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campaign against welfare cuts and poverty

There was an item on BBC London News about over 2,000 people being summonsed to Southwark County Court for arrears of Council Tax this morning, due to the benefits cap and the local council demanding that people who were previously exempt (poor) now have to pay.
 
:mad:

Monday, 21 October 2013 14:22

Following the recent rushed consultation on personal independence payment (PIP) mobility component, the DWP has today confirmed that it is not prepared to make any changes to the 20 metre limit for eligibility for enhanced rate mobility. The news will come as a bitter blow to the many thousands of disabled claimants likely to lose their higher rate mobility component payments or Motability vehicle as a result.

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/ne...arsh-20-metre-limit-for-pip-enhanced-mobility
 
What would Reeves do? Axe the tax first, paid for by reversing a tax cut for hedge funds and tax perks such as Osborne's "shares for rights". What about Atos, whose harsh tests strip benefits from so many of the sick? From St George's, in Armley, we heard that the great majority queuing for food had been left penniless by benefit sanctions or delays. She says the case that the MP Dennis Skinner raised in PMQs last week is typical of many she sees: a constituent, dying of cancer, lost his benefits in an Atos case and died before it was reviewed.
Labour brought in Atos, so what will she do? Atos must be replaced – and doctors' evidence must always be used. There will be tests, people can't be parked, but no targets will be set for numbers to be cut off benefits: she demands that the Department for Work and Pensions publish figures it hides on numbers losing benefits.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/rachel-reeves-thickest-skin-labour-best-hope
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Awful news, Polly is stating though Rachel Reeves position on benefits is more nuanced than her 'bash claimants' media stance, but Polly has form on exonerating LP chiefs who then go on to crap on the most vulnerable.
 
Frankie Jack said:
:mad:

Monday, 21 October 2013 14:22

Following the recent rushed consultation on personal independence payment (PIP) mobility component, the DWP has today confirmed that it is not prepared to make any changes to the 20 metre limit for eligibility for enhanced rate mobility. The news will come as a bitter blow to the many thousands of disabled claimants likely to lose their higher rate mobility component payments or Motability vehicle as a result.

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/ne...arsh-20-metre-limit-for-pip-enhanced-mobility
Click to expand...


She says the case that the MP Dennis Skinner raised in PMQs last week is typical of many she sees: a constituent, dying of cancer, lost his benefits in an Atos case and died before it was reviewed.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/rachel-reeves-thickest-skin-labour-best-hope
Click to expand...


The thing even Tories M.P's know the outcomes of these brutal changes, they have seriously disabled people and their families who come to their surgeries, do they just ignore them, don't care, or is it they know the effects, but keep quiet for political expediency?
 
Benefits and Work are reporting from 28 October, where a claimant is investigated by the DWP even as a result of a false accusation of fraud, they will automatically lose their DLA and be forced to make a claim for PIP, even if found to be entirely innocent.
 
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03gills said:
Personally, I'm an advocate of an unconditional citizens income, but the principle of our current, so called ''contributory'' welfare system should be that If an individual has been paying X amount of tax for Y amount of years & suddenly loses their job, then he/she is fully entitled to sit on their bum, do nothing, & claim X amount of benefits for Y amount of years without having to worry about about the DWP hassling them, nor about judgmental little turds wagging their fingers at them.

Only once you've claimed back what you've paid in, can the state then start attaching conditionality to the receipt of the benefit. That *should* be the principle of a contributory system in theory, but thanks to said judgemental little turds, in practice that isn't the reality, & people are expected to ''work'' for a benefit that some have already bloody well worked many years for. :mad:
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The ex said that when he went to sign on age 22, having worked full time since he was 16 he was told his contributions based JSA would last a week...

I think it would at least make sense to clarify the system so that people see what they are getting for their NI payments.

I'm pretty sure that many European countries have systems where if you work most of the year you get several months on a portion of your real pay with no shit off the state rather than a basic amount and loads of hassle. AFAIK this is often more set up for seasonal workers during the off season but I can still see the benefits.
 
stuff_it said:
The ex said that when he went to sign on age 22, having worked full time since he was 16 he was told his contributions based JSA would last a week...

I think it would at least make sense to clarify the system so that people see what they are getting for their NI payments.
Click to expand...

Well, you've kind of stumbled onto one of the great hidden issues that politicians really don't want aired, which is that if you measure the current entitlement your contributions buy you, then measure them against previous entitlement, they've shrunk, but the amount of money taken from you has not.

I'm pretty sure that many European countries have systems where if you work most of the year you get several months on a portion of your real pay with no shit off the state rather than a basic amount and loads of hassle. AFAIK this is often more set up for seasonal workers during the off season but I can still see the benefits.
Click to expand...

It's the prevalent system in at least half of the EU, because it works, and because someone who's on 70% of their previous salary for a year has more money to look for work, among other things!
 
treelover said:
Benefits and Work are reporting from 28 October, where a claimant is investigated by the DWP even as a result of a false accusation of fraud, they will automatically lose their DLA and be forced to make a claim for PIP, even if found to be entirely innocent.
Click to expand...
:mad:
 
Impact of welfare reform

Sheffield Hallam University has developed a dataset which maps estimates of per capita cumulative financial impact of welfare reforms based on official data and what seems to be a robust methodology of calculation . but all the data is actually publicly available using the rather snazzy infographic tool hosted by the FT http://ig.ft.com/austerity-map/

Of course it can’t be 100% accurate, but it is probably ‘good enough’ for most purposes of analysis and policy work. It opens up further questions – i.e. how are people coping or not coping with these reductions, specifically those in minority or otherwise disadvantaged groups, and what are the implications of this for local services. The full report based on this dataset is also publicly available – http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/hitting-poorest-places-hardest_0.pdf.
Click to expand...
 
Good stuff,its a shame it was SHU's Professor Steve Fothergill who provided NL with the evidence that many tens of thousands from de-industrialised areas had been 'parked' on Incapacity Benefit and gave them justification for 'reform'
 
att.jpg


From a recent b3ta challenge, Soviet propaganda in the uk, with this story :(

As soon as I saw the new compo I just had to do this.
My mrs has cancer. She has gone from a 9st attractive woman to a 6st old lady who is having treatment 3 days a week for Lymphoma. She has had three ATOS assessments, the last one last week and has been found 'Fit For Work' each time. She will now automatically be put on JSA and lose her DLA/ESA whatever they choose to call it and would have to attend the Jobcentre five days a week from 9am to 5pm and actively look for work.
This means she would have to give up any hope of treatment to do this. She has now told them to stick their benefits and now gets nothing. Forgive me for the rant but we are actually going through this.
I don't know exactly how long I will have her in my life, but one things for sure, I will never let her attempt to get any benefits from this evil, vile government again despite her never being off work in her entire working
life as a nurse. And the so called rumour that they have coins glued to the floor to see if anyone trys to pick it up... Completely true. A 50p under the table.
Click to expand...
 
Rutita1 said:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3912171.ece?CMP=SOC-appshare-iphonetto-tw-ios-1.6



Ah that's nice :facepalm:
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A policy that, if ever instituted, would blow up in their faces. Unemployment is still teetering on the brink of increasing. The middle classes, who are beginning to feel the full force of the austerity measures the poor have been subject to for years, won't blithely accept what amounts to part of the equity in their home being stolen from them, especially as (like all of us) they've already fulfilled their side of the social compact by paying Income Tax and NI contributions. Punishing people for being unemployed may play well when you're not in the putative target group, but this - this expands the target group massively, and directly into trad Tory-voter territory.
 
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "We are very pleased that the court has ruled that the benefit cap complies with the European Convention on Human Rights.

"The benefit cap sets a fair limit to what people can expect to get from the welfare system - so that claimants cannot receive more than £500 a week, the average household earnings."
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wut?
 
Mean average wage is 26k. Much less outside London of course but let's not make too much of that or they'll introduce regional benefit caps.
 
BigTom said:
Mean average wage is 26k. Much less outside London of course but let's not make too much of that or they'll introduce regional benefit caps.
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It really is time we came up with a more relevant average income stat than mean wage. Not only is it distorted by region, it's also a very poor indicator of living standards because it ignores dependents and living costs. So you get the absurdity of the benefit cap where the income of people like me (no dependents, living with family) is used as a comparator for single parents with 3 kids, paying full rent, with no consideration that our income needs are worlds apart.
 
On a more sombre note, today 1400 hard working ship workers with secure happy families rising very early as part of alarm clock Britain, tomorrow they are scroungers living off the state with too many kids who are bleeding the state dry.
 
400,000 sanctioned Oct 2012 - June 2013 under new sanctions regime - minimum 4 weeks, maximum 3 years - 48,000 people got the three year sanction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24833627

List of utterly ridiculous sanctions that is useful for challenging the idea that these are applied fairly (though personally I am now against sanctions entirely, used to be that I was ok with them when people turned down jobs they could reasonably do but seeing how they are misused I am now fully against them) :http://birminghamagainstthecuts.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/a-selection-of-especially-stupid-sanctions/
 
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treelover said:
"maximum 3 years - 48,000 people got the three year sanction."

fucking hell, that's obscene.



Surprised you endorsed them at all.
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Not the new longer sanctions, but I used to think that if someone was offered a reasonable job and turned it down it was right for benefits to be stopped for a month or less, don't anymore. I would never have thought sanctions for being late for appointments or being ill more than twice in a year and that kind of thing was right.
 
I've never been in favour of punitive benefit sanctions - AFAIC, out of work benefits are (or at least should be) a safety net between survival and destitution and as such JCP advisors shouldn't have the power to withold them on a whim. Even in the case of turning down a "reasonable" offer of work - Who's to say what's reasonable?

The only time anyone's money should get stopped is if they've been proven to have been claiming fraudulently.
 
Frances Lengel said:
I've never been in favour of punitive benefit sanctions - AFAIC, out of work benefits are (or at least should be) a safety net between survival and destitution and as such JCP advisors shouldn't have the power to withold them on a whim. Even in the case of turning down a "reasonable" offer of work - Who's to say what's reasonable?

The only time anyone's money should get stopped is if they've been proven to have been claiming fraudulently.
Click to expand...

It's not even just turning down an offer of work (and there are plenty of unreasonable offers of work, like commission-only door to door sales jobs and zero-hour agency jobs) it can be something as stupid as failure to apply for a job you're not even qualified for.

I can't believe that the idea that leaving someone (and possibly that person's dependants) with an income of zero for a whole month is a fitting punishment for anything is so readily accepted by so many people.
 
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