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?

Multimillionaire Tony Blair agrees to pay his interns the minimum wage

The Office of Tony Blair, which helps to administrate his consultancy and diplomatic interests has agreed to pay his interns the National Minimum Wage. It was the government of Tony Blair in 1998 who introduced the minimum wage. This decision to modify such shoddy behaviour only came about after the Office of Tony Blair was exposed by a careers website named Graduate Fog, their reports were picked up by the Guardian newspaper.

The current rate for the minimum wage stands at £6.08 per hour. The current rate for the London Living Wage stands at £8.30. But the Office of Tony Blair are not offering that which seems odd given that his office is based in central London. The London Living Wage campaign was started by  a group called Citizens UK who describe themselves as the national home of community organising.

Estimates for the sainted Tony Blair's wealth vary. Both the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph have estimated this year that his annual income is in the region of £20 million.

Gus Baker from Intern Aware queried why Tony Blair wasn't paying all his interns:

"While it is good and welcome that Blair has relented and agreed to pay the interns in his private office, he still reportedly does not pay those working for his charity. Failing to pay at least the national minimum wage isn't just unfair on those who are asked to work for free, it excludes those who can't afford to. Tony Blair should know better and pay all his interns a fair wage."

What the Prince's Trust say about our out of work young people

The Prince's Trust; Prince Charles' charity have just this week published a report which reveals the full extent of  long term unemployment among young people and how much worse it has become in recent years. as I have mentioned being unemployed when you are young causes real damage and longer term problems later in life. See Lost Generations: http://inmyshoesnorthlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/lost-generations_17.html

The number of 18 - 24 year olds claiming JSA for at least six months has risen by 315% THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN PER CENT in the recession. In August 2008 the number stood at 40 360. In October 2012 it stands at 167 580.

As regards long term unemployment the figures aren't much better: In 2008 there were 38 550 18 - 24 year olds who had been out of work for more than TWO years. By July this year that figure had risen to over 100 000. An increase of 170 %. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY PER CENT

Martina Milburn who is the Chief Executive of the Prince's  Trust said: "Long term unemployment can lead to a downward spiral of poverty, homelessness and depression."

A guest blog from a woman with autism in her 40s

At the end of 2009 I left a job in a government department. I was very pleased to leave, as my disabilities were not being supported effectively. Government departments talk the talk on disability but don't get their act together. After being misinformed by the Jobcentre and applying for  Job Seeker's Allowance I worked out that I should have applied for Employment Support Allowance and was assessed for ESA mid way through 2010. Dealing with government bodies from the outside from outside proved no better than dealing with them from the inside.

The ESA assessment was farcical. The contractors doing the assessment proved  they  knew nothing about disability when they called themselves ATOS Healthcare with a section called Medical Services. Looking at disability as if it were health issue misses the point. Someone with, say Downs Syndrome might be fighting fit and able to run fundraising marathons and still not able to hold down a job. Treating this person as a malingerer misses the point. Looking at this person's ability to complete the ESA fitness for work test which asks  participants to lift their arms above their head and walk so many steps, misses the point too and is humiliating for those being assessed.

One of my disabilities is autism. At my assessment I arranged for an expert volunteer from the National Autistic Society to advocate for me. I had brought with me copies of lengthy expert reports on my disabilities and my advocate and I sat there and educated the assessor on what autism is. Neither the assessor nor the people back at the office she sent her notes to, have training on specific disabilities, so before they could assess me I had to educate them. Not easy when I have a communication disability and the NAS does not have enough advocates for more than a handful of cases.

I have recently been asked to attend a reassessment for ESA. I refused - writing to ATOS and asking what the purpose of the meeting could be. I have already provided all the information on my disabilities that I can, my disabilities are lifelong conditions which do not change. Reassessment would provide ATOS with no more information and would be a burden to me in terms of finding advocacy.

ATOS Healthcare Medical Services wrote to me to explain that reassessment was necessary because the ESA rules have changed. Well that explains everything, now that the government has new rules I am to undertake all and any forms of work and my disabilities have magically disappeared. I continue to refuse reassessment because I refuse to be humiliated by a bureaucracy which has been disabled from supporting me by its assumption that disability can be seen in terms of health instead of inclusion and writes its rules accordingly.

Millionaires picking on cripples

That's the Government bullying the sick and disabled. Whilst the nation is singing the praises of the Paralympians, what is the Government doing? Firstly David Cameron announced that he was going to set up a special Olympic and Paralympic honours list just to commemorate their achievements, and the flip side of what the Government are doing?

Yep that's right - threatening to withdraw £71 a week from sick and disabled benefit claimants! This is from a weekly total of £99.15.

People who claim Employment Support Allowance are judged to be too ill or disabled to work.

These people are split into two groups: Firstly the support group, who are deemed to be a long way off from rejoining the workplace. The second group are named the Wrag group. This is an acronym for Work Related Activity Group. This latter group are assessed to be capable of taking steps towards moving into work straight away. Therefore they must undertake a range of activities to help them get back into work

According to the Department of Work and Pensions these activities are to include:

• Attending and taking part in work-focused interviews.
• Carrying out work-related activities that the claimant's adviser asks the claimant to do.

This is to include unpaid and unlimited work experience according to what the DWP told the Guardian newspaper. In order to legally permit officials to make the sick and disabled in the Wrag group do work experience as a condition of their benefit claim the Government had to pass an additional clause to their Welfare Reform Act of 2012.

There are people concerned about the implications such new conditions will have for those affected. Gillian Guy the chief executive of the Citizens Advice Bureau, said there were already lots of cases that had cropped up where benefit sanctions had been applied "inappropriately, often causing great hardship". Ms Guy went on: " People have their benefits cut with little or no warning or explanation or understanding of what they failed to do."

Paul Farmer, who is the chief executive of Mind, the mental health charity warned: "It is important to remember that people in the work-related activity group have been assessed as unfit for work - they are not at full health and are still very vulnerable, they face significant barriers to return to employment and need support rather than the threat of sanction."

On top of this, the Government are "reforming " payment of Disability Living Allowance. What they are doing is replacing DLA with the more restrictive personal independence payment (PIP) from next year. DLA helps with the cost of transport, equipment, care and other specialist needs. DLA is currently paid to 3.2 million people. Under PIP, the Government estimates that up to 500 000 people will lose entitlement to the benefit in the coming years as the eligibility criteria are tightened and people's claims are reassessed.

Here are just a selection of remarks from some of the British paralympian team:

• Aaron Phipps, Wheelchair Rugby:: "DLA pays for those essential things I would need. It is just completely essential, I would be completely lost without it."
• David Clarke, Blind five-a-side football: "It seems as though disabled people's independence is being jeopardised by the Government's proposals, but it is so wide of the mark..."
• Natasha Baker, Dressage: "DLA enables disabled people another life...it allows us to be independent. I love my independence."
• Kylie Grimes, Wheelchair Rugby: "DLA is really important.I have been injured now five and a half years. For me it is hugely important. I would have been lost without it, to be honest."

Our Prime Minister this morning announced that he was setting up a separate honours list for Olympians and Paralympians. He has spoken of a legacy from both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Yet he and his Government seem hell bent on depriving some of the very people he is speaking of, of monies that they need to live independent lives.

Some legacy Mr Cameron.