We are meeting Essex University Pole Fitness Club this week who contacted us out of the blue and asked could we volunteer to help the ABC? 

At the ABC we do get to communicate with a wide variety of people, but this contact really was a surprise. 

Here is some information about the club in their words:

We pride ourselves as being one of the friendliest and most welcoming clubs on campus. With more members than any other sports club at Essex, we provide a great environment for our members to have fun and learn the art of pole dancing!

Our classes are suitable for all abilities, from those who have never been on a pole before to those who are more experienced.
We are a relatively young sport but are spreading the word on pole dancing in a fun and safe environment!
 

*National Competition IUPC Champions; 2012 & 2013.
*Derby Day Winners; 2013 & 2014!
*South East Regional Champions; 2016.
*Gold Standard Award; 2016 & 2017.
*Nominees for Club of the Year; 2014, 2016 & 2017. 

It is an interesting artform. All the different dance moves on the pole have names. Pole dancing and pole fitness requires skills and moves not dissimilar to learning judo, ballet or any other formal, structured, discipline. 

More on this later, but we really appreciate their interest in helping us.  If you are an Essex University Student looking for a new activity we are sure they would be glad to hear from you.

Click on the image below and go to their website:

Robert joined the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as Permanent Secretary in January 2011 having been Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport from May 2007.

Amazingly during his tenure, The department’s headcount has reduced by some 50,000 since the 2010 to 2011 financial year, and operating costs are now £2.9 billion a year lower than 2010 to 2011.

Permanent Secretary, Robert Devereux, said:

I am very proud of all that my 84,000 colleagues in DWP have achieved. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to lead them. While reforming nearly every part of the welfare state, they have radically improved our customer service and worked relentlessly to improve the lives of the millions of people we serve.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, David Gauke, said:

On behalf of all the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions whom he has served as Permanent Secretary, I want to thank Robert for his leadership of and commitment to the department over the last 7 years.

He has been instrumental in steering DWP through a period of great change – including the roll-out and expansion of Universal Credit throughout the country – and he leaves the department in good shape for the future.

Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, said:

Robert has led DWP through some of the biggest reforms in recent years and can be truly proud of what he and the department have achieved.

Thanks to his hard work and dedication, DWP has become significantly more effective over the last 7 years.

I am grateful to Robert for the role he has played across government and I have valued his wise counsel and support over the years. I wish him the very best for his retirement.

The Cabinet Office will announce arrangements for a successor in due course. Robert Devereux will be retiring from the Civil Service on his 61st birthday on 15 January 2018.

ABC Note: At the DWP Robert Devereux has led the organisation as it introduced the biggest reforms to welfare and pensions for a generation, including:

• Universal Credit
• the new State Pension
• automatic enrolment into a workplace pension
• the new Child Maintenance Service
• the Personal Independence Payment
• Together with the day to day operation of a system supporting 20 million customers, these reforms coincide with:
• a record employment rate of 75.3%, and a record 32.14 million people in work
• unemployment at its lowest rate since 1975
• a record low number of workless households
• 608,000 fewer children living in workless households since 2010
• a rise in the proportion of people saving for retirement

Critics will point to the failed Work Programme and its exploitation of the unemployed. The lying and false claims by the DWP to customers - the scrapping of an expensive computer programme - chronic Universal Credit problems and rollout delays and a large number of unnecessary deaths from suicides and carelessness due to benefits sanctions and the ATOS, PIP assessments. Huge numbers of DWP decisions getting overturned at tribunal; 40,000 mobility scooters being taken away, and a willingness to ignore criticism from church leaders, NGO’s, psychologists and medical people, even at times the DWP's own consultants. A rise in child poverty and a massive rise in homelessness, the poor lying in doorways as numerous as the dead on a battlefield.  The willingness to preside over a culture of cruelty and dishonesty by an organisation that is meant to be helping people. History may not look on Robert Devereux, Lord Freud and Iain Duncan Smith in the same rosy terms as they would like to be remembered. Time will tell.

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The Chair of the Work and Pension Committee has written to the Chief Executive of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) querying the financial settlement for the Monarch Airlines pension scheme. The questions centre around a £7.5 million secured loan note granted to the PPF by Greybull Capital, the firm that bought Monarch Airlines for £1 in 2014, and the priority that will be given to competing interests and creditors in the fallout of Monarch’s plunge into administration on October 2^nd.

Press coverage today has raised the possibility that because of the way the buyout was engineered, the PPF may lose out entirely on its claim while Greybull – a private firm run by Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas and Richard Perlhagen – could even extract a multi-million pound profit from its investment.

Commenting, Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “How can it be that once again, mega rich individuals could walk away from a collapsed company with a bumper profit while ordinary people pick up the bill? This massively supports the case for the law to change, to robustly protect pension schemes against owners seeking to line their pockets while avoiding their responsibilities, in line with our recommendations. Do we need another illustration of the ethics of some of the billionaire class in this country before we act?”

Greybull bought the ailing airline, minus the company pension scheme, for £1 from its billionaire founders the Mantegazza family October 2014.

Before the takeover the pension scheme had reportedly been carrying a deficit of £158 million.

To enable the takeover, the pension scheme was separated from the company as part of a Regulated Apportionment Arrangement (RAA) negotiated and approved by the Pensions Regulator (TPR) and the PPF in September 2014. TPR agreed to the deal as it was satisfied that Monarch would otherwise have inevitably gone insolvent within 12 months.

According to the terms of the RAA:

· The former owners made a £30 million mitigation payment into the scheme and demonstrated to TPR’s satisfaction that all other creditors to the firm had made “significant compromises” on their claims;

· Greybull gave the PPF a 10% equity stake in the new restructured business and a £7.5 million secured loan note, potentially enabling the PPF to gain from any recovery in the firm’s fortunes.

The scheme entered PPF assessment in October 2014 and was fully transferred into the fund in November 2016. Members of the Monarch scheme now receive PPF levels of pension benefit, including a 10% cut to accrued benefits for deferred members and a further compensation cap limiting payments to those with the highest accruals, e.g. the longest serving pilots. 

Image: Monarch Airlines

We wrote with some ideas to Lord Heseltine recently following a Channel 4 broadcast that Mr. Heseltine took part in.

Lord Heseltine was kind enough to comment: I read of your work with much interest.  I hope it is of help to many people. 

Lord Heseltine is one of the few people, it appears to us, to have recognised the change in mood in the country? It not just the Corbyn factor, or BREXIT, or falling real incomes, inflation, or any one item. The public are recognising the harshness of policies towards the disabled. and towards those on benefits. That proper jobs are still hard to get, and even in work you may still be struggling - just about treading water.  Crushing down the poorest is not the answer. You need a certain level of income to get a job, to function as a member of society. 

Government borrowing is backed - not by silver or gold, but by people who can be defined as National Insurance numbers (NINO) at the most basic level. Damage the capacity of our people, cause long term mental health issues due to stress...force people into the wrong jobs with the threat of sanctions where they get stuck, or drive people so deeply into poverty they cannot function at all and you are destroying the long-term capacity of our economy to generate wealth.   

Lord Heseltine is a very successful businessman and he lives in the real world. There will always be those born with the silver spoon, highly gifted, hard working or just plain lucky.  We cannot all be Richard Branson, and even Richard Branson would not find it easy if he started out in business today. 

We thank Lord Heseltine for those kind words of encouragement. 

Image: Richard Branson, Born 18 July 1950 (age 67) estimated wealth 5 Billion USD.  

Having just won a significant Working Time Regulations case ourselves at an Employment Tribunal, we are always keen to see how the DWP treats its own staff. 

You might be interested to read these four cases. It gives an insight into how fair the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) are as an employer.

How they treat disabled staff and complaints of age discrimination. Of course, many disputes are settled before they get to a tribunal.

Still it makes interesting reading. 

Mrs C Akintunde v Department for Work and Pensions: 2206580/2016

Employment Tribunal decision.

Decided: 20 June 2017

Ms S Green v Department For Work And Pensions: 2400178/2017

Employment Tribunal decision.

Decided: 10 July 2017

Mr P Withenshaw v Department for Work and Pensions: 2403203/2014

Employment Tribunal decision.

Decided: 27 March 2017

Mrs S Clark v Department For Work and Pensions: 3200597/2016

Employment Tribunal decision.

Decided: 2 March 2017

ABC Note: Have you been treated unfairly while working for Jobcentre Plus or the DWP. If you have, then contact us in complete confidence. 

Have you seen unfair practises taking place and feel a moral and ethical need to speak out. Again, your information will be treated in complete confidence. PLEASE go to the contacts page and we can get in contact with you. Complete discression is assured. 

End Hunger's activist conference is a week away. This will be a chance to bring together people from around the country who want to see an end to people being forced to use food banks. It will bring together local groups from across the country to End Hunger.

With confirmed speakers including Heidi Allen MP, Kings College London's Rachel Loopstra, food blogger Jack Monroe, and Frank Field MP (chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Food and Poverty), it will bring together campaigners, policy experts, those on the front -ine fighting poverty, and people with experience of poverty. It will be a chance to learn the latest from our campaign and find out more about the need to End Hunger.

Date and Time

Tue 17 October 2017

10:00 – 15:30 BST

Add to Calendar

Location

Central Hall Westminster

Storey's Gate

Westminster

London

SW1H 9NH 

Why do Christian Students work to End Hunger?

End Hunger is supported by grassroots campaigns around the country campaigning in their communities to End Hunger. Ruth Wilde of End Hunger partner organisation the Student Christian Movement writes on why campaigning for End Hunger is important to them.

If you want to come along say the organisers please click on the logo below:

End Hunger is supported by grassroots campaigns around the country campaigning in their communities to End Hunger. Ruth Wilde of End Hunger partner organisation the Student Christian Movement writes on why campaigning for End Hunger is important to them.

Carole Spiers is the founder of International Stress Awareness Day and Chair of the International Stress Management Association [ISMA].

As part of International Stress Awareness Day [INSAD], a confidential stress survey is being conducted to identify how stress affects all of us, both at home and at work.

This survey is being conducted by the International Stress Management Association [ISMA] and the findings will be released on INSAD, on 1st November 2017, and to the media as part of event publicity.

To make it fully representative, ISMA wants as many people as possible to take part. Why not be the first to complete the survey and pass the link to your friends and colleagues?

You can complete the survey by clicking here:

Very proud that our latest article on the Las Vegas shooting incident has been reproduced by the prestigious Barrister magazine. Dare we risk it and praise our own work, but it is an interesting read and sheds new insights and ideas on a topic commented on by media all around the world. 

News like this can change very rapidly and you must avoid being sucked into the conspiracy theory trap where people start postulating wild ideas without any evidence. Some of the video comments are appalling, with Stephen Paddock’s brother being accused of lying or acting on camera by self-appointed body lanquage expert, and his female partner of being accused of being the equivalent of a Filipino prostitute/mail order bride. Nice. 

Your heart goes out to people like this plucked from obscurity and thrown into the limelight for the most negative of reasons. Freedom of speech is a doubled edged sword. We are glad that Google and Facebook are clamping down of pure fake news websites.

Please just click on the image below to be taken to the Barrister magazine website. 

Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock, was a wealthy accountant, property investor and gambler.

You might not think he would have anything remotely in common, or to offer as an example to the audience of a website based organisation that aims to assist those managing on low incomes?  

Paddock’s killing spree resulted in 58 victims and injured at least 489 people in the USAs biggest mass shooting to date.

One things that can be learned from this is - the risk of making a vice into a hobby.

Drink, drugs, gambling and sex, many might argue are the greatest pleasures you can have.

Aside drugs, which we totally don’t agree with here at the ABC because of their addictive nature, making a vice a (sole) hobby, is we feel a huge mistake.  

A few beers after rugby or football, or gambling on the lottery and helping your community cannot hurt. Chasing the opposite sex in way that does not hurt anyone, such as an existing partner, will not cause any harm we would argue.  

However, make a vice your only hobby and it can lead to trouble.

Drugs and excessive drinking can trigger schizophrenia, paranoia, depression and other forms of psychosis. Check out the long-term symptoms of your favourite vice on YouTube or the Internet and try and think ahead.

To be able to manage people, you must be able to manage yourself first. Businesses fail when the boss cannot manage his vices and in the end manage his, and then the company’s money.

Prior to World War One the UK government encouraged a ‘gun in every cottage’. Shooting was promoted as a sport. Just as Henry the Eighth banned golf to encourage the population to practise archery, in order to prepare for the next European conflict. Gun ownership was actively promoted in the late 1800’s.

All that changed at the end of WW1. Fearing a socialist revolution, the returning servicemen’s guns were rounded up and dumped in the North Sea. Only the landed gentry kept their guns, for shooting vermin it was argued?

The demobbed troops were pacified. The newly formed British Legion sold low cost subsidised beer and the ‘Poppy’ came to symbolise the sacrifice. The dramatic and violent social change that the upper classes feared, never materialised.

In the USA the desire to own a gun is held by large numbers of people. In countries like Australia, South Africa or the USA where white settlers displaced the indigenous peoples, there may be a subconscious fear that those disadvantaged may want to claim back the land that was stolen from them?

Inequality in society is recognised as a huge driver of mental illness. In countries like Africa where a huge number of illegal guns are in circulation, these are generally used or held for practical purposes such as crime or self-protection. Rarely in societies where everyone is equally poor, such as in the case of the black community, do people go out and aimlessly kill people they have never met.

 A reason for this might be the selfishness that capitalism creates in aspirational communities. The simmering resentment of those who feel that others have something they do not, whether it is money or happiness.

Contrary to popular belief, the black slaves in the southern states of America were not always as passive as history portrays them? History is written by the victors after all. Passive slaves tending the cotton fields makes the guilt of the white people easier to bear. Much easier than hearing about those who fought against their enslavement.  

In Haiti the slaves rose up and butchered the white slave owners. The idea that the black slaves might rise and claim the white women and the property of their white overseers may be a deeply rooted fear in the subconscious mind of the white population? In the same way that in the UK people fear immigration as a threat, which at times seems completely irrational. There has been migration since the very earliest human civilizations after all.  

it could be that this deeply rooted fear is, that if people’s guns were taken away by the government, white Americans would be left powerless?  

The argument that if the Jews were gun owners there would have been no Holocaust, or no Armenian massacre of a million Christians, is often cited by gun owning advocates.

That could explain the obsession with gun ownership, but who really knows…?

Both Sigmund Freud the founder of psychoanalysis and Jung his disciple, both believed there were basic animal instincts so deeply rooted in the human mind we are not aware of them. Freud believed that WW1 was so violent because leaders had found a way to tap into these subconscious fears.

At the end of World War Two, Lt. Colonel Douglas McGlashan Kelley at just age 33, was involved in testing the Nazis for mental competency prior to the Nuremberg trials using the Rorschach ‘Inkblot’ test. The Nazi leaders were judged sane and Kelley upset people when he claimed people like this could have just as well have existed in America. This idea did not go down well with everyone in God’s chosen country.

Himmler committed suicide and was not tested. He was considered a ‘bit out of whack’ even by the Nazi leadership. An upper face, half-intellectual, a lower face, that of a psychopath experts have argued.

Kelley after the war had been appointed Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in North Carolina, and in 1949 he was appointed Professor of Criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. He had written several successful books and was judged an accomplished man.  

Fascinatingly, Kelley committed suicide in front of his wife and children on New Year's Day 1958 by ingesting a capsule of potassium cyanide. Kelly had burnt something on the stove - he went upstairs and came down frothing at the mouth before collapsing and dying.   

Hermann Göring, whom Kelley had come to know during his psychiatric evaluation at Nuremberg also killed himself in this manner around twenty years before. This was detailed in Jack El-Hai's nonfiction book; The Nazi And the Psychiatrist.

The term crazed gunman is overused. These shooters are aware of each other and they may be making a statement, like the University of Texas shooting, where on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former Marine sharpshooter, having killed his wife and mother, picked off people at random from the top of a university building. Whitman’s motive was he hated his father and his aim was to get back at him and then take his own life in a suicide-by-cop. He had a small brain tumor, but that was discounted as a principal cause of his actions.  

The temptation to take drugs and alcohol, or to gamble to relieve the pressures of stress and boredom by those struggling is understandable but it is a mistake.  

‘Do nothing that has no value’ said Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵, c. 1584 – June 13, 1645), a Japanese samurai warrior and master swordsman.

We all like to relax and have fun, but staying in control of your own mind takes self-discipline.

Let your vices control you, and then lose control of yourself and you never know where it might lead?   

Image: Charles Whitman University of Texas shooting. Sixteen people were killed in total; a 17th victim died in 2001 from injuries sustained in the attack. 31 people were wounded. 

The Liberal Democrats have accused David Gauke of burying his head in the sand as he announced the rollout of Universal Credit will go ahead despite concerns over delayed payments. It comes as the latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed that almost a quarter of new claimants to Universal Credit did not receive their full payment on time.

The Liberal Democrats have accused David Gauke of burying his head in the sand as he announced the rollout of Universal Credit will go ahead despite concerns over delayed payments.

Stephen Lloyd MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Work and Pensions, commented:

“Ministers continue to bury their heads in the sand over the shocking impact the rollout of Universal Credit is having on thousands of people's lives
 
“For David Gauke to ignore even his own MPs shows just how out of touch with the needs of ordinary people this government is.
 
“The whole point of the piloted implementation was to learn lessons and make the necessary changes, but ministers are determined to press ahead despite the consequences.
 
“This is despite clear evidence from numerous respected organisations of the destitution families are experiencing because of Universal Credit, including statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions itself.

"It’s almost as if the government wishes to drive these numbers up even further - which is just madness".