Atos ‘death threats’ claim – ‘outrageous’ insult to those its regime has killed

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“If this isn’t intimidation, I don’t know what is – it’s a very clear message to anyone: How dare you protest against us and, if you do, we’ll find you fit for work!” Anti-Atos protester Joanne Jemmett with the sign left by Atos workers outside the assessment centre in Weston-Super-Mare on Wednesday (“Fit enough to protest – fit enough to work!”) at the start of this short film documenting the demonstration there.

Watching the stories stack up in the wake of the national day of protest against Atos last Wednesday has been very interesting.

The immediate response was that Atos has approached the government, seeking an early end to its contract. This deal, under which Atos administers the hated Work Capability Assessments to people on incapacity or disability benefits, would have been worth more than £1 billion to the company over a 10-year period.

Allegedly, company employees have been receiving death threats, both during and after the protests. We’ll come back to those shortly.

The Conservative-led Coalition took this development in the way we have come to expect – spitefully. A DWP spokesperson said that the company’s service had declined to an unacceptable level, and that the government was already seeking tenders from other firms for the contract.

This is what happens when bullies squabble.

Atos is the big bully that has just had a shock because the other kids in the playground stood up to it and made it clear they weren’t going to stand for its nonsense any more. We’re told that all bullies are cowards and it appears to be true in this case – Atos went running to the bigger bully (the government) and said it was scared. The government then did what bigger bullies do; it said Atos was rubbish anyway and set about finding someone else to do its dirty work.

Here’s the sticking-point, though – as the BBC identified in its article: “The government was furious with Atos for leaking information it believes to be commercially confidential… If Atos wants to pull out early, some other companies may pay less to take those contracts on than they otherwise would.”

I should clarify that companies don’t actually pay for contracts; they offer to carry out the work at the lowest prices they think are viable, in competition with other firms. The government chooses the company it feels is best-suited to the work. In this situation, it seems likely that the possibility of death threats may put some firms off even applying.

So let’s come back to those threats. A spokesperson for the organisers of Wednesday’s demonstration tells us that pickets took place outside 93 Atos centres, across the UK. Most of these were very small – averaging 30 people or less (I can confirm that in Newtown, Powys, a maximum of 15 people attended at any one time). Brighton and London were bigger, but 12 demos had only one person present.

“That is really funny because, as you have seen, Atos are saying they had to close down all their centres for the day – up and down the country – because of huge hoards of scary, threatening disabled people issuing death threats,” the spokesperson said.

“All demos were peaceful and no trouble or arrests were reported.”

In the spokesperson’s opinion: “Atos have been planning to step down for a long time because they weren’t making enough profit and just used our tiny little demos as an excuse.”

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and sister group Black Triangle issued a joint statement: “The bizarre exit strategy Atos have developed in identifying apparent physical threats on Facebook despite the growing lists of real deaths caused by the WCA regime is an outrageous insult to all those who have died and all those who have lost family members through this regime.

“It is an insult to those left without their homes, without money and needing to go to food banks.

“It is an insult to every person who has suffered worsening physical and mental health through this inhuman regime.”

The statement also poured water on any government claim that other companies had been put off bidding for the contract:”The alphabet corporations – G4S, A4E, SERCO, CAPITA – are already lining up to take over the multi-million profits and the mantle of the new Grim Reapers. The misery imposed by this Government and the DWP will continue as long as its heinous policies continue.”

I would strongly urge all readers to put their support behind the remainder of the statement, which asserted: “The Work Capability Assessment must also end.

“The reign of terror by this unelected Coalition Government which has awarded itself pay rises and cut taxes for those earning more than £150,000 while piling punishment, poverty, misery and premature death on everyone else in its policies of rich against poor must end.

“Make no mistake – we will continue to demonstrate against ATOS, now delivering the complete failure of PIP in which claims are being delayed by up to a year.

“We will demonstrate against any other company that takes over the WCA contract.

“We will continue to demand the immediate removal of the WCA, and the removal of this Government.”

Hear, hear.

In my article on the Bedroom Tax evictions taking place in my home town (yesterday) I made it clear that too few people are bothering to pay attention to the evils of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government. That article received a huge response, garnering almost four times the readership of other recent posts within just 24 hours.

The situation described in this article is much worse – people aren’t being evicted from their homes; they are being forced off of the benefits that have kept them alive, pushed – by the government! – towards destitution, despair and death through either suicide or a failure of their health that their Atos assessment results deny should ever take place.

Today’s article should have more readers, after the success of yesterday’s – but we’ll have to see, shan’t we? If fewer people read it, we’ll know that they all just looked up for a moment, thought, “Oh, that’s interesting,” and went back to whatever distraction keeps them happy in the face of impending government-sponsored pain.

Any attempt to inform the public will fail if the public stops paying attention.

Let’s keep it focused where it belongs.

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Has the Coalition set Labour an impossible task – to rescue politics from corruption?

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all in it together, andy burnham, asset, banker, BBC, benefit, broken, business, cheat, children, Coalition, company, confidence, Conservative, corrupt, corruption, crisis, cuts, David Cameron, debt, Democrat, Department, disabled, draconian, DWP, economy, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, elderly, eugenics, fail, firm, fraud, George Osborne, immigration, incompetent, kill, Labour, liar, Liberal, mark hoban, message, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, nose, Opposition, Paul O'Grady, Pensions, plastic tories, policy, politics, poor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, private, promise, public service, sick, slave, social security, strip, tax break, Tories, Tory, trough, untrustworthy, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Not a good egg: Ed Miliband was hit by an egg on his first campaign visit after returning from holiday abroad. The thrower, Dean Porter, said: “They do nothing. The government do nothing. The shadow government do nothing. I don’t believe him at all. If you are poor, you are considered a burden.”

Yesterday’s article, DWP denials: They would kill you and call it ‘help’ received an unprecedented reaction – considering it was only intended to prepare the way for a larger discussion.

In less than 12 hours the article went viral and galvanised many of you into vocal support, sharing your stories of government (and particularly DWP) ill-treatment and urging others to follow this blog – for which much gratitude is in order. Thanks to all concerned.

The aim was to show how low politics and politicians have fallen in public estimation. The general consensus is that our politicians aren’t interested in us. They make promise after promise before elections – and the party (or parties) in office often set up tax breaks for sections of society their focus groups have told them are needed to secure a win. After they’ve got what they want, they don’t give a damn.

Look at the Coalition. The consensus is that this is a failed government. That it has broken one promise after another. That its ministers are liars and its Prime Minister is the worst charlatan of the lot.

That its rallying-call, “We’re all in it together”, refers only to Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament and their close friends in the most lucrative (and therefore richest) industries, along with the bankers (of course), and that they have all dug their noses deep into the trough and are (to mix metaphors) sucking us dry. Look at the way Mark Hoban employed his former employers to rubber-stamp the DWP’s new plans for the Work Capability Assessment.

In short: That the Coalition government is the most incompetent and corrupt administration to blight the United Kingdom in living memory, and possibly the worst that this land has ever endured.

We fear that these tin-pot tyrants are carrying out a eugenics programme to kill off people who have become sick or disabled; we fear that their economic policies are designed to put anyone less than upper-middle-class into the kind of debt that current wages will never permit them to pay off – a debt that can then be sold between fat-cat corporations who will hold the masses in actual – if not admitted – slavery; that they will dismantle this country’s institutions, handing over everything that is worth anything to their buddies in business, who will make us pay through the nose for services that our taxes ought to cover.

And yet a recent poll suggests that we would prefer this corrupt gang of asset-stripping bandits to run the economy of the country (into the ground) rather than give Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour Party, an opportunity to restore the country’s fortunes.

Are we all going schizoid? Are we really saying that, while we don’t believe the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats could organise a binge in a brewery without stealing the booze from us while we’re drinking it, we do believe them when they say the current economic nightmare was because Labour mismanaged the economy?

(In case anyone hasn’t really thought it through, the current lie is that the international credit crunch that has cost the world trillions of pounds was caused, not by bankers (who have never been punished for it) but by the UK Labour Party giving too much money away to scrounging benefit cheats. In fact, only 0.7 per cent of benefit claims are fraudulent and, while they cost the taxpayer £1.2 billion a year, that does not justify the £19 billion the Coalition has given to its private, for-profit friends to make a pretence of dealing with it.)

Are we really saying that even though we all now know that George Osborne’s economic policy is nonsense, based on a theory that has been comprehensively rubbished, we’re all happy to give him and his miserable boss David Cameron the credit for the slight improvement in the UK’s economic fortunes that we have seen in recent months? It was always going to improve at some point, and the current upturn is more likely to be part of that kind of cycle than anything Osborne has done.

If we really are saying that, then we all need to put in claims for Employment and Support Allowance, on grounds of mental instability!

That’s not what’s going on, though.

It seems far more likely that the general public is having a crisis of confidence. As a nation, we know what we’ve got is bad; we just don’t have confidence that we’ll get better if we put our support behind the Opposition.

This is the Coalition’s one great success: It has damaged the reputation of politics and politicians so badly that nobody involved in that occupation can escape being labelled as corrupt, or liars, or worse.

And Labour is doing far too little to fight that.

A BBC article on the problems facing Labour states that the Coalition has sharpened up its messages on, among other things, welfare and immigration. The message is still the usual hogwash; the problem is that Labour has made no meaningful response. Her Majesty’s Opposition appears to have given up Opposing.

Is this because the main political parties are now so similar that Labour is now supporting Coalition policies? That would make sense in the context of statements made before the summer recess by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, in which Labour appeared to capitulate over welfare and the economy, even though the Coalition had lost all the major arguments.

When they did that damned stupid thing in that damned stupid way, Vox Political was the first to say “watch their poll lead disappear” – and it has more than halved from 11 percentage points to five, according to The Guardian.

This lackadaisical attitude from the Labour leadership has not gone unnoticed among the backbenchers and the grass roots, and the last few weeks has been notable for the rising chorus of dissent against Ed Miliband’s leadership. Some have described the Labour front bench as “Plastic Tories”.

Even Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham took a pop, saying Labour needed to “shout louder” and produce attention-grabbing policies by next spring – or lose any chance of winning the 2015 election.

Miliband’s response to that was to claim that Burnham was really saying the Labour Party was “setting out how we would change the country”. This is nonsense. He was saying that was what Labour needed to do, and Miliband rendered himself untrustworthy by suggesting otherwise.

It is very hard to put your support – and your vote – behind somebody you don’t trust, who seems completely unable (or unwilling) to fight your oppressor on your behalf; in short, someone who seems just as corrupt as the government in power. At the moment, Ed Miliband doesn’t stand for anything – so there’s no reason you should stand up for him.

What, then, should Labour do?

Easy. The party needs a clear, simple message that everybody can understand and get behind; one that members can support because it reflects Labour beliefs rather than whatever Coalition policy currently seems popular, and above all, one that comes from verifiable truth.

He could take a leaf from Paul O’Grady’s book. In a clip on YouTube, the entertainer says: “We should be vocal in our fight against oppression. We should let them know that we are not taking these draconian cuts lightly!

“We should fight for the rights of the elderly! Of the poor! Of the sick! And of the children!”

Rapturous applause.

Labour needs more than that – but a commitment to protect those who have been most harmed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat doomsday spree would at least be a start.

Gauke’s attack should be a rallying cry for Labour

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Another fool who doesn’t think before speaking: David Gauke, pictured here with jaws clamped shut in a desperate attempt to prevent his foot from leaping into his mouth. It would serve him right if his ill-judged attack on a Labour MP brings the entire party and all its supporters together for a concerted attack on the Conservative-led coalition’s silly and baseless policies.

Tory Treasury tax-avoidance fan and whistleblower-basher David Gauke’s attack on the Labour Party is yet another shot in the foot for the Government That Can Do Nothing Right.

His ill-judged, ill-timed remark that Labour MPs were “turning on each other” is more likely to galvanise Her Majesty’s Opposition into more co-ordinated and powerful attacks on Coalition ideology and incompetence – especially after we learned the Tory claim that they inherited an economic mess from the last Labour government was nothing more than a blatant lie.

“They don’t really have anything to say and they’re now turning on each other and I think their own backbenchers are beginning to realise that the Labour leadership haven’t really got a voice,” Gauke told the BBC in response to a piece by Labour’s Swansea West MP, Geraint Davies, in The Independent.

In doing so, it seems Gauke was trying to distract attention from what Mr Davies was actually saying – which is worth repeating here, because it is likely he speaks for a huge majority of Labour members who are becoming increasingly frustrated by the contradictory and self-defeating behaviour of their leaders.

So what does Mr Davies say?

First: “The electorate doesn’t yet see a clear choice between the parties on cuts vs growth.” This is because Labour has promised not to reverse Conservative-led ideological cuts and to keep spending at Tory-set levels for 2015-16, if returned to office at the general election – even though the Conservatives have decisively lost the argument on austerity. It simply isn’t necessary.

Second: “The Tories have been relentless in asserting that Labour messed up the economy. Not rebutting this charge makes us look like a shamefaced schoolboy admitting responsibility by omission.” Mr Davies makes a second good point here – more so because, as William Keegan reported in Sunday’s Observer, the spring issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy exonerates the last Labour government of any economic wrong-doing. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling did the right thing – and it is worth reminding everybody that the Conservatives, at the time, supported their actions. That was when the Tories were led by – who’d have thought it? – David Cameron and George Osborne, just as they are now!

The Observer article went on to note that US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has also endorsed the Labour government’s actions in his recognition that demand in our economies must be stimulated. Conservative-led Coalition policy has drained demand away. This is why the smart commentators are pointing out that the unforeseen upturn in the UK economy in recent months has nothing to do with government policy; it’s just that things had to get better, sooner or later.

Third: He puts up his opinion – that a Labour government should boost the UK’s productive capacity “by linking industry, universities and councils. We need a sharper focus on the growing export opportunities to China, India, Brazil and Russia. We must invest in homes and transport, use public procurement as an engine to grow small and medium-sized firms…. We need to continue a journey towards jobs and growth, not to be diverted into a cul-de-sac of more cuts.”

The last comment dovetails perfectly with the attack launched by Labour this week on the Coalition’s record – which claims the average worker will have lost £6,600 in real terms between the 2010 election and that due to take place in 2015.

Paraphrasing former Tory PM Harold Macmillan, Labour said many workers had “never had it so bad”, pointing out that David Cameron has presided over a more sustained period of falling real wages since 2010 than any other prime minister in the past 50 years.

The Tories’ only response has been to repeat the lie that the Coalition was clearing up a “mess” that we all now know for certain Labour neither created nor left.

Conservative business minister Matthew Hancock was the one voicing it this time, so voters in his West Suffolk constituency please note: This man is a liar. You must not trust him.

And of course David Gauke weighed in as well. He’s the minister in charge of tax – who was revealed to have worked for a firm specialising in tax avoidance. Do you trust him? He’s also the minister who reportedly green-lit a plan to discredit Osita Mba, a solicitor with HM Revenue and Customs, after he blew the whistle on the notorious Goldman Sachs “sweetheart” deal that wrote off millions of pounds in interest charges on tax owed to the UK Treasury by the multinational corporation. A trustworthy man?

David Gauke is the MP for South West Hertfordshire. Voters there may wish to reconsider their opinion of him.

What these chuckleheads are missing is the fact that Mr Davies is not a lone voice in the wilderness; his article expressed the opinions of a wide majority of Labour members and voters.

And it cannot be coincidence that only a day after his Observer article appeared, veteran Labour MP Michael Meacher weighed in on his blog with a few opinions of his own about what Labour’s leaders should be saying.

“Will the Labour party declare it is opposed to zero hours contracts and will end them?” he wrote (perhaps after reading the Vox Political article on that subject).

“Will it show it is opposed to blacklisting by making it an imprisonable offence, prosecuting the 44 companies who indulged in it if convicted, and making it sure that all the 3,213 building workers secretly subject to blacklisting are informed of the cause of their up to 20 years’ joblessness and fully compensated? Will it say loud and clear that a decade of pay cuts for those on the lowest incomes is flagrantly unjust when the 0.01 per cent richest have not only not paid any price, but have seen their wealth continue to grow untouched?”

This is the sort of fire Labour members and voters want to see from the leaders. There is nothing to fear from tissue paper-thin Tory arguments and outright lies. It is time to stand up for Labour principles, damn the Tories for their evil, damn the Liberal Democrats as fools and dupes, and set out a plan to get the ship of state off the rocks and into calmer waters.

If Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, and the rest of the Labour front bench have any sense, they’ll realise that continuing with the course they have set will put them in a tiny minority that cannot possibly hope to win the next election. Alignment with Geraint Davies, Michael Meacher and the millions like them should ensure an overwhelming victory.

It isn’t even a choice, is it?

Osborne’s cuckooland claims could leave a terrifying legacy

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austerity, Balls, borrowing, contraction, cuts, debt, deficit, economy, Ed, education, fuel, George, Gideon, infrastructure, investment, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Miliband, Osborne, payment, pensioner, rail, recovery, road, science, UK, Vox Political, winter

‘Jeffrey’ Osborne sings for his supper at some CBI dinner.

Try not to choke on your coffee: George Osborne reckons the British economy is “out of intensive care”.

Now, he says, the task is to “secure the recovery”.

He’s starting on Wednesday with cuts totalling £11.5 billion which, once fiscal multipliers are taken into account, means a contraction of around £20 billion in the national economy.

Securing the recovery. Good luck with that, Gideon.

The good news is that he is expected to announce investment in infrastructure projects, including roads, railways, education and science. He has realised – probably too late – that cutting all those infrastructure projects at the start of this Parliament was economic suicide and is trying to do something about it before everyone realises he’s an idiot. He is, of course, much too late for that but the investment – if it goes to well-advised places – might just do some good.

Don’t bank on it, though.

Osborne’s claims about the economy are based on statements that government borrowing has come down and employment is up – but we know that the first isn’t true and the second is not helping. In other words, he’s built his castle in the sand.

Government borrowing rose by £300 million in 2012-13, from £118.5 billion to £118.8 billion, according to the Office for National Statistics. That’s not a huge amount, you may think, but remember this government reckons it has cut borrowing by a third since taking power. That would put borrowing at around £100 billion right now, which is clearly inaccurate.

The debt is now £1.9 trillion, up from 1.1 trillion a year ago – 75.2 per cent of GDP, up from 71.1 per cent.

We all know what the problem is: Austerity – the self-perpetuating (and self-defeating) policy that will eventually bankrupt us all (but not the country. Because we have our own currency, the UK is unlikely ever to go bankrupt. You see, when the Tories told you that, they were lying).

The worst of it is that the other main political parties have signed up to the delusion that all these cuts might actually do some good.

Ed Miliband has ruled out more borrowing. That in itself is not a bad idea. But Ed Balls has admitted that he would follow Tory spending plans, at least for the first year of a Labour government, and there’s a consensus that pensioners will probably be the next defenceless social group to be hit with cuts – this time to benefits such as winter fuel payments.

They are talking among themselves. It seems unlikely that any of them has bothered to look out of the window to find out the real effect of their idiot schemes.

And so the agony continues. Based on an economic fallacy, perpetuated on the masses, while the very rich continue raking it in.

The longer this goes on, the greater the danger to us all.

Benefits: how much information are the authorities holding back?

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benefit, Coalition, cuts, disability, disabled, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, Iain Duncan Smith, Incapacity Benefit, Job Centre Plus, Jobseeker's Allowance, recession, shrink, state, Work Placement, Work Programme, work-related activity group, Workfare

It might look like another boring benefit claim form to you, but to some people with disabilities and long-term health conditions, the sight of an ESA50 is enough to trigger anxiety, panic, or even heart attacks.

The British economy might be out of recession but the Coalition cuts regime marches ever onward – especially if you are claiming – or lucky enough to be receiving – the much-maligned Employment and Support Allowance.

(It was never about dealing with our economic difficulties, you see. It was always about shrinking the state and cutting the number of people dependent on it for their living – by one method or another).

The latest wheeze among Job Centre Plus staff appears to be the practice of missing out important information about your benefit such as, for example, the fact that being put in the work-related activity group of ESA claimants means you only receive the benefit for 365 days and during that period you should try to make yourself ready for work. After then, you will be put on Jobseekers’ Allowance and subjected to all the sanctions and requirements that entails – including, presumably, Workfare.

Can you imagine what would happen to someone with agoraphobia, who suffers from panic attacks, if they were put on a work placement scheme?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the authorities wouldn’t be ignorant enough to put anyone in a work placement that might be harmful to their health or to their attempts to recover from their condition. Well, if you’re on ESA, all I can say is good luck with that. I’ll be back in a year or so to ask how it worked out for you.

We all know of many cases in which people with disabilities or health problems have been put into situations that have worsened their conditions. The most famous examples were terminal – the people involved are now dead. I understand the average number of deaths per week is now 78. Iain Duncan Smith must be beside himself with joy.

But there are many others who, although they are being pushed to the limit by a system that has been twisted to make it as unhelpful as possible, are still persevering. I know of people who have been put on the work-related activity group of ESA, but weren’t told about the time limit and were left high and dry when the money ran out.

Are you on ESA? Are you in the work-related activity group? Do you know when your benefit will end?

At least that person was lucky enough to receive notification of what was happening to them. Another person, on heavy medication for painful conditions, did not realise they had been moved from Incapacity Benefit to ESA and was astonished to find they had taken and work capability assessment and failed it. The result? They were kicked off the benefit. Fortunately, they appealed and won. But the experience was extremely traumatic.

Make no mistake – this is a system that is designed to intimidate you; to weaken you; to push you into the sidelines in the hope that you’ll go away and be no more bother to those who run it.

“The Work Capability Assessment is being continually reviewed and refined, through a series of annual independent reviews, with improvements resulting in a fairer and more accurate system,” according to the Department for Work and Pensions.

That’s excluding where you live, apparently.

Will you stand up for a future that works?

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"A future that works", "Robin Hood", anti-austerity, anti-growth, austerity, avoidance, bank, borrowing, Coalition, cuts, debt, demonstration, economy, energy, evasion, government, green, housing, Hyde Park, industry, Justice, manufacturing, policy, rally, tax, transport, unemployment, wages, youth

Getting the message across: The PCS union managed to project it’s ‘Say no to austerity’ message onto the Palace of Westminster itself, home to the Houses of Parliament.

Anti-austerity campaigners from across the UK will be converging on London tomorrow for a mass demonstration against the Coalition government’s failed policy of cuts.

It is possible that hundreds of thousands of people will journey to the capital to march under the heading, “A Future That Works” – showing their opposition to the government’s pro-austerity, anti-growth policies. The march will end with a rally in Hyde Park.

If you’re wondering whether to go, or even whether the demonstration is justified, I would like to quote the following, from the organisers’ website:

“Austerity has failed – the economy has not grown for two years, unemployment and youth unemployment have risen, living standards have been squeezed and borrowing is not coming down.

“We need an alternative approach – one that puts decent work and growth at its heart and takes a long-term approach to rebuilding the British economy after the crash.

“We need to invest in new infrastructure in transport, energy and social affordable housing and to make fighting youth and long-term unemployment an absolute priority.

“We need to see rising wages so our economy has sustainable growth and isn’t based on household debt.

“We need to reform the banking system so it works for the real economy and an active industrial policy to support manufacturing and the green, low-carbon sectors of the future.

“We need tax justice with a clamp down on avoidance and evasion and a Robin Hood tax on the banks.

“We cannot afford to continue with austerity nor can we go back to business as unusual.

“We need policies to build a ‘new economy’ where the rewards from growth are more equally shared by those in the middle and at the bottom rather than just going to those at the top.

“Finally we need economic growth to be spread across the entire country rather than just being concentrated in a handful of sectors and parts of the UK.”

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!

Suicide rate is now the strongest indicator of unemployment

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Iain Duncan Smith has been crowing about the private sector after the official unemployment figure dropped from 8.2 to 8 per cent of the workforce.

He reckons we should take our hats off to private sector employers for providing the new work. Well he would, wouldn’t he?

His attitude conforms with the narrative the Tories have been trying to build since 2010, that the private sector would rush in to fill the jobs gap left behind after the Coalition cut the public sector to ribbons – providing decent, gainful employment for the masses.

That story went straight into the circular file when the economy flatlined, right after George Osborne took charge – and resurrecting it now seems a desperate act, especially in the light of the facts.

Firstly, the Olympics have distorted the figures. We don’t know how many employers took on extra hands in advance of the games, so we don’t know how many of those jobs will go again, now that the major event is over. We do know that businesses suffered losses during the games because an expected influx of consumers did not materialise; how will that affect future figures?

Second, the number of people working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job hit a record high of 1.42 million – the most since records began in 1992.

Third, the unemployment rate actually rose in around half of the British regions. This supports the claim that the Olympics distorted the figures, and points to a continuing downward trend.

Finally, if Mr Smith wants a more accurate monitor of unemployment, he should look at the suicide rate – according to a new report by the British Medical Journal.

It found that the suicide rate among men rose by 1.4 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in unemployment.   This means that between 2008-2010, 846 more men ended their life than would normally have been expected; the corresponding number for women was an extra 155 suicides.   On average, male unemployment rose by 25.6 per cent in each of those years, while the male suicide rate rose by 3.6 per cent each year. When male employment rates rose briefly in 2010, the suicide rate dropped slightly.

We already know that an average of 32 people per week are dying as a result of Mr Smith’s brutalities against the disabled; now we know that more than 1,000 have been driven to kill themselves because of the government’s unemployment policy.

Meanwhile, among those who do have jobs, we know that average wages now only last 21 days in the month, meaning that workers have to dip into their savings, ask family for funds, or go to loan sharks for help – increasing the national debt problem and creating a trend that could lead to even more suicides.

I notice Iain Duncan Smith, promoter of the private sector, hasn’t got anything to say about that.