UK 'skills gap' and social and economic exclusion — a prospective letter to Hereford Times?

Alan Winstanley ('True figures', Hereford Times printed Letters, November 28) argues that the UK can’t train enough nurses and/or high-tech sector employees. A UK General Election is a great time to ask political parties why they think that might be so, and how they and their party would address that matter if elected to represent us.

I would argue that a root problem is short-termist underfunding by successive UK governments in the training of home grown talent, as I argued on the BBC2 tv programme ‘Working Lunch’ broadcast on September 27, 2000. A Web Design training company worker had told me, “I agree with you: six weeks is inadequate for our training curriculum, but the government has told us to halve the training period from 12 weeks to 6 in order to double the throughput from the dole queue.”

The Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion argued on the same programme slot that there was considerable underinvestment in training to promote absolutely basic literacy skills. Four years later while volunteering in teaching [other] adults with learning difficulties very basic computing skills, I was commended for “endless patience with slower learners.”

Yet there was no paid future in that for me, as Learning & Skills Council prioritsed  NVQ Levels 2 and 3 — with no extra investment overall — so as to implement the London 2012 Olympics agenda. I, and the trainees I supported, and their Guardian/Channel4 Teacher of the Year Award Winning paid teacher, were let down yet again! (“Learning & Skills Council [existed] to help make England better skilled and more competitive.”(1))

It’s also been pointed out that our nurses are trained at their own expense,(2) and many rely on food banks (3) and Universal Credit top up. (4)

Basically, the First Past the Post (FPTP voting system favours the major political parties’ tax-evading funders [as ‘wealth creators’ for those parties] to invest more in their Research & Development. Government underfunding of public services leads to burnout while tech companies such as BT help resource think tank ‘charities’ such as Reform UK toward, say, the ‘digitising of public services’ creating greater social exclusion and extreme poverty as Universal Credit is ‘digital by default’.





Alan Wheatley

(NB: Hereford Times recommends that letters for publication be 250 words or less to stand a chance of publication, but I have had more wordy letters published there. The above text comes to 362 words excluding my byline.)

Notes

1. "The Learning & Skills Council exists to help make England better skilled and more competitive" was the 'description' or Mission Statement proclaimed on their former website.
2. uk nurses trained at own expense
3. uk nurses food banks
4. uk nurses "universal credit"

Oxford Geography Prof. Danny Dorling: If Geography was more international subject, its literature would have wealth of perspectives

Prof. Danny Dorling is a Social Geographer, and his work ties in with the theme related in my blog post https://newsforwardsfromalanwheatley.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-apartheid-of-wealth-state-we-are-in.html

He has worked closely with Taxpayers Against Poverty. He has some very candid and illuminating words to say about his subject, the students who are attracted to it, and the fruits by which it is known.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/geography-soft-option-posh-students-104226543.html
Especially of relevance to the current UK General Election 2019 is
http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/a-better-politics-by-danny-dorling-on-tap-website-some-alternatives-to-the-
Title: A Better Politics by Danny Dorling on TAP website some alternatives to the mess created [from 2010 to 2016]

Within my 1993/97 Interdisciplinary Studies (Major: Sociology) BA pathway at U. Westminster, I studied a module The Geography of Development. One of the things I learned in that module was that South African apartheid and exploitation of migrant male mine workers was a key factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. Male migrant workers were allowed into the Republic of South Africa to work in the mines, but not allowed to take their families with them. That resulted in their seeking sexual contact with women local to the mining locations, some of whom wer HIV+. Thus they took the virus back with them to their homelands.

On the positive side,

In ... the journal Emotion, Space and Society,Dorling wrote that university geography departments need to do more to address their imperial origins as it is the “core subject of imperial domination”. 
 

He explained: “Most of the world doesn’t have many geography departments. It is a very British-centred thing. If it was a more international subject, our journals would be full of people writing from different backgrounds.”

According to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) 40 per cent of 16 year olds study geography, compared to around 27 per cent in 2010. This increase has largely come from black and minority ethnic minority groups.

A spokesperson for the RGS told The Times: “It is right that geography reflects the diversity of the world within its students. There is more work to be done across the geographical community to properly achieve this.”

Source: https://uk.yahoo.com/news/geography-soft-option-posh-students-104226543.html

On the negative side, Dorling has told the Times Higher Education Supplement:

“Geography in the UK has become a soft option for those who come from upper-middle class families where increasingly you are expected to go to university, especially for those who were privileged (and so often have high GCSE marks) but are not actually that good..."

Although the curriculum should cover issues like climate change and global inequality, Dorling said it actually gives rise to graduates who “make the world an even worse place” by taking careers in industries like banking, advertising and management.

He added geography is the “favourite subject” of “ those who create hostile environments for immigrants, political parties that border on the facists, of war-mongers, bankers and imperialists”.

Famous geography alumni include former Prime Minister and Conservative MP Theresa May and Prince William who studied the subject at St Andrew’s University in Scotland.

Source: https://uk.yahoo.com/news/geography-soft-option-posh-students-104226543.html

What kind of online privacy would we get post-Brexit?

Go tohttps://www.wddty.com/news/2019/11/health-sites-passing-medical-data-to-google-and-facebook.html
for original WDDTY article

This following transatlantic What Doctors Don't Tell You — aka Get Well — magazine online story came to me via my inbox., The key phrase in it for me in the context of there currently being an in-or-out-of the European Union General Election:

even though it is a legal requirement in the UK and Europe to do so

And I thought, "Nigel Farage, now leader of the Brexit Party, and other anti-EU voices within the UK such as Boris Johnson, have long spoken about EU regulations as "excessive red tape."

Here is the article:

Health sites passing medical data to Google and Facebook

About the author: 

Bryan Hubbard

November 27th 2019 in Drugs, Heart disease

Some of the world's biggest health websites are sharing people's private medical information with Facebook, Google and Amazon.

WebMD, Healthline, Babycentre and Bupa are capturing sensitive data—such as medical problems and symptoms, drugs that are being taken, and menstrual cycles—and passing it on for targeted advertising campaigns.

The sites are capturing the data without permission, even though it is a legal requirement in the UK and Europe to do so, by using 'cookies' that monitor activity, an undercover investigation by the Financial Times has revealed.

Drug names that were entered into the website, Drugs.com, were passed to Google's advertising arm, DoubleClick, while queries about heart disease that were keyed into the British Heart Foundation, Bupa and Healthline sites were sent on to specialist online advertising firms such as Scorecard and OpenX.

With the data from the cookies—pieces of code that are embedded on people's browsers—Google and the others can follow the person around the internet, and he will suddenly start seeing online advertisements about his condition or drugs for the problem.


Of the hundred health sites the FT analysed, 78 were passing on the data to DoubleClick, and 48 were also sending medical information to Amazon.


"This kind of data is clearly sensitive, has special protection and transmitting this data most likely violates the law," said Wolfie Christl, a researcher.

---

References

(Source: Financial Times, November 13, 2019)

What kind of online privacy — or lack of! — would we be likely to experience in the event of a pro-hard-Brexit 2019-elected government?

More references to this story at
private medical information google facebook bupa "european union"

About 758,000 results (0.55 seconds) 

Benefits & Work Publishing review GE2019 party manifestos for benefit claimants

I forward the below from Benefits & Work Publishing Ltd Newsletter, to which I've added some explanatory text for the acronyms such as ESA.


Alan Wheatley

Benefits & Work Publishing Ltd logo, with link to
https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/4128-the-manifestos-are-out-but-will-they-influence-your-vote

THE MANIFESTOS ARE OUT

We’ve taken a look at each of the main parties’ manifestos, with the exception of the SNP which is out too late for this newsletter.

If you are voting solely on what each party is offering, then there is little doubt that Labour have made the most effort to capture sick and disabled claimants votes.

Their undertaking to immediately stop all new transfers to UC, and then scrap the benefit completely when they come up with a new system, would be an enormous weight off many claimants minds.

As would the plan to end the current work capability assessments (WCAs) [toward disability-related Employment & Support Allowance/component of Universal Credit] and PIP [Personal Independence Payment, re additional living costs of having a disability] assessments and take everything back in-house.

Increasing ESA [Employment & Support Allowance] by £30 for claimants in the work-related activity group (WRAG) and raising carers allowance to the level of JSA are two other potentially popular moves. [Alan adds that those in the Work-Related Activity Group -- WRAG -- of ESA claimants are especially prone to the perils of benefit sanctions, as witnessed at https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/account-of-sanctions-desperation-leaves-disabled-peer-in-tears-at-wrag-research-launch/
]

Both Labour and the Lib Dems say they would scrap the benefits cap, the two child limit and the bedroom tax.

And, like Labour, the Lib Dems would end WCA’s and reverse the cuts to ESA for claimants in the WRAG.

Both have more offers in their manifestos.

The Green Party take a different approach, saying they will introduce a “Universal Basic Income (UBI), an unconditional financial payment to everyone at a level above their subsistence needs”

The adult rate of UBI would be £89 a week with an additional supplement for disabled claimants.

They would also replace UC and benefits sanctions.

The Brexit Party are not trying too hard to capture the claimant vote. They are simply offering to have a five week maximum wait for payment of universal credit and undertake a review of the benefits system, followed by reform.

The Conservatives possibly get the prize for irony when they say in their manifesto that “. . .we will continue our efforts through the tax and benefits system to reduce poverty, including child poverty.”
Other than that they have little to say to claimants, except that they will “reduce the number of reassessments a disabled person must go through” and “publish a National Strategy for Disabled People before the end of 2020”.

Will the manifestos influence your vote?

Post a comment in our manifesto round-up (see Benefits News below) and let us know what you think.

....

---

BENEFITS NEWS
Only 40% of universal credit claimants get their full entitlement
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that only 40% of universal credit (UC) claimants get the full amount they are entitled to.
Fight to outlaw mandatory reconsiderations has begun – can you help?
The fight to outlaw mandatory reconsiderations has begun, thanks to Benefits and Work members, but more help is needed.
The manifestos are out, but will they influence your vote?
Well, with the exception of the SNP, all the party manifestos are out now. Will their offers to claimants make a difference to how you vote?
BBC and Channel 4 both to air Jobcentre friendly documentaries
Campaigners have criticised the BBC and Channel 4 for airing similar ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentaries based inside jobcentres, which are likely to cover-up the misery caused by Universal Credit (UC).
UC fraudsters becoming bolder in targeting claimants
A housing association in Teesside has issued a warning to tenants about universal credit fraud scammers who are going door-to-door offering bogus loans to tenants.
Bedroom tax supreme court defeat for DWP
The supreme court has ruled that, for a small number of cases, the bedroom tax is a breach of human rights and should be ignored by tribunals.

Frack Free United: URGENT ACTION: Let's Ban ALL Forms Of Fracking For Good

As editor of this Web Log (blog) I forward the below, even though Steve at FFU via ActionNetwork.org <contactus@frackfreeunited.co.uk> does not seem to recognise that slower readers find it very difficult to read so much within just 3 minutes.

I am such a slower reader, but consider however long it takes me to forward this edit -- with relevant Google search tags added -- a useful investment of my time in helping save Planet Earth.

Alan Wheatley

From: Steve at FFU via ActionNetwork.org <contactus@frackfreeunited.co.uk>
Date: Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 8:00 AM
Subject: URGENT ACTION: Let's Ban ALL Forms Of Fracking For Good

Please spare 3 mins to read this email. Urgent Action. Ask your candidates to sign the Frack Free United Election Pledge. We must BAN all types of fracking definitions and techniques to protect communities from the companies 'Flouting the rules' Why? Just days before the general election, the Conservative Government placed a moratorium on 'fracking' in England. Make no mistake, this is is a massive win in our campaign and together we have dealt a serious blow to the ambitions of the onshore fossil fuels industry. But, there are still many questions to be answered on the definition of fracking and if the moratorium covers other extreme extraction techniques such as ACID stimulation. You would think that the definition of fracking is simple, consistent and without constraints... Think again. The devil is in the definition detail...Check out why, click here. This is why we must keep on the pressure and ask this question of ALL our politicians from ALL parties - "Will you call for an immediate BAN of fracking AND all onshore unconventional oil and gas exploration and production, including coal bed methane and acid stimulation?" Please contact your parliamentary candidates and ASK THEM TO CLICK HERE AND SIGN OUR FRACK FREE PLEDGE. ... So far, over 100 candidates already signed up, and we have 2.8% Conservative Party, 4.7% Independent/Other, 15.9% Labour Party, 30.8% Green Party and 45.8% Liberal Democrats. We have produced an election leaflet (Click here) and please get in touch if you or your candidate would like some leaflets to hand out. When we started the FFU project in early 2016, our plan was to change the policy of the major parties and together we must celebrate how far we have all come, united in our cause. Make no mistake… This grassroots campaign has grown into a movement that has inspired the world and has impacted energy geopolitics. It's amazing how far we have come... now let's finish the job. Best regards Steve and the team #VoteFrackFree Our pledge to you. It is our intention to keep setting the agenda and continue to put pressure on the government to halt all forms of fracking. We will continue to work tirelessly push our message to everyone who can make a difference in our communities. If you can help please do. No matter how big or small the gift, every penny will go into campaign efforts and will help us to get our message out. PLEASE DONATE HERE [Personally, as a very poor pensioner, I'm not in a position to donate money to 'good causes'. I do recall though that donating one's time as in my forwarding this item via blog post can be helpful.]

Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up and get started building an email list and creating online actions today. Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.

No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops — and, by extension, 'free market economics'

An item in Housmans Radical Booksellers (London) e-newsletter caught my eye this morning, and I flag it up below.

First though, I shall refer to a small passage from Naomi Klein's 2007 book, 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'
https://naomiklein.org/the-shock-doctrine/
that is in large measure about the economics of the late Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics who was one of the influencers of Thatcherism, and integral to the CIA plot that destroyed the democratically elected Allende Government in Chile on September 11, 1973 in order to bring in an American economic experiment of rebuilding an economy by shock and awe. (That was the original '9/11', as Klein has pointed out.)

Like all fundamentalist faiths, Chicago School economics is, for its true believers, a closed loop. The starting premise is that the free market is a prefect scientific system, one in which individuals, acting on their own self-interested desires, create the maximum benefits for all. It follows ineluctably that if something is wrong within a free-market economy — high inflation or soaring unemployment — it has to be because the market is not truly free. There must be some interference, some distortion in the system. The Chicago solution is always the same: a stricter and more complete application of the fundamentals.

When Friedman died in 2006, obituary writers struggled to summarise the breadth of his legacy. One settled on this statement: "Milton's mantra of free markets, free prices, consumer choice and economic liberty is responsible for the global prosperity we enjoy today." This is partially true. The nature of that global prosperity— who shares in it, who doesn't, where it came from — are all highly contested, of course. What is irrefutable is the fact that Friedman's free-market rulebook, and his savvy strategies for imposing it, have made some people extremely prosperous, winning for them something approximating complete freedom— to ignore national borders, to avoid regulation and taxation and to amass new wealth.

This knack for thinking highly profitable thoughts appears to have its roots in Friedman's early childhood, when his parents, immigrants from Hungary, bought a garment factory in Rahway, New Jersey. The family apartment was in the same building as the shop floor, which, Friedman wrote, "would be termed a sweatshop today." Those were volatile times for sweatshop owners, with Marxists and anarchists organizing immigrant workers into unions to demand safety regulations and weekends off— and debating the theory of worker ownership at after-shift meetings. As the boss's son, Friedman no doubt heard a very different perspective on these debates. In the end, his father's factory went under, but in lectures and television appearances, Friedman spoke of it often, invoking it as a case study for the benefits of deregulated capitalism— proof that even the worst, least-regulated jobs offer the first rung on the ladder to freedom and prosperity.

A large part of the appeal of Chicago School economics was that, at a time when radical-left ideas about workers' power were gaining ground around the world, it provided a way to defend the interests of owners that was just as radical and was infused with its own claims to idealism. To hear Friedman tell it, his ideas were not about defending the right of factory owners to pay low wages but, rather, all about a quest for the purest possible form of "participatory democracy" because in the free market, "each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants." Where leftists promised freedom for workers from bosses, citizens from dictatorship, countries from colonialism, Friedman promised "individual freedom," a project that elevated atomized citizens above any collective enterprise and liberated them to express their absolute free will through their consumer choices. "What was particularly exciting were the same qualities that made Marxism so appealing to many other young people at the time," recalled the economist Don Patinkin, who studied at Chicago in the forties— "simplicity together with apparent logical completeness; idealism combined with radicalism." The Marxists had their workers' Utopia, and the Chicagoans had their entrepreneurs' Utopia, both claiming that if they got their way, perfection and balance would follow.

(I have copied and pasted the above from online source https://archive.org/stream/fp_Naomi_Klein-The_Shock_Doctrine/Naomi_Klein-The_Shock_Doctrine_djvu.txt
)

Now I move to the matter of 'No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops — and, by extension, 'free market economics'.

'No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops!'

The Housmans Radical Booksellers e-newsletter wrote:

No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops!

Our friends upstairs at anti-sweatshop campaign group No Sweat are crowdfunding to expand their ethical T-shirt project that sources T-shirts from a workers co-op in Bangladesh and uses the profit to fund sweatshop workers unions. Find out more here:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/no-sweat-t-shirt-that-fights-sweatshops

Screen capture of the 'No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops! Crowdfunder website
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/no-sweat-t-shirt-that-fights-sweatshops

I copy and paste text from that Crowdfunder page, that includes an online video:

No Sweat: T-shirts that Fight Sweatshops!

by No Sweat in London, England, United Kingdom

 No Sweat! Our T-shirts are made in a workers co-op run by ex-sweatshop workers & we use the profits to fight against sweatshop labour. 

 

"We did it. On 26th November 2019 we successfully
raised £5,264 with 142 supporter in 42
days."

Radical Booksellers

For more on Housmans Radical Booksellers, go to https://housmans.com/

For more on Radical Booksellers in general, go to http://www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk/

Voter registration ends midnight tonight!

From Helen Heathfield for Sheffield Green Parties, here with a focus on Hereford & South Herefordshire Parliamentary Constituency

Voter registration ends midnight tonight!

Hereford & South Herefordshire parliamentary candidate Diana Toynbee (Green Party)
photographed with picturesque River Wye backdrop, clearly in summer foliage!

Dear Alan,

It's deadline day to register to vote, and to get a postal vote you must apply before 5pm. Over 300,000 people registered to vote last Friday. Let's make sure today's even bigger. Please especially reach out to the young people in your life with these non-partisan youth-friendly messages from yesiwill.vote:

1. Share their ‘Deadline Day’ video on Twitter and Facebook.

2. They have a number of inspirational young people supporting their campaign, as well as some household names - please share their ‘Register to vote’ posts, as well as your own, on your Instagram stories - along with a link to their website.

3. They’re using the hashtags #RegisterToVote and #DontGetLockedOut

Hustings

Do you know someone who's not sure how to vote yet? Then send them to a hustings! And come too: be a friendly face as Diana runs circles round the other candidates!

Wednesday 27 November, 7pm doors, debate at 8pm, Left Bank Hereford. Book your free ticket here.  Email your two questions in advance to: info@herefordleftbank.com
Thursday 28 November 4-5pm, Art College. This is just for staff and students - but please make sure any staff and students you know are going.

Friday 29 November 7pm at John Kyrle School Ross-on-Wye. Questions by 9pm Sunday 24 Nov to tim.shelley@ymail.com

Monday 2 December 2-3.30pm at the GW Railway Club Hereford. Organised by Herefordshire Carers Support.

Tuesday 3 December 4.30-6 at Life & Soul Kitchen, Unit 1, Three Elms Trading Estate, Hereford, HR4 9PU. Organised by Mencap.

Wednesday 4 December, 6.30pm at The Barrels, St Owen Street Hereford. Live hustings organised by BBC Hereford&Worcester. Please let Diana know if you want to be part of her team of ten - diana.toynbee@greenparty.org.uk

Wednesday 11 December, 7.30-9.30pm at Left Bank Hereford. Not an offical hustings but a chance to discuss 'what should the council's core strategy say about housing?'. In association with the Herefordshire Centre for Community-led Housing.

Leaflets

Come on out - bring your friends and family! There are delivery hubs from Bobblestock to How Caple and St James to Ewyas Harold. Contact diana.toynbee@greenparty.org.uk to be connected with a delivery team.

Also, please contact me (07932 039031) if you'd like to join with Ellie's leafleting teams in North Herefordshire. We have a beautiful yet hard-hitting postcard about the urgency of climate action going out from this Friday.

Street stall

Diana will be speaking with members of the public at a street stall in High Town this Saturday 30 Nov. Come along for an hour or two - contact diana.toybee@greenparty.org.uk to book your slot.

Posters and posterboard

Glenn and Giles are out and about delivering posterboards and window posters. Please let Glenn know what you want and they'll deliver as soon as they can: storhaug@myphone.coop

Funds

A huge thank you to everyone who has already donated to our campaign. If you haven't yet, please consider donating now: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/diana-toynbee-for-south-herefordshire-green-mp

Bristol's still best

For the best chance to get our second Green MP - head to Bristol West. Now's the time to make a difference.  Fill in your details here to get involved. This is our only opportunity for another MP in years - please go for it!

Party time!

The other side of Christmas we'll be sharing our annual GreenFeast at Northolme Community Centre Belmont. Saturday 11 January 6.30 – 9.30 pm. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Helen

On behalf of both Herefordshire Green Parties
07932 039031

PS I was wrong about Ellie being on the Sunday Politics show last weekend - it's THIS WEEKEND!
PPS Please keep on following, sharing and retweeting:
https://www.facebook.com/diana4hereford
https://twitter.com/diana4hereford

Fire and Rescue Service worker says: "For workers' rights, vote against Boris Johnson"

Before presenting the youtube video clip below, I shall just mention that Herefordshire & Worcestershire Fire & Rescue Service workloads have been very much affected by recent Climate Change-related floods in Herefordshire & Worcestershire.

Eg,

• http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/18001395.big-clear-up-begins-herefordshire-floods/
• https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/18056849.picnic-benches-flooded-pub-wash-almost-50-miles-away/
• https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/18035949.rain-lashes-herefordshire-flood-weather-travel-updates/ 
• https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/search/?search=floods+fire+rescue+service

When Boris Johnson was London Mayor, he sold off Fire Stations. Now, as Prime Minister, he champions the 'global property investment' industry, rather than Fire Stations.
https://newsforwardsfromalanwheatley.blogspot.com/2019/10/government-and-fiona-bruce-backing-for-mipim-uk-summit-2019.html

A Fire & Rescue Service Worker speaks out:

As editor of this Web Log and in the interests of 'positive campaigning', I would recommend Hereford & South Herefordshire voters listen to the online video above, and attend and participate in the parliamentary constituency hustings advertised at
https://newsforwardsfromalanwheatley.blogspot.com/2019/11/ge2019-hustings-in-hereford-and-s-herefordshire.html
and asking candidates about their party policies on the matters most important to the individual voter concerned.

See also

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/17845097.firefighters-fear-cuts-police-takeover/

 

Are you registered to vote? Guest posting by [Labour supporting] TrixXxie of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, who has a Labour MP who supports Britain Remaining in the EU

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group itself is non-party-political.
Whatever your party political preferences this General Election,
make sure you are registered to vote.

 

The day before the 2017 election a national newspaper predicted the largest Tory majority since Thatcher. Nearly every pollster predicted a Tory landslide. They had us down by up to 13 points - and a day later *we proved every single one of them wrong.*

This time around? An earthquake is happening. *Yesterday 300,000 people registered to vote.* More than 1.5 million young people have registered to vote since the start of the election.

We've got one more days to sign people up. *Share this link everywhere.*

https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

The apartheid of wealth state we're in

The apartheid of wealth State we're in

Preface by Alan Wheatley

Frank Dobson lived among the voters who elected him their MP election after election

I originally published this re-publishing of a Community Care magazine Social Care Experts blog post, at the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Web Log that I used to administer. In a way, my yet republishing it again here is a tribute to the example set by the late Frank Dobson MP in living among the people he represented, though that was much despised by right wing tabloid newspapers.

Further, since I republished the below blog posting by Bob Holman at a Web Log that I administered, it has been apparently deleted from the Community Care website.

The blog posting below is originally from Community Care magazine and the days of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. The matters of geographical social inequality raised in that piece have become more urgent as a consequence of the social cleansing that has arisen since the 2010 General Election brought in a cabinet of millionaires with no real electoral mandate for the policies that they and their successors attempted to excuse with the backdrop of the crash of 2008 that really stemmed from the perils of investment bankers being rescued by the State.

The pull quote in the Bob Holman article is:

"The affluent elite tell the government about poverty. Those who endure it are shoved aside." 

These days, that shoving of poor people aside gives rise to the sharp rise in out-of-London-dispersal of poor people. While the definition of 'affordable housing' laid down by investment banker-turned 'ennobled'-welfare reform minister David Freud and his ilk have made a mockery of social housing, the debt induced by linking definition of 'affordable' to "80% of [a deregulated housing market] rate" results in a steep rise in homelessness and out-of-London housing dispersals.

Yet with property developers and Central Government pulling Camden Council by the purse strings, we are in for further segregation of wealthy and poor people as this paragraph from a recent Camden New Journal item highlights:

The so-called “affordable” section of the development appears not to have the same entrance, amenity areas and roof terraces as the rest of the building. Even rubbish disposal seems to be segregated; tenants of the affordable flats are expected to take their own rubbish to the bins while the other flats will be provided with a rubbish chute. Moreover it seems that this section, together with the community space, will be directly over one of the most polluted and noisy traffic junctions in Camden. 

It can, ideally, be instructive for people to be 'up close and personal' with what they emit. I close this preface with a link to an item from 2011 about Jeremy Clarkson's sad discovery about such matters.

Poor must meet Gordon

Photo of Bob Holman taken from 2016 obituary in The Guardian
"Bob Holman gave up a comfortable life as a university professor
to follow his religious convictions to live and work on deprived housing estates."
Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The GuardianVisit The Guardian obituary page for Bob Holman

by Bob Holman

Originally posted in Community Care magazine, 20 February 2008

Many of those committed to reducing poverty make the time to lobby the rich but have little contact with those at the sharp end Papers recently released show that Tony Blair had regular meetings with the ultra-rich. They lobbied the prime minister on tax breaks and pensions for themselves and their companies. No doubt they now meet Gordon Brown.

If a lobby for the rich meets in Downing Street why not one for the poor? I do not mean the leaders of national charities who have regular meetings with ministers. Odd that those on salaries of more than £100,000 a year, which help reinforce the idea of inequality, should take it upon themselves to be the poverty lobby.

Bob Holman: "The affluent elite tell the government about poverty.
Those who endure it are shoved aside."

Anyone who lives in a deprived area knows that many people on low incomes are intelligent and articulate about their plight. In 1998, I encouraged some residents in Easterhouse, Glasgow to write. They did not need to be taught to think or analyse. They did need help in finding a publisher. When the book came out as Faith in the Poor, it soon ran to a second edition.

One problem is that people in poverty are segregated from the powerful. When I joined the Labour Party in the 1960s, some MPs still lived in council estates, cheap housing areas and pit towns. Not now. As the research of Danny Dorling, professor at Sheffield University, shows, Britain is an increasingly segregated society.

Poverty lobby

The affluent – MPs, leaders of think tanks, government advisers, other senior public figures and all who make up the chattering classes – are geographically and socially distanced from those who struggle to survive. Consequently, it is almost impossible for them to have close friendships with and to act jointly with those who experience inequality. It is the powerful, affluent elite who tell the government and the media about poverty while those who endure it are shoved aside.

The poverty lobby should now campaign on the issue: “listen to poor people rather than us”. If the government agrees to breakfast with those on low incomes, how could it be organised? I don’t know. I do know that organisations such as ATD Fourth World run community and service user groups made up of single parents, pensioners, those on disability benefit, asylum seekers and many more.

Their representatives would be a start.

The agenda? That is for them to decide. I do believe that they would demonstrate to politicians that poverty is not because of an underclass or fecklessness or defective personalities but is something imposed by the powerful – the kind of people who make up the ultra rich lobby.

Bob Holman is an author and voluntary neighbourhood worker in Glasgow

- See more at: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-care-experts-blog/2008/02/poor-must-meet-gordon/#sthash.fOdghxsF.dpuf


Alan notes: The reason the above 'See more at' link no longer works and in fact leads to a 'page not found' cartoon, is that Community Care magazine has moved from being "the voice of social care," to being a publication that does not wish to interfere with the marketisation of social care, and/or offend potential advertisers. Deletion or re-routing of pages on a website is often a cause of what is called 'page rot'.
See also

Planning White Paper ignores accessible housing, Disability News Service reports

Frank Dobson MP, RIP

An advantage for me of staying in touch with my old home freebie the Camden New Journal is of course updating me about my old locale and the people there and getting more information about them.

Along those lines, I discover with some sadness the death of my 2010/15 MP Frank Dobson has died, but celebrate his previous existence. He became my MP by way of boundary changes in 2010. My 1992-2010 MP in Hampstead & Highgate constituency had been Glenda Jackson until boundary changes led her to contest and win the 2010 General Election by just 24 votes in the Hampstead & Kilburn seat, while my home constituency became the Holborn & St Pancras seat with Frank Dobson as MP.

(I also recall from my being in Camden Town Hall for the count on polling day at General Election 2010, that he said he loved being voted for by people he lived among. At that same count was Glenda Jackson, who had not moved from London SE3 to live in the Hampstead & Highgate constituency.)

As my MP he was much more approachable than Glenda Jackson ever had been, and I remember conversing with him sometime during the 2010/15 period as we walked through Westminster near Houses of Parliament. I can't recall what had brought us to walking together that day, and though I was a firm Green Party member at that stage and even a Spokesperson on Social Security, we spoke affably.

Later, with the help of disability activists from Women with Visible & Invisible Disabilities and Payday Men's network, I got his intervention when I had been summonsed too frequently to disability benefit assessments for Employment & Support Allowance. I was no longer bothered after that.

Frank was very much demonised by the right wing press for his insistence on not moving out of council housing in the nearly 40 years that he was an MP. While I shall let former Peace News editor Albert Beale tell more about his conversations with Frank Dobson, I shall just quote this from his tribute letter re Frank Dobson:

I remember, when he was elevated to Secretary of State for Health in the Blair government, bumping into him setting off on foot for Westminster (with his overnight red boxes of ministerial papers having been driven off in his official car without him), and him explaining that since he was in charge of health, he needed to set an example and shape up a bit…

Albert Beale pays tribute to the late Frank Dobson MP

Camden New Journal: HS2 report 'whitewash'

Tom Foot reports: Lord Berkeley, who worked on the report into escalating costs of HS2, distances himself from the leaked findings. Follow link to CNJ website

GE2019 hustings in Hereford & S Herefordshire parliamentary constituency

I've received the following from Helen Heathfield of Herefordshire Green Parties:

Spread the word about hustings

Do you know someone who's not sure how to vote yet? Then send them to a hustings!

1. TONIGHT! [Friday 22 November] 7.30pm at The Kindle. Organised by The Civic Society. £3 donation for non-members of the Civic Society.
2. Wednesday 27 November, 7pm doors, debate at 8pm, Left Bank Hereford. Book your free ticket here.  Email your two questions in advance to: info@herefordleftbank.com
3. Thursday 28 November 4-5pm, Art College.
4. Friday 29 November 7pm at John Kyrle School Ross-on-Wye. Questions by 9pm Sunday 24 Nov to tim.shelley@ymail.com
5. Monday 2 December 2-3.30pm at the GW Railway Club Hereford. Organised by Herefordshire Carers Support.
6. Wednesday 4 December, 6.30pm at The Barrels, St Owen Street Hereford. Organised by BBC Hereford&Worcester. Please let Diana know if you want to be part of her team of ten - diana.toynbee@greenparty.org.uk
7. And for all those people who won't be attending a husting, please share Diana's Facebook posts and tweets with friends, family and local groups:

https://www.facebook.com/diana4hereford
https://twitter.com/diana4hereford

UK GE2019 dominates Disability News Service uploads for Thursday 21 Nov 2019

The UK General Election set for Thursday 12 December dominates this week's headlines from Disability News Service, that is updated every Thursday.

I present the headline links below without analysing the items themselves, due to time constraints and disability factors on my part. Disability News Service is run by responsible journalist John Pring, and the presentation below helps flag up items of likely interest to my most regular readers.

My main task here is to flag up the 'keywords' related to his output. It also helps counteract my feelings of powerlessness related to what is presented more generally in news media as a 'two horse race' and features demonisation of main opposition rather than focusing on policies.


Do not forget though, that this December 2019 UK General Election falls within Disability History Month!

Alan Wheatley

Latest Stories

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Election 2019: ‘Tories forced a million members of disabled families into poverty’

Election 2019: Lib Dems fail to explain disability omissions… and snub disabled members

Election 2019: Lib Dems overlook working-age social care reform… again

Election 2019: Greens set to outdo other parties on independent living

Election 2019: Labour fails to set accessibility targets for ‘housing revolution’

‘Horrific’ stats show how most disability benefit fraud allegations are false

Disability History Month’s stark messages after Tory austerity decade

Tens of thousands of disabled workers ‘let down by equality law enforcement failure’

A prospective Hereford & South Herefordshire General Election Hustings question for parliamentary candidates

The question

What would you say to the pot-smoking young Etonian Boris Johnson about drug taking and student finance for the current and future generations?

Background

The post-201 MP in Hereford & South Herefordshire parliamentary constituency is old Etonian Jesse Norman, who has extolled old Etonians as prospective model prime ministers.(1) He has also been Financial Secretary to the Treasury since 2019,(2) The Augar Review into post-18 Eductation Funding, meanwhile, has recommended that the earnings threshold before student loans are repayable be lowered, and the write-off period be extended from the current 30 years to 40 years.(3) These changes are applicable to new students only, but that in effect means future generations.

The earnings thresholds also ignore realities of modern rent payments and the devaluing of university degrees under Mass Higher Education.

Jesse Norman's fellow old-Etonians David Cameron and Boris Johnson have admitted to taking drugs at Eton.(4) In the era in which Norman, Cameron and Johnson were at uni, Neither Mass Higher Education nor mass unemployment existed, but student grants did for most students.

Now, youth mental health is a major concern,(5) and Herefordshire has seen growing problems with 'County Lines' drug operations,(6) amid rural transport poverty problems.

See also http://theconversation.com/county-lines-the-dark-realities-of-life-for-teenage-drug-runners-103929
and https://www.talkingdrugs.org/general-election-2017-drug-policies-of-the-main-parties
noting particularly that the Green Party of England & Wales has long advocated decriminalisation of currently illicit drugs.

Notes

1. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22jesse+norman%22+etonians
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Norman
3. https://www.whatuni.com/advice/news/the-augar-review-what-it-means-for-universities-and-students/78028/
4. https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/david-cameron-memoirs-book-disappointing-leader-1-6339533
5. https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/young-peoples-mental-health
6. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=herefordshire+%27county+lines%27
7. https://www.smallwoodtrust.org.uk/news/tackling-rural-poverty-and-isolation

Hereford Amnesty International presents poetry reading for human rights, Weds 20 Nov 2019 above De Koffie Pot

TALKS, DISCUSSIONS AND FILMS CALENDAR

Every Wednesday, 7.30pm - 9.30pm, The Left Bank Village, Bridge Street, Hereford, HR4 9DG

TONIGHT!! WEDNESDAY 20TH NOVEMBER - HUMAN RIGHTS POETRY EVENING

A night of poetry readings and discussion about the power of words in the struggle for human justice and liberty. Amnesty International was founded because one man believed the pen is mightier than the sword in the struggle for human rights. We'll consider if this is still true today. Will include original poems read by the authors as well as recited works by Rohingya refugees, Emmanuel Jar - former child war soldier rap artist, Maya Angelou and recorded music from Billy Bragg in the interval. Organised by Hereford Amnesty.

WEDNESDAY 27TH NOVEMBER – THE GENERAL ELECTION: CANDIDATES DEBATE

Join us for a General Election Hustings in The Left Bank, where the four candidates, the incumbent Jesse Norman (Conservatives), Diana Toynbee for the Green Party, Anna Coda for the Labour Party and Lucy Hurds for the Liberal Democrats will take part in a chaired debate. Doors open 7pm. Hustings starts 8pm. Please book your free tickets at www.herefordleftbank.com and submit one question per guest to info@herefordleftbank.com
 

WEDNESDAY 4TH DECEMBER – THE GENERAL ELECTION: A BLIND TASTING OF MANIFESTOS

Many people's attitudes to policies depend on which party is proposing them. But what if we don't know which party is behind a proposal? That's like tasting a wine blind, not knowing from which vineyard it comes, judging it on its merits. Come along and exercise your taste-buds. Organised by Perry Walker, Talk Shop.
 

WEDNESDAY 11TH DECEMBER  - THE CORE STRATEGY FOR HOUSING

"We are what we build" A chance to explore housing issues in Herefordshire in anticipation of the Core Strategy review.  Two guest speakers from Herefordshire Council will report on the work they have been doing on self-build and addressing homelessness.  Please come and bring your thoughts and suggestions for input. The evening has been organised by Nancy Winfield from the Herefordshire Centre for Community Led Housing.
 

WEDNESDAY 18TH DECEMBER – BIG GREEN FESTIVE DRINKS

Everyone is invited to this end of year celebration in the Charles Bar at the top of The Left Bank. Let's cheers to a greener and more sustainable 2020! Complimentary mulled wine and mince pies and lots of merry-making!
 

WEDNESDAY 25TH DECEMEBER – CHRISTMAS BREAK
WEDNESDAY 1ST JANUARY – NEW YEAR’S BREAK

WEDNEDAY 8TH JANUARY – THE HEREFORD BY-PASS 

Perry Walker (Talk Shop) has been interviewing people with different views on the Hereford By-Pass project. This session will feedback from these interviews, review the main attitudes he found, and explore whether and where common ground can be found between them.
 

WEDNESDAY 15TH JANUARY – FILM NIGHT

We will be showing ‘Happy as Lazarro’ (2018 Italian) continuing our monthly pattern of showing films from around the world in our Speakeasy Bar.
Lazzaro, a good-hearted young peasant, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination, form a life-altering bond when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping.
Reviewed by The Guardian here
 

WEDNESDAY 22ND JANUARY – SHOWING OF ‘TREES ARE THE KEY’

'TREES ARE THE KEY' is an inspirational 40-minute documentary narrated by Kate Winslet. It was made in conjunction with The Word Forest Organisation, a Dorset charity that plants trees, builds classrooms and facilitates education in rural Kenya; it also shines a spotlight on the women’s empowerment group, Mothers of the Forest. It tells the story of why we need to plant more trees in the tropics and why we need to support the people who are taking care of the forests. This film showing has been organised by Herefordshire Green Party.
 

WEDNESDAY 29th JANUARY – WHAT HAVE HUMANS EVER DONE FOR THE PLANET?

A short look at what humans are doing to the planet and some controversial things we can do to solve the planet’s problems. A presentation will be given by Valerie Fitch, followed by Q&A and interesting discussion chaired by Perry Walker. Valerie will be defending her own controversial ideas and we hope there will be further panel members who will have their own take on the subject. Further details to follow.

WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY – GLOBAL SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL PROBLEMS

A round-table discussion about the role of civil society in globalisation and how we define these terms. We will discuss multilateralism, cosmopolitanism and with the United Nations 75th Anniversary in 2020 in mind we will discuss possible reforms of the intergovernmental organisation. How are rules of law upheld? How do we create change in the face of challenges? We will discuss possible solutions with key themes being unity, justice and equity. Discussion led and chaired by Rob Thistleton.
 

WEDNESDAY 18TH MARCH - 99%: HOW CREATING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY FOR MILLENNIALS WILL HELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT

Mark E Thomas, author of the book 99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It, will talk about why we are now looking at the first generation in living memory that can expect to be poorer than their parents. This is mass impoverishment in action and the result of political choices rather than cast-iron laws of economics. He will show how we got into this mess, and how we can get out and he will show that the five key actions that we need to end mass impoverishment are precisely those we need to tackle climate change. After the presentation, there will be a discussion and a workshop for participants. The evening will conclude with an opportunity for book signing at 9:30 pm.
 

Hope you can make it and keep in touch with us with any ideas for future evenings!

Best wishes,
Nat Waring and Alan Adams
Coordinators of the Talks, Discussions and Films Calendar
01432 357753