Defend London’s NHS – Mass Demo This Saturday May 18th

From Defend London NHS

Saturday 18 May, Assemble 12 noon

Concert Hall Approach /Belvedere Rd, Waterloo http://goo.gl/maps/Lg6MT

March to Downing Street then rally in Whitehall at 2pm

This demonstration has been called by an unprecedented coalition of London residents, medical staff, trade unions and health campaigners who have come together to raise the alarm regarding the biggest threats to A & E’s, maternity units and in-hospital care for a generation.

Closures planned across the capital include nine accident and emergency departments, a number of maternity units and thousands of hospital beds that campaigners believe will put lives at risk..

Hospitals and community services are also threatened with take-over by multi-national private companies. Hundreds of thousands of London residents have pledged their opposition to these privatisation plans for the NHS.

Across the capital, tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest and demonstrate to save their local hospitals. 80,000 signed a petition against the closures in North West London. 25,000 joined the demonstration to defend Lewisham hospital.

The local campaigns have joined up to call on the government to stop these closures. We are working together to undermine the government’s divisive tactics of playing one hospital off against another. Instead we are demanding that the government provide the funding needed for safe levels of care across the capital.

Visit the website for details of local meet up points: http://defendlondonsnhs.wordpress.com/

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

‘We won’t reduce the rent … We’ll kick them out’: Research Reveals Landlord’s Response to Housing Benefit Reform

A report published by the DWP gives a glimpse of the horrific future hundreds of thousands of people are set to face due to housing benefit reforms.

The report is part of an ongoing piece of ‘independent’ research commissioned by the DWP to look at the impact of the first raft of welfare reforms – the vicious cuts to housing benefits.  These included the caps on the amount of benefit available to pay for housing and a reduction in local housing allowance rates from the bottom 50% to 30% of the local rental market.  Another change meant that those aged under 35 are no longer entitled to a self-contained property, but can only claim the Shared Accommodation Rate (SAR).

The research features wide ranging interviews with claimants, landlords and housing advisors discussing the changes.  As is repeatedly pointed out, as these interviews were carried out throughout 2012, then many, if not most claimants will not have yet been affected by the reforms.  This research is therefore an indicator of how people are intending to  respond to the changes.   The report is also quite long so I won’t try cover it all in one post.

Predictably the most telling comments come from landlords.  According to the report, 16% of landlords who currently let to claimants plan to stop doing so due to the cuts.  Most landlords seem well aware of what is to come and are already making plans:

“I’m giving notice on [20 tenants affected by the change to the Shared Accommodation Rate], it’s not fair, I don’t like doing it. And we’re not taking any [more] on. We have to protect ourselves and we have to protect our landlords.”

This was the response of one letting agent to the vicious slashing of housing benefits for those under 35 and is an attitude which seems to dominate the private rental sector.  Despite initial claims by the Government that landlords would lower rents in response to the changes it seems that barely any of them have been prepared to do so.  Only those renting in areas with high numbers of claimants have seriously considered this as an option – but crucially even this in many cases appears to be just a temporary measure.  Landlords may be willing to accept a temporary small reduction in rent to avoid the expense of eviction, but will turf tenants out when tenancies are due for renewal.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is a localised benefit, which is paid according to the local cost of rents.  This decision to peg the maximum available at the bottom 30%, rather than 50% of the market, will mean hundreds of thousands of private sector tenants forced to pay some of their rent out of meagre benefits intended to pay for other living expenses.

The average loss to claimants according to the report is £7.76 a week – although due to the caps in some areas this will be far higher.  Landlords appear to be sceptical that those on benefits will be able to afford this, with one warning: “Some of them are making it up but a lot of them are struggling because it’s not just [LHA] that’s been cut, they’re getting other money cut as well, so it’s making it harder and harder.”

Many landlords report having already reduced the number of claimants they rent to on Local Housing Allowance due to the introduction of Direct Payments by the Labour Government in 2008.  This meant that generally rent payments were sent direct  to tenants not landlords, a move which was hugely unpopular amongst those renting out property.  When Universal Credit is finally launched, the Direct Payments regime will be strengthened and also applied to the social housing sector.  The  very thing that most landlords say puts them off renting to claimants is about to be hugely extended.

As would be expected, one of the biggest impacts of the reforms has been in London where in some boroughs almost no properties are now affordable to those on benefits due to the caps.  This will not just affect those out of work – 44% of housing benefit claimants in London are working.  It will also not just impact on central London boroughs such as Westminster where rents are astronomical.  A letting agent in Barking and Dagenham reports their current strategy on renting to tenants on benefits: “We have slowly, slowly been booting them out, average between 150 and 200 properties.”

The research also reveals that a less well known, but sweeping reform to housing benefits, the introduction of the Shared Accommodation Rate for those under 35, could bring some of the most devastating consequences.   This change, which means anyone under 35 will have to find a room in a shared house to be eligible for LHA, was carried out without any assessment of whether enough properties exist to house all those who need them.

The report suggests that this is not the case, with many landlords pulling out of the multiple occupancy market due to recently introduced regulations.  Planning permission is now needed if a property is to be used for multiple tenants in a move which many landlords claim has made the sector unprofitable.  Quite simply, most landlords say the Shared Accommodation rate is too low, summed up by this quote from a landlord in Perth:  “‘Where’s the difference going to come from £52 [LHA] up to £85 a week [rent]?  There’s no way somebody on £120 a fortnight can afford to pay the difference and I can’t rent them out at £53 a week. I think they’ll possibly be moving, I can’t see any alternative.”

Almost all landlords quoted say they are planning to evict claimants under 35, with some going even further and suggesting they will now not rent to anyone from this age group: “We’re not housing under 35s now, so long term it will resolve itself because we’re not putting anyone in under 35. But we’ve got this 15, 20 people who are going to be on the street.”

This comment is backed up by a housing advice worker later in the report who says: “a lot of existing agents and landlords have told me they’ve now served notice on every tenant they have under 35. Even those tenants who might be in work at the moment, a lot of landlords have thought if they lose their job they won’t be able to pay the rent.”

Many landlords fear that tenants under 35 will face homelessness as a result of the drastic cuts: “[They’ll end up] on the streets, they’ve got nowhere to go. These people haven’t got no funds.”

Others have concerns that separated parents will no longer be able to have their children stay with one Hackney landlord saying: “There are going to be certain tenants who it’s going to have a massive impact on.  My heart bleeds for them, because the majority of them are divorced fathers who see their kids. I’ve got one lovely guy, he’s got three kids, wife lives in Hillingdon, kids come and spend the weekend with him, where’s he going to put them? Does he lose his visitation rights to his children because he hasn’t got a job or hasn’t got the home to be able to offer the children somewhere to sleep [because] there isn’t any room?”

Like many of the bodged welfare reforms, it will be the most marginalised who are worst affected by the slashing of LHA rates for under 35s.  Those likely to end up homeless will be the people who cannot go back to live with their parents, or who face other difficulties such as a mental or physical health condition which makes sharing difficult or even impossible.

Whilst claimants in some form of supported accommodation, such as homeless nightshelters or women’s refuges have been exempt from the reforms (so far), many Local Authorities used informal relationships with landlords to provide housing for those they deem ‘vulnerable’.  The report suggests this is all likely to come to an end, with one landlord reporting: “‘I’m kicking them all out … I’m serving them notices because I want, on the day the rent will have to be changed, they’ll already be out … It’s a complete change to the portfolio.  I’ve always been the person they phone up and say they’ve got somebody who’s not well or who’s just come out of drug rehabilitation, that kind. I’ve always taken them in and never had a problem but I’m not going to do it any more.”

To read the DWP’s gushing press release which accompanied this report you would never guess the bleak future it describes for low income tenants.  This is far from surprising.  Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Fraud claimed the first piece of research in this series proved tenants were not facing excessive financial difficulties due to housing benefit reforms.  In fact the research had revealed that many tenants were having serious money problem before the cuts were even introduced.

This time the DWP is attempting to use the research to claim that there has been no Kosovo style social cleansing due to LHA reforms and people are not being exported from London in huge numbers.  But that’s because the report was carried before most claimants had been affected by the changes.  The views of claimants themselves, along with housing advice workers, (both of which I’ll cover later this week) reveals that this mass forced expulsion is simply yet to come.

It’s also important to note this research does not include the impact of the Bedroom Tax, the overall benefit cap or Council Tax benefit reform.  Nor does it consider the changes to DLA, Employment Support Allowance, the upcoming nightmare that is Universal Credit or the huge rise in the numbers of claimants having benefit’s sanctioned.  It also does not examine the consequences of the Benefit Uprating Bill which will see Local Housing Allowance rises capped at 1% annually despite rents soaring by over ten times that figure in some parts of the UK.

If this report makes grim reading (and it does) for all those concerned about the future of housing for people on low incomes, then it is only a small taste of what is to come.

The report can be read at: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/report_abstracts/rr_abstracts/rra_838.asp

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

This Is What Austerity Looks Like – First Suicide Due To Bedroom Tax Reported

The welfare reform death toll has risen by one more tragic victim the Sunday People is reporting.  The papers says:

Ten days ago Stephanie Bottrill sat in the redbrick terrace house which had been home for 18 years to write notes to her loved ones, the Sunday People reports .

She ripped the pages from a spiral-bound notebook and placed them neatly in little brown envelopes.

There was one for her son. Another for her daughter. Her mother. Friends. And a very special one for the year-old grandson she doted on.

Then in the early hours of last Saturday Stephanie, 53, left her home for the last time, leaving her cat Joey behind as the front-door clicked shut.

She crossed her road in Meriden Drive, Solihull, to drop one of her letters and her house keys through a neighbour’s letterbox. Then she walked 15 minutes through the sleeping estate to Junction 4 of the M6.

And at 6.15am she walked straight into the path of a northbound lorry and was killed instantly. Stephanie Bottrill had become the first known suicide victim of the hated Bedroom Tax.

In the letter to her son, Steven, 27, she had written: “Don’t blame yourself for me ending my life. The only people to blame are the Government.”

This is what happens when people are left with nothing at all, something the millionaire scum in Government will never understand.  Money runs out for most of us, and very quickly if you are on benefits.  It’s hard to even think about anything else if you have no money.  If it goes on for days, or weeks or longer it can be torture.   Even before welfare reforms the benefits system was not generous.  It did contain some strange anomalies, usually down to the huge cost of renting in some parts of the UK, but people on benefits were already living in dire poverty.  It was landlords living it up, not claimants.  Yet a handful of unusual cases – often large homeless families in expensive, emergency housing – have been presented as the norm and used as cover to slash social security even further.

When you take away money from people in already in poverty it drives them to destitution.  Desperate people do desperate things.  Yes there will always be a complex combination of factors in tragic deaths such as these.  But homelessness, hunger and despair are not trivial matters that can be cleared up with a bit of counselling or a work related activity meeting with some welfare-to-work poverty pimp.  They don’t go away – not without money.  So whilst Iain Duncan Smith hands out billions to Atos, A4e and his friends in the private sector remember Stephanie Bottrill.  She didn’t need incentivising, assessing, motivating to find those ‘hidden vacancies’ or any other bullshit.  She was too ill to work, and there aren’t any vacancies, hidden or otherwise in many parts of the UK.

She needed twenty quid a week because she was poor and couldn’t pay her rent and was going to lose her home.  What little she had in this world, this Government took away, and now she is dead.  And she was someone’s mum.  The price of her life was  just half of what Iain Duncan Smith spends on breakfast in a day, let alone a week.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Turn up the heat on British Gas: protest at the British Gas AGM on Monday 13th May

From Fuel Poverty Action

When? Monday 13th May, from 1pm
Where? Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Broad Sanctuary, London, SW1P 3EE
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/Vf1rI

On Monday 13th May, Centrica – parent company of British Gas – are holding their 2013 AGM.

British Gas bosses and shareholders will be planning to pat themselves on the back after another year of soaring profits. We’re planning to turn their AGM into a public embarrassment.

While shareholder activists from Fuel Poverty Action, the Greater London Pensioners’ Association and Disabled People Against Cuts will be speaking out inside the AGM, we’d like you to join us for a protest outside.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH BRITISH GAS?

>> British Gas are making a killing from annual energy bill price hikes. British Gas bosses earn multi-million pound payouts every year on the backs of the millions of us forced to choose between heating and eating.

>> British Gas are buying off ministers to ensure that energy policy prioritises their profits over the public interest.

>> British Gas are lobbying for a new generation of dirty and expensive gas power stations instead of cheaper, clean renewable energy.

TURN UP THE HEAT…

Join us outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster from 1pm. Bring banners and placards and come along to speak out against British Gas and the impact of their profiteering on our lives.

Community owned renewable energy and mass investment in insulation and energy efficiency would bring down bills, keep our homes warm, tackle climate change and put power back in people’s hands.

There are alternatives, but Big Six bullies like British Gas are getting in the way. They’ve got the government in their pockets, so it’s down to us to turn up the heat…

http://fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/

Above pic from: http://occupynewsnetwork.co.uk/reclaim-the-power/

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Doctors Warn of The Hidden Costs of Welfare Reform

A letter written by Scottish Ministers to Iain Duncan Smith reveals one of the often overlooked consequences of the savage cuts to social security.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Health Secretary Alex Neil claim that the brutally flawed Work Capability Assessment used to determine eligibility for sickness and disability benefits is creating a “workload problem” for GPs.  This follows a recent letter signed by over 25 doctors and health professionals warning that the process is not only “cruel” but has also led to “significant adverse events such as self-harm and suicides which many of us have witnessed”.

It will not just be the NHS which begins to creak under the strain of welfare reforms, as millions of people are driven into destitution and a benefits regime which is increasingly designed to punish the poor.  As pointed out yesterday, when Universal Credit is fully introduced, parents of teenagers may find themselves expected to work, or attend workfare for many of the hours their children are not in school.  Leaving possibly hundreds of thousands of teenagers to wander the streets could create an explosion of anti-social behaviour, bullying and crime.  Benefit sanctions, as one leading homelessness charity has already warned, could lead to people being forced to beg and steal to survive.

The impact on policing, courts and prisons could be astronomical as parents are no longer permitted to care for their children and are sent on workfare instead.  The cost to the communities we live in, and to those children themselves, can not even begin to be measured.

Street homelessness is rising sharply, and the bedroom tax, benefit cap and housing benefit cuts can only add to that.  A think tank recently warned that one in four children will be living in poverty by 2020 as a direct result of changes to benefits.  Iain Duncan Smith’s crass attempts to redefine poverty as a personal failing rather than an economic disaster will not change the consequences of creating a society in which a quarter of young people are near destitute.

One of architects of welfare reform, Chris Grayling, once alleged that an area of Manchester was akin to the fictional representation of Baltimore in the television series The Wire.  Baltimore has a horrifically high murder rate and the show depicts a  flourishing drugs trade which all to often fills the vacuum in the absence of socialised protection for the poorest.  Grayling couldn’t have been more wrong about Manchester, yet this Government seem intent on making that absurd comparison come true.

The UK did not have an overly generous welfare system despite the claims made by all three political parties.  The main reason the social security system became so complicated is years of thinly designed cuts, bodges, anti-fraud initiatives and endless schemes aimed at trying to cure people of unemployment.  The reason the social security is so expensive is largely down to the astronomical costs involved simply in keeping a roof over your head in the UK.

The last Tory Government launched an all out assault on social housing – with the end result being soaring private sector rents and a rocketing housing benefit bill.  Iain Duncan Smith’s reckless experiment with welfare goes far beyond what even Thatcher would have dared suggest.

Those on benefits, whether in or out of work are now seeing their incomes decimated, and it’s only going to get worse.  No-one can truly know the social consequences of the changes that are taking place, which are all too often hidden under the cover of relentless propaganda claiming that the poorest people in the country are secretly living it up at the tax payers expense.

In truth this country already had poverty that should shame any nation as rich as the UK even before these changes to social security.  But even that may pail into insignificance compared to what is to come.  One thing is surely beyond doubt however.  Whatever is left of society after these reforms are fully implemented, it will be expensive for all of us.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Benefit Bullshitting Exposed By Daily Mail’s Workshy Map

Yesterday’s Daily Mail Workshy map blows apart the benefit bullshitting of  the right wing press, despite their best efforts to smear hundred of thousands of sick and disabled people as criminals.

The map is based on recent figures detailing the outcomes of Incapacity Benefit re-assessments.  This is the crude computer based test carried out by IT firm Atos which has been used to strip vital benefits from hundreds of thousands of people.  This system has been justified by a relentless propaganda campaign which evoked myths of millions of scroungers, families where three generations have never had a job and whole areas of the UK ‘blighted’ by benefits culture.

In fact digging into the figures simply reveals that even in unemployment hotspots, the number of people who have been assessed as unable to work is tiny.  According to the Mail, 2,570 people in Leeds were found ‘fit for work’.  Leeds has a population of almost three quarters of a million people.  This means around one person in every three hundred was claiming a sickness or disability that they are no longer entitled to.  Even on a large housing estate this represents just a handful of people.  This number will rise as Incapacity Benefit re-assessments are not yet complete, but the figures suggest at the very most one person in 150 will eventually lose the benefit*.

And in truth most of those people are far from ‘fit for work’.  Employment Minister Mark Hoban recently revealed that 15% of ‘fit for work’ decisions are eventually judged to be incorrect – and that only includes those claimants with the tenacity, confidence, and health to successfully undertake an appeal.  Even those who do not have decisions over-turned at appeal may be anything but ‘fit for work’.  People with Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, Parkinson’s Disease and many other serious health conditions have all been judged able to work by Atos and the DWP.

The Daily Mail’s claim that all those found ‘fit for work’ are workshy is as contemptible in itself as it is dishonest. It is worth remembering that everybody who was previously claiming Incapacity Benefit had previously been signed off work by their own doctor and undergone a DWP medical.  Unless both GPs and the DWP’s own doctors have been lying on a massive scale, then none of these people could be considered to be in good health.

This is reflected in what little evidence is available (PDF) detailing what happens to those found ‘fit for work’, which shows that most people end up on the dole.  And it is this which shatters yet another myth about welfare reform – which is that this is about saving tax payers money.

Claimants thrown onto the dole lose around £30 a week and but this means a significant administration burden for already over-stretched Jobcentres.  This comes on top of the cost of the Atos assessments and the ever growing number of appeals – along with considerable hidden costs such as an increase on the burdens on GPs, hospital consultants and advice agencies.  This stress of these assessments alone has driven some claimants to suicide, whilst many more people have reported their health has deteriorated due to the system.

It is now a terrifying time in the UK to be both poor and in poor health.  It is not just those currently on benefits who will be affected, but anyone who falls ill or becomes disabled and has to leave their job.  And for what?  To make a fraction of a percentage of people lose around £30 a week because they are no longer quite as ill or disabled as this Government now insists they must be to qualify for health related benefits.  Rarely has such a nasty policy been carried out by any Government for such trivial ends.

*It is unclear how far through the assessment process different cities are.  As the assessments are just over half complete then the Daily Mail’s workshy map actually means nothing at all, except for demonstrating the revealing fact that no-one at the paper seems to know where Manchester is.

A ‘not fit for work’ map has been created by @Mylegalforum and published on DPAC’s website.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

What’s So Fucking Great About The Minimum Wage?

A minimum wage which condemns people to poverty is an insult to the millions of people who often do the hardest forms of work.  Yet this pittance of just £6.31 an hour – or less for those under 21 – is increasingly seen as some kind of Holy Grail by politicians from all three main parties.

Both Iain Duncan Smith and Liam Byrne talk of gaining a minimum wage job as if this will transform the lives of those in poverty, showering riches, opportunity and joy upon them as they become decent, moral, hard-working wage slaves.   In reality most minimum wage work is temporary, has little or no prospects and is supplemented by and often punctuated by benefit payments.

But worse than this, whilst people are marginally better off on minimum wage than on out of work benefits – despite government lies to the contrary – it still isn’t enough to meet the most basic costs of living.  In Leeds, the bottom end rent for a private sector three bedroom flat is around £150 a week.  A full time job on minimum wage pays just a few pounds over £200 a week.  Whilst a family would still receive Housing Benefits and Tax Credits, even this barely provides an income that will provide for food, bills and other essentials after housing costs.

The so called Living Wage, currently being trumpeted by Ed Miliband, is barely any better.  In London a full time job (37 hrs per week) on the Living Wage would leave a take home pay of just under £270 a week.  A recently announced affordable housing project, based in Stratford and claiming to be for the low paid, is set to charge £323 a week for just a two bedroom flat.  The ‘Living Wage’ isn’t even enough to pay an ‘Affordable Rent’.  And try telling a bank manager you want a mortgage when you are paid just over £8 an hour.

The minimum wage sets a government approved standard of poverty that grasping employers are only too happy to endorse.  As rises in the minimum wage have failed to keep up with inflation, this has meant the lowest paid steadily receiving less and less.  Last year George Osborne froze the minimum wage for young people at a disgraceful £4.98 an hour.  There have been calls within the Tory Party to cut the minimum wage even further or to exclude certain groups such as disabled people or the young.

Neither government or bosses should set wages, workers should.  It is no accident that during the 60s and even 70s, when Trade Unions were at their most militant, working class wages were at an all time high.  Lying Tory revisionists would claim the 70s were a desperate time and these unions had to be reigned in and in many cases smashed.  The truth is for most workers they’d never had it so good.

In the absence of a strong trade union movement the minimum wage is now the only protection against both gross exploitation and in work poverty – and it fails at both.   This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight tooth and nail to keep it.   In the context of ever increasing benefit conditionality, to lose the minimum wage would be a disaster as claimants could be compelled to take any job, no matter how low the pay.  With trade unionism almost dead in most low paid sectors, whatever scant compromises have been won need to be maintained as the benefits system disintegrates.

But if we are forced to fight to keep it then we should do so with no illusions.  A government set minimum wage, which has never risen above poverty pay, is a failure of the left, not a success story.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Blockade the Bailiffs – Take On The Sewer Rats Set To Profit From Welfare Reform

Over the next few months hundreds of thousands of people face losing their homes due to the Bedroom Tax whilst others will be driven into debts they can never pay by the endless tsunami of cuts to benefits.

Already some companies are salivating at the prospect of dragging families from their homes and stealing the few remaining possessions of those with least. Little more than a privatised police force to protect the profits of bankers and landlords, bailiffs will be just one of the many sectors getting rich on the back of the brutal and shambolic welfare reforms.

In the North West of England, Jacobs Bailiffs, one of the largest firms in the area, are chomping at the bit to get started.  A post on their website details how they have been actively promoting their vile services to make every last penny they can from the misery to come.  Whilst exhibiting at a trade show for local authorities recently, Jacobs Bailiffs boasted that “with Welfare Reforms taking effect from 1^st April the Jacobs team can talk you through our recovery strategies for maximising collections.”

A communications blockade against the company has been called for this Monday (29th April) in what will hopefully be the first of many attempts to hold these scum to account for their actions.

For more details join the facebook page or visit: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/04/508885.html

Please spread the word.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Watch Out Surrey, Here Come The Benefit Claimants!

The Home Counties could soon be swamped by tens of thousands of families fleeing London due to this months benefit changes.   With almost every London borough set to become unaffordable for families on benefits, many people will be sensibly looking to the surrounding areas to escape imminent homelessness.

The cap begins this months in Croydon, Bromley, Enfield and Haringey, meaning Surrey and Kent in the south and Hertfordshire and Essex in the north of London could be first to take the hit.  Luckily the leafy home counties still have some reasonably priced  accommodation for those on benefits who wish to remain within commuting distance of friends and family in London.

Take a look at this delightful 2 bedroom house in Mertsham, the perfect starter home for a young single mum looking to start a large family.   Two single claimants wishing to escape London’s housing benefit caps could try this cottage – unsuitable for children due to ongoing renovations nearby – but ideal for a group of young unemployed friends who like the country air.

In reality Surrey residents should not be overly concerned about the upcoming influx.  Far from the lurid tabloid portrayals, the vast majority of claimants are thoroughly decent people.  Statistics show that those on sickness benefits are no more likely to commit crime than any other sector of the population.

Whilst claimants are no more likely to commit crime than anyone else, they are often high users of public services and so can be expensive.  Despite this Government’s lies, many people on sickness and disability benefits are subject to the Benefit Cap and will need to leave the capital.  GPs and hospitals across the South East are likely to see a surge in demand as a result.  Some large families leaving London may not speak English as a first language, but Surrey’s excellent schools system should soon help clear that up.

The first mass influx will begin over the next few months as an estimated 40,000 families affected by the Benefit Cap will be forced to seek housing outside the capital.  This is only likely to be the beginning however as soaring rents and shrinking benefits could mean soon almost all private sector tenants on benefits will be priced out of the capital.  Hundreds of thousands of claimants could soon be making a move to Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Kent over the next few years.

Boris has been only too aware of the impact of the radical changes to Housing Benefits.  Back in July 2010 he wrote to Iain Duncan Smith (tif file, spotted by @AnitaBellows12)  about the likely impact of the unprecedented cuts.  According to the Mayor, quarter of a million Londoners could be affected by the changes with many moving to ‘fringe’ areas of the capital.  Since he wrote that letter the situation has become far worse, with the emergence of the Benefit Uprating Bill which will cap annual Housing Benefit rises at 1%. London rents rose by 7.9% over the last year.

Boris has spotted it will not just be poor inner Londoners affected but those in the leafy commuter belt, where some people actually voted for the clown.

And Tory voters in the Home Counties will only have themselves to blame as public services are overwhelmed and unemployment is exported out of the capital straight into their backyards.  So desperate have they been to punish London’s poor with the badly thought out Benefit Cap, they have cut off their noses to spite their already chinless faces.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Burning Thatcher’s Corpse Will Cost 8000 Welfare State Funerals

As fawning Tories prepare to spend millions on a lavish funeral for a hated Prime Minister, changes to the Social Fund suggest that in future the relatives of those without estates will increasingly be forced to borrow from the Government to meet the bulk of funeral costs.

A link currently making the rounds on twitter features last year’s story that many grieving families are forced to depend on pauper’s funerals due to the lack of adequate support within the welfare state.  Just 54.5% of applications for funeral payments were accepted in 2011/12, a number which has been steadily falling since before this Government weren’t elected.

On top of this the amount available for funeral costs is woefully inadequate.  A report published last year revealed that the average cost of a funeral is £3,091.  The average amount paid out from the Social Fund towards funeral expenses is just £1,217.

One of the reasons for this discrepancy is that the part of the Funeral Payment which can be allocated to ‘other’ expenses – which means anything above the most basic legal costs involved in a funeral – has been capped at just £700 since 2003.

The direction of travel is clear.  The number of people being rejected for a Funeral Payment is increasing, whilst in real terms, the amount available is falling.

Unsurprisingly the DWP’s answer to this is not to reverse the trend but to encourage claimants to take out a Budgeting Loan towards the funeral costs of family members.  In a note deposited in the Parliamentary library, Pensions Minister Steve Webb states: “We are therefore taking powers in the Welfare Reform Bill that is now going through the Commons that will, for the first time, bring funeral costs within the scope of the budgeting loans system.”

True to his words, funeral expenses are now eligible for a Budgeting Loan.  These are small loans which those on benefits can apply for and are repaid at source out of benefit payments.  Along with the Bedroom Tax and the Council Tax Bill, for grieving families this will be yet one more unavoidable weekly payout that slashes meagre social security payments.  Yet this Government are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of spending £10 million on Thatcher’s funeral.

Funeral Payments cost around £45 million a year providing expenses for 38,000 funerals.  This means that if you are on benefits, a low wage or a state pension, this toff Government thinks that Margaret Thatcher was around 800o times more important than your mum.

(above pic shows the mass pauper’s graves which are increasingly common in the US)

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid