Introducing – Pil and Galia Kollectiv, one sixth of Mute's ensemble music column covering sonic adventures across genres and time. Email: info AT kollectiv.co.uk
No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City A fistful of research on the state of critical public art in the maelstrom of New Labour's regeneration programmes. By Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles
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Submitted by unterschreber on Monday, 24 March, 2008 - 02:53
Private Eye (In the Back section)
From Private Eye, a brief update on the lie detector system soon to be used across the UK on suspected 'benefit thieves'*, i.e. all claimants. The system comes from Mossad, but what's really alarming is that it is administered by scorched-earth PFI war machine Capita. *NB. Readers with no sympathy for 'benefit thieves' have come to the wrong website.
Outsourcing LIE OF THE LAND
Lie–detector technology developed by Mossad for interrogating suspeted Palestinian terrorists is being used in British Jobcentres. Outsourcing 'specialist' Capita has deployed the 'Advance Validation System' in an attempt to catch benefit cheats at five Nottinghamshire Jobcentres and the Department of Work & Pensions call centre in Lincoln. Over a three-month trial 1,250 claimants of income support and jobseekers' allowance must undergo AVS. Those whose voices show signs of 'stress' when answering questions are called in for what Crapita describe as 'corroboration interviews'. Exactly where that leaves genuine claimants who exhibit signs of stress caused by the indignity of being treated like terror suspects is unclear. If it's a success – i.e. if it results in more people losing their benefits – it will be 'rolled out' to all Jobcentre Plus offices and DWP call centres across the UK, and millions of pounds will 'roll in' to Crapita's coffers.
Far removed from the clichéd image of the ‘ivory tower’, today’s universities have been opened to the harsh realities of neoliberal economics. In the name of democratisation and equality, the university has become a cross between a supermarket and a factory whose consumers are also its hyper-exploited labour force. But the conditions of mass intellectuality also create new potentials and alliances
