Monday 28 February 2011

Which way for Tory Localism?

Research by the New Local Government Network showed that the key ingredients to success in sub-regional partnerships included building up an evidence-base and sound understanding of the sub-regional economy, good leadership with vision and ambition for the partnership, and operational capacity to ensure that the local area is capable of delivery. Placing a new “duty to co-operate” on local authorities, public bodies and private bodies that are critical to delivery, such as infrastructure providers, is helpful. However, in order to overcome natural barriers to collaboration – such as fear over loss of sovereignty, a lack of clarity over accountability, local political interests or issues around resources – the most powerful tool is devolution of a strong financial or policy-based power to make worthwhile the time-consuming and costly business of partnership.
Moreover Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) were backed by substantial financial clout from central government, and with access to sources of funding from Europe which was match-funded by central government. Indeed it is reported that it could cost as much as £1.4 billion to wind them down and complete existing programmes. Meanwhile, the LEPs come with no budgets to encourage their formation. The much-heralded Regional Growth Fund of £1.4 billion over three years is nowhere close to the sum given to RDAs, and will not be solely dedicated to LEPs.

The government has set out some of the roles it foresees LEPs fulfilling, most notably around local transport, housing and planning, as part of an integrated approach to growth and infrastructure development. LEPs are also to play a key role in pooling and aligning funding streams to support housing delivery, setting out key infrastructure priorities, and supporting or co-ordinating projects.

However, a round key issues such as skills and welfare to work (the second most common theme in the 56 original bids received by government after rebalancing the economy), there is little evidence yet of the devolution of powers concerning the commissioning or strategic delivery of welfare to work
programmes. The recommendation they “work with” local employers, Jobcentre Plus, and learning providers to help workless people into jobs is fairly nominal. Nor will the ability to “make representations” on the development of national planning policy mean much when planning is such an integral part of regional growth.

For a government that has set such store by its commitment to localism and decentralisation, there are still real concerns about the willingness of Whitehall to let go. In the transition from RDAs, there remain key concerns about what will happen to some of their main functions which are likely to be drawn up to central government and its agencies rather than devolved to LEPs or to local authorities. Inward investment and key sector development will be centralised, and skills funding will be routed through the national Skills Agency straight to colleges and training organisations. These are crucial levers to drive local economies.

As the Total Place approach appears to have run into the sand across Whitehall, it is vital that pressure is maintained in encouraging central government to become more integrated and more willing to devolve budgets and powers.

The government’s broader public service reform agenda also provides a challenge to Britain’s future growth. The localism agenda, for example, aimed at empowering individuals and communities to have more say over their localities, holds many potential problems to integrated, strategic economic development.
On planning, despite a “national presumption in favour of sustainable development on all planning applications”, there is a fear that the bottom-up approach this government is taking – by giving local residents and communities more planning powers and abolishing Regional Spatial Strategies – could be anti-development. The New Homes Bonus is the cornerstone of the government’s framework for encouraging housing growth. It provides a few small incentives but it remains to be seen if this is enough to drive regeneration. Current evidence would suggest it is a long way off-target.

Alongside this, there is rapid and substantial reform across public services that is in grave danger of fragmenting local delivery and working against moves to create better integration. Direct elections for police commissioners, commissioning directly by GPs, and free schools all provide new, and potentially conflicting, forms of accountability at a local level, which could mean that driving and leading economic regeneration becomes more disparate and difficult.

Moreover, financial challenges faced by localities through Cameron’s intense squeeze on public sector spending, and particularly the local government settlement, means localities have a sizeable economic task ahead of them. The government continues to argue they are “confident” the private sector will fill the gap in employment, but between the first quarter of 2000 and the start of the recession, more than a fifth of all job creation came from the public sector. The need for private sector rebalancing may be urgent in areas that have benefited most from the expansion of the public sector, such as many of the formerly industrial economies of the north east and north west, but there is no evidence to suggest this is about to take place. This will leave many localities badly affected by this poor design in policy.

Take Swansea for example. This is a fairly modern city that, at one time relied on heavy industry coming from car manufacture, steel and aluminium production. As this degenerated over the last 20 years, it was replaced by an array of public services. Local and central government, Welsh Assembly and DVLA – these were just a few of the broad range of government offices that came in to pick up the slack of joblessness in the area. Now many of these government departments are being closed or downsized, leaving the threat of large scale unemployment looming over the city. Over 30% of the population works in the public sector and any shrinkage in jobs seems, at the moment, to be replaced by the emergence of a new private sector.

All this gives additional credence to the argument that Tory localism has been ill-conceived, ill-planned and ill-timed. It will leave communities in South Wales, the Midlands, the North-West and North-East totally devastated, unless Cameron and Pickles radically rethink their strategy and now implement a rescue plan. With no evidence of this forthcoming it bodes badly for people in these communities.

Sunday 27 February 2011

Disabled people thrown out of work by Remploy

Historically welfare to work policies have concentrated on job placement, however, recent UK government policy, as seen in the recent round of bidding for the Work Programme, has seen a shifting of focus towards sustainable job outcomes where sustainability may only be recognised two years after being placed in work.

In order to be seen as a leading player in this new policy, Remploy have commissioned Inclusion to produce an independent research report into career advancement to be published on Monday 7th March. They will be hosting a series of roundtable discussions later in March, to share the findings of this research more widely and discuss how career advancement can aid sustainability in today’s welfare to work arena.

I am sure news that Remploy are working hard to stay ahead in the field will bring much comfort to the 1,500 employees, most of whom are disabled workers who were earlier this month given notice of pending redundancy. Remploy is a government-funded body that has its own businesses providing jobs for 3,000 disabled people, including 227 in Greater Manchester, as well as an employment agency that find them posts with private employers.

Bosses at the firm say the business has suffered because of the difficult economic climate, with many factories operating at less than 50 per cent capacity. If this be the case, it begs the question of why are they spending money they clearly don’t have to commission research – particularly as Remploy is not fulfilling its mission to provide sustainable employment opportunities for disabled people.

A spokesperson was reported as saying:

“This scheme is voluntary and every employee will be able to choose if they want to apply for the severance package.

Oh, that’s OK then – in that case everyone can stay. Or maybe not.

“We will ensure that any employee who decides to leave and wants to continue working, will have guaranteed support from our employment services to find another job.”

Well that will make all those newly unemployed people a whole lot better won’t it. And does anyone else see a possible irony here? They make people redundant and then they find disabled people work – probably through one of their government-funded schemes. So, in effect, they are creating their own customers. How callous is that?

Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman, who chaired a cross-party back bench inquiry into planned closures at Remploy in 2009, said: “The overwhelming priority is that there should be work opportunities for people with disabilities, and the Government, in taking its decision, must not salami slice and undermine Remploy because it is so important.”

Unite. the union in defending the workers being made redundant, blamed "poor management" for the announcement and leader, Len McCluskey said: "What these employees face is a nightmare scenario of struggling to find new jobs in the toughest jobs market since the early 1990s, when we all know that disabled people are always at the back of the jobs queue.

“Ultimately, there is the prospect that some of these factories could close.
“We will be campaigning against this voluntary redundancy programme during the 90-day consultation period.”

A Department of Work and Pensions spokesman said: "Remploy has had £555m government funding but unfortunately the factory arm of their business has not been able to successfully compete.”

Meanwhile, GMB members who now face redundancy have been given authority by the union central executive council for industrial action ballot over redundancies. The Committee have been advised that GMB members in Remploy have already voted in a consultative ballot by a majority of 5 to 1 to take strike action.
Let me be quite clear - The Big Society, if its exists, must mean finding work for disabled workers and a strike to stop the deliberate run down of Remploy shows disabled workers are fed up of being lectured on the big society by those in high society
Unfortunately, it is expected that preparing for the ballot will take at least six weeks and will be conducted by the Electoral Reform Services (ERS). This may be too late for many of the affected staff at the firm. Remploy last month told GMB that proposals for voluntary redundancy were being rolled out across the company from Monday 31st January 2011. This was just 7 days after the legal consultation period of 90 days commenced on the 24th January 2011.
What is known about previous redundancies made by Remploy in 2008 is that the vast majority of workers (85%) are still unemployed and on benefits with no prospects of finding work. The GMB CEC were also told that Remploy management has made little, or no progress, in finding work for the remaining Remploy factories in spite of the fact that EU rules allow public bodies to place orders with sheltered workshop outside of normal procurement arrangements.

The unions affected have placed an alternate plan before government to save jobs at the factories. Part of the plan is to reverse the rise in the number of managers which has increased despite reductions in the number of factories and shop floor workers. In total the Remploy unions have put forward a plan to cut £30million from costs while making Remploy viable.

Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith personally asked Remploy to show restraint in the distribution of a bonus windfall to its top-tier management. However, directors went ahead with 288 bonuses and then embarked on their redundancy programme.
The payouts, which are subsidised by the taxpayer, saw directors handed bonuses of up to £15,000 each and include benefits that amount to more than the annual salaries earned by some of the workers. Certainly more than the average worker now facing a future of joblessness.
There is nothing new in these outrageous bonuses - the company paid its management team £1.5m in bonuses and benefits last year. Its accounts show that chief executive Tim Matthews, 59, who once listed drinking champagne among his interests in Who's Who, took home a record total package of £180,000. He also claimed thousands of pounds more in expenses for hotel stays and meals.
Remploy finance director Nigel Hopkins received a £140,000 package, including a £15,000 bonus. Further figures show that in the past three years consultants working with Remploy on the redundancy and other 'modernisation programmes' have been paid more than £6m.

A further example of the “them” and “us” culture under the Tories, but here we have a firm, supposedly dedicated to supporting some of the most vulnerable people in society, ruthlessly taking away their livelihoods whilst feeding the riches bosses of another welfare to work company.

And it’s all being done with our money!!!

Friday 25 February 2011

Conservatives created the NHS ‘bureaucracy’ they are now attacking

by Guest
February 25, 2011 at 11:13 am


contribution by Jon Taylor

The Tories talk a lot about how the public sector has become bloated, according to them, it has become ‘weighed down by bureaucracy’.

But is Tory policy not responsible, at least in part, for creating the bureaucratic system we see before us today? I think it’s about time the left started to challenge the notion that bureaucracy is solely a left-wing phenomenon. It’s not.

Ironically, in terms of the NHS, much of the bureaucracy at which Lansely directs his venom was borne out of the purchaser-provider split. A policy initiated by the Tories in 1990, and regrettably not reversed by Labour in 1997.

This move, for the first time, established the internal market in the NHS. The idea being that competition would drive up quality, productivity, and efficiency.

There is no evidence that this has happened. There is evidence, however, that the purchaser-provider split has led to a huge increase in transaction costs, notably management and administration costs.

Currently it is predominantly Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) that are responsible for commissioning or purchasing services on behalf of us: taxpayers and patients. Within PCTs sit many of these bureaucrats whom the Tories like to blame for the various failings of the NHS.

These ‘commissioners’ are responsible for purchasing services from another group of bureaucrats based in provider organisations; contract managers, accountants and a like. These people perform a critical function. They manage financial transactions.

It is hardly surprising; therefore, that, as the market has become embedded in the NHS, the number of people needed to manage transactions has shot up. The moment we introduced the market we began to need people to manage money flows, negotiate contracts, and administer financial transactions.

It is for this reason that the Tories ‘war on bureaucracy’ is disingenuous populism.

The Department of Health’s own unpublished figures indicate that transaction costs resulting from the purchaser-provider split account for 14% of total NHS costs. This is money that could be spent on frontline care.

Lansley knows very well the function performed by the bureaucrats he loves to pretend to hate. He also knows that opening up the NHS to ‘any willing provider’ will increase transaction costs and, as a direct consequence, increase in bureaucracy.

Although ‘officially’ they will no-longer be on the government pay roll, the tax payer will still be paying for them from the cash handed over to private firms by GP’s.

However, in 2013 the government will be able to declare a great victory. Lansley can claim to have defeated his great nemesis – bureaucracy. He can hold up the private sector as our saviour.

The private sector, according to him I’m sure, will have come to our rescue by re-employing and rehabilitating these lazy, good for nothing, parasitic, public sector pen pushers.

Therefore, rather ironically, Andrew Lansely will actually need to recruit more people to his rapidly expanding army of demoralised x-public sector bureaucrats in order to deliver his longstanding and well documented ambition: wholesale privatisation of the NHS.


Jon Taylor works in the NHS for a Cancer Network, and is a trade unionist

What happened to civility?

I find there is an increasingly regrettable trend in political debate in this country. It is a trend that frequently causes distress and unhappiness rather than stimulating intellectual debate. I refer to the tendency to hurl abuse, ridicule or intimidate during an argument.

Take a recent email I received> I hade in an earlier correspondence commented that I found his personal attacks on me abusive. I stated:

“In future, if you have anything to say to me, kindly keep the matter to political issue and omit the personal abuse. It is uncalled for and unappreciated.”

To which he replied:
“I have not given you any personal abuse, if you want to deem that I have that is your choice. You do not know me so do not tell me what i should or should not do … Trust me I have no qualms about putting my point of view forward publicly ….”.

These are not isolated comments. I have experienced them via emails, on discussion forms and in meetings. I am sufficiently old-fashioned to believe they are uncalled for.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we should all sit down over a coffee and all agree with Tacitus. Indeed, it would be a tragic would if that ever happened. Far from having all the answers, I sometimes wonder if I even know the questions. No, we should cherish a diversity of opinion and listen and welcome it when it is offered.

Our modern culture seems to enjoy humiliating and abusing people publicly – even our TV encourages it. Millions savour the nightly (or is it weekly, I don’t know) gladiatorial display of people being forced to make fools of themselves in some public baptism. Programmes like “Big Brother” or “I’m a celebrity …” have a lot to answer for, but so too do our modern youth. They even have a word now to describe the act of ‘one-upping’ and making someone look foolish – they call it ‘pwned’.

No, it is fundamentally disrespectful and we should not tolerate it. As readers will know, I am a hard-line leftwinger, but I am also a realist and accept that many do not agree with my views. Democracy allows me the right to express my opinion – and, in turn I MUST allow others the right to disagree, sometimes forcefully. But let’s make sure in our debates that we keep to the topic in hand.

In our arguments we have no need to imply directly or indirectly that someone is foolish for holding a view. What is wrong with accepting that if you really, really listen to what the other person is saying – if you totally accept their right to disagree the, sometimes, just sometimes they, for their part and often prepared to start listening to you.

I can think of no finer moments than spending an hour arguing passionately with political opponents and then going to a local coffee shop and enjoying their very pleasant company. God forbid, they were Tories – but since when should that stop us being friends?

Wednesday 23 February 2011

So, the time has come not to renew membership of the Green Party

Because of its significance and newsworthyness, I am reprinting below a posting by Toby Green, who was, until recently an active leading member of the Green Party.


This is something that gives me no pleasure at all. When I joined the Green Party ten years ago, I did so in the genuine belief that it might offer an alternative to the place-seeking politics that have come to characterise so much of Western democracy. To discover that the Green Party is no different is a saddening moment, though of course it should come as no surprise. Its members are human beings, after all. But how did this come about, and why does it matter?

The crisis in the party is caused by several factors. The first is that the active membership is really very small - definitely less than 1000 people. In this situation, it is very easy for a relatively small interest group to hijack it for its own ends. This is what has happened with GreenLeft. I have nothing against the Left, and indeed consider myself Left, in the sense that it is clear that most of the sadness and misery of the world today is caused by inequalities. But GreenLeft is mainly simply a rehashing of old Trotskyite views in a new environmental clothing. The problem with this being that Trotskyism never accepted that while Marx´s critique of capitalism was broadly accurate, the solution was an utter disaster (and indeed, unGreen - viz Soviet Union); one of the tragedies of the 20th century being that in spite of the violence and destructiveness of capitalism, in the Cold War the better ideology won. GreenLeft is, in general, populated by angry people whose personal ties - or lack thereof - allow them plenty of time to devote to meetings, email lists, and entryism. As they have more time than most GP members, GreenLeft members have taken over many of the administrative posts in the party and their positions are increasingly the default policy options of the party.

Why does this matter in Britain? It matters because of the peculiarly rabid anti-religiousness of the British Left. This is the intellectual critique which has followed the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and others, who fail to recognize that secular ideologies in the 20th century proved even more violent than religious ones. They blame the violence of human societies on religion, rather than on humans. In Britain, almost more than in any other country, this position has become the default one of most leftist intellectuals, filtering through to groups such as GreenLeft. However, there are many problems with such a stance, not least the fact that the majority of human beings are deeply religious - and it is therefore extremely presumptuous of people to claim to act for "the people" when they despise the ideology of a large part of "the people".

How has this affected the toleration and indeed covert abetting of anti-semitism within the UK Green Party? The key lies in John Gray´s masterful 2007 book Black Mass, where Gray noted the tendency in secular liberal society for the emergence of repressed religious manifestations, and put this down to secularism´s repression of what is in fact a deep human need, the belief in myth. To take a leaf out of Freud, where deep emotional needs are repressed, they return. If, in a Christian society, religion is repressed, the deep human need for myth may emerge in a secular form: Christianity´s long-standing difficult relationship with Judaism and Jerusalem means that this manifests itself in a hatred of the secular form of Judaism, the political state of Israel, and in a repressed form of anti-semitism that dare not speak its name.

This has become abundantly apparent in the Green Party´s abject failure to address clear anti-semitism (and indeed other forms of prejudice) within the party. There appears to be a crass and touchingly self-congratulatory view that if someone is a member of the Green Party, they therefore can´t be prejudiced. This sort of self-regarding drivel is a symbol of one of the worst aspects of the party, which is that all too many members of the party belong because they want to feel good about themselves, not because of what they might achieve. Take the example of fair trade: a recent edition of Green World held what was essentially a two-page advertorial for a fair trade company. Fair trade is on the rise, more available in British stores than in other countries. Why? Because British leftist consumers like to feel good about themselves. Kit Kats are labelled Fairtrade in Britain but not in many other countries for instance. Fair trade is of course better than slave labour, but it does not address the fundamental issue that siphoning off agricultural surpluses from poor countries for the economies of the developed world can do very little to help redress global economic inequities; this was indeed a cycle which began with the Atlantic slave trade, when African societies had agricultural surpluses requisitioned to feed slaves on the middle passage.

Essentially, much of the membership of the party is therefore grounded in a sort of superior bad faith. And so of course, members of the Green Party can´t be prejudiced. If they accuse members called "Levy" of being Israeli academics in disguise defending Israel, they can´t be rehashing old Jewish conspiracy theories. If they circulate emails from David Duke, a key figure in the Klu Klux Klan, on how "Jewish Zionists" are shaping American policy in Israel in alliance with Obama (thereby rehashing not only anti-semitic myths but also an alliance of this with anti-Black racism), they can still work in Caroline Lucas´s office and be on the list for the European elections. If they circulate emails accusing Jewish members of parliament of double loyalty (to Israel and the UK), there´s no need to suppose that they are re-hashing the anti-Catholic discourse which surrounded JF Kennedy´s run for office in 1960. If they talk of the "squealing zionists", there´s no reason for them not to be respected party figures.

To be fair, after all of this, the party did recognise that there was an issue. A report commissioned by the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC - a powerful decision-making body in the decentralisd power structure of the party), and written by two non-Jewish members, said that these were examples of a toleration of low-level anti-semitism, and that therefore a working party on anti-semitism was recommended to be established. Although kicked into the long grass at first, it started work when a senior figure recommended an article by a known holocaust denier on his blog. But the working party was quickly an impossibility. I should know: I was the chair, a position I only adopted when no one else was prepared to. Replies to very calm, polite emails asking for input came there none. Ever. Weeks would go by without any discussion, and if I as chair then asked for input this was always slack. One member only ever sent one email to the group. Eventually, a crisis came when a new GP member posted emails to a list confirming that the epithet of "squealing zionist" was justified. Since this was one of the phrases criticised in the original report to the GPRC, I brought this to the attention of the group - at which point one member resigned.

This should perhaps not be surprising, since the member who resigned was the very same member who had first used this phrase. The fact that the Green Party put him on the group at his own request (total membership: just 6) speaks volumes for their attitude to it. Especially since, in a subsequent email which this member circulated, he said he had long told the party that the group would be used as a means to change the party´s policy on Israel. That is, this member never had any intention of supporting the work of the group, and people in the party hierarchy knew this.

So where did this leave the situation? The Working Party was dissolved. Members of the GPRC said they would come up with their own recommendations, and recommended the adoption of the EUMC definition of anti-semitism. This created uproar, and the decision was revoked by the GPRC through a process that was specially expedited outside the ordinary parameters of the functioning of the council. The GPRC instead adopted a policy that they would not develop a policy on anti-semitism, in spite of their own report. Thus, GPRC has accepted that there is a problem, and decided to do nothing about it.

In the midst of all this farce, a wild card entered the process, which was the joining of the party of a Jewish member who was a leading light in Jews for Justice for Palestinians. This member took to making violent ad hominem attacks on Jewish and non-Jewish party members who were concerned at anti-semitism. In what would seem to me to be clear instances of projections of their own obsessions, they expressed surprise that there could be non-Jewish members who had these concerns, and accused people of having no interest in global politics except Israel (and defending the Israeli position). As someone who has always tried to find a balance between twin unacceptables - Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and anti-semitism - and who moreover had repeatedly voiced elements of criticism of Israel on public email lists in the party, this simplistic drivelling verbal violence was hard to take. I remained in the party. However, this individual then launched a formal complaint against a Jewish party member who has been prominent in condemning the toleration of anti-semitism in the party, accusing them of entryism - even though in the accuser´s own emails it has become clear that this is what they themselves are guilty of, since they talk of how before joining the party they had been told by people how the "Zionist lobby" was "infiltrating" the party; that is, their joining the party appears to be a clear decision to enter it to fight what they perceive as wrong.

So, what was the attitude of GPRC to this accusation? Although their own report has accepted that there is a problem with anti-semitism, and although anyone looking at these email lists can see the violence of this member´s almost daily tirades, the accusation has not been thrown out as trivial. Instead, a full tribunal of inquiry has been established. The idea put around by this new member is that, as a Jew, they can see through the anti-semitic myths. But what is lacking in this whole debate is an understanding of Jewish culture. Jews are notorious for disagreeing with each other - there are four synagogues in Gibraltar alone. And Jews are loud. Just because (a very small minority) of Jews disagree about what constitutes anti-semitism in this case, it doesn´t therefore mean the whole issue should be dismissed.

Far from it. After four years of this charade, it has become clear that the Green Party is institutionally anti-semitic. Its institutions have not dealt with clear evidence of anti-semitism. They show no evidence of wanting to, and indeed now seem to have decided to target perceived "problem" members of the party who have raised this issue. This is fundamentally a political decision: the Green party has decided that it is increasingly a hard left party, allied with enemies of Western capitalism. Rightly, it thinks that Islamophobia is one of the more dangerous phenomena to have arisen since 9/11, and in reaction against this it turns a blind eye to discrimination against perceived enemies of Islamic peoples, Israel, and the Jews. This is a classic case of projection: horrified at their own government´s attitudes towards Islamic countries, and wanting no part in it, this mentality projects this violence onto a scapegoat - Israel and Jews.

Fundamentally, therefore, not only is the Green Party institutionally anti-semitic, but for deep-seated political and emotional reasons it is incapable of dealing with this. Projection, bad faith, repression of basic belief structures needed by the human psyche, unthinking reaction, and anger to political forces of the 21st century: this is a potent, unhealthy and toxic mix which leads to bad policies, bad decisions, and a party which no thinking person can belong to any more. Certainly it cannot bring about a greater peace and stability in the world, which is one of the core things that the Green Party is supposed to stand for.

False Economy or false hope

False Economy, a new group dedicated to fighting the cuts has described itself as:

“False Economy is for everyone concerned about the impact of the government’s spending cuts on their community, their family or their job. It is brought to you by local campaigners, those who rely on or support good public services and those who work to supply them.

False Economy’s supporters want to build the broadest possible movement that can get the government to change direction. Of course the country has been damaged by the recession, but there are alternatives to these deep, rapid cuts. The government’s cuts are unfair, risk the fragile economic recovery and fail to make those who caused the crash pay a proper contribution through the tax system to clearing up the mess they made.

False Economy is for everyone who thinks the coalition is cutting too much, too fast and wants to do something about it”

Fair enough, but I’m not too sure about why they were established, especially as there are already a number of anti-cuts organisations scattered throughout the country. They say they have been set up and organised by a number of notable luminaries, including:

Guy Aitchison: co-editor of the openDemocracy blog and a PhD student at UCL;
Kate Belgrave: Journalist and regular contributor to the blogs Liberal Conspiracy and Hangbitch
Alison Charlton: a Communications. Content Manager at Unison
Nishma Doshi: Economic Justice Campaign Assistant at Friends of the Earth Europe and based in Brussels
Deborah Gray, Mutiny: A small entertainment events organisation that arranges occasional political discussion groups
Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy
Chaminda Jayanetti: Commissioning editor “The Samosa” and contributor to Liberal Democracy and openDemocracy
Becky Luff: joint editor/ owner along with Deborah Gray of the website “The cuts won’t work”
Adam Ramsay: owner of the website “No Shock Doctrine for Britain”. He is a member of Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International.
Clifford Singer, creative director at Sparkloop graphic design agency and creator of the Other TaxPayer's Alliance website
Nigel Stanley: Head of Campaigns and Communications Department, TUC
Stuart White: Labour party member and activist in “Oxford Save our Services”

Now call me cynical, but this group seems to be little more than a bunch of bloggers. Not that I am against blogging – as you can see, I do it myself. However, why do they feel we need to organise another strand of rebellion?
This is precisely what the left does so well – divide and separate. There are already a number of excellent anti-cuts organisation operating in the UK – Coalition for Resistance with active involvement from the likes of Tony Benn, through to even more left wing groups like Right to Work campaign.

If all they hope to do is create another blog site then fair enough, but if they hope to organise another campaigning movement then I would ask them to seriously to think again.

They say of themselves:

“False Economy is not a top-down national organisation. We recognise that there will be many campaigns against cuts, with some based locally, others that link up people in particular sectors, and others that bring together national organisations. Not all will agree on every aspect or share the same priorities.

But while we welcome and respect this diversity, we believe that we will be more effective when we work together, share information and pool resources.

False Economy will grow and develop as the campaign develops, but we launch with these initial objectives:

  • To gather and map information and personal testimony about the cuts and their effects
  • To show that there are alternative economic approaches
  • To provide resources and tools for campaigners and campaign groups.”

It is imperative the left unify under a single flag if we are to stop Cameron’s austerity packages. Division will not solve the problem. At the moment I cannot see how they fill a political void. I ask them to think again and unite under existing banners.

Monday 21 February 2011

Is there space in Labour for a Red?

There can be little doubt that since the Thatcher years, this country has moved more to the right. The political heyday of the left was probably at its summit during the Miner’s strike. On March 12th, 1984 Arthur Scargill declared strikes in the various coal fields and this ultimately resulted in 1,000 pickets attempting to prevent a sole scab bath attendant from entering the threatened Emley Moor colliery.

Since then the Miner’s have been defeated and overall trade union membership has declined in this country. Current estimates put membership at a meagre 24% of the working population and with no noticeable sign of the trend improving.
On top of that, the Labour party, never known for its hardline socialism finally divested itself of its leftward leanings when, in December 1981, a National Executive Committee inquiry team was set up, which reported the following June. The Hayward-Hughes inquiry proposed the setting up of a register of non-affiliated groups who would be allowed to operate within the Labour Party. The inquiry sent a series of questions to the Militant tendency. The Militant general secretary, Peter Taaffe, told the inquiry that the Militant's Editorial board consisted of five people, with an additional sixty-four full time staff.
The inquiry found that the Militant was in breach of Clause II of the party constitution, and that in the opinion of the inquiry the Militant tendency "would not be eligible to be included on the proposed Register". This allowed Neil Kinnock, then leader of the party, the opportunity he needed and mass expulsions of Marxists from the party soon followed.
The drift to the right was followed by Tony Blair who, in 1995 led an assault on Clause lV of the Constitution. The original version of Clause IV, drafted by Sidney Webb in November 1917 and adopted by the party in 1918, read, in part 4:
To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

However, Blair and New Labour did not want to be held to a programme of nationalisation, arguing that we had moved into a post-industrial era where it was necessary to work alongside capital and not against it.

So, with this kind of history is there truly a place for socialists and Marxists in the Labour party? In many respects it is difficult for those of us on the left. The movement has become fragmented and disorganised. Even the Communist party, once the guardian of the soul of Marxism, is split into various groups and it is hard to identify the philosophical differences.

Of course Socialist Workers Party continues to trundle along, but they have tended to sit more on the fringe rather than contain the bulk of left-thinking individuals. As for the Labour party itself – well with New Labour now consigned to our history books and a new leadership things look slightly rosier for the left. But Ed Miliband is nothing like his father and even though he served his internship with Tony Benn, he is not a Bennite.

Nor should we assume the National Executive, or the National Policy Forum is likely to drift to the left either.

The bastion of hard left socialism in the Parliamentary Labour party is arguably the Labour Representation Committee, but with only about a dozen members, they pose little threat to the more traditional groupings like Tribune or Compass. Indeed, its chair, John McDonnell could not gain sufficient votes to be added to the candidates for the leadership of the party.

So with such anti-left feeling about, why should a Marxist stay in the party? Easy, and there are several reasons:

1. Because there is really nowhere else to go – none of the other groupings offer any real opportunity for power
2. Because it is the Labour party that has direct links with the trade union movement and Marxists should rally around this flag, even when they are in a minority
3. Because the hard evidence shows the UK will not commit to a worker’s revolution – if that was going to happen, it would have taken place in 1984 with the Miner’s strike. Marxists must be willing to compromise and accept the democratic road to socialism
4. It is the duty of socialists and Marxists to act as a political vanguard to fight within the party to change it and mould it into a far more left-leaning and radical organisation dedicated to worker control.

Being a socialist in a social democratic organisation such as the Labour party is not easy, but it is possible – Tony Benn, John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn and Dennis Skinner have shown that. As Marxists and socialists we should not give in, we should continue to fight for what we believe to be right.

I confess to being an unapologetic Red - a Marxist and there are many times I think of leaving the Labour party. Certainly I would find more bonhomie with Communists, Socialist Workers, or even the Socialist Labour party. But I stay where I am because this is where I believe I need to be – trying to convince comrades within the party to accept socialist principles.

In many respects it’s a thankless task – but where in any of the writings of Karl Marx did he ever say it would be easy?

Sunday 20 February 2011

Tory public services will never be "open"

In the Daily Telegraph today, David Cameron writes about his vision for “open public services”. Quite what this means, when he intends to sack thousands of council workers and civil servants, remains to be seen.

Then, later in the article it all he becomes clear. First the prime minister described his vision of "open public services" and this is soon followed by his promise to release public services from the "grip of state control".

In other words, he is going to either privatise large chunks of public services or sub-contract them out to private enterprises. So, we can soon look forward to schools being run by organisations like Serco, or perhaps your local hospital might be renamed the Bristol Royal BUPA Centre , or the BMI Royal Hospital for Sick Children.

When you go to sign on, you might be met by an A4e worker, who would review your claim and sort out your benefit entitlement. Perhaps sections of our local constabularies could be part run by G4S or Reliance Security, but don’t worry, because the training industry will be waiting to ensure all the ‘private firm’ police have SIA cards, in accordance with security industry requirements.

Cameron argues this approach would make public services more accountable, but has he ever asked questions of any of the PFI contractors? Has he ever tried to acquire information about the inner workings of defence or welfare to work contractors? They are not ruled by the strictures of Freedom of Information, so they can keep their books closed and prying eyes out. This is the sort of openness he is really offering.

He also talks about public services needing an injection of creativity and innovation and here he has a point. For too long services have followed a route that sometimes defied logic, simply because ‘this has been how we always do it’.

There’s no doubt there is a need for a review of service delivery across the board, but throwing the baby out with the bath water is tantamount to lunacy. It will destroy jobs, make services less accessible because they will be driven by profit and not need, reduce accountability and threaten those who most use services.

The trade union movement need to force Cameron to rethink his entire policy and show how ill-conceive it really is. PCS and Unison should tackle this issue headlong and if the government threaten to proceed, organise full-scale strike action to force Cameron to rethink his ideas.

Will that happen? In my view, I think it unlikely. More probable is the unions will organise a demo or two and maybe a petition. Cameron will then barnstorm his ideas through and before we know it, we will be in the kind of society Thatcher could only dream of – scary isn’t it.

Friday 18 February 2011

Will the AV vote be a non-event?

This post was written by Reuben Bard-Rosenberg

In a couple of months we will be taking a vote on the most basic aspect of our democracy – the way in which we elect our government. Yet one could be forgiven, over the past few days, for forgetting that such politically important matters were at stake. First we had the much trumpeted revelation from the no to AV campaign that reform will cost £250 million (!).

The figures themselves were rather suspect, but regardless of that many rightly considered the whole argument to be ridiculous. As one person tweeted “egyptians abandon revolution, decide democracy is too expensive.” The idea that we should keep the same undemocratic voting system the same simply to save a a figure that amounts to less than 0.05 % of annual government spending, is pretty hard to sensibly defend.

At the same time, supporters of AV are also stoically resisting the urge to focus on any important political principals. The headline statement from Nick Clegg yesterday was that FPTP allowed MP’s to abuse the expenses system.

”When a person is corrupt, they should be punished” Clegg said. “When a system makes corruption more likely, it should be changed.”

If there were an offline equivalent to Godwin’s Law, it would almost certainly refer to the tendency of all politicians to invoke The Expenses Scandal. Though last year’s revelations were distasteful, they hardly demonstrated a level of corruption sufficient materially effect our public services or a form of corruption that would imperil our democracy (i.e. bribes for votes).

In the cold light of day the issue seems miniscule compared with mass unemployment, the possible double-dip recession on our door step, or indeed the real democratic deficit inherent in first past the post. Yet expenses have become a kind of lowest common denominator argument that commentators can use in place of politics.

Indeed the idea of democracy has been curiously absent in the campaign for AV. The term barely appears on the website of major pro-av pressure group Take Back Parliament, who instead have chosen the amorphous slogan of “yes to fairer votes” (as though the already vague concept of fairness hasn’t been stretched beyond recognition by the rhetoric of the current government).

This watered down contest might, in part, reflect the political class’ low opinion of the people. Yet more fundamentally, it reflects the nature of the proposals that we are voting on. Unlike the great constitutional reforms of the 19th and early 20th century, and in contrast to proportional representation, there has never been any desire outside parliament for the Alternative Vote.
The proposals emerged almost wholly from the Westminster village. And this is because they do not represent the application of an clear principles to our political system.

A system that equates the first preferences of some with the least objectionable options of others, and which – on a fairly arbitrary basis – counts the second preferences of some but not others, cannot, unproblematically, wrap itself in the flag of democracy.

Equally the temptation to see AV as a stepping stone to a genuinely proportional system is misplaced. As Andy Newman explains, the AV system is best seen as a variant of of First Past the Post. As Jim Jepps, of the Daily Maybe put it to me, one of the underlying principles of Proportional Representation is that minority opinions ought to be represented in parliament. AV in fact does the polar opposite, ensuring that nobody can be represented unless they win over 50% support in a given constituency.

Indeed, it is difficult to see what great criteria AV meets, aside from introducing a bias towards moderates – who are most likely to be people’s least bad option – and therefore making the electoral system more amenable to the Lib Dems. At the same time, FPTP, a residue of the pre-democratic age, remains fairly indefensible in contemporary political language.

So expect to see more of the rubbish, more arguments about how much money reform will cost more references to the expenses scandal, more shallow and patronising rhetoric about how “tribal” and dinosaur-like the opponents of AV are. But just remember, it’s not because the people are stupid. It’s because the proposals before us fundamentally miss the point.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Wherefore art thou Labour?

I am totally convinced that if you called an election today and at the same time hog-tied David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith, laid them on a bed of fraudulent expense claims in a seedy brothel and then called every national newspaper, Labour would still find a way to lose the election!

Take yesterday for example. Labour had it made – Spelman had to return to the House of Commons and apologise because she got the forestry sale wrong. In the same day, Iain Duncan Smith was forced to back down about the housing benefit reduction for long-term unemployed.

Did Labour come out fighting and baying for blood? Of course not – first they sent in Mary Creagh to waffle on endlessly about how Labour were bigger and better tree-huggers than the Conservatives. By the time she had finished, half the elected members were cheerfully snoozing away and all you could hear in the chamber were gentle snores coming from one or two of the leading lights in the 1922 Committee.

Labour didn’t even get excited when Iain Duncan Smith presented his welfare reform bill to parliament – this is despite the fact that many will suffer. Clause 51, for example, contains proposals, as yet scarcely noticed, that seriously jeopardise the income of many disabled people. Consider a stroke victim, who may have paid national insurance for decades before incurring a severe impairment from which there is no prospect of recovery. If they have even a low-paid working spouse, the bill will cut their money off cold the moment that 12 months have passed.

According to forensic analysis by Tim Leunig, an economist at the London School of Economics who has recently been appointed to the leading liberal think tank Centre Forum, it could leave large families even in deeply unfashionable corners of the capital trying to scrape by on £3 per person each day. And the entire bill is underpinned by a recasting of the rules on indexation, which will steadily make the poor poorer. Instead of being pegged to the total cost of living, benefits will in future be pegged to the cost of shopping, thereby stripping the rising price of keeping a roof over one's head out of the general calculation.

But did the Labour benches howl, rant and scream? Nah – they sat there whimpering, like a dog with a cut paw. They looked and behaved in a way that suggested they felt impotent and in many respects they are. Ed Miliband has proven to be almost laughable at PMQs – a guaranteed butt for the jokes and sarcasm pouring from David Cameron’s drippingly wealthy lips. As for the rest of them? Well Ed Balls has been something of a non-event – many predicted fire and brimstone. What we have had so far is more akin to tepid and mediocre. Yvette Cooper, supposedly one of the key brains in the Shadow Cabinet and a possible future leadership candidate, has been conspicuous by her silence. Not that there has been much going on in the world for her to talk about – Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Iran Bahrain, and of course, Afghanistan.

Then of course there is Liam Byrne. You may know the name but not remember why – he is actually the shadow secretary for Work and Pensions. Now, this week they announced the unemployment figures and the statistics made for pretty unpleasant reading - 2.5m people unemployed, the number of people in full-time work down 5,000 on the previous year, 2.2m people economically inactive because they are on long-term sick leave and 15% of people work part-time do so because they can’t find full-time work.

If the overall statistics were bad, they were dreadful when it came to the 16 to 24 year olds – 965,000 are out of work, a rate of 20.5%.

Against this, Chris Grayling emphasised there had been an increase of 40,000 new job vacancies in the three months to January. What he didn’t tell the House was these figures include openings for those taken on temporarily to conduct the 2011 census. If you exclude these vacancies, the actual increase was a meagre 8,000.

Now I may have blinked, but I don’t recall Byrne savaging the Tories about these results. Oh sure, they grunted a little and made polite moans in the appropriate places, but very few Tories would have felt a need to quake in their boots.

If Labour is going to have the audacity to call themselves the Opposition, they need to do just that – oppose. This doesn’t mean languishing on the green leather of the House of Commons chamber dozing off. It means vociferously and actively standing against all legislation attacking working class people.

It demands they stand against the government when they want to squeeze the poor, whilst dishing out £2bn to multinational corporations to run the Community Payback scheme.

If Labour is going to have any chance of impacting on the Tories it needs to re-evaluate its entire approach. This will mean dropping the “Mr Nice Guy” image and becoming tougher and more willing to resist. A number of Labour activists are already active in anti-cuts groups, but this need to seep through the sytem to the party leadership. Labour must take a more vital role in the Coalition against the Cuts and the Right to Work movement.

Has Ed Miliband got what it takes to lead such a party? This morning I am not so sure.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Universally unfair credits: No justice for the poor

Well the day has finally come. Later today the government will set out how it intends to overhaul the welfare system to try to make work pay better and to tackle the "benefit culture". With it will come a new "universal credit", new sanctions for those turning down jobs and a cap on benefits paid to a single family.

According to Cameron, current rules "encourage people to act irresponsibly".
The reason behind all these changes? Is it because they want to make benefits fairer for all? No. Is it because they want to ensure those who are hurt hardest by the unfairness in society are protected? No.

According to ministers in the Department of Work and Pensions, five million people of working age are on out-of-work benefits, 1.4 million of those for nearly a decade, while unemployment has become entrenched in many communities. In the view of these Tories, many of whom are millionaires who have never been on benefit; this shows the current system is not working.

Ahead of the announcement, David Cameron said the "collective culture of responsibility" which had underpinned the benefits system for more than 50 years had eroded in recent years.

"The benefits system has created a benefit culture," he said. "It does not just allow people to act irresponsibly but often actively encourages them to do so."

As usual the Tories are determined to attack the small number (and even DWP are admitting the numbers are less than they have been saying) of people who abuse the benefit system. Nobody in the Tory party mentions anything about the number of companies or individuals who regularly abuse the tax system and, courtesy of clever accountants avoid paying millions in taxes.

Take for example Vodaphone, who have managed to save billions through effective use of tax havens. Oh it’s legal enough, but is it moral? Well there you have the $64,000 question.

Just as the Tories were coming into power a number of businesses saw the opportunity of a lifetime. In a study at that time, around one quarter of all self-employed people in the UK were considering moving themselves and their businesses abroad over the next five years. Is this how Cameron is going to promote business and help the unemployed find work?

It has been well documented that Philip Green has structured the ownership of the Arcadia group (which owns Topshop and Dorothy Perkins) so that neither he, nor his wife pay UK income tax on profits paid out by the group as dividends. Because Mrs Green lives in Monaco, she saves a packet. If dividends were instead paid to Mr Green as a UK tax resident, he would be subject to UK income tax at an effective rate of 36.1% (42.5% additional rate less 10% credit).

But you don’t hear the Tories whining on about these folk, and why? Because they and others like them bankroll the Tory party, Green is close buddies with Cameron – don’t forget he was asked by the prime minister to do an analysis of government spending and procurement. So we can’t expect these buddies to fall out too soon.

No, as usual it is the poor who will be beaten and bruised today. There will be no fairness, no equality and no justice for those needing welfare benefits.

Some things in life never change

Who care about Big Brother anyway?

Why are we so frightened of taking on the Tories and fighting their cuts? They have been in power now for almost nine months and in that time they have attacked our health service to such an extent the very existence of the NHS, as we know it, is threatened.

At the same time, they have guaranteed all the schools desperately in need of building renovations will need to live in squalor, whilst the middle classes luxuriate in their squeaky new academies. Younger kids will suffer too, as Sure Start programmes have their funds cut and childcare facilities dwindle.
Normally the Tories hold the needs of the military as sacred, but not any longer. Trainee pilots, along with a raft of other personnel, are heading to the job centre to join increasing numbers of people being forced to sign on.

Social care, police, climate change, transport and local services have all been ravaged because of the Tories love of the “smaller state” and a desperate need to keep spending to a minimum. So what have the unions done? Well, Unison ran a petition to collect one million names to defend services – last heard they were still collecting.

As for all the other unions? They have tub-thumped loudly enough, but in terms of real action … most of us are still holding our breath.

The Labour party hasn’t been much better. Ed Miliband has been largely ineffective at PMQs and his colleagues in the shadow cabinet might as well go and enjoy a winter break. No-one would notice if they went. At the recent student marches to defend EMA and oppose the hike in student fees, the number of Labour constituency banners were noticeable by their absence.

So its little wonder the general public isn’t angry. If the politicians can’t be bothered, then why should the electorate. On the whole the average Joe or Sally is too busy surviving on a day to day basis to worry about how to fight cuts.

I’ve been sat here today wondering why people aren’t getting more outraged each time they hear the news and I think I worked it out. What do you do if you think you are going to hear bad news? Well, one option is to fight, but if the likelihood is that nothing will change, then many will choose to opt for flight. Folk who go along this route try to escape the realities of their own misery by living out fantasies.

Many of these will have switched on daytime TV this morning and what are they greeted by? Programmes like “Wanted down under”, where viewers are shown lovely homes and sunny, happy lifestyles in Australia – a thriving future where everyone smiles and lives worried-free whilst enjoying barbies and good friends. Interestingly, they never showed any film of what life was like during the flooding.

Or, views might choose “Homes under the hammer” – a programme where ‘ordinary ‘ people buy cheap houses at auction and after some cosmetic changes, sell the house, making thousands of pounds profit. If they don’t sell, they might rent the property and live off the profit. Again the programme ignores why the house was on the market in the first place. In reality, it was probably because it was repossessed, leaving the original owner homeless.

If none of these programmes take your fancy, you can watch “Flog it”. A programme where ‘ordinary people take items they have found in their attic, or heirlooms that have just been hanging around. These unexpected little trinkets are then sold at auction. Not sure about readers to this blog, but in my attic there’s just a pile of old junk and rusty tools. No heirlooms here.

In the evenings viewers can watch Eastenders, Coronation Street or Home and Away – soaps that prove every time that no matter how hard life may seem, there is always someone worse off than you – so be grateful!

Don’t fancy the soaps? That’s OK, there’s always Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, NCIS or CSI – escapism at its finest.
We are being fed lies by the government, deceit by the politicians and the media help to perpetuate it. By offering us a diet of third rate nonsense, they allow the public the escapism they feel they need.

Remember George Orwell’s book “1984”? In it he described a totalitarian society where dissent was eliminated. In order to keep this harsh society intact, the Ministry of Truth offered every citizen an alterative reality. Well today, our ‘ministry’ sits in the corner and helps control our lives.
Just like Orwell’s world was controlled by Big Brother (BB), an idealized character that constantly watched over and supposedly protected everyone, so the government has become the new BB. As a result of their effective management of us through the media, we never argue or debate what they are doing – even when it is against our best interests.

In 1984, the society was controlled completely and lived according to two simple axioms. In 2010, it is no longer fiction and we have brought them into the real world. Today we are living them on a day-to-day basis:

Long live Big Brother
Ignorance is Strength
Rather than hating what is happening to us, the PR men and the media have convinced us there is always someone worse off. Instead of fighting back, we live in the security of known misery.

Anyway, you will have to excuse me. I would love to continue this argument and analyse how the cuts are affecting all of us, but “This Morning” is about to start ……

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Getting 'on yer bike' is easier than getting a travel pass

On Wednesday the Government will publish the latest round of unemployment statistics and the safe bet is they will be depressing. Typically, members of the front bench will point to numerous initiatives that are now running, or shortly due to start. They will also talk about how private enterprise will shortly take up significant numbers as business grows.

Opposition benches will accuse the government of failing to tackle the rising numbers signing on. Neither will take a hard look at why the unemployed are increasingly refusing to look for work. In a report in “New Statesman”, Alice Miles correctly asserted that one of the driving factors is because the cost of transport to interviews is often prohibitive.

Jobcentre Plus has established a system to help claimants claim expenses when these things happen. Unfortunately it is bureaucratic frequently acts as a disincentive to search for work.

First the client has to go to the jobcentre to fill in a form and have an interview with an adviser, who will decide whether to fund the trip. This adviser will also check afterwards to see if the client turned up. Conservative estimates are that this bureaucracy costs approximately £50 - £75 every time a claimant needs travel money.

The problem is even more complex as we live in an information age where employers often arrange same/ next day interviews. Many claimants do not get as far as the paperwork because the jobcentre cannot see them until the following day, so they often can’t get their costs paid on time.

A while ago, American research found that inadequate transport was often one of the key determining factors that prevented claimants from looking for work. Car ownership is often too probative for most claimants, so many need to rely on public transport – but in many areas public transport routes do not exist, or are too expensive and this can frequently block opportunities for the unemployed to return to work.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that travel costs can often be 10 to 20 per cent higher for those living in rural areas. With significant cuts now being implemented across most councils this will result in reductions to the transport subsidy, leaving many people isolated.

The government needs to consider how they intend to get people back to work if claimants can’t get to work. No doubt the government is hopeful Work Programme will make this easier as more clients are slowly fed directly through to providers, who, in turn, will take responsibility for funding travel costs.

Unfortunately this presupposes all claimants will be transferred to an independent provider. It also assumes these providers are capable of responding immediately and appropriately to the needs of the client – something that has historically been found to be seriously wanting.

No, the solution will need to be far simpler and believe it or not, it’s not rocket science. The client rings up during office hours and jobcentres guarantee a same day service to ensure clients have funds to get to interviews. If the caller rings between 5pm and 6pm s/he can speak to a JSA adviser, who can liaise with local transport services to ensure they are able to pick up a travel warrant from the local railway station. Seamless delivery at its finest.

Unfortunately, I have reached the stage in life where I have become something of a grumpy old man. As a result I am confident that instead of looking at how DWP could iron out the wrinkles in my approach they would prefer to trash it and assume it is inoperable.

So if you are unemployed and have an interview away from home, don’t expect the jobcentre will jump for joy and respond immediately to your requests. They are more likely to suck their teeth and say “Oooh, we don’t get a lot of call for travel warrants around here!”

Your patience will be tested, your nerves frazzled and your blood pressure sent through the roof, but in some cases you will get help ……….. if you really, really, really ask nicely!

Monday 14 February 2011

Slinging out the elderly with the trash

Perhaps it’s because I’m closer to needing services for the elderly that I’m pretty horrified by reports today from the Health Services Ombudsman that provision is failing to treat older people with care, dignity and respect. I’m not sure why I am surprised, because I remember forty years ago going into a care home and being pretty appalled by the treatment I saw.

Even then nurses and care workers talked to elderly patients with that condescending and patronising lilt. You might have come across it yourself:

“How are you today … dear.” Not even my wife calls me dear, so by what right do you, a seventeen year old girl, have to call me ‘dear’. I am not your ‘dear’; I am a person who has earned, through years of hard labour, the right to respect.

“Now come on Annie, you really should eat you dinner – it will do you good.” No it won’t. It is hospital food. The cabbage has been boiled for over an hour and has the consistency of limp seaweed; it tastes like the algae from a brickworks lake and has the same colour as my fingernail. The chips are soggy and cold and the pie feels like it has been heated under the steamer on an espresso machine.

“Hello John, how are you today?” Which we all know is really shorthand for - “Good grief John, haven’t you had the decency to die yet? I’ve had this room booked for nearly two months and I do wish you’d get on with it.”

What about the entertainment care homes offer the elderly? Why do we assume they all enjoy tea dances, singalongs and bingo. Now readers I have a favour to ask all of you. If ever I have the misfortune to develop dementia, I want you all to promise me that before I have to play bingo, you will jointly and mutually euthanise me. As for the singalongs? Why do they assume that because you are old, you know songs from the Second World War? Not sure about the rest of my contemporaries, but I know the lyrics to a few Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones songs.I could even croon “Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas if you give me a bit of notice, though I suspect younger readers might be shocked by an oldtimer warbling a few curse words.

Old people aren’t looking for special privileges. They don’t want to be treated as special and different, but they do feel they have a right to respect – is that so awful? Is it so terrible that a woman in her seventies should have the right to undress in private, instead of having care assistants staying in the room, staring at her? Is it so bad a man, who has worked in a factory for over forty years, should feel it unjust that when he rings a bell for attention because he is in pain, no-one comes, or if they do, he feels a burden.

What is it about western society that degrades our elderly in this way? In eastern cultures older people are revered and respected. Here in the UK we see them as a nuisance.

You know something? A couple of years ago I was doing some research into problems facing older carers and I saw something I thought I would never see in a civilised society. I came across a woman in her late seventies who had a forty-four year old daughter with severe learning difficulties. The older woman had no support from external carers – she did all the work herself, even though she had quite severe heart problems. On my visit, I watch this wonderful old woman lift her fully grown daughter out of her wheel chair and carry her to a nearby sofa. I would guess the daughter would have been about 90lbs – certainly more than you would want to lift at that age. She never grumbled, because for her it was a joy to look after her daughter, even though caring was probably killing her. Can we truly say that, as sons and daughters, we would do the same for our parents, or grandparents?

She proved something to me though – older people are strong and resilient and can and do regularly cope with strife, difficulties and problems. They are talented and ingenious in their tactics for coping with the ardours of life and problems the system places upon them.

But there is more that could and should be done. If we ignore the needs of the elderly, we are not only dismissing part of our society, we are saying something about ourselves. Let’s face it, the message we are sending out is that people are disposable and once you go passed your ‘sell-by date’, you have no use.

To my mind, it’s no way to treat people and no way to lead a society.

Who cares about the BAFTA's

Is it only me that gets fed up with the sycophantic back-patting that goes on each year with the Oscar ceremonies and BAFTA awards? Each year an unknown electorate (I’ve never really worked out who they are) determine who we think are the top actors for the year and which are the best films we should see.

Well I have several gripes about this. Firstly, as someone on a relatively low income I can’t afford to go to the cinema very often – the last time was to see Harry Potter. So I must admit, I don’t really care who wins. It’ll be a couple of years before the DVD reaches one of my local charity shops. When it does, I’ll be able to buy a copy and make my own judgement. Right now, I couldn’t give a fig about the fact that ‘the industry’ thinks Colin Firth is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Secondly, am I really that interested in the antics of an overpaid, bourgeois aristocrat? From what I understand, the King’s Speech covers an aspect of the life of King George Vl. Over the years, the media has made great play on his ‘courage’ during the Second World War because he refused to leave London during the Blitz.

Ummmm … so did a couple of million other Londoners, so what makes him so different?

And the fact he had a stammer? Well, I am sure that must have been very distressing for him, particularly as public reaction in that era was less than favourable. But I am sure a comfortable lifestyle with plenty of fine food, the expensive clothes and the beautiful paintings more than adequately compensated...

Forgive my digression, but I can never understand why, as a nation, we continue to doff our caps to royals, whose only right to laud over us comes from our unwillingness to remove them.

Back to the point in hand and my third gripe. Colin Firth has been hailed as being the best actor of the year and received dozens of accolades in the process. Next week (or whenever it is), he’ll probably win an Oscar too. Before we get too excited, let’s not forget he will earn a packet as a result of picking up all these awards = and his income from future films will of course go up substantially.

I understand they anticipate the film will make £300m in box office sales and less cynical folk advise me the British Film industry will gain from his success. How? Will the shareholders in the King’s Speech give back some of their profit to support struggling unemployed actors? Will the writers redistribute 10% of their earnings to unpublished writers? Of course not.
Whilst a few hundred people last night enjoyed a grand beano in some fine hotel, millions of us poor oiks can look forward to a bleak year ahead. According to a recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, redundancies are set to rise sharply in the next few months as public sector cuts bite. Depressing perhaps, but no great surprise - four out of ten organisations planned redundancies in the first quarter of this year, the survey discovered. These included one-third of NHS employers, half of central government and three-quarters in local government.
Meanwhile, as we recover from the shock that Colin Firth will now earn millions, a new opinion poll by ComRes has suggested 63% of people believe the impact of the spending cuts will be felt more by poorer households than the better off - up from 57% in December. The poll suggested almost as many, 57%, thought the government was cutting too far and too fast in its efforts to tackle the deficit.

So who should we be concentrating on this morning? Colin Firth and all the other ‘sweeties’ who picked up meaningless gongs last night - or the millions of people this morning who are scared stiff they will not be able to cope financially if all the cuts take place?

Don’t get me wrong, I congratulate Firth on his success, but I fail to see what the excitement is about. And I cannot understand the justice in a system that will now allow him to become very wealthy, whilst thousands this winter will ‘sign on’ and face penury.

Has the world gone crazy this morning? You bet!

Sunday 13 February 2011

Oh please, come off it Cameron!

I simply don't believe it. David Cameron has rejected accusations that his Big Society policy is simply a mask for government spending cuts. Where is this man coming from?

He and his cromnies have devastated services and at the same time dumped the problem on the Third Sector, whilst cutting their funding as well.

I suppose the next thing you know, he'll be arguing we needn't wash our hands as bacteria doesn't respond to washing! Might sound outrageous, but he's already asking us to believe the ridiculous.

Saturday 12 February 2011

Do politicians really care?

Well now we have it from the horse’s mouth – the middle classes are going to suffer too. According to Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, the middle classes are unaware of the scale of government spending cuts that will hit them this year.

In other words, Tory England is going to hurt about as much as it does for us oiks, who survive on a day to day basis. No great surprise there! The news comes hot in pursuit of other reports that Birmingham City Council is to axe 7,000 jobs as part of their cuts programme.

Birmingham has always been a candidate for mass redundancies, particularly as the Council is Tory-led, with significant back-up from the Lib-Dems. In fact, the Council has never been noted for its care for its workforce (see a more detailed report here) and these announcements will have a profound effect on working people in Birmingham.

Clarke is right to point out they will suffer as a result of these cuts, but he should have told the whole truth – everyone will hurt, and in a very big and painful way. So, why did he isolate just the middle classes? Easy, you only have to look at the fact he gave the interview to the Daily Telegraph to find your answer. He is desperately trying to shore up Tory votes and where better to reach out to middle class Tories than in their very own rag?

In three months time local elections will fall again and good money is on a landslide loss of seats for both Tories and Lib-Dems. Look at any map and see which councils they run and you quickly realise the close links they have with the middle classes – Woking, Westminster, Stafford, Basingstoke and Shrewsbury and Atcham – not exactly poverty crisis points dominated by an ‘underclass’ of poor.

But wouldn’t it be nice if one day a Tory or a Liberal Democrat politician were to turn around and fight for the rights of the working classes? Of course that’s not going to happen – after all, what does David Cameron, have in common with the average worker, or single parent. His estimated (albeit disputed) personal wealth of £30m places him in a totally different league. Indeed, in his Cabinet, Cameron has eighteen millionaires, including Nick Clegg, although in his defence, little Nick only owns about £1.8m.

All of this led Sadiq Khan to suggest these rich Tories were unable to empathise with the average worker. Speaking to James Kirkup of the Daily Telegraph, he said:

That they are rich is relevant because of the lack of empathy. I’m not saying that they can’t empathise – but they just don’t get it.

For them, tightening your belt is taking two holidays a year instead of three . . . or having one au pair rather than two. I think it is a problem if you have a cabinet that doesn’t understand the real challenges that people face. If you have a background that is one-dimensional and have not had the life experiences or understood what sacrifice means to ordinary punters, I would say it is difficult.

But Khan needs to be careful. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has an estimated personal wealth of around £4m, Ed Balls is the son of a professor, and attended a fee-paying school; Harriet Harman went to St Pauls and her aunt is a countess; and Shaun Woodward is a multimillionaire with homes in several countries.

In short it seems none of the party leaders have much in common with any of us working folks. They all live in safe financial cocoons, with chauffeur-driven transport, where foreign holidays are expected and their annual clothing budget is probably more than the average person pays in a decade.

Not sure about my readers, but I haven’t been away for a holiday for three years and when I did, it was to Devon (don’t knock it – gorgeous county and wonderful people). Last year I spent approximately £100 on clothing – and that includes socks and underwear. I don’t drive, so I have to rely on busses and my monthly pass costs me £40. I was looking forward to getting an older person’s bus pass soon, but my local area seem likely to scrap that.

I’m not complaining about my life – more would be nice, of course, but I am happy with things the way they are. What angers me is when politicians try to tell me they know what its like to be me. Or how those with far more money than me tell me they know what is like to worry about money.

Yesterday I toured around the power companies, because if I stayed with my current supplier I would have to pay £12 more a month. If Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clarke and Clegg can tell me they did the same I will sit back and shut up.

Until then I have a right to be angry.

Friday 11 February 2011

No tears for Eric Illsley

This morning Eric Illsley is waking up in a small cell, where he will languish for the next few months. Now, I like to think myself as a caring person, so I am really trying hard to feel sorry for him. Unfortunately, I am failing dismally.

Let’s look at some of the facts – he first entered parliament in 1987, but his political career was never that much to write home to granny about. Sure, he sat on the front bench for a short time, but he was soon consigned to the back benches when Labour came to power.

As for his voting record? Well, he grumbled a bit about Iraq, but at the end of the day went along with the Blair government. On identity cards, he voted in favour. He supported the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill when it came before the house. On asylum seekers, he voted for stricter controls and he voted against laws to stop climate change.

Yup, this sounds like a real good socialist here. I can see he will be sadly missed in the party. (Do you detect a hint of cynicism?).

Even when he comes out of nick he won’t fair too badly. I mean, let’s face it he’s been on quite a nice little number for the last 23 years. The pays pretty good and he clearly thought the expenses were decent. On discharge he’ll probably right a book or two about his experiences – Jeffrey Archer seemed to do quite well out of that little activity. Then there’ll be the occasional TV appearance.

No, I won’t shed too many tears for Mr Illsley – I think he’ll cope quite nicely, thank you very much.

Thursday 10 February 2011

Musings of a new granddad

Recently I became a grandfather and since the birth I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the kind of society young Zach will inherit as he grows up. A chance to also consider whether all those changes I dreamed of and campaigned for as a young man have happened.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s we were going to change the world. Our heroes were radicals with exotic names – Tariq Ali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Mao Tse-Tung. We fought on the streets, on campuses and in the back rooms of dingy pubs, all in the belief that any day the old order would fail and we would herald a new age. An era with equality for all, an absence of poverty and above all, freedom from the threat of nuclear war.

Forty years on, it seems to me very little has changed. Our revolutionary leaders either conformed to the “system”, or have been discredited. Tariq Ali became one of the leading lights of mainstream Labour party politics, Daniel Cohn-Bendit joined the Greens and sits in Strasbourg as a member of the European Parliament and Mao has been thoroughly discredited and found to be far more authoritarian than all our worst nightmares.

In the 60s and even in the 70s, we marched against a variety of wars, including the Six-Day war and Vietnam. Today we oppose conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. Forty years ago, we marched from Aldermaston to London in opposition to nuclear weapons. Nowadays, we stand silently as the government announces there will be a replacement for Trident.

As a young man and eager member of the Communist party, determined to change the world I stood horrified as the Berlin wall was raised, and watched the oppression in Czechoslovakia. There is no Communist party today – well there is, depending on whether you want to look at the Communist Party of Great Britain, the New Communist Party or the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). The revolutionary road has been largely superseded by the democratic path but, just like in the 1960s there is little or no money in the coffers, so most of the hard left find it hard to stand candidates.

The Labour Party back in the 1960s was led by a one-time lefty, who swung to the right once he took over the leadership. Those on the left in those days had held much hope in the leadership of Harold Wilson, only to find him slipping away from the fundamental values outlined in Clause lV of the Constitution of the Party. In 2011, there is no Clause lV – well that’s not strictly true, but there is no longer any requirement for the party to seek control for the means of production and distribution. Blair and his New Labour project effectively put paid to that idea. The latest incarnation of leadership in the Labour Party is a product of the New Labour project and despite being nicknamed “Red Ed”, his pronouncements against strike action to oppose the cuts are reminiscent of the words of Wilson, Callaghan and Kinnock.

In the 1960s, we rediscovered the notion of poverty and began to realize there is an ‘underclass’ in modern society – a sector who earn less than 60% of the national average income. Fourteen years ago, New Labour declared war on poverty – they failed – we still have an underclass and little, if anything has changed. The top elite still own the vast majority of the wealth in this country. A carer will still live on a substandard income whilst a banker can earn an annual income in excess of £8m

So am I cynical? Yes – and I think I have a right to be. My generation let our young people down. We sold out our values for the comfort of a modern three- or four-bedroomed semi in the ‘burbs. We satisfied our idealism with pay increases and a more comfortable life. When Maggie set about dismantling the unions we didn’t cry out in horror and when Blair finished the job we sniffed and said: “So what can I do about it?”

In short, my generation doesn’t have much to be proud of. A lot of failed ideals and trashed values. So my prayer for my young son is simple. Learn from us – don’t sell out, don’t give in and don’t trust those who tell you that sooner or later the system is about to change. It isn’t. The system will never change – you have to change it.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Pricing universities out of reach

When I was 18 I wasn’t very interested in studying, so the idea of going to university never really raised its head. In those days, like many of my generation, all I wanted was a few beers of a night and the chance to meet lots of girls. So I went to work in a job I hated, on a salary that offered no real opportunity for expansion and with no real career prospects.

Fortunately ten years later my thinking had changed and I applied to do a degree. Now I was never one of those academic elite who felt able to go to Oxbridge. I was closer to one of those oiks that went to what they now call a new university – in those days we called them polytechnics.

I was very grateful for my place and particularly relieved that I was given a full grant and even a few pounds extra because I was a mature student. Had I have been forced to pay student fees there is no way I could have afforded to go. I was a husband and a father (though I was to be divorced just weeks before going to ‘the poly’.

I studied hard, managed to obtain a good degree and went on later to gain a teaching qualification and a master’s degree. Because of circumstances I had an employer who paid for both of these postgraduate qualifications – again if I had been forced to pay the fees myself I would not have been able to afford them.

I am in no doubt I have been very fortunate.

Today I hear Oxford will probably charge £9,000 a year for tuition fees to study at their illustrious university – slightly less than the annual salary of someone on a statutory minimum wage and substantially more than the amount a married couple receive on the dole.

For someone like myself, who went back to education later in life this huge hike in fees is a disgrace and divisive. It will mean very few working class people will be able to think about going to Oxford or any of the other ‘red bricks’– even if intellectually they would be able to cope with the standards required.

So we have a situation, thanks to Cameron and Clegg, where the working class, and particularly those who are out of work, can never aspire to entering the portals of academia. Effectively they have made learning beyond the financial reach of the poor, the underprivileged, the unemployed, the disabled and ordinary working class folk with families who want to return to education.

Oh, and what about the single mothers who want a chance to develop their lives once their baby is old enough to be handed to a childminder?

It is an absolute disgrace and epitomises the divisiveness of this government – where the ‘haves’ can get the opportunities, and the ‘have not’s’ are forced to struggle through life, trying to make ends meet. No doubt Cameron would prefer the kind of society epitomised in the book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist”. As society where the privileged have all the finer things in life and the working class scrape an existence, fighting a daily battle to survive

No guesses as to which side of the fence Clegg and Cameron want to sit on!

Excellent site - worth visiting

This is well worth a visit if you care about those who are jobless.

http://www.workprogramme.org.uk/

It's not me and I have no involvement in it, but they have a lot of good stuff there. Look at it and link to it.

Out of work? Heaven help you ....

The Big Society has had a bad week and it looks likely things are not due to improve. Matters looked bleak when Liverpool pulled out of a Big Society pilot programme and they then moved from bad to worse when its driving force, Lord Wei announced his intention to scale back his commitment.

If all this didn’t give Cameron a headache, then pronouncements by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless didn’t help. Twenty-four hours later, revelations emerged that Eric Pickles blocked proposals to protect Cameron's flagship "big society" project from the harshest of council spending cuts. By now the PM must have been feeling like the King of Kadesh at the Siege of Meggido – except for Cameron, there was no escape route.

One concern coming from the Third Sector is that they feel they are being squeezed. The Government is encouraging them to take over delivery of critical services (running of libraries, job clubs etc). Against this, they have inflicted substantial cuts to local funding in order to reduce the deficit.

Consequences of this can be found on the GB Job Clubs website. Many of their network of over 100 local clubs are strapped for cash, so they are offering the chance to ‘put their names in a hat’ for a free laptop. GB Job Clubs was set up in 2009 by Chris Neal (a retired derivatives broker with strong Tory connections) with support from the Cobden Centre. Like many charities, it is struggling financially. The organisation was initially funded by Neal with a £500 start-up budget and has since received some support from local authorities and the Church Urban Fund.

With the latest raft of austerity measures, this funding is under threat and is likely to impact on Neal’s network. If local clubs cannot secure finance for premises, equipment and day-to-day running costs, they could close – bringing an end to the amalgamation of Tory small state idealism as seen in the Big Society and localised job-hunting services.

Would they be missed? It is far too early to gauge whether they have achieved any success. Neal claims 30% of those who lose their job find another one through friends, family or contacts and his clubs provide the social networking to make this happen.

What is known is that historically, they have not been particularly successful. First opened in 1984 in the North East, a number of studies argued they were of limited value. A 1986 Guardian report into how the scheme was functioning in Dundee found that of the city's 7,100 long-term unemployed, only 147 people had been found places at job clubs and only six people on the wider Job Start scheme had actually found work.

If they fail, or are forced to close their doors, many providers will be expected to pick up the slack they leave behind. The sector has the necessary skills and experience to take over the role, but existing job club clients will be used to a service that mentors, supports and befriend. In some instances volunteers will have given many hours encouraging clients and building their self-worth whilst helping them write CVs, providing transport to interviews, or simply offering a resource to create peer self-help support groups.

These resources are expensive and providers will be hard pushed to match such intense levels of support. If they have to take over the functions of job clubs they will need to think how they will deliver this kind of service. Equally, if job clubs survive and find the funding to continue, providers will need to consider how they will make themselves an attractive and welcome alternative.

Evidence shows only 8% of clients attending programmes run by independent training providers secure full-time, sustainable employment. With statistics like this, it would suggest the jobless would probably be just as successful sat at home writing for jobs whilst watching morning TV. Indeed, this option could save the Government millions whilst offering the unemployed the chance to feel they had some say in their own future.

There has never been any kind of caring and supportive initiative designed to support the jobless and help them achieve the goals they feel are important to them. Many want the chance to work, but current and previous provisions are dominated by ‘targets’ and ‘sales figures’ that simply move the jobless off the unemployment register and into some kind of work – even if it doesn’t suit the client. Equally, others want the chance to retrain, but the current funding structure for contracts means that it is against the best interests of providers to support this option as they will not get paid if the client goes to college.

In short, the system doesn’t work, won’t work and ultimately will collapse!

Friday 4 February 2011

Unemployment and the Great British Fob Off!

News that 97 per cent of posts created since the economy came out of recession are of limited hours will come as no shock the welfare to work sector. The statistics mean only 6,000 of the 200,000 jobs to have come up in a year pay a full-time wage.

Of further concern to providers is the fact that evidence showed the top performing provider only achieved 8% sustained job outcomes. The average caseworker will be already aware of this, but it seems the Department of Work and Pensions have chosen to ignore current labour market trends.

There is an increasingly trend emerging amongst employers to offer part-time, or ‘zero-hour’ contracts because there is often no National Insurance to pay on behalf of the employees as usually their earnings are comparatively low.

In addition, firms often do not have to pay overtime or pension contributions, unless the part-timer has worked more hours than a full time colleague. Unscrupulous employers have historically used zero-hours contracts as a means by which employees are only paid for work actually done. For example, a restaurant might employ three staff and not know how busy a particular night was going to be. The employer would therefore have staff 'on call' and unpaid, until it became busy enough to bring them out to serve.

One of the reasons employers have opted for these contracts is because they are worried about low growth levels, increasing inflation and the reluctance of banks to finance projects. This point was emphasized by David Frost, the Director-General of the British Chamber of Commerce, who said:

“Clearly there's a lot of nervousness about the future and companies are hiring people on a short-term basis in case the economy doesn't grow as expected. When there's more confidence companies will convert part-time people into full-time employees.”

This kind of uncertainty will not disappear overnight and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) warned it will take at least two more years before the economy claws back output lost to the crisis of 2008. In the meantime, unemployment will soar this year to a 17-year high of 2.8m - 8.8% of the workforce.

Now, let me draw an analogy. Let us assume you had a car parked outside that you needed for work. Let us also assume that every time you needed the car, it only started and ran 3 times in every 100 – would you continue to run the car? Presumably not. Yet the government adhere to a belief that the Welfare to Work sector offers the unemployed some kind of future salvation.

Clearly this is not the case and evidence shows large numbers are being referred to independent providers (who are paid handsomely for their services), only to be fobbed off with low-grade part-time work. This is hardly a solution and one can only stand in total confusion at Iain Duncan Smith’s professed allegiance to the process. Is it that he sees our future as all being employed part-time? Perhaps he doesn’t care about the unemployed and only wants to massage the statistics? Possibly it is because he sees the vast profits the Welfare to Work sector makes and thinks he can fool us whilst making companies like Serco, A4e, Working Links and others pay low rates of corporation tax.

The system is ineffective, fails to address fundamental problems within our labour market and offers no solutions to the unemployed. Rather than encouraging large corporations to bid for the new Work Programme, the government should be reviewing the entire process of how we fail those who are workless.

Morally, it is what should be done – I won’t hold my breath!
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