Jeffs posts
Last year I wrote an article about how the social security system in the UK has been re-structured around “ordeals”, which were introduced by the Conservative government in order to discipline and “disincentivise” citizens from claiming welfare support, by undermining any sense of security people may have of fulfiling their most basic needs. Welfare support is extremely conditional and precarious. Ordeals are intrinsic to a system of punishment that the draconian Conservatives claim will “change the behaviours” of underpaid, unemployed and disabled people. By creating a hostile environment, the government are somehow claiming that it’s possible to simply punish people out of poverty.
My friend, Mo Stewart writes, today in the Guardian (Letters Fri 11 May 2018):
“The British public have reacted to “a sense of betrayal of that so-called British value of fairness” (The hostile environment? Britain’s disabled people live there too, the guardian.com, 26 April). This “sense of betrayal” was only possible because the national press reported the plight of the Windrush scandal, but this is not always the case. Some of the press were happy to promote the exaggerated claims of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) which, during five years of coalition government, knowingly misled the public regarding “fake” claimants of disability benefit. Coincidentally, disability hate crimes increased by 213% during the coalition’s term in office.
Influenced by a US healthcare insurance “consultant”, who funded DWP-commissioned research used to justify welfare reforms, the work capability assessment (WCA) adopted the bio-psychosocial model of assessment which has failed all academic scrutiny. The WCA is used by the DWP to resist access to the employment and support allowance (ESA) sickness and disability benefit, which is the financial equivalent of jobseeker’s allowance, so there is no financial incentive when claiming ESA.”
This DWP assessment totally disregards diagnosis, prognosis, past medical history and all medical opinion. Deaths of genuine claimants were always inevitable. There is a reason why the DWP has refused to publish updated ESA mortality totals since February 2014, as suicides linked to the ESA assessment climb. It’s time for this ideological DWP tyranny to end, and for the national press to stop disregarding another national atrocity impacting on disabled people.”
The letter was signed by:
Mo Stewart Independent disability studies researcher
Professor Woody Caan Editor, Journal of Public Mental Health
Dr Tanya Titchkosky Professor of disability studies, University of Toronto
Professor Peter Beresford Professor of citizen participation, Essex University
Dr Marion Hersh Senior lecturer, biomedical engineering, Glasgow University
Dr Dominic Griffiths Senior lecturer in Inclusive Education and SEN, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Anne Daguerre Assistant professor in work, employment and welfare, Middlesex University
Dr Simon Duffy Director, Centre for Welfare Reform
Vin West Chair, Arfon Access Group,
and others.
Posted by jeffrey davies
jeffs posts
tories about to drop a tonne weight on pensioners – instead of fixing the young’s real problems
One of the Tories’ biggest missteps in 2017 was their decision to include the ‘dementia tax’ on the homes of pensioners in care. The move – clung to in spite of the uproar that it caused, until Labour’s surging popularity forced them to drop it – showed the absolute cynicism of the Conservatives’ attitude toward even their traditional supporters.
Pensioners vote – and a lot of them vote Tory – so the conventional wisdom went. But as soon as the Tories thought, foolishly, that they were so far ahead in the polls that they didn’t need to rely on the pensioner vote, the knives came out for our older folk, too.
Do they never learn?
The ‘MSM’ are now reporting that a think-tank headed by a Tory peer is proposing a tax on all pensioners in order to fund a £10,000 lump sum to young people when they turn twenty-five, to “ensur[e] there’s a fair deal across the generations“.
Even the fact that the idea could occur to them shows the detached and simplistic nature of Tory thinking: “let’s tax old folk and give a lumper to the kids – that’ll fix things!”
Way to miss the point by a country league, let alone a country mile.
If you want ‘fairness across the generations’, give the young what their parents and grandchildren had:
free education as an investment in their – and our – future
housing that costs no more than two or three times the average wage
ample social housing for those who need it (which will help costs for those who want to buy, too, by increasing supply)
secure employment at decent wages
decent pension provisions from their employers, linked to earnings at retirement not some fraction of a depleted pension pot
a properly – centrally – funded and organised NHS, providing care free at the point of need, when needed, not hours, weeks or months later if they’re lucky
In other words, change society – it’s not impossible if those in charge have the political will and the economic, monetary nous – so people can build a life, rather than being forced to work till they drop and pay exorbitant rents to live in houses they could never afford to buy and exorbitant interest rates on education loans that hang round their necks until they’re grandparent-age themselves.
Do that instead of conducting a smash-and-grab raid on the elderly.
Oh right. For that you need a Labour government.
Tories can’t change their spots – as this latest debacle shows all too clearly.
Posted by jeffrey davies] on 09 May 2018
jeffs posts
This is another great video from that notorious Russian propaganda outlet, RT, which shows exactly why we need the channel. It's the only one allowing those smeared as anti-Semites from the Labour party to come on TV to give their side and their views.
In this clip, RT's presenter for the 'Going Underground' programme, Afshin Rattansi, talks to Marc Wadsworth. Wadsworth is the veteran anti-racist campaigner, who was smeared as an anti-Semite by Blairite Labour MP Ruth Smeeth. He was then subjected to what can only be described as a kangaroo court, before being found guilty and thrown out.
Wadsworth here talks about how he formed the Anti-Racist Alliance in 1991, and how he helped the parents of the murdered Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, meet Nelson Mandela. He states that this was a time when racism and Fascism were on the increase. Blacks and Asians had been attacked, the BNP had established a bunker, which they claimed was a bookshop, and then there was the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He was able to get Stephen Lawrence's parents to meet Mandela through contacting expatriate members of the ANC, who were disgusted to find out that Black lives were just as cheap in London as they were in South Africa. The Anti-Racist Alliance itself had the support of MPs, Blacks, Asians and Jews, and was the largest Black led anti-racist organisation in Europe.
Rattansi then asks him about Amber Rudd, the deportations and his expulsion from the Labour party. Wadsworth states that his father was one of the Windrush generation. He was an RAF volunteer from Jamaica, who paid his own passage of here in 1944 to help Britain fight the Nazis. After the War, he then made his way back here, to help this country rebuild. Wadsworth says that his father's dead now, but if he were alive, he'd be appalled at the way they were treated, and the way his son has been treated.
Rattansi then asks him how long he's known Jeremy Corbyn. Wadsworth states that he's known Corbyn since he was first elected as an MP in 1983, when he was a campaigning trade unionist. Wadsworth also discusses how he was one of those involved in the movement for Black sections in the Labour party, which led to the election of the first Black Labour MPs, including Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott. This was a landmark moment, as up till then parliament had been all White, as White as that of South Africa.
He and Rattansi also discuss how Wadsworth was influential in changing and drafting the law on racial harassment in concert with a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This was after a series of battles with the BNP on the Isle of Dogs after the election of Derek Beacon, when Jews were being attacked.
As for the kangaroo court that found him guilty of anti-Semitism, he states that his legal team had entirely disproved the charges against him, and that the court couldn't even give him a definition of anti-Semitism, and had to take legal advice part way through. He found this very disturbing. He says he's been overwhelmed by the support he's received from thousands of people, and that polls show most people think he's innocent. He states that this is the Blairites trying to hold on to power, and that if they get away with throwing him out, they'll be able to throw out anybody. It could be Jackie Walker next, or Ken Livingstone.
Rattansi tackles him on why no Labour figures have publicly defended him. Wadsworth states that he had received the support of high-ranking Labour MPs, naming them. As for the reason they haven't publicly come forward, this is because Tony Blair is under siege by the Blairites. 172 MPs signed a 'no confidence' motion against him, which is 95 per cent of parliamentary MPs. They're afraid to speak out in case the right-wing press jump in and try to use their defence against them and the wider Labour party.
Rattansi mentions that Wadsworth isn't just concerned with racial justice, but also with class. Wadsworth states that he left the Labour party because of the invasion of Iraq. He rejoined when Corbyn became leader. He states that we need to back Corbyn in this battle for the soul of the Labour party, if we wish to have genuinely socialist, internationalist, anti-war Labour party.
At the end of the programme their subtitles giving dates from a 'Justice for Wadsworth' tour, beginning in London. You may wish to stop the video at that and make notes of the dates.
Wadsworth is clearly a man of deep conviction and integrity, and it is an utter travesty that he has been so foully smeared as an anti-Semite when he is clearly very, very far from it. As are so many others.
As for his story about his father serving in the RAF, and then coming back to Britain after the War to help in our reconstruction, Wadsworth's father was by no means the only one. The book Under the Imperial Carpet, which discusses various incidents in Black British history, has a chapter on the many West Indians, who, like Wadsworth's father, came to this country during the War to help us. These people were so well received that they came back here after the War expecting the same treatment. Sadly, they weren't, and found instead bitter racism and resentment. Rudd and Tweezer's deportation of this generation and their children is another vile chapter in this story of hope, racism and disappointment and maltreatment.
Wadsworth and everyone else falsely accused of anti-Semitism should be cleared and reinstated as members of the Labour party immediately.
The deportations must stop now, and those deported returned to their homes and families in Britain. And Tweezer should resign or be thrown out for her role in drafting the legislation used to persecute them.
And Ruth Smeeth and the other Blairites are utterly despicable, and should be deselected.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 09 May 2018
