One in the ear for Michael Gove

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education, Jess Green, Michael Gove, parent, poem, pupil, teacher

Here’s one for all beleaguered teachers across Britain – but it’s for their pupils as well.

I was pointed towards this by another blog (alittleecon – look it up). It was posted less than a week ago but has already won a huge following, including many teachers.

I’d like to ask for school pupils to take a look at it too. If you’ve ever spent time in class waiting for the bell to ring and wishing your teacher would stop bothering you because you just don’t care, listen to this and understand why.

If enough school-goers saw, and heard, and listened to this poem, it might completely change their attitude to teachers and teaching.

And if enough parents saw, and listened, and thought about what this poem says – about their own lives and the lives their children can expect thanks to the worst-ever British government, perhaps it might persuade them to think again before putting their cross next to the Conservative candidate at the next few elections.

It isn’t rocket science.

And to Jess Green, if you’re reading this, I’m looking forward to your next poem.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Why make a fuss over childcare subsidy for the very rich?

Tags

care, child, Coalition, Conservative, Democrat, government, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, parent, people, politics, subsidy, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, work

[Image: BBC]

If ever there was a government guilty of false advertising, it is the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition.

Yesterday the TV news was full of a childcare subsidy scheme that, we are told, is worth up to £2,000 per family.

The only problem: You have to be paying £10,000 or more to get the full amount as only 20 per cent of the care cost is refunded.

The subsidy is available to working parents – not only poor working parents who need the help, but to any couple whose aggregate earnings are anything up to £300,000 per year.

How many of your friends (who are parents) earn that much?

How many of them spend £10,000 a year on childcare? For most of the families I know, that amount would make it their greatest expense – around one-third of their total income.

The impression I get is that most people have been forced to come to their own arrangements with family or friends. This subsidy will not change that. It doesn’t provide enough.

Up to 1.9 million families with children under 12 may well benefit from this – but most of them will get pennies, not thousands of pounds.

The average amount available to each family from the £750 million fund is £400, but with some taking thousands, most will get much less.

The real beneficiaries will be the very rich; the highest earners who do not need any subsidy at all. But the scheme has been dressed up as a gift for everyone.

By May next year, most families will be more than £6,000 per year worse-off.

This is an attempt to distract you from that distressing fact.

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Why is Iain Duncan Smith now demonising step-parents?

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"outcome measures", 3SC, A4E, Atos, benefit, benefits, broken, Coalition, Conservative, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, families, family, government, Group, Iain Duncan Smith, Insidious Dole Snatcher, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, parent, Parliament, people, politics, Prevista, sanction, sick, single, Social Finance, step-parent, Tories, Tory, unemployed, unemployment, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work capability assessment, Work Programme

Together with the right-wing press, he has already persuaded the general public to turn on the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed. Now Iain Duncan Smith (or Insidious Dole-Snatcher, as he has been dubbed) is turning his sights onto so-called “broken” families.

Iain Duncan Smith is a strange, strange man. His latest speech is proof of this. In it, he tells us all why it is a bad thing for parents to break up with their partners and form new relationships.

Apparently it’s much better to stay locked into loveless marriages, creating myriad social and psychological problems for the children, than it is to accept that a relationship isn’t working and move on to something better.

The Crip-killer General turned his attention on so-called “broken” families last week, announcing a series of new “outcome measures” whose stated intention is to track whether his policies promote “lasting life change”.

(I think we can be sure that anyone who falls foul of Mr Smith’s odious standards will certainly endure “lasting life change” of some kind – like the average of 73 people per week who, during assessment for his Employment and Support Allowance, die. You can’t get a more lasting life change than death!)

The first of these new measures checks up on the proportion of children who live with the same parents from birth, and asks whether those parents have a good-quality relationship.

“We are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown,” he said.

Let’s consider the implications of what he’s saying. He wants to keep families together – that’s a good thing, right?

Not always. Notice he’s not suggesting that he’ll do anything real to help families with problems. He’ll just check whether they’re happy or not.

I know a thing or three about families that break up. I’m a stepfather myself (well, my stepson and stepdaughter consider me that way, even though their mother and I never married). I got into the relationship after the father had left; mother and children were not a very happy family at the time. There were arguments and upsets – a lot of dysfunctionality.

This changed after I joined them. It took a while, I admit, but things started to change for the better. Some long-term issues haven’t fully healed but for the most part, things turned out all right. Nobody in the family is a criminal. The children – who are both now adults – have held down jobs, although my stepson’s time in a local theatre was cut short when the government cut its funding. Thanks for nothing, Mr Smith!

What I’m saying is, family break-up does not lead, inevitably, to social problems and crime, and Mr Smith does the people of the UK a huge disservice by implying this.

In fact, he’s attacking step-parents, single parents – anyone who does not fit into his narrow-minded opinion of what constitutes a proper family group. He sees us all as a problem that he needs to fix.

No thank you, Mr Smith! My family and I got along just fine without you!

And besides, what’s he going to do to help families with problems?

Is the Department for Work and Pensions going to come into family homes to measure whether children are growing up in “stable, loving families”? Or will private companies be paid to force couples to stay together, no matter what real-life problems this may cause? Is the government seriously suggesting abusive partners should be kept in family homes?

Are couples looking at benefit sanctions, if they decide to split up – in effect denying them the short-term help they would need to get back on their feet as individuals? This seems more likely.

In fact the only solid plan I could find was to hand over huge wodges of cash to private companies Prevista, Social Finance and 3SC – apparently to shoehorn youngsters into the state-sponsored slavery known as the “work programme”.

So it’s actually just a get-rich quick scheme for companies run by Mr Smith’s friends. Let’s all take a moment to remember how one company – I believe it was A4E but I sit ready to be corrected – took £400 per claimant, before handing them over to Job Centre Plus and a £300 work scheme. The £100 taken by the company – for doing nothing – was excused as an administration cost.

I suppose we could call it jobs for the boys (and girls).

… Just not our boys and girls.

Bedroom tax will put people on streets while homes go empty

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adapt, B&B, bed and breakfast, bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, cap, carer, child, child under 10, child under 16, Coalition, Conservative, council tax, couple, debt, Department for Work and Pensions, derelict, disability, disabled, DWP, e-petition, economy, empty, flat rate, government, homeless, housing benefit, housing cost contribution, Iain Duncan Smith, illness, Localism Act, low income, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Housing Federation, non dependent deduction, over 40, parent, Parliament, pension, people, Pickles Poll Tax, politics, rent, sick, student, tax, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Universal Credit, Vox Political, welfare

The National Housing Federation ran a campaign against the ‘bedroom tax’ while the legislation was going through Parliament – but the government was blind to the concerns of this expert organisation.

By now you should know that you’ll be in financial trouble from April next year, if you receive housing benefit and the government decides you’ve got one or two too many bedrooms.

This applies to people who are working but on low pay, who must therefore claim housing benefit in order to keep a roof over their heads. This means it applies to 93 per cent of people who have claimed housing benefit since the Coalition government came to power (only seven per cent of claimants were unemployed).

It applies to separated parents who share the care of their children and who may have been allocated an extra bedroom to reflect this. Benefit rules mean that there must be a designated ‘main carer’ for children (who receives the extra benefit).

It applies to couples who use their ‘spare’ bedroom when recovering from an illness or operation.

It applies to foster carers, because foster children are not counted as part of the household for benefit purposes (this is particularly evil, in my view).

It applies to parents whose children visit but are not part of the household -although housholds where there is a room kept for a student studying away from home will not be deemed to be under-occupying if the student is away for less than 52 weeks (under housing benefit) or six months (under Universal Credit). Students are exempt from non-dependant deductions, but full-time students will not be exempt from the Housing Cost Contribution (HCC) which replaces non-dependent deductions under Universal Credit (more on this elsewhere in the article). Students over 21 will face a contribution in the region of £15 per week.

It applies to families with disabled children; and

It applies to disabled people, including those living in adapted or specially designed properties (again, this is evil, as it could mean these people will be required to leave that home for another one, with the added expense of having to re-install all the special adaptations).

Pensioners will not be affected – unless they are part of a couple and the partner is below pension age, after Universal Credit is introduced.

The size criteria that will be applied means housing benefit wil be restricted to allow for one bedroom for each person or couple living as part of the household. However:

Children under 16, who are either both boys or both girls, will be expected to share. This will undoubtedly create many family feuds as puberty is not known for its calming effect on young people.

Children under 10 will be expected to share, regardless of gender. Again, this will create problems for families. It is not a normal situation and it seems bizarre for the government to suggest that it should be.

On the ‘plus’ side, a disabled tenant or partner who needs a non-resident overnight carer will be allowed an extra bedroom for that carer.   If you have a ‘spare’ bedroom under the new rules, you will lose 14 per cent of your housing benefit; for two or more extra bedrooms, you’ll lose a quarter of your benefit. According to the government’s impact assessment, this means 660,000 people will lose an average of £14 per week (£16 for housing association tenants).

Now for the complications.

After Universal Credit is brought in, if only one member of a couple is over pension age, the bedroom tax will apply to the household. If one is receiving Pension Credit, they will be unaffected.

There are currently six different rates of ‘non-dependent deductions’ – amounts removed from housing benefit according to the earnings of people aged over 18 who live in a household but are not dependent on the tenant for financial support. This will become one flat-rate ‘housing cost contribution’ that will be deducted from housing benefit. It will not apply to anyone aged under 21.

Under UC, each adult non-dependent will get their own room, but each must pay the full, flat-rate housing cost contribution – unless aged under 21 and therefore exempt.

Under UC, lodgers will not get a room allowance but any income is disregarded. They will not count as occupying a room under size criteria rules. Currently any income is taken into account and deducted pound for pound from benefit, apart from the first £20. As this income is completely disregarded under UC, my best guess is that the government expects this amount to cover any loss in both housing benefit and Universal Credit. I have a doubt about that. Taking in a lodger will also affect home contents insurance policies, potentially invalidating them or raising the premiums.

Bedroom tax will not apply in joint tenancy cases.

Until UC comes in, benefits will be protected for up to 52 weeks after death; afterwards the run-on will be three months.

And until UC comes in, tenants will receive 13 weeks’ protection where they could previously afford the rent and housing benefit has not been claimed in the previous year; afterwards, the size criteria will apply immediately.   Pre-1989 tenancies are not exempt from the bedroom tax.

Those are the facts relating to this particular benefit change. There are others which will also affect your ability to keep your home, but – concentrating on this for a moment – you’re probably already screaming “What does it MEAN?” in frustration at your screen.

If you’re on a low income, aged over 40 with children who have left home, or disabled, you could be not only slightly but severely and unfairly affected. It seems likely you will have to choose to either pay the extra amount, or move. It seems likely that I will be in this category, so be assured that I sympathise completely with everyone else in the same situation.

And there will be many, many people who are. Surveys say around a third of tenants will try to move, mainly to one-bedroom properties. This is far more than the government has anticipated in its planning.

Here’s where things get suspicious: There is a national shortage of one bedroom council and housing association homes, meaning many tenants will have no choice but to move into the more expensive private sector or stay put – even though they will not be able to afford the extra costs.

The majority will stay put, but nearly eight-tenths (80 per cent) of those are worried about going into debt, with two-fifths (40 per cent) fearing they will accumulate rent arrears.

The evidence shows that, whether you move or stay put, landlords will lose income, which in turn means evictions and homelessness will increase. This is my belief. We will see a lot of people going homeless at the same time as a lot of houses go empty.

In fact, homelessness is already on the rise – as it always is under a Conservative government. According to the National Housing Federation – the umbrella organisation for housing associations in England – there has been a leap of nearly 50 per cent in the number of families forced into B&Bs. Between January and March this year, they totalled 3,960, compared with 2,750 during the same period in 2011. That number will escalate under the new legislation.

Any fool can see that this is madness. The logical choice has to be that people, who would otherwise go homeless, should be housed in buildings that would otherwise go empty.

But we are under the heel of a government that has little to do with sanity. The sane choice – in order to keep housing benefit payments down – is to cap rents at a particular, affordable, level. This way, landlords receive a steady amount of money, tenants keep their homes, and housing benefit remains manageable. But the government cannot tolerate this as it is deemed to be unwarranted interference in the market. Never mind the fact that the market could collapse if enough homes go empty! The idea is that the steady drive to increase rents will attract people rich enough to afford them. Again, one wonders where these people are and how they will be able to pay. Also, every price bubble eventually pops, so sooner or later – again – we’ll have a lot of homeless people on the streets while buildings go empty and (eventually) derelict.

Am I painting a depressing picture? Let’s add to the misery by reminding you that housing benefit is being withdrawn for everybody aged under 25. The assumption is that they will return to the family home if they can’t afford their rent – but that is a big assumption. There may be reasons they cannot do so (I’m sure you can imagine some for yourself). what do they do then? Housing benefit itself is being capped. And then there is the Localism Act and its effect on Council Tax payments. From responses to my previous article about the so-called ‘Pickles Poll Tax’, you will be able to see that some councils will add as much as 30 per cent of the council tax bill to the costs of those tenants who currently receive full council tax benefit, regardless of whether they can afford to pay. And has anybody said anything recently about the plan to cap all benefits at £500-per-week-per-household?

If you want to call on the government to axe the bedroom tax, there is an e-petition against it: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/33438

A mother’s fear – that the GOVERNMENT will steal her child

Tags

benefit, benefits, child, Coalition, Conservative, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, DWP, Facebook, government, Guardian, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, parent, Parliament, people, politics, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare

Here comes the reaper: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and the man ultimately responsible for the agony being felt by parents of disabled children across the UK.

It’s a damning indictment of government welfare policy when the mother of a disabled child says state benefits will not cover her child’s needs – and then the government still decides to review whether she should receive them.

“My daughter has a progressive incurable condition and after being told to [do so] time and time again, we applied for DLA,” writes Rebecca Brooks-Weir on the Vox Facebook page.

“Six years into receiving the benefit we received that letter – the one claiming an investigation to review whether I’m spending the money properly.

“I got it today and returned it today… I am shocked and sickened at this letter. I have only ever used the money to support my child and have spent thousands more on her needs because of her disability – like the DLA is even enough!

“Who are these people… MONSTERS!”

That letter would be the BF57B, which goes out to every parent or guardian in receipt of DLA when they renew their claim. The form it contains must be signed before the claim can move forward. It demands that the person signing must agree to a review of their role as parent or guardian.

Ms Brooks-Weir is now living in fear that the government will take away her child, if an office-dwelling pen-pusher decides she is not properly spending the pittance she receives.

I already covered the contents of the letter in ‘Children targeted in latest government attack on the disabled’, so you’ll already know how vague the Department for Work and Pensions’ (yes, them again) criteria are.

This is the sharp edge, folks. Will good mothers lose their children because of the arbitrary value judgements of an out-of-touch regime?

Children targeted in latest government attack on the disabled

Tags

accountability, allowance, benefit, BF57B, child, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, Duncan, DWP, Guardian, health, Iain, Independent, living, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, parent, Pensions, PIP, politics, Smith, work

Does anybody remember when ‘accountability’ was the buzzword of the times? The public was going to be able to see who was responsible for the decisions affecting us, and would be able to seek recompense from those people when injustice arose.

Did we get it?

Here’s a story that you might have missed in all the Olympic hubbub, that raises the question of accountability again.

On August 2, The Independent reported on a letter that has started appearing on the doormats of parents who claim Disability Living Allowance for their children – the in-work benefit to cover the increased living costs faced by those with disabilities. It seems this document, the BF57B, goes out to every parent or guardian in receipt of DLA when they renew their claim, and the form must be signed before the claim can move forward.

The letter states that the Department for Work and Pensions wishes to review the recipient’s role as a parent. This seems innocent enough, but in fact it is the thin end of a threat to take the child into care, unless the wishes of the writer are followed.

It says the parent must “always act in the best interests of the child”, which is fair enough but exactly what every parent is expected – and hopes – to do, whether the government tells them or not. Then it provides a bullet-point list of what DWP demands this should include. This list includes: “manage and spend any money from Disability Living Allowance in a way that best serves [the child’s] best interests”.

What is this letter saying? That DLA claimants – unless coerced by the heavy hand of Iain Duncan Smith – will spend their cash on cigarettes, alcohol and satellite TV (the suggestions of the Independent columnist), rather than on necessities?

This is an in-work benefit. It is not likely to cover all the costs of looking after a disabled child. It is therefore likely that one or both parents will have a job as well, in order to cover those costs in full. Budgeting that money is their own business, as the people best qualified to care for their own child and manage their own household.

Not according to the DWP, though! Because they have a disabled child, the Department clearly now believes it is entitled to root around every aspect of a family’s life, in search of an excuse to cut off payments.

Beneath the bullet points are the ominous words, “We will review your status as an appointed person if we think that you are not acting in the best interests of the person named above”. In other words, if you do not spend your money exactly as we tell you, then we will remove it – and your child.

The letter might not say it in as many words, but the message is clear: We do not believe you are a fit person to receive money for this child. Our reason for thinking this is the fact that you have claimed this money. We intend to find a reason to take both the child and the money away from you.

The DWP says it is careful about the language it uses, and has re-stated its mantra that the benefits system has “trapped” many people in a “spiral” of welfare dependence.

The latter point is completely irrelevant to parents of disabled children on DLA. I repeat: It is an in-work benefit intended to help cover the extra costs of living with a disability. Depending on their individual conditions, those disabled children may find themselves claiming the benefit – perfectly correctly – throughout their life.

It is absolutely wrong to accuse parents of wrong-doing, simply because they have claimed what the law says they should.

So I want to know who wrote this letter. I want to see that person come out in public and explain precisely what their instructions were, why they chose those particular words, the meaning of the bullet-point list and how the threat to take children into care will be carried out. Then I want to see some good, old-fashioned punishment – not just for the person who wrote the letter but for the people who told them to do it, as well.

And anyway, what will the DWP do with all these disabled kids it wants to take into care?