I return from summer break with a shock as the UK hits moral rock bottom. On the day that it is revealed that 2,380 people in three years died within 14 days of being declared fit to work by an ATOS assessment and having benefit stopped, we also have 45 of the most appalling members of the political class elevated to trough it for life in the House of Lords, at a possible cost to the taxpayer of 67,500 pounds per week in attendance allowances alone.
It is worth remembering that it was the Red Tories who brought in ATOS, and Yvette Cooper, to be precise, who ordered the extreme tightening of the unfit to work assessment which has resulted in death for thousands and dreadful stress and misery for hundreds of thousands. Ian Duncan Smith may have also gleefully implemented it, but this particular horror was entirely inherited from the Guardian’s favourite leadership candidate.
The House of Lords appointments are so horrible it is difficult to comment. The most utterly objectionable of all is one of the least known to the public. Stuart Polak becomes a Lord for services to the Conservative Friends of Israel. That you can, unelected, become a legislator of the UK based on your loyalty and service to another state is appalling.
Others are more obviously dreadful. Lord Hogg now has a title that befits the moat of his home, which he had cleaned by the taxpayer prompting much rage in the expenses scandal. Tessa Jowell benefited from hundreds of thousands of pounds of corrupt money from the sordid Berlusconi, claiming she did not read the mortgage documents in which his cash paid off her house, before she signed them, and going through an entirely risible pretence of temporary separation from her husband, David Mills, who escaped a corrupt Italian justice system. David Willetts was rejected by his constituents because of extreme expenses scamming, and walks grinning back into the Lords.
Michelle Mone is rewarded for her opposition to Scottish independence. The woman sold out the workforce who made her fortune by expensively covering her crotch and now comes out as a Tory knicker saleswoman. Darling also is ennobled for services to the union, after being too cowardly to face the electorate in May. The Lib Dems get more legislators today than they could manage at the general election. That is simply astonishing.
The conduct of the political class is utterly shameless. Meantime they indulge their fantasies of stripping workers of all protection and of stopping aid to the needy, and while the politicians gorge and gorge, the poor are quietly being slipped away to die.
RobG
27/08/2015 5:08pm
ONE FIFTH of Andy Burnham’s supporters believe “the world is controlled by a secretive elite”!
MORE THAN ONE THIRD of Andy Burnham’s supporters believe “the United States is the greatest single threat to world peace”!
TWO THIRDS OR MORE of Andy Burnham’s supporters want nationalisation of utilities including the railways and want much more redistribution of wealth!
For God’s sake don’t let this lunatic anywhere near power!
Pathetic, isn’t it.
Jeremysmear.
Kind regards,
John
You are letting Smith off the hook. He is responsible for a much more punitive and vicious regime than any of his predecessors. He introduced a much more restrictive application of the WCA, more restrictions on claims, an increase in means testing, more workfare and a huge increase in the application of sanctions on sick and disabled claimants.
If you want the origins of this attack on the sick and disabled you need to go back to the early Nineties when the then Social Security Minister Peter Lilley bought in paid ‘advisers’ from the U.S. private insurance industry to help ‘roll back’ the welfare state for their own benefit. New Labour’s crime was to continue the Thatcherite legacy.
” Meantime they indulge their fantasies of stripping workers of all protection and of stopping aid to the needy, and while the politicians gorge and gorge, the poor are quietly being slipped away to die.”
These Eloquent Lines have a ring of the Poetic..As they describe the Tragic reality.. Being –
Deaths in the support group and the assessment phase are more problematic because they involve people who do have serious illnesses, many of whom may be expected to die while claiming. But are these deaths being hastened artificially by the DWP’s treatment of them?
A statistical release published today (August 27) in response to my Freedom of Information request dating back to May 28, 2014, states that the total number of deaths involving claimants of Incapacity Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance and Severe Disablement Allowance – between the start of December 2011 and the end of February 2014 is 81,140, including 50,580 (ESA claimants) and 30,560 (IB/SDA claimants). All figures are rounded up to the nearest 10.
Add this to the 10,600 deaths that were already known between January and November 2011 and you have 91,740.
Information for ESA claimants shows:
7,540 deaths while claims were being assessed, bringing the known total to 9,740.
7,200 deaths in the work-related activity group, bringing the known total to 8,500.
32,530 deaths in the support group, bringing the known total to 39,630.
And 3,320 deaths in which the claimant was not in receipt of any benefit payment and is therefore marked as “unknown”. More on this @
http://guerillawire.org/welfare/dwp-publishes-death-statistics-80-average-a-month-die-after-being-declared-fit-for-work/
Re the New Lords
Kirsty Blackman, SNP spokesperson on the House of Lords said: “This is a sorry list of rejected and retired party politicians – cronies and hangers-on with big cheque books.
“The message from David Cameron is – even if people reject your party at the ballot box you will be handed a seat in parliament for the rest of your life – because Mr Cameron ‘can’.
“It is an affront to democracy that politicians whose parties have been roundly rejected by the electorate can then re-appear in parliament a few weeks later and legislate for the rest of their lives without ever having to be accountable again. That is the scandal of today’s list.”
Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said the new peers would cost the taxpayer at least an extra £1.2m a year.
She added: “At a time when the government is talking about reducing the cost of politics, this announcement is an expensive insult to the public.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/news/1327527-bra-tycoon-michelle-mone-obe-named-tory-peer-for-house-of-lords/
Here’s Corbyn’s response:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-smith-should-resign-over-disability-benefit-death-figures-says-jeremy-corbyn-10475017.html
How do I get into the House of Lords?
Seemeth like easy work. £300/day and you don’t even have to vote. In fact you can clock in and out in 40 minutes and go shopping in Fortnum & Mason with your £300. If that’s what you like spending it on.
Kind regards,
John
John Spencer-Davis
It seems fairly certain that Corbyn will become the next leader of the Labour Party. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. I suppose all we can say is that the smear-fest will go into overdrive!
The very poor are being ethnically cleansed in this country and the bastards deliberately released the figures in the knowledge that it was a bank holiday weekend.
It shouldn’t come as no surprise to anyone, ennobling friends and loyal servants to the cause, has been going on for years at the den of iniquity aka Westminster.
All the usual suspects are to be made up including Danny Alexander who will become a Knight of the Realm. Alexander was soundly thrashed as MP for
Nairn Badeoch and Strathspey, losing by more than 10,000 votes to the SNP’s Drew Hendry.
But now thanks to his enoblement, he can rest assured his seat on the gravy train is secure for life.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dissolution-honours-2015
The sooner Scotland becomes independent from the three ringed circus that is Westminster the better.
‘BTW was it you who was calling on Craig to produce a new post in the last thread?’
It was not me nor anyone else Laddie. Duh! I do not issue orders to Craig nor would presume to do so.
I encourage people to join Debbie Abrahams MP, and many others, in calling for Duncan Smith’s immediate resignation:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/104436
“Stuart Polak becomes a Lord for services to the Conservative Friends of Israel”
_____________________
So now the gravy train is catering for anyone who does favours for the incumbent/s, any nebbish or shmendrik,now has a chance to sup from the well of the taxpayer,even if their allegiance is to another state.
Surely this makes it easier to abolish or thoroughly reform the House of Lords.
Let me mention once again the book by Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty, The Athenian Option: Radical Reform for the House of Lords (Sortition and Public Policy), which urges replacing the current House of Lords with a different legislative body made up of citizens chosen randomly, as was done in the Boule (Council) of ancient Athens.
I find reading your blog problematic, Craig. You put things well, and add info and illustrations that solidify the point of view, and the result is so satisfying to read, that it almost (but not quite) dissipates my rage, while simultaneously justifying, strengthening and clarifying it. Perhaps you could remedy this unintended pacificatory side-effect of your wonderful articles by including a list of suggested Actions – eg brick through SWP large plateglass windows?
RoS. Wee Duggie lost to Mhairi Black.
So it’s ‘Arise Sir Douglas’ and ‘Arise Sir Vincent*’. YCNMIU
‘Among other awards, Danny Alexander and Vince Cable are to receive knighthoods, having lost their seats at the general election this year.’
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-08-27/downing-street-releases-list-of-45-new-peers/
*His first name is John. Probably lining up a City directorship or two as we speak.
RoS. So sorry. I was thinking of Douglas Alexander, Wee Duggie.
Red face!
“The hottest place in Hell…”
That’s a paraphrase of these lines in Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno:
Mary i Should have said.. Cheers for the voxpoliticalonline link.. Em Twice
And for DTRH greetings 🙂
And on the 25th day of August, A merry Kezia Said.. ” Labour will debate Things like Trident at their Conference”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-jIHWvBjI
And on the 27th Day of August, Andy Pandy Says.. No Way –
Andy Burnham has dismissed moves by Labour chiefs north of the Border towards developing a Scottish policy on the renewal of Trident.
We knew Kezia was Dreaming, or telling wee fibs.
http://www.thenational.scot/politics/burnham-dismisses-scottish-trident-policy.6858
The fact that sick are not necessarily chronic sick and include those working whom fall ill and need to apply for sickness benefit, is always downplayed. This means every working person in this country, is affected by the “reforms” on the social net, that have gone so far as creating the aggressive regime of effectively accusing the sick people from swinging the lead.
This is reflected in the fact that soon as anyone applies for sickness benefit their case is automatically referred to Atos (it will now be Maximus). Just how much does Atos get paid for the referral is a mystery?
Contemporaneous data re the case of a friend whom fell severely ill and was hospitalised, upon applying for the sickness benefit despite the fact that he could hardly breath and talk. He was compelled/made to talk on the phone to the operator who was handling his case and had to listen to the riots act read to him by the operator lasting for a good few minutes.
The fact that the insurance company spiv have been involved in drawing up the current arrangements explains a great deal about the current status of the sickness benefit that could affect anyone of us working people.
As the car insurance market affeting every car owner, and evidentially is a total market failure (turning the police force into enforcers/collectors for insurance companies) due to the same bunch of crooks and spiv advising the legislature ought to serve as a warning for the sickness benefit to go the same way.
The fact remains that none of the political actors are of any consequence in the almost single party system that has come to have three major franchised outlets in the guise of the out right Tories, tongue in cheek Tories as in nulabour, not so right wing Tories as in RIP libdem, and then rabid fascists as in the plethora of the UKIP et al kind of parties. Furthermore the oligarch owned media are far too busy keeping the current order as the only alternative that twenty first century can be governed with, as we are edging to have the same political climate as the pre WWII Germany.
The figures released today about the 300,000 net immigrants to UK, whilst beebeecee is busy portraying the mass deaths of the fifty refugees in Austria as the deaths of immigrants, are masking the fact that last year only 12800 refugees applied for asylum in UK. Fact that most refugees are not choosing to come to UK is of no consequence to the oligarch owned media that are too busy pushing the barbarians at the gate; showing the endless loop package of Callais truck surfers and pushing the French strikes as the attack of the migrants on the vehicles to come over here. As Teresa of May travels there to build a wall as in the fashion of zionistan in dealing with the said barbarians!
All the while the troughers are left to genuflect to the relevant sacred cows and be active members of friends of zionistan, getting rewarded for their genuflections by receiving the direct benefits of daily attendance allowance without ever facing Atos or attending any work coach meetings in the privatised job centres.
Moral turpitude? Not on your Nelly. It is new Britain in the brand new twenty first century silly!
RoS. So sorry. I was thinking of Douglas Alexander, Wee Duggie.
Red face!
_______________
No need to be sorry Mary, wee Dougie is a waste of space as well, and frankly these moral betraying politicians all become faceless kitsch, ersatz, of the real thing.
But it’s our own fault because we let them, democracy and fairness in politics isn’t a right of the public, it’s something that must be constantly fought for, the vox populi isn’t listened to.
The Westminster bubble, is virtually impervious to the suffering of the citizens.
Mary
27/08/2015 7:06pm
I remember you requesting a new post from Craig, Mary, and Daniel did the same thing. “New post please Craig” were the words used in both cases, I believe.
Not sure it was the last thread but it was pretty recent.
Please don’t make me find it.
Kind regards,
John
5 threads back!
Page 4 of the Aaronovitch thread to save you the bother of looking. Busted. I confess. Take me to IDS.
Mary
27/08/2015 8:44pm
Lol thanks.
I wanted to be the first one to drag it out, in a courteous way. I knew it would be coming anyway.
Kind regards,
John
The peers who supposedly vet the names suggested.
The members of the Commission are:
•Lord (Ajay) Kakkar (Chair)
•Lord (Colin) Low of Dalston
•Professor Gillian Peele
•Sir Malcolm Ross
•Lord (Garry) Hart of Chilton (Labour)
•Lord (Michael) Howard of Lympne QC (Conservative)
•Baroness (Rosalind) Scott of Needham Market (Liberal Democrat)
http://lordsappointments.independent.gov.uk/about_us.aspx
It was the aggressive and despotic Polak bulldozing Cameron to consistently thrown his weight behind Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and during the Gaza conflict has refused to allow his ministers to condemn the Israeli actions as “disproportionate”.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/nov/16/pro-israel-lobby-conservatives-channel4-dispatches
Yavneh College is the contrivance of Polak and the only learning centre I know that uses children’s finger-prints to sign in and out of school.
AIPAC-aping Zionist lobby group European Friends of Israel (EFI), situated in Brussels and founded by Stuart Polak, the director of Conservative Friends for Israel (CFI) since 1989. EFI is financed by corporations and individuals from Europe and Israel. According to an extensive analysis by David Cronin, its remit is to shape elite opinion rather than the wider public, by white-washing Zionist crimes against Palestinians. This is corroborated by a 2015 report by the Corporate European Observatory, titled Spin Doctors to the Autocrats: How European PR Firms Whitewash Repressive Regimes, which declares that the EFI, “..has been keen to re-frame the image of the country as not just being defined by conflict, sometimes to the point of surrealism.” (p.43)
It hosts extreme Jews including far-right racists and advocates of settlement expansion. The EFI has is known to have defence links with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which was one of the largest suppliers of arms to the IDF during the 2009 Gaza massacre. IAI was among the key sponsors for the EFI launch and has strong links to the arms industry thanks to Stuart Polak’s consultancy firm
The neoconservative political thinking, which a number of government officials adhere to, is dangerously spearheading Britain towards a neoconservative authoritarian state, no doubt due to the lies, deception and tendency toward despotism inherent in its philosophic underpinning.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/17006-how-britains-pro-israel-lobby-invests-in-young-parliamentary-candidates
The Guardian Labour leadership debate today (starts about 25 minutes in)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=13&v=UuCRIuHrKAo
Captain Scarlett, the corporate pixie and the class loner were put in their place by the geography teacher, who it seems to me was edged out by the team of Guardian questioners during what amounted to a 6th form debate.
My favourite bit: about 1 hour four minutes into the debate, Burnham, Cooper and Kendall are asked why they didn’t vote against the Tory welfare bill.
Certainly, with feudal Scottish baronies (pre 2004) the caput) would be flipped from the castle to a pile of rocks to sell the title with the rocks and keep the castle. With Darling it was the castle that was sold.
John Spencer-Davis
Thank you.
So it would appear that Mary’s “I do not issue orders to Craig nor would presume to do so” is being slightly economical with the truth.
She has of course also called, directly and indirectly, for me to be banned on several occasions.
Apologies in order, Mary>
“When doing so, you might care to tell us if you think that the UK is unique amoung European countries in doing so and if so, in what way(s).”
It was not addressed to me but I would be interested to know if you include, as the Eurovision Song Contest does, Israel in Europe. Thank you. 🙂
I meant to say welcome back Craig and hope you had a good Doune the Rabbit Hole. Good post. Can’t disagree.