campaign against welfare cuts and poverty

[ddraig]

shocking!
no link?

 

[Greebo]

http://www.facebook.com/Justice4Jobseekers/posts/364416866996024


Guy who runs Justice4jobseekers F/B site banned from local jobcentre for posting about them on his site, allies going ballistic, not sure which JC, wtf..

FFS!

 

[equationgirl]

Useful article in the Guardian with facts and figures, based on work from the Rowntree Foundation:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths

 

[treelover]

Guy on FB site mentions that he has been sanctioned for not accepting a 10 hrs a week job 200 miles away, crazy if true..

 

[BigTom]

Guy on FB site mentions that he has been sanctioned for not accepting a 10 hrs a week job 200 miles away, crazy if true..

60 minutes travel, will be 90 minutes travel under universal credit. That's the maximum distance they can make you apply for a job, don't know if that's different for accepting one but I wouldn't have thought so - he should definitely ask for a review and appeal that + go to CAB. Far from the oddest sanction I've heard, would not disbelieve it for a second, turning down a job offer? blatant opportunity for a dick of an advisor to make a referral and hopefully win that easter egg!

 

[Greebo]

Guy on FB site mentions that he has been sanctioned for not accepting a 10 hrs a week job 200 miles away, crazy if true..

Iniquitous. Somebody was either on a power trip or in a vile mood, I reckon.

 

[weepiper]

Front page story in my local rag today

http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-e...uts-edinburgh-families-to-lose-2170-1-2886806

Councillor Ricky Henderson, convener of health, social care and housing at the City Chambers, said the welfare shake-up was taking money “directly out of the pockets of the poorest people in Edinburgh”.
He said: “By definition, people on benefits are at the poorer end of society, and I would go further and say that not only is this taking money from the poorest families, but that this money won’t be [going] into local economies.
“The evidence is that poorer people tend to spend a greater proportion of their income locally because they don’t have flats in Marbella and can’t jet off to Las Vegas.
“Some of this money would have gone to the council in rent, but most of the other money would be spent in shops and services.”
On the bedroom tax, Cllr Henderson questioned whether it would be “morally right” to evict a council tenant “whose only offence was that the government had moved the goalposts”.

 

[treelover]

F/Times (paywall i think) has an front page article which shows that those in the Northern areas are losing as much as five time more money than those in the affluent South, it describes how local economies will be devastated as the massive range of benefit cuts reduce spending power in poorer communities.

btw, good for the FT is publishing this...

btw, this is happening, in the poorer end of town here, even cheap clothes/shoes, etc shops are closing...

 

[treelover]

Big foodbank opening in Billingham...

 

[treelover]

http://www.shu.ac.uk/mediacentre/first-evidence-overall-impact-welfare-reform-across-britain


link to the Important new research by Sheffield Hallam University on the regional impact of the benefit cuts(see above post)


as a perhaps ironic aside, Professor Steve Fothergill who lead on the research, was also the guy who provided NL with the research on IB take up in de-industrialised areas(eg many redundant ex miners in merthr Tydfill had been signed off onto IB) which (not what naïve Fothergill had expected) led to the abolishing of IB and the intro of ESA.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Latest insight into Tory thinking

http://trueblueviews.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/unmasked-is-meena-britains-worst-scrounger/

 

[treelover]

That site is a spoof, isn't it?

 

[yield]

F/Times (paywall i think) has an front page article which shows that those in the Northern areas are losing as much as five time more money than those in the affluent South, it describes how local economies will be devastated as the massive range of benefit cuts reduce spending power in poorer communities.

btw, good for the FT is publishing this...

btw, this is happening, in the poorer end of town here, even cheap clothes/shoes, etc shops are closing...

This one?
Welfare cuts widen UK prosperity gap
Financial Times. 10th April

The findings of the FT's investigation – the first to examine the local economic and business consequences of the reforms – suggest any impact will be most acute in areas outside Tory strongholds.

Well done Lib Dems.

 

[ffsear]

Its shocking how bad we have it now in this country!

 

[treelover]

yawn, that old carnard,. I think you will find many people here pay into global charities and some campaign on global poverty, etc..

 

[weepiper]

Its shocking how bad we have it now in this country!

Fuck off.

 

[Frankie Jack]

Seconded weeps.

 

[Greebo]

<snip>many people here pay into global charities and some campaign on global poverty, etc..

Including those of us who are on benefits.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Its shocking how bad we have it now in this country!

There's always some idiot who pulls the old "but they're so much worse off in (add name of latest disaster area)".

You may have heard of a concept call relative poverty. That is, poverty as measured against the state of development of a nation or polity, if you haven't, please try to acquaint yourself with the concept, as then you can avoid trotting out canards and making yourself look foolish.
Relative poverty is the best measure by which we (as a society) can gauge whether social programmes produce a net social benefit - that is, do the bread and the circuses cost society more or less than they save it. Read some history. I'd recommend anything about the bread riots in Imperial Rome.

Oh, and we're not a country, we're a nation, you arse.

 

[treelover]

Some charities, far from organising legal challenges to benefits cuts, have been joining up to a DWP organised group – the Disability Action Alliance (DAA) – headed by Disability Rights UK. The DAA claims that it is “committed to making a difference to the lives of disabled people by designing and delivering innovative changes”.
There’s no doubt that the DWP’s slashing of benefits and its vicious anti-claimant propaganda campaigns are making a huge difference to the lives of disabled people, but it’s surprising that any charity would want to be associated with the people behind them.

So far, only the TUC ‘s Disabled People’s Committee has openly refused to join DAA (members only) saying that it will not be “conned into becoming part of the problem rather than part of the solution”.

Meanwhile, DAA claims on its website to now have more than 100 member organisations - but refuses to reveal who any of them are.

latest on the co-option/astro-turfing of disability charities, shameful and cynical but very very cunning...

 

[treelover]

can someone put this on the benefit sites on FB, I don't post on there..

 

[audiotech]

"The benefit cap: Popular, but ill-judged and supported by lies."

 

[audiotech]

Here's the UK rank in the world of 'how "generous" unemployment benefit is for the first year after a worker loses their job'. Rank #46

 

[smokedout]

Here's the UK rank in the world of 'how "generous" unemployment benefit is for the first year after a worker loses their job'. Rank #46

except those figure are pre-euro and only measure a small factor of unemployment benefit spending and therefore the claims made are complete bullshit (like most of the rest of the shit on that blog)

 

[audiotech]

Front page story in my local rag today

http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-e...uts-edinburgh-families-to-lose-2170-1-2886806

The goalpost analogy is a good one and IDS has just two weeks to avoid a Judicial Review on this whole pathetic saga. Lete's trust it's a Geoff Hurst moment: "They think it's all over? It is now!

 

[audiotech]

except those figure are pre-euro and only measure a small factor of unemployment benefit spending and therefore the claims made are complete bullshit (like most of the rest of the shit on that blog)

Well, I never thought for a moment it would be fully transparent, but they do point to an IMF report on the issue that they cite as a source (not read it), but I expect it to follow a similar pattern. Nevertheless, it still indicates what a set of cunts politicians are generally.

 

[smokedout]

yes the IMF report is based on figures from 1995-2005, and according to the link in the post the table is based on figures from 2000

also using the amount paid in benefits as a percentage of average wage says nothing about unemployment benefit generosity really, in lots of the countries mentioned benefits are time limited to a year or are contribution based only schemes, in others words yes the rate of benefits may be slightly higher but barely anyone is entitled to them. I suspect the report also misses that housing benefits are not included in UK unemployment benefits, but housing costs are built into a lot of other systems.

thing is, UK benefit rates are not generous at all compared to comparable economies, but ludicrous conclusions from years old data - on a post calling for the truth about benefits only make that harder to point out

(not having a go at you for posting btw, just sick of seeing stories on that blog all over facebook and when you dig into them they are complete bollocks, he was the one pushing all the ben fellows conspiracy nonsense during paedogate, and recently behaved disgustingly on another atos related story which turned out not to be true)

 

[audiotech]

Try this one for size. The file the DWP doesn't want you to see.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Kandice Pieterse ‏@KandicePieterse 17 Apr
Last Tuesday my father was deemed by DWP as "fit to work". He died on Thursday of terminal cancer. #discuss

 

[Greebo]

I'd like to be shocked and surprised by that, but I'm not.