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Showing posts with label Mike Craig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Craig. Show all posts
Mike Craig ☭ At the beginning of this month I received a 'work capability assessment' form to fill in, even though I had reached state pension age.

I have returned this form and attached the following letter:

Medical’ Support Services, Belfast April 2022

One of the most stressful things that sick and disabled people in the UK can experience is the arrival of the so called ‘work capability assessment’ form. This ‘assessment and the whole process of which it is a core element has caused me no small amount of suffering over the past few years, on top of that caused by my long-term illness.

Anyone who hasn’t been through this process would wonder what all the fuss is about - surely if a claimant is ill or disabled the assessment will determine how their capability for work will be affected by this and they will be given financial support, but anyone who has experienced this process will know that this isn’t the case. In fact no effort or cost will be spared in order to deny financial support to claimants, and this assessment is part of that goal.
 
Of course, I don’t expect you to take my word for this, so I include some evidence.

Before the introduction of the new assessment regime, implemented as part of ‘Welfare Reform Bill’ introduced by the Tories back in 2010, claimants underwent a medical assessment carried out by local medical staff who had expertise in the illness or disability being presented by the claimant. This was not infallible but at least it was based on an honest attempt to determine how the claimant’s disability affected their ability to make a living through work.

In the last year (2010 to 2011) of the old medical assessment in the UK, 300 claimants died within 6 weeks of being denied benefit because they were found to be capable for work. In the first 11 months of the new assessment (2011 -2012) a staggering 11,600 claimants died within 6 weeks of being denied benefit after being found capable for work. 

This information was obtained as part of an FOI request by disability campaigners. Subsequent requests have been denied on the grounds that this was ‘a vexatious request’. So we can only estimate the death toll caused by this process. Campaigners have claimed that the number of deaths could now have reached 160,000.

The ‘work capability assessment’ is completely bogus and is based on pseudoscience. The premise of this process is that all claimants are liars and are work-shy, so we need a system which will catch them out.

While the Tories were in opposition from 1997 until 2010 they weren’t idle. Their welfare guru Iain Duncan Smith met with insurance policy designers in the USA and commissioned them to design a ‘welfare’ system for the UK which would weed out the slackers. This new system would be similar to one used by the US insurance giant Unum.

Unum received negative attention in 2002 when California regulators fined Unum and alleged that the company inappropriately denied long-term disability insurance claims.

The company was involved with the UK's controversial Welfare Reform Bill and was investigated by the BBC in England at that time.
 
The descriptors used in the assessments carried out by Unum, which were then used in the UK’s work capability assessment, were found by US courts to be based on pseudoscience and deception.

There have been many cases where claimants have been sent this assessment form while they have been on their deathbed in hospital. In my case, I received the form on the day before my 66th birthday, i.e. when I was about to become a pensioner. And as we all know, pensioners are no longer entitled to working age benefits. Neither do they have to submit to work capability tests in order to receive their state pension.

I could have returned this form to you and told you where to stick it, but instead I decided to use this as an opportunity to enlighten you as to the consequences of this process.

Michael Craig.


⏩ Mike Craig was born in Belfast to atheist parents in the 1950s. Now living near Moneymore, Co. Derry, he is a member of Left Horizons, the UK Labour Party, and Unite The Union, and is an advocate of Universal Basic Income. He is a retired electronics technician, has 11 Grandchildren and 4 Great Grandchildren.

Death By Welfare Reform

Mike Craig answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

MC: We'll Take A Cup Of Kindness Yet, John Throne.

TPQ: Best book you have ever read?

MC: Germinal; Emile Zola.

TPQ: First book to really own you?

MC: The Condition Of The Working Class In England; Friedrich Engels.

TPQ: A must read before you die?

MC: The Day We Won The Class War; It hasn't been written yet.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

MC: Fact, Being dyslexic, I find reading to be hard work, so reality first.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

MC: Orwell and Mary Kenny.




A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.


TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

MC: Pinocchio.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

MC: Carlo Collodi.

TPQ: Any book you point blank refuse to read?

MC: Harry Potter.

TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?

MC: David Starkey.

TPQ: Pick a book to give to somebody so that they would more fully understand you.

MC: I'm not sure that there is one. Das Capital perhaps.

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

MC: The Donegal Woman; John Throne.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

MC: Germany Calling; Mary Kenny.


⏩Mike Craig was born in Belfast to atheist parents in the 1950s. Now living near Moneymore, Co. Derry, he is a member of Left Horizons, the UK Labour Party, and Unite The Union, and is an advocate of Universal Basic Income. He is a retired electronics technician, has 11 Grandchildren and 4 Great Grandchildren.

Booker's Dozen @ Mike Craig

Mike Craig surveys the perfidy that helped undo the Corbyn leadership of the British Labour Party.

Everyone, except notably the mainstream Media, has been commenting profusely on the recently leaked report on The Labour Party's internal investigation, entitled The work of The Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019.

Several Left-wing writers and bloggers have dissected the report and catalogued offending snippets of social media communications in order to show that there was an organised and concerted campaign to undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Party. These highlighted excerpts do indeed prove that this was the case.

It appears that the report was commissioned by the current General Secretary, Jenny Formby, with the aim of pinning the blame for the failure to investigate antisemitism on her predecessor Iain McNicol, together with leading members of the Witch-finder General's office, AKA The Governance and Legal Unit.

The person(s) who leaked the report and those writers who have investigated it, listing the names of the culprits involved in this activity and the evidence against them, have done the Public a service.

Of course this is not how Corbyn's successor Keir Starmer sees it. No, for Starmer, the most pressing issue is to hunt down the whistle-blower. Starmer has form in criminalising those who act in the public interest. He was instrumental in the fast-tracking of the extradition of Julian Assange and in pressurising the Swedish authorities to take this route.

Starmer was part of the so-called 'Chicken coup' in 2016, and was among those MPs who resigned. He was not an innocent bystander while all of this underhand activity was going on, and as it has turned out recently, he had a lot to gain from it.

There is evidence in the leaked report that investigations into alleged incidents of antisemitism were deliberately archived rather than being dealt with. The aim being to show that the Corbyn Leadership didn't take the issue seriously, and that therefore Corbyn himself must be antisemitic. Although this tactic did have some effect, it didn't undermine the support for Corbyn among party members and the general public to the extent that the conspirators had hoped for. They needed another weapon to supplement this one, and that appeared when the General election was called in 2017.

The report shows that this clique worked against their own party during the election campaign. They would rather have had the Tories remain in power so long as this meant the end of the Corbyn leadership. This was a step too far!

This was no longer a battle between the Right and the Left in the Labour Party. The chicken coup from the previous year had now developed into a real coup d’etat.

The dictionary definition of a coup d’etat is 'the forcible removal of an existing government from power through violent means'.

Well let's look at that definition.

Was the Labour Party the government in power? No, but there is no doubt that the 2,700 votes by which it fell short in the general election were only a fraction of what it lost due to the negative campaign tactics of the conspirators. The LP would be in power today if there had been no conspiracy!

Was violence used in order to keep the said government from power? It is my understanding that If you know that your actions will cause loss of life, then you are deliberately committing an act of violence.

We don't need to look at the leaked report for evidence of this violence. Since 2010, 200,000 people have died due to cuts in public services, and a further 150,000 have died due to the welfare reform bill. The Corbyn manifesto contained plans to end the causes of these deaths. Those MPs, officials and staff of the Labour party involved in securing their own Party's defeat knew this to be the case. They are guilty of malice aforethought in the execution of their crime.

The plotters had a close shave in the 2017, and they needed to ensure that the results were more definitive the next time. Enter Sir Keir, leading the elephant of Brexit into the room just in time to save the day. Finally Corbyn threw the towel in after the 2019 election, an election, it must be remembered, would not have taken place if the previous one hadn't been sabotaged!

Of course no one could have predicted the current crisis, but I think it goes without saying that if the Corbyn government had been in power for the last two years, Britain would not now have the second highest death toll in the World from covid19.

Not a bloodless Coup by any stretch of the imagination!

⏩Mike Craig is a member of Left Horizons.

Not So Bloodless Coup

Mike Craig on why the NHS should not have to rely on charity.

You have to admire the monumental efforts of this old soldier, and the generosity of the thousands of people who sponsored him, but the NHS is neither about giving or receiving charity.


Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community - Aneurin Bevan

The billionaires and millionaires are watching Mr. Moore and his supporters and laughing all the way to the off-shore banks with the money they've been creaming off our public services. This theft has left the NHS in such a state that people like Mr. Moore feel that they have to give donations in order to save it in this time of crisis.

The well intentioned people who put their efforts into raising funds for public services are inadvertently undermining them. The NHS is a public service, not a charitable one, and it is paid for through taxation and national insurance contributions. We have already paid for it!

By donating to the NHS we let the government off the hook. We are sending a message to the government and their friends the speculators that it's alright to continue to steal our taxes through PFIs and outsourcing. We're telling them to carry on regardless because when the funds have been siphoned off, we'll happily pay again to make up the shortfall.

Thanks Mr. Moore and thanks to all those who supported your initiative, but really folks, you'd do the NHS a lot more good by directing your efforts into a campaign to stop its deliberate destruction by a bunch of parasites.

It [the NHS] will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it. - Aneurin Bevan

⏩Mike Craig is a member of Left Horizons.

Army Veteran Aged 99 Raises £20 Million For NHS By Walking 200 Laps Of His Garden

Mike Craig on the need to protect workers from the virus of capitalism. 

I'm fairly sure, based on my interactions with many members of the Labour Party and others who consider themselves to be progressive, that few have looked at The Labour Theory Of Value. I believe that if they had, they would not have illusions that capitalism can be reformed. Considering this, I will attempt to apply part of this theory in the simplest of terms, in order to make my point.

The Labour Theory Of Value holds that no commodity has any value except for the amount of labour (socially useful work) instilled within it.

It may be a good idea to go and look it up (even Wiki has enough info to give you the gist).

All you have to do in the meantime, is to observe what has been happening around the World during the last few weeks.

As more and more people have had to down tools and stay away from work, in order to isolate themselves from the contagion of Covid-19, the economies of the World have been grinding down to a fraction of what they were. No labour = no commodities and no services!

Banks do not produce any value, since they do not do any socially useful work. If most of the population was wiped out by C-19 or anything else, the survivors would need shelter, food, clothing and medical treatment. These would be their only concerns, and money would be of absolutely no use to them. Banks therefore, would be the last organisations that survivors would be thinking about.

When you really think about what we need to survive in such a situation, it soon becomes obvious that money is useless.

Keeping this in mind, while taking a step backwards, and looking then at what we consider to be a normal society, it becomes much easier to see that money is only a means of measuring value, for the purpose of exchanging commodities, and is not in itself worth anything.

In a capitalist society money is used by those who do not contribute any socially useful labour, to extract value from those who do.

When a company borrows money (capital) from a bank in order to produce a commodity, the money which the bank hands over comes from interest paid to that bank from previous loans to other companies. The workers in the new company use their labour power to produce the commodity which is then sold, and part of the takings from these sales is paid to the bank in order to pay back the loan plus interest. We can see from this that the owner(s) of the new company have not been out of pocket, as it is the value produced by the workers which pays back the bank for the capital which was borrowed to start the company in the first place. It can also be seen that the bank has taken part of the value in interest even though the bank did not add any value in the process.

The money which the bank lent to the new company came from the interest it charged other companies who in turn, also extracted their value from the labour of their workers.

As we see from this, currently and historically, all of the capital which the banks hold and all of the profits (surplus value) that the shareholders obtain has been created by the socially useful labour of the workers. The situation has become a bit more complicated, especially in the last 4 decades since 'finance capitalism' has taken over the World's economies. This type of capitalism is based on debt. In this system, profits are made based on the value which will be created by workers in the future, though mortgages etc. and money itself has become a commodity, the accumulation of which has created the vast inequalities which have become visible to most people in recent times.

At the end of the day someone has to create the value behind this fictitious money - it does not just magically appear, and that someone will be the future generations of workers.

Today it has been revealed that several banks in the UK continued to pay dividends to their shareholders, despite being asked to pause this and divert this capital towards the fight against Covid-19. This shows the parasitic nature of banking.

Because of its very nature, Capitalism can not be made into a just and fair system. It is a system based on deception and exploitation. Profit is unearned income creamed off the top of the value created when our labour power is converted into a commodity and exchanged for money. Giving us a wee bit more of a share of the value that we create, as was done during the Keynesian years, still doesn't remove the profit motive and the clamour for endless growth. Neither does it change the deception that is inherent in the process.

When this pandemic is over and capitalism and its governments are crying poverty, despite having off-shored Trillions of Dollars into tax havens, they will try to impose austerity on the World's workers. They will do this by reducing our services and living standards, and they will also impose controls over our freedom of movement in order to prevent us from organising resistance to these measures.

We have already paid for anything that the governments have given us during this crisis. We have already paid for the health services, and the inadequate welfare and emergency wages, the 'mortgage holidays', etc. Why should we pay again?

If after seeing how the System, and the governments which prop it up, has explicitly put profits before lives, people remain unconvinced of the need to replace it, I believe we will be doomed.

⏩Mike Craig is a member of Left Horizons.

Why Workers Shouldn't Pay For The Economic Crisis Resulting From The Covid-19 Pandemic

Mike Craig on the need for a Universal Basic Income.

Thirty years ago a workmate gave me a book on the theory of Universal Basic Income.

I wasn't convinced right away by what I read.

Then a few weeks later I managed to find another book on the subject together with a book written in the 70s titled To Him Who Hath, authored by (wait for it) ... Frank Field, together with Molly Meacher (then wife of the late Michael) and Chris Pond.


After going over the arguments presented in these books I became increasingly convinced that UBI was a good idea if it could be used in the correct way.

As you would expect, the arguments against introducing a universal basic income came from the Thatcherites (Neoliberals) – 'giving away other people's money', and 'it would create a disincentive to work', etc.

The Left was actually silent on the issue, most hadn't even heard of it, but when the idea started to catch on, mostly due to the internet in the late 1990s, and organisations were formed promoting it, then the Left also acquainted itself with the theory and subsequently poured scorn on it.

Socialists argued that UBI would replace the social wage. That public services would be phased out and workers would have to pay for healthcare, etc. out of their basic income. They also argued that UBI would help capitalism to exploit workers even more as it would undermine trade union solidarity and collective bargaining.

During the last 20 years, since the Left first made these arguments, UBI has not been introduced, but all of the other prophetic warnings about our public services have become a reality. Today, instead of having a universal basic income, we have the most draconian form of means tested (non-universal) welfare system called 'universal credit'.

The version of universal income that I have been arguing for over the past 3 decades is one that could be used as the basis for a transitional programme, from capitalism to socialism, and would accompany the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, beginning with the re-nationalisation of health and care services.

It's not often one gets to say 'I told you so', but after all of these years, we not only have prospective Labour leaders calling for this on the back of the Covid19 crisis, but we have Marxists echoing this call.

⏭ Mike Craig lives near Moneymore, Co. Derry. He is a retired electronics technician, a social campaigner, and since 2016, a Labour Party activist. Born to atheist parents in the 1950s, he has 11 grandchildren and 3 Great Grandchildren.

Universal Basic Income

Mike Craig responds to Barry Gilheany on the issue of anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party.

I shall begin this reply with a few words which will hopefully prevent my comments from being taken out of context.

I am an atheist who happens to have been born in the north eastern part of the island of Ireland. That my ancestry is both Irish and Scottish is nothing more than a matter of fact, and is of little consequence to the reality of my life. My allegiance is to the Working Class peoples on this Planet, rather than to the piece of land I found myself inhabiting by accident of birth. My current political home is within the UK Labour Party as this is the most effective organisation of my class which exists within these islands at the present time.

As an atheist, I have no bias against followers of any particular religion. My antagonism to religious sects and their organisations is impartial and universal, I am not however antagonistic towards those of my class who follow these faiths. I have many friends who identify with these faiths or with their history.

Barry Gilheany, in his article, has not introduced any new arguments in support of the claim that the L.P. has more of a problem with anti-Semitism than that found in wider society.

I would agree that some on his list of advocates for the Palestinian cause have been on the wrong side of other political disputes, although some of his claims are comprised of quotes taken out of context, especially in the case of Chomsky. It is true that Chris Williamson, and many others have made serious misjudgements on the situation in Syria, nevertheless none of the cited situations have much in common with that in Israel /Palestine.

Where I differ with many others who support the Palestinians is on the question of the continued existence of the State of Israel. I take the same view on this as I do on the question of Northern Ireland. Neither of these political entities should ever have come into existence, but since they do exist, and have done for many decades, they can't simply be swept away.

When I hear the chants of 'from the river to the sea', I despair! Generations of people have now lived in Israel since their families set up home there when no other country would take them. Are they to be driven out and made to start all over again? No one here In Ireland is suggesting that this should happen to the progeny of those planted here by the English a few centuries ago.

I do understand the fears of the citizens of Israel, but this is where my sympathy ends.

To have a society built on the interests of one religious sect /race/ethnicity/ culture to the exclusion of others is indefensible. The argument that unless you only live with 'your own kind' you can't live in safety and security simply doesn't hold water. If I and many like me, took the view that we could only live with our own kind (atheists and socialists) we would soon make a lot of enemies. There are many multicultural, multi-ethnic societies around the World which exist without having resorted to apartheid policies. The evidence speaks for itself.

Of course, if you want to guarantee your security it is a good idea not to take over someone else's land and then persecute them. Making enemies never makes for a peaceful life!

Zionism is not an exclusively Jewish standpoint. There are plenty of Christian Zionists. The USA for example, has millions of them, so equating Zionism exclusively with Jews is disingenuous to say the least. It is quite a convenient tool though, when you're trying to create a certain narrative. A narrative which it is hoped, will make the indefensible more acceptable – 'Manufacturing consent', to quote one of the enemies of elitism.

Denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the form of a nation state would not be seen as a priori anti-Semitic if those doing the denying were consistent across the board and opposed, on principle, all nationalist movements ….

I suppose for many it would depend on the circumstances of said nationalist movements. I am not a supporter of nationalism because in most cases it is elitist. A state for the Jewish people is elitist in the same way as a state for the Catholic People or a state for the Protestant People, or one for Muslim People etc., and we all know how well those worked out. Remember Franco's Spain, Craig's Ulster, de Valera's Eire, Khomeini's Iran, etc.

The question of self-determination is not necessarily nationalist at all, and can be one of defence from an imperialist power which seeks to undermine the human and civil rights of the natives.

Is Barry Gilheany seriously suggesting that Israel is under threat from an imperialist power?

In fact, the situation in Israel the exact opposite. The Palestinians are the natives whose human and civil rights are being violated, their infrastructure bombed and bulldozed back to the stone age.

My view, for what it's worth, that the optimum solution for this troubled state, is that Israel would become a secular socialist entity in which people of all faiths and ethnicities live together in peace for the common good.

I also find it interesting that there is no mention in the article that many of those high profile people expelled or suspended from Labour during the investigation into anti-Semitism in the Party have been Jews.

Again, this is part of the programme. Dispense with all dissent by discrediting the opposition and if that opposition is Jewish, portray them as 'self-haters' or 'the wrong type of Jew'. We need look no further than this article to see this tactic, which dismisses Jewish Voice For Labour as being a small but vociferous, anti-Zionist group as being of the Far Left, therefore of no significance.

Within the Labour Party this issue is not just one of anti-Semitism, it is also one of class interests. The majority of the members of the Party are workers, whose only asset is their labour power, while many in the tiny minority which holds all of the political power are owners of 'the means of production'. The role of this group is to prevent the majority from getting ideas above its station and actually creating a socialist society. The attack on Corbyn in this article is an attack on Corbynism, a movement of hundreds of thousands of people who want a better society and a better World. As a labour member who is part of the struggle to democratise the Party, I believe that the voice of the mass membership should take precedence over that of the MPs and their small ruling clique, most of whom do not work in the interests of working people.

I do not believe that those outside the Party (including those affiliated through sectarian interest groups), who do not support the interests of the majority of the membership, should be able to exert influence in my Party.

The main reason, (conveniently omitted from this article) why anti-Zionists and others do not accept the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is not because they disagree with it's words. Certainly the supplementary additions are problematic, but most agree with the gist of actual 35 word definition. No, the reason is that Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust, so why have the other victims been excluded? Why do we need a specific anti-racism definition exclusive to one group?

To recognise the suffering of others does not do an injustice to your own suffering!

⏭ Mike Craig lives near Moneymore, Co. Derry. He is a retired electronics technician, a social campaigner, and since 2016, a  Labour Party activist. Born to atheist parents in the 1950s, he has 11 grandchildren and 3 Great Grandchildren.

Zionism Is Not An Exclusively Jewish Standpoint

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