The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. As I never tire of pointing out, if it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
People are reacting to this announcement with scepticism – and who can blame them?
Here’s what the government has said:
The government is to give more money to victims of the Windrush scandal, which saw hundreds of people wrongly threatened with deportation.
Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that the minimum payment will rise from £250 to £10,000, and the maximum from £10,000 to £100,000.
The figure will be higher still in “exceptional” circumstances, with money coming through quicker than before.
In the analysis inset by Westminster Hour‘s Jack Fenwick, though, he said
One person [told] me they won’t believe it until a cheque is in the post.
Who can blame them?
The big scandal of the Windrush compensation scheme so far is that people have died before receiving compensation. Did their descendants get the cash? That would have been reasonable, in the circumstances. Taking it back would not.
And what about people who were wrongly deported. Has the Home Office made any effort to contact them, apologise, and ask them to come back? Many of Priti Patel’s deportation victims have suffered terrible ill-treatment since deportation, so that is a can of worms that needs to be opened.
So it’s a nice announcement. But we need to action, not just pretty words.
Inferno: The Grenfell Tower blaze caused the greatest single loss of life in London since World War II, with official figures showing 72 people lost their lives.
How can we believe a Tory claim that the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry on safety for people living in flats will be put into practise?
For a start, Robert Jenrick is the one making the claim and he’s as crooked as a nine-bob note (in This Writer’s experienced opinion)!
The recommendations
required flat owners or building managers in England and Wales to:
Share information with their local fire service about the design of external walls and the materials used
Carry out regular inspections of lifts and individual flat entrance doors
Share evacuation and fire safety instructions with residents of the building
But we will have to monitor the Tories carefully, if we want to be sure they don’t pull yet another u-turn.
And remember: they have already prevented the most important change – the removal of all flammable cladding from tower blocks.
What conclusion are we supposed to draw from that, apart from:
The Tories never cared about the lives lost at Grenfell and will happily watch more people die the same way.
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Christine McCluskey: when she died, after your Tory government cut her benefits, she weighed just three stone.
Christine McCluskey did not have to die in the humiliating way your Conservative government demanded.
The 61-year-old grandmother had suffered long-term health problems most of her adult life including Crohn’s disease – which left her with a colostomy bag – osteoporosis, arthritis, a stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
This housebound lady had a feeding tube and a painful fistula that leaked through her abdominal wall, she was severely malnourished and was being investigated for a worrying cough at the time the Department for Work and Pensions assessed her for Personal Independence Payment.
The decision: her payments of £117.85 per week were removed and her mobility car was taken away from her.
Weeks later she was diagnosed with terminal cancer but her payments were not restored. She died four months after her benefits were stopped, weighing just three stone.
She was unable to receive fast-track access to PIP that is available for people with terminal illnesses who have less than six months to live, because she was unable to show when she was likely to die.
But doesn’t her case, along with those of Stephen Smith and Errol Graham, show that – deprived of benefits – people definitely will die within the six months stipulated?
The matter is even worse, though: The Tory government promised to review its six-month rule more than a year ago – and then forgot about it.
In the time since then, it is believed that more than 3,000 people have died in similar ways to Ms McCluskey while the Tories sat on their thumbs.
Earlier this month, motor neurone disease sufferer Lorraine Cox won a court case demanding a judicial review of the rules that demand only people with certain illnesses, who can prove they will die within six months, may claim PIP on the fast-track system.
So the Tories will have to go to court and defend their decision (albeit by omission) to cause these thousands of deaths.
Or will they just quietly announce a rule change between now and the hearing, as they have with the safeguarding rules that failed Errol Graham?
Whatever happens, it seems a rule change will happen. If so, This Writer hopes the families of the deceased – likely to number more than 20,000 over the last six years – demand compensation through the courts.
More than 300 are already doing this over a change in Universal Credit rules, after the system that deprived people of benefit because they were paid on different dates at the end of each month was condemned as “irrational” by the Court of Appeal.
Will the Tories care?
That is a good question, that cuts to the heart of Conservative policy on benefits.
It has been argued that the benefit system is heartless and kills people because the Tories want to save money and don’t care if people die as a result.
But their system of constant review and persecution is actually more expensive than simply paying the benefits – especially when one adds in the cost of appeals by all the claimants who have been denied benefits under false pretences, and now the cost of compensation claims.
Current Tory measures have done nothing to reduce benefit fraud, which remains a miniscule proportion of all claims.
So it seems we should ask the question nobody seems willing to ask:
Did the Tories impose these rules simply because they wanted to kill vulnerable people?
This is what you get when you elect Tories. You don't 'Get Brexit Done' you don't 'Get Moving', you get sick elderly women being effectively euthanised by the DWP. If that's what you want, fine, keep voting for the animals who did this to Christine McCluskey. https://t.co/ZhKqymf5Hn
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If you were relieved when Boris Johnson promised an independent inquiry into his government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis, you’ve missed the point.
Boris Johnson promises the world. He delivers very little – if not actually nothing at all.
It costs him nothing to say he’ll have work done – and we should all know by now that he will spend nothing on the work.
In fact, his response to Ed Davey’s question followed a classic pattern.
He said: “I do not believe that now, in the middle of combating the pandemic as we are, is the right moment to devote huge amounts of official time to an inquiry.”
Will the PM commit to a future public Covid-19 inquiry? asks acting Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey
A reminder that it’s now over a year since Boris Johnson promised an independent inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative party. https://t.co/50mfXdsQ3K
And even when the report has been commissioned then it's not guaranteed to be published. The Russian influence report being another good case of delay and obfuscation#obfuscateDenyDelay
*Conducted by a private company charging £Millions, which just so happens to have previously donated to the Tory party. Probably owned by some wife/husband of a Tory MP and/or Dom’s mate.
If you really want an inquiry into the government’s homicidal response to Covid-19, This Writer recommends contributing to that which is currently being carried out by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Covid-19:
The newly-formed All-Party Parlaimentary Group on Coronavirus has just set up an inquiry into Govt handling of coronavirus crisis & is already taking evidence (see link).
Boris Johnson is too slow. Lessons need to be learned before winter, not afterwards:https://t.co/rx6CY0aBcu
— Dr Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) July 15, 2020
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Lorraine Cox: she has motor neurone disease, but was denied PIP because she could say she would die within six months. It seems 3,000 others who also couldn’t predict their own deaths have died without receiving PIP in the last year.
It is one year since the Tories pledged to review their rules on which terminally-ill people could claim Personal Independence Payment – and it seems more than 3,000 would-be PIP claimants had to die before they were forced to do it by a court ruling.
They died without receiving PIP, because they could not predict when they were likely to die.
This Site celebrated like many others when Lorraine Cox won her case demanding a judicial review of the rules that said only people with particular terminal illness could claim PIP – and only if they knew they would die within six months.
Now we discover that – if recent trends have continued – then 3,000 people died between the Tories pledging a review that seems not to have happened and the Tory defeat in the Cox case.
I asked what happened to those people while Ms Cox was fighting her case in court.
Well, now we know.
According to The Mirror:
DWP figures show 17,070 people died waiting for a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decision in five previous years.
If that pattern repeated, more than 3,000 will have died in similar cases since the review launched last summer.
Charities have demanded change.
The Tories are saying the Covid-19 crisis delayed their review.
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Boris Johnson has the clap: but his show of appreciation for NHS staff went no further than a photo opportunity outside 10 Downing Street.
Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt after the number coming from the EU fell again and (it says here) coronavirus prevented thousands of arrivals from the rest of the world.
Here’s the Guardian:
The prime minister made the promise a cornerstone of his general election campaign last year and has since reiterated many times his determination to deliver the increase.
But annual data from the Nursing and Midwifery Council shows that the number of nurses and midwives from the European Economic Area (EEA) on its register, and thus able to work in the UK, has fallen for the last three years in a row.
The total now stands at 31,385. That is 1,650 (five per cent) fewer than the 33,035 such health professionals who were in Britain in 2018-19 and 6,639 fewer than the 38,024 who were here in 2016-17, the year in which the UK voted to leave the EU.
Last year just 913 people from the EEA joined the NMC’s permanent register for the first time. That is less than 10 per cent of the 9,389 EEA nurses and midwives who did so in 2015-16. Numbers arriving from Spain, Italy, Romania, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland have slowed to a trickle.
The NHS in England already has more than 40,000 vacancies for nurses.
Johnson simply doesn’t have a clue.
He made the pledge in the run-up to a general election – probably because he thought it would sound good and play well with voters.
He knew he’d be getting no nurses from the EU, and he had been told that Covid-19 was on the way – although, given his limited ability to understand global events, it is unlikely he gave any consideration to the meaning of this.
He spent weeks standing outside the door of 10 Downing Street, clapping for NHS staff in the certain knowledge that the virus was killing some of them and removing many others from active service.
And he knew that nobody would be recruited to boost those numbers.
Worse, his government announced plans to penalise NHS staff (as part of the Tory recovery strategy) and to harm the finances of student nurses who had stepped in to help when the NHS really needed them.
Not only did he lie about recruiting 50,000 more nurses; he has deliberately made the NHS unattractive for anyone considering that career.
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Checkout: it seems the Tory governent may be encouraging people with disabilities to check out of LIFE, after promising to arrange supermarkets to deliver groceries to them and then reneging on it.
Claims that some people with disabilities could slip through a government safety net and be left to starve are understated. Where is the safety net?
According to Disability News Service, the government announced that 1.5 million disabled people had been categorised as “extremely vulnerable” to the virus and would receive regular deliveries of basic groceries if they do not have their own support network of friends and family.
The list includes those with severe respiratory conditions, many people on immunosuppression therapies, and those with certain cancers.
DNS quoted a disabled Baptist minister who raised concerns that people with disabilities who were not on the government’s list would be left to starve to death.
But here’s my concern:
I have family members who qualify for this help – according to the criteria listed by the government – and haven’t heard a single word about regular grocery deliveries for them.
It raises the question: who actually is on this mythical list of people who qualify for such deliveries? Who compiled it? Does it exist at all?
Or is it as fake as the government’s claims about personal protective equipment, coronavirus tests and ventilator supplies?
Remember: the government has ordered the NHS to deny coronavirus treatment to anybody with the disabilities in its list, if they contract it.
This Site would be keen to hear from anybody who has been contacted about receiving deliveries of supplies from supermarkets – on grounds that their health condition qualifies them for it.
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Rishi Sunak: his promises to employees are turning out to be worthless.
Another Tory coronavirus promise bites the dust.
Rishi Sunak promised that zero-hours workers would be covered by his promise to pay 80 per cent of employee wages, as long as they were on PAYE.
But his promise depended on employers signing up to the deal, and many haven’t.
Instead, the Department for Work and Pensions has been swamped with new claims for Universal Credit.
The reason?
Rishi Sunak said on Friday that workers on zero-hours contracts would be covered, as long as they were paid through PAYE. But many of these workers have simply been let go en masse in any case. Self-employed workers, who are not on PAYE, are not covered at all and will have to claim benefits if their work dries up and no new government measures are enacted.
There’s no two ways around it. The Tories promised people would be protected; the Tories lied.
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It seems Rishi Sunak has announced spending worth £640 billion in his Budget speech on Tuesday – to rapturous applause from the Tory-supporting media.
That’s £140 billion more than the £500 billion offered by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in their Labour election manifesto last year – that the same media voices ridiculed in a (successful) bid to get more people to vote for the Tories.
What has changed in less than four months, to make the Tory offer praiseworthy when Labour’s was dangerously reckless?
And where’s the money coming from, that wasn’t available before?
That’s what they’re asking on the social media:
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell promised £500bn of infrastructure spending, prompting eyes to pop all over Westminster and Whitehall. Rishi Sunak today promised £640bn.
And doesn’t this announcement prove the truth of this comment?
BUDGET. Massive borrowing. Final proof Tory Austerity failed. 10 wasted years. Millions of wasted lives. I should be happy but I'm not, I'm angry. Angry that the Tories persevered with their austerity experiment knowing that it was failing the country and failing us the people.
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Drug buddies: Will Boris Johnson hand over any cash saved on Brexit to Donald Trump for substandard US medicines?
This short Twitter dialogue says it all.
A hundred years or so ago, back during the EU referendum campaign, Brexiteers tried to fool us into thinking the UK would save £350 million a week – and all of the money could be diverted into funding the National Health Service.
I suppose they thought it was a very funny joke, especially when it fooled so many of us into supporting the ‘Leave’ option.
(Apparently it might have been a different story, had more of our population been better-educated. What does that say about ‘Leave’ voters.)
Now it’s a matter of days until they have to make good on their offer.
Rachael Swindon pointed this out on Twitter – with a sharp observation on the validity of the original promise.
And Karen Owen’s response makes clear where she thinks the cash will go.
Oh, was the referendum campaign only four years ago? Sorry – I guess it just seems like this farce has been going on forever.
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