No to Maximus / WCA

In work - out of work  -  these lot have it covered. Their one aim  to take  away your entitlements and leave you penniless.


Currently a controversial American company  is taking over the contract  to assess the fitness of benefit claimants to work,  having replaced the French firm Atos, who quit the contract last March. They will be used by the government again to help cut  benefits of sick and disabled people, who have already been disproportionately targeted. Two million people have had their benefits sanctioned since 2013, this is the Governments true agenda, hand in hand with companies like Maximus are hitting the poor the hardest.
The Work Capability assessment has proved  to be a very expensive disaster in both financial and human terms.  A growing  number of suicides have been directly  linked to this stressful procedure, whilst medical  staff and claimants themselves  have warned  of the desperate consequences  for those  left with no money at all by the system.
People who  cannot work, for various reasons  should be supported, it is unnecessary to pay millions and millions of pounds to  private companies like Atos and Maximus. Are our own G.Ps not to be trusted.
Today disabled activist groups  and supporters will across  the country vigorously  protest against  these heartless work  tests.
It should also be noted  that Maximus  are also involved in helping to privatise the N.H.S, running the  fit for work occupational  health service  designed to bully and harass.
I personally am in a support group, my crime, I periodically suffer from depression and anxiety but it looks like Maximus has been given a green light to  diminish  people  like me.
Maximus like Atos  before them alongside the Work Capability Assessments must be stopped in their tracks, they are  profiteers of the sick and vulnerable and because of them combined with Tory policies people are suffering. People before profit should be the maxim.
Maximus another ruthless company doing the governments dirty work.


Here are details of the call out by DPAC ; Disabled People against cuts


Please support them, after they have finished with us they will start on the rest.


http://dpac.uk.net/2015/01/disabled-claimants-welcome-to-maximus-march-2nd-everywhere/

The Welsh Language - Alan Llwyd (b;1948 -) Happy St David's Day/Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus.

From the pen of literary critic and most prolific Welsh language poets of our time. Happy St David's day/ Dydd Dewi hapus. At the end of the day we are all different,  but fy iaith, still standing despite it all.  All the best  Heddwch/peace

Stand above the abyss, and shout into the cleft:
she's the thunder in the silence, the noise in the cold emptiness;
although fugitives grope for their splintered ropes on the cliff,
she's the one who prevents our fall into the great muteness.

She's the rain that refreshes the earth, the ruby's sheen,
the harvest breeze,rolling in the corn and the wheat;
the precious sapphire,  the emerald in the grass that is green,
the restless rustling of barley, and bright gleam of light.

She protects from the mute edge, the fort that keeps  enemies at bay,
and above the gaping abyss, she is our tether;
she keeps our dignity; our home against all disarray,
the knot that unites; she gathers her people together.

should the link shatter and break, what would be amiss?
Knot  by knot the rope now opens above the abyss.

trans. the author

Reprinted from ; A Book of Wales, an anthology;
selected by Meic Stephens;
JM Dent, 1987

Time to Change/Amser i Newid

On St David's day/ Dydd Gwyl Dewi a hopefully eye opening film about Wales's share of global inequalities/ Ffilm fydd gobeithio yn agorad llygad fewn i shar Cymru o anghydraddoldebau byd-eang

Banksy leaves his mark on Gaza!

The anonymous but eminent British artist known as Banksy  has again taken aim at Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians, and the daily injustices that they face. Sneaking into the Gaza strip and filming the devastation in the wake  of last summers IDF Operation Protective Edge. The two minute video is entitled "Make this the year you discover a new destination". Showing us what the mainstream media do not want us  to know or see. Depicting for us the lives of the ordinary Palestinian . The destruction that he witnesses was the result of the 50 day conflict which saw 539 Palestinian children dead, and close to 3,000 injured. In total more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed according to United Nations figures.l
Utilising the  language of a low budget tourist video, with the footage of the Palestinians quarantined within. A brilliant charged combination  of art and politics in a place  now devoid of beauty.
And we should remember that today and tomorrow, children like the ones portrayed in the video, will continue to  play amid the rubble and destroyed  building, and that resistance is existence, that existence is resistance.

Dear David Cameron

Last week I talked about Margaret Thatcher's legacy, now I turn on her heir. With  his slicked back hair, Mr Cameron always seems to be willing  to  pose for a photo. Always with his friends keen to castigate  poor people on benefits, with their 'culture of entitlement ' jibe, a man who  stands next to the likes  of Malcolm Rifkind and his ilk, people who  seem to think they are entitled to more as they try to defend themselves after recent  'cash for access scandal.
David Cameron sure keeps delivering, giving us pain, pain and pain, he does not seem to want to give us any hope.
So David Cameron, is this your vision,  to scapegoat the poorest and the most vulnerable  in our land.  Your Big Society initiative, is largely seen as a failure, those at the bottom are clearly  bearing the brunt of austerity. People living daily in fuel and food poverty, the escalating costs  of lifes' basics, please  don't get me started on our beloved N.H.S. Remember  the state provision that we paid for, you have demolished purely for ideological  reasons. You and your party clearly believe  that society should be founded on inequality - that the poor deserve poverty, whilst the wealthy deserve incentives. I am sorry to dissapoint you, but the people are growing tired, and will not  tolerate your hands of unfairness anymore.
We have noticed  that you are nothing  but a slave-owning descendent who has never worked a single day  of your life. With your inherited wealth and all the vestiges of privilege that has been bestowed on you, it is clear that you do not have much  understanding of the real world.
Oh and delivering speeches that threaten to throw teenagers  out onto the freezing streets, it does however reveal something heartless, a person devoid of compassion. Your ideas  reek of arrogance, toxic, the whiff of inequality stalks your foul breath, as you keep cosying up to your friends and crony's the super rich.
As your friends dodge   and fail to answer questions on their tax avoiding  millionaire friends, your party has decided to stigmatise benefit claimants who are deemed  overweight with the threat of punitive sanctions. Picking on the vulnerable again, is your way of life, your creed.
So out of touch you are verging on the ridiculous, cheap and nasty is your cloth. We have not got time  to go,  but I sincerely hope you are soon kicked out of No 10, as well as your rabble of right wing wreckers. Yes I hope we do without you, as support  for anti-austerity policies grow, it is time to create an economy that works for everone, based on fairness,  not just for the privileged few and those nesting at the top. So Mr Cameron I believe your time is up,  it is time  that you and the rest of  your nasty party are kicked out of power.


( oh and remember)

Journey of Sound

( for sapientia, she who knows)

Some haunting blues
sounds of the desert,
the holler of liberation
breezy kora  leaping,
reggae bass, middle eastern oud drifting 
ragas and  dub mutation,
tabla and djembe's rhythms mixing
percussive beats soaring,
releasing chords of souls simplicity.
I love the wind, when  it blows on through
breathe in rhymes, messages of freedom,
a familiar dance, moving through spaces
coming down easy, on a sunday afternoon,
the revolution is right here
the groove is in my heart,
got that high time feeling
it don't hurt at all,
releasing pressure 
respites of musical pleasure,
here on the edges of time.

Miriam Makeba - Malcolm X

Miriam Makebas song for Malcolm X  on the  anniversary of his death. The prescient words  of brother Malcolm X, still  today  slice  today through our lives,  slicing through  the rhetoric of politicians and pundits alike as if he still walked among us. His opinions, his work, his deeds, still matter, strike a chord, as we  still work  towards  goals of social justice  and continue to remember his transformative power. we continue to make a stand against racism wherever it may raise its ugly head.

Everybody seems to be preaching revolution
Though no one ever seems to show appreciation
To that man  over there who  bought about a  new generation
To that man  over there who  bought about  a new black  nation

Do you remember Malcolm
Do you remember him, Malcolm
Yeah brother  Malcolm
Don't you know he was  a great man

He tried to keep the people away from oppression
From day to day M lived for liberation
Until that man with a man  took away his devotion
He and his wife and kids without protection

Do you remember Malcolm
Do you, remember him, Malcolm
Yeah brother Malcolm
Don't you know he was a  great man
Oh yeah

It seems  life  and death  seem to go  together
For me in my heart. Malcolm will live forever
Especially when I think about the blackness he reflected
I said especially when I think  about the one he represented


Do you remember Malcolm
Do you remember him, Malcolm
Oh yeah brother Malcolm
Don't you know he was a great man
Oh yeah