How to regain your reputation with one simple sentence

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Barack Obama, celebrity, Clint Eastwood, Conservative, convention, David Cameron, David Letterman, Dirty Harry, endorsement, Magna Carta, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, NHS, people, political, politics, privatisation, Republican, sell-off, support, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

Clint Eastwood and the chair that stood in for Barack Obama at the Repubican Convention. The speech disturbed many Eastwood fans – myself included – but he has won back his doubters with charming simplicity. (Photo: STAN HONDA/AFP/GettyImages)

Clint Eastwood. What a guy.

You may recall a while ago I was one of the many who took issue with Mr Eastwood for his bizarre interview with a chair during a Republican convention in the United States. I wrote an article asking why celebrities have to belittle themselves by declaring their support for political parties, and basically said that it can’t do their reputation any good at all.

Well, it seems I misjudged the great man.

Collared by an interviewer who demanded to know what possessed him, Eastwood’s response was the stuff of legends. “If they’re stupid enough to ask me to a political convention,” he said, “they have to take whatever they get.”

Genius.

One person for whom I doubt this response would work is David Cameron, who was outed as a dunce on David Letterman’s US chat show last week.

It isn’t stupid to ask what “Magna Carta” means. After all, my next-door-neighbour’s four-year-old can work it out.

Perhaps Letterman could have started him off with something easier, though – like maybe, when his party didn’t win the election and never stated that it planned to do so, why has he sold off so much of the NHS in England to private companies, and why does he have plans to sell off so much more of it?

The old argument that it creates more choice is clearly nonsense because people were, reasonably, expecting the choice to be theirs. Instead, they have been presented with the company that has bought the contract and told, “This is your choice of NHS supplier. Don’t catch anything too serious or you’ll be paying it off for the rest of your life.”

Or, in the words of an iconic Eastwood character: “Do you feel lucky?”

G20: Ian Tomlinson’s Death Whitewashed?

There have always been concerns about the police, and about they way they in turn are policed. The result of this investigation will only increase those concerns. What makes it more worrying is that those responsible must know that they haven’t fooled anyone. Still they carry on and do exactly what they want. For anyone who thinks they’re living in a democratic country under the rule of law, that is a chilling thought.

SMILING CARCASS'S TWO-PENNETH

How can you be sacked for gross misconduct AND keep your pension? No doubt he’ll have little difficulty finding alternative lucrative employment from some other public or private right wing employer who likes to see us plebs knocked about when we get a bit ‘uppity’.

“If he had known then what he now knows about the circumstances, everybody’s movements and Mr Tomlinson’s health, he would have used no force,…”; from what I remember, Mr. Tomlinson was not doing anything that required the use of ANY force; he was not a threat to the office, so that force was ‘unreasonable’ and therefore an assault- which resulted in his death ergo… do I need to say it? Not knowing about his health is no excuse; if there was a threat and reasonable force was used, then any pre-existing health condition becomes irrelevant. Because this was unreasonable force, then the resulting death, whether…

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Could this be the Coalition government’s biggest cock-up yet?

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Coalition, coastguard, Conservative, Conservatives, David Cameron, government, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, politics, rescue, smugglers, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

Not only does this look like happy days are on their way – for SMUGGLERS – but it also shows up what an irresponsible idiot David Cameron really is. He tried to cover up his mistake by calling it a clerical error when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Please spread this information around – especially in coastal areas!

Pride's Purge

(not satire unfortunately – it’s the coalition government!)

UPDATE – This government cock-up could cost Tory MP Oliver Letwin his West Dorset seat at the next election!

More than half of the voters in his constituency have signed a petition protesting against the scrapping of the Portland rescue helicopter as part of government plans to cut coastguard and rescue services. See here for more info.

the coalition government’s biggest cock-up yet?

A government ‘mix-up’ over dates means the UK coast will be left inadequately guarded. For up to 2 years.

We know the coalition government has made some huge mistakes in its mad rush to sacrifice public services at the altar of austerity, but this one might just beat them all.

It’s not being very well reported but as part of its austerity measures, the government has just started closing half of all the local Coastguard Maritime Rescue…

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Get your votes out, lads and lasses!

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Any Answers, Any Questions, benefit, benefits, Christmas bonus, Coalition, Conservative, Council Tax Benefit, Council Tax Relief Scheme, CPI, government, Jobseeker's Allowance, Localism Bill, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, Parliament, pension, pensioner, people, politics, RPI, student, Tories, Tory, tuition fee, TV licence, unemployment, Universal Credit, Vox Political, vulnerable, Winter fuel payment, Workfare, young people

The only power you have: Pensioners keep their benefits because they vote; youngsters are told they can’t change the system, so they don’t bother. They give up their democratic power and, as a result, are made to suffer.

Is the government is right to maintain benefits to older people, whatever their financial situation, while cutting benefits to more vulnerable people?

This was the popular issue on BBC radio’s Any Questions/Any Answers this week – popular because it highlighted the contrast between pensioners, who influence governments, and youngsters, who don’t.

The simple fact – nailed by a tweeter – is that old people vote more than young people. Therefore, it is the choice they make that can decide who forms the next government. Therefore any party (or parties) in power will pander to them and try to ensure that they take as few hits as possible during a time of cuts.

Remember the old adage that, if you don’t vote Tory when you’re old, you’ve got no brains? They try to look after their support base.

So pensions stop being linked to RPI and get linked to CPI instead, meaning a drop of 0.4 per cent in their annual rise (which was 5.2 per cent last year – well above average pay increases). They get a Christmas bonus. They get winter fuel payments whether they need them or not. Free TV licence.

Meanwhile, youth services are cut hard. Student tuition fees are tripled. The number of young adults out of work skyrockets and they are faced with crippling sanctions on their Jobseekers’ Allowance if they don’t comply with slave-labour Workfare schemes. The Universal Credit will cap the amount of benefit they receive to keep them in poverty. The Localism Bill will bring in county-based council tax relief schemes instead of Council Tax Benefit, which will push low-earners (traditionally the young) out of their homes to look for accommodation in less-desirable areas.

The government can get away with this because young people don’t vote – so they are no threat.

Of course, we’ve all heard the naysayers banging on that there’s no point in voting because it won’t change anything; whatever happens, you’ll end up with a politician representing you. We’ve all heard that sort of tripe. Their point – that politicians are no different from each other; that they’re all in it to line their own pockets, may seem valid. But just look at the evidence of the last century in Britain alone and you will see that it is not true.

Was Aneurin Bevan lining his own pockets when he set up the NHS? Of course not – but Andrew Lansley and many other MPs are lining theirs by breaking it up. And that’s just the obvious example.

So, young people of the UK – and in that I count anybody from 18 up to retirement age – it’s time to start thinking seriously about your situation.

Do you really want to be a Conservative politician’s helpless pawn? Do you want to be consigned to poverty, to a life of endlessly being shifted from one inadequate set of digs to another? From one Workfare placement to another?

Or will you take charge of your own political life and make it clear that you won’t be pushed around like that?

There are more of you than there are pensioners. You can choose a government that is fair; that actually wants to help you. Remember, the government that formed the NHS did it when there was supposed to be “no money left”, and in a time of far worse proportionate debt. And it wasn’t a Tory government. Or a Liberal Democrat one.

So get your votes out.

Smaller recession won’t stop the agony for the sick, disabled, unemployed, low-waged…

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austerity, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, contraction, council tax, cuts, David Cameron, debt, deficit, destitute, disability, disabled, DLA, double-dip, economy, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, GDP, George Osborne, government, growth, Incapacity Benefit, job, Jobseeker's Allowance, Labour, Lib Dem, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Localism Bill, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Nick Clegg, OBR, Office for Budget Responsibility, Office of Budget Responsibility, Parliament, people, politics, poverty, private sector, public sector, Rebekah Brooks, recession, sick, suicide, tax, tax avoidance, Tories, Tory, Treasury, unemployment, Universal Credit, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work capability assessment

UK GDP changes over the last few years. You can see that, after the Coalition took over, we have had just two quarters of growth and no less than FIVE of contraction. The graph was created before the new revision came in so the last block is in fact -0.4, rather than what is shown. (Graph from economicshelp.org)

Official figures have been revised to show the UK economy contracted by less than thought in the second quarter of 2012. Apparently the recession only deepened by 0.4 per cent, rather than the 0.5 per cent to which it was revised last month. The original estimate was 0.7 per cent.

Big deal.

It’s a far cry from original Office of Budget Irresponsibility estimates for 2012, which had the economy growing (if you can believe it) by 2.5 per cent during the year. Instead it has contracted by around 1 per cent. That’s a huge error margin – around 1/28 of GDP.

And it’s a far cry from what the Coalition were predicting in 2010, when public sector job losses were going to be offset by a huge inrush of private sector jobs that never came. David Cameron can swan off to New York (incidentally avoiding the reappearance of his friend Rebekah Brooks in court) and talk about a million jobs being created, but that doesn’t even begin to cover the harm that his austerity measures have perpetuated.

And of course it means that we’re all still in the longest double-dip recession since the end of World War II, thanks to the Coalition – they can blame Labour all they want, but the figures tell the truth: GDP started dropping after the Tories and the Liberal Democrats took the reins of power.

What does this mean for the less well-off in society? Well, it’s obvious…

Continued recession means that there will be less tax money available to the Treasury (and there’s still no real effort being made to track down those tens – maybe hundreds – of billions being kept away by tax avoidance).

This will allow Messrs Cameron, Osborne et al to continue their persecution of the poorest in society – those who had nothing to do with the causes of the recession – and their programme of rewards for those who made this possible – the bankers and financiers who did dump us all in it.

So we will see further deep cuts in the welfare budget. More sick and disabled people will be driven to suicide. We have already seen news stories in which it has been admitted that failed ESA claimants have ended up destitute – expect many more in the future.

The Universal Credit will come in, capping the amount of benefit families will be able to receive and ensuring that they are plunged into poverty, through no fault of their own.

The Localism Bill will come in, forcing councils to create council tax relief schemes that will force the lowest-paid in society out of their homes to search for accommodation in less “attractive” parts of the UK – if they can find anywhere at all.

And as I’m typing this, in the back of my mind I can hear Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, whose coalition with the Conservatives has made all this possible, saying: “Only the Liberal Democrats can be trusted with the economy and relied upon to deliver a fairer society too.”

And that’s the funny part!

Comic Book Conference Season

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Coalition, conference, Conservative, David Cameron, Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, government, Joker, Labour, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, politics, Sue Marsh, Superman, Theresa May, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

(I can’t reblog from a Blogspot column, but Sue Marsh’s opinions of the Liberal Democrats, Labour and especially the Tories at conference time are well worth reading)

Cameron, The Joker, will ooze sociopathic idiocy for a week in Birmingham. It may just be that some plebs will have to be admitted and tolerated, but the champagne swilling Baddies will pepper the news with snobby utterances and outrageous put-downs. There will be a Theresa May cat incident or a “Toxic Tories” own goal or two. Beyond the secure zone we will shake our heads and agree that they are unfit to govern.

The words of the Joker will chill us all.

For the rest, go to: http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/comic-book-conference-season.html?spref=tw

She goes on to say that Labour needs to produce Superman (mixing her superheroes up a little, but we’ll forgive her) if they are to appear electable, and I tend to agree. Whatever Her Majesty’s Opposition pulls out of the bag, it had better be stunning.

Grayling, IDS, Miller to be tried for crimes against humanity?

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Atos, austerity, benefit, benefits, Chris Grayling, Coalition, Conservative, corporate manslaughter, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, government, hate crime, Hillsborough, Iain Duncan Smith, ICC, IDS, Incapacity Benefit, International Criminal Court, Maria Miller, means test, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, Samuel Miller, suicide, The Hague, Tories, Tory, UNCRPD, United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Vox Political, WCA, work capability assessment

It might seem ridiculous but the DWP and Atos are guilty of the behaviour described in this image – and much worse – leading to loss of income and stress that, for some, has been intolerable. Thousands of deaths have been recorded.

It may seem like fantasy but the International Criminal Court has been asked to consider whether to take legal action against ministers in the UK government whose enforcement of austerity measures has led to the deaths of sick and disabled people.

Disability specialist Samuel Miller has written to the office of the prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague, intending to file a complaint against the ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions who are considered most responsible for the “draconian welfare reforms and the resultant deaths of their society’s most vulnerable” – Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and Maria Miller.

He believes there is precedent for such a case, thanks to a request for a Greek austerity trial at the Hague.

But the matter is not cut and dried. Mr Miller’s letter seeks clarification on whether austerity deaths of the sick and disabled in the UK are considered a crime against humanity by the ICC and whether the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities would be taken into consideration by the court.

Mr Miller has spent the past year reporting on the crisis for the UK’s sick and disabled to the United Nations. His own verdict is clear as crystal: “Austerity measures consisting of draconian welfare reforms and ‘sham’ means-testing (Atos Healthcare UK and the Department for Work and Pensions) are ostensibly to blame for their plight – with disability hate crime and inflammatory media attacks factored into this mix.”

My own opinion is that Mr Miller is right. At the very least, IDS and his cronies are guilty of corporate manslaughter (see previous blog posts on disability, Atos, the DWP and the many, many deaths).

Will the International Criminal Court see it this way? We’ll have to wait and see.

To be honest, I doubt that this campaign will score a victory at its first attempt.

But the recent verdict on the Hillsborough tragedy has shown that people are prepared to work hard and wait a long time for justice.

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I find it very unsettling that the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition has not committed himself to supporting the campaign against what Sonia Poulton rightly describes here as “a dangerous and costly exercise”. I can only urge those reading this to contact him yourself, expressing your support for the views laid out here. Make it clear that the policy is wrong; it was bad when Labour introduced the WCA and it is much, much worse now.

The REAL reason Cameron won’t sack Mitchell

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Andrew Mitchell, borough council, Britannia Unchained, chief whip, Chris Corbett, Chris Skidmore, Coalition, compassionate conservatism, Conservative, constable, David Stephenson, Derebyshire, Dominic Raab, Elizabeth Truss, Erewash, Fiona Bone, Free Enterprise Group, government, idlers, Jason Farrar, Jessica Lee MP, Kwasi Kwarteng, laziness, lie-in, Mark Twain, Nicola Hughes, PC, pleb, police, Priti Patel, sergeant, Tameside, Tories, Tory

Derbyshire Tory David Stephenson and the Conservative Party’s Parliamentary chief whip Andrew Mitchell have done us all a great favour by demonstrating what their political party really thinks of the rest of us.

“If you get 100 points for shooting one policewoman and 200 points for shooting two policewomen, how many do you get for shooting a lawyer?”

With these words, Derbyshire Conservative councillor David Stephenson signed his political career’s death warrant.

It was clear that he was referring to the deaths of PCs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone in Tameside, and for Stephenson it was a sick joke too far.

But he would have got away with it if it had not been heard by the wife of serving police sergeant Jason Farrar, who telephoned the councillor to complain and was told to “go away, you silly man”.

In response, the officer contacted Derbyshire police federation, MP Jessica Lee and Erewash Borough Council leader Chris Corbett, who immediately removed Stephenson from the council executive and from the list of approved Conservative candidates, so he will not be allowed to stand for re-election as a Conservative.

That’s a bit different from what happened with Andrew Mitchell, isn’t it?

But just take a look at the Conservative Party’s record, and you’ll see that Stephenson is the exception that proves the rule.

We all know about Mitchell’s comments now – in fact, thanks to some of our renowned national newspapers, we can all read the police officer’s report. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he told the constable to “learn your place” and called him a “pleb”.

But he was only continuing a tradition of insulting the common citizenry of this nation that has been alive and well throughout this Parliament.

Only last month we heard about the new book Britannia Unchained, by right-wingers Priti Patel, Elizabeth Truss, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, and Kwasi Kwarteng, all members of the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs. In it, they argue that British workers are “among the worst idlers in the world”, that the UK “rewards laziness” and “too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work”. Britannia Unchained? It seems more likely that they want to chain us to our work-stations!

And what about Philip Davies, the Tory MP who said the disabled should be “allowed” to work for half the minimum wage?

Compassionate Conservatism!

Too many voters were misled by that lie in the run-up to the 2010 election, but then, it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled (according to Mark Twain). It’s time for us all to admit that there’s no such thing as compassionate Conservatism.

We all need to accept that Mr Mitchell’s remarks to the Downing Street policeman are representative of the way the majority of Conservatives see the British population.

David Cameron cannot sack Andrew Mitchell because, if he does, he’ll have to sack half his party membership.

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I seem to recall that people with terminal cancer, who took the Coalition/Atos work capability assessment, were told they were fit for work. I’m wondering if this sale of cancer research to the private sector is an attempt to justify those decisions retrospectively. Sort of: “We’ll get our buddies in private enterprise to rubber-stamp it and then we’ll be off the hook!” Of course, Interserve is likely to make millions out of this as cancer affects one in three of us. Perhaps it’s time to look up the list of MPs’ interests and find out who has shares?

Pride's Purge

(Not satire – unfortunately)

(UPDATE – another private company ISS, not INTERSERVE are running the ICR services. My mistake.)

In yet more privatisation of the NHS, three more NHS Trusts have just handed their services over to a private company – Interserve.

I’m not sure anyone’s noticed, or is even all that interested, but another private company ISS has also taken over the running of the Royal Marsden NHS Trust which specialises in cancer care – and included in the deal was the world renowned UK Institute of Cancer Research.

The ICR is (was?) one of the world’s most influential cancer research institutes and has (had?) charitable status. It is (was?) listed as one of the top four cancer centres in the world. It operates (operated?) as a charitable status and in its mission statement it states (stated?) that its research is for public benefit not private…

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