Making work pay, what a con

The Tories and the government’s whole idea about making work pay I’ve discovered me a complete lie. The whole idea pushed by Iain Duncan Smith tat no one should be able to gain more being on benefits than in work. Already this is ridiculous as many are in work who claims benefits due to low pay. Much like myself I am a part time office worker doing 16 hours a week at present and claim working tax credits to top up my pitiful pay. This still puts me way below the average wage of a worker in Britain coming in just shy of 10k a year. This week I’ve been notified that my working tax credits are to be lowered or cut if you like by £200 from what I got last year. My pay is a tiny amount above the minimum wage I would not be claiming tax credits if I was earning a decent wage so the idea I’m earning too muc is stupid. The government or HMRC if you like claim I have earnt too much in the last year so I shouldn’t get so much next year. Making work pay therefore is an absolute joke my wages have not gone up or down in the last year and as a result I’ve applied for working tax credits once again so how has HMRC worked out I shouldn’t get the same as last year? Is this down to inflation or government cuts? In which case I am highly dubious that my extra £200 will help the government all that much. But of course this is not about paying of far deficit or anything like that it is a clear attack on the poorest in society. Rhetoricof a general strike is one thinglets see some action and something which can provide hope to many struggling by today. I will no doubt have to cut back on some of the things I spend on in a month cutting back on some of the things I enjoy to make up the short fall. I am also disabled registered blind and do get a extra component to my working tax credits yet this really isn’t much and I am still struggling by every month to live. I do live with my mum at present as no where cheap enough to move out to so I am hoping my cut in benefits wont mean I can no longer pay my mum rent. How this works out that I should be one of the people to pay for the private sector and the bankers mess I do not know but as we know big business’s run off laughing to themselves to the banks evading and avoiding tax to the tune of billions. Fair? I think not. This has really fucked me off if I’m honest and made me realise how little fight back there has been to the cuts. A couple of marches from A to B to listen to Ed Miliband and a 1 day public sector strike are not what I call an effective fight back. Many people are angry and growing angrier by th week. With the bedroom tax no more than a plaything to the mainstream parties who can say how bad it is a actual fightback is still needed desperately. No wonder unions are not looking to fight back most of the leaders are on good money and the cuts are not affecting them as yet. Change is going to have to come from below the unorganised I feel. No political party seems prepared to stand up and fight back so it is left to the down trodden and the disenfranchised to fight back. Unions are one thing but when they are offering no lead to fight back we could do with the money some of their full timers are on but their advice of sitting back and waiting for a labour gov is frankly insulting to many of us who’re struggling. I’ve had enough if you have to join me in the fight to change things. We need a new way of doing things work has never paid for many people and is even less now its time for change in 2013!

solidarity with PCS tax and welfare strikes this week:

From a PCS press release: A week of rolling strikes involving 135,000 workers from the two largest government departments kicks off today, 3 June. Starting in north east England and Yorkshire and the Humber today, and in the north west tomorrow, jobcentre and benefit office staff from the Department for Work and Pensions join tax workers from HM Revenue and Customs in a series of regional walkouts until Friday. The strikes form part of the union's three-month civil service-wide campaign against imposed cuts to pay, pensions, jobs and working conditions, which has involved weeks of industrial action among the union's 250,000 public sector members since a national walkout on budget day on 20 March. The latest threat from Labour to universal benefits for pensioners is further proof that these two departments are at the heart of the political debate about public spending. The workers involved provide invaluable public services - with HMRC collecting and administering the taxes that fund all other public services and our welfare state that are currently being undermined by the Tory-led government. Successive years of cuts in HMRC have left the department unable to properly tackle the estimated £120 billion lost every year through tax evasion, avoidance and non-collection. And, despite high unemployment, DWP has cut 20,000 staff since May 2010 and the government is now threatening to cut even more support for people entitled to benefits. These strikes come as the union is campaigning to stop government plans to close all 281 of HMRC's walk-in tax advice centres in the UK and divert enquiries to already overloaded jobcentres. Pilot closures of 13 enquiry centres in the north east also starts today (3rd June). The union has previously announced it will hold a fresh national civil service-wide strike towards the end of June if the government continues to refuse to negotiate.

Solidarity with PCS members this budget day

This Wednesday we will see up to a quarter of a million PCS members taking strike action The following is a piece by John McInally, Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) vice president, personal capacity PCS members are preparing to launch our union's national industrial action campaign with a one-day strike on Budget Day, 20 March, when Chancellor Osborne will be announcing more cuts in the civil service and also on workers generally. PCS members are aware of the scale of the attacks - job cuts, pay freezes, attacks on terms and conditions and trade union facilities, all of this to prepare the way for the mass privatisation of the civil service. Our campaign will be effective and sustainable with the aim of causing maximum disruption to the employer to get them around the negotiating table. It's unreasonable that they're not prepared to sit down and discuss the issues with us, preferring instead to press ahead with these unwarranted attacks. PCS members are prepared to struggle and the government is wrong if it thinks it can attack us without determined resistance. There will be a one-day strike on 20 March and a further half-day strike on 5 April which marks the end of the 2012/13 tax year - this walkout will begin a week of tax justice campaigning to highlight the £120 billion tax 'gap'. Added impetus for the dispute will come from the announcement that all 281 tax enquiry offices in the country could close under new plans by the government, including 13 to be closed this year in the North of England. Also, from 1 April, PCS members will have extra pension contributions imposed on them, while from the same date, millionaires are being given a tax cut. Fighting austerity On 20 March there will be rallies in cities up and down the country, where there will be speakers from other trade unions and campaign groups like Disabled People Against the Cuts and Black Triangle. We want to make sure people know that yes, it's a strike against the attacks on our terms and conditions, our pay etc but it is also a strike against austerity and the failed programme of the government. PCS particularly welcomes other unions' involvement. For example we welcome the strike of Unite and PCS members in the Homes and Communities Agency who have coordinated their strike for budget day. As our general secretary Mark Serwotka told the pre-budget TUC rally: "We hope our strike action is successful but we're quite clear, our union is right to take action, but we all know if more of us take action together we have a better chance of winning ... "On 26 June George Osborne will do another significant thing. He will announce his comprehensive spending review which will confirm the butchery of public spending for the next three years. What a brilliant day that would be - that while he announces cuts in parliament - to see as many people as we can taking industrial action together, demonstrating together and protesting together. If we build that movement then we can turn our aspirations into reality." Weekly meetings Starting off as a one-day strike on 20 March and an overtime ban from 21 March, the union's national disputes committee will meet weekly. We will be calling further action at short notice. We will implement work-to-rules throughout government departments. We will keep up the pressure on the employer until they are prepared to talk to us. We will also be making sure that government ministers and senior managers get a warm PCS reception when they come to visit civil service offices. For example on 13 March at a Ministry of Justice building in London, Cabinet Office minister Frances Maude didn't go through the front door. He was driven around the back in his Jag with the blacked-out windows because there were 40 PCS members demonstrating outside. He's going to have to get used to that because we're going to keep it up until he talks to us. The union's departmental groups are looking at what action to call as well. There will be days of action with themes like equality, welfare, taxation and so on. We're determined to keep the pressure up until the government is prepared to talk to us. Over the course of the past six months we've managed to win concessions in disputes within departmental groups. The slogan: "Campaigning works, action gets results" is true. We'll be making sure that we build the action until they're prepared to talk to us. ________________________________________ PCS national strike Wednesday 20 March 2013 Rallies: Barnsley: 10am-1.30pm, Peel Square, Pitt St Birmingham: 12.30pm, Conservatoire, off Chamberlain Square, for strikers in Birmingham, Shropshire, Dudley, Worcester, Coventry. Bradford: 12pm, Memorial Gardens Bristol: 12.30pm, Tony Benn House (Unite building), BS1 6AY. Cardiff: 12.30pm - Temple of Peace, King Edward VII Avenue, CF10 3AP. Huddersfield - 12.30pm - Market Cross, Market Place Leeds: noon, Victoria Gardens, outside the art gallery Leicester: 11.30am, 89 Humberstone Gate, city centre, LE1 1WB Lincoln: noon, Speakers' Corner, Lincoln High Street Liverpool: 11am, Liner Hotel, Lord Nelson Street, Liverpool London: 12-2pm, Old Palace Yard (opposite parliament), SW1P 3JY Manchester: 11.30am, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester Newcastle: 12.30pm, Grey's Monument Nottingham: 12.30pm, Market Square, for all strikers in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Plymouth: 12.30pm, Guild Hall, Copthorne Hotel, Armada Way, PL1 2AD Preston: 11am, Flag Market, Market Square Stoke: 11am, Albion Square, Hanley - assemble at the cenotaph near the town hall, opposite Radio Stoke, for all strikers in Staffordshire and Stoke

the growing movement of the excellent UKuncut

I've been following the progress of a movement known on the internet on twitter and facebook called UKuncut.
They are at this website here : http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/

I was listening to a bbc radio 4 podcast on the growing movement and the excellent work they are doing so far tonight, you can listen back to it here for a limited amount of time only.

http://j.mp/i3ZYhW

Please do listen to this it offers a good arguement from both sides and includes interviews from the founders of Ukuncut and representitives of the tax payers alliance which i will come on to a bit later on.

If you havent heard of them before UKuncut are a new protest movement group set up on the internet using twitter and facebook to communicate to spread the word and highlight the fact that while public sector money is being cut hugely that on the other side to represent that we are not in fact contary to what some tories may say we are not all in this together.

Ukuncut's aim is to bring to the wider publics attention that big business's multinationals in alot of cases areavoiding and dodging huge tax bills. Whilst this is not strictly against the law it is moraley wrong in my opinion.

With Vodafone having been found to have avoided paying a estimated 6 billion pounds to the british HMRC this provoked anger with people and UKuncut took to the streets to make this point heard that there is something very wrong going on out there.

In the podcast it highlights some of the protesters inside Top shop in Oxford street in London before christmas protests of which i followed very closely on twitter live at the time. But to hear actual sound clips from the protests gives me real hope and belief that there are people out there fighting for a fairer future for all.

People such as Phillip Green who i have blogged about in the past were targetted by UKuncut. ALthough Phillip has not committed any tax evasion as far as we know his wife is a non british citizen and it is rumoured he ships a lot of his company Arcadia's profits off to Monaco where she apparently lives to avoid having to pay tax on it while in Britain.

I feel this is a outrage and for innocent hard working people in the public sector having to loose their jobs due to cuts and job loss's when no cuts wouldh ave to be made if cases's like Vodafone and Top shops owners paid their tax properly we would be ok.

What angers Ukuncut protesters even more is the absolute lack of effort being made from our present government which is conservative lead with the vast majority of the current cabinet being millinaires themselves. They feel a lot lot more could be done to plug the loop holes that these rich multinationals are exploiting for their own benifit. To me it smacks of a very unbalanced unequal system when you have hard working honest poor people paying their bit of tax which will be a lot of their weekly earnings to the government when the people who really can afford to pay tax and a hell of a lot more in my opinion do not consistently.

The tax payers alliance which i eluded to earlier in my post rear their ugly head again. They all seem to be a load of daily mail reading look after yourself type person really and feel that we will have to put up with this as it has always been this way in this country. They also feel that taxing big business's too much in the end will drive them away to other countries. To me i'd say good ridence really maybe in their place we would bring in fairer and more honest companies who want to play by the rules. We as a country need to be setting an example i feel as with a lot of things our actions are often reflected and replecated around the world. So i whole hartidly support Ukuncut and their efforts to protest and make their message heard. Also good on radio 4 for highlighting their efforts i think its about time this sort of message is heard loud and clearly and those who are not playing by the rules are named and shamed.