We have every right to protest. It’s our fucking World as much as anyone else, especially rich cnuts.
ed: What you want a reasoned argument?
In that case, rich cnuts are trashing our beautiful world.
Recognise that?
What’s needed?
Are you going to do nothing while Capitalists destroy our World?
Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
Keir Starmer has rightly been under fire since Labour last week exploited abused children by publishing a Twitter post claiming Rishi Sunak doesn’t care about protecting children from paedophiles. Sunak is abysmal, but he has no role in the sentencing of offenders – and Starmer himself, as then-Director of Public Prosecutions, played a key role in creating the sentencing guidelines that courts still follow, including specific recommendations on sentencing sex offenders.
Starmer’s anonymity request was not his only controversy regarding sex offenders
And further hypocrisy in Labour’s current stance has come to light thanks to Gil O’Teane, who pointed out that – as a barrister acting on behalf of a convicted paedophile – Starmer asked a judge to keep secret both the offender’s identity and the leniency of the sentence he had received:
There is no suggestion that Starmer was acting improperly in representing his client in 2002 – but there is every suggestion that a man who understood the nuances of sentencing in 2002 is profoundly hypocritical and reckless to disregard his own history in order to make a vile, misleading and inflammatory smear against a political opponent. Especially one who was running the CPS when it chose not to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.
still researching the Neo-Con Zionist siht Keir Starmer. He started being DPP and head of the CPS in 2005, there were two other Neo-Con Zionist sihts in charge of the government and Met Police then.
Is there a change between being concerned with human rights and then DPP and CPS? I think that I’ve got it actually & it applies to the 3 NCZ sihts.
Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Energy companies received more than 700,000 complaints about their treatment of debt-ridden customers over the last five years, openDemocracy can reveal.
In the last year alone, the energy regulator Ofgem was made aware of 40,000 complaints relating to the controversial forced fitting or disconnecting of pre-payment meters.
Yet the watchdog was only forced into action earlier this month when an undercover Times investigation found British Gas had sent bailiffs to break into vulnerable people’s homes and fit the meters by force. Following the expose, it suspended the practice until the end of March.
Centrica, the owner of British Gas, announced today that its profit had hit £3.3bn for 2022 – more than triple the £948m it made in 2021 – just weeks after the regulator launched an investigation into its use of bailiffs against at-risk customers.
Now, data obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request has revealed for the first time the scale of alleged mistreatment of vulnerable customers since the energy price cap was first hiked in April.
“Ofgem has known about this crisis for years, and so have the companies themselves. Suppliers are not being honest when they act like they’ve just discovered it and they’re shocked, like the CEO of Centrica did,” Ruth London, co-founder of the Fuel Poverty Action campaign group, told openDemocracy.
Energy companies are required to report the number of complaints they receive from customers every month to Ofgem. Last year, they received 161,103 complaints related to disconnection and debt issues – of which 40,458 were about pre-payment meters – though Ofgem has consistently refused to tell us which suppliers received the most.
The category includes complaints from customers about their energy supply being disconnected or having a prepayment meter installed forcibly without a warrant or despite them being vulnerable.
Other examples of complaints include customers being disconnected by error or without due process and being put on debt repayment plans that are unsuitable or unaffordable.
The true number of people being ill-treated is likely to be much higher. Ofgem revealed at the beginning of February that customers were being left on hold for hours by energy companies, leading to more than half hanging up before they could report an issue.
Ofgem said revealing how many complaints different companies had received would breach Section 105 of the 2000 Utilities Act, which states that the public disclosure of information companies supply to the regulator is prohibited in order to protect national security. The law has previously been criticised for preventing whistleblowers from raising issues about the energy sector that are in the public interest.
The regulator said after the British Gas scandal broke that it was “unacceptable” to forcibly install prepayment meters before all other options had been exhausted.
But charities have criticised it for ignoring calls to end the practice for months.
“Lives have been and are being lost because of their silence and refusal to act on the truth they have long known,” said London.
Clare Moriarty, the chief executive of Citizens Advice, said it “should not have taken this long” for Ofgem to act.
The charity said it saw more people unable to afford to top up their pre-payment metre last year than for the entirety of the previous decade combined.
The Times reported that British Gas customers who had prepayment meters forcibly installed had included a woman in her 50s who the company’s bailiffs were told had severe mental health problems and a mother whose “daughter is disabled and has a hoist and electric wheelchair”.
The paper’s undercover investigation also alleged that the Arvato Financial Solutions employees were incentivised with bonuses to fit prepayment meters. The boss of British Gas owner Centrica apologised and said he was “disappointed, livid and gutted”.
Last year, a non-executive director at the regulator resigned saying Ofgem had “not struck the right balance between the interests of consumers and interests of suppliers”.
Peter Smith, policy director at the charity National Energy Action, said: “The recent announcement by major suppliers that they would temporarily pause forced installations of pre-payment meters is welcome, but this was prompted by public shaming of suppliers and there is still no market-wide ban.
“We also desperately need a coherent plan to help millions of people already trapped on prepayment meters. This means rewiring the energy market to provide more affordable tariffs and finding new ways to address the underlying debt issues which are rife due to soaring energy costs.”
Richard Lane, Director of External Affairs at StepChange Debt Charity, said: “We welcome Ofgem’s move to suspend the forced installation of prepayment meters (PPMs), but it’s clear that thousands of households have been struggling with energy bills for some time now, which is evident in our own client data.
“For the people that have already been moved onto PPMs, there must be better protection to prevent self-disconnection and extreme energy rationing.”
Updated, 16 February 2023: This story has been amended to include fresh data obtained through freedom of information law on the number of complaints notified to Ofgem between 2018 and 2022. Previously, it just contained data for 10 months of 2022.
Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
I’ve always been a Socialist but never been a Labour Party member. I strongly object to the Neo-Con Keir Starmer posing as a Socialist and will campaign against him and the Labour Party which he has authority over.