Today's Topics:
1. Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: Jackdaw #3 --
Universal Credit? Universal Household Debt (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Britain, freedom news: Class War at the Rees-Mogg Residence
- Media and MPs in Hyperbolic Rage (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
There are now 870,000 claimants for Universal Credit, the Government's new flagship
welfare scheme. By the end of 2018 the plan is for every area of England to be covered by
this digitally based welfare service that rolls six different job-related benefits into
one. It's expected that 5.7 million households will be claiming Universal Credit by 2023.
This includes the transfer of more than 2 million recipients of Employment Support
Allowance (ESA), so there's a very long way to go. ---- Yet even at this early stage of
the programme, and after six years of trials and pilots with relatively simple claims, the
badly-designed scheme is creaking and swaying. It's working class households, the poor,
the disabled and the low-paid who are already paying the cost of this failure.
As predicted by welfare rights activists, demands on food banks have increased four-fold
in areas where Universal Credit has been fully rolled-out. The scheme's IT system can't
cope with even current levels of demand, leading to unnecessary miscalculations and
delays. Rent arrears have soared due to claimants being forced to wait five weeks or more
for payments. Forty per cent of UC claimants are in arrears, the majority for the first
time in their lives. Private landlords are refusing to accept UC claimants as tenants.
Some people put this disaster down to wide-scale managerial incompetence. We say it is a
deliberate politically driven attempt to punish and criminalise the working poor. Through
so-called austerity programmes we are being made to pay for the international crisis in
banking finance that surfaced in 2008 and will re-appear yet again.
The Government had to print an extra £505 billion in "quantitative easing" to save its
lords and masters in corporate finance from the effects of their reckless gambling. Not a
single banker has been prosecuted for the 2008 crisis. Most of the extra public money
printed has simply led to massive increases in house prices, rents, and the value of
shares. Very little has found its way into new jobs and or even a modest rise in average
wages. In the last ten years the UK has seen the longest period of declining real incomes
in recorded economic history, which is back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In
contrast, the amount of bonuses paid out in the UK finance sector last year was over £15
billion.
As well as claimants themselves, other people are starting to take notice. There's the
possibility of change and resistance in the air. Stories are appearing in the local and
national press virtually every day about Universal Credit and its iniquities. A House of
Commons Select Committee is desperately trying to shore up the scheme. In response to
numerous court cases the DWP is on the back foot, forced to repay some claimants and
moderate the rules for others. Groups of claimants and their friends are banding together
locally to help one another and publicise the scheme's failures. Unite the Union and a
number of DWP staff have followed the lead of Disabled People Against the Cuts and are
calling for Universal Credit to be scrapped.
The Government can find (i.e. order the Bank of England to print) £505 billion to save a
few banks. That's more than £7,500 for every woman, man and child in Britain. Clearly, the
government has no interest in scrapping Universal Credit and wiping out record levels of
household debt instead, not unless they are forced to do this.
Scrap Universal Credit! Wipe out household debt!
Article from Jackdaw 3
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Jackdaw-Issue-3-RGB.pdf
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/09/11/universal-credit-universal-household-debt/
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Message: 2
One of the things I've put a lot of time to thinking about is how Class War can get media
coverage and then control it. It's not a square I've been able to circle. I'm part of the
group and I'm also researching their foray into electoral politics (I was a candidate for
the Class War Party in 2015). ---- The mass media is exceedingly fickle and I've been on
protests where I've thought "this is going to get a lot of attention" only to find no
mainstream media coverage. One example was the day, a week before the 2015 general
election, when we blocked Tower Bridge in London with hundreds of people on a meandering
demonstration through the streets. As Class War were a political party at the time I
imagined this would garner some sort of attention for the group. There was nowt. You can
see a selection of pictures from this event at Peter Marshall's My London Diary site
Then one day you wake up to articles all over the news about Class War doing this, that
and the other. The attack on the Cereal Killer Café later in 2015 for example or the
occasional mentions of Corbyn's policy advisor, Andrew Fisher, and a tweet he made in
support of my standing against Labour's Emily Benn. Often these are accompanied by
outlandish claims on the fringes of the fake news media (as it's become known). There were
reports that protesters tried to rip a dog apart with their bare hands at the Cereal
Killer Café and of course that Class War is a fringe group within the Labour Party.
Yesterday the media was at it again in one of the most bizarre collective outbursts to
date. The group had planned a little trip to the London residence of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The
reasons are very simple for targeting this man. He currently holds a great deal of sway
within the Tory Party and they are battling and have been for over quite soem time about
not just the direction of Brexit but the future leadershipof their party and therefore who
will be the next Prime Minister of the UK. Rees-Mogg is seen as being on the right of the
party and supports Boris Johnson. This is a battle that is as much about his Eton
background as anything else. With no old Etonian's in the cabinet at the current time,
people like Rees-Mogg, who have been educated to believe that they have a right to rule
over us, must be incredibly frustrated. You can guess that these battles for supremacy are
basically a race to see who can be the shittiest in power. The debate is about the class
interests of the ruling class. The fact they are split is welcome but one day a side in
this battle will win and we need to be ready.
And then we find out about the Rees-Mogg nanny. Veronica Crook has spent over 50 years
slaving for the Rees-Mogg's. She has wiped arses for multiple generations. We can probably
assume Jacob wipes his own now but you never know with these cossetted feudal types.
Feudal is the right word. Slaving is the right word. So Class War's intention was to
protest and to seek answers about the treatment of Nanny Crook. What does she get paid?
Does she have holiday? Does her pay amount to the London Living Wage?
At the protest, Rees-Mogg emerged and then after a while so did Nanny Crook. Ian Bone,
founder of the group, put these questions to Crook but she was always looking towards her
master to ensure she was saying the right thing. She told Ian that she wasn't paid an
hourly rate. Of course, it wouldn't be difficult to work one out. The hours she must work
and being always on call for the little Moggs must make her hourly rate pitifully small
but Rees-Mogg could come clean and tell the world.
In his autobiography Ian writes about growing up the son of a butler. This is an issue
that resonates with him. The video of the protest shows him making some comments about
Stokholm Syndrome but his conversation with Crook is actually heartfelt and comes across
as caring. The mass media though have chosen barely to mention Nanny Crook and the point
of the protest. The media have shrieked and wailed about "far leftist" protesters who
shouted and screamed and Ress-Mogg's children.
If you watch the video you can clearly tell there are very few raised voices. Rees-Mogg
brought his children to a Class War protest. Ian chose to engage with them directly,
telling them the truth about their father. That incident lasted about 40 seconds and
consisted of Ian telling the little Moggs that their father didn't pay their nanny very
well and that this issue means he's not a very nice person. Prior to that you can see Ian
putting these points directly to Rees-Mogg himself, who refuses to answer and puts a hand
up to instruct his wife to be quiet when she says something about the nanny getting time
off at weekends. Let's be clear, he brought his kids out into that protest but in any case
these kids are going to be just fine aren't they? They're never going to know what it's
like to suffer because of the actions of their father. They won't suffer because of
Universal Credit or the bed room tax. They won't need to use a foodbank. They'll be just
as cosseted as their father.
Tory and Labour MP's were quick to condemn Class War after footage was shown on the BBC
and other news outlets. Many of them just took the line that Class War were shouting at
kids, that those 40 seconds would damage them irreparably and going to a politicians home
is out of order. On the fringes (but not fringe enough) bloggers like Guido Fawkes
suggested a link between Class War and John McDonnell because both were supporting United
Voices of the World strikers at a PCS union organised solidarity protest outside the
Ministry of Justice last week. On twitter and facebook general lefties and Labour Party
members have criticised the group for helping Rees-Mogg get sympathetic coverage, as if it
was all part of a great plan.
This morning I thought things might have settled down a bit and maybe the media would
shift their focus to what the protest was about rather than the "explosive" and
"sensational" 40 seconds. So far I've only seen Janet Street-Porter's effort. She does
mention Crook but she claims that the nanny answered all the questions adequately,
concluding that it's "game, set and match" to Rees-Mogg. This was because she was
desperately trying to compare Ian Bone to Serena Williams, claiming the two had both had
media meltdowns this week. Street-Porter ends her piece with this amazing observation:
"Although the rant at the Rees-Mogg nanny was distasteful, Bone has a point. The number of
poor people working as slaves in domestic households in Britain has risen sharply in
recent years - but they are just as likely to be trapped in middle class homes as obvious
toffs like Mr R-M. And if Nanny Crook didn't like her pay and conditions, what's she still
doing wiping bottoms after 71 years?
But if on the off-chance she has had enough of Tory high life she might bring her
child-minding skills to help multi-millionaire Serena Williams control her tantrums."
She doesn't link the word ‘slave' to her ponderings on why Crook doesn't get a different
job for some reason. And guess what? Class War doesn't want the middle class to have
slaves either. Unfortunately it's hard to protest outside everyone's house so we chose a
high profile bastard to target. The point is made though: there are far too many people in
wage slavery of this obscene kind and it needs to be tackled. Maybe with Street-Porter's
article we see a shifting of the discussion on the protest. Time will tell.
Once again Class War are all over the news. There's no predicting it and once it happens
there's very little anyone can do to control it.
Jon Bigger
https://freedomnews.org.uk/class-war-at-the-rees-mogg-residence-media-and-mps-in-hyperbolic-rage/
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