published an article about it here, raising concerns that he was just trying to avoid any responsibility that might lie with the government.

Now, I see parents and others have written to The Guardian, making the same point more forcefully. Here’s one:

His [Daly’s] Conservative government got rid of the excellent Sure Start scheme introduced by Labour to help parents understand how to relate to their young children when they perhaps had no good model of parenting themselves.

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His Conservative government abolished so many youth clubs, which could provide a sanctuary for teenagers to play sports or discuss their problems with a counsellor rather than resorting to gang violence on the streets, which may well have contributed to some of these problems.

His Conservative government could have provided more resources for child and adolescent mental health service teams to help children with emotional difficulties, as well as giving their parents support, which would have lessened the number of children having to wait months for the urgent treatment they need.

Being a parent is hard, especially for those who have suffered most throughout these years of austerity and decline in public services, and who have been living with the added anxiety of rising costs of food and clothing and the exorbitant rise in rents, which has resulted in so many families now living in temporary accommodation.

This, of course, adds to a child’s sense of insecurity. If the government were more in touch with the effect of these issues, it could have seen how much families have been affected and addressed these problems rather than, as Daly does, condemning “crap parents” for children’s struggles.

Another writes:

Attributing “kids who struggle” to “crap parents” is as hypocritical as it is contemptible. Are these the parents of children who struggle because of budget deficits for special educational needs and disabilities? Are they parents of children in schools denied a full complement of staff because of the crisis in teacher retention and the decimation of learning support staff?

Is the clamour for extending free school meals evidence of feckless parents, or of a level of impoverishment that food banks cannot keep pace with? Is disquiet at dwindling, inaccessible nursery and pre-school provision just the ungrateful voice of the low‑paid, despite them facing the second‑highest childcare costs in the developed world?

Obsessed with parents, Daly dismisses all other considerations. He cannot allow, for example, the connection that professionals and campaigners, including an all-party parliamentary group, have long made between a sharp rise in adolescent knife crime and massive cuts to youth services.

Neither has he time for those advocating strategies to improve social cohesion or identifying causes of its erosion (Youth violence isn’t an incurable disease – my work with young people proves it, 10 October).

Instead, Daly lauds “stability” as a defining characteristic of the family, while supporting a government that has weakened the structures on which the most vulnerable depend for that stability. He may have reason to reflect on the quality of parenting that produced his warped sense of propriety.

Last word goes to the person who wrote the following, which is excellent:

“How many “crap parents” showed their misjudgement in voting for James Daly?”

He may have a point.

Source: Crap government is the problem, not crap parents


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Tory lies: car industry issues were due to Brexit, not the war in Ukraine

Kemi Badenoch: another Tory parrot, uttering whatever tripe she’s told to regurgitate at us?

Take a look at this video clip of Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch saying concerns faced by car makers were due to the war in Ukraine, not Brexit – coupled with a more recent news report saying the exact opposite:

The best we can say about this is that at least the lies are being debunked faster.

In fact, this one was debunked in the press as soon as it was uttered. The Guardian explained [boldings mine]:

She said:

“The issue that the automotive industries are talking about is around rules of origin. This is something that the EU are also worried about because the costs of the components have risen.

“This isn’t to do with Brexit, this is to do with supply chain issues following the pandemic and the war in Russia and Ukraine.

“I actually have had meetings with my EU trade counterpart, we are discussing these things and looking at how we can review them, especially as the TCA [trade and cooperation agreement – the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU] will be coming into review soon.”

The “rules of origin” requirements raised by car manufacturers are part of the TCA, and are therefore definitely related to Brexit. But Badenoch is right in the sense that all European car manufacturers are having problems because there is not enough battery supply in Europe, making them reliant on imports from Asia.

And wrong in the sense that there is no information here that links a car battery shortage with Ukraine. Any shortages in minerals that are used in these batteries may be overcome by obtaining them elsewhere.

The question now is: did Badenoch know she was not telling the truth, or was she just another Tory parrot, squawking out the words she had been told to say?

If so, who is telling Tory ministers to utter such tripe?


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Coronavirus test and trace programme hit by further disasters on only its second day

This is going well, isn’t it?

Let me put it another way: it isn’t.

There are serious IT problems which mean contact tracers can’t use the dedicated “test and trace” website.

There isn’t enough work yet, meaning contact tracers are being paid for nothing – although they are being made to wait for it; payments have been unreasonably delayed or were for the wrong amount.

And they don’t even have dedicated team leaders to help them sort out these problems.

NHS workers in the scheme reported being unable to log into the new website, with staff saying they received a message saying a “critical incident” has been reported.

[Also:] “They’ve recruited all these people and there’s not enough work… launching this early was purely to try and dominate the news.

The tracer said she can see there are hundreds of contact tracer shifts available, commenting that, given there are no cases assigned to her, “I could book every day if I was that inclined and get money for sitting painting my nails!”

Another issue that contact tracers have told Sky News about is delayed pay.

One area of progress is that she now has been provided a number to talk to the team leaders but still has not been assigned a specific one for her.

Source: Coronavirus: Test and trace programme ‘hit by more problems’ on day two | UK News | Sky News

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Suspend benefit cap to protect disabled people in coronavirus crisis? It’ll never happen under Tories!

She’ll never support it: Therese Coffey’s record suggests she is not sympathetic to disabled benefit claimants.

It’s a good, solid, practical suggestion: with disabled people most at risk of financial loss during the coronavirus crisis, the government should suspend the penalties it has imposed on them in the last 10 years.

These include the benefit cap and the “two-child policy” for benefits relating to children.

Also suggested by the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) is conversion of the Universal Credit advance loan into a non-repayable grant.

In fact, the DBC requests the suspension of all debt repayment deductions from UC.

And the organisation calls on the government to suspend work-related conditionality and associated sanctions for those receiving benefits.

Other proposals include a call to give higher priority to resolving technical and capacity issues in the benefits system, as well as providing clear guidance for making both a digital and non-digital claim for UC. This is practical as the Department for Work and Pensions has been swamped with claims after the coronavirus lockdown began.

And there is absolutely no hope that the government will grant – or even seriously consider – any of these requests.

The Tories have turned the benefit system into a very efficient device with which to persecute people with disabilities.

They seem to see the coronavirus as a handy aid to this cause, with hospitals already being told to ration ventilators to those with a better chance of surviving – which is prejudicial against the disabled.

In fact it would be easy to see the crisis as providing the Tories with an opportunity simply to continue their hate campaign by other means.

When the final figures are summed up, it will be interesting to see what proportion of the dead happen to be disabled.

Source: Coronavirus: Suspend the benefit cap during crisis to protect disabled people, charities ask – Mirror Online

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MS sufferer nails problems with PIP – and delivers petition to put them right

As seen on Twitter: there’s many a truth told in jest.

Ashley Arundale understands the Personal Independence Payment better than most ministers at the DWP, it seems.

Not only has the multiple sclerosis sufferer delivered a letter to Downing Street demanding changes to the administration of PIP, but she has written an article explaining exactly what is wrong with it.

She describes the claim process as an “indignity I never expected”:

Firstly, the form itself is incredibly complex – not ideal for anyone with cognitive issues, experienced by up to 60 per cent of us living with MS. And you don’t really get advice on how to fill it in.

But an even bigger – and very common – worry is the lack of knowledge from assessors. My assessor did not seem to understand MS at all, and gave me no chance to explain it. In fact when I suggested it would be helpful for me to give some information about my condition, she seemed to get pretty annoyed.

The assessor’s total lack of knowledge was alarming.

Worse still is the fact that the assessment report that comes back is more likely to be a work of fiction than a medical record:

It was full of contradictions and inaccurate information. For example it claimed my condition could improve with specialist input – but treatment does not make MS better, it just tries to stop it getting worse.

The report also said I was observed walking with no difficulties and a normal gait. But the assessor never observed me walking, and I definitely don’t have a normal gait!

The DWP refuses to acknowledge fluctuating conditions, in which the symptoms are sometimes worse than normal, either. And what did it mean?

These informal observations were used to determine my financial future.

Anything that was inconvenient to the DWP’s version of me was either ignored or rewritten.

That’s the so-called “Atos [or Maximus] Miracle”, of course – the mythical ability of unqualified assessors to magically cure people of long-term, debilitating and progressive conditions, simply by pretending they don’t exist.

And, of course, such miracle cures can only cause harm in the end – often fatal harm, as we have seen in far too many cases.

At least one in four people with MS have had their PIP reduced or cut altogether – often incorrectly.

Figures from the MS Society revealed 83 per cent of people with MS who appealed their PIP decision after moving from the old benefit, Disability Living Allowance (DLA), won their case at tribunal.

We know this rings true too – and it suggests that people with MS have a better chance than those with other disabilities.

But the problem is getting people to appeal. Ms Arundale didn’t:

I thought about appealing but was afraid of making a fuss and losing the award altogether, which I know has happened to others. Right now I don’t feel supported by the system at all, just scared and exhausted.

The Tories have promised improvements – a minimum reassessment period and the scrapping of unnecessary reviews for pensioners and those with the highest needs. But there have been reports of difficulties.

And talk of the money that’s being spent isn’t encouraging. What’s the point of saying £84 million more is being spent on disability benefits, if it’s not going to the right people?

As Ms Arundale states:

For years the Government has been dragging its heels, with various politicians promising improvements to PIP, and that we will have a benefits process we can trust. But what’s taking them so long? Why are they leaving thousands of people like me struggling to get by?

Because they like it, of course. Because they want fewer disabled people using the public purse to live a decent life.

Because they want fewer disabled people.

I think they call it “culling the stock”.

Source: Living with MS is painful but I’ve never felt indignity like a PIP assessment | inews

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900 deaths a year due to NHS computer problems – caused by unsuitable software?

My understanding is that the software used by the NHS – like that used by many government departments – is bought from large corporations that work on a “one size fits all” basis.

The problem? One size doesn’t fit all.

The simple fact, as it seems to This Writer, is that government – not just the current government, but any government – seems too willing to pay a fortune to huge corporations for off-the-shelf software that doesn’t work.

I mean, who provided the software under criticism in the article quoted below?

A much better policy would be to seek tenders from multiple software writers – including small firms – for bespoke software that actually does the job required of it.

It would be cheaper, it would be better, and above all… it would be safer.

Problems with computers could be blamed for up to 900 deaths in the NHS every year, two academics have claimed.

Computers are embedded across the NHS but many are “bad” and “low quality”, putting lives at risk they say.

From the PC that stores patient records to systems embedded in devices like MRI scanners and dialysis machines, NHS IT is “unnecessarily buggy” and “susceptible to cyber-attack”, according to Harold Thimbleby, professor of computer science at Swansea University.

Source: NHS computer problems could be to blame for ‘up to 900 deaths a year’ – Mirror Online


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After Carillion – Interserve. Will it go under – and if it does, who’s next?

It seems Interserve is about to go the same way as Carillion.

If it does, the Conservative government will force the public to pay the costs again, even though they’re the ones who stupidly employed greedy private contractors who put our money in their bank accounts rather than investing it in the public services they are supposed to be providing (at least, that’s the Carillion model).

I hope that Interserve doesn’t go under, but it occurs to me that any private firm with a contract to provide public services will be in breach of that contract if it ends up in receivership due to poor financial management.

So it should be the government’s responsibility to get our money back from these people, rather than charging the public.

It might be easy to force the poor to cough up for the mistakes of the rich, but it isn’t justice.

Let’s have some justice for a change.

It appears the Tory Government could once again be stretching its pan-palms out to catch the overspill from the potential collapse of another favoured private contractor, Interserve.

Interserve’s debt almost doubled from £274m in 2016 to £513m at the end of 2017. An underestimation of the costs involved in a public-private partnership contract to provide waste-to-energy services, which saw the corporation raise its provision on one such project in Glasgow from £70m to £195m, has badly affected it.

And in further deeply worrying news, the corporation’s share price has plummeted from 717p in 2014 to just 63p in December, leading to serious discussions with its lenders over the firm’s remaining financial options.

Although the corporation issued profit warnings in September and October 2017, it has announced that it reportedly expects that its 2017 performance was in line with expectations. This, along with the partial recovery in its share price might be due to the fact that the corporation’s new chief executive announced cost cutting measures: £15m in 2018 to £50m by 2020.

With the corporation employing 80,000 people worldwide – 25,000 in the UK – and when it is responsible for public contracts including cleaning, healthcare, security, probation and construction, one wonders what cost-cutting measures will actually involve and how these might impact the provision of essential public services.

Source: Another major government contractor on the brink after 90% share price collapse and debt doubling | Evolve Politics


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DWP hounded diabetic, mentally ill mother to her death after ‘fit for work’ verdict

150920Urbacz pic copy

Your caring government will say there is no evidence to connect its policies with the deaths of benefit claimants. Does anybody – at all – believe that any more?

This was posted on Facebook today.

Peter Urbacz

My mother Ruby Urbacz age 59 was found dead at her home on the 6th September as a result of a heart attack. She had been admitted to hospital a 01/08/15 for chest pains where they found she had had three minor heart attacks. Even though my mother had poor mobility , type 2 diabetes, very basic numeracy and literacy skills and mental health problems including depression, she was deemed “fit for work” by the DWP. She was put on JSA and hounded to show evidence of looking for a job she struggled to write a shopping list and thus constantly worried about money and if her benefits would be stopped.

Her benefits were stopped without without any investigation as she missed her jsa appointment whilst in hospital, after her discharge she had received no money for five consecutive weeks of the £50 per week she would have normally received she was also paying £20 per week in bedroom tax. On only £30 per week She could not afford to feed herself properly as bills were her main priority, so was living off food bought from poundland which obviously worsened her diabetes.
She was getting carer visits from the red cross.

After her discharge from hospital. On the the 4th September the carers notes say “Ruby is worried about money, still waiting for benefits to be sorted.” She died less than 48hours later.

I’m writing this not because I want sympathy but to make you aware that Iain Duncan Smith’s policies are directly contributing to the deaths of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Please do not comment with sympathetic messages as this will not change anything, instead share this post and make as many people aware of the contemptuous nature of our self serving government who punish the poor and give to the rich.
Thank you for sharing.

Source: His diabetic mother was found dead in her home after being sanctioned for being in hospital with heart problems. | Benefit tales

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People with mental health problems ARE vulnerable and the DWP has lied AGAIN

zDWP-Vulnerable

A claim by the Department for Work and Pensions that jobseekers with mental health problems are not classed as vulnerable and may be sanctioned with impunity is false, documentary evidence has shown.

Welfare Weekly revealed last week that JSA claimants with even the most serious mental health illnesses are not considered vulnerable by DWP. This has a knock-on effect when their Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) is reduced or stopped.

In that circumstance, everyone can apply for a hardship payment totallying up to 60 per cent of their JSA, to help cover the cost of food and bills while they have no other means of support.

Those classed as ‘vulnerable’ can normally claim this vital support immediately, but others may have to wait at least two weeks, and then go through what could be a lengthy application process.

In the case of claimants with mental health problems, that two-week wait could be extremely dangerous.

According to the article: “DWP guidance on hardship payments states: ‘Requests for hardship payments may be made by people who say they have a mental condition. A person will only be a member of a vulnerable group if the condition causes limitation in functional capacity because of a physical impairment.’

The guidance goes on to clarify that mental health problems without physical impairment include: “Affective disorder, Agoraphobia, Anorexia nervosa, Anxiety, Bipolar Affective disorder, Bulimia nervosa, Depression, Dissociative disorders, Nervous Debility, Neurasthenia, Neurosis, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Panic attacks, Paranoia, Phobias, Phobic anxiety, Psychoneurosis, Psychosis, and Schizophrenia.”

Oh, really?

Vox Political has received information showing that both the Department of Health and the Home Office disagree with this definition – and the DWP has in fact made itself vulnerable to accusations that its own guidance is encouraging decision makers to abuse vulnerable adults.

The Department of Health/Home Office paper No secrets: Guidance on developing and implementing multi-agency policies and procedures to protect vulnerable adults from abuse adopts and confirms a broad definition of a “vulnerable adult” from a 1997 consultation paper entitled ‘Who Decides?’, that had previously been issued by the Lord Chancellor’s Department.

It defines a ‘vulnerable adult’ as a person “who is or may be in need of community care services* by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation” [bolding mine].

The paper adopts as a “starting point” for its definition of abuse, that it is “a violation of an individual’s human and civil rights by any other person or persons”.

“Any other person or persons” includes officials working for the Department for Work and Pensions.

It seems the DWP has a huge amount of explaining to do.

Please publicise this widely and pass it on to anybody who is vulnerable due to mental health issues, along with anybody dealing with such people in a professional context (including carers). Everybody needs to know about this.

Of course, anyone with serious mental health problems should be receiving Employment and Support Allowance rather than JSA, but of course the work capability assessment process used by the DWP is hopelessly inadequate at identifying people who need the alternative benefit – it was designed to be that way.

Anyone affected by the DWP’s discrimination against the vulnerable should also consider campaigning against the work capability assessment.

*For the purposes of this guidance ‘community care services’ will be taken to include all care services provided in any setting or context.

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Health Warning: Government! is now available
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