Theresa May

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Commentary and analysis of recent UK political events

 

Charities criticise David Cameron for repeated misleading statements about the bedroom tax.

Charities Turn ‘Bedroom Tax’ Attack On PM

Charities have accused the Prime Minister of giving “inaccurate” statements and raising “false hopes” by suggesting that disabled people who need an extra room are exempt from the so-called “bedroom tax”.

Eighteen chief executives of leading disabled charities have written to David Cameron criticising comments he made during Prime Minister’s Questions last Wednesday.

Mr Cameron was asked about calls to exempt disabled people from the spare room subsidy and responded: “Obviously, what we have done is to exempt disabled people who need an extra room.”

The charities, which include Carers UK, the RNIB and and Sense, say he has made similar remarks twice this year.

The letter states: “None of these situations reflect the reality of the Government’s policy. We are now even more concerned that the effects the policy is having on disabled people and their families are not understood in Government.”

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The government redefines fuel poverty to look better

Fuel poverty: Ministers ‘shifting goal posts’

A committee of MPs has accused ministers of “shifting the goal posts” to reduce the number of households in England classed as in fuel poverty.

The definition of fuel poverty would be changed by amendments to the Energy Bill so that 2.4 million were classed as fuel poor rather than 3.2 million.

The Environmental Audit Committee says that is unacceptable.

The government insists the changes help “to get a better understanding of the causes and depth of fuel poverty”.

The cross-party committee’s report said families were currently classed as fuel poor if they spent more than 10% of income on fuel “to maintain an adequate level of warmth”.

Under the new definition, families would only be deemed to be in hardship if they had “above average fuel costs” leaving them with “a residual income below the official poverty line”.

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Spy Blog asks which UK politician, if any, authorised NSA snooping on “un-minimized” data of innocent people in UK ?

I would hazzard the guess Tony Blair and Jack Straw although it’s important to remember that the entire cabinet shares legal responsibility. In Blair’s cabinet that would mean that ministers are responsible for actions that they had absolutely no knowledge about.

 

Home Secretary Theresa May is asked for explanations about the Ifa Muaza 20-hour deportation round-trip. [Ifa Muaza or Isa Muazu?]

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Politics news allsorts

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Image of reams of paper on a palletThe ConDem coalition government has published the HS2 bill. At 49,910 pages long it evades democracy by preventing representations. 891 pages would need to be read every day to simply read it in the 8 weeks for representations. It presents a wonderful opportunity for protestors although it will waste a lot of paper and ink. No MPs were seen under the bill in parliament as it was passed almost unanimously last night.

A source close to the government said “That was a good wheeze – it was one of Lansley’s again. Drowning the NHS in bureaucracy, castrating 38degrees, charities and the unions with the lobbying bill and now this. We’ve decided to ruthlessly pursue our narrow class interests now that it’s accepted that we have no chance to win the general election. HS2 should sustain us for a decade or two if we take it easy on the port.”

The Guardian asks what it would take to regain Labour voters. The comments are clearly calling for nationalisation of utilities and trains and to abandon Neo-Liberalism. No chance of that with this ‘Labour’ party.

I must confess that even I was taken in by Miliband pretending to be a Socialist at the conference this year. It only lasted about two days. It’s very clear what the Labour party needs to do to attract voters. I’m effectively disenfranchised without a choice between the three main Neo-Liberal parties. It’s clear that there are many that feel exactly the same.

Shadow Home Office Minister Diana Johnson makes a valid point about Theresa May supporting migrant domestic slavery by tying their visas to one employer.

Unfortunately she also accepts uncritically the current case of “invisible handcuffs” slavery saying “The Labour party would deal with this case proportionately. We would try the ‘invisible handcuffs’ factional splitter Maoist squatters case in the special Court of Make-believe and convict to ten years in the pretend prison at the back of the wardrobe.”

No mention of Cameron’s plans for web censorship. Let’s hope it’s quietly forgotten.

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Theresa May drops a bobo

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Just recently the press has been awash with reports of three women held as slaves in South-West London. The police have disclosed only meagre details like they were originally “a collective” and shared a political ideology.

Despite every few details, UK Home Secretary Theresa May has – no doubt trying to benefit from the shock and outrage – declared tackling slavery in modern Britain “a personal priority.”

The trouble is that this slavery story is totally overblown. It looks like their shared ideology was Anarchism and they probably just wanted out and were not slaves at all. No handcuffs except for “invisible handcuffs.” I’m calling it bollocks.

25/11/13 Looks like I was wrong on the Anarchism. Slavery case: two arrested ran a revolutionary Communist collective. I wonder if I’ll be wrong on the “invisible handcuffs.

25/11/13 5.20 p.m. There appears to a prejudged approach and a lack of sensitivity to this news story. Political ideology and the fact that the group has lived at many different addresses in London are repeatedly emphasized.

Living in London on a low income has always been precarious, more so for people reduced to living in squats: squatters would often be forced to relocate as properties are repossessed. I’m talking from experience.

Slavery is about being held as a prisoner and denied basic rights. It is not about people pursuing a different, alternative lifestyle. Nor is it about being a dysfunctional family.

26/11/13 ‘Slavery’ in London: an hysterical morality tale even features dysfunctional and an iceberg …

Image of an iceberg

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Theresa May must not further erode Britons’ rights to citizenship

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/14/theresa-may-erode-britons-citizenship-right

Image of UK Home Secretary Theresa May

Theresa May has said she wants to extend her powers to strip citizenship from suspected terrorists, even if doing so renders them stateless. Under current law the home secretary may denaturalise anyone with dual nationality whose UK citizenship is deemed by her to be “not conducive to the public good”. But if May has her way, even British-only nationals will lose their citizenship. The consequences will be profound.

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In her first 30 months in office, May deprived 16 Britons of their citizenship, almost all of them on grounds of being linked to terrorist activities. One such ex-Briton is Mahdi Hashi, a Somali-born UK citizen who grew up in Camden, north London, and subsequently became involved in the al-Shabaab group. The home ecretary ordered that he be stripped of citizenship while he was in Somalia, cancelling his passport and right to re-enter Britain, and leaving him vulnerable to rendition to the US. Hashi now languishes in jail in New York on terror charges.

The vast majority of these former citizens were outside the UK at the time, giving the lie to their right to appeal to a UK court, and freeing the home secretary from full scrutiny. Few of them have ever been charged in a British court with any criminal offence. The protections that each and every British citizen should have against arbitrary decision-making and against a life without citizenship have been gradually and deliberately stripped away.

During the dark days of the second world war, when Britain was in mortal danger, only four people were stripped of citizenship. Theresa May has denaturalised more than four times that number of in the last three years alone. Now she wants to increase the state’s power further by consigning British-only citizens she deems undesirable to statelessness. We would do well to note the refugee scholar Hannah Arendt’s observation that one can measure the extent to which authoritarianism has infected a government by the number of denaturalisations it orders. This growing erosion of the security of UK citizenship needs to be reversed.

[It’s important to realise that we are discussing suspects. It is likely that there is little or any evidence against them and that action to deny nationality is essentially arbitrarily applied.]

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Anti-racism campaigner and immigration caseworker sent ‘go home’ text messages by Home Office

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/antiracism-campaigner-and-immigration-caseworker-sent-go-home-text-messages-by-home-office-8886200.html

UKBA left red faced after Suresh Grover and Bobby Chan receive texts telling them to leave the country

Image of immigrants go home van

Less than two weeks since the Home Office anti-immigration vans were banned by the advertising watchdog for using “misleading” statistics, the UK Border Agency has come under fire for telling an anti-racism campaigner and an immigration adviser to leave the country in a text.

On behalf of UKBA, private contractor Crapita sent leading campaigner Suresh Grover a text telling him he had no right to live here. The same text was sent to Bobby Chan, an Immigration Caseworker at Central London Community Law.

Mr Grover, who founded the anti-racism charity The Monitoring Group, has campaigned for justice for Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbie. He also runs race relations advice surgeries across London.

He told the Independent “ I was absolutely shocked and quite horrified to receive the text. I thought it wasn’t meant for me. I came here with my parents in 1966, I was born in East Africa and have always had a British passport.”

<original posting snipped>

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27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingAnti-racism campaigner and immigration caseworker sent ‘go home’ text messages by Home Office