By Katie Hind
Thousands of people are expected to join the second round of protests against the government’s unfair new tax
More rallies are being held across Great Britain this weekend to fight against David Cameron’s controversial new idea – bedroom tax.
The Sunday People has been at the forefront of the demonstrations, with placards reading “Stop Bedroom Tax” being visible across the UK.
Since the paper launched its campaign in January, it has featured numerous individuals who will find themselves worse off if the scheme, which will see people of a working age in social housing who have a spare bedroom have their housing benefit reduced by £40 to £80 a month, is introduced.
Last weekend, disabled grandmother Libby Green, 57, told how she was being pressured to move out of her home, which is next door to her son and his three children, while she battles breast cancer. She also suffers from spina bifida and had one of her legs amputated in 1996. She said:
“It’s just unbelievable, I don’t know how they can sleep at night.”
Meanwhile, Fiona Oxley-Goody was sent a letter to tell her she would have to pay £60 per month extra for a home she has had adapted so her severely disabled son Logan could receive round the clock care.
These cases are among the 660,000 who will be affected if the tax comes in.
A fortnight ago, Afghanistan war veteran Cody Lachey, 29, joined 1500 protesters in Manchester after his one bedroom flat was recently reclassified as a two-bed because of a box room.
In Croydon, south London, Janet Richards marched with difficulty after being told she would lose her home too. After she had a leg amputated below the knee, the council gave her a two bedroom flat but she now faces paying extra as it is deemed she shouldn’t have her second bedroom as it is now counted as a spare room, even though a carer stays there.
She said:
“I have been too frightened to think about how I will cope. I’m terrified.”
Below are where this week’s peaceful rallies are being held. If you want to tell David Cameron that his despicable new scheme is not acceptable, then join in!
View March 30 BT in a larger map
I would like to wish all those taken part a very peaceful day whereever you are? due to not feeling great & high blood pressure & stress & doctors orders I will not be there in person. So good luck & watchout for the plain clothes coppers who may start problems???? Ms May’s orders?
Cameron is targeting people who don’t vote tory by nature.He is needing tarred and feathered on the day he is unceremoniously thrown out of government. If we had wanted nazi types to rule us in Brotain then we would not have bothered fighting them off in the second world war. He deserves the same fate as those nazis who fell prey to the justice of the nuremburg trials. His day of trial will surely come.
You’ve got the time for the Edinburgh march wrong. It’s not 1pm.
12.00pm St Andrews Sq
12.45pm Leave St Andrews
13.30pm Expected Arrival at Parliament
Does anyone know how many bedrooms the mps have in the tax payer subsidised apartments or second homes they claim to need? (And rent out to family and friends)How do these greedy nasty people manage to sleep at night? I pray that what they are inflicting on the great people of Britain come back to them one hundred fold. How do we accept that the Banks ‘need’ 50 billion pounds as a ‘buffer’ against any future fraudulent action takenn against them !! What buffer do the poor and needy have against starvation and despair?
please peruse the following and sign up
Manchester Left Unity, answering Ken Loach’s appeal for a new party of the left, committed to representing working people, saving the welfare state and bringing the left together. UNIFY. TAKE CONTROL. email Jenny Ross: manchester@leftunity.org
KEN LOACH INVITES A DIALOGUE:
“Europe is plunging deeper and deeper into crisis. Its governments are continuing with their failed austerity policies which are destroying the social and economic gains working people have made over many decades. The economic crisis has increasingly become a social and political crisis as people face poverty, hunger and even death, as a result of the catastrophic and government-imposed failure of health systems and social services. A further manifestation of this crisis is the rapid development of fascism in Greece, in the shape of Golden Dawn.
However the people of Europe are fighting back. There is a continual mobilisation on the streets to oppose these policies, together with strikes and diverse forms of direct action and resistance. European-wide cooperation is increasing as the movement opts for greater political coordination in solidarity and action. In Greece, France, Germany and elsewhere, new political formations have emerged, drawing together a range of left forces, posing political, social and economic alternatives, and challenging the capitulation of social democracy to neo-liberalism. Here in Britain, a successful response to the rightwards move of Labour has not yet taken place, yet we have equal need of a new political formation which rejects austerity and war, advocates a greater democratisation of our society and institutions, and poses a new way of organising everyday life.
Such a new left formation would present an alternative set of values of equality and justice; socialist, feminist and green. Its politics and policies would stand against capitalism, imperialism, war, racism and fas- cism. Its urgent tasks would be to oppose austerity, defend the welfare state, fight to restore workers’ rights and advance alternative social and economic policies, redistributing wealth to the working class.
Its political practice would be democratic, diverse and inclusive, committed to open dialogue and new ways of working; the mutual respect and tolerance of differences of analysis; the rejection of the corruption of conventional political structures and their frequent reproduction of the gender domination of capitalist society.
International solidarity is fundamental to the success of any resistance and the achievement of any political progress; such a new political formation will work with other left organisations and movements in Europe and internationally, to build coordination, strategic links and common actions.
The need for cooperation amongst those forces in Britain which seek to bring change to our society is vital. The need for unity is paramount as attacks on the living and working conditions of ordinary people intensify, and the very fabric of our welfare state is being destroyed. A dialogue of the left is being opened, to ensure that this political perspective receives adequate expression and that we do not remain outside of the political developments in Europe and beyond. The situation is now so urgent that sectarian attitudes and interests must be abandoned.
A new political organisation is necessary. We call on all those willing to tread this path to support this Appeal, so that this essential discussion can make progress.”
Excuse me but didn’t the Tory’s state children in need of an extra room would not be affected and did they not also say anyone needing an extra room because a carer stays over night would not be affected? Are the local authority’s now going agents what the chancellery stated? secondly anyone deemed as retired in council homes would not be affected by the extra room tax or bedroom tax, thirdly as a council tenant you have a protected tenancy therefore your local authority can not fours you out of your home unless you have breached your tenancy agreement but if you are in social housing you do not have a protected tenancy therefore your social housing group can ask you to leave for what ever reason they deem necessary… ever way this Tory-Lib government seems intent on dragging the poor people of this country feather down the drain of despair wile the well off home owners get yet another tax brake and those with a second home or a country estate is it fear that these people should be free of extra tax on there estates or there second homes NO but this Tory-Lib government wont TAX them.
The only good Tory is a LavaTory that flushes stinking,rotten,vile,putrid, dark faeces away.
I hope everybody has a great day protesting against this evil governments attacks
on poor and vunerable people. The day of reckoning will come to Conservatives and
their Lib Dem lackies.
They pretend not to notice, but in reality, the lily livered bastards are shitting themselves.
In the old days the twisted scum would be dragged from the sanctity of their castles, hung till half dead, then drawn and quartered…….
None of that for me though!
Just burn the fucking lot of em……………………..
Good luck to everyone protesting for their rights. I would love to join you all if I was’nt stuck in twelve foot of snow for the past ten days. I only hope IDS gets what is coming to him, he wont be in power for much longer thats for sure, and he can’t hide forever. I pray daily for him to suffer a vile illness. I for one would make sure he is found fit for work and would drag him by the neck into poundland and beat him with barb wire should not stack shelves quick enough.
He and his posh boys days are numbered shower of sickofants.
Bet your bottom dollar the parasites are sunning themselves in the Caribean or Monaco over the Easter break from parliment, they know they would be safer over there as there time is coming believe me.