Kingston activists shut down slave labour stores

By Richard Donnelly.

Unemployed people, students and low paid workers took to the streets of Kingston last night to protest against the workfare scheme, which forces unemployed workers to work for their benefits. The action was called by Right to Work, and was joined by members of the Kingston Anti-Cuts Group.

About thirty activists met at Kingston train station to target shops that use unpaid labour. They went on to occupy Tesco, MacDonalds, Boots, TopShop and Primark in central Kingston. Disabled and unemployed people made speeches denouncing workfare as slave labour, and slamming the Welfare Reform Bill, which will force disabled and terminally ill people off Disability Living Allowance and into low-paid work or workfare programmes.

The protestors were applauded by people on their way home from work, and were warmly welcomed by on looking pensioners and workers, who were given leaflets about the workfare scheme. Schoolkids and other passing young people joined the protest, chanting “the Tories stole our EMA, but we won’t work for JSA.”

Campaigners are angry that the schemes mean that retail chains don’t have to pay people to work for them and that young people are being forced to do 40 hour weeks in low-skilled jobs for only £53 a week. The workfare scheme is an attack on the unemployed and on trade union organisation.

The government claims that the scheme helps unemployed people back into work, but actually it just decreases the amount of paid jobs available. It undermines the confidence of retail workers to fight for better pay and conditions, because unemployed people can be forced to work the same jobs for 30% of the minimum wage.

Right to work have called a new protest against firms that use unpaid labour, and will be back on the streets at 1pm, Saturday 3^rd March. Meet at the top of Kingston High Street, at the junction with Eden Street, outside Starbucks.

Workfare, no way!
Make the greedy bosses pay!

Petition launched to save Kingston Hospital ward

From Kingston Guardian.

A petition has been launched in a bid to stop a hospital ward being axed.

Derwent ward, which looks after rheumatology, haematology and general medicine patients, is under consultation to be closed from level six in the Esher Wing of Kingston Hospital by the end of the month.

The closure, which comes as the hospital looks to make £2.6m in savings, would mean 20 general medicine beds out of 500 will go.

The rheumatology service would be relocated elsewhere in the hospital.

The petition, which has 28 signatures so far, calls on the hospital not to close the ward, which helped former patient Richard Cranefield.

It also calls on Surbiton and Kingston MP Ed Davey, who campaigned against cuts to accident and emergency and maternity in the past, and Kingston Council to condemn the job cuts and ward closure at the hospital and across the NHS.

A spokesman for Kingston Hospital NHS Trust could not confirm if there would be any redundancies but said a consultation was in progress.

He said: “In the past 12 months, Kingston Hospital has successfully reduced the average hospital stay for medical patients from 7.2 days to 6 days.

“As a result, our patients are now spending less time in hospital and so we need fewer beds. Consequently, we are in a process of consultation to close 20 beds.

“Our services to patients will not be affected by the proposed changes; in fact, the decision has been made in order to improve efficiencies.”

A Unison spokesman said the threat of job losses and the reduction in beds were a major concern.

To view the petition visit gopetition.com/petitions/save-derwent-ward-stop-the-cuts-at-kingston-hospital.html.

 

Pensioners call on Kingston Council not to close sheltered housing

From Kingston Guardian.

A vulnerable pensioner has made a last minute plea for Kingston Council to halt plans to close a communal block of sheltered housing flats.

Executive councillors are due to decide tonight whether to close sheltered housing at Waters Square in Norbiton.

Read more.

Kingston budget day demonstration: fight back against the cuts!

Say no to Kingston Council cuts!

Kingston’s Lib Dem council are planning swingeing cuts to the borough’s adult social care and education in the upcoming budget. With cuts of over £8.6 million year and planned cuts of£4.4 million next year, Kingston’s councillors are wilfully participating in the destruction of the welfare state.

With between 50-100 job redundancies within the council and privatisation of children’s services, the budget also pushes for cuts of up to £1.4 million to mental health facilities. Already last year seen the closure of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for mental health patients, Rose Lodge, and plans to sell off resident care homes.

It’s clear the council is determined to make the most vulnerable pay for a bankers’ crisis they didn’t cause. And this all while all but one of Kingston’s senior schools are being turned into academies and 600 job are lost at Kingston Hospital.

All the while £20 thousand is being spent on car park rebranding!

All those who want decent schools, hospitals and other public services, should be opposing all cuts being forced upon us by a council ideologically in lieu with the ConDem government of millionaires. We should say no to all cuts, invest in our public services to create growth and give jobs to the million young unemployed people, every five of whom are chasing one job.

Say no to the council cuts! Join us to demonstrate at the council when the budget is set, 6pm, Wednesday 29th February 2012, Guildhall 1, High Street, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 1EU.

Organised by the Kingston Anti-Cuts Group.

For more information call 07795190036 or email kingstonanticuts@gmail.com

Read the budget here.

Facebook event.

Trades Council endorses Kingston anti-cuts demonstration

The Kingston and District Trades Council has thrown its support behind the demonstration against Kingston Council’s austerity budget outside the Guildhall at 7pm on Wednesday 29th February, and issued the following statement:

The Kingston and District Trades Union Council ask members of the public to support the demonstration to be held outside the Guildhall on Wednesday 29^th February (early evening) to lobby the Councillors as they go to the Council meeting to set the 2012/13 Council Budget.  Proposals for the cuts are to be found on the Council’s website. Cutting through the tedious “apple pie and motherhood” spin, the proposed cuts make sickening reading. 

Once again, the most vulnerable among us are being targeted to make up the shortfall in Council finances imposed by Central Government to fill the hole left by irresponsible bankers and greedy city gents.

The K&DTUC ask demonstrators to make Councillors aware of the long term consequences of these cuts; the prospect of more youngsters on the street when there is nowhere else to go, the loss of library activities for the very young to encourage a love of books and to enjoy the company of their peers, elderly and disabled residents left without adequate care services that will tip them over the edge into the more expensive care homes, council tenants driven into debt and homelessness.  But of course that will be next year’s problem.

Above all, Councillors should be reminded that they are elected, and paid out of the public purse, to represent all of the residents, not just the ones they play golf with.

Please lend your voice to those disenfranchised by infirmity, poverty, social deprivation and youth.


6pm on Wednesday 29th February at Kingston Guildhall.
Stop all the cuts! Fight for every job!

Mentally ill man kills himself after Kingston Council serves eviction notice

From Kingston Guardian.

A mentally-ill man killed himself by setting fire to his front room over fears he would be kicked out of his home, a coroner ruled.

Kevin Hall, 57, who was divorced with a young son, covered his flat in St Andrew’s Road, Surbiton, with petrol, lit a match and lay on the sofa after being served an eviction notice by Kingston Council.

Two weeks before the suicide on April 1 last year, Mr Hall failed to turn up to an eviction hearing, telling social workers he “no longer had the will to fight”, the court heard.

Read more.

Kingston Hospital cuts frontline staff and closes ward

Kingston Hospital will be hit with renewed attacks on its services and a cut to its primary care and prescribing costs of £1.6 million.

One in ten medical beds in the hospital will be lost, while 32 ward-based Health Care Assistant posts will be cut.

The total new “savings” being imposed on the hospital are £2.6 million and means that one in Health Assistants will be made redundant, while Derwent Ward in Esher Wing is closed. Derwent Ward provides rheumatology, haematology and general medicine services. The proposals are set out in a document published by Kingston Hospital and euhemeristically named “Consultation paper for the reconfiguration of the medical wards including staffing and location”.

MP for Kingston and Surbiton, Ed Davey, campaigned during the election on his supposed record of fighting against closures at Kingston Hospital, while David Cameron promised to “cut the deficit, not the NHS”. But all those promises have been ripped up over the past two years as Kingston Hospital has been hit with more and more cuts to nursing and medical staff.

The cutbacks are tied to the privatisation and marketisation of the NHS which the ConDem government are rolling out across the country. The Health and Social Welfare Bill, currently being put through parliament, will mean that the private sector will be much more involved in commissioning and delivering health care services through a system of so-called “GP commissioning”.

Kingston Council boasts of its record of introducing GP commissioning bodies well before the time required by law, and councillors like Derek Osbourne, the Leader of Kingston Council, publically support the government’s notorious bill.

The TUC’s All Together for the NHS campaign has called a rally in London on March 7^th against cuts and privatisation. You can see more information here.

Local anti-cuts activists have launched an online petition to save Derwent Ward. You can sign it here.

Kingston cutbacks will hurt vulnerable and women hardest

By Francesca Manning, Kingston Anti-Cuts Group.

Kingston Council has advertised its new budget on the basis that it freezes council tax, but behind this popular measure is a story of cuts targeted at the most vulnerable sections of local society.

The Council has identified the increasing amount of disabled and special educational needs people living to the same age as others as a financial “problem”, failing to see that this is a sign of the success of the social welfare system that it is now trying to depreciate and dismantle.

Kingston’s LibDem Council will be seeking to make “efficiencies” of £8.6 million in 2012/3 and the majority of the cuts will fall on adult social care and children’s services. Adults with learning difficulties will be forced out of residential care and back into the home, with councillors looking to “augment the provision already provided by the community” rather than actually providing comprehensive care packages. Services designed to provide care to children with special educational needs, in order to give their parents respite from their heavy duties, will be scaled back. Mental health provision will be cut by £832,000 by 2015/16.

And it’s not only service users that will be hit. In the same way that mental health services are now being amalgamated (so there are now only half as many Mental Health Teams in the borough) or turned over to social enterprises, the Council believes that they “will continue to make savings from staffing” of public services. There will be redundancies, and many jobs will be passed over into the voluntary or private sectors, opening the way for assaults on pay, pensions and conditions.

For women in the borough, the budget is a two-pronged attack. Women are often the primary caregivers for both adults and children with disabilities and special needs, meaning that cuts to those services hit them the hardest – indeed, women’s caring responsibilities are one of the main reasons for the gender pay gap. Also, the majority of the people that work in jobs providing services for the most vulnerable are women themselves, meaning that this budget puts their jobs and pay at risk.

And to add insult to injury, the Council has also committed itself to making savings of £500,000 by 2015/6 to its “Supporting People” budget, one of the roles of which is to provide help, support and shelter to women who suffer domestic abuse.

Kingston’s LibDem and Tory councillors are targeting the most disadvantaged people in the borough, and pushing women out of work or into worse conditions, while forcing them to accept more and more caring responsibilities. Those who want to protect women and the vulnerable need to look past the headline figure about council tax and join the demonstration on budget day.

Stop all the cuts! Fight for every job!
6pm 29^th February at Kingston Guildhall.

Cancer patient’s sadness over closure of Kingston ward which kept him alive

From Kingston Guardian.

A cancer patient treated at a vital hospital ward set to close has spoken out about the move which could see jobs go.

Derwent ward, which looks after rheumatology, haematology and general medicine patients, is due to be closed from level six in the Esher Wing at Kingston by the end of February.

The closure means 20 beds out of 500 will go in a bid to make £2.6m in savings.

Read more.