It seems clear that without de facto quotas, explained in Kaliya’s report, it is much less likely that the process of being assessed for support would inflict so much suffering on so many people. Taken together, the reports add more detail to an emerging picture of the political manipulation at the heart of an assessment process that continues to cause sick and disabled people immense hardship and suffering a full 5 years after its introduction.
Over the past 25 years, the NHS has been insidiously converted into a market-based healthcare system. This process is accelerating under the Coalition government and the very existence of a National Health Service is in danger. How did it ever come to this for Great Britain’s most cherished institution?
Unemployment now affects 27 percent of the working population. A report by the Catholic Church charity Caritas said that there are now 3 million people living in severe poverty (defined as having less than €300 a month to live on) in Spain, double the 2008 figure.
This was the nod-and-wink arrangement between Labour and Tory governments and the five per cent who owned half the wealth of all of the United Kingdom. The Labour MP turned media man, Brian Walden, described how it worked. “The two front benches [in Parliament] liked each other and disliked their back benches,” he wrote. “We were children of the famous consensus … turning the opposition into government made little difference, for we believed much the same things.”
A national demonstration in defence of the NHS has been called on 29 September at the Tory Party Conference. This was confirmed by Unite- GMB-Unison! UNITED WE STAND TO SAVE OUR NHS!
An apathetic mainstream media, an ambivalent political class and a broad populace who have become spectators rather than actors in their daily lives, have created the mistaken impression that Britain is taking its austerity hammering lying down. This could not be further from the truth. Many of the most disenfranchised groups in UK society are rising, rebellion is fomenting, and flames of dissidence are licking the powder keg of mainstream mood. So why doesn’t it feel like it?
“…India now has higher child mortality rates than Bangladesh or Nepal, in spite of Bangladesh and Nepal having barely one half and one third of India’s per-capita income, respectively. There are similar failures in the field of elementary education.”
The study of 2,000 10-17-year-olds by the Children’s Society charity revealed that 76 percent of British children are “often worried” about how much money the family had.
More than 53 percent said their home was too cold last winter and 24 percent said it was “much colder” than they would have liked.
Indonesia is not just any developing country. It’s the fourth most populous country in the world (after China, India, and the U.S.), and it’s now a big sweatshop for global corporations. The country’s minimum wage is about $200 a month, leaving vast swaths of Indonesia’s workforce in poverty.
It was announced today that the Red Cross will be distributing its first emergency food parcel programme in the UK since World War II. The charity is gearing up to provide food for 500,000 starving Britons this winter, as the UK government announces the British economy is back on track.
Universal Jobmatch, the DWP’s job search website that became ‘mandatory’ for those claiming unemployment benefit on March 1st 2013, has been dogged by controversy amid claims it is simply a tool for keeping tabs on jobseekers rather than an effective aid to help them find work.
Websites like The Void and Consent Me have done sterling work exposing this and other government scams, like Workfare, designed to shame and exploit the victims of its economic criminality.
She became an international icon after surviving being shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls. But Birmingham poet Benjamin Zephaniah fears others may be using Malala Yousafzai for political reasons
