Tag Archives: women

Suella Braverman’s speech: a self-hating bid for Tory leadership?

Suella Braverman: this product of UK multiculturalism reckons multiculturalism has failed.

The UK’s Tory Home Secretary has continued her hate campaign against immigrants in a speech to an American think tank – earning widespread condemnation from all but her own Tory cronies.

She was discussing policy, which means she would have needed to get permission to say her words from the Cabinet Office.

Commentators may be right to suggest that it is a first move in a bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, challenging Rishi Sunak’s ever-weakening position.

(Sunak appears to have given up any pretense of trying to run the country and seems to be devoting himself to projects that will make money for himself and his family.)

Of course, as she did have permission (the speech was signed off by Downing Street), then the Tories should lose votes from gay people and women – because she promoted discrimination against both those segments of the population in her speech; this is now Tory government policy.

The fact that she was speaking to a US think tank suggests that she was making a pitch to the kind of international oligarchs who provide much of the Tory Party’s funding (do I have to attach the word ‘allegedly’ to that?) in order to gain support for such a bid.

But the speech also opens up the main fault with Braverman’s candidacy – for anything: her opposition to immigration indicates hatred of the very mechanism that has put her in a position even to make her speech, let alone seek power as a world leader.

Her own prime minister is of Indian descent, yet has risen to become the political leader of a country that is not, ancestrally, his. Doesn’t that, alone, destroy her arguments?

She is, herself, a daughter of immigrants, but the way she speaks about them reveals not the calculated reasoning of a seasoned politician but the irrational hatred of an unbalanced child.

Remember when Jewish people were labelled “self-hating” if they campaigned against the policy of Israel to persecute Palestinians on the lands that country has illegally occupied? It was a misnomer, because they did not hate their religion, culture or ethnicity – just a policy of a country that claimed to represent that religion, culture and ethnicity.

But that issue brought the phrase “self-hating” into modern parlance and we may now attach it to Braverman with far more accuracy than was ever applied to it in relation to Jews.

She is the daughter of immigrants; she does clearly hate them (and, by extension, their offspring), so she’s very definitely self-hating.

And she knows it’s her weak point, too. That’s why she went on the attack when she was challenged about it after her speech:

In this part of her speech, Braverman claimed that multiculturalism – allowing people of other cultures to settle in the UK – has failed because they don’t integrate into society:

Her arguments about the results of immigration are not new; they are the same arguments that were put forward by Enoch Powell in 1968. Fortunately, we had people like Jonathan Miller to present the other side, back in those more enlightened days:

The claim that people come here to create communities of their original countries, rather than integrate into our culture, falls because only a minority do this:

Braverman is the daughter of Mauritian and Kenyan immigrants who integrated into UK society. Her prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian extraction but has also integrated into UK society. They are both living proof that her claim is false.

In fact, the debate over immigration goes back centuries; Shakespeare discussed it – and it is appropriate to end this article with a speech from the man who is considered to be England’s greatest writer.

If you claim to love England, Britain, the UK, and the culture that we have built, then you should love and live by these words:

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Top law firm invites Mel Stride to start pension mediation for 50s women | Westminster Confidential

David Hencke’s ever-informative Westminster Confidential site provides this update on the struggle to get restitution for women who have been harmed by changes to the pension system:

One of London’s top law firms has written to Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, inviting him to agree to mediation talks to end the long suffering impasse on awarding compensation to the now 3.5 million 50s born women who had to wait another six years before they got their pension.

[A] report into the issue was published at the end of November and concluded that there was direct discrimination … women who were born from 1950 to 1960 had been singled out to wait for their pension while everyone else was unaffected.

It has also to be taken into account that 9.8m men were given 5 years free auto credits to retire 5 years early, aged 60, whilst the state pension of 3.8m 1950’s women was twice deferred, by stealth, and they were then coerced back to work for up to another 6 years having been denied the promised similar auto credits awarded to men.

The report [was hand-delivered] to Rishi Sunak at Downing Street just before it was published. It was also delivered to Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who is currently involved in a long inquiry into how much the women should be compensated after finding partial maladminstration.

It might be instructive to contrast this with another case of discrimination against women, that has been in the news recently; I refer to that of Birmingham City Council, which used a bonus scheme that unfairly benefited men more than women while it was run by a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition and then was under no overal control, between 2004 and 2010.

After a court battle, the council was ordered to pay £760 million to settle equal pay claims – and attempting to comply has caused the council to declare (effective) bankruptcy. Tory MPs have made a big fuss of the fact that a council that is now run by Labour has been financially embarrassed, even though it was their party that caused the problem.

The UK government cannot go bankrupt; it can always issue currency to cover any spending it has to make (although there should be a balancing tax take, to counter inflation).

But, so far, it has resisted calls to compensate women harmed by the state pension changes, even though those changes were clearly discriminatory against them.

Hypocrisy? What gives the Tory government the right to avoid a responsibility that the law has thrust onto a local authority – with the enthusiastic support of Tory MPs?

Source: Exclusive: Top law firm writes to Mel Stride inviting him to start mediation talks on restitution for 50swomen | Westminster Confidential

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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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Is candidate who posted ‘disgusting’ anti-women and anti-refugee comments Starmer’s preference?

Keir Starmer: if they surround themselves with flags, with what else are they going to surround themselves?

I have a simple question: is this the kind of person Keir Starmer values over Jeremy Corbyn?

In 2017 Mr Haldane was discovered to have made ‘disgusting’ anti-refugee and anti-women posts on social media, including sharing posts by right-wing extremist groups.

Right-wing candidates have been greenlit despite allegations as grave as serious sexual assault and hate speech toward the disabled, as well as undisputed track records of racist comment and sexual harassment.

If so…

Does his political organisation – whatever it can be said to be now – deserve your vote?

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How could this care home spend severely disabled man’s cash on women’s clothes, cosmetics and toys he could not use?

Care: this is the most illustrative image I could find that doesn’t show the people involved in the story – but how many severely disabled people are getting the care they need?

This is a serious breach of care. It seems care home staff and a UK city council spent a severely disabled man’s money on things that weren’t for him – and lied to his family about it.

Ian Reeves was a resident at Marston Court Care Home, Leicester, from 2007 until he died in February 2021. His next of kin, sister Sharon McConnell, developed serious concerns about the care he was receiving and how his money was being spent after their mother died in 2018.

She found that his bedroom was bare and he was sitting in a broken wheelchair, so she asked for control of his finances – but was refused.

So she applied to the courts to become a deputy – with the council retaining the role of appointee – and this was granted. Then she requested information on what had been done with his money.

She found that thousands of pounds had gone into and out of his bank account over the years – being spent on women’s and children’s clothes, cosmetics and toys he could not use.

She also found her wheelchair-bound brother’s money had been spent on Zumba classes and chiropody, which she also found strange. The council told her the Zumba classes were specially adapted and he enjoyed taking part.

There was much more (see the source article – link below – for details).  Ms McConnell wanted more information but was frustrated by the response, so she urged the council, the police, the Care Quality Commission and the ombudsman to carry out their own investigations.

The police and the CQC very quickly backed out. The council concluded the home had mismanaged her brother’s finances and that more than £1,500 of his money was ‘unaccounted for’.

It ordered the home to apologise, pay the missing money back and carry out a review of its policies for managing residents’ finances. But the home did not accept the council’s findings and claimed the spending on Zumba classes, clothing and toys all met Ian’s needs.

Both Marsden Court and the council have been found guilty of failing her brother and maladministration by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The ombudsman concluded both the council and home mismanaged Ian’s finances. Its report, which refers to Ian only as ‘Mr C’, highlights a catalogue of mistakes by both organisations.

Ms McConnell has been offered apologies and £500 in compensation – to make up for the loss of thousands of pounds.

But bosses at the home, while acknowledging they had to learn lessons on good practice from the case, have said they don’t recognise other concerns that had been raised.

They said the home had received a clean bill of health from the Care Quality Commission (which had backed away from investigating, remember) and the council (which had admitted failings) and other professionals regularly visited the home and viewed Ian’s room.

That’s where this story ends. But it raises questions about the care of other severely disabled people at homes around the UK – the most obvious being the following:

How many other people have received – or are receiving – the same or similar treatment to that received by Ian Reeves?

Source: Scandal as care home spends severely disabled man’s money on women’s clothes, cosmetics and toys he could not use – Leicestershire Live

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Women in government pension trap are facing extreme financial hardship

WASPI protesters: it seems the government isn’t even bothering to engage with these ladies.

It must have been bad enough when the UK wasn’t in a Tory-created financial crisis, but now the strain on women who were born in the 1950s must be phenomenal.

These are women who weren’t properly informed that instead of retiring at the age of 60, as they expected, the government was raising the age at which they would receive a state pension to 66.

More than 200,000 women have died without receiving satisfaction from the government.

80 per cent of those affected have suffered financial hardship and 30 per cent are in debt. This could have been avoided if they had been properly informed of what was happening and its implications, according to campaigners.

One shocking aspect of this report is that the government hasn’t bothered to engage with campaigners since 2016.

Since then, the effects of Brexit, Covid-19 and the current inflation crisis have harmed millions of people across the UK – including these already-disadvantaged ladies.

But the Tory response is: can’t be bothered.

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Car crash interviews show the Conservatives’ biggest liability in #CPC21 is their leader

Coward: Boris Johnson hid in a fridge once to evade difficult questions. Now he is being forced to face them – and has no answers.

Boris Johnson can’t say anything right, can he?

Listen to these diabolical responses to TV interviewers – on shortages caused by Brexit:

On crimes against women (pay close attention at 3 minutes 30 seconds when he says he wants to concentrate on real crimes – whatever he means by that):

Johnson’s lieutenants aren’t faring any better.

In addition to Kit Malthouse’s rinsing on Sky (above) I now have video of the confrontation between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Hutchins, who had to prove he still had cerebral palsy – a lifelong condition – to a Tory-employed benefits assessor, and whose job was taken away from him by Tory cuts. This is hard to watch:

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

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Sarah Everard case isn’t just about male – but POLICE – violence against women


Why are the UK’s news media avoiding any mention of the Metropolitan Police Service’s collusion in the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard?

Commissioner Cressida Dick was well aware of concerns about Wayne Couzens, long before he planned and executed his crimes against Ms Everard.

He had been nicknamed ‘The Rapist’ by colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which he joined in 2011, because he made some female colleagues feel uncomfortable, according to the Evening Standard.

The paper also reported that Kent Police took no action in 2015 after it was alleged that he had been seen driving around Dover, naked from the waist down.

And the Met – which he joined in 2018 – received further accusations of indecent exposure by Couzens on two further occasions. Neither of them were investigated properly in the days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Ms Everard.

The BBC reported in July that the Independent Office for Police Conduct said a total of 12 gross misconduct or misconduct notices had so far been served on police officers from multiple forces in relation to the Couzens case, including about the handling of two separate claims that Couzens had indecently exposed himself.

And other recent cases show that police turning a blind eye to the crimes of fellow officers is at epidemic levels.

In this context, the Met put out a statement that its members were “sickened, angered and devastated” by Couzens’s crimes. Maybe they are – but is it only because he was caught?

“They betray everything we stand for,” the statement continues. But Met police officers betray everything they stand for on a daily basis.

Look at the Daniel Morgan case, in which the Met was found to be “institutionally corrupt” and Commissioner Dick herself was found to have obstructed access to vital information without reason.

And what punishment did she receive for this corrupt behaviour?

None. Instead she was rewarded for it with a two-year extension of her job.

Real people are disgusted…

… but does that really matter when the media – and the politicians – are backing these corrupt cops to the hilt?

Look at Labour leader Keir Starmer. In his speech at the party conference – on the day we learned Couzens had abused his police powers to arrest Ms Everard before abducting, raping and murdering her – he used rape victims as a tool of emotional blackmail to push for more police powers.

I’ll hand you back to Another Angry Voice for an opinion more succinct than any I could add:

The Met’s comment says staff recognise the concerns raised by Couzens’s actions and will comment further after he has been sentenced for his crimes – but I have no hope that anything useful will be said.

We’ll probably hear that new measures will be put in place to prevent such crimes in the future – that will not be enforced.

They’re likely to say that lessons have been learned – but nobody will act upon them.

The end result is that women will be left in greater fear of violence against them than ever – not because of men, as some in politics and the media are signalling, but because of the police.

You can bet the Met won’t do anything to change that.

If you want proof, all you have to do is wait for the reports of the next crimes committed by officers of the Metropolitan Police.

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

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Online abuse of women in politics is getting worse, says Williams. But relief is on the way

Kirsty Williams, shortly after she had been made the Welsh cabinet secretary for Education.

A long, long time ago, when This Writer was still working at the Brecon and Radnor Express (I think), Liberal Democrat Kirsty Williams was likened to toilet paper.

Her response was to say that if any comparison could be made, she would be Double Velvet. Many people thought it amusing at the time.

Now it seems that was just a mild example of the kind of abuse she received in a political career that has lasted around 20 years, and that she says has become worse because of the social media.

I’ve had my own differences with Ms Williams (I won’t deny it); politically I am traditional Labour and there is a lot of space between my views and hers. But we co-operated on the campaign for the general election voting system to be changed to proportional representation before the referendum – and wouldn’t the UK be a much better place if we had succeeded?

And she was an excellent constituency AM.

So I am saddened to learn that she – along with her husband and children – has been forced to deal with this.

I am far more willing to believe her than some of the representatives of my own party, who – in my opinion – went out of their way to stir up reactions and then squealed when people responded aggressively to their own unacceptable behaviour.

One of the examples in the BBC article is when then-Welsh Assembly Member Neil Hamilton referred to her and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood as “political concubines”. He got away with it after claiming he had not intended to upset anybody.

But that is deliberately provocative language! How did he think people were going to react?

And when people see those who are elected to high office acting in such a way, they think it is permissible to do the same.

We have a shocking example of this squatting in 10 Downing Street pretending to be prime minister at the moment, having referred to gay people as “tank-topped bum boys”, Muslim women as “letterboxes”, black people as having “watermelon smiles”… the list of his offences is endless.

But it is possible that some relief is on the horizon, with the forthcoming Online Harms Bill that will bring in prison sentences for the behaviour Ms Williams identifies.

She says she would not discourage her three daughters from entering politics but would be worried for them, having to cope with the kind of abuse she has received.

I hope the new law – if it doesn’t have its teeth pulled by some of the offenders in Westminster – will make the environment safer, for all the rest of us and for them.

Even if I don’t approve of the political party they may choose to represent.

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

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#DWP bungled #Waspi women’s #pension-age rise. How long must they wait for #compensation?

WASPI protesters: this image is from 2016 and women born in the 1950s had already spent years protesting against the way the Department for Work and Pensions mistreated them.

The so-called Waspi women have finally won recognition that they were mistreated by the government, after an ombudsman found maladministration by the Department for Work and Pensions.

But they won’t get any compensation for it – at least, not yet – because the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has no power to order it.

The PHSO found that the DWP failed to act quickly enough, once it knew a significant proportion of women were not aware that the age at which they would qualify for the state pension was going up.

It should have written to the women affected by the change, at least 28 months – more than two years – earlier than it did.

The ombudsman’s report said

Between 1995 and 2004, accurate information about changes to State Pension age was publicly available in leaflets, through DWP’s pensions education campaigns, through DWP’s agencies and on its website.

[But the DWP} failed to give due weight to relevant considerations, including what research showed about the need for ‘appropriately targeted’ information, what was known about the need for individually tailored information, or how likely it was doing the same thing would achieve different results. Despite having identified more it could do, DWP failed to provide the public with as full information as possible. DWP failed to make a reasonable decision about next steps in August 2005.

It did not ‘get it right’. And its failure to use feedback to improve service delivery meant it did not ‘seek continuous improvement’. That was maladministration.

DWP then failed to act promptly on its 2006 proposal to write directly to affected women, or to give due weight to how much time had already been lost since the 1995 Pensions Act.

It did not ‘get it right’ because it did not meet the requirements of the Civil Service Code, and it did not take all relevant considerations into account. And it failed again to use feedback to improve service delivery and ‘seek continuous improvement’. That was also maladministration.

The maladministration led to a delay in DWP writing directly to women
about changes in State Pension age. If the maladministration had not happened, DWP would have begun writing to affected women by December 2006 at the latest, 28 months earlier than it did (in April 2009).

It follows that affected women should have had at least 28 months’ more individual notice of the changes. For women who were not aware of the changes, the opportunity that additional notice would have given them to adjust their retirement plans was lost.

The investigation is not over; its next stage will consider the impact that the injustice had on the women it affected.

The co-chairs of the All-party parliamentary group on State Pension Inequality for Women, Andrew Gwynne (Labour) and Peter Aldous (Conservative) have both welcomed the findings.

“The DWP must urgently address these findings, and advise 1950s women what actions they will take to right the wrongs committed by successive Governments. For too long 1950s women have been ignored, and this must change,” said Mr Gwynne.

And Mr Aldous added: “We now must see a cross-party effort to sort this problem out. This issue is bigger than any administration and has been raised repeatedly over the last 25 years. The PHSO findings must now be scrutinised by the DWP and parliament, and then we must set out about compensating women for this injustice.”

It seems the DWP itself isn’t ready to comment yet:

Waspi women have already waited many years for an admission that they were mistreated by the government, and that they have suffered loss as a result.

It seems they may not have to wait even longer before getting any compensation for the loss they have suffered and the huge amount of distress it has caused.

Source: Women’s state pension: Compensation closer for Waspi campaigners – BBC News

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

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

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