Redhill Coalition Against Cuts

A couple of us went along to the Mencap Big Cuts event in Redhill today. It was a very informative session, attended by dozens of people from all over the South East.

We learned how the increased “personalisation” of social care – offering people a choice of care provider (often not including the choice of continuing to attend the day centre they were perfectly happy with) – is leading to the increasing isolation of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Some local authorities are tightening the support criteria for learning disabled people. East Sussex, for example, used to provide care for those with “critical” or “substantial” needs, but have recently decided to cut costs by restricting care to critical only.

In West Sussex, the vulnerable are fighting back. On April 1, 2011, West Sussex County Council (WSCC) decided that anyone with “moderate” needs would lose all their care benefits and support – 4,500 people in all. In addition the Council closed 3 vital day centres for disabled and elderly people, and made access to its remaining day centres more difficult. The Don’t Cut Us Out Campaign isn’t having any of it. They have raised £3,500 to fund a Judicial Review, two high profile protests outside County Hall, Chichester, a 20,000 strong petition to force a debate within WSCC and a strong media campaign. Professional social workers within the Group are providing free Advocacy support to appeal  WSCC’s decisions to cut their funding and social care support.

In Surrey, at present, there is “no threat to services”. But there is an innocent, but equally ominous, sounding Public Value Review underway into services for People with Learning Disabilities. So there may be more to report soon.

Watch this space.

Anyone with a disability in the Redhill area who is worried about cuts or other issues should contact The Hub – a friendly and helpful source of information on a wide range of topics.

It’s the Budget next week.

Expect to hear young George telling of all his achievements in his 2 years as Chancellor. And hasn’t he done well:

• 8.4% unemployment – the highest level since 1995
• youth unemployment over 1 million – a new record
• the number of women out of work the highest for 25 years
• 270,000 public sector jobs cut last year

So, no reason to expect a change of direction then.

To mark the day, UK Uncut are organising an Austerity Isn’t Working Queue outside Downing St at 11am on Budget Day (Wednesday 21st March) – recreating of one of the most iconic images in British political history. Please join them if you can.

More details here: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/austerity-isnt-working

You could watch this excellent (and short) video to get yourself in the mood:

Do you have a learning disability, or care for someone who does? Are you worried about cuts to services?

Mencap is holding a series of events to tell people about cuts happening in their area, and to explore ways we can fight them together. One is happening right here in Redhill, at Warwick School on Saturday 17 March.

The events will show how cuts are affecting people with a learning disability and their families. If you are worried about how the cuts could change the help, support and benefits you get, come along and:

• Join the fight against cuts!
• Find out about cuts that might affect you.
• Find out how to protect learning disability services and keep the support you need.
• Get together with other people with the same concerns.

Find out more and book your place on the Mencap website

The morning after the night before’s eviction.

It’s sad to see the Occupy St Paul’s camp reduced to this. Sad, but inevitable, I suppose. Apart from their somewhat totalitarian decision to carry out the eviction in the dead of night I understand the police were fairly well behaved this time. No riot shields and helmets across the steps of St Paul’s (although they were in the vicinity); no kettling or police horse charges.

The Occupy London School of Ideas in Islington was also evicted last night. While its case was still progressing through the courts. So, just to make sure the occupiers stayed evicted, the building was demolished at 6 o’clock this morning.

Occupy has gone from St Paul’s, but continues in other towns and cities, and will doubtless reappear elsewhere. Some of the injustices that the camp was created to draw attention to have become more mainstream – tax-payer funded bankers’ bonuses and widespread corporate tax-dodgery, to name but two. Occupy have not been the only organisation protesting about these issues, but the high-profile nature of their protest has certainly helped to get them noticed.

Several members of Redhill Coalition Against Cuts have spent time at both the St Paul’s and Finsbury Square site (Finsbury Square is still going strong, at the moment), helping with supplies, catering and other duties. We will be monitoring developments and will keep you informed of future opportunities to get involved.

The government deficit is expected to be £127 billion this year. This is almost exactly the same as the UK’s Tax Gap of £120 billion (the Tax Gap is the total missing from the government’s coffers due to tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax paid late).

It sounds like the cuts we are told are inevitable could largely be avoided by improvements at HM Revenue & Customs.

So what are the government actually doing? Staff numbers at HMRC have been cut from 97,000 in 2005 to 67,000 in 2011, with this scheduled to fall to about 50,000 by 2015.

Genius!

Find out more in Tax Research UK’s Tax Gap Factsheet.

“Bank on something better” is the slogan of the Move Your Money campaign, which we blogged about a few days ago. The campaign is encouraging people to move their bank accounts from the big name banks that caused the financial crisis 3 years ago to more responsible alternatives.

The Guardian published a good article on this campaign at the weekend, which, amongst other things, notes that the regulations surrounding credit unions have recently been eased, which should allow them to provide a more effective alternative to banks (as well as expensive payday lenders and loan sharks).

At our meeting last week, we learned of a recently launched local credit union – Surrey Save – which could provide an alternative for those tired of the profiteering of the big 5 banks.

(This is, of course, not an endorsement or any form of financial advice – just information. Please do your own research.)

Britain is being refashioned into a nation which believes that helping the needy is morally and fiscally unaffordable.

The way we talk about welfare is changing. Debate surrounding the Welfare Reform Bill has focused largely on whether or not it is moral to allow a tiny minority of families to receive £26,000 or more in state benefits – overlooking how housing benefit, which makes up most of this figure, goes straight into the pockets of private landlords.

Across Regent Street, UK Uncut activists hold a banner stating “Tax Avoidance £25bn; Welfare Cuts £4.5bn”. There are quicker, easier ways to pay down the deficit than throwing the disabled and mentally ill out of their homes and communities, and this government knows that full well. Instead, the reforms are about changing our political culture to one in which basic compassion no longer plays a part.

Read more on the New Statesman website.

The New Economics Foundation (nef), amongst others, are promoting a new campaign – Move Your Money UK – to encourage people to move their bank accounts from the big name banks that caused the financial crisis 3 years ago to more responsible alternatives.

Last October, a similar campaign in the US resulted in 650,000 people closing their bank accounts and moving their money to credit unions. Move Your Money UK is promoting credit unions (not so common in the UK), as well as ethical banks and building societies, as safer (and more socially useful) places for people to save their money.

The recent furore over RBS CEO Stephen Hester’s bonus (and his predecessor’s knighthood) risks obscuring the fact that no meaningful banking reform has taken place since the bail-outs in 2008. (Over half of the Conservative Party’s funding comes from the financial sector – maybe this could explain the lack of government action?)

In a recent speech, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, said: “Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today”.

If the goverment won’t do anything about it, maybe we can. Go on – move yer money!

A review by RCAC Chair, Nicola Dodgson

Since our first public meeting in November 2010, Redhill Coalition Against Cuts has achieved a number of things.

Through our mailing list, (which has increased significantly in size since its beginnings,) website, Facebook and Twitter, we have  raised awareness of a number of cuts-related issues, encouraged people to join actions both locally and further afield, and built up a small but solid base of people to help on our stalls and with planning our actions.

We have raised our public profile, and with that the important issue of government cuts, through the local media.

We have gone out and engaged people with the issues, such as on our stalls, at our coffee morning, and at our Bail-In of NatWest bank in Redhill.

We have written to local GPs, asking them to tell the government that they do not support NHS cuts and privatization.  We have supported actions around the public-sector pensions strikes on June 30 and November 30, helping to raise awareness of the issues, and put together public meetings around these events.

We have also supported action in Brighton, with many of us joining the roaming tour of tax-dodgers and bankers in support of our NHS, in Sheffield as some of us took part in UK Uncut action there, and in London, as many of us joined the Block the Bridge Block the Bill action on Westminster Bridge, as we helped to fill coaches from the local area to the 26 March March for the Alternative, and with our continued support for the growing Occupy movement.

It is important that we continue to bring these issues together, and raise awareness among the public of the many injustices associated with the public sector cuts that we are facing.

Locally, we stand to face increasing numbers of cuts, and going forward I believe it important to keep ourselves abreast of these, through local news, our affiliates, and networking with local workers, Union reps, and other community groups.

I also think it important that we make the next year one of local action.  We must make sure that people do not succumb to apathy and defeatism, and must continue to engage with local residents as we have, and encourage them to become involved.

It has been fantastic more recently to find increasing numbers coming to our meetings and willing to take action- we must make sure that local people know they have every right to be angry, and encourage them however we can to come and join us, and help us raise funds to continue to grow our campaign.  Our December tax dodger action rounded off the year in style.  I hope that we can keep up the momentum from this, and start 2012 as we mean to continue it, and make our campaign against cuts even bigger and stronger.