Disability benefit cuts be aware of what’s going on

Today changes are being rolled out in disability benefits. The change from DLA to PIP enters another phase being rolled out in other parts of the country. • Concern? A new system of disability benefits has begun to take effect across England, Scotland and Wales. Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) are replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) as part of the government's welfare reforms. The government claims PIPs will target resources more effectively towards those who need it most. But a charity warns that almost a fifth of claimants - 600,000 people - could eventually lose their benefits. Since April, thousands of new claimants in the north of England have already applied for PIPs. Now, new claimants of working age in the rest of Britain will also have to apply for a PIP, rather than DLA. Northern Ireland will join the system later. From October, PIPs will be extended further, when the government will start to re-assess existing claimants, but only those who circumstances have changed. The vast majority of the 3.2 million people who currently claim DLA will not be re-assessed until 2015 or later. Many disabled people fear having to be put through the new in-person tests to test their eligibility. Phil Sumner, a former postman who has multiple sclerosis, told the BBC that the prospect of an interview is "quite intimidating". "It's like being judged again. Filling out forms is bad enough. Face-to-face, I don't like anyway," he said. Savings Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) suggest that 450,000 will no longer be able to claim the benefit by 2018. But the disability charity Scope said that - including those who would have been new claimants between now to 2018 - some 607,000 people will miss out in total. The government claims the new system will better target those who need help. Under DLA, most people filled in their own application forms, and did not have to re-apply, even if their health improved. "Seventy-one percent would have indefinite awards, without regular checks," the disabilities minister, Esther McVeigh, told the BBC. "So this is about targeting billions of pounds a year at the people who n So we are told. I am currently on DLA and am not being reassessed just yet I don’t expect to be for sometime but it is a worry at the back of your mind. My eyesight is unlikely to ever improve so how is my situation ever likely to change? I was awarded my DLA for life when I got it and don’t see why this has to change. I will have to see what happens but I don’t see why I should be targeted while the rich laugh all the way to the banks evading billions in tax. Quite clearly this is an attack on disabled people who as we know can’t fight back so easily so are an easy target for this vicious and cruel government. All benefit cuts must be fought as best we can. Keep a watch on my blog for further updates on benefit cuts and disability news and views.

Smashing the myth of strivers and skivers

Divide and rule is an age old tactic of the ruling class has been used for decades if not centuries it’s simple yet effective. Well recently or longer depending on your point of view the British government has been embarking on the demonising of the poor in a attempt to force through benefit cuts, pay freezes job cuts and so on. Their latest divide and rule tactic has to pit so called strivers and skivers the deserving poor against the undeserving poor, the unemployed against the employed, public sector vs. private sector the disabled against the non disabled. I could go on and on all ways of dividing the working class. Lets be clear society as it stands consists of two great social class’s directly opposed to each other the bourgeois i.e. the so called 1% at the top the ruling class who use their state the police and the army a body of armed people as Engel’s once described it and the working and middle class below these called99%. New Labour and the Tories have been great at muddying the lines of class phrases like we’re all middle class now and if you work hard you can get on and throwing money at the poor and the use of the credit system to inflate a boom period all served to drag everyone up. This was not sustainable of course under capitalism and we are now seeing the results of this. Since the financial crash of 2008 all governments around the world Bara few have embarked on a austerity drive in their words to cut the deficit never mind most deficits have continued to rise ever since. In the UK the con-dem government who came to power in 2010 have set about making some huge huge cuts which will change the face of the country for good. We have coined the phrase a scorched earth policy as I think personally the tories do not think they will get back in in 2015 and as so are going for broke in order to turn as much of the public sector over to the private profiteers. Also their main drive in cutting the deficit has been to cut welfare and the idea that you should not earn more on benefits than you can in work. Which is a complete lie have any of these Tory rich boys ever been on benefits or out of work? Currently JSA is at a pitiful rate of 75 quid a week roughly and even less if your younger with other cuts to housing benefits to the under 25’s cuts elsewhere and the rising living costs this is not the life of luxury the government and previous governments have made out. On 8 January Parliament voted to limit increases in benefits to 1% rather than by the rate of inflation as they had previously been. Cutting the link between prices and benefit rises is effectively a huge cut to future benefits because people will be able to afford less with the money. Iain Duncan Smith, minister for work and pensions who is driving the attacks, said it would be 'absurd' to raise benefits by inflation (currently officially 2.2%). He said it was unfair because benefits are paid by the taxes of those who are working who are not seeing their wages increase by inflation. But contrary to the government's talk of 'shirkers' the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has shown that this change will affect the benefits of far more working people than unemployed (7 million compared to 2.5 million). This was just a day after the changes to child benefits came into force. Households where one person earns over £50,000 will see their benefit cut and over £60,000 will see it stopped altogether. The IFS has worked out that these families will lose an average of £1,300 a year. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has published research which shows government and media attacks on 'scroungers' are based on lies. On average members of the public think 41% of the welfare budget goes to the unemployed. This 'fact' is used to justify attacking the unemployed as scroungers. In fact the figure is 3%. And, with huge job cuts, any of the "hard-working taxpayers" of today could be denounced as the "work-shy scroungers" of tomorrow. Alongside the massive tax dodging of firms like Vodafone and Starbucks, the amount of benefit fraud is even more miniscule. The public has been led to believe it is 27% of the welfare budget. The figure is actually less than 1%. Compared to the legal and illegal expenses claims of MPs most benefit fraud is tiny. All this has not stopped the Tories of Westminster City Council from floating the idea of cutting benefit for people they deem too fat. And next week people they deem too thin or too tall no doubt. People in work are being asked to approve attacks on the unemployed because they 'get too much money'. However, one of the questions in the TUC survey was about the benefits entitlement of an unemployed couple with two children aged six and ten. The imagined figure was £147 a week, when £111 is the real figure they would be entitled to. But the amount that those surveyed thought the couple would actually need to live on be £202 a week (excluding housing costs). The old adage would seem to be true. Figures can't lie but liars can figure. The Daily Express contained headlines "a new ice age", "a cure for cancer" and "the economy is booming" in the same month. Why on earth believe it when they tell you 80% of benefit claimants are frauds? To give a example of real laziness Youth Fight For Jobs a organisation set up in 2009 to fight their system a system which was not providing young people with enough jobs and opportunities were set to debate with Tory minister Matthew Hancock on Thursday morning on the ITV breakfast programme Daybreak about the governments new traineeship programme. Guess what Matthew could not even get himself out of his bed to defend his own flawed policy. What a shirker you may think. Youth Fight for Jobs supporter, Ian Pattison, said, “Can you imagine my surprise when I discovered a minister whose government berates so-called ‘shirkers’, couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to defend his own policy. Unfortunately, the Tory Business Minister, Matthew Hancock, overslept and missed our debate. If the Minister was a jobseeker, he could lose his benefits for up to 3 months for such an offence. Luckily, the Tory MP doesn’t have to worry about things like that, as I’m sure he’s more than happy with his meagre £97,000 salary, on top the £43,230 he claimed last year in expenses – a new personal record.” “Hancock’s Traineeship scheme is the latest gimmick coming out of the Tories’ to disguise the fact they have failed to tackle the staggering problems of unemployment effecting young people. Hancock and his government are trying to shift the blame for youth unemployment away from them and their failed system and onto the unemployed.” “Young people are not lazy. In fact, it is the Tories’ cuts agenda that is worsening the economic crisis, slashing jobs in the public and private sector. Jessops is the latest high-street chain to go bust; 2000 workers could lose their jobs. Research has revealed that it is harder to get an apprenticeship than get into Oxbridge. Hancock claims his Traineeships are a stepping stone to apprenticeships, but the whole point of an apprenticeship is secure people with the training they need for a job. Hancock’s scheme doesn’t create any new jobs, or even promise any apprenticeships. Hancock isn’t genuine about developing young people’s skills, he voted to increase university tuition fees to £9,000 a year, which alongside the scrapping of EMA, has priced a huge number of young people out gaining the skills they could use to secure a job.” So lets smash this myth of striversand shirkers, we are the working class the 99% and we are all under attack from this system of capitalism . Its time we threw off our chains and united. Lets not fall for anymore divide and rule lets united and bring down this system of the rich once and for all.

Drop the bill!, mass action needed to save the NHS

As Nye Bevan famously said the NHS will be around for as long as there are people willing to fight for it. Well today in 2012 with the health and social bill making its way through the lords at present the signs do not look good. But medical groups and workers are rising to the task in hand.

The National Health Service (NHS) is being broken apart by the hammer blows raining down on it from the Con-Dem government. Huge job cuts and closures of hospital wards and departments, including Accident and Emergency, are wreaking havoc. On top of this, the widely criticised Con-Dems' Health and Social Care Bill will accelerate the privatisation process in the NHS.
How the NHS is being undermined:
'Efficiency savings' ie cuts. The Royal College of Nursing said last November that 56,000 jobs have been axed in the last two years as part of the current government's drive to achieve £20-£30 billion of 'efficiency savings'.
Privatisation. Begun by John Major's Tory government in the 1990s, most non-medical NHS staff have been outsourced to private contractors. The resulting job cuts have meant a deterioration in cleaning and other vital services. And a fortnight ago an entire hospital, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, was taken over by a for-profit private company, Circle.
Heralded by Labour's Tony Blair, Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts - under which hospitals are built and maintained - are licences for private corporations to make vast profits at the expense of NHS funds.
Mega-expensive PFI schemes have put 22 health trusts in jeopardy of becoming bankrupt. But instead of scrapping these rip-off schemes, health secretary Andrew Lansley has agreed to subsidise the contracts with £1.5 billion of public money!
The move to Foundation Trust hospitals (another Labour inspired scheme) will increase 'competition' between hospitals for resources and lead to more cuts and closures. Under the Health and Social Care Bill self-governing Foundation Trusts will also be allowed to raise 49% of funds through non-NHS work. In other words, prioritising higher fee-paying private patients over NHS patients.
A leaked NHS report last year spelt out how private companies will direct the commissioning of patient services when 80% of the health budget is transferred to GP consortia under the government's Health and Social Care Bill. A clear admission that the Con-Dems intend to privatise the NHS.
The Socialist Party calls on the trade unions and community NHS campaigns to unite and fight to stop Lansley's Bill and the threats to our NHS and instead demand a fully funded, publicly owned and democratically run health service.

Kill the Bill. Stop Tory health minister Andrew Lansley and the Con-Dems turning the clock back on health care in Britain. We want free, accessible, high quality and publicly funded healthcare
No cuts, closures or job losses in the NHS
No mergers, or any other 'reorganisation', on anything other than clinical grounds
End the postcode lottery. Fully-funded, high quality, health care should be accessible in every area
Kick big business out of the NHS. End PFI and refuse to pay the debt
Nationalise the pharmaceutical companies under democratic control and integrate them into the NHS
For mass action to defend the NHS with trade union strike action at its heart

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This is just the start of the fightback whih needs to be ramped up. With the threat of privatisation at its core this piece of tory legeslation threatens the whole idea of a national health service for the benifit of all.
Part and parcel with this profiteering are the enormous cuts. £20 billion of so-called savings planned since 2010 are ravaging the NHS.

But resistance is growing. Health workers' trade unions and organisations, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, with members numbering hundreds of thousands have come out against it.

Given that what is posed is the total destruction of the NHS this is not surprising. Even a survey by relatively wealthy governments in the OECD recognises the NHS as one of the world's best health systems that has been improving patient care for years.


We have seen the labour party and Ed Milibandwagon come out in recent days to jump on the ground swell of feeling against this bill ratehr opportunistically in my view.
Labour leader Ed Miliband is opportunistically attempting to claim the mantle of hero of the NHS but has no effective strategy to defend the biggest reform ever won by the working class in Britain.

"Now is the time for people of all parties and of none, the professions, the patients and now peers in the House of Lords to work together to try to stop this bill." But disability rights campaigners can explain how far opposition in the Lords got them in the campaign to oppose the vicious Welfare Reform Bill. MPs thanked the Lords for their amendments and ignored them, passing that bill up for royal assent, effectively making it law.

Like the bashing of bankers' bonuses Miliband has hit on a rich seam of anger among working class people. But Miliband and his party are not against all 'reform'. He has described Labour's reforms "including using the private sector where appropriate" as the reform the NHS needs. Labour is a big business party which, when in power for 13 years, went very far in preparing the ground for Lansley's bill through massive PFI privatisation and marketisation of the health service. So whatever happens do not let labou off teh hook here and think they are on our side as they are not the last 13 years showed exactly that.

To save the NHS we must be serious about defending it to start with not looking for short term political gains and boosts in certain polls and right wing tabloids but principled resistance to one of the greatest organisations this country has ever produced. If this goes and the break up of the NHS is started future generations will not forgive us for idolly

standing by while it happened.

Lets unite now to defend one of Britains best known treasures.