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Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Tory manifesto: more elderly people will have to pay for own social care – The Guardian

Posted: May 18, 2017 at 2:18 pm

The prime minister is expected to announce an end to the triple lock on pensions in the manifesto. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

More elderly people will have to pay for their own social care in the home and lose universal benefits under a new Conservative policy which, Theresa May will say on Thursday, is difficult but necessary to tackle the crisis in funding.

Introducing the partys election manifesto, the prime minister will say it is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the challenges ahead as she unveils a controversial policy that would reduce the value of estates that many people hope to pass on to their children.

The policy will be a flagship measure in the Tories election manifesto, which the prime minister will pitch as a programme for solving some of the challenges facing Britain. It means wealthier people with more than 100,000 in assets will have to pay for their own elderly care out of the value of their homes, rather than relying on the council to cover the costs of visits by care workers.

The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are alive. Instead, products will be available allowing the elderly to pay by extracting equity from their homes, which will be recovered at a later date when they die or sell their residence.

Labour responded to the announcement by saying that people could not trust the Tories promises on social care. Barbara Keeley, shadow minister for social care, said: In their last manifesto, they promised a cap on care costs. But they broke their promise, letting older and vulnerable people down.

Its the Tories who have pushed social care into crisis; their cuts to councils have meant 4.6bn axed from social care budgets between 2010 and 2015, leaving 1.2 million people struggling to get by without care. And NHS bosses have recently said that the money the Tories promised them wont help alleviate the problems.

To provide a more immediate boost in funding for social care, the government will also end universal winter fuel payments of 100 to 300 a year for pensioners, bringing in a means-tested system instead. The Conservatives declined to say how much they would raise from this, or what limits they would place on who is eligible for the benefits, but the payments currently cost the government around 2bn a year.

The manifesto is set to have a markedly different tone from Labours, which promises a populist programme of mass nationalisation, more spending on the NHS, the abolition of tuition fees and an end to the public sector pay cap.

May billed it as a declaration of intent: a commitment to get to grips with the great challenges of our time and to take the big, difficult decisions that are right for Britain in the long term.

People are rightly sceptical of politicians who claim to have easy answers to deeply complex problems. It is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the challenges ahead and the hard work required to overcome them, she will say.

Other measures expected to be included in the manifesto are:

A pledge to scrap free school lunches for infants to pay for free breakfasts for all primary pupils, saving around 650 a year per pupil, which will be used to increase schools funding by about 4bn over the parliament.

Extra charges for businesses that employ workers from overseas and higher charges for foreigners who use the NHS.

A ditching of the triple lock on increasing the state pension, as signalled by May and other ministers during the campaign.

The care policy is an attempt to meet the cost of looking after the elderly in their homes, which councils across the country are struggling to fund in the face of severe budget cuts. In turn, this has been putting unprecedented pressure on the NHS.

At present, people have to pay for their social care at home if they have wealth of more than 23,500, excluding the value of their residence. Under the new policy, people will have to pay for their social care only if they have wealth of more than 100,000 but the value of their homes will be included as well. As a result, more homeowners will be liable to pay for the cost of home helps and carers provided by the council.

It is better news for the elderly in residential care, whose homes are already included in calculations of their assets. It means they will now only have to pay for their care until they have remaining assets of 100,000, instead of 23,500. There are no details on when the policy would be implemented, but it is likely that it would require consultation and legislation.

The Conservatives will also say they plan to do more to integrate the NHS and social care, stop unnecessary stays in hospitals, and examine how to make better use of technology to help people live independently for longer. An additional measure to help family carers will be a new right to request unpaid leave from work to look after a relative for up to a year.

May will hope the measures address deep concerns about the long-term costs of funding social care, which have been having a knock-on effect on the NHS as more elderly people stay in hospital.

On Thursday, doctors leaders will accuse ministers of a callous disregard of the NHS and putting its funding into deep freeze. The British Medical Association will call on ministers to plug the enormous funding gap in healthcare spending between Britain and other major European countries.

May said at a press conference on Wednesday that the manifesto would seek to address five major challenges, in an echo of social reformer William Beveridges five giant evils.

The social care announcement is likely to get a mixed reception, as some Conservatives will worry about it going down badly with middle-class voters who want to pass on the value of their homes to their children.

May is already under pressure from some on the right of her party over interventionist policies, such as her pledge to cap energy costs for households. Previous attempts to reform the funding of social care have met with deep hostility from the rightwing press, which branded Labour proposals for a levy on estates a death tax.

Her decision to include a measure that could be unpopular with middle-aged and elderly voters is likely to be taken as a sign of confidence in winning the election, given the Tories double-digit lead in the polls over Labour. Strategists also hope it will paint the prime minister as a realist and pragmatist in contrast to Labours manifesto promising more spending on public services paid for by higher taxes on companies and high earners.

Other measures in the manifesto are likely to include proposals on improving skills and apprenticeships, and a promised expansion of workers rights, which Labour has dismissed as spin.

The document is also likely to retain the Conservative commitment to bringing down immigration to the tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands. That approach was challenged on Wednesday by a leader in the Evening Standard newspaper, edited by the former chancellor George Osborne, which claimed that no senior cabinet ministers support Mays desire to keep the target.

In a leader column, the newspaper said there had been an assumption at the top of the Conservative party that May would use the election to bury the pledge made by David Cameron before he was elected in 2010 because it was unachievable and undesirable. Thats what her cabinet assumed; none of its senior members supports the pledge in private and all would be glad to see the back of something that has caused the Conservative party such public grief, the newspaper said.

Editorials are written anonymously as the voice of the newspaper, but Osborne tweeted a link to the column and the front page of the Evening Standard, which attributes a squeeze in the cost of living to inflation caused by Brexit.

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The toxic stuff we breathe: South Africa, 2017 – eNCA (satire)

Posted: at 2:18 pm

File: 'South Africa hates women. It hates children. It hates the poor. And poor, black children who are girls are least valued.' Photo: eNCA

We are the most unequal society in the world. The country we live in is inordinately violent. We remain an extremely stratified country. Bessie Head once described the country as "a situation where people are separated into sharp racial groups ... one is irked by the artificial barriers. It is as though, with all those divisions and signs, you end up with no people at all.

We have come a long way since Heads indictment of the colonial and apartheid pathology and its impact on people in South Africa. But in some respects we have not overcome the habit of categorical thinking, or of the unequal distribution of power in line with those "artificial barriers".

We no longer legislate "race", and officially police every aspect of life in line with such prescriptive categorising in South Africa. We abolished that elaborate formal structure in 1994. But old habits die hard. Additionally, other, perhaps even older and more entrenched divisions, artificial barriers which have come to be seen as natural such that we no longer even see them, remain mostly unaddressed, despite our aspirations to do so, and despite the constitutional compulsions that are supposed to shape our society.

Class is one axis along which much that ought to have changed in the post-1994 settlement has yet to be addressed. It remains part of that bundle of issues we have inherited from the past that Terry Bell and Dumisa Ntsebeza have elsewhere called "unfinished business". The crimes committed in the past have not been fully accounted for, and this in a society where there are many calls for us to move beyond that past. Memory of oppression, we are told, ought to be nothing more than that: recollections of the past. Those who resist such calls to "move on" often draw attention to their scars, some literal, but manymetaphoric.

But scarring was not only the consequence of institutionalised racism. Colonialism and apartheid, and many of the systems they engendered as "indigenous African culture", also institutionalised specific arrangements for distributing power among people in this part of the world, but also violently displaced older arrangements by which men and women, older and younger people, insiders and outsiders in polities, among others, related to one another. And while much of that which has been so violently displaced by colonial conquest and its avatar, apartheid, survives in multiple sites, there can be no return to some pre-colonial wholeness for those of us who live here and now.

But the way we live now is not only explicable by what is going on here and now. Our past, and all its unfinished business, includes specific articulations of sexism and heteronormativity which benefited some but not others. The value placed upon some people rather than others, the infantilising of black women in legislation and political practice, the reduction of black men to labour units and the figuration of their bodies as threats to the imperial and apartheid order, and the organisation of legitimate and illegitimate desire in relation to the earlier imperial and later white supremacist nationalist project affected all of us, and in many respects, affect us still.

This is not to excuse the inordinate violations those with less power routinely suffer in contemporary South Africa. It does go some way towards understanding some of the social dynamics which contribute to that violence. Can a society with South Africas levels of inequality material and symbolic really expect to be more peaceful?

Men and women in this society, despite the hard work done by many and despite the provisions of the Constitution and the political economy it is supposed to frame, are not fully equal, and are not equally valued. Everyday sexism is real. Some of us can expect to navigate our day in public without being reduced to objects of someone elses unwanted and incontinent professions of sexual attention. The majority among us, women, have no such guarantees. And the boys and the men learn every day what is allowed, what is tolerated and what is encouraged, and what they will be able to get away with, because they are boys, or men. It takes a lot of work to unlearn those habits, and goodwill among us, as men, is not enough.

Similarly, the privileging of heterosexuality (or what is read to be such, or those versions of sexual expression which closely mirror or deliberately imitate it) cannot be denied. Though it is harder for many people to admit that habits of mind and being founded in heteronormativity and homophobia are as destructive of the humanity of those subjected to such prejudices, but also of the humanity of those who have such habits of thought and behaviour.

Our contempt for poor people outstrips our contempt for poverty in South Africa. How else explain our failure to undo the effects of those old divisions by which the current distribution of material resources from land through income, from nutrition to education, from employment chances to recognition of talent, can hardly be seen as accidental except by the wilfully blind? History has not been undone over the last 23 years, and while it would have been insane to expect such to have been possible, it ought also to outrage us at how much progress we could have made in the last near-generation since the abolition of formal apartheid.

South Africa hates women.It hates children.It hates the poor. South Africas record is clear on this. And poor, black children who are girls are least valued How we came to this state is hardly mysterious. Devaluing those with less power is a longstanding habit of thought. Whole systems were dedicated to ensuring that the material reality matched the ideas, and for centuries. And some of those systems actively taught such beliefs about the world and the value of various people in it Worst, many of those systems remain active today.

Look to university campuses where young men can indulge in belittling the women around them as part of a ritual by which they get to become part of the organisation. Listen to people who use phrases like "man up" and "dont be a sissy". Observe the pigmentocratic standards of beauty by which the advertising and entertainment industrial complexs South African chapter configures desirability. Remind yourselves how adults relate to children in schools and churches, on buses and taxis, in trains and planes, in parks and sports grounds.

We all need to listen to ourselves, to watch ourselves, and remind ourselves why we are the way we are. We need to change our habits of thought and being, thoroughly, and it may help many of us to remember the deep histories of some of those habits. We have unfinished business. Despair and hopelessness are not enough, and neither is hand-wringing. Nothing can bring back the lesbians killed, the children murdered, the woman violated, the poor people dehumanised and deprived of their lives because they were inconvenient in a society where it seems increasingly that we have ended up with no people at all. We must do the work of mourning them, certainly, but we also owe them more.

Violation and violence, the stuff we breathe. We need fresh air, here and now, not elsewhere.

eNCA

20 April 2016

As women protest against the way rape is dealt with on campuses, Angelo Fick argues that our responses continue to be shameful.

11 December 2015

The United Nations special rapporteur Dubravka imonovi compiled her report after an eight day visit to South Africa.

28 June 2014

In recent times, we have increasingly used the idea of the monster to describe people who perpetrate acts which we think lie beyond the human category.

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The big four will be hit by the abolition of the 457 visa. – The Australian Financial Review

Posted: May 17, 2017 at 1:45 am

The big four will be hit by the abolition of the 457 visa.

The big four accounting and advisory firms may have to refocus their efforts on training local staff as the abolition of the 457 visa system curtails their ability to import staff from their overseas operations, especially for specialised consulting roles.

The firms also couldbe hit with an extra $1 million a year in costs as part of the government's proposed new levy on employers that use visa workers, as revealed in last week's budget.

PwC, KPMG, EY and Deloitte have about 1400professionals who are 457 visa holders in their ranks, representing about 5per centof the 25,800 staff at thefirms.

The now-abolished 457 visa wasparticularly useful for these global firms asit allowed them to sponsor professionals from overseas offices to work for up to four years, and featured a possible migration pathway as an incentive to come to Australia.

It has been replaced with a much tighter two-year and four-year temporary skill shortage visa as part of a government "crackdown" on the 457 visa in other industries, said Chris F Wright, a senior lecturer specialising in immigration and labour markets at the University of Sydney Business School.

While accountants remain on the four-year visa stream, management consultants have been relegated to the two-year stream which removes any path to permanent residency.

Dr Wright said the firms still have other migration pathways open, such as the 186 permanent migration visa, but they also mayhave put more effort into developing specialised skills in their local operations.

"They might have to think more creatively about developing the skills of their local staff," he said.

"It seems to me that these policy changes have been designed to address problems in two industries hospitality and construction but the blunt instrument the government has wielded has affected industries that are doing the right thing.

"The 457 visa when it was first introduced in 1996 was designed explicitly to serve the needs of organisations like the big four consultancies, their use of the visa was in line with its intended purpose of sourcing specialised skills."

PwC is the biggest user of the visas, with 550 of their approximate 7500 headcount on a 457 visa, or around 7 per cent of total staff.

"For PwC, the changes as they stand now, will make attracting and keeping global talent more challenging," said Carter Bovard, a partner and immigration practice leader at PwC.

"Most of the difficulties we expect to encounter are in the domain of management consulting, with the visa validity period reduced, and restrictions on the firm sponsoring this category for permanent residency."

On top of the new restrictions, PwC and its rivals would all face the government's proposed foreign worker levy of $1800 a visa per year from March 2018.

The levy, which goes towards a new Commonwealth fund to train local workers, replaces the current system where a sponsoring company had to pay 2 per cent of its payroll to a training fund unless it already paid 1 per cent of payroll towards internal training.

Despite the big four already investing heavily in training, the new system would, for example, force PwC to pay an additional $990,000 a year based on its current intake of 550 visa workers. That would be in addition to the costs from the government's doubling of the four-year visa application fees, which have shot up from $1060 to $2400. The two-year visa cost is $1150.

Rival KPMG has about 300 workers on 457 visas, or around 5 per cent of its 6600-odd headcount,and about 140 Australians working in overseas offices of the firms.

"We do have concerns that the government's changes to the 457 program have not sufficiently taken into account the needs of multinational enterprises who need to move staff around," said Michael Wall, a partner and KPMG's head of immigration services.

"It must be remembered that it is more expensive to hire people on 457s than recruit locally so employers only do this when there are skills gaps they cannot fill domestically."

The proposed new training levy also wouldset KPMG back $540,000 a year based on 300 workers.

At EY, there are around 300 professionals on the 457 visa, or around 5per cent of its 6415 staff, "across a couple of dozen professional occupations", said Wayne Parcell, a partner in people advisory services at the firm.

"EY sponsors EY professionals to work in Australia where there are skills that cannot be readily sourced from the Australian labour market.Many EY Australia employees are sponsored to work outside Australia throughout the firm's global operations as part of our global talent strategy," Mr Parcell said.

Finally, Deloittehas about 250 staff on 457 visas, or around 4 per cent of its total staff of 6000.

"Deloitte's priority is to focus on analysing impacts of the changes and working with our people who are feeling uncertain or unsettled about how their work arrangements will be affected,"said Alec Bashinsky, a partner and the firm's head of people and performance.

The change has had a variable impact on other professional service firms who import staff for projects.

A spokeswoman for technology consultants Accenture said the changes would not "materially impact our business".

Strategy firm McKinsey said they had made use of the 457 visa but did not detail how the changes would impact their operations.

"McKinsey Australia has used 457 work visas for highly specialised roles to access skills and experience which in some cases aren't available in Australia at short notice. This includes situations where clients' needs require people with in-depth understanding of overseas markets," said Tiffany Withers, McKinsey Australia's director of professional development.

Strategy firms Bain and the Boston Consulting Group declined to comment.

edmundtadros@afr.com.au

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ABAD fears abolition of fixed tax – The Express Tribune

Posted: at 1:45 am

KARACHI:The Association of Builders and Developers of Pakistan (ABAD) a country-wide body of over 700 members has expressed concern over the possible move of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to abolish the fixed tax regime for builders and developers in the upcoming federal budget.

This will discourage construction industry and again open the gates of corruption, which is not in the interest of businessmen and the country, according to a press release.

ABAD Chairman Mohsin Sheikhani said ABAD members had deposited Rs150 million as 5% advance tax under the fixed tax regime in the past four months of current fiscal year, which reflected total fixed tax payment of Rs3 billion, while ABAD had committed that the sector would pay Rs2-3 billion.

We also said last year that the construction sector was paying almost Rs80 million in minimum taxes, which would rise 10 times if a corruption-free fixed tax regime is allowed, he said.But before that, the FBR brought the issue of new property valuations, virtually blocking the wave of new construction for almost six months. We started getting NOCs for new construction from January 2017; had the FBR bureaucracy given us chance to work from first month of the fiscal year, we could have reached the fixed tax target, he said.

ABAD members are involved in 25% of construction activities across the country while other players are responsible for 75% construction. He insisted that ABAD members were more than willing to pay taxes and the government should continue to collect fixed tax for at least three years.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17th, 2017.

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U.K. Labour Party Vows to Raise $62 Billion by Taxing Rich – Bloomberg

Posted: at 1:45 am

U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn pledged to raise48.6 billion pounds ($62 billion) in taxes on businesses and the wealthy to pour more money into health, education and infrastructure.

The main opposition partys 128-page manifesto for the June 8 election promises 37 billion pounds of funding for the National Health Service, the abolition of university tuition fees and the establishment of a National Investment Bank to lend 250 billion pounds over the next decade.

Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

There will be an increase in income taxes on those earning more than 80,000 pounds a year, and another one on earnings over 123,000 pounds; a hike by a third on corporation tax and a new levy on companies paying staff more than 330,000 pounds a year.

For the last seven years our people have lived through a Britain run for the rich, the elite and the vested interest, Corbyn told a rally in Bradford, northern England, on Tuesday. Labours program will reverse our national priorities to put the interests of the many first.

On June 8, voters will be electing a new government almost a year after a slim majority of the country chose to pull Britain out of the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May called the snap vote, citing the need to strengthen her hand for Brexit talks, and polls show her Conservatives handing Labour its worst defeat since at least 1983.

Still, Labour has enjoyed an uptick in support since a leaked draft of the manifesto last week, with voters rallying behind calls for higher income taxes on the top salaries and a promise to ban contracts that allow employers to hire staff with no guarantee of work.

If Corbyn succeeds in edging above 30 percent of the vote, he could make the case that he has matched or bettered the performance of his predecessor, Ed Miliband, and stay on as leader, something he has vowed to do regardless of the election result.

A slew of nationalizations in the rail, water and energy industries capped Labours pitch with Corbyn offering aradical and responsible plan to contrast with Mays oft-repeated selling point of strong and stable leadership. The biggest cheers for Corbyns speech at Bradford University came when he announced hed abolish university tuition fees and take control of the railways.

The Conservatives have been holding Britain back. Low investment, low wages, low growth, Corbyn said. Labour will move Britain forward with ambitious plans to unlock the countrys potential.

The party said it accepts last years referendum result for Britain to withdraw from the EU but it would scrap Mays negotiating position, prioritizing continued access to the single market and customs union.

Labour would immediately guarantee the rights of some 3 million EU citizens living in Britain, rather than making that contingent on a reciprocal guarantee for Britons abroad. It also ended its vacillation over immigration, accepting that the free movement of EU nationals to Britain would end after Brexit.

The party also promised increased regulation of taxi companies, including national standards to guarantee safety and accessibility. It said these would be updated to keep pace with technological change and ensuring a level playing field between operators, a reference to Uber Technologies Inc.

More than 24,000 words long, the document mentions taxation 38 times. Here are the key takeaways from Labours program for the next five years:

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Punjab govt yet to come up with plan to abolish DTOs – The Indian Express

Posted: at 1:45 am

Written by Navjeevan Gopal | Chandigarh | Published:May 16, 2017 6:13 am Captain Amarinder Singh

Nearly two months since Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singhs announcement to do away with the post of District Transport Officers (DTO), the state government is yet to finalise the blueprint to abolish the post and put an alternative system in place.

Abolishing the post of DTOs and transferring the powers of DTOs to sub-divisional magistrates was one of the key decisions of Amarinder government in its first cabinet meeting on March 18.

In the run up to elections, Congress leader Sunil Jakhar Jakhar is now the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president had said that posts of DTOs had become synonymous with den of corruption and that after being voted to power, the government would abolish the posts.

Sources told The Indian Express that the government was now thinking to bifurcate the non-commercial and commercial works, dividing those between sub-divisional magistrates and Regional Transport Authorities.

The non-commercial works will cover cars and two wheelers, while commercial works will cover operations on a bigger scale involving bus permits and collection of taxes from commercial vehicles among other things.

According to sources, the government was mulling over to have at least ten Regional Transport Authorities (RTAs). Currently, there are four RTAs in Patiala, Bathinda, Jalandhar and Ferozepur.

After the Amarinder-government had announced the abolition of posts of DTOs, a four-member team of transport department officials was tasked to study practices prevalent in the adjoining states, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

The team has already submitted its reports.

Yes, there is a proposal to increase the number of RTAs and divide the operations between non-commercial and commercial, said Punjab Transport Secretary Sarvjeet Singh. He, however, added that nothing was finalised yet.

An official, however, said putting in place an alternate system by abolishing posts of DTOs was a tall order.

There are a number of SDMs in many districts. Dividing the work between them would be an uphill task, especially when not all data of the transport department has been computerised yet and officials still have to rely on checking records manually through registers.

Sometimes, you have only one register pertaining to particular data. For example licenses which are to be renewed, said an official.

It is not correct to associate the post of DTOs with corruption. DTOs have a lot to do. The monthly targets of revenue set by government are huge in many districts. I think the transport department is the second biggest department after excise and taxation department as far as generating revenue for the state is concerned. I do not think DTOs can be done away with. At the most, there could be a change of designation, said an official who has worked as a DTO in the past.

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New pledge aims to amplify Catholic opposition to death penalty – Catholic News Agency

Posted: May 14, 2017 at 5:42 pm

Washington D.C., May 14, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA).- A Catholic pledge against the death penalty cites Pope Francis stand as a motive to increase Catholic action against capital punishment.

Catholics and all like-minded individuals need to sign it; it is a pledge that will go about urging people to educate, advocate, and pray for an end to capital punishment, Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida said.

The bishop, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, told a press call May 11 that he had signed the anti-death penalty pledge from the Catholic Mobilizing Network.

Bishop Dewane said the pledge will encourage parish priests to talk more about the death penalty.

It is a matter of life, so they need to be talking about it, he said.

Pope Francis comments on the death penalty feature prominently in the pledge.

All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to fightfor the abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, the Pope said in Oct. 23, 2014 remarks to the International Association of Penal Law.

The pledge commits the signer to educate himself or herself and the community about the death penaltys injustices, including the ways it risks innocent life, fails victims families, and contradicts the Catholic Churchs pro-life teaching.

The signer pledges to advocate for the dignity of all life and to be actively working to end the death penalty in my state and in my country. The signer also pledges to pray for mercy and healing for all who are involved in the criminal justice system.

Among the other backers of the pledge is Marietta Jaeger-Lane, whose daughter was murdered in 1973. She rejected claims that the death penalty brings closure to victims families.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Gods idea of justice. When I see Jesus life in Scripture, I see someone who came to heal us, to restore the life that has been lost to us, she said. I have signed this pledge, and I believe that the Catholic community can be the one to end the death penalty.

Karen Clifton, the Catholic Mobilizing Networks executive director, said the network launched the pledge to amplify the Churchs work to end the death penalty. She said there is growing opposition to the death penalty, especially following the April executions in Arkansas, where the governor tried to execute eight men in 11 days, and ended up executing four of them.

Clifton said the effort amplifies Pope Francis call while continuing the work of the U.S. bishops Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

The Catholic Mobilizing Network is a sponsored ministry of the Congregation of St. Joseph.

The pledge is located at http://catholicsmobilizing.org/pledge.

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Immigration forum set for Monday night – The Salem News

Posted: May 13, 2017 at 5:45 am

BEVERLY The Beverly Multifaith Coalition and ECCO are co-sponsoring a forum Monday evening about the country's immigration policy and deportation.

"An Overview of Immigration Policy and Deportation in the USA: How did we get here?" will feature Rob McAndrews, an immigration attorney and social work professor at Salem State University, and Alexandra Pineros-Shields, executive director of the Essex County Community Organization.

It's set for 7 p.m. Monday, May 15, at the First Baptist Church on Cabot Street.

"We want to be part of a debate that's taking place nationwide related to immigration, related to refugees and related to deportation," said the Rev. Kent Harrop of the Baptist Church.

What sparked the forum is the idea that deportations of undocumented immigrants may heighten in a few months, according to immigration attorneys Harrop spoke with.

"We need to understand where we've been historically and where we are," Harrop said.

After the presentations, attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions.

This forum is one of three to be hosted by the church.

The second will focus on the sanctuary congregation movement, Harrop said. This includes looking at the Underground Railroad that hid slaves before the abolition of slavery, as well as protection of Central American people escaping war during the 1980s.

"We will be educated on an emerging new sanctuary congregation movement," Harrop said. A growing number of faith communities are part of a sanctuary movement that pledges to help immigrants facing unjust deportation.

A third forum, to be scheduled sometime this summer, will focus on those who want to get involved in advocacy for refugees, immigrants and those who face a deportation risk.

Arianna MacNeill can be reached at 978-338-2527 or at amacneill@salemnews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SN_AMacNeill.

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Abolition and replacement of the 457 visa Government …

Posted: at 5:45 am

On 18 April 2017, the Government announced that the Temporary Work (Skilled) visa (subclass 457 visa) will be abolished and replaced with the completely new Temporary SkillShortage (TSS) visa in March 2018.

The TSS visa programme will be comprised of a Short-Term stream of up to two years and a Medium-Term stream of up to four years and will support businesses in addressing genuine skill shortages in their workforce and will contain a number of safeguards which prioritise Australian workers.

This new visa is part of the Governments significant reform package to strengthen the integrity and quality of Australias temporary and permanent employer sponsored skilled migration programmes.

Key reforms include:

The implementation of these reforms will begin immediately and will be completed in March 2018.

Further information on reforms is available:

Further information on different aspects of the reforms will be published in due course.

1 Set at $53,900 as at 12 April 2016.

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Abolition and replacement of the 457 visa Government ...

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French President-elect Emmanuel Macron in Paris, on May 10, 2017. (Christophe Ena / AP) – CTV News

Posted: May 11, 2017 at 12:45 pm

PARIS -- The disintegration of France's political landscape following the presidential election victory of Emmanuel Macron is picking up speed by the day.

Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the niece of defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, is quitting politics, depriving their National Front party of one its few real stars. Marine Le Pen tweeted Wednesday her regret at the decision but added that, "as a mother, I understand it."

Marechal-Le Pen, 27, cited "personal and political reasons" in announcing that she won't seek re-election in June. She held one of the National Front's two seats in the National Assembly.

On the other extreme on the far left, the Communist Party and the party of defeated presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon are messily divorcing. They campaigned together for Melenchon's presidential run that saw him surge late in the campaign and get nearly 20 per cent of the first-round vote, narrowly missing a runoff against either Macron or Le Pen. But the parties appear increasingly likely to separately field candidates who will compete against each other in the June legislative elections.

From holding power through outgoing President Francois Hollande and his majority in the outgoing parliament, the Socialist Party is tumbling ever deeper into disarray. Meanwhile the mainstream right is torn between wanting to work with Macron and wanting to clip the new president's wings.

Hollande presided Wednesday over his last Cabinet meeting. He and Macron then appeared together at a ceremony in Paris' Luxembourg Gardens to commemorate the abolition of slavery. The transfer of power is Sunday.

In what he said was his last official ceremony as president, Hollande allowed himself a joke, promising to turn over all his powers to Macron: "Don't worry!"

More seriously, Hollande said Macron's defeat of Le Pen showed voters' support for "tolerance, respect, dignity, democracy, openness." Without naming the National Front, Hollande's speech rang as a warning against the populist, nationalistic discourse of the party with a history of anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia.

Hollande addressed Macron as "Mr. President."

"The same France that can be glorious can, sometimes, also make mistakes," he said. "There are always more or less dark forces that try to drag France to places where it doesn't want to go."

"We must continue to fight against the divisions that tear people apart, including here; against discourse that sets people against each other," he added. "There is still a lot to do, Mr. President."

The upheavals in rival parties could strengthen Macron's fledgling "Republic on the Move" movement as it fights its first legislative election in June, aiming to deliver him the parliamentary majority he will need to govern effectively and implement his campaign pledges over the next five years.

Macron's presidential run and victory on a "neither left nor right" independent platform upended the decades-long left-right duopoly on power in France. In a first for modern France, the mainstream left and right parties failed to qualify for last Sunday's presidential runoff, which saw Macron handily beat Le Pen with 66 per cent of the vote.

In the new and uncertain political landscape, Manuel Valls personifies the struggle of some politicians to work out where they now fit. The former prime minister in Hollande's Socialist government is now belatedly trying to hitch his star to Macron's "Republic on the Move" party, but risks finding himself in no man's land: unwanted by either party in the legislative election.

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French President-elect Emmanuel Macron in Paris, on May 10, 2017. (Christophe Ena / AP) - CTV News

Posted in Abolition Of Work | Comments Off on French President-elect Emmanuel Macron in Paris, on May 10, 2017. (Christophe Ena / AP) – CTV News

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