Makeover for homeless man

Below is a link to a film that has gone viral on YouTube recently, I think it speaks for itself, check it out. As a result lots of money was donated to a homeless charity called Degage Ministries in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24943101

A civil partnership made in heaven?

This week saw the first anniversary of the Coalition government. So what are we to make of it all? Here are some of the highlights.

May

I vividly remember the day that Clegg and Cameron held that nauseous press conference in the garden at 10 Downing Street. There was a chap on the BBC London radio news in the morning of 12 May who referred to them as looking like an upmarket Ant and Dec. I could see what he meant inasmuch as there are times when you can barely tell which one is which. But then I was left wondering did he also mean that they talk drivel, aren't funny and are classed as light entertainment?

Rising star, David Laws, resigns after 17 days in the job, after allegations of financial misdemeanors. A year later he is suspended from the Commons, for seven days, for what are described as "serious breaches". This is from a man who is, in that age-old cliche, a self-made man. An ex-banker and a millionaire caught fiddling his expenses. It beggars belief, and he was being lined up to be the Chancellor's right-hand man!

June

George Osborne set out his budget. VAT increases from 17.5% to 20%. Child benefit and public sector pay are frozen. Housing benefit cuts are announced that will affect thousands. Personal tax allowances went up.

August
The Coalition passes 100 days in power. Samantha Cameron has a baby daughter.

September
The Liberal Democrats have their annual conference, which Nick Clegg comes through relatively unscathed. Telling the party faithful the Lib-Dems are doing "great things" in government and that the party should "hold its nerve" whatever criticism comes their way. As if to back him up MPs vote to scrap ID cards (which no government was going to fund) heralding it as fulfilling one of their coalition pledges.

October
This month sees George Osborne explain in detail his Comprehensive Spending Review. In June cuts to the welfare bill were said to be £11 billion. In early September he announced a further £4 billion, by the time of his Comprehensive Spending Review the total cuts to the welfare budget amounted to a total of £18 billion.

November

Student protests against tuition fees dominate the news. In the majority of cases fees are set to triple. The headquarters of the conservative party were beseiged and some gathered on the roof. An effigy of Nick Clegg was burnt.

December
Sure enough, in the commons MPs voted to raise the tuition fee cap.


January
After months of speculation about Andy Coulson's ability to be Director of Communications for David Cameron, he finally resigns. He had repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking in spite of being editor of the News of the World at the time it was going on. I don't think this tells us anything about the government, but to me it indicates an appalling lack of judgement on the part of the Prime Minister.


AprilThe Cabinet announces what it terms a pause, in their overhaul of the NHS. This, they say, is to consult further over the proposals for a shake-up. This is after Andrew Lansley became the first Health Minister to get a vote of no confidence from the Royal College of Nursing Conference. The whole thing strikes me as a fiasco.



May
The Liberal Democrats have a disastrous time in the local English elections and the national elections in Scotland and Wales, and what rankles them further is that the Tory vote holds up well. And to cap a bad night for Nick Clegg the referendum for AV was a resounding no.

So all things considered, what do I make of the Coalition's first year?
The way I see it the Tories spent a long time in opposition, so they had a long time to consider what they would do when they got back in power. The Lib-Dems are clearly the junior partner in this coalition and I think that shows. So the Tories have been able to pick on their long-standing bogey men; the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, these are the people who have borne the brunt of their economic policies. Sure, they inherited an economy mired in trouble, but they have chosen the direction to take the country in, all the while assuring us that their old friend, the free market will get us out of trouble.

that nice, sensitive Michael Gove...

Just over a week ago (10 September) the Education Secretary, Michael Gove was asked this question by Luciana Berger MP in the House of Commons: "What can he and his Government do to ensure no students turn up to school embarrassed because they don't have the right clothes?"

He said he had recently visited a food bank in his Surrey Heath constituency. He went on: "I appreciate that there are families who face considerable pressures. Those pressures are often the result of decisions that they have taken which mean they are not best able to manage their finances."

Ms Berger said she was "appalled" by his remarks. "People I have met are ashamed to have to turn to food banks. I vehemently disagree it is because they have mismanaged their finances." In 2012 Ms Berger who is the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, made a short film in 2012 Breadline Britain which centres around this issue.

The Trussell Trust, who run almost 400 food banks in the UK, have some statistics about the work that they do: Since April 2012 they have seen an increase in the numbers of foodbanks of 76% but a 170% increase in the numbers of people given emergency food. That number is 346 992 in 2012/13 and relates to the period up to April 2013. That is to say the figures are before the benefit changes came in.

The Trussell Trust see the main causes as the rising cost of living, static incomes, underemployment and unemployment, all things that lead to increasing numbers of people hitting a a crisis causing them to turn to the Trussell Trust.

The Executive Chairman of the Trussell Trust, Chris Mould says: "The sheer volume of people who are turning to foodbanks because they can't afford food is a wake-up call to the nation that we cannot ignore the hunger on our doorstep. Politicians across the spectrum urgently need to recognise the real extent of UK food poverty and create fresh policies that better address its underlying causes. This is more important than ever as the impact of the biggest reforms to the welfare state since it began start to take effect. Since 1 April we have already seen increasing numbers of people in crisis being sent to foodbanks with nowhere else to go."

Old habits die hard

So Vodafone are at it again, that is, not paying their taxes.

According to Robert Peston, the BBC's business correspondent in: "one of the biggest deals in corporate history", Vodafone have just made themselves and their shareholders the rather tidy sum of £84 billion.

However due to the way the company is structured they will not be paying the UK government any tax revenue. This all quite legal. They are selling their 45% stake in Verizon wireless to the US telecoms group Verizon Communications. The US business is owned by a Dutch holding company. They will be paying $5 billion in tax to the US government.

So worldwide, Vodafone's shareholders are set to receive £54 billion. In the UK dividends will be to the tune of £22 billion. The shareholders will however be expected to pay tax on their dividends

Depression, Discrimination, and (no) DSS

Last year I became depressed. Really depressed. Clinically can’t-get-out-of-bed just-want-to-die depressed. So depressed I could no longer handle my job and had to go on long-term sick leave for several months.  

I got sick pay but it came nowhere near to paying my rent and living costs, but I found out I was entitled to housing benefit. Now all I needed was a letter from my live-in landlord to prove I lived there and paid rent, as I had no tenancy agreement.

The landlord refused to give me a letter. He told me that if he did he would have to pay taxes and raise everybody’s rent, and “you don’t want that, do you?” “No” I said, intimidated.

Since he wouldn't give me a letter and the rent was paid in cash, leaving no paper trail, I could not prove I paid rent and so receive housing benefit. Over the next few months I spent my life savings (around £1000) on living and rent. Most of the time I was still too depressed to get out of bed.

As my savings started to run out, I panicked and started looking for flats. All I see is

NO DSS
NO DSS
SORRY NO DSS

Some don’t say this. So I call up and ask, explaining my circumstances – and they tell me “NO DSS”.

My fragile depressed mind could not cope with this constant rejection, nor the quickly looming threat of homelessness. I had no one I could stay with.

I try a local homeless centre, who only had very limited flats in obscure places with old men. As a young woman who has had a lot of bad experiences, this does not feel safe to me. I am scared and frightened and can’t cope and just want somewhere safe to live.

Desperate, I decide to lie. I start pretending I’m still working when I call potential landlords. The first flat I see is hellish, 14 stories up in the middle of nowhere with a balcony I could see myself jumping off.  The second, however, seemed perfect. Nice room, nice area, nice kitchen. Unfortunately like the last landlord the landlady lived-in and demanded cash-in-hand. But my money was almost gone and I needed to move fast, and I was able to claim housing benefit at this address, without her knowledge.  

A few weeks after moving in she became suspicious of my presence in the house. Although I had planned to make myself scarce during the day, my depression got the better of me and I spent too many days in bed. She was heavily pregnant so she didn't work.

She pulls me aside one day and starts shouting and demands to know if I’m on DSS. I deny everything. She says if she finds out I’m on DSS she will kick me out.  She won’t tell me why she would kick me out.

Because she is a live-in-landlord it is perfectly legal for her to evict me for any reason with ‘reasonable notice’ – which can mean any time.

Being threatened with homelessness again, being watched at home and forced to be out the house eight hours a day, pretending I’m at work, with nowhere to go, no money and no one to talk to - sent me into a suicidal tailspin.

Between visit’s to A&E and the Samaritans, I applied to council housing, stating my depression made it really hard for me to live with people and I couldn't cope anymore. It took forever and was a real struggle to get together. Exhausted but victorious, I handed the application in. The sour-faced assistant told me it would take 13 weeks just to look at my application. My application had several signed statements saying I was suicidal and my housing stress was the major contributor to this. I was advised that if I wanted it any sooner than this, I would have to make myself homeless. Then they might put me in a hostel. Or something.

Needless to say I couldn't cope with making myself homeless. The council was true to their word and didn't get back for 13 weeks, by which time, thankfully I had found accommodation. A friend’s landlord took pity on me and agreed to rent out the small room to me, knowing I was on DSS and was struggling to find a place to live. I can only imagine this was because she met me as her tenant’s friend first, realised I was a decent human being and not ‘DSS scum’.

I’m now four months into my tenancy, complete with a real tenancy agreement, and I love my new flat. So a happy ending for me. But my happy ending was due to sheer luck, and the story could have turned out a lot differently. And I’m sure has turned out very differently for lots of other vulnerable people.

I am still so frustrated that it is perfectly legal to discriminate against people on housing benefit in this way. Perhaps it would not be a problem, if the government was not relying so heavily on the private sector ‘to provide’ for DSS tenants, whilst offering no incentive for doing so or penalties for not doing so. Furthermore, despite low rates of occurrence ‘benefit fraud’ is never out of the papers, but I have yet to read about the private landlords who are dodging taxes and exploiting vulnerable tenants.  

Smoke and mirrors

Evasion of tax is illegal, avoiding paying tax is not, hence the numbers of people who earn their living as accountants.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines tax as : n 1 a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on personal income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.

I am a tax evader. I buy my fags duty free from under the counter. This is really common where I live and nearly everybody I know buys their roll ups this way.

But I am not::

• Google
• Amazon
• Starbucks
• Apple 
• Thames Water 
• Vodafone     

These multimillion pound companies avoid paying tax out of principle.

So who's criminal?

It gets worse before it gets better

I felt a bit guilty when I heard the ruling that the ESA Work Capability Assessment was unfair to people with mental health problems.

I've recently gone through the same process for depression. However - unlike the court claimants - I was lucky and spared the much-dreaded interview, and was fully successful in my claim.

Despite my experience, I wholeheartedly agree that the process is unfair on people with mental health problems. Here’s why.

I have a Masters in Social Policy, so I know a fair bit about benefits, and I did my dissertation on mental health, so I’m pretty clued up about that too. But there was no chance that I would have been able to fill out the necessary forms without an advice worker helping me over several sessions.

Fortunately I also happened to have a slew of evidence – GP notes, psychiatrist reports - from previous desperate (and failed) attempts to get appropriate housing and treatment. They were not easy to get and I found it distressing repeating ‘my story’ to stranger after stranger.

I had two advisers from separate organisations tell me that I should bring someone with me to the Work Capability Assessment interview – not for moral support, but to take notes due to regular reports of interviewers just making stuff up and ignoring evidence given.

Sorry, what? Seriously? Like the process wasn't already stressful and difficult enough, I also had to ensure I could protect myself against fraudulent reports made by the government against me. (no, paranoia is not one of my symptoms, but no prizes for guessing who would win that court case)

Luckily I was spared that misery, but that didn't stop me fretting about it for weeks.

The whole application was a complete nightmare to pull together, making my depression worse, when I just wanted to focus on pulling myself together. Getting better. So I wouldn't have to be on benefits.

Isn't that the point?

Work Capability Assessments discriminate against vulnerable claimants

So judges have ruled today in favour of two claimants with mental health problems who claimed  that the test for sickness benefit would discriminate against them. The law requires that the government should make reasonable adjustments to avoid discrimination. The judges at the Upper Tribunal ruled that the Work Capability Assessment puts people with mental illness, autism and learning difficulties at a substantial disadvantage.

Work Capability Assessment (WCA) tests, are designed to measure a person's entitlement to Employment and Support Allowance. ( ESA) They are supposed to determine whether someone is fit for work. They are run by a French company Atos on behalf of the government. They have proved controversial with the claimants being subjected to these assessments. In fact, according to the the government's Public Affairs Committee, the Department of Work and Pensions' decisions have been overturned in 38% of appeals.

Lawyers for the two individuals who won their legal challenge today argued that where the claim is from someone with a mental health problem, it should be the government's responsibility to seek additional medical evidence. Under the current system, evidence from a professional, such as a GP or a social worker,is expected to be provided by the claimants themselves. There is no obligation for the DWP to collect this evidence, even on behalf of the most vulnerable - apart from in rare cases.

Almost 20 000 people are assessed each week for ESA in England , Wales and Scotland - these are figures provide by the DWP. More than a third of these people are claiming primarily for mental health problems, meaning thousands of people each month are going through a process that puts them at a substantial disadvantage.

UK charities; Rethink Mental Illness, Mind and the National Autistic Society all intervened in the case to provide evidence based on the experiences of their members and supporters. Mind's chief executive Paul Farmer said: "The judgement is a victory, not only for the two individuals involved in this case, but for thousands of people who have experienced additional distress and anxiety because they have struggled through an assessment process which does not adequately consider the needs of those with mental health problems."

A spokesperson for the DWP said: "We disagree with today's ruling and intend to appeal."

Fiddling while Rome burns

So the country is in a mess, I think we can all agree on that. So what are the Tories doing about it? OK we all know that there is a Coalition Government but the Conservatives are the major partner, both in numbers and influence.

So instead of concerning themselves with addressing the multitude of problems our country face, the Tory party are doing what they do best; bickering among themselves about their favourite subject - Europe and the European Union, endlessly. They have been banging on about this for weeks. 

Truth be told they have been banging on about this for forty years! We joined what was then the Common Market in January 1973 and they have not stopped bickering about it since.

This week the new unemployment figures were released. The Office for National Statistics announced a small increase in unemployment to 2.52 million.

The numbers of NEETS (Young people not in employment, education or training) is just under one million. That is more than one in seven 16 to 24 year olds. This is according to the Work Foundation who go on to say: "The UK has experienced the fastest rise in youth unemployment of any country in the G8 since the start of the recession and now has the third worst levels in the OECD."

There are 660 000 people in the UK affected by the bedroom tax.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, in a report out this week: "Income inequality increased by more in the first three years of the crisis to the end of 2010 than it had in the previous twelve years." 

The report goes on: "After taxes and transfers, the richest 10 per cent of the population in OECD countries earned 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 per cent in 2010, up from 9 times in 2007."

So are the Tory Party occupying themselves with these problems? No, they would prefer to posture and preen and endlessly discuss something that isn't going to happen until 2017 if at all! 

Crying into my porridge

I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard there were street parties in Glasgow celebrating the long-awaited death of Maggie Thatcher last Monday. If I wasn’t living in England now I would have been there in a heartbeat, joyously joining in the celebrations.

However, after being exposed to just some of the endless bickering in the media about who she was, what she did and what it meant, I started to question my unbridled glee, and wonder where it came from. After all this is a human being we are talking about, and I’m rarely so callous as to celebrate people’s deaths.

So why celebrate her death? What makes her different?

I was only a toddler when Thatcher lost power, but my father – a socialist in his day – made sure I knew all about this wicked woman, this rich and snobbish bogeyman who greedily privatised Britain whilst the working man suffered and lost everything. My father was working-class and the first of his family to go to university, purely as a result of Labour government funding. He did well, and my childhood was comfortable, but our lives could have been very different under a Conservative government, and I never forgot that.

I grew up to become a young socialist, listening to inspiring speeches by the then-leader of the Scottish Socialist Party – Tommy Sheridan – who was a key figure in the anti-poll tax campaign that eventually lead to Thatcher’s demise. Graffiti from the riots can still be seen in central Glasgow.

I went on to study Social Policy at University in Scotland (paid for by the Scottish Government). A fundamental theory in Social Policy was the importance of equality in society – and my fellow Scottish students seemed so like-minded that when Thatcher was mentioned in lectures, a near-audible boo would shoot round the room.

Over time it became clear to me that left-wing (anti-Thatcher) ideals and Scottish Nationalism were inextricably linked. Thatcher thrust her unwelcome right-wing policies on a mostly left-wing Scotland, who –without a Scottish Parliament - was too small to defend itself against this Westminster imposition. This dynamic closely mirrored all the patriotic history lessons I had growing up about the English invasions in the thirteen and fourteenth centuries, in which the underdog Scotland bravely fought back but, outnumbered, were ultimately defeated.

The imposition of Thatcherism in Scotland therefore paved the way for the Scottish Parliament and greater independence – as Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond explains "What Margaret Thatcher did was turn the Scottish Parliament from being a nice idea - democratic advance to being something absolutely essential".

So when I heard that Glasgow was having spontaneous street parties to celebrate her death, I got a little rush of patriotic pride and a feeling of belonging and understanding that made me laugh – although a little sad as I was no longer living with my ‘kin’. The bogeyman was dead – and therefore so was all that she stood for to me; the imposition of unfair right-wing policies from England on an unwilling but outnumbered left-wing Scotland.

We're happy to help George

So from Monday 1 April this Coalition Government's welfare reforms kick in - kick being the operative word. They are back to their favourite activity; kicking the poor, the needy and those in social housing.

Some MPs, I am certain, will have spent the Easter weekend rehearsing their spiteful and vitriolic attacks on the feckless benefit scroungers. They will have been itching to get their comments broadcast or published anywhere they can.

Now I am sure most of us are aware that the welfare bill is huge. It is generally thought to amount to very near to a third of Government spending. Out of work benefits are generally held to make up 3% of the welfare bill.

The population is getting older, living longer; so how much of that bill is going on people who are drawing a state pension?

According to the Pensions Policy Institute, in 2011 - the most recent figures available, there were a shade over 12 million pensioners living in the UK.  As regards how much this costs, the most recent figures the PPI were able to provide related to 2009. Pensions cost £68.9 billion, if you added on housing related benefits, disability living allowance and attendance allowance the figure rises to £84.5 billion. The government is saying that it will protect pensioners from welfare reform, apart from DLA which it is reforming across the board.

So the first welfare reform, which does start Monday 1 April, is this ludicrous spare bedroom tax. It is widely agreed that this will affect 660 000 people across the UK. This means that if you live in social housing and you have a spare room your housing benefit will be reduced and you will have to pay the difference. For one spare room this will mean 14% of your housing benefit costs, if you have two or more spare rooms this will mean 25% of your housing benefit costs.

The sort of people this will affect are:

• couples who for medical reasons cannot share a bedroom. From radio phone-in programmes I heard over the weekend this is not uncommon
• divorced couples who need a spare room so their children can come and visit, which is going to put a huge strain on family relations
• siblings of the same sex, who, irrespective of the age difference will be compelled to share.

The last group I want to mention is people with disabilities, who may need to have to have a carer stay overnight but not every night or may be living in accommodation that has had adaptations to enable them to live there. Here the answer is as clear as mud as to whether they will get an exemption. Some councils are saying yes, you are exempt, some are saying it will require you to pay part of you housing benefit costs. The Government are yet to give a definitive answer.

So the man from the council or the housing association comes round and says you've got to pay more rent. Bear in mind we are talking about people who are either living on a low wage or indeed on benefit. Do you think he's going to say don't worry we can offer you alternative accommodation? The social housing supply is under enough pressure as it is.

This "spare room subsidy" as I believe Mr Cameron prefers to call it, which is just semantics, is clearly unworkable and unfair.

Then there is the council tax benefit which the government has given responsibility for to local authorities and cunningly renamed council tax support. Local authorities have had their budgets cut by 10%. So they are now going to be asking people to make a contribution where they previously had been exempt.

Last week, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report said the new system would leave 1.9 million claimants who are currently not required to pay council tax needing to find, on average, an extra £140 per year. Another 150 000 households would be required to pay £300 more per year.

To quote the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: "This will push people into poverty or cause more hardship for already very poor households."

Then there is the much vaunted Universal Credit system, diligently researched by Iain Duncan Smith who spent several years in the Tory wilderness stalking council estates up and down the land, so that he came to understand the problems faced by the poor and disenfranchised all over the UK so much better.

His answer is Universal Credit. His idea was to run four pilot schemes before he introduces it nationwide in October 2013. Before the pilot schemes have started they've put three of them back to July and now there's only one that will start on time. We are told this won't affect the outcome.

Next we come to the Benefit Cap, this has been set at £26 000 - councils are already renting properties on the outskirts of London and other cheaper areas of the country so that they can relocate their more expensive housing benefit claimants.

So this Government seems determined to hound the poor and make them poorer.

This is the same Government that acquiesced to multinationals such as Amazon, Starbucks and Google. These incredibly wealthy companies offered to make voluntary payments to the taxman, having studiously avoided paying what was due by their skillful manipulation of their books. All quite lawfully, of course.

Who wants to be a barista?

OK it's a silly word but it would appear that as job opportunity it is surprisingly popular, at least in Mapperley which is in Nottinghamshire.

The Costa coffee chain are opening up a new branch, so advertised for barista posts in their new shop. We all know that these are hard times, but Costa were very taken aback when they received more than 1700 applications for just 8 jobs. Only three of these jobs were full time.

That works out at 212 applicants for each job!

In Nottinghamshire the unemployment rate in January was 12.8%. The national average unemployment rate is 7.7%.

Frances O'Grady who is the General Secretary of the TUC said: "These figures show just how desperate people are for any kind of work. Ministers claim there are plenty of jobs out there but the reality is that there are far more people chasing these jobs."

What people really think of those on benefit

There is a vote in the House of Commons today on whether to cap benefits to a 1% rise only, for the next three years.

The Tories have been queueing up to get themselves on any media platform they can so they can slag off those in receipt of benefit! There has been an absolute onslaught of Government criticism of so-called benefit scroungers. It's not as if any of these people can be held responsible in any way for this country's financial woes but to hear some of these people go on you'd think the blame should be squarely  laid at their doors.

The Trade Union Congress commissioned YouGov, who are now firmly established as one of the top 25 market research companies in the world. The TUC asked YouGov to look into the attitudes of the British public towards those who were in receipt of benefits.What YouGov did was to establish what the general public thought was the case and what was actually the case.

• Average public perception: 41% of Britain's welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people.
• Reality: just 3% does
• Average public perception: 27% of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently.
• Reality: 0.7% of the welfare budget is, according to Government sources, claimed fraudulently.
• Average public perception: an unemployed couple with two school-age children would receive £147 per week in Job Seekers Allowance
• Reality: £111.45
• Average public perception: Only 21% think this family would be better off with one of them working a 30 hour-a-week job paying minimum wage; this 21% thinks, on average, they would be £59 a week better off.
• Reality: the family would be £138 a week better off.

The Government are perpetuating myths and misunderstandings about what they delightfully coin the benefit culture. This is a deliberate ploy on their part to play one sector of society off against another, in this case the working poor, against those who aren't working. The deserving poor against the undeserving and presumably feckless.

Just today Nick Clegg was speaking to MPs about the proposed benefit cap. He told them that services such as schools and the NHS would suffer unless a benefits rise cap was imposed.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies are a major economic research institute in the UK often used by the Government. The IFS  have said that JSA accounts for 2.4% of the total welfare budget, they continue that benefits for those on low incomes, ie those who are working account for 21% of the welfare budget, whereas payments for elderly people, including the state pension make up over 42%.

So why oh why does the Government feel so free to glibly castigate and vilify this section of society?