DWP admits cuts risk increasing homelessness
The Department of Work and Pensions have just published their impact assessment of the housing benefit cuts. It is an assessment by civil servants of the possible consequences of introducing these policies. Here’s their summary:
“The impact assessment recognises that there are a number or risks as follows:
• increases in the number of households with rent arrears, eviction and households presenting themselves as homeless;
• disruption to children’s education and reduced attainment;
• disruption to support services for people with disabilities and other households with care and support needs;
• an increase in the number of households living in overcrowded conditions; and
• a decrease in the number of and quality of private rented sector properties available to Housing Benefit tenants.” continue reading… »
Our new website – False Economy – goes live
The new cuts campaign website has gone live today.
The TUC is a strong supporter, and we have been working with a group of local campaigners and on-line activists for the last few months, to make it a reality.
continue reading… »
Caroline Lucas calls for overhaul of Parliament
Green MP Caroline Lucas has published a report outlining her vision for a more efficient, cost-effective and user-friendly Parliament.
The report, entitled The Case For Parliamentary Reform, will shine a light on some of the most archaic procedures and processes of the House of Commons – and outline the urgent need for reform through changes to the way Westminster works.
Since being elected to parliament six months ago, I have been deeply shocked by the inefficiency of the outdated systems at Westminster.
As the Government’s programme of severe spending cuts to reduce the deficit comes into force, the financial cost to the tax payer of time-wasting in Westminster takes on a new and more urgent significance.
For example, an electronic voting system would make far better use of MPs’ time; just queuing up to vote accounts for around £30,000 a week in MPs’ salary costs. In the last Parliament there were over 1200 votes. Since it takes about 15 minutes per vote, that means an MP with an 85 per cent voting record would have spent over 250 hours queuing to vote – a huge waste of time and money.
Among the report’s proposals are:
- The introduction of electronic voting, which it is estimated could save 1.5 hours or more (1) of MPs’ time a week, and thus for time wasted save around £30,000 salary costs per week
- A systematic overhaul of Parliamentary language to make it self-explanatory, thus demystifying parliamentary processes, and increasing transparency and accountability.
- Measures to prevent the “talking out” of Private Members’ Bills
- Increase transparency so MPs (and constituents) know in advance if they have been selected to speak in a debate. Greater use by the Speaker on limits on backbench speaking time.
- An end to late night sittings to make MPs hours and those of parliamentary staff more family friendly.
Caroline Lucas adds:
The reforms outlined in my report would be straight-forward and cost-effective to achieve. Some build on previous proposals from the Wright Committee and from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons.
Some have been agreed in the past, but not implemented. Others were rejected by previous parliaments at a different time. Some are new proposals, drawn in particular from experience in other legislatures. A new parliament, in new circumstances, should examine them again.
From a press release
Is there any point complaining about a sensationalist media?
Let me get this out of the way before I start – I’m not an activist or a campaigner. For various reasons, I’m not a great joiner of campaigns or parties or a signer of petitions.
I’m more than happy to bump my gums about issue x, y or z online, but my net contribution to the UK’s political scene is zero. Thus, I try not to instruct people who actually get off their backsides and do things.
That said, I think we need to have a chat about strategy here. It seems to me that a lot of time is being wasted complaining about things that simply can’t be altered.
continue reading… »
Worried about NHS being privatised? You should be
When Tony Benn was asked how the public would respond to the NHS being privatised, he replied “there would be a revolution.”
He was right. But the government, despite some of its more absurd recent decisions, is not so stupid. Lansley, Cameron et al know that you don’t privatise the NHS: you liberate here, you outsource there, until the groundwork is laid to such an extent that one of the biggest milestones of privatisation can be reached, and it is barely reported at all.
This week, Hinchingbrooke NHS Hospital in Cambridgeshire was almost completely taken over by Circle Health, the biggest private healthcare operator in the EU, in what the CBI unnervingly called a “trailblazing deal”, and what the BMA more bluntly said was “an untested and potentially worrying experiment.”
The decision represents the most significant step ever towards privatisating the NHS, and was described by the Financial Times’ Public Policy Editor as “an historic moment.”
Circle Health, in case you’re wondering, is a partnership (like John Lewis) which is managed, delightfully, by a former Goldman Sachs investment banker named Ali Parsa. The deal with Hinchingbrooke has been given a dose of PR, with press releases emphasising that Circle is ‘employee-owned.’
But Circle is far from a socialist utopia: half of the company is owned by private investors, including Blackrock – an asset management firm owned by the most well-paid CEO on Wall Street and famous for its lucrative hoovering up of the casualties of the 2008 financial crisis.
Make no mistake: Circle Health is a corporation at its mercenary best, with designs on expanding the UK’s private healthcare industry, and wooing the UK’s healthcare professionals away from the NHS. Andrew Lansley’s decision to give GPs control of 80% of their funding resonates harmoniously with Circle Health’s business practices, in which doctors are awarded shares in return for sending patients to Circle hospitals.
Such an alluring carrot would surely result in doctors prioritising private healthcare, not least because once they are given shares in Circle they would have a vested interest in the company’s profit margins.
It is slowly becoming clear is what a goldmine the NHS is, as more and more corporations emerge from the woodwork to siphon a bit off for themselves.
Reactions to Lansley’s NHS reforms were mixed at best, but it was private healthcare giant, Humana, whose charmless statement shed the most light on who the real beneficiaries will be. A spokesman for the company, which was once described by a whistleblower as “inherently unethical,” said: “are we optimistic? You bet we are.”
The rest of us, I suspect, should be feeling apprehensive.
UKuncut target Topshop on Tax Avoidance day
Shops owned by Sir Philip Green, the retail billionaire and ‘efficiency adviser’ to the government, will become the target of the ‘Day of Action’ against Tax Avoidance on Saturday 4th December.
Organisers behind UKuncut told the Guardian today that shops including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge would be targets, alongside the traditional enemy Vodafone.
The Guardian points out:
The businessman banked the biggest pay cheque in corporate history in 2005 when his Arcadia fashion business, which owns Topshop, paid a £1.2bn dividend. The record-breaking payment went to his wife, Tina, who lives in Monaco and is the direct owner of Arcadia. Because of this arrangement no UK income tax was due on the gain.
Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research UK, estimated Green saved £285m by paying the dividend to his wife.
UKuncut say they have set up the ‘Big Society Revenue Service’ (BSRC) to tackle Tax Avoidance in the UK.
Hundreds of activists across the country are expected to mobilise this Saturday for the action.
More details will be announced in the run-up to the big day, on here as well as the UKuncut website and Twitter account.
Yesterday, students from the UCL occupation also staged a protest at Topshop in Oxford Street, London. Here is a video report from that event.
Our economic recovery will be sluggish, says the OBR
Having had a quick look at the new OBR forecasts, my first thought is that this is a lot more realistic than the last set of forecasts. Although as Robert Chote himself says they will almost certainly be wrong.
The media is so far concentrating (helped no doubt by Tory spin) on two aspects: the revised 2010 numbers and the public sector jobs figure. Neither are that note worthy.
continue reading… »
Video reports from Lewisham protests/riot
“It would be easy to declare our opposition to the cuts the coalition is proposing,’ Sir Steve told us at the council’s AGM way back in June.
It’s even easier, it seems, to put up no opposition at all. Locals have gone mad at Bullock’s proposals to cut libraries, refuse services and staff (especially in a borough that depends on council for employment).
As early as June, Lewisham council had bullocked ahead and forecast a budget gap of up to £60m for 2011 to 2014 (although was still in the dark about government plans for key grants). People expect (for reasons that will forever escape me) a little more from Labour.
It has been clear for a while that Sir Steve should keep an eye on the tide. Yesterday evening, he tried to ignore it. Several hundred people turned up to protest at the early-evening council meeting. All went well, until people heard that the public gallery would be restricted to 40. Then, someone said 28. Then, people decided they’d head in regardless. Why didn’t Bullock hold this meeting in a large hall somewhere and have it out?
Here are a few videos I shot during the rush.
If ‘kettling’ isn’t justified in other circumstances, why protests?
contribution by Peter Ede
Kettling has been justified by the police as legitimate measure primarily to keep “law and order” and more specifically to prevent potential injury and/or damage to property.
In order to test this, here is an outlandish analogy: consider a foggy night on a motorway. The majority of drivers, who have clean licences, are being careful. A few may have points on their licences. Some will drive at excessive speed. There is a very real risk in this situation of damage to valuable hundreds of thousand of pounds worth of cars, and indeed of serious personal injury.
continue reading… »
Support the UCL Occupation
The wry protest songs, satirical posters and occasional smiles on the faces of students involved in the occupation of UCL, Jeremy Bentham room, does not take away from the fact that the room is a place of constant work, intense planning, sporadic meetings and tweeting (something which Channel 4 have now congratulated the occupiers on).
One moment there is an English Literature lecturer admitting his flaws as a protestor and his dislike of filmic depictions of Maoists, and then even before you have time to put on a second jumper in the bitter cold, a group has formulated to discuss the next way of attracting media attention and capturing the hearts and minds of the public. continue reading… »
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» What do we want from the BBC?
» The coming crisis of Conservatism
» Others should follow the Cooperative in boycotting Israeli settlement goods
» What’s the point of these justifications for the ongoing war in Afghanistan?
» The alternative: why Greece should NOT abandon the Euro
» For Cameron, looking weak is a bigger problem than being unpopular
» Most women don’t need counselling before abortion, shows study
» With Caroline Lucas stepping down, how the Greens need to change
» Advertising Standards Authority vs Archbishop Cranmer
» The far left versus the far right: French election part deux
» Our mental health services are a mess; can Labour change it?
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