Details of the new social security benefits being introduced by the Scottish Government following the introduction of new devolved powers are to be outlined in the Scottish Parliament.

Social Security Secretary Angela Constance will on Tuesday announce the detail on the payments which are said to be the most complex programme of change since devolution started.

The powers include responsibility for Ill Health and Disability Benefits, Carers Allowance, Cold Weather Payments and Winter Fuel Payments, Discretionary Housing Payments and some powers relating to Universal Credit.

Sure Start Maternity Grant will also be introduced before it is replaced by the Scottish Government’s own Best Start Grant.

Ten of the 11 devolved benefits, totalling around £2.8 billion of annual payments, will be handled directly by the new social security agency itself.

Discretionary Housing Payments and the Scottish Welfare Fund will be delivered by local authorities.

The Scottish Government has ruled out using private firms to assess individuals for benefits.

Image: Social Security Secretary Angela Constance

Ms Constance is expected to say in Holyrood: “We have already announced that we will create a new social security agency, with an efficient central function and a strong local presence across Scotland and have ruled out the use of private agencies in benefit assessments.

“Scotland’s new social security system is the largest and most complex programme of change delivered since devolution.

“Today I will set out some of the detail of the social security payments to be delivered by the Scottish Government and how, with the agreement of Parliament, we will deliver them.

“I will be making clear to Parliament that our guiding principle is that people should be treated fairly and respectfully, allowing them to have the support they need to live their lives with dignity.”

Meanwhile:

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Post, the First Minister said the Tories must give “a direct answer” over whether they would apply a “whopping great cut” to the lifeline welfare payment before it is devolved to the Scottish Government in 2019.

The Prime Minister said the benefit, worth up to £300 a year, will be means-tested in England under Conservative rule but that pensioners in Scotland would be exempt.

Miss Sturgeon said she feared the fuel payment for the elderly could be cut by as much as 87%, adding: “There is a number of questions we feel the Tories need to answer.

New payday loan regulations come into force on Friday, requiring all online lenders to advertise on at least one price comparison website.

The CMA says the new rules will:

• Allow customers to compare loans more easily, to establish the best value
• Give borrowers a clear explanation of fees and charges, making it easier to establish the cost of missing repayments
• Make it easier for new lenders to compete with existing players on price

The Consumer Finance Association, which represents payday lenders, says the price cap has already resulted in 600,000 fewer consumers having access to credit.

It says the number of loans being approved since 2013 has fallen by 42%.

Brian Tracy tells it how it is. We hope this video will assist you plan your future, increase your wealth and increase your happiness.

The New Economics Foundation have been considering the impact a fund owned by the public could have on the UK. 

Implemented correctly, a sovereign wealth fund could have a hugely positive impact on our economy, as seen in other countries around the world – from improved intergenerational fairness to much needed infrastructure investment.

To be a success in Britain, such a fund would need to follow seven principles:

1. Provide planning and investment for the long term

It is vital that we start to think long term. Britain has historically not been good at long term investment and planning, and a wealth fund must be geared towards improving the lives of current and future generations.

2. The fund should be permanent

The principal should always be protected and maintained in line with inflation. Norway, owner of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has a strict rule that a maximum of 4% of the total can be spent in any one year. Checks such as this protect against governments using the fund for short term political gain.

3. The fund must have a social function

A wealth fund must come with clear criteria about the societal challenges it is designed to address.

Alaska, for example, uses their fund to tackle inequality, distributing dividends directly to all residents. As a result, it has one of the lowest levels of inequality among US states.

Britain’s fund could tackle collective social problems like adult social care, the housing crisis or climate change, all of which require large quantities of stable and patient capital.

4. The fund must be ethical

Investment decisions must be taken using strict ethical guidelines, focusing on the overall impact to society as well as economic returns.

A large-scale consultation should be conducted to understand how this should be applied in the UK, similarly to the process followed by Norway. After a multi-year consultation to develop the criteria, the country now has an Ethics Council which decides which industries and companies should be excluded. As a result, the fund avoids companies responsible for human rights abuses and environmental destruction.

5. The fund must be transparent and accountable

Appointments to the board, investment decisions, annual reports should all be transparent in order to ensure accountability.

The board should be a mixture of appointed people with specific skills coupled with citizen representatives, who could be elected. The board would be accountable to us all as collective owners and would be required to act at all times in line with governance structures and rules that had been set up.

6. Owned by British people, collectively – not by the state

The fund needs to be owned by those whose interests it has been set up to serve – the British people. This means setting up a new ownership structure outside the traditional public/private dichotomy.

One example of this can again be found in Alaska. Its Permanent Fund has shown remarkable endurance and stability in the face of hostile moves by the state government. The courts there ruled in favour of the people and prevented the state government from accessing the fund. Attempts to close the fund were also rebuffed by a referendum.

7. The fund should make best use of the public assets we already own

The UK public sector currently owns about £360billion worth of land and property which is managed sub-optimally and could be actively used to solve our pressing housing crisis. Rather than flogging the land off in a counterproductive firesale – often abandoning valuable assets to big property developers – we could take control of this public land portfolio and use it as the starter investment for a wealth fund.

The Crown Estate provides a useful model for how this can be done. It manages a property portfolio of over £12bn and generates surplus profits of £300million through active management while maximising their total contribution to society and not just their bottom line.

Plans for shale gas funds may follow similar rationale, but it is vital that proceeds are not used simply as part of efforts to encourage local people to tolerate potentially dangerous activity.

Orkney and Shetland have shown it is possible to recoup money from industries for disturbances caused by extracting natural resources. These funds are then best used as part of efforts to mitigate the future impacts of climate change – not simply to offset a continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels, for which we will all eventually pay a heavy price.

Last year GMB won a landmark employment tribunal against Uber, which ruled that its drivers were not self-employed contractors but employed workers - and were therefore entitled to the national minimum wage, sickness and holiday pay.

Uber's license to operate in London expires next week. Right now Uber does not pay the minimum wage to its drivers in the UK. Uber drivers don't even get basic rights like holiday pay. But we could force Uber to change their exploitative business practices. 

Transport for London (TfL) is in charge of renewing Uber's license. GMB, the union for Uber drivers, has called on TfL not to renew the license unless Uber guarantee safe working practices and basic employment rights.

Together say the GMB we can remind TfL of their obligations to us and not just to Uber's powerful lobbyists.

Click below to sign the petition: 

The Australian Fabians are putting together a collection of new progressive policy ideas to be launched at the NSW Labor conference on July 29, 2017. The Fabians want to get people talking and thinking big about the challenges facing their community.

The current Australian Government has watched as inequality has grown, but it's not too late to turn it around. But to do it the government need to get serious about challenges like housing affordability, the future of work, new technology for transport  and fighting the rise of casualised employment. The Australian Fabians have the ideas, but they need your help to spread the word.

If you would like to support this project, please contribute to the Fabians crowdfunding campaign. So far the Fabians are almost half-way to their goal, and they need your help to get there. The Fabians truly appreciate your donation they say, which makes this project possible.

ABC comment: Do chip in if you can. These guys do great work. 

 There has been a revision down to 0.2% for GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017, which the Office for National Statistics says reflects household spending slowing down.

The TUC are saying: “The next government will inherit an economy that needs serious attention. An urgent priority must be to reverse the current fall in living standards. The minimum wage must go up faster, and the pay restrictions on public servants like nurses, firefighters and midwives must be ended.

“It is also vital for Britain to increase investment in communities where good jobs are in short supply. More investment is needed in skills, transport links, broadband, decent homes and high quality public services.”

The TUC has published analysis showing that unsecured debt per UK household will reach a record high this year of £13,900. This exceeds the pre-crisis peak of £13,300 in 2007.

A repot last year said:

• 3.2 million households are in ‘problem debt’ – defined as paying out more than 25% of their gross household income on unsecured debt repayments (3.2m is equivalent to 1 in 8 households.)
• 1.6 million households are in ‘extreme problem debt’ – defined as paying out more than 40% of their gross household income on unsecured debt repayments (1.6m is equivalent to 1 in 16 households.)

Don’t Join the Army’ is a project of Veterans for Peace UK. The organization says that it is a response to the Army’s consistently misleading and exploitative recruitment campaigns aimed at young people.

Army recruitment has frequently been successful from areas where there is high youth unemployment. The North East as an example.

In the wake of the Manchester bombing there has been some talk of 'boots on the ground' - mainly in the US, but in the end only education, not military muscle, can bring about change.  There was high unemployment in Iraq following the Irag war and that was certainly a factor in the rise and success of ISIS recruitment.

In much of the Middle East, including oil rich Saudi Arabia, unemployment has been high (20%). The irony is that it is places like mineral rich Africa, and the oil rich Middle East - countries suffer instability. Proxy wars in the 70s and 80s between the communists and capitalists countries held back fantastically wealthy, mineral rich countries in Africa. Today countries like Angola are thriving. The fantastic profits selling diamonds were made in Israel and Antwerp, but the costs of production was kept in Africa.   

The roots of Middle East unrest stem from the carving up of Africa in the 1800s and the Balfour declaration in WW1 where France and the United Kingdom were meeting even early in the war to divide up the spoils of WW1 in the Middle East. This was at a time the UK and France were not even winning the war.

This divide and rule strategy was to reduce countries bargaining power (to shrink Turkeys Navy that threatened the Suez Canal - the gateway to India) and later to keep Middle East economy’s needing to sell their oil and minerals cheaply to finance regional wars and fund military spending. Not to develop education and infrastructure and advance society, but in the main to keep autocratic leaders in power.  That is - till those leaders need to be removed (like Saddam Hussain) and replaced by governments (puppets in some cases) friendly to the western powers. Such as in Afghanistan today.

Leaders who want to nationalise and take control of their countries resources to benefit ‘the people’ found themselves being overthrown by the CIA, at the request of the UK, such as happened in Iraq.  A pattern that has also happened in South America and Caribbean by the US fearful communism could take hold. Guatemala for example, where the socialist government was overthrown covertly so the US, United Fruit Company could continue their profitable business. 

Most suicide bombers are not poor, or illiterate, but from largely secular and educated middle classes. Westerners sniggering about the need to claim their 70 odd virgins in heaven are presenting a misleading picture. These are educated people in many cases, driven by deep seated conviction about ridding their region from the western influence and occupation. They see the West as ‘Godless’ and corrupt. 

ISIS are brutal people after decades of war, tribal conflict, abject misery and wretched poverty. They may be out to shock the West into letting go. However we need to try and understand these people. Just dropping bombs. frequently on wholly innocent civilians, is in the end self-defeating. It just creates a cycle of violence. 

Veterans for Peace UK

Based on the experiences of hundreds of veterans, Don’t Join the Army provides young people with information about military service often missing from the official recruitment material.

Ben Griffin, served with the SAS in Iraq and is the coordinator of Veterans for Peace UK. He said “The army is engaged in a long-term campaign to recruit our children and to capture the imagination of those who will never join. The army is nothing like the recruitment adverts, our new website reveals the reality of army life and the possible negative consequences of army service.”

Veterans for Peace UK is a voluntary ex-services organisation of men and women, who collectively have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2. The organisation says that ‘War is not the solution to the problems we face in the 21st century’.

Since the turn of the century, our society has prosecuted a long war across a number of countries. The public are aware of some elements of the war; other elements remain secret and concealed from view.

Air strikes, drone strikes, missile strikes, night raids, torture sites, internment camps, terrorist attacks, chemical attacks, sieges, invasions, and occupations are the tactics of this war.

Terrorism in The Words Of Veterans For Peace UK

If the aim of this war is to defeat terrorism, then it is an ongoing and spectacular failure, as the following graph illustrates.

If the aim of this war is to increase the status, power and wealth of individuals and institutions loyal to the War System, then it is an ongoing success story, and business as usual for our society.

The politicians get a place in history. The generals are promoted. The soldiers get medals. The arms dealers get sales. The bankers get profits. The corporations get access to resources and markets. The newspaper editors tell the story and the militarist on the street basks in the reflected glory of it all.

The death and destruction are external costs.

During this long war, opposing political factions have held power, each one has contributed to the perpetuation and expansion of the war, none have made a genuine effort to end the war. This “War on Terror” is just business as usual for a country dominated by the War System.

The mouthpieces of the War System muddy the waters:

• They vilify regimes for human rights abuses whilst feting others as important allies.

• They call for military action as the one-size-fits all solution to the complex problems we face in the 21st century.

• They respond to some attacks with screams of outrage whilst ignoring other attacks that would undermine claims to be better and more humane than others.

It does not have to be like this.

The War System relies on the daily participation of thousands and thousands of individuals to function. We can end this madness by refusing to participate at every level. It is time for us to abandon the War System.

Image of injured soldiers courtesy of the Daily Express

Theresa May starts to look vulnerable: For the second time in as many months, the prime minister made a u-turn, this time over a policy that would require comfortably off pensioners to contribute from their assets to the cost of their care in old age. Journalists sensed blood as the measure was labeled a “dementia tax” by opponents. The last thing May needed was a prime time interrogation from the BBC’s bulldog-in-chief Andrew Neil. But that’s exactly what she got, and things didn’t go well for her.

Political analysis: “There’s no way around it: her manifesto has bombed,” concludes Tom. Polls suggest Labour will win the under-40 vote, meaning pensioners could be the difference between May in cruise control and an election shipwreck. In cold political terms, May will be shielded from some of the fallout today as attention turns to the Manchester explosion.

 Image courtesy of the BBC: Theresa May failing to answer NHS questions

The BBC have said that Labour will "in effect" end the freeze on benefits through a package of reforms in its "first Budget", the shadow chancellor has said.

John McDonnell said his proposals would make the freeze "irrelevant", but did not say whether he would scrap it.

Later though, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News the freeze was "unfair" and "would be ended".

The Liberal Democrats have also said they would end the benefits freeze and reverse welfare cuts.

According to their manifesto, the Conservatives have "no plans for further radical welfare reform" and would continue the roll-out of Universal Credit - a single monthly payment to replace many other benefits.

The freeze on working-age benefits, which came into force in 2016, sees welfare payments capped at their current rate until 2019.

Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr show, Mr McDonnell said the proposals the party was putting forward "would ensure that in effect we would be addressing this issue of how we reverse the benefit freeze itself".

"I want to do it as part of an overall reform package and not just pick off one by one."

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He said: "We're putting £30bn in over the lifetime of a Parliament into welfare, we're reforming the whole process... and the implication of that will be... the impact of these proposals will make the freeze irrelevant because we'll reform the whole process."

Labour's manifesto includes plans to scrap the bedroom tax, restore housing benefit for those under 21 and increase Personal Independence Payments for the disabled.

When pushed about what level of economic growth would be needed for Labour to deliver its plans, Mr McDonnell insisted the party's proposals were "completely cost neutral... because for everything you put in, you get the money back".

Mr McDonnell rejected Resolution Foundation findings that 78% of Conservative cuts would not be reversed under Labour proposals.

He said his strength of feeling on this issue was such that he would deliver the reforms in the first Budget.

'Fair' system

Mr Corbyn was also pressed on whether enough money had been allocated in the manifesto to fully reverse all the welfare cuts Labour has criticised.

He said some money had been set aside "as a start" and "obviously we would review it as time goes on".

Asked about immigration, Mr Corbyn said a Labour government would deliver a "fair" system, but would not be drawn on whether he personally wanted to see numbers rise or fall.

He said net migration would "probably be lower" in the future, but added: "I want us to have a society that works and I cannot get into a numbers game because I don't think it works."