Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

The signatories to the open letter condemning what Cameron calls his “Moral mission” of Welfare reforms, have a perfect right to do so.

As “elected” church leaders they represent the views of a large group of similar thinking individuals, who think differently to the present government leadership.
They have an influence on the present and changing morality of the UK society they live in

Like any other group, whether they are the Unions, Professional bodies, Bankers, Bookies. CPI, Business representatives, etc..

It is their responsibility to speak out against what they see as punitive moral changes and to do so as effectively as the can do.

Perhaps, if the Churches had spoken out against Hitler or Mussolini in his early days then Europe may not have gone through the savagery it did.

I would wager if the 27 signatories had spoken out in favour of Cameron and his motley crew, they would have been invited to No 10, at the front door and Cameron would have been beamingly welcoming them on the doorsteps.

I admire the Orthodox Church in Kiev opening its door to act as a hospital for injured protesters.

I think in general the churches; similar organisation and religion in general have done more good than harm and act a civilizing influence on societies.

The only problem I have is when they support their arguments with a God.

=========

personally, i don't think the bishops worded their "protest" right at all, though the sentiment behind it has validity
of course, and as has been written before, it would be good to see the church taking a lead by putting its hand in its own bulging pockets .... it would strengthen its moral stance immeasurably, rather than looking like just a political attack

Of course the church supports the poor. They are the main segment of their congregations and believers. When people get better educated they have no use for such superstition. The church won't put its hand in its pocket as it has a vested interest in keeping people in reduced circumstances. That can be seen all over the world.

Rebecca,

I can see that she may be on "offer to the public", but cannot see how she is a "public officer"!

Perhaps, I am missing something.

But like GF I think she will be found guilty on a number of charges.

Whether she will walk down the steps, or not, I am not sure.


Will she be calling Cameron as character witness?

Some character!!!!

Delights – and disgraces – of the Atos day of protest 20/Feb/2014

I was.

I attended one of the 144 locations used by Atos to carry out the discredited work capability assessments – in Newtown, Powys – where I was just another face in the crowd that had gathered to remind the public of the atrocity being carried out with their tax money.

The Newtown campaign was undoubtedly small in comparison to others around the country, with a maximum of 15 protesters at its height, but the public response was excellent. The assessment centre is next to a major traffic junction, meaning there were plenty of opportunities to talk to motorists while they waited for the lights to change.

The overwhelming majority of them were enthusiastically supportive.

Also supportive were the local police. We were lucky enough to have two beat officers – I think their names were Graham and Geraldine – checking in on us at regular intervals to ensure that we were not harassed or abused.

I understand that this was not the case nationally – in London, according to the Atos National Demo Facebook page, “150 Police including riot Police were … waiting for 80 disabled demonstrators”.

Elsewhere, people took creative action to raise awareness. Beastrabban’s blog tells of a rosette laid for the victims of Atos and the government’s benefit ‘reforms’ in Derby. He writes: “In the centre of the rosette is a form of the dedication to the dead read out annually for the victims of the First and Second World Wars at the Cenotaph, adapted for these new victims of government indifference and cruelty:

“‘Atos shall not weary them, nor IDS condemn. At the going down of the sun, we shall remember them.’

“Each of the ribbons surrounding this dedication has the name of one Atos’ victims.”

If you want to see the rosette, visit the blog; there is a link to the image.

In Leicester, Jayne Linney was up at 5am, taking her medication, in order to be coherent for a local radio interview at 8am, with time to recover before attending her local demo with around 50 other people.

This featured a programme lasting more than two hours, with speakers, poets and singers – captured by local homeless project Down Not Out and featured in the local press. Further information is on her blog.

But not all experiences were positive. Look at this:

140219atos-wsm-19-feb
This sign was found outside the Atos office in Weston-Super-Mare. I believe the person in the photograph was among those who found it, not those who made it – so please don’t direct any harsh comments at her.

This sign is what greeted demonstrators in Weston-Super-Mare when they arrived at the Atos office there. Clearly this office contains some very hard-line supporters of government policy, whose attitude demonstrates the blinkered, small-minded, fantasy-world attitude that allows policies like the Atos assessment regime to exist in a supposedly advanced country like ours.

For information: Not everybody attending the Atos day of action was on incapacity or disability benefits. Many were people of excellent health who came along because they are thinking people who have realised how hugely damaging the Atos assessments are, or who have friends and relatives who have been victimised by the system, and wanted to voice their opposition.

A similarly large proportion of those taking part – both able-bodied and with illnesses or disabilities – had jobs. They took time off to join the demonstrations because they believe it is wrong to victimise those who are least able to fight back; that it is wrong to bully them into an early grave.

I cannot speak for any of the other events but at Newtown, three-fifths of those present were able-bodied, including myself.

Long-term readers of this blog will be well aware that Mrs Mike has been at the receiving end of Atos – and DWP – mistreatment for years. That is why I am vocal in my opposition to Atos and the government policies that support its assessment regime.

Was the day of action a success? Yes and no.

Undoubtedly the impact on the general public has been huge. Many, many people have been made aware that people are being pushed to their deaths by government policy, and many more will become aware of it over the next few days, as media reports go out in the local press (for example, I’m expecting a report in a Powys paper today).

But there won’t be a change of policy. We have a government that does not care about public attitudes at any time except during election campaigns. At elections, we know that both Coalition parties are happy to lie through their teeth to you, in order to win your votes.

The task now is to remind people on the street of this fact - as often as is necessary to cement in the knowledge that a vote for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats is a betrayal of the most vulnerable people in the UK today.

After all, what kind of psychopath wants their vote to condemn an innocent person to destitution – and possibly even death?

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

Was the day of action a success? Yes and no.

Undoubtedly the impact on the general public has been huge. Many, many people have been made aware that people are being pushed to their deaths by government policy, and many more will become aware of it over the next few days, as media reports go out in the local press (for example, I’m expecting a report in a Powys paper today).

But there won’t be a change of policy. We have a government that does not care about public attitudes at any time except during election campaigns. At elections, we know that both Coalition parties are happy to lie through their teeth to you, in order to win your votes.

The task now is to remind people on the street of this fact - as often as is necessary to cement in the knowledge that a vote for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats is a betrayal of the most vulnerable people in the UK today.

The task now is to remind people on the street of this fact - as often as is necessary to cement in the knowledge that a vote for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats is a betrayal of the most vulnerable people in the UK today. After all, what kind of psychopath wants their vote to condemn an innocent person to destitution – and possibly even death?

what sort of buffoon writes this polemic drivel, and worse, what on earth is sticky doing promoting it further here?

The problem with bigots is....

The problem with lung disease is, you kind of have to breathe. At least a bit regularly.

And the problem with heart failure is hearts can't really fail. They're just not optional.

The problem with bowel disease is you have to eat. Quite a lot. I've tried stopping, it doesn't really work. And food is incredibly yummy. And it nurtures our souls more than our taste buds let on.

With kidney failure, hours dedicated to satisfying the great dialysis beast allows you to process liquids, which is fairly non-negotiable by anyone's standards.

And the problem with cancer is it doesn't give the tiniest shit which one of us it invades or where.

But the trouble with bigots is, they ignore all of that. They can only see one problem.

"Why is that bloke down the street getting something I'm not? And why should I pay for it??"

Another buffoon posting his opinions on Twitter - MidWalesMike. Who gives a toss what he thinks.

Over 2 million followers for a start.

Phone Hacking Trial: Rebekah Brooks wanted to blame Les Hinton and Colin Myler for phone hacking scandal – Martin Hickman
20/2/2014

, Part 2: Rebekah Brooks wanted to blame News International’s former chairman Les Hinton and the News of the World’s editor Colin Myler for the phone hacking scandal, according to a document disclosed today.

On Friday 8 July 2011, four days after the Guardian revealed the hacking of Milly Dowler, causing outrage which led to the NoW’s closure, Mrs Brooks outlined her plan for dealing with the fallout.

In an internal email headed “Plan B”, she wrote:

“A thought… and a Les situation could play well into this even if it was at a later date. ie result of report when published would slam Les, Colin Etc and it will vindicate my position (or not).”

In an apparent draft statement, she suggested News International admit it had wrongly accepted the results of the police investigation into voicemail interception in 2007, writing:

“Our internal investigations were woeful and limited and we failed to hold the right people to account. The result was the very sad closure of an outstanding newspaper whose reputation was irreparably tarnished by the actions of a few. We are committed to retaining as many jobs as possible.”

Mrs Brooks, whose email was disclosed in full at the hacking trial today, continued:

“What do you think?… I am ring fenced and properly. It will be written as slippery slope for me but I hardly have a reputation left.”

Two days before the closure of the News of the World, Mrs Brooks, NI’s chief executive, suggested that the company should launch a bumper Saturday Sun and cut the price of the Sunday Times to £1 “to stop the MoS [Mail on Sunday] getting big sale.”

Rebekah Brooks denies charges of conspiring to hack phones, conspiring to commit misconduct and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The trial continues.

We may agree about some things gf, but we will never agree about Twitter!:-)

Manuel.

Many of society think the same as stated above about this present detached, self interested bunch of adolescents of this coalition government, and many would suggest the leadership is sociopathic, or at the least psychopathic in their thinking and policies.

The results of the inept economic and social policies are coming home for the country to see and will be borne in mind at the next election.



It would seem to me you are the buffoon once again .

Why not go an play another round of golf and have a stroke or two.

Glad we have Cynics support.......

cynic 20 Feb 2014 15:27 - 36924 of 36930

The task now is to remind people on the street of this fact - as often as is necessary to cement in the knowledge that a vote for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats is a betrayal of the most vulnerable people in the UK today. After all, what kind of psychopath wants their vote to condemn an innocent person to destitution – and possibly even death?

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2014

David Cameron's Orwellian word games




In February 2014 the Archbishop of Westminster spoke out against the so-called "welfare reforms" being conducted by the Conservative party (and their ever wiling Lib-Dem enablers). Vincent Nichols is the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and has recently been brought into the inner circle of cardinals by Pope Francis. Here's a quote:
"The voices that I hear express anger and despair … Something is going seriously wrong when, in a country as affluent as ours, people are left in that destitute situation and depend solely on the handouts of the charity of food banks."
Nichols is by no means the first religious person to speak out against the immorality of imposing ideological austerity and cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in society whilst ever more wealth gets distributed to the tiny establishment minority. The Church of England has criticised "welfare reform"; At Easter 2013 a coalition of smaller churches spoke out against attacks on the poor by Tory ministers and the mainstream media; and other groups such as the Quakers have been constant champions of social justice. It's not just religious people that are complaining either. Countless charities, voluntary organisations, anti-poverty campaign groups and social activists have spoken out too.

David Cameron's riposte to this latest condemnation of his government's attacks on the poor and vulnerable was absolutely extraordinary. He claimed that the sustained attacks on the social safety net his government have been conducting (which affect far more working people than unemployed) are part of a "moral mission" aimed at giving "hope" and "opportunity" to "people who had previously been written off with no chance".

Given the appalling history of the Catholic church, even after Pope Francis has begun steering the institution towards the path of social justice, few people would accept a high ranking Catholic as an perfect moral arbiter. However, nobody in their right mind could accept the leader of a political party which is absolutely obsessed with their bankrupt "greed-is-a-virtue" neoliberal economic ideology speaking as a moral arbiter on their own brutal welfare policies.

If the religious organisations of the nation, charities and the voluntary sector are speaking with one voice to condemn Tory "welfare reform" as immoral, it is absolutely extraordinary that Cameron could attempt to defend his attacks on the poor and vulnerable by describing them as being part of a "moral mission".

The idea that Tory welfare reforms bring "hope" and "opportunity" to the poor and vulnerable is yet another extraordinary assertion. Here are a dozen facts about this supposedly "hope" inspiring welfare system.
The DWP admitted that between January and November 2011 at least 10,600 people died within six weeks of being declared fit to return to work under the Atos administered WCA regime.
The DWP is currently stonewalling Freedom of Information requests to ascertain how many people have died in similar circumstances since November 2011.
The DWP didn't even count how many people had died within weeks of being declared fully fit for work and thrown off benefits entirely.
The Atos administered WCA regime has been condemned as discriminatory by the courts on two occasions, the DWP have ignored these court judgements and refused to abandon their discriminatory assessment regime.
The number of people stripped of their social security entirely per year via sanctions has soared to an all time record high of 897,690.
Tory ministers and DWP officials repeatedly lied that there were no league tables for imposing sanctions until the league tables were leaked to the press in March 2013.
Hundreds of thousands of people are being compelled under threat of absolute destitution to give up their labour rights and work for free on Stalinist style compulsory labour projects. Even though these people are still in receipt of unemployment benefits, the government excludes them all from the official unemployment statistics.
Comparison between the official Labour Market Statistics published in February 2014 and the same period in 2010, we can see that the Tory welfare reforms have been an absolute disaster. The total number of people out of work for more than two years has skyrocketed from 250,000 to 448,000 and the number of 18-24 year olds out of work for more than two years has more than doubled from 55,000 to 114,000.
4 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty, and this number is increasing all the time as a result of "austerity" and "welfare reform".
The number of people living in such dire poverty that they are reliant upon food banks has grown exponentially. Studies have linked this rise in food bank dependency to Tory "welfare reforms".
The majority of people to have been made poorer by Tory benefits cuts are not unemployed, they are the working poor and their families.
Between 2009 and 2013 the number of working people claiming benefits to keep their heads above water rose by a staggering 104%.
You may have noticed that I didn't even mention Bedroom Tax in these twelve points, so here are a few articles on that particularly vile demonstration of Tory malice against the poor and vulnerable:
Driven to suicide by the Tories deadly "Bedroom Tax" blundering
"Bedroom Tax": Impoverishing the poor to subsidise the rich
The "Bedroom Tax" and Tory hypocrisy
The flawed "Bedroom Tax" justification narrative
Why I oppose "Bedroom Tax"
Returning to David Cameron's attempted justification for his so-called "welfare reforms", it is clear that he is using Orwellian language. Recall the slogans from 1984 "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strength". Well David Cameron's defence of the Tory attacks on the welfare system are remarkably similar, the two over-riding themes being that "Morality is Immorality", "Opportunity is Destitution" and "Hope is Fear".

If we look through David Cameron's extensive back catalogue of lies and distortions we can find many other examples of this kind of Orwellian use of language. Cameron's pre-election lies about the NHS are some of his most famous, so we'll start there and move on to some of his other lies.
Cameron said that he'd cut the budget deficit, not the NHS, then imposed £20 billion worth of austerity cuts on the NHS: "Cutting is Not Cutting".

Cameron said that the NHS would be safe in his hands, then he carved it open for the private sector and fed £1.5 billion worth of NHS contracts to Tory party donors: "Safe is Not Safe".

Cameron promised "no more top down reorganisations of the NHS" then pushed through the biggest and most controversial top-down reorganisation in the entire history of the organisaation: "No More is Another"

Cameron claimed in a 2013 party political broadcast that the Tories are "paying down Britain's debts" when the reality is that they have increased the debt by more in their first 3.5 years than New Labour did in the previous 13: "Paying Down is Dramatically Increasing".

In October 2013 Cameron claimed in parliament that Labour "bankrupted Britain" even though the UK kept their AAA credit ratings until George Osborne lost them due to his blundering economic mismanagement several years later: "Bankrupted is Investment Grade"
David Cameon's long track record of subverting the meanings of words means that we shouldn't be surprised that he is at it again with his "Morality is Immorality", "Opportunity is Destitution" and "Hope is Fear" nonsense, but it is enough to make us wonder whether this is some Old Etonian game to test how much cognitive dissonance "the lower orders" can endure.

I can't help thinking that this is some kind of game, like the England footballers at the 1998 World Cup trying to sneak song titles into their interviews with the press, David Cameron is perhaps trying to impress some of his Old Etonian chums with his Orwellian word games.

i suppose you support the loony animal liberation front as well

off you go then and man the barricades .... perhaps throw a few flagstones or molotovs too to stop getting too bored and cold

"The DWP admitted that between January and November 2011 at least 10,600 people died within six weeks of being declared fit to return to work under the Atos administered WCA regime."

The welfare cuts are a VERY popular policy.

Manuel.

Well he responds to you.

I would think that is too far down the tree for many!

Comparison between the official Labour Market Statistics published in February 2014 and the same period in 2010, we can see that the Tory welfare reforms have been an absolute disaster. The total number of people out of work for more than two years has skyrocketed from 250,000 to 448,000 and the number of 18-24 year olds out of work for more than two years has more than doubled from 55,000 to 114,000.