Haringey Fuel Poverty Warm-up Action

Posted on | January 27, 2012 | No Comments

Sunday 29th January
12 noon, Meet outside Boots, Wood Green High Road (next to Shopping City), N22

* No more deaths from hypothermia
* Reduce fuel bills now
* No to cut-offs
* Expose energy companies profit scandal
* Yes to renewable energy – Phase out fossil fuel dependency to prevent climate catastrophe

We will be calling on all shops, pubs and public buildings to welcome those who wish to get warm. Come and join us – don’t sit in the cold alone.

Part of nationwide weekend of action, see below for details.

Organised by Haringey Solidarity Group, supported by Haringey Alliance for Public Services, and Haringey Housing Action Group.

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Nationwide Fuel Poverty Action Weekend of Winter Warm-ups

Friday, January 27th – Monday, January 30th

http://fuelpovertyaction.wordpress.com

It’s January. It’s freezing. Christmas emptied the coffers and now the bills are starting to bite. As the Big Six energy companies rake in profits of 700% and the government freezes the fuel allowance, it’s time to tell the Big Six and the government that we’ve had enough!

Fuel poverty is a public issue, not a private pain. One in four families in the UK is shivering, out of sight, behind closed doors. The government and energy companies may want to keep it this way, but we say this can’t go on.

In the UK, six companies are deciding how 99% of our energy is sourced, produced and priced. Under this monopoly, we have no say in these decisions, despite them having a major effect on our health and our climate.

On the last weekend of January, Fuel Poverty Action will be heating things up!

We’re calling for people to come out of their cold homes and into the warm offices of the Big Six: E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern, Centrica (British Gas), and Npower.

We can also warm-up at the town halls and housing associations, which are putting profit and cuts before people’s welfare.

Bearing flasks of tea and our own experiences of landlords that won’t listen, unaffordable bills, tuition fees, and debts, as well as cuts in services, benefits and working conditions, our winter warm-ups will be taking place wherever cuts are biting and warm spaces look inviting.

This is a call to anti-cuts groups, local youth and pensioner organisations, and anyone suffering in the cold this winter because they can’t afford the heating. So get organising in your communities to make this happen.

We can find ways forward, collectively, by making ourselves heard by the government and the energy companies. But what do we demand? Some things are clear: Decent shelter and warmth are a right, not a privilege. We should all have well insulated, warm homes and affordable bills that don’t make us choose between eating and heating. But how do we achieve this? What alternatives are there to a corporate controlled energy industry? How do we shift to sustainable, renewable energy? As we Warm-up we’ll be discussing these important questions and forming a plan to achieve it, come and join us!

Stop shivering in silence, let’s warm-up together!

Details of local actions will be announced on the website ( http://fuelpovertyaction.wordpress.com/) and on Twitter (@FuelPovAction).

The January actions are just the beginning! Fuel Poverty Action is a group of the Climate Justice Collective, which is planning a mass action in late April / May. If you and your group want to get more involved, come to a planning meeting on Saturday, February 18th, 2011 in Oxford. Look out for an email or check the CJC website for more info closer to the time: http://climatejusticecollective.wordpress.com

Latest from kilburn

Posted on | October 17, 2011 | No Comments

In the last period, the KUWG has been active in many ways. KUWG continues to look after peoples cases against the Job Centre/DWP, but also champion’s people’s struggles on many other fronts.
We continue to leaflet outside the Kilburn Jobcentre Plus and surrounding areas.

Our KUWG members have attended the Hillingdon Against Cuts functions and demos as well as helping other organisations that struggle against library closures in Brent and Camden – such as Brent Fight-back.
KUWG attended the anti-Atos demos and the demonstration at the Tory Conference.

KUWG is holding a public Workshop on the 20 October at the Forester Hall (part of the Tricycle) 7-9pm on the question of Atos’ Work and Sickness Reassessments. (Ellenor Hudson of SERtuc to speak).

KUWG has developed a close relationship with Winvisible, an All African Women’s Group, Women against Rape and other groups. A recent case needed collaboration between Women’s issues and Unemployment’s issues. KUWG met these Women’s groups at the Council-and-Police-led public Community Summit meetings in Camden (re: the public disturbances in early august), where KUWG spoke to explain the anger and indignation of those who are dispossessed and criminalised by the financial capitalist class in power.
Some members have joined the Brent Private Tenants Rights Group for housing benefit reforms- CAMPAIGN AGAINST HARDSHIP.  They plan a campaign to raise awareness about the benefit reforms, holding public meetings with high profile speakers and contacting other groups like LCAP, UNISON, UNITE and SHELTER for support.

Other members took part in NATIONAL AFRIKAN PEOPLE’S PARLIAMENT PRESS CONFERENCE at a Downing Street demonstration. A critique will be delivered to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street regarding: The wrongful murder of Mark Duggan and others in the black community, uprisings and a conservative state attack on a community. www.afrikanpeoplesparliament.org

Take action this October

Posted on | September 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

LCAP is making a difference!

• Over twenty members of Hackney Housing Group visited Hackney Housing Office to demand rehousing in support of one of their members and her neighbours who were living in a private house so bad it had received a Prohibition Order from the Council banning people from living there. Although the council had issued the order, no action had been taken to help the families and individuals living there to move. As a result four households were housed by the end of the next day, and we will continue to demand all of the people living there are rehoused.
• Welfare Action Hackney have challenged sanctions for two of their members and won!
• Corporate Watch has exposed that Newham Council and Matalan among others benefited from people being made to work for their benefits – at far below minimum wage. (An issue first brought to their attention by LCAP groups).

There is loads happening in the next month. Get your diary out and come and lend your support…

This Friday 30th September: Atos shouldn’t be allowed to recruit doctors to throw people off sickness benefits!
12 noon – 2pm, Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington, N1

Thursday 20th October: Public Workshop, Thrown out of Sick – and Sent to Find a Job!
7pm, at the Forester Hall, part of the Tricycle theatre. Hosted by Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group. Free entry.

Saturday 22nd October: Film screening of “A day’s Work, a day’s pay”
10am-11am at the Anarchist Bookfair. Come and see this moving and revealing film about claimants being forced to work for their benefits in the US.

Saturday 22nd October: Workshop “Resisting Welfare Abolition”
3pm-4pm in room 3.26 at the Anarchist Bookfair.

Sunday 23rd October: A National Meeting of Defend Welfare network
11am-5pm, Somers Town Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, NW1 1EE (5 minutes walk from Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross stations) Wheelchair accessible

Join us for a meeting with like-minded people to share ideas and strategise to stop the government’s attacks on welfare.

Saturday 29th October: London Coalition Against Poverty monthly meeting
Venue and time tbc.

You might also be interested in these actions and events organised by other groups…

Friday 7th October: The struggle for human rights for South Africa’s shack dwellers

A few years ago, LCAP hosted inspiring speakers from the South African shackdwellers’ movement. Next week, the secretary general of the movement will give a talk.

Sunday 9th October: Block the Bill

The government is just weeks away from destroying the NHS forever. This is an emergency. On Sunday October 9th, join UK Uncut on Westminster Bridge and help block the bill. Get to the middle of Westminster Bridge shortly before 1pm.

Last weekend in October: Fuel Poverty Day School – more details to be published soon.

Can you help out this month?

• Come and support one of the demos or events above.
• Volunteer on our stall at the Anarchist Bookfair on 22nd October. Email londoncoalitionagainstpoverty@gmail.com if you can help out.
• Email welfareactionhackney@gmail.com if you can help out at the national Defend Welfare meeting on 23rd October.
• Come along to one of our group meetings and get more involved.

Defend Welfare Gathering

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

Sunday 23rd October, 11am-5pm
Somers Town Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, London, NW1 1EE
(5 minutes walk from Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross stations)
Wheelchair accessible

Join us for a meeting with like-minded people to share ideas and strategise to stop the government’s attacks on welfare.

Welfare is being systematically attacked:

• Unemployed people are being forced to work without pay.
• Disabled people are being deprived of their entitlement to benefits through the devastating Work Capability Assessment process.
• People can now be left destitute for up to two years through benefit sanctions.
• The right to housing is under attack: Housing benefit cuts are set to make thousands homeless. The right-wing called for evictions in response to the riots, even before courts had found people guilty.
• Private companies stand to make millions through bullying claimants on the Work Programme.
• Legal aid cuts make it harder to challenge bad treatment.
• The only benefit that was available to people under 18 – EMA – has been abolished by this government.
• Single mothers are being forced to be job-seekers when their children are at an even younger age.
• Asylum seekers are forced to survive on incomes far below benefit levels, which are already set at subsistence level.
• The full impact that the Universal Credit will have is yet to be understood.

But people across the UK are organising to defend welfare. The Boycott Workfare campaign recently forced the “Making Work Pay” conference to relocate at short notice. Atos, the private company responsible for depriving hundreds of thousands of people of sickness benefits, has had many of its offices occupied, costing it thousands of pounds. Claimants are sharing information on how to challenge the bullying and discrimination that is rife in the new set-up.

This gathering is open to everyone who wants to take action to defend welfare. We are a claimant-led network – our response to welfare reforms is led by people who feel their effects the most – but the attacks on welfare will affect us all whether we are in work or may need welfare as parents, if we become unemployed, due to sickness or disability, or as pensioners.

We plan to run the day with lots of discussion and chances to share ideas and information in workshops and an open space session where we can set the agenda on the day. If you can offer a workshop or would like to propose something for the agenda, please get in touch.

Please help make the day happen:

• Let us know you can make it!
• The network does not have any funding, so if your group or union branch can make a contribution to the costs of the room or participants’ travel, please help raise funds for it. Groups and individuals may want to approach union branches or organise fundraisers to raise funds for your travel.
• Let us know if you can help with food, childcare or facilitation on the day.
• Forward this invite to anyone else you know who might be interested, post it on your blog or social media; mention it at meetings, and help spread the word!

No Evictions of Tenants – We all have a Right to a Home!

Posted on | August 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

We condemn the use of evictions by Wandsworth Council as a punishment measure for families who have criminal charges against them after the riots. In the first place, Wandsworth Council has issued this eviction notice before the person in question has even been convicted of an offence. Secondly, evictions must not be used as a punishment. This is inherently unfair; it is only council and possibly housing association tenants that will be evicted not private tenants or home owners.

The government says that people who allow their children to take part in riots don’t deserve to live in housing ’subsidised’ by the tax payer. However, a council tenant is not ’subsidised’. They are merely paying a reasonable rent for their home to the local authority, unlike a private tenant who is paying an unreasonable rent to a private landlord. Who is subsidising who?  

Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister wants to change the law so that council tenants convicted of offences which are not connected to where they live can be evicted in new fast track procedures, in addition to fast track evictions already planned for people who behave anti socially in or around their homes. We agree harassment and anti social behaviour needs to be tackled but we think that evictions are a blunt and lazy way of doing this. Councils already have legislation which they can use to tackle anti social behaviour, but eviction is currently the last step after all else has failed.

We call on local councils and housing associations who do not agree with these proposals to state publicly that they will not be using these measures against their tenants. We call on people in Wandsworth and beyond to support and defend their neighbours if they are targeted with eviction notices by their councils. In Hackney and Haringey Housing Action Groups have used delegations to the housing office and town hall to put pressure on the council to house members of their group. This is the kind of support and action we must take to show that these measures are not acceptable and will not be workable. Council tenants must not be punished twice; once by the courts and then by the council making them homeless.

See  www.hackneyhousinggroup.wordpress.com / www.haringey.org.uk

Contact londoncoalitionagainstpoverty@gmail.com

See another statement against the riot evictions here: http://noriotevictions.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/campaign-statement/#comments and sign this petition to tell the government not to evict tenants http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/10847