My podcast now operational at:
https://whovotedforthis.buzzsprout.com/
It’s interviews with parents who have autistic children and serious housing issues.
There’s also plenty of snark about the right wing sociopaths and cringing centrist wallies who pass as political leaders today. Everyone’s sick of the lot of them.
Will be mainly on the podcast now, so not posting here.
Kate
Posting will be light this week as I work on a few things. Back soon.
Blogging will be on hold for a few more days while I finish some things. Back soon.
There’ll be a short break in posting while I finish a few things. Back soon.
Should be back up to speed by next week. Decided to take a couple of weeks after the election to go through all the transcripts and recordings I have from jobcentres and work capability assessments, and get all that work in order for the next round of fighting.
Go well, all and remember – Labour was never going to give us social security back. As ever, we’ll have to go and get it back ourselves.
See you soon.
Blogging will be light-ish over the next couple of weeks. Saving myself until the election, etc. Be good.
Really like this, so reposting it. Might repost it once a week from now on.
Excellent video by the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group. Share and enjoy!
Out & about atm on a few things – back soon.
If you have some time and feel like tearing it up on twitter, go ahead and tweet the work programme provider Urban Futures @urbanfuturesuk and the charity Marie Curie @mariecurieuk and ask them exactly how people came to be placed on the community work placement (CWP) workfare programme at Marie Curie when Marie Curie doesn’t take workfare placements anymore.
I got the answer below (ie it was an accident), but have asked for more detail about the exact processes that companies that provide volunteers to charities must (should) go through when placing volunteers with charities to make sure volunteers aren’t on workfare. How exactly do workfare placement “accidents” like the one described on the link below happen?
Sadly, nobody from either UF or MC is responding to my calls and emails atm, so feel free to get in yourselves.
Blogging will be light over the next week or so as yours truly takes a few Santa days and wines… thanks to everyone who spoke with me for pieces for the site this year and who had me along to leafleting, meetings and events. You are all GREAT.
My key finding this year (same as last year’s, really): the world is made up almost entirely of fantastic and decent people who are ruled by a small band of elitist assholes.
The good people will win in the end.
Have a good one. See you soon.
As readers of this site will know, I’ve been chasing the DWP for details of the useless “work skills” and “employability skills” courses that JSA claimants must attend on the threat of sanctions… people report being forced to attend courses where they have to build towers out of drinking straws, roll marbles down tubes and tear up pieces of paper to reassemble in the interests of accquiring teamwork skills… Some people I’ve spoken to even said they were threatened when they dared to complain to providers about the courses they were sent on. This all goes on because ritual humiliation of and aggression towards people who are out of work is thought to be absolutely fine in our day and age….
The DWP press office ignored my questions about this, of course, so I sent the department an FOI. I asked for lists of providers of these courses, how funding streams work, how much providers like Reed and A4e charge for attendance on these courses, what sort of quality control is in place, what standards (if any) course providers must meet to provide these courses and if the courses are indeed compulsory – ie, why are people threatened with sanctions if they refuse to attend, or say a course does not match their skill set? Surely the DWP can share its own rules re: whether people are threatened with sanctions if they refuse to attend these so-called skills courses.
Needless to say, the DWP responded with a section 12 – cost of information extraction exceeding the £600 limit, etc. The DWP said it does hold some of the requested information, though, so I’ll be redrawing the request. I’m particularly interested in the costs of these courses. People have sent me some intriguing possible cost figures – the sort of money that would suggest these course providers are on course to have a very merry Christmas.