Saturday 31st January & Sunday 1st February 2015

[citizenJA]

goodnight, my friends
love
JA

[seeingclearly]

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has been accused of “not knowing what was going on” in primary schools.

Labour’s David Blunkett said her demands that all children aged 11, should know up to their 12 times table was already covered by a numeracy programme introduced in 1997.

And the same applied to her announcement that they should also be able to write a short story with accurate punctuation, spelling and grammar and read a novel.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/to ... ar_twitter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As a parent of someone who started in primary ed in autumn 1996, I can attest to the fact that there was something called literacy hour every day for the next six years at least. It was the first hour of the day, and covered numeracy too, and was mandatory throughout England, unsure about Scotland and Wales. It was very successful with children who had normal educational needs. SEN are different, but if correctly assessed children with these should never be classed as illiterate or innumerate, as their learning difficulty should be identified. I've always taken the tory claims of widespread illiteracy with a pinch of salt because if this programme, though I'm less sure whether incomer children at secondary level got adequate induction into English or extra help.

[seeingclearly]

Thanks for all good wishes, and please accept mine to you all. You have kept me going, and my mind in one piece, through what has been one of the most difficult periods of my life. The Internet shrinks the separation between us, I'll be reading when I can. I'm reprising a journey I last took 52yrs 2months ago to the day! It will be interesting. As will hearing of events in the UK from FTN. keep safe, warm and active, and don't despair. Blessings to all. xxx

[seeingclearly]

Tomorrow's Indy front page leading on 'Labour facing crisis in Scotland'. Predicting the SNP to take up to 45 of Labour's current 59 seats.

Small wonder lots of people here are feeling down ... it does feel like there's no let up in the damning.

We have to hope that - as with the referendum - there are quite a lot of people playing things close to their chests.

Of course Yessers always say that what voters in Scotland do will not affect England. It's their excuse for a quite vindictive and illogical campaign against Labour, one I'll admit to not fully understanding. But that's because it's always prefaced with an unreferenced litany of complaint against Scottish Labour and shouts of red tories and the like. I don't see how the loss of Scottish seats would not affect England, and so their expressions of solidarity with England never feel sincere. I know those who've been through the worst of this elsewhere have had more than enough of it, but here it's only really mentioned in passing. The feeling I get from it all is that you put yourself beyond the pale to express labour sympathies, but who can tell really, between trollery and a compromised media. Pperhaps there's someone here who lives in Scotland who can explain.

[RogerOThornhill]

This is complete bollocks.

David Lindsay retweeted
Andrew Neil ‏@afneil 6m6 minutes ago
The collapse in bond yields is slashing the interest bill on the debt. Will the Chancellor use it for typical pre-election giveaway?

It's not being slashed. There's far more of it than planned, and the falling yield is only on new debt.

Imagine Labour doing this?

What is "slashing" the interest is that Osborne is taking the interest paid by the Treasury to the Bank of England on the debt bought under QE back into the Treasury - that's the reason it's dropped dramatically.

It's a con - it effectively says "we'll never reissue that debt but haven't yet got round to writing it off".

[thatchersorphan]

Good morning everyone.

Despite having full entitlement to Support Group ESA, my payments stopped a few months ago and nobody can or will tell me why. My claim is, apparently, being administered clerically so there is no information available to the helpline operators as they can only deal with inquiries on claims that are live on the system.
I have written many letters, asked for many call-backs, and done everything I can to find out what's going on. If I have been sanctioned, I have not been told. If I have been removed from benefit for some other reason, I have not been told. I have no idea what's going on and I am now behind by well over £1500.

Sending you many virtual hugs ephemerid. I suspect your file has got lost somewhere -this happened to me many years ago(with a DLA claim and appeal),fortunately Welfare Rights had copies of everything, which helped them to get things going again. It also helps if you have an advocate/advisor as they take them more seriously than they do us claimants. I think you do need to get your MP involved (or those on the select committee if yours is unsympathetic http://www.parliament.uk/business/commi ... embership/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ) including a diary and letters etc of the DWP responses, or lack of, and the effect on your already poor health. If you are able to handle the publicity, there's also the possibility of getting the press involved, this does sometimes help. It's a long shot, but there's also the PCS union's Mark Serwotka, see if he can get things moving.

If it's all clerical there's another possibility - that they manually re-entered your bank details for some reason and did it wrong (although I think the bank would have noticed the name difference and stopped it themselves, and notified DWP) - or even forgot to press the 'Y' button to continue sending payments (the latter also happened to me, though I think my claim is on their computer system, took them a while to figure out WHY they'd stopped them and they hadn't sent a letter because they hadn't stopped them intentionally. I think I was fortunate to get one of their nicer advisors the time they figured it out.)

I wish I could be of more help, you have helped so many of us in the past, including me (with a list of what I needed for a reconsideration). Don't give up, do get plenty of rest, and prioritise yourself and getting this sorted out.