Two people in this image are duo notorious for their violence and immoral crookery. The other two are the Kray Twins.

(Source: twitter.com)

At its AGM on April 14 2013, Amnesty International UK passed a resolution on the Human Rights of sick and disabled people in the UK.

Judge in Oxford to Bethan Titchborne, who was assaulted by police officers and charged and fined for “harassment” for protesting against Prime Minister David Cameron’s cuts to disabled persons’ welfare (and related deaths).

(Source: brightgreenscotland.org)

Since 2006, John Nash, who was until 2010 the Chairman of private healthcare providers CareUK, hasdonated over £300,000 to the Conservative Party. Since the Conservative Party-led coalition government formed in May 2010, the following has occurred:

• CareUK has been set to benefit from privatisation within the National Health Service enacted under Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in April 2012 (with Lansley’s  personal office being gifted a £21,000 donation from John Nash himself).
• John Nash was appointed by Chancellor George Osborne to a panel “advising” the government on public spending cuts. Nash recommended £10 billion of “efficiency savings” (spending cuts) to the NHS. Incidentally, CareUK will profit from outsourcing used, and accelerated in Lansley’s NHS bill, to cover the lack of services caused by these very cuts.
• In 2011 John Nash and his wife were specifically chosen by Iain Duncan Smith Work and Pensions Secretary to supply (and profit from) £73 million worth of the government’s forced unpaid labour schemes.
• In January 2013, John Nash was given a seat in the House of Lords by Prime Minster David Cameron, and has been made an education minister by Education Secretary Michael Gove. Gove then appointed Nash, fellow major Tory donor Theodore Angew, and Bain & Company (Mitt Romney’s asset stripping alumni) to advise on public education cuts; with Bain being permitted to bid on public education outsourcing and privatisation contracts in the UK.

A simple inquiry: how can such blatant nepotism, bribery, corruption and conflict of interest go without adequate media scrutiny or official repercussion?

class-struggle-anarchism:

spitzenprodukte:

“FREE STANDING COLUMN” - This A5, double-sided photocopy from the student protest on November 30th 2010 was the first thing produced by the group that was later to become Deterritorial Support Group. Some of the strands of ultra-left rhetoric are clear but it has a much more tabloid tone. The drop-shadows remained. The term “Wolf-Eyed replicant” to describe Nick Clegg was coined by China Mieville I think.

I like the bit that says:

You don’t think that after all our “mickey mouse” media studies lessons we can’t see through your ,mock indignation at our violence…

hehe

newstatesman:

What’s wrong with the Tory party?

Watch out for the Tory dinosaurs, warns David Skelton – director of UK’s Policy Exchange. Skelton declares that David Cameron’s “modernisation” project did not go far enough. So what do the Tory modernisers need to do next? To return to power and win a majority in parliament, he argues, the Conservatives must learn to reconnect with the north and ordinary working voters to shake their “out of touch” reputation:

Last year, Policy Exchange and YouGov carried out a major polling exercise about what voters want, and there are lessons from it for all the main parties. For the Conservatives, it highlights four (overlapping) ways in which the party needs to do better.

First, they need to do better outside their southern heartland. In the south and the east of England the Tories have nine out of every ten seats. In the Midlands they have about half, and in the north less than a third. In Scotland they hold a single seat.

Second, they need to do better in urban areas. The Tory problem in the north and Midlands is a specifically urban one. There are 80 rural seats in the north and the Midlands. The Conservatives hold 57 of them (or 71 per cent). But there are 124 urban parliamentary seats in cities in the north and Midlands, of which the Conservatives hold just 20 – or 16 per cent. That is why only two Conservative MPs have Premiership football teams in their constituencies – even though there are 20 teams in the League.

It will take a while to change this. In many cities the Tories face a structural problem. In the councils of cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, the Tories do not have a single MP or councillor and have a drastically diminished activist base. London is the Tories’ other urban problem – there they hold just 38 per cent of the seats. In many cities, voting Tory has become countercultural and the Conservatives have become stranded in a distant third place, replaced by the Liberal Democrats as the official opposition to Labour. Being stuck in third place is very self-reinforcing, because no councillors means no activists, and that makes it hard to win seats at general elections.

Third, the Conservatives do badly among ethnic minorities. Fewer than one in eight voters of Pakistani origin voted Tory, while nearly six out of ten voted Labour. Among black voters, fewer than one in ten voted Tory and eight out of ten voted Labour. Brit - ain’s ethnic-minority voters are usually concentrated in urban areas.

Finally, the Conservatives need to do better among ordinary working people. Polls show two-thirds of voters agree that “the Conservative Party looks after the interests of the rich, not ordinary people”. Even among Conservative voters, more than a quarter agree. They are voting for the party despite this problem. (And no, that isn’t because these people think they are rich and that they will benefit.)

Click here to read this piece in full.

[Artwork: David Young for the NS]

Cameron is a PR man. He “modernisation” of the Tory Party was clearly a veneer of acceptability that quickly dissipated once he barely managed to come to power. Nasty, corrupt and retroactive as ever.

guardian:

Steve Bell’s If… David Cameron reads the Leveson inquiry.

24 April 2013 — The pig issue: Artist confronts British Prime Minister David Cameron

Activist and performance artist Mark McGowan crawled four miles from his home in South London to the Prime Minister’s residence in Westminster pushing a toy pig on roller skates with his nose. McGowan suffers with Bowel Cancer and took the action to highlight privatization of the National Health Service, on the day the House of Lords pushed through legislation to outsource healthcare.

The Artist Taxi Driver is a hero. #wheresdaddyspig

(Source: metro.us)

Bethan Tichborne, 14 March 2013:

Yesterday I was found guilty in the Oxford Magistrates’ Court of causing “harassment, alarm and distress” following a peaceful and legal political protest in Witney in December. The judge said “I can think of nothing more alarming than the statement that ‘Cameron has blood on his hands.’” I will continue to say that Cameron has blood on his hands, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

30 people have died as a direct result of the government’s ‘welfare reforms’. Thousands have died after being found ‘fit for work’. Over the long term, as more and more is taken away there will be increasing harm and death, including many hidden ones. The fine and costs come to more than I earn in a month, the judge said that on a whole £700 a month of course I’d have no trouble paying it back. After rent, travel to work, food and paying off loans I don’t have money left at the end of the month, and my salary is going down soon, so I’m not sure what will happen next. Except that I’m going to keep saying that Cameron has blood on his hands.

Here’s some notes I wrote earlier on what happened:

On the 30th November David Cameron was booed as he came on stage to turn on the Witney Christmas Lights. You can watch a very funny video of him trying to drown out any criticism by awkwardly getting the crowd to cheer everyone from themselves to the Queen below. When there’s some background heckling during the countdown he appeals to the crowd to “come on, shout louder!”

Kind of funny. Also, kind of not funny. I find it very weird watching the video, because while this was going on I was being beaten up by the police on the other side of the stage. I have never been so scared. My face was being pushed into the ground, I could feel blood coming from my nose, there was someone putting their whole weight on my back while someone else was stamping on my knees, along with various people grabbing and twisting my limbs. And then the officer on my back moved a knee up onto the back of my neck. Up until then I’d been shouting “I’m not resisting, I’m cooperating,” trying to ask them to stop, but from the moment I felt someone pressing their body weight into the back of my neck I gave up trying to communicate anything to them, I realised the police officers on top of me either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear me. Instead I began begging anyone who was nearby to intervene, to tell them to stop. Images flashed into my mind of what could happen. I was in pain, I couldn’t see what was going on, I was crying and bleeding, I couldn’t properly breathe, and I thought that they might leave me seriously injured. I’ve worked supporting people who’ve badly damaged their necks or back, and I can’t believe that any police officer was taught that kneeling on the back of someone’s neck is every an acceptable thing to do.

So that was one of the background sounds that Cameron was trying to drown out with his calls for round after round of applause. One of the things Cameron asked the crowd to cheer was “the Paralympics, that was great.” Well yes, the paralympics was great, but he should remember that his ministers were booed loudly whenever they appeared at paralympic ceremonies, and that it had the least popular sponsor possible, ATOS. The government gave ATOS the contract to kick disabled people off benefits they need to survive, and despite some of its staff quitting on grounds of conscience, they’ve done an admirable job of swiping those benefits away.

To rub salt into the wound the government justify their cuts with misleading press releases about what percentage of disabled people they’ve deemed “fit for work.” These are taken up by the press, who spin them still further from reality and stir up public hatred of “scroungers” and “shirkers”. A survey by Inclusion London found that the general public believe that between 50% and 70% of disability claims are fraudulent. The reality is that the fraud rate for disability benefits is 0.5%.

The words that the government and media are using is the indirect part of their attack on disabled people. Disability hate crime, which ranges from comments in the street through vandalism of motability cars up to imprisonment, torture, rape and murder (yes, in the UK, this happens) is growing. A Comres study found that 66% of disabled people in September 2011 said they experienced aggression, hostility or name calling compared with 41% in May 2011. That’s a huge increase in a short amount of time.

I knew about this through hearing and reading stories about the people who are being affected, I also knew that these stories weren’t being given the front page spreads that ‘scrounger’ stories get. I think it’s important to show that some of us are refusing to buy the rhetoric that would have us scapegoat disabled people. So I held up a placard that said “Cameron has blood on his hands,” and I shouted that “disabled people are dying because of Cameron’s policies.” I didn’t expect that to be a big deal, I only wanted to do my bit to show that we’re not all taken in by the rhetoric that disabled people are ‘scroungers’ and ‘shirkers.’ I didn’t think that it would lead to being beaten up, arrested, held overnight and then taken to court on two ridiculous charges.

Since December there has been a little more attention slowly coming to focus on the horrific way that this government is treating disabled people. MP Micheal Meacher told the House of Commons that Cameron has blood on his hands (he didn’t get arrested). We’ve heard more about how the bedroom tax is going to hit disabled people.

But still, there’s very little media coverage of the disability campaigners who are also in court today, in London, challenging the cut of the Independent Living Fund, which will force people into residential homes? We had a huge amount of coverage of one large family getting one large council house. Where are the front page stories about the far more common experiences of people who are losing their independence, their ability to meet their basic needs, even their houses? Where are the front page stories about the people who have killed themselves, seeing no other option as the support they need is pulled away from under them? There are now 30 cases listed on the website Calum’s List, a memorial site for those who have died because of the welfare reforms, either through suicide or through ill health and hardship. Aren’t any of those 30 people as newsworthy as one large family getting a large house?

We must do what the mainstream media will not, and resist the government’s attempt to divide and rule. We can listen to the voices of the people who know what’s going on, the people on the frontline of the cuts, and share them with our friends.

Calum’s List is hard reading, but important. It lists the deaths caused directly by welfare reform.

Disabled People Against Cuts campaign tirelessly, provide an endless amount of information and analysis, and receive hardly any media coverage, or even the recognition they deserve from the wider anti-cuts movement

The Black Triangle Campaign tells it just how it is, read their about page, read some of their blog posts, and you get a sense of just how violent the government’s two-pronged attack on disabled people is, and how dangerous it is for the rest of society to stay silent.

I am currently trying to get #cameronhasbloodonhishands trending on Twitter in opposition to this totalitarian suppression of dissent.

spitzenprodukte:

“THEY TALK ABOUT VIOLENCE” I collected a whole bunch of leaflets, propaganda and flyers during the 2010 student protests. I think I got this flyer at the second or third demo after Millbank, produced by one of the anarchist affinity groups which operated at the time.

(via class-struggle-anarchism)

ITV News: Tenants hit by ‘bedroom tax’ tell of financial misery

From April, if you live in social housing and have a spare bedroom, you will have to either downsize or face a cut in your benefits: A reduction of 14% if you have one spare bedroom, or 25% if you have two or more spare bedrooms.

An estimated 660,000 social housing tenants will be affected, according to the National Housing Federation.

They include, disabled people, divorced parents, foster carers, parents with children in the armed forces and those at university.

It is causing widespread anger, anxiety and worry.

I went to meet Lisa and Brett who live in a two bedroom house in Essex.

Lisa has cerebral palsy. Brett is her partner as well as her full-time carer. Because of her condition Lisa spasms and moves around a lot in the night, Brett sleeps in the second bedroom 90% of the time.

Because they are a couple, they are expected to share a room. Come April, they will have to pay £80 a month for it.

They say they will struggle to pay because they simply can’t downsize.

The couple are really feeling the burden of the that financial pressure. Lisa told me:

We get more migraines because of the worry. We have to use some of our emergency hours to get carers in to be with me while he’s [Brett] not well.

(Source: itv.com)

Even though it’s January, and it’s 2013, it feels like a Victorian Christmas. It’s not just because of the beautiful snow, and the laughter of kids throwing snowballs. It’s also because Britain is returning to levels of inequality not seen since the time of Dickens. And because of a welfare bill which makes Dickens’s Christmas Carol feel disturbingly current:

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.”

The Welfare Uprating Bill, which returns to the House of Commons on Monday for its third reading and report stage, is a cold-hearted bill. It will stop maintaining benefits by inflation rates and cap them at just one per cent for the next three years. When inflation is taken into account, this is a cut. Through our work on the ground with organisations like the Trussell Trust, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of people resorting to food banks.

Last year 120,000 people in Britain relied on a food bank to stave off hunger. That’s double the number the year before. And it is predicted to double this year again. Poverty in Britain is real, and it is getting worse. In a decent society, nobody should be forced to go to a food bank in order to feed their kids or be forced to go without heating when temperatures plummet. But even the government admits that this Bill alone will put 200,000 more children into poverty.

One third of the people whose benefits are being cut are out-of-work. Government figures show that most people who are out of work are out of work for months, not for years, which illustrates that they have not chosen a life on the dole. They need help in hard times as they look for a new job. They are people like the staff of the famous High Street stores now going bust every week. In our work with communities we find people want to work, and we support them in finding work: but we also find, as they do, that it is hard - especially hard, today.

The other two thirds of the people whose benefits are being cut are in work. Yet wages are so low, rent so high, and even food prices growing at double the rate of inflation, that they still struggle to make ends meet. They are the cleaners who look after our offices, the nurses who take care of us when we are sick, the teachers who educate our children, the soldiers who put their lives on the line. The IFS have predicted that if the welfare uprating bill passes it could make seven million working households worse off. They are also the people on whom local economies depend. Slashing the incomes of those at the bottom is not just cold-hearted, it is also wrong-headed. It will depress the economy further.

And there is an alternative. We do have a choice. Rather than making the poorest people in Britain pay for the financial crisis, Oxfam proposes we should start at the top. People earning a million pounds a year should have their £40,000 tax cut cancelled. Out of control casino banking should be tempered by a Robin Hood tax to raise funds to tackle poverty. Tax dodging companies who pretend the money they make in Britain was really transacted in a tax haven should be made to pay their fair share, in full. This would balance the books, but not on the backs of the poor.

“Bah!’ said Scrooge, “Humbug!’”