The coalition government claims that the private sector will take up the slack created by sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector workers.
That’s the theory. OK, let’s look at the reality.
Earlier this year steelmaker Corus ripped the heart out of Teesside with savage redundancies. Now it transpires that the outgoing chief executive has been paid more than £2million for this successful act of butchery.
Isn’t it fun watching the Condem Alliance fighting like ferrets in a sack over Trident? They are squabbling over whether the £20 billion cost of the current plans should be taken from the Ministry of Defence budget or supplied by central Government.
Fox won’t even agree to have the programme scaled back from four to three submarines.
He says: “At current levels of technology, it is very hard to manage a continuous deterrent with three submarines rather than four.”
Easy for me!
Meanwhile former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell has called for the weapon system to be included in a forthcoming review of defence spending. In this case it could be cut back.
He says: “How can you possibly take on such a large financial commitment as Trident without considering the military and political implications?
“If fierce cuts are to be made in Britain’s conventional forces, surely we have to consider whether replacing Trident can be justified.”
A much better policy would be to abolish Trident completely and put the entire cost, the immediate £20billion and the eventual £97billion into life-enhancing services rather than extermination sectors of the State.
August, 2010 newsletter
The Gathering Storm
Though we are still waiting to discover the fine detail of the government’s spending review, to be revealed in October, only the most blinkered individual could fail to see the direction of its thinking. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has declared its intention to abolish the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the Advisory Council on Libraries (ACL). Library campaigners have long called for strong leadership to be shown in the sector, but it is not clear what will replace the MLA and ACL. If control of libraries were to be simply handed over to local government lock, stock and leaking barrel, it would hardly be progress. Some councils have a very bad record indeed over libraries, Wirral being the prime candidate for disapproval. If the aims enshrined in the 1964 Libraries Act to sustain a “comprehensive and efficient service” are be safequarded there needs to be a proper Library Development Agency, in which the voices of the users are paramount.
The government continues to speak of public spending cuts of between 25% and 40%. Given that libraries don’t even have the largely fictitious protection allegedly offered to health and overseas development (my local hospital is losing 300 full-time equivalent posts, possibly my wife’s job included), the prospects are not good and cuts will probably be at the upper end of the scale. Already there are savage service reductions in Southampton, Hampshire, Blackburn, Lewisham, Bolton, Doncaster, Cambridgeshire and elsewhere. Protests are beginning.
Some of the cuts, for example in Lewisham and Bolton are on a similar scale to those that were repulsed in Wirral. Campaigners logically should bombard the Minister with letters pointing this out and asking him to act. On the ground, the protests need to be built. The marches, lobbies and Read Ins in Blackburn, Hampshire and Doncaster and the industrial action by Unison in Southampton are a start.
One third of libraries slash book budgets
One in three secondary schools has cut its library budget in the last year, a Cilip report has revealed. The School Library Group’s Sue Shaper is quoted in the TES saying: “People were shocked the government had no answer to that question (about up to date figures on the state of libraries). Alan Gibbons’ Campaign for the Book was also bringing in a lot of hearsay evidence. We wanted more scientific meat on the bones.”
Well, Sue and her colleagues have provided it. The full report will appear around the time the School Libraries Commission announces its evidence. There is a link to the interim version on my blog: www.alangibbons.net. Together, these reports will provide us with ammunition to argue the case for school libraries and librarians.
Evidence alone will not defend school libraries. In tandem with robust campaigning, the reports may give the minority of head teachers who don’t understand the power of reading pause for thought. We will have to be vigilant. In the last month I have heard of more than a dozen school library closures and personally challenged some of the head teachers who have instigated them.
Make school libraries statutory- now it’s a Welsh petition
A petition has been launched, addressed to the Welsh Assembly Government, calling for school libraries to be made statutory. Sign here:
Keeping the culture of author visits alive
A worrying report in the Times Educational Supplement recently exposed the fact that some authors have seen the number of invitations to visit schools fall by 50%. Though I have not experienced such a steep decline personally none of us can be complacent about the situation. Author visits make a huge contribution to stimulating students’ interest in reading and they must continue. In fact, they should be expanded. According to one Arts Council official only 10% of schools organizes author visits!
Where budgets are under extreme pressure I have found that some of the following can help:
*two schools sharing an author. This means half the fee but also half the travel and accommodation costs which are sometimes a bigger obstacle than the author’s fee. The author often visits one school in the morning and one in the afternoon.
*clusters of schools sharing an author. In some areas a school with excellent facilities acts as a central venue. Other schools then bus in their pupils for a large performance event.
*support from parent bodies.
*in extremis, some schools charge £1 or £2 per pupil to participate in an author event. In principle I am opposed to this but, if visits would not happen without a modest charge, I think it has to be considered. I still maintain that author visits should be central to the curriculum and funded from school budgets where possible however. At the same time some school are ‘sharing’ me, others are booking me for six-day residences. This implies that it is as much about pedagogical will and understanding as it is about resources.
Smallest cash pots are the most likely to be cut, says report
One in three secondary schools has cut their library budget in the last year, a new …
Oh, the agony! Oh, the ecstasy!
We’re broke, they cry. The money has all gone, they wail.
Well, not if you work in the City of London, the square mile that plunged us into this mess.
For their unique expertise in crashing the world economy into a lamp post called greed and moronic chutzpah, more than 2,800 people in the City took home more than £1million last year, the Financial Services Authority has revealed.
The FSA, you will remember, is keen to avoid “rewards for failure.”
Was that telling fact plastered on the front page of your morning newspaper, I hear you ask.
No, it was hidden away in the financial pages.
Education Secretary Michael Gove famously claimed that 2,000 schools had asked to become academies. The figure is 153. That doesn’t add up, does it?
Now this is odd. Just when every other area of government spending is being cut by between 25% and 40% the British taxpayer is being forced to cough up the money to pay for the first airstrip on St Helena.
That’s right, I am talking about the remote island where we exiled Napoleon Bonaparte.
4,000 people live on St Helena, which is 1,200 miles off the African coast. The airstrip is going to cost £100 million pounds.
So how did this curious anomaly come about, you may ask. Well, let me say that I know for certain it has nothing to do with the fact that Lord Ashcroft, who funds the Tory party, is a long time supporter of the airstrip. It is outrageous to say that the decision was taken because he ‘buzzed’ the island in his private plane to publicise the need for an airport. It is scurrilous to say that it is because he demanded the airstrip in a radio interview.
Any of you subversive types who says otherwise needs a damned good horse-whipping!
Is this the most sickening thing you ever heard.
NHS chiefs in Dorset hired a ‘troubleshooter’ on £2,557 a day to make budget cuts. No, that isn’t a joke. Derek Smith- such a charismatic name, don’t you think- also claimed £19,539 for travel, food and ’subsistence’ in the last financial year. Maybe Mr Smith should try subsisting on the income of a nurse or ward clerk.
Trust chairman Jeffrey Ellwood said he did not believe the payment was excessive and insisted Mr Smith contributed to a viable recovery plan.
Oh, that’s all right then.
In another fine display of fiscal rectitude, it has been revealed that the taxpayer is spending more than £15million to send the children of British diplomats and military officer to private schools. These include Blair’s alma mater Fettes College, Winchester, Roedean and Marlborough.
Apparently the fees can amount to £22,000 a year, pretty much the annual salary of a nurse or schoolteacher. These payments continue even when overseas staff return to the UK!
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