Benefits underpaid while NL apparatchiks merrily stick their snouts in the financial trough….

'Flipping marvellous'

It must be fun to be a NL apparatchik as it is all flipping, fripperies…and fraud. So while these greedy apparatchiks have their snouts firmly in the trough. Lets have a look at the DWP’s publication on fraud and error….

Lets look at how much money is underpaid when your average NL clone exploits the system. Lets look at the pathetic NL apparatchik’s excuse, ‘It was an honest mistake’, ‘I was acting within the rules’ and ‘I have done nothing wrong’.

NL are obsessed with the idea of ‘benefit cheats’ and scroungers’…well, it is obvious they (step forward McNulty and Purnell)  are applying their own cheating and greedy standards to everyone else. One rule for us and one rule for them…

NL will highlight the ‘errors and fraud’ in this report but what is conveniently forgotten is the amount of money that is not claimed. Money people are entitled to but for various reasons didn’t get. Around £1.2bn was underpaid. Underpaid….! So the poorest people in this society would have lost out, living in further poverty and yet NL greedy grasping apparatchiks make sure they don’t lose out even when it isn’t theirs to take. The sheer hypocrisy of these people is utterly breathtaking.

Yet I don’t see posters etc. telling people about benefits they could and should be applying for. Encouraging people as opposed to scaremongering and instilling so much fear about ‘benefit fraud’ that it actually puts people off applying but hey, NL won’t be losing sleep over that …especially if they have a firm handmade pocket sprung mattress with a silk & cashmere top and kitted out with some nice silk cushions.

And also the amount of money lost due to ‘error and fraud’ is a drop in the financial ocean when comparing it to tax evasion and avoidance (something in the region of between £97bn and £150bn is lost in tax theft). But again, it will be about ‘benefit cheats’. Unfortunately I doubt I will be seeing a poster any time soon near my local bus stop that states, ‘No ifs no buts, tax evasion is a crime’…. with a photo of Blears and Purnell under the Big Brother watchful eye of the  HMRC and the cops….

Now that would be a result. I mean don’cha just detest ‘something for nothing’ culture..?

Seumas Milne on anti-politics

Excellent article form Seumas Milne on the ‘snouts in trough’ controversy.

The contrast between Labour’s socialist MP for Luton North, Kelvin Hopkins, who commutes to work and claimed £36.45 of his annual £4,800 food allowance, and the neighbouring New Labour MP, Margaret Moran, who “flipped” her second home allowance between Luton, Southampton and ­London and is now repaying a £22,500 under duress, could not be clearer.

In conclusion:

Breaking the domination of the main parties would be welcome if it opened up politics to the anti-war, pro-equality, anti-privatisation majority disenfranchised by New Labour. In current circumstances, that looks highly unlikely. But what the Westminster crisis and expected electoral meltdown might encourage is a challenge to the centralised grip that has squeezed out internal party democracy, in Labour in particular, and created a parliament full of careerist clones. That’s a change that will be essential if a remoralisation of parliament is to make itself felt across society as a whole.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/13/mps-expenses-reform

Criminal injustice continues….

Jean Corston:

Evidence collected by the Commission has demonstrated that throughout the criminal justice system female offenders, female victims of crime and women workers continue to face discrimination in a system designed for men by men.

Sending non-violent, vulnerable women to prison, many of whom who have been the victims of abuse, is not the answer for these women or their children. We welcome the changes introduced by the Government, particularly the end to routine strip searching and the funding announced for community provision for women offenders earlier this year. However, much remains to be done.

Attitudes and expectations as to how a ‘proper victim’ should behave continue to shape the criminal justice system response. Women who are victims of violence, particularly sexual violence are often made to feel like the perpetrator rather than the victim. There have been some commendable policy developments, particularly by the Crown Prosecution Service, but practices and attitudes continue to act as a roadblock to effective implementation.

Jack Straw probably shoved the Corston Report at bottom of his in-tray while bigging up Lord Carter’s Titan prison proposals which means warehousing the powerless, social dustbin for the mentally distressed. But alas, it wasn’t to be… Titans got junked…but Straw is still determined to carry on privatising the prison system.

Women are still being banged up for crimes that don’t need custodial sentences, many are vulnerable and powerless, and women are still dying.

The inquest into the death of Lisa Doe opened last month, she was found hanging in her cell, she had a history of self harm.

How many more women will needlessly die?

 

Links:

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/standard.asp?id=1742

http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk//index.asp?PageID=934

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/20/prisonsandprobation

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/corston-report/

http://inquest.gn.apc.org/pdf/2009/INQUEST_press_release_lisa_doe_inquest_opening.pdf

Disband the TSG

Figures obtained by the Standard show the Territorial Support Group was accused of 159 assaults, four of them serious and three of them sexual, in the past year. No officers have been disciplined. Scotland Yard said none of the cases had yet been “substantiated”.

Well, of course Scotland Yard will say that. But it is becoming apparent that the TSG are a law unto themselves. Their violent hyped-up ‘looking for a ruck’ behaviour. What precisely is the difference between the infamous out-of-control SPG and the TSG? Nothing… The only thing different about those two units is the name, same ideology and same tactics…

The Met’s response is that they are ‘often in confrontational policing situations’… So does that give them licence to indulge in casual unprovoked violence? Whacking people on the back of the legs, head and any other part of the body, punching people in the face, causing a death. They instil fear in people rather like the hated SPG. They are out-of-control thugs.

Liberty are correct when they say,”We have heard too much about the TSG – there is clearly an urgent need to investigate and probably abolish this arrogant and unaccountable force within the force.”

The solution is simple, disband them.

Quotes from Evening Standard http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23690792-details/Calls+to+disband+the+Met+squad+in+G20+riots/article.do