November 2011 Archives

Education secretary Michael Gove (pictured looking his best) was absolutely correct yesterday to highlight the inconvenience caused to families by public sector workers who will strike in their millions tomorrow. 

It is encouraging that a Conservative minister has such foresight to realise that families may indeed be inconvenienced.

For, if action is not taken now, in decades to come it will rest upon the shoulders of the children of tomorrow's strikers to bear the considerable financial onus of helping their parents whose public sector pensions will have dwindled in value by so much that they will be worth squat.

That is what he meant by "inconvenience", wasn't it?

Why social care should strike tomorrow

Picture: Rex Features

As a Conservative, it is natural that Cabinet secretary Francis Maude (pictured getting the beers in) would speak out against the public sector workers' pensions strike on 30 November. 

Last week he suggested that, instead of taking to the streets, employees engaged in a nice a cup of tea and a sit-down for 15 minutes. Today he has been counting the cost to the economy of the one-day stoppage: £500m, he estimates. Frightening.

What, then, is his opinion of last week's sale of Northern Rock by chancellor George Osborne at a loss to the taxpayer of between £400m and £650m, depending on whose figures you believe?

If Maude's £500m estimate of the cost of next week's action is accurate, that makes a cumulative hit to the nation's balance sheet of about £1bn in a couple of weeks, half of it due to the government's intransigence over pensions.

With accountancy management as exemplary as that, the Coalition should now perhaps review its willingness to blame Gordon Brown and the Eurozone for the nation's economic woes.

Oh, and just to get you in the right frame of mind for next week's pensions strike, the Daily Mirror reports that Maude is in line for a £731,000 retirement pot.

As if you needed any encouragement...

Picture: Rex Features

Many public sector employees, including social workers, can only dream of the prospect of a 2.3% pay rise. That is the going rate, according to figures from IDSPay.co.uk, published on Left Foot Forward in a blog by Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke.

With inflation hovering around 5%, October's figure is a comparatively paltry sum - yet one that is lower than the 2.4% average awarded in September.

The publication of these statistics could not have been better timed. This week, the High Pay Commission reported that top earners have enjoyed - and "enjoyed" truly is the word - a piss-taking rise of 4,000% over the past 30 years as the average wage increased just threefold.

Mind you, it didn't deter headhunter Dr Heather McGregor from telling Radio 4's Today programme that anyone who thought the disparity unfair ought to consider moving to Cuba.

A more enlightening piece of analysis from a person who holds a doctorate is difficult to imagine...

...Enter Dr Vince Cable (pictured, thinking), seemingly intent on rubbing the entire deposits of a salt mine into a gaping wound before adding a squeeze of lemon. The business secretary has concluded that employers are finding it too difficult to shed staff and employment law should be reformed to make it easier for them, the poor lambs.

Two-and-a-half million people might disagree with his assessment of employment law, of course.

His call prompted Unite to describe the proposals as a "charter for bullies and rogue employers".

So next week, when trade union members strike about proposed changes to public sector pensions, it may be worth them also bearing in mind the signals sent from those who very much have - like the top earners and their apologists - and those who want to remove what workplace rights you have - like Cable.

Because when the pensions fight is won, another battle will inevitably start.

Picture: Rex Features

Someone ought to have told the TUC that the inviolable Cliff Richard (pictured discovering atheism) had a god-given right to an annual crack at the Christmas number one. 

Short of The Pogues coming up with something half-decent, I hope the nation's affections will turn to a single by a newly formed band, The Workers.

Under the auspices of the TUC, they have released a remix of the Canned Heat classic, Let's Work Together, to mark the day of action by public sector employees on 30 November.

One of the stars of the popular beat combo is Margaret Greer, a social worker from Enfield, north London, who once auditioned for The X Factor. She didn't appear on the programme so clearly she is talented.

Greer is quoted on the TUC website as saying: "If we don't take action we are walking blindly into poverty. Every worker should be striking as our future - and the future of young people - depend on it."

So why not buy Let's Work Together? With some judicious downloading, you can time it just right to deny Sir Cliff his annual pilgrimage to the top of the charts.

You need not feel (too) guilty about it either: 40p of each sale goes to Age UK.

The London Borough of Wandsworth is home to the subway (pictured) in A Clockwork Orange where a homeless man was beaten up by the droogs. Forty years later, the council appears to be threatening to deliver a good kicking - metaphorically - to its housing tenants. 

First, it warned that entire families could be evicted from its properties if just a single member of the household was convicted of involvement in last summer's riots - with an arrogant disregard of the deleterious effects of homelessness on the very young.

Now Wandsworth is turning its guns on unemployed people.

Going even further than work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith's draconian plan to cut the housing benefit of tenants who have failed to accrue enough working hours for entitlement (under the government's subjective measure), the south London council has warned that unemployed people could lose their homes if they remain jobless two years after moving in.

Wandsworth Council is expected this week to approve the changes to the conditions of housing tenure, under which fixed-term tenancies will be introduced to facilitate the eviction process.

In times of rising unemployment and seemingly perpetual economic crisis, it falls upon Wandsworth to finally turn the screw on those on low incomes and at risk of vulnerability.

What William Beveridge (left), with his emphasis on access to decent housing, would have made of this, one can only imagine. Actually, you could have a darned good guess.

Pictures: Rex Features

Industrial action and the Conservatives are not natural bedfellows, notwithstanding (pictured drinking water) education secretary Michael Gove's appearance on a picket line in a former life as a journalist. 

What his current colleagues think of Militant Mike's picketing past can only be the subject of conjecture (youthful impetuosity, perhaps?), but at least he stuck it out longer than the 15 minutes to which Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has suggested the public sector unions limit themselves on 30 November.

In a gesture that could be described as avuncular - or patronising - Maude pointed out that, by nipping out for only a quarter of an hour, staff could avoid being docked pay.

It sounded like he was recommending a coffee break, a sip-in perhaps.

I may be making assumptions but I cannot imagine Maude's boss, Dave Cameron, being too impressed with the prospect of our nation's public servants heading for the canteen or a coffee shop to sit down with a hot drink when they could be behind their desks.

Why? Well, on Friday, the prime minister made known his disapproval of protests that were not done "on two feet".

I will not nitpick this particular use of words, but already this year the students have tried the two-feet option, as have thousands of trade unionists, something, by a process of elimination, Cameron ought to support.

We all know he didn't but the question has to be asked: which protests DOES he support?

Picture: Rex Features

Think tank Demos has devised an index to evaluate how local authorities in England and Wales are managing the public spending cuts.

Called Coping with the Cuts, website visitors can use a pull-down menu to see how their local authority's disability services score on personalisation, eligibility and budget changes. 

Although there is an explanation as to how Demos arrived at its rankings, I was surprised to find the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham coping "well", even though the cuts level was assessed as "very high".

This is a council seemingly on a mission to make life difficult for its service users, including disabled people.

Although the Demos research is a useful pointer on the impact of the cuts, the Hammersmith summary has left me feeling a need for a definition of "coping well". 

Um, "cutting well"? Hope not.

Labour leader Ed Miliband came in for some flak two months ago when he told trade union members caught up in the local government pensions dispute that they should desist from striking during negotiations.

Whether you agreed with Miliband or disagreed with him, it was a point of view honestly held (I hope). But it was also a standpoint that one could imagine the employers nodding along to, much like those toy dogs that were once the must-have accessory for rear parcel shelves of Ford Cortinas. 

If Miliband's way is the key to a solution, what explanation could Doncaster Council possibly have for sending Section 188 redundancy notices to staff in the middle of talks about the authority's proposals to cut pay and introduce inferior terms and conditions?

The talks were planned to conclude on 14 November but Doncaster, in what looks suspiciously like an act of sabotage, is attempting to force the hands of 10,000 staff, or even cynically provoke industrial action in order to dismiss them more easily and re-employ the chosen few as it sees fit.

If it is wrong to take industrial action in the middle of negotiations, as Miliband believes, then it is equally wrong for employers to threaten thousands of staff with their livelihoods during talks that ostensibly are being held to seek a solultion.

The only message it sends is that the employer, in this case Doncaster Council, has no intention of thrashing out a deal.

Ed Miliband may wish to clarify that statement he made to the TUC conference. 

Picture: Rex Features