After the Secret Flights to Deport Windrush Migrants, No-One Is Safe in Tory Britain

We all need to look at ourselves and judge who of us is racist as we all have a right of live. Just because someone, for whatever reason may be different is no reason to be abusive to each other.

There should be zero tolerance on racist attitudes so that we can all live in peace with each other.

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Mike in his articles attacking May and her truly foul decision to destroy the evidence needed for the Windrush migrants to show their right to live in our wonderful country also mentioned that poem by Martin Niemoller. Niemoller was one of the scandalously few Christians in Nazi Germany to oppose the regime. You know the poem. It’s become something of a cliché – It opens with the various groups the Nazis came for, with the refrain ‘I did not speak out, because I was not’ whichever group was being attacked. It ends with the line that when they finally came for him, there was no-one to stand up for him. This was the reality in Nazi Germany. The Nazis attacked group after group, not just Jews, but also Gypsies, Socialists, Communists, trade unionists, the disabled, and other political and religious dissidents. And it had an effect. The Catholic Centre Party…

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Chris Smith: People Want the Advertising Standards Authority to Act on Political Claims

I agree with most of this post, however, in my 60 odd years of life on this earth I have found that there are not many politicians in who you can believe in, be they red, blue, green, purple, orange, yellow and others. However, there are some in which there is some form of belief and others practically none. They all promise the earth and unfound riches in their manifestos and only when they assume power can the truths be revealed.

You cast your vote and hope for the best.

Regarding Brexit nothing has come forth as we have not Brexited and will not be doing so until March 2019 or may be not, depending on whether there will be a transition deal or not.

Everything is so up in the air and no one on either side in the UK or Europe can be sure of the final outcome. We can all speculate on what the outcome or outcomes will or can be and who will be in power if and when we do or not do Brexit.

That length of string is getting longer or is it shorter, day by day.

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

This is another fascinating little video from RT’s Going Underground. Host Afshin Rattansi talks to the former cabinet minister under Blair, Chris Smith, above his decision to oppose the Invasion of Iraq, his work in the Advertising Standards Authority, and Brexit.

Smith was Blair’s Culture Secretary, and the author of a book, Creative Britain. The cover showed him wielding a professional movie/TV camera. He states he opposed the Iraq invasion because it was ‘obviously the wrong the policy’. He also states that during his time with the Advertising Standards Authority, people wrote in asking them if they could possibly act against the misleading political advertising in elections. Smith states that this is sadly impossible. Their constitution limits them to commercial advertising only, and they have no power to prosecute or punishment politicians that lie.

On the subject of Brexit, he and Rattansi clearly hold different views. Smith appears…

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Welfare reform ‘will see £50 a week more cuts to 900,000 disabled people’ – Black Triangle Campaign

John Pring Disability News Service 14th September 2017

About 900,000 disabled people will see their weekly incomes fall by at least £50 a week by 2020, because of the continuing impact of the government’s welfare reforms, according to new research.

The research by the consultancy Policy in Practice found that, of 7.2 million working-age, low-income households, more than two-fifths of those containing a working-age disabled person would lose at least £50 a week, compared with November 2016.

The report, The Cumulative Impact Of Welfare Reform: A National Picture, says the impact of measures introduced after November 2016 will see the average low-income household containing a working-age disabled person lose £51.47 a week by 2020, compared with an average loss of £35.82 for households not containing a disabled person.

This will come on top of an average weekly loss of more than £20 for low-income households containing a working-age disabled person as a result of welfare reforms introduced pre-November 2016 – such as the benefit cap, cuts to housing benefit and the bedroom tax – although this figure does not take account of rising living costs.

 

Source: Welfare reform ‘will see £50 a week more cuts to 900,000 disabled people’ – Black Triangle Campaign

Secular Talk: Judge Has Journalist Arrested for Using Freedom of Information Act

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It seems that freedom of the press is under attack all around the world. Erdogan, the wannabe Ottoman Sultan of Turkey, has made himself notorious for jailing anyone, journalist or not, who dares criticise him. John Kampfner, in his book, Freedom for Sale, describes the clampdown on press and media freedom across the world, in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Dubai and Russia. And now America. In this piece from Secular Talk, Kyle Kulinski comments on a Vice Report about the arrest of a journalist in the US state of Georgia, Mark Thomason, and his lawyer, Russell Stookey, by the chief judge of Pickens County superior Court, Brenda Weaver. Thomason’s the publisher of a small, local newspaper, Fannin Focus. They were arrested on charges of identity fraud and making false statements. Thomason’s real crime was making official requests for public documents on illegally cashed cheques. He and Stookey also…

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Vox Political on IDS Replacement, Stephen Crabb

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Mike over at Vox Political has put up a piece giving a few choice facts about the man now filling IDS’ seat in Cabinet, Stephen Crabb. He points out that Crabb has enthusiastically supported all of the benefit cuts, including the 30 per cent reduction in ESA. However, he begins by talking about Crabb’s enthusiasm for curing gay people.

No, he isn’t a mutant crab. That was a bad joke.

Not a joke is his apparent belief that people who are gay can be cured of it. He is on record as having taken interns from a charity called Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), and sponsored a ‘gay cure’ event run by the same organisation in 2012.

Perhaps he thinks serious illnesses and disabilities like cancer, Parkinson’s disease and amputated limbs can also be cured. Let’s face it, everyone carrying out Work Capability Assessments seems to have that belief…

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Private Eye from 2006 on the Failure and Dysfunction of the Freedom of Information Act

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Private Eye in its issue for the 6th to 19th January 2006 published a long article on how the Blair government’s Freedom of Information Act actually didn’t do what everyone expected, and lead to great openness and freedom of information from government. I’m posting it up here as it shows how there’s always been a problem using the Act to get information, as Mike and so many of the other disability activists have found out for themselves, trying to get information out of Ian Duncan Smith’s DWP. Here’s the article:

How FOI Doesn’t Work

“The culture of secrecy in Whitehall, and beyond, is cracking open,” announced Lord Falconer in the Guardian last week, reflecting on the first anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act.

“We have seen real change … We seek to achieve across the whole public sector a new culture of openness, fully embedded in each and…

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Vox Political: Jeremy Hunt Runs Away from Doctors

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Last week Mike posted about how a Tory fundraising event in Fareham had supposedly been cancelled after it was found that doctors had been buying the £15 tickets in order to confront Jeremy Hunt. It seems this wasn’t quite true. According to a report from the Groaniad Mike’s reblogged on Vox Political, the event wasn’t cancelled. The location was changed, and those attending the event were checked to make sure they didn’t have any medical people with them.

See http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/15/confirmed-tory-activists-prevented-doctors-from-attending-event-with-jeremy-hunt/.

This is prize cowardice, well worthy of the Gentleman Ranker, Ian Duncan Smith, or as I prefer to call him, aIDS, because of his similarly lethal and virulent nature. The Galloping Major is known to gallop off at very high speed whenever he’s faced with his opponents in person. He’s hidden in laundry baskets, run out the back of job centres, and deliberately scheduled speeches first thing in the morning…

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Tory MP David Willetts’ Defence of the Welfare State

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The Tory MP, David Willetts, a member of the ‘One Nation’ group within the party, which had been set up to reconcile the Conservatives with the NHS, wrote a defence of the welfare state in his 1992 book, Modern Conservatism. This is surprising, not only because Willetts was a Tory, but also because he was Thatcher’s former adviser on social security. He wrote

Nobody is very clear why a Conservative should support a welfare state. It seems to fit in with the highmindedness of the Liberals and the egalitarianism of the Labour party. But what is conservative about it? If Conservatives do support it, is this mere political expediency? …

Why have a welfare state: efficiency and community
The are two types of argument for a welfare state. Neither is exclusively conservative, but they both tie in closely with two crucial elements of conservative philosophy – the belief in…

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Vox Political Meme on the ‘Caring’ Conduct of the DWP

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Earlier this evening I reblogged Mike’s article about aIDS’ hissy fit over Mike’s blog, and others like his, describing the way people are dying or left mentally ill, sometimes extremely seriously, after being found ‘fit for work’ by Atos and now Maximus. Apparently the Minister for Chequebook Genocide thinks these are ‘outrageous claims’. The only part of his sorry affair that is outrageous is the conduct of the DWP and its mendacious and cowardly head.

Mike’s piece included this meme below, which comprehensively rebuts aIDS’ claim that those assessed are treated fairly and with courtesy. And Field isn’t the only person to have reported such treatment of claimants. Others have too. There have been a number of horrendous reports of people suffering from severe depression being asked why they haven’t committed suicide after they’ve revealed that they’ve suffered thoughts of ending their lives.

Disgraceful. As is all of this shabby…

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Worry about getting back into work.