Hidden from sight: unemployed and not in receipt of benefits

The depressing news that UK unemployment rose by 70,000 to 2.56m between December and February also revealed an interesting government take on the situation: that unemployment is not on the up.

Employment Minister Mark Hoban has made this claim because while unemployment rose by 70,000 in the three months to the end of February, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance fell by 7,000 to 1.53 million. 

The latter is good news for the Government because it saves on its welfare bill, but the big question is why have the numbers of unemployed gone up but the number of claimants gone down?  Is there an increasing group of people who are unemployed and not in receipt of help to get them back into employment? Have they been pushed into that situation or made the choice voluntarily?  If so, how do they get by?

And, finally, why does Hoban think he can make such a disingenuous statement and get away with it?

Child Poverty rising under the Coalition Govt

The End Child Poverty campaign is a coalition of over 100 charities committed to ending child poverty in the UK.

A recent report providing a localised map of child poverty shows the scale of the challenge to achieve this goal. On average throughout the UK, one in five (20.2%) children are classified as below the poverty line (before housing costs). In some areas of large cities, this rises to over 40%.

Child Poverty damages children’s experiences of childhood and harms their future life chances.  Research earlier this year by Save the Children found that:

·         well over half of parents in poverty (61%) say they have cut back on food and over a quarter (26%) say they have skipped meals in the past year.

·         around 1 in 5 parents in poverty (19%) say their children have to go without new shoes when they need them.

·         a large number of children in poverty say they are missing out on things that many other children take for granted, such as going on school trips (19%) and having a warm coat in winter (14%).

·         only 1 in 5 parents in poverty (20%) say they have not had to borrow money to pay for essentials, such as food and clothes, in the past year.

At a national level, the signs for child poverty are worrying. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a growth in child poverty of 400,000 between 2011 and 2015, and a total of 800,000 by 2020. This prediction came before recent announcements about benefits uprating: the Welfare Uprating Bill, which caps benefit rises at a below-inflation 1% for the next three years, is expected to push another 200,000 children into poverty.

End Child Poverty believes that we need action at the national, regional and local level to meet the goal embedded in the Child Poverty Act 2010 to end child poverty by 2020.  Find out what you can do to end child poverty at http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/what-you-can-do

Campaign against the unfair 'bedroom tax'

Today Labour is launching a major campaign to highlight the incompetent, unfair and out of touch ‘bedroom tax’ David Cameron’s Government will introduce in April. 

The ‘bedroom tax’ tells you everything you need to know about David Cameron and his government.

While families of soldiers serving our country will have to find extra money for their son or daughter’s bedroom, 13,000 millionaires will get a tax cut worth £100,000 a year on average.

Two thirds of the households hit are home to someone who is disabled. Foster families will be hit – even if they have foster children in their ‘spare room’.  Divorced parents and grandparents will be charged more if they want to keep a spare room for when their children or grandchildren come to stay.

To add to the chaos, the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted that there are not enough smaller properties for families to move to, yet the ‘bedroom tax’ will still hit households that don’t have the option to move.

Our campaign will put relentless pressure on David Cameron until he sees sense, admits this policy is totally unfair, and thinks again.

You can help the campaign here

Communities forced to step in to keep their libraries open

Libraries are in the front line of cuts to Council budgets imposed by the Coalition Government. Many are closing, but a briefing from the Local Government Information Unit highlights how others are being saved through the efforts of local communities. These communities are dedicating both time and finances, and entering into partnership with councils to keep their libraries open.

Some interesting statistics:

• 170 community-supported or managed libraries are now running, most of which began in 2011 and 2012; 255 more are planned for the next few years, bringing the total up to 425 libraries, or 12% of all libraries in England.
• community-supported or managed libraries tend to be smaller ones.
• 95% of all community libraries are partnerships between the Council library authority and the community; many remain part of the statutory library service.

In London, the community association in an affluent part of Camden, generated both pledges of £660,000 and volunteer time pledges to help keep Primrose Hill Library open.

However, in deprived areas, there may be less capacity or interest. Yet, it is precisely in these localities that libraries are most needed. The answer for these neighbourhoods must be for local councils to allocate additional resources and foster capacity-building, not to cut budgets and walk away.

However, this is likely to be more difficult as council budgets shrink year on year as the Coalition cuts, cuts and cuts again.

Academic standards are in decline. Easy to say, but easy to prove?

A familiar refrain from some quarters is that academic standards are in decline.  Every year at GCSE and A-Level results time delighted students have their achievements denigrated by equally delighted naysayers for whom increasing pass rates are a self-evident proof of a decline in standards.  The exams must be getting easier, they say, why else are so many students passing?

 

Similarly there are those who look to the higher education sector and point to the rise in students graduating with 2:1 and 1^st class degrees as further evidence of a decline in standards.

It’s easy to knock those who have passed their exams, but what evidence is there of a decline in standards?  An (admittedly brief) search online shows surprisingly little actual evidence.  There are plenty who claim to know from personal experience that standards have declined, or who highlight the pressures that teachers are under (as if this is somehow evidence that their integrity is being compromised), but I’ve struggled to find any actual evidence that my A-levels were harder than yours, or the 2:1 I achieved nearly 20 years ago was so much harder to achieve than a 2:1 today.  I haven’t found a single paper in an academic journal or any report cited in a newspaper article that provides actual evidence of a decline in standards.  I’m looking, for example, for a selection of academics to mark assignments completed by students a decade or more back:  would they give the same marks?   Sadly, there appears to be no such research out there.

 
If there is, please let me know.  Otherwise let’s face up to the truth: academic standards are not in decline.  It may simply be that we have got better at teaching and that education is no longer just for the privileged (but not necessarily brightest) few.  

Time to lower the voting age to 16

Surely the time has come for the right to vote in local and parliamentary elections to be extended to 16 and 17 year olds?

At 16 the law allows a person to work full-time, pay income tax and national insurance, get married or enter a civil partnership, consent to medical treatment, and join the armed forces.  However, despite all these responsibilities they are not trusted with the vote.

There are over 1.5 million 16 and 17 year olds in the UK. These young people are knowledgeable and passionate about the world in which they live, and are as capable of engaging in the democratic system as any other citizen.

16 and 17 year olds today are ready to engage and participate in our democracy, having learnt the principles in citizenship education, which has been a compulsory part of the national curriculum in secondary schools since 2002. Giving them the vote at 16 would empower young people to better engage in society and influence decisions that will define their future.  Making young people wait until they are 18 is squandering their energy and passion. It is leaving it to chance whether MPs take into account the interests and perspectives of their younger constituents.

Not only are 16 and 17 year olds by law able to make complex decisions and take on wide ranging responsibilities, they are also showing in practice that they want to make a positive difference.  Many are already engaging with democracy through being a local youth councillor, a member of a youth parliament or their student union. Locking them out is patronising: it relies on out-dated views about young people’s capacities.

Our political system should recognise the abilities of 16 year olds by properly including them in society and showing them the trust and respect that society expects of them by giving them the right to vote.

Food: time for government to act to stop this waste

A new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 'Global Food; Waste Not,Want Not’ has found that as much as 50% of all food produced around the world never reaches a human stomach.

By 2075 the UN predicts that the world’s population is set to reach around 9.5 billion, which could mean an extra three billion mouths to feed. A key issue to dealing with this population growth is how to produce more food in a world where the resources needed to produce it, including land, water and energy, are under competing pressures.

The report points to efficiencies that can be brought about by changes in the 'production' of food, but also highlights the shocking waste of perfectly edible food due to western preferences for cosmetically attractive goods.

The report found that  between 30% and 50% of food produced around the world each year never reaches a human stomach. 

In the UK, as much as 30% of UK vegetable crops are not harvested due to them failing to meet exacting standards based on their physical appearance, while up to half of the food that’s bought is thrown away by the consumer.

It is clear that the supermarkets are responsible for much of this waste and it is also clear that they will not change their practices:  they will point out that they are simply satisfying consumer demand for attractive food and for discount offers.

Therefore the Government needs to take a positive step and intervene to cut this waste.  It should penalise supermarkets (not farmers) for rejecting perfectly edible food due to cosmetic reasons.  It should also take steps to prevent buy-one-get-one free offers on food with a short shelf life.

I'm assuming the Coalition Government will not do anything of the sort becuase they will not want to interfere with the market (the market is always right etc.), and because they are in it for the short term.  Many of their policies to date show they have little consideration for the plight of future generations.  Shame on them.