Tories - convince me you're not evil

[cloggypop]

There's only one poster on here I've ever pulled up for referring to other posters as vermin.

[Bjornebye]

There's only one poster on here I've ever pulled up for referring to other posters as vermin.

 

[Stu Monty]

Imagine if someone on here described blacks or Muslims as lower than vermin, they'd probably be crucified (literally).

 

Nevertheless, at least nobody can have any complaints when the Tories see them as vermin too, right? Oh wait, I forgot about that 900 page thread to that effect. Ah well, consistency must be a verminous trait too.

 

Being black isn't a selection of values, is it, as well you know. People aren't born Tory, they just choose to identify with their, xenophobic dehumanizing policies.   I think you may well have a point with Muslims, although you quite happily call them mentally ill so, you know, the outrage rings a little hollow. 

 

You wouldn't protest at Fascists, Nazis or Fundamentalists being called vermin, would you? Odd that you're going to bat for people that well after that speech would still fearmonger about having a nigger for a neighbour though. And even now will happily use the same smears on modern immigrants that were used against the Jews in order to facilitate the holocaust.

 

Not all Tories are cunts (or vermin). It's not a terrible indicator though.

[Stu Monty]

 

He's saying precisely there. Get out!

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

They've just voted to take £120 a month off people who've been medically certified as unfit to work, so as to "incentivise" them back into work.

 

Lovely bunch of lads (and lasses).

Eh?

[thegreatelephant]

Being black isn't a selection of values, is it, as well you know. People aren't born Tory, they just choose to identify with their, xenophobic dehumanizing policies.   I think you may well have a point with Muslims, although you quite happily call them mentally ill so, you know, the outrage rings a little hollow. 

 

You wouldn't protest at Fascists, Nazis or Fundamentalists being called vermin, would you? Odd that you're going to bat for people that well after that speech would still fearmonger about having a nigger for a neighbour though. And even now will happily use the same smears on modern immigrants that were used against the Jews in order to facilitate the holocaust.

 

Not all Tories are cunts (or vermin). It's not a terrible indicator though.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Eh?

The vote today to cut the weekly ESA (the modern version of DLA) payment to disabled/ill people who have been assessed by ATOS etc to be unfit for work, but who may be capable of some work in the future.

 

It's a benefit paid to people with cancer, mental health issues, MS etc. It's set to drop from £102 a week to the same as JSA, just over £70 a week, with the ideology behind the cut reportedly being that giving actual, genuinely sick people less money will suddenly help them recover and be more likely to seek and obtain work.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

The vote today to cut the weekly ESA (the modern version of DLA) payment to disabled/ill people who have been assessed by ATOS etc to be unfit for work, but who may be capable of some work in the future.

 

It's a benefit paid to people with cancer, mental health issues, MS etc. It's set to drop from £102 a week to the same as JSA, just over £70 a week, with the ideology behind the cut reportedly being that giving actual, genuinely sick people less money will suddenly help them recover and be more likely to seek and obtain work.

I thought they were bringing in the universal credit?

[Hades]

The vote today to cut the weekly ESA (the modern version of DLA) payment to disabled/ill people who have been assessed by ATOS etc to be unfit for work, but who may be capable of some work in the future.

 

It's a benefit paid to people with cancer, mental health issues, MS etc. It's set to drop from £102 a week to the same as JSA, just over £70 a week, with the ideology behind the cut reportedly being that giving actual, genuinely sick people less money will suddenly help them recover and be more likely to seek and obtain work.

 

Sickening. It's a type of eugenics. They know the outcome will be increased suicides. 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

I thought they were bringing in the universal credit?

Fuck knows. It's an IDS thing so it's being made up as he goes along.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

That's fucking horrendous if true. Got any links?

[Anubis]

It's getting to the point where we're going to have to kill IDS, isn't it. I'm thinking in a lift, with the word 'TOUCHABLE' written across the wall in his blood.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Just reading into it and it will be for new ESA claimants only.

 

Existing ESA claimants will still receive their current rate of benefit. Still, it's still pretty shoddy. If you have MS or whatever and got too ill to work a year or so ago you'll get more than somebody who has the same condition as you, the same hindrances to holding down a job, but purely because they got ill and claimed a bit later.

 

If you type "ESA vote" into Google and check the Twitter results, loads of charities are reporting it. Still got to go back to The Lords though.

[Jairzinho]

I guess the hope for Tories is that lots of these people will be dead by 2020.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Imagine if someone on here described blacks or Muslims as lower than vermin, they'd probably be crucified (literally).

 

Nevertheless, at least nobody can have any complaints when the Tories see them as vermin too, right? Oh wait, I forgot about that 900 page thread to that effect. Ah well, consistency must be a verminous trait too.

Sometimes I think you genuinely believe what you post, having given it due consideration and weighed all sides of the argument.  Then I read cack like this and remember that you're just a shit-stirring bellwhiff who is prepared to throw all traces of logic and decency down the shitter just for the chance to take a contrary view to everyone else.

[Dr Nowt]

The vote today to cut the weekly ESA (the modern version of DLA) payment to disabled/ill people who have been assessed by ATOS etc to be unfit for work, but who may be capable of some work in the future.

 

It's a benefit paid to people with cancer, mental health issues, MS etc. It's set to drop from £102 a week to the same as JSA, just over £70 a week, with the ideology behind the cut reportedly being that giving actual, genuinely sick people less money will suddenly help them recover and be more likely to seek and obtain work.

PIP is going to be the modern version of DLA, think it's already being rolled out as a replacement to some, with more in the pipeline. ESA replaced Incapacity Benefit. I presume it'll be people in the Work-Related Activity Group they're fucking over, rather than those 'fortunate' enough to be in the Support Group, who are adjudged to be incapable of going back to work indefinitely.

 

Obviously it's fucking horrendous to do this to people in such a position, and often has a ruinous effect on them due to stress, worry and many other factors. Lost count of how many cases I've read or been told about of people refused various elements of ESA/pronounced fit to work who have died shortly afterwards/are in the final stages of terminal illness.

 

Sadly so much of it seems to just come down to how the forms are filled out rather than what health issues the person has. I've helped several people fill out these forms either for the first time or when they've been turned down initially, and they have received their benefits.

 

The forms give the space of a few paragraphs to describe how an individual's illness affects them, and as obviously the amount of detail which can fit in such a small area is slim, the person making the decision may decide it isn't having as serious an effect as it is, certainly not as much as is made crystal clear when laid out in fine detail.

 

If anyone knows someone in the position of applying for this type of benefit, by all means PM me (happy to spend however much time is needed discussing and/or filling them out where necessary, obviously at no charge) or at the very least, tell them not to play ball with such a sneaky way of operating and to fill out as many sheets of printed A4 as it takes to accurately convey every single facet of a serious illness/disability, and to attach them to the back of the claim with a reference to them in the relevant section of the form.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

"And for my next trick..."

With hardly anybody noticing, George Osborne is planning to steal the pension pots of five million people and use it to paper over the cracks of his shit-handed mismanagement.

 

Worra cunt. 

 

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-scandal-of-chancellor-george-osbornes-pensions-meddling-a3178141.html

 

Gordon Brown has gone down in history as the Labour chancellor who raided the nation’s pension schemes when he abolished the tax-free status of dividend income. But even in his wildest dreams, Brown would surely not have sought to get away with what Chancellor George Osborne is currently quietly putting in place. 

The grand plan of today’s Chancellor is to take effective control of the nation’s local government pension schemes so he can direct them to invest in his pet infrastructure projects. In doing this, he crosses a line no British government has dared to cross before. It is thinly disguised state direction of investment.

The Government’s scheme is clever because it is Osborne’s usual mix of sleight of hand concealed beneath a veneer of overdue and necessary reform. The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), provider of pensions for five million people or 12% of the nation’s workforce, is one scheme but the investment policy is scattered among 89 different bodies. The attraction of this is local accountability. The downside is that the multiple doubling-up of actuaries, administrators, auditors, portfolio managers, investment consultants and the rest is ridiculously expensive.

Note, however, that the LGPS is a funded pension scheme, meaning the money — some £210 billion of it — has come from the contributions of employees and employers, not directly from the taxpayer. It is different from the unfunded schemes of the armed services and the police, where the pensions will be paid directly out of taxes. 

Bizarrely, given it was somebody else’s money, there was widespread support for Osborne at the Conservative Party conference last year when he announced that he would ask the 89 funds in the scheme to transfer their resources into a few much larger “investment pools”. He got away with it probably because he claimed, and few disagreed, that such rationalisation could save hundreds of millions of pounds in costs. 

Since then, and with a deadline of this month, those who run the schemes have been working hard to satisfy the Chancellor’s desire for the myriad funds to be repackaged as six pools of at least £25 billion each. Resistance is thought to be futile. They are in no doubt that if they do not do it voluntarily, he will consider changing the law to force them. 

But there is a second arrow in the bow. With a political flourish, Osborne has branded these new pools as British sovereign wealth funds although they are nothing of the sort. Sovereign wealth funds are formed by and belong to governments such as Norway, which have saved some of their oil tax revenues for future generations. Sovereign funds belong to the nation. But these pension funds do not belong to the nation — they are the statutory assets of the five million past and present local government employees. 

But that seems an irrelevant detail to this Chancellor in a hurry. This is where it gets messy because he has also said that these new pools will be expected to invest 25% of their assets in infrastructure, and again it is clear from the draft regulations that those running the funds will have to do what he wants. A document published in November by the Department for Communities and Local Government, entitled Investment Reform Criteria and Guidance, spells this out. It says in part: “The draft regulations include a provision for the Secretary of State to issue guidance... Authorities would then need to have regard to that guidance when producing their investment strategy... The consultation process proposes to introduce a power for the Secretary of State to intervene in the investment function of an administering authority where it has not had sufficient regard to guidance published by the Secretary of State.”

These are deep waters. It makes sense for pension funds to invest in infrastructure to the extent that these assets can be expected to deliver a reliable long-term income stream that matches the funds’ needs. But this does not apply to all funds all the time, and because such assets can be hard to sell in a hurry, even those it suits should not buy too much. 

Nor does it mean pension funds have the skills to build the stuff. Buying completed infrastructure is one thing; building it from scratch means taking on all the risks of planning and construction and cost overruns. That requires a quite different set of skills and exposes the funds to a wholly different level of risk. 

But the even more basic point is that it is no business of government how pension funds invest. Under the British system, trustees and investment managers have by law to put pension fund money where they believe it will deliver the best returns for members. They may not always get it right but that is what they are trying to do. 

It is a fundamentally different thing for government to decide that this money should in future be used to  meet the infrastructure needs of  the nation. 

It is utterly invidious to have government nudging the funds in the direction of what will inevitably be its latest pet schemes, which it cannot get funded by anyone else. Think Osborne kowtowing to the Chinese, then when the Chinese say no, passing the project to the pension funds. And if the pension funds then lose money, well that’s the risk of investment.

Government has no business bouncing pension funds into paying for stuff that, unpressured, they would never have looked at. While too many City bodies have remained silent on the issue, some senior figures are appalled. Philip Jones, recently retired as an investment manager for the London Pensions Fund Authority, says he is totally disgusted that a Conservative Government should be planning “the appropriation of private pension fund savings for central government purposes”. 

It is, he says, “totally scandalous. No pension pots are safe if this is allowed to happen”.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Charities slam Tories for forcing through disability benefit cuts despite House of Lords defeat

 

 

MPs voted 306-279 to cut Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) by £30 a week - ignoring a desperate protest from a Tory backbencher

 

Charities slammed the Tories tonight for surging ahead with disability benefit cuts despite a major defeat in the House of Lords.

 

MPs have renewed plans to cut Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) by £30 a week - ignoring a desperate protest from a Tory backbencher who declared: "This is my warning shot to government".

 

Heidi Allen's speech made an 11th-hour plea for her own party to find "the compassion to look after the little man".

 

She added: "Today I will not support [the government]. Today I may abstain, but only for today."

 

 But her plea fell on deaf ears as a motion to challenge the House of Lords, which struck down the cuts last month , was passed by 306 votes to 279.

 

MPs also voted 301-277 against a Lords decision to reverse the scrapping of child poverty targets - which are being replaced by "shameful" measures that don't count parents' income. 

 

The defeat will spark a complex legal tussle between the House of Commons and the House of Lords known as "ping pong" until they reach an agreement.

 

Dr Fran Woodard, policy director at cancer care charity Macmillan, said: ""We are deeply disappointed that the government has not listened to the wide range of voices, including those from their own party, who have expressed major concerns.

 

"These cuts will have a damaging impact on people affected by cancer and other health conditions.

 

"Every penny counts when someone can’t work because of cancer, and taking away vital financial support can be a serious blow to people when they are at their most vulnerable.

 

"The Government must urgently reconsider their decision; if they press ahead, the planned changes could seriously hinder the full recovery of people with cancer."

 

The move affects new or interrupted ESA claimants deemed fit for "work-related activity" (WRAG) from April 2017 - a group that has nearly half a million sick and disabled people.

 

Their benefit will be cut from £102.15 to £73.10 a week, equal with jobseekers' allowance. Those in the more severe "support group" will be unaffected.

 

Rob Holland of learning disability charity Mencap added: "The opposition across society to this cut is overwhelming.

 

"People with a learning disability will be disappointed to see the Government continue to try and force this cut through despite their promise to protect disability benefits.

 

"Just 6% of people with a learning disability are in employment; however the Government are still yet to provide any robust evidence that cutting ESA WRAG will improve this number.

 

"In fact the evidence available shows it will push disabled people further away from the job market, and closer to poverty."

 

And MS Society chief executive Michelle Mitchell said: "We are deeply disappointed and frustrated that the Government has ignored the Lords’ sensible intervention on this Bill.

 

"It is hard to see how this move can possibly help achieve the Government’s commitment to halve the disability employment gap."

 

Labour accused Tory welfare minister Priti Patel of a "total lack of compassion" after she made an argumentative 29-minute speech defending the cuts.

 

"In fact the evidence available shows it will push disabled people further away from the job market, and closer to poverty."

 

And MS Society chief executive Michelle Mitchell said: "We are deeply disappointed and frustrated that the Government has ignored the Lords’ sensible intervention on this Bill.

 

"It is hard to see how this move can possibly help achieve the Government’s commitment to halve the disability employment gap."

 

Labour accused Tory welfare minister Priti Patel of a "total lack of compassion" after she made an argumentative 29-minute speech defending the cuts.

 

And she sparked an outcry after she tried to claim Macmillan backed aspects of the government's policy - despite the cancer charity warning ESA cut victims could lose their homes.

 

She told MPs: "Macmillan have also said that many people who are working when they're diagnosed with cancer would prefer to work or return to their jobs during or after treatment."

 

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith interrupted, saying: "Could she confirm that Macmillan are opposed to the reduction by £30 a week for members of the ESA wrag group?"

 

But she sidestepped the question, saying: "I think Macmillan alongside the government will recognise that I've already said that those that are on the support group will rightly not be affected and will be supported obviously because they are in the support group because they are ill."

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charities-slam-tories-forcing-through-7426545#ICID=sharebar_twitter

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Utter contempt for democracy - aided and abetted by that smug, useless turd slouching idly on the Speaker's chair.

 

[skend04]

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-scandal-of-chancellor-george-osbornes-pensions-meddling-a3178141.html

 

So the pension pot I've been paying into might give me fuck all if Osborne's investments go tits up? Simply. Wow.

[Rico1304]

To be fair that's funny, if it were the other way round you'd piss yourself.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

To be fair that's funny, if it were the other way round you'd piss yourself.

Yep. PMQ's etc is a bit of a charade and is arguably not longer fit for purpose. But, it is what it is. So, I wasn't too fussed about that Corbyn shout and thought it was quite funny.

[thegreatelephant]

The vote today to cut the weekly ESA (the modern version of DLA) payment to disabled/ill people who have been assessed by ATOS etc to be unfit for work, but who may be capable of some work in the future.

 

It's a benefit paid to people with cancer, mental health issues, MS etc. It's set to drop from £102 a week to the same as JSA, just over £70 a week, with the ideology behind the cut reportedly being that giving actual, genuinely sick people less money will suddenly help them recover and be more likely to seek and obtain work.

 

question of choosing your targets though isn't it? they are nothing but cowards.

 

not convinced they are not evil

[AngryOfTuebrook]

To be fair that's funny, if it were the other way round you'd piss yourself.

It's mildly amusing.  To hear those braying morons, you'd think it was the lethally-funny joke out of that Python sketch.

 

 

 

 

Even they don't think it's that funny.  They're just making their noises to stop the leader of the Opposition from speaking.  It's just the routine way of stifling democratic debate.  Former Labour leaders used to enter into the pantomime too and people on all sides of the House would feel so smug and proud of themselves if they managed to stop the other fella from talking - meanwhile, millions of people were put off the idea of Parliamentary democracy all together, to the point where one in three couldn't find anyone worth voting for.

 

I fucking hate this sort of shit.

[Anubis]

What's missing from PMQ's is a bit of Brad Pitt in Troy. While they're braying somebody needs to cross the floor of the house and punch one of them so hard their teeth become their lunch, then walk up and down in front of them, shouting "is there no one else?"