Showing posts tagged UK politics
mindovermatterzine: [Image: ATOS logo superimposed over Dr. Nick, the quack doctor from the Simpsons, with a speech bubble saying ‘Time for your assessment!’] The image above is our entry in the ATOS logo redesign competition. If you haven’t heard of ATOS, they are a French company which was contracted by the government to carry out assessments of disabled people to determine whether they qualify for Employment and Support Allowance (which replaces the old Disability Benefit). This is part of a general shift towards contracting out government services to private companies because it’s apparently ‘more efficient’. But it turns out that, shock! horror! ATOS hasn’t been doing such a good job at assessing whether people are fit for work. In fact they’ve done such a bad job at it that lots of people went online to compain about the way they were being treated. In a situation like this any responsible company would take the criticism seriously and attempt to open up a dialogue with disabled folks in order to address their concerns. That’s not what happened. Instead ATOS sent threatening letters to the Internet Service Providers that hosted the websites, and the ISPs shut the websites down. The websites that were shut down did not contain any illegal content. In fact they were engaging in exactly the kind of free speech and debate that is necessary for a functioning democracy. However libel lawsuits are so costly that only the rich can afford to defend a libel lawsuit in court. Ordinary people simply do not have the money to hire a lawyer to defend a libel suit, even if the suit is blatantly unfounded, and so even the threat of a lawsuit is enough to get a website shut down. However the Internet is fighting back. ATOS wants to silence legitimate criticism of them, but disabled people, activists, and bloggers are responding by turning the criticism up several notches. If you’re artistically inclined, or just like playing with Photoshop or the GIMP, why not join in the fun create your own redesigned ATOS logo? Here’s the original logo to start with. I received the assessment forms in the post this morning. So that’s made me feel better then. View high resolution

mindovermatterzine:

[Image: ATOS logo superimposed over Dr. Nick, the quack doctor from the Simpsons, with a speech bubble saying ‘Time for your assessment!’]

The image above is our entry in the ATOS logo redesign competition. If you haven’t heard of ATOS, they are a French company which was contracted by the government to carry out assessments of disabled people to determine whether they qualify for Employment and Support Allowance (which replaces the old Disability Benefit). This is part of a general shift towards contracting out government services to private companies because it’s apparently ‘more efficient’. But it turns out that, shock! horror! ATOS hasn’t been doing such a good job at assessing whether people are fit for work. In fact they’ve done such a bad job at it that lots of people went online to compain about the way they were being treated. In a situation like this any responsible company would take the criticism seriously and attempt to open up a dialogue with disabled folks in order to address their concerns. That’s not what happened. Instead ATOS sent threatening letters to the Internet Service Providers that hosted the websites, and the ISPs shut the websites down.

The websites that were shut down did not contain any illegal content. In fact they were engaging in exactly the kind of free speech and debate that is necessary for a functioning democracy. However libel lawsuits are so costly that only the rich can afford to defend a libel lawsuit in court. Ordinary people simply do not have the money to hire a lawyer to defend a libel suit, even if the suit is blatantly unfounded, and so even the threat of a lawsuit is enough to get a website shut down.

However the Internet is fighting back. ATOS wants to silence legitimate criticism of them, but disabled people, activists, and bloggers are responding by turning the criticism up several notches. If you’re artistically inclined, or just like playing with Photoshop or the GIMP, why not join in the fun create your own redesigned ATOS logo? Here’s the original logo to start with.

I received the assessment forms in the post this morning. So that’s made me feel better then.

(Reblogged from mindovermatterzine)

[Guest Post] Troubled Families: A Moral Maze, or The Seven Traits of Highly Unsuccessful People | Bad Reputation

BiMedia | Bisexual News & Opinion from BiMedia.org

BCN magazine editor Jen Yockney was among the guests at last night’s LGBT garden party hosted by David Cameron at 10 Downing Street.

One of my personal heroes, btw.

New fund announced to help disabled people into politics | eGov monitor | The Information Daily

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said that the fund represents “an important step towards levelling the playing field” with giving disabled people more of a voice in politics.

The money will be available until March 2014, and will help meet the costs that a disabled candidate might face when standing for election. The funding will help with transport, technology, and communication support

It’s not a citizenship test. I don’t know why this bothers me as much as it does, but I get so goddam irate when I hear politicians, media, everyone calling it a citizenship test and no one challenging it or correcting them.

I’m not quite sure how well my experience generalizes, so I’ll just tell you how it worked for me. As a non-EU citizen marrying a British person, I got a spouse visa. This was stressful, expensive and sucky in itself, but I won’t go into it here. The visa lasts for two years, and you’re responsible for having the next thing in place by the time it runs out.

The next thing is called Indefinite Leave to Remain. You send off an application with all kinds of bank statements, bills proving you both live in the same place (this is their idea of proving you’re still married), photos of both of us, my passport…oh yeah, and a lot of money.

Up until a month or two before I needed to pay it, the fee had been something like £350. When I did it, they’d more than doubled it to £750. This was about a month’s income for me, and a lot more disposable income than we had at the time, and it made me stressed and angry and crazy. But what can you do? They know they have a captive audience. It’s not like you can go to the other British government down the street and get a better deal.

And you have to send a pass score from the Life in the UK Test.

The word ‘straight’ isn’t homophobic. Now can we get on to the stuff that matters, please?

UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg orders Government to fly pride flag - PinkNews.co.uk

Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England

jhnbrssndn:

A 23-year old student from Sheffield Hallam University in the north of England is bound for America. That wouldn’t be unusual—except that Richard O’Dwyer won’t go voluntarily. The UK Home Secretary has today agreed to extradite O’Dwyer over US copyright infringement charges for running a “linking site” called TVShack.

Back in June 2010, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized O’Dwyer’s tvshack.net domain name after a closed, one-sided hearing before a judge. (All domains ending in .net and .com are seizable by US law enforcement, regardless of where their owners are located.) But O’Dwyer soon had the site back up at a new address, TVShack.cc, which did not require a US-based domain name registrar. He slapped a notice to the top of the new site urging users to update their bookmarks.

In November 2010, British police showed up at O’Dwyer’s home. As Julia O’Dwyer, Richard’s mother, told us last year, “They had two American guys with them, which Richard assumes were men from ICE. They questioned him about his website. It wasn’t more than an hour. The ICE men shook his hand when they left,” she said. “One of them said ‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to go to America.’”

Richard, apparently realizing that his site had become a serious matter, took it down. A couple of computers were seized, and he hoped that would be the end of the matter.

It wasn’t. He was asked to report to his local police station on May 23, 2011, where he found out what had happened: UK police had dropped their own investigation, but the US had requested O’Dwyer’s extradition.

Such remedies are uncommon among all offenses; they are doubly so when it comes to copyright and computer cases. Such extraditions were nearly unheard of until the last year, when O’Dwyer and then Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom both became extradition targets over copyright cases.

O’Dwyer’s site was a “linking site” that did not host infringing content itself, and his lawyer compared it to Google, which also links to copyrighted content. TVshack did do things like show lists of the most clicked-on links (surprise: most were copyrighted TV shows), however, and the proportion of offending links appears to be much higher than at a search engine like Google. US lawyers argued that O’Dwyer had personally promoted links to infringing content, too.

Nexus

O’Dwyer’s site did not appear to violate UK law, and O’Dwyer’s servers weren’t located in the US. This alone poses no problem to an extradition claim; courts have recognized for centuries that a person can’t simply sit in another jurisdiction and direct a harm into another jurisdiction without penalty. But the general question raised in such cases is whether the alleged miscreant had a “nexus” with the target jurisdiction; had he put himself under its rule by choosing to transact business there? Or was the contact merely incidental and accidental?

A UK judge recently found a nexus. “There are said to be direct consequences of criminal activity by Richard O’Dwyer in the USA albeit by him never leaving the north of England. Such a state of affairs does not demand a trial here if the competent UK authorities decline to act and does, in my judgment, permit one in the USA,” he ruled two months ago. (Julia O’Dwyer said that the judge lacked the “technical brains to know about the whole thing. That guy just lives and breathes extradition.”)

But the final decision to proceed would be up to the Home Secretary, Theresa May. According a BBC “breaking news” tweet this morning, May has agreed to O’Dwyer’s extradition despite a 20,000-person strong petition urging her to refuse consent.

(Reblogged from bossa)

Equal Marriage in the UK - It’s about time!

From the ‘It’s About Time’ website.

“It’s about time we had equal marriage in the UK, and we’re one step closer – but we need your help to achieve equality.

The Government have promised equal civil marriage by 2015 at the latest. They are holding a consultation on how this should be done, and you can respond and encourage them to go further – to implement fully equal marriage and civil partnerships for all couples, both religious and secular.

No matter what your politics, we need as many people as possible to respond. We need to send a big message that we want full marriage equality.

Please take part in this next step in the fight for equality. Please tell your family and your friends to get involved too – this is a huge step forward, and everybody can play their part in making history.”

Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families

girl-in-a-wheelchair:

The last time I looked at this yesterday, it had just over a thousand signers. Now it’s sitting at 12,192 at the time of writing.

This is what the Spartacus Report can do!

UK citizens! Have you signed this?

(Reblogged from prawnmael)
“

whatfreshhellisthis:
The reason we celebrate Nov. 5th with bonfire night? Where we light fireworks and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes?
IS BECAUSE GUY FAWKES LOST
HE WAS NOT A FREEDOM FIGHTER
HE WAS NOT A HERO
HE WAS NOT SOME ANARCHIST MAYTR TO LOOK UP TO
HE WAS A MURDEROUS DRUNKEN ASSHOLE WHO WANTED TO INSTATE A CATHOLIC THEOCRACY BY KILLING THE ENTIRE PARLIAMENT AND WHO DREW THE SHORT STRAW AMONGST HIS FRIENDS

Or maybe the Gunpowder Plot was one in a long string of sectarian conflicts in which more often than not Protestants held the upper hand in terms of power and bodycount. Could we at least try to have a little awareness of historical context beyond OMG EVIL CATHOLICS?
Love from Belfast,

Bronze by Gold: CALLING ALL NON-BRITS:

Ah sectarianism -  still the curse the of these Isles.I just want a fire festival, that’s all.

(Reblogged from salt-water-chardonnay)

MAEL PRIVILEGE: Trigger Warning (Child Abuse): Nadine Dorries says child sex abuse victims should "just say no"

torayot:

afterthecurtain:

droppingthefbomb:

Two weeks after the Mid Bedfordshire MP introduced a sexist private member’s bill which would teach only girls the virtue of sexual abstinence and “how to say no”, Nadine has helped to advance the myth that child sexual abuse is linked…

I just emailed her. It helped with that ‘sick to the stomach’ feeling I got when I read this and when I listened to the show segment. I feel like I should go have another shower now.

(Reblogged from prawnmael)
“

Everybody who tells me they feel betrayed by the Lib Dems talks about tuition fees.

The Tory minister for universities wrote this for the Daily Fail (istyosty link; which means it won’t add to the Fail’s hits/ad revenue/etc) today, but does it sound like Tory policy?

Crucially, most people will not have to pay a penny back until after they have graduated and are earning at least £21,000 – up from £15,000 now, meaning lower monthly repayments. A graduate on a salary of £25,000 currently repays £75 a month. In future, graduates on the same salary will repay £30 a month.

Some graduates do not undertake paid work, perhaps because of caring responsibilities, or accept low wages in return for work they find more fulfilling. They will not have to repay, and all outstanding debts will be written off after 30 years.

And, in one of the biggest changes of all, part-time students will no longer have to pay up-front fees. They will become entitled to loans on the same basis as full-time students, for the first time ever….

Some people say that it isn’t worth going to university. That is for individuals to decide. We certainly need to provide alternative career paths too. That is why we are providing 250,000 extra apprenticeships during this Parliament

I’d like to go back to university this year myself, if I can, and you know what? I’d rather do it under this system than the old one.

This is the betrayal people are screaming about. This is the kind of thing people will tell you if you ask them why they voted against their local Lib Dem councillor, who’s been in the job for 15 years and is a well-liked person who’s helping their local council not cut services (because Lib Dem-run councils aren’t; Labour-run councils are). This is why they’ll say we’re Judas, we’re whoring ourselves out, we’re making a deal with the devil, and every other metaphor on an emotive subject like sex or religion you can think of.

Because I can feel better about wanting to go to university than I have before.

I’m not saying I like this stuff because I am a Lib Dem. I’m a Lib Dem because I like this kind of stuff.

http://minnesattva.livejournal.com/719427.html
“
I’m still dreaming of a time when everyone is sick to death of Labour and Tories, but that time isn’t now. There are still some crumbs of comfort:
http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2011/05/07/reasons-not-to-be-suicidal/

Important information on your cats right to vote!