Poverty And Priviledge

A FABULOUS article I found in The Independent  Thursday, 5 May 2011 By Peter Dunn

Poverty and privilege: A scene of recession Britain

Britain has become a nation of ghettoes of the long-term unemployed – mocked and punished by three decades of incompetent and heartless government. Mrs Thatcher's blitz on the country's industrial heartlands; a strategy to wring the necks of noisy trade unions, created these barrios of suffering. Tony Blair's landslide victory in 1997 had the legions on the dole dancing in the streets, but their dreams were betrayed. Instead, New Labour institutionalised and buried the "dustbin" people who had sent nearly half the cabinet to London to give their children a future. David Cameron identified and condemned the Broken Society and promised to fix it. "Jam and Jerusalem on hallucinogens" was one description of his campaigning fever in the slums of Glasgow. But once Gordon Brown had sulked out of Downing Street nothing changed. Even now, as another polling day looms, the suits of Westminster have left whole communities of the damned to rot in the spring sunshine. Welcome to apartheid Britain and the death of pity in the Mother Hubbard of All Parliaments.

From the Rhondda to Hartlepool, Blackpool to Inverclyde, Wolverhampton to Hull, Glasgow and Caerphilly – the scrap heaps of political mediocrity – five million men and women remain on the dole. Of these, 2.6m – massaged from the official figures – are permanently on incapacity benefits – "on the sick". Half of those would be working in a stronger economy. New research by Professor Steve Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University has revealed a state of hopeless atrophy across the country's 100 weakest economies. These Blightlands of third-world, third-generation unemployment embrace a third of the UK population. Even the tabloids' cherished bogeymen, "immigrants coming over here and stealing our jobs" have shunned the derelict mining villages and dockyard bombsites of the politicians' industrial clearance sales.

"Worklessness on this scale," Fothergill says, "is a colossal waste of talent and a waste of productive potential." The cost of these wasted lives – £16bn a year – is staggering. It dwarfs the £10bn real estate tag for the Olympic site in London.

Secure inside the Westminster village, a community gated now behind ramparts of bombers' blast walls – few politicians seem willing to confront the pandemic disease of working class poverty. Another academic, Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Sheffield University, has an intriguing theory about this. Britain has become, in all but name, a one-party state. Labour and Tory have become politically and socially indistinguishable. Red Tory, Blue Labour (the latest wheeze of party stylists) add a touch of farce to the pretence of difference. Dorling's 2010 book, Injustice: Why Social Inequality Exists, shows the emergence of a new homogenous political tribe which has lost the nerve to debate. Why bother when all parties now court the swing votes of a single "squeezed middle class". To ingratiate himself with this group Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has announced his aversion to "irresponsible strikes" – meaning all strikes – ignoring the cries of "rubbish" from union leaders organising protest marches against public service cuts. Miliband, like David Cameron, has also sought the blessing of Rupert Murdoch. He has visited Wapping to fawn at the feet of News International boss Rebekah Brooks and told his backbench warriors to shut up about the mogul's £8bn bid for BSkyB. Poverty takes a back seat in the gruesome ritual of courtship to win the old man's approving nod.

The problems of sink estates, the inner-city tower blocks of Prozac-drugged children have been euphemised with the help of a new kind of visionary whose importance now exceeds even that of the politician's spin doctor thugs. Part-social philosopher, part-medicine man, their task has been to re-define poverty in a way that flatters the charitable sensitivity of politicians while subtly blaming the unemployed for not understanding how their communities could be improved. Cameron's crowd thought of it first. They discovered Phillip Blond, a Bunteresque theology academic and political conference fringe groupie from the University of Cumbria. Blond is a moral crusader who worries a lot about "the moral status of the foetus".

More importantly, for Cameron's people, he believes the welfare state, not capitalism, damaged the cohesive, self-help nature of working-class communities. The implication lurking in the jargon thicket seems to be that it's the workers' own fault if they haven't got jobs. They should have realised that redemption is "all about working class mutuality creating actual capital, building social capital". It all sounds a bit like a Disney medieval theme park, but even Tories who don't get it have queued to buy Blond's book on "Red Toryism". Not to be outdone, Ed Miliband's team tracked down a soothsayer of their own. They found him in Maurice Glasman, a north London poly lecturer. Glasman had helped Ed's older brother, David, write one of his speeches for the leadership election. Miliband senior had said that life was "about more than money and benefits" and had urged the party to "return to the values that used to be engraved upon the Labour heart". Leaving aside the bit about foetuses, Glasman's vision of a re-branded "Blue Labour" echoes the exotically-retro flavour of Blond's self-help Red Toryism. Any anxieties that Glasman's life-style – he lives above a shop in Hackney and rolls his own fags – might be thought a tad low-rent with the target audience of "squeezed middle classes" was soon resolved.

According to the New Statesman, Miliband junior's office rang him and said: "Would you like to be a lord?"

No-one seemed to see anything ironic in the Glasman/Miliband view about there being more to life than money. When David lost the leadership to Ed he consoled himself by supplementing his £67,000 salary as MP for South Shields with a £50,000-a-year contract with Sunderland Football Club. South Shields is one of the poorest town's in Britain. Some of its households haven't seen a wage packet for 20 years.

Not surprisingly, Professor Dorling's book hasn't attracted many fans among Blue Labour's well-heeled leadership. An Old Labour man himself he believes all the major parties – including Labour – share responsibility for bringing the country almost to its knees. Western countries like Britain, he says, have seen nothing like it since 1854, when Charles Dickens was writing Hard Times. He sees it as little short of a betrayal of Beveridge's post-war crusade against the social evils of the Thirties – ignorance, want, idleness, squalor and disease. Now a new credo, rooted in social apartheid that starts in schools, struts by the nation's slumdog neighbourhoods – elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair.

Yet pity was always one of the fundamental virtues of British life. It travelled easily, crossing class borders without a passport, informing every level of the nation's cultural life. In 1966 Jeremy Sandford's BBC film Cathy Come Home created an uproar about the homeless and made the charity Shelter into a major player which no politician dared ignore. In 1982 Alan Bleasdale's Boys From the Black Stuff reduced my generation of TV critics to tears of rage. Fleet Street's newspapers set the political agenda, keeping poverty high on news lists. Television's finest documentary makers stood on windy council estates, daring Parliament to flinch from its duty to the country's underclass.

Generations on and the decline of the old media, swept to the kerb by the new technology of the internet superhighway, has been a major factor undermining the accountability of the metropolitan political class. Old Fleet Street shed expensive reporters and joined the all-night party of vacuous celebrity, its newsroom survivors reduced to rifling Google for the latest tweet from Stephen Fry. In the worst recession since the Thirties, the repo men dump furniture on the lawns of countless provincial homes, unheeded by the newspapers in London.

In television, a new breed of programme controller clutters the schedules with lifestyle shows, house make-over shows, more shows featuring bad-tempered cooks, gloating "documentaries" shove cameras with eye-wincing intimacy into people's bodily deformities. Two of the most critically-acclaimed comedy shows, Paul Abbott's Shameless on Channel 4 and The Royle Family on BBC jeer at the poor with stereotypical portrayals of life on the dole as a joke. The latter focuses on an anally-obsessed brood of farting couch potatoes. The soap's admiring resume on Wikipedia herald's the family patriarch Jim, played by Ricky Tomlinson as "the man who made 'my arse' a national catchphrase". Was it a coincidence that David Cameron has dismissed unemployment as "a culture that pays people to sit on their sofa rather than go to work"?

The trouble with poverty is that it never sits comfortably on a sofa. A few weeks ago, on Question Time, the union leader Mark Serwotka described how 13 job vacancies in South Wales had attracted 1,000 applicants – vindication of a recent survey which showed that nine out of 10 people on the dole would actually prefer to be in work. Professor Fothergill's report, the culmination of a decade tracking the lives of people "on the sick" across the nation, has homed in on Merthyr Tydfil, where nearly a third of the population of working age is on the dole. Fothergill estimates that the little valley community needs 3,000 new jobs; across the wider valley community, the Rhondda and Cynon, the imperative is for 35,000. The scale of the task, replicated abroad in the US Rust Belt, almost defies solutions. Even Professor Dorling is stumped. When I asked him what governments should do to rebuild the UK employment market, he said something vague about looking after the aged properly; then he startled me by adding: "Also there's got to be depopulation of the Welsh Valleys."

"Sign-On" Valley is deeply symbolic to those who cherish the earliest days of socialism. It was the cradle and is now the graveyard of the Labour Party and its dreams of an alliance between intellectuals and working men's unions. Its birth was blessed there on a windy slope in February 1900 by its first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardy, the pacifist son of an unmarried Scottish farm servant. He called it "a poor little child of danger, nurseling of the storm". It's why I went there for The Independent in 1993, to ask Hardy's descendants what they thought about Labour's new plans to put on a suit and reach out to the voters of suburban England. Tony Blair was John Smith's shadow home secretary at the time, a pioneer – along with Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown – of the scheme to create the "Savile Row Tendency".

Back in London I phoned Blair. I told him his valley supporters dreaded being dumped in the name of gentrification.

"Can we do this off the record?" he said. I got the sense that he couldn't wait to see the back of all those sooty, cloth-capped coal-shovellers.

Seven years later I had another taste of his steely resolve to keep Labour up-market. I was living in the North-East at the time. New Labour's adventures with the Dome had attracted widespread derision and Blair was panicking about not being elected for a second term. I wrote a long article for the New Statesman suggesting the party could rescue its fortunes by teaming up with Durham University to build a world-class IT city on its new under-developed campus site at Stockton by the Tees. Critically, given the region's chronic unemployment, it would reach out to young people on economically-ravaged estates like those in Peter Mandelson's seat, Hartlepool. I called it the Big Idea. At a stroke the PM could establish New Labour as a modern, yet caring party, anxious to retrieve a generation of children abandoned after the industrial car-crash of the Thatcher years. Blair rejected the plan; discussion with ministers was forbidden (none replied to my letters asking for support) and the party's MP in Stockton South, Dari Taylor, was told by Downing Street to back off. It was a spine-chilling demonstration of Blair's white-knuckle grip on the reins of government – and a portent of the kind of society he intended to build to secure his legacy. Blair wanted to put a grin on the face of the bankers and pour cheap money over the grateful voters of suburban England. The ragamuffins on the sink estates could wait.

Three years ago, now living in Dorset and still fuming, I threw the Big Idea into the back of my old Land Rover and took it to meet my MP, Oliver Letwin. The Tories has just started to build up an impressive head of steam denouncing the Broken Society; Iain Duncan Smith's genuine concerns about poverty were attracting attention – suggesting a government-in-waiting that wanted to get its head under the bonnet and fix things.

Letwin, a One Nation Tory in the Macmillan mould, did more than pick up the Big Idea and stroke it; he sat in my kitchen two years ago and constructed a dazzling vision. If the North-East project worked, he said, why stop there? Universities were all power stations of knowledge, energy, inspiration. They, too, could have their IT cities. The notion of creating a national grid of learning and job creation was breath-taking. And it made sense, Letwin said, to do this outside London because provincial land was cheaper.

Alas, post-election – to borrow the poet Yeats – "I, being poor, have only my dreams." It now seems as though regional Britain will have to whistle for its grid of superhighway cash cows. Earlier this year David Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne heralded the birth of "Britain's rival to Silicon Valley". Tech City, embraced by Google and Facebook, is to be built in London's East End in the sumptuous property environment of the Olympic Village. Cameron has relatives who work for Google; Osborne is a friend of Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt. An anonymous reviewer of the project on the internet – by a man who already runs a small IT company in the area's ironically-named Silicon Roundabout – has likened its influential founders to "a spreading family tree of mediaeval royalty". There doesn't seem to be much emphasis on the kind of broad social benefit envisaged in Oliver Letwin's provincial grid of academic powerhouses Cameron – anxious to encourage new ideas from abroad – signalled during the launch that Tech City will have a special place in its heart for foreign inventors.

A new category of travel document – Entrepreneur Visas – will guarantee a smooth passage through immigration control. Of course, any investment has to be a good thing. Sitting it in one of the richest cities on the planet will hardly resonate in the distant provinces of Broken Britain. Tech City confirms the haughty indifference of a political class which so often betrays the dreams of voters who send it to Parliament with a mandate to deliver. It scares people; makes them angry about their own sense of powerlessness. Nothing demonstrates this more than the email I received from New Labour MP Dari Taylor before she lost her marginal seat in Stockton South seat to her Tory opponent.

"I worked hard for your project with Tony Blair, but found no support," she said. "I was on my own and you have to accept that you either have the power or you don't. Sadly I did not."

Housing benefit cuts could increase homelessness

Crisis has produced a national survey supporting its fear that many of the 88,000 people affected by the Government's planned cut in housing benefit could become homeless if this goes ahead.

The Government is pushing through changes to extend the Shared Accommodation Rate (SAR) to 25-34 year-olds, which will see an average cut in housing benefit of £47 per week. This is because their benefits will only cover the cost of a room in a shared house, instead of a self-contained flat.

Between 7 and 13 April Crisis surveyed housing advisers across Britain about the impact of the current SAR on their work and clients, and their thoughts about the consequences of extending this rate to single people aged 25 to 34.

Summary of findings

• 87% said there would be difficulty finding appropriate properties for people on the revised rate
• 74% said there would be difficulty housing clients for whom sharing is not appropriate 
• 74% said that the current SAR is a serious barrier to their work with under 25s, or that they do not work with this age group because of it
• 4% said they have no clients who will be affected by the change
• 62% felt there would be a higher risk of tenancies breaking down

Crisis would like the Government to rethink its plans, making the point that 25-34 year olds already make up 34% of its clients.

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Last Night....

Random stuff from Jules....

Well I intended to get to bed about three times last night.

But I ended up watching "an Audience with Kenneth Williams" AND cleaning the PC off.

Some of those programs you load and forget about sit there, and SOME ask for info of whats going on slowing down the machine. (not a technical explanation by a long shot but you get the drift)

I cleaned of reserve "spare" "alternative" browsers I had on. Part of those: I had Safari as at one point I wanted a sort of Mac Emulation thing as a "feel good, feel different" type thing. That had a subroutine called apple support, so that, even when not being used was checking web for stuff and nonsence from apple.So that was removed.

The other one I found slowed the machine down - even though it wasnt being used was Google Earth. Wow, when I removed that (rarely used it) the PC was like Daffy Duck on Turkish Coffee.

So my tip is (and I really shouldve known this for years) Dont load ANYTHING onto the machine unless Absolutely needed. And if you dont need it anymore - get rid.

I ended up going to bed at about 3.30am Which in the scheme of things theres nothing wrong with, but it is a disturbed sleep pattern in some respects.
That happens with me from time to time.
Whether its frenetic subconcious brain activity that i'm unaware of, or not, I dont know.
Some people can say, right it's10o'clock, I'm off to bed and DELIBERATELY choose to sleep.
It appears I cant do that, there seems to be a switch missing.

Now I am on the coffee, and the tablets are all taken.

My primary aim is EGGS. I need eggs from the shop.That is my next Mission.

Longshot Kick The Bucket

The Pioneers - Longshot Kick De Bucket by jahprout
I thought I'd share a great tune . If you see the label. Sheesh It was released when I was TWO years old.Wooh.But I love the skanky ska type stuff. ENJOY

Stay Calm?

Just a thought: 


When you choose to forgive those who have hurt you, 


you take away their power. 


When you object peacefully in many numbers, 


the weight of opinion tends to win. 


When you speak the true feelings you have against injustice, 


there is no way you can lose in the whole scheme of things. 


When you are kind to others, 


there is no blame within you. 


There is power in peace. 


But peace can involve loud noises, 
in right places, 
for right reasons 
to be heard against the tumult of the bizarre and horrendous drumming noises of insanity.


Take the position where its not you winning, but EVERYONE winning, even those you oppose








This Blog has a Facebook Group here:
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Help NOW towards an Action on the 9th May.

GUEST BLOG by  benefitclaimantsfightback


At the first party and protest outside Atos Origin’s UK headquarters on January 24th over a hundred disability and claimant activists and groups held a noisy and passionate demonstration.

On April 14th, as part of the Third National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, Atos Origin’s offices were picketed around the UK.

As part of the National Week of Action Against Atos Origin, beginning on Monday 9th May, a second Party and Picnic against Atos will take place on the 9th May from 2pm at their Head Office in Triton square, near Euston.

Bring music, drums, banners, placards, food to share and brighten up the faceless corporate wasteland that is home to poverty pimps Atos Origin Ltd.

Musicians, poets, orators, ranters, shouters, all benefit claimants and supporters welcome. Please help spread the word, invite your friends and let’s make this the biggest stand against poverty pimps Atos Origin so far.

Triton Square is on the North side of Euston Road, a minute or so from Warren Street tube and less than five minutes from Euston/Euston Square or Great Portland Street tube stations.

HERES THE VIRTUAL GHERKIN's BIT - 

What we can do to help: 

In the run up to the event, if Virtual Gherkin people can be tweeting, writing to the media, posting on forums, etc emailing friends with the details and then hopefully we can get the word out there better than we have before. The Virtual side is JUST as important as the actual going to the event.


Join our Facebook Group here http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_116578655088997

Wednesday Morning

It started with an alarm call I didnt need.

So - i Got up, salvaged a coffee and took my tablets. By salvaged I mean reheated unused coffee from yesterday. Not that i'm tight or anything but there was enough left in a pot that would make an adequate morning slug of the black stuff with restorative powers.

I do Have a new pack of Coffee, but being morning, I thought.... well that thought stays as simple as - Knife, Opening new coffee, pouring into container and a possible fail. Mornings need a wake-up time frame.

I took my tablets and some painkillers and checked the PC . So Anyhow discovers some emails i'd missed. Did what I could.

Yesterday went through my mind. From limited funds I lent a mate enough for his very short term need, a slight lack of funds for him till thursday- hopefully that will return to me tomorrow else I'm buggered really.

Also planned do a little shop for some essentials - including a new bag of dog food as last was poured into said dog's bowl . The Fella was patient for his walk, as he is MOSTLY, and things went according to a reasonable plan.

There was lots of Grass cutting noise about too. Although essential , the noise of it and number of times it happens is like being "worried" by bees - an annoying background sound in anyone's book.
But There Is lots of grass about that gets cut in common areas and stuff- its a "garden Estate".

And that essentially was the start of my morning.

How Monday Morning Started This Week.

I am Up - Kettles gone clunk. So excuse me whilst I fill the cafetierre. G'mornin BTW.
Tesco shuts Sunday Night here. So what fikkin time it open? Is it open yet? I need some co-dydramol as soon as poss. Grrr
Bills Today
TV Licence payments are a frikkin joke at around 14 pound a month ((justsaying))
And Water Rates CHARGING you for collecting the water from the roof when it rains? Ludicrous
Welcome to the fortnightly bill payments by arrangements day for jules.
Have Internet/Phone to pay, Service charges, Water , Telly, Electric, Food, Will leave me with less than 20 a week for all else. 
Might treat myselfto a visit to "The Charity shop" see if theres a 4 quid treat or something. At moment i also paying out for painkillers.
So what would happen if I needed , Say a couple of plates etc? Or A new hoover? No chance.
Its same all the time. Just get minimalistic stuff and hiberfuckingnate. Cant afford not to. People dont realise how shite it is.
That rant was brought to you by "Jules's active mind" and "Aricaba Coffee"

1. 110 quid in a couple of hours just *gone* <---------hates bills , leaves me skint
   

Virtual Gherkin 11th May- Supporting UKDPC

VIRTUAL RESISTANCE /The VIRTUAL GHERKIN

On Wednesday May 11th thousands of disabled people, their families and supporters from all over the country will come together to protest with one voice outside the Houses of Parliament and make their feelings known about the impact of spending cuts on disabled people 

This will also be ON LINE Protest too.

The day of protest, organised by UKDPC and major disability organisations, will send a strong and powerful message to the Government.

They’re marching to make sure that the Government hears disabled people’s voices. Cuts to vital benefits and services will have a massive impact on disabled people’s independence and could push people into poverty – the Government must act now to make sure that disabled people are not the Hardest Hit.

How do I take part on May 11th - IF i'm too ill, i'm too far away, I cant afford to go, I have responsibilities, I have care for someone etc?

They’re expecting thousands of disabled people to descend on London and join in on the day, THE VIRTUAL GHERKIN is co-ordinating a mass email campaign for those for what ever reason cant make the marches. 

So show your support for disabled people across the UK.

Join The Virtual Gherkin on Facebook here: 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_116578655088997

The Virtual Gherkin on Facebook

Do You know we have a Facebook group too now?

Its called "The Virtual Gherkin on Facebook"

May the 11th - Does the Group wanna support Claimants Fightback? 


I can use their stuff, with permission and we can then START a recruit to group?


Your comments are welcomed... 


Patti - also would John Ingamells make a good admin do you think? -
 EVERYONE. 
I need your input. 
Thanks.


http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_116578655088997

Email Campaign Against Benefit Cuts. VirtualResistance....

VirtualResistance 

(formerly Armchairarmy)

April 14 Email Campaign Against Benefit Cuts.

April 14th is the National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts. 

There will be many different events taking place across the country. 

But for those who can’t attend those events but would really like to express their fears and ABSOLUTE disgust at the cuts to 

housing, disability, sickness & welfare benefits, 

Why not join us once again in a mass email campaign.

Whether you are 

disabled, 

ill, 

a carer, 

unemployed, 

a single parent,

 low-waged, 

a volunteer,

 a student, 

or simply... someone who cares about the vulnerable in our society,

take this opportunity to join us and voice your opinions. Let the media and your MP

know that we won’t just let them railroad through their cuts and penalise the most

vulnerable. 

Join us in a mass email event on April 14.

EMAIL CONTACTS: 
(You need to copy and past these links into your email client / browser)


TV PROGRAMMES


1 BBC mike.sergeant@bbc.co.uk


2 Have your say bbc.co.uk/haveyoursay


3 ITV Tonight mailto: tonight@itv.com


4 Channel 4 News news@channel4.com


5 Five studio@five.tv


6 Sky news@sky.com & newsonline@bskyb.com


7 Newsnight newsnight@bbc.co.uk


8 Politics Show politicsshow@bbc.co.uk


9 Andrew Marr show http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/andrew_marr_show/
8379560.stm (Leave comment)


10 form for This week with Andrew Neal http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/
this_week/contact_us/default.stm


NEWSPAPERS:


11 The Independent News:newseditor@independent.co.uk
letters@independent.co.uk


Letters:


12 The Guardian
News: home@guardian.co.uk
Letters: letters@guardian.co.uk


13 The Morning Star
News: lettersed@peoples-press.com


14 The Evening Standard
Letters: letters@standard.co.uk


15 The New Statesman
editorial@newstatesman.co.uk


16 The Telegraph
Letters: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk


17 The Mirror
Letters: mailbox@mirror.co.uk


18 The Times
News: editor@the-times.co.uk
Letters: letters@the-times.co.uk


19 The Sun
News: editor@the-sun.co.uk
Letters: talkback@the-sun.co.uk


20 The Daily Mail
News: editorial@dailymailonline.co.uk
Letters: letters@dailymail.co.uk


21 The Observer
editor letters@observer.co.uk


If you want to contact your MP and why not? Here’s a useful link to find your MP’s
email address: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts: "Just a quickie today. Thursday, April 14th sees the 3rd National Day of Protest Against Benefits Cuts. Details below. I will be 'blogging ..."

Love Levenshulme, Hate Cuts

We are an anti-cuts group based in Levenshulme, Manchester. Our group arose when Levenshulme Baths was under threat of closure. 


We launched a community campaign to save Levenshulme baths. 

The community mobilised itself, attending demos, swim-ins and other events. 


The Council reversed its decision to close the
baths! We can be contacted on lovelevyhatecuts@gmail.com

We are now working on other campaigns; both initiating them and supporting other campaigners. Here are a few important campaigns


Save Levenshulme Sure Start.


The current position is that Manchester Council is proposing various options for Sure Start Centres have the grant which funds them and Sure Start has been cut by £8 million. One option is to tender out services to other organisations form the voluntary or private sector. 


The Council states they will not close any centres.


Key Dates: On Wednesday 13th April, 4 pm, the Council Leader, 
Sir Richard Leece is visiting Levenshulme Sure Start Centre, Broom Avenue, to answer questions from users. It is vital that as many people as possible show their support – not just users
but others in the wider community.


ALL ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND.


On Thursday 14th April a coach is leaving Portland Street at 7 am with Sure Start campaigners from across the city. They will go to Downing Street to hand-over petitions and lobby the government. The lobby has been organised by Tony Lloyd MP. Beck said there are a few places if anyone is interest in going


Becky asked that a small working group be set up to plan further. This was agreed and supported.


Becky organised leaflet distribution with LLHC for the 13th meeting.


If you want to support this campaign please text 078211 62270 or Facebook Save Levenshulme Sure Start or drop us an email at lovelevyhate.cuts@gmail.com and we’ll pass on your details.


Save Newbury House.


This is an embryonic campaign started by residents of Newbury House. Chris is a resident at Newbury house, a 16 place supported residence for residents who had faced alcohol problems and homelessness. It is a unique service in the city.


In March their provider, Riverside, was told there was a proposal to cut this service.


Residents are very worried. They were told they would have a statutory right to be rehoused, but they need this vital service and accommodation. Supporting People had been to take photographs of residents’ rooms and residents had held a meeting and then refused to allow photographers into their rooms.


LLHC are supporting this campaign. For more info you can email direct to the group savenewburyhouse@gmail.com.


Love Lollipops Day of Action


LLHC are organising a celebration of school crossing patrols as their roles are increasingly under threat due to government cuts. This event will take place in the summer term. If you want to get involved email us at lovelevyhatecuts@gmail.com


Local Election Hustings for Levenshulme and Gorton South


Inspire, Stockport Road, April 28th at 7 pm.


LLHC has organised a hustings, with guest Chair Rev. David Grey. Candidates from Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, Conservative and Respect (George Galloway) have confirmed.


ALL WELCOME to attend or email in questions at our email address.

_____________________

This Blog is another Guest posting due to the Virtual Gherkin having   incredible disbelief at the Speed, and nature of the Cuts from the CSR and beyond.