How Do You Live When Sanctioned?

     How do you cope if you are on Jobseeker's Allowance and you get “sanctioned”? Quite frankly, you don't, you can't possibly, unless you can dip into a nice bankbook, which in the circumstances is most unlikely. It's a matter of begging, borrowing, stealing or doing without. After all Jobseeker's Allowance doesn't let you save for a rainy day. Losing the pittance that you rely on to survive, even for a few months, can tip you over the edge. This policy is brutal, inhumane and totally unjust, and belongs to, what should be, a bygone era of peasants and serfs. In a civilised society, nobody should be treated in that manner or forced in to that situation.

       That babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is quiet on this matter of sanctions, far be it for them to reveal the truth of what life is like for the ordinary people, too many celebrities to pander to, and splash across their pages. However on the streets in the real world, where you and I live, the number of people being sanctioned is growing, we now have an army of people being brutally abused in this way. What is more, it is not just the Department of Work and Pensions that are willy-nilly throwing about santions, the companies that are involved in the workfare scheme are referring people to be sanctioned. Not content with getting the labour free, they want sweat and blood.

This from Corporate Watch:

Sanctioning – stopping someone’s benefits after a perceived infringement of the terms of their claim for between one week and six months – was a favourite policy of the previous government but figures revealed by Corporate Watch and the Observer today show the coalition, together with sub-contracted private ‘provider’ companies, has massively increased the amount of sanctions imposed.

To download as a pdf click here.

Read a personal experience of being sanctioned here.

      139,000 sanctions were handed out to Jobseeker’s Allowance* claimants in 2009 but this more than tripled to 508,000 in 2011, the coalition’s first full calendar year in government. There was little change in the number of people signing on in this period, meaning a much higher proportion of people have had their benefits cut. In February 2011 for example, 1.44 million people were claiming JSA compared to 1.42 million in 2009. 51,000 sanctions were imposed in the former month, compared to 9,000 in the latter.

       Many of these sanctions are initially suggested, or ‘referred’, to the Department of Work and Pensions by the private companies the government has sub-contracted to run many of its welfare schemes, such as the flagship Work Programme, for people who have been signing on for a year or more. DWP statistics, obtained by a Corporate Watch freedom of information request (download the disclosure here), show companies such as Serco, Seetec, Working Links and A4E have been even more eager to sanction people than the government.

      The companies referred over 110,000 cases to the DWP for sanctioning between the start of the Work Programme in June 2011 up to January 2012, the last month figures were available (they do not have the power to sanction but they can suggest claims should be sanctioned to the DWP, which then decides whether the reasons given by the provider are appropriate).

Read the full report HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sweatshop Europe Is Still The Aim.

      Like I keep saying, sweatshop Europe is the aim. Now that the People of Greece have seen their living standards trashed and poverty and deprivation is the norm for the ordinary people, it's time to invite in the big corporate plunderers. Time to start useing that poverty and deprivation as available cheap labour.  The puppets sitting in Athens, controlled by the Troika, (EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers), have now rolled out the red carpet for the corporate/financial Mafia to come in and do what they like with the environment.

This From Corporate Warch:

Public event, 

Thursday 19 September, 7 to 9pm,
Unite House, 128 Theobald’s Road, Holborn, London, WC1X 8TN.

Gold mining in Greece: stories of resistance and repression
       Under the pretext of a severe financial crisis Greece is reasserting its investor-friendly profile by opening up all goldmines across the country without regard to the threats that mining poses to the environment and to people’s livelihoods. Foreign investors are particularly welcome: fast track processes; tax relief; exception from damages; easy money; no royalties; no problems.
      But the true picture is not so rosy! Sham public consultations, questionable deals designed to advance specific corporate interests and the slow but steady destruction of the environment have been met with resistance. The struggle to oppose Eldorado Gold’s plans to create an enormous open pit mine on Mount Kakavos and within the ancient forest of Skouries has succeeded in capturing people’s imagination and inspiring waves of solidarity across the country.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

CORPORATE FASCISM, OWNER OF LANGUAGE??

        An interesting article from Corporatewatch, that shows the absurd levels the corporate world will go to to restrict freedom in an attempt to stop any form of competition, criticism, and take control, of anything from which they believe they can make money. How do you own an adjective which describes so many things, are the words we use to be controlled by the corporate world? If ever there was a need for proof that we have entered the era of corporate fascism, then this is it. 

         In an almost surreal corporatisation of politics, and language, a corporate media group has brought us one step closer to the outright ownership of everything by trademarking the phrase
'radical media'. @Radical Media LLC has litigated against Peace News, New Internationalist, Red Pepper and other radical media groups using the phrase in the title of a joint conference to be held in London in October 2011. Six months into organising the conference, the organising group received a threatening legal letter from the media corporation objecting to the 'unlicensed' use of the term. The organisers decided they could not fight the challenge because, even if they won in court, they would have had to pay around 75% of the court costs, amounting to tens of thousands of pounds. The conference will now be called the Rebellious Media Conference

(see www.radicalmediaconference.org).

          In eerie echoes of Monsanto's seed patenting strategy and the corporate ownership of rain water in South America, @Radical Media has essentially taken it upon itself to earmark a resource, here language, which people already use, then punish them for 'stealing it'. In a statement, the conference organisers said "it is absurd that people involved in genuinely radical media projects are being prevented from using the adjective that best describes their activities". This paves the way for a bizarre dystopian future in which companies buy the political language that is used in resistance against them, then have dissenters dragged through court for nicking 'their' phrase.

ann arky's home.