400,000 made destitute by new JSA sanctions regime
“Quite how someone left with no money is meant to clean, maintain or buy clothes for interviews, or pay for travel for interviews or pay for internet access to look for jobs …seems to be an unanswered question.” Birmingham Against the Cuts questions how sanctions are supposed to help people find work.
Bedroom tax - unfair, unworkable and counterproductive
“The only way this course is changed is through resistance – from councils and housing associations refusing evictions and supporting court actions to individuals and communities supporting each other and resisting eviction.” Birmingham Against the Cuts describe their campaign for a no eviction policy.
A selection of especially stupid sanctions
The number and length of benefit sanctions has risen hugely under the coalition. Two and a quarter million JSA claimants have had their money stopped, and since October 2012 sanctions are for a minimum of four weeks and a maximum of three years. ESA claimants can have 70% of their benefits stopped indefinitely. Imagine being without any […]
Cutbacks in healthcare – how they affect Birmingham and the whole of the UK
Since forming in the aftermath of the 2010 General Election, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government have presided over massive cuts in many departments. Welfare, education, health – it seems that nothing has been spared from the chop, all in the name of austerity and trying to bring the deficit down. Healthcare and benefits are two […]