0845 Scamming The Poor

Being as I am currently on the dole I have reason on occasion to have to phone my local benefits office. Time was that I would just call the office up the road from me and that would be fine. They have however recently changed my local DWP into a JobCentrePlus, the ‘Plus’ means that it does less than it used to. No longer can the people at the office answer benefits enquiries I am now to phone an office on the other side of the city that has no regular phone number, just an 0845 number. I am sure that most people out there have come across these numbers before. The 0845 number for those of you that don’t know is a scheme that is presented to us as making things more convenient i.e. one number that can be called from anywhere in the country and is charged as a local call. Sounds OK eh? Well the thing is these numbers are no longer charged at local rate and the main reason a lot of places use them is that the organisation recieving the call makes money off the call.

That any business would jump at the chance to make money off people before they are even customers is hardly surrising and not the sort of thing that even gets me angry anymore. However when the Job Centre starts using them to make money out of claimants that really pisses me off. People who try to get by on state benefits are some of the poorest people in the country and that the very organization that is supposed to help them is making money out of us is disgusting.

It’s not only the job centre that is doing this however no! Glasgow City Council also use these 0845 numbers as a way of making money out of us when we need to contact them. Not content with selling the city out from beneath us they have now figured out that they can charge us if we want to complain!

Bastards the lot of them.

And as Cocksparrer sang all those years ago…

Take ‘em all,

one and all,

put ‘em up against a wall and shoot ‘em!

Anarchists Arrested In Penza, Russia

Two anarchists, Oslav Kirosheyev and Vitaly Bakhmasterov, were arrested on June 16th in the city of Penza for handing out leaflets. The comrades were arrested under anti-terror legislation for handing out the leaflets which read “Government is the prison of the people. Become an anarchist and free yourself!” they face possible imprisonment as well as expulsion from University.

The police are basically using anti-extremism legislation to outlaw all anarchist activity, just like in the good old days of uncle joe.

There is a russian language news story here and if anyone could offer a translation I would be most grateful. We must find some way of sending a message to the Russian authorities that we will not tolerate this kind of treatment of our comrades.

A possible fax for sending nasty letters about the case would be the city Duma (municipal government) :
3-01 54-18-12

Also the Russian consulate in Edinburgh is located at 58 Melville street and I’m sure that they would be more than happy to answer any question people may have. The phone number for the consulate is 0131-225-7098 and the fax is 0131 225-9587.

The embassy at 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London can be reached on 0203-051-11-99