Launch of the Homelessness Bill 2019 on youtube

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Social Housing, Affordable Rents & Elimination of Homelessness Bill

Here is the link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOV3i6TolJU&feature=youtu.be

The launch started at 2:30PM Today, Monday, 16 December 2019.

Agenda of the Launch

2.30 p.m.
Welcome -  Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics

2.35 p.m.
Why launch this Bill? -  Rev Paul Nicolson

2.55 p.m.
“Housing and inequality in the UK - Inequality street" - Daniel Tomlinson, Resolution Foundation [The data referred to by Daniel is available via https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/inequality-street
]

3.15 p.m.
"The impacts of demolishing council estates and why we need more council homes" -Professor Loretta Lees [A major focus here is how London's 'out of borough placements' translated as gentrification' and loss to those displaced and thus alienated. In some cases this amounts to 'genocide', she says. Precariousness -- living on a prayer -- is rife as a cumulative result of right wing government policies. ]

3.35 p.m.
"The Social Housing, Affordable Rent and Elimination of Homelessness Bill" - Ian Wise QC

[Ian outlines the obligations his Bill places on local authorities to monitor housing issues in their area, and also the corresponding obligations placed upon the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government that are legally binding and enforceable.]

3.55 p.m.
Response from Councillor Zena Brabazon, Deputy Leader Haringey Council. Labour Party. [Zena was elected to Haringey Council in 2018 after campaigning actively against the Haringey Development Vehicle that Paul Nicolson was campaigning against. Through her campaigning she also met Prof Loretta Lees. Council housing policy has since been informed by inputs from Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, Child Poverty Action Group and other organisations. As a ward councillor she has also been informed by contact with ward constituents and her work as a school governor in recognising the extent of child poverty. She also acknowledges the life foundation given her by a caring state -- "not a nanny state: just a decent state."

She also thanked Paul Nicolson for his pre-2018 Haringey Council elections campaign of civil disobedience in refusing to pay Council Tax while many in that borough were made poorer by its Council Tax Reduction Scheme ignorance of their plight. Full Council Tax Reduction has been restored to the poorest families and Paul's refusal to pay Council Tax has ended.

She thinks the Bill drafted by Ian Wise is "a brilliant initiative" against the inhuman constraints imposed by right wing central government.

4.15 p.m.
Questions and discussion 

4.55 p.m.
Conclusion - Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics

5.00 p.m.
END

NB: The event was originally to be chaired by Debbie Abrahams MP, but as a family friend of the late Frank Dobson MP she was attending Frank's funeral

See also https://newsforwardsfromalanwheatley.blogspot.com/2019/10/government-and-fiona-bruce-backing-for-mipim-uk-summit-2019.html

LB Camden to hold its own rally vs UK Parliament shut down

Originally published at Camden New Journal

Camden to hold its own rally against parliament shutdown

Demo to be staged in Russell Square on Saturday

29 August, 2019 — By Richard Osley





A RALLY against Boris Johnson’s decision to shut down parliament – a move widely seen as a measure to make it harder for MPs to oppose a no deal Brexit – is to be held in Camden this weekend.

Labour council leader Georgia Gould said this evening (Thursday) that opponents to a crashing divorce from Europe and the Prime Minister’s prorogation tactics were uniting for the event in set up for  Russell Square.

Cross-party speakers will take over the park on Saturday for the ‘Camden Defends Democracy Rally’ from 10,30 am with organisers urging residents to show the strength of feeling by joining them there.
Cllr Gould will be joined by Hampstead and Kilburn MP Tulip Siddiq, Holborn and St Pancras MP Sir Keir Starmer, Camden Unison branch secretary Liz Wheatley, Sian Berry, a councillor in Camden and also the Green Party’s national co-leader, and representatives from the Liberal Democrats.


After the rally, campaigners will head to a national protest outside Downing Street.

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SEE ALSO ‘OUTRAGE’ AS BORIS JOHNSON SHUTS DOWN PARLIAMENT IN BREXIT BATTLE

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“Camden will not stand by and watch an unelected Prime Minister trample on our democracy to force through a ‘no deal’ Brexit,” said Cllr Gould. “Camden is proud of our diverse community, our connections to Europe, our EU citizens, our openness and we stand in solidarity with our allies across the UK and EU making their voices heard..”

Around three quarters of Camden residents who took part in the 2016 EU referendum voted to remain in the union.

What might be included in Boris Johnson' 'bold new agenda' for the UK Parliament?

A local Green Party colleague sent me pdf [Portable Document Format] e-copy of what Boris Johnson had written MPs today toward suspending UK Parliament.

Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p1

Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p2

My colleague noted,

see attached for his dreadful letter, which unsurprisingly fails to mention climate change, inequality and child poverty  in his list of what needs to be done (add your own 'burning injustice)

 I responded:

I don't generally get around to read BoJo's literary output, and now I feel more justified in that omission.
Re Bojo's "bold new agenda," I guess that with Gove as Brexit Secretary, Gove's back story as Education Secretary

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2013/11/12/gove-slams-social-work-education/#.UoNAveIqvKc

and as Justice Secretary

https://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/2017/07/did-tory-war-on-poor-weed-out-magistrates-opposed-to-push-button-mass-destruction-in-the-name-of-debt-recovery.html

gives us a foretaste of how being more Trump-trade deal friendly might fit in with such a 'bold agenda'.

Beyond that, I append text from my reply to someone's rather misinformed reference to Blair's welfare reforms being worse than his Tory predecessors got up to.

Best Wishes

Alan

[Someone wrote]

----extract starts----

i know the torys have taken things to extremes but it was labour that started the welfare reforms and a lot of the people are still there in the background

----extract ends----

"The people still there in the background" include senior Civil Servants, ex-Civil Servants, and a continuum of Government ministers and opposition spokespersons, as can be deduced from this article outlining the research of a medically retired RAF veteran, Mo Stewart.

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’ A string of activists, academics, politicians and journalists have welcomed the publication of a new book by a d...

Eg,

----extract starts----

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’

By John Pring

John Pring the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

on 15th September 2016

A string of activists, academics, politicians and journalists have welcomed the publication of a new book by a disabled researcher which exposes how successive governments have planned the “demolition of the welfare state”.

Mo Stewart has spent eight years researching the influence of the US insurance giant Unum over successive UK governments, and how it led to the introduction of the “totally bogus” work capability assessment (WCA), which she says was designed to make it harder for sick and disabled people to claim out-of-work disability benefits.

Stewart’s book, Cash Not Care: The Planned Demolition Of The UK Welfare State, published this week, argues that the assessment was modelled on methods used by Unum to deny protection to sick and disabled people in the US who had taken out income protection policies.

She says in her book that the WCA was “designed to remove as many as possible from access to [employment and support allowance] on route to the demolition of the welfare state”, with out-of-work disability benefits eventually to be replaced by insurance policies provided by companies like Unum.

She warns that the UK is now close to adopting that kind of US-style model.

Stewart is a former healthcare professional and a female veteran and self-funded her six years of research, which has been repeatedly referenced in parliamentary debates, and has been highlighted by Disability News Service (DNS) for nearly five years.

She describes in her book how Peter Lilley, secretary of state for social security in John Major’s Conservative government, hired senior Unum executive John LoCascio to advise the UK government on how to cut the number of claimants of long-term sickness benefits.....

----extract ends----

Further on there having been a continuum of Tory and Labour politicians involved in the corporate demolition of the welfare state, the changed 'descriptors' for disability benefit assessment tests that the Tories piloted in 2011 had actually been signed off by Yvette Cooper as DWP Secretary in April 2010, as this article shows:

Even harsher new ESA Medical approved''(warning very bad news inc)

Even harsher new ESA Medical approved''(warning very bad news inc) Even Harsher New ESA Medical Approved Tens of thousands of claimants facing losing their benefit on review, or o...

Yvette Cooper is the kind of Labour MP who would come more to the fore again if Labour right wing MPs managed to oust Jeremy Corbyn as that Party's Leader.