The Un-credible Shrinking Man

"Ever wondered what really goes on around the Cabinet table? The sorry story of Nick Clegg - the un-credible shrinking man!"

Excellent! Well worth a punt. 

It’s criminal what this Government is doing to the victims of violent crime

Picture is from UNISON Greater London Health & Safety network meeting last week with guest speaker(4th from right back) Gerard Stilliard from Thompsons Solicitors. 

Every 3 months, following the meeting of our regional committee on safety, all London UNISON branch H&S officers are invited to attend a briefing by Thompsons on various safety related issues.

Gerard had been asked to speak about changes to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme in 2012.

Now, I knew that this Tory led government, with the active support of the Liberal Democrats, had made changes to the scheme, but what I didn’t realise is just how bad these changes were, especially for those at work who are attacked and badly assaulted.

Gerard explained that under the new scheme, eligibility and awards have been slashed. Any tariff awards less than £2500 have been removed entirely. While compensation for the rest of claims have been reduced on average by 50%.

Which means that in the past if you were for example a healthcare assistant and you had been badly beaten up by a patient, which took up to 3 months to recover, you would have received under the old rules £1750 in compensation. Now you would get nothing.

In the past if you had been a teaching assistant and been assaulted and punched so hard in the eye by a pupil that it resulted in permanent blurred or double vision, you would have received £4,400 to £8,200.  Now you would only get 1/2 to 2/3rds of that amount. Remember this is for permanent injuries! Was £4,400 under the old system too much?

Even worse, it use to be the case that loss of earnings awards due to injury were related to what you actually use to earn before the assault. Now it is only at statutory sick pay levels.

So if a Park warden had been so badly beaten up by drunken yobs that he or she could never return to paid work. Under the 2008 rules if the warden was aged 50, earned £15,000 per year and expected to retire at 65 then they could have expected to have received £225,000. Under 2012 rules they would only get £67,000. A loss of £158,000.

The government has also made it far difficult to claim, reducing time limits, not allowing managers to report cases to Police and slashing time limits for appeals.

Of course it is not only employees who are suffering from these cuts but all victims of violent crime.

In a civilised society the State has an absolute duty to protect all its citizens from criminals and deal responsibly with the consequences of this criminality for those who have suffered from it. The only citizens this Government gives a damn about are the 13,000 millionaires who will be given £100k plus tax cuts in 4 days time.

Conseal: It does what it says on the side of the tin

"It does what it says on the side of the tin". Does Not Treat Rot. Also Available in Moral Cowardice Yellow. Hat tip I support Public Service don't let the Con Dems destroy them

Nick Clegg apology a.k.a - lying gob s***e?

Nuf said.

Update: and now the Musical :)

 

The Good Liberal Democrat

This is part of the speech on pensions that Janice Turner gave at a Liberal Democrat fringe event last week called "Pension reform – public, private and state – What’s fair?".  Also at this event was Steve Webb MP, Pensions Minister, Dave Prentis, UNISON and Danny Finkelstein, The Times.  Janice is also the Co-Chair of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees.  In her speech she firstly attacked the pension industry for for doing their best to try and destroy decent company schemes in the private sector. 

"I’ve devoted my spot to talking about private sector occupational schemes, because we’ve got an expert sitting next to me who will be talking about public sector schemes. But as a Liberal Democrat I can’t just say nothing at all about public sector schemes when millions of public sector workers are about to ballot for the biggest day of action since the General Strike.

A hundred years ago, Asquith and Lloyd George brought this country the old age pension and they did it by having the vision, and by having the courage and determination not to back down when the Conservatives insisted that the government couldn’t afford it. A century on and occupational pensions are just as necessary today. We all hope to retire with a pension we can live on, rather than just existing. But most of us aren’t going to get there.

In the public sector the average pension is a mere £7,800 a year, beneath the poverty threshold. The average for women is only half that. There is nothing gold plated about public service pensions. Now more than five million people are being told that the Conservative-led government can’t afford them and are proposing that they move to career average schemes, raise the age that they can retire on it, and link it to the state pension age so that it keeps going up; and cutting their take-home pay by increasing their pension contributions.

All this is on top of the government’s announcement that they were going to switch public sector pension increases to CPI instead of RPI. That move on its own will wipe over £100-billion off their pensions when they retire. £100-billion. The government really hasn’t thought this through. Have they considered the impact it will have on the economic recovery if nearly a quarter of UK households have a pay cut? If 5 million people reduce their spending and increase their retirement saving to compensate that may be enough to slow down the recovery.

It is not true that we can’t afford these pensions. Just like a century ago, the government can afford it, the Tories just don’t want to. They have other priorities like wanting to save rich people from paying the 50p rate of tax. These proposals go too far, they are unfair, this government isn’t listening, and for many people struggling with a pay freeze and spiralling inflation it will force them out of their pension schemes as they cannot afford the pay cut.

And it is wrong to suggest that public sector pensions are unfair to private sector workers. Private sector workers had their pensions savaged by the Labour government but that’s not the fault of ordinary public sector workers. I for one expect the British government to lead by example, to set the highest standards for the way it treats its workforce, and that means safeguarding their pensions.

So yes I believe there is a major crisis in occupational pensions and the government needs to stop trying to make it worse with its proposals for the public sector, and act now to start repairing the damage to private sector pensions".

Nick Clegg Song by Russell Howard

Enjoy.

Saying Goodbye to Broken Promises?

Once upon a time a fresh faced Party leader called Nick Clegg spoke eloquently about “broken promises - there have been too many in the last few years; too many in the last 30 years in fact; our nation has been littered with them; a trail of broken promises ....I think it is time to do things differently ....I think it is a time for promises to be kept “ .

These are the opening lines from the Liberal Democratic Party Election broadcast 13 April 2010. Check out on Youtube before it disappears. Hat tip Tom.

Meanwhile, talking about “promises” ...."page 39 of the 'Liberal Democratic Manifesto 2010' states " We will scrap unfair fees for all students taking their first degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000 each. We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the charge is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income. We will immediately scrap fees for final year students” Hat tip Three Score Years and 10.

Finally the BBC reports that the new “Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has insisted that plans to charge tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year to students in England represent a "fair and progressive solution to a very difficult problem".

Nuf said?

No more broken promises Nick?

Video from the National Union of Students.  Hat tip Labourlist

Update: even more hypocrisy - check out stroppy

New CONDEM Logo as more Lib Dem Cllrs join Labour

Hat-tip thingy Steven Frear.

How things change? Liberal Democrat Poster 2005

Hat tip thingy Col. Roi

Luke on Why Lib Dem's won yesterday in Valentines Ward

At the risk of it sounding just like “sour grapes” I thought this was interesting analysis reported by Luke. "There was also a by election in Redbridge yesterday, which the Liberal Democrats won. Their literature concentrated on Redbridge Council’s foreign policy and used some pretty unpleasant pictures of Gaza.

Interestingly they broke a cardinal rule by naming an opponent, just one - the Leader of the Council, Cllr Alan Weinberg.I am also told from friends campaigning in the ward, that there were people knocking on doors, speaking of Gaza and mentioning what Conservative Cllr Weinberg and the Labour Foreign Secretary have in common - which was why their respective parties were not campaigning on the council’s foreign policy.

I wonder who should be ashamed of that deceit?" East London Tory Agent Peter Golds.

Maybe after the “respect” candidacy imploded the mysterious “canvassers” that I saw last night mentioned here were those out spreading such frankly racist filth.