Guest post: The Broken of Britain – Fighting a Good and Just Fight
Posted on Wed 23rd Feb 2011, 1:29pmThis is a guest post by Lisa J. Ellwood, a disability & mental health activist
"The moral health of a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members" – a new twist on an old saying that is itself rooted in religious antiquity. How sad it is that 3,000 years later this sentiment is still very relevant. Author and MS Philanthropist J.K. Rowling made much the same observation in her best-selling Harry Potter series with the following pearl of wisdom: "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
Recent media coverage has shone the spotlight on disabled people, and that spotlight has been less than favourable. We are castigated as 'scroungers and 'fakers' not only by journalists and their employers, but also neighbours, friends and even family. It would seem that the vast majority of the great British public knows several people who are as fit as a fiddle and audaciously raking money in hand-over-fist thanks to bogus benefits claims based on faked illnesses. There is an endless stream of rhetoric to be found when reading any newspaper, blog or listening to talk radio. Too often I find myself reading the latest venomous shots fired by the disgruntled and wonder if the face behind the pseudonym is a familiar one.
It takes much more than one voice singing in the darkness to shed light on a given concern. It is this basic understanding which brings the most unlikely of people together to work towards a common purpose. While "The Broken of Britain" campaign is in its infancy, the core group of people involved are seasoned veterans when it comes to raising awareness about their lives as disabled people in the modern world. We come from differing backgrounds, have a wide range of illness physical or mental - and we all have differing perspectives on the contentious issues concerning disabled people. The one thing that brought us together as a collective was our tacit agreement that the current coalition government is waging wholesale warfare against the most vulnerable in British society: women, children, the poor and disabled people specifically. The irony is that funds and services for disabled people includes women and children from all backgrounds (including celebrities collecting benefits for their disabled children).
We have supported the various UK anti-cuts initiatives including boycotts, protests and petitions. That support will continue. The only thing that we have ever asked is that the not yet disabled keep an open mind and lend their support to our efforts in kind. Contrary to populist belief, disabled people do as much as we possibly can to help ourselves – as much by personal choice as driven by circumstance. However, we do need the active support of able-bodied people. What we bring to the UK anti-cuts movement is no different to what we've always had to do in order to get even a modicum of much-needed help with daily living.
However, it is a double-edge sword for us – standing up for ourselves, so to speak, by participating in protests typically elicits the salvo "if you can manage that then you are fit to work" or even worse "you asked for trouble just by participating". Disingenuous statements and worse have been levelled at Jody McIntyre, the disabled activist pulled from his wheelchair during a recent student protest and dragged across a London street by no less than four Met Police Officers. We are made to hold account for our unenviable predicament by the society which victimises us. Many disabled people hold back from activism because they are afraid of taking the risk and then having it used against them. We are broadsided on a daily basis by the insensitive and uninformed, no less because of the stigma attached to being physically disabled, mentally ill or wresting with the energy-stealing demons of "invisible illness". It's bad enough for someone who struggles with physical disabilities, but for those with 'invisible' and/or mental health problems there is added trauma in processing the searing hatred coming from wilfully ignorant and wholly unrepentant able-bodied people. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the US, “justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
For those that care to, it is easy to engage with disabled people; all that is required is communication. Yes, we will have missteps along the way and on both sides. But in speaking to members of the various students groups via social media, I have reminded them that once-upon-a-time I was student, able-bodied and thinking I had my 'whole life ahead of me'. The life I lead now as someone who lives with both physical and mental illness was not one I had ever considered for myself. As little as two years ago I could not have foreseen how drastically my life has changed in the past year alone. The only good thing that keeps me holding on is the fierce determination of those whom I work alongside. It is a great privilege to fight a good and just fight with people whose entire lives have included coping with chronic illness far more admirably than I have in my situation in the past year. The powers-that-be have come first for the most vulnerable of British Society. It's easy to close hearts and minds to a situation because you believe it's nothing to do with you. But one day it just might be you they come for, you who needs to fight tooth and nail to save your home, you child or even your own sanity.
The afore-mentioned Ms. Rowling has bequeathed to us a legacy of accessible wisdom. To paraphrase The Greatest Wizard of the Age, Albus Dumbldore, Headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry: it is our choices my friends, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. These are dark times and the moment is already upon us when we must choose what is easy and what is right. We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. All who are not in the decidedly comfortable position of an assured future must work together bound by the fears which concern us all. It is imperative that we fight, fight again and keep on fighting - for only then can the underhanded be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. "We teach people how to treat us" – so the old saying goes. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike. The consequences are far worse should they be the result of simply giving up.
If you want to write a blog post for UK Uncut, you can send proposals to ukuncut@gmail.com
"The moral health of a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members" – a new twist on an old saying that is itself rooted in religious antiquity. How sad it is that 3,000 years later this sentiment is still very relevant. Author and MS Philanthropist J.K. Rowling made much the same observation in her best-selling Harry Potter series with the following pearl of wisdom: "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
Recent media coverage has shone the spotlight on disabled people, and that spotlight has been less than favourable. We are castigated as 'scroungers and 'fakers' not only by journalists and their employers, but also neighbours, friends and even family. It would seem that the vast majority of the great British public knows several people who are as fit as a fiddle and audaciously raking money in hand-over-fist thanks to bogus benefits claims based on faked illnesses. There is an endless stream of rhetoric to be found when reading any newspaper, blog or listening to talk radio. Too often I find myself reading the latest venomous shots fired by the disgruntled and wonder if the face behind the pseudonym is a familiar one.
It takes much more than one voice singing in the darkness to shed light on a given concern. It is this basic understanding which brings the most unlikely of people together to work towards a common purpose. While "The Broken of Britain" campaign is in its infancy, the core group of people involved are seasoned veterans when it comes to raising awareness about their lives as disabled people in the modern world. We come from differing backgrounds, have a wide range of illness physical or mental - and we all have differing perspectives on the contentious issues concerning disabled people. The one thing that brought us together as a collective was our tacit agreement that the current coalition government is waging wholesale warfare against the most vulnerable in British society: women, children, the poor and disabled people specifically. The irony is that funds and services for disabled people includes women and children from all backgrounds (including celebrities collecting benefits for their disabled children).
We have supported the various UK anti-cuts initiatives including boycotts, protests and petitions. That support will continue. The only thing that we have ever asked is that the not yet disabled keep an open mind and lend their support to our efforts in kind. Contrary to populist belief, disabled people do as much as we possibly can to help ourselves – as much by personal choice as driven by circumstance. However, we do need the active support of able-bodied people. What we bring to the UK anti-cuts movement is no different to what we've always had to do in order to get even a modicum of much-needed help with daily living.
However, it is a double-edge sword for us – standing up for ourselves, so to speak, by participating in protests typically elicits the salvo "if you can manage that then you are fit to work" or even worse "you asked for trouble just by participating". Disingenuous statements and worse have been levelled at Jody McIntyre, the disabled activist pulled from his wheelchair during a recent student protest and dragged across a London street by no less than four Met Police Officers. We are made to hold account for our unenviable predicament by the society which victimises us. Many disabled people hold back from activism because they are afraid of taking the risk and then having it used against them. We are broadsided on a daily basis by the insensitive and uninformed, no less because of the stigma attached to being physically disabled, mentally ill or wresting with the energy-stealing demons of "invisible illness". It's bad enough for someone who struggles with physical disabilities, but for those with 'invisible' and/or mental health problems there is added trauma in processing the searing hatred coming from wilfully ignorant and wholly unrepentant able-bodied people. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the US, “justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
For those that care to, it is easy to engage with disabled people; all that is required is communication. Yes, we will have missteps along the way and on both sides. But in speaking to members of the various students groups via social media, I have reminded them that once-upon-a-time I was student, able-bodied and thinking I had my 'whole life ahead of me'. The life I lead now as someone who lives with both physical and mental illness was not one I had ever considered for myself. As little as two years ago I could not have foreseen how drastically my life has changed in the past year alone. The only good thing that keeps me holding on is the fierce determination of those whom I work alongside. It is a great privilege to fight a good and just fight with people whose entire lives have included coping with chronic illness far more admirably than I have in my situation in the past year. The powers-that-be have come first for the most vulnerable of British Society. It's easy to close hearts and minds to a situation because you believe it's nothing to do with you. But one day it just might be you they come for, you who needs to fight tooth and nail to save your home, you child or even your own sanity.
The afore-mentioned Ms. Rowling has bequeathed to us a legacy of accessible wisdom. To paraphrase The Greatest Wizard of the Age, Albus Dumbldore, Headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry: it is our choices my friends, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. These are dark times and the moment is already upon us when we must choose what is easy and what is right. We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. All who are not in the decidedly comfortable position of an assured future must work together bound by the fears which concern us all. It is imperative that we fight, fight again and keep on fighting - for only then can the underhanded be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. "We teach people how to treat us" – so the old saying goes. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike. The consequences are far worse should they be the result of simply giving up.
If you want to write a blog post for UK Uncut, you can send proposals to ukuncut@gmail.com
Guest post: UK Uncut – crime scene investigators for British banking
Posted on Tue 22nd Feb 2011, 2:12pmThis is a guest post by Andrew Simms, a fellow of new economics foundation (nef). You can follow him on Twitter or read more of his articles on the nef website.
When bankers say it’s ‘time to move on’ from ‘banker bashing’, they sound, more than anything, like hit-and-run drivers eager to leave the scene of the crime. Unfortunately, moving-on is virtually impossible as long as everyone else has to live with the economic consequences of their recklessness, and for as long as the banks remain unreformed. When the bankers’ banker, Bob Diamond, calls an end to ‘remorse and apology,’ it carries an air of bewildered annoyance that anyone is still complaining, so used are they to getting their own way.
That much is clear, now that we’re in the season of bank profit announcements, inconveniently, just as cuts start biting countrywide. Last week, Barclays announced profits of £11.6bn and admitted that it paid only 1% corporation tax, compared to 28%, the current national rate. This week, the chief executive of RBS, which is 84% taxpayer owned, is set for a £2.4 million bonus.
And what is the government doing to tame the banks, tackle excessive profit making and the culture of disproportionate bonuses? So far they’ve made a great spectacle of Project Merlin, their new package of banking checks and balances. But these have been dismissed, even by the Daily Telegraph, as ‘meaningless twaddle.’ In reality the Coalition government is much less coalesced around how to tame the banks.
Not only are the real issues both cultural and structural, solving them has become soaked in conflicts of interest. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently revealed that City financiers provide around half of the Conservative Party’s funding. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary contortions of a government that says it will get tough on the banks, in virtually the same breath that it says it is time to stop bashing them. Also, why it has launched an Independent Commission on Banking, with a brief to come up with whatever structural reforms are necessary, and then proceeds to pre-judge its outcome by briefing that breaking-up the banks is not on the cards.
Here’s the problem. Banking – an intermediary service - became the tail that wagged the economic dog. It was meant to be a utility that serves society and all its productive activities. Yet banking became an end in itself, with a business model built on the exploitation of conflicts of interests. Our challenge, now, is to make banking both safe and useful. nef has a number of proposals to help do this. They range from changing the culture and perverse incentives for staff, to looking at how money is created and who gets the benefit, and separating risky from important but routine functions. They’re part of nef’s Great Transition campaign to take back our banks and are summarised in the report 'Where did our money go?
But ideas without action are like recipes without ingredients. For that, we all need dynamic initiatives like UK Uncut who can bring the issues alive on the streets where people live, work and shop. A dysfunctional banking system is possibly the greatest obstacle to creating a better, sustainable economy. If UK Uncut can get bank reform talked about in the same way that they triggered pub conversations all over the country about tax avoidance, there is hope. At the very least, they are helping to ensure that nobody leaves the scene of the crime until justice has been done. I believe, that UK Uncut is the Big Society in action at its very best.
When bankers say it’s ‘time to move on’ from ‘banker bashing’, they sound, more than anything, like hit-and-run drivers eager to leave the scene of the crime. Unfortunately, moving-on is virtually impossible as long as everyone else has to live with the economic consequences of their recklessness, and for as long as the banks remain unreformed. When the bankers’ banker, Bob Diamond, calls an end to ‘remorse and apology,’ it carries an air of bewildered annoyance that anyone is still complaining, so used are they to getting their own way.
That much is clear, now that we’re in the season of bank profit announcements, inconveniently, just as cuts start biting countrywide. Last week, Barclays announced profits of £11.6bn and admitted that it paid only 1% corporation tax, compared to 28%, the current national rate. This week, the chief executive of RBS, which is 84% taxpayer owned, is set for a £2.4 million bonus.
And what is the government doing to tame the banks, tackle excessive profit making and the culture of disproportionate bonuses? So far they’ve made a great spectacle of Project Merlin, their new package of banking checks and balances. But these have been dismissed, even by the Daily Telegraph, as ‘meaningless twaddle.’ In reality the Coalition government is much less coalesced around how to tame the banks.
Not only are the real issues both cultural and structural, solving them has become soaked in conflicts of interest. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently revealed that City financiers provide around half of the Conservative Party’s funding. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary contortions of a government that says it will get tough on the banks, in virtually the same breath that it says it is time to stop bashing them. Also, why it has launched an Independent Commission on Banking, with a brief to come up with whatever structural reforms are necessary, and then proceeds to pre-judge its outcome by briefing that breaking-up the banks is not on the cards.
Here’s the problem. Banking – an intermediary service - became the tail that wagged the economic dog. It was meant to be a utility that serves society and all its productive activities. Yet banking became an end in itself, with a business model built on the exploitation of conflicts of interests. Our challenge, now, is to make banking both safe and useful. nef has a number of proposals to help do this. They range from changing the culture and perverse incentives for staff, to looking at how money is created and who gets the benefit, and separating risky from important but routine functions. They’re part of nef’s Great Transition campaign to take back our banks and are summarised in the report 'Where did our money go?
But ideas without action are like recipes without ingredients. For that, we all need dynamic initiatives like UK Uncut who can bring the issues alive on the streets where people live, work and shop. A dysfunctional banking system is possibly the greatest obstacle to creating a better, sustainable economy. If UK Uncut can get bank reform talked about in the same way that they triggered pub conversations all over the country about tax avoidance, there is hope. At the very least, they are helping to ensure that nobody leaves the scene of the crime until justice has been done. I believe, that UK Uncut is the Big Society in action at its very best.
The RBS Bail-In - This Saturday, Be Audacious
Posted on Sun 20th Feb 2011, 10:21pm
Last Saturday's day of action was a storming success. Days after they announced a £3.4bn bonus pot and just hours after it was announced that Barclays paid only a 1% tax rate, the Big Society Bailed-In to branches up and down the country, transforming them into libraries, comedy venues, children’s breakfast clubs, a crèche and even a bus route. Thousands of us told the banks that we will not pay for their crisis.
Ordinary people are standing up to government and big business to say that we will not let these ideological cuts happen without a fight. We spoke to hundreds of thousands of people on high streets up and down the country and our creative, subversive actions were all over the news. Very strangely, The Daily Star on Sunday even compared us to a mystery have-a-go hero from Peterborough.
But we're not finished with the banks yet. This Friday RBS/Natwest will be announcing their profits and bonuses. After receiving £20bn of public money in 2008, RBS is now 84% owned by the taxpayer. And yet, instead of being made to pay for the crisis it caused, RBS continues to gamble recklessly with our money and continues to reward its executives with massive bonuses.
This Saturday, UK Uncut will be Bailing-In to RBS and Natwest branches across the country, reoccupying our bank branches and transforming them into one of the services under threat.
And, even more excitingly, this Saturday the Uncut movement is going global for the first time. The recently formed US Uncut will be holding their first day of action across the pond. So as we hit RBS and Natwest in towns and cities across the UK, they will be targetting the Bank of America in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and many, many more cities across the states. Just like the most heinous of corporate tax dodgers, we’re moving offshore! Check out their inspirational website and, if you know anyone in the States, urge them to go along.
This Saturday, please join us and our American friends. As you know by now, our website has everything you will need to make your Bail-In a success. Think creatively. What’s being cut in your area? What cut makes you most angry? Could you set up a classroom inside RBS to protest the cutting of the school building programme? How about occupying it in sleeping bags to protest cuts to housing benefit? Or what about holding a fitness class to protest cuts to leisure facilities?
There are already actions popping up. So start plotting. List the action on the website. Tell everyone. Get your props. Bail-In.
After performing her stand up set in Barclays this week, comedian Josie Long said the best protest was about “optimism, silliness, audacity.”
This Saturday, be audacious.
See you on the high streets.