Call it "Community". Sounds nicer than Slavery on the High Street

LONDONERS and South-East commuters must be very well-informed. We get regional news and features on TV, and free newspapers cluttering the tube. We even have a new regional commercial TV channel. We know from national TV how well the country is prospering, and people are getting back to work, and house prices, even if we can't afford them must mean prosperity in London and the South East.

Some people even have two jobs, Boris for example, and even if Labour now has a string of London boroughs, we are told it must do more to target the "aspirational", those who "shop at Waitrose" and want a "home and garden". Obviously those Londoners who have been told they might have more chance of a council flat if they move to the Black Country are not enough.

There's more to London life than the diet of government hand-outs and West End shows publicised on  BBC, as people know from experience, but it sometimes seems to take less conventional media and unpaid journalists to see what's going on, and talk about it.  One example I've come across is a poet, entertainer and educationalist going by the name of  Pete the Temp

Here's an extract from his blog recently:


Workfare, Forced Labour and the new ‘Business and Community Wardens’.


Arriving at Finsbury Park station I came across a group of men people in high vis vests. Their vests read ‘Business and Community Warden’. I’ve learned to be suspicious of people who claim to be ‘public officers’ or ‘wardens’ so I went up to one to ask what they do. My mistrust quickly melted to sympathy. The man I was speaking to walked with a heavy head, sagging eyes and a narked expression.  His colleagues also looked seriously bored and disaffected.

He told me he is on a six month, 30 hour per week Workfare placement. The work is a compulsory condition for receiving his Job Seekers Allowance –  a meagre £240 a month to live off. Of this he has to pay his own travel (£88 a month) to get to and from his  unpaid work. That leaves him a grand total of £152 a month (or £38 a week) for food, bills, and any other services or contingencies needed to maintain his home and his health. I don’t imagine his weekends are particularly lively.

The frown on his face crept over my own as he told me that he they do not provide food so many days he can’t afford to eat at work. One day he was ill with a virus and needed to miss a day. He was told that “that wasn’t good enough” so he worked through his illness. If he misses a day of work he loses 1 month pay. If he misses 3 days he loses months of pay.

I was left wondering how much time he and his fellow unemployed colleagues  were able to look for work while they stood motionlessly and reluctantly outside the station waiting for members of the public to ask them directions. They told me that they “have a list of things to do” including patrolling local supermarkets (they have been dealing with shoplifters for both Sainsburys and Tesco) but mostly they have to just stand there.

Why do these supermarkets (who have already dodged so much tax) get free forced labour from some of the borough’s most vulnerable involuntarily unemployed? Was it not these same corporations who lobbied so hard against the minimum wage and are now cutting costs on their own security? If they are benefiting from this labour then why don’t they, and not the tax payer, pay the Job Seekers Allowance ?

“How do I complain?” I asked the Warden.

“Phone the number on my vest and speak to Courtney Bailey, he’s the boss”

When I phoned I got through to The Finsbury Park Business Forum. This is an odd place to be directing a complaint about a body of public wardens, regularly briefed by the MET to carry out low level police patrol and ‘counter terrorism’ duties as a kind of forced volunteer unit of para- police. The Business forum’s website says that one of their duties is to ‘lower the perception of crime’ at the station. In helping the police clear the area of ASBOs this can be seen as the civilianisation of social cleansing. Poor people forced to police poor people on behalf of business.

Courtney Bailey met my complaint by quickly becoming loud, aggressive and insulting. When I pressed him on the scheme he accused me of being “wrong in the head”, “full of it” and “one of those anarchists” (he was at least right about that last point).

“Name me one person who is has no choice to work for us?!” he shouted.

“I’m not going to name them because you might report them to the Job Centre and they could lose their benefits” I replied.

He hung up.

Kerry- Anne Mendoza, in her fantastic new book: ‘Austerity: The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy’ points out:

‘Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights clearly states: ‘No-one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.’ If the government threatens to withdraw a person’s sole lifeline unless they supply their labour, then it can clearly be argued that this labour has been obtained forcibly. The labour is also clearly compulsory.’

She goes on to point out that benefits such as the JSA are a safety net that help citizens ‘live in dignity’ and are a ‘foundation stone of social democracy’. Why are we now submitting people to compulsory work in order to get it?"

The Jobcentre sends people on this scheme where they are supposedly gaining training and experience.  Pete reckons the "training" consists of a visit with someone from the Metropolitan Police to give the "volunteers" training in "self-confidence".

The Forum says ‘This is truly a community coming together as one team for a safer neighbourhoods in   Islington…Our aim is to promote community solidarity and encourage neighbourhoods to identify and solve problems and be a trusted friend for Business and the Community.’

"The newsletter thanks VIPs in the police, local businesses and stakeholders. Not a word of thanks  goes to the Wardens themselves, who will be working without pay outside Finsbury Park station for the next six months.  The scheme is soon set to be rolled out to Drayton Park, Arsenal, Highbury & Islington, Holloway Road, Angel, Camden, Kings Cross – tube and train stations."

http://www.boycottworkfare.org/ 



A few years ago I seconded a motion at the annual conference of trades union councils calling for a campaign against these workfare schemes. Some sisters and brothers from Merseyside felt our London motion did not go far enough, and they successfully moved an amendment promising more action.

I'm afraid I missed the report the following year on what had actually been done. If anyone can set me right on I'd welcome their accounts.

Meantime, we have the Tories back with a vengeance, and we can see why they are keen to get rid of awkward notions like Human Rights that they find restrictive.

UKIP Man Sends Out A Xmas Gift to Workers

 OUTSIDE City Links depot, Motherwell.

TWO items of generosity to warm the heart in the season of goodwill, and good cheer, and betoken - for somebody perhaps - a happy and good new year.  First, the news that Daily Express and Daily Star owner Richard Desmond, who has written sentimentally about his immigrant forebears, and likes to be known for his charitable works, has donated £300,000 to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Well, he is entitled to fund the party of his choice, even if it has some undesirable allies and a less charitable attitude towards foreign immigrants.

It seems unnecessary to ask whether Desmond's newspapers will follow, since they have been setting the anti-immigrant, and anti-minority, agenda since long before most of us had heard of UKIP's leader Nigel Farage.  

The second piece of seasonal goodwill came in the news for 2,727 City Link workers, just in time for Christmas Day, that their company was being placed into administration, and they will be getting the sack - not from Santa Claus, but from City Link boss John Moulton. Mind you, maybe this modern-day Scrooge was too upset to tell them. Most only heard on the news that they will be receiving no more pay after December 31st.


City Link was a major carrier, used by firms like John Lewis, and Mothercare.

While people who were expecting parcels have been told today they can collect them from depots, the workers will be collecting their P45s.  And some maybe not even that.

The 2,727 staff who have been told to brace themselves for “substantial redundancies” in the coming days do not 1,000 self-employed drivers and third-party workers, whom receivers Ernst and Young say would be “unsecured creditors” of City Link and therefore not entitled to any redundancy payments.  The RMT union reckons the true jobs figure was about 5,000 once workers in the supply chain were taken into account.

Better Capital bought the troubled courier group for just £1 in April 2013 from Rentokil. It promised to invest £40 million turning round the business, which had not got over its takeover of rival Target Express in 2008, and was slowed by IT problems. The company put workers on new contracts, paying staff on a per-parcel basis and requiring drivers to pay for their own vans, uniforms and petrol.

Most parcel carriers have been doing more business due to increased online buying. In the Summer City Link launched a new green and yellow staff uniform, replacing the old black livery. But the uniforms were not company issue - hundreds of drivers on City Link’s books had to pay for the kit themselves, as they are self-employed.

Last month City Link’s said it had “got all its plans in place to deliver an even more successful peak to last year’s winning performance”. Liam Tucker, its operations director, who joined in September, said: “City Link had one of its most successful peak periods in 2013 and we are looking forward to an even busier and more successful one in 2014.”

But now we are told that City Link has incurred substantial losses over several years. "Despite the best efforts to save City Link, including marketing the company for sale, it could not continue to operate as a going concern,” ,” said Ernst and Young (EY) partner Hunter Kelly, who highlighted intense competition in the sector and a struggle to reduce its overheads.  EY is expected to start letting staff go in the coming days because City Link’s owners – private equity firm Better Capital, led by veteran venture capitalist Jon Moulton – have failed to find a buyer as a going concern.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/26/city-link-collapse-substantial-redundancies

City Link was still advertising for more owner drivers as news came of the redundancies. But as City Link’s existing freelancers have discovered, they will not be entitled to any redundancy payments made by the administrators and some could even lose deposits put down on leased vehicles.

The RMT union says announcing the closure at Christmas was not only heartless but being in a holiday period could hinder any rescue plan. RMT’s general secretary, Mick Cash, called for an official investigation into both the timing of the appointment of administrators and allegations that City Link may have been restructured prior to its collapse, moving “valuable property assets out into a separate company”.

Better Capital boss Jon Moulton dismissed the RMT’s claims, telling the Guardian: “If this is an asset strip, it is an extremely poor one because we will have lost a lot of money.” Better Capital has already written down its £40m investment in City Link to £20m.

Meanwhile fellow blogger Tom Pride has been looking at the boss of  Better Capital:
"Moulton is a former Conservative Party donor, who decided to transfer his allegiance to UKIP after criticising Tory chancellor George Osborne for not cutting hard enough and for being too soft on austerity".
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/ukip-supporter-and-fat-city-cat-jon-moulton-sacks-2727-of-his-staff-on-xmas-day/

And here are some quotes:
Moulton on making people redundant: “You can never fire anyone too soon“

Moulton’s description of the people he has fired: “cutting away unnecessaries“

Moulton on why there should be even more austerity: “It’s the moral thing to do and it’s the right thing to do.“

Moulton on why there needs to be more cuts to public services such as the NHS: “I don’t believe that the UK economy will do well until the public sector shrinks.“

Moulton on how much he loved making companies bankrupt when he worked as an accountant: “Insolvency was great.”

Moulton on his great love for Margaret Thatcher: “”Without Mrs Thatcher I probably would have stayed working in the US, watching the UK decay rapidly.“

Moulton on his approach to making a profit: “We come and make redundancies, close facilities, take the costs of out of a P&L and in a month or two, profits come back.“

Moulton on his first experiences of dealing with bankruptcies and redundancies: “Firing people, selling factories and stock. It was great fun.”

Moulton on why he loves his job  – which often involves sacking thousands of people: ” I do what I do for the enjoyment it gives me.”


http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/meet-ebenezer-scrooge-2014-sacking-people-is-great-fun/

STOP PRESS

City Link staff hold protest outside Scottish depot

City Link contractor says: 'I've worked for nothing'

Workers facing redundancy at the collapsed parcel delivery firm City Link have staged a demonstration outside a depot in Motherwell. City Link contractor Mark O'Neill, who has worked with the company for 21 years, will become a creditor but doubts he will get any money back
He said: "It looks as if I've worked the whole of December for nothing. "You couldn't ask for a worse Christmas present."

Staff learned that the company, which employs 165 people in Scotland, had gone into administration on Christmas Day. Workers gathered in Motherwell on Monday morning to protest against the prospect of redundancy.

The job losses are expected on New Year's Eve, with the remaining posts being retained to wind down the company.

Political action

Staff have been told they will be paid until 31 December. More than 100 contractors work for the company in Scotland. They will be treated as creditors by administrators.

Those taking part in the protest in Motherwell were demanding political efforts to save the operation as a going concern - or for as many jobs as possible to be saved.

Gordon Martin, regional organiser in Scotland for the RMT union, said some staff were joined at the demonstration by their partners and children.

Speaking at the scene, he said: "It's a demonstration organised by the workers, for the workers, about their right to work. Basically this is a right-to-work argument. These guys deserve and demand the right to work."

He claimed a recent meeting with the administrators failed to give staff answers to their questions.

"They've walked out of the meeting more disillusioned than when they walked into it, which is saying something considering the situation," he said.

Mr Martin said the protesters were aiming to put political pressure on UK and Scottish politicians to intervene to save jobs.

He urged MSPs and Scottish ministers to "intervene with any means possible and through any actions to try and keep this as a going concern - and if that's not possible to save as many jobs as possible".



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30623463
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-30621539

Guilty of being pregnant, and telling truth at job interview

 WHEN we were young it was considered a feature unique to faraway totalitarian regimes, and unimaginable in Britain, that the state should dictate to couples whether they could have children, or how many.  Laws forbidding abortion, and even contraception, are more common, especially where the authoritarian Church holds sway.

But you can wave goodbye to your individual freedom and rights when you are poor and need to claim benefits (as distinct from the privileges of the rich), particularly if you are female.

Not content with presiding over the numerous deaths of people whose disability benefits were taken away, Tory Minister Ian Duncan Smith is looking for new ways to take away unemployment benefits. One would involve stopping women who had more than two children from registering as available for work. Remind you of anything?

Already under pressure and incentives to meet targets for claimants they take sanctions against, some officials seem to be ahead of the minister in their enthusiasm for making up new rules they can enforce.

Jobseekers are supposed to show evidence that they are making genuine efforts to look for work. But a young woman in Ashton Under Lyne has been punished for trying too hard.

The 19-year old woman was 23 weeks pregnant when she attended an interview for workfare - that is, work for nothing - at a branch of DIY and home improvement merchants B&Q.

Whilst at the interview they noticed that she was pregnant and they said they would put her on light duties. But it seems that later they changed their minds. Whereupon the jobcentre decided to take the  woman off their workfare -and benefits -list, telling her “we are sanctioning you because you told them that you were pregnant”.

This woman had walked some miles to the workfare interview, seeing it as her last chance of not being sanctioned, having previously been accused of not making enough effort to find work. She had been truthful at her interview. Had she not been, she could have been in trouble, and putting herself and her baby at risk.

We all know this government's attitude to Health and Safety regulations, - so much "red tape" to be dispensed with - but in this case a person is being penalised for not putting herself or potential employer in breach of them.

Unemployed workers and supporters have staged a demonstration outside Ashton job centre, and accuse officials there of targeting pregnant women for sanctions. 

I don't know how common this kind of thing is.  It is bad enough people being forced into unpaid work for their benefits, without being deprived for telling the truth when applying for it.

I think this calls for questions in the House from MPs at the very least.
And the PCS union, which I know has had trouble displaying posters in the Job Centres urging courtesy towards claimants, should make further efforts to advise its members, that there are limits to how far they are obliged to go in doing the government's dirty work.

  
 http://thepoorsideoflife.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/the-low-levels-that-ashton-jobcentre-will-go-to-to-sanction-people/

 
http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/protesters-target-ashton-jobcentre-for.html

How Britain Looks After its Heroes

WHENEVER British soldiers come home from whatever war they have been fighting, or old soldiers find themselves in the news as say, victims of robbery, it is customary for headline writers to refer to them as "heroes".

Not wishing to be grudging I thought I might as well adhere to the convention. Our story concerns what happened to an ex-soldier, who became the victim, not of common street robbers, but of government policies administered by smooth officials.

A friend posts the article written by Michael Havis for the Stevenage Advertiser.

A year ago former soldier David Clapson, aged 59, died at his home from diabetic keto-acidosis, which the NHS calls “a dangerous complication of diabetes caused by a lack of insulin.”

Because he had no money, Mr.Clapson could not pay for his electricity to keep his insulin supply cool.

His jobseeker’s allowance of approximately £70 a week – on which his family says he was reliant – had been suspended three weeks before on June 28, for missing meetings.

According to his family, Mr Clapson was found “alone, penniless and starving” a short distance from a pile of printed CVs, with nothing to his name but £3.44, six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date tin of sardines.

The coroner found that David – a former BT engineer of 16 years, who had served two years in Northern Ireland with the Royal Corps of Signals during The Troubles – had nothing in his stomach when he died.

Now his sister, Gill Thompson, says “lessons must be learned” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) before vulnerable benefit claimants are sanctioned in future.

Severe Condition, ..."Correct Procedures"

She said: “I rang him regularly to check on him and so did friends, but because he was such a quiet and private person neither family nor friends knew just how bad it was.

“Apparently the DWP rely on information from the claimant, support workers or medical professionals to understand the level of vulnerability.

“Should his severe condition not been taken into consideration when issuing this sanctions? Should someone have checked his file?”

In a letter sent by the DWP regarding the case, head of benefit centres – Claire McGuckin – said “I am confident that the correct procedures were followed for the administration of benefit.”

Gill said: “I am disgusted with the DWP response and now feel I should make this more public. David should have been helped by health professionals not persecuted by the authorities. He was not a scrounger but wouldn’t seek help. He needed true professional and clinical support which never came.

“The authorities should have been more willing to understand and help a vulnerable adult before they die.“The signs were there and lessons must be learned to ensure cases like this are truly eliminated from a fair society.”

The pile of printed CVs found near David Clapson's body suggests that far from being a "scrounger", he was making every effort to find himself a suitable job, something rarely to be offered by those places misleadingly described as Job Centres. He might not have had time for their pointless "meetings".

Maybe the DWP staff would have been better able to pay attention to Mr.Clapson's particular needs and condition if they were not under constant pressure to take away people's benefits. Money for which he would have paid adequate national insurance during his 16 years working for British Telecom, as well as his time in the army.

Under the war on welfare presided over by Tory Ian Duncan Smith and his understudy Esther Mcveigh, thousands of people have died after decisions taken by DWP officials or the private firms brought in to profit from removing people's entitlement to unemployment or disability benefit. 'Hero' or not, David Clapson joined the statistics.

Read more: http://www.theadvertisergroup.co.uk/Daily-News/Stevenage/Lessons-must-be-learned-from-diabetic-former-soldier-who-died-after-benefits-sanction-20140722174205.htm#ixzz38XQjwHvX

See also:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11043378.Man_starved_after_benefits_were_cut/

And there's more.

Since I posted this blog, I see Tom Pride (Pride's Purge) has gone further into the area and assembled a whole sheaf of cases.
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/tory-party-declares-war-on-british-servicemen-and-women/

A Face Behind the Grim Statistics

 MARK WOOD a face behind the figures

 IT was one of those stories that have become all too common in Cameron's Britain. Only this one happened in the Tory Prime Minister's own backyard. Not Downing Street, but his Oxfordshire constituency, where a lot of people are supposed to be comfortably well off, and some are more than comfortable.

Mark Wood, aged 44, was neither. He had a number of mental health problems, and his GP did not think he was fit to work, but ATOS who did the work assessment found Mark fit. Their advice led to his sickness benefit being stopped. His housing benefit also stopped. Four months later, in August last year, Mr.Wood was found dead at his home in Bampton, Oxfordshire.

 The Oxfordshire coroner, Darren Salter, said that although it was impossible to identify the cause of death, it was probably "caused or contributed to by Wood being markedly underweight and malnourished". He weighed 5st 8lbs (35kg) when he died; his doctor said his body mass index was not compatible with life.

 The story of how Mark Wood died after struggling to survive on £40-a-week disability allowance, being reluctant to ask relatives for help, not realising he should sign on, and developing an eating disorder, was narrated by Amelia Gentleman, in the Guardian yesterday.

 Concerned about his patient's condition, Wood's doctor, Nicholas Ward, wrote a letter for Wood to pass to the jobcentre in support of his benefits application, stating that he was "extremely unwell and absolutely unfit for any work whatsoever". The letter, presented to the inquest, stated that his anxiety disorder and obsessional traits had been made "significantly worse" because of the pressure put on him by benefit changes. It continued: "Please do not stop or reduce his benefits as this will have ongoing, significant impact on his mental health. He simply is not well enough to cope with this extra stress. His mental and medical condition is extremely serious." It was not clear whether the letter reached the jobcentre.

  Dr Ward told the inquest the Atos decision was an "accelerating factor" in Wood's decline and eventual death, according to his family. Wood told housing association staff he was very distressed housing benefit had been cut off, and by letters about rising rent arrears and warnings from the electricity company his supply would be cut off. Many letters were unopened, so he was unaware he needed to visit the jobcentre to reapply for support, his sister, Cathie Wood, said.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/28/man-starved-to-death-after-benefits-cut

Mark Wood's case was one of many. Organisations campaigning against the work assessment system and attack on benefits say as many as 10,000 people have died due to their effects. Cath Wood says she is writing to David Cameron, as Mark Wood's MP, and to the Minister responsible,, Ian Duncan Smith. "I would like Iain Duncan Smith to stop talking about this as a moral crusade, and admit that this whole process of reassessing people for their benefits is a cost-cutting measure. I want him and Cameron to acknowledge the personal costs of this flawed system. This is not just someone being inconvenienced – this is a death," Cathie Wood said.

She is angry Atos did not seek medical evidence from her brother's GP, and made the assessment that he was capable of preparing to return to work after a half-hour interview at his home. The Atos report concluded his mental state was "normal".

An Atos spokeswoman said: "Our thoughts are with the family of Mr Wood at this difficult time." The Department of Work and Pensions had a similarly sympathetic message. Unfortunately their thoughts and sympathy come too late to save Mark Wood.

After recent demonstrations throughout the country, ATOS has said it wants out of the work assessment scheme. But this could simply mean another company, such as Capita or G4S, is getting in line for the contract. G4S could be facing prosecution after an inquest last year reached an "unlawful killing" verdict on asylum seker Jimmy Mubenga, who died as he was being shoved on a plane at Heathrow by G4S security guards. The company's Australian subsidiary has just lost the contract for the detention centre in Papua New Guinea where another man died.

As for the DWP, a government minister apologised on Thursday after it emerged that the Department had written to a woman asking her to begin "intensive work-focused activity" although at the time she was in a coma.

The same day, as a result of lobbying by disabled campaigners and the efforts of Labour MP John McDonnell, there was a debate in the House of Commons about how government welfare reforms - starting with the previous, Labour government, bringing in the assessment tests and ATOS - have affected the sick and disabled.

MPs discuss welfare reform effects on sick and disabled

This is worth looking at both for the speeches of John McDonnell, Dennis Skinner and other MPs, and for the amount of empty space in the chamber, showing how many MPs were too busy or could not be bothered to attend this debate.

 We can only be grateful for the way a dedicated socialist like John McDonnell refuses to be disheartened by surrounding apathy or bought off by the Establishment. And here is the statement issued afterwards. The story of Mark Wood can serve an illustration of why it is necessary.


PRESS RELEASE 28/02/2014 For Immediate Release
Following a historic debate in the House of Commons, the first time in its history people with disabilities have secured a debate on a motion of their choosing, John McDonnell MP calls on the Government to implement a full cumulative impact assessment of the effects of welfare reform on sick and disabled people. Following yesterday’s historic backbench business debate in the House of Commons, John McDonnell has called on the Government to address the widespread suffering amongst the disabled community as a result of the impact of cuts to the welfare budget. The debate marked the first time in the history of this Parliament that people with disabilities have secured a debate in the Chamber on an agenda of their choosing. Secured with cross-party support on a motion worded as closely as possible to an e-petition organised by the WOW campaign, MP’s called for an independent cumulative impact assessment of welfare reform on sick and disabled people, their families and carers. The e-petition amassed well over 100,000 signatures and incorporated a number of demands made by disabled people facing enormous distress as a result of this government’s harmful welfare agenda. The motion was carried through without opposition in the Chamber yesterday. John McDonnell MP now calls on government action to address widespread suffering among the sick and disabled community.

 John McDonnell MP said: ‘I now call on the Government to respect the will of Parliament and implement the recommendations for a full cumulative impact assessment of the impact of changes in the welfare system on sick and disabled people, their families and carers.’ ‘All the evidence now demonstrates the scale of the suffering of disabled people as a result of the cumulative impact of the cuts to welfare. The government must act now to address the widespread concerns expressed by religious leaders, voluntary organisations and numerous experts.’

Making Profit Out of Misery

It's not enough to replace ATOS

PROTEST outside Ealing Job Centre, Wednesday morning. One of many around the country.
(photo Raj Gill) 

ON the same day that demonstrations were held around the country against the French-owned firm ATOS, which runs the assessment tests of sick and disabled people to find them fit for work, the news came that the government is thinking of handing this task over to another firm.
Controversial security firm G4S and privatisation profiters Capita could be in the running.

There were no less than 144 demonstrations around the country on Wednesday. Disabled protestors in wheelchairs blocked doors in ATOS headquarters until police managed to remove them. At Southend, ATOS staff themselves walked out nd joined the protest.

At West Ealing, in London, where I joined the protestors at 8am outside the Job Centre, someone had brought a coffin to remind us of the poor unfortunates who have been driven to their deaths by having benefits stopped even though they could not work, or by the stress of the tests they faced.

Besides the red flags of Unite the Union's Community branch, a PCS civil service union member with his flag, and Ealing trades union council members with their banner, a woman arrived dressed as the grim reaper, complete with scythe, to emphasise the  point. The mood of the disabled demonstrators particularly was spirited, angry and defiant. The response of the passing public, whether taking leaflets or sounding car and bus horns, was sympathetic.

Despite persistent propaganda against "scroungers", people have been hearing about some of the things really going on. Yesterday's Mirror described how a 50 year old man in Stoke on Trent, who had lied about his ill health in a desperate attempt to find work, was sacked because of epileptic fits, and had to claim benefits. But then his benefits were stopped because ATOS had decided he was fit for work. Fortunately his benefits have now been reinstated after an appeal.

But as Eve Turner, of Ealing trades council told us on Wednesday, though half the people stopped by ATOS have won their appeals, many people have died in destitution waiting for their appeals to be heard. The government is even considering making claimants pay for their appeals, in the same way it has moved against workers wanting to bring wrongful dismissal cases to tribunals.  



Campaigners estimate that more than 10,000 disabled people have died after ATOS work capability assessment. This may include people who were in the final stages of serious illnesses and dying anyway, though ATOS assessed them fit for work, and people who committed suicide because of the way they were treated. 

This government, like its predecessor, claims it is about helping people off dependency and into paid work. The same government has presided over the closure of more than 50 Remploy workshops which provided useful, often skilled, employment to people with disabilities.
.
ATOS is not helping people find jobs, other than its own staff, it is an IT firm which saw the profits to made from Britain's "austerity" policies, and set up ATOS Healthcare though it does not care for anyone's health. It has been given the job of getting people off benefits, and is being paid  £100 million a year from the taxpayer, while job centre staff are among public servants whom the government is laying off. Its staff have targets to meet, and not much in the way of qualifications, so that its costing the public upwards of £50 million a year in appeals against flawed decisions. But perhaps this government has plans for that too.

The object is to drive people into desperate poverty, provide employers with a ready supply of cheap, sackable, labour, (witness the way people have been sent to work for their dole), and make sure that however much misery is caused by austerity policies for the mass of people, they can still be a source of profit for the government's chums. If this game of robbing the poor to pay the rich more causes thousands of deaths, well that's not just collateral. It is one way of getting a result.

Labour, which introduced the work capability assessments - and commenced the rundown of Remploy - says now it would remove ATOS. There are reports -possibly put about by the company itself, that it wants to move out of this work. The government is letting it be known that it has other bidders in mind. But however awful the ATOS record is, replacing it with another capitalist firm out for profit from misery is not the answer we want.

One of the companies mentioned is security giant G4S, whose CV, beside the Olympic debacle when it failed to recruit enough staff, has included deaths of asylum seekers from here to  Australia's Manus Island facility in Papua, New Guinea. Just the kind of reliable, sensitive hands to which we can entrust disabled or mentally ill members of the community to be looked after.

Why can't people's health and fitness be assessed if necessary by their GPs or other qualified professionals employed by the National Health Service? Why can't those who need help back into work be assisted by properly trained, in-house employment staff, dedicated to public service, and not to chasing degrading targets or private profit?  Could it be this contradicts the government's aim of getting rid of civil service trade unionists?

We need not just a change of  government, but a change of direction and policy. And till we get both, let's hear it for the resistance!  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26287199

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/atos-itself-not-fit-for-work-disability-benefit-test-provider-may-finally-have-contract-terminated-9136353.html

Class Revolt in Bosnia

BOSNIA and Hercogovina has shaken by an eruption of public anger aroused by privatisation, factory closures, profiteering and unemployment. This has been the country's crash course in free market capitalism, as people tried to rebuild their lives after the bloody war of two decades ago which left it saddled with a US and EU backed peace accord preserving its division in two.

Perhaps the brightest sign to come out of this seemingly spontaneous outburst of protest and riots is that it cut across the ethnic division and boundary, encouraging people to come out for unity. This may not be a homogenous political upheaval, but it is a movement of class.

The movement began, fittingly, in Tuzla, the mining and industrial town in north central Bosnia where people steadfastly resisted not only Serb nationalist forces in the war, but the influence of sectarian religious elements and Bosnia's governing SDA. Tuzla has a tradition of resistance going back to the 1920s struggles against the Yugoslav monarchy and rising again in partisan war against the Nazis in World War II. It was the partisans who proclaimed Bosnia a republic for all its people, and it was for this multi-ethnic character that the people fought when Yugoslavia came apart. At least a quarter of the population were of mixed origin anyway.

The end of the Bosnian war brought new problems, of US occupation, EU pressure, and those who had done well out of the war hoping to do better out of privatisation, and trusting a war-weary working class would not put much fight. What has really angered people however is that these new bosses have not even been after production and modernisation, but simply made a fast buck closing factories and selling assets.

 In Tuzla, the trigger this week was the sudden collapse of four formerly state-run companies that employ thousands in the city. The companies were privatised but the new owners sold the assets, sacked the staff and filed for bankruptcy.

On Thursday in Tuzla, workers from Vladom TK took it to the streets to demonstrate peacefully to put a stop to their factory being shut down and to save their jobs. Riot police attacked them to break their demonstration and beat the people who called the protests. They arrested their union leaders. One of them, Sakib Kopić, from “Polihema” union, spoke to local journalists by phone while he was under police arrest: “They keep us here for more than an hour, and nobody tells us anything.”

The government arrested Aldin Širanović, one of the leaders of the group called “Stroke,” which together with another group called “Revolt” helped people organize. He was released after a few hours, and said he was severely beaten under arrest. Union leader Sakib Kopić said he saw Širanović broken by the police: “Blood was pouring from his nose. They did not take him to hospital.”
“They were given the order to remove us from the streets, and that’s it. Then they started to attack us. Lots of people got injured. I saw a child of 15 years old who was all bloody, and who was crammed in one bus. They did not let him out. Doctors wanted to help him, but the cops locked the boy in the bus,” said Kopić.


People’s fury exploded. Some 5,000 local residents, including students from the technical college, joined the workers and set fire to government buildings, tires and police cars. “You have really hungry people who decided to do something,” said Dunja Tadic, a woman from Tuzla. ”People here are not living lives, they are simply surviving. Maybe 15% of the population lives well, mostly those who are stealing and their relatives. They destroyed the so-called middle class. All in all I don’t see how it can be any better here.”

Hana Obradovic, an unemployed philosophy and political science graduate who participated in the protests explained: “Our government sold state companies for peanuts, leaving people without their pensions or social security, Their families have nothing to eat, while our politicians sit in these institutions and steal from people.”

At one point some of the 5,000-strong crowd stormed into a local government building and hurled furniture from the upper stories. "The people entered the government building," said Mirna Kovacevic, a student who witnessed the protests. "They climbed to the fourth floor and started to throw files, computers, chairs from buildings. They burned parts of the building …
"Four storeys are blackened. People have burned the stuff that was thrown outside … Some people are trying to put the fire out. It's hectic."



On the walls of government buildings in Tuzla people wrote “Everybody to the streets. Death to nationalism!”. Throughout the Bosnian war, while the Muslim SDA party headed the government, Tuzla was run by mayor Suleiman Beslagic's Social Democrats, non-nationalists. 

But the fires lit in Tuzla this time spread through the country. On Friday night, the scene was enacted in Sarajevo, the capital, as fire raged through the presidency building and hundreds of people hurled stones, sticks and whatever else they could lay their hands on to feed the blaze. Police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon trying to disperse the crowd. Buildings and cars were also burning in downtown Sarajevo and riot police chased protesters.

"It is about time we did something," said a woman in her 20s who gave her name only as Selma. "This is the result of years and years of not paying attention to the dissatisfaction of the people."

"Everyone is here because everyone has a problem with this government," said a twentysomething male protester who did not want to be identified. "Young people don't have jobs. Older people don't have pensions. Everyone is fed up."

In Zenica, another central Bosnia city, protesters set fire to part of the local government building.

A fire at the National Archive of Bosnia, thought to have destroyed documents from the Late Ottoman and Austrian periods of rule, is less hard to justify, adding a sad sequel to the Serb incendiary attack on the National Library of Bosnia at the start of the war. But it is not certain this was the work of demonstrators or clear what its purpose would be. 

Although the protests were largely confined to the Croat-Muslim half of Bosnia, there was also a rally in Banja Luka, the main city in the Serb half of the country. About 300 activists and citizens staged a peaceful march to call for unity among all Bosnia's ethnicities. "We are all citizens of Bosnia and we all have the same difficult lives here," organiser Aleksandar Zolja, president of the non-governmental organisation Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, told the rally.

In Brcko, a demonstrating crowd held the mayor hostage, while in Bihac people took over government buildings.  Elsewhere, police intervened at the mansion home of an SDA politician who was brandishing a gun at the crowd. But in Mostar, demonstrators were even-handed, attacking the premises of both the SDA and the Croat nationalist HDZ party.

On 7 February, Bosnian Federation Prime Minister Nermin Nikšić held a press conference, with prosecutors, and accused hooligans of creating chaos.  Bakir Izetbegović, one of the country's three presidents and leader of the Party of Democratic Action said, "I believe that people want a change of power. I believe that within three months we should offer citizens a chance to choose who they trust, because it's obvious that this isn't working anymore".

In the Serb held part of Bosnia, Republika Srpska, president Milorad_Dodik said he was "proud of the citizens in Republika Srpska" for not falling for provocations that could make the unrests in the federation spread further. He has also expressed suspicions that there might be an underlying political project that intends to somehow make the recent unrests expand into Republika Srpska.


European Parliament member Davor Ivo Stier said that  "When people who set things on fire in Mostar are yelling 'This is Bosnia!', it incredibly reminds me of the Chetniks during the agression against Croatia yelling 'This is Serbia.'. When Zlatko Lagumdžija accuses the European parliament because of a resolution which condemns centralism, it is clear just how much the centralist elites are against the European peace project. Croatia and the EU cannot be passive towards this downward spiral of violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is time to show leadership. End to centralism! End to violence! It's time for an European path of Bosnia and Herzegovina!", he commented on his Facebook profile the riots in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

(Zlatko Lagumdzija is leader of the Social Democratic Party and currently Bosnian Foreign Minister)

Davor Ivo Stier,  a Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) politician, and Croatian member of the European Parliament, was born into a Croatian expatriate family in Argentina—his paternal grandfather was a colonel in the fascist Ustaše who left for South America after World War II.He  returned to Croatia in 1996 and worked as a diplomat in Washington and Brussels.

When he talks about fires and violence in Mostar, it might be unkind to visit the sins of the father upon the son by remembering the crimes of the Ustashe during World War II. But talking of Mostar and fires, we cannot forget the more recent war, when so much of that historic town was reduced to rubble under fire from both Croat nationalist and Serb Chetnik forces either side. Such criminal, barbaric conduct does not seem to have hindered Croatia or Ivo Stier's "European path".

As we approach the centenary of an incident in Sarajevo, and the events it helped ignite, I see the Austrian government too has expressed concern over these riots and said it might reinforce its troops  in Bosnia. But that's enough history for now.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/07/bosnia-herzegovina-wave-violent-protests

http://revolution-news.com/class-war-bosnia-herzegovina-government-fire/

Rakovsky centre solidarity statement

Life and Death is Not a Game

AS the torch is lit and the media geared for the Paralympic Games due to open next week, let's not forget the sick and disabled people throughout the country who might never make the front-page but do find themselves thrust into the front line fighting this government's determination to make the poorest and weakest in society pay for the wealthy bankers' crisis.

They face the government, determined to slash benefits even if it means spending millions hiring companies to "assess" and advise on claims (and incidentally remove civil servants' jobs by transferring their work to the profit-making private sector). As if they were not ill enough already, they face the worry and ordeal of assessments supposedly to see if they are fit for work, as though there were that many suitable jobs out there even for the able-bodied. (To be fair, this started under the New Labour government. But this lot have happily inherited it).

They also increasingly face harassment and violence from the ignorant lumpen, for whom attacks from the media and government on supposed "benefit cheats" are , like the attacks on "bogus asylum seekers" before, a green light to go ahead with cowardly attacks on the most vulnerable victims they can find.

But these, as we shall see, are not their only enemies.

The top firm making money out of making these "assessments" is ATOS, which just to rub it in is trying to improve its PR image by sponsoring the Paralympics. But the struggle which sick and disabled people are having to go through is not a game. It is a matter of life and death.

Here's an extract from Hansard on a question asked in Parliament in December:

Tom Greatrex: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people have been found fit for work under the work capability assessment who had submitted an appeal against that decision and subsequently died prior to the appeal being heard. [87678]

Chris Grayling: The Department for Work and Pensions does not record the information requested. However, HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) management information indicates that between October 2008 and October 2011, the most recent reported period, 31 appeals against decisions relating to work capability assessments have been withdrawn following the notification of death of the appellant. HMCTS cannot identify which of these appeals were against decisions where the appellant was assessed as fit for work.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2011-12-20b.87678.h

Fortunately not everybody in the press is covering for the government. Chris Sommerlad and Andrew Penman reported in the Mirror on April 12 that people were dying at the rate of 32 per week after being found "fit" for work and denied incapacity benefit.

"We've used the Freedom of Information Act to discover that, between January and August last year, 1,100 claimants died after they were put in the 'work-related activity group'. "

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/tag/Atos%20Origin

While the government might not want to even look at the grim statistics, others are not only clocking them but looking further, into the stories behind them. Stories like that of Elaine Christian, whose body was found laying in a drainage stream after she had been reported missing.

"A post mortem revealed she had died from drowning, despite having more than ten self-inflicted cuts on her wrists. The inquest in Hull was told Mrs Christian had been worrying about a meeting she was due to have to discuss her entitlement to disability benefits.

Her spiralling health problems meant she had to give up her job at Cooplands bakery in Greenwich Avenue, where she was described as a cheerful, hardworking and trusted staff member.

http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Woman-drowned-drain-upset-health-check/story-12927176-detail/story.html

George, from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, worked all his life, first as a miner and foundry worker, then as a communications engineer, until a heart attack in 2006 when he was 53.

After a brief stint working self-employed his doctor told him to stop and George applied for ESA. It's worth £91 to £97 a week but like everyone else George got £65 a week - the equivalent to Jobseeker's Allowance - for three months while he waited for his "work capability assessment".

These tests, carried out under a £100million a year contract by private firm Atos Origin, were introduced by the last government. They've been finding up to two in three applicants are "fit to work" - but many appeal and 40% are successful.

In George's 39-minute exam, the "disability analyst" noted that George had angina, heart disease and chest pain, even when resting. But this wasn't "uncontrollable or life-threatening" and George "should be able to walk at least 200 metres".

Atos's report went to the Department for Work and Pensions, where George's heart problems were ignored and he got six sick "points", as he could only stand up for less than half an hour due to pain.

Short of the 15 points needed to get ESA, George was put on Jobseeker's Allowance and told to find work. He appealed, waiting eight months for his case to go to an independent tribunal. There George got nine more points, as he could only walk 100 metres before stopping.

He was put on the "work related activity" group where he got the lower rate of benefit and special help finding a suitable job. But months later George collapsed and died of a heart attack, the day before another Atos medical. His widow is convinced the stress of claiming killed him.

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/02/sick-who-gives-atos.html

Atos Healthcare has a £110m-a-year contract with the Department of Work and Pensions to assess whether disabled and sick people are entitled to claim the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or whether they are fit for work.

The contract has been the subject of an adverse report from the National Audit Office (NAO) which comes after numerous thwarted attempts by MPs to find out more about the performance targets and financial penalties in place. The government has refused to answer these questions claiming the information is “commercially confidential”.

Secret filming of training given to doctors recruited by Atos suggests that staff are monitored to ensure they do not find excessive numbers of claimants eligible for benefit. Both the government and the company have consistently denied there were fixed targets.

The film also showed some trainers employed by Atos to teach new recruits how to carry out the tests felt uneasy about revised criteria introduced, making it harder for some very severely disabled claimants to qualify for support. No matter how serious claimants problems are with their arms, for example, "as long as you've got one finger, and you can press a button," they would be found fit for work.

Dr Steve Bick, a GP with 20 years' experience, applied for a job as an assessor with Atos to carry out the work capability assessment (WCA), and secretly filmed his training for Channel 4's Dispatches programme. Bick was told by his trainer that he would be watched carefully over the number of applicants he found eligible for the highest rate of disability payments. The trainer tells trainee assessors: "If it's more than I think 12% or 13%, you will be fed back 'your rate is too high.'" When Bick questioned how the company could know in advance the precise proportion of people who needed to be put in this category, the trainer replied: "How do we know? I don't know who set the criteria but that's what we are being told."

One of the trainers admits during a session that the auditing process makes her feel uncomfortable. "It's terrible sometimes, people having [problems with] both hips and both knees, but good hands. Terrible. And you know, we talk about modern work adaptations, but we know how it looks from the other side – there's no jobs for normal people, healthy people. But we have to think this way and sometimes you feel awful because you can't do anything for people. You can't feel sorry and give them the money just because you feel sorry for them ... you will go on targeted audit," she says. (Channel Four Despatches, July 30)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/27/disability-benefit-assessors-film

Large numbers of people found ineligible for the benefit are appealing against the decision to find them fit for work; about 41% of those refused support go to tribunal and 30% are subsequently granted the benefit. There have been more than 600,000 appeals since the WCA started, costing about £60m a year.

But clearly many people are either unable to appeal or don't make it through their torment and tribulations to see it through. In the case of Elaine Christian, above, taken from a site called Calum's List, which records such tragedies, the threat of testing and destiution was enough to drive her to her death. Here is another case from Calum's List:

Karen Sherlock – DWP/ATOS Say ”Fit For Work.”

In the midst of ill health and a kidney transplant, Karen spent two years fighting the DWP and ATOS for help.

Her husband Nigel said it was a disgrace she was refused benefits and said her battle finally took its toll on her health. Although she struggled to get out of bed, it was deemed she could work by officials at Atos Healthcare, which assesses benefits claimants on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions. Karen lost an appeal against the decision. In April her £96-a-week benefits were stopped, plunging her into despair as her health deteriorated. Karen died on 8th June.

The Express – Karen Sherlock – Rest In Peace

http://calumslist.org/peters-list/

As I've said, the disabled face more than one kind of assailant.

An interesting one, brought to our attention by a blogger called Reuben on The Third Estate, is Brendan O'Neill, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

"On Tuesday he took the opportunity to smear Calum’s List, a website dedicated to compiling information about those deaths, particularly suicides, where welfare reform has been “alleged to have had some culpability”.

O’Neill used Calum’s List to exemplify what he called the “highly patronising… victorian-style pity-politics” of the campaign against welfare reform. Such campaigners, he said, lack “any constituency of grassroots support, any backing from ordinary people, and so must try to raise an army of dead people instead”. He contrasted such “pity politics” with what he saw as the much better “politics of solidarity”. Calum’s List he said were “exploiting” suicide victims.

The response from Calum’s List illustrated, with absolute clarity, the sheer baselessness of these assertions:

Calum’s List is written by the disabled, and by people who are bereft… a group of disabled people, widows, widowers, bereaved parents and orphans trying to find a voice

This website isn’t exploiting people. It has been put together by FRIENDS, RELATIVES & THOSE DIRECTLY AFFECTED

http://thethirdestate.net/2012/07/brendan-oneill-caught-with-his-trousers-hanging-shamefully-around-his-ankles/

You may not be suprised to find a writer in the Torygraph picking on people whose exposure of what is happening to claimants and the Welfare State is an embarassment to the government. After all, the newspaper's poor but honest owners, the Barclay brothers, though they also own the Ritz, were reduced to building a £60 million mansion on the Channel isle of Brecqhou so they could get some peace and quiet from the Inland Revenue. They have also had to make cuts of their own. When they took over Littlewoods they stopped the firm's tradition of donating 1 per cent of its profits to charity.

But Mr.O'Neill, who specialises in exposing lefties and people campaigning against austerity, yet evidently failed to do his homework before he made his ill-informed attack on Calum's List, is not just any old right-wing hack.

He began his career at Living Marxism, the journal of the late Revolutionary Communist Party(RCP) (1984-97), which metamorphosed by way of economically rebranding itself "LM" and losing a libel action brought by ITN jounalists whom it accused of inventing atrocities in Bosnia, into something called "Spiked", of which Brendan O'Neill succeeded Mick Hume as editor. O'Neill has written for, among others, The Guardian. The New Statesman, The Australian, the Christian Science Monitor and The American Conservative.

Led by academic Frank Furedi, the RCP/LM was not unique in producing graduates who crossed to the other side. But it distinguished itself by evolving collectively to the Right, shedding those who still thought Marxism had something to do with the working class, so Furedi's high fliers did not need to depart the flock. Besides Brendan O'Neill, and Mick Hume at the Times, there's Claire Fox, founder of the Institute of Ideas, as a regular guest on the BBC's Moral Maze. Her younger sister Fiona, who used to write in LM as Fiona Foster and headed the RCP's front Irish Freedom Movement, was appointed to the Science Media Centre in December 2001, and despite having no scientific background became an "expert" on science and how it was presented.

I've written before about Joan Hoey, who used to write in LM expressing her doubts about the Srebrenica massacre, and was secretary of another RCP front, the Campaign Against Militarism, before going by way of the Centre for Defence & International Security Studies to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and is now the Economist Balkan specialist.

Kate Davies, who as Kate Marshall was general secretary of the RCP, is now well-paid CEO of the Notting Hill Housing Trust, married to a senior officer of Hammersmith and Fulham's armslength Hammesmith Homes, which is divesting the borough of council housing, and has written for London Tories on how local councils can encourage home ownership.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/kate_davies/

It was a three hour Channel Four programme in which Frank Furedi appeared, challenging global warming fears, that aroused environmentalists' interest in its RCP/LM background and the possible links with business lobbyists. Some time before this I'd been alerted to the RCP guru's evolution by an article he wrote in the Guardian, while still wearing his radical hat, arguing that trade unions and others in this country were far too obsessed with health and safety concerns.

It struck me at the time that in a bourgeois democracy at least, there are fewer occupational hazards and risks for journalists and sociology professors than for say, building workers or quarrymen. (Though those academics who take sides with us on safety may find themselves on blacklists). The assault on health and safety "obsession" became the stuff of tabloid media tales and jokes and now it is the policy of David Cameron's government.

Brendan O'Neill and "Spiked Online" have continued the libertarian campaign against supposed hand-wringing middle class liberals interfering with the responsibility of individuals to look after themselves, though he has plainly come a cropper trying to impose this false picture on the Calum's List initiative.

In line with the same Tory theme, protecting the right to exploit by supposedly defending our "freedom" to be exploited, I see that as someone on the Third Estate has pointed out, O'Neill rejected suggestions there was anything wrong with the treatment of unemployed people used as unpaid "volunteers" for the Jubilee events.

http://thethirdestate.net/2012/07/brendan-oneill-caught-with-his-trousers-hanging-shamefully-around-his-ankles/

http://thethirdestate.net/2012/06/my-prediction-proves-correct-brendan-oneill-claims-that-anger-over-treatment-of-unpaid-stewards-is-just-middle-class-paternalism/comment-page-1/#comment-88613

Dismal Prospects

LAST month we heard about the young people sent up to London to be unpaid stewards for the Jubilee celebrations, and left to sleep under a bridge before they started their working day. The security firm employing them with the promise of paid work for some was North west-based Close Protection Ltd. which also has Olympic work coming up under sub-contract to the security big boys G4S.

But there is money to be made both ends of these arrangements, and the company which supplied the cheap but willing workforce sent up from the south-west is called Prospects Group.

If like me you can remember when firms were supposed to make their money by making stuff, then like me you might not have heard of them. But Prospects Group is one of those companies that have sprung up to take care of the public sector, and in these days of cuts and austerity they seem to be doing well. Now from leaving youngsters out in the cold it is moving on to freezing out teachers, or at least their unions.

Here is Tim Lezard reporting on the excellent Union News site:

The company responsible for Jubilee stewards rough sleeping under a bridge has this week threatened to freeze out teaching unions when it takes over a Gloucestershire school.

Parents on Monday received a letter informing them Whitecross School in Lydney is to be turned into an academy under the control of Prospects Group – a firm that makes millions out of carrying out inspections for Ofsted and is approved by Michael Gove’s education department to charge for advice on setting up academies and free schools.

And while teachers and staff are unhappy about the change to academy status, they are also concerned that Prospects Group has told them it has no intention of signing a model recognition agreement with unions.

Hannah Packham, the NUT’s senior organiser for the South West, said: “In a letter copied to us, Prospects have said that they have considered the TUC model agreement and have decided not to adopt it saying that they see ‘no need’ to do so.

“We have real concerns that a company with such a poor track record is intending to expand its chain of schools in the South West without an agreed machinery for negotiating on behalf of members.”

In 2010 Prospects Group took over the running of the nearby Gloucester Academy, a challenging school with a high number of pupils on free school meals, with English as a second language or other special educational needs.

In March inspectors found the firm’s school was “inadequate,” “fragile” and needed further monitoring. Their main finding was: “The academy has made inadequate progress. This monitoring inspection has raised serious concerns about the standard of education provided by the academy and I am recommending a further monitoring inspection.”

Prospects Group hit the headlines in June as the company responsible for providing the government’s Work Programme when it launched an enquiry into jobseekers being forced to sleep under London Bridge before the Thames pageant celebrations.

Parents were told of the proposal to turn the school into an academy by letter this week and one parent, who did not want to be identified, questioned why consultation was only taking place just days before the end of term when plans have been underway for months.

A public meeting has been called for current and future parents of pupils to debate these concerns. It will take place on July 18th at Lydney Town Hall from 6.30pm.

http://union-news.co.uk/2012/07/exclusive-academy-threatens-to-freeze-out-teaching-unions/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18329526

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/07/jubilee-stewards-staff-treatment-london-bridge-john-prescott_n_1576570.html

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/119935

Call on MPs to debate ATOS and 1,100 deaths

ONE good thing that has happened in recent years is that people with disabilities or needing help have been organising, and using the abilities they do have, to fight their corner, so they are not leaving each other alone to succumb to whatever is done to them, and not leaving the rest of us with the excuse that "we didn't know".

Just as well. The government and its propagandists in the media may do all they can to incite hostility to those it is attacking, telling us it is people making benefit claims who, along with pensioners living too long, are responsible for the crisis, and not rich bankers and City speculators gambling with other people's lives and money. Judging from the increasing amount of violence against the disabled there are enough lumpen yobs ready to believe them. It is easier than taking on the rich and powerful.

But anyone of us could find ourselves among the unemployed, homeless, chronically sick or disabled. The odds on becoming desperately poor are much better than on becoming a millionaire.

On Saturday I posted about the man so desperate he set fire to himself outside a Birmingham Job Centre. I went on to quote a report saying more than a thousand people claiming sickness benefit died last year after being told they were fit enough to go get a job.

The boss of ATOS, the firm given the contract to get them off benefit has picked up nearly £1 million bonus.

"Is no one doing anything about all this?", people will say. "Surely someone should be raising it in parliament?".

Someone is. It is the same Labour MP to whom it seems to have been left to raise so many things. Here is a report from the newsletter of the ME and CFS Association:
http://www.meassociation.org.uk/?page_id=1666

Commons attempt to get MPs to debate ATOS and “the deaths of 1,100 Employment and Support Act claimants”

by Tony Britton on July 2, 2012

A Labour MP has launched an attempt to get the House of Commons to debate the £100m-a-year contract awarded to Atos to carry out work capability assessments of people applying for Employment and Support Allowance – which he claims has led to the deaths of 1,100 claimants put in the category for compulsory work-related activity.

In an Early Day Motion tabled last Thursday, John McDonnell (Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington) also praised the British Medical Association whose Annual Representative Conference last week called for the work capability assessment to be scrapped immediately and to be replaced with a system that does not harm the most vulnerable people in society.

His motion also includes condemnation of the decision to allow Atos to sponsor the Paralympics which follow the London Olympic Games and, for good measure, Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the Games themselves.

Dow took over the Union Carbide company whose plant at Bhopal, India, leaked methyl isocyanate gas in 1984 – leading to the deaths and injury of thousands of people in the vicinity. The event was one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

At the moment, the Early Day Motion – EDM 295 – is not supported by a single other MP.

Early Day Motion 295

ATOS
Session 2012-13
Date tabled: 28.06.2012
Primary sponsor: McDonnell, John
Sponsors:
Text:

That this House deplores that thousands of sick and disabled constituents are experiencing immense hardship after being deprived of benefits following a work capability assessment carried out by Atos Healthcare under a 100 million a year contract; notes that 40 per cent of appeals are successful but people wait up to six months for them to be heard; deplores that last year 1,100 claimants died while under compulsory work-related activity for benefit and that a number of those found fit for work and left without income have committed or attempted suicide; condemns the International Paralympic Committee’s promotion of Atos as its top sponsor and the sponsorship of the Olympics by Dow Chemical and other corporations responsible for causing death and disability; welcomes the actions taken by disabled people, carers, bereaved relatives and organisations to end this brutality and uphold entitlement to benefits; and applauds the British Medical Association call for the work capability assessment to end immediately and to be replaced with a system that does not cause harm to some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Flames throw light on desperate reality behind statistics

WITH all the TV coverage of the Olympic torch, I don't expect there'll be much time for another kind of flame.
But here is yesterday's Guardian's report:

A man has set himself on fire outside a Birmingham jobcentre after what reports suggest was an argument over benefit payments.
The 48-year-old unnamed man is understood to have doused himself in flammable liquid and tied himself to railings after a dispute inside the Jobcentre Plus in the Selly Oak area on Thursday.
Police arrived at the scene and extinguished the fire after the jobcentre was evacuated.
The man was later taken to hospital with burns to his legs.
A source with links to staff at the centre told the Guardian the man had been recognised by the staff as vulnerable with outstanding health issues but had recently been found fit to work precipitating a move from one benefit to another. This had caused payment delays.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/29/man-on-fire-birmingham-job-centre?newsfeed=true
And now an item from investigative bloggers Penman and Sommerlad back in April in the Mirror:

MORE than a thousand sickness benefit claimants died last year after being told to get a job, we can reveal. We've highlighted worries about the controversial medical tests for people claiming Employment Support Allowance which are being used to slash the country's welfare bill.

The Government has boasted that more than half of new claimants are found "fit to work" - failing to mention that over 300,000 have appealed the decision and almost 40% have won.Instead, employment minister Chris Grayling says this "emphasises what a complete waste of human lives the current system has been".

Here's another waste of human life. We've used the Freedom of Information Act to discover that, between January and August last year, 1,100 claimants died after they were put in the "work-related activity group" - that's 32 a week.

This group - which accounted for 21% of all claimants at the last count - get a lower rate of benefit for one year and are expected to go out and find work.

This compares to 5,300 deaths of people who were put in the "support group" - which accounts for 22% of claimants - for the most unwell, who get the full, no-strings benefit of up to pounds 99.85 a week.

We don't know how many people died after being found "fit to work", the third group, as that information was "not available".

But we have also found that 1,600 people died before their assessment had been completed.

This should take 13 weeks, while the claimant gets a reduced payment of up to pounds 67.50 a week, but delays have led to claims the system is in "meltdown".

Mr Grayling admitted last month that 35,000 people are waiting longer than 13 weeks. Commenting on the deaths of claimants, a Department for Work and Pensions official said: "It is possible that the claimant had already closed their claim and then subsequently died, meaning that these figures may be overestimating the true picture."

Of course, they're bound to include some people who died of something completely unrelated to their benefit claim.

But there are plenty of tragic cases - such as that of David Groves who died from a heart attack the night before taking his work capability assessment.

The 56-year-old, from Staveley, Derbyshire, worked for 40 years as a miner and telecoms engineer but stopped on doctors' orders after an earlier heart attack and a string of strokes. His widow Sandra said: "When Dave was called in for a medical, he felt like he was back to square one.

"He was in a terrible state by the day he died. It was the stress that killed him, I'm sure."

Stephen Hill, 53, of Duckmanton, Derbyshire, died of a heart attack in December, one month after being told he was "fit to work", even though he was waiting for major heart surgery.

Citizens Advice told us it has found "a number of cases" of people dying soon after being found fit for work.

"There seems to be a clear link between the cause of death and the condition they were suffering from that led to the claim," a spokeswoman added.

The work capability assessments are carried out by private firm Atos, on a pounds 100million a year contract.

The firm made a pounds 42million profit in 2010 and paid boss Keith Wilman pounds 800,000, a 22% pay rise on the previous year.

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2012/04/32-die-a-week-after-failing-in.html
But the clampdown on benefits claimants has not been all bad news. Not for some.
On Wednesday this week the Mirror reported:

The fatcat boss of a firm hired to help slash the benefits bill has won a bonus of nearly £1million.

Thierry Breton’s bumper payout means he pocketed more than £1.9million last year.
Details of the obscene sum paid to the head of French firm Atos come as David Cameron draws up draconian new welfare cuts.
Atos was brought in to reassess 2.5 million people on ­incapacity benefit to help the ­Department for Work and Pensions decide whether they are fit to work.
Mr Breton received his massive pay out despite mounting numbers of successful appeals by people ordered to get a job after being tested by the firm.
Heart attack and lung disease victims are among those judged to be well enough to work.
Some 3,100 claimants had appeals upheld in May 2011, up from 900 in the same month in 2010, the latest figures show.
On average almost two in five, 38%, challenged decisions are overturned at tribunal, nearly one in 10 of all those made.
And the appeals system costs taxpayers tens of millions of pounds to administer.
Labour MP Tom Greatrex says Mr Breton’s bonus will “sicken” those put through the reassessment ordeal.
The Atos chief’s latest payment comes on top of wages and perks totalling £1.83million in 2010.
It was revealed in its recent annual report in which it boasts about its “excellent service”.
Mr Greatrex said: “People will find it hard to believe that he sees fit to reward himself with millions, while thousands here suffer.
“It will sicken those who have been through the Atos process to hear the company crow about its expertise.”
He called on the DWP to get a grip on Atos and make the firm improve its performance.
“Thousands suffered because time and again incorrect decisions have been made on the back of Atos assessments,” he said.
An Atos source said decisions on fitness to work were not based solely on its ­assessments but also on information from ­claimants and their doctors.
A spokesman for the company said the bonus was unrelated to the firm’s Government contract, insisting: “No bonus payments are made as part of the Department for Work and Pensions contract.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/atos-fatcat-lands-1m-bonus-941601
Oh, and also this week, David Cameron said his government was determined to "get rid of the benefits culture". Well, at 1,000 deaths last year you could say they are getting rid of the poor.
Time we got rid of Lord Snooty and his chums. They ought to be burning in hell. Let the flames lit in Birmingham be our torch.

And don't let us catch you smiling!

AS the government attacks people's rights and benefits, as well as the jobs and pensions of the state's own servants, it is treating frontline staff worse, with bullying and overwork, and hoping they will take this out on clients and service users.

Fortunately there is resistance.

A report from the Public and Commercial Service union, PCS gives an insight into what is happening behind the department doors. It says:

Managers in government call centres have been taking down union posters that expose the brutal way workers are told to treat people on benefits.

Bosses in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) said the notices were offensive and an incitement to take industrial action.

The PCS posters were on union noticeboards and highlight the real experiences of workers in DWP call centres – including one who was told off for wishing an unemployed person "good luck".

They also refer to the number of callers who threaten suicide because of cuts to disability benefits.

Industrial action is not mentioned.

Follow this link to see the posters they tried to ban

The PCS posters were a response to an insensitive management propaganda campaign aimed at people who take time off sick.

Fran Heathcote, president of the PCS DWP group, said. “This is as an attack on the union’s independence. The posters are no different in content to those we've used before and we can see no justification for them being banned."

See the banned posters

PCS in the Department for Work and Pensions

Fight for dignity at work - join PCS

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