campaign against welfare cuts and poverty

[Greebo]

Word. Reasonable allowances should be made about signing on times and related appointments, the same as a reasonable employer would make for one of their employees.

 

[treelover]

DWP report accepts mistakes made on welfare sanctions by jobcentres

Internal inquiry rejects existence of targets but accepts action is taken against jobcentres that sanction benefits less than others

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/15/dwp-no-evidence-jobcentre-benefits-targets

 

[Frances Lengel]

Welfare again though.

It's Social Security, wankers.

 

[J Ed]

An internal inquiry at the Department for Work and Pensions into the covert regime of welfare targets at jobcentres says it has found no evidence of the practice – yet it accepts that action is taken against those jobcentres that do not sanction benefits as much as others.
The report also says some jobcentre staff are sometimes given personal targets, but only after being disciplined.

I had to re-read that three times. They are just admitting that there are targets but they aren't written down, aren't they?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I had to re-read that three times. They are just admitting that there are targets but they aren't written down, aren't they?

No, it's worse (and more subtle).
They're saying "there's no evidence of secret/hidden targets, but we do look into JCs that have a lower than average number of sanctions, and we do discipline individual staff who sanction below the average number of claimants".
Al the while not acknowledging that by disciplining staff and targeting specific JCs, the so-called "average" will, ipso facto, be raised, thus giving a self-perpetuating, ever-rising target to attain.

 

[BigTom]

We found no evidence of a secret national regime of targets, or widespread secret imposition of local regimes to that effect.

Translation:

"We were actually quite open about having sanctions targets"

 

[audiotech]

When a "league table is not a "league table", but is in reality a "league table". Orwell will be spinning in Room 101 at the Ministry of Truth.

Addressing the issue of whether league tables are routinely exchanged inside the DWP and Jobcentre Plus, he said: "It would be technically possible to configure management information into a league table (a simple manipulation of Excel) but as the leak showed, it is not in a league table.

 

[audiotech]

'Inflation dropped a touch in April, but it remains well above the pace of earnings growth. Real wages in the UK have been falling for three years. The chart below shows average weekly earnings (total pay including bonuses) in real terms (March 2013 prices using RPI). 'Down, down, deeper and down...'

Who are these people earning over £450 a week, cos I don't know anyone earning this much, not that I begrudge those who are?

 

[BigTom]

'Inflation dropped a touch in April, but it remains well above the pace of earnings growth. Real wages in the UK have been falling for three years. The chart below shows average weekly earnings (total pay including bonuses) in real terms (March 2013 prices using RPI). 'Down, down, deeper and down...'

Who are these people earning over £450 a week, cos I don't know anyone earning this much, not that I begrudge those who are?

Presumably they are using a mean average which will be distorted by the few people earning extremely high amounts. I'd like it if they'd also plot the median (50% of people earn less) and mode (the amount(s) that the most number of people earn) averages along with the mean, it'd be interesting to see them. They will certainly be lower than the mean average though.
I don't think I've ever seen figures for the mode salaries tbh, median iirc is somewhere around £20k but google it before quoting me cos that's probably a couple of years old even if it's right.

In any case that graph's the reality even if we'd move the line down to the median or mode if we felt that they were more reflective of reality than the mean*, and whatever actual rises there have been in employment over the past few years are offset against the reduction in real wages along with more part time work. I don't really know why economists claim to be scratching their heads over how it is that unemployment isn't at/over 3million and employment has risen tbh, but apparently they do. Still, they are economists so we shouldn't expect too much I suppose.

*personally I'd always plot the mean and the median - I don't know what the mode graph would look like or how many modes there would be so I don't know if we'd actually be able to learn anything from having it there. In principle it would be good to see that as well.

 

[treelover]

Labour's New New Jerusalem


Duration:
30 minutes
First broadcast:
Monday 27 May 2013

The words of William Blake's Jerusalem were invoked by Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee when he launched his party's proudest achievement: the creation of a welfare state.
"I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land."
But some leading Labour Party figures no longer believe in the top down model that was meant to make real that vision of a "new Jerusalem". Mukul Devichand hears from leading Labour Party figures who want a radical new welfare settlement, saying the state itself is to blame for society's ills as much as the market.
This new cadre of Labour thinkers is known as "Blue Labour". Two years ago we made a programme about them. Then they were worried about the impact of immigration on blue collar communities.
Now they are part of Labour's inner circle: academic Maurice Glasman has been elevated to the House of Lords; Jon Cruddas MP is in charge of writing the party's manifesto; and Ed Miliband's widely applauded "One Nation" conference speech last year was written by "Blue Labour" godfather Marc Stears.
The post war welfare settlement, according to Lord Glasman, represented the triumph of those who believed that government could solve social problems. That victory, says Glasman, came at a price: "A labour movement that was active and alive in the lives of people became exclusively concerned with what the state was going to do."
The alternative, according to Blue Labour thinkers, is welfare delivered at local level rather than by a centralised state; and a benefits system that prioritises those who contribute over those who do not. "The key concept we use is incentive to virtue," Lord Glasman tells Mukul Devichand, "so we have to be judgemental."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01sm2g0



'Analysis' on R4 tonight is about 'blue labours' plans for ending benefits as we know it, Glasman is interviewed arguing 'we have to be judgemental, as is Cruddas, back to the Victorian age, shocking stuff.


btw, BBC really does have an agenda on welfare, Purnell pushing his ideas?

 

[audiotech]

Some electioneering going on as well I suspect. I'm not against the idea of welfare being delivered at a local level. The key concept used and quoted above does have a Victorian ring to it though and the additional comment, "so we have to be judgemental", suggests some updated version of a parish council administering a new 'Poor Law'. Interestingly enough the old poor laws fell into decline owing much to the introduction of welfare reforms in the 20c. Welfare reform now is benefit cuts, so touching yer cap to some charities, Dickensian in nature, but updated with happy faces and balloons. Then there will be the new workhouses to spend all those hours the assumed indolents have plenty of.

The politicians pile on this mess, with their unaccountable, bloated, inefficient bureaucracy's the result and then people on low incomes get hammered, as they return to another age for some inspiration for a re-think.

Pretty grim all round.

 

[stuff_it]

Hero: http://www.bridlingtonfreepress.co.uk/news/local/naked-glued-to-job-centre-desk-1-3843817

Superglued himself to the Jobcentre desk naked.

 

[treelover]

Wow, hope the Mirror, etc pick this up...

 

[Greebo]

Wow, hope the Mirror, etc pick this up...

We can hope, although I don't expect much.

 

[Libertad]

Fair play to the man.

 

[J Ed]

I was talking to someone who works at a CAB yesterday and we got on to the subject of food banks, she told me that according to her clients her local food banks were handing out some (in the view of some of her clients) pretty extreme evangelical Christian biblical tracts with their food.

 

[Greebo]

<snip>local food banks were handing out some (in the view of some of her clients) pretty extreme evangelical Christian biblical tracts with their food.

I'm no fan of the Salvation Army, but at least AFAIK they've always but always taken the line of take care of the body first and only then consider offering to feed the soul.

Those tracts could easily drive even the most desperate away from asking for help.

 

[BigTom]

Hero: http://www.bridlingtonfreepress.co.uk/news/local/naked-glued-to-job-centre-desk-1-3843817

Superglued himself to the Jobcentre desk naked.

best part of 2 years old: http://metro.co.uk/2011/10/07/naked...himself-to-desk-in-job-centre-protest-178065/ and was in the metro at least, think it was in other papers too. Not sure why it's been reposted in some way on the bridlington free press site, has todays date as the post date but says published in 2011.

 

[8115]

More on the dodgy psychometric tests.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/19/health-watchdog-investigates-psychometric-tests

 

[audiotech]

Wow, hope the Mirror, etc pick this up...

Tony Parsons has a piece titled: "Disabled go from Paralympic winners to humiliated as 'scroungers' in space of a year" published some days ago.

I'm afraid one of the very few journalists to raise this demonisation process by those in government and their media lackeys. I'm also afraid that it's all too late, as the bastards seem to have won over public opinion on this issue.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Tony Parsons has a piece titled: "Disabled go from Paralympic winners to humiliated as 'scroungers' in space of a year" published some days ago.

I'm afraid one of the very few journalists to raise this demonisation process by those in government and their media lackeys. I'm also afraid that it's all too late, as the bastards seem to have won over public opinion on this issue.

Thing is, the bastards also know that that "winning over" is contingent on them continuing to peddle the same tropes convincingly, so I'll give Tony Parsons a nod for bringing an alternative view into the public domain, even if I don't personally think much of his body of work.

 

[audiotech]

I'm with you there VP.

Edit: Johnny Void's body of work on the other hand is exemplary.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm with you there VP.

Edit: Johnny Void's body of work on the other hand is exemplary.

Agreed. Very much a case of fact-based journalism, rather than editorial opinion dressed up as reportage.

 

[treelover]

OTT?

 

[Greebo]

<snip>OTT?

Not if you've got data from reliable and respected sources to back up those claims.

 

[treelover]

thinking of printing some..

 

[EastEnder]

Ed Miliband rules out borrowing to reverse spending cuts
Looks like Labour have given up on the idea of reducing the cuts...

 

[treelover]

The social fund is the last resort, the final gasket that blows in the benefits system. Jobcentres did offer social fund loans or grants in an emergency, but in April that function moved to local councils to do as they please, un-ringfenced. The Children's Society finds they make randomly different provisions and conditions. In Stoke four experienced staff, sympathetic but canny, field some 50 calls a day from people at the end of their tether. Checking the caller's status on several data bases, they can hand out vouchers for food banks, open their own food cupboard, sometimes offer clothes or top up empty gas and electricity keys. Families needing nappies, milk or school uniform are sent to children's centres. "No, I'm sorry, we don't give out money or loans any more," begins almost every phone call. "No, I'm sorry, only food for three days". No, no bus money.
Most callers have been referred from the jobcentre, an irony since most people's crises are caused by what the jobcentre has done to them. Errors delaying payments have left some starving. Many have been "sanctioned", with benefits stopped for weeks: a catastrophic punishment, often for trivial infringements – even the best reasons for a missed appointment are dismissed. This team sees letters demanding attendance that arrive after the appointment date, but people are still sanctioned. The Department for Work and Pensions denies the existence of quotas, but jobcentres are under intense pressure to cut people off, with league tables and threats to offices or staff who sanction too little. The DWP is delaying the publication of data on these new tougher sanctions – expected to be shocking.
All human misery is here. Some callers are in tears, some shout in frustration after a series of rebuffs, some plainly have mental health problems ignored by the sanctioners. Some are just out of prison, arriving with nothing at all, no change of clothes. One ex-army man suffering panic attacks has been sanctioned when he couldn't leave his home. Some have been on the streets: homelessness is rising in Stoke. How desperate can you be when you have nothing to feed your children and debt collectors are pressing? A man who went totally blind last year has been thrown off disability benefit for missing an appointment, his debts building as he has a spare room.
Some have lost disability benefits after an Atos test, and can no longer make ends meet. Many are deeply ashamed at having to beg for a food parcel. Council tax and bedroom tax debts escalate. One frantic woman loses it after being evicted, her husband's family is harassing her, and she's been kicking off at the jobcentre, which doesn't help. Then her phone battery goes. Calls to this office have risen by a quarter but the fund has exactly £80,000 a month, regardless of demand.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/25/osborne-spending-review-intensive-care

Polly on her visit to Stoke, genuinely heartbreaking

and its going to get worse,

 

[BigTom]

Birmingham Law Centre has closed today
http://www.birminghamlawcentre.org.uk/

It is with regret that we have to advise you that Birmingham Law Centre has now closed down. If you are a creditor you will be receiving a letter from the Insolvency Service. If you are a client of the Law Centre you will receive a letter explaining what will happen to your file.

Please note we will be unable to respond to any messages left on the voicemail or callers who visit in person at the office.

Just like that. We knew it was in trouble and was likely to close but thought they'd found interim funding and hadn't said anything new until today. Beginning of the end of advice in Birmingham.

 

[purenarcotic]

Birmingham Law Centre has closed today
http://www.birminghamlawcentre.org.uk/



Just like that. We knew it was in trouble and was likely to close but thought they'd found interim funding and hadn't said anything new until today. Beginning of the end of advice in Birmingham.

Shed a small tear at work when I saw this morning. We're all pretty devastated, it's a lifeline to our service users, I dunno what we're going to do now.