Monthly Archives: October 2010

There is nothing fair about cutting incomes already stuck in poverty.

Posted on by

The Guardian 19th October 2010

Simon Jenkins believes the government needs all the poor it can muster to defend the cause of cutting from the rich. (Cutting from the rich and clobbering the middle, Cameron looks like a lefty, 15 October). There are many poor people in the UK but, standing justice on its head, the government’s propaganda has thundered the message that they are exploiting the rich, so opening the way to cutting the welfare of the poorest.

Britain has the lowest adult unemployment benefits in western Europe at 40% of average earnings – others are around 60% to 70%. They are also half the UK poverty threshold and 40% of the Joseph Rowntree minimum income standard. Despite this deep poverty the coalition has moved the annual uprating from the more generous RPI to the meaner CPI. Even the RPI never kept up with the increase in prices of essentials such as food and fuel.

The effect of the move will reduce the buying power of jobseeker’s allowance/employment and support allowance of £65.45 a week, £51.85for under-25s, by about £1 a week per year if current inflationary trends remain unaltered. This is a cumulative £3bn taken
from the pockets of the poorest over the next 10 years assuming a steady claimant count of one million, without a thought to the existing misery”, poor maternal nutrition, poverty-related illness and educational under achievement, with their huge costs to the taxpayer.

Rev Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Justice – The powerful do not unreasonably exploit the weak

Posted on by

The Times, October 15 2010

Justice has traditionally been about ensuring the powerful do not unreasonably exploit the weak.

Sir, Daniel Finkelstein’s discussion of fairness should hit reality when it has to be translated into laws that promote justice (“Why the Tories are now the party of fairness”, Opinion, Oct 13). Fairness is sprinkled liberally on the polices of all political parties but the issue for many voters is not about the politics of left or right, but whether Parliament has the capacity or the wisdom to turn policies into just laws.

In recent history a public sense of justice made Parliament overturn the closed shop, a law of the left, and the poll tax, a law of the right. Justice is about making judgments in the light of the evidence and has traditionally been about ensuring the powerful do not unreasonably exploit the weak.

The Rev Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Economic Injustice and the Disintegration of Mixed Communities

Posted on by

by Rev Paul Nicolson, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust.

Delivered at the Defend Council House Lobby in Committee Room 7 at the Parliament at 1pm on 11 Oct 2010.

The decision to cap housing benefit is a spectacular example of economic injustice. It continues decades of the disintegration of economically mixed communities, and hits the poorest households below the belt – while protecting the speculators and landlords who profit from high rents and therefore high housing benefit.

I was a Parish priest in a beautiful village in the Chiltern Hills from 1982 to 1999. Most people have seen it on television, where it is called Dibley.  During that time, a combination of the sale of council houses and private speculation ended the mixed community of rich, middle class and poor. The right to buy led to the sale of council houses to sitting tenants for £25,000 they are now being sold on at around £250,000; the villagers’ rented cottages were bought by a speculator in the 1940s and sold off for a fortune every time a tenant died. You have to raise at least ££400,000 to live in Dibleyland now unless you are a servant, a farm labourer or a vicar in tied houses. Continue reading →

Cuts should be tempered with economic and civil justice

Posted on by

The Times, Saturday 2 October 2010

Sir, Camilla Cavendish is right to draw attention to the precedence given in the governmental policy-making to cutting costs over promoting justice. For years legal aid has been made inaccessible for vulnerable people. The shortage of solicitors who have a housing contract with the Legal Services Commission has resulted in many unrepresented evictions and far too much dependence by governments on voluntary unqualified advisers.

This injustice will be compounded in Westminster, where the rents of more than 4,000 tenants are higher than the £250-£400 a week housing benefit cap.

In any event, this benefit cannot be claimed without a means inquiry; which the arbitrary caps render pointless because they ignore the low incomes of the claimants.

Debt, court and bailiffs costs, eviction and misery are inevitable unless the rush to cuts is tempered with both economic and civil justice.

The Rev Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust