George Osborne's £5bn gamble to stave off recession

An extra £5bn of capital investment, funded by spending cuts elsewhere, will form the centrepiece of an overall £30bn national infrastructure programme due to be announced by George Osborne on Tuesday as part of an attempt to prevent the country from sliding back into recession ...

With the autumn statement due to be fiscally neutral, Osborne has had to find nearly £8bn in savings to fund the additional £5bn capital investment, as well as the delay in the fuel duty rise and the higher than expected costs of benefit upratings.

Some of that will come from lower than projected spending across Whitehall and higher corporate tax receipts, but he is also planning to freeze some working tax credits at the higher income end ...

The government has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Association of Pension Funds and the Pension Protection Fund to develop a new pension infrastructure platform, and make it easier for pension funds to invest in projects such as renewable energy, power stations and ports.

The scheme is in some ways a substitute for Labour's Private Finance Initiative ...

Gdn  27 Nov 2011    George Osborne: Autumn Statement    

Latest UK GDP data even worse than it looks

Plan for specialist maths schools

The Government is to set out plans for up to a dozen new specialist schools aimed at providing the "highest quality maths teaching in the world" ...

Maths is seen by the Government as a "fundamental strategic priority" in education.

With the spread of digital technologies, it is regarded as being of ever-greater importance to the economy, offering students a better chance of well-paid jobs than almost any other subject.

Ministers want the new schools to produce a new generation of mathematicians able to produce breakthroughs in pure and applied mathematics or able to build new innovative companies.

msn.news  26 Nov 2011    Tory Education 'Reform'

Towards two-tier schooling

Free schools in England set for extra £600m

Teenagers to be given jobs funded by the taxpayer

"Do less, make it seem like more"

The payment — effectively a taxpayer-funded bribe for companies — is designed to get more than 400,000 young people into work.

The scheme, which has hallmarks of the Thatcherite Youth Training Scheme of the 1980s, will be funded by freezing tax credits for up to three years, hitting millions of workers earning up to £28,000 ...

Tel  25 Nov 2011

Nick Clegg announces £1bn fund to tackle youth unemployment

The opposition said the move represented a U-turn and was in effect a revised version of Labour's future jobs fund, cancelled by the coalition government when it came to office.

After protracted negotiations inside the government, ministers will subsidise 160,000 work places by providing £2,275 to any private-sector business willing to hire an unemployed 18- to 24-year-old.

The scheme will be administered by private-sector providers via the government's work programme, and any young person taken on will have to complete the placement or be refused benefits.

Anyone rejecting a subsidised job offer will be required to undertake four weeks' mandatory work activity ...

roblet
25 November 2011 1:43AM

"May lead to permanent jobs."

More likely it tends to lead to a revolving door policy by companies who can obtain a constant stream of subsidised labour.

As with all compulsory schemes for the unemployed, this then becomes an incentive for unscrupulous companies to jettison their regular employees in menial work, in favour of cheap labour from the massed ranks of the enforcees.

The employers will be happy anyway.

Gdn  25 Nov 2011    Full employment?    Outsourcing    Youth Unemployment

The myth of full employment

Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits

Coalition sheds crocodile tears over young jobless

Workers should not fear for jobs under employment law overhaul, says Vince Cable

Mr Cable is due to announce what is being billed as the biggest reform of employment law for decades – although senior Conservatives have privately blamed Liberal Democrat Coalition partners of hampering an even greater overhaul.

Ministers say cutting the cost and bureaucracy of laying off workers will help businesses remain profitable throughout the economic downturn ...

Tel  23 Nov 2011

Coalition to relax employment laws

Ministers also want to make it easier for companies to lay off large numbers of staff more quickly.

Under current laws on collective redundancy, companies planning to lay off large numbers of staff have to hold a consultation lasting at least 90 days.

That could fall to 30 days under the proposals.

Business groups have told ministers that the requirement to go on paying workers for so long after deciding to sack them places an undue burden on companies trying to cut costs urgently ...

Tel  23 Nov 2011     A 'modern and compassionate party'    Global Labour Market    Pawns and Players

Cameron's war on employment rights

Precarity

UK 'complacent' on nuclear future

On extending nuclear plans to meet 2050 climate targets, chairman of the committee, Lord Krebs, said "there isn't a credible Plan A".

"It is though we're setting off on a long journey without a map, without a driver, and without anyone to fix the car if things go wrong," he told reporters at a briefing in London.

"We are in danger of placing ourselves in a position where we will be unable to ensure a safe and secure supply of nuclear energy up to 2050 ... the government's nuclear energy policy simply lacks credibility." ...

The committee says there is a serious danger of UK expertise being lost by this period, with the skilled workforce ageing and a lack of investment in training new people.

Lord Krebs suggested that the government, regulatory agencies and industry would find it hard to recruit trained and skilled Britons.

And relying on other countries to provide a talent pool was not a sensible strategy ...

BBC NEWS  22 Nov 2011    Energy Policy    Nuclear Power

Judge to examine Goldman Sachs tax deal

The judge is expected to be given the power to examine the private accounts of Goldman Sachs and Vodafone to establish whether senior inspectors wrongly "let them off" multi-million-pound tax bills.

The National Audit Office ... is also considering whether to examine the tax affairs of other big companies to establish whether HMRC officials routinely signed off deals which underestimated the true liabilities of the companies.

The move comes after the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee accused Britain's top Revenue official, Dave Hartnett, of misleading Parliament following a deal with Goldman Sachs that allowed the US investment bank to avoid more than £10m in tax penalties.

It also accused officials of allowing Vodafone to pay just £1.25bn in a tax dispute with the Government, despite a potential tax bill of £8bn ...

Ind  22 Nov 2011    Tax Dodgers

Dave Hartnett accused of lying to Parliament ...

On The Town With Dave Hartnett

HMRC Controversies

Why revisit the working time directive?

Every crisis also provides an opportunity.

In exchange for agreeing to the revision of the Lisbon treaty, it looks like the British coalition government has won the right to revisit the EU working time directive ...

The working time directive is a European Union directive that provides the right for workers in EU member states to have a minimum number of holidays each year, paid breaks and rest of at least 11 in any 24 hours, as well as placing an upper limit (subject to some exemptions, called "opt outs") on the number of hours a worker may work per week.

This is currently 48 hours per week ...

Like all parts of the social chapter, it was opposed by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories because of their belief that anything that stopped the untrammelled operation of the free market was an affront ... to the right of employers to act as they saw fit ...

Gdn  21 Nov 2011

Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood

... the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing" ... the government's aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".

The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life ...

Gdn  15 Nov 2010

A 'modern and compassionate party'    Global Labour Market    Pawns and Players

Oliver James    Towards a new measure of well-being

Comment is free readers on … long working hours

Government set to measure UK happiness

Work-Life Balance

Precarity

Liberal Democrats fight benefits cut to fund freeze in fuel duty

The itch to take a short-term populist measure subordinates any signal to the market that gas-guzzlers are anti-social

Liberal Democrat cabinet members are fighting a rearguard action to prevent the Treasury pressing ahead with plans to withhold some benefit increases for the unemployed to fund a delay in the planned 3p rise in fuel duty due in January ...

The lower than inflation benefit rises would save the government £1bn against what had been expected by the Office of Budget Responsibility.

That sum roughly matches the sum needed to fund a freeze in fuel duty ...

... some Lib Dems – including the business secretary, Vince Cable – were wavering over the issue ...

Gdn  18 Nov 2011    IDS: Welfare Reform    Is the coalition eco-friendly?    Peak Oil    Third Meltdown Log

UK facing 1970s-style oil shock

Reform For GPs Giving Long-Term Sick Notes

Work longer for less, and don't fall sick!

The Government review has recommended that family GPs still certify up to four weeks of absence but employers should be able to refer those off sick for longer than this to an independent panel of doctors.

The review also suggests setting up a service to help those on sick leave find more appropriate jobs.

According to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), around 140 million working days are lost to sickness absence each year.

While most people return to work, every year 300,000 people drop out of work onto health-related state benefits.

This places an economic burden on employers, taxpayers and the individuals themselves.

DWP says each year employers spend around £9bn on sick pay, while health-related benefits cost taxpayers £13bn ...

Earlier this year the Government asked Dame Carol Black and David Frost to lead a review of sickness absence in Great Britain, to examine if long-term sickness absence could be reduced to prevent people from dropping needlessly out of the labour market.

It claimed that if all the recommendations are accepted it could save £400m a year for employers and £300m a year for the Government, while boosting economic output by over £1bn a year.

skyNews  19 Nov 2011    Cutting the Deficit    The Work Programme    Welfare reform

Virgin Money buys Northern Rock for £747m

The sale, announced on Thursday morning, will raise £747m for the Treasury – just half the amount that the UK taxpayer injected into the bank last year ...

George Osborne said ...

"It represents value for money, will increase choice on the high street for customers and safeguards jobs in the north-east " ...

Gdn  17 Nov 2011    Bankocracy Log    George Osborne

Financier who got Northern Rock rolling

What's in it for Sir Richard Branson?

Northern Rock sold 'at a loss'

Have taxpayers got a decent deal ... ?

Will Virgin plus Rock challenge the big banks?

Pain. But no gain

The Treasury analysis of independent City forecasts showed that net public borrowing is now expected to rocket to £412bn over the next few years.

This is more than £100bn higher than the £303bn total projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility a year ago, after the government-wide spending review.

Crucially, it also dwarfs the £389bn four-year total OBR forecast based on the plans of Alistair Darling, his Labour predecessor, which the Coalition argued was much too high ...

Ind  17 Nov 2011

Osborne to miss deficit target

The employment minister, Chris Grayling, blamed the eurozone's troubles for the rise in joblessness.

"These figures are bad news. They are … the consequence of what we're seeing in the eurozone."

"If you go back four months, unemployment was falling, youth unemployment was lower than 900,000. We've seen a big slowdown in the economy I think as a result of the crisis elsewhere."

But the business secretary, Vince Cable, declined to blame unemployment on the euro crisis, telling Channel 4 News the problem lay in low domestic demand.

"I would certainly not blame the euro-crisis. The problem particularly of youth unemployment is deep rooted and has been with us for a very long time.

"Our domestic economic conditions are very difficult in large part because of the legacy we have to deal with ...

"I am not trying to look for a scapegoat or a way of escaping responsibility for it." ...

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said ...

"The macro-economic consensus appears to be swinging behind the view that the recession, created by a major financial crisis, and the overhang of debt in public and private sectors, could have a longer effect depressing economic activity than many thought likely a year ago." ...

Gdn  17 Nov 2011    A free market train wreck    Cutting the Deficit    Whither Britain? Log

Permanent underclass is emerging in UK

Extra 150,000 foreign workers in Britain as unemployment rises

It's very convenient to blame the eurozone, but there's a larger canvass to this report. Like Premier League football clubs which prefer to buy the 'ready made product' from abroad, many firms prefer the same route to the more costly route of actually training the 'home grown' variety.

Yes, I know there's a big problem with the demand for 24/7 entertainment, carefully cultivated by - among others - the Murdoch media, and there's also a big problem with the fact that schools can no longer inculcate the vanished 'sacrifice-today-for-a-better-tomorrow' culture which used to exist fifty/sixty years ago.

However, fifty/sixty years ago precarity was unheard of, and there really was full employment.

Which leads on to the bigger problem, which government ministers understand perfectly well, but would rather not discuss with the hoi polloi.

It's very simple: the global economy needs a globally mobile labour force, and a reserve army.

It keeps wage rates in check.

... even as overall unemployment rose, foreign workers continued to prosper.

The number of non-UK nationals in British employment was 2.56 million, up 147,000 from the same period year earlier ...

Chris Grayling, the employment minister, said ministers are working to get more British workers into jobs.

However, he suggested that some employers would rather hire experienced foreigners than take on British school-leavers.

“In many cases there is reluctance on the part of employers to take in people straight from school, college or university with no experience,” he said ...

Tel  16 Nov 2011    Full Employment?    Global Labour Market    Reserve Army

Dispensing with the Third Face of Power     The myth of full employment

Permanent underclass is emerging in UK

Coalition sheds crocodile tears over young jobless

When he announced his austerity programme shortly after becoming chancellor, George Osborne insisted that job losses in the public sector would be far outweighed by the opportunities that would be created by a liberated and thriving private sector.

Wednesday's figures give the lie to the chancellor's breezy optimism: 111,000 jobs were shed by the public sector in the three months to June, while 41,000 were created in the private sector ...

Sadly, things are going to get worse before they get better, and maybe a lot worse.

The Office for National Statistics said that average earnings, excluding bonuses, in the three months to September were 1.7% higher than in the same period of 2010.

The annual inflation rate in September 2011 stood at 5.2%, meaning that real incomes are falling rapidly at a time when public spending cuts are starting to bite ...

Gdn  16 Nov 2011

Youth unemployment hits 1 million

Employment minister blames the eurozone

Employment minister Chris Grayling said the eurozone's troubles were behind the rise.

"These figures are bad news. They are I'm afraid the consequence of what we're seeing in the eurozone," he said.

"If you go back four months, unemployment was falling, youth unemplyment was lower than 900,000.

"We've seen a big slowdown in the economy I think as a result of the crisis elsewhere." ...

Gdn  16 Nov 2011

Labour market statistics: November 2011

For July to September 2011:

• The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 70.2 per cent, down 0.4 on the quarter. There were 29.07 million people in employment aged 16 and over, down 197,000 on the quarter.

• The unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent of the economically active population, up 0.4 on the quarter. There were 2.62 million unemployed people, up 129,000 on the quarter. The unemployment rate is the highest since 1996 and the number of unemployed people is the highest since 1994.

• The inactivity rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 23.3 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter. There were 9.36 million economically inactive people aged from 16 to 64, up 64,000 on the quarter.

• Total pay (including bonuses) rose by 2.3 per cent on a year earlier, down 0.4 on the three months to August 2011 (with both the private and public sectors showing lower pay growth).

• Regular pay (excluding bonuses) rose by 1.7 per cent on a year earlier, down 0.1 on the three months to August 2011.

ONS  16 Nov 2011    Full employment?    ONS Stats    Reserve Army    

Inflation

Eurozone crisis is a handy excuse for faltering UK economy

David Cameron: London is under constant attack from Europe

Lansley threatens to sack NHS chiefs who ration care to save money

The move, which comes amid unprecedented pressure on the health service to save £20bn, is a response to a damning July report by the Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP), which accused primary care trusts (PCTs) of "reducing or delaying access to care".

The panel warned that some patients could die because a majority of PCTs, the bodies that control health budgets, were forcing patients to wait a minimum of 15 weeks ...

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said that while waiting times were rising and treatments being cut to save money in the NHS, it was ironic that Lansley was having to "use the very powers that his own reckless health bill will abolish".

He added: "It's an even greater irony that it's needed to tackle a growing postcode lottery that his bill actively encourages ...

Elizabeth Wade, head of commissioning policy for the PCT Network, said GPs would find themselves facing the same problems of shrinking budgets and increasing demand.

"Changing commissioning structures will not change the financial pressures on the NHS and these difficult decisions are not going to go away ...

Gdn  14 Nov 2011    NHS 'Reforms'        

CCP

Lansley to 'remove' NHS managers who don't meet foundation hospital deadline

UK economic outlook worse for seventh month in a row, says OECD

At the start of a week that will provide a snapshot of inflation, unemployment and high-street spending, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) appeared to bear out the main charge made by Labour: that the slowdown in the UK economy predated the intensification of the eurozone crisis.

But the OECD report also showed Britain was not alone in experiencing a gloomier economic outlook, with the other six members of the G7 group of industrial nations – the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and France – all experiencing slowdowns.

The darkening international picture will enable the government to argue that weaker growth, higher unemployment and a bigger budget deficit are the result of factors beyond its control ...

The expectation 18 months ago was that the government would have a tough first year, but by now there would be signs of the economy picking up.

Stronger growth in 2012 would leave voters with the feeling Osborne's deficit-reduction plan had paid off, creating a good backdrop for re-election in 2015.

That timescale has been put back by at least year ...

Gdn  14 Nov 2011    A free market train wreck    Global Risks 2012    

Circle Health – the 'social enterprise' run by the world's hardest hedge fund managers

John Lewis it is absolutely not

Circle Health – the company that last week became the first private healthcare operator to take over the running of an NHS district general hospital – has variously been described as a "John Lewis-style mutual", a "third-sector provider", and a "social enterprise majority owned by employees".

It is none of these things.

If it were, it would not have attracted about £120m of investment from highly astute and profit-driven venture capital and hedge funds ... run by ruthlessly brilliant investment managers whose reputations are built on spotting trends in the capital markets before anyone else ...

So what exactly is Circle Health? In truth, it is a subsidiary ultimately controlled by Circle Holdings ...

Almost 95% of those shares have remained in the hands of six investors ...

... the much-mentioned 30m shares Parsa has handed out to more than 2,500 staff ... are, in fact, shares in an entity registered in the Virgin Islands called Circle Partnership ...

Even after wading through the fuzzy language of "social enterprise" ... it becomes very difficult to get a handle on how empowered staff at Circle Health have become, or indeed how well they are being rewarded ...

Circle Health made a pre-tax loss last year of £44.3m. The likelihood of shares yielding a dividend can only be a medium- to long-term goal ...

This is very far from the kind of employee ownership found in the co-operative movement or share option plans.

John Lewis it is absolutely not ...

Obs  13 Nov 2011    Corporate Media    NHS 'Reform'    Outsourcing    Private Equity

Healthcare industry

Cameron seeks to push one million workers out of the public sector

With little fanfare, services across the country are being quietly taken over by private equity ...

With little fanfare, services across the country are being quietly taken over by their own staff – state funded but run independently ...

The Prime Minister claims the number of services that adopt the scheme will be a key test of his Big Society vision ...

At least 45,000 health workers have already left the public sector under the programme, including 10,000 nurses ...

Julian Le Grand, Tony Blair's radical policy adviser who advocated introducing the market to the public sector, is heading the Government's mutuals task force ...

Ind  13 Nov 2011    'Divi' Dave log    Outsourcing            

John Lewis it is absolutely not

Care may suffer, admits private company taking over NHS hospital

Care may suffer, admits private company taking over NHS hospital

It's Southern Cross 'care' homes all over again.

The first private company to take over an NHS hospital has admitted in a document seen by the Observer that patient care could suffer under its plans to expand its empire and seek profit from the health service.

Circle Health is already feeling a strain on resources due to its aggressive business strategy, the document reveals, and the firm's ambition to further expand into the NHS "could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients", it says ...

Concerns over the future of the health service were further heightened when David Cameron, in a speech on regulation and the economy, said he wanted the NHS to be a "fantastic business for Britain" ...

Circle, which is backed by City hedge funds run by Crispin Odey and Paul Ruddock, who have donated £790,000 to the Conservative party, admits in its share prospectus to having made losses since it was set up in 2004.

The latest accounts show an operating loss of £34.97m as of December 2010 ...

Gdn  12 Nov 2011    NHS 'Reform'    Outsourcing

Healthcare industry

Wounded soldiers face sack under new Army redundancy plans

A classified document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, says 2,500 wounded soldiers, including 350 who have lost limbs, will not be exempt from the extensive cuts.

The internal memo ... also discloses that 16,500 personnel will be made redundant by April 2015 – more than double the number originally proposed ...

The efficiency drive has been ordered because the Army has so many wounded soldiers that able-bodied recruits are being turned away and its fighting strength is being diminished.

Details of the full scale of the redundancy programme came as millions of people paused to pay a silent tribute to the nation’s war dead yesterday.

The ceremony was particularly poignant at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, where soldiers marked the death of the 385th British serviceman to be killed since 2001 ...

Tel  11 Nov 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Third Meltdown Log    

The Work Programme's 'big society' logic: get charities to do it for free

"It is hard not to see this as a kind of cost-shunting scam"

In the current low growth-high-unemployment economic climate ... the mainly private Work Programme providers are seeking to drive down costs and transfer risk ... by asking voluntary organisations to do their work for them, for free ... a number of volunteer centres across England report that long term unemployed people are being covertly referred to them by WP providers.

The bulk of these referrals involve individuals being sent informally to centres to help them become "job ready" ...

No-one is questioning the value of volunteering in this respect: the problems arise over why the clients are being referred, who pays, and who benefits ...

What frustrates volunteer centres is that the sudden spate of WP referrals comes at a time when they have seen their public funding cut and demand is increasing.

While their reason for existence is to support voluntary work, many are reluctant to commit shrinking resources to "someone who does not have an interest in volunteering but believes they have been told they must volunteer." ...

Ministers were always irked by the criticism that the "Big society" was about public services being provided by volunteers for free ... this looks dangerously like private companies protecting their profit margins by using volunteers to provide public services for free ...

Gdn  10 Nov 2011    Dave's Big Society Con    The Work Programme

'Reserve Army    Work Programme meets Dysfunctional Labour Market

Eurozone crisis hits UK companies

The CBI's Richard Woolhouse said members were already reporting that "export demand from parts of Europe is falling".

He said: "That is serious when you consider the eurozone accounts for 40% of Britain's exports."

For the first time in this crisis, companies are "cutting investment" in Europe and the UK to conserve cash, he said.

Another lurking danger is that risk-averse banks are refusing to provide trade finance to small and medium-sized businesses, further choking off Britain's ability to export.

Woolhouse said there were worries that, as in 2008: "We will face systemic liquidity problems." ...

A report from JP Morgan said a sharp increase in bank funding costs was "a key channel by which the UK will be affected by the intensification of European sovereign and banking stress".

Gdn  11 Nov 2011    A free market train wreck    Euro Crisis    Whither Britain? Log

Eurozone crisis hits UK companies

How eurozone turmoil could make its way across the Channel

David Cameron says ECB must act now

Cameron's rant-of-the-day is directed against that alleged source of all our troubles: the EU

Cameron said that the crisis had prompted the British government to prepare for a possible breakup of the eurozone.

"We meet at an alarming time for the global economy. Markets are incredibly volatile. The eurozone is in crisis.

"It is not in our interests for the eurozone to break up – for countries to leave the eurozone.

"We have to keep the British economy safe, to take the British economy through this storm. That means preparing for all eventualities." ...

Gdn  10 Nov 2011    'Divi' Dave Log

Brussels is stifling City of London, Cameron claims

'We’re sick of you telling us what to do'

Eurozone crisis is a handy excuse for faltering UK economy

Inquiry call over Mark and Helen Mullins deaths

A charity worker has called for a full investigation into the deaths of a vulnerable couple whose bodies were found in their Warwickshire home.

The deaths of Mark and Helen Mullins, from Bedworth, last Thursday, are being treated as "unexplained" by police.

Kervin Julien, from the Christian charity Anesis, knew the couple and said they struggled to get benefits.

He has called on the authorities to find out what happened so it does not happen to others in need.

He said the couple walked every Sunday to a soup kitchen in Coventry almost 12 miles away in order to have something to eat and pick up food bags ...

BBC NEWS  09 November 2011
A 'modern and compassionate party'    Marginalising the disabled
Third Meltdown Log    Welfare 'Reform'    Whither Britain? Log

Autonomous Individualism    'Communitarian Citizenship'    Marginalised    'Unsustainable Burdens'

RIP Helen and Mark

UK trade deficit hits record high

Exports barely grew, leaving the country's goods trade deficit with the rest of the world at £9.8bn, much wider than the £8bn forecast by economists and the biggest trade gap since records began in 1998, the Office for National Statistics said. The gap was £8.6bn in August ...

The widening in the deficit followed a 3.8% jump in imports, driven by higher imports of chemicals, oil and silver.

Meanwhile, exports edged up just 0.2% as higher exports of oil and cars were offset by lower exports of chemicals, intermediate goods, such as parts for machines, and consumer goods ...

European Union exports rose by just 0.5% in September but imports rose by 4.1%.

Excluding oil and other erratic items, exports to EU countries fell 2.8% ...

Gdn  09 Nov 2011    A free market train wreck    ONS Stats    Whither Britain? Log

The financial reform grudge match is going to continue for some time yet

Sir Mervyn effectively said the Bank and the new Prudential Regulation Authority should have an absolute right to exercise their judgement when applying their powers, rather than being expected topolice a rulebook that the banks and their well-paid lawyers always find it so easy to dance around.

The example the Governor gave was that he wants to be allowed to tell a bank that has increased its leverage to cut it back even if it has stayed within the rules, if he feels that it is taking on too much risk.

He wants, in other words, to return to the system of regulation that the Bank of England ran until its powers were given to the Financial Services Authority in 1997: a system in which regulators used their discretion rather than referring to the whistle ...

Ind  04 Nov 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    

Regulators Name 29 Banks Critical to Global Stability

New NHS regulator 'risks failure'

Under the health secretary's plans, Monitor will become responsible for setting prices for NHS-funded services, ensuring competition works in the health service and maintaining essential services if hospitals go bust ...

The report also highlights that Lansley's thinking has been influenced by his time as a civil servant working under Lord Tebbit ... in Margaret Thatcher's government.

"Andrew Lansley's own ideas for the reform of the NHS, developed while in opposition, were born out of his experience of the privatisation and regulation of utilities in the mid-1980s when he was principal private secretary to Norman Tebbit," it says.

Writing in the Daily Mirror earlier this year, Lord Tebbit came out against Lansley's NHS bill with an analysis that echoes the King's Fund report.

The peer wrote: "What worries me about the reforms … is the difficulty of organising fair competition between the state-owned hospitals and those in the private sector." ...

Gdn  03 Nov 2011    NHS 'Reform'

Towards a two-tier health 'service'

Norman Tebbit: Don't let David Cameron destroy our NHS

Economic regulation in health care

Co-operation and competition

UK 'preparing to give more to IMF'

George Osborne doesn't say where the money is coming from. A form of QE, perhaps?!

The UK currently provides £29bn ($46bn) of the IMF's £600bn ($950bn) lending capacity.

About £4.9bn of UK money is held in the IMF's fund but it could draw down up to £29.4bn from the Treasury in certain circumstances.

Last week UK Chancellor George Osborne told MPs there may be a case for further increasing the budget of the IMF to keep pace with the size of the global economy ...

BBC NEWS  03 Nov 2011

Eurozone: UK 'ready to back IMF bailouts'

Britain is standing by to give more money to the IMF so that it can, in turn, lend more money to Eurozone countries like Greece, Italy or Spain who are struggling to service their debts.

The government now believes, I'm told, that there are only three ways out of the current crisis - the first they hope for, the second they fear and the third they are ready to accept.

The three are:

1. Eurozone leaders succeed in getting last week's deal back on track despite Greece's plan to use a referendum to secure a better deal

2. Greece leaves the euro

3. Enhanced IMF funding for the Eurozone's struggling economies

Reuters reports that China's deputy finance minister Zhu Guangyao revealed tonight that the third option is already under active discussion in Cannes in advance of the G20 summit.

The politics, here at home, are complex for a government pledged not to spend British taxpayers' money on propping up the euro.

However, Chancellor George Osborne has been very, very careful to leave himself room to do just that so long as it's via the IMF and given not to the Eurozone bail out fund but directly to individual countries.

BBC NEWS  03 Nov 2011    Cutting the Deficit(?)    George Osborne    IMF

"The nasty church ... "

"The nasty church has joined with its kin the nasty party to look after their kin - the nasty rich."

Blogger whitecross, Guardian, 31 Oct 2011

The Bishop of London clocked at number 75 in a list of the top 100 environmentalists compiled by The Independent on Sunday, according to the Wikipedia biog. It also indicates that he does not allow his anti-aviation credentials to come in the way of the use of air travel when he is working. Wiki

Presumably he has the same lax attitude towards the Sermon on the Mount when St Paul's cathedral announces it cannot function without daily takings of £20k. How the police are going to clear Occupy London without violence, he doesn't say.

According to the church's website, their financial strategy at present involves "a mix of styles and approaches" having "scaled down holdings in UK company shares and invested more in global company shares and private equity." .

In acknowledgement of the UK's newest and principle religion (shopping) its extensive property portfolio includes retail parks, great chunks of high street and the MetroCentre mall; pre-Westfield the biggest shopping centre in Europe.

It also operates highest end retail units in London's Savile Row, and for a mere £85, one can lunch on a steak and a glass of red at the Royal Lancaster, the luxury hotel it owns on London's Hyde Park .

The Mayor of London's love and dedication to high-finance and the City is known and outspoken, and the City of London Corporation is best summarised by the Penguin Rough Guide to London:

"with its Lord Mayor, its Beadles, Sheriffs and Aldermen, its separate police force and its select electorate of freemen and liverymen, the City of London is an anachronism of the worst kind. The Corporation, which runs the City like a one-party mini-state, is an unreconstructed old boys' network whose medievalist pageantry camouflages the very real power and wealth which it holds."     Huffington Post

Bishop of London branded hypocrite ...

Mark Field, Tory MP for Cities of London and Westminster, said: “While no one expects anti-capitalism to be a 24-hour activity, I would have hoped the protesters would show a little more respect for the sanctity of St Paul’s.” ...

Nick Herbert, the policing and justice minister, said the Government was examining whether the law was working effectively in light of the continued protest.

He told BBC1’s Politics Show: “Everybody agrees there should be a right of peaceful protest in our country. People have an entitlement to make their view known.

"It’s fundamental to our democracy and the coalition is committed to protect that.

“But we saw – for instance in Parliament Square – where there was a permanent encampment which had gone on for years and was very disruptive to the enjoyment of Parliament Square by others.

“And if necessary we will take action to deal with other invasions of private property that involved permanent encampments."

He added: "You do have the right to protest but you don’t have the right to go and live somewhere and that’s why we do need to look again at whether the law is operating effectively.”

Tel  31 Oct 2011    Corporate State Log    

MF Global files for bankruptcy after European debt bets

If the 99% are Evicted, it Will be by the 1%

Is Occupy London a part-time protest?

Sermon on the Mound

Regional growth fund will create thousands of new jobs, says Nick Clegg

"He said the funds would create or safeguard 325,000 jobs", but Sky report it's only 37,000

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has said the government's regional growth fund will provide a "snowball effect that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs".

Clegg outlined the second tranche of regional growth fund investment – worth £950m – and said it would ensure taxpayers get "more bang for our bucks" by creating growth and reducing dependence on the financial services sector.

He said the funds would create or safeguard 325,000 jobs, and rejected criticism of the length of time it has been taking for the cash to reach businesses ...

Gdn  31 Oct 2011

Coalition pledges £1bn on 100 projects to kickstart the economy

A case of double counting?

Officials at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills are hoping that the money, from the Regional Growth Fund, will trigger a further £6 billion in investment from private companies.

They have tried to focus the public cash on small companies and those in the manufacturing supply chain as much as possible.

Due diligence on the successful bidders for the public money will start today.

Two new power stations in Yorkshire, creating more than 1,000 jobs and enough energy to power more than two million homes, will be approved.

Charles Hendry, the energy minister, said this was “a further example of our determination to clear the backlog of planning applications, to stimulate growth and enhance our energy security” ...

Jenny_Tells

The two new power stations are: Ferrybridge - a 108 MW Multifuel (biomass and energy waste) power plant in Wakefield, Yorkshire, representing an investment of £250 million by SSE Generation.

It is expected around 350 jobs will be created during construction.

Thorpe Marsh - a 1,500 MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plant in North Doncaster, Yorkshire, representing an investment of £984 million by Acorn Power Developments. It is expected that up to 800 jobs will be created during construction.

They may help to keep the lights on, but what about nuclear power? As one understands it, consent for the two plants had already been given and the funding was in place from private sources before the coalition's announcement.

So it's a bit of a con to include these developments in the grand plan to kickstart the economy.

Tel  30 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck

Elderly struggling to cope with social care cuts

Government figures show that councils' annual budgets for help for the over-65s has fallen by £1.3bn since 2010, with cuts hitting nursing homes and support for the most vulnerable.

Despite chancellor George Osborne's promise last year to provide and extra £2bn for councils to spend on care homes, meals on wheels and daily help for the elderly and disabled, research conducted by the Commons Library suggests that the money, which was not ring-fenced, had not reached the frontline.

Instead, the figures show that in 2009-10 councils in England spent £7.6bn on social care for the over-65s compared to £6.3bn this year – a cut of nearly a fifth (17%) ...

BBC NEWS  28 Oct 2011    A 'modern and compassionate party'    'Caring' ... the free market way    
Cutting the Deficit    George Osborne    Third Meltdown

Marginalised Home Page    'Unsustainable burdens'

Lansley to 'remove' NHS managers who don't meet foundation hospital deadline

There has been increasing concern in the Department of Health over the time taken for the remaining 69 acute hospitals in the NHS to become foundation trusts, which operate outside Whitehall control and are the cornerstone of Lansley's reforms.

Unlike NHS trusts, foundation trusts are meant to be able to compete in clinical and financial terms for patients.

The National Audit Office noted this month that the number of authorisations peaked in 2007 and 2008, however, and only 14 foundation trusts had been authorised since the end of 2009.

"Sometimes, the problem rests with a hospital's management team – unable to take the difficult decisions needed to turn things around.

"For them, I have a stark warning. If your hospitals are not there by the time you say, you're not getting there at all," Lansley told an audience of policy makers, NHS experts and private healthcare executives in the City.

"The secretary of state has the power to remove and replace management teams that fail to deliver, and I will not hesitate to use that power if needed." ...

Gdn  26 Oct 2011    NHS 'Reform'

Osborne's anti-green agenda splits Coalition

Mr Osborne is the leader of an increasingly influential faction within the Cabinet willing to sacrifice green policies if doing so is deemed helpful to economic growth ...

Mr Huhne will turn Mr Osborne's own words against him. Whereas the Chancellor said at the Conservative Party conference that "We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business," Mr Huhne will say in a speech this morning:

"We are not going to save our economy by turning our back on renewable energy." ...

From green back to blue: 10 anti-green Tory policies:

• Rural planning reforms
• Eco-homes
• Green Investment Bank
• Aggregates fund
• Gagging of agencies
• Oil spilltugboats
• Abolition of advisory panels
• 80mph speed limit
• Illegal tropical timber
• Forests sell-off

Ind  26 Oct 2011

Eating the Future Log        Green Investment Bank    Is the coalition eco-friendly?

Cameron to miss Rio+20 earth summit for Jubilee

Earth Summit 2012

Eurozone debt crisis: can the European ideal survive?

The [UK] Government’s policy, which is to encourage fiscal union in Europe while simultaneously attempting to ensure we get something in return, is starting to look increasingly untenable.

Switzerland and Norway are tolerated, like parasites on the pig’s belly, as EU free-riders because they are small and of little consequence.

Britain would be a different matter entirely and would be repeatedly disadvantaged by a fiscally unified eurozone.

Saving the world from immediate disaster has to be the priority for now, but there will come a time in this unfolding crisis when more radical thinking is called for.

The single currency cannot survive on the present policy mix. Britain must prepare to switch tack.

Tel  25 Oct 2011

Give firms freedom to sack unproductive workers

More precarity?

Britain’s “terrible” employment laws are undermining economic growth and should be overhauled, according to the confidential report obtained by The Daily Telegraph ...

The radical recommendation to scrap the concept of unfair dismissal is made by Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist, in a report commissioned by David Cameron ...

Mr Beecroft warns that simply scrapping the law would be “politically unacceptable”.

He therefore recommends a replacement regulation, called Compensated No Fault Dismissal, which would allow employers to sack unproductive staff with basic redundancy pay and notice.

Mr Beecroft concedes that a “downside” under his new scheme is that employers could fire staff because they “did not like them”.

“While this is sad I believe it is a price worth paying for all the benefits that would result from the change”, he says ...

Tel  25 Oct 2011

Tory revolt and the precariat

Behind all the fervour for freeing the United Kingdom from servitude in the EU, the lies and rage about the Brussels bureaucracy, and the nationalist rhetoric about "repatriating powers" lurks an insistent desire to abolish all or much of the social and employment legislation that Europe has given to families and workers in this country.

European Community law has transformed the protection of economic and social rights in the UK, especially in employment.

The first and greatest impact of EU law was in the areas of sex discrimination and equal pay, but it has subsequently pervaded nearly every aspect of employment, and has been particularly crucial in terms of employment rights.

(The EU is the only region in the world in which workers' rights are legally embedded.)

The UK is also obliged by law to comply with a wide range of EU regulations and directives, promoting inter alia socio-economic rights on equality, health, maternity pay and safety at work.

What the Tories want is to reduce such rights to make the labour market "flexible", or in other words, to give employers even more power over their workers ...

openDemocracy  25 Oct 2011

EU Log        Global Labour Market    'Reserve Army'    Third Meltdown Log

Precarity

QE will not guarantee rise in bank lending

It's quite simple, Sir Mervyn, the QE should have gone to the Green Investment Bank

Bank of England governor Mervyn King has admitted that the central bank's pumping more money into the economy will not guarantee an increase in lending by commercial banks ...

But [Sir Mervyn] King told MPs he thought lending would not fall as fast it would have done, had no action been taken ...

" ... What we have to do is to find ways of giving incentives to the existing banks in order to lend more."

BBC NEWS  25 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log    QE

A Faustian Pact 4

Bank of England's MPC united over quantitative easing

Education spending 'falling fastest since 1950s'

The [Institute for Fiscal Studies] report says that after a decade of rapid growth in funding schools and universities, the UK is now facing the largest cut in education spending over any four-year period since at least the 1950s.

"Having risen by historically large amounts during the 2000s, the UK's education budget is now set for an historically large fall over the next few years," says senior research economist Luke Sibieta.

As a share of national income, the IFS is projecting that public spending on education will fall close to the level of the late-1990s - when it dipped to 4.5%.

It had not previously been at such a low level since the early 1960s.

But these spending cuts will not be evenly spread ...

Among the areas with the deepest spending cuts will be capital funding on schools, which ... will be more than halved ...

The IFS warns that the biggest long-term losers could be early years support, youth services and 16-to-19 education in England.

They will lose an estimated 20%, but unlike universities, the IFS suggests their cuts will not be offset by private funding ...

BBC NEWS  25 Oct 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Tory Education 'Reform'

Towards two-tier schooling

Education spending 'falling fastest since 1950s'

Devaluation is no panacea for the UK

Visit the BoE's home page, and slogans will float across the page telling you that the Bank's job is to maintain "confidence in the currency"!

It's not generally realised, but over the past four years, the pound has experienced its sharpest depreciation since Britain left the gold standard in 1931 ...

The Government and the Bank of England are prone to represent this change as part of a necessary adjustment ... to ensure a more competitive economy for the future.

Yet so far, there have been few obvious benefits, either in terms of growth or net trade.

There have, on the other hand, been some clear-cut downsides – inflation at above 5pc being the most obvious ...

Too much is being expected of monetary policy. The Government has come to see the Bank as a substitute for its own lack of flexibility on fiscal policy.

A low exchange rate policy is also pursued as a way of re-engineering the British economy towards traded goods and exports.

It's reasonable to assume that eventually, such extreme exchange rate depreciation must have some effect, but whether it's really worth the inflationary trade-off is open to question.

Persistently high inflation will ultimately make the economy less competitive, not more so ...

A country which has become as de-industrialised as the UK is not quickly going to rebalance back to Victorian levels of manufacturing prowess ...

Tel  24 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log

BoE Home Page

Semi-detached of Downing Street tells neighbours to get their act together

William Hague: 'we must repatriate laws from EU'

Hague and Cameron advocate traditional Tory 'have-it-both-ways' policy on Europe

Mr Hague, who vehemently argued against Britain's membership of the Euro while in opposition, has turned into the bloc's defender, warning that the proposed referendum would hurt Britain's economy.

Mr Cameron had suggested that if the eurozone countries sought greater integration in order to resolve the problems of the single currency - which would require the unanimous support of all 27 member states - the UK would "exact a price".

Asked whether he wanted to repatriate powers to the UK, Mr Hague said: "That is my position, that is the Prime Minister's position, it is the Conservative Party's position, that is not the agreed position of the coalition." ...

Tel  24 Oct 2011

David Cameron vows to reclaim EU powers amid looming Tory rebellion

The Prime Minister is to demand more British control over employment and social laws in return for supporting a new European treaty to shore up the single currency.

Although British taxpayers’ money will not be used for the new multi-trillion euro bail-out, it is expected to require a rewriting of EU treaties, which needs Britain’s backing and may prompt a referendum in this country.

Mr Cameron’s “repatriation of powers” offer came as the Conservative leadership was making a last-ditch attempt to stop at least 60 Tory MPs voting for a referendum on leaving the European Union in the Commons today ...

Tel  23 Oct 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    EU Log    

David Cameron, captain of a hostile team

Sarkozy tells Cameron: 'We’re sick of you telling us what to do'

Eurozone crisis is a handy excuse for faltering UK economy

NHS power will be held by quango

The health secretary will "franchise" the running of the NHS to a quango for up to three years at a time ...

In unpublished evidence to the health select committee last week, Malcolm Grant, the government's choice to run the powerful NHS commissioning board, outlined "an extraordinary transformation of responsibility" ...

At present, the cabinet minister for health has a "duty to provide a national health service" in England, but that disappears in the NHS bill's proposals.

Grant ... told MPs that, under the new system, the secretary of state "mandates" the commissioning board to run the NHS every "two … possibly three years" and then retreats into the shadows.

The board will hand over taxpayers' cash to groups of GPs to buy services on behalf of patients.

He admitted there would be "a fundamental change of responsibility and accountability under the bill" because about £80bn of public money would be transferred to the board and GPs.

He said these two groups – not politicians – would run the NHS and ensure patients received an adequate level of health provision in England.

"If [GPs] are dissatisfied with what happens in a hospital, they need to deal with it and not simply complain to a secretary of state who no longer has this responsibility, nor to the commissioning board which has given them the responsibility, but to complain to the hospital and get it sorted, and, if it is not sorted, to use their commissioning power to ensure that it is." ...

Gdn  23 Oct 2011    Losing Democracy    NHS 'Reform'    

Eurozone crisis is a handy excuse for faltering UK economy

Throughout, the response has been late, timid and wrong, but convenient for George Osborne, David Cameron and Sir Mervyn King because they can now blame Britain's slide into a double-dip recession on events on the other side of the English Channel.

King's speech in Liverpool last week was a case in point. The gist was that we had a nice recovery going in the UK until the little local difficulty in Greece turned into a question of whether monetary union has a future.

The Bank of England governor insisted that following the depreciation in the value of the pound and the implementation of the coalition's government's "credible" plan for the public finances "we were on track".

This simply won't wash. Growth had ground to a halt in Britain long before the situation in the eurozone went critical.

Credit flows to business have been declining for at least two years.

Even before Britain's important European markets started to become more difficult, there was no underlying improvement in export performance, largely because companies used the benefits of a cheaper pound to plump up their profit margins ...

Gdn  23 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Is capitalism the only game in town?    Whither Britain? Log

David Cameron warns that UK must not be frozen out of economic decisions

Facing a sizeable 'UKIP' block within his own party, and a largely sceptical media, Cameron has a very weak hand made, worse by his tendency to try and face both ways.

Explaining to the British people that Britain needs Europe more than Europe needs Britain is an agenda Cameron is unqualified to undertake.

At the EU summit in Brussels to discuss the eurozone crisis, the Prime Minister will warn that the euro's 17 members must not dictate policies for the 10 countries, including Britain, that have not joined the single currency.

His intervention reflects growing fears among British ministers that the 10 could be virtually frozen out of decisions that would have a huge impact on their economies – such as the single market, bank regulation and EU directives affecting small and large businesses ...

Ind  22 Oct 2011

Banks should accept a bigger loss on Greek debt

The report from Greece's international debt inspectors, which formed the basis for discussions at the finance ministers' meeting on Friday, says that in order to keep rescue loans from the eurozone to the €109 billion foreseen under a second bailout deal tentatively reached in July, Greece's debt would have to be cut by 60 percent ...

Ind  22 Oct 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    EU Log    

Italy vs France

Osborne's Goldfinger killing attempts to be "greenest government ever"

So who is our Goldfinger of the day?

George Osborne, of course, whose free market ideology means he cannot comprehend that green regulations create growth far more often than preventing it.

This is why the government yesterday slashed between £400m and £1.3bn from the subsidies directed at creating a sustainable and clean energy supply for the UK and ultimately reducing energy bills.

It also follows the collapse of the only carbon and capture storage project bidding for £1bn of government money ...

Gdn  21 Oct 2011    Eating the Future Log    Is the coalition eco-friendly?    

UK renewable energy subsidies slashed

Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study

Longannet carbon capture project cancelled

Climate change 'grave threat' to security and health

Government borrowing figures better than expected

The Telegraph thinks borrowing fell, when in fact only the rate of borrowing fell, quite a different matter.

Office for National Statistics data suggests the chancellor is on course to hit his target of cutting the budget deficit from £137bn to £122bn this year ...

Samuel Tombs, UK analysts at Capital Economics said a £2bn downward revision to borrowing in August had helped put the Treasury on track to hit the £122bn forecast.

He added: "Nonetheless, we doubt that these figures fully reflect the recent slowdown in the pace of economic growth and therefore we continue to expect the trend in borrowing to deteriorate in the second half of the fiscal year."

Gdn  21 Oct 2011    ONS Stats        

Relief for Chancellor as borrowing falls

Spending Review one year on

The public’s view

The mood of the general public is anxious and uncertain about the future, with an expectation that the worst is still to come, particularly as public sector recession hampers the recovery of the labour market and with continuing global volatility.

Spending cuts and the labour market

In the eighteen months to June 2011, private sector job gains had more than offset public sector losses.

But a significant share of the gains were part-time positions and in the second quarter of 2011, when the public spending cuts started in earnest, this pattern was reversed with public sector job losses overtaking private sector job gains.

In the private sector, the construction sector has been hit hard, but growth in business services suggests opportunities in outsourcing may have outweighed the impact of the cuts in the private sector

In the public sector, job losses appear to have been more front-end loaded than expected, with particularly severe losses early on in local government.

The regional impact has been more varied than we originally expected.

The policy options

The Chancellor has little scope to change direction on his plans to cut the deficit.

But there are ways to fine tune his fiscal strategy, although these are not easy or costless.

We believe the best option is to bring forward capital spending, to boost infrastructure.

PWC  Oct 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Whither Britain? Log    

UK spending cuts have hit councils hardest

Local authority cuts: one year on

North-south divide widens as public sector cuts hit businesses

King says British economy would stall without ultra-low interest rates and QE

Despite news that the annual rate of inflation rose to 5.2% last month, the governor said the Bank was justified in recommencing its quantitative easing programme, which was put on hold in early 2010 after £200bn was injected into the economy.

King said the annual increase in the cost of living was likely to be "at, or close to, the peak" and the Bank expected the inflation rate to fall back next year.

"In contrast to headline inflation, domestically generated inflation remains subdued – and on some measures barely above zero. Increases in energy prices, import prices and VAT account for the current high level of inflation. Once the effect of these temporary factors begin to dissipate, inflation should fall back sharply early next year. A persistent margin of spare capacity in the economy, and the recent deterioration in demand prospects linked to the crisis in financial markets, will add to the downward pressure on inflation in the medium term."

Gdn  18 Oct 2011    QE    

A Faustian Pact 4

Local authority cuts: one year on

Halfway down the list of 130 separate ways to save £65m this year, printed in Durham county council's 108-page medium term financial plan, is a £1.7m cut to road maintenance projects.

Which is partly why engineering technician Daniel Lee finds himself at home, newly unemployed, smiling at his two-week-old son and wondering how the mortgage will get paid.

Over the next three years the council plans to shrink its workforce by about 1,600 ... but the impact of cuts to local authority budgets has repercussions that ripple far beyond the employee roll at county hall.

In the year since the coalition's Comprehensive Spending Review imposed unprecedented cuts on local authority budgets, the consequences have been felt most keenly in deprived areas that rely heavily on state services and public sector jobs, places such as the former steel mining town of Consett, which has never fully recovered from the closure of the British Steel works in the 1980s ...

Gdn  18 Oct 2011    

Cutting the Deficit    Eric Pickles' Localism    'Reserve Army'    Third Meltdown

Cuts hit 47 children's centres

"Local authorities are responsible for spending decisions" - Sarah Teather, Children's minister

At least 47 children's centres in England have either been closed or are being earmarked for closure because of funding cuts, research shows.

The survey by shadow children's minister Sharon Hodgson also suggests eight out of 10 of those who responded have cut funding in the past year.

A further nine out of 10 are planning to do so in 2012 ...

National Children's Bureau ... chief executive Dr Hilary Emery said cuts to local authority services such as play facilities, support for disabled children and youth services, are all painting a picture of children as the biggest losers of the recession ...

BBC NEWS  18 Oct 2011

A 'modern and compassionate party'    Cutting the Deficit    
Has the Coalition abandoned children?    Third Meltdown Log

Marginalised Home Page

Children

The 'huge' lobbying war chest behind the builders

Plans to force lobbyists to sign up to a register in an attempt to increase transparency were delayed by a year yesterday, despite previous pledges from the Government.

David Cameron described lobbying in a speech last year as “the next big scandal waiting to happen” following the furore over MPs’ expenses.

The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that an elite forum of property developers charged “key players in the industry” £2,500 a year to set up breakfasts, dinners and drinks with senior Conservatives.

The club raises about £150,000 a year for the party.

Official records show that ministers in charge of the new planning regulations have met 28 times with figures from the property industry since coming to power and have only seen environmental groups 11 times ...

[Sir Simon Jenkins] suggested that it was not a coincidence that a requirement forcing councils to allow new homes only to be built on previously developed brownfield sites was dropped from the draft planning documents ...

Tel  17 Oct 2011    Planning 'Reform'    Westminster Sleaze

Lobbying clean-up is delayed – after lobbying

Gas prices will continue to rise, industry bosses warn

Dave's latest "do less make it seem like more" initiative falls flatter than Pancake Tuesday

Phil Bentley, the managing director of British Gas, said ... that the “inconvenient truth” is that energy prices will continue to rise.

“In my opinion unit prices will only go one way unless someone discovers huge amounts of gas and imports it into the UK.

"The international price for gas, I am afraid, is going up,” he told the BBC ...

Tel  17 Oct 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    Energy Policy    

Huhne calls for consumers to switch energy suppliers

David Cameron to demand energy companies cut household bills

Government sets out plans to tackle rising energy costs

Lobbying links put pressure on coalition

The figures show that minsters met corporate representatives on 1,537 occasions in the first 10 months of the coalition.

This excludes several hundred round-table meetings where numerous companies were present.

Trade bodies, thinktanks and other interest groups had 1,409 meetings.

By contrast, charities were met on just 833 occasions, and union representatives just 130 times, less than a tenth as often as their corporate counterparts.

Tamasin Cave, of the lobbying transparency group Spinwatch ... warned they may merely scratch the surface.

"The findings show a massive disparity in ministerial access for different types of groups – corporate interests clearly have privileged access.

"But these are just the meetings we know about: Conservative ministers in particular are meeting outside interests in a private capacity.

"This just can't be done when ministers are meeting those who have commercial interests. In this context, private simply means secret."

Cave added that her organisation was engaged in a freedom of information battle with Cabinet Office minister Mark Harper, who is overseeing the coalition's plans to introduce a lobbying register.

Harper, she alleges, is resisting an FoI request asking for details of his meetings with lobbyists to discuss lobbying transparency ...

Gdn  16 Oct 2011    Westminster Sleaze

Lobbying clean-up is delayed – after lobbying

Number 10 won't speed up lobbying industry regulation

'House swap' plan to help the unemployed uproot in search of work

'TheGovernor' should get an 'Adam Werritty job' advising Grant Shapps and IDS

The controversial plan to tackle the unemployment crisis means people living in social housing will be helped to uproot their families in order to chase jobs.

Details of the scheme are yet to be finalised, but it is understood the plan would involve a nationwide database of house swaps and the removal of any barriers to people in social housing moving between regions.

The scheme will be launched in the coming weeks.

Grant Shapps, the housing minister ... (said) ...

"Home swap direct will mark the start of a new drive to improve mobility within social housing." ...

TheGuvernor

I(n) Canada, where I now live, people regularly uproot their lives to take advantage of employment opportunities. There can be a real lack of work in small communities. Much of this work is in the North where condition are harsh & the jobs tough. I've done it and many people I know have gone in search of better opportunities for their families. While I'm aware that we are fortunate here in Canada to have these opportunities there is also a much stronger work ethic here & an intrinsic aversion to a life on 'welfare.'

Gdn  15 Oct 2011    Housing    'Reserve Army'    

Conservatives crack down on jobseekers with tougher rules

IDS tells unemployed they should get on the bus to find work

Nuclear power a costly failure

Mr Huhne has bought into the wrong model: the future's Thorium, Chris

Britain is still paying for nuclear-generated electricity consumed a generation ago because of the hidden costs of an industry reared on the expectation of public subsidies, the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said yesterday.

He told the Royal Society in London that the nuclear industry and the Government should show that they have learned from their past mistakes if they are to retain public support for a renaissance in nuclear power ...

Ind  14 Oct 2011    Energy Policy    Nuclear Power    

Peak uranium

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

Thorium

Thorium fuel cycle

Ofgem vs the energy companies: an entertaining distraction

On the failure of the 'invisible hand' ... but don't tell the public

The politicians ... won't admit that they are essentially powerless to stop energy bills rising over the long-term.

The £200bn or so required to renew the UK's energy infrastructure has to be found from somewhere.

And, in the case of nuclear, the government will end up giving some firm-ish guarantees to the private sector since the City's instinct is to run away from a model that requires ten years of up-front spending before 30 years of healthy cashflows arrive.

So, while Chris Huhne and Ed Miliband talk about oligopolies and rigged markets, we have yet to see radical proposals brought forward to overhaul the structure of the industry.

Even SSE's move to sell all its generation into the day-ahead market has been dismissed as insufficient by small energy retailers -- it's the six-month and year-ahead markets they're interested in.

That's the backdrop for today's squabble ...

Gdn  14 Oct 2011    Energy Policy    Falling Living Standards    Nuclear Power

Liam Fox's friend 'bankrolled by corporate intelligence firm and Israel lobbyist'

Mr Werritty is reported to have paid for travel around the world from a company that received funds from G3 Good Governance Group and Tamares Real Estate, an investment company owned by Poju Zabloudowicz, the chairman of Bicom.

Jon Moulton, a venture capitalist, is also said to have provided money to Pargav Ltd, the firm which is alleged to have bankrolled Mr Werritty.

Over the past few days, speculation has mounted as to how Mr Werritty was able to join Liam Fox on more than 20 overseas trips including official visits, conferences and holidays.

It has now emerged that six different people and companies each paid up to £35,000 to Pargav since last year.

Mr Werritty is said to have withdrawn more than £140,000 from Pargav's bank account to fund his travel around the world to meet up with Dr Fox ...

Mr Zabloudowicz is the head of Bicom, a prominent organisation which promotes Israeli-British relations. His companies have also donated money to the Conservative Party and he is a supporter of David Cameron.

Last night, he confirmed donating £3,000 to Pargav.

A spokesman said: "For many years, Poju Zabludowicz has helped fund not-for-profit organisations, not individuals, due to his passion for the promotion of peace and understanding between peoples in the United States, Europe and the Middle East." ...

Tel  14 Oct 2011

Questions the Cabinet Office will not be asking ...

Craig Murray's email to the UK ambassador to Israel includes the following question ...

10) You and Werritty reportedly both attended an anti-Iranian conference in Israel, as did Fox.

What contact did you have with Werritty at that conference or in its margins? What did you discuss? ...

Craig Murray  14 Oct 2011    Middle East Peace Process    War on Terror Log    Westminster Sleaze

Friends in high places     Middle East Peace Process

Downing Street report

Adam Werritty 'plotted with Israel' to topple Iran's President

Firm at centre of Liam Fox allegations also funded Labour trip

The real Adam Werritty and Liam Fox scandal

Liam Fox, Adam Werritty, Lord Bell, Bell Pottinger and Sri Lanka

Adam Werritty set up Liam Fox meeting with Iranian regime lobbyist

Poju Zabloudowicz

BICOM

CFI

AIPAC

RBS the 'most vulnerable' bank in Europe

The state-backed bank is already 83pc owned by the taxpayer and would likely face full nationalisation under the scenario set out by Credit Suisse, which estimates RBS might face a capital shortfall of £16.9bn in a new round of Europe-wide industry stress tests.

"RBS appears to be the most vulnerable although the company has said that the methodology, especially the calculation of trading income, is especially harsh for them," said Credit Suisse ...

Tel  14 Oct 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log

European Banks Face Deadline to Raise Capital Levels

What next for the NHS?

A brief look at the health and social care bill shows one thing: Lansley believes that private enterprise and competition, now often referred to by that Blair-era euphemism "choice", are the future of the NHS ...

... from next April it is a certainty that we will see companies competing to offer services.

And there's the rub. The bill only greases the wheels. Private sector involvement can be massively increased whether the bill passes or not.

The NHS in England is no longer one integrated service. How that affects healthcare remains to be seen.

Gdn  13 Oct 2011    NHS 'Reform'        

One hospital trust in five is struggling for survival

After last year's election, the Government set a target for all NHS trusts to achieve foundation status by 2013, later put back to 2014, as a cornerstone of its strategy to reduce top-down command and control management in the NHS and increase local autonomy.

There are 252 NHS trusts in England, of which 139 currently have foundation status ...

But the Government's plans are now threatened by a combination of historic debt, punitive interest charges on privately financed schemes and structural problems ...

Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, which will question ministers next week, said the NAO report made for "very grim reading" and placed "a huge question mark" over the Government's ability to deliver its health policies.

Ind  13 Oct 2011

Hospitals lambasted for 'alarming' treatment of older people

Dame Jo Williams, the commission's chair, said:

"Too often our inspectors saw the delivery of care treated as a task that needed to be completed. Those responsible for the training and development of staff, particularly in nursing, need to look long and hard at why the focus has become the unit of work rather than the person who needs to be looked after – and how this can be changed.

Task-focused care is not person-centred care. Often what is needed is kindness and compassion, which cost nothing."

The entire NHS needed to ensure that it made big improvements to end the scandal of poor care, she added.

Poor leadership in NHS organisations had let "unacceptable care ... become the norm", while the attitude of some staff resulted in "too many cases where patients were treated by staff in a way that stripped them of their dignity and respect", said the report.

Inspectors also found unacceptable care on well-staffed wards and, equally, excellent care on understaffed ones ...

Gdn  13 Oct 2011

Nurses should blow the whistle on poor quality care, says Andrew Lansley

Mr Lansley said: "It is unacceptable for some of these essential standards of dignity and support for people's food and drink not to be met."

He added: "Staff across the NHS, if they see examples of poor care [it is important] that they blow the whistle ...

mr-ed
The whistle-blowing rules that were put in place last year are a farce. They weren't back dated for a start - not good for the NHS to show willing on the issue. They don't prevent managers getting back at an employee via other routes either. Which they do. Everyone who works in the NHS knows that if you blow the whistle in the NHS your career is toast - regardless of the whistle-blowing rules

Try telling Barbara Allatt, the trainee nurse who raised the issue at South Staffordshire Trust, that whistle-blowing is an option. She lost here place on the Nursing training course in 2009 and was REFUSED a tribunal over the issue this January.

People will only speak up if whistle-blowers are seen to be treated correctly even if such an action is retrospective. As such FULL reinstatement of people like Barbara Allatt with double back pay (assuming qualification in her case) is the bare minimum for Andrew Lansly's words to be anything other than hot air.

Tel  13 Oct 2011

No one voted for the NHS to be privatised

As the House of Lords prepares to vote on the NHS and Social Care Bill, it is clear that medical professionals and the British people – despite a protracted listening exercise by the Government – still do not support existing plans for the NHS.

Despite the Prime Minister’s claims to the contrary, it is public fact that every single Royal College representing nurses, GPs and midwives maintain serious concerns about the Bill. The official policy of the British Medical Association is that the Bill be withdrawn.

It is also clear – as the Prime Minister is acutely aware – that the British people do not support the privatisation of the NHS; no one ever voted for it, so this Bill has no democratic mandate whatsoever.

A serious number of Liberal Democrat, Labour and crossbench peers want to amend the Bill to remove the concerns so many significant bodies and individuals hold. We, the undersigned, call for the suspension of or significant amendment of the Bill so it can be supported by most of the medical profession and the British people, who pay for, support and service our great NHS.

No one is against reform and change, but the NHS is too important and valuable to our society to be transformed forever in this unpopular, undemocratic way.

Ind  11 Oct 2011

NHS: the nightmare of choice

The proposed model for the NHS is very similar to the one that sold off the utilities – a level playing field of providers all operating on a platform, be it Network Rail, the National Grid or BT Openreach.

The platform for health is more abstract (and malleable, perhaps): a set of commissioners using the flawed currency of the national tariff for health services, and the even more flawed national outcomes frameworks.

They will commission from any qualified provider whose sole credential will be registration by the Care Quality Commission ...

Choice is an illusion created by people to sell you something.

The egalitarian utopian market in which social businesses and the mightiest US private healthcare companies compete and provide health services in a mixed economy is a fallacy.

Competition creates mega, monopoly suppliers ...

Competition is the supreme example of waste in health services ...

NHS management costs run at not much more than 3%, compared with nearly 20% for the US ...

Gdn  09 Oct 2011    NHS 'Reform'    Third Meltdown Log

Towards a Two-Tier NHS

Lansley forced to assist struggling NHS trusts

Sharp rise in NHS patients waiting more than 18 weeks for care

If the Health Secretary won't be accountable, then who will?

Elderly people 'will be hardest hit by NHS reforms'

Taxpayer nursing huge losses on RBS and Lloyds

A complete waste of money ... should have been allowed to fail.

Three years on from the bailouts and – instead of the profits expected – market meltdown and bank regulation mean the taxpayer is sitting on a £32bn paper loss ...

Gdn  13 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    A Faustian Pact

As bank shares tumble, the scale of the financial shock becomes clear

Huhne will use Fukushima report to revive nuclear programme

Plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations date back to the Blair energy review of 2007, which was a u-turn from the conclusions of the 2003 energy review, which concluded that a new generation of nuclear power stations would not be commissioned

Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, is scheduled to release the final report by Mike Weightman, chief inspector for nuclear installations, into what lessons should be learned from the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan ...

An upbeat message from Huhne will be aimed at countering a series of setbacks in the energy sector as deteriorating financial conditions encourage companies to pull back from nuclear and threaten to abandon carbon capture and storage (CCS) programmes.

He will also want to convince critics that his Tory coalition partners are not trying to undermine the low-carbon agenda by arguing Britain can no longer afford it.

Greenpeace is already pursuing a judicial review for alleged insufficient lack of consultation on nuclear power, and has been further antagonised by a perceived lack of transparency over submissions made to Weightman.

Anti-nuclear protesters are infuriated that EDF, the French state-owned energy company at the heart of the UK's new nuclear plans, has started preparatory work on a facility at Hinkley Point in Kent ahead of the report's publication ...

Obs  09 Oct 2011

Nuclear industry presses sceptical Huhne over backing new reactors

... the coalition agreement with the Conservatives involved a new pledge to allow nuclear stations to be built with a proviso that they do not involve public subsidies.

Huhne has already followed this up with a commitment to make companies pay for all their clean-up costs after a nuclear accident.

Currently, the industry only pays the first £140m, with the government picking up the rest of the bill, which Huhne believes amounts to a public subsidy ...

The economics of nuclear power have already been hit by low gas prices and a weak pound, which makes it more expensive for UK-based companies such as Centrica to import reactor parts.

The government has also promised to introduce a minimum carbon price to help make nuclear economic, which the Liberal Democrats support. But the industry will want it to be at least €50 a tonne, compared with current prices of about €15.

Firms are also concerned that Whitehall cost-cutting could result in the programme to decommission existing reactors, which is funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), being slashed ...

Guardian  19 May 2010    Energy Policy    Nuclear Power

'Going nuclear'

RWE reviews involvement in UK nuclear programme

Labour's love-in with the nuclear industry still blossoming

Lib Dem MPs set to rebel against nuclear power 'subsidy'

Nuclear power may become less attractive option

Government names eight new sites for nuclear power plants

Exercising Britain's nuclear options

Who will pay the bill for closing Britain's £200bn energy gap?

EDF ran secret lobbying campaign to reduce nuclear waste disposal levy

10 new nuclear power stations named

Youth joblessness highest since Tories last in power

More than a million young people are now unemployed, the highest number since the Conservatives were last in power, government figures to be published this week are expected to reveal.

The figures have been swollen by the number of graduates and school-leavers who have failed to find work after joining the jobs market this summer.

Unemployment rose by 80,000 to reach 2.51 million in the three months to July, 77,000 of whom were 18- to-24-year-olds, lifting the youth joblessness total to 973,000 ...

Gdn  08 Oct 2011    A 'modern and compassionate party'    Full employment?    Youth Unemployment

Graduate Fog

Emails and video footage pile pressure on beleaguered Liam Fox

The Guardian has revealed Werritty:

¦ Involved Fox in discussions with Boulter that have left Fox facing the prospect of being called to give evidence in a "blackmail" trial in the US. ;

¦ Was present at a discussion about the possibility of providing British security-sensitive technology to Libyan rebels;

¦ Has visited Fox at the MoD's Whitehall offices 14 times in a little over a year and hands out official business cards that claim he is "an adviser to the Rt Hon Dr Fox MP";

¦ Ran a controversial charity from inside Fox's office in the houses of parliament;

¦ Collected £90,000 in salary from the Atlantic Bridge charity, which is linked to major US business lobby groups;

¦ Has previously been present when Fox met Rajapaksa and other senior Sri Lankan ministers;

¦ Fox and Werritty were investors in the same health consultancy company.

Gdn  08 Oct 2011    Westminster Sleaze

Fox used expenses to pay ... Adam Werritty

Fox adviser is involved in arms deals

A major blow to Neo-conservatives

The Atlantic Bridge

UK and Switzerland agree tax treaty

The deal is part of a wider agreement that will see UK taxpayers with Swiss accounts pay a withholding tax of 48pc on investment income and 27pc on capital gains.

The levies will apply to accounts that are not fully disclosed to HM Revenue & Customs.

Exchequer Secretary, David Gauke, said:

"This is an excellent agreement which tackles a problem many people thought would never be solved.

"Working with the Swiss Government we have delivered a highly effective solution which will benefit both countries and recover billions of pounds of unpaid tax for the UK."

However, the agreement comes as concerns were raised about Swiss banks transferring customer accounts to subsidiaries in jurisdictions that do not have the same tax agreements.

HMRC said any bank caught encouraging clients to move their money to avoid tax would become liable for that tax.

Mike Warburton, Grant Thornton tax partner, said:

"Between a bank actively encouraging their clients to put money into a convenient offshore jurisdiction and a client asking to transfer their money is a very wide grey area. How HMRC will police this remains to be seen." ...

Tel  07 Oct 2011    Corporate Sociopathy Log    Tax Dodgers

UK signs agreement to tax Swiss bank accounts

Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion

Deal reached on Swiss-German tax treaty

End Tax Haven Secrecy

After cheap political point scoring comes an expensive reality

Meanwhile the private sector has its own way of 'managing' the recession ... BBC

In the boom years before 2007, the economy had three main motors of growth: a speculative bubble in the City, a speculative bubble in the housing market, and a growing public sector that was dependent on bubble tax receipts.

Then the lights went out ...

Initially, the response was to rapidly slash short-term interest rates, from 5.5% to 0.5%, the lowest level in the Bank's history.

Because the banking system had been so damaged by the downturn, this was seen as insufficient, so the Bank stepped in with its first tranche of quantitative easing ...

The Bank has estimated that the original £200bn tranche ... resulted in inflation being 0.75-1.5% higher while the level of real GDP was 1.5-2.0% higher ...

Much of the boost leaked abroad and – in the absence of a transmission mechanism such as an investment bank – did rather more to push up global commodity prices than to help struggling UK businesses ...

In a letter to King the chancellor said he was looking at ways of getting credit directly to small and medium-sized businesses and plans for this will be announced in next month's autumn statement ...

Gdn  06 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log    QE

UK financial firms downgraded by Moody's

Mervyn King: this may be worse than the Great Depression

With inflation approaching 5pc, do we really want more QE?

"Just how many fixes are required before you realise you are an addict?"

In a speech two or three weeks back, Adam Posen, said that such (inflationary) fears were "unfounded" and "unwarranted", but answer me this.

How's the further plunge in the value of the pound that greeted this announcement not inflationary?

Even the Bank of England's own analysis of the effect of QE to date, which is based on quite questionable methodology, estimates that it has added 0.75 to 1.5 percentage points to CPI inflation for a maximum gain in real GDP of 2pc ...

Already, the Bank of England has bought up around 20pc of the national debt, equal to some 14pc of GDP. This will expand it to close to 30pc ...

... it's a disappointment that the Bank's statement made no mention of the "credit easing" flagged by George Osborne, the Chancellor, in his conference speech.

This is an idea worth pursuing – a way of getting the newly released funds to the bits of the economy that really need it and stimulating some much needed business investment.

As it is, I fear that it will again be the investment bankers who are the major beneficiaries.

QE is like a drug; once hooked, it's very difficult to wean yourself off ...

Tel  06 Oct 2011

Bank of England takes QE plunge

The MPC is gambling that inflation will come down rapidly next year, partly as a result of the weakness of demand but also because energy prices are coming down on world markets and because last January's increase in VAT will not be repeated ...

The other issue is whether the extra spending power gets to the parts of the economy that needs it.

Rightly, the Bank noted today the dampening impact on the economy of the squeeze on real incomes, but in part that has been due to the impact of previous rounds of QE, which has fuelled speculation in asset prices and thus pushed up the cost of energy and food.

Nothing in today's announcement suggested the monetary boost would be better targeted this time ...

Gdn  06 Oct 2011

BoE 'a Titanic disaster'

Dr [Ros] Altmann described another round of QE as "a Titanic disaster" which would impoverish pensioners.

She said: "Buying gilts of corporate bonds is not what we need to revive the economy. It may be a short-term boost for bond traders and markets, but it risks a loss of confidence in the Bank of England's policymaking, which ultimately will be damaging."

Dr Altmann asked: "Has the Bank of England abandoned its core inflation-fighting remit?"

She called on the Bank to lend new money directly to small companies - "the lifeblood of our economy" - to help create jobs.

Ind  06 Oct 2011

BoE injects further £75bn into economy

David Kern, chief economist at the [British Chambers of Commerce], said:

"Higher QE on its own is not enough and we urge the [Monetary Policy Committee] to look at other radical methods.

"There is a strong case for the MPC to help boost bank lending to businesses by immediately raising its purchases of private sector assets." ...

... the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) is calling for an urgent meeting with the pensions regulator to discuss ways of protecting UK pension funds from the negative effects of QE.

QE tends to push down long-term bond yields, therefore reducing the return on the investments made by pension schemes.

"Quantitative easing makes it more expensive for employers to provide pensions and will weaken the funding of schemes as their deficits increase," said Joanne Segars, chief executive of the NAPF.

"All this will put additional pressure on employers at a time when they are facing a bleak economic situation."

BBC NEWS  06 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    QE

UK economic growth cut to 0.1% for April to June

The UK economy barely grew in the second quarter as consumers cut spending, compounding more downbeat news from the eurozone and fuelling fears that Britain could soon slip back into recession.

Official data also showed the 2008-2009 recession was deeper than orginally thought. Revising previous numbers, the Office for National Statistics halved its GDP estimate for April to June this year to just 0.1%, suggesting the economy had already ground to a halt before the European debt crisis escalated in the summer.

Household spending dropped 0.8%, its sharpest decline since the depths of the recession at the start of 2009 ...

Gdn  05 Oct 2011

'Confidence shock' risks tipping UK into double-dip recession

The downward revision of UK GDP to just 0.1% shows Britain was on the brink even before the latest wave of euro panic ...

Sir Mervyn King frequently reminds us that we should worry less about month-to-month changes in GDP growth rates, and more about how much time it will take the economy to make up lost ground and clamber back onto the long-run path it crashed off in 2008

The real - non-financial - economy was a train wreck well before 2008, but the reality was hidden from most people by easy borrowing, and cheap Chinese imports.

Since one, or both, of those conditions is unlikely to return, we shall eventually have to face the reality that the economy is still a train wreck and will not pick up however much electronic money Osborne and King pump into the banks.

Eventually government is going to have to get involved, since the private sector is sitting on a shed-load of cash and is not going to invest it any time soon.

Gdn  05 Oct 2011

Financial crisis has world teetering on the brink – welcome to the new normal

Europe's public debt crisis is the sequel to the private debt crisis that broke in the summer of 2007.

Governments amassed huge budget deficits in an attempt to shield their economies from the worst effects of the collapse of the borrowing bubble that inflated in the first half of the last decade.

The roots of that go back still further, to the increasingly dominant role of big finance in western economies over the past quarter of a century.

The story has been of banks free to lend what they want and a private sector free to borrow what it wants.

Mini financial crises, in Mexico, in south-east Asia, in Russia, in Brazil and Argentina, were dismissed as inconsequential, until in 2007 the bug burrowed its way to the very heart of the global financial system ...

Gdn  04 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    Falling Living Standards

'Confidence shock' risks tipping UK into double-dip recession

The euro debt crisis must force a re-evaluation of capitalism

UK has become a nation of zombie companies

British Economic Stagnation

Andrew Lansley trumpets his market-led patient voucher scheme

The health secretary aims to have 50,000 patients with long-term conditions being able to buy their own treatments by 2014 ...

This is a wholely sinister development, and one in tune with far-right thinking of the sort that drives health 'care' in the U.S. of A.

My partner (age 71) has a long-term condition called polycythemia vera - a disorder of the bone marrow which makes blood all the time, whether the body needs it or not.

She has been treated for nearly 12 years, and has not had to worry about where the drugs she needs are coming from, nor about their cost.

(Actually very little, since the treatment is an old leukemia drug which is used for its side-effect of mopping up excess blood).

My partner does not want 'choice' of where to 'spend' a voucher; she wants the continuation of the excellent care she gets from our local hospital.

She regularly visits a US website about the condition, and regularly relates stories of the troubles US patients have getting treatment.

Lansley is being grossly dishonest in offering vouchers, since the whole point about long-term conditions is that they don't go away - until you 'pop your clogs' - so what happens when the voucher runs out, Mr Lansley?

Gdn  04 Oct 2011    NHS 'Reform'    Third Meltdown Log

Marginalised

Debunking Lansley

Duncan Smith blames riots on family breakdown and benefits system

Having adopted the Washington Consensus, the Tories don't like the costs of the 'reserve army' created, and look round for spurious reasons to shift the blame for their plight onto the victims of their policies.

Duncan Smith compared youngsters joining gangs to child soldiers in developing countries who seek companionship and role models, saying:

"Many young gang members drift in from dysfunctional broken backgrounds in search of a place to belong, a perverse kind of family, others through fear of retribution.

"With no role models except the violent and the criminal, like child soldiers of the third world these young minds bear the deep scars of a life filled with anger and violence.

"Fighting this through our police forces is crucial, but this isn't a job for officers alone – we must end the false belief that we can arrest our way out of this crisis."

Duncan Smith told the conference that pockets of social housing had too often become places of intergenerational worklessness, hopelessness and dependency.

He said the government was confronting the worklessness that had been nurtured "for too long" by the benefit system.

He cited the four million people stuck on out of work benefits, "many for a decade or more", and one of the highest levels of unsecured personal debt in western Europe, coupled with widespread family breakdown and high rates of teenage pregnancy which he said saw "poor parenting transmitting dysfunctionality from one generation to another" ...

Gdn  03 Oct 2011    A 'modern and compassionate party'

IDS & the Third Face of Power    The Myth of Full Employment

Osborne hopes to ‘ease’ business credit

Has Osborne given up on Merlin?

Credit easing would involve billions of pounds of public finance ... to buy corporate bonds.

Initially the bonds would be those issued by big companies. And the Treasury would probably only undertake to purchase these bonds in the event of a further worsening in the eurozone's financial crisis that seriously reduced the provision of credit to businesses.

Such bond purchases could, in theory, start almost immediately ...

In the longer term, the impact of credit easing on the flow of credit to smaller businesses could be more significant - because the Treasury is hoping to encourage the creation of bonds made out of small-business loans, by promising to buy such small-business bonds and thus create a market for them.

The idea is to encourage banks to parcel up small business loans into such bonds ...

... it's proof the Treasury has given up hope that - in the absence of structural reform of the credit market - small businesses will find it any cheaper or easier to borrow, even in the longer term.

The Treasury may indeed be fearful that the Project Merlin agreement with the UK's big banks, which sets targets for business lending in 2011, is at best short-term sticking plaster - and at worst, the banks may yet miss their Merlin targets.

BBC NEWS  03 Oct 2011    Bankocracy Log            

Osborne to help families by freezing council tax

The families Osborne refers to are not those who rely on the services which are being cut, demonstrating once again that we are not 'all in it together'.

As for the obsession with weekly collections, Pickles seems to think this is local councils' only job. It soon will be!

The move to freeze council tax for the second year running shows how concerned ministers are that families are feeling “squeezed” ...

It is the second time in a week that a significant sum of money has been “found” to pay for a policy.

Last week £250 million was set aside to restore weekly bin collections.

This means more than £1 billion has now been committed to plans designed to chime with voters ...

Tel  02 Oct 2011    A 'modern and compassionate party'    

Osborne finds £805m to freeze council tax

Minimum wage harming job opportunities for young

Firms may be reluctant to create jobs by recruiting inexperienced staff because they are put off by the increased wage bill, the Low Pay Commission has suggested ...

New rates for the minimum wage took effect on Saturday. For 18-20 year olds, the minimum wage is now £4.98, up from £4.92.

For 16-17 year olds, the new rate is £3.68, up from £3.64.

Tim Butcher, the commission’s chief economist told the Daily Telegraph that the body is launching a new investigation into the role the minimum wage has played in Britain’s growing youth unemployment problem ...

Tel  02 Oct 2011

A 'modern and compassionate party'    Falling Living Standards    Inequality    Third Meltdown

Low Pay Britain

Sharp rise in demand for food handouts

How David Cameron swept aside sceptics over Libya campaign

Ken Clarke might yet turn out to have been prescient, as Libya was never one country before Mussolini 'unified' it ...

The Guardian investigation has also established that ...

David Cameron overrode scepticism in his cabinet when he took one of the biggest gambles of his premiership in March to press for a UN security council resolution to authorise military force to protect civilians.

Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary who was described by one cabinet minister as the "biggest dove", thought that partition was the "logical thing" ...

Gdn  02 Oct 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution

An ethical economy?

The first thing [Osborne] needs to do is revisit the fascinating research carried out a few years ago by Nesta, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, which showed that there was a "vital 6 per cent" of UK businesses that had created half of all new jobs with existing companies between 2002 and 2008.

It showed that these 11,530 companies, all of them innovative and high-growth, and employing 10 or more people, were responsible for generating 1.3 million out of the 2.4 million jobs created by established businesses in the previous three years ...

Nesta also showed that these high-growth firms were spread across sectors, and that all UK sectors contained between 4 and 10 per cent of these high-growth firms.

Nesta did the research before the recession but reckons the principle remains true today and that most of these firms have survived downturns.

If this is correct, there are big implications for government policy.

Perhaps the most challenging area is getting finance and bank lending directed towards these growth businesses – so this is the right time to create ... a new public bank or authority for small business, as well as a new body for securitising loans to SMEs ...

Research and development tax relief should be reformed and capital allowances made more generous ...

Ind  02 Oct 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    Full employment

New Right piles the pressure on Cameron and Osborne

For want of a plan for tomorrow the Tories go back to yesterday

For want of a plan for tomorrow the Tories go back to yesterday

People who have seen drafts of his speech tell me that he will offer his empathy to voters who are suffering and suggest that he understands how cold it is for those shivering in the bitter winds of austerity.

His message will be: "I feel your pain."

This worked for Bill Clinton, but at the time he was running for office, not occupying it.

It is hard to convince voters that you feel their pain when you are leading the government which is presiding over it.

It is even harder when you cannot give them a convincing answer – because you simply don't know yourself – when the pain might start to ease.

It is tougher still when many voters don't regard you as one of them and suspect that you can't truly relate to their daily struggles ...

Gdn  01 Oct 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    

Working for nothing – the truth about low pay in the UK

Sharp rise in demand for food handouts

An ethical economy?

New Right piles the pressure on Cameron and Osborne

Tories face union anger over tribunals change

Mr Osborne told the Sun:

"We talk a lot about trade union rights - but what about the right of the unemployed person to be given a shot at a job and a career?

"What about the rights of people currently sitting at home with nothing to do, desperate to get work, but the business can't afford to employ them because they fear they are going to be taken to the tribunal?"

A total of 236,000 employment tribunal claims were made last year, with an average award of £8,900 for successful claimants, and the average cost of defending a claim at £4,000, according to Treasury officials.

It is claimed the change in law will benefit business by around £6 million a year in reduced legal fees and payouts, while employees are expected to lose around £1 million in unfair dismissal awards ...

Ind  01 Oct 2011    Globalization Log    Global Labour Market    Third Meltdown Log    

Osborne plays down tax cuts but wants to make sacking staff easier

Precarity

Andrew Tyrie questions economic strategy

The Ludwig von Mises growth strategy?

In the pamphlet for the pro-free market think tank, Centre For Policy Studies, [Andrew Tyrie] said the government had to review its positions on the reform of public services, the increase in overseas aid and some aspects of its environmental agenda.

The pamphlet, called It's the Economy, says:

"Without the lynchpin of a clear strategy for growth in place, other attempts to provide a more appealing theme than austerity are unlikely to succeed.

"The Big Society; localism; the Green strategy - whether right or wrong - these and other initiatives have seemed at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it; likewise the huge spending hike on overseas aid and the cost of the Libyan expedition."

He said instead there should now be a relentless focus on improving living standards.

Mr Tyrie called for the tax system to be simplified and business taxation to be reduced, and said he wanted to see fewer regulations and changes to labour laws.

"There is much to do, and it is not just a question of gaps in policy," he said.

"A coherent and credible plan for the long-term economic growth rate of the UK economy is needed." ...

BBC NEWS  01 Oct 2011    Full Employment    Globalization Log    Is Capitalism the only game in town?

No tax cuts before the next election

Ludwig von Mises Institute

Ludwig von Mises

Midwives warn further cuts will put women's safety at risk

More than a third of midwifery heads surveyed said they would have to reduce the number of staff in the next 12 months – even though 60% say they do not have enough midwives to staff the unit even now.

Most senior midwives (79%) said they had job vacancies and that two-thirds of the posts had been empty for more than three months.

The rising birthrate means midwives are stretched and numbers need to increase, they say.

In July, the Office for National Statistics reported that the number of births had risen by 2.4% compared with the previous year – a continuation of the decade's steady rise ...

Gdn  28 Sept 2011    Maternity    NHS 'Reforms'

Midwife shortage 'dangerously high'

BAE cuts are a wake-up call for a government with no growth strategy

One of the differences between manufacturing and financial services is that the former frequently requires major capital investment in plant and machinery that can only be justified if a certain level of demand is guaranteed for many years to come.

Even then, such investment may not be possible without some sort of financial support, whether indirectly through capital allowances or via grants and loans.

It is not just in the defence sector where we have yet to hear how the Coalition Government thinks it might begin to build such structures.

Indeed, one of the biggest criticisms of the Coalition, that after being so quick to unveil its plans for cutting the deficit it has been frustratingly slow in setting out a strategy for growth, remains valid.

That delay becomes more inexcusable by the day.

Ind  28 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    What is to be done? Log    Whither Britain? Log

The Myth of Full Employment

Libya conflict may cost UK £1.75bn

Using data provided in answers to parliamentary questions, and figures provided by the RAF since the campaign started, the defence expert Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis, was able to make two sets of detailed calculations about the costs of the Libya operation in the first six months.

Using one method, he estimated the cumulative cost of the operation to the end of August at between £1.38bn and £1.58bn. Using a second method, the costs were potentially even higher – between £850m and £1.75bn.

In June, the government said the overall costs of the Libya campaign were in the region of £260m. An earlier estimate by the chancellor, George Osborne, put the operation in the "tens of millions."

Tusa did not include the cost of the most recent sorties, which have included several RAF Tornados flying on numerous occasions from the UK to Libya, or the "start-up" costs that were incurred when, in the early weeks of the mission, the MoD hired fleets of Eddie Stobart trucks and trailers to take equipment from here to the military base in Gioia del Colle, Italy ...

Gdn  25 Sept 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution

David Cameron's treatment risks killing the patient

For an intelligent Keynes vs Mises debate, see the blogs to this article

For maximum effect, a growth strategy should not be just a list of desiderata, but an articulated plan of action with measureable objectives and dates, that gathers momentum and builds to a substantive whole.

Now is the time. Finance is extraordinarily cheap. Many large infrastructure projects involve both the private and the public sectors.

Given the continuing pressures on the public finances, the key is to identify those projects which have a high ratio of private to public expenditure.

Does the Treasury have a schedule of such projects? Can suitable projects be accelerated? Is there a schedule of projects which are awaiting a government go-ahead, as opposed simply to government money?

Is there a list of areas where the mere removal of a regulation restricting something would spur private spending?

Has the discount rate on which the efficiency of public investment projects is judged been dramatically reduced?

Is there anybody in Whitehall who is now looking across departments from the point of view of the aggregate demand, as opposed simply to the efficiency, aspects of projects and decisions?

The government shouldn’t hold back on the grounds that some extra public spending may be necessary to get a project started.

The Treasury’s main fiscal rule refers to current rather than investment spending.

So there is scope for an increase in the latter without breaking the rule ...

Tel  25 Sept 2011    What is to be done? Log        

George Osborne is warned of disaster over welfare reforms

Concerns centre on the ability of HM Revenue and Customs, which will have a central role in delivering Universal Credit, to meet its deadlines.

HMRC chiefs are understood to have privately told ministers of their concerns about the timetable ...

The fears within Whitehall echo alarm already expressed by independent observers.

The National Audit Office has warned that the welfare reform programme faces major risks.

The chairman of the Commons public accounts committee has called the plan “a train crash waiting to happen” ...

Tel  25 Sept 2011    Welfare Reform        

HMRC continues to write off debt

Government borrowing hits new high

Public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions such as bank bail-outs, hit £15.9 billion in August, up £1.9 billion on the same month a year ago, the Office for National Statistics said ...

This leaves current net borrowing since March at £51.5 billion, down £3.9 billion on the same period the previous year.

The figures add to doubts that the Chancellor can meet the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) target of reducing the deficit to £122 billion this year ...

Ind  21 Sept 2011    ONS Stats    Whither Britain? Log    

World economy: statistics and damned lies

£12bn 'black hole' in public finances ...

David Cameron: I promise to protect the countryside

The word 'sustainable' means absolutely nothing to Cameron

The Prime Minister’s views on the Government’s controversial planning reforms are disclosed for the first time in a letter sent last night by Mr Cameron to the National Trust ...

A copy of Mr Cameron’s letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph, reads:

“Let me say at the outset that I absolutely share and admire your commitment to the countryside, and wholeheartedly agree that policy-makers have an enormous responsibility to our environment.

“Both as Prime Minister, as a rural constituency MP, and as an individual, I have always believed that our beautiful British landscape is a national treasure.

“We should cherish and protect it for everyone’s benefit.”

Ministers are pushing through plans to replace more than 1,000 pages of planning regulations with just 52 in the National Planning Policy Framework.

The change is controversial because it writes into the rules a “presumption in favour of sustainable development” ...

Tel  20 Sept 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    Tory Planning 'Reform'    

£12bn 'black hole' in public finances could mean austerity for years to come

A calculation in the Financial Times says the structural deficit — the deficit that persists even if the economy is growing at its full potential — is 25% bigger than previously thought, leaving chancellor George Osborne with a £12bn gap.

Plugging it would require new austerity measures equivalent to raising VAT to 22.5% ...

One issue is whether the economy has less spare capacity – ie room to grow sustainably – than previously thought, as Charlie Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England, conceded last month. "We have a high degree of uncertainty about what the spare capacity in the economy is, but our assessment is that... the recession has led to a relatively long-lasting hit on... spare capacity."

If there is less spare capacity in the economy than previously thought, a bigger portion of the government deficit will be permanent, rather than being wiped out once the economy bounces back ...

Gdn  19 Sept 2011

Gordon Brown Helped Cause the Crisis

Is this why the lack of spare capacity arose?

Total manufacturing production was stagnant during this period (2000 and 2007).

The gross value ... of output from all production industries combined fell by 3% between 2000 and 2007. Their employment level dropped by nearly 1.1 million ... These trends were not an inevitable result of shifts in comparative advantages that are said to occur in advanced economies. Real manufacturing output rose at an average annual rate of 2.2% in the U.S., 1.2% in Germany and 1.1% in France between 2000 and 2006 ...

Eager to achieve the illusion of steady progress in the overall economy, Mr. Brown needed the rapid expansion of financial services, and the real estate and business services industries.

Their output soared by 48% and 33% respectively from 2000 to 2007, compared with 19% for the overall economy. Their combined employment level reached nearly 6.7 million in 2007, an increase of more than one million.

Rapid expansion of consumer credit in turn boosted demand for wholesale and retail products and services. The booming financial and real estate sectors, with their inflated salaries, bonuses, and profits generated by unsustainably rapid credit growth, also filled Mr. Brown's tax coffers.

Thus, despite the decline in corporate and personal income and national insurance tax revenues from the production industries, he was able to fulfill Labour's 1997 election promise of expanding public services. The output of health and social services increased by 26.3% from 2000 to 2007.

Employment in the category "other service activities," which includes public administration and government services, grew by 1.3 million between 2000 and 2007, reaching almost 10 million -- nearly a third of all British jobs ...     [WSJ]

A free market train wreck    Cutting the Deficit    Whither Britain? Log

Weak growth may force Chancellor into further austerity

We're fed up with Europe, so give us a vote

Could the Tories win the ensuing election, Mark Pritchard?

The referendum should be held next year, and a successful "No to political union" result would immediately strengthen the Prime Minister's negotiating hand in Brussels to commence serious and meaningful negotiations with our partners on Britain's new relationship.

The process of returning political sovereignty to Westminster would then take place over the proceeding two years.

But, if Brussels refused to repatriate specified powers within a designated 24-month period, then a second referendum – this time an "in or out" vote – would be triggered in 2015 and held on the day of the next general election.

This stepping-stone approach would give voters, the British Government and Brussels Eurocrats an action list and a timetable.

Having been served notice by the British people, Brussels would need to act.

If specified powers were not returned within the defined timetable, Brussels would have only themselves to blame if Britons voted to leave the EU.

The British have grown weary of Europe.

The Coalition government should end decades of political appeasement by successive governments and champion freedom and democracy for Britain – and agree to a referendum.

Tel  19 Sept 2011    EU Log        

A crisis of democratic legitimacy

Stock markets fall sharply ahead of Greek debt crisis talks

Chucking spears at a nuclear threat

European debt crisis

As the 1942 Beveridge report said: in a crisis, be revolutionary

Larry's survey of where we are at fails to emphasise the need to factor in the growing impact of the Anthropene.

He rightly emphasises that a return to 'business as usual' - the Tory solution - is not an option, but Ed Balls is as lacking in awareness of the Anthropocene problem as his Tory opposite numbers.

And the Lib-Dems? Where's the Green Investment Bank Chris?.

Voters want a decent education for their children, a job that pays a living wage, medical treatment when they fall ill, a roof over their head and dignity in old age. All parties agree that these are the things that they should be delivering; they disagree about the means not the ends.

Conservatives think the road to prosperity is about cutting red tape, a state that lives within its means, lower taxes and greater individual responsibility.

Progressives would say that the crisis has illustrated the need for tougher controls on capital to allow a more interventionist approach.

The left's updated version of Beveridge would perhaps include a safe place to put our money, an environment that we hand on to our children in a better state than we find it and a rewarding job.

Our political masters should look at the current benighted state of Britain and conclude that it is time to start planning for a post-crisis world.

They need to accept that the model of the past quarter-century was unfit for purpose. That's what Beveridge concluded in 1942.

He would come to the same conclusion today.

Gdn  18 Sept 2011

A free market train wreck    Contesting the Markets Log    Falling living standards    Whither Britain? Log

Welfare reforms a further blow to families with a disabled child

Under the proposals within the welfare reform bill, disability additions will be cut in half for all but children with very specific needs, such as severe visual impairment or night-time care needs.

This will result in financial support being reduced by over £1,400 per year to families who are likely to have equally high costs.

Family Action has estimated that this cut will result in a loss of benefits of more than £22,000 of support over the childhood of a disabled child.

This is an enormous amount for the households on the lowest income, who are already at significant risk of living in poverty or debt ...

While families currently in receipt of this benefit will have transitional protection against this cut we at Every Disabled Child Matters estimate that this policy will impact on up to 57% of all families with disabled children in the future.

Worryingly this week the government released information that it had previously underestimated the number of families receiving this benefit by 70,000.

This means that 170,000 families will have this benefit immediately frozen in 2013 and potentially cut if there is a change in household circumstance ...

Gdn  16 Sept 2011

Marginalising the Disabled    Third Meltdown Log    'We're all in together'    Welfare 'Reform'

Marginalised Home Page

Pollution disaster fears as rescue tugs are ditched

The Tories want to outsource disaster, er, 'management' New Orleans-style.

Cf: Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" - Chapter 20: 'Disaster Apartheid', for full gruesome details

The four tugs, put in place as a result of the calamitous oil spill from the tanker Braer, which ran aground in Shetland in 1993, are to come out of service in a fortnight as part of the Government's public spending cuts.

The move, which will save £8m a year – vastly less than the cost of dealing with any major oil spill – goes against the clear recommendations of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and is being described by concerned MPs as "inviting disaster" and "crazy".

The Government hopes that commercial tug operators will fill the gap when needed ...

Ind  15 Sept 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Outsourcing    Third Meltdown Log

Last Nation Standing

Disaster Apartheid

Disaster Apartheid/ if they can't pay, let them die!

Disaster capitalism: how to make money out of misery

NHS needs £5bn to save 40 hospitals

Part of the problem lies with the system of payments that encourages hospitals to keep patients in beds.

[Paul] Corrigan says that, on some estimates, 60% of patients in hospitals should not be in the wards.

But if this number were cut by just a third, there would be a significant loss of income.

He predicts the end of the district general hospital that "tries to do everything for everybody".

That is a hopeless business model, he says.

"We have seen, in trauma, stroke care and angioplasty, that we have reduced the number of centres offering care – and clinical outcomes have improved.

"We need to educate the public to accept this." ...

Gdn  15 Sept 2011    NHS 'Reform'    Outsourcing

The hospital is dead, long live the hospital

Midwife shortage 'dangerously high'

UK to sue ECB over clearing house regulations

It's crunch time for Britain: are we in, or out?

In a policy paper published in July, the ECB outlined plans to ban clearing houses from dealing in euro-denominated financial products under certain conditions.

The ban would apply if a clearing house's daily net credit exposure was above €5bn (£4.4bn) or 5pc of the market, unless it was based in a eurozone country.

With 40pc of the world's over-the-counter derivative trading based in London, several City-based clearing houses – including LCH.Clearnet – would fall foul of the rule.

The Government intends to fight the proposal on the grounds that it contravenes the fundamental principles of the single market and European law, including the freedom of establishment and the free movement of services and capital. It is the first time any European Union member state has taken legal action against the ECB.

Britain's unprecedented move demonstrates the deep concerns ministers have about Europe's attempted financial services land-grab. Bank of England policymakers are already pushing back against efforts in Brussels to seize control of banking regulation that would turn national supervision into little more than a local enforcement service.

The UK also recently fought off a French proposal for clearing houses to have access to central bank liquidity, which would have effectively limited euro-denominated clearing to the eurozone nations.

Tel  15 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    Bankocracy Log    EU Log    Whither Britain?

Revealed: secret government plans to win back women

Vouchers to start with maternity??

Downing Street is considering cutting the school summer holiday ...

Other measures raised include:

• Front-loading child benefit to help parents struggling with childcare and lost earnings in their children's first years.

• Working towards a "proper" ban on advertising to children.

• Introducing new personal budgets for maternity services to allow women to shop around for the services that meet their needs.

• Developing a new strategy – "including possible cross-party work" – to ensure there are more female candidates for mayoral posts, elected police commissions and local enterprise partnerships.

• Changing plans for the new universal credit to give it to women as a default, instead of allowing the applicant to nominate a household member.

• Setting up a new website to allow women to anonymously disclose and compare their salaries with others in their industry.

• Criminalising forced marriage because the "signals sent out by opting not to criminalise is a bad one".

• Holding a No 10 summit for women in business. "We haven't had one yet," it acknowledges ...

Gdn  13 Sept 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    

An invitation for Bahrain

Invitations to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition – an enormous arms fair which opens its doors today at the ExCeL Centre – have been extended to 65 countries.

At least 14 delegations hail from countries that are defined as "authoritarian regimes" by human rights groups ...

Arms campaigners have expressed dismay that Bahrain ... has been invited ...

Other countries that have been sent invitations include Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Kazakhstan.

Arms campaigners had tried for months to discover which national delegations were being invited to the arms fair through freedom of information requests but they were rebuffed.

The government finally published the list yesterday once national newspapers, including The Independent, began to make enquiries last week ...

The government defends the arms industry as a vibrant and lucrative part of the UK economy ...

Franglais59

Israel will be there in force, but no mention of them in the article..

“Israel’s largest comparative advantage is in military products, because these demand advanced technology on one hand and military experience on the other… no country in the world is as dependent on arms sales as Israel. The Jaffa orange is fast being edged out of the public consciousness by the Uzi submachine gun as Israel’s major export. Israel is the largest per capita arms exporter in the world”

Moshe Arens, former Israeli Defence Minister

“The Israeli government and its army have been for years now using the West Bank and Gaza as their testing ground. The Palestinians are their guinea pigs. The Israeli army uses tear gas that would probably be banned in any other countries in the world. They shoot tear gas, directly at protesters, once again, an illegal act. But a very rewarding one. Israel’s security industry is booming. It’s never been this good. Countries all over the world are buying Israel’s expertise in security, crowd control and weaponry every day. Israeli soldiers are training other countries commandos all over the planet”

From the blog, Bil’in: A Village of Palestine, 02/01/11

Ind  13 Sept 2011    Corporate Sociopathy Log    Third Meltdown Log

BAe Systems

Bank reforms will keep Britain afloat

Consider the deficit side of the ledger: fiat currency boom 'n bust banking will continue to dominate Britain's 'free market train wreck'

... consider the benefit side of the ledger.

The UK was almost bust by the 2007-09 banking crisis because it houses banks that are so big in relation to the size of the economy.

The risk that the next banking crisis could sink the UK and its taxpayers had to be eliminated as far as possible.

That is the rationale for going further than the new souped-up requirements by international regulators for banks to hold more capital, of better quality.

UK ringfenced banks will have to hold equity capital equivalent to at least 10% of their risk-weighted assets (more than the 7% level demanded by Basel's boffins) and then top up their coffers with unsecured debt.

Overkill, say the bankers.

Rubbish: by historical standards – ie norms prevailing 20 or 30 years ago, before bankers saw that more leverage and more risk was the easiest way to improve returns on capital and pay themselves more – it is not excessive at all.

Indeed, given the risk of colossal upheaval that would follow meltdown in the eurozone, there is a fair argument that the ICB has been lenient ...

Gdn  12 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log

A Free Market Train Wreck    Fiat Currency: A Faustian Pact

The banks ... too big for the economy

George Osborne given stark warning on cuts' impact

A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK's leading experts on the public finances, concludes that the chancellor's strategy will result in greater inequality and rising child poverty ...

The IFS analysis, included in a new international study into the impact of the "Great Recession" of 2008-09 on 21 wealthy countries, says the most severe downturn since the interwar years will "cast a very long shadow in the UK", with the poorest 30% of households especially hard hit.

"Declines in living standards look set to continue until at least 2013-14.

"If realised, this would mean that average living standards had not grown in well over 10 years, making it one of the worst decades for changes in living standards since at least the second world war." ...

Gdn  12 Sept 2011    Falling Living Standards    Inequality    'We're all in it together'    Whither Britain?

Childcare costs put parents in debt

Bosses' bonuses up by 187% since 2002

UK household squeeze at its worst for two years

Wage study shows rich-poor divide

Why the 'squeezed middle' is here to stay

UK households 'face £780 drop in disposable incomes'

If we're lucky, we'll only be 10 per cent poorer

Banks face biggest shake-up for decades

The elephant in the room - fiat currency - remains unnoticed

To give an idea of the scale of the reform, the Commission estimates that up to £2 trillion of banks loans and investments - or up to a third of their total loans and investments - would end up behind the ring fence.

The biggest structural changes would be faced by Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, whose investment and wholesale banking activities are very substantial and would not be allowed inside the ring fence.

Lloyds and Santander would be able to put most of what they do inside the ring fence. And HSBC would face less reorganisation than Barclays and RBS, but more than Santander and Lloyds.

The new protected retail banks would have their own boards, where there would be a majority of independent non-executive directors.

And they would be forced to hold much more capital as a buffer against losses - capital equivalent to at least 10% of so-called risk-weighted assets - than the new international minimum.

The Banking Commission also wants the firewall to be relatively high.

So capital could only be moved from the retail bank to the investment bank if that did not mean there was a risk of the retail bank's capital resources falling below the 10% minimum ...

BBC NEWS  12 Sept 2011

ICB report: reaction

British Bankers' Associaton

"UK banks are well on the way to implementing the sweeping reforms already brought in and expected to be brought in by UK, EU and global authorities to make banks and the system safer and to ensure that banks can fail in the future with savers and taxpayers protected and the supply of finance to the economy maintained.

"The ICB's recommendations cover the same important issues. Any further reform measures adopted by the UK authorities need to be carefully analysed and compared with those agreed internationally. It is vital that the full impact any further reforms will have on the economy, the recovery and banks' ability to support their customers in the UK is understood."

David Miller, fund manager at Cheviot Asset Management

"An important point is that the banking industry is a very important component of the UK economy and whatever is done needs to ensure that we retain a strong banking industry.

"It is a much more important component to the UK than it is to other countries which is why the gold plating of the regulatory regime which is being implemented globally has got to sensible and not push us into a corner where the banking industry here is uncompetitive."

Tel  12 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log

A Faustian Pact 2    An Addiction to Growth

Banking reform would cut growth

Vickers report: banks get until 2019 to ringfence high street operations

Fiat Money Systems

Work Programme leaves charities fearful for their future

It's quite simple: the Tories prefer outfits which are profit-driven.

The cumbersome structure of the Work Programme was meant to break the mega-contracts up into bite-sized pieces, to ensure that smaller organisations could get involved.

But (Duncan) Shrubsole (Crisis) says the power of the biggest contractors, such as A4e and Serco, has left many feeling exposed.

"The government has a fundamental misunderstanding of how the contracting process played out for the voluntary sector – by directing everything through big prime contracts the dice were always stacked against the small, specialist provider, however good its track record."

Obs  11 Sept 2011    Big Society Con    Outsourcing    The Work Programme

Conservatives given millions by property developers

Dozens of property firms have given a total of £3.3?million to the party over the past three years, including large gifts from companies seeking to develop rural land.

Developers are also paying thousands of pounds for access to senior Tories through the Conservative Property Forum, a club of elite donors which sets up “breakfast meetings” to discuss planning and property issues.

The disclosures are likely to provoke a new “cash-for-access” row and will give rise to fears that planning policies could have been influenced by powerful figures from the property industry.

Tel  09 Sept 2011    Tory Planning 'Reforms'    Westminster Sleaze

Ministers pushing for reforms blocked building in their own constituencies

Property developers pay for access to Conservatives

Hands Off Our Land

Rising inflation is 'no barrier to more quantitative easing'

Want growth? Give the banks a load of dodgy money. Get Inflation.

Despite rising inflation, Investec expects the MPC to restart QE as soon as October because the risks to growth are so severe.

It has already spent £200bn of newly created money on buying assets, mainly Government bonds.

A raft of weak economic data in the UK and a deteriorating outlook for the global economy as a whole last week prompted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund to call on G7 policymakers to introduce further stimulus where there is scope.

While the MPC is expected to extend QE, George Osborne has repeatedly insisted that the Government will press ahead with its austerity plan to bring the deficit down, despite growth fears.

"Engaging in more QE at this time would mean taking more risks with the Bank's credibility; but not doing so would mean accepting a depressed growth outlook and a possible undershoot of the inflation target in the medium term," said [Simon Hayes, economist at Barclays Capital.

Tel  10 Sept 2011    Bankocracy Log    QE    

Slum UK: housing crisis that shames the nation

Housing conditions in Britain are among the worst in Western Europe and cost the nation about £7bn a year by adding to the pressure on the NHS and other public services, according to a major study to be published today ...

It warns that homelessness is on the rise and predicts the return of unscrupulous landlords like the infamous Peter Rachman, who exploited his London tenants in the 1950s and 1960s.

Almost 4,000 people are sleeping rough on London's streets, an increase of 8 per cent since last year.

About half of these are from the UK and the rest from a wide variety of other countries, notably Poland ...

The Pro-Housing Alliance ... blueprint recommends the housing crisis should be tackled by the provision of 500,000 green and affordable houses and flats a year for the next seven years, including bringing empty homes back into use ...

The number of families on waiting lists in London doubled to 362,000 between 1997 and 2010 – and now accounts for more than 20 per cent of the national waiting list. Yet more than 6,000 council homes are empty in London, nearly a third because they need repairs, with more than 2,300 going without tenants for more than a year.

Ind  08 Sept 2011    Housing Benefit 'Reform'    Ponzi Housing Market    Third Meltdown

Rough Sleepers

Top tax rate will raise £12.6bn more in revenue, official figures reveal

The 50p tax rate will raise an additional £12.6bn over the next five years even if people choose to leave the country to avoid it, according to the government's own projections which will add to pressure on the Treasury not to scrap higher taxes.

By 2015-16 the 50% tax rate for people earning above £150,000 will bring in £3.2bn more than if the tax rate had stayed at 40% - rising from £1.1bn this year and totalling £12.6bn over the five year period.

Compared with a 45% rate, 50% will bring in an additional £5.3bn ...

Gdn  07 Sept 2011    'We're all in it together'

Inequality

The 50p tax rate is holding back Britain

How much will the 50p tax rate raise?

50p tax rate a 'temporary measure'

Osborne urged to scrap 50p tax rate

As Karl Polanyi so aptly put it:

"For the entrepreneur the lure of profit; for the worker the fear of starvation."

"We are concerned that Britain's 50p income tax rate is doing lasting damage to the UK economy," wrote the economists, who include Cambridge University academic Bob Rowthorn and former members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee DeAnne Julius and Sushil Wadhwani.

"It gives the UK one of the highest personal tax regimes in the industrialised world, making it less competitive internationally and making us less attractive as a destination for both foreign investment and talented workers.

"It punishes wealth creation by imposing on entrepreneurs and business people a marginal tax rate in excess of 50% once national insurance contributions are added in. This is particularly damaging when the UK needs to create new businesses in new industries."

The economists, who said the rate applies to just 1% of people who pay 24% of all income taxes, added:

"We call on the Government to drop the 50p tax at the earliest opportunity as part of a package of measures to stimulate growth.

"Only by returning to an internationally competitive tax regime will Britain enjoy long-term sustainable economic growth." ...

Ind  07 Sept 2011    Is Capitalism the only game in town?    Trickle Down Theory

Punish the feral rioters, but address our social deficit too

It would be interesting to learn more about Ken Clarke's perceptions of the 'mainstream' values of our society, since the evidence suggests that it is broadly Thatcherite.

Full employment would be a useful weapon in your armoury, but the sad fact is that even in the years of the Brown 'boom', unemployment was around the 1.4m mark whereas, during the 1950s and 60s, unemployment was around the 3 per cent mark, or lower.    [BBC]     [Pol]

Clearly those 'utopian' figures are not going to return, thanks largely to the Thatcherite-neoliberalism which Ken Clarke's party was only too eager to adopt in the 1970s.

Having created an economic and social 'deficit' Clarke, Pickles, IDS, Osborne, and Cameron are raging against the consequences of their choice.

They are clearly not prepared to spend the money on the penal system to make rehab viable, rather the US system of 'bang 'em up' is all that it is financed to undertake.

So, no use complaining about a defective penal system, Ken, when the cuts are taking it in the wrong direction.

And, btw Ken, community sentencing is no cheapo alternative.

Above all, a strategy to get the unemployed back to work should be the biggest game in town.

Building more houses may not be the main road to 'rebalancing' the economy away from fiat currency banking.     [TPR]

... reform can't stop at our penal system alone.

The general recipe for a productive member of society is ... about having a job, a strong family, a decent education and, beneath it all, an attitude that shares in the values of mainstream society.

What is different now is that a growing minority of people in our nation lack all of those things and, indeed, have substituted an inflated sense of expectation for a commitment to hard graft.

That's why reform is so important and the reason we have established the communities and victims panel to explore what lessons can be learned, from the riots and the civic action to clear up the damage.

We need to continue to put rocket boosters on our plans to fix not just criminal justice but education, welfare and family policy.

Addressing unemployment means making progress on the economy by getting the deficit under control and pressing ahead with welfare reform and work programmes.

Building stronger families means gripping the 120,000 most problematic ones and really addressing their problems, not leaving them in touch with, but untouched by, dozens of different agencies.

A decent education means liberalising our schools system so that more students can benefit from high standards and discipline.

The coalition has a renewed mission: tackling the financial deficit, for certain.

But also, importantly, addressing the appalling social deficit that the riots have highlighted.

Gdn  05 Sept 2011    Full Employment?    Prison & Rehab    Riots

A Very Neoliberal Catastrophe     Family Breakdown     'Reserve Army'

Employment blackspots revealed

No backing down on planning reforms

The key to recovery is the building of more houses, seems to be the message.

Yes, they are needed, and yes, it will create jobs ... in the short term.

But will it spin off into other areas of manufacturing, or will it just suck in more imports?

And to what extent will the new housing by eco-friendly?

It's easy to bandy about that over-used buzz word 'sustainability', but coming from the likes of Osborne and Pickles, it's almost certainly spin.

The chancellor, George Osborne, has waded into the row over government proposals to shake up the planning system, insisting the government will "win this battle".

Osborne has written an article in the Financial Times with the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, in which the two senior Tory ministers claim planning reform is "key" to economic recovery ...

Planning delays cost the economy £3bn a year, and reform is imperative because the current system is a deterrent to international enterprise as well as a barrier to the expansion of "homegrown enterprise", they said ...

Gdn  05 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    Tory Planning Reform

Cameron moves to water down new EU job laws

The Prime Minister’s office secretly commissioned its own legal advice on the Agency Workers Directive, which concluded that the impact of the new laws could be moderated.

The directive, to be introduced under EU law, will give temporary agency workers the same rights as full-time workers to pay, holiday and maternity leave after 12 weeks of employment.

The laws are expected to cost British businesses almost £2 billion a year.

But Downing Street has been told by lawyers that the Business Secretary’s department has “gold-plated” the legislation with additional rules that need not have been included, despite a pledge by the Coalition not to introduce unnecessary regulation that undermines business.

Mr Cameron’s advisers are weighing up whether to strip out some of these provisions.

One option suggested is the “Armageddon” tactic of simply refusing to introduce the new laws, a move that could result in multi-million pound EU fines for the Government ...

Tel  05 Sept 2011    Agency Workers    Third Meltdown Log

Matthew Hancock: tackle bankers' greed or expect history to repeat itself

The book challenges the myth that people and businesses always act in their own best interests, and recommends a series of checks and balances to ensure poor judgments are challenged.

Among the most controversial proposals is the idea for the creation of a "public protagonist" with the remit to question corporate transactions, such as mergers and takeovers, where managements are highly-incentivised to deliver deals that may not be in the interests of stakeholders.

The protagonist would have the authority to convene special shareholder meetings on behalf of the public and publicly test courses of actions planned by the management.

Better decision-making should also be incentivised, the authors suggest, by legislation to create a new crime of professional gross negligence for senior managers of "systemically-important financial institutions", with convictions punishable by imprisonment ...

Banker bonuses should also be subject to a 10-year clawback, the authors suggest, while women should make up at least 30pc of company boards because greater diversity changes decision-making and brings better business performance.

If businesses do not comply within a year with this gender recommendation, the authors believe legislation should force them to do so ...

Tel  04 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Corporate Sociopathy    What is to be done? Log    

David Cameron in push to dilute ICB ring-fence reforms

'Reform' will be of the "light touch" variety - like Gordon Brown's presumably!

'Divi' and his Chancellor clearly believe - as the planning 'reforms' confirm - that the country is stuck with housing bubbles - financed by fiat currency - as a substitute for rebalancing the economy away from the City.

Senior Whitehall sources have revealed that the Prime Minister believes he will now have to "take over" the banking debate and explain why he believes economic growth should come ahead of more regulatory upheaval.

The sources have made it clear that it is not just about delaying any reforms but that the reforms themselves need to be fundamentally re-thought.

The Prime Minister wants to focus on what has been achieved on bonuses, lending and other banking reforms and make it clear to the markets that the Government backs the UK's banks.

Although there will still be some form of ring-fencing, which the Chancellor has already backed, it will be of a "light-touch" variety ...

Tel  03 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    'Divi' Dave Log

Fresh hope for banks as David Cameron takes charge

Ring-fencing banks is not the answer

Government's plans for PFI threatens British firm's Crossrail bid

Rebalancing the economy, R.I.P.

... it is understood that the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Treasury do not want TfL, the London mayor's transport authority, to fund the deal off its own debt-laden balance sheet and are considering a PFI-type arrangement instead.

The Thameslink deal will be financed by a Siemens-led consortium that will put equity into a specially created business and then raise the debt to build the trains.

Those trains will then be leased back to the train operator, which will pay a regular fee to the consortium.

Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, warned that if the government took the PFI route it could tip the balance in favour of non-UK bidders such as Siemens, despite the recent procurement pledge.

He said: "There is a trade-off here where, on the one hand, you raise public sector borrowing, which slows reduction in the deficit but allows a greater chance of the trains coming from Britain.

"Or, on the other, you can keep the deal off the government's balance sheet and make it more likely that a foreign company will win the contract.

"A large company like Siemens will be able to borrow the money to undertake a project of this kind." ...

Obs  04 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    Full Employment?    

PFI under attack from left and right

Libya: the minister, the Tory donor and a contract to supply oil

The deal with Vitol was said to have been masterminded by Alan Duncan, the former oil trader turned junior minister, who has close business links to the oil firm and was previously a director of one of its subsidiaries.

Mr Duncan’s private office received funding from the head of Vitol before the general election.

Ian Taylor, the company’s chief executive and a friend of Mr Duncan, has given more than £200,000 to the Conservatives.

Vitol is thought to be the only oil firm to have traded with the rebels during the Libyan conflict.

Oil industry sources said that other firms including BP, Shell and Glencore had not been approached over the deal.

One well-placed source said this was “very surprising” because other companies would have been keen to be involved.

Last night the Coalition was under pressure to disclose details of Mr Duncan’s role in securing the deal, worth about $1billion (£618million).

The firm is thought to have supplied fuel and associated products to the rebels and traded oil on their behalf.

The controversial firm has previously been fined for breaching sanctions and paid money to Arkan, the Serbian warlord, allegedly for oil contracts ...

Tel  01 Sept 2011    Westminster Sleaze    

Workless households rise 5% to 370,000

There's more vacancies than there are unemployed, isn't that right Chris? Or is this a 'third face of power' job?

The employment minister, Chris Grayling, said:

"While the slight fall in the numbers of workless households and children living in workless households is encouraging, these figures still underline the sheer scale of the challenge we face.

"Over the last decade, thousands of people were simply abandoned to a lifetime on benefits, and a staggering 1.84 million children are living in homes where no one works.

"This is why we launched the Work Programme this summer, which will give tailor-made support to help people get off benefits and get into work, while our overhaul of the benefits system will ensure that work is always the best option."

Gdn  01 Sept 2011

Working and workless households, 2011

The key points from this release are:

• The percentage of households where no adults work was 18.8 per cent, down 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier.

• The percentage of households where all adults work was 53.5 per cent, up 0.5 percentage points from a year earlier.

• Of the regions in England and countries of the UK, the North East had the highest percentage of workless households.

• The number of households in which no adult has ever worked was 370,000, up 18,000 from a year earlier.

• There were 1.8 million children living in workless households, down 26,000 from a year earlier.

ONS  01 Sept 2011    A free market train wreck    'Reserve Army'    The Work Programme

Churning the Unemployed

Oh dear, the one plank the coalition is relying on looks a bit thin

Never worked households at record high

Clegg backs Cable in battle over bank reform

The Prime Minister, who has been lobbied intensively by bank bosses, has accepted their argument that the changes should be phased in over several years.

Government sources confirmed that could mean they would not take effect until after the next election, as The Independent predicted yesterday.

But Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are braced for a backlash from Sir John Vickers, chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking, which will propose ring-fencing of the banks' retail and investment arms in its final report on 12 September ...

Ind  01 Sept 2011    Banking Commission    Bankocracy Log    Corporate Sociopathy Log    

Banks 'still expect taxpayer to pay for their failure'

Darling's verdict on Britain's bankers

The disproportionate damage banks can do

RBS helped bankroll Europe's last dictator

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

British banks ignore money-laundering rules

Coalition must show it values banking sector - the UK needs the tax

Hegel on Wall Street

Balancing on a Cable

Revolving-door culture leaves government full of clever bankers

Bank of England chief Mervyn King calls for 'narrow banks'

Fiat Money Systems

NHS bill 'will let Andrew Lansley wash his hands of health service'

The health secretary will be able to "wash his hands" of the NHS after forthcoming legislation which will take away his duty to provide a national health service, according to legal advice funded by campaigners.

The legal opinion, commissioned and paid for by members of the 38 Degrees website, justifies the widespread public concern about the government's health reforms, in spite of Andrew Lansley's assurances that he has listened and responded to criticisms, they say.

The independent legal team says the health and social reform bill removes the health secretary's responsibility for NHS provision through a "hands-off" clause designed to give autonomy to commissioning groups.

David Babbs, executive director of 38 Degrees, said one legal opinion suggested responsibility for provision would instead fall to an unknown number of "clinical commissioning groups".

Babbs said: "The so-called 'hands off' clause … removes political accountability, which is the only real control voters have on the way the NHS is delivered.

"We won't be able to fire people on regulatory bodies or private healthcare companies when things go wrong.

"None of us voted for these fundamental changes to the NHS. They weren't in any party's manifestos, or the coalition agreement, so 38 Degrees members have clubbed together to get legal advice to convince MPs that the changes shouldn't be pushed ahead and that the public's concerns need to be taken seriously." ...

Gdn  30 Aug 2011    NHS 'Reforms'    

NHS Expert Legal Advice

War On The Scroungers

PEOPLE on the dole for more than a year should be forced to take a job at the minimum wage – or lose their benefits, a report published today urges.

The proposal from a Labour-leaning think-tank comes after figures showed that the number of long-term unemployed had doubled to 400,000 since the recession.

In a hard-hitting report, the Institute for Public Policy Research is calling for anyone on unemployment benefit for more than a year to be guaranteed a minimum wage job, which they would have to take or lose their benefits ...

Sunday Express  28 Aug 2011    The Work Programme

A Dysfunctional Labour Market    'On the sick'    The Myth of Full Employment

IPPR: Hospital changes

'Protint'

British Army cleared of systematic abuse by Baha Mousa inquiry

More than four years after Mr Mousa's death, Corporal Donald Payne pleaded guilty to charge of inhumane treatment at the beginning of a court martial which was to run for six months and become the most expensive in British military history.

By the end of the trial, all charges against the remaining defendants were dropped due to a lack of evidence, including a charge of manslaughter against Cpl Payne.

Mr Justice Stuart McKinnon criticised the soldiers for failing to properly answer questions and accused them of putting up a "wall of silence" ...

Tel  27 Aug 2011    Torture        

Unemployed offenders face tougher work in the community

Unemployed offenders face a full week of unpaid work, including the possibility hard manual labour, under plans to toughen community penalties as an alternative to prison.

Instructions will be issued to courts by the Ministry of Justice, urging them to make sure unemployed offenders sentenced to the "community payback" programme work a minimum of 28 hours over a four-day week.

They will spend the fifth day looking for work or face losing their jobseekers' allowance ...

The more intensive scheme will also require offenders to start work within seven days of sentencing instead of the two weeks it currently takes following a court appearance ...

The scheme is run by the probation service and the public can nominate jobs to be undertaken by offenders.

A ministry spokesman said the work usually included improving public areas by picking up litter, cleaning graffiti, and maintaining parks and green spaces.

But offenders can also be required to undertake hard labour such as working on a community farm ...

The prisons and probation minister, Crispin Blunt, said the scheme would encourage unemployed offenders back into the routine of hard and meaningful work ...

Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said :

" ... the scheme will only be viable if it is properly resourced, doesn't put council workers out of work and if offenders are fit to carry out the tasks."

Gdn  24 Aug 2011    Prison & Probation    The Work Programme    

Being volunteered to work for nothing

Precarity in action: encourage firms to shed workers and re-hire them for free; say goodbye to the minimum wage, and profits go up!

David Cameron ... (and) ... Tony Blair ... share the same essential conviction: that there is a degenerate rump at the bottom of society ...

... one of the central ideas of Iain Duncan Smith's Work Programme is "mandatory work activity": up to 30 weekly hours of faux-employment spread over 28 days, during which people have to do work "of benefit to the community" in return for their jobseeker's allowance of £67.50 a week.

If they decline the offer of "experience" paid, in effect, at a rate of £2.25 an hour, or fail to make a go of it, their benefit can be stopped – for a minimum of three months, and six months if the transgression is repeated.

It's a strange thing: by definition, you cannot volunteer for this, so the appearance of mandatory work activity on a CV speaks of reluctance being met with compulsion ...

... Tesco acknowledged it is co-operating with jobcentres to provide 3,000 four-week placements this year, and Poundland rather brazenly said that taking on unpaid benefit claimants "doesn't replace our recruitment activity but adds to the number of colleagues we have working with us".

Neither of them, nor the equally placement-friendly Asda, answered a question about what "work experience" actually involves ...

"Work experience is an excellent way for young people to gain the practical experience and showcase their talents," enthuses the DWP minister Chris Grayling; jobcentre advisers, says his department, are now being told that if a company has no vacancies for a young jobseeker, they should be "pushy" about the possibility of an unpaid placement ...

Gdn  23 Aug 2011    Full Employment?    The Work Programme

Is Capitalism the only Game in Town?

Extra push for jobseekers

A 'volunteer' at Primark

Is this the start of a lurch to the right by the coalition?

Cameron's solution for broken Britain: tough love and tougher policing

Student debt will soar to £200bn

The bigger picture here is Osborne's attempt to shift "the deficit" away from government and onto families.

This was revealed last April when the OBR forecast that the average household would by £77k in debt by 2015.     [Gdn]

Presumably, since joined-up thinking is not a facet of recent governments, this does not include student fees debt, and makes no allowance for the rising costs of housing, food, and fuel - to mention the more obvious constraints on consumerism which are already with us.

So if households are not going to pay off the deficit, and taxes on the rich have got to go down, inflation is the only weapon left??

Welcome to North Korea by the North Sea.

The analysis, compiled by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), concedes that the fee increase, from a maximum of £3,290 a year, will add £124bn to the burden of personal debt by 2047.

Last year, before the changes were finalised, BIS estimated that total student debt will stop rising in 2027, having peaked at £67bn ...

The total of student debt at its peak is equivalent to more than a quarter of Britain's national debt, or the entire welfare bill.

It also dwarfs the £136bn gross mortgage lending during all of 2010.

But even when the debt is at its height, the department expects to recoup less than £11bn a year from lenders.

Professor Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and chair of the million+ group of new universities, called the situation "unstable" and compared the new system to a "house of cards built on borrowed money" ...

Ind  21 Aug 2011    Britain in Debt    Higher Education    Whither Britain

More on ... going into debt

You're going to pay for the cuts ...

Osborne’s recovery depends on consumers getting further into debt

Ministers admit family debt burden is set to soar

Riots: Now governors warn of prison time bomb

The total number of prisoners yesterday hit a new record of 86,654 – up 723 on the previous high set last Friday, and leaving less than 1,500 spaces left in the system.

Geoff Dobson, deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust, added:

"The rapid increase in prison numbers means that sections of our prison estate are becoming human warehouses, doing little more than banging people up in overcrowded conditions, with regimes that are hard pressed to offer any employment or education.

"The likelihood is that for some first time offenders this will provide a fast track to a criminal career."

A report released by the trust last year found that 60 percent of those serving sentences under a year go on to re-offend ...

Ind  20 Aug 2011    Prison & Probation    Riots    

Crisis deepens for UK's young

Record numbers of A-level candidates are expected to end up without a university place today – as the latest unemployment numbers underline the bleak prospects of them finding a job.

More than one in five of Britain's young people (those aged 16 to 24) are out of work and almost 100,000 of them have been on the dole for two years or more.

The youth unemployment rate rose to 20.2 per cent this spring, according to the Office for National Statistics – one of the highest in the European Union ...

The youth unemployment situation will be compounded by the number of teenagers who will not get into university this year.

The number applying has reached an all-time high of 669,956 as candidates try to beat the rise in fees of up to £9,000 a year, coming in September 2012.

Today's A-level results will likely see about 250,000 people chasing just over 40,000 places in clearing, meaning a record 210,000 will miss out. Many of them will face a dilemma over whether to hunt for scarce jobs, volunteer as unpaid interns, take gap years or seek university places overseas.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, described the Government's fees policy as "a clumsy disaster".

The increase in youth unemployment is especially worrying because of the strong evidence that if young people can't establish themselves in the world of work early in their careers they will find it much more difficult later on – the "lost-generation" phenomenon ...

Ind  18 Aug 2011    Full Employment    Riots    Whither Britain    Youth Unemployment

Unilever: Europe and US face 10 years 'low growth'

The Anglo-Dutch business and its brands, which also include Sunsilk hair conditioner, Lipton tea and Knorr cooking stock, currently secures around 27pc of its revenues from Western Europe.

However, Mr Polman yesterday identified Turkey and the BRIC countries – Brazil, India and China – as its fastest growing markets.

"We are by any standards the emerging market company. We are growing by 10pc or more now consistently in the emerging markets, and that's a very healthy growth.

"We can continue to grow at a 4pc-6pc range overall," Mr Polman told Reuters.

Tel  18 Aug 2011    Falling Living Standards    Full Employment    Globalization Log    Whither Britain

Riots show Britain in last-chance saloon, Duncan Smith says

Britain is in "the last-chance saloon" when it comes to solving the "social crisis" at the root of the riots, the work and pensions secretary has said.

In a Spectator interview, Iain Duncan Smith predicted the unrest on England's streets would prove to be a turning point in David Cameron's leadership.

Mr Duncan Smith said the events had the potential to influence the PM in the way 9/11 made an impact on Tony Blair.

"This is our warning... the crisis is coming," he said.

BBC NEWS  18 Aug 2011

The London riots were, for him, simply the most spectacular manifestation of another war: that being fought, and lost, on the streets of Britain’s inner cities.

Until now, he says, many people have believed that gang warfare existed only in America and in television series like The Wire.

"People didn’t think it was happening two blocks away." But it was, he says, and his north-east London constituency is a case in point.

"There has been gang war going on in Waltham Forest. Each postcode gang is at war with another.

"There’s evidence that they had a truce during the riots, and were swapping information with each other."

Duncan Smith believes that the looting was a mixture of professional gangs, who would set a building ablaze then rob a jeweller’s store, and opportunists who were swept up in the crowd.

The original Tottenham riot, he says, was spontaneous.

‘There were groups like the Socialist Workers Party inciting a lot of anger. But when people saw the police couldn’t control both the riot and the looting, the penny dropped. “Everybody — here’s the game. There’s looting to be had here.” ...

Spectator  17 Aug 2011

   Riots    Street Gangs    Whither Britain

England riots: ministers wrong to 'steer' courts, says Lord Carlile

Executive wishes to control Judiciary as well as Legislature

Lord Carlile, the barrister and former Liberal Democrat MP warned that the sacrosanct separation of powers between the government and the judiciary had appeared to have been breached by some of the messages coming out of government since the riots engulfed neighbourhoods last week.

Carlile, who served for 10 years under Labour and the coalition as the government's independent anti-terror adviser, told the Guardian:

"I don't think it's helpful for ministers to appear to be giving a steer to judges.

"The judges in criminal courts are mostly extremely experienced and well capable of making the decisions themselves.

"Ministers should focus on securing the safety of the public." ...

He said that "just filling up prisons" would not contribute to maintaining the peace of England's streets, and warned that there were too many first-time offenders who had been remanded in custody on relatively minor offences after the events who would be eligible to appeal for bail ...

Gdn  17 Aug 2011    Losing Democracy    Riots

Second wave of enterprise zones named

"Do less; make it seem like more"

Mr Cameron said: "We are determined to do everything we can to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

"Enterprise zones are a major step towards delivering this, cutting business taxes, easing planning restrictions and giving business the tools they need to invest and expand.

"These new enterprise zones will be trailblazers for growth, jobs and prosperity throughout the country."

Chancellor George Osborne said the zones would create more than 30,000 new jobs by 2015.

"They will benefit from over £150 million in tax breaks over four years, new superfast broadband, lower levels of planning control and the potential to use enhanced capital allowances," he added.

Ind  17 Aug 2011    Full Employment    Third Face of Power

Part-time Britain hits record high as unemployment soars

The number of people claiming jobless benefits also surged 37,100 last month to 1.56m - the largest monthly increase since May 2009 ...

The figures cast doubt over the private sector being able to pick up the slack from public sector job losses and deal a further blow to UK growth prospects.

The statistics also point to further misery for Britain's young people: youth unemployment rose by 15,000 over the quarter to reach 949,000, or 20.2pc of 16-24 year olds ...

However, the number of people in work rose by 25,000 on the quarter to reach 2.97m.

But the jump was partly due to more people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job - some 83,000 more people had no chioce but to take part-time work, reaching 1.26m on the quarter - the highest figure since records began.

The unemployment rate was 7.9pc and there were 9.3m economically inactive people aged between 16 to 64 ...

Tel  17 Aug 2011    Full Employment?    Youth Unemployment    Riots

ONS

UK banks fund deadly cluster-bomb industry

The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC have all provided funding to the makers of cluster bombs, even as international opinion turns against a weapons system that is inherently indiscriminate and routinely maims or kills civilians.

One year ago this month, Britain became an active participant in the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a global treaty that bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs.

To date, 108 countries have signed the treaty, which also forbids parties from assisting in the production of cluster weapons.

Yet there has been no attempt by the Coalition Government to rein in banks and investment funds that continue to finance companies known to manufacture the weapons.

Using a loophole in the legislation, financial institutions can continue to back cluster-arms manufacturers as long as they don't invest in the bombs directly ...

Ind  16 Aug 2011    FYB Log        

Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion

German tax dodgers with money hidden in Swiss banks can sleep easy tonight.

For the German government this week initialled a beggar-thy-neighbour deal that undermines years of diplomatic work to penetrate Switzerland's globally corrosive banking secrecy.

The agreement, which is due to be signed by both governments over the next few weeks, sees Germany accepting a paltry $2.8bn upfront from the Swiss banks said to hold some $276bn of Germans' undeclared wealth ...

Here in the UK, HM Treasury is negotiating a similar agreement with Switzerland. It has simply been biding its time to see what kind of deal Germany gets.

With the UK government pursuing such a self-interested and myopic policy, it is no surprise that senior UK diplomats appear distinctly disinterested in playing ball at the G20, where a truly global deal to end tax haven secrecy could be brokered.

A former senior US Treasury official, who used to negotiate tax treaties for the US, recently told me of his fury about how these dirty deals are undoing a whole career's worth of work against financial secrecy ...

Gdn  12 Aug 2011    Tax Dodgers

Deal reached on Swiss-German tax treaty

End Tax Haven Secrecy

If only fixing Britain were quite so simple

The thing that's driving bond yields ever lower is impaired demand.

One effect of this is to encourage the Bank of England to keep short-term interest rates close to zero, which drives money out of short-term deposits into longer-dated bonds, thereby reducing their yields.

But the underlying cause is that in conditions of great economic uncertainty, the private sector stops spending and investing, and saves the consequent surplus instead.

If these savings are not flowing into productive, but relatively high risk, investment, they tend to go into "safe haven" government debt instead, where there is some certainty of getting your money back.

What's more, if the government too is trying to reduce its debts, the whole process becomes self reinforcing, driving yields and private sector demand ever lower.

Unfortunately for us all, that is what's really going on here ...

Tel  11 Aug 2011    A Faustian Pact

This 'safe haven' is no bustling harbour

... the government's current recipe on bank lending is a complete muddle.

Project Merlin, the deal with the big banks, was a dance around the houses that is set to become an annual event without getting to the heart of the problem, and the Business Growth Fund, at £2.5bn, is too small to make a difference.

More imagination, and intervention, is required if the "march of the makers", the phrase Osborne coined in his last budget, is to get out of the slow lane.

The chancellor is right to be pleased by low gilt yields, but he should make use of them to get the cheap money to where it is needed.

Gdn  11 Aug 2011

Osborne concedes 'longer' recovery

Boris Johnson calls for police cuts rethink

The London Mayor claimed ministers should take “another look” at proposals to cut force budgets, and said officers needed to “get on and do what they signed up to do” ...

He also argued that those in authority needed to have their ability to instill discipline in youngsters restored.

Police forces in Britain face an array of reforms including reviews into pay and conditions, the creation of a new National Crime Agency and the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners - all set against the backdrop of dwindling budgets and job cuts.

The plan for the National Crime Agency, which is expected to be operational by December 2013, has been criticised for its lack of detail, particularly around cost ...

Police sources say they fear the desire to push ahead with proposals are based on the length the Coalition Government’s parliamentary term rather than what is best for the service ...

The mayor also claimed that those in positions of authority had somehow lost their right to impose discipline ...

Tel  10 Aug 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Riots    

Threat of cuts brings added pressure to overstretched police forces

11.24 Key quotes from David Cameron

'Fed Up' Residents Form Anti-Looter Patrols

Gang suspect killed by police did not fire his gun

Police run out of cells

Police 'plan to cut 14% of jobs by 2015'

Only one in ten police officers 'visibly available to public'

Police face big cuts challenge

'Savage' cuts to youth spending

Row over volunteer police

Greater Manchester Police to cut a quarter of posts

Clarke 'planning to close six prisons'

Is The World Going Bankrupt?

The longer the Western debt crises smolder on, the darker the outlook for the global economy.

Because the US economy is collapsing, American consumers are buying fewer goods from China and India.

And because investors are piling out of euro and dollar investments, supposed islands of stability are starting to look shaky as well.

In recent weeks, the Swiss franc and the Brazilian real have appreciated so strongly that exporters in those countries have been virtually unable to sell their products abroad ...

Scaling down debt isn't easy, as can be seen in Britain.

The government of Prime Minister David Cameron has imposed more rigorous spending cuts than any other traditional industrial nation.

The austerity program is coming at a high price. The cuts are hitting domestic demand and have all but wiped out economic growth.

Every country that embarks on fiscal cuts faces a similar fate, and it takes years for the measures to bear fruit.

States that have restored their budgets to health tend to grow faster than profligate ones.

So the economic prosperity of the West hinges on whether governments are capable of thinking in new dimensions of time.

They finally need to start thinking further ahead than the next election.

Der Spiegel  09 Aug 2011    A Faustian Pact Log    America    China    EU    Global Risks 2011

Fiat Money Systems    Is capitalism ... ?    What caused the credit crunch?

Osborne cuts short holiday to deal with stock market crisis

This is a case of the 'third face of power' in action. Not only does Osborne know - as Thatcher told us - 'you can't buck the market'; he also knows he has no powers to address growth/employment since these powers were surrendered to the market in the 1980s.

It's another case of 'do less, make it seem like more'!

George Osborne is to return from his holiday in California to address MPs about the state of the economy on Thursday, when parliament is being recalled following the riots across London.

The Treasury did not release information about what the chancellor intended to say but he will be speaking the day after the Bank of England is widely expected to reduce its growth forecast for the UK ...

Gdn  09 Aug 2011    Third Face of Power

Royal Bank of Scotland posts £794m loss after Greece hit

RBS, the last of Britain’s five biggest banks to report results, was pushed into the red by the Greek write-off and an £850m provision to cover compensation for customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance ...

Tel  05 Aug 2011    Bankocracy Log    Coalition Log    FYB Log    

FTSE slumps to worst week since 2008

Market turmoil

Value of bailed out banks drops by £30bn

Royal Bank of Scotland posts £794m loss after Greece hit

RBS, the last of Britain’s five biggest banks to report results, was pushed into the red by the Greek write-off and an £850m provision to cover compensation for customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI).

Shares in Royal Bank of Scotland lost 14pc of their value in early trading knocking nearly £2bn off the state-owned lender's market value.

The dramatic fall in the share price caused a temporary suspension in the trading of RBS shares, making it the third of Britain's major banks to have had trading halted in its shares in the last 24 hours after Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays yesterday.

Tel  05 Aug 2011    Bankocracy Log    FYB Log    

Osborne plans to cut 50p income tax rate

Plan B: Trickle-Down Theory to the rescue?

David Cameron and George Osborne are ... intent on cutting the top rate of tax, for those earning more than £150,000 a year, to 45 per cent – possibly as soon as in the Budget next April ...

The Conservative plan ... is being driven by Treasury analysis suggesting that the extra revenue generated between the 45p and 50p tax bands could be as little as £750m ...

Ind  05 Aug 2011    Full Employment    IMF    Is Capitalism ... ?

IMF: UK must be ready for more QE if economy flags further

UK set for low growth as the mood 'darkens'

Boris Johnson tells George Osborne to cut NI and 50p tax

How Trickle-down Economics Works

Trickle-Down Theories Don’t Hold Up

Trickle-down theory

UK officials were allowed to interrogate tortured prisoners

A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian ...

The fact that the interrogation policy document and other similar papers may not be made public during the inquiry into British complicity in torture and rendition has led to human rights groups and lawyers refusing to give evidence or attend any meetings with the inquiry team because it does not have "credibility or transparency" ...

Some have criticised the appointment of Gibson, a retired judge, to head the inquiry because he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner ...

The protocols also stated that former detainees and their lawyers will not be able to question intelligence officials and that all evidence from current or former members of the security and intelligence agencies, below the level of head, will be heard in private ...

Gdn  04 Aug 2011    Torture

British government's secret interrogation policy

UK's secret policy on torture revealed

Campaigners to shun UK inquiry into detainee 'torture'

Torture investigation 'has no credibility'

Soldiers in Afghanistan face one-year tours of duty

The extension of tours will be highly controversial at a time when cuts are being made in numbers of personnel, and when the Libyan mission means that British forces are engaged in fighting on two fronts, leading to complaints of overstretch.

But Brigadier Davis, of 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, stressed that the continuing Taliban threat showed the need for longer deployment of some UK contingents, especially those "mentoring" Afghan forces, to provide more continuity – and that this necessitated much longer periods in Helmand.

He said: "The constant churn of people with whom you have really strong relationships is hard, so I think you need to reduce that by having people in theatre for longer.

"I suspect over time we'll see these changes and a larger percentage of people doing longer tours ... We are looking at nine to 12 months."

Ind  01 Aug 2011    Cutting the Deficit    War on Terror Log    

UK set for low growth as the mood 'darkens'

Businesses remain nervous about spending an estimated £60bn cash pile on investment plans, instead waiting to see whether the current raft of economic and political risks pass and remaining cautious in the meantime ...

Ind  01 Aug 2011    Full Employment    Whither Britain?    

UK recovery hopes hit by weak manufacturing

Drinks industry takes a hold on government alcohol policy

Minutes of meetings of the group before and after the election, seen by The Independent, show that drinks industry representatives in attendance rose from an average of one or two at each meeting in 2009-10 to some six or seven in 2010-11.

Among the members of the cross-government group, chaired by the Home Office's director of drugs, alcohol and partnerships, are representatives of Heineken, Bacardi, Molson Coors, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association and the supermarket Morrisons.

Experts said the Government was right to consult the industry about its plans but was wrong to include it on policy-making committees.

It created an insuperable conflict of interest as "making money from alcohol sales is at odds with reducing harm" ...

Ind  01 Aug 2011    Corporate State Log    

Public sector workers need 'discipline and fear', says Oliver Letwin

Letwin, architect of the coalition's plans to reform public services, told a meeting at the offices of a leading consultancy firm that the public sector had atrophied over the past two decades ...

Letwin added that some of those running schools and hospitals would not survive the process and that it was an "inevitable and intended" consequence of government policy.

"You can't have room for innovation and the pressure for excellence without having some real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers that things may go wrong if they don't live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them," he said.

"If you have diversity of provision and personal choice and power, some providers will be better and some worse.

"Inevitably, some will not, whether it's because they can't attract the patient or the pupil, for example, or because they can't get results and hence can't get paid.

"Some will not survive. It is an inevitable and intended consequence of what we are talking about." ...

Gdn  30 July 2011    Social Darwinism    Sociopathy

Reforming the Regime

Coalition must show it values banking sector - the UK needs the tax

"This was a crisis that started in the banking sector and the failures of the banks imposed a huge cost on the rest of society.

"So it is fair and right that in future banks should make a more appropriate contribution which reflects the many risks that they generate."

These were the words of George Osborne to the House of Commons in June 2010's emergency Budget ...

At the time, critics warned the levy would lead banks to up sticks and change domicile ...

Thirteen months on, and ... another, perhaps far less predictable, hit to the Exchequer is looming ...

News that the Exchequer stands to miss out on about £1.2bn of taxes as a result of 15,000 pending job losses across the City and Canary Wharf does not make for pleasant reading ...

... with the publication of the final report of the Independent Commission on Banking on September 12 in particular – Osborne will be under close scrutiny as to just how valuable he views this once symbiotic relationship.

If he is shrewd in both his words and his actions, maybe next time the axe falls across the banking industry, London may be spared a little more so than its rivals ...

Tel  30 July 2011    Bankocracy Log    Whither Britain? Log

Full Employment: Where From?

Banks 'asking customers to leave' to hit Government targets

City job cuts to cost the Government £1.3bn in lost tax revenue

Rebel feud puts UK's Libya policy in jeopardy

The killings came at a difficult time for David Cameron's government, which just a day earlier had formally recognised the rebel Transitional National Council as the representatives of the Libyan state and ordered diplomats of the Tripoli regime to leave the UK.

In a speech offering unreserved praise, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, had praised the rebels' "increasing legitimacy, competence and success." ...

Ind  30 July 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    War on Terror Log    

Knife crime and gang violence on the rise

According to Scotland Yard the number of recorded knife-crime injuries in London went up from 941 to 1,070 in the three months between February and April this year compared with the previous three months; victims in the 13-24 age group injured during knife crime increased by more than 30% between 2008-09 and 2010-11.

Youth services, particularly those that prevent gang violence, have been savaged by local authorities because of government-imposed cuts.

More than £100m was removed from local authority services for young people up to March this year, according to the Confederation of Heads of Young People's Services, which surveyed 41 of their members.

Budget cuts imposed at the start of the financial year averaged 28%, but some local authorities were cutting 70%, 80% or even 100% of youth services, it said.

Almost 3,000 full-time staff who work with youths have been lost.

Universal services such as youth clubs have been hit hardest: 96% of the 41 heads of youth services who responded said club activities would be either reduced or stopped altogether by April next year.

MPs on the education select committee warned parliament last month that "disproportionate budget reductions" could have "dramatic and long-lasting" consequences.

Graham Stuart, the select committee's chairman, said the current situation was "damaging" and an increase in crime was "inevitable".

He said: "Tim Loughton [the children's minister] has said that cuts to children's services are disproportionate and we agree." ...

Gdn  29 July 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Street Gangs    'We're all in it together'

Thinking the unthinkable

Brilliant blue skies? Or bonkers? Steve Hilton, the prime minister's thinker-in-chief, is a bit of both.

Perhaps the UK could just ignore EU regulations on temporary workers, suggested the T-shirt-clad head of strategy? ...

How about abolishing all government press officers and replacing them with a single blogger per department?

Abolish all consumer rights?

Close all Job Centres?

Then the most toxic: abolish maternity leave in order to encourage employers to take on more women (follow the logic?).

And, finally everyone's favourite: use technology to separate the clouds and bring in more sunshine ...

... there is one gaping flaw in the Government's understanding of the new wave of tech-based entrepreneurialism.

Facebook and Twitter embrace not just this new mood but also a more pronounced sense of equity.

And it is this that is so lacking in Cameron's approach to economic austerity.

The supine bailout of the bankers and the servility towards the Murdochs proved that we are not all in it together.

The pain has been shared out, in varying degrees, among the mainstream population, but not among the very wealthy and the obscenely wealthy.

The reason Hilton's reported remarks about abolishing maternity leave strikes such a nerve is that it reinforces a view that the wealthy can dictate the terms and that deregulation is designed solely for this purpose ...

Ind  29 July 2011    'Divi' Dave Log    'We're all in it togther'    

Cameron's blue-sky thinker has his head in the clouds

Costs of British military operations in Afghanistan estimated at £18bn

Official figures by Commons defence committee also estimate cost of Libyan no-fly zone and bombing at £260m ...

Gdn  28 July 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    War on Terror Log

Afghanistan     Churchill's Client State

NHS begins rationing operations

Two-thirds of health trusts in England are rationing treatments for "non-urgent" conditions as part of the drive to reduce costs in the NHS by £20bn over the next four years ...

Examples of the rationing now being used include:

* Hip and knee replacements only being allowed where patients are in severe pain. Overweight patients will be made to lose weight before being considered for an operation.

* Cataract operations being withheld from patients until their sight problems "substantially" affect their ability to work.

* Patients with varicose veins only being operated on if they are suffering "chronic continuous pain", ulceration or bleeding.

* Tonsillectomy (removing tonsils) only to be carried out in children if they have had seven bouts of tonsillitis in the previous year.

* Grommets to improve hearing in children only being inserted in "exceptional circumstances" and after monitoring for six months.

* Funding has also been cut in some areas for IVF treatment on the NHS ...

According to responses from the 111 trusts to freedom-of-information requests, 64 per cent of them have now introduced rationing policies for non-urgent treatments and those of limited clinical value.

Of those PCTs that have not introduced restrictions, a third are working with GPs to reduce referrals or have put in place peer-review systems to assess referrals ...

Ind  28 July 2011    NHS 'Reforms'

NHS competition study splits academic community

The day they signed the death warrant for the NHS

Lansley's reforms 'threaten future of NHS'

Probation officers spend 75% of time not dealing with offenders

The MPs say they accept that probation officers have to do a certain amount of work that does not involve dealing directly with offenders but are "staggered" to find it can be as much as 75%.

"No one would suggest that it would be acceptable for teachers (who also have to do preparatory work and maintain paperwork) to spend three-quarters of their time not teaching," say the MPs.

"The value which really effective probation officers can add comes primarily from their direct contact with offenders." ...

The MPs want to see an external review of the future of Noms, saying its creation has not led to a joined-up treatment of offenders and it has not proved itself proficient at handling national contracts such as for bail accommodation and facilities management.

Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said:

"The report confirms that Noms has been a major problem from the start.

"Napo warned in 2004 that Noms would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

"It is scandalous that probation staff now spend 75% of their time on form-filling and responding to centrally driven emails.

"Even Daniel Sonnex, who brutally murdered two French students three years ago was seen for just 20 minutes a week ...

Gdn  27 July 2011    Prison & Probation

NOMS    Reforming the Regime

British Economic Stagnation

The stagnation of the economy and the damage this is doing to Tory popularity has sparked a debate about the need for growth.

Predictably, it ignores that fact that the recovery was fostered by increased government spending, including investment and is being throttled by government spending cuts.

Instead, the focus is on tax cuts for corporations and the rich, an end to all carbon reduction policies, a reduction in the minimum wage, abolishing employment laws, privatisation and so on ...

... the effect of this huge transfer of incomes from poor to rich would be to depress economic activity even further as well increasing the public sector deficit.

Few of these ideas are likely to find much support outside Tory circles.

But one which has is the idea of a corporate tax cut to boost investment.

This call ignores two important facts.

First, the government is already cutting corporate tax rates from 28% to 23%, yet the private sector’s investment strike continues and accounts for 80% of total lost output.

Secondly, the non-financial corporate sector is already sitting on a cash mountain, which is simply financing dividend payments, enormous executive pay and takeovers- that is, everything but investment ...

If necessary, a radical government would simply seize these corporate savings and use them for investment purposes on its own account.

But in no case should there be a reduction in the incomes of the household sector via wage cuts and public spending cuts.

This only diminishes its ability either to spend or save, and does not create business investment.

Socialist Economic Bulletin  26 July 2011

Barriers ... Economy Log    Falling Living Standards    Whither Britain?

Alternatives to Borrowing    What is to be done?

Boris Johnson tells George Osborne to cut NI and 50p tax

Weak growth may force Chancellor into further austerity

Jeremy Warner's conclusion - that there is no "output gap" - confirms the 'apocalypse soon' scenario

If there is one thing the Government must do, it is maintain its commitment to fiscal austerity.

If the deficit isn’t tackled, interest rates will rise, market confidence would be undermined, and future growth would be severely damaged.

Britain and many other advanced economies have no option but wear the hair shirt for a prolonged period of time.

Any attempt to wriggle out of this corrective adjustment to the excesses of the boom is the path to ruin ...

Tel  26 July 2011

GDP figures are no cause for celebration

The financial recovery is down to the taxpayer, Larry. The Icelandic solution did not get a look in.

... there is no real cause for celebration.

The UK economy is smaller today than it was in 2006 and is crawling out of the deep pit into which it plunged in 2008 at a snail's pace.

There was a 6.4% drop in output over six quarters during 2008 and 2009, and since then gross domestic product has increased by 2.5%.

You would have to go back to the 1930s to find an economic recovery so slow and so feeble.

Nor is there any evidence of the long-awaited rebalancing of the economy.

Manufacturing output is still 8% below its level five years ago, while the financial and business sector has grown by almost 5% over the same period.

The sector that triggered Britain's deepest and longest postwar recession has recovered fastest.

Gdn  26 July 2011    Barriers .... Green Economy Log    Falling Living Standards    Whither Britain? Log

Alternatives to Borrowing

Iceland's Way

'Two Britains' qualifications gap emerges

There are huge local variations in levels of education within Britain's adult population, reveals an analysis published by a lecturers' union.

It shows "two Britains" divided by a wide educational gulf, says the University and College Union.

In the Glasgow North East constituency 35% of adults have no qualifications, compared to only 1.9% in Brent North ...

The figures from the Office for National Statistics, and analysed by the lecturers' union, show the percentages of people aged between the ages of 16 and 64 without any qualifications in parliamentary constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales, up to December 2010.

It reveals concentrations of low educational achievement - including parts of Glasgow, Birmingham, Derby and Bradford, where more than a quarter of the adult population is without a single qualification.

The lowest-achieving region for education is identified as the West Midlands - with 26 out of 29 seats in the area below the national average in terms of the proportion of adults without qualifications ...

BBC  26 July 2011    Barriers ... Green Economy Log    Whither Britain? Log

Higher Education

West Midlands 'worst' for educational qualifications

Graduate gloom as 83 apply for every vacancy

Fit-to-work tests a 'flawed process'

The report states: "It is widely accepted that the Work Capability Assessment [WCA], as introduced in 2008, was flawed.

This has been borne out by the high number of appeals and the high success rate of appellants.

It was also reflected in the amount of evidence from individuals which expressed grievances with the way they were treated during the process and the accuracy of the outcome."

The MPs estimate the cost to the taxpayer of these appeals at around £50m a year ...

The report highlighted concerns about the number of testing centres that were not accessible to people with disabilities.

"It is unacceptable that disabled people should be called to attend an assessment at a centre which is inappropriately located, inaccessible to them or where reasonable adjustments cannot be made to accommodate special requirements arising from their health condition," the report states ...

Gdn  26 July    Atos    Welfare 'Reform'

Cutting social security by stealth

Social Security payments would fall with new inflation gauge

Heart tsar attacks Health Secretary's NHS reforms

Sir Roger Boyle, who retired as the Government's National Director of Heart Disease at the weekend, accuses the Health Secretary of squandering past gains in treatment because of his obsession with opening up the NHS to private contractors, at the expense of patients.

Sir Roger told The Independent:

"The allegiances [of the private companies] will be to their shareholders, not to the users of the services.

"If the market was going to work, the Americans would have cracked it." ...

Ind  26 July 2011    NHS 'Reforms'

Lansley's reforms 'threaten future of NHS'

Vince Cable calls for action as consumer confidence slides

Vince Cable, the business secretary, highlighted the growing alarm in cabinet at the poor state of the economy when he said that growth was so worryingly weak that the Bank of England should undertake another round of monetary expansion through quantitative easing.

Cable believes that without further action Britain could wait many years for a recovery after being locked into a long L-shaped recession.

"There is a genuine problem with demand, especially consumer demand," he said, speaking ahead of Tuesday's second-quarter UK growth estimates ...

Cable was careful to follow Osborne's argument that looser monetary policy is preferable to a U-turn on tax increases and spending cuts ...

Osborne appeared to rely on deregulation and promised corporation tax as his chief weapon to combat stagnation.

He told the Sunday Telegraph he wanted to do away "with very high rates of tax that only damage growth and enterprise".

His remarks reflect frustration that public spending has not been cut as planned, leaving the deficit higher than forecast ...

Gdn  25 July 2011    Barriers ... Green Economy    QE

Growth figures disguise the north-south divide

It's SMEs that create jobs, Larry, not councils!

Britain has far too many working-age adults without qualifications, but the position is worse in the north-east (13%), the north-west (12.1%) and Yorkshire and Humberside (12.8%) than it is for England as a whole.

The same three northern regions have also seen a bigger decline in new business start-ups since 2004, an 18.8% drop as opposed to 16.6% for the UK as a whole.

London has the highest rate of business start-ups of any region in the UK (11 per every 1,000 members of the adult population in 2009), while the north-east (5.7), the north-west (7.6) and Yorkshire and Humberside (7.1) are all below the UK average (7.9) ...

If the government is serious about rebalancing the economy away from consumption to production, and away from the south-east to the rest of the UK, there are five priorities.

The first is that macro-economic policy has to be conducive to investment and exports. That means cheap money and a competitive exchange rate.

The second is a rethink of tax policy, with consideration given to a land value tax that would penalise owners of vacant or under-used real estate.

The third is to learn the lessons from the recent decision to hand the contract for building train carriages for Thameslink to Siemens rather than Derby-based Bombardier, which is that public procurement can be a powerful tool for boosting activity and jobs in the regions.

Fourth, reform of the banking sector is needed to prevent finance "crowding out" the other sectors of the economy.

For manufacturing to become relatively stronger, the City needs to become relatively weaker, but that won't happen if the response to the financial crisis is pusillanimous.

Finally, the government needs to make good on its commitment to localism.

Despite claims that Whitehall's stranglehold is being weakened, far too many imaginative plans for growth-enhancing projects are gathering dust in council offices because of the anal retentive approach to local government finance.

Autonomy was a big factor in the flowering of Britain's regions in the 19th century. Ministers should not need to be reminded of that fact.

Guardian  24 July 2011    Barriers ... Green Economy    Coalition    

SMEs ... credit conditions ... very tight

Big bank lending policy still selling SMEs short?

Energy providers are bamboozling British SMEs

Maternity units struggle as birth rate soars

Across the UK, maternity units were forced to close to new admissions 1,055 times last year, nearly always because of understaffing or lack of beds, a series of Freedom of Information requests have found.

At least 927 women were turned away.

In some London trusts, one in five midwifery posts lies vacant.

The Royal College of Midwives says at least 4,700 extra midwives are needed in England and Wales.

An as yet unpublished independent inquiry examining an increase in maternal deaths in the capital looked at 42 deaths of women over an 18-month period from January 2009 and found that substandard treatment was a major factor in 17 cases ...

Ind  25 July 2011    Maternity    NHS 'Reforms'    

Cameron 'breaks election midwife pledge'

Babies' lives put at risk by understaffed neonatal units

NHS maternity units falling short

Too few midwives, too many risks

George Osborne will stick to austerity programme despite halting output

24 July 2011 7:54AM

I would refer people to this book: Richard Heinberg

This unique contemporary study of the global predicament makes clear the need to invent a new financial paradigm (removing the money-creation function from private banks) and a steady-state or degrowth economy.

Unfortunately we have a situation where politicians and bankers are hand-in-glove extending business-as-usual and pretending that growth can still be achieved.

Are they deluded or plain greedy?

The likelihood of a managed migration under the status-quo to a sustainable economy seems remote, so there needs to be a political party willing to embrace and espouse these principles, and be ready to make a persuasive case when the next elections come (in the UK that can only mean the Green Party methinks) which - with Osborne's austerity plans seeming certain to only accelerate the contraction - could come soon, particularly with sovereign defaults and the critically unstable state of global finance looming large.

Is there sufficient freedom in the media to provide an airing for these contrarian (even subversive) views?

Without such a political mandate we're just scrambling around in the ruins.

Obs  24 July 2011    Barriers ... Green Economy Log    Eating the Future Log    Richard Heinberg

The End of Growth

This deal ties Europe ever more closely – and leaves us on the margins

A European finance minister will have to set the borrowing limits of individual nations, irrespective of national electorates' views.

He, or she, will have to determine where the structural funds in the EU be spent.

The Euro-treasury will have to decide if the eurozone or the EU operates any longer with widely diverging rates of corporation and other taxes.

He will have to levy fines on nations.

He might even seize their assets and control their bank accounts.

He would be a very important figure.

Much more so than the Chancellor of the Exchequer...

The debate about Britain joining the euro could start all over again.

Ind  23 July 2011

Central Bank May Be Winner in Europe’s Debt Talks

Mr. Trichet won commitments from governments on another longstanding issue.

Political leaders in Brussels agreed to take more concrete steps to reduce their debt and to ensure that the Greek disaster is not repeated elsewhere.

Euro zone countries promised to cut their budget deficits to below 3 percent of each country’s annual output by 2013, in line with limits set by treaty, but widely violated ...

... in a sign that not all members of the governing council are happy with the agreement, Mr. Weidmann criticized what he called a major step toward collective responsibility for the mistakes of individual states.

“This weakens the fundament of a monetary union built on individual fiscal responsibility,” Mr. Weidmann said in a statement.

“In the future it will be even more difficult to maintain incentives for solid financial policy.”

NYT  22 July 2011    EU Corporate State Log    

A Question of Sovereignty

Bailout rescue: euphoria wanes as doubts emerge

Greeks overjoyed by bailout deal

Police 'plan to cut 14% of jobs by 2015'

Will anyone notice?

There will be 34,000 fewer police jobs in England and Wales in March 2015 than in March 2010, research by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary suggests ...

It estimated that the overall cut of 14% will include losing 16,200 officers and 16,100 civilian staff.

The HMIC added there was "relatively strong evidence" falling staff numbers might lead to a rise in some offences ...

BBC NEWS  21 July 2011    Cutting the Deficit    

Forensics service shut and courts are closed

Ken Clarke plans tough changes to community service – run privately

Only one in ten police officers 'visibly available to public'

City pays £14bn bonuses despite Project Merlin

Banks and other financial companies paid out an unchanged £14bn in bonuses last year despite the Government's Project Merlin deal with the big banks to show restraint on the payouts.

Financial and insurance bonuses made up 40 per cent of the total £35bn paid in UK bonuses in 2010-11, Office for National Statistics figures showed.

The average financial-sector bonus was £12,500, compared with £1,670 for the whole private sector and just £180 for public-sector workers.

The financial-sector total is more than the £12bn paid at the height of the crisis in 2008-09 but below the £19bn at the market peak in 2007-08.

Financial-sector bonuses remained 58 per cent higher than a decade ago and double the total paid out in 2002-03 as the market moved from the dot.com crash to the debt boom.

Bonuses in the financial industry have held up even as the Government has announced public-sector job cuts and ordinary workers in the private sector have seen their living standards eroded by rising prices and static wages ...

Ind  20 July 2011    Barriers ... Green Economy Log    Bonus Culture    Falling Living Standards    Inequality    

Graduate gloom as 83 apply for every vacancy

Private sector firms invited to bid for £1bn slice of NHS

This bunch of swivel-eyed policy wonks from outer space have learned nothing from the failure of Southern Cross 'care' homes, or the goings-on at Winterbourne View hospital.

There are two problems: when the private sector goes belly-up the state will be involved in some sort of bail out, and, the failure of oversight from useless 'inspectors' at the so-called Care Quality Commission compounds the problem.

A true health market - which is probably the ultimate aim - would involve varieties of provision along the lines of the food market. Excellent for the rich, bog-standard for most of us, cheap-and-not-very-cheerful for the marginalised.

Not what Nye Bevan had in mind at all.

Patients will be offered a choice of provider, including private companies and charities, across eight services including those for back and neck pain, wheelchair services for children and talking therapies for patients with stress and depression ...

Later, further specialities may be included under the "any qualified provider" provision in the Health and Social Care Bill, raising alarm about the privatisation of the health service ...

Yesterday, Mr Lansley insisted that extending choice would give patients more control over their care and better results.

"[There is] a mistaken idea that competition is there for the sake of it, or to increase the independent sector's role in the NHS," he said

"But... what this is really about... is real choices for people over their care, leading to better results." ...

Ind  20 July 2011    NHS 'Reform'    Outsourcing

Unsold properties on estate agents' books hit record high

The Ponzi housing market damages mobility of labour

Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, said:

"Summer sellers are more nervous about their selling prospects than the early birds who asked ever higher prices during the first six months of this year."

But he warned that many home owners may not have sufficient equity in their homes to drop their prices any further and may be "trapped" in their current properties ...

Tel  18 July 2011    Ponzi Housing Market

IDS Work Programme    

House asking prices fall for first time this year

The property ladder that threatens to become a snake

Only the foundations of a housing recovery

First-time buyers see no let-up in home loan drought

Inflation wipes thousands off property values

'A nudge in the right direction won't run the big society'

The problem, as (Baroness Julia) Neuberger saw it, was that there was "precious little" evidence to show that nudge worked beyond a purely individual basis.

So the Lords set up a subgroup of its respected science and technology committee to examine the issues.

After 12 months of research, 148 written submissions and evidence from 70 witnesses, the report will be published on Tuesday.

It will make uncomfortable reading for Cameron because, according to Neuberger, nudging people is not normally enough.

"Basically you need more than just nudge," she says, when we meet in the Lords.

"Behavioural change interventions appear to work best when they're part of a package of regulation and fiscal measures," she adds ...

The difficulty with nudge theory, she says, is that "all politicians love quick fixes. I mean, they look at very short time frames.

"I think one of the problems with all of this is if you really want to change people's behaviour it takes a very long time … you have to look at a 20- to 25-year span before you get a full change of behaviour." ...

Obs  17 July 2011    David Cameron's 'Big Society'    'Nudge'    

Charity cuts: the 'avoidable destruction' of homelessness services

Another roar of pain and anger from the homelessness charity sector ...

... Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of Framework, a Nottinghamshire-based charity ... explains how far services for homeless and vulnerable people have come in the past decade, not least as a result of investment through the Supporting People programme, and how quickly those services will fall apart, now that funding stream has been savaged ...

Chrissy81
15 July 2011 8:06PM

Framework helped me when I was homeless. Their support after they helped me get housed also means I will never become homeless again.

I now work for Framework and it is very clear all the work we do is not just about helping homeless people - it is saving the country money!

We really are keeping people out of prison and out of hospital. We do this by reducing substance misuse, mental health problems, anti-social behaviour etc.

Also, the support is all about trying to ensure that people sustain tenancies, get in to work and hopefully don't need to access support services in future.

I am an example of this.

Framework have drastically changed homelessness in Nottinghamshire over last ten years and these cuts are seriously jeopardising all their good work.

The cuts will only make short-term savings. In the longer term the cost to our country both financially and socially will be devestating.

Gdn  15 July 2011    Housing Benefit 'Reform'    'We're all in it together'

Marginalised

Framework

Homelessness cuts: what exactly are ministers there for?

Homelessness: charities face 30% funding cuts

First in the cuts firing line: the homeless and socially excluded

Quantitative easing makes Bank of England £10bn

So, QE actually adds to the deficit!

[Simon Ward, chief UK economist at Henderson] added that, ultimately, the Bank is likely to make a loss on the QE programme as it intends to raise rates before selling the bonds.

"As rates go up, there will be upward pressure on yields.

"Added to which, the volume of sales will be another factor in increasing yields. And higher yields means lower prices," he said.

Any losses will be borne by the taxpayer under an indemnity clause which means any profit or loss is transferred to the Treasury.

Tel  15 July 2011    Bankocracy Log

Alternatives to Borrowing        

Quantitative easing back on Bank of England's agenda

UK deficit hits record despite £1.1bn axe on borrowing

UK 'must save £50bn a year or face a similar crisis to Greece'

A further austerity programme half as large again as the current package of tax hikes and public-spending cuts will be required to prevent a Greek-style debt crisis from overtaking Britain in the coming years, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility ...

Britain's ageing population – and especially the demands placed on the National Heath Service – is the biggest driver of the coming crisis, the OBR says.

Ind  14 July 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Falling Living Standards    

UK unemployment claims show biggest jump in two years

The number of people without jobs and claiming unemployment benefit rose by almost double that expected last month to reach 1.52m – its highest total since March 2010, official figures confirmed today ...

Tel  13 July 2011    ONS    Reserve Army

Part-time jobs are the only option for millions of British workers

Elderly care in the NHS: 'There is nowhere for people to go'

The NHS is desperate to cut beds and the time people stay in them.

But many frail old patients must remain on the wards because there is no suitable care for them at home ...

If the hospital can swiftly usher patients out of the building, it can shut down wards, a process that the hospital chief executive, Mark Newbold, sees as a sign of success.

"The real breakthrough in terms of reducing staff is when you reduce capacity.

"So if we can close a ward, then we don't need those staff, and no one will notice that those staff aren't there because that facility is not open," Newbold says.

However, reality throws up obstacles to this plan.

Because social services budgets are being cut at the same time, delays beyond the control of hospital staff slow the flow of patients back into the community ...

Gdn  12 July 2011    'Caring' for the elderly ...    Cutting the Deficit    NHS 'Reform'

New disability benefit test 'driven by cuts'

In a private meeting with disability minister Maria Miller, campaigners set out their concerns over the test for the new personal independence payment (PIP), with many organisations anxious that reform is being driven by a pledge to cut 20% from the cost of the benefit.

The new test will be piloted over the summer on around 1,000 volunteers who currently claim disability living allowance (DLA), which will be replaced by PIP when it is introduced in 2013 ...

The government last year promised to reduce working age expenditure on this benefit by 20% on the forecast expenditure for 2015/16, triggering suspicion among campaigners that the changes are motivated by the need to cut costs rather than to improve the way the benefit is distributed.

"How can you decide that [a reform] is going to save 20% in advance? I would think that this is driven by cost reductions, and that they have come up with a way of assessing people that will result in the cost savings they want to make," [Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope] said ...

Gdn  12 July 2011    Marginalising the Disabled    Welfare 'Reform'

Marginalised

Key probation services to be put out to tender

The 35 chief officers of probation have been told they need to examine the "potential for core probation services" to be put up for competition.

Michael Spurr, the chief executive of the National Offender Management Service ... said it was hoped the competition process would also ensure that those probation functions remaining in the public sector were delivered with clear benefits in terms of costs, efficiency, quality and risk management ...

Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said:

"Probation services do not lend themselves to the normal laws of supply and demand, it is unclear who the customer is.

"The government has little if any understanding of how complex work with offenders is and how demanding supervision can be " ...

Gdn  12 July 2011    Outsourcing    Prison & Probation

Marginalised    

Thousands face uncertain future as care home chain is broken up

Hundreds of Southern Cross care homes could be returned to companies registered overseas in tax havens where little information about their finances or their directors is publicly available.

Southern Cross, which runs 752 care homes in the UK, caused huge anxiety for its elderly residents and their relatives when it announced its closure yesterday after months of speculation about its financial woes.

Analysis by the GMB union revealed the names of 80 landlords who own 615 of the homes, many of which are subsidiaries of larger companies registered overseas.

This makes it much harder to obtain financial information about the companies as rules governing accountability and transparency, especially in "tax havens" such as Jersey, Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands are significantly more lax.

In addition, the GMB was unable to trace more than 120 landlords, which mean thousands of people are living in care homes where the identities of the owners and directors are unknown.

In the absence of full company accounts and other relevant information, such as the names of directors, it is "nigh on impossible" to assess whether they are suitable to run care homes funded in large part by public money ...

Ind  12 July 2011    'Caring' for the Elderly ...    FYB Log    Outsourcing    Southern Cross

Marginalised    Social Democracy or Social Darwinism?

Competition plan for state services unveiled

What a droll little man is Mr Cameron. It seems public services are to blame for inequality!

The reforms would be driven by the principles of choice, decentralisation, diversity, fair access and accountability ...

This would include personal budgets for social care users by 2013;

funding following the user in state schools, universities, childcare and the NHS;

premium payments for school pupils and healthcare patients from disadvantaged backgrounds;

easily accessible information about public service performance;

and payment by results for providers of services such as welfare-to-work, offender rehabilitation, and drug and alcohol treatment ...

[David Cameron] described public services as "the backbone of the country" but complained that they still operate with a "take-what-you're-given" philosophy that has failed sufficiently to close gaps between the life quality of the rich and poor ...

Public services were "failing on fairness", with people in the poorest neighbourhoods dying seven years earlier than those in the richest;

children from disadvantaged families half as likely to get five good GCSE passes as their better-off contemporaries;

and just 40 students on free school meals getting one of the 80,000 places at Oxford or Cambridge universities ...

Ind  11 July 2011

Ministers urged to let schools and hospitals fail to hasten reforms

... documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act reveal research by civil servants warning that markets are susceptible to "failure" and costs could in fact rise unless a true market is created by allowing public services to collapse if they are unsuccessful.

It opens up the potential for schools, hospitals, social care systems and nurseries to fold without the government stepping in to prop them up ...

The documents obtained by the Guardian were prepared by civil servants as part of an internal government review into the consequences for democratic accountability of the coalition's localism, big society and outsourcing reforms that are integral to today's white paper ...

The document also:

• Concludes there is a benefit in choice and competition in driving up standards, but that it works best where there are fixed prices in health for operations, or in education per pupil, otherwise there is a risk that companies will simply compete by undercutting each other. Drawing on evidence from the first major wave of privatisation in the 1990s, it says "providers will compete on price but quality may suffer".

• Highlights the potential for "market failures" in the public sector, saying some areas may not be appropriate. "In particular, it is worth noting that if the service is complex; time-critical; and used infrequently, (for instance accident and emergency services), it may be difficult for users to make an informed choice."

• It warns that wealthier people may be better placed to exercise choice in which services they access, because they are more likely to be able to travel further for the school or hospital they want ...

Guardian  11 July 2011    'Big Society'    Inequality    

Cameron promises to 'end state's monopoly' over public services

John Lewis-style public services to break state monopoly

Sainsbury's shoppers asked to donate food from their trolleys to poor

Sainsbury's is launching the food donation trial at selected stores from 8-10 July as new research from the food redistribution charity FareShare reveals that 40% of local community projects relying on food donations are struggling to meet demand.

Shoppers will be asked to add an extra item – from a suggested list – to their basket or trolley, and it will then be distributed to local community projects for the homeless and disadvantaged by FareShare.

The scheme is based on one FareShare operates in France, which has attracted a record 13,000 tonnes in one weekend alone.

The Sainsbury's trial is being carried out in 19 stores, including New Cross Gate in London, Garthdee in Aberdeen and Kings Heath in Birmingham.

If successful it could be rolled out across the UK, making it easier for shoppers to donate food regularly.

Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare said:

"At a time of severe economic hardship, we are seeing unprecedented and increasing demand for food donations.

"We are highlighting the issue to encourage the food industry and the public to increase their support." ...

Gdn  07 July 2011    'Big Society'    'We're all in it together'

Bonuses in the City ... foodbanks are booming

Church-led foodbanks see 50% rise in demand

Food banks feeding needy people around the UK

Job centres to give food vouchers to unemployed

Trussell Trust

Soaring private rentals reflect pressure on first-time buyers

Matt Hutchinson, director of flat and houseshare website SpareRoom.co.uk, said:

"The rise in renting is not only due to people not being able to afford to buy, but also changing attitudes towards homeownership with more and more people deciding to rent for longer rather than committing to the massive financial burden of taking out a mortgage.

"In a recent survey of more than 10,000 flat and housesharers we discovered that 12% of Britons never plan to own a property while another 12% estimated it would take them more than a decade before they could afford to climb on the property ladder, which suggests that the demand for rental property could reach crisis point in the next few years.

"Even though interest rates are at a historic low, very few first-time buyers are in a position to buy and take advantage of attractive mortgage deals, and with the cost of living spiralling out of control, making it impossible to put money away for a deposit, this is likely to put tremendous strain on the rental market."

Those stuck in private rented accommodation were penalised financially for their predicament: while the average weekly rent for social renters was £75 last year, tenants in private accommodation paid an average of £155 a week ...

Gdn  05 July 2011    Ponzi Housing Market

Landlords from Hell

Spirit of Rachman still walks the streets of London

Rachman on the march again?

Private tenants feel 'powerless' over landlord problems

Renting

Shelter

Shropshire council sends dismissal letters to entire workforce

Shropshire county council gave its 6,500 staff notice of their dismissal on 30 September, but offered them immediate re-employment if they accepted a 5.4% pay cut as well as changes to their sick-pay arrangements.

The council said it needs to make the changes to find £7m towards a total savings target of £76m over three years.

The alternative would be "large-scale" redundancies ...

The council's plan emerged as new figures showed that spending by councils on local services has fallen for the first time in two decades as a result of cuts in government grants.

Councils in England will this year spend an average 5.7% less on services than in the previous 12 months, including almost 15% less on housing, 21% less on roads and 32% less on planning ...

Gdn  05 July 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Eric Pickles' Tory Localism

Dilnot: pensioners should pay more tax to fund care in old age

Individuals will have to pay the first £35,000 of the costs of a care home place, or help in their own homes with tasks such as washing and dressing, under the plan.

After reaching this cap, the state will step in and cover any care costs above this level.

But to meet the additional drain on the Treasury of an estimated £2 billion a year, ministers may choose to raise taxes, the report, from the Care Commission said. And Mr Dilnot said part of the burden must fall on pensioners.

In addition, pensioners will still face paying up to £10,000 a year for board and lodging costs in a care home, even after reaching the £35,000 cap, and "top up" fees where state grants do not cover the full costs of a residential home place.

Andrew Dilnot, the economist who chaired the commission, said it was up to ministers to decide which taxes could rise, but pointed out that "at the moment (pensioners) don't pay national insurance" ...

Tel  04 July 2011

Will Osborne agree to fund reform of elderly care?

The Dilnot recommendations are expected to suggest a sliding scale of between £35,000 and £50,000 on the limit pensioners pay towards their care.

They would be urged to take out insurance to cover that expense. At the moment, bills can exceed £100,000 for prolonged periods in residential care.

At present, people with assets totalling more than £23,250 have to contribute towards their care; that limit is likely to be raised to around £100,000.

The report is understood to recommend that free care levels be calculated on the basis of rates paid by local authorities.

That means families could have to pay the balance if an elderly person is living in a more expensive residential home and that care bills might only be picked up when the threshold of £35,000 to £50,000 of care is reached at council-set rates ...

Ind  04 July 2011

Councils could offer loans

... local authorities will be empowered to make a loan at a preferential rate against the value of a property owned by someone entering a care home.

The loan would be redeemed on the sale of the property after the person dies ...

Although the centrepiece of Dilnot's report will be a recommended cap of about £35,000 on individual liability for care costs, which would require underwriting by the government, other proposals will seek to make it easier for people to draw on their assets without having to sell their home during their lifetime.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, about a million elderly homeowners have properties worth more than £100,000 yet qualify for means-tested benefits ...

Gdn  03 July 2011    Dilnot Report

'Caring' for the Elderly the Free Market way    No such thing as society    'Putting People First'

Charging for Residential Accommodation Guide (CRAG)

Councils 'are turning blind eye' to rise of slum landlords

A chronic shortage in social housing and an unaffordable housing market mean that around 3.4 million people in the UK rent their homes, a 40 per cent rise in the past five years.

Local authorities are turning a blind eye to illegal and unsafe housing because they do not have the resources to re-house those inside, housing officers admit in footage obtained by uncover documentary teams for Channel 4's Dispatches ...

Research conducted by Shelter says that more than 90 per cent of environmental health officers with tenant liaison responsibilities have encountered examples of landlords engaging in the harassment or illegal eviction of tenants.

Eighty per cent of environmental health officers have come across landlords in their area who persistently refuse to maintain their properties to a decent standard and yet two-thirds say no landlords have been prosecuted in the past 12 months ...

Ind  04 July 2011    Ponzi Housing Market

Soaring private rentals reflect pressure on first-time buyers

Landlord regulation proposals scrapped

Homelessness builds into a social crisis for coalition

The number of people in England presenting to their local council as homeless rose by 23% in the first three months of this year, compared with the same period in 2010. The numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets has also started to climb.

That 23% figure does not tell the full story: some councils in London – Hackney, Bromley, Islington, Haringey — saw year on year rises in homeless applications of between 80% and 99%.

These statistics, troubling in themselves, are only the first wave. They refer to people, by and large, uprooted by the reverberations of the financial crash of 2008 and the resultant economic downturn.

They do not yet show the impact of public spending cuts which came in on 1 April or housing benefit changes, which will start to be felt from January 2012.

When these filter through, the homelessness graph is likely rise dramatically ...

Councils fear the housing benefit cash "savings" to Iain Duncan Smith's Department for Work and Pensions budget is merely "cost shunting" on a grand scale ...

Gdn  03 July 2011    Housing Benefit 'Reform'    Welfare 'Reform'

Rough Sleepers

Savage cuts will leave people sleeping rough on the streets

Housing Benefit

The ABC of early years intervention

The passion of the secretary of state for work and pensions (Two babies, one future, 2 July) for early intervention to increase the chances of a disadvantaged child moving out of poverty brings horses bolting and open stable doors to mind.

For too many children disadvantage starts with a mother who cannot afford a healthy diet and might not know enough about the food she needs to give birth to a healthy baby.

International research, headed by the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, has shown that poor maternal nutrition leads to poor cognitive ability, developmental brain disorder and a higher risk of cerebral palsy.

The last government took the point and added the health in pregnancy grant, the baby entitlement of the child tax credit, the toddler entitlement of the child tax credit and the child trust fund, but it too should have started before women conceive by increasing their unemployment benefit of £53.45 a week.

The present government abolished all these benefits, so reducing the income during pregnancy and the first year of a baby's life by £1,735, as calculated by Family Action.

An unemployed woman aged 18-25, before and during pregnancy, has an income of just £53.45 a week.

This will be more vulnerable to rent arrears from housing benefit caps, still vulnerable to unregulated loan sharks, and is likely to be overtaken by the escalating weekly cost of a healthy diet and domestic fuel with the annual uprating now pegged to the RPI.

The public health white paper only mentions food when abolishing the Food Standards Agency and never mentions debt, another source of mental illness.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chair, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Guardian  03 July 2011    Welfare    'We're all in it together'

Zacchaeus 2000

Eric Pickles warns David Cameron of rise in homeless families risk

A leaked letter, from the office of Eric Pickles has warned that welfare reform will make 40,000 more families homeless ...

Written by Nico Heslop, Pickles's private secretary, at the clear instigation of the minister, the letter lays bare fears of mass homelessness "disproportionately impacting on families". It says:

           40,000 families will be made homeless by the welfare reforms, putting further strain on services already "seeing increased pressures".

           An estimated £270m saving from the benefits cap will be wiped out by the need to divert resources to help the newly homeless and is likely to "generate a net cost".

           Half of the 56,000 affordable homes the government expects to be constructed by 2015 will not be built because developers will realise they will not be able to recoup even 80% of market rates from tenants.

Gdn  02 July 2011    Housing    Welfare

Alternatives to Welfare

Full text of letter

Iain Duncan Smith to unveil payment by results welfare system

Iain Duncan Smith will set out groundbreaking plans on Saturday for billions of pounds of private sector money to be invested in helping children early in their lives.

He will also announce plans for an innovation fund aimed at getting the hardcore of 40,000 unemployed teenagers ready for work.

Investors, including those from the voluntary and private sectors, will receive a return drawn from the public spending savings Duncan Smith hopes will result from a subsequent fall in crime, welfare spending and other costs of social failure ...

Duncan Smith has been working on separate plans on early intervention and teenage unemployment through his chairmanship of the cabinet social justice committee, and alongside a government-commissioned report to be released on Monday by the Labour MP Graham Allen ...

Duncan Smith and Allen, drawing on a wealth of social science, both hold near-deterministic views on the importance of the first two years of childhood ...

Gdn  01 July 2011    Barriers on the Road to a Green Economy    Has the Coalition Abandoned Children?

Branch Offce Britain    IDS & The Third Face of Power    The Myth of Full Employment    Youth Unemployment

Martin Rowson on Iain Duncan Smith

Businesses reject call ... to employ more Britons

A licence to get tough on welfare

Bombardier jobs 'disaster' feared by council leader

Frank Field

'Super-nannies' to help parents

It's easier to work than to mother

Coalition scraps national network of charging points for electric cars

The Department for Transport, which had planned to have 9,000 recharging points by 2013, has decided that the programme is not viable ...

At present there are about 700 points. The 8,600 electric vehicles expected to be sold by the end of this year would require some 4,700 points.

In a new strategy document, the department said: "Most recharging is likely to take place at home and at work, so an extensive public recharging infrastructure would be under-utilised and uneconomic." ...

The Committee on Climate Change has said that the UK needs to have 1.7 million electric vehicles by the year 2020 to be on course to hit ambitious carbon-reduction targets.

Ind  02 July 2011    Eating the Future Log    Is the Coalition Eco-Friendly?

'Last Nation Standing'

How To Wreck A Recovery - Tory policy and Q1 GDP Data

Conclusions

The recession was driven by the collapse in private sector investment. The fall in household consumption was also important, much more so than in the OECD as a whole.

The resumed private sector investment strike now accounts for close to 80% of the entire output loss since the recession, and the economy remains more than 4% below its prior peak level.

The government and the OBR promote the notion that cuts to government spending will lead to spending in the private sector from households and businesses.

The opposite has been the case. The entire recovery was engendered by the rise in public sector spending and private investment followed later.

The Tory-led government has reversed the rise in public investment through its cuts policy.

This has led first to stagnation and now contraction of private investment in Q1 2011.

The fall in private and public investment combined more than accounts for the entire slowdown in the British economy in the last two quarters.

Tory policies have wrecked the recovery. Only a rise in public investment can revive it.

Socialist Economic Bulletin   02 July 2011    Contesting Austerity

ONS Growth Stats    What is to be done?

Lib Dem MPs set to rebel against nuclear power 'subsidy'

A large group of Lib Dems are concerned about clause 78 of the bill ... that asks them to support a carbon floor price.

This mechanism penalises fossil fuels but not low-carbon energy sources, such as nuclear and renewables, and the MPs believe it hands a large financial windfall to nuclear power – effectively a subsidy.

The government has admitted that because of the size of the nuclear industry, it stands to gain up to twice as much as renewables from the proposed carbon floor price.

In a written reply, the Treasury economic secretary, Justine Greening, said:

"The existing nuclear sector is likely to benefit by an average of £50m per annum to 2030 due to higher wholesale electricity prices.

"Similarly, the renewable energy sector is expected to benefit by an average of at least £25m a year to 2030." ...

Gdn  01 July 2011    Energy Policy    Nuclear Power

Carbon Trading    Energy Bill

Call for Chris Huhne to resign over Fukushima emails

Families face nuclear tax on power bills

Stats Show UK Pensions Bill 'Is Affordable'

Jeff Randall - not your average left wing commentator - tells Sky News - shows Francis Maude is being economical with the actualité

The Government is on thin ice when it makes the claim that public sector pensions are unaffordable, according to Sky's business presenter Jeff Randall.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has told Sky News that the Government cannot continue to foot the pensions bill.

"The cost to the taxpayer of public sector pensions has risen by a third in recent years," he said.

"All of those who say these pensions are affordable need to say which hospitals they'd close down, which doctors, nurses and teachers they'd make redundant in order to pay for continuing subsidies to public sector pensions."

Treasury figures show public service schemes paid out £32bn in 2008-09.

However, looking forward, the most recent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest this figure will have risen just slightly to £33.2bn by 2016/16.

And a chart in the Government-commissioned Hutton report shows public service pension payouts will actually fall as a percentage of GDP over the coming decades.

"Is this affordable? Clearly it is because we're affording it right now," Randall said.

"And what about the changes to pensions? Francis Maude told me they would save £3bn a year - but that's less than half of one percent of the Chancellor's total payout."

He went on: "The Government is on very thin ice here if it's going to go down the affordability route." ...

Sky News  30 June 2011    Coalition Log    

Public-sector pensions: Spot the odd one out

Public sector pensions: doctors vote to ballot on industrial action

Public service pensions: how they became a striking matter

Hutton report

What is the government proposing?

Public or private - the issues are often the same

Public sector pensions

NHS redundancies to cost public £852m

Taxpayers face an £852m bill for redundancies as a result of the Government's shake-up of the National Health Service.

The Labour Party leader Ed Miliband ... warned that many of the staff being sacked by strategic health authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs) would be re-employed by the GP commissioning consortiums replacing PCTs.

Mr Miliband said the U-turn over the original reforms would increase the number of statutory organisations in the NHS from 163 to 521, instead of cutting bureaucracy as the Government suggested.

"Is this what you meant by a bonfire of the quangos?" Mr Miliband asked.

The Prime Minister insisted the shake-up would save £5bn by cutting bureaucracy ...

Ind  30 June 2011    NHS 'Reform'    

NHS redundancies to cost public £852m

Taxpayers face an £852m bill for redundancies as a result of the Government's shake-up of the National Health Service.

The Labour Party leader Ed Miliband ... warned that many of the staff being sacked by strategic health authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs) would be re-employed by the GP commissioning consortiums replacing PCTs.

Mr Miliband said the U-turn over the original reforms would increase the number of statutory organisations in the NHS from 163 to 521, instead of cutting bureaucracy as the Government suggested.

"Is this what you meant by a bonfire of the quangos?" Mr Miliband asked.

The Prime Minister insisted the shake-up would save £5bn by cutting bureaucracy ...

Ind  30 June 2011    NHS 'Reform'

Climate policies 'need new tools'

The UK's greenhouse gas emissions are not falling fast enough to meet government targets, say advisers.

Emissions rose by 3% during 2010, says the Committee on Climate Change.

This was due to extra energy demand in cold weather; but the general trend is flat, which is "incompatible" with the 3% annual cuts needed, the CCC says ...

Rhian Kelly, director for business environment at the Confederation of British Industry, said recent policy changes had slowed decarbonisation.

"Recent policy shifts have dented investor confidence, such as the sudden removal of the incentive behind the Carbon Reduction Commitment.

"To get back on track, the government must clarify a number of grey policy areas, including the Green Deal, electricity market reform and the Green Investment Bank."

BBC NEWS  30 June 2011    Eating the Future Log    Is the coalition eco-friendly?

Alternatives to Fossil Fuels    Energy Bill    Energy Policy

The grey lobby is bad for Britain’s health

I wonder how many people blogging on here realise the role played by grandparents in bringing up their grandchildren?

Courtesy the stagnation of wages since May 1979, both parents MUST now work in order to pay the bills. Which is why 'parasitic' grandparents step in.

Furthermore, the young have little to look forward to in terms of the job markets: work is now largely low skill, undemanding, and precarious, and even graduates are finding the labour market more and more difficult.

This is what happens when a country 'sells the family silver' in pursuit of utopian theory turned into a policy statement such as the Washington Consensus.

Like previous utopian theories, globalised 'free' markets need human beings to fit into a preconceived mould, in this case the extreme indiviualism of the 'philosopher' Ayn Rand.

The old are but one group who are not going to make the grade in the pursuit of Objectivism.

The bigger problem is that, in abolishing altruism and empathy, the 'big society' is killed on day one, as the motivations which might have moved people to participate no longer exist.

The basics are clear: the flow of younger workers is slowing, while the Baby Boomers are both living longer and retiring on a mass scale.

Between 2011 and 2016, the number of people aged 65 and over will rise by 1.4 million.

By 2041, there will be just two and a half workers for every retired person, down from nearly four now.

As Reform’s new report, Old and Broke, makes clear, this means that by 2041, the pensions bill will be £32 billion higher (in today’s money) and health and care spending will increase by around £40 billion.

This cannot conceivably be afforded from current spending – so while the deficit will indeed fall during this parliament, it will start to increase again in the next, and then keep increasing ...

Telegraph  28 June 2011    Caring the free market way    Coalition Log

Autonomous Individualism     Communitarian Citizenship

The problem of moral indifference    'Unsustainable Burdens'

UK must not support World Bank's 'dirty' power subsidies

... Britain contributes more than £2bn a year – or nearly one-third of its total UK aid budget – to the bank, but according to the House of Commons environmental audit committee, the US-based institution heavily funds fossil fuel power projects which undermine global and local attempts to reduce carbon emissions and poverty.

The MPs said that Britain abstained last year from a vote to provide South Africa with $3.75bn (£2.33bn) for a massive coal-burning project but that it should be prepared to vote down such projects in future ...

Gdn  29 June 2011    Eating the Future Log    Globalization Log

Alternatives to Fossil Fuels    

Environmental Audit Committee

World Bank's $3.75bn coal plant loan ...

Nick Clegg to unveil localism pledges

The Liberal Democrat leader is to say:

"We need to reverse decades of centralisation to make our communities masters of their own economic destinies ... " ...

Mr Clegg will say that allowing business rates to be retained locally could mean councils have direct control of more than 80% of their budgets, rather than the 50% currently ...

Mr Clegg will also announce the nationwide introduction of Community Budgets, where cash for local services is pooled to help deal with problems more efficiently.

In the case of one family in Salford, 250 interventions were required in one year - including 58 police call-outs and five arrests; five emergency hospital visits; two injunctions; and a Council Tax arrears summons.

The council's Community Budget approach saw the creation of a joint prevention and early intervention team, and is said to have cut the £200,000 cost by two thirds.

"There are families that have been let down by the system," Mr Clegg will say.

"Their complex problems mean they can end up seeing dozens of professionals across public services - but those professionals aren't always joined up, making it near impossible for anyone to get an overall picture of what that family needs.

"Community budgets are budgeting for real life, breaking down the barriers between different parts of the machine, and treating people with troubles like human beings, not figures on a spreadsheet."

Ind  29 June 2011    Dave's 'Big Society'    Tory Localism

'Communitarian Citizenship'

Councils fear over housing benefit cut

Elderly care crisis 'will get much worse'

Preliminary figures from leading health economist William Laing reveal the extent of the squeeze across the sector.

Mr Laing carries out an annual survey of the fees councils pay to care homes. This year, there has been an average rise in fees across the UK of just 0.5%.

This equates to a real terms cut of 2.5% after inflation is taken into account.

Most councils have completely frozen their fees, which means a 3% real terms cut.

Mr Laing's figures are based on 70% of the 200 councils in Britain.

They show widespread cuts across England in the current financial year, with the deepest in Wirral, which is proposing to take 9.5% off its fees.

Just over half of elderly care home residents are paid for by local councils.

Mr Laing said on average, local authorities were paying about £100 a week less than the true cost of care for each resident, with privately run homes staying in business by charging those who pay for their own care more than the market rate ...

As well as cutting fees and selling off homes, many councils are cutting back the care they provide to elderly people in their own homes.

In Birmingham, where fees are not yet finalised but where a 7% cut is expected, the council is cutting £50m from its social care budget ...

BBC NEWS  28 June 2011    Caring for the Elderly the Free Market Way

No such thing as society    'Putting people first'

Very few save for old age care

Social care funding crisis looming

UK's carbon floor price 'could waste £1bn a year'

Government plans for a carbon floor price could waste £1bn a year and drag another 90,000 households into fuel poverty, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) will warn today.

The Government hopes the Carbon Price Support (CPS) scheme will establish a predictable investment climate for low-carbon energy projects such as wind farms and nuclear power stations.

But the IPPR think tank's Hot Air report argues the CPS will do nothing to reduce emissions while adding to costs for UK consumers.

The CPS is designed to complement the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – which caps carbon dioxide emissions and allows industry to trade carbon emission permits – by kicking in when permit prices drop too low. The floor will start at £16 a ton in 2013, rising to £70 by 2030.

Because the CPS will exist only in Britain, the extra cost will simply drive permits – and carbon emissions – offshore, the IPPR concludes. By creating two carbon prices within the ETS, the CPS will waste up to £1bn as cheap carbon permits from Britain flood the EU.

"Because a floor price for carbon in the UK will depress the carbon price elsewhere in Europe, the UK will effectively hand over billions to European polluters," the IPPR's Andrew Pendleton said.

And because it is part of Britain's annual Finance Bill, MPs will need to vote on the scheme each year, undermining its credibility as a long-term guarantee, the IPPR warned.

Ind  28 June 2011    Barriers on the Road to a Green Economy Log    Carbon Trading

Eating the Future

Alternatives to Carbon Trading

So what's wrong with cap and trade?

So who profited from carbon trading?

Graduate gloom as 83 apply for every vacancy

Re-balancing the economy? Not while the rewards are in financial 'services'!

The banking sector may have taken a battering in the court of public opinion, but financial services are still by far the most popular employers.

Investment banks and fund managers can now expect to receive more than 232 applications for every place.

The next most popular industry is energy, water and utilities with 187 applications for every vacancy.

Three-quarters of the companies surveyed insist that a 2:1 degree is the minimum requirement for the CV to make it past the first round.

London and the South-east continues to dominate the graduate recruitment market, offering more than half (54 per cent) of all vacancies in 2010-11.

More vacancies (14.6 per cent) are likely to be offered in accountancy than in any other career area ...

Ind  28 June 2011    Barriers on the Road to a Green Economy Log

Higher Education    

Universities shake-up eyes greater competition

'About Wall Street jobs, wealth, and the cultural distortion of America'

The mental health ward at Lancaster Farms Young Offenders Unit is to be closed

Staff on the mental health ward, which serves young prisoners who are suffering a mental health crisis or at risk of or who have attempted suicide, are NHS staff although the centre is within the prison itself.

Lancaster Farms houses some of the most troubled and damaged young men in the North of England.

Many of them are care leavers and most have come from abusive backgrounds.

They have committed or are on remand for serious crimes. About 20 jobs will go.

Gdn  27 June 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Prison & Probation    'Prozac Nation'    'We're all in it together'

NHS reforms could reduce patients' trust in doctors

[Dr Hamish] Meldrum said the BMA has "great reservations" about government plans to reward GPs for the high-quality commissioning of services.

"If patients even suspected that their GPs might be rewarded for how well they do, and particularly how well they do financially in terms of commissioning – giving way to suggestions such as 'You may not be referring me, you may not be investigating me, you may not be prescribing for me because that actually means money in your pocket' – well, that would seriously damage the trust.

"While we have always argued that doctors must be a part of the decision-making process, it has to be in partnership with patients and done in a way that doesn't undermine that trust," he said ...

Gdn  27 June 2011    NHS 'Reform'

Why the NHS must engage with the voluntary sector

Gove urges parents into classrooms to break strike

In an unprecedented step in relations between the Government and trade unions, the Secretary of State for Education said that classrooms threatened with closure could remain open if head teachers used the "wider school community" – including pupils' parents – to teach lessons.

Some head teachers have written to parents asking them to consider, if they have been vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), volunteering to ensure lessons go ahead, Whitehall sources claimed yesterday ...

Retired teachers are also being asked to volunteer.

In a letter to schools last week, Mr Gove encouraged head teachers to use all necessary measures to keep schools open.

He wrote that there was nothing to stop head teachers from dropping the national curriculum for a day or increasing the pupil-to-teacher ratio if it meant keeping the school open ...

Ind  26 June 2011    'Big Society'    Michael Gove

Lloyds strategic review puts up to 15,000 jobs at risk

Having earned a reputation as a cost-cutter at Spanish bank Santander, Horta-Osório, the City believes, will set out plans to axe an extra £1bn of savings, on top of the £2bn a year already being achieved as a result of the takeover of HBOS during the 2008 banking crisis.

Some 28,000 posts have already been lost as a result of the integration, and analysts estimate that another 15,000 jobs will now be cut ...

Obs  26 June 2011    Bankocracy Log    Corporate Sociopathy Log

Treasury urges British banks to take big losses to help Greece avoid meltdown

Despite the assurance of prime minister David Cameron that the UK taxpayer will not pay towards the latest EU bailout of Greece, Treasury officials are working behind the scenes to persuade British banks holding Greek bonds to take a "haircut" now as the best way to avert a potential global crisis ...

One idea, proposed by Germany, is that the banks would be persuaded to swap Greek bonds for loans on less favourable terms when they expire – a so-called "soft restructuring" that would help ease the pain for Athens.

Politicians across the EU are battling to secure "private sector involvement" in the Greek rescue alongside government and IMF help in the hope of preventing Athens from defaulting on its debts, a move they fear could start a ripple effect in world markets.

Analysts say even a debt swap, under which Athens would pay its debts over a longer period, would leave bondholders facing a reduction in the value of their investment.

But officials argue that only if private banks take a hit now can the damage be limited ...

Erik Britton, director of City consultancy Fathom, said:

"It's not the direct exposure, it's the indirect exposure and the implications of an unruly default that I would be worried about.

"French and German banks bought Greek bonds, and they took out insurance against default.

"Who did they take out that insurance with? The US and UK banks. There has to be a loser – who's the loser?" ...

Gdn  25 June 2011    Bankocracy Log    EU Corporate State Log    

Eurozone debt 'most immediate threat' to UK financial stability

£10bn 'black hole' means new defence cuts loom

The financial “mismatch” is larger than all the defence cuts announced in last year’s Spending Review, and has raised fears of another round of painful reductions in the Armed Forces.

The MoD’s budget, £33.8 billion this year, is being cut by 8 per cent over four years.

The department has concluded that those cuts will still not be enough to balance the budget, meaning that unless the Treasury increases defence spending to fill the gap, more cuts will be required.

The shortfall concerns the MoD’s budget from 2015, but sources said that without a promise of more money now, ministers will soon have to start cutting and cancelling programmes due to be delivered later ...

Tel  24 June 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    'Divi' Dave Log    

Government names eight new sites for nuclear power plants

The eight sites are: Bradwell, Essex; Hartlepool; Heysham, Lancashire; Hinkley Point, Somerset; Oldbury, South Gloucestershire; Sellafield, Cumbria; Sizewell, Suffolk; and Wylfa, Anglesey.

The plans were announced by Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, despite his own opposition to nuclear energy.

He has insisted that the new plants should not be subsidised by the taxpayer ...

Charles Hendry, the Energy Minister, said:

"Around a quarter of the UK's generating capacity is due to close by the end of this decade.

"We need to replace this with secure, low carbon, affordable energy. This will require over £100bn of investment in electricity generation alone, twice what was invested last decade.

"Industry needs as much certainty as possible to make such big investments." ...

Ind  24 June 2011    Nuclear Power    Pricing Carbon

Go-ahead for 10 nuclear stations

10 new nuclear power stations named

Ed Miliband paves way for most ambitious fleet of nuclear reactors in Europe

Families face nuclear tax on power bills

In search of a coherent energy policy

On the gross failure of the 'invisible hand'

That question is this: as Britain's ageing power stations near the end of their operating lives, how do we ensure that the lights do not go out while also keeping the pledges we have made about cutting carbon emissions?

When Ofgem posed that question in February 2010, it said there was a limited window of opportunity in which there was time to act.

Some 16 months later, Britain has yet to agree an energy policy for the next decade and beyond and the window will soon close....

Ind  23 June 2011    Energy Policy    

Britain at risk of power cuts from aging networks

Energy firms must invest £200bn to meet UK targets

How long till the lights go out?

Energy White Paper 2003

Energy White paper 2007

Tory peer attacks government's welfare to work programme

Ministers said the programme, launched two weeks ago, would provide a boost for the "big society" because it would give charities a big role in getting benefit claimants back into employment.

But 90% of the UK-wide "prime" contracts have gone to major companies, and while around 500 voluntary organisations have been named as specialist subcontractors, concerns have been raised about the financial sustainability of the deals offered to them.

Some specialist charities feel they have been treated as "bid candy" by multinational firms, who put their names to bids to emphasise their "big society" credentials while competing for £5bn of work programme contracts.

Some feared that, having won the contracts, the successful bidders would not pay specialist charities to do the in-depth, long-term work they do with hard to help groups of benefit claimants.

[Lady Stedman-]Scott's comments were echoed by the homeless charity Crisis, whose chief executive, Leslie Morphy, told a conference on Tuesday the design of the work programme effectively excluded charities with specialist expertise ...

Gdn  22 June 2011    Welfare 'Reform'    

Solar industry takes tariff fight to Lords

The Merits Committee ... is to consider a letter co-signed by some 58 organisations and businesses – including the Solar Trade Association, the Co-operative, and the Town and Country Planning Association – calling for a rethink of Government plans to slash the "feed-in tariff" (FiT) scheme barely more than year after it was introduced.

The committee could trigger a parliamentary debate and vote on the Government's proposals to cut the subsidy rates available to solar power projects of more than 50 kilowatts (kW) – roughly the size of a hospital or housing association scheme – by between 38 and 70 per cent.

If the changes go ahead the industry argues it is unlikely any projects of more than 50kW will be built.

Much of debate centres on the comparative cost of solar power.

A report from the Climate Change Committee last month backed new nuclear as the cheapest option for the green power Britain needs to hit its carbon-reduction targets.

But the solar industry disputes the point, claiming that solar costs should be compared with retail prices, because of the scale of the technology ...

Ind  21 June 2011    Is the coalition eco-friendly?

Alternatives to Fossil Fuels    Nuclear Power

The Government needs to firm up its energy policy to support solar

RAF chief Sir Simon Bryant in warning over Libya

The RAF's ability to deal with future emergencies is under threat if British intervention in Libya continues beyond September, MPs have been warned ...

[Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant] ... the RAF's second in command, said morale among airmen was "fragile" and their fighting spirit was being threatened by being over-worked ...

According to the briefing paper, ACM Bryant warned MPs in May that many areas of the RAF were "running hot", while servicemen's sense that the nation valued their efforts was being undermined by the coalition's defence cuts.

He said the air force was also finding it difficult to recruit staff, with many specialist posts up to a quarter understaffed and recruitment to RAF reservists at a nine-year low ...

BBC NEWS  21 June 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    'Divi' Dave Log

Prolonged Libya effort unsustainable, warns Navy chief

Mental health services in crisis over staff shortages

Mental health services have been in crisis since before I started this site in 2003

Overcrowded and understaffed psychiatric wards are leaving patients fearful for their safety and unable to make proper recoveries, according to a damning assessment of Britain's mental health service by its lead professional body.

Professor Dinesh Bhugra, the outgoing president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told the Guardian that widespread failures in inpatient care for mentally ill people meant many hospital wards did not meet acceptable standards and discharged back into society sick people who remained a risk to themselves and others ...

His warnings are supported by a study to be published next week in which the royal college describes how about half of patients – mostly women – report feeling unsafe in many of worst-performing hospital trusts. The report also says:

• Average bed occupancy rates in English inpatient units are much higher than the 85% standard, with some wards running at 120% occupancy.

• Access to psychological therapies falls far short of acceptable standards recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and other health bodies.

• Daily one-to-one contact with nursing staff is less than that accepted as being conducive to recovery.

• Outreach links into the community are insufficient in two-thirds of the wards inspected by the royal college's centre for quality improvement ...

Gdn  20 June 2011    'Prozac Nation'

Unions risk becoming as irrelevant in the public sector as in the private

Most private-sector workers gave up going on strike, decent pensions and job security decades ago.

With varying degrees of resentment they do not see why those who happen to work for the state should still enjoy such luxuries, and certainly not when public-sector salaries, which used to lag way behind, have caught up.

Given that the great majority of the UK workforce works for private companies – about 25 million against only five million working for the state in one form or another – the weight of public opinion on this matter is pretty much pre-determined ...

"Most private-sector workers gave up on decent pensions and job security decades ago"

That's something to boast about, is it, Sean?

I agree that reaching for the strike weapon as a first port of call is unthinking, but the reason why British people's standards of living improved over the years 1945-79 was partly due to the fact that strong unions were there to see pay went up alongside profits.

Then came Maggie, Nicholas Ridley, 'Sir' Alan Budd, and the Miners' Strike.

The war against public sector unions was planned in 1976 - the Ridley Plan - with one aim only: to keep wages depressed, and allow profits to let rip.

It succeeded.

Meanwhile folks, there seem to be two Sean O'Grady's writing in this paper this morning; the other one is bemoaning the fall in living standards!

Ind  20 June 2011    Cutting the Deficit    Falling Living Standards    

UK families under most financial pressure since the depths of recession

Libya campaign could cost Britain 'hundreds of millions'

Labour supports mission ...

The cost of Britain's military operations in Libya could run "into the hundreds of millions" ...

"The campaign is costing tens of millions, potentially into the hundreds of millions as it goes on, but that money is coming from the reserve that we have set aside, precisely for contingencies such as this," [Danny Alexander] told Sky News on Sunday.

When the campaign started, the chancellor George Osborne said the cost would be "in the order of tens of millions of pounds, not hundreds of millions".

Since then, defence economists have warned that the spend could reach £1bn if the campaign stretches on into the autumn ...

Gdn  19 June 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    War on Terror Home Page    

Nato admits civilian deaths in Tripoli air raid

NHS reforms hide 'new threats', warns leading Lib Dem

The former MP Dr Evan Harris ... told the Guardian:

"Liberal Democrats and healthcare professionals have largely succeeded in preventing Monitor ... being used to marketise the health service but there's a real danger the new health bill, or the government's 'instructions' to the NHS Commissioning Board will force competition on local health services through a different route."

Harris highlighted the danger of essential NHS services being undermined by large numbers of cases, and the income that goes with them being farmed out, to private or third sector providers leaving an A&E, or intensive care unit unviable ...

A second area identified by Harris was the potential for clinical commissioning groups to outsource most work to private companies with vested interests, beyond the scope of full public scrutiny ...

Harris is also concerned that the government is still only placing a responsibility on to the secretary of state of the "duty to promote" rather than the stronger duty to "provide or secure the provision of" a comprehensive NHS service.

Harris said he had received advice from public interest lawyer Peter Roderick demonstrating that was now in doubt.

"If the government doesn't want the secretary of state to have a duty to provide a comprehensive NHS then they should say so and see it voted down by the Liberal Democrats.

"If they accept that the secretary of state cannot shrink from that responsibility they should make it clear." ...

Gdn  18 June 2011    NHS 'Reforms'    Outsourcing

CBI criticises Cameron for backing down over public service reforms

No mention of tax cuts for CEOs, Mr Bentley?

Government accused of bowing to vested interests and allowing 'forces of inertia' to derail changes ...

... the CBI's deputy director general, Neil Bentley ... warned that the failure to embrace competition could lead to deficit reduction plans faltering.

He said: "In most areas, we are seeing public services cling on to existing ways of doing things, with vested interests fighting modernisation at every turn and campaigning against change.

"Just this week, we have seen the forces of inertia in the NHS unions triumph on health reform. This is a missed opportunity for the government, and with profound consequences.

"Patient services will only be improved if the NHS is opened up to far greater competition and dependence on hospital care is reduced.

"Without reform, the £20bn savings needed to help balance the NHS books will surely hit services."

... the CBI is (also) disappointed that Gove has ruled out the introduction of for-profit schools ...

It should also press ahead with modernising the law around industrial action – and before strikes occur, [Neil Bentley] said.

Gdn  17 June 2011    CBI Log

Public sector pensions: Work longer and pay more

Southern Cross staff asked to sign away employment rights

Southern Cross ... is struggling to stave off insolvency and has agreed in principle to hand back hundreds of its 750 homes to landlords because it can no longer afford to pay annual rent of £230m.

The company is cutting 3,000 staff and attempting to impose a new contract of employment on workers, many of whom already work 12-hour shifts and are paid little more than the minimum wage of £5.90 an hour.

Southern Cross's proposals ... include staff being temporarily laid off if the company deems there is insufficient work, pay and hours being cut or increased by 20% each way, employees carrying out duties other than caring (such as cleaning and cooking) and in some cases agreeing to opt out of the European working time directive that limits the amount they can work to 48 hours a week.

The plans also propose that carers should be prepared to work in different homes "within a reasonable area" ...

One carer from Yorkshire ... said:

" ... They will be moving us around like agency staff. If I go to a home which is further away it will take longer and they are not going to pay for my petrol."

Another carer claimed Southern Cross had refused to call in agency workers when staff called in sick, which meant on some occasions just two carers were left looking after 50 residents ...

Gdn  16 June 2011    FYB Log    Outsourcing    Southern Cross    'We're all in it together'

CBI criticises Cameron for backing down over public service reforms

Bombardier train factory at risk after £3bn Thameslink deal goes overseas

Are welfare costs taken into account in making a decision such as this, Dave?

The future of Britain's last remaining train factory was thrown into doubt on Thursday after the government named an overseas consortium as the preferred bidder for a £3bn contract to make carriages for the upgraded Thameslink route.

The decision to sideline Bombardier Transportation's factory in Derby in favour of a group led by Siemens means one of Britain's largest train orders is likely to be made in Germany at a time when Britain desperately needs to boost its own manufacturing ...

Transport minister Theresa Villiers acknowledged that "there will be disappointment in Derby" but insisted that the Siemens bid represented "the best value for money for taxpayers" ...

She said that the Thameslink contract would create up to 2,000 jobs in Britain – about 600 to make train components, about 650 to build two new maintenance depots and about 750 to maintain the trains and operate the depots.

However, it is estimated about 1,500 staff will be needed to build the trains and they will be based in Germany.

Bombardier, which employs about 3,000 people in Derby, is understood to be reviewing its entire UK strategy in the wake of its failure to become preferred bidder, which sources said could potentially lead the Canadian company to significantly slim down its UK operation ...

Gdn  16 June 2011    Barriers Log    Branch Office Britain

Coventry and Warwickshire hospital in PCT funding dispute

The Tory-Labour 'internal market' model throws up potentially catastrophic problems:

A hospital is still disputing with its funders how much it should be paid, two months into the financial year.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire has not signed a contract with either Coventry or Warwickshire Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).

The dispute relates to a "significant gap" in what both PCTs felt that they could afford to pay and what the hospital initially demanded.

Warwickshire PCT has refused to deny or confirm the gap was originally £20m ...

The two PCTs are now merging and the new chief executive, Stephen Jones, said it had been a "complex process".

He said: "We are working closely with University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire to complete contract negotiations.

"The process is complex, particularly during changing times for the NHS, but I am confident that we will soon reach an agreement on the outstanding issues." ...

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire said that it still had no plans to cut posts despite having to make efficiency savings of 4%, like other hospitals ...

BBC NEWS  16 June 2011    Coalition Log    NHS 'Reforms'

This NHS debacle sets us back a generation

Ex-New Labour's Alan Milburn - now the coalition's 'social mobility tsar'(!) - berates Cameron's 'u-turn'.

So how will the NHS books be balanced? By the usual device which policy-makers have deployed every decade or so in the NHS. A very large cheque.

It is precisely the situation Cameron and George Osborne were trying to avoid: sorry, George, but the cash you were saving in your pre-election Budget for tax cuts will now have to be spent on a bail-out for the health service ...

... the Government’s U-turn places real power in the hands of the national NHS Commissioning Board – the daddy of all quangos.

The board will control how £60 billion of NHS money is spent in local communities from Darlington to Dartmouth.

It is the biggest nationalisation since Nye Bevan created the NHS in 1948. I’m not sure whether he would be laughing or turning in his grave at the prospect of the Conservative Party championing such a policy.

Bevan would be equally perplexed to see the Conservatives abandon competition as a driver of NHS improvement ...

Tel  16 June 2011    NHS 'Reforms'    Reflections on the renewal of the Labour Party    Towards a two-tier NHS

NHS reformers need to care for patients – not systems

NHS reforms: Welcome to a 'cut and shut' health service

NHS bill: concession or sleight of hand?

Libyan bombing alone will not budge Gaddafi

Almost three months into the campaign of air strikes, Britain and its Nato allies no longer believe bombing alone will end the conflict in Libya, well-placed government officials have told the Guardian.

Instead, they are pinning their hopes on the defection of Muammar Gaddafi's closest aides, or the Libyan leader's agreement to flee the country.

"No one is envisaging a military victory," said one senior official who echoed Tuesday's warnings by Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the navy, that the bombing cannot continue much beyond the summer.

Stanhope, whose comments caused fury in Downing Street, was expressing publicly what many senior defence officials say in private, officials made clear.

The conflict is also straining relations between Washington and its European allies. Although few Nato countries are taking part in the air strikes, Europeans – including the British – are dismayed at the refusal by the US to deploy its low-flying A10 "tankbusters" and helicopters ...

Gdn  14 June 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution

Last Nation Standing    The rise and fall of a great power

Prolonged Libya effort unsustainable, warns Navy chief

George Osborne backs ring-fencing of retail banks

George Osborne is to give government backing to plans that will force banks to ring-fence their high street operations in an attempt to minimise the risks of a second financial crisis ...

Bankers are deeply divided over ring-fencing and how it will work in practice, and the chancellor is expected to acknowledge that much work needs to be done to establish how retail businesses can be protected.

One key issue to tackle is whether corporate loans and deposits should be included in the ring fence ...

Gdn  14 June 2011    Bankocracy Log

Banking Commission    Fiat Currency Banking

Fiat Money Systems

Fractional Reserve Banking

Network Banking: a radical solution for the UK's banking crisis

The real health challenge has been ignored in this debate

... one of the frustrating things about this row is that it has distracted political and clinical professional attention from the challenge of bringing down costs. A painful slog lies ahead if the NHS is to achieve the £20bn in savings that it needs to make by 2015.

The debate about the Bill has focused on elective surgery. But 70 per cent of health expenditure goes on elderly patients with chronic diseases.

And that is where demand will explode over the coming years as our population ages.

This debate has often felt like a way of ignoring these difficult facts.

Ind  14 June 2011    Caring for the elderly the free market way    NHS 'Reform'    

NHS bill: concession or sleight of hand?

NHS: Field theory

Prolonged Libya effort unsustainable, warns Navy chief

The head of the Royal Navy has warned that the fleet will not be able to continue the current scale of operations around Libya beyond the summer unless ministers take tough decisions about what they want to prioritise.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, said the navy had planned for a six-month commitment but that the government would have to make "challenging decisions" about what it wanted to do thereafter.

Stanhope also conceded that if the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and its Harrier jump jets had not been mothballed last year, they would have been deployed to the Mediterranean.

This would have been cheaper – and made operations more reactive – than flying planes from the Italian base at Gioia del Colle ...

Gdn  13 June 2011    Dave's Libya Resolution    Divi Dave Log

Drinks firm Diageo funds pregnancy health initiative

Drinks retailer Diageo is to pay for 10,000 midwives in England and Wales to be trained to offer advice on the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy.

The Department of Health hopes the training initiative will in turn help more than one million expectant mothers over three years.

It is part of government moves to bring the private sector into public health ...

BBC NEWS  12 June 2011    Maternity Services    Outsourcing

Cameron 'breaks election midwife pledge'

Midwives urged by health service to let volunteers help with chores

Minimum alcohol price fiasco

NHS chief admits UK is short of 4,500 midwives

Diageo hits out at UK tax regime

Diageo warns it could leave UK over tax

Diageo branded socially irresponsible for UK tax avoidance

The G8 Gleneagles Summit: Diageo Plc

Homelessness on the rise as recession and cuts bite

BTW, Mr Shapps, your government has cut the funding for CABs [ME]

Homelessness is rising dramatically for the first time in years in the UK as the effects of the recession are felt ...

The government data show that 26,400 people approached a local council for housing help in the first three months of 2011, a rise of 23% compared with the same period last year.

Less than half of these applications were successful ...

Some of the biggest rises in homelessness applications came in London boroughs: substantial rises were recorded in Bromley (99%), Hammersmith and Fulham (92%), Islington (88%), and Haringey (83%), in the first three months of 2011.

The figures also revealed an increase in homeless families being housed in bed and breakfast accommodation ...

The housing minister, Grant Shapps, admitted the figures underline "how the recession has brought difficult times for lots of people".

But he said homelessness remained a government priority and urged people at risk of losing their homes to contact a Citizens Advice bureau ...

Gdn  10 June 2011    FYB Log    Ponzi Housing Market    'We're all in it together'

Statutory Homelessness: March Quarter 2011 England

Government's welfare to work scheme launched

Seven-year contracts have been agreed to largely private sector companies, including outsourcing giants Serco and G4S ...

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said:

"The Work Programme will tackle the endemic worklessness that has blighted so many of the country's communities for decades ... "

The Work Foundation research group has warned the programme would do little to improve job prospects for people living in economically weaker areas of the UK.

Neil Lee, the group's senior economist, said: "As the Work Programme is based on payment by results, contractors carry the initial risk.

"There is therefore the danger that private contractors will focus on investing in places where they are more likely to get people into work to secure a return on investment." ...

BBC NEWS  10 June 2011    The Work Programme

ONS Employment Stats    'Reserve Army'    Welfare 'reform'

Incapacity benefit test will send up to 800,000 back to work

Avanta

Campaign for Learning

Seetec

G4S

Cable warns restive unions of fresh laws against strikes

Up to one million workers are expected to walk out on 30 June in protest against the spending cuts, and further shows of union strength are planned for the autumn.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, will tell a union conference that such moves could backfire by playing into the hands of senior Tories pressing for fresh controls on industrial action ...

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is the most senior Tory to call for new legislation against industrial action.

Speaking last year as London Underground workers staged a walk-out, he suggested that strikes should be banned unless at least 50 per cent of the union members in a workplace took part in a ballot.

David Cameron has said he believes the Thatcher government's legislation of the 1980s is adequate, although he has told MPs he is "very happy" to look at the arguments for new laws – a position that led Mr Johnson to denounce the Prime Minister as "lily-livered" ...

Ind  06 June 2011    Contesting Austerity    'Reserve Army'    The Myth of Full Employment

UK economic recovery on the verge of collapse

Markit, the analyst that compiles the closely watched monthly surveys of activity in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors, said its latest research suggested the UK economy was on target to record growth of just 0.3 per cent during the second quarter of the year, even more disappointing than the first quarter's 0.5 per cent ...

The Office for National Statistics said yesterday that the number of new orders for construction work fell by 23 per cent during the first three months of the year, the steepest decline theindustry has experienced since 1987 ...

George Osborne ... continues to insist the Government must hold its nerve by not deviating from his plans to cut borrowing, despite the increasing evidence that this policy may be damaging growth ...

Ind  04 June 2011    Falling Living Standards

Barriers to a Green Economy    What is to be done?    

Cameron-backed report to protect children from commercialisation

Has Rupert Murdoch approved this report, Dave?

The proposals come in a long-awaited report, leaked to the Guardian, on the commercialisation of childhood.

It was commissioned by Cameron and is due to be published on Monday with strong support from Downing Street ...

The report, which was prepared by Reg Bailey, the chief executive of the Christian charity Mothers' Union, finds "sexualised and gender stereotyped clothing, products and services for children are the biggest concerns for parents and many non-commercial organisations" ...

Key measures

• Retailers to ensure magazines with sexualised images have modesty sleeves.

• The Advertising Standards Authority to discourage placement of billboards near schools and nurseries.

• Music videos to be sold with age ratings.

• Procedures to make it easier for parents to block adult and age restricted material on internet.

• Code of practice to be issued on child retailing.

• Define a child as 16 in all types of advertising regulation.

• Advertising Standards Authority to do more to gauge parent's views on advertising.

• Create a single website for parents to complain to regulators.

• Change rules on nine o'clock television watershed to give priority to views of parents.

• Government to regulate after 18 months if progress insufficient.

Gdn  03 June 2011    'Big Society' Con

Gertrude Himmelfarb's Victorian Virtues    Libertarianism    Nudge