Month: May 2013

Members of the PCS union who work in Midlands offices of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are on strike again on Wednesday June 5th.

PCS members in the DWP are angry because:
*  20,000 jobs have been cut in the DWP since May 2010
*  Years of pay restraint has seen our living standards drop by 20%
*  We are all be affected by planned cuts in our terms and conditions
*  Targets, attendance management andpeople performance mean more stress
*  Their pensions have been attacked.
*  The government say they won’t talk about these issues

In HMRC Government plans to close every HMRC public enquiry office with the loss of 1200 jobs and an essential service to the public.

Support PCS by attending picket lines from 7.30 am and the public rally at lunchtime:-

Public Strike Rally

Wednesday June 5th

Save Handsworth Leisure Centre
No Cuts-No Privatisation

PUBLIC MEETING

2pm
Saturday 1st June
Handsworth Leisure Centre Dance Studio, Holly Road, Handsworth, B20 2BY

Leeds council tackles bedroom tax with semantic solution | UK news | guardian.co.uk.

Clever use of language.  Full marks to Leeds, but I wonder how long the Coalition will allow them to get away with it.  It’s too a dangerous precedent to set for any government to ignore.

More than 25,000 people applied for the ‘discretionary housing payment’ to help pay their rent this month, as the Bedroom Tax kicked in.  This compares to just 5,700 applications in the same month last year. Notices of eviction are being issued up and down the country.  Caught up in these figures were a blind widow, a disabled dad and a rape victim. It is time to put a human face on the statistical failure of the Bedroom Tax.

The Blind Widow

 

Helen Sockell, 56, (pictured above) has lived in her Kilmarnock home for 25 years.  Her husband John died in 2005 and their son Andrew died, aged just 24 in the same year.  She is blind and now lives alone, supported by a full time carer.

She has no way to find the additional £33 a fortnight that the Bedroom Tax has added to her costs and so…

Motherland,
I have been meaning to write you,
For some time now,
But my words simply cannot cascade,
Across my page like the rivers,
Falling across your mountains,
My words cannot descend from this pen,
Like the tears your women still cry,
How do I embody their strength  – in this?
How do I paint the remnants of children,
Across maps of our valleys,
In search of a heart that might just be beating,
Somewhere.  

I have been meaning to tell you,
I have fallen so in love since I left you,
I dream of your valleys,
I cradle them within me, unwilling to let go.
But the memories of my love,
Are encrypted in the painful remembrance,
Of rape and massacres,
Of mass graves and torture,
Of the tears cried by Parveena Ahangar,
As she searches for the strength to continue,
Now how do I write this to…

(satire?)

Downing Street has announced it is to launch an investigation into the latest edition of Britain’s Got Talent after numerous complaints by viewers that it quite clearly hasn’t.

The government clampdown on dishonest TV shows emerged as the Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed senior ministers were planning to get tough on anything annoying which might make people less likely to vote for them at the next election.

A spokesperson for Number 10 confirmed negotiations were already under way at cabinet level to introduce legislation aimed at curbing rainy weekends, banning rolls of sticky tape with ends that are impossible to find and laws which will to put an end to public displays of Michael Gove.

In a related development, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said in its interim report this week that formal investigations have also been launched into the scandal of the proliferation of offensive…

I am nearly speechless with this video. I’ve laughed so hard I spit beer in my keyboard. I actually LOL’d

Please enjoy this too…. Dusty pulls off another good one

“Where did YOU study science?”  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

I need new expletives… there is another video. It’s like a two ring circus… enjoy

 

 

These are god’s warriors folks… aren’t you glad?

Walmart Workers Launch First-Ever ‘Prolonged Strikes’ Today | The Nation.

Here’s the world turned upside down…and not before time.  Let’s all show some solidarity.

Walmart employees are on strike in Miami, Massachusetts and the California Bay Area this morning, kicking off what organizers promise will be the first “prolonged strikes” in the retail giant’s history. The union-backed labor group OUR Walmart says that at least a hundred workers have pledged to join the strikes, and that some workers walking off the job today will stay out at least through June 7, when Walmart holds its annual shareholder meeting near Bentonville, Arkansas.

Organizers expect retail employees in more cities to join the work stoppage, which follows the country’s first-ever coordinated Walmart store strikes last October, and a high-profile Black Friday walkout November 23. Like Black Friday’s, today’s strike is being framed by the union-backed labor…