5 benefit changes the government don't want you to know about

Threats to take away children from families is a new low for the coalition government's war on benefit claimants.

It used to be that when politicians wanted to bury bad news they’d orchestrate its release to time with a distracting event. Seeing Iain Duncan Smith publicly criticized for wasting at least £140 million of public money over Universal Credit at the start of this month, it struck me how we’ve slowly reached another level. “Unmitigated disaster”? “Alarmingly weak”?

These words were used to describe Universal Credit but could easily have been levelled at a number of largely unreported changes to the benefit system. Nowadays, bad news is buried by even worse news. The sheer volume of inefficient and unethical changes to social security this Government has enacted means some of it doesn’t even get noticed. Which, for a set of politicians hacking at vulnerable people’s support systems, is worryingly convenient.


So, here’s five benefit changes the government doesn’t want you to know about.

1. Disabled people denied a key benefit have had their right to appeal reduced   

2. Long-term sick people are having their benefits sanctioned ... for being sick 

3. 50,000 disabled people are being cut out of work 

4. There’s now a one-year limit on hundreds of thousands of people’s sickness benefit 

5. Eviction letters are now including veiled threats to remove people’s children 

Empty threats concerning people’s children may be a new low. Then again, against the recent actions of this Government – be it imposing sanctions on the disabled or removing the benefits of the sick – ‘a new low’ seems to come weekly.     

Britain’s homelessness crisis evident in record number of calls to Shelter

Charity has received 175,000 inquiries in the past 12 months, up 10 per cent in the previous year. Emily Dugan reports

 

The scale of the nation's homelessness crisis is laid bare in figures published exclusively in The Independent today which show that the numbers calling the housing charity Shelter for help is at an all-time high of almost 175,000 calls in the last year, up 10 per cent on the previous year.

Visits to the advice pages of the charity’s website are also up more than 20 per cent, with almost 400,000 people seeking help online.

The latest Government figures show statutory homelessness is up 6 per cent, while the number of households living in temporary accommodation such as B&Bs is at 56,0000, up 9 per cent on last year.

Some 80,000 children are expected to spend Christmas without a proper home.

Helpline staff believe the impact of welfare reforms – including the benefit cap, the ‘bedroom tax’ and increasingly punitive benefit sanctions – could be one the reasons behind the marked rise in calls for help. The continued fallout from the recession, the rise of the cost of living and an apparent increase in rogue landlords as the rental market grows have also contributed.

It's business that really rules us now

Lobbying is the least of it: corporate interests have captured the entire democratic process. No wonder so many have given up on politics

 
It's the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It's the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It's the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.

The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.

On Monday, for instance, the Guardian revealed that the government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations.

On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.

Last week we discovered that G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated.

Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.

Since Blair, parliament operates much as Congress in the United States does: the lefthand glove puppet argues with the righthand glove puppet, but neither side will turn around to face the corporate capital that controls almost all our politics.

This is why the assertion that parliamentary democracy has been reduced to a self-important farce has resonated so widely over the past fortnight.

So I don't blame people for giving up on politics. I haven't given up yet, but I find it ever harder to explain why.

When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the three main parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?

UK child poverty survey reveals cold facts about freezing homes

The reality for a growing number of children in poor families in Britain is cold, damp houses and not enough to eat, a new survey by a leading children’s charity reveals, as living standards decline for most people across the country.

“This is a damning incitement of how children feel about their chances of their future and the opportunities they will have in life,’ Hersfield told RT.

“For millions of children up and down the country, poverty is a grinding reality – and it is getting worse. Many families are facing stark and unacceptable choices, like heat or eat. 

This is disgraceful in any country, especially in one of the world’s richest,” Matthew Reed, the chief executive for the Children’s Society, said in a statement. Children’s Centers in crisis

A separate survey published on Tuesday by another charity, 4Children, shows that an increasing number of families are using the services offered by children’s centers, despite the fact that many are being starved of cash due to local government funding cuts.

ATOS - NOT Fit for Work!

From 'We Demand David Cameron Calls an Election'

Bedroom tax defeat for Westminster council in landmark case

Barrister Surinder Lall, who is blind, wins appeal as his spare room stores essential equipment and has never been a bedroom

 
A housing association tenant in central London has won an appeal against the imposition of the bedroom tax by Conservative-run Westminster city council, in what is thought to be the first such victory in England.

Surinder Lall, who is blind, argued successfully to a tribunal that a room in his flat classified as a second bedroom had never been used as one and had always been where equipment helping him to lead a normal life was kept.

In his decision notice, the judge wrote: "The term 'bedroom' is nowhere defined [in the relevant regulations]. I apply the ordinary English meaning. The room in question cannot be so defined."

Anonymous Million Mask March UK

Nick Clegg Confronted By Disabled Woman On #BedroomTax

Nick Clegg was left stuck for words after being confronted by a seriously ill lady who is being hit by the Bedroom Tax. 

Karen in Basildon phoned in to Call Clegg to complain about the Spare Room Subsidy, which means that she is paying £16 per week extra, despite needing the extra room for her oxygen concentrators.

She has been told she should move the devices to her bedroom, but insists they are so loud, they would stop her and her husband sleeping. 

 Unfortunately I can’t find the specific clip, only the whole half hour show on Youtube, but this call is about 17 minutes in.

BEDROOM TAX CASES OPEN TO NEW APPEALS FOLLOWING LANDMARK JUDGEMENT

A Kirkcaldy Benefits Tribunal has made a judgement which opens the way for hundreds of thousands of appeals, and which drives a coach and horses through the ConDem Coalition’s hated Bedroom Tax.

In an appeal against Fife Council’s decision that a tenant of what the landlord said was a three-bedroomed property had to pay for ‘under-occupying’ two bedrooms, the Tribunal judge ruled that the property in question in fact had just one bedroom, and the tenant was not liable for any bedroom tax.

The judge also ruled that the Council must refund the tenant all the housing benefit it had deducted since its original decision. 

Crucially the judgement also makes clear that a council:

cannot make a reliable bedroom tax decision on the assumption that data submissions from a landlord on bedroom numbers are correct;

must know the room purpose and usage as at the time it makes the benefit tax decision for that decision to be reliable;

must consider not just room size in making a decision but also usable floor space.

The process in determining bedroom tax liability across Merseyside was no different from that adopted by Fife council: every bedroom tax decision made by Wirral, Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley and Halton councils is therefore arbitrary and rife for challenge and must be appealed by every affected tenant.

Merseyside Federation will continue its work to ensure that tenants know they have both a right and a responsibility to appeal against this vicious attack on the poor.

Now we know why they're called the Cons

Anther one from Shirley

The Rise of the Food Bank

From Shirley on twitter

Civil servants spent £1 billion on taxpayer-funded credit cards

Civil servants spent £1.1 billion using taxpayer-funded credit cards last year to pay for items including gourmet meals and fine wines, it has been disclosed.

More than 137,000 officials used the ‘government procurement cards’, pushing up the bill for 2012-2013 to four times that of 2002 – despite David Cameron’s pledge to curb their use.

The money spent on the cards could have paid for 52,000 new nurses.

A total of £1,655 was spent by Home Office staff on a stay at the luxury Hilton Rose Hall resort and spa in Jamaica’s Montego Bay.

Officials at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport spent £927 on a single picture frame, while the Planning Inspectorate spent £646 on a ‘specialist ergonomic chair’.

It has become harder to scrutinise what the cards are being spent on - Buying Solutions, the agency previously responsible for the charge cards, displayed charts and tables on its website but these are no longer available.

£7,500 on wages, £5,000 on pension..and it’s on the House

PUBLIC fury erupted yesterday over plans to raise MPs’ pay to £74,000 a year — and give their pensions a big boost too. 

Deputy PM Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband both vowed not to take the extra cash — but No 10 refused to say what David Cameron would do.

 Last night it emerged a pensions windfall worth up to £5,000 EXTRA a year is hidden in the small print of the plans.

The backlash came after the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority unveiled proposals to increase MPs’ pay from the current £66,396 to £74,000 in 2015.

The 11 per cent hike will cost taxpayers £4.6MILLION

But in a little-noticed move, IPSA decided the new £74,000 wage will be the final salary for any pension built up before 2015.

The decision means some MPs will pocket an extra £5,000 a year in retirement and cost taxpayers at least £10million.

There was also criticism of IPSA’s call for MPs to produce their own “annual report” on what they have done for constituents.

Mr Miliband said: “I don’t think MPs should be getting a ten per cent pay rise when nurses and teachers are facing pay freezes or very low increases.”

And Mr Clegg said it was “about the worst time in which you seek to advocate that MPs should get a double-digit pay increase.”

Schools 'failing brightest pupils'

Non-selective state schools are failing to get the most out of their brightest pupils, according to a new Ofsted report.

The watchdog found that last year 65% of the pupils who had achieved a SAT level 5 in English or Maths did not go on to get at least an A in both subjects at GCSE.

 Ofsted's chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw said this morning that his inspectors had found that in many schools "expectations...are far too low" for the most able children.

 He also said that having a target of children getting A-C grades at GCSE created "false incentives" that stopped teachers pushing the best students harder.

They don't want an intelligent breed of consumers, do they?

West's public health authorities invest £44m in tobacco

More than £44m has been invested in tobacco firms by local councils in the West, despite their new responsibility for promoting public health.

Figures obtained by the BBC show that a pension fund administered by Somerset County Council has approved the biggest spend of £21.6m.

Gloucestershire County Council has invested £12.2m, authorities in Avon some £9.7m and Wiltshire Council £1.1m.

In April, as part of the NHS reform, local government was passed responsibility for public health - a term encompassing everything that prevents disease and prolongs life, such as promoting physical activity and better diets, as well as stop smoking services.

The former director of public health for the South West, Dr Gabriel Scally, has lambasted the investments as an "impossible contradiction".

He said: "How can you have a responsibility to improve the health of the population and yet be one of the owners of a tobacco company?

They make money by making you sick, then make more by 'trying' to make you well.

Legal loan shark Henry Angest charges hard-up families up to 200% interest while Tory Party are offered just 3.5%

Banker Henry Angest has given them more than £1million in cash and offered to lend another £5million at just 3.5% interest 

 
A Tory multi-millionaire makes money as a legal loan shark by charging customers interest of up to 200% – but offers “mates’ rates” to David Cameron.

Banker Henry Angest, 72, has given the Conservatives more than £1million in cash and also made a standing offer to lend them another £5million at just 3.5% interest.

That is a fraction of the rates charged by Mr Angest’s Everyday Loans company, a probe by the Daily Mirror and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found.

The revelation he is involved in consumer credit has fuelled claims Mr Cameron will not cap interest rates because he’s in the pocket of wealthy backers. 

Arbuthnot Banking Group chairman Mr Angest, with an estimated personal wealth of £45million including a farm in Perthshire, is one the elite group of supporters to be rewarded with intimate dinners at Downing Street and Chequers.

Another major Tory donor, Adrian Beecroft, has a major stake in payday lender Wonga. 

Yesterday the PM sidestepped demands for a crackdown on rip-off credit firms by calling for more support for credit unions. 

But Labour MP Stella Creasy, who wants to limit interest charged by firms such as Everyday Loans and Wonga, said: “People struggling to understand what the Government has against capping the cost of credit want reassurances they have not been lobbied by the donors over cosy dinners in No10.” 

Norman Lamb: home-help for elderly is scandal waiting to happen

The elderly care system “incentivises neglect” and could lead to a new abuse scandal, the health minister Norman Lamb warns as a review is launched into home-help services.

Frail pensioners suffer from care that is organised “by the clock”, with some visits lasting no more than 10 minutes while rushed workers are paid the minimum wage or less, according to Norman Lamb.

 He will suggest that the crisis in home-care for the elderly could become the next abuse scandal to erupt, with failings potentially as serious as at the Mid Staffordshire NHS trust.

However, because pressure on services is so great, agency workers are in some cases paid to spend no more than 10 or 15 minutes with an individual. This leaves pensioners facing a choice of either being dressed or having a meal prepared for them during rushed visits.

 In addition, there have been complaints that carers change too frequently, leaving elderly people to receive intimate care from strangers and with new staff not always being familiar with their needs.

Well, they're not working and have pretty much consumed all they're going to, they have no use anymore.  That's the government doesn't care about the elderly!

The Anti-Bedroom Tax and Benefit Justice Federation

The Federation was launched at the 2nd Benefit Justice Campaign Summit on 11 May 2013 in London to co-ordinate opposition to the bedroom tax and other benefit cuts.

Government announces details of post Work Programme support

Press Release

Work Programme leavers targeted by specialist advisers as part of a tough approach to get them into a job.

Minister for Employment Mark Hoban said:

“The Work Programme is getting some of the hardest to help claimants into work despite a tough economic climate.


“We always knew that there would be some who would require further support after the Work Programme, which is why we’re introducing this intensive and uncompromising regime.

Read more on the measures being introduced to get people back into work, but nowhere does it say where the jobs are comng from!!

Samaritans called in over Liverpool bedroom tax suicide risk

City's housing associations say one tenant attempted suicide, with more people becoming distressed and overwhelmed

The Samaritans have been drafted in by Liverpool's Riverside Housing Association to help deal with desperate tenants on the brink of suicide because of the bedroom tax.

Staff at Riverside Housing Association’s head office in Speke are being trained by phone counsellors from the Samaritans as workers struggle to cope with the high volume of calls from tenants at risk of suicide.

And South Liverpool Homes (SLH) said in early May a tenant attempted suicide over the bedroom tax and earlier this year a resident committed suicide over issues believed to be related to financial hardship.

Head of business excellence at SLH Claire Ryan said: “People have become overwhelmed, they’re just engulfed by the financial situation.He said: 

“It’s a range of different issues and bedroom tax is one which affects six and a half thousand of our tenants so it’s clearly a significant factor.

“I think what we’re experiencing is the cumulative effect of the austerity measures.”