Atos Protest & Camden City: – Monday 24 January 2011
Incapacity advantages at the moment are beneath assault by our Labour authorities, who’ve insisted they’ll implement the Tory plans to chop the quantity paid in incapacity advantages by £3 billion by 2028. And the Home of Lords financial affairs committee just a few days in the past revealed a report calling for a elementary overview of the advantages system to deal with the rising social and financial prices of incapacity advantages.
Additionally final week the Excessive Courtroom dominated that the earlier authorities’s session on altering incapacity advantages was illegal as “it offered the adjustments as a method of supporting disabled folks into work however did not clarify that 424,000 susceptible claimants would see their advantages minimize by £416 a month.”
When the Tory coalition authorities got here into energy in 2010 it picked on the disabled who it thought can be a straightforward goal for the cuts it was making to help the bankers. Protests reminiscent of this on Monday January twenty fourth 2001 confirmed how improper they have been, with decided opposition to the unfairness of their cost-cutting reforms from disabled teams together with Disabled Individuals Towards Cuts (DPAC) and the Black Triangle Marketing campaign.
One a part of the marketing campaign by successive governments has been to offer enormous publicity and precedence to learn fraud, which in line with the nationwide Audit Workplace solely quantities to 0.6% of the DWP price range and is a “drop within the ocean in comparison with the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the quantities misplaced by them and main firms exploiting tax loopholes.“
In 2011 a significant supply of unfairness within the system was the makes an attempt to chop prices by way of computer-based means to work assessments carried out for the DWP by European IT firm Atos. The interviews have been administered by ‘healthcare professionals’, typically poorly educated and missing the {qualifications} and expertise to evaluate many kinds of incapacity, notably psychological sickness. Virtually 70% of these assessed have been moved onto the decrease profit charges of the Job Seekers Allowance with some being refused any advantages in any respect.
An unbiased overview for the DWP made elementary criticisms of the assessments, and round 40% of those that appealed the selections ultimately had their advantages restored to earlier ranges – however solely after months of hardship, and sometimes simply in time for his or her subsequent overview when their advantages would once more be axed. A part of the issue was the strain utilized on the assessors to fulfill targets in reducing advantages by the corporate so they might justify their prices to the DWP.
And there have been loads of true horror tales. Individuals assessed match for work who died inside days of the assessments, those that dedicated suicide and a few who starved to loss of life. Profit cuts actually do kill.
Atos went on to achieve different contracts from the DWP till September 2024 when the contract for Private Independence Cost (PIP) and work functionality evaluation (WCA) got to Serco. The DWP had acknowledged there have been flaw within the Atos assessments however few imagine that Serco will probably be any fairer.
Monday January twenty fourth was a a Nationwide Day of Protest Towards Profit Cuts, with actions across the nation, together with protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, close to Edinburgh (Atos’s Scotland HQ) and Glasgow. I started by photographing a neighborhood protest at Archway in North London earlier than happening to a protest exterior the London HQ of Atos Origin in Triton Sq. near the Euston Highway.
On My London Diary again in 2011 I wrote far more in regards to the Atos assessments and likewise in regards to the particulars of the 2 protests. The protest in Triton Sq. was closely policed however the organisers and people participating, together with Disabled Individuals Towards Cuts, WinVisible (Ladies with Seen and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Towards Poverty have been intent on this being a peaceable protest.
Police have issues in coping with disabled protesters. Many need to deal with them fastidiously and their officers actually realise that photos of them being roughly dealt with can be horrible PR. However they have been irritated that the protesters determined to protest near the precise Atos places of work quite than in a pen they’d arrange a brief distance away. And when one aged man walked via the unfold out police line he was roughly pushed to the bottom and dragged away, although later he was allowed to rejoin the opposite hundred or so protesters.
The police then introduced extra limitations and erected them across the protesters, telling them they might solely exit the fenced space once they have been dispersing on the finish of the protest. There appeared to be no actual justification for this and so they appeared merely to be a merely a matter of pique that the protesters had not adopted their directions.
Extra at Atos Checks Unfair to Disabled.
Camden Market – Camden Excessive St/Chalk Farm Rd
I had loads of time to get from Archway to Triton Sq. and acquired off the bus in Camden City for a stroll and to utilize considered one of London’s quickly disappearing public bogs in the midst of the busy street junction there (however I believe closed just a few years in the past.)
I’d photographed round Camden Excessive Avenue and Chalk Farm Highway very often within the Nineteen Nineties, typically on my method dwelling from taking photos elsewhere in North London, and strolling from Camden City station to Chalk Farm. Then the lemon sorbets from Marine Ices have been the very best in London if not the world. However that’s gone too now, and in January 2011 it wasn’t the climate for it.
Again within the Nineteen Nineties the streets would have been fairly empty besides at weekends, however by 2011 there have been loads of vacationers wandering round even on a chilly Monday in January, although enterprise was pretty slack. However primarily I pointed my digital camera as much as the decorations above the retailers
Extra photos: Camden Market.
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Tags: 2011, ATOS, Atos assessments, Atos Origin, Atos assessments, profit cuts, profit fraud, advantages, Black Triangle Marketing campaign, Camden Excessive St, Camden Market, Chalk Farm Rd, incapacity profit, Disabled Individuals Towards Cuts, DPAC, DWP, health for work, healthcare professionals, incapacity advantages, London, London Photographs, decrease profit charges, psychological sickness, Nationwide Day of Protest, ndon Coalition Towards Poverty, Private Independence Cost, peter Marshall, PIP, police, protest, Serco, tax evasion, Unfair to Disabled, illegal session, WCA, Winvisible, Work Functionality Evaluation
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