Daily archives: April 6, 2013


Daily Blog 04/06/2013

  • Here’s a poster currently displayed on the wall in the manager’s office of Homebase Haringey – which clearly shows the company is using workfare as a means to reduce their payroll costs:

    tags: workfare politics

  • This is what we have learnt. Those who have attempted to capitalise on these six deaths have proved themselves to lack basic decency and humanity. A three-year crusade to demonise unemployed and disabled people has culminated in the attempt to represent this lone monster as emblematic of the entire welfare state. Driven in part by the political spinner Lynton Crosby, the Tory strategy to win the next election is clear: turn large sections of the country against each other.

    tags: welfare politics

  • Thirlwall dissected the kingly rule that Philpott had over his first wife (unnamed), then Heather Kehoe, a 16-year-old he left this wife for when he was in his forties, then Mairead Philpott, then Lisa Willis. A crucial idea – seen commonly in abuse cases and until now rarely spoken of – is Philpott’s yearning to keep all of these women almost perpetually pregnant. Babies and more babies. Seventeen babies. Not bred to milk the benefits system. Bred as his girlfriends and wives cannot look or move elsewhere when they’re rotund and vulnerable. Bred in tribute to his enormous prowess and machismo. Followed, time and again, by court cases at Philpott’s behest to remove custody of babies from his ex-wives and girlfriends. Taking children from their mothers was Philpott’s ultimate tool of power, after mental and physical cruelty. “Women were your chattels,” said Justice Thirlwall. “You bark orders and they obey. You were kingpin and no one else mattered.”

    tags: crime

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