Merthyr Shows Unemployment As It Is.
Hat-tip to Claimants’ Action South Wales.
“Gemma and Donna Griffiths, sisters and media students from Merthyr Tydfil, have made a film that exposes welfare reform for the sadistic, blinkered ideology that it really is. Amazingly, they’ve had help from the BBC (strange how the beeb’s attitude has softened, now it’s Tory “reforms” instead of almost identical Labour “reforms”), and a “behind the scenes” version of their film has been shown, available through the iplayer until the first of march – don’t miss it. There’s also youtube, but I haven’t managed to get into that yet. Now, I could go into great detail here, and took copious notes, but really it’s better if you just watch it. All the same, I couldn’t resist commenting on some of the highlights… Remember when IDS (who refused to be interviewed, what a surprise!) said that claimants in Merthyr should “get a bus to Cardiff” to look for work? We see how the first bus down (in the real world, not on the timetable) doesn’t get in until after 8am, and takes twice the time claimed by IDS. We have a clear admission by Maria Larcombe of Acorn [agency scum] that many jobs, particularly unskilled jobs, will start at 6 or 6:30, and thus are of no use to people travelling by bus from Merthyr – in any case at the time of filming there were 14,700 people unemployed in Cardiff chasing just 2,941 jobs, and as we know only too well, most of those won’t be real jobs anyway. We have an interview with the infamous Norman Tebbit who spouts on for a bit, asks the same old rhetorical questions such as why the system isn’t working, people aren’t getting off benefits and into work – when the answer, that there is no work, is obvious to anyone who cares to open their eyes. Tebbit also talks about how people in the south east of England – his area of expertise – often travel for over an hour and a half to work, but surely this is mainly due to congestion of the roads and railways, ironically another problem that has been caused by the same sort of incompetence and mis-government that has led to Merthyr, and most of the rest of Wales, being in the economic hole that it is.
Gemma and Donna, welfare claimants salute your excellent work! Now, how about exposing the fake jobs advertised by Jobcentre Plus for your next project..? And if you fancied writing an article, or several, I would love to publish it…”
Ipswich Unemployment Action publishes the Video now:
Ipswich Unemployed Action. 
Just seen the video (15 mins ago), decided to attempt a blog post on it… so came on here and found out it already had been done 😀
Work Programme
February 27, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Let me point out a little experiment by Work Programme Network (sister site of IUA):
Every job (JCP advertised only) within Cardiff in the last month (361 – approx 12 jobs a day or 72 jobs a week):
http://jobsearch.workprogramme.org.uk/location/cardiff
A search for “Merthyr” and “Merthyr Tydfil” returns 0 jobs. This is primarily because its a small place and the search experiment only chose the major areas (i.e. Cardiff) – although the max radius (something like 75 miles although Merthyr looks about 25 miles away from Cardiff) selected from Cardiff should have collected them but its a minor issue.
Doing a directgov search for such place returns a lot of the fake jobs but as I pointed out on a blog post the JCP jobs are only to trap jobseekers into sanctions – rarely are any jobs genuine on there.
An exposure of the “fake jobs” is extremely welcomed. In fact, I can be of some major assistance in how to present this to the people. http://www.workprogramme.org.uk/contact-us-work-programme.html
Work Programme
February 27, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Good video, very informative. It should be complulsive viewing for Daily Mail readers!
A4e Protest
February 27, 2011 at 7:07 pm
My only problem with the video is the fact (correct me if I am wrong) it was only a Wales thing!
As long as we are run as this big UK (rather than the 4 individual constituent countries) it should have been shown to all. I could name enough TV slots to have aired it… BBC have a problem filling up the schedule with half-decent material. Although this wasn’t pro production it was of a high enough standard.
I hope they consider doing one about the fake jobs in an independent capacity and then try to get it commissioned by one of the TV channels.
Work Programme
February 28, 2011 at 9:51 am
A4e Protest, dig the posters!
We should have versions of ’em in Ipswich.
Andrew Coates
February 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Andrew: I could probably do something similar for Ipswich. Just give me a few ideas and I see what I can come up with.
Perhaps the YMCA Training logo attached to a leg iron?
A4e Protest
February 28, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Sounds good to me 🙂
Work Programme
March 1, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Andrew and Work Programme:
Here’s links to a couple I did before. Even if they not quite what you had in mind, it should give you a few idea.
Dencora House ball and chain protest
YMCA Training Logo with leg iron
A4e Protest
March 1, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Great A4E !
I bet the YMCA have already had a look and a groan.
If we won’t know till the Summer who the enemy will be we can guess.
Andrew Coates
March 2, 2011 at 10:39 am
Never heard the words “A4e” and “Great” in the same sentence haha
I assume you were referring to A4e Protest.
I am sure Emma Harrison viewed this page too… something too good to be true? She had to see it for herself!
Work Programme
March 2, 2011 at 11:35 pm
No, we lurve Emma, innit?
Andrew Coates
March 3, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Andrew and Work Programme: Too true, we can be fairly certain the usual suspects will be getting The Work Programme contract.
I do hope YMCA have had a look. If not I will have add a few more pics to get the blog further up the search listings!
If you click on my name, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you can see all the YMCA Training/Dencora House banners.
A4e Protest
March 3, 2011 at 8:32 pm
I’ve just been referred back to TNG. Some kind of motivation programme….
Andrew Coates
March 4, 2011 at 10:49 am
Have you noticed half the staff have changed? 😀
Work Programme
March 4, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Start Monday.
Andrew Coates
March 4, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Tory council to make homelessness illegal
The Tories have a new policy on homelessness: make it illegal. That is the extraordinary intention of a Conservative flagship council. Worse, they want to ban Salvation Army soup kitchens.
Westminster city council, the richest and most powerful council in the UK, is proposing a new bye-law to ban rough sleeping and “soup runs” in the Victoria area of London. The proposed new bye-law will make it an offence punishable by a fine to “sleep or lie down”, “deposit materials used as bedding” and to “give out, or permit another to give out, food for free”.
If these proposals are passed, they will also prohibit companies with a proud record of corporate social responsibility from doing good things. Companies like Pret a Manger, who have, very quietly, for many years, given away their unsold food to London’s homeless. If the Tories get their way, companies like Pret will be forced to throw the food in the bin.
What must housing minister, Grant Shapps, think of this? Back in Christmas 2007, Shapps, ostentatiously spent a night in a bag outside Victoria station.
Back then he told Andrew Porter of the Daily Telegraph:
“Our policy is we absolutely need more houses. The way to do it is to incentivise communities to want to build houses. It works by saying, ‘build these houses and you get a new town centre or other services like a hospital or school’. The existing community gets the gain, not just those people who move there”.
That was then and this is now. If the Tories on Westminster council get their way, Shapps would have been fined for sleeping in the street. Not, we suspect, that he would do it now.
Shapps first came to our attention when he was the Tory campaign manager in the Ealing Southall by-election. Back then, he hit upon the wizard idea of describing his candidate – on the ballot paper – as a “David Cameron Conservative”. His candidate came third. Shapps has not run a by-election since.
Interestingly, though, Tom Watson has resurrected the idea – in Barnsley. Perhaps we should forever use the phrase “David Cameron’s Conservatives” on all our leaflets.
We may be doing Shapps a disservice. It may be that he is appalled by Westminster’s proposal. He may choose not to trot out the line that it is all Labour’s fault. If he does, though, he should look at Westminster in a little more detail before shooting from the hip.
Last year, the Tories in Westminster spent £3,973,952 on 12 temporary staff, all of whom cost the council over £500 a day. The highest paid temporary staff member, a temporary head of regeneration and partnerships, costs the council £745 a day and has cost £453,446 for the 608 days the person has worked for the council. A senior project manager, charges £600 a day, costing the council £852,600 for
1,421 days work, while a senior business analyst, charging £521 a day, has cost the council £827,400 for 1,588 days work. Overall, the council spends £10.5 million a year on temporary staff.
You can buy a lot of soup for £3,973,952.
Remember, this is the council of Lady Porter. The one that has supposed to have reformed itself since those scandalous days. Its financial management is now so good that it invested nearly £17 million in since-failed Icelandic Banks, of which over £11 million has yet to be recovered.
Shapps might also tell us that that there should be a “big society” solution to the problem of homelessness in Westminster.
Yet the council is cutting over £1 million from voluntary sector grants over the next two years, a cut of 25%. Nearly £60,000 (39%) is being cut from the financial support given to information and advice agencies – the sort of people that give advice to the homeless.
Direct support to the homeless is to be cut by £967,000 over the next two years.
No wonder they want to make it illegal to sleep in a cardboard box.
http://www.labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/02/27/tory-council-to-make-homelessness-illegal/
Labour Uncut
March 1, 2011 at 4:45 pm
They have a point… why would you want so many homeless people in the heart of the capital?
Force them to move outside the Victoria area, then and only then, you can clearly see homelessness has been solved!
Just like the nonsense stated in regards to unemployment, they will claim the pilot encouraged these homeless wasters who we all know drink, gamble and take drugs, and steal from people, (all the stereotypes etc.) into turning their lives around, get out and work, getting a flat etc. And as it has been so successful, they will spread it to other areas which homelessness has increased (ok the cuts, but most moved on from the Victoria area) to combat that.
On a more serious note. I know the human rights (both the HRA’98 and ECHR) are a joke which are hard to rely on but the only way they can outlaw it is for the councils to have a ACTIVE duty to house these people. This wont happen of course, they cannot evict people from the streets.
Of course, part of this is down to paranoia… these cuts are making more homeless people, and guess who lives near Victoria? It is security concerns which is fuelling this drive. They want to prevent tents in Parliament Square and they want to ensure that in effect a curfew exists where no one can be on the streets after dusk for any reason other than travelling home.
Work Programme
March 1, 2011 at 6:27 pm
The draft bye-laws I just read states its only an area around the city hall. Likely a pilot idea to be extended, although its not the point there is plenty of room for movement… for example the other side of Victoria Railway Station is fine, St James Park/The Mall/Birdcage Walk, Broadway/Tothill, Westminster Abbey end of Victoria Street etc.
There is also many ways around the “free refreshments” restrictions. A refreshment is a light meal snack or drink. So even providing homeless people their dinner isn’t going to violate it.
Work Programme
March 1, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Actually another law will deal with Parliament Square….
Parliament Square (Management) Bill (HL Bill 43)
Work Programme
March 7, 2011 at 5:53 pm
I like the part in the video where they investigated IBS’s claim that people on Merthyr should just get on a bus to cardiff.
good work!
Samuwl L Jackson
March 2, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Social mobility is a dead end
Our society relies on working-class jobs – dangling a narrow ladder for moving up is a diversion from tackling inequality
I am a walking indictment of Britain’s class system. Because I was a middle-class kid who attended a primary school “located in an area of high economic deprivation in Stockport”, as Ofsted put it, I was uncomfortably aware of this from an early age.
Without inflicting my life story on you, my mother was a lecturer at Salford University, and my dad was an economic regeneration officer for Sheffield city council. I grew up in an educated milieu and simply followed in the footsteps of fairly well-paid, professional people who’d gone to university. I did not suffer from the instability and stresses that scraping by in life can cause a family. Even when my dad lost his job during the fag-end of the last Tory government, I still enjoyed relative financial security. Like all people with my background, I will almost certainly die as I was born: middle-class.
Contrast my upbringing with the kids I grew up with. “Most of their parents tended to have some kind of work, but it was very low-paid – like shops, local industry, or whatever was about,” says Helena Button, my old teacher. Not long after I left, my school was ranked in the country’s bottom 5% for test results. I ended up as the only boy in my class to go to university, not because of innate superior ability, but because all the odds were stacked in my favour. Here is the reality of social mobility in modern Britain.
Yes, there are exceptions. My friend James is one of them. Raised in a single-parent family in an impoverished former mining community in the Rhondda Valley, he was the first in his family to go to university. He’s now a public affairs officer for one of the country’s leading charities. If politicians want a poster boy for social mobility, he’s as good as any.
Social mobility is the common language of today’s political establishment. As Nick Clegg would have it: “For old progressives, reducing snapshot income inequality is the ultimate goal. For new progressives, reducing the barriers to social mobility is.”
But social mobility has nothing to offer the vast majority of people who share the backgrounds of my old classmates. It’s the idea of creaming off a small minority of able working-class kids and catapulting them into the middle classes. You accept the class system, merely offering ladders for some to escape the bottom. As Clegg suggests, issues such as inequality are sidelined.
Of course I am not saying we should abandon attempts to crack open the worlds of politics and the media, to take two striking examples. Both have become middle-class closed shops because of the scandal of unpaid internships and the growing emphasis on qualifications, among other factors. It’s not just unfair, it leads to bad policies and bad journalism. But while opening up the professions will benefit a few thousand working-class kids, it will mean very little to the millions remaining in working-class jobs.
At this point, you are well within your rights to snap back: “It’s all right for you. You’re not going to spend your life cleaning out toilets.” But no one is talking about abolishing cleaning jobs or, say, supermarket checkout staff and call centre workers. Society as it is currently structured depends on millions of people working in these crucial jobs. Yet the cult of social mobility has contributed much to today’s rampant sneering at working-class Britain, because everyone is supposed to escape such occupations and become middle-class. Gordon Brown was typical among modern politicians when he fought the 2010 general election with a promise to create “a bigger middle class than ever before.”
Instead of putting social mobility at the heart of politics, we should emphasise the social worth of working-class jobs and support struggles to have pay and conditions that reflect it. Take a report by the New Economics Foundation a couple of years ago, which compared the social value of different occupations. Hospital cleaners, for example, are generally paid the minimum wage. However, when taking into account the fact they maintain standards of hygiene and contribute to wider health outcomes, NEF estimated they generate more than £10 in social value for every £1 they are paid. Waste recycling workers are another case in point: because of their role in preventing waste, promoting recycling and keeping down carbon emissions, NEF calculated that, for every £1 spent on their wages, another £12 is generated. But the NEF model was damning when it came to well-paid jobs like City bankers (for every £1 paid, £7 of social value is destroyed) or advertising executives (£11 destroyed for every £1 popped into their bank account).
Rather than embracing the individualism of social mobility, we need a collective approach. In the four years before the recession hit, the real wages of the bottom half were stagnating; for the bottom third, they actually declined. The inability of our greatly weakened trade unions to fight the corner of working people is a major reason, because there was no major countervailing force to the ever-growing concentration of wealth at the top. At the heart of politics should be a determination to improve the lives of working-class people as a class, rather than focusing on ways to somehow rescue a small minority.
I never thought that I’d agree with the ultra-Blairite Hazel Blears, but last year she put it to me pretty eloquently: “I’ve never really understood the term ‘social mobility’ because that implies you want to get out of somewhere and go somewhere else … And I think that there is a great deal to be said for making who you are something to be proud of. And if you’re working-class, not to wear that as a kind of chip on your shoulder, or even a burden that you carry around with you, but actually something that is of value, for its own sake, that says something about who you are, what your values are, where you come from.”
Nearly a century ago, the Scottish socialist John McLean said: “Rise with your class, not out of it”. My friend James should be proud of what he’s achieved, but his life story is exceptional. Social mobility provides no answers for the vast majority of working-class people. It’s time we abandoned it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/01/social-mobility-dead-end
The Guardian
March 2, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Minimum Wage (Amendment) Bill (HC Bill 29)
A
BILL
TO
Enable the national minimum wage to be varied to reflect local labour market
conditions; and for connected purposes.
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and
consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present
Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Low Pay Commission inquiry
The Low Pay Commission must consider and take evidence on the availability
of employment opportunities and the impact of the national minimum wage
on job creation and access to employment in all travel to work areas where the
average level of unemployment in the preceding year has been above the
national average, and must consider in the light of that assessment whether to
recommend that the minimum wage in any such area should be set at a level
below the national minimum wage.
2 Duties of Secretary of State
(1) If the Low Pay Commission, following an inquiry conducted under section 1,
recommends that the minimum wage operating in any area comprising one or
more travel to work areas should be set at a level below the national minimum
wage, the Secretary of State must make regulations to bring the
recommendation into effect.
(2) The regulations must be made by statutory instrument and are subject to
annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay the regulations before Parliament within a
period of 3 months beginning with the day on which the Low Pay Commission
makes its recommendation.
(4) The regulations may include provision amending, repealing, revoking or
disapplying existing statutory provision (whenever passed or made).
3 Existing contracts of employment
A decision to set a minimum wage in any area comprising one or more travel
to work areas below the national minimum wage must not affect existing
contracts of employment.
4 Interpretation
In this Act a “travel to work area” is an area so defined by the Office for
National Statistics.
5 Financial provisions
There shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament—
(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of this Act by a Minister of the
Crown or by a government department, and
(b) any increase attributable to this Act in the sums payable under any other Act
out of money so provided.
6 Commencement, short title and extent
(1) This Act comes into force on the day on which it is passed.
(2) This Act may be cited as the Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2011.
(3) This Act extends to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2010-2011/0029/cbill_2010-20110029_en_2.htm
Hansard
March 3, 2011 at 4:42 am
Its one of the worst bill I have ever seen.
And as an idea is crap. We know its to lower wages, but its also a bad for inner city areas which may increase, as those with an existing contract of employment is only entitled to the lower rate. How is that fair?
Employers will only ever bolt on existing contracts with extensions to fixed term contracts instead of a new contract which enables them to keep the rate if the NMW rate increased, and likewise, employers will be offering new contracts to take advantage of lower wages – rolling contracts and zero hour contracts etc. are gone, replaced with a new zero hour or rolling contract!
Oh did we mention its up to 3 years sanctions now for refusing these jobs?
Work Programme
March 7, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Disabled people left out in the cold.
Look at the signatories of this letter]
http://thebrokenofbritain.blogspot.com/2011/03/left-out-in-cold-letter-on-anti.html?spref=bl
Kyron
March 7, 2011 at 11:18 am
We hope they have an impact Kyron.
In the meantime, are there any plans for protests?
Andrew Coates
March 7, 2011 at 3:40 pm
I am sorry to say, but the so-called middle-classes or Fatcher’s babies do not give a stuff about anybody other than themselves. They should have been born in 1936, then they would have had a good mentor in their way of thinking: Hitler, why. Get rid of all the non-workers, let them starve or gas them; all people who are homeless, anybody who is disabled and cannot work, let them starve. This is what these people are saying, why. Stop all benefits if they do no find a job or cannot work. Who is going to feed them, who is going to pay their bill, where are you going to put all the new homeless when they have been evicted from their homes. And don’t turn around and say: “Give them vouchers”, because it will cause more to administer then it would to pay them. They ONLY people who will fight will be the poor and when they do, the middle-classes BEWARE, there are more of them than you. Do not believe the MPs when they say the average wage is £35,000, £18,000 is nearer the truth. THE TIME IS COMING…
Revolution
March 10, 2011 at 12:01 am
Spot on. The mode salary in Ipswich (in regards to advertised jobs esp. on JCP’s job system) is around £14,500 for a full time job.
This happens to be full time job @ NMW. Everyone under that is because of the popularity of part time jobs the majority avoiding Employers NI costs so they only pay the wages. They then get two to three people to do just one persons job.
Work Programme
March 10, 2011 at 12:15 pm
MP calls on Labour to save welfare state
Left MP Jeremy Corbyn urged the Labour Party today to get its act together and throw itself into the campaign to save the welfare state from destruction.
Mr Corbyn was among just a dozen Labour MPs who voted against the government’s vicious Welfare Reform Bill in the Commons on Wednesday night.
Demanding that Labour show backbone and leadership, Mr Corbyn declared: “We are not just facing budget cuts. We are facing a fundamental attack on the whole principle of the welfare state.”
A huge swathe of 240 Labour members abstained in the second reading vote, following the timid line adopted by party leader Ed Miliband and his shadow cabinet.
Many of those who obeyed the Labour whips confessed privately that they felt ashamed at the party leadership’s paralysis in the face of the Con-Dem assault on the sick and poor.
Among the abstainers were several MPs who stood up at a tense meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party this week and demanded that the party must vote against the second reading of the Bill.
As a result of the row party managers slightly toughened up a feeble Labour “reasoned amendment” to the Bill, which was rejected on Wednesday night by 317 votes to 244, a government majority of 73.
In a further vote on the actual second reading just 22 MPs registered their opposition, while the government romped home with 308 votes.
Only 12 Labour members voted against, along with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, four SNP MPs, three Plaid Cymru, one SDLP and one Alliance Party.
The Labour rebels were: Ronnie Campbell, Katy Clark, Michael Connarty, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Cruddas, Dai Havard, Kelvin Hopkins, Sian James, John McDonnell, Jim Sheridan, Dennis Skinner and Mike Wood.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/102084%5Dwill%20not%20vote%20against%20the%20destruction%20of%20the%20welfare%20state
Morning Star
March 10, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Well done those who voted against the legislation.
Well bad the rest.
Andrew Coates
March 11, 2011 at 3:50 pm
A badly-paid or temporary job can be as bad for mental health as no job at all, research has suggested.
Little job security, demanding work and very little control over a role can all impact on people’s well-being just as much as unemployment, it found.
In fact, people who are unemployed can feel better-off mentally than those who are in poor jobs of low “psychosocial quality”, the report added.
Researchers said government policies tend to focus on job seekers when they should also take into account the quality of a person’s job.
Writing in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, experts led by a team at the Australian National University in Canberra said: “This study has shown that work of poor psychosocial quality, characterised by low job control, high job demands and complexity, job insecurity and the perception of unfair pay, does not bestow the same mental health benefits as employment in jobs with high psychosocial quality.
“In fact, we found that moving from unemployment to a job with poor psychosocial quality was associated with a significant decline in mental health relative to remaining unemployed.
“This suggests that psychosocial job quality is a pivotal factor that needs to be considered in the design and delivery of employment and welfare policy.”
Studies have long found that people in work enjoy better mental health than those who are unemployed.
But fewer studies have examined how people feel about their jobs when they are in employment.
Researchers analysed data from more than 7,000 people in Australia and found well-being was very much dependent on the quality of the job.
uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20110315/thl-wrong-job-can-affect-well-being-d831572.html
Yahoo
March 15, 2011 at 2:01 pm
“psychosocial job quality is a pivotal factor that needs to be considered in the design and delivery of employment and welfare policy”
But it has been addressed, silly! What do you think litter-picking for your benefits is about? lol
Deidre
March 15, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Criminals sentenced to Community Payback are already doing things like litter picking. And I don’t want to do them out of a job. There need is greater than mine!!!
On a more serious note though. What is the point of Community Payback if the unemployed are going to do the same work on The Work Programme?
A4e Protest
March 15, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Maybe there isn’t enough people on Community Payback? 😀
This is the solution of replacing council jobs with free labour.
Community Payback will continue, but just like how jobseekers are forced on to Flexible New Deal with anonymous sex offenders.. jobseekers will be working alongside criminals.
Work Programme
March 15, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Nice one, Work Programme. I just thought, sex offenders are often segregated for their own protection in prison. With all the prison overcrowding we here about it clealry makes more sense not to send them to prison in the first place!
Your so right about the government’s real intention of replacing council workers with the ball and chain brigade – namely our goodselves!
A4e Protest
March 16, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Talking of workfare…
http://www.workprogramme.org.uk/201103161159/training-wage.html
The initial version of the Training Wage Bill has been published. 2 words in a signed contract will exempt a person from the National Minimum Wage!
Work Programme
March 16, 2011 at 11:07 pm