I couldn't resist sharing this image put up by The Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign to promote their Sheffield rally and Halloween party on 31st October.
It was prepared well before Theresa May's most recent meltdown at the Tory party conference and shows May, Boris Johnson and Amber Rudd in their true form......as Zombies.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
I've had a quiet day, punctuated only by people sending me things about Theresa May on social media.
I liked this one, 'inspired' by Al Pacino in 'Scarface'. It's the morning after indulging in that hubris feeling;
One of the more obscure aspects of an election are the publicity seekers who stand in the constituencies of famous politicians, hoping to get on the television. Some wear silly costumes.....like 'Lord Buckethead' who stood against Thatcher, Major and now Theresa May.
One of his more sensible policies dealt with nuclear weapons;
"A firm public commitment to build the 100-billion-pound renewal of Britain's Trident weapons system, followed by an equally firm commitment, privately, not to build it. They're secret submarines, so no one will ever know. It's a win-win."
It produced this exchange on The Guardian;
Well, it cheered me up.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
Well, I settled down to watch the election results; I warned Robyn that I wasn't going to be worth talking to the next day and that if things went particularly badly I might well attack the TV.
As it was, I was almost as surprised by the exit poll which came out at 1000pm as the BBC pundits were.
I spent the rest of the night marvelling as the results came in; Theresa May had lost, although Labour hadn't done well enough to win. The tories could only hold onto power by doing a deal with the 'Democratic' Unionist party - the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association.
In other words we now have a bunch of religious and political fascists determining what happens to us.
Jeremy Corbyn played a blinder. All the right Labour M.P's who had been planning another assault on his leadership following the election campaign were talking through gritted teeth.
Apart from the politics, Theresa May is the person who tried to deport my Robyn under threat of arrest and imprisonment. She fought our appeal all the way and seizing her passport for a year which prevented us from having a holiday during the last period when I was well enough to have travelled abroad.
It also prevented us from marrying for a year and then when we had a date and had made our preparations, her Home Office forced us to cancel everything, postpone it and rearrange the date - for no purpose whatsoever.
However badly she feels now, having messed up everything, is just a fraction of what she deserves.
Worst of all she is back in power and as a result of that old age pensioners will lose their winter heating allowance, primary school children will lose their meals and we will all be worse off as the services we all rely on will be cut back.
Now we need to get her out before I kick the bucket.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
I've voted!
I walked all the way to the Post Box on my own and, as you can see, my postal vote is on its way. I've now walked or driven on 6 of the last 7 days.
I voted labour and after 38 years of voting in elections it's the first time I've been able to vote for a leader of the Labour Party who is a socialist and who will carry out the promises he has made during the election campaign.
That's two firsts.
Here's a favourite photograph from 1984;
It's Jeremy Corbyn being arrested outside South Africa House at Trafalgar Square. I love the fact that he has hand-written his own placard, in an impeccable font.
I was also there at the picket although not necessarily on the same day as this. The noisy and raucous 24 hour picket of South Africa House lasted for many years, seven days a week, organised by David and Norma Kitson and their supporters.
At the same time, the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was condemning Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress as 'Terrorists', as was her government and party.
Britain, America and Israel were secretly arming and supporting the Racist South African government.
At this time, the South African government blew up the London headquarters of the ANC without any sanctions being imposed on it.
So there were times when opposing Apartheid in South Africa could seem like a lonely and thankless task.
It didn't stop Jeremy Corbyn any more than, after he had won the Labour Party leadership, 170 members of the Parliamentary Labour Party supported a motion of no confidence in his leadership. One by one, the majority of members of his shadow cabinet resigned at hourly intervals to cause him the maximum embarrassment and humiliation.
He stood again in the subsequent election and won the leadership with an increased majority.
Labour started the election campaign 20 percentage points behind the tories. Now Labour has a majority of the vote in opinion polls in London and Wales. The gap between the two parties is down to 3 per cent in the latest national opinion poll.
Corbyn is truly a man of steel and I urge anyone with a vote to cast it for their Labour Party candidate on June 8th.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
I must still be alive - I still get really, really angry.
First here's an article from The Daily Mirror on 28/12/16, which calculated the fees paid to the private companies which have been given the job of assessing the benefits paid to sick and disabled people.
This is something that used to be done by the state; to be precise by the Department of Work and pensions and the medical assessments carried out by the applicants doctor. This was all at minimal cost - take a look at how much it costs us now;
Daily Mirror 28/12/16
"Fit-to-work firms Atos and Capita have earned more than £500m of taxpayer cash running a hated Tory scheme to assess people for disability benefits.
"Analysis of Government data by the Mirror shows the two firms were paid £211m for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments in the first 11 months of 2016.
"That was up from £198m in 2015, £91m in 2014 and £7m in 2013, the year PIP launched.
"PIP is designed to help disabled people live independently and is replacing the old Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
"Yet despite the assessments' £507m price tag, thousands of decisions based on them are being overturned on appeal.
"Figures to September 2016 show 61% of 90,000 claimants who appealed against a PIP decision at a tribunal won their case."
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Here's the reality of these expensive assessments; this from another Daily Mirror article from 29/12/16.
Dad DIES 10 months after Job Centre bosses told his doctor not to write any more sick notes
The DWP wrote to James Harrison's doctor behind his back and declared him fit for work 10 months before he died
ByJohn Ferguson
29 DEC 2016
Daily Mirror.
A seriously ill dad died just 10 months after Department for Work and Pensions bosses advised his GP not to write any more sick notes for him.
James Harrison had been declared “fit for work” and should not get medical certificates, the letter said.
But 10 months after the DWP contacted his doctor without telling him, James was dead at 55, the Daily Record reported.
His daughter Abbie, 23, said: “It’s a disgrace that managers at the Job Centre, who know nothing about medicine, should interfere in any way in the relationship between a doctor and a patient.
“They have no place at all telling a doctor what they should or shouldn’t give a patient. It has nothing to do with them.
“When the Job Centre starts to get involved in telling doctors about the health of their patients, that’s a really slippery slope.”
Abbie said James had worked since leaving school at a community centre near his home. But his already poor health went downhill after the centre was shut down by austerity cuts.
He had a serious lung condition and a hernia before the centre closed, and developed depression and anxiety afterwards.
Abbie said: “He’d worked all his life. He wasn’t the kind of guy who knew anything about benefits.
“But as his health deteriorated, there wasn’t any chance he could do a job. He applied for employment and support allowance.”
James got ESA but only at the low rate of £70 a week, the same as jobseekers’ allowance. He was then sent for one of the DWP’s hated “Work Capability Assessments” – and declared fit for work.
Abbie said her father James had worked all of his life
Despite that decision, Abbie said James remained in constant need of medical help and had to go to his doctor regularly.
But the GP repeatedly refused to give him a sick note, and James began to suspect the Jobcentre were to blame.
Abbie said: “He really needed a note. He was too ill to go to the constant appointments at the Jobcentre and he didn’t want to be sanctioned.
“He became convinced the DWP had been talking to his doctor behind his back.”
Abbie didn’t believe James’s theory at the time and thought he was just confused. But when she asked to see her dad’s medical records, she found a letter in his file from Julia Savage, a manager at Birkenhead Benefit Centre in James’s home city of Liverpool.
The letter was addressed to James’s GP. It said: “We have decided your patient is capable of work from and including January 10, 2016
.
"This means you do not have to give your patient more medical certificates for employment and support allowance purposes unless they appeal against this decision.
“You may need to again if their condition worsens significantly, or they have a new medical condition.”
PhD student Abbie is furious that James had to waste time at his short doctor’s appointments pleading for a sick line he wasn’t going to get.
And she is sickened by the way the system treated her father at every turn.
She said: “I’d love to interrogate these DWP people the way they interrogated dad – ask them to explain the things they put him through.
“Dad wasn’t well. Who knows, maybe he could have improved if he’d been given some support, rather than subjected to suspicion and scepticism at every turn.”
Asked about the letter, a DWP spokeswoman said: “The GP would have been notified so they know the outcome of the assessment.
“And as the letter says, there’s no longer any requirement to provide a fit note unless the claimant appeals the decision, or their medical condition worsens or they have a new medical condition.”
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But then the Tory governments of Cameron and May don't care how much they hand out to their friends at outsourcing companies, their priority is not handing out money to the desperate people who need it.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
It's a big anniversary for us today - a year after our tribunal hearing.
Robyn is American and was here on a visa - she applied for a new visa and neither of us realised this was a situation where The Home Office takes a huge fee and then automatically refuses the request. More than that, they slapped an immediate application for a deportation order and seized her passport.
I was desperate and, of course, we appealed.
A year ago in November I was in Charing Cross Hospital for a 'simple' kidney operation. I was meant to be there for a couple of days which turned into a week when they couldn't stop the bleeding.
So this became our legal office;
We had statements to write, bundles of documents to sort out and number, strategy and plans to work out. In fact, the more research I did the less chance we seemed to have.
Robyn struggled from home and back on a variety of buses and trains, carting her computer with her because the Hospitals Wi-Fi had caused my computer to sieze up - as soon as I got home it was OK.
We ended up e-mailing statements to each other, rewriting them and e-mailing them back again. Then Robyn printed them out and then copied the bundles of documents at huge expense at the local newsagents. They must have thought Christmas had come early.
It was only later at court that we discovered that The Home Office had 'lost' their copy, which we had sent by registered post.
We kept a spare copy - I'm used to that happening.
Here's our case;
And then on the 14th December we struggled up to Feltham to the tribunal to put our case to the Judge.
Really, I suppose we were very lucky.
But the alternative was unthinkable.
Either we went on the run, which is a bit of a problem in my state - more like a saunter, with the occasional use of a walking frame to hold me up.
We weren't exactly Thelma and Louise.
Or Robyn went back to the States and we were separated.
Anyway, today I've been reliving it all and it's not been much fun.
Robyn tells me to just be grateful but I can't forget that 2015 was the last year when I could have travelled but we couldn't take a holiday thanks to Theresa May and The Home Office.
Or that they didn't even really consider our application - just refused it out of hand.
I remember it all - our friends Martin and Sue who came to give evidence for us, me pacing up and down in the corridor. The Judge not letting me in to advise Robyn, so she was alone in the courtroom.
Running through in my head all the problems in our case; and there only seemed to be problems.
And then it was over and we faced a month long wait for the result - after Christmas.
As I said, I am grateful for the year but I'm angry we were put through such an ordeal. I didn't need the stress. And it was all such a struggle too.
And now the awful Theresa May is Prime Minister.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwith-promisestokeep@gmail.com
We've both had an identical letter from The Home Office, which is why I'm growling even though it could well be good news.
It's hard to tell.
I should explain that we spent 2015 fighting their attempts to deport Robyn and refuse her a visa. We couldn't go anywhere because they seized her passport.
Well, we won at the tribunal.
So then we went to The Registry Office to give notice that we intended to get married - that was fine based on Robyn's visa.
Except we then got a letter from The Home Office telling us and the Registry office that we needed to give 70 days notice instead of 28.
So we had to cancel the wedding and put it back. We made a decision that, whatever their decision, we were going ahead anyway.
So our letters?
They tell us that we "have complied with the investigation".
Really?
They had until 10th June to interview us and they didn't. So all we did was to confirm by e-mail where we were living and that was it.
They haven't told us that our wedding is legitimate (we have a Learned Judge's ruling that our relationship is genuine) or that it can go ahead. In fact they still have until the 20th June to object.
Anyway, it's happening on the 28th June.
Either it's going to be done by the designated officials or it will be done by us.
Whatever.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
We ended up back at The Registry Office - this must be a record.
It wasn't a happy morning.
A week ago we got notice from The Home Office that we had to give 70 days notice instead of the usual 28 so that they can "Investigate whether our relationship is genuine".
That meant our wedding can't go ahead now.
So it wasn't a very happy selfie this time.
I should say that we'd assumed it would be the 70 days in the first place but the Registry Office took a fortnight to give us an appointment, then told us we didn't need 70 days and that 28 days would do.
We booked our wedding, paid the bills, made the plans, told people from the USA to book their tickets........
We also picked June 7th because it would quiet and so that I'd have finished my Chemotherapy in time and I would be fit for the day.
And now we've cancelled it all.
I should also say that we fought our case at a tribunal back in December and won a ruling from the Right Honourable Judge that we did indeed have a genuine relationship.
We now face interviews and investigations by The Home Office and even the possibility that they could try to 'ban' us from marrying. So far, they've stopped us getting married for 18 months.
This time, I may have to get all legal with them, I've had enough.
Well, we've paid out money, cancelled and rebooked but we'll announce the new date in a few days time when we've got confirmation.
And if they ban us?
We may have to marry ourselves.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
