British poetry against Atos

This video is called ATOS FORCING DISABILITY WEBSITES OFFLINE.

By Jody Porter in Britain:

The poetry of struggle – Fit To Work: Poets Against Atos

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Mark Burnhope is part of an anti-austerity campaign with a twist – he’s an editor of the website Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos.

Taking the fight against welfare reform into the field of culture, the site is an ambitious attempt to change the very meaning of the phrase “fit to work.”

“We want to change the meaning of ‘fit to work’ from a condemnatory life sentence to a recognition that everyone is fit to – and wants to – work, in dignity and security at the work of their choice,” he says.

“We believe that these circumstances are often off-limits – we are fit to work, but by and large our corporate culture is not fit for anyone to work in.

“That’s amplified by the experience of physical or mental illness and disability.”

The project hopes to add to the already high, and rising, tide of protest against what Burnhope terms “the corporatisation of the Department for Work and Pensions,” represented by Atos and the work capability assessment programme.

“To say the programme isn’t working is a gross understatement,” Burnhope tells me.

And poetry can make a difference?

“WH Auden‘s line ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ has been taken out of context and made into a challenge – one we’re accepting,” he smiles.

What brought Burnhope into disability activism?

“Amid the misery of the coalition government there have been flashes of excitement as a coalition is being created on the streets, in squats, in occupations and in community groups,” he says.

“We’ve seen disabled and disability activists at the forefront of student fees protests, and the benefits cuts are leading to an alliance around disability rights between disability activists and other campaigners.

“We’re making contacts as we go – building bridges between poetry and disability arts communities, finding contributors from all around – and they’re finding us, which is nice.

“Speaking for myself, as someone born with physical and hidden disabilities, until the coalition came in I felt more of an ally than an activist when it came to disability rights. Even now, maybe I’m just a ‘proactivist’ or a ‘reactivist’ – I’ve watched the government swing a wrecking ball through the sick and disabled community and I’ve had to say no. Publicly.

“Like race, gender and sexuality, disability has often been invisible on the left or regarded as an add-on – but now people are seeing that it’s not a supplementary, minority issue but central and far-reaching. Disabled people have always faced a dominant culture which sees their complaints and demands as quaint.

“But we’re now seeing the effects of a government and media-manufactured culture that sees benefit claimants – any benefit claimants, the average Joe doesn’t differentiate – as ‘scroungers.’

“The overwhelming mood among the disabled and sick people I know and have met through social networks is that this protest has become synonymous with disabled rights as a whole. These times could be the most significant for disabled rights in recent history. We’re taking back the movement from a government that makes every effort to undo its achievements.”

I ask him about the co-editors he runs the site with.

“They are awesome – but not as awesome as me,” he laughs. “Plus, we prefer the politically correct term ‘minions.’

“Sophie Mayer and I worked together on Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, an online campaigning anthology that brought together over 100 poets and culminated in the production of a book and eight launch events nationally.

“That project is what gave us the confidence to start Fit to Work and use blogging and other social media to ensure it reached the widest possible audience.

“Sophie is also a poet in her own right, published by Salt and others. Daniel Sluman edits a magazine called Dead Ink and recently had his first full poetry collection published by Nine Arches Press.

“Sophie and Daniel are both passionate about identity politics including disability, social justice, equality, all that stuff. And they’re inclusive but critical about poetry, so they were a natural choice.”

What inspired the project?

“Pictures of tiny babies crying as they are evicted and sent to the workhouse because they and their parents have rickets caused by corporate lobbying from supermarkets which has eviscerated inner-city food availability.

“In other words – the combined effects of simultaneous vicious attacks on the 99 per cent and how they affect people with disabilities – universal credit, the personal independence payment and employment support allowance, the bedroom tax, the continued outsourcing of the work capability assessment programme – with the free market, profit-led values that promotes.

“This is intensified by the tabloid media’s language of ‘scrounging’ and ‘skiving,’ all of which undermine any gains made in dismantling the disabling public perceptions of people with disabilities.

“It’s the horrible paradox where [Minister for Disabled People] Esther McVey claims she is helping (helpless) people with disabilities out of the oppression of benefits – double-speak for depriving us of what we need to participate in an ‘ablist’ society on our own terms.”

And how’s the campaign going?

“We’ve had nearly 100 submissions,” he says. “Both the poetry community in this country and the disability arts and activism community have shown their support by submitting work, reading the site and sharing it.

“We’ve got a WriteToThem link on the site so that readers can share it with their MPs, and we’re waiting to see what – if any – responses we get, which we’ll post on the site.

“So far all but a – legendary – handful of MPs have been very quiet about the total eradication of a fair benefits system, and we’re hoping against hope that the poems and statements on the site wake them up to the real effects on their constituents.

“We’re also running a GoFundMe campaign to support the site, which we’re running independently and for free. But we know that many of our contributors and readers are all struggling in the same economic situation. We’d like to raise enough money to enlarge the project, maybe with a print book, and even live reading events and workshops, thus increasing its visibility further.”

Any public events planned? Burnhope answers with a question.

“Does anyone have an accessible – and public transport accessible – venue with sign-language and hearing aid provision?” he asks.

“If so, we’d love to hear from you, so we can bring our poets and our audience together. Get in touch!”

• For more information visit Fit To Work: Poets Against Atos or their Facebook page.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter. Read more here.

Related articles

• ATOS declare George Osborne unfit for work as Chancellor (gogwit.wordpress.com)
• UK pulls out of 2016 Paralympics after ATOS declares no disabled in UK (tompride.wordpress.com)
• Blind campaigner who fought Atos at Holyrood leads battle with benefits bullies (dailyrecord.co.uk)
• Labour MP brands Atos 36 per cent profit increase as ‘slap in the face’ to Britain’s sick and disabled (dailyrecord.co.uk)
• Atos subcontracts tests for new disability benefit to NHS (guardian.co.uk)
• Disability benefit reforms: ‘It’s about more than the cuts, and more than the Paralympics’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Bungling Atos rake in £500million of taxpayers’ cash from botched fitness-to-work tests (dailyrecord.co.uk)
• Amnesty International condemns coalition for assault on disabled (leftfootforward.org)
• South Wales Echo letters: Monday, May 13, 2013 (walesonline.co.uk)
• Fraudster ATOS fined for supplying fake crip detectors for use in fitness for work tests (tompride.wordpress.com)

Economic crisis, but not for rich Britons

This video from Britain says about itself:

HSBC Laundered Billions In Cartel Cash And Got Away With It

Jan 9, 2013

HSBC, the world’s third largest bank and its 6th largest company, has paid a record $1.92 billion settlement after U.S. investigators found that it spent years committing serious crimes involving money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, moving tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups and for nations like Iran. Those investigations even uncovered substantial evidence “that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity.”

Shameless HSBC bank bosses posted profits today of £13.7 billion – at the same time as launching an attack on their workers’ pension scheme: here.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Top bosses laughing all the way to the bank

Monday 04 March 2013

Directors’ pay at FTSE 100 firms soared last year, growing up to seven times faster than the average worker’s wages.

Researchers at Incomes Data Services said that while millions of ordinary people are suffering on ever-shrinking salaries, the bosses of Britain’s top companies were raking in the cash.

Non-executive chairmen saw their pay rise by 6 per cent on average last year, taking home nearly £400,000 each.

Their fees ranged from an average of £270,000 in technology firms to over half a million pounds at oil and gas companies.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said it showed that “we need urgent reform of boardroom pay.

“Top directors are showing little restraint while millions of workers are suffering real-term losses to their incomes and are really feeling the squeeze on their living standards.”

And ordinary directors still managed to get their hands on £64,000 – a 4 per cent increase on 2011 and double what they charged in 2000.

Meanwhile the chairmen of company remuneration committees – the people who set the pay for executives – snagged an eye-watering 14 per cent increase.

Ms O’Grady said that “these bumper settlements bear little relation to performance” and it showed the need for workers to sit on pay committees.

The figures were published as reports surfaced that HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver will receive a £2 million bonus as part of a total package reportedly worth up to £7m for 2012.

But while company chiefs filled their boots research by the Labour Party showed that British workers had taken a huge hit to their pay packets.

Real wages – pay minus inflation – fell by 3.2 per cent between the third quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2012, the same as in Portugal.

Among the 27 EU member states, only the Netherlands, Cyprus and Greece suffered greater drops.

By Rory MacKinnon in Britain:

Disabled left £10 worse off a week

Monday 04 March 2013

“Perverse” housing benefit cuts will strip disabled tenants of more than £10 a week even after stop-gap payments, housing associations have warned.

The National Housing Federation poured scorn on the coalition’s bedroom tax yesterday as it showed discretionary council top-ups for disabled people will fail to cover even a fifth of the average shortfall.

The federation called on the government to repeal the “ill-conceived” bedroom tax or “at the very least” exempt disabled and other vulnerable people.

From April the bedroom tax will see housing benefits rationed out even more meagrely, with a 14 per cent benefit cut for any tenant with a spare bedroom.

Chancellor George Osborne’s Funding For Lending hand outs are mostly just funding banks’ shareholders, official figures showed today: here.

Related articles

• £2m windfall for HSBC boss Stuart Gulliver despite fine (metro.co.uk)
• HSBC Annual Profit Falls on Money-Laundering Charges (dealbook.nytimes.com)
• HSBC reports $20bn profit despite fine (metro.co.uk)
• HSBC pays 78 City bankers £1m after fine for money laundering (standard.co.uk)
• HSBC chief set to earn £8m bonus (express.co.uk)

British disabled people against cuts

This video from England says about itself:

Jan 28, 2012

A group of disabled people in London chained themselves together and then to railings in protest against goverment welfare cuts, they blocked Regent Street from Oxford Circus and despite it being a very cold January day and the police reading out a dispersal order they stuck it out for over two hours.

By Rory MacKinnon in Britain:

Disability activists round on councils’ £10m cut to public toilet budgets

Monday 17 December 2012

Disability campaigners reacted with outrage yesterday after seeing new research showed that some English and Welsh councils have slashed spending on public toilets by a third.

Public-sector union Unison said there had been an overall cut of £10.4 million since 2010, or about an eighth.

Metropolitan councils hacked away the most, with an average cut of 33 per cent.

The biggest cuts were in London and north-west England, with 10 councils slashing more than £250,000 each.

Unison local government secretary Heather Wakefield said it was a serious public health issue.

Access to public toilets “should be the measure of civilised society,” she said.

“We have come a long way from the Victorian sewer-streets, awash with human waste,” she said.

Linda Burnip of Disabled People Against the Cuts said the lack of accessible toilets was already a problem for many disabled people.

Toilets in pubs and restaurants were little help as they were rarely accessible or had additional facilities like hoists or changing beds, she said.

“This means many disabled people just can’t go out or can only go out for very short lengths of time.

“These are the types of real-life barriers to employment that Chancellor George Osborne, Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith and other ministers just seem to be oblivious to when they attack disabled people as benefit scroungers,” she said.

A spokeswoman for disability charity Scope said it was “disappointing” that financial pressures were leading councils to cut funding.

“For many disabled people, knowing that there are accessible public conveniences located around the country can give them the confidence they need to get out and about in their community and use local amenities,” she said.

In October fellow charity Mencap led a “flush mob” in London’s Trafalgar Square to highlight the capital’s lack of changing places for people with mobility issues.

There are just 29 fully accessible changing places in Greater London, with none on the capital’s major shopping streets or the five main rail stations.

Related articles

• Disabled people fight for their rights (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Osborne Vs the Disabled (steppaz1961.wordpress.com)
• Disabled ‘fearful of income loss’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Welfare reforms ‘to hit half a million disabled people’ (itv.com)
• How Osborne’s benefits cuts will hit the disabled (newstatesman.com)
• Benefit cuts to hit disabled (independent.co.uk)
• Half a million on disability benefits set to lose out under DLA changes (scotsman.com)
• International Day of Disabled People: Scope’s wish star campaign – in pictures (guardian.co.uk)
• How the Big Disability Charities Let Down Disabled People … again (johnnyvoid.wordpress.com)
• A tax on carers: Charities say 420,000 disabled people will be hit by bedroom tax (mirror.co.uk)

US Republicans against disabled people

This video from the USA says about itself:

Tea Party Candidate Attacks Disabled Veteran Opponent for Dress Shopping

Oct 14, 2012 by TheYoungTurks

“One of the dirtier House races this election cycle is between Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., and Army vet Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs in combat. Walsh has been attacking Duckworth for things like talking about her military career (“My God, that’s all she talks about,” he once said), and, now, wearing dresses.

At a debate, Walsh held up a photo of Duckworth and said: “I was marching in a parade in Schaumburg [Ill.[, Sunday, two days before the Democratic convention, when Tammy Duckworth was on a stage down in Charlotte [N.C.[ — if you can look at the picture — picking out a dress for her speech Tuesday night.” Jimmy Dore (The Jimmy Dore Show), Steve Oh (COO of The Young Turks) and RJ Eskow (The Breakdown, Huffington Post) break down why Rep. Joe Walsh, a man who dodged child support, would launch a sexist attack against a disabled U.S. Army veteran.

For quite some Republican politicians in the USA, not even George W Bush was far enough to the political Right.

For them, George W Bush starting wars was OK. Many veterans of those wars became disabled.

At least, the Bush administration accepted on paper that those disabled veterans should not be discriminated against.

But extremely conservative Republicans now want to destroy the Bush administration’s work on this.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Senate blocks disability treaty

Wednesday 05 December 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

The US Senate, led by right-wing Republican opposition, rejected a United Nations treaty today on the rights of the disabled.

With 38 Republicans casting No votes, the 61-38 vote fell five short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify a treaty.

The vote took place in an unusually solemn atmosphere, with senators sitting at their desks rather than milling around the podium.

The treaty, which has already been signed by 155 nations and ratified by 126 countries including Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, simply states that nations should strive to assure that the disabled enjoy the same rights and fundamental freedoms as their fellow citizens.

It was negotiated by the George W Bush administration, completed in 2006 and signed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

The blueprint for the UN treaty, formally called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, was the US Americans with Disabilities Act, which put the US in the forefront of efforts to secure equal rights for the disabled in 1990.

That act was signed into law by George H W Bush, George W Bush’s father, another Republican president. The main senator promoting it was Bob Dole, later Republican presidential candidate.

Republicans ludicrously claimed that the treaty could pose a threat to US national sovereignty.

“I do not support the cumbersome regulations and potentially overzealous international organisations with anti-American biases that infringe upon American society,” huffed Republican Senator Jim Inhofe.

The treaty had been widely backed by the disabilities community and veterans groups.

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the vote disappointing and noted that President Obama had declared just before the vote that “disability rights should not stop at our nation’s shores.”

Related articles

• Republicans cite abortion, home schooling to defeat UN disability treaty (rawstory.com)
• Vote for U.N. disability rights treaty fails, despite Dole’s push (kansascity.com)
• Dysfunction and Lies: Senate Vote Beyond Shameful (themoderatevoice.com)
• How Low Can You Go? Senate GOP Tanks Disabilities Treaty, Siding with Paranoid Rick Santorum and Glenn Beck (pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com)
• UN disability law fails in Senate (bbc.co.uk)
• Rights of Persons with Disabilities (playaminded.wordpress.com)
• Senate Rebuffs Dole’s Appeal for Passage of UN Disability Treaty (hispanicbusiness.com)
• Senate Republicans reach new low in rejecting UN treaty on rights of disabled (dailykos.com)

Disabled people fight for their rights

This video is called Disability Rights.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Disabled protesters demand end to cuts

Monday 03 December 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Disabled protesters across the world marked the International Day for People with Disabilities today with a huge series of events.

The cycle started on Sunday with a big rally of people with disabilities in Madrid, where more than 10,000 people, many in wheelchairs or being led by guide dogs, marched under the slogan: “SOS Disability: Save our Rights, Inclusion and Welfare.”

The protest focused on government austerity measures affecting disabled people by reducing services, closing disability centres and forcing care workers from their jobs.

In crisis-hit Greece, thousands took part in a rally in Thessaloniki today.

Greek campaigners say recent austerity cuts have left many disabled people struggling to receive proper care and state support.

Their banner said: “Handicapped people’s struggles relate to us all. You walk with us.”

In North Korea, disabled schoolchildren sang at a performance in the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace in Pyongyang, while across the Indian subcontinent events in towns and cities marked the day with rallies and demonstrations.

And in Nepal, disabled people gathered to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilise support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities.

In Ireland, about 2,000 protesters marched to the gates of the Dail to show the government a red card ahead of the 2013 budget.

Members of the Disability Rights Coalition said they are demanding rights, not charity, and called on politicians to maintain social welfare rates.

Spokeswoman Siobhan Kane said: “Everybody talks about the big announcements on budget day, but for people with disabilities it is a gradual drip feed.

“Day by day and week by week, they are told a support or service is being taken away.”

There are 600,000 people with disabilities across Ireland – 13 per cent of the population – but the disability sector has already suffered budget cuts of 13.7 per cent since 2008.

Britain: A disabled man wrongly found fit to work has launched a legal challenge over the government’s controversial disability benefit assessment scheme: here.

Related articles

• Country sees ‘huge’ increase in disabled people (antiguaobserver.com)
• International Day of People with Disabilities brings protests worldwide (photoblog.nbcnews.com)
• International Day of Disabled People: Scope’s wish star campaign – in pictures (guardian.co.uk)
• What if the spouse is disabled? (andrewazzopardi.org)
• International Day of Persons with Disabilities (diversityresources.wordpress.com)
• People with disabilities press demands (thehindu.com)
• [Focus] Economic crisis turning back the social clock for disabled people (euobserver.com)

Fire kills German disabled workers

Not in only in Pakistan, or very recently in Bangladesh, do factory fires kill workers.

Also in Germany (with a role for the Roman Catholic church in the tragedy). Money seems to be more important than human lives in some countries.

This video is called Fire kills 14 in German workshop for disabled people.

By Marianne Arens in Germany:

Germany: Fire at workshop for the disabled kills 14

29 November 2012

A fire in a workshop for the disabled killed 14 people in the town of Titisee-Neustadt in the Black Forest state of Baden-Württemberg on ​​Monday. The accident is one of the worst such disasters to take place in Germany in recent years.

The fire broke out in a large room on the first floor in the workshop, which is run by the charity organisation Caritas. Gas flowed from a mobile gas-fuelled heater, ignited and exploded. Poisonous fumes and smoke spread quickly.

Thirteen people with disabilities—ten women and three men—and a care attendant died from smoke inhalation. Others made it to the windows where they were rescued with the help of firefighters. When firefighters arrived, many of the workers stood at windows screaming for help. The exit was cut off by a staircase, and many of the disabled were unable to walk and reliant on wheelchairs. Fourteen people suffered injuries, nine of whom were seriously injured.

A total of 111 people were present in the building. They worked in metal and woodworking departments, involved in electrical assembly and packaging, in part for the automotive industry.

Leading German politicians immediately issued their condolences. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Baden-Württemberg premier Winfried Kretschmann (Green Party), together with Pope Benedict XVI, all expressed their concern and spoke of their “horror, despair and sadness” (Kretschmann). They stressed that every security measure had been taken and that the fire prevention measures in the workshop were quite adequate.

In fact, the building lacked a proper fire extinguishing system. It had no sprinklers which would have immediately dampened the smoke with water. According to the Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Reinhold Gall (Social Democratic Party-SPD), these elementary safety measures [were] “not required.” Apparently building regulations for a building where disabled people or people with limited mobility live and work do not include the need for a sprinkler system—as is usual for other public buildings such as airports or exhibition halls.

The building where the fire broke out was a new facility, constructed in 2006. The sheltered workshop in Titisee-Neustadt was originally built in 1979, but was fully refurbished six years ago. A new wing was built at the same time. No explanation has yet been given why such a risky form of heater was installed in a new building with its own heating system.

Caritas certainly has enough money to provide adequate fire safeguards in its homes and workshops. The charity is run by the Roman Catholic Church and is the largest private employer in Germany. It employs over half a million full-time employees nationwide, and an equal number of volunteers. It operates approximately twenty-five thousand facilities such as kindergartens, schools, nursing homes, counselling centres and workshops for the disabled.

The so-called “welfare agencies,” including Caritas and the (Protestant) Diakonia, enjoy many privileges. They are subject to virtually no control, enjoy substantial tax privileges, and ban their employees from unionizing. The German business magazine Business Week commented recently: “Under the guise of a non-profit they have built up an expansive and ever-changing empire. They continually invent new tasks to be done and the state puts up the money.”

Only a few weeks ago Caritas employees who had gone on strike took legal action to prevent their sacking by their employers.

The owner of the Bangladesh clothes factory where 112 people died in a fire at the weekend astonishingly claimed today that he was never told the building had to have an emergency exit: here.

Related articles

• Fire in disabled workshop in Germany kills 14 (itv.com)
• Fourteen die in fire at German workshop staffed by disabled people (guardian.co.uk)
• 14 people die in fire at German workshop for disabled people (PHOTOS) (rt.com)

Atos anti-disabled corporation goes nuclear

This video from Britain is called Disabled people protest against Atos role in Paralympics.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Don’t let Atos near nuclear, Greens warn

Friday 05 October 2012

The Green Party attacked the appointment of controversial “fit for work” firm Atos to run nuclear industry IT systems today as “foolhardy in the extreme.”

Atos has been criticised repeatedly for its controversial role policing the government’s back-to-work scheme, with people wrongly having their benefits slashed and being forced into employment despite being too ill to work.

The firm also has a chequered history regarding previous government contracts.

In 2008 Atos was subject to a government inquiry after it lost sensitive data along with passwords and user names for the Department of Work and Pensions computer systems.

And earlier this year the head of the UK Borders Agency said that Atos was responsible for major disruptions in the Agency’s IT systems, causing “significant delays and hardship” for those applying for in-country visas.

But in a press statement the firm announced today that it had secured responsibility for the delivery of “significant aspects of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority‘s (NDA’s) IT services.”

The five-year, £140 million contract covers Sellafield, Magnox, National Nuclear Laboratories and Low Level Waste Repository.

Responding to the announcement Green Party environment spokeswoman Penny Kemp told the Star: “We are astounded at this government’s ability to employ companies which have been shown to be incompetent.

“This is the very company which assessed terminally ill people as fit to work and has happily helped the government slash benefits from the most vulnerable in our society.

“To trust them with the nuclear operation is foolhardy in the extreme.”

Atos said it anticipated that bringing “a diverse range of IT services into this arrangement” would deliver up to 30 per cent savings across the contracted services.

Atos UK and Ireland CEO Ursula Morgenstern said: “This is an extremely important contract for Atos and we are delighted to be at the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the NDA estate.”

Nuclear workers’ union Prospect representative Jez Stewart said: “Any efficiencies to be made through the more effective use of technology would be welcome. But if Atos is seeking to make savings at the expense of staff we need to see a convincing business case to back their claims.”

The firm running Sellafield nuclear power station is to be prosecuted over allegations that it sent bags of low-level radioactive waste to a nearby landfill site, it was confirmed today: here.