The cuts - a look at some alternatives

At a time when we're told there are no alternatives, here's a movement that's exploring them. See what you think.

It Cuts Both Ways...The Alternatives from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.

The government cuts

Many people feel that the government has turned their back on them due to the massive cuts. On Saturday 26 March there will be a protest against the government’s cuts. This will see the UK’s biggest single protest since the anti-Iraq war march in 2003. Many people around the country will travel to London and make their voices heard at their anger of government’s cuts. The march will begin from London’s Victoria Embankment between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges at 12:00pm.

The cuts are absolutely ridiculous; they seem to be killing off young people when they are the future of the society. This is what, I think, the government doesn’t seem to realize.

My brother is due to begin university in September. He will be studying English Literature; his mind is set on going to university this year. To some extent I’m worried about the amount of debt he will be in at the end of his degree. Will there even be enough jobs available for university graduates?

I’m still considering going university, there is a lot I’d like to learn and there is no social life like university. But I have always been put off by the tuition fees – even before they put up the fees. I find university life rather interesting and it’s quite heart-breaking that I may have to forget about going to university all together because I’ll be drowning in debt by the time I graduate.

I know a few people that have dropped out of college because of the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) cuts and also the rise of tuition fees, they feel that it isn’t worth going to university and getting themselves in larges sums of debt. I know many young people were only attending college because of EMA but I suppose they could have come up with a better alternative rather than calling the whole thing to a close.

What I’m mostly upset about is them getting rid of the FJF Future Jobs Fund. My brother got his first job through the Future Jobs Fund and although the contract was only for 6 months, he got the skills and experience he needed that will attract potential employers. Now it is going to be tougher than it was before for young people with little or no experience to find employment. This is what happens when the government tries to fix something that isn’t broken. They are supposed to be creating more opportunities not taking them away.

Just because of the government, people should not give up on their dreams; there are other options than just going to university. This is the chance for people to think and be more aware about what is out there. There are apprenticeships where it is possible to earn money while gaining essential skills required in a working environment and I’m sure there are more choices out there.

Despite the government, my family still remain optimistic and believe that something better will come along. There is always an option. The cuts have made me think about how much we take for granted. 

Me and My Unemployed Self

You may think, just as I did, that getting up at a really early time to get ready to go and work for someone you don't like is just not worthwhile, doesn't feel worthwhile and doesn't promote job satisfaction. But being unemployed is not a case of "I can stay home and do whatever I want".

I, like most people, absolutely loved the idea of not having to work, staying at home and watching daytime TV. I quite enjoyed the idea of staying up late and waking up at some time in the afternoon. But that didn't last long because eventually my friends and people I knew all started to get jobs. They quickly took a dim view of the unemployed, and as I had been part of that club for some time, in their eyes I was dossing and becoming a scrounger. I was constantly getting pissed off with the same old spiel that came out of their mouths that I could recite it word for word. I became bored and regularly ended up sitting at home on my own watching crap TV.

Until my dad told me about it, I didn't even know that the job centre existed! That I could sign a piece of paper and the government would give me some money! I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to get some money for sitting on my backside. I thought I'd won the lottery. In the beginning it was great, just sign your name and get over £100 a fortnight! I could buy my tobacco, go out, buy games, it felt good. I had money!

But when you break it down and work it out, it's not nearly enough for you to live on. The government clearly have no idea what they are talking about. They worked it out wrongly at some stage. What if they had to live on £60 a week could they? What would they say then?

There is a requirement that the adviser matches a job to you. Now, you have to apply for these jobs even if you are neither qualified nor experienced. If you don't, then your benefits are stopped. This is something which all staff at job centres are pre-programmed to utter.
I soon had an internal battle of whether I could put up with the rigmarole of going to the job centre and having to put up with all the aggro just to get some money.

After some time you get promoted, the worst promotion ever, to "New Deal". It's centred around looking in newspapers, the Internet or using the phone to call employers whilst sitting in a room full of people tired and pissed off. Fail to attend, then - yep - your benefits get stopped. The only beneficial part is the chance to gain some skills from voluntary work. There are two ways out, get a job and work for your money or finish the program and start from the beginning.

These high and mighty advisers constantly shirking their responsibilities is a constant source of anger, but I still have to go through the motions or my benefits get stopped. I have been back and forth through this system so much that it felt as though that was my job. So I became trapped in this cycle of can't get a job due to lack of skills and can't learn the skills because no one is willing to teach these skills.

So, to recap, being unemployed lost its initial appeal long ago.

So I guess this is how it's going to be....

Well, we all knew it was going to be doom and gloom since the Comprehensive Spending Review last autumn. I've been harping on about how things are going to be crap in earlier postings. Well earlier this week a few stories have emerged that offer some pointers as to how things are starting to pan out.

NHS

There is a report out produced by a trade-union-funded website that goes by the name of False Economy. (False Economy are funded by, among others: Unison, the Fire Brigades Union, TUC, and the Public and Commercial Services Union.) The report is claiming that job losses within the NHS are going to be double what the Government has claimed. False Economy used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data from NHS trusts nationwide. Their survey is incomplete because some of the NHS trusts didn't respond, and some are suggesting the final total may be higher than False Economy's estimation. False Economy predict that job losses within the NHS over the next four years, certainly including frontline staff. ie Doctors and nurses, will total 50, 000. The Government accused the report and the unions of scaremongering.

The Daily Mirror, Wednesday 23 February, helpfully provided us with the thoughts of David Cameron and the Conservatives from last year:

"It is there in black and white behind me. I'll cut the deficit not the NHS."

"We recognise its special place in society, so we will not cut the NHS."

Both of these quotes come from David Cameron in 2010, and from the Tory election manifesto:

"We're the party of the NHS. We back its funding and have vision for its future."

The General Secretary of TUC, Brendan Barber, said the research by the False Economy report, "gives the lie to government claims the NHS was safe in their hands".

Should the figures from the False Economy report turn out to be accurate the Government will no doubt be able to blame the health authority managers and trot out the familiar phrase, back office job cuts.

Child Poverty

Save the Children analysed data for local authorities from across the country and concluded that 1.6 million children are living in poverty and warned that the situation would only worsen as unemployment was set to rise. Ms Sally Copley, who is the Head of UK policy for the charity said: "It's a national scandal that 1.6 million children are growing up in severe poverty." Save the Children said their analysis showed that in 29 local authority areas, more than one in five children live in poverty. Nationwide the figure was one in seven.

We all know that benefits are frozen, food and fuel prices are increasing and VAT has returned to its full 20% rate since the end of January.

So things are getting worse and as time goes on this year they will deteriorate further for many people.

Sickness Benefit

Lastly, can I just mention what used to be known as sickness benefit. People will remember that the Government said at the time of the Comprehensive Spending Review it would review how it was evaluated. True to its word, the Government has been running pilot schemes under their new system.

One of the authors of the the review and someone who was crucial in devising the new medical assessment, Professor Paul Gregg, who is described by the Guardian (23 February) as an economist and a welfare expert, said: "the test is badly malfunctioning, the current assessment is a complete mess".

People with terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis and serious mental illness have been found fit to work. This was in one of the early roll out schemes, I must say I'm not surprised - these people couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery....

We are all in this together....

Ten days ago there was an article in London's Evening Standard newspaper about a fraudster who managed to con his way into a job with a city investment bank that payed £165k a year.

After he hoodwinked a City headhunting firm, they put him forward to apply for a job as a deputy chief executive with this bank. He blagged his way through two interviews and Bob's your uncle. His scam only lasted a little over a month, by which time he fraudulently "earned" himself £14,500. His sentence was 100 hours of community service and 18 months probation.

In the Metro newspaper, Wednesday 9 February there was a story about another bloke, who was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for scamming housing benefit to the tune of £28 grand over the course of three years.

Both these individuals pleaded guilty to the offences they were charged with, which in layman's terms is theft.

The first man's lies were discovered after a month and he fiddled half the money that the second man fiddled, who kept up his lying for more than three years.

The first man stole from a Middle Eastern bank, the second man committed the cardinal sin of stealing from the British taxpayer. I think they both should have been locked up. But fiddling benefits is one of this country's sacred cows. Please don't misunderstand me, as I've said before fiddling benefit is cheap, shabby and just plain wrong. It's also taking the taxpayers' money.

Which brings me to another thing that is also plainly wrong - not paying your tax. On Newsnight, Monday 31 January they estimated that there is £15 billion of unpaid tax in the UK. At the moment Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is pursuing 22 companies through the courts for a total of £4.7 billion. Some are household names; Boots,Vodaphone, Barclays bank, and Topshop, to name but a few.

Later in the item they were talking about some of the protests against the cuts. Before I go further I must point out that I'm not, nor have I ever been a member of UK Uncut. This was the protest group that the report focussed on. They are one of the so-called new breed of protest movements who are now organising themselves utilising mobile phones, the internet, and social media.

UK Uncut's focus is unpaid tax and the effect the cuts are having on people's quality of life. The report looked at UK Uncut's protests on Oxford Street. They had protested outside flagship stores of the target shops and chains. And I think they have a point.

The basic point I'm trying to make here, is that things aren't equal, nor are they fair and some of us are suffering a lot more than others.

Blue Monday

Depending on who you read, the most depressing day of the year is either Monday 17th or Monday 24th January. Quite how they work this out goodness knows! Suffice to say, I think for all of us it's a strange time of the year. It's the time of the year for resolutions, predictions and promises.

For this coalition Government it seems to be a time for broken promises. I don't know enough about it to list them all, but off the top of my head I can think of a handful: EMA, VAT, NHS, child benefit changes and student loans. To be fair, it was only the Lib-Dems who promised to do away with student loans. The coalition has put them up three times over!

The point I'm making is, as promises, they've all been broken.

The Education Maintenance Allowance
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said that the Labour lot were scaremongering when they said that the Tories would scrap it. It gets voted on today, (19th January) but it is almost a certainty to go through and they'll be abolished come the summer. Do we not want our population to be educated?

Child Benefit
David Cameron said he was going to leave it alone. Still it's only those who have one parent earning £40k or more that will go without - a broken promise nonetheless.

The NHS
The coalition said that there would be no top-down reorganisation yet even though medical bodies, the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association to name but two, are advising caution, Andrew Lansley the Health Minister, is boasting about the need for wholesale reorganisation and doing away with Primary Care Trusts at one fell swoop, another broken promise. The biggest shake up of the NHS in decades.

And then there's VAT
A month before the election, David Cameron said that his plans didn't involve an increase in VAT. Another broken promise. A two-and-a-half per cent increase in tax doesn't sound like very much (OK so the VAT doesn't go on food or children's clothes) but it's going to affect everything - all of the people, all over the country.

It is universally acknowledged that the cost of living is going up. I heard on the news one morning this week that Britain's rate of inflation is higher than that of Zimbabwe! The cost of food has risen, the cost of domestic fuel has risen and the cost of transport has risen. Both public transport and the cost of petrol/diesel.

But don't worry, you'll know just how unhappy you are
And this Government's latest wheeze to help us all to come to terms with this pain? David Cameron is going to spend £2 million and ask the Office of National Statistics to come up with a happiness index! I don't think any of us need £2 million to point out to Mr Cameron that if the cost of living is going up, we are all likely to be less happy.

Whatever next?

No-one seems to disagree that there are going to be huge job losses. Half a million in the public sector are to go in the next three or four years. The Government inadvertently owned up to this at the time of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010. They have not revised this prediction in the three months since. Local Government cuts will start to hit in April and that, presumably, is when job losses will begin to kick in.

It is widely predicted that alongside these public sector job losses there will be a further half a million jobs to go in the private sector over the same time period. I think we can all recognise that there is an interdependency that goes on between these two sectors. So I guess we can see unemployment figures rising but how far, who knows? For some of us, more blue Mondays are on the cards.

Waiting lists....

I have lived where I live now for five and a half years. Six weeks before that my local council placed me on the housing waiting list. Due to fact that I am a single man and have no children I qualified to be on the list, but was not deemed to "be in priority need".

I feel I clearly understand this. It's bloody obvious that a single man in his forties is not in as MUCH need of housing as say, a single woman in her twenties with a toddler. Don't get me wrong, housing is a basic human need, we all need a roof over our heads.

I found out the other day, courtesy of Ken Livingstone in the local press, that the number of people who are on my local authority housing waiting list number 15,500. Is it any wonder that in the five-and-a-half years that I've been on that infernal list I've not heard a dicky-bird from my local council?

In the 2001 census the population of my north London borough was put at 202,824. Local estimates and surveys place a higher figure on that now. A study by the local council estimated it to be 223,171 in 2007. So I console myself with the thought that there are plenty worse off than me on that waiting list of 15,500.

Have you had similar experiences? We would like to get a picture of what it is like to be on the housing waiting list. Please post your comments below.