The Bad Theresa May Rap

Re-blogged from here

The Bad Theresa May Rap

I'm not a rap artist but the words came to me this afternoon accompanied by a rap-like rhythm, so I figured I should write them down and share them... if (on the off-chance) any rap artists do want to record it please get in touch!  😎

The Theresa May Rap

Theresa May's so strong and stable,
Her government snatches food from the table
Of working families whenever they are able
By saying that benefits just aren't available.

Theresa May's so stable and strong,
Says free school lunches are just wrong,
Just like Maggie who, when she came along,
Stole free school milk from the very very young.

Theresa May's so strong and stable,
Her DWP says all to work who're able,
Even the dying & those clearly incapable,
Assessed by ATOS even when unable.

Theresa May's so stable and strong,
Pensioners attacked on multiple prongs:
Bang goes the triple lock, that's just wrong,
Bye-bye winter fuel payment, going going gone.

Theresa May's so strong and stable,
Own all your own house - hah! whilst you're able,
Paying for social care might leave you a gable
And maybe even three legs on your table.

Theresa May's so stable and strong,
Selling off the NHS bits one by one,
To the highest bidder who has come along
Enforced private healthcare is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Theresa May's so strong and stable,
Wants to build grammar schools for the academically able,
Everyone else gets the scraps from the table,
Equality in education? Now that is a fable!

Theresa May's so stable and strong, 

Watched homeless figures rise for so long,
Did nowt about it, just ignore them among
All the others suffering cos they ain't strong.

Theresa May's so strong and stable,
In favour of hunters killing foxes when they're able
Chased to exhaustion by horses from the stable,
Hounds tearing them apart just like a rabble.

Theresa May's so stable and strong,
Published her manifesto, it's 88 pages long,
Nothing of substance in it hidden in among
The oft repeated words that she's stable and strong.

© Anne Nichols, 2017

No home, no job, no bank account... what can you do?

I see many outspoken comments about how bad it is that people are sleeping on the streets, that they are not working but can afford tattoos, piercings, dogs, booze, fags, etc... and every time I read such a post my heart sinks as I know it will be followed by any number of highly critical replies calling homeless people every name under the sun. Calling them out for being lazy, for not wanting to work, for just being interested in drugs or booze, for not taking responsibility for their own lives. 

There may well be odd cases where the person sleeping rough could have prevented it happening, but for the vast majority that is not true. The reasons why people find themselves on the streets, homeless and jobless, are many. Usually there is a connection between them: In the UK it is almost impossible to find a job if you are homeless. In the UK it is almost impossible to find a home if you are jobless. How do you resolve that?

Some homeless people are ex-service personnel who have left the armed forces and not been able to re-adjust to civilian life. Their marriage may have broken down, they may be disabled physically or suffering PTSD or other mental health issues as a result of their service.

Others are youngsters who have left home for whatever reason: perhaps a family conflict, perhaps abuse by a relative, perhaps just not being allowed to remain within the home they grew up in. Some of them are youngsters who grew up in foster families or children's homes who have nowhere else to go once they reach the age of majority.

Some are people who have lost their job or been laid off and can no longer afford to pay their mortgage or rent, and for whom the welfare benefits system has failed, or through sanctions or ineligibility. 

Yet more may be those with mental health issues, who are so badly let down by the current system of non-care. Those who, for all sorts of reasons, may not be able to cope with living alone or with others, yet who still need to be housed and cared for.

There are times when there needs to be help provided, where the collective responsibility of a compassionate society needs to kick in and help those who have nowhere to live to find somewhere, or to find a job. How can we do this?

Well firstly it takes money - and under a government which runs an austerity budget that is not an easy thing to find! It also takes social and political will. Social, because we as a society need to understand why homelessness happens and how we can address it, and political because the politicians need to understand there is no quick fix for this, that it will cost money, but that by not taking action it will, in the long term, cost us even more, so non-action is a false economy!

Government could allocate funds to every area with a homeless population, sufficient to purchase a large enough property (or properties if more than one is needed) that can be converted into bedsits so that anyone who is homeless has a safe place of their own to live and sleep. It could even be done as a community project with those who will live in it helping to create the living spaces - thus learning new skills that could help them later on and giving them a sense of involvement and ownership of the project.

Once they are safely housed then they may need help with more skills training, with further education, or finding work suitable to their health and abilities. This could be done in collaboration either with local colleges, or with employers who would provide spaces for people in need of job experience. Once they have those extra skills or experience and an address it becomes so much easier to find permanent employment. 

But there are still other factors to take into account: how does one live without a paid job? This is where UBI comes in. I don't mean like at the work experience level of payment, I mean an amount that is sufficient to provide the necessities and a bit left over. It needs to be set at a level to pay for clothes, food etc, with the accommodation cost being covered by government until such time as they were earning enough to move into a separate place of their own. The key thing is to set levels realistically, not at some artificially low sum where the only way you can survive is by eating 9p bean-burgers every day! 

Managing the UBI brings to mind the need for banking facilities for those whom the high street banks find unattractive, whilst avoiding the lure of the money lenders who prey on the vulnerable. Having a people's bank would allow those who do not have access to commercial banks to have an account into which their earnings or allowances would be paid. This removes another of the hurdles that face many people who are homeless and jobless.

By helping homeless and jobless people in this way you are encouraging them to become members of the wider community rather than living on the fringe or outside of it, you are also giving them dignity and independence, and enhancing their sense of personal self-worth, which in many cases has been destroyed by years of abuse or deprivation.

Finally, there needs to be a shift in attitude towards homeless and jobless people: they are being blamed for being homeless and jobless and it is not their fault! The reason the media promotes the idea that they are to blame is that it suits the government's rhetoric of austerity and the principle of divide and rule. Until we all realise what game the government and media are playing  and if we allow them to make us believe that being homeless and jobless are not political issues then we are being fooled.  We need to stand up and protest, whether that be direct to our MP, via marches and demonstrations, at the ballot box each time there is a by-election for council seats or an MP, or most importantly, at the elections for councils and mayors on 4th May. #VoteLabour and help get this situation sorted. 

 

50 broken Tory promises - how many more to come?

Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party my previously politically passive husband has become politically vocal. I think he finally has hope that we will see a change for the better once we can get rid of this Tory Govt. and replace it with a proper real Labour one!

This is one of the posts that he shared recently on Facebook - it sums up more succinctly than I can why the Tory Govt. needs to go!

Here are 50 more broken Tory promises from the first five years of failure in Downing Street:

We will balance the books by 2015
THE TRUTH: Britain still has a budget deficit of £90billion

We will pay down Britain’s debts
THE TRUTH: George Osborne has borrowed over £500billion in five years - more than Labour did in 13

We will get net immigration down to the tens of thousands
THE TRUTH: Net immigration is almost 300,000 per year

No more top-down reorganisations of the NHS
THE TRUTH: £3billion wasted on the biggest reorganisation in NHS history

We will improve your living standards
THE TRUTH: Families £1,600-a-year worse off than in 2010

We will deport more foreign criminals
THE TRUTH: The number of foreign crooks on our streets soars 20%

We will keep our nation’s defences strong
THE TRUTH: Army hacked back by 20,000 troops to its lowest level since the Napoleonic wars

We will not raise VAT
THE TRUTH: VAT hiked to 20%, costing the average family £450-a-year

We will protect the vulnerable from the cuts
THE TRUTH: Cruel welfare sanctions force one million people to use food banks

We’re all in it together
THE TRUTH: Millionaires get a £100,000-a-year tax cut - the poor get the £15-a-week Bedroom Tax

GP access promised 12 hours a day, seven days a week
THE TRUTH: Patients face a 10-day wait to see their family doctor

We will get tough on illegal immigrants
THE TRUTH: Home Office loses track of 174,000 illegal immigrants

We will get tough on tax avoidance
THE TRUTH: The Treasury is still missing out on an estimated £34billion a year

We will stop the closure of A&E and maternity wards
THE TRUTH: Dozens closed or downgraded since 2010

We will cut the number of MPs by 10%
THE TRUTH: Not a single MP has been cut

We will get Britain building again
THE TRUTH: Lowest level of house-building since the war

We will have more small schools with smaller class sizes
THE TRUTH: Number of infants in oversized classes up 200%

We will protect front-line policing
THE TRUTH: 17,000 cops get the boot

We will support families through the tax and benefits system
THE TRUTH: The average family loses £1,100 through tax and benefit changes

We will be the Greenest Government Ever
THE TRUTH: Cameron tells his Ministers to “cut the green cr*p”

We will work towards ending child poverty by 2020
THE TRUTH: 300,000 more kids plunged into poverty

We will enhance the status of teachers
THE TRUTH: Teachers’ pay cut in real terms year after year and their status publicly attacked from Michael Gove

We will revolutionise cancer care
THE TRUTH: The key cancer treatment waiting time target missed for the past four quarters

We will cut the number of highly-paid special advisers in Government
THE TRUTH: Number of special advisers soars by 50%

We will support and improve Sure Start
THE TRUTH: 763 Sure Start centres closed and many more scaled down

We will break down barriers between health and social care
THE TRUTH: Social care funding slashed by £3.5billion as part of attack on town hall budgets

We will restore trust in politics
THE TRUTH: The Tories trouser £30million in donations from hedge funds – which were given a huge tax cut in 2013

We will protect our NHS
THE TRUTH: 40% of NHS contracts handed to private health firms

We will revolutionise prisoner rehab
THE TRUTH: Prison escapes, assaults and suicides all soar as inmates are locked in overcrowded cells for 23 hours a day

We will increase spending on vital flood defences
THE TRUTH: Flood defence spending cut by £247million – and thousands of homes are flooded

We will fight for the union
THE TRUTH: Cameron talks up the SNP to punish Labour and unveils plans to downgrade Scottish MPs at Westminster

We will tackle inequality
THE TRUTH: The richest 1% of Britons now own the same amount of wealth as 54% of the population.

We will treat white collar crime as seriously as other crimes
THE TRUTH: 90% of cyber-crime is allowed to go undetected

No more winter crises in hospital
THE TRUTH: A&E departments in meltdown with one in five patients not seen within the four hour target.

We will invest in our schools
THE TRUTH: Plans to build more than 700 new schools across Britain brutally axed

We will help the disabled into suitable jobs
THE TRUTH: Remploy factories shut down and disabled people subjected to cruel Atos tests

We will make our borders more secure
THE TRUTH: Customs checks for dangerous drugs and weapons scaled back dramatically

We will keep supporting our young people
THE TRUTH: More than 2,000 youth workers axed and at least 350 youth centres closed

We will create security for British businesses
THE TRUTH: HSBC is amongst a raft of UK firms unsettled by Cameron’s EU referendum pledge.

We will not means-test child benefit
THE TRUTH: Child benefit means-tested and then cut for better-off families

We have no plans to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We have no plans to get rid of Labour’s Future Jobs Fund
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We will improve Britain’s productivity
THE TRUTH: Productivity is 21% lower than the G7 average

We will deal with long-term unemployment with our ‘Work Programme’
THE TRUTH: More than 650,000 people are left off work for more than a year.

We will bring in 3,000 more midwives
THE TRUTH: Cameron misses his target by almost a third

We will create the “right sort of jobs” to spread prosperity “for the many not the few”
THE TRUTH: 1.7million zero hours contracts handed out in Cameron’s low-pay Britain

No-one will be made homeless by our welfare cuts
THE TRUTH: Rough sleeping up 55% since 2010

We will not allow cuts to front-line services
THE TRUTH: Services are cut across the board, from nearly 500 public libraries to over 1,000 lollipop ladies

We will not cut the NHS
THE TRUTH: The NHS is forced to find £5billion of ‘efficiency savings’ – cuts by any other name

We will have head-to-head TV debates like in 2010
THE TRUTH: Cameron was too chicken to take part

And there will no doubt be more of the same. If you think this is wrong, please join the Labour Party today and help us put things right. https://join.labour.org.uk/

Petitions that get results...

Following on from yesterday's post about the use of petitions, I was pleased to receive a response from my local authority, South Lakeland District Council, in respect of a petition on care2.com that I signed back in June of this year.  The petition "Stop housing discrimination against homeless people with pets" called for a rethink in the way that homeless people with pets are dealt with, and a copy of the petition was sent to each local authority.

The response from Cllr Graham Vincent, the council's Portfolio Holder for Health and Wellbeing, thanked me for raising the issue and explained the council's position,  insofar as housing homeless persons meant they often had to share accommodation (I presume this means hostels) and that having pets in such places was not appropriate so the pet was kennelled overnight (presumably at the council's expense.) He also referred to families escaping domestic abuse and that having pets housed with children is not always appropriate.

Cllr Vincent went on to explain that the council was currently revising their housing strategy and that this issue would be looked at as a part of that review, and that he will raise the matter at the regional Homelessness Forum to see if there are other options which may be better.

I have to say that I am delighted to have the reply from Cllr Vincent, and his assurance that he will look at this again.  I shall respond to him and make some comments and suggestions which I hope he may find of use.

Whilst I understand the reasoning behind the council's stance, I do feel very strongly that where a homeless person has been sleeping on the street and their only companion has been a dog, that it is wrong to separate person and dog as part of the rehousing issue. The dog is a vital part of the well-being of that person, possibly their only friend or companion, and once parted both will suffer.

The same can apply to families - if children are forcibly separated from their pets due to homelessness / rehousing, it can simply add to their trauma. Maintaining the continuity and stability of the good things in a child's life is essential when they are faced with domestic violence or abuse issues, as it will help them to cope with the huge changes they are going through.

If the current method of housing homeless persons does not allow for them to keep their pets then we really need to be rethinking how and where we rehouse people.  It's difficult enough being homeless without the distress of losing a loyal and trusted companion also.  I look forward to hearing how my local authority will progress this issue and hope they will be brave enough to consider some alternatives to the status quo.

Crossing the floor

If you have, like me, become fed up of the endless #piggate  stories flooding the press and social media, you will be glad to know that today's story has nothing in it about quadrupeds of any type!

Instead, I've been watching the steady climb of  membership figures since the announcement of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Leader of the Labour Party on Saturday 12th September.

An article dated 25 September last year (2014) on opendemocracy.net gace the following figures as having just been published in a House of Commons Library Report:

“Latest estimates suggest that the Conservative Party claimed 134,000 members, the Labour party 190,000 and the Liberal Democrat Party 44,000.*” They also say that, in June, UKIP had 39,000 members.

So how does that compare with the figures now, 12 months down the line?  It's hard to be exact as the latest "official" figures published by the House of Commons Library are dated August 2015, and show as follows: 

According to the latest party press releases and media estimates (at 11 August 2015):
- The Conservative Party has around 149,800 members, as of December 2013.
- The Labour Party has around 270,000 members, as of August 2015.
- The Scottish National Party has around 110,000 members, as of June 2015.
- The Liberal Democrat Party has 61,000 members, as of May 2015.
- UKIP has around 42,000 members, as of January 2015.
- The Green Party (England and Wales) has 61,000 members, as of June 2015.

However, what is clear is that whatever the figure was on 12th September, the Labour Party membership has climbed by more than 62,000 since the leadership election result - that's more than the total number of members that UKIP has, crowed the Independent.

Many of the new members are assumed to be from the 105,598 registered supporters (the £3 voters) signing up as full members, although there is evidence that some new members were not previously registered supporters whilst others have crossed the floor from other parties to join the Labour Party.  The total membership of the Labour Party is now reported in the Independent as approx. 360,000, which is probably more than the Conservative, the LibDem and UKIP totals combined!

So, apart from feeling smug, what should we as a party be asking all the new members to do?   We need action, we need people to spread the word about Labour Party policies, we need people to volunteer to deliver leaflets, attend meetings, organise awareness and fund-raising events, talk to anyone and everyone how a Labour government would result in a better, more socially just and caring society in the UK. How a Labour government would protect and improve the NHS; scrap student fees; bring essential services like the railways back into common ownership (not the same old nationalisation which was top heavy and didn't work);  build affordable social housing so that everyone who needs one can afford a home; by providing protection and support via the welfare system or otherwsie to the old, the sick and to people with disabilities of any kind;  to support small businesses and sole traders who have long-been ignored and neglected by all political parties;  by making our communities safer and giving our young people better opportunities for their futures. These are the policies that we need to explain to our friends, our neighbours and the wider society in which we live. Our vision is for a better future for us all in the UK, rather than the most wealthy 1% being OK and everyone else just getting by or suffering.

If you want to join us you would be very welcome:  https://join.labour.org.uk/ and if you are in the Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency we will probably see you at a local South Lakes Labour event very soon!

Why has homelessness become such a big problem?

When I moved to London in 1981 I was staggered at seeing people sleeping on the streets, living in cardboard boxes on street corners, sleeping in subways and on park benches.

I had moved from Kendal in Cumbria, where there were two people who slept rough, both of whom apparently refused to live in proper housing for their own reasons. 

That people had to sleep rough was such a revelation to me...  now almost 35 years on and there are even more people sleeping on the streets or being dumped in unsuitable temporary accommodation.

People with mental health issues, young people, homeless families, or ex service-people who have nowhere else to live and who are suffering the awful after-effects of their involvement in any of the more recent conflicts.

How can this be? Why and how have we got it so wrong as a society?  How do we solve the problem?  And how quickly can we solve it?  We need social housing, we need affordable housing, we need a variety of housing suitable for the different needs of people. Not just family homes, but flats or houses for single people, for elderly people, for disabled people, for everyone to be able to have a place they can call their own.  It should not be too much to ask in 2015 that we all have somewhere to live!

*Jeremy Corbyn's housing manifesto proposes a radical rebooting of home construction permitting councils to be house builders and providers in order to meet the demand for affordable housing in their own areas:  PDF LINK

*  The new Leader of the Labour Party, just in case you missed it!