Friday 29 October 2010

Twitter round up

As I mentioned before it can be hard to find the spoons to write here, but what's really easy and uses little energy is tweeting. So sometimes I post links to articles on Twitter that don't get covered here on the main site. And that's not good for our non-tweeting readers who end up missing stuff.

So I thought I should start doing a regular (or as regular as I can manage) round up of relevant news stories that we've tweeted.

There's been quite a lot about the housing benefit cuts. The Guardian reported that councils are planning for an exodus of families from London. Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, told the BBC that he will not accept "Kosovo-style social cleansing" of the capital due to a government cap on housing benefits. (And as many Tweeters pointed out, when BoJo is standing up for the poor you know there's something really wrong.) Unsurprisingly many MPs distanced themselves from Johnson's comments and Vince Cable accused the mayor of using "inflammatory language". The Independent report that the government is determined to push ahead with the plans regardless and that Cameron thinks the cap is "fair".

The next big issue is the planned removal of the mobility component of DLA from people resident in care homes. BenefitScroungingScum appeared on BBC Radio Leeds to talk about the issue. @beccaviola tweeted that having her Motability vehicle while she was stuck in a care home was the thing that stopped her killing herself. RADAR released a statement that they're strongly opposed to the plan.

The big twitter story of the week has been the Vodafone tax bill story that we reported last month. Protesters managed to shut down both a Leeds branch of the store and Vodafone's flagship store on Oxford Street. There are more protests planned for tomorrow (scroll down to the comments for a slightly more accessible plan if travelling all over London isn't that ideal for you). Johann Hari wrote a column about just how effective protesting can be. @kimkali wondered if all those made homeless by the cuts are going to move in to their local Vodafone store.

Other tweets of note:


And finally: The CAB are conducting some research into the ESA medicals process. If you're claiming/about to claim have a look at their Fair Welfare campaign page.

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