At Monday's lobby and again, yesterday's lobby, I met the Reverend who I've met a few times.
Yesterday, of course, he remembered me straight away and came up to say hello.
I told him that on Tuesday I'd done some sums regarding the £26000 cap. How it effects me and how it effects another single mother but who lives in a council flat.
He asked me if I'd send him the figures and I said sure, but please don't say it's me who lives in the private flat. He said he wouldn't.
"Oh Father," I continued. "Working it out was so depressing that I just got really drunk!"
"Oh you mustn't do that," he said.
"I couldn't help it Father. So many people find life so hard at the moment and you need some form of escape..."
"I understand but it's also very expensive,"
"Oh no Father, the supermarket's know how we're feeling and doing some great deals at the moment. You can get a whole pack of beers for £3.50!"
He shook his head, his eyes brimming with sorrow saying "Try, and do send me those figures so I can lobby with them."
"I will Father, today!"
He's replied this morning. "Thankyou very, very, much."
My pleasure Father. Thank YOU.
My absolute pleasure Father given the former Archbishop of Canterbury has sided with the government on welfare handouts, saying bishops "cannot lay claim to the moral highground":
"The sheer scale of our public debt, which hit £1trillion yesterday, is the greatest moral scandal facing Britain today.
If we can’t get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt, we will be mortgaging the futures of our children and grandchildren.
In order to do this, we desperately need to reform our welfare system." (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091330/Lord-Carey-benefits-cap-Fuelling-culture-welfare-dependency-immoral.html)
Reform our welfare system, not our banking system? You too, are with punishing the poor as you side with the rich Lord Carey?
His own father worked and his mother STAYED AT HOME. "Hard-working people." I am not a person?
He says Duncan Smith "has come to realise that we have betrayed the poorest and most vulnerable by merely throwing money at them, be it income support or housing benefit, with no strings attached."
No, we've been betrayed by a lack of affordable housing, low wages which don't rise with inflation and now beating everyone with a stick as companies sack people by the hundreds. The construction industry alone will lose 45,000 jobs this year.(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/25/construction-industry-lose-45000-jobs-2012) Why no mention of any of this in these articles???
Oh Lord Carey, your fellow bishops aren't wrong. You, like so many others, just can't see the bigger picture. Or don't want to see it.
Yesterday's Evening Standard actually led me to this story. I've tried reading other commentator's in the Daily Mail this morning but it's hurting my eyes too much.
I was blind you see, like them, I admit it, but now I see things in ways I never could before I lost everything at a click of a finger.
That's all it takes
It's that quick
From there you must rise against ever rising obstacles.
The futures of our children and grandchildren indeed.
Preserving hope is easy to say when one is rich hey former Archbishop Lord Carey?
Once again Reverend, thank you very much.
Showing posts with label Banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banks. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Bleed the Banks, not the NHS
Subsidy to the Banks: £100bn. Cuts to the NHS: £20bn. Sound fair to you?
UKuncut staged protests all over the UK today in an Emergency Operation against Andrew Lansleys proposed attack against the NHS.
In Camden the protests were staged outside the three main banks. A friend of mine had made a monopoly board, where we flippantly bought up a hospital for a couple of hundred pounds or picked a card from the 'No Community Chest' to be told that due to funding cuts the heart operation in desperate need would have to wait a further six months. Couldn't buy the railways because they were already sold.....
I was dressed like a corpse, in black, surrounded by people dressed as doctors, nurses and patients who were all drawing attention to the £100bn subsidy the government pays to banks.
I kept my flyer so I could share with you what I learnt:
A recent BBC investigation found HSBC used a tax loophole to divert millions of pounds of NHS money to a Guernsey tax have.
In 2010 a company set up by HSBC made more than £38m from its 33 PFI hospital building schemes and paid only £100,000 in UK tax - less than half of its 1% profits.
Stuart Gulliver, the new chief executive of HsBC, recently received a honus of £9m - which could pay the annual salary of 400 nurses.
"Lansley - Leave our NHS alone. It's the banks that are sick!"
Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill would open up health care to multi-national private companies.
Big business and banks get bail outs and evade paying £120 billion in tax each year but the government says public services have to pay for the crisis.
You know they aim to cut £20 billion from the NHS.
What does this mean in your area?
How many health workers will lose their jobs and hospitals close?
Here, have the full story and some pics:
My lovely Camden in the Sun - The Sun! Cuts kill: the dead lying on the monopoly board:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3606829/Sick-protests-over-NHS-cuts.html
And lots of pictures of my lovely Camden in the Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391822/Banks-siege-anti-cuts-protesters-rally-support-NHS.html
And some super ones here:
http://pcseuston.org.uk/photos-and-video-from-uk-uncuts-emergency-operation-in-camden/
The message is getting through. I very much hope it does so on all levels. I applaud UKuncut for their intelligent visual forms of "civil disobedience". I do not applaud government policies that require a need for it.
UKuncut staged protests all over the UK today in an Emergency Operation against Andrew Lansleys proposed attack against the NHS.
In Camden the protests were staged outside the three main banks. A friend of mine had made a monopoly board, where we flippantly bought up a hospital for a couple of hundred pounds or picked a card from the 'No Community Chest' to be told that due to funding cuts the heart operation in desperate need would have to wait a further six months. Couldn't buy the railways because they were already sold.....
I was dressed like a corpse, in black, surrounded by people dressed as doctors, nurses and patients who were all drawing attention to the £100bn subsidy the government pays to banks.
I kept my flyer so I could share with you what I learnt:
A recent BBC investigation found HSBC used a tax loophole to divert millions of pounds of NHS money to a Guernsey tax have.
In 2010 a company set up by HSBC made more than £38m from its 33 PFI hospital building schemes and paid only £100,000 in UK tax - less than half of its 1% profits.
Stuart Gulliver, the new chief executive of HsBC, recently received a honus of £9m - which could pay the annual salary of 400 nurses.
"Lansley - Leave our NHS alone. It's the banks that are sick!"
Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill would open up health care to multi-national private companies.
Big business and banks get bail outs and evade paying £120 billion in tax each year but the government says public services have to pay for the crisis.
You know they aim to cut £20 billion from the NHS.
What does this mean in your area?
How many health workers will lose their jobs and hospitals close?
Here, have the full story and some pics:
My lovely Camden in the Sun - The Sun! Cuts kill: the dead lying on the monopoly board:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3606829/Sick-protests-over-NHS-cuts.html
And lots of pictures of my lovely Camden in the Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391822/Banks-siege-anti-cuts-protesters-rally-support-NHS.html
And some super ones here:
http://pcseuston.org.uk/photos-and-video-from-uk-uncuts-emergency-operation-in-camden/
The message is getting through. I very much hope it does so on all levels. I applaud UKuncut for their intelligent visual forms of "civil disobedience". I do not applaud government policies that require a need for it.
Friday, 8 April 2011
Politics is deteriorating my language - f%*king f*^k f^*k
I didn't fall asleep watching Question Time last night but spent much of the programme shouting 'oh fuck off' at the television. No, not the television, get a really bad picture on the television even when the aerial's in prime position. I was saying "Oh fuck off" to my laptop (courtesy of Iplayer, thank you BBC).
The cut in corporation tax wasn't mentioned once.
Just the need to wipe out the deficit the last government left behind.
I'm sick of fucking hearing it.
Blue, Yellow and Red, on these cuts, seems to me they're all on the same fucking hymn sheet just trilling different fucking harmonies.
I'm sick of fucking hearing BOLLOCKS.
On Wednesday, I returned from a lovely morning distributing flyers for Zen Boot Camp and a coffee with a friend and a restful read of my book in the sunshine but picked up a copy of the Evening Standard when I did so.
"Worse off Wednesday" - Cuts Cuts Cuts. Slash Cut Families First
Couples with children will see their net income fall by £3,865
Lone parents will lose £2,142 a year
"Treasury minister Danny Alexander piinned blame for the economic crisis on Labour and insisted the cuts and tax hikes were fair. He said "We had a cataclysmic economic problem left by the previous government, with a huge budget deficit..." (p2, 6 April)
Oh fuck off, I'm fucking sick of fucking hearing it.
And then I read, to my own "OH FUCK OFF" crescendo:
"A treasury source said of the IFS report (that said "London is particularly hard hit by cuts to housing benefits"): "Do you think it's fair for a family to receive over £400 a week in housing benefit?"
Do you think it's fair? Do you?
Do you think it's fair that 1000's of families and individuals are going to be evicted and there are no fucking affordable homes to pour them into?
Do you think that's fair? Do you????
Right, enough f ing and blinding from me for one day.
Top tip over the Easter holldays, do not read or watch any media, any political media whatsover, not if you don't want to fucking swear infront of the children. Try and leave it all behind, enjoy the sunshine..
I will leave the subect with this pie chart though. You need to see it. You need to see how unfair this coalition is being. How this deficit doesn't have to be pared down simply by screwing the taxpayer.
And a bonus for you, I'm not sure Benefit Scrounger swears. There is objectivity in what she writes. It's very good:
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-much-tax-is-paid-by-workers-and-how.html
The cut in corporation tax wasn't mentioned once.
Just the need to wipe out the deficit the last government left behind.
I'm sick of fucking hearing it.
Blue, Yellow and Red, on these cuts, seems to me they're all on the same fucking hymn sheet just trilling different fucking harmonies.
I'm sick of fucking hearing BOLLOCKS.
On Wednesday, I returned from a lovely morning distributing flyers for Zen Boot Camp and a coffee with a friend and a restful read of my book in the sunshine but picked up a copy of the Evening Standard when I did so.
"Worse off Wednesday" - Cuts Cuts Cuts. Slash Cut Families First
Couples with children will see their net income fall by £3,865
Lone parents will lose £2,142 a year
"Treasury minister Danny Alexander piinned blame for the economic crisis on Labour and insisted the cuts and tax hikes were fair. He said "We had a cataclysmic economic problem left by the previous government, with a huge budget deficit..." (p2, 6 April)
Oh fuck off, I'm fucking sick of fucking hearing it.
And then I read, to my own "OH FUCK OFF" crescendo:
"A treasury source said of the IFS report (that said "London is particularly hard hit by cuts to housing benefits"): "Do you think it's fair for a family to receive over £400 a week in housing benefit?"
Do you think it's fair? Do you?
Do you think it's fair that 1000's of families and individuals are going to be evicted and there are no fucking affordable homes to pour them into?
Do you think that's fair? Do you????
Right, enough f ing and blinding from me for one day.
Top tip over the Easter holldays, do not read or watch any media, any political media whatsover, not if you don't want to fucking swear infront of the children. Try and leave it all behind, enjoy the sunshine..
I will leave the subect with this pie chart though. You need to see it. You need to see how unfair this coalition is being. How this deficit doesn't have to be pared down simply by screwing the taxpayer.
And a bonus for you, I'm not sure Benefit Scrounger swears. There is objectivity in what she writes. It's very good:
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-much-tax-is-paid-by-workers-and-how.html
Sunday, 13 March 2011
A mother's rallying cry!
Who works harder? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS!
Who deserves bonueses? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS!
Who needs a holiday? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS!
Who do we depend on? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS
Who's on the march? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS
(Taken from the Mothers March Hymn sheet)
Who deserves bonueses? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS!
Who needs a holiday? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS!
Who do we depend on? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS
Who's on the march? Bankers or mothers? MOTHERS
(Taken from the Mothers March Hymn sheet)
Monday, 28 February 2011
Doom day protest
Today there is a protest march to Camden Town Hall as the budget cuts are being administered, scratched into paper, of what goes, what stays. Utterly depressing really so going to a protest is the only sensible thing to do!
(I've just found out on a website that the council are cutting £80m from public services while spending £220m on a bio-containment and virus research facility on land that was promised to residents for affordable housing but instead was sold off at discount to the UKCMRI - I read it here:http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/mon-28-feb-march-to-camden-town-hall-assemble-5-30-pm-mornington-crescent/)
Anyway, I can't go to the protest but I'm mentioning it as yesterday afternoon I went to the Union offices and helped make the banners for it!
"No ifs, not buts, no condem cuts!"
When Dave talks about a big society I really don't know what he means because from where I stand it's always existed, just now being torn apart.
(I've just found out on a website that the council are cutting £80m from public services while spending £220m on a bio-containment and virus research facility on land that was promised to residents for affordable housing but instead was sold off at discount to the UKCMRI - I read it here:http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/mon-28-feb-march-to-camden-town-hall-assemble-5-30-pm-mornington-crescent/)
Anyway, I can't go to the protest but I'm mentioning it as yesterday afternoon I went to the Union offices and helped make the banners for it!
"No ifs, not buts, no condem cuts!"
When Dave talks about a big society I really don't know what he means because from where I stand it's always existed, just now being torn apart.
Bank bail in...
Saturday morning a bunch of us, I say 'us' I mean 'us' you know, people, you know what I mean... well a bunch of us piled into Natwest bank in protest at the cuts/bonuses, every unnecessary thing that's happening at the moment!
The shop floor was turned into a creche! Kids reading, drawing, a sing song at the end as they banged or blew through their instruments. All under the watchful gaze of the press!
My son wasn't with me, sadly and also luckily. A guy from the One Show approached a dad who we might see on the telly tonight!! I wouldn't have had the balls I don't think to be on the telly... or maybe I would've had, don't know! I was too busy smiling at the beautiful juxtaposition of being at a bank protest having written about bank greed just a few days earlier.
The protest was organised by ukuncut though I heard about it through an invite on facebook:
A Feminist Big Society Bail-in.
It was great! Reading the press, there were other sit ins around the country. One bank was turned into a laundry and another into a school where protesters turned up in school uniform ready for a history lesson from a lecturer from the London School of Economics.
The Mail was present where we were and delivered a decent write up for once!: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360925/Activists-turn-40-British-bank-branches-creches-classrooms-shelters-job-centres-protest-bonuses-cuts.html
Go to: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/ and have a read around their website or subscribe to the newsletter or anything really. Just don't be angry about it all, all by yourself!
The shop floor was turned into a creche! Kids reading, drawing, a sing song at the end as they banged or blew through their instruments. All under the watchful gaze of the press!
My son wasn't with me, sadly and also luckily. A guy from the One Show approached a dad who we might see on the telly tonight!! I wouldn't have had the balls I don't think to be on the telly... or maybe I would've had, don't know! I was too busy smiling at the beautiful juxtaposition of being at a bank protest having written about bank greed just a few days earlier.
The protest was organised by ukuncut though I heard about it through an invite on facebook:
A Feminist Big Society Bail-in.
It was great! Reading the press, there were other sit ins around the country. One bank was turned into a laundry and another into a school where protesters turned up in school uniform ready for a history lesson from a lecturer from the London School of Economics.
The Mail was present where we were and delivered a decent write up for once!: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360925/Activists-turn-40-British-bank-branches-creches-classrooms-shelters-job-centres-protest-bonuses-cuts.html
Go to: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/ and have a read around their website or subscribe to the newsletter or anything really. Just don't be angry about it all, all by yourself!
House of Mirth!
My son found this very funny...
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but the £50m Camden has been given for housing repairs over the next four years can be compared to a beggar receiving 50p from a banker to cover the next four days. Given the Kingdom’s wealth, £50m is but a drop. It is pouring scorn on an already wounded borough.
The postcard I sent the coalition last July, with the deceased Jennyfer Spencer’s name on it, asked for the return of £238m in allocated funds which was withheld from Camden by the previous government because of its refusal to privatise its council properties through Almos.
Blackmail and bullying is rife in this political playground where ordinary people are the ones to suffer and die; the latest being 91 year old William Jeffrey who fell down the stairs of his estate. Had the lifts been working he might still be alive.
We need to stop this spill of blood. £238m is a pittance compared to the £3bn levy the banks have got away without paying. £50m is a crumb. Chiefs have been able to award themselves vast bonuses from their billion pound pots, only a week ago in fact. The money is there.
If I have misunderstood totally and the £50m is on top of the £238m which is actually on its way back to the borough then I do apologise.
I asked the coalition to answer my postcard through Frank Dobson, the Miliband brothers or its own members who live in the borough and to date have heard nothing. Unless of course the news of this paltry sum is my answer, in which case, give Camden back what it’s owed. Remunerate it similarly to its neighbours in the future. The brutality has gone on long enough.
"Mummy, what does pittance mean?" he asked.
"A little bit."
"What does crumb mean?"
"Same thing, tiny bit, like the tooth fairy leaving you 5p instead of 50p."
"Oh ha ha ha! £50 million a crumb! Ha ha ha ha ha!"
Yes, he found it hilarious, my little proof reader.
The comment got into the local paper!
"What I could do with £50m" is the header I sent the editor.
Well, if you don't laugh you cry, don't you?
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but the £50m Camden has been given for housing repairs over the next four years can be compared to a beggar receiving 50p from a banker to cover the next four days. Given the Kingdom’s wealth, £50m is but a drop. It is pouring scorn on an already wounded borough.
The postcard I sent the coalition last July, with the deceased Jennyfer Spencer’s name on it, asked for the return of £238m in allocated funds which was withheld from Camden by the previous government because of its refusal to privatise its council properties through Almos.
Blackmail and bullying is rife in this political playground where ordinary people are the ones to suffer and die; the latest being 91 year old William Jeffrey who fell down the stairs of his estate. Had the lifts been working he might still be alive.
We need to stop this spill of blood. £238m is a pittance compared to the £3bn levy the banks have got away without paying. £50m is a crumb. Chiefs have been able to award themselves vast bonuses from their billion pound pots, only a week ago in fact. The money is there.
If I have misunderstood totally and the £50m is on top of the £238m which is actually on its way back to the borough then I do apologise.
I asked the coalition to answer my postcard through Frank Dobson, the Miliband brothers or its own members who live in the borough and to date have heard nothing. Unless of course the news of this paltry sum is my answer, in which case, give Camden back what it’s owed. Remunerate it similarly to its neighbours in the future. The brutality has gone on long enough.
"Mummy, what does pittance mean?" he asked.
"A little bit."
"What does crumb mean?"
"Same thing, tiny bit, like the tooth fairy leaving you 5p instead of 50p."
"Oh ha ha ha! £50 million a crumb! Ha ha ha ha ha!"
Yes, he found it hilarious, my little proof reader.
The comment got into the local paper!
"What I could do with £50m" is the header I sent the editor.
Well, if you don't laugh you cry, don't you?
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Valentine's Day
On Valentine's Day a consultation about DLA reform will end, spelling disaster for some our most disabled country folk. Yeah! The coalition loves disabled people!
Go here for more information: http://onemonthbeforeheartbreak.blogspot.com/
I must direct you to a really amazing political blog, funny, informed, a voice so powerful.
Today Sue Marsh's article is one we should all read about taxes! I'm hopeless with economics but Sue is a very talented writer who can render the complicated uncomplicated.
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/02/shocking-tory-tax-trickery.html
Better still, grab yourself a cup of tea and just delight in many of things she has written!
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/
Go here for more information: http://onemonthbeforeheartbreak.blogspot.com/
I must direct you to a really amazing political blog, funny, informed, a voice so powerful.
Today Sue Marsh's article is one we should all read about taxes! I'm hopeless with economics but Sue is a very talented writer who can render the complicated uncomplicated.
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/02/shocking-tory-tax-trickery.html
Better still, grab yourself a cup of tea and just delight in many of things she has written!
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Bonuses bonuses but none for you....
The top 20 staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland is possibly getting bonuses between £1m and £5m and there are huge payouts for senior staff at Barclays as well according to the Sunday Times.
On Friday my housing officer's eyes swept across the Guardian's headline, which was lying casually on my sofa:
"Lloyds asks taxpayers for another £5bn"
He let out a low moan that said everything that neither of us could articulate.
Then Polly Toynbee said it in yesterday's Guardian Weekend, about this decade's financial meltdown (sorry to quote all of her but it's so well said):
"The British Government found itself within hours of the collapse of everything, when ATM's would have closed, supermarket shelves cleared and the thin wall separating our just-in-time capitalism would have been torn down to expose the frightening vulnerability of the whole system.
It didn't happen....quite"
You, taxpayer, saved everyone's arses to the tune of £1.3 trillion. Toynbee continues:
"Were lessons learned? Was the City repentant? The band played on as the new head of the now taxpayer-owned RBS was paid more than £9m. Bonuses were not banned, merely delayed after G20 pressure, and regulation only mildly tightened.
Will it happen again in the next decade? Almost certainly, as the country yearns for every sign that house prices take off again. We want our bubble back - heedless of warnings that the next bubble could be catastrophic."
We're a nation going to hell and not even in a bucket while these "executives" take this cash and threaten to leave the country if Government taxes them at 50%.
I have no words. I can't blog about this, I don't understand. Goodnight.
On Friday my housing officer's eyes swept across the Guardian's headline, which was lying casually on my sofa:
"Lloyds asks taxpayers for another £5bn"
He let out a low moan that said everything that neither of us could articulate.
Then Polly Toynbee said it in yesterday's Guardian Weekend, about this decade's financial meltdown (sorry to quote all of her but it's so well said):
"The British Government found itself within hours of the collapse of everything, when ATM's would have closed, supermarket shelves cleared and the thin wall separating our just-in-time capitalism would have been torn down to expose the frightening vulnerability of the whole system.
It didn't happen....quite"
You, taxpayer, saved everyone's arses to the tune of £1.3 trillion. Toynbee continues:
"Were lessons learned? Was the City repentant? The band played on as the new head of the now taxpayer-owned RBS was paid more than £9m. Bonuses were not banned, merely delayed after G20 pressure, and regulation only mildly tightened.
Will it happen again in the next decade? Almost certainly, as the country yearns for every sign that house prices take off again. We want our bubble back - heedless of warnings that the next bubble could be catastrophic."
We're a nation going to hell and not even in a bucket while these "executives" take this cash and threaten to leave the country if Government taxes them at 50%.
I have no words. I can't blog about this, I don't understand. Goodnight.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
RBS chief gets £9.6 million bonus
This is, how does one put it? Disgusting?
Stephen Lester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, gets near £10 million in bonuses while thousands of his staff are made or have been made redundant in 'cost cutting' exercises.
Getting £9.6 million when the taxpayer had to bail out the bank.
Words fail me.
I'm surprised I'm even commenting
Stephen Lester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, gets near £10 million in bonuses while thousands of his staff are made or have been made redundant in 'cost cutting' exercises.
Getting £9.6 million when the taxpayer had to bail out the bank.
Words fail me.
I'm surprised I'm even commenting
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