Casualty in crisis: A&E - a service in meltdown

Damning report says NHS Trusts were pressured to introduce new 111 service before they were ready

Doctors were placed under “unprecedented pressure” to go live with the new NHS 111 helpline before some were ready, contributing to the A&E crisis in Britain's hospitals, documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

Paramedics have been sent out to treat patients who did not feel ill enough to need an ambulance and were "more than willing" to see a GP instead, according to a damning assessment by the NHS Alliance, which represents GP surgeries and other primary care trusts.

In a separate official report by NHS England, presented to the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt 10 days ago, officials told him that A&E performance has "deteriorated significantly over the last six months" as a result of increased numbers of patients arriving at casualty, job losses and social care pressures leading to elderly people remaining on wards.

The introduction of NHS 111 last month has exacerbated the crisis, the officials said. Mr Hunt now faces questions in Parliament over his handling of the crisis in emergency care.

The NHS Alliance said warned in its report that providers of the new non-emergency telephone number did not feel prepared to "go live" with the service on 1 April but felt they were put under "unprecedented pressure" by the Department of Health.

In one incident in Bristol, because of 111 call mishandling, police were called to a palliative care patient despite an attempt by a doctor to intervene.


Mr Hunt has insisted for the past month that the growing crisis at accident and emergency units is a result of Labour's 2004 GP contract, which allowed family doctors to opt out of out-of-hours care.

Yet both the NHS Alliance and the report by NHS England – the quango overseeing the delivery of the newly restructured health service – say that the introduction of the 111 service has piled pressure on Britain's emergency units.



Despite the Health Secretary's repeated claims about the 2004 GPs' contract being the driving force behind the A&E crisis, nowhere in the 23-page NHS England report does it list this as a factor.


"For weeks, Jeremy Hunt has sought to blame the 2004 GP contract for the pressures on A&E. We now know that the official advice he was receiving in private from NHS England did not support his claims.

This embarrassing revelation will damage confidence in the current incumbent. Jeremy Hunt needs to remember that he is the Secretary of State for Health, not his department's spin doctor-in-chief."

NHS 111 was launched in some pilot areas last year before being rolled out in most parts of England on 1 April. But since its introduction, there have been warnings that the failure of call handlers to deal with patients correctly has triggered an influx in people arriving at A&E.

Conservatives float two-tier benefits system in private survey in Labour marginals

People who are unemployed for long periods could receive less in benefits than those who have worked and then lost their jobs, according to plans being considered by the Conservatives.

 

The proposal for a two-tier benefits system is one of a number of Conservative policy ideas in a survey sent to members of the public in marginal seats held by Labour.

Some of the questions appear to set out possible Tory thinking on the party’s approach to future benefits reform going into the next general election, which is now less than two years away.

One questioned whether benefit payments should be linked to the amount of income tax or national insurance a person has paid.

The next questions suggest a two-tier benefits system, by asking whether people should get a different payments if they had only just lost their jobs. 

MPs may get £10k pay rise: But they say: 'It's not snouts in the trough - if you pay peanuts you get monkeys'

MPs are in line for a pay rise of £10,000 a year – but they may have to give up their gold-plated pensions. 
 

According to some insiders, officials believe a pay rise as high as 25 per cent – taking salaries to £82,172 – is needed to give MPs a fair deal. 

But it is thought they may recommend a figure closer to £10,000 to try to minimise the anticipated public outcry.

Downing Street will be alarmed at the prospect of a big rise for MPs on the grounds that it would undermine David Cameron’s ‘we’re all in it together’ campaign to encourage other workers to make do with no increase or minimal rises of one per cent. 

A senior MP said: ‘We know we are going to see headlines of “snouts in the trough” but the issue of MPs’ low pay has to be resolved. ‘We got into this mess 25 years ago because we were frightened of being criticised by the press and public for giving ourselves a proper pay rise.

‘Instead, we were encouraged to claim more expenses under the counter.

The expenses scandal ended all that and now we are left with a pitiful pay cheque. 

‘Voters may not like it but if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Unless our pay goes up, the decline in the quality of people prepared to become MPs and Ministers will increase and the whole country will suffer.’ 

Endemic gagging: Over 300 UK police silenced with taxpayer millions – report

Mere months after it emerged some 14.7 million pounds (US$22.4 million) was spent on gagging UK Health Service employees, a report has exposed 13 police forces across the country signed over 300 compromise agreements with staff, spending millions.

 The gagging clauses are being widely used across UK police forces, leading to concerns they are being used to ensure the silence of police employees. This would prevent them from speaking out over issues of public interest, according to a Freedom of Information survey, reported in the Telegraph.

The 13 forces which responded to the requests for information were only the ones which agreed to provide details, meaning the actual number enforcing the confidentiality agreements is likely to be significantly higher.

The Freedom of Information requests showed that some 200 officials and civil servants put their name to compromise agreements over the course of two years, costing some 14 million pounds. Additionally, 4,500 local authority workers entered similar arrangements.

In the case of the NHS, potential whistleblowers have been gagged, threatened and stopped from raising concerns pertaining to patient safety.

Barclay told the Daily Mail earlier this year that NHS gagging clauses were having “having a chilling effect on whistleblowers,” saying that “hundreds of potential whistleblowers may have been prevented from speaking out for fear of legal action.”

The former chief of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, Gary Walker, revealed in February that he received a 500,000-pound ‘super gag’ in 2010. The money was offered in exchange for keeping silent regarding his belief that his hospital was a threat to patient safety.

£140 buys private firms data on NHS patients

Bupa approved to access sensitive medical records as campaigners question patient consent for release. 

 Private health firms, including Bupa, can pay £140 to identify potentially millions of patients and then access their health records, detailing intimate medical histories, under a new national arrangement in the NHS, the Guardian can reveal. 

The records, which include sensitive information about hospital visits, such as a mother's history of still births, patients' psychiatric treatment and critical care stays, allow individuals to be identified by use of postcode, gender and age as well as their socioeconomic status.

On Monday the government slipped out the news that private insurer Bupa was approved to access England's "sensitive or identifiable" patient data, housed centrally by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). 

It is now among four private firms that have passed the government's vetting procedures.

The prime minister has argued that companies such as Britain's key life sciences firms should be able to benefit from the NHS's vast collection of patient data. But critics argue that this amounts to putting the NHS "up for sale".

Like millions of other patients, I'm certain I never gave my consent for that." The Guardian has established that private companies are already attempting to access patient records which can identify individuals. 

In July a private research firm Civil Eyes was granted access to sensitive "consultant code" data.

Stop the Cuts: Newcastle Rally for the People's Assembly with Owen Jones

Monday 20 May, 6.30pm, at the Black Swan (downstairs at Newcastle Arts Centre), 69 Westgate Road, Newcastle. 

 Speakers: Keynote speaker - Owen Jones, author of 'Chavs' and Independent columnist Sam Fairbairn, Coalition of Resistance national secretary Gail Ward, disability campaigner and Tyneside No Bedroom Tax 

Simon Elliott, PCS union regional secretary Cris McCurley, solicitor and campaigner against cuts to legal aid Chair: Clare Harwood, Unison activist and vice chair of Tyne and Wear Coalition of Resistance

The high court and the future of the bedroom tax

Just how much inconsistency, confusion and hardship do people have to endure before a disastrous policy is abandoned?

This week ten of those affected, and their families, wait to find out if the High Court will save them from this destructive policy.

Disability living allowance (DLA) in particular has become the new ‘rent money’. In the population as a whole 10% are in receipt of DLA, but among tenants affected by the bedroom tax this proportion rises to over a third. Despite the Burnip judgment, in which the judge gave clear advice that disability benefits should not be used for rent, chronically sick and disabled tenants report that their DLA is being included in income assessments by local authorities and their expenditure ruthlessly scrutinised.

Not only is this ethically questionable, but it is also highly problematic for anyone who faces losing all or part of their DLA entitlement when assessed for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), as their home will also be at risk. No PIP = no money for rent shortfall = no housing. The fear and anxiety this generates cannot be overstated.

Housing associations are already reporting the accumulation of arrears. Many tenants are already in debt and have had to borrow money from family and friends. Delays as local authorities sift through piles of discretionary housing payment (DHP) applications push tenants further into arrears. There is confusion and regional disparity, with some local authorities including disability benefits as available income and others not.

The bedroom tax is causing harm. It will continue to cause harm. It will continue to exacerbate tenants’ mental and physical health problems. These are not temporary teething troubles that will be smoothed over; impoverishing people will drive them deeper into debt and despair.

 This is an aggressively destructive and malignant policy; it is rotten in its conception, its design and its consequences. It’s time to abandon it. We just have to hope the judges agree.

Devastating impact of 'bedroom tax' which forces huge leap in hardship handouts for tenants

Exclusive: Demand for emergency handouts increases by 338 per cent

 
The extent of the suffering inflicted by the “bedroom tax” can be revealed for the first time today as figures show a 338 per cent leap in the number of people applying for emergency handouts in the month since it was imposed.

In April, more than 25,000 people resorted to applying for discretionary housing payments (DHP) to help cover their rent, according to an analysis of 51 councils by The Independent. There were only 5,700 such claimants in the same month last year.

Demand on the emergency fund – which is intended to provide short-term help to housing benefit claimants who are unable to pay their rent – is now so great that people who would previously have been given help may receive reduced handouts. Some applicants have already had their claims refused altogether.

In Birmingham, which saw the number of DHP claimants jump from 496 in April last year to 2,601 last month, the city council reported that many of those hit by the welfare reforms were turning to “last-resort services” such as food banks.

In Glasgow, which saw the highest number of claimants of any council in the country, 5,501 people sought emergency help last month in the form of a DHP payment, while neighbouring North Lanarkshire has seen the number of claimants rise from just 37 over four months last year to 1,451 this April alone.

Councils reported massive shortfalls in their emergency housing grants. Birmingham City Council believes it will have to support residents hit by a total cut of £11.5m to their annual benefits because of the bedroom tax, but only has a DHP fund of £3.7m.  Portsmouth only has a DHP fund of £475,000, but has to cope with a bedroom tax shortfall of £1.5m.

Ukip donor says women in trousers are 'hostile' and unmarried mothers need a 'smack'

Is this guy for real!!

A businessman who gave £10,000 to Ukip has said women in trousers are showing "hostile" behaviour, unmarried mothers deserve "a good smack" and "date rape" is an invention of feminists.

"Walk along any street and you see women using trousers like a uniform every single day," he has written. "This is hostile behaviour - they are deliberately dressing in a way that is opposite to what men would like.

 "It is behaviour that flies against commons sense, and also flies against the normal human desire to please."

 He suggests that women wearing trousers could have affected Britain's falling marriage rate.

"Trousers are made for men's bodies, which are mostly straight up and down. Women's bodies on the other hand consists of curves. Women have big bottoms - they are meant to have big bottoms.

 "Countless women who would look lovely in dresses or skirts are embarrassingly unattractive in trousers."

His Marchessini.co.uk blog contains more colourful views, including: "There is a basic fact of life that women do not grasp — skirts give erections, but trousers do not."

 His internet writings include the suggestion that unwed mothers are "naughty girls" who should be given a "smack".

 It also suggests "date rape" allegations "mean nothing" since because there is "no violent act it is difficult to know whether any rape took place".
 "Feminists have convinced women that if they make love with a man, and it is not satisfactory, then it must have been rape," the blog says. "Of course, such allegations cannot be taken seriously, and they do great harm by persuading women that they have been “raped” when they have not."

The blog also links sexual abuse with homosexuality and questions whether homosexual relationships "have anything to do with love".

One post reads "90% of the sexual abuse that took place in the Catholic Church was between priests and teenage boys. This is not “paedophilia”, but good old fashioned homosexuality. But because the press and many people have now accepted homosexuality, and do not wish to attack it, they instead call the abuse in the Church “paedophilia”."

Defend London’s NHS demonstration

Save our hospitals - No to privatisation

 Join the demonstration on Saturday 18 May 2013, assemble from 12:00 at Jubilee Gardens, Waterloo (Belvedere Road, SE1) and march to the Department of Health and parliament. 

This demonstration has been called by an unprecedented coalition of London residents, medical staff, trade unions and health campaigners who have come together to raise the alarm regarding the biggest threats to accident and emergency departments, maternity units and in-hospital care for a generation. 

Local campaigns have joined up to call on the government to stop these closures. We are demanding that the government provide the funding needed for safe levels of care across the capital.

Find out full details of who is backing the demonstration and how to get involved from the Defend London’s NHS website.

March Against Monsanto

On May 25, activists around the world will unite to March Against Monsanto.

Why do we march?

• Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumors, infertility and birth defects.

• In the United States, the FDA, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the population, is steered by ex-Monsanto executives, and we feel that’s a questionable conflict of interests and explains the lack of government-led research on the long-term effects of GM products.

• Recently, the U.S. Congress and president collectively passed the nicknamed “Monsanto Protection Act” that, among other things, bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds.

• For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.

• Monsanto's GM seeds are harmful to the environment; for example, scientists have indicated they have contributed to Colony Collapse Disorder among the world's bee population.

What are solutions we advocate?

• Voting with your dollar by buying organic and boycotting Monsanto-owned companies that use GMOs in their products.

• Labeling of GMOs so that consumers can make those informed decisions easier.

• Repealing relevant provisions of the US's "Monsanto Protection Act."

• Calling for further scientific research on the health effects of GMOs.

• Holding Monsanto executives and Monsanto-supporting politicians accountable through direct communication, grassroots journalism, social media, etc.

• Continuing to inform the public about Monsanto's secrets.

• Taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won't take these injustices quietly.

We will not stand for cronyism. We will not stand for poison. That’s why we March Against Monsanto.

David Cameron – representing a venal and self-serving ruling elite

David Cameron is currently at the UN, and news is emerging that he plans to block the moves by a panel to include a commitment to reducing income inequality in the new targets set to replace the Millennium Development Goals.

 
So whilst wishing to eradicate world poverty, David Cameron is simultaneously blocking an initiative which would further this very goal.

Hmm, let us unpick this supposed paradox. I propose it is precisely because this commitment would include moves to publish wealth statistics of developed nations that our premier is lobbying hard to ensure that it is removed. 

Maybe then statistics such as the fact that the rich make up 8% of the world’s adult population and own 82% of its wealth[1] would be included in the report, and measures would be put into place to begin tackling this obscenity.

In this case, obfuscating the fact that focusing on reducing income inequality is an integral part of tackling extreme poverty, without which no significant gains will be made.

Doing this would in reality produce the ‘measurable’ and concrete actions’ that No 10 is keen on seeing, and more tellingly would be the ‘something’ that people could easily judge was being delivered. The statistics on income inequality would be extremely clear and easily measurable, and maybe that’s the problem.

The reality is that the amassing of wealth is part and parcel of the neo liberal agenda to which most of our elected representatives ascribe and personally profit from. The fact that things such as extreme poverty and hunger exist at all in a world awash with riches in off shore bank accounts and military industrial complexes shows how venal and self-serving our ruling elite really are. 

This is not about the politics of envy as some on the right purport, but the politics of morality and compassion which our ruling elite have worked hard to divorce from the political sphere.

Revealed: Number of Scots reduced to poverty after having their benefits taken away on the rise

OFFICIAL statistics revealed that 4680 Scottish claimants had their benefits stopped in April 2012.

 More than 200 people had their jobseeker’s allowance suspended every working day this time last year – plunging struggling Scots into an instant financial crisis.

Shocking Department for Work and Pensions statistics show 4680 ­claimants had their benefits stopped during April 2012. This is an astonishing increase of 940 per cent, as only 500 people had benefits removed in April 2009. 

SNP MP Eilidh Whiteford, who has been campaigning against benefits being stopped unfairly, described the huge rise as “profoundly worrying”.

She said: “The objective, it seems, is to force people off benefits whatever the consequences.” Claimants can have their benefits taken away for months and tough rules ­introduced by the Tories in October can see jobseeker’s ­allowance removed for up to three years.

Nigel Farage calls Scottish Protesters Fascist Scum

Having been escorted away from Scottish nationalist protesters in the back of a riot van yesterday, Nigel Farage took to the Today programme this morning to describe those who harangued him in an Edinburgh pub as:“fascist scum filled with total and utter hatred of the English” 

Despite a string of UKIP candidates exposed as racists and homophobes, Farage had the brass neck to complain that some facets of Scottish nationalism were “deeply unpleasant”.

True to form, one of UKIP’s own candidates has been on hand to call the Scots “tartan turds” and demand that one London-based Scot should “go home”.

Government urged to abandon 'bedroom tax' by House of Lords

Children 'being failed by Coalition cuts': Doctors warn of widening social inequalities

Ministers have also broken vows to tackle obesity and binge drinking, the British Medical Association said.

 
Cuts to Sure Start children’s centres and changes to the benefits system could harm the most vulnerable children while ministers have not lived up to pledges to tackle problems like binge drinking and obesity, it added. 

The BMA called for parenting classes aimed at children in households with unhealthy lifestyles, tackling drinking and poor nutrition during pregnancy and a ban on advertising of certain foods to children.

She said: “The austerity measures, the changes in benefits will particularly impact on some families which are only marginally coping. Poverty is a major factor in relation to children’s health and welfare.”

Prof Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the first children’s commissioner for England who wrote the forward for a BMA child health report published yesterday, said: “Britain is failing its children on a grand scale.

The report said more children than ever were put into care last year, mainly due to abuse and neglect, and a greater number are still dying in Britain than other western European nations despite some improvement in death rates. 

Failings in healthcare mean that just 3% of children with asthma have a full, written plan for managing their condition and only 5% with diabetes are getting a level of care which meets “best practice” guidelines, it said.

Disability benefit assessments 'unfair', says ex-worker

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Wood says he believes Atos assessors are not free to make truly independent recommendations. 

 He said he felt compelled to speak out because it was "embarrassing to be associated with this shambles". 

"It's very unfair on the people making claims, they deserve a fair assessment and as a taxpayer I'm pretty cheesed off about the £100m plus that's being sprayed away on this dog's breakfast," he said.

The assessments - or fit to work tests - sparked protests from disability campaigners after their introduction in 2010. But Dr Wood has criticised some of the tests which he says contain "dubious concepts and shaky reasoning".

He claims assessors are told that if a claimant can walk from the kitchen to the sitting room, it proves they can walk 200m (650ft); and if a person can dress themselves once during the day that is proof they have enough concentration and motivation to hold down a job.

He insists these rules are not published in handbooks and guides, instead they are simply spoken about in training sessions.

Will You Be At The International March Against Monsanto?

The protest is on May 25th 11am PST and simultaneously spans 6 continents, 36 countries, 48 United States plus the District of Columbia, and at least 250 cities.

Why do they need to be protected from the law? Why are they putting themselves above the law? And who are these politicians that are willing to just do what they are told to do because of the money they are receiving from these huge companies?



Why do we march?  See here!

Hundreds Take Part in "Poor People's March" Against Unemployment and Austerity USA

Hundreds mark 45th anniversary of Dr. King's "Poor People's March" to highlight ongoing fight against inequality and high unemployment.

Greece’s 200% increase in HIV shows how disastrous austerity can be for public health

“Greece is an example of perhaps the worst case of austerity leading to public health disasters,” Mr. Stuckler explained in a telephone interview.

 “After mosquito spraying programs were cut, we’ve seen a return of malaria, which the country has kept under control for the past four decades. New HIV infections have jumped more than 200 percent,” he noted.

“The thing about healthcare systems,” the OECD’s Ankit Kumar explained in a telephone interview, “Is you cut the money today, and start to see the cuts’ impact at least three to four years from now.

You know that people aren’t getting their medications. But it takes a couple of years before this manifests itself in high levers of sickness, fewer people being able to work, and more people facing shorter lives. 

Given the consequences of what has happened in Greece, these outcomes are just going to get worse and worse.”

Coming to a town near you 'very soon'!

Blacklist Support Group

George Tapp - 64 year old blacklist campaigner ploughed down and dragged 100 yards done the road as car drives at full speed through the demo outside Manchester City FC. 

2 broken legs and fractured knee cap. 2 other blacklisted workers also hit by the same car.

Why is this not in any news!!!

'Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills'

In the US, more than five million people have lost access to health care. In Greece, there's a 200% increase in HIV cases. 

 
And in some of the worst-hit countries, suicide rates are up. 

David Stuckler, author of an explosive new book, says the facts speak for themselves.The mass of data they have mined reveals that more than 10,000 additional suicides and up to a million extra cases of depression have been recorded across the two continents since governments started introducing austerity programmes in the aftermath of the crisis.

In the United States, more than five million Americans have lost access to healthcare since the recession began, essentially because when they lost their jobs, they also lost their health insurance. And in the UK, the authors say, 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness following housing benefit cuts.

In terms of "economic" suicides, "Greece has gone from one extreme to the other. It used to have one of Europe's lowest suicide rates; it has seen a more than 60% rise." In general, each suicide corresponds to around 10 suicide attempts and – it varies from country to country – between 100 and 1,000 new cases of depression.

The UK, he says, is "one of the clearest expressions of how austerity kills". Suicides were falling in this country before the recession, he notes. Then, coinciding with a surge in unemployment, they spiked in 2008 and 2009. As unemployment dipped again in 2009 and 2010, so too did suicides. But since the election and the coalition government's introduction of austerity measures – and particularly cuts in public sector jobs across the country – suicides are back.

But based on the actual data, he is in no doubt. "We've seen a second wave – of austerity suicides," he says. "And they've been concentrated in the north and north-east, places like Yorkshire and Humber, with large rises in unemployment. 

Whereas London … We're now seeing polarisation across the UK in mental-health issues." He cites, also, the dire impact on homelessness – falling in Britain until 2010 – of government cuts to social housing budgets, and the human tragedies triggered by the fitness-for-work evaluations, designed to weed out disability benefit fraud.

"What's so particularly tragic about those," he says, "is that the government's own estimates of fraud by persons with disabilities is less than the sum of the contract awarded to the company carrying out the tests."

At least, though, no one in the UK has been denied access to healthcare – yet. Stuckler confesses to being "heartbroken" as what he sees happening to the NHS.

"Britain stood out as the great protector of its people's health in this recession," he says. "By all measures – public satisfaction, quality, access – the UK was at or near the top, and at very low relative cost." But that, he says, is now changing.

"I don't know if people quite realise how fundamental this government's transformation of the NHS is," he says. "And once it's in place, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. 

We haven't yet seen here what can happen when people are denied access to healthcare, but the US system gives us a pretty clear warning."

British man sets self on fire after failing to pay debts

A British father has set himself on fire after being pursued by loan sharks who threatened him with phone calls and text messages.

 
Bolton coroner's court heard Antony Breeze, 36, had debts amounting to £1,600 and his phone was "ringing day and night" with calls from various debt collectors, loan sharks and pawnbrokers. 

Breeze, who worked for engineering firm Webster Drivers, set himself alight in an alley near his home after receiving the text messages.


He was taken to hospital after being spotted by a neighbor, but died from burns covering 73 percent of his body.

His death has come at a time of criticism of payday loan companies that add interest of up to 200 percent on short term loans. The tide may be turning though, as two payday lenders were forced last week to surrender their trading licenses over bad practices.

‘We won’t reduce the rent … We’ll kick them out’: Research Reveals Landlord’s Response to Housing Benefit Reform

A report published by the DWP gives a glimpse of the horrific future hundreds of thousands of people are set to face due to housing benefit reforms. 

Predictably the most telling comments come from landlords. According to the report, 16% of landlords who currently let to claimants plan to stop doing so due to the cuts.

Most landlords seem well aware of what is to come and are already making plans: “I’m giving notice on [20 tenants affected by the change to the Shared Accommodation Rate], it’s not fair, I don’t like doing it. And we’re not taking any [more] on. 

We have to protect ourselves and we have to protect our landlords.”

Almost all landlords quoted say they are planning to evict claimants under 35, with some going even further and suggesting they will now not rent to anyone from this age group: “We’re not housing under 35s now, so long term it will resolve itself because we’re not putting anyone in under 35. 

But we’ve got this 15, 20 people who are going to be on the street.”

 If this report makes grim reading (and it does) for all those concerned about the future of housing for people on low incomes, then it is only a small taste of what is to come.

Benefits Rule Risks Closure Of Night Shelters Forcing Hundreds Onto Streets

Hundreds of vulnerable homeless people face being turned out on to the streets amid confusion over how local authorities should interpret a legal ruling which could trigger the closure of emergency night shelters. 

Some shelters which rely on housing benefit payments to fund their operations could be forced to shut after a court ruled that they do not legally constitute a dwelling, and so cannot claim the benefit on behalf of shelter users. 

One shelter has been forced to shut its doors after Salford council in Greater Manchester said it would no longer accept its housing benefit claims.

The Narrowgate project was giving temporary accommodation to 28 homeless men and women each night. It shut its doors in April after Salford council invoked the ruling and cut off housing benefit payments.

Activists Put Bedroom Tax In The Dock

Disabled people who claim that the government’s vicious bedroom tax unlawfully discriminates against them launched a legal challenge against it today. 

 Many face losing part of the housing benefit which pays their rent if they have a “spare” room – even though they might need the room because of their disabilities.

Now lawyers in 10 cases at London’s High Court are seeking a ruling that the regulations, introduced on April 1, “unjustifiably discriminate against housing benefit claimants who are disabled or care for disabled family members.”

Tenants deemed to have one “spare” bedroom have had their housing benefit axed by 14 per cent and those with two or more “spare” have lost 25 per cent. 

Lawyers for the families say they face moving to a smaller property or falling into arrears, bringing the threat of eviction.

Cuts-Crazed Tories Dump 15,000 More On The Dole

Ministers were slammed today for leaving people’s lives “in tatters” as unemployment soared to a staggering 2.52 million. 

Britain’s unions unleashed a chorus of condemnation as 15,000 more workers joined the dole queue in the first quarter of 2013. The Office for National Statistics figures showed the jobless total had risen for the third quarter in a row, now standing at 7.8 per cent.


And those in work saw their total pay go up just 0.4 per cent in the last year, a rise quickly chomped up by CPI inflation of 2.8 per cent.

General secretary Len McCluskey said: “Today’s jobless figures confirm that David Cameron and George Osborne have nothing to offer but more of the same – lashings of austerity in a low-wage economy. “Their polices, that have benefited the rich and powerful so generously, are leaving the lives of ordinary people in tatters.” 

Public-sector union Unison general secretary Dave Prentis called on the government to scrap its damaging austerity measures “before it’s too late.” 

'Suicide' of bedroom tax victim

A grandmother killed herself after being told she needed to pay an extra £80 every month under the so-called 'bedroom tax', her son has claimed. 

Stephanie Bottrill, 53, was found dead by a motorway last weekend. Earlier, she had posted her keys and a note saying the Government was 'to blame' for her death through a neighbour's door.

Her son Steven, 27, told the Sunday People his mother had struggled to cope after learning she needed to pay extra for the home she had lived in for 18 years, under the Government scheme that charges for empty rooms in council housing. 

The grandmother, who suffered from the auto-immune system condition Myasthenia gravis, could not work and relied on benefits.

She knew she would have to move as she could not afford it, but the council could not find her anything suitable. It only offered her one property with poor transport links that she felt would have isolated her from friends and family, her son said. 

Early last Saturday morning, Ms Bottrill walked 15 minutes from the estate to Junction 4 of the M6 motorway, where she was killed.

Part of her letter to her son read: 'Don't blame yourself 4 me ending my life its my life the only people 2 blame r the Grovement no-one else.' (sic)

Thousands flood Israeli streets in anti-austerity protest

Thousands have rallied in six major Israeli cities including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in protest against tax hikes and other austerity measures presented as part of the country’s new budget.

 Rallies on Saturday took place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Modiin, Rishon Lezion and Ashdod with more than 12,000 people protesting across Israel.

In Tel Aviv alone, 10,000 outraged people were carrying signs “Where's the money? With the tycoons, dummy" and "Look us in the eyes tomorrow," Ynetnews reports.

Some 200 people were demanding social justice in Jerusalem while several hundred blocked an intersection in Haifa.

Police Confirm Bilderberg 2013 to Take Place in Watford, UK

Source: Infowars.com

“A Hertfordshire Police spokesman confirmed the event was taking place but declined to comment on operational policing details,” reports the Watford Observer.

The spokesman added that the force would “facilitate people who want to undertake peaceful protest.”

The police’s insistence that demonstrations will be allowed (despite a “security exercise” which is expected to surround the hotel grounds and keep prying eyes away), bolsters the view that Bilderberg has learned from previous years when protesters and journalists were treated with disdain, leading to negative press attention.

It remains to be seen how much attention the British press will bestow on a group that habitually relies on a castrated and compliant media to either ignore its existence or play down the Bilderberg as a mere “talking shop,” despite innumerable instances of the group wielding its influence with scant regard for democratic transparency.

In 2010, former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg member Willy Claes admitted that Bilderberg attendees are mandated to implement decisions that are formulated during the annual conference of power brokers.

In 2009, Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon even bragged about how the Euro single currency was a brainchild of the Bilderberg Group.

Hundreds of activists are expected to descend on Watford and Infowars invites as many people as possible to make the trip in order to force the mainstream press to give Bilderberg the attention it deserves, thereby dismantling the shadowy group’s much cherished veil of secrecy.

114 year Workers Rights Scrapped by Coalition Government.

Last week, on the 25th April 2013, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill was granted royal assent, bringing into law the government’s widely unpopular proposals to scrap employers’ 114-year-old liability for their staff’s health and safety in the workplace.

This means that the burden of proof now falls on the employee to show that the employer had been negligent in their duties towards them, rather than the employer being asked to prove they were following regulations correctly, as has been the case since the Victorian era. 

This is likely to result in injured workers, and the families of the deceased, being unable to claim compensation for their losses due to accidents at the workplace, seeing as the evidence needed to prove negligence is held by the employer rather than the employee – and employers guilty of negligence are unlikely to willingly hand over the proof.

(2) The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill ERRB was amended at the very last minute by the government, by insertion of 61 clause which will mean that a worker can be injured due to an employer’s breach of a statutory duty within health and safety at work regulations but the worker will be prevented from enforcing that breach.

POLICE STATE UK: THE RIGHTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU’D LOST

There are plenty more rights we've lost, all listed on the site.  I've posted the one related to protests and marches.

 Right to Protest 

Thatcher’s Public Order Act 1986 sought to prevent the effectiveness of public protest (such as the Miners Strike) by making it law that in order to be lawful, protest organisers had to give police six days advance notice of their action.

Since this time, successive governments have used upgrades to the Public Order Act to undermine the right to peaceful protest. The Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 granted a number of powers to police and restrictions on protesters. In response to the protest of Brian Haw who spoke to parliament from Parliament Square for several years as a protest against the crimes of the Iraq War, the Act applied special restrictions on protest within a designated area of 1km of any point of Parliament Square.

Basically, it is now almost impossible to protest outside our parliament without being arrested.

The Act created a new offence of trespassing on a designated site. The site can be Crown Land, land that belongs to the monarch or heir to the throne or land a secretary of state believes is appropriate for designation in the interests of national security.

The Act also made all offences arrestable. Previously a police officer had to determine whether he suspected a person of committing a non-arrestable, arrestable or serious arrestable offence. 

The powers available flowed from that determination.

There has also been a gradual militarisation of the police force which has been armed with ever escalating toolkit of measures and devices to quell dissent in the streets.

These methods involve: Kettling - you can see an example here. Snatch & Grab Arrests – Groups of police form a moving corridor into the protest, the front officers of which grab protesters at random. These arrests can also be made at police lines outside a kettle, or by plain clothes police in advance of protests (arrest occurs at 25 seconds in).

Agent Provocateurs and Violence – This was witnessed at the 2010 student protests where agent provocateurs were filmed running into the crowds, pushing , pulling and kicking student protesters in order to generate violent conditions. 

One student, Alfie Meadows ended up in hospital requiring brain surgery after a police officer beat him with a baton. . Instead of the police officer facing the courts, Alfie was charged with violent disorder. He was finally acquitted just this month by a jury who agreed he was defending himself and other protesters.

Martial Law & Emergency Powers Since the Bill of Rights Act 1689, it has been illegal for the UK government to dispatch the armed forces to British streets during peace time without the consent of parliament.

For hundreds of years we have lived under an agreement that citizens dissenting the government faced police, not the armed forces. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 ended this tradition. The Act means that a range of emergency powers can be applied by approval of The Queen (the Government) which would suspend the Bill of Rights 1689, Habeas Corpus, the Parliament Act 1911 (which restricts a parliament to five year terms) and others for a period of up to 21 days at a time.

The Real Struggle Begins: Europe Descends into Fascism

In Spain people are speaking of the start of ‘the real struggle’, while in Greece the term ‘civil war’ permeates the political climate. 

In both countries a frightening re-emergence of a dictatorship past seems to characterize the current historical moment as fascist ideologies become more acceptable and police tactics become more pre-emptive and militarized.

These two trends emerging together, the rise of far right ideologies and pre-emptive militarized policing, indicate a shift in the discourses of legitimacy used by the state.

The tone has changed on the streets of southern Europe. People are growing increasingly impatient with the failure of their governments in the face of an ongoing economic crisis. 

For more than a month people have been organizing massive street protests outside the National Congress in Madrid. The “rodeo el congresso” actions began on 25th September 2012 and were quickly met with police brutality and a police force that clearly felt entitled to act some ways which were shocking even the veterans of the struggle against Franco’s dictatorship.

The sense that a new stage of struggle had commenced was not just in the meetings — the tens of thousands on the street seemed to have a new found urgency to their complaints, and most of all, there was a strong desire to show the government that the classic strategy of ruling through repression and fear was not going to work.

Benefits cap leads to eviction notices in trial area

Social landlords in Haringey say changes to welfare system are forcing them to take legal proceedings to terminate leases.

 In the first tangible proof that the cap would lead to rising levels of homelessness, one of Britain's biggest social landlords, Genesis, has issued a warning to tenants in Haringey – a London borough chosen by ministers to test plans to limit benefit payments to £26,000 a year – saying that it will now need to start legal proceedings to "terminate our lease". 

The letter from Genesis says it has been forced into taking these steps because of the "significant changes being currently introduced to the welfare benefit system".

The letter warns that, if the tenants do not offer a defence, a court can force eviction within 14 days. 

The overall benefit cap set at £500 per week, or £350 for single people, was introduced in four London local authorities – Enfield, Bromley, Croydon and Haringey – in mid-April, and will be rolled out nationally later in the year.

The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated that 56,000 households will be hit, with an average weekly loss of £93. The majority will be families with children.

Austerity: boom times for the soup kitchen food supplier

The growth of FareShare, which distributes low cost food to charities serving vulnerable people, tells us the UK's voluntary welfare safety net is under huge strain. 

FareShare and its members may have a role in helping to ameliorate some of the social damage of austerity measures but already the scale of the challenge is daunting.

 As Boswell puts it: If you look at the number of charities out there providing food we could expand 50 times over. The need is absolutely enormous

Nottingham anticuts protest May 4th 2013 Anonymous

Atos comes under attack in emotional Commons debate

The private contractor Atos, which administers the government's work capability assessments, has come under sustained criticism from MPs as they told stories of constituents who had died shortly after being ruled fit for work by the firm.

During a powerful Commons debate that united politicians from all parties, MPs gave emotional accounts of how very sick individuals had been incorrectly assessed and told to return to work. Some of them later died, they said, and MPs told of others who had killed themselves or become suicidal following such decisions.

Labour MP Michael Meacher described the death of a young man with epilepsy shortly after he was classified fit for work and saw his benefit cut by £70 a week.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, condemned the "humiliating and demeaning" process which "makes sick people even sicker". 

Labour's Pamela Nash said: "Nothing has shocked me more as an MP … than the sheer scale of anxiety and hardship caused by the flawed work capability assessments." She described seeing constituents developing mental health problems as a result of the stress the process caused. 

Then you have this story of how ATOS workers talk about the individuals they are supposedly assessing, calling them down and outs ... Read more here.

Bedroom tax: Domestic violence victim may lose home after panic room is classed as spare bedroom

A domestic violence victim may lose her home after a panic room protecting her from a violent ex was classed a spare bedroom. 

The mum-of-one was abused by the thug, also arrested for attempted murder of a police officer. He began to make threats against her and cops insisted she had a panic room installed. 

The woman – whose name we are withholding – shares a three-bedroom house in Nottingham with her son and will lose 14 per cent in housing benefit because the room is deemed a “spare”.

She said: “I spend every day in fear and the security in place at the house is something I need. “I don’t know how I’ll pay the bedroom tax. I cannot move out as they won’t replace the room.” A panic room is a bedroom converted into a high-security area with solid door and barred windows.

Nottingham North MP Graham Allen said: “This lady needs protection and help – not penny-pinching bureaucrats. The Government has lost the way on bedroom tax. “What will it save? Peanuts – and the damage will cost a fortune.” 

Around 660,000 people could be affected by the tax – including hundreds of domestic violence victims with panic rooms.

George Osborne to tell IMF that austerity U-turn would do damage

George Osborne will warn the International Monetary Fund that a U-turn on the government's budget plans would do more harm than good when officials from the Washington-based organisation arrive in London on Wednesday for two weeks of talks.

The Treasury intends to reject the IMF's call for an easing in the pace of deficit reduction and will insist that any change in the strategy is both unnecessary and counterproductive. 

Alarmed at the flatlining of the British economy in 2011 and 2012, the IMF said last month it was time for Osborne to do more to boost economic growth and urged that he should rethink plans to cut the government's structural budget deficit by 1% of national income in 2013-14.

The chancellor was stung by the criticism, which was seized upon by shadow chancellor Ed Balls as evidence the government had damaged the economy with an over-aggressive austerity approach.

Despite the government's poor showing in last week's local elections, Osborne has no intention of changing course but is keen to avoid a public call for a volte-face from the IMF, which initially was a strong supporter of the coalition's approach to tackling the UK's record peacetime budget deficit.

Treasury officials intend to show that any change to the strategy followed for the last three years would damage the government's credibility in the financial markets and that the subsequent increase in long-term interest rates would outweigh any benefits from cutting taxes or increasing spending.

They will also say that the sluggishness of the UK economy in 2012 was a result of the drop in exports to the crisis-hit eurozone, rather than weak consumer spending.

The IMF has become more concerned about the health of the UK economy over the last year and has called for a rethink of fiscal policy – tax and spending – unless the pace of growth picked up.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, embarrassed the chancellor last month when he singled out the UK as a country that had the scope to ease fiscal policy to boost growth. 

The chancellor was particularly irritated by Blanchard's comment that the UK was "playing with fire" by refusing to change tack.

Water cannons on standby for summer riots

Home Secretary Theresa May is said to be in favour of their deployment by police for the first time outside of Northern Ireland amid fears of summer riots. 

 Both the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) have requested them to tackle any civil unrest caused by welfare cuts and June's G8 meeting of world leaders.

Talks are at such an advanced stage that the type of cannon they want to use has even been identified. The intimidating Ziegler Wasserwerfer 9000 is capable of carrying up to 9,000 litres of water, or even tear gas, which can be fired at rioters at the powerful rate of 1,100 litres per second. The jet is mounted on a heavy-duty vehicle weighing 29 tonnes that is also equipped with CCTV cameras and searchlights at both the front and rear.

They are understood to cost about £1.3million each, with an order for three being considered. The Met believes they would be a "valuable option in rare situations" and it has worked with Acpo to develop a formal business case detailing the operational, technical and medical implications of using them. It is understood that an initial Home Office licence would cover the use of basic water only.

A Home Office source told the Sunday Express: "There's an urgency to get the water cannons by the summer. "Theresa May is actually pushing for it. The G8 is a worry for them." 

An official Home Office spokesman said: "We will ensure forces have the tools and powers they need to maintain order on our streets.

However, MP Keith Vaz said: "We need to tread very carefully over the use of water cannons which I know are favoured in continental Europe. "After the riots two years ago, we received very little support for the development of water cannons. "There needs to be full consultation on this issue."

Work & Pensions Committee: Hold IDS to account for his use of statistics

We are both disabled as well as being disability activists. 

 
We experience pain and suffering ourselves and see it in our friends, families and colleagues. It is one thing to live with the physical challenges of a disability. It is quite another to hear lies and misinformation every day from our own government. 

We have watched sick and disabled friends fall foul of the Employment and Support Allowance process and seen people who are genuinely sick and disabled being left with next to nothing to live on.

Some are living in fear of the Personal Independence Payments assessments to come. In this climate, which is confusing and intimidating for some of the most vulnerable in our society, those in power should be operating to the highest standards of integrity and accuracy.

Recent reports suggest that the Work and Pensions Secretary may have misrepresented Government statistics to make a political point.

http://www.standard.co.uk/panewsfeeds/ids-misrepresenting-statistics-8571591.html

We are concerned that this is just the tip of the iceberg. We believe that Iain Duncan Smith has built a wall of misinformation to discredit all claimants of DLA when the fraud rate of DLA is a tiny 0.5%. 

Last month nearly 500,000 people signed Dom Aversano’s petition calling on IDS to live on £53 per week.

That was an incredible movement of people trying to hold a politician to account for his words. Please sign this petition, and we might actually see that happen.

Who's laughing now? Nigel Farage forces Ukip into the political mainstream with a stunning haul of seats in the local elections but how will he cope with the big time?

His party was dubbed a bunch of clowns – but they emerge as serious nationwide threat to three main parties. 

 
What Farage definitely has is a populist “this guy is actually saying what he thinks” appeal.

This has stood him well as he tells voters deeply disillusioned by an economic mess for which they still blame all the main parties that their leaders are “all the same” and went to the “same schools and Oxford colleges”.

And he has finally fused his obsession with EU withdrawal, which isn’t a hot issue for voters, with immigration, which is, by claiming the first is the answer to the second.

Farage – who, it’s rumoured, is not an easy man to work with – is a one-man band presiding over an “outfit” he himself complains is difficult to lead. He has yet to deal fully with the apparent undesirability of some of his candidates, since the excuse that Ukip does not yet have the resources to monitor all 1,700 of them in these elections will not wash a second time.

For now, however, he looks like being on a roll, at least until the European elections. As the man himself, quoting Bob Monkhouse, likes to say: “They’re not laughing now.”

Local election 2013: 'Put disabled down' councillor re-elected in Cornwall

A Cornwall county councillor who quit after saying disabled children should be "put down" has been re-elected to the unitary authority. 

 
Collin Brewer, 68, won the Wadebridge East ward as an independent candidate with 335 votes, a majority of four after resigning in February. He said he stood again because he was asked to by people in the ward.

Disability Cornwall said it was "shocked beyond words" and that it was a "sad day for Cornwall".

UK: Protesters and police clash in march against austerity

Around 300 protesters clashed with the police as anti-austerity groups marched from London's Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament on Saturday.



There were scuffles between activists and police which lead to the arrest of one man and confrontation between the two sides.

The event, organised by The People's Unity Party, is calling for an end to the controversial Bedroom Tax introduced by the coalition government, the return of VAT to 17.5% and for cuts to national services to end immediately. 

Similar protests were also organised in Edinburgh, Scotland and Cardiff, Wales.

Activists say that measures like the Bedroom Tax and tax breaks for corporations and banks harm the 99% of the population. The austerity reform introduced by the government will take £2.3 billion out of the pockets of Britain's poorest households.

Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans arrested on suspicion of rape

Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP, has been arrested on suspicion of raping and sexually assaulting two young men.

 
They claim to have been raped and sexually assaulted between July 2009 and March 2013 at his constituency. Both were in their twenties at the times of the attacks, although their exact ages have not been disclosed.

The Conservative MP was arrested at his home in Pendleton, Lancashire, this morning and is understood to be still in custody for questioning. The property has been searched by officers.

 David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was informed of the arrest today, as was John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons.

As crisis in NHS 111 helpline deepens... A&E chiefs fear bank holiday meltdown

The new NHS 111 system faces meltdown this weekend, doctors fear. 

 
The warning came as it emerged that at least three patients may have died because of failings in the helpline.

As well as the deaths, a further 19 cases involving poor care are being investigated – even though 111 has been running for only a few weeks. 

The figures emerged as A&E departments braced themselves for a surge of patients over the bank holiday weekend as a result of flaws in 111. Dr Peter Carter, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said:

It has collapsed. What’s happening is that because people are not able to get through they are giving up and self-referring to A&E.