City of Philistines

Cambridge City Council are going to cut spending on libraries by 30% over the next three years, in an attempt to save £20 million. CCC lost money in Iceland investments. This is a fait accompli. They are asking how we want to spread the cuts, but the cuts are a fact. The CCC doesn't believe in consulting people before making decisions. They consult once the decision has been made.

We've seen a series of book shop closures as well, Brown's, Border's and Galloway & Porter.

Outside the university the city is devolving, sinking into the fens.

Welfare Reform - Cameron

So PM Cameron is going to get tough on £1.5 billion in benefit fraud. Firstly this figure contradicts the official figures from the DWP. Benefit Fraud is £330m, down from £850m ten years ago. So where is the PM getting his figures from? Where does the figure of $1.5b come from and why is it 5x the official figure?

According to a report in City Wire (Jan 22):

At £30 billion per year, fraud in the UK is more than twice as high as thought, with tax evasion costing the public purse over £15 billion per year and benefit fraud just over £1 billion.

... Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure.

Apart from the £1b figure (from where?) where is all the hoo-ha about tax evasion?

Again I ask why ordinary people, and people living on benefits are paying for the excesses of bankers and their reckless clients? I don't have a mortgage I wasn't involved in property speculation, or financial mismanagement. I wish the government would leave me the fuck alone and target the people who caused the problems in the first place!

What in reality has happened to the people who caused the financial crisis? Not a fucking thing. They are free to do it all over again, and on past form they will do so.

On the other hand will there come a time when they say "OK, we've cleaned up the system, and we'd like those people who genuinely qualify for benefits to relax and concentrate on getting well, or living well"? No of course there never will, because people everywhere hate the idea of charity which enables a person to live without working. People with that attitude should visit India and see what a society with no social welfare looks like. I'd be a beggar in India - begging for money on the street and living in cardboard boxes.

I don't get a huge amount in reality - just £9200 per year. It's enough to house, cloth and feed me and not a lot more. For which I am more grateful than I can say.

But the news is all about people on benefits being undeserving cheats and thieves. I'm not a thief. I'm genuinely unwell. I get so stressed listening to all this hard talk about people on benefits, it's so upsetting because the distinction between those who genuinely need help and those who don't is blurred. It makes it shameful to rely on the government, even when you have no choice. What David Cameron is saying is that receiving handouts is shameful. But he's a millionaire from a millionaire family - with every privilege provided. He has no idea what it is like to be chronically ill, or to lose the ability to work. He doesn't even need to work.

So watch out everyone on benefits. You are now being pursued by private companies paid to catch you out. You may say that if I'm honest that I have nothing to fear. But unlike an ordinary member of the public I am a suspect merely for claiming what I am entitled to claim. By accepting a benefit, I sign up to allow these private companies to investigate my life. Ordinary people have a right to privacy and are presumed to be innocent, even though there is a lot of crime in the country, the fact that they have possessions does not automatically make them a suspect in all robberies. As of today I am suspected of fraud, just because some people commit fraud. If all people were suspected of tax evasion because some people are guilty of tax evasion, and had to open up all of the bank accounts to private companies paid to expose them, how would they react?

Ha!

For the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, to say that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might have "blood on his hands" [Guardian 1 Aug], is very much the pot calling the kettle black don't you think?

Benefit Levels

People keep citing these huge amounts that people get on benefits in the UK. Single men getting £12-14,000 per year and having no incentive to work was being cited by some Tory on BBC's Question Time on Friday. Fucking hell! I get £4,800 in Income Support including the top-up for being ill. I get about £4,400 in Housing Benefit - about £9,200 in total. I don't know what people do to get so much more! I really don't. As far as I can make out there is no way for me to fiddle the system even if I did lie my arse off, and risk prosecution. I give the relevant agencies my information, they tell me what I get and I have fuck-all to say about it. I guess my accommodation is pretty cheap - £320 per month - but all of that goes directly to my landlord, and it is cheap because I live with five other adults (four middle-aged bachelors). My standard of living is determined by the IS. Out of that comes all my bills, telephone, food, clothes, everything. It's not exactly the lap of luxury, I get by because I walk everywhere, don't own a car. I don't have holidays. I don't have an ipod or a flash computer. I have a PAYG mobile I put £5 on every couple of months and only use it for texts and incoming calls. My luxury is that I buy second books to read, mostly from charity shops.

So perhaps a review is in order if people are getting so much more than me, but why do I have this sinking feeling that I'm the one who's going to end up with LESS!?

GPs suddenly competent

The government, past and present, has never been confident that my GP is able to assess my fitness for work and has taken that responsibility out of their hands - so that the responsibility rests with a privately employed GP (salary?) who sees me once, for 45 minutes, prods me a few times and asks a couple of questions, and with no continuity or history, no x-rays or referrals to specialists or reports from psychologists (I repeated gave them the contact details for my psychologist and they have never contacted her) or any of that other broad base that my GP works from.

But now, now the GPs are competent to run the entire NHS!

NHS 'to undergo radical overhaul' (BBC)

Why not go the whole hog and let my physician make the decisions that so deeply affect my life rather than a stranger! They've been treating me for eight years now, they haven't always been able to help, but that very fact is an important part of the picture when it comes to my fitness to work. Give my GP the right to assess my benefit claim!

Could you live decently on £14,400 a year?

Head line from the BBC.

A salary of £14,400 is the minimum a single person needs for an acceptable standard of living, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).

I which case I'm about £5,000 short of an acceptable standard of living!

Now Show - 31.3 Benefits

>The Now Show last Friday opened with a segment on benefits claimants. As usual it mixed fact and funny. An mp3 of the segment is here...

They mention the two different forms for reporting tax evasion (to HMRC) and benefit theft to the DWP. Here's what they look like:

I'd like to try for a transcript at some point as well.

One gem: "tax fraud costs 15 times as much as benefit fraud."