Dear Iain McNicol -Labour Leadership Vote – What a Farce

This is the letter I sent to Iain McNicol this morning as I too have received my email denying me my vote!

Dear Iain McNicol

As a previous Labour Member who didn’t renew my membership due to concerns with actions by my local Labour Party and what I perceived as a lack of opposition from the Parliamentary group, I maintained my belief in Labour’s aims and values.

Given this I willingly paid my £3.00, which I can ill afford as a disabled benefit recipient, to become an Affiliated Supporter and vote for my preferred candidate in the Leadership campaign.Upon receiving my electronic ballot paper I immediately duly voted but today I received an email informing me my vote will not be counted?

The email states “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party or you are a supporter of an organisation opposed to the Labour Party and therefore we are rejecting your application.” I refute this supposition completely, and as a lifelong Labour supporter ask you give me your “reasons” by return. Given the deadline for voting, this request is of the utmost urgency.

This is addressed to you as the promoter of the Leadership race and request you give this your urgent attention

In anticipation of a speedy response

I had to send this to Liz Kendall as my MP with the request – please forward this to Iain McNicol who has no email

Labour have stolen my Right to Vote

As anyone who reads my blog will know I’m a lifelong socialist, which so far in my life has meant being a Labour supporter; and like many others over the past decade this has become more difficult.

For me being a socialist means giving a damn about people – especially those that need support; and this was the case long before I became benefit dependent, so yesterday’s Commons voted on a Benefit Cap, was for me the last straw, to use an old adage.

I a LIVID, I feel betrayed and I want Labour to know it; my twitter friend @juxtaposed summed my feelings up beautifully with “Oh Labour” and specifically one line  “What’s the point of you if all you’ve got To offer is that Labour will be tougher?”;  this is exactly what I’ve been asking as many Labour MPs I can, generally to no avail.

In a nutshell, what this means to me is a lose of choice, who can I vote for next year – the Toxic Tories and The Ludicrous LibDems do not count for me any more than UKIP or any other Right wing Party but…if Labour are planning to carry on with the exploitive and discriminatory policies introduced by the Coalition, then I’m truly stuck without a  real option.

What I can do is continue to contact as many Labour MPs and give them real reasons why this is not good enough; if only in the hope that the honourable 22 – listed below, who voted against the Cap last night can use this to persuade more to join them.

To the NOES – THANK YOU

Abbott, Ms Diane

Campbell, Mr Ronnie

Connarty, Michael

Durkan, Mark

Edwards, Jonathan

Galloway, George

Hopkins, Kelvin

Jackson, Glenda

Llwyd, rh Mr Elfyn

MacNeil, Mr Angus Brendan

McDonnell, Dr Alasdair

McDonnell, John

Mudie, Mr George

Riordan, Mrs Linda

Ritchie, Ms Margaret

Robertson, Angus

Skinner, Mr Dennis

Watson, Mr Tom

Weir, Mr Mike

Whiteford, Dr Eilidh

Williams, Hywel

Wishart, Pete

Wood, Mike

ESA Assessments DO Have Targets?!!

At last, Kaliya Franklin,  has produced the evidence we all have been waiting for – Proof that ATOS & the DWP operate the ESA assessments against Targets!

This means People must both score the number of points required for benefit receipt and fall within the proportion of people the norms system will allow to receive the benefit. In other words it matters not how many points you might score if the target has already been met your claim will be denied!!

Read Kaliya’s post at – Benefit Scrounging Scum: and her full report here How Norms Become Targets

Dear Kate Green – Where do Disabled People fit in Labour’s ‘Tough on Welfare’?

Dear Kate Green MP

You wrote in LabourList.org on Oct 18 you’d spent a week ” at home with a bad back, unable to make it into Parliament“, you then talk at length about the ineffectivenesses of ATOS and how the Labour Party needs ” to think about whether we can we develop an assessment process that looks at people’s real lives, at what they would really need to be able to do to hold down a job, and what support they’d need to do it.”

I’d like to ask you to now consider those people who live with your ‘bad back’ every day of their lives; those of us who struggle through with a disability that causes sickening  pain, so bad we can’t sleep, move, or even think, What are Labours plans for us? We’ll never be able to hold down a job when it takes an hour to write a short, simple email because of pain, or confusion from lack of sleep. We are people who live in fear of a brown envelop, for fear it’s another ATOS appointment or another form from the DWP; where do we fit in Labour’s Welfare Policy?

It is all very well and good for you & your senior Minister Rachel Reeves to ‘think’ about Welfare Reform, and how you might make it work around supporting people into work; but in order for Labour to be a truly One Nation Party, you must recognise their are a proportion of us who will never (in my case ever again) be in employment.

I and thousands of others like me do exist and whilst we may not contribute via PAYE we have a role in Society; we are parents, grandparents, children, volunteers, bloggers  etc and are worth far more than to be ignored aside from the vicious media campaign of Scrounging Parasitical individuals who’s only aim is to bleed the Country dry.

You were incapacitated for one week, I hope this has given you a small understanding of our lives.

In anticipation of your thoughts

 

Why is the Labour Party in bed with a RIGHT-wing thinktank?

Would anybody from Labour care to explain why the Party is in bed with organisations that have decimated the provision of social security,contributed to the deaths of many thousands of ill or disabled individuals, and that intend to con many more thousands of workers out of hard-earned and desperately needed cash in the future, with their inappropriate health insurance policies?..

Read More at today’s Excellent Vox Political –  Why is the Labour Party in bed with a RIGHT-wing thinktank?.

PLEASE Share/Tweet this as widely as possible particularly if you have access to a Labour MP!!

Dear Ed Balls WorkFare doesn’t Work!

Dear Ed Balls MP

Following your announcement of Labour’s plan to tackle unemployment, I’m asking you to think!

I’m not an economist, a Politician, a journalist  & nor do I belong to any ‘thinktank’, I’m someone who has worked within and around various WorkFare schemes since the 80’s, and that I believe qualifies me an opinion.

The basic problem with most of these scheme was they were time limited Government subsidised projects with the real recipients being the Companies, who benefited from cheap labour. The ’employees’ generally only received basic pay and training for their role, little or no support once placed, and rarely anything more that enabled them to do something other than return to the Job Centre to sign on,  again, once their time is up.

I can see no difference with this and your plans other than Labour has this time adopted the Conservative ideology of Mandating attendance, thus buying into the toxic rhetoric that somehow it is the fault of the jobless people for being unemployed and not the responsibility of Government to create Jobs!

As a Labour member I am appalled that the Party has decided to perpetuate myth that unemployment is the problem of the unemployed; NO, it’s the problem of the Government and Labour would serve it’s members better by acting in opposition to the vile, immoral tactics of the Coalition, rather than merely repackaging Failing and Failed Policies.

So before you go ahead with this please ask yourself How does demonising Millions of People and depriving them of gainful employment fit into One Nation?

Yours without anticipation of a reply