Gangs are preying on vulnerable people sleeping rough in UK cities and forcing them to work for nothing Rough sleepers are being turned into “modern-day slaves” by criminal gangs operating across the country, according to one of the UK’s leading charities helping people living on the streets. Thames Reach says it is aware of reports that gangs are targeting homeless people in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Southampton, Dover, Leicester and Luton. The revelation comes after a raid on a travellers’ site in Bedfordshire by police last weekend that led to the arrest of four men and a woman on suspicion of slavery offences. Police said the alleged “slaves” were mostly English, but some were of eastern European origin. Detectives said they were all vulnerable and were either homeless people or alcoholics who had been recruited by “gangmasters” offering money. But according to Thames Reach this was not an isolated incident. The charity said it has been contacted by 22 central and eastern European rough sleepers who had run away from gangs this year. It said some were fearful for their lives. “We have been coming across some extremely disturbing reports from homeless people who have been ‘enslaved’ by criminal gangs across the UK,” said Mike Nicholas, a spokesman for the charity. “Increasing numbers of rough sleepers, many from central and eastern Europe, have told us how they have been held against their will, beaten and forced to work without wages before escaping and ending up on the streets of London.” Earlier this year Thames Reach staff found a group of six rough sleepers linked to a slavery ring operating out of London’s King’s Cross that sparked a police investigation. The charity said the men had come from the Czech Republic and were being exploited by a Czech family based in Birmingham. One of the men, “Michal”, told the charity he had been lured to the UK on false promises of paid work. He claimed that before flying he was drugged with what he now suspects was a sedative, which the gang claimed was a painkiller to help with his bad back. He was then driven to a house in Birmingham where he lived alongside nine other victims of the four-strong gang who were taken each day by minibus to work at a bakery in Luton. Michal told Thames Reach staff that he worked as a “slave” and all his money was taken from him by the gang who beat him regularly. He claims he was given poor food such as bread and butter once a day and that the gang stole his ID and opened a credit card in his name. Another man from the Czech Republic, Wojtek, told Thames Reach he was living on the streets of London, relying on handouts, when he was approached at a soup run near Victoria with the offer of a job and accommodation. He was given a coach ticket to Leicester where he claims a gang stole his ID and bank and credit card accounts. He was told that if he tried to escape he would be caught and beaten. The claims shine new light on the influx of eastern European immigrants to the UK. While the number of rough sleepers from the UK is falling in London, the number of people from central and eastern Europe has steadily risen. Thames Reach has helped over 1,000 central and eastern European people return home since early 2009. It says another 1,000 were counted on the streets last year. It says some of those who returned were victims of violent assaults by gang leaders. “We need to alert homeless services and the people using them to the threat,” Nicholas said. “The embassies and police also need to take the issue more seriously, ensuring the victims get assistance and that this recently exposed menace is tackled. Life as a rough sleeper can be extremely dangerous but the sheer criminality and brutal nature of these gangs has taken the threat of living on the streets to a new level.” Slavery Homelessness Immigration and asylum Communities Housing European Union Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Lawyers say government moves to stop ‘spurious’ personal injury claims will lead to cases increasing Government plans to end Britain’s burgeoning litigation culture will achieve the opposite result, according to legal experts who warn that the measures will trigger an increase in the number of individuals pursuing “spurious” personal injury claims. The embarrassing claim threatens to undermine the government’s case for overhauling Britain’s legal aid system, which ministers say is long overdue and is necessary to save the taxpayer some £400m a year. The justice secretary, Ken Clarke, has said the measures are necessary because the “civil justice system has got out of kilter”, resulting in “spiralling legal costs, slow court processes [and] unnecessary litigation”. However, the Consumer Justice Alliance, an umbrella body comprised of charities, law firms and insurers, warned that key proposals to transform the personal injury claims system, outlined in the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill, will backfire. Under the current system, legal costs are borne by the losing party. The system works because a claimant takes out “after the event” (ATE) insurance that pays the defendant’s costs if the claim fails. But under the new scheme, known as “qualified one-way cost shifting”, the defendants will bear their own legal costs whatever the outcome. In addition, under the new system the claimant does not have to obtain a lawyer to make a claim, nor do they need to obtain ATE insurance. The alliance warns that this combination will result in a “chancer’s charter”. It argues that defendants will find themselves under pressure to settle small personal injury cases – often disparagingly referred to as “slips and trips” in the legal profession – based on economic realities rather than merit. The alliance quotes a typical example of a local authority who could take the view that it is better to pay out £2,000 in compensation to settle a spurious case where someone has slipped on a wet floor, rather than pay £10,000 in legal costs which they will face whether they win or lose. Robert Khan, head of Law Reform at the Law Society, warned that once introduced “many defendants including public authorities will be worse off”. The society has launched a campaign, Sound Off For Justice, against the reforms. Khan warned that the reforms to the way that personal injury claims are funded will result in many becoming uneconomic for solicitors to take on. “This will lead to a major increase in accident victims representing themselves without the benefit of legal advice,” he said. The alliance argues that the current system works well by ensuring lawyers and insurers will take on only cases that have a reasonable chance of success, a system that “filters out” the majority of claims. But it claims the new system removes this filter. “The government is seeking to tackle a compensation culture,” said Nigel Muers-Raby, the alliance’s chairman. “Astonishingly, their remedy – qualified one-way cost shifting – to this non-existent problem will almost certainly result in a significant increase in bogus claims that it will be financially sensible for defendants to settle even if they are not at fault. This is a chancer’s charter.” A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice defended the reforms saying that the current system encouraged “excessive, costly and unnecessary litigation”. She said that the government acknowledged that as a result of reforming no-win no-fee agreements, it was necessary to protect personal injury claimants from having to pay the other side’s costs if they lost, otherwise genuine claims would not be brought. Instead claimants will have to make a minimum payment to initiate their claim in a bid to block spurious claims being brought. The government has yet to set a level for the payment. Concerns about the impact of the government’s legal aid reforms are threatening to cause divisions within the coalition. A number of Lib Dem MPs are known to have reservations which are expected to be aired when the party holds its conference this week. Alistair Webster QC, chair of the Liberal Democrat Lawyers’ Association, has described the bill as “dire”. Consumer rights Consumer affairs Legal aid Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Supporters pour in as police numbers swell ahead of tomorrow’s day of reckoning, when authorities will try to evict some 50 caravans from the Basildon site Under a banner reading “no ethnic cleansing”, the entrance to the Dale Farm Travellers’ site was a hive of activity yesterday. Supporters arrived by car, bicycle and on foot, and those residents who work in other parts of the country returned to be with their families and prepare for the bailiffs tomorrow. A police presence was also building up in the area ahead of the eviction targeting some 50 caravans and small chalets at the site near Basildon, Essex. Many of the Travellers were in tears as women huddled together in caravans, anxious at the impending action by Basildon council, which comes after years of legal wrangling over the travellers’ right to stay on what has become the most disputed piece of privately owned land in Britain. Ann Livingstone, 70, from Norwich, was one of those who arrived on Saturday at what has been named “Camp Constant”, the protest camp where around 100 to 150 people have come to give their support to the gypsies. “I came to represent reasonable people who feel this country has come to such a silly point where £18m of taxpayers’ money can be spent in pushing people out of their homes on land they own. Where do they go now? On to someone else’s land?” she said. Livingstone said she intends to stay until tomorrow to show solidarity with other protesters, and is prepared to be arrested. The travellers have been giving up their beds to the supporters, who are of mixed age and background. Mamie Slattery, 57, said they appreciated the support. She was moving her valuables out of her static home into a small caravan. “I
Continue reading …Road safety officers have found that most seats are wrongly installed, including many put in by the shops that sell them Two-thirds of child car passengers are being put at risk of injury or death because of poorly fitted seats, the Observer has learned. At least 66% of car seats for babies and young children are wrongly fitted, according to figures supplied by local authority road safety officers around the country. Many were poorly fitted by parents, but a separate investigation by consumer group Which? found that almost half those installed by retailers’ own fitting services were also done incorrectly. Problems included seatbelts routed wrongly and harnesses that were too high or too loose. In Portsmouth, of 141 seats tested over the summer, only 41 (29%) passed the safety check. Thirty-four (24%) failed on a major point: of these, six were the incorrect stage of seat for the child; five were too old to be used; and seven were condemned by the council’s road safety officers. Data from Wirral council showed a similar number of problems, with 37 out of 47 seats (79%) not fitted properly. Of these, road safety officers were able to adjust 33, but four were not suitable for the child who was using them. In Oxfordshire, problems were found in 77% of cases, with badly routed seatbelts accounting for 29% of mistakes. An Observer campaign is being launched to highlight the problem of badly fitted car seats and to encourage retailers and parents to ensure they are using seats properly. Research given exclusively to the Observer by Which? shows that even parents who have made use of a retailers’ fitting service may be transporting their children in unsafe seats. Testers from Which? who shopped incognito at 43 stores around the country – including branches of John Lewis, Mothercare, Babies R Us and seven independent retailers – found mistakes made in almost half the cases. The retailers all offer fitting to parents who buy child car seats in their stores or on their websites, and most claim to have trained staff doing the job. However, Which? said that in 49% of the stores it visited assistants failed to install seats correctly. A similar number recommended seats that were incompatible with the tester’s car. Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, said: “Major retailers made serious and potentially dangerous mistakes when advising parents on child car seats. This just isn’t good enough.A child’s safety will depend on having the right seat correctly fitted, and parents expect to be able to rely on the advice they’re offered in-store. Retailers have got to raise their game and train their staff properly.” Although some of the faults are minor and may not lead to additional injuries, some are bad enough to prevent the car seat offering the protection it should. Statistics do not exist to show how badly fitted seats contribute to accidents – police are not required to collect this data – but research suggests that putting a child in a badly fitted car seat could have dangerous consequences. “Seats that are incorrectly fitted can lead to worse outcomes in an accident,” says Duncan Vernon, road safety manager for England at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.” Travel safety advice Children Retail industry Hilary Osborne guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …” Michele Bachmann went on national TV this week to tell the world that the HPV vaccine could render women “retarded.”‘ (h/t Boing Boing )
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Definitions are important to the context of this segment of John Boehner’s economy speech Thursday, so here they are: Job Creators = Corporate interests. If you were to take the member list for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, top Republican donors, and oil interests in this country, that would more or less be who John Boehner’s “job creators” are. “On Strike” = holding their breath (and assets) until they turn blue and get their way. It is antithetical to assume any relationship between worker strikes and the kind of strike Boehner is referring to in his speech. Workers strike because they are at a disadvantage against corporate interests and can only withhold labor as a way to expand their rights and their voice. The Boehner brand of “strike” is where already-powerful actors choose to withhold assets and investment in the economy in order to gain even more power than they already have, at the expense of workers and the health of the country. It’s an unpatriotic, ugly sort of strike. Now that the nomenclature is defined, I think it’s safe to say that John Boehner just admitted that corporate interests, in collusion with the Republican party, are intentionally sabotaging the United States economy in order to gain even more political power and strip everyone else of theirs. For some context, here’s a snippet from the transcript : “They’ve been undercut by a government that favors crony capitalism and businesses deemed ‘too big to fail,’ over the small banks and small businesses that make our economy go. “They’ve been antagonized by a government that favors bureaucrats over market-based solutions. “They’ve been demoralized by a government that causes despair when we need it to provide reassurance and inspire confidence. “My worry is that even after all of this, much of the talk in Washington right now is basically about more of the same. More initiatives that seem to have more to do with the next election than the next generation. . .initiatives that seem to be more about micromanaging economic decisions than liberating them. “I think the American people are worried about this too. “I can tell you the American people — private-sector job creators in particular — are rattled by what they’ve seen out of this town over the last few years. “My worry is that for American job creators, all the uncertainty is turning to fear that this toxic environment for job creation is a permanent state. “Job creators in America are essentially on strike. Isn’t it bizarre to have Boehner equate “the American people” with “private-sector job creators”? The job creators are the people who spend money on products and services offered by those private-sector businesses. If the people have no money, they won’t be spending any. This is Economics 101. It’s incredibly cynical, but not surprising, for John Boehner to endorse the concept of a strike provided that the outcome is even more power consolidated in the hands of a few. Perhaps he should have simply said “Oligarchy!” and walked off stage. It would have been more honest.
Continue reading …Twenty years ago an album that wreaked havoc on the conventional music industry was released. Lauren Spencer, who was among the first to hear Nevermind, reminisces with the surviving band members, and returns to Seattle to hear how Kurt Cobain changed music for ever Twenty years ago on a hot, smelly mess of an August day, the kind New York City does so well, I
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Fox’s Megyn Kelly brought on the Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer and the ACLU’s Mark Sawyer to discuss the crowds at the recent GOP debates where people there were cheering for the number of executions Gov. Rick Perry carried out in the state of Texas , and for Ron Paul’s position that somehow churches and charitable organizations could manage to take care of someone who is sick and doesn’t have insurance, with a few in the crowd being so crass as to yell “Let him die” when asked Wolf Blitzer’s hypothetical on who pays when someone finds themselves in that situation. Naturally, Kremer said she was very offended by the cheering for allowing an uninsured person to just be allowed to die and said this about those that yelled out at the debate: KREMER: Well Megyn, first of all I’d say that the people that yelled that out were not “tea party” activists. They were hecklers. You know, we do not, the “tea party” movement does not focus on the social issues whatsoever. And when you’re talking about, you know, capital punishment and then the question that Wolf Blitzer asked, you’re talking about two different aspects there. And we just don’t go there. Focusing on these issues is not going to turn the economy around. It’s not going to pay down our debt and deficit, put people back to work, and that’s not what we’re focused on. I have in the last couple of days tried to find out who yelled that out, because I want to know. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the people from the audience. And I can tell you when it happened we all turned around to look and identify who it was, because we were appalled at that behavior. It was absolutely unacceptable. Okay, fair enough that no one knows for sure who the people were who yelled out the “Let him die” statement. That said, Kremer doesn’t actually know whether this was some self-described “tea party” activist or not, does she? I don’t think it actually matters all that much though because her group which is nothing but a bunch of AstroTurf-ers looking out for the interests of big business and the insurance companies among others may not be crass enough to say out loud that their political position is to just let the uninsured pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and if they were not fortunate enough to have insurance, they’re probably going to die, the end result if the same. When this woman and her ilk get on board for single-payer and quit looking out for the interests of their corporate masters, I’ll believe that any of them have a charitable bone in their body. Until then, she should be considered nothing more than a spokesperson for the Koch brothers, big pharma, the insurance companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and any of the rest of them that are sponsoring her so-called “movement.” As to Kremer’s assertion that their Republican re-branding effort called the “tea party” does not focus on the social issues, well, that notion is just ridiculous on its face. As many have written about here and as David Sessions at The Daily Beast pointed out , there’s really not a dime’s worth of difference between the extreme right-wing, Christian fundamentalist arm of the Republican Party and these self-described “tea partiers.” The ACLU’s Mark Sawyer did a pretty good job here of pointing out that the views of these “tea partiers” is that if someone doesn’t have insurance, they look at that person as a deadbeat that doesn’t want to pay into the system, which is a fiscal issue and not a social one. Kremer defended herself by repeating Ron Paul’s ridiculous assertion that charities can somehow take care of those who are sick and don’t have any insurance. KREMER: I’m not backpedaling at all. Look, we… it’s not that we want to go out there and turn our backs on people that need help. That’s not it at all. We are all for helping the needy, people who fall down on their luck go through hard times. The problem is when that safety net becomes a hammock and becomes a way of life. (In other words, those dirty lazy brown people sitting on their asses collecting their welfare benefits who don’t want to work.) That’s what we are against. But when people truly need help we’re all for it. And in addition to that, we are the most charitable country in the world. We are very good at taking care of people and contributing to charities, so that charities can help people. So we… it’s not that we have no compassion. That’s not it at all. It’s… we are focused on the fiscal aspects of what is going on here in Washington D.C. and as I said, we are not going to let these social issues distract us. Unfortunately Sawyer didn’t point out to her that charities taking care of the sick didn’t work out so well for Ron Paul’s former campaign manager , who died with no insurance and almost $400,000 in debt for his medical bills. And apparently Megyn Kelly never heard of survivors benefits from Social Security since she framed one of the last questions for her panel members this way. KELLY: Mark, those who would defend some of the audience, you know, members, who were yelling, and we’ll stick with the Ron Paul thing for now have said, there’s a difference between a society that says for example we’re going to help the poor, we’re going to help children, we’re going to help people who literally cannot afford health insurance, and we’ll do that, because we’re a compassionate society. And being a society that says to a man like in Blitzer’s hypothetical, who has the money and who can buy it, but chooses not to, to then rush in when you need the state and say, we will give you the benefit of insurance you never bought, just because we’re that kind of society. And the argument people will make is, you know, would we rush in to help a widow and her children for a man who didn’t buy life insurance even though he could afford it? What say you Mark? I’d say Kelly needs to read up on Social Security survivors benefits, because yes we do already as a society, help those people. If Kelly wants to know more about that survivors benefit program, maybe she should bring in Rep. Paul Ryan to answer some questions about it, since he knows a thing or two about how it works since he benefited from it. As Sawyer also pointed out at the end of the segment, that individual mandate to buy health insurance that these so-called “tea partiers” supposedly hate so much as well would have taken care of the problem of the hypothetical man in Wolf Blitzer’s question to Ron Paul not having any coverage. And on a final note, why in the hell are any of the networks bringing this Kremer woman on at all, other than trying to pretend we’ve got some actual third party in America? There is no “tea party.” It’s a creation of Fox News, CNN, the Koch brothers, Freedom Works and a bunch of other right wing groups that are tied at the hip with the Republican Party and big business interests in America. Whatever you could claim that was “grass roots” about this movement was co-opted almost as soon as anyone calling themselves the Tea Party got started. I’m so tired of the networks deceiving their viewers that this is either a real third party movement and not just some re-branding of the Republican Party to get the Bush stink off of it or that it’s actually “grass roots”, it’s not even funny any more. But sadly, they all continue to do it. When any of these birds actually run with the party affiliation “Tea Party” behind their name, they can claim that this is some actual third party in the United States. Until then, they deserve to be branded as what they are, which is nothing but the extreme right wing of the Republican Party who want to push to get more extreme right wing Republicans elected and push the Overton window even further to the right.
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