How The DWP Is Drafting In Doctors To Promote Iain Duncan Smith’s Warped Ideology

Our class have always known that work makes you ill and shortens your life. The bosses know it too – which is why they leave it to us.

the void

Are you working hard enough?  Are you sure?  What if you get sick, or have an accident?  Are you prepared to go to work anyway, even if you don’t think it would be good for your health?  What if your doctor and boss agree you could do something other than your usual job instead of malingering at home?  Like making cups of tea all day, or cleaning the bogs, or any form of work your empoyer can dream up to force you not to take time off.  Because that is now the chilling reality as the DWP attempts to inject Iain Duncan Smith’s warped ideology into the NHS.

Last week the DWP issued patronising new guidance to GPs on when they should issue a Fit Note.  Doctors are warned of the dangers of ‘worklessness’ and told they must consider “the vital role that work can play in your patient’s health”.

View original post 1,061 more words

Persons Unknown

What you can do:
Find out about Joint Enterprise Support JENGbA, sign their petition or go to one of their public meetings Tweet, publicise, be heard
As Lisa says: ‘Tell the media, Tell your Mam’ [my Mam is furious]
Come and show your solidarity on Wednesday 21st October, Stratford Court, 10 am.
Watch your back

Now That's What I Call History

Over the past few weeks Class War and LSE’s Lisa Mckenzie in particular have been taking a lot of stick for their choice of target and tactics.  For months Class War and the Women’s Death Brigade have been standing up against the relocation of young teenage mothers by supporting E15 Mums’ campaign, opposing Poor Doors, challenging Gay Pride’s for profit associations with big business and international banking,  and exposing the dodgy deals and marketing of working class women’s bodies for profit at the Jack the Ripper Museum in Cable St.  All pretty straight forward.  Not everyone likes the shouty, irreverent style of the brigade, but its pretty hard to defend kicking out teenage mums, humiliating social housing tenants, censoring gay activists in the name of Pride, or possible shonky negotiations for planning permission.  But then Class War went too far.  They went for the hipster – and the infamous Cereal Killer…

View original post 935 more words

IWW Turkey and Greece joint statement about the latest Ankara massacre

Liverpool IWW

The bombing on 10th of October 2015 was directly against the Kurdish liberation movement, the working class and all oppositions who resist against the dictatorship.

This massacre is another ring of the chain that extends from Armenian genocide to Dersim massacre, from May Day’77 to Maras Massacre’78, from Sirnak Massacre’92 to Diyarbakir and Suruç bombings that happened within this year. All these massacres have targeted the people who ask for Freedom, Democracy and Justice on Anatolia over the last 100 years. The offender side has always been fascist party militants, religious fundamentalists and occasionally governmental commissioners themselves.

This is not a coincidence, a mistake, a weakness, and not the latest fragment of a distant past. Quakes of the capitalist economy agitate regional and global competitions. The games, the power struggle between the states are becoming more complicated, more frantic, more shocking. All the problems, issues that capitalist system generates or…

View original post 140 more words

2 – 8 November 2015: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex

From www.cape-campaign.org

About the Week of Action

A week of action has been called to encourage people all of the UK & the world to take action against the construction of the North Wales Prison in Wrexham.

The prison will be the second largest prison in Europe, holding more than 2100 people and costing £250 million to build. Australian contractor Lend Lease was awarded the contract to build the Wrexham titan prison by the government in May 2014.

Local people have resisted the prison for over half a decade; objecting to planning applications, lobbying, going to meetings. Full planning permission was eventually granted in November 2014 despite local resistance. It is now a construction site and this place of abuse and oppression is being built as we speak.

Our aims are to resist it, slow it down and send a message to the state and the prison industry that it is not acceptable to profit from caging human beings. The Government wish to build more prisons in the UK, this is our opportunity to intervene and prevent this industry from expanding. We must take the offensive against prison expansion and the social control of our lives. We are fighting until all are free.

What is taking place?

• Demonstrations at the prison and its suppliers. Find your local prison profiteer here:

• Noise & solidarity demos at prisons all over the UK

• Information nights, workshops & film showings to ignite more resistance to the prison industrial complex in the UK

Organisers from the CAPE Campaign will also be supporting existing events taking place during the week including:

• The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) Annual Procession on 31 October. The UFFC is a national coalition of families and friends of those that have died in the custody of police and prison officers as well as those who are killed in immigration detention and secure psychiatric hospitals in the UK. Assemble 31 October 12Noon at Trafalgar Square for a silent procession along Whitehall followed by a noisy protest at Downing Street.

• The Surround Yarl’s Wood Demonstration at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre on Saturday 7th November: https://www.facebook.com/events/755942137885113/

How to Get Involved

• Contact Community Action on Prison Expansion – info@cape-campaign.org

• Contact a local group close to you – http://www.cape-campaign.org/about/local-groups

• Tell us about something you are organising so we can help promote it

Early October class struggle round-up: couriers, construction workers, and call centre staff fighting back

Cautiously pessimistic

A few recent wins in the class struggle:

Up North, Newcastle SolFed are reporting that they’ve won a substantial wage theft campaign against a call centre in Newcastle, and promise a fuller report coming soon. Down in London, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain’s organising campaign against couriers is paying off, as Gophr has just become the first courier company to sign their charter promising to pay the London Living Wage (the real one, not George Osborne’s made-up one), plus reasonable costs like bike maintenance. The IWGB are also going to start running free weekly legal advice clinics on Thursday afternoons. London Industrial Workers of the World and the Angry Language Brigade are also reporting a limited victory over dodgy wage-stealing boss Craig Tallents – in the end, they had to go down the legal route and so only got the legal minimum and not everything…

View original post 169 more words

Autonomy Films present REFUGEES IMMIGRATION RACISM Saturday 24/10/15 Bridport

Wessex Solidarity

A short film about migrants and a talk by Louisa Adjoa Parker Author of ‘Dorset’s Hidden Histories: Beginning to explore four hundred years of the presence of black people in Dorset.’ To be followed by question and answer, and discussion.
7pm for 7.30pm WI Hall, North Street, Bridport Entry £4, less if you can’t afford it Soup on sale from 6.45 pm.

EVENTS ORGANISED BY OTHERS

Saturday 17th October 2015
A day of plays,films, dance and music for DEMOCRACY DAY includes Billy Bragg, puppets, Cartoon Action Theatre and Bridport Youth Dance. For details of timings, check programmes available around town.
11 am till 8.30pm (Doors open 10 am, refreshments available) at the Electric Palace, South Street, Bridport

Thursday 22nd October 2015
ROBB JOHNSON brings the award winning GENTLE MEN to the Justice Cafe. Songs inspired by the experiences of his two grandfathers in WW1.
Doors open 8 pm for 8.30…

View original post 95 more words

Liverpool IWW Spread Message that Claimant Advocacy is Not a Crime!

We’ll be doing another of these soon in Dorset, get in touch if you’d like to be involved.

Liverpool IWW

This afternoon, members and supporters of Liverpool IWW held an information picket outside the town centre job centre, on Williamson Square. We are one of several IWW groups and other activist organisations holding demonstrations at job centres this week. Scottish Unemployed Workers Network called for solidarity with claimant advocate Tony Cox, who faces court in Forfar tomorrow on the ludicrous charges of threatening behaviour, refusing to give his name and address and resisting arrest. He was arrested at an Arbroath job centre last January, whilst representing a highly vulnerable unemployed woman.

Scottish Unemployed Workers Network assert that:

“We believe that this case highlights the climate of fear that is evident within many job centres, but that it is not only benefit claimants that are treated with contempt. Welfare advisors are also being subjected to bullying and intimidation, as in the recent case of Mike Vallance at High Riggs Job…

View original post 165 more words

It’s Workfare Week! Tell The Bastards What You Think On #WEWeek2015

the void

Workfare industry bosses react with delight to news David Cameron intends to attend their next conference.

The vile welfare-to-work sector are teaming up with a DWP controlled front organisation this week to hold a celebration of all the money they are making out of unpaid work.

The inaptly named Fair Train are funded by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, a government body under the control of both the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and Iain Duncan Smith himself.  Despite their name, this so-called charity exists to promote unpaid Work Experience schemes, by flogging off dubious Quality Standard awards to workfare exploiters.  In 2013 they were paid a whopping £283,000 of tax payer’s money to promote unpaid work schemes.

Week Experience Week is part of this gushing celebration of exploitation, so it is no suprise to see ERSA, the trade body established to lie on behalf on the…

View original post 86 more words

14-15 Nov: Caring, survival & justice – international conference London

From English Collective of Prostitutes

Dear friends,
We will be participating in this International Conference on women on 14-15 November 2015, and invite you to join us.

SATURDAY 9-5pm

Session 1: Reproducing the human race – valuing mothers and all carers
Session 2: Caring under austerity, climate change, occupation and war SUNDAY 9-5pm
Session 3: Women’s justice work against sexism, racism and every discrimination
Session 4: A living wage for caring and the struggle for pay equity

We will be reclaiming the indispensable contribution of mothers and all carers to reproducing the human race, as well as the justice work women do to defend ourselves and loved ones from every violence and discrimination. What are the obstacles to caring, and how can the petition for a Living Wage for Mothers and other Carers be an effective tool for building the movement internationally – to prioritise survival and pay equity?
The conference will be opened by Selma James (Sex, Race and Class – the Perspective of Winning). Details of the content and the speakers will be circulated nearer to the time. We are hoping that our network in Canada, Greece, Haiti, India, Ireland, Italy, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Spain, Tanzania, Turkey, US, Venezuela and elsewhere will be able to attend.

Venue: To be confirmed
Access: full wheelchair access ● please book in advance for childcare
We look forward to hearing from you. Please let us know if you are planning to attend. If you coming from abroad, we will be glad to help with visas.
Invest in caring not killing.
Global Women’s Strike (GWS), Women of Colour GWS
and Payday (a network of men who work with the GWS)

Sometimes, solidarity means annoying jobcentre managers: stand with Tony Cox!

Dorset IWW are joining this campaign tuesday afternoon in Bournemouth, use the contact form if you would like to take part.

Cautiously pessimistic

Tony Cox was arrested back in January after Arbroath Jobcentre management called the police on him to stop him assisting a vulnerable claimant during a jobcentre interview. Now, all these months later, he’s due back in court in October, and a call has gone out for people to take to jobcentres across the country on the 12th or 13th of October to talk to people about their rights to be accompanied at the jobcentre. This would be doubly worthwhile if you can make it – it’s worth giving information to people that might help save them from a sanction, and also the show of defiance will send a clear message to jobcentre bosses that the more they try to repress claimant organising, the more resistance they’ll provoke. So far the only officially confirmed events are for Glasgow, Wales, and Forfar Sheriff’s Court, but I’m sure that more will be…

View original post 708 more words