Vox Political’s top 12 of 2013

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allowance, assessment, Atos, austerity, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, David Cameron, Democrat, Department, economy, employment, fit for work, government, human rights, Iain Duncan Smith, Labour, Lib Dem, Liberal, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Nelson Mandela, Pensions, people, police, politics, repression, social security, state, support, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare, work, work capability

Government repression of the people, plans to give corporations the power to overrule national laws, the end of legal protection of our human rights and the continuing horror story that is the Coalition government’s idea of a benefit system were among your top priorities in 2013.

It would have been easy to write a ‘review of the year’ highlighting what I think were the main issues of the year, but this may not have been representative of the feelings of readers.

Instead – borrowing an idea from Pride’s Purge – let’s look back at the articles you, the reader, found most interesting. These are the subjects that we should all watch carefully as the new year progresses and we move ever-closer to the general election of 2015.

While we can see Conservative and Liberal Democrat policies reflected in these stories, let’s also ask what Labour would do. What are the policies of the Opposition on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? Would the current Labour leadership reverse party policy of the last 100 years and move to restrict our legal freedoms (as suggested by the disastrous decision to support Iain Duncan Smith’s repressive retroactive law on Workfare in March)?

And what about the other parties – the Greens, UKIP, and the new pretenders that have sprung up in protest at the excesses of a government that was never elected by the British people but has set about changing the face of Britain in such a massive way that the UK of 2015 will hardly be recognisable as the same country that went to the polls in 2010? Are they a serious political force, a vote-splitting annoyance that could allow the Tories back into power, or an expression of the nation’s conscience?

Take a look back – and then take a look forward.

1. Sleepwalking further into Police State Britain as law offers new powers of repression (November 11)

2. Death of a great man marred by the hypocrisy of a weasel (December 6)

3. Iain Duncan Smith has committed contempt of Parliament and should be expelled (May 10)

4. Back to the Dark Ages as the Tories plan to scrap your Human Rights (March 10)

5. Judges find DWP ‘fitness for work’ test breaches the Equality Act and is illegal (May 22)

6. UK police state moves a step closer (to your door) (February 11)

7. Austerity programme proved to be ‘nonsense’ based on a spreadsheet mistake (April 19)

8. Is Labour planning to betray its core supporters by siding with Iain Duncan Smith? (March 16)

9. The biggest threat to democracy since World War II – and they tried to keep it secret (December 4)

10. Are you going to let David Cameron abolish your rights without a fight? (June 10)

11. MPs tell their own Atos horror stories (January 18)

12. Skeletons in ministers’ closets (or indeed bedrooms) come back to haunt them (May 6)

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Thatcher disdained sanctions. Why do her heirs love them so much?

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beg, benefit, benefits, Botha, Church Action on Poverty, claim, Coalition, Conservative, David Cameron, Department, despair, destitute, destitution, DWP, esther mcvey, government, Iain Duncan Smith, Job Centre Plus, Jobseeker's Allowance, lender, Liam Purcell, loan shark, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Nelson Mandela, payday, Pensions, people, politics, sanction, social security, South Africa, steal, Thatcher, Tories, Tory, unemploy, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, work

Vox‘s article on Nelson Mandela stirred up a huge amount of comment. As you might expect, much was complimentary; some was not.

One of the critics sought to alter the stated opinion of David Cameron and his Conservatives by pointing to a letter from Margaret Thatcher to then-South African President PW Botha in 1985, seeking Mr Mandela’s release from prison. This part of the letter didn’t sway yr (dis-)obdt srvt, as the suggestion seemed to be made as part of advice on how Mr Botha could gain political advantage from the situation, rather than from any genuine moral standpoint.

The letter did feature comments that are of considerable interest and relevance at this time – relating to sanctions. Mrs Thatcher wrote: “The Commonwealth meeting opened with forty-five countries seeking extensive trade and economic sanctions against South Africa… My rebuttal of the case… rested on two main premises: that sanctions do not work, indeed are likely to be counter-productive and damaging to those they are intended to help: and that it was inappropriate to take punitive action against South Africa at the very moment when you are taking steps to get rid of apartheid and to make necessary changes in the system of government in South Africa.”

Let’s take these comments back home and apply them to people who are unemployed in the UK today.

The Department for Work and Pensions, under Iain Duncan Smith, imposed a tough new regime of sanctions against Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants in November last year.

Now, sanctions can be imposed for a month if a claimant is judged to be not actively seeking a job or being available for work. Subsequent misbehaviour along these lines would mean a 13-week period without benefit. The claimant must then reapply for benefit in both instances.

Benefit may also be lost for 13 weeks if a jobseeker fails to attend an interview with a Job Centre advisor, although it restarts automatically at the end of this period.

The highest sanction withdraws JSA for 13 weeks if a person leaves their job voluntarily, rising to six months for a second “failure” and three YEARS for a third.

In the eight months between the application of the new rules and June this year, nearly 600,000 JSA claimants were sanctioned. Employment Minister Esther McVey claimed that this affected only a small proportion of jobseekers – “The vast, vast majority of people don’t get sanctions” – but when you compare the actual number of sanctions (553,000) with the number of people on JSA (1,480,000) it becomes clear that this is not true.

In September 2012, 1,570,000 people were on JSA. The government has been claiming that the figure has dropped because people are getting jobs but from these figures it seems far more likely that they have had their money stopped instead.

Ms McVey also said: “The people who get sanctions are wilfully rejecting support for no good reason.” Let’s have a look at that with the help of this website. All the sanctions it describes were really imposed on real jobseekers by Job Centre Plus employees, and these are just some of them:

“You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply for three jobs each week.”

“You have a job interview which overruns so you arrive at your job centre appointment 9 minutes late. You get sanctioned for a month.”

“Your job centre advisor suggests a job. When you go online to apply it says the job has “expired” so you don’t apply. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks.”

“You are on a workfare placement and your job centre appointment comes round. The job centre tells you to sign on then go to your placement – which you do. The placement reports you for being late and you get sanctioned for 3 months.”

The victims of these sanctions were clearly people who were trying to take steps to rid themselves of their unemployed status and get a job – but they were sanctioned by our Conservative-led government under a policy created by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. Draw a parallel with what Mrs Thatcher was saying about South Africa and it is clear that she would call that “inappropriate”.

But do they work? No.

According to Liam Purcell, writing in the Church Action on Poverty blog: “Where there are few jobs available, as in the North West of England, taking money away from people is hardly going to help them find jobs.

“Many of the unemployed despair of getting help and meaningful training. For most people who are sanctioned, it does nothing to help them acquire skills that would help them compete in the labour market.

“Having to apply online for dozens of inconvenient, unsuitable jobs for which they are poorly qualified, and which they may be physically or mentally incapable of holding down, is hardly a profitable use of time… Yet failure to comply can mean an end to even the minimum income produced by benefits.”

And the result? “Destitution, which follows, merely helps the poorest to learn how to survive by ducking and diving, by applying to charity, by falling into the clutches of payday lenders and loan sharks, by begging and sometimes stealing. Increasingly we come across people who find the whole process of claiming out-of-work benefits so demeaning and stressful that they just can’t be bothered to apply, and conveniently disappear from the official register of the unemployed.”

And conveniently disappear from the official register of the unemployed.

For those the system was originally “intended to help”, as Mrs Thatcher put it, her letter of 1985 was absolutely right: “Sanctions do not work [and] are likely to be counter-productive and damaging.”

But for a government that is desperately trying to claim that its policy on jobs is succeeding, sanctions that “conveniently disappear” people work very nicely indeed.

 

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Death of a great man marred by the hypocrisy of a weasel

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Hypocrite: We can’t prove Cameron was behind the ‘Hang Mandela’ campaign of the 1980s, but we do know he opposed Mandela’s politics and supported apartheid in South Africa. He did not think Mandela was a “great light” or a “hero” – he’s just saying what he thinks you want to hear.

I hope everyone in the UK is as saddened by the death of Nelson Mandela as they are disgusted by David Cameron’s two-faced tribute.

According to Wikipedia, Mr Mandela rose to prominence in the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961 in association with the South African Communist Party, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife.

After his release, he served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation.

While he was in prison, David Cameron was involved in some extremely shady anti-Mandela activities.

According to a statement that was put out across the social media in the summer, “When he [Mr Mandela] does die, and David Cameron jumps on the Mandela bandwagon, remember that in 1985 he was a top member of the Federation of Conservative Students, which produced the “Hang Mandela” posters.

“In 1989, Cameron worked in the Tory Policy Unit at Central Office and went on an anti-sanctions fact-finding mission to South Africa with a pro-apartheid lobby firm sponsored by PW Botha. Remember this when he tells the world he was inspired by Mandela.”

Cameron’s membership of the Federation of Conservative Students is questionable, as is his participation in the “Hang Mandela” campaign. His participation in the fact-finding mission is well-documented, though.

As for his party – well, let’s look at the words of Conservative talisman Margaret Thatcher: “The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation.” Tories revere the Blue Baroness; if that was her opinion, no doubt it belonged to many of them as well.

If you still need to be convinced, see the following:

“Nelson Mandela should be shot.” – Tory MP Teddy Taylor

“This hero worship is very much misplaced.”- Tory MP John Carlisle

“How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?” – Tory MP Terry Dicks

(All the above are taken from Tom Pride’s article on the subject earlier this year)

Conservatives hated Mandela; Cameron was a Conservative then and is Conservative leader now.

When you see him saying things like, “A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a hero of our time,” remember that.

What a two-faced, hypocritical slug.

 

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Stand up, you slaves!

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Babylon 5, benefits, Benjamin Franklin, Cait Reilly, Catherine Bennett, Chris Grayling, conditioned helplessness, Conservative, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, DWP, economy, Employment Minister, government, Human Rights Act, Jan Moir, Job Centre, Jobseeker's Allowance, Jobseekers, John Kennedy, Mahatma Ghandi, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Pen Room Museum, people, politics, Poundland, Sarajevo, students, Tesco, The Guardian, Thomas Aquinas

I’ve been accosted by several people in the 24 hours or so since I wrote ‘No forced labour please, we’re British’ – all of them determined to make me believe that any stand against government injustice is doomed to failure and I shouldn’t try to support it.

What a bunch of craven cowards.

If these people had their way, everyone in the UK would be a slave. If the religion they preach was true, all of our ancestors would have been slaves as well – to the biggest bullies with the nastiest weapons, all the way back down through time.

None of the great changes, emancipations, freedoms that were ever gained in history would have taken place.

Well, I’m here to tell you that we are not slaves; those changes did take place, and they happened because people like you and I made them happen.

The writer J Michael Straczynski, creator of the cult SF TV show Babylon 5, put it very well a few years ago, so I’ll hand the rest of this article over to him:

“Let me tell you about a little psychological trick called conditioned helplessness.

“When our world and our choices are restricted over a sufficiently long period of time, we come to believe that we cannot snap our bonds, cannot choose anything other than what we have, even though those bonds are often as sheer as gossamer.

“And it’s when we are in that state of conditioned helplessness that we are truly at our most dangerous, to ourselves as we fall into despair or poor decisions, and to others when the weight of the perceived chain becomes too much, and like enraged elephants we go mad… and make those around us pay the price for our confinement.

“It is in the vested interests of any society, any form of government, any hierarchical system to make you believe that you have no power, that you have no choices, that you cannot fight City Hall or Parliament or the Party or the Committee. We are told to play nice, to behave, to get along, that the human being singular can’t really change anything, can’t affect anything. Leave it to the rest, to the authorities, to those qualified to deal with the problem. They want you to go to sleep, to believe that there is nothing you can do.

“They are, of course, quite wrong. And when they tell you you cannot do anything, that you do not have a choice, they are lying to you. Nothing more, nothing less.

“History was changed by one assassin in Sarajevo, whose bullet set off a chain reaction that led to World War I and by default to World War II and much of the Cold War history thereafter.

“One man with a bullet can change the world. We’ve seen it. We know it’s true.

“How much more can one man or one woman with one idea change the world? Ask Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, John Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Aquinas.

“And while you’re at it… ask yourself.”

JMS is appealing to us to see “hope, and optimism, and our capacity to build a better world if we are willing to fight for the future, to seize it for ourselves and make of it what we want, because if we don’t then someone else will make it for us, and it may not be the best possible future, or the one we most desire. It is about the nobler aspects of our humanity, those elements which call us together in a common cause, not the differences that pull us apart… In the final analysis, whatever we may have been taught to the contrary, we are more alike than we are different.”

There is something we can do. And we should praise those who do it.

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