National Day of Action on 'Welfare Reform'

Today there is a guest posting from the Green Party National Spokesperson on Disability, Alan Wheatley. Following Budget Day when this government disgracefully decided to attack disabled people in its plans to force thousands off Disability Living Allowance and into penury or Mc Jobs, which will not employ disabled people anyway, Alan's comments are very timely. Alan has also provided some photos of the action day with Alan below.

National Day of Action Against 'Welfare Reform' Actions in Kentish Town

Consultant Dorothy Leeds wrote 'Secrets of Successful Interviews: How to get the job your really want'. The book never really helped me get paid work, but has helped me work more successfully as a campaigner.

As an example, she states that there are five very powerful reasons for job applicants to ask questions at an interview.

1. Questions give you information [to help guide decision making]

2. Questions make you think — eg, why has this post become available?

3. Questions demand answers

4. Questions put you in control

5. Questions show that you care

Thus as a veteran disabled jobseeker in 2001 I directed Lib Dem DWP Spokesperson Steve Webb to ask about retention and deployment of Disability Employment Advisers by Jobcentre Plus. (I had had three DEAs in the space of as many years. My latest DEA had been recruited with a Masters degree in Computer Science and succumbed to work-related stress within just a few weeks of starting, then been off sick for about six months. His stand-in replacement already had three other jobcentres to cover.)

The response to that Parliamentary Question was that JobCentre Plus keeps no centralised record of DEA recruitment and retention, but the national figure of about 650 DEAs for the whole of the JobCentre Plus network had been pretty consistent for the past ten years. So, when you read the smears against claimants of out of paid work disability benefits as scroungers etc, consider how little the State has supported genuine jobseekers and get a better picture of how disabled people have been set up for failure and are now considered ripe for the picking in the new, state-funded 'welfare reform' slavery legislated in the Welfare Reform Act 2009.

And so part of my real work has become campaigning as an expert witness against market-led 'welfare reform'. While parasitic exploiters of the vulnerable have latched onto the recession as a major opportunity, they have also had a few cabinet ministers or ex-cabinet ministers in their pocket as 'advisers'. One of my favourite tips from Leeds' book is, "Think like a boss." So while multi-millionairess Emma Harrison and her like have ex-Cabinet ministers at their beck and call, I decided to join the Green Party after not getting sufficient reaction from the Lib Dems. Now, as Green Party of England & Wales Spokesperson on Disability and on Social Care Services, I am not so isolated as I was when a Lib Dem in 1996-1998. As previously reported on Joseph Healy's blog, Caroline Lucas MP has put in commendable resistance to the Con-Dems' economic policies and really does believe that fair is worth fighting for.

Such has been the case with Emma Harrison, owner of A4e [Action for Employment] with a personal fortune estimated at £40m. That single parent lives in a stately home in Derbyshire, funded from the public purse as A4e is a 'global leader in public service delivery reform'. Rather than having a poorly trained and selected, over-stretched Disability Employment Adviser to support her cause, she has had ex-Secretary of State for Education & Employment David Blunkett to 'advise' her for about £30K pa on top of his parliamentary salary.

The national network known as No to Welfare Abolition set its Day of Action Against Welfare Reform for Wednesday 16 June, and in LB Camden the morning events were a demo outside the offices of A4e Insight in Holmes Road Kentish Town. A4e Insight is the lobbying wing of A4e, and one demonstrator from WinVisible [Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities] pointed out that A4e is colluding with the Israeli Government's illegal occupation of Jerusalem.

The A4e Insight building in Kentish Town proclaims, "Your journey into work starts here," yet when I was sentenced under New Deal to attend an A4e centre in 2008, they did nothing to really help me. Adding insult to injury, I later discovered that they would have got a 'successful outcome' milestone payment of about £2K for the CV that I had created with professional help elsewhere before going to A4e. What a waste of taxpayers money!

We then moved on to demonstrate outside Kentish Town Jobcentre, and single parents present spoke very movingly about having been forced into badly paid work that they were over-qualified for, and how employers regarded single parents as more of a burden than an asset. So the jobs that they were pressured into taking on were short-lived, adding to greater frustration.

Later, as the Day of Action Against Welfare Reform activities moved on to Hackney, I moved on to an Enabling Haringey event called 'Out and About in Haringey'. That forum event helped outline just how ill-prepared transport infrastructures are for getting people with impaired mobility and other disabilities into the 'work-a-day' world. It also emphasised the urgency of greater bargaining power for disabled people who are all too frequently portrayed as parasites.

So I commend you to sign up to the petition Against DWP reforms for the genuinely sick and disabled.

http://www.petitiononline.com/12buckle/

Alan Wheatley


Green Party of England & Wales Spokesperson on Disability and on Social Care Services