Chattering Monkey

Welfare Reform Bill – ACT NOW

Monkey — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:48:17 +0000

The Welfare Reform Bill will make life harder for the most vulnerable members of society, particularly those who are disabled. Kaliya Franklin writes:

Included in the bill are proposals to remove the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance from state funded care home residents, the most vulnerable of all. In such circumstances mobility allowance is used to fund accessible transport. This could be a motability car, but is often accessible taxis or specialist wheelchairs. Removing this payment would see care home residents virtual prisoners and those who use wheelchairs confined to bed. This is a long way from protecting the vulnerable.

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) was New Labour’s answer to the perceived Incapacity Benefit ‘problem’ widely reported to have serious failings as an assessment process. It has already left people without benefits whilst they are terminally ill. The method of assessing people for ESA, the Work Capability Assessment is to be continued, despite over 40% of claimants appealing against the decision and 70% of those winning their appeals with representation.

The bill proposes an arbitrary time limit on contributions based ESA of 12 months, meaning unless the claimant is entitled to means tested benefits ESA will cease regardless of their health condition. Time limiting ESA is effectively a tax on working families as many will simply not be able to continue working without additional funds for transport, treatment or care and consequently will be forced to become fully reliant on the welfare state.

The bill also proposes to scrap Disability Living Allowance and replace it with a Personal Independence Payment of which the stated aim is to reduce eligibility by 20%. The Department of Work and Pensions’ own statistic report that Disability Living Allowance has a fraud rate of 0.5% makes a mockery of government claims that this is about reducing fraud.

I understand the Bill is due to be discussed by the Lords. If they ratify it, it becomes a reality. It will literally make life unliveable for many folk. Whilst anti-cuts campaigners have been up in arms over plans to sell of the forests, close libraries, and reduce public sector pensions, there has been considerably less noise over the Goverment’s War on the Disabled – neither UK Uncut, nor 38 degrees have taken up this up. Where’s the Benefit has info about how you can help:

Sign the Petition asking for a proper debate in the Commons over the reforms – this will buy campaigners a bit more time.
If you are, or you know people who are, in the UK Uncut inner circle then please beg them to do something. Occupations ditto. OccupyLSX were asked to support Hardest Hit rally in London in October. They didn’t. Please, please try to change this.
If an organisation receives a restricted donation earmarked for a specific cause they have to either spend it as the donor requests, or return the money. With bodies like 38 Degrees funding their campaigns through asking for member donations, perhaps one can send them a restricted donation earmarked to only be spent on fighting the welfare reform bill.
Write to your MP.
Write to a Lord. Pick a Lord, pick any Lord. Pick several. Write to them, beg them to see what they’re doing. The Lords is where the bill is right now and there’s only one reading left. There’s a list of Lords and their contacts here.

Placenta Bear

Monkey — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:06:47 +0000

Up the duff? Wondering what to do with the placenta? Well, wonder no more! Designer Alex Green has helpfully designed a kit to help you turn your placenta into a lovely teddy, which you can give to your baby. Weirdly, this is touted as an innovation in sustainable toys.

(Yes, this has been around for a while. I never claimed to be up to date with all the internet madness.)

Via Inhabitots.

Is it time to rob shoes again?*

Monkey — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:22:43 +0000

The police appear to have accidentally killed another non-white youth. The details are somewhat murky, but it seems that eleven officers were involved in arresting and ‘subduing’ him, which according to witnesses quoted in the Daily Mail, involved cuffing him, sitting on him, kicking him, and spraying him with pepper spray. He later died in hospital. The cause of death has not yet been established. The police are calling for calm.**

More here from the Daily Mail.

*Asked some wag on facebook.

**As in, we’ll top some bloke, but you folks keep quiet. You’d think they could have waited a bit until the Riot Fever had died down a bit. Tsk.

NOOOOOOO!!!!

Monkey — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:04:35 +0000

The BBC is thinking of ‘scaling back’ it’s best channel – the one reason I pay my license fee – BBC 4. Not sure what exactly that will mean. I’m personally not too bothered about BBC 4 dramas, for example – I’m in it for the documentaries and the comedy. But BBC 4 is the one channel that makes it worth having a TV.

Maggie develops an eating disorder

Monkey — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:38:06 +0000

Parents! Remember the bad old days when you had to make sure your kids got enough exercise, ate healthy foods, and grew up to be the size and shape that’s right for them? Well, those days are now over. Now everyone can look forward to being the proud parents of a stick-thin waif of a daughter, and with very little effort. No need to hide the crisps and stock up on apples. Just buy her Maggie Goes On a Diet – aimed at six to twelve year olds – and watch your daughter shrink as she develops an unhealthy relationship with food, and an obsession with her body size.

Asylum life in Britain

Monkey — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:59:08 +0000

Women refugees – many of them destitute – record their lives in photographs. The Guardian.

A collection of the Guardian’s asylum articles is available here.

Naughty stockbrokers

Monkey — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:48:43 +0000

Not the first, and no doubt not the last to draw comparisons between looting at the bottom and looting at the top. But worth reading.

Poor old Nicky Sarkozy was working on his tan when the news of widespread financial rioting brought him running home. He and the governments of Italy, Spain and Belgium, had to abruptly ban “short selling”, to protect the banks from looters in bespoke suits.

And what might “short selling” be? Let’s try to outline a no-frills version of what can be a complicated transaction.

Suppose I “go short” on a hundred million shares in Banco de Fatcats, which are trading at one euro a share. It doesn’t mean I buy them. Instead, I borrow the shares through a broker (who is holding them for another gambler). The broker then sells the shares for me, at the market price of one euro each, collects the €100m from the buyer and gives it to me.

To complete the transaction, I must buy the same number of Banco de Fatcats shares that I’ve borrowed and give them back to the broker by a certain date — say next Friday. The broker is essentially a bookie. I’m gambling that the price of the shares will go down. If the price goes up, I lose.

Now, if I want to improve the odds on winning, I pull the stroke that seems to have happened last week in France and other countries, and here’s how that works.

Having sold the shares, I put my people to work, quietly rioting in the market place. They put word out through their network of contacts that Banco de Fatcats is in trouble. This network will be highly trusted, an integral part of the financial world. The rumour about Banco de Fatcats may be true, something I’ve been told or figured out. Perhaps it’s false, a total invention. Doesn’t matter. The point is to attack the share price.

As word spreads, those with shares in Banco de Fatcats will hurry to sell, to get out before the price drops further. This will push the price down. By Friday, the market price of a Banco de Fatcats share may be 80 cents. So, I buy the hundred million shares for €80m and return them to the broker. And I’ve made a €20m profit.

At any minute of the day, such deals and millions of more complex gambles, are being played out. It involves attacks on banks (Societe Generale was a victim last week), on companies, on currencies, on the bonds of individual countries. This kind of looting requires specialist skills, just as a Birmingham looter needs to know how to get through a security shutter, to hotwire a van or shift three dozen 50-inch HD TV screens at a good price.

The notion of capitalist investment — the use of accumulated wealth to grubstake a business that will pay dividends — is somewhat quaint, seen in the context of this kind of sophisticated market looting. To take part in such riots, you need three things: huge wealth, membership of a gang of similarly avaricious and well-connected thugs and the morals of a Tottenham looter.

Crocheted childbirth education doll

Monkey — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:06:49 +0000

Well it’s Saturday night, and I’ve got to be up at 6am tomorrow to go car-booting. Sadly, I haven’t got one of these to sell:

Brought to you by the ever-hilarious and ever-so-slightly mean Regretsy.

Iconic Photos

Monkey — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:19:53 +0000

This is an amazing blog.

Record of the dead

Monkey — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:10:07 +0000

One of the most famous images from Pol Pot’s era – small portraits of all those who passed through S-21, a school on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, used by the Khmer Rouge to torture then kill their victims.

The photographer who took these pictures was Nhem Eim. The New York Times tells more of his story.

Yale University runs a project to try and match names and identities to the faces.