jeffs posts
These are true stories of benefit claimants attending Ashton-under-Lyne Job Centre on Thursdays – the reality of the Department for Work and Pensions under the Conservative Party:
We spoke to a young couple who even though they are working they are struggling. Because they don’t work full time they are on Universal credit and they don’t have a penny to spare. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Universal Credit is hell on earth.
We spoke to a lady who was rushing out of the Jobcentre. I asked her what was wrong, was she ok? She told me that she was pregnant and they had sanctioned her. She couldn’t stop though because she was in a rush to collect a bank statement. I gave her a leaflet and told her that we would be here next week if she wanted to talk, and for her to read the advice on the leaflet.
We spoke to a lady who had just been informed that she had been sanctioned for not answering a telephone call from the DWP. She had already told them that her mobile phone was broken, but they ignored this fact and sanctioned her anyway. She will be appealing.
I spoke to an older, disabled gentleman who has to use a motorised scooter to get around. He had recieved a text to inform him that he had missed his ESA medical assessment in Huddersfield. Huddersfield is miles away, a train ride away and he would have massive problems being able to make this journey. I’m not sure if he had recieved a letter from the assessment centre informing him of this, but I told him that even though it is scary he must open the brown letters that come through his letterboxes. Many people are scared of opening them, the whole system makes you scared because they hold your future in their hands.
We gave him some good advice and helped him.
We spoke to a young couple with a young baby and a toddler. Both the children were ill, and they had a sickness bug. Even so they had to attend their appointment even if that meant that one of them had to keep running out of the building with a child that had been sick. Why can’t they just leave people alone. The mother of the children is also disabled, and in my opinion she shouldn’t have to attend a Jobcentre appointment.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 07 October 2017
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jeffs posts
It is impossible to reconcile the Tory claim that their government wants to invest in the UK with actions like handing £55 million of public money to health profiteers Care UK, to be deposited in its tax haven bank accounts.
Much of that money will be handed to shareholders in tax-free profits, doing nothing whatsoever to help people suffering from health problems and contributing to the worsening of – for example – the regular winter crises in Accident and Emergency departments across the UK.
And there is the question of corruption to consider: Care UK funded former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley when he was drafting his Health and Social Care Act, the lamentable piece of legislation that allowed private companies into the NHS. Did they provide him with £21,000 on the condition that they receive contracts worth millions?
The whole situation stinks like a cesspit. The sooner a Labour government takes office and kicks out these lazy freeloaders, the better.
It was announced last week that Care UK had secured a £55m contract to provide elective healthcare services at the North East London Treatment Centre, Redbridge.
Care UK reported in 2013 that public funds accounted for 88% of the company’s revenues and admitted to using “tax-efficient” financial structuresinvolving the Channel Islands. Its sister company, Silver Sea, is domiciled in low-tax Luxembourg. In 2014 the Guardian published a story claiming that Care UK had not paid a penny in corporation tax since it was bought by the private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital in 2010.
Claims that the Tories are selling off the NHS and other public services to their city banker mates have been rubbished as apocryphal by their supporters. But you only have to look at cases like this to see the truth of the matter.
These companies are simply in it for the profit, and the only way for them to make a profit is by charging more than the service costs to provide. In the public sector that difference would be ploughed back into the service for the benefit of all. For private companies, it goes out of the NHS and usually out of the UK, squirrelled away from the tax authorities in offshore havens. If they don’t make a profit they don’t stick around for long. Posted by jeffrey davies on 03 October 2017
Jeffs posts
This is another excellent piece from RTUK. And it shows why we're better off looking at alternative sources of news on the Net than relying on flagrantly biased BBC. Even when those alternative sources are owned by Putin's Russia.
This report discusses the true scale of hidden and rural homelessness in the UK, which is much bigger than previously considered. Among the chilling statistics, it reports that 1 in 10 people experience homelessness every year, and that homelessness has increased 50 per cent since the Tories took power in 2010. In London, 12,500 people are forced to sleep on sofas or the Tube every night. Nationally, 70,000 people were sofa surfing, 20,000 people sleep in unsuitable accommodation, 12,500 living in squats, 9,000 living in tents. A spokesman for Centrepoint states that the statistics are patchy and unclear, and that homelessness is often unreported by the general public, because they don't know the homeless people they see sleeping rough. This prevents it from gaining the attention it needs to attract proper political action.
Not all towns deal with the problem in the same way. While most councils try to get the homeless into a hostel or similar, Carlisle is trying to solve the problem by giving the homeless tents, toiletries and other things they need, a policy which is praised by one homeless man, a Mr. Dubka, interviewed on the programme. The programme does report the government's response, which says that it is committed to tackling homelessness and has devoted £550 million to this goal by 2020. The government is also about to pass the Homelessness Reduction Bill intended to force council to act in cases where people are about to become homeless.
But councils are still finding it difficult to cope, as budgets have been slashed by 70 per cent from 2014, councils are forced to concentrate on the urban centres, a point supported by a spokesman for another charity, Porchlight. The programme also cites statistics collected by Herriott Watts University. It concludes that on the one hand, it's good that the figures for rural homelessness are finally being included and pressure is being placed on the government to include them in its Homelessness Reduction Act, but on the other funding is still being reduced.
I am not surprised that there are a high number of 'hidden homeless' in London and around the country. A little while ago I found a study of homelessness in New York, written by an American social scientist and based on his doctoral research in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was briefly a major issue in American politics. It's actually more difficult to define the scale of the homelessness problem in New York, because many of the homeless aren't living on the streets. They are sleeping on friends' couches, or in basements or closets or other areas given to them to sleep in by kindly janitors. And although the problem is much bigger in the 21st century than it was twenty or so years ago, it has practically disappeared as a political issue.
Many of those homeless in New York are graduates. I wonder how many are also people with university degrees in this country, who can't find accommodation in the cities in which they moved to attend uni, because of a shortage of affordable housing.
The report also makes another excellent point, though one by tacit demonstration rather than open statement. The government has said that it's devoting £550 million to the problem by 2020. This looks impressive, but as the programme shows, this is actually a cut of 70 per cent. It shows why you should be always very careful about accepting the government's stats when they are given in isolation without corresponding data to compare it with.
Also, whatever they say, this government will do the barest minimum to tackle homelessness. Due to Tory policies, the wider British economy depends on house prices remaining high. And they can only remain high if there's a demand for them
Posted by jeffrey davies on 30 September 2017
