And the same team in Broughton Astley this morning

I'm thinking there may be a theme here...

Labour4Lutterworth in Gilmorton this lunchtime

The Leadership Contest

As we finally stagger towards the two-thirds mark in an internal election that has taken twice as long as the national one, David Fish has drawn my attention to several interesting recent articles in the New Statesman.

First, Peter Wilby's column from July 30 has a bit of a pop at Harriet and a non-knee-jerk response to rise of Jeremy Corbyn.

Next, Helen Lewis on the dangers of over-reliance on social media.  And finally Mary Creagh MP (who, if I can remember that far back, was once briefly a candidate) on the sudden 'toxicity' of the middle ground.

Many thanks, David.

Starting Election Day.  The Labour4Lutterworth Committee Rooms 07:10.  David Fish, Amanda Hack, David Gair.  Time to get your rosette on and VOTE LABOUR.

Union saves jobs

David Fish drew my attention to this story on the BBC - a rare incidence of mass media reporting a good news story about a trade union.

Get the full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/business-26342093

Fighting the same battle

David F sent me this quote:

"If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain–when healing and relief depend upon payment.
I warn you that you will have ignorance–when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.
I warn you that you will have poverty–when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.
I warn you that you will be cold–when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work–when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.
I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light.

"I warn you that you will be quiet–when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.
I warn you that you will have defence of a sort–with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding.
I warn you that you will be home-bound–when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.
I warn you that you will borrow less–when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday–
- I warn you not to be ordinary
- I warn you not to be young
- I warn you not to fall ill
- I warn you not to get old."

It was made by Neil Kinnock, in Bridgend, on Tuesday June 7 1983.  It serves as a reminder just how good Kinnock was at making speeches - and why the Right Wing Press simply had to dub him the Welsh Windbag.  It also reminds us how, thirty years on, we are still fighting the same battle.

Substitute David Cameron or The Coalition for 'Margaret Thatcher', change the date to Thursday May 7 2015, and the rest holds as true today as it did in 1983.

Don't forget the PCC election!

Just over a week before the scandal of the £75 million police commissioner elections in which a tiny turnout of between 10 and 20% will see unheard-of Tories returned, claiming a mandate to cut and cut everything except their own wages, it is worth considering what the Tories really think about the police.

A week or so ago David sent me an article from the Birmingham Post.  You can read the article in full by clicking this hyperlink, and I recommend you do.  However, the crux of the matter is, the Tories are making West Midlands Police chip in £0.5m towards the cost of policing this year's Tory conference in the city.  To add insult to injury the same funding change means the force owe themselves £249,942 for the pleasure of protecting last year's LibDem conference from cheated voters.  All this of course, at a time when hundreds of  officers in the second city are facing the chop.

The government's ploy of downplaying the PCC elections is a disgrace - and we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting them get away with it.

So buck the trend on Thursday November 15.  Defy the pundits and vote in the PCC election.  Vote Labour.  Vote for Sarah Russell!

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)