Mitchell Incident

For members who might have missed it, David has sent me the transcipt of the police log published in yesterday's Telegraph.  I have posted it as a page - see panel to the right.

Personally, I'm intrigued that the media consider 'pleb' more reprehensible than ***** or @@@@!!  Pompous arrogance, sadly, isn't a crime whereas effin and blindin at anyone in the street, especially someone like a police officer doing his or her duty, is a Section 5 Public Order offence.  And as everyone now knows, a conviction or even a warning for Section 5 is enough to disqualify the recipient from standing as Police and Crime Commissioner.

I also like the way the Tories try to spin the complaints of the Police Federation as 'political'.  As Mr Mitchell rightly points out, he's the @****@ Chief Whip.  Politics is what he ***@@*** does!

Those were the days...

I was sorting through the old rubbish and chucking out---

Sorry.  Start again.  I was cataloguing the archive and came across this priceless relic.  Yes, it's the Branch's first-ever newsletter dating from 1984BB (Before Bach). 

Graphics have come on somewhat since those days but our guest speakers certainly haven't.  What's that middle box on the right of the front page say?  And the central box on the back?  I'm going to make you read the transcript I have provided on a separate page [use the navigation on the top right of the blog].  And whatever you do, don't tell anyone!

In general terms, it's remarkable how little has changed politically.  I could Tweet the quote on taxes today and nobody would ever dream it's 28 years old.

Whatever happened to the Stan Brown Memorial Evening?

David transcribed this from The Now Show (BBC Radio 4) podcast, June 29 2012.

 

Comedian Marcus Brigstocke on the rich threatening to move themselves and their money abroad.

 

"Everyone has to live with their money is.  But David Cam-Moron has reminded us who is really to blame for all our ills.  Yes, it's all the fault of working class scummy scrounging little piggies, the lot of them.  I, Marcus, am not so stupid as to say that all welfare is sacred and mustn't but touched and cut, but - David Cam-Moron, inherited multimillionaire, talking about a culture of entitlement - my irony meter broke in a wail of bitter laughter.

 

"David Cam-Moron takes those who work hard and do the right thing - good people -

the heart and soul of Great Britian - and pits them against those claiming benefit.  Reasonable, perhaps?  BUT David Cam-Moron knows that they are the same people.  Seven in eight people claiming benifits are working low earners.  They are working but not earning enough and not living near enough to the hospitals shops and factories and schools and hospitals that they work in to keep the country going!

 

"The Conservatives use the word tradition to justify the ideology the rest of the world grew out of decades ago.  They have no idea how the rest of the world lives.  They might say, 'Well, you know, cuts to benifits will mean that working families will have to use their second cars to go to work or take their children forty miles to school unless of course they are at boarding school...

"I, Marcus, wish low earning workers could have the choice to leave the country.  How would the paper pushers cope then?????"

Fit to Work?

David Fish passed me this item, from the Birmingham Post, August 2, page 8.

Government ‘fit to work’ advisor overseeing ‘fit for work’tests to step down after calling on Conservative government to make tests ‘fair and humane’.

 

Professor Malcolm Harrington has resigned after 60% of disability benefit claimants were found to be fit to work in the West Midlands.

 

Disabled people applying for Employment and Support Allowance have been rejected and they should look for a job instead.

In the West Midlands, Department for Work and Pensions figures show that decisions were made on 8,200 applications for Employment and Support Allowance, the benefit which has replaced incapacity benefit, over a three month period in the West Midlands.

4,900 were rejected so that 59% of cases where a decision was made resulted in the claimant being told they were fit for work. Another 1,500 people, 18 per cent, were placed in a “‘work related’ activity group” where they receive training and support, such as help with interviewing techniques, designed to help them join the workforce eventually.

Just 1,800 claimants, 22 percent of those claiming Employment and Support Allowance, were placed permanently on the benefit over a three-month period in the West Midlands.

And in the same period, another 7,100 claims were simply withdrawn before a decision was taken.

The figures refer to new claims. People who cliam old benefits which are being phased out, such as incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance or income support paid on the grounds of illness or disability, are also undergoing assessments.

In April, the Government revealed that around a third of these claimants were also being categorised as fit to work following fresh tests.

The 13 week assessment, which tests physical fitness as well as mental skills, was first introduced by Labour.

Professor Harrington was called in to review the tests after thousands of disabled were successfully challenged their test results. He has admitted that some claimants who are genuinely unable to work had been through a “traumatic” experience because of the tests.

He told the programme: “I think people are being treated more like human beings now, but it is still difficult to go through it”.

The Government has not published regional figures for the number of initial decisions overturned on appeal, but nationally around 15 percent of initial decisions result in appeals and just under a third of these result in a decision being overturned.

(These so-called capability assessments are carried out by the notorious ATOS Healthcare, despised sponsors of the Paralympics. Employment and Support Allowance is, I am sad to say, a late-blooming fungus on the Labour Government tree. The test is exactly the same as the old Incapacity Benefit test, with all its ridiculous anomalies and inherent unfairness to those suffering mental health probolems, just rebranded and outsourced to a French IT company with targets to meet. The truth is, it's a test of your perceived ability to win the appeal.

I did hundreds of Incapacity Benefit appeals over my twenty years with the CAB. Never lost one.  RW)