The lies on the wall

   By Theo Russell


THIS GIANT poster on the Piccadilly Line platform at Earls Court underground station claims that the magnificent achievements of Paralympic athletes from around the world were only possible with the backing of 26 giant corporations.
 Ironically Atos, the global IT and health company, which is reviewing disability living allowance entitlements, is the most prominent.
 Two weeks ago a group of leading British Paralympians spoke out over the Government’s policy to scrap Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and said the benefits are vital to being able live independently.
 All the Paralympian athletes had to wear lanyards with Atos logos. Equestrian Natasha Baker, who won two gold medals at the Paralympics, said: "I have support from lottery fund but definitely, getting around would be a hell of a lot harder without DLA."
 And weightlifter Ali Jawad said: “The Government needs to sort it because a lot of people would suffer for not being eligible for mobility.”
 Further down the list is Dow Chemicals, which produced both napalm and Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War, and owner of Union Carbide, responsible for the 1984 Bhopal disaster which killed 3,787 people.
 It is a lie and an insult to Paralympians and all those who backed and trained them to claim that their achievements were only possible with support from corporations like Atos and Dow – one of which is attacking disabled people’s rights, and the other responsible for inflicting disabilities on hundreds of thousands of people to this day.

No gold without DLA

DANIELLE Brown, a gold medal winner in the Paralympics, last week said that Disability Living Allowance, which is about to be scrapped, made it possible for her to take part in the games.
 She was the first Paralympian to speak out since the games began on the importance of the benefits and other financial support received by our elite disabled athletes.
 Her comments will deliver a boost to disabled campaigners who fear the Government will use the success of Britain’s Paralympians as an excuse for cutting vital support to disabled people.
 Brown, who won an archery gold medal in the individual compound event to add to the gold she won in Beijing four years ago, is believed to be the first disabled athlete to represent England in a non-disabled Commonwealth Games team, after qualifying for Delhi in 2010 and winning a team gold.
 She receives the higher rate mobility component of DLA, and also the DLA care component, but prefers not to say at which level.
 Like many ParalympicsGB athletes, her life is focused almost entirely on her sport, but when told by Disability News Service (DNS) of the Government’s plans to replace DLA with a new personal independence payment and cut spending by 20 per cent (saving the Government £2.2 billion), she said simply: “Oh, wow”.
 She said: “From a personal perspective, without the support, I personally couldn’t manage. If it was to be cut I know I would struggle. I can see how that would make other people be affected in a similar way.”
 She added: “I have got a Motability car [which is paid for with her DLA mobility payment] which I couldn’t manage without. I would struggle if I didn’t have a car.”
 Without her DLA, and without her car, she would be forced to take public transport. “If I catch a train it is very difficult. What do I do when I get to the other end, especially if I have very heavy equipment with me?”
 Asked why other athletes had failed to speak out so far about the cuts, she said: “I genuinely think that your focus is on the competition. You focus so hard on training, competing… it is not like real life.”
 She said she and other Paralympic athletes were just not aware of what was happening with welfare reform and cuts, and other political disability issues.
 Team GB’s Paralympic heroes have launched a furious attack on the Government over the savage plans to slash vital disability payments.
 Last week George Osborne was booed as he appeared in front of an 80,000-strong crowd at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London, to present medals to triumphant Paralympians.
 Now competitors have told of their own fury at the Coalition cuts which will see benefits worth between £20 and £131.50 a week slashed next year.
Blind Team GB footballer Keryn Seal, 30, who relies on his £70-a-week allowance to get to training, told the Sunday Mirror: “I find it quite incredible that the Government can go around handing out medals when away from the Games they are taking the DLA away.
 “It’s all well and good backing disabled sports at the highest level and looking good for the cameras but what they are doing is going to affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people really badly.”

Disabled protest at Atos Games

 by New Worker correspondent

DISABLED campaigners, along with their friends, families and supporters, took to the streets this week in the Atos Games – a protest at the involvement of the private company Atos in sponsoring the Paralympic Games.

 The company is notorious for the work it does for the Department of Work and Pensions in assessing the capability to work of the disabled and long-term sick.

 The tests it uses are computer based and it has been set an agenda to slash by £18 billion the overall sickness and disability costs to the Treasury.

 The tests used pronounce people with terminal cancer and people with very severe disabilities fit to seek work or train for work.

 With high levels on unemployment the chances of these people finding work, even if they could do it, are zero. What it means in effect is removing them from higher long-term benefits on to short-term unemployment benefits at greatly reduced rates.

 And to secure even those benefits they have to go through a charade of looking for or training for work or face losing benefits altogether.

 There have been many deaths and several suicides as a result of DWP decisions based on Atos reports as the disabled despair. DWP decisions can be changed on appeal but this takes many months without benefits and legal aid to help people appeal has been cut.

 Recent editions of Dispatches and Panorama have exposed the pain to a wider audience. They documented an Atos "assessor" asking someone who had taken several overdoses why they weren't dead yet and there are stories of people being forced to walk until they collapse, before being declared "unfit for work".

 An investigation by the Daily Mirror highlighted that 1,100 employment support allowance claimants died after being placed in "work-related activity groups" – that's 32 a week.

 Protests began on Tuesday in Hull, Sheffield and Leeds over planned cuts to disability benefits. More protests are planned for the opening of the Paralympic Games.

 In addition the Government faces a court action from disabled people over its decision to scrap the Independent Living Fund (ILF).

 The case would be the latest in a series of high-profile judicial reviews of decisions by Government departments and other public bodies to slash services and spending due to the coalition’s deficit reduction plan.

 The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is planning to close the ILF, which will see funding passed to local authorities and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

 The protesters say the plans to close the ILF – a Government-funded trust which helps about 19,700 disabled people with the highest support needs – are a huge threat to disabled people’s right to independent living.

 They say the money will not be ring-fenced when it is passed to local authorities, with the Government’s consultation paper offering no details on how councils will be able to meet the extra costs of disabled people with high support needs who previously received ILF money.

 And they fear many disabled people will be forces back into residential institutions – which in the long-term are more expensive to the Treasury.

 Campaigners are also fighting the Government for their right to have a recording of their interviews with Atos assessors – something that could be a valuable tool in appealing against DWP decisions.

 The on-line campaigning group False Economy says it has spoken to people who felt that their assessments were imprecise and unfair and that final reports did not necessarily reflect the facts of their disability.

 This issue of recording work capability assessments and proof of accuracy of interpretation is essential.

 The DWP's line is that people can ask to have their WCAs recorded, but only on official recording equipment – equipment that, as it turned out, seemed often to be broken, or unavailable, on days when people requested it.

Police kettle cyclists as Olympics open

THE METROPOLITAN Police last Friday used the opening of the Olympics as an excuse to attack the regular monthly Critical Mass cycle ride around central London.

 The police have never liked this event, which has no organisers and no pre-planned route and takes place on the last Friday of each month.

 In 2005 they tried to stop them by handing out notices informing participants of the requirement under section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986 to notify the police of the route of any “public procession” – and the criminal consequences of failing to do so.

 This notification requirement doesn’t apply to processions “commonly or customarily held” and a legal case that went all the way to the House of Lords established that Critical Mass comes within this exception. 

 On Friday the police tried again, this time using section 12 of the same Act. This allows a senior police officer to impose restrictions on a public procession if he/she considers the procession might, among other things, result in “serious disruption to the life of the community”.

 Relying on this power, the Met banned Critical Mass participants from using the Olympic Route Network or going north of the Thames. 

 The police kettled one group of cyclists in Stratford, east London and used considerable force to drag cyclists from the bikes. This included one elderly disabled cyclist on a tricycle.

Bread and Circuses in London

FEW OF US have been able to afford a seat at the London Olympics and those who do and then manage to struggle through the queues face another fleecing from the corporate caterers, determined to make the most of the monopolies they’ve paid for in the grounds.

            The opening ceremony was certainly an entertaining tableau of history which made a passing nod to working people in a romp that spanned the centuries. Whether this makes the year’s sporting spectacular the “People’s Olympics” is another matter.

            The Soviet Spartakiads and the great sporting festivals of the old people’s democracies in eastern Europe were genuine People’s Olympics with sporting champions and mass games drawn from the factories, farms and offices of socialism. But those days are sadly long gone except in China and Democratic Korea.

Today we can still admire the efforts of the British teams competing against the finest athletes in the world and we can also take some comfort in watching the achievements of the sportsmen and sportswomen from People’s China and the other people’s democracies this week. China has predictably taken an early lead in the medals stakes but even Democratic Korea has bagged three gold medals so far  – a remarkable achievement for the land of Juché that demonstrates the DPR Korea’s long-standing commitment to health and sport under socialism.

            A Zionist attempt to politicise the Games, by lobbying for a minute’s silence at the opening ceremony to honour the Israeli athletes killed during a Palestinian Black September attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972, was rejected as inappropriate by the International Olympic Committee. This was also the view of Prime Minister, David Cameron and Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson.

            Cameron, who attended a commemorative event for the Israeli athletes at the Guildhall, said while it was important to remember what happened in 1972 planned memorial events were the proper way to do that. This was echoed by the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee that is fielding four athletes in the London Games. Jibril Rajoub said: "Sport is a bridge for love, unification and for spreading peace among the nations. It must not be a cause for divisiveness and for the spreading of racism.”

            That’s certainly the modern Olympic ideal that claims to inherit the tradition of the Greco-Roman Olympiads. Whether it was true then, in an age when slavery was the considered the norm and when the “games”, at least in Roman days, had a different meaning in the Colosseum, is a matter of opinion.

            How true it is today is also debatable. At least the games were free in Roman times along with the food scattered amongst the crowd to keep them happy. The Romans called it “bread and circuses” and they were sponsored by the Roman elite as a way of distracting the slaves and the poor from their woes.

 These days it’s the exact opposite. Nothing is free and the poor are virtually excluded by cost from all the live events. Seats cost an arm and a leg and the spectators pay through the nose for any food or drink available at the stadiums.

The Olympic ideal may still be true for many of the athletes and the millions who watch the events on TV in Britain and the rest of the world. But today there is little doubt that the Olympiad is seen as nothing more than a cash cow and a global trade fair by corporate business and the politicians who serve them.

London bus workers vote to strike

LONDON bus workers have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a dispute over London's bus operators' refusal to recognise the massive increase in workload for their workers during the Olympic Games.

 Members of Unite working for 21 London bus operators, including Go Ahead, Stagecoach, London United, Arriva, Metroline, First and Abelio backed strike action by an average of 94 per cent.

 Turnouts across the operators averaged 38 per cent (the same percentage turnout that saw Boris Johnson re-elected as mayor of London).

 The giant union Unite is now giving the bus companies a final opportunity to consider this landslide result in favour of strike action before the union announces possible strike dates early next week.

 Bus workers are the only London transport workers not receiving an award for their extra effort during the Olympic Games.

 A recent survey of almost 3,000 London transport passengers conducted by independent researchers for Unite, revealed hat almost nine out of ten back bus workers' call for an Olympic payment.

At least 800,000 extra passengers are predicted to use London's iconic red buses during the Olympics.

We don’t want Olympic missiles!

  

 by New Worker correspondent

 

AROUND 100 people from Lewisham and Greenwich marched from Oxleas Woods on Shooters’ Hill to Blackheath last Saturday, linking the two sites where the Government plans to site Rapier missiles to “defend” the coming Olympic Games in east London from any terrorist attack from the air.

The marchers were protesting at the siting of these missiles close to their homes and in places of recreation and leisure that are popular with the local community.

As the marchers pointed out, if any missile were fired from these sites both the missile itself and anything it hit would fall as dangerous shrapnel over the heavily populated area of south and east London.

The preparations for the games, which are meant to represent peace and friendship between nations, are beginning to resemble the preparations for a war.
The marchers’ route took them to the Peace Garden at Charlton House and the War Memorial on Blackheath.

Pre-emptive policing for the Olympics

 

by Daphne Liddle

THE METROPOLITAN Police plans to use controversial pre-emptive arrests during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to prevent any possible disruption of the events.

 Met Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison claims this will be nothing more than the policy already adopted for the Notting Hill Carnival, where known pickpockets, thieves and gangs who are likely to be intending to attend are pre-emptively arrested before the event and released without charge afterwards.

 The police claim they have foreknowledge of these people’s criminal intentions – possibly even before the “criminals” themselves have made up their minds what they intend to do.

 And certainly there is a real case for pre-emptively arresting someone like the notorious neo-Nazi Tony Lecomber who, in 1981, was arrested for plotting to explode a bomb at the Notting Hill Carnival after information was passed to the police by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.

 Plotting to carry out a terrorist attack like that is in itself a crime.

But the Met are now into the policy of arresting people who might be about to commit a crime on the basis of their opinion of that person.

 Furthermore they intend to arrest any protesters, including peaceful protesters, who might disrupt the games. Allison said the police would not arrest “law-abiding protesters” but this definition is restricted to those who have informed the police in advance and have been told exactly where they may stand – probably a very long way from anywhere they might be seen by more than a handful of people.

 Last year, just before the royal wedding, 20 people were pre-emptively arrested in four separate locations on the ground that they were suspected of being about to commit breaches of the peace.

 Their case is currently under a judicial review at the High Court. Those arrested include members of the “Charing Cross 10” who were on their way to a republican street party, the “Starbucks Zombies” who were arrested from an Oxford Street branch of Starbucks for wearing zombie outfits, and a man who was simply walking in London and was arrested because he was a “known activist”.

 All were released without charge after the event. But anyone arrested in similar circumstances during the Olympics might have to wait several weeks before the events are over.

 Hannah Eiseman-Renyard, from Occupy London, voiced concerns that plans for pre-emptive strikes might target legitimate protesters hoping to use the Olympics to highlight a cause. “The definition of protest currently seems to be synonymous with disruption and criminality,” she added.

 Police and intelligence officers are also carrying out checks on more than half a million people coming to the Olympics. This includes the competitors and their entourage as well as stewards, security guards, catering and cleaning workers and ticket-holding spectators.

 There has been a lot of focus on the teams from Syria including members of the Syrian Olympic committee with close links to the Assad government – as though it was a crime for the Syrian Olympic Committee to have links with its own elected government.

 MI5 says that, so far as it knows, no know Al Qaeda supporters have tried to become stewards or other workers at the games. This illustrates the point that real terrorists could be very hard to identify in advance but legitimate political protesters are easy to spot because they make their views publicly known – so police and intelligence services will focus on the easy targets.

 Another sinister aspect of the policy of pre-emptive arrests is that the arrest is, police acknowledge, meant to have a “chilling effect” – in other words it is used to deter people from attending legitimate political protests in future.