Ask your councillor to help reduce the gap between rich and poor
UK income inequality is among the highest in the developed world and evidence from The Equality Trust and others shows that this is harmful for almost everyone. People in more equal societies live longer, have better mental health and are more socially mobile. Community life is stronger where the income gap is narrower, children do better at school and they are less likely to become teenage parents. When inequality is reduced people trust each other more, there is less violence and rates of imprisonment are lower. If we want to build a better society, it is essential we take action now to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
Evidence presented by The Equality Trust shows that there are different ways to reduce income inequality. Societies can either redistribute income (as they tend to do in Scandinavia) or narrow pay gaps in the workplace (as they tend to do in Japan and certain US states such as New Hampshire).
The British Social Attitudes Survey in December 2010 showed that a majority of people think the Chief Executive of a large company should be paid no more than six times the pay of a typical factory worker.
Evidence collated by One Society indicates that pay gaps are, on average, 15 to 1 in local authorities, 10 to 1 in large charities and a huge 262 to 1 in FTSE 100 companies. Inequality is built into the very foundations of our economy.
But we can change this. Councils can be a great force for reducing the pay gap. They can tackle inequality through their own pay policies and also, crucially, through their influence on private-sector contractors.
Email your councillor by following this link:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/act-local-reduce-the-gap
North Somerset has the 7th largest gap between rich and poor in the country.
Friday, 18 November 2011
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Young Protestors Stormed Council Meeting
Young protesters stormed council meeting
Bethan Evans, Reporter, Weston Mercury Thursday, November 17, 2011
CROWDS of young people stormed the North Somerset Executive meeting on Tuesday night, protesting against the proposed £600,000 cuts to their youth services. Many youth workers and young protesters made their case to councillors to urge them to stop the cuts which are proposed in the council budget for next year. One of the youth workers, Charlie Lane, said: “The young people want their views and opinions heard. You are trying to steal their future and if you do that you will pay when these young people could be sat in your seats.” Another speaker, on behalf of youth workers, Jean Lord said: “If there is no youth services run by experienced and trained workers, untrained volunteers may move in their own agendas, the extremes of which could be religion and political agendas. “They could then impart that on to young people and who knows how many others will become troubled.” Dozen of young protesters came with placards and chanted in the Town Hall to get their voices heard, while supported by family and friends. Councillor Mike Bell, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on North Somerset Council, said: “The plans to cut the youth service to almost nothing are absolutely the wrong kind of choice to be making. We will do everything we can to persuade Conservative council leaders to think again. “It was great to see so many young people turn out at the Town Hall. It is so important that councillors listen to the voice of local people and I hope the force of this protest ruffled a few feathers in our stuffy council chamber.”
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Teenagers protest at cuts to Youth Service
Teenagers protest at cuts to youth service, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 Bristol Evening Post
Picture: Jon Kent
PLACARD-waving teenagers mounted a protest on the steps of Weston-super-Mare Town Hall to campaign against sweeping cuts to the youth service.
More than 30 teenagers from Portishead Youth Service, waving placards with the slogans Save our Youth Service, Save our Youth Workers, chanted as councillors walked into last night's council meeting.
Teenagers, who attend the Harbour Road centre, stood on the steps before packing the council chamber chanting 'What do we want? Youth workers, when do want them – now'.
The protest follows news that the cash-strapped authority is to reduce the youth service budget from £1.142 million to £282,736 by 2013.
The move will see all 24 youth worker posts across the district deleted and funding currently allocated to youth clubs cut to almost zero.
But, as many youth workers work on a sessional or part-time basis, the actual figure of staff reductions could be far greater. Instead the authority is asking community groups, parents, churches, schools, parish and town councils to step in and fill the gap in provision left by the cuts.
The youth service will be replaced by a new community family service which will provide support to the 300 most vulnerable families – 900 children – across the district.
The news of the cuts comes at the same time as Portishead Youth Centre has just undergone a £1.1 million refurbishment. Youngsters addressed councillors at the meeting, highlighting the importance of the youth service.
Charlie Lane, 18, who has been attending Portishead Youth Club since she was 11, led the protest.
Charlie, who works as a senior volunteer at the youth centre, said: "The youth service is vital to all these young people and they are here today to show what it means to them. The council is stealing from our future."
Fellow volunteer Declan Marlow, 19, said: "The youth service helps young people develop key skills and social skills needed to grow and develop. The youth service is a vital service for the young people here."
Portishead resident Paul Maltby said: "Portishead has a state-of-the -art youth centre but the council is to slash its funding, throwing its future into doubt. The council has let the youth of Portishead down badly – please do not take away the lifeline of the youth club as well."
Portishead Youth Club management committee chairman Roger Sainsbury said: "I'm convinced that good professional youth work for all young people is the best way to support the vulnerable. If we don't invest in young people now, we'll end up paying for it tomorrow. We now have a £1 million world class youth centre and I've seen the value of good professional youth work for young people."
UNISON members – who paid for the coach to take teenagers to the protest – also spoke at the meeting about the impact of the cuts.
North Somerset Council's executive member for children and young people, Councillor Jeremy Blatchford, said a survey of provision in the district revealed there were already more than 600 providers of youth activities in the district, including Guides, Scouts, church groups and sports clubs. He added that youth provision was not just the responsibility of the local authority.
The protest came at the same meeting as the authority endorsed its medium-term financial plan which outlines cuts of £47.3 million over the next four years, including £18.6 million in the financial year 2012/13. The budget proposals will be agreed by the executive in February but will have to be ratified by the full council later in the month.
Picture: Jon Kent
PLACARD-waving teenagers mounted a protest on the steps of Weston-super-Mare Town Hall to campaign against sweeping cuts to the youth service.
More than 30 teenagers from Portishead Youth Service, waving placards with the slogans Save our Youth Service, Save our Youth Workers, chanted as councillors walked into last night's council meeting.
Teenagers, who attend the Harbour Road centre, stood on the steps before packing the council chamber chanting 'What do we want? Youth workers, when do want them – now'.
The protest follows news that the cash-strapped authority is to reduce the youth service budget from £1.142 million to £282,736 by 2013.
The move will see all 24 youth worker posts across the district deleted and funding currently allocated to youth clubs cut to almost zero.
But, as many youth workers work on a sessional or part-time basis, the actual figure of staff reductions could be far greater. Instead the authority is asking community groups, parents, churches, schools, parish and town councils to step in and fill the gap in provision left by the cuts.
The youth service will be replaced by a new community family service which will provide support to the 300 most vulnerable families – 900 children – across the district.
The news of the cuts comes at the same time as Portishead Youth Centre has just undergone a £1.1 million refurbishment. Youngsters addressed councillors at the meeting, highlighting the importance of the youth service.
Charlie Lane, 18, who has been attending Portishead Youth Club since she was 11, led the protest.
Charlie, who works as a senior volunteer at the youth centre, said: "The youth service is vital to all these young people and they are here today to show what it means to them. The council is stealing from our future."
Fellow volunteer Declan Marlow, 19, said: "The youth service helps young people develop key skills and social skills needed to grow and develop. The youth service is a vital service for the young people here."
Portishead resident Paul Maltby said: "Portishead has a state-of-the -art youth centre but the council is to slash its funding, throwing its future into doubt. The council has let the youth of Portishead down badly – please do not take away the lifeline of the youth club as well."
Portishead Youth Club management committee chairman Roger Sainsbury said: "I'm convinced that good professional youth work for all young people is the best way to support the vulnerable. If we don't invest in young people now, we'll end up paying for it tomorrow. We now have a £1 million world class youth centre and I've seen the value of good professional youth work for young people."
UNISON members – who paid for the coach to take teenagers to the protest – also spoke at the meeting about the impact of the cuts.
North Somerset Council's executive member for children and young people, Councillor Jeremy Blatchford, said a survey of provision in the district revealed there were already more than 600 providers of youth activities in the district, including Guides, Scouts, church groups and sports clubs. He added that youth provision was not just the responsibility of the local authority.
The protest came at the same meeting as the authority endorsed its medium-term financial plan which outlines cuts of £47.3 million over the next four years, including £18.6 million in the financial year 2012/13. The budget proposals will be agreed by the executive in February but will have to be ratified by the full council later in the month.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Young People are our Future
Over 50 children and young people from Portishead and Weston Youth Clubs demonstrated outside North Somerset Council's meeting tonight, over plans to slash Youth Services, close down Youth Clubs and make 60 part-time youth workers redundant. They were carrying hand made banners and placards, and chanting to councillors as they arrived at the meeting. Their request was simple - Don't Close our Youth Clubs.
Unusually for a North Somerset Council meeting there were 10 members of the public who spoke - many of them about Youth Services, emphasising the point that young people are our future.
Many of the young people who spoke talked about the help they had received from youth workers when they had experienced bullying, and that youth services had also helped them with training and new skills. Charlie Lane, leader of the Portishead Youth Club campaign, told the councillors that they were stealing her future.
One adult speaker warned the council that using untrained volunteers in youth clubs may mean children are subjected to extreme political and religious views. She also told them there were good economic reasons for retaining youth services, which would avoid extra costs for schools, the youth offending service and prisons. She went on to say that if North Somerset cuts the Youth Service there will be costs to the community in terms of anti-social behaviour. Another speaker warned the councillors that the young people present would become the councillors of the future and would be involved in making decisions about them, when they are older and vulnerable.
The budget, was as per usual, listed as the last item on the agenda. Earlier in the day we had put in a request for it to be moved up the agenda, so that the young people could hear what their councillors had to say and then would be able to get back home at a reasonable hour. Our request was denied.
At the last minute they did agree to bring the item up the agenda. Opposition councillors got up to express their concerns about the budget and the budget setting process. This took about 15 minutes, and then the councillors voted to endorse the medium term financial plan as a policy document, and to refer it and opposition alternatives to scrutiny panels. DEBATE WAS EFFECTIVELY SHUT DOWN. Hopefully people in North Somerset will see the coverage on both BBC and ITV local news, and when we demonstrate again in February there will be more speakers, and more people shouting, until the councillors here us.
ITV News link here -
http://www.itv.com/westcountry-east/fears-over-youth-cuts61243/
Councillor Blatchford, Executive member for Children and Young People was on the 6 pm ITV Local News comparing the preventative work done with young people to fixing potholes. Doesn't Councillor Blatchford realise that Youth Services is preventative work, and in any case as a result of the council's reorganisation of Children's Services to focus on only 300 families, there will be no preventative work done.
UNISON Speech to Council
This is the speech I would have made if I hadn't been cut short by the Chairman
Those of you that were here in February may remember that I expressed UNISON’s view that the public spending cuts are unfair, because they hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, and are also unnecessary, because there are other ways to cut the deficit, such as clamping down on tax avoidance, introducing a Robin Hood tax and making our taxation system fairer. 9 months since I last spoke at a council meeting, we are now starting to see more clearly the impact of the cuts, and we are also seeing greater anger at our very unequal and unfair society – anger that ordinary people are being made to pay for the financial crisis with cuts to services, jobs, pay and pensions, while those who caused the crisis are actually getting richer. Occupy protests are springing up all over the world, including in nearby Bristol, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have recently expressed their concerns over corporate greed and massive inequality.
As I have also said previously we have some sympathy for councillors because the cuts have been imposed on you by central government. BUT the party that governs North Somerset is the party that governs the country – at least currently. And you have a duty to your constituents to make it very clear to your colleagues in Westminster how the cuts are affecting local people, and demand that they change their course of action. BUT it is also our view that you as a council have made the situation worse for yourself by previous actions you have taken, including outsourcing services, whereby you have effectively put large parts of your budget outside your control. Councillors might want to ask what penalties are being imposed on the support services contractor for the delay in procurement savings?
This evening you are considering the medium term financial plan – appendix 3 of which contains a spreadsheet of figures representing money and jobs to be cut. But what this spreadsheet doesn’t tell you – is anything about the impact of these cuts on people’s lives - for that you need to talk to your constituents and you also need to look at the equality impact assessments. Those assessments with high impacts have been summarised for you in Appendix 6, but you should really download them in full from the council’s website. Once you’ve read them, you will need to seriously consider whether the statements made in these assessments about how the council will mitigate the impact of these cuts go far enough, or are even in fact possible, given the current financial situation.
I want to briefly mention some of the cuts you are considering.
In Adult Social Services you are proposing to cut a massive £14 million from the services you provide to elderly and disabled people. Councillors will be aware that in a recent survey commissioned by the disability charity Scope, which assessed the impact of local authority cuts to services for disabled children and adults, North Somerset came out 7th from bottom out of 152 local authorities. Your budget also contains proposals to cut the services you provide to people suffering domestic abuse, services to prevent anti-social behaviour, reoffending, and homelessness – all of which will have huge impacts for some of our most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens, and will also have a significant impact on the council’s ability to meet its equalities duties.
In Children and Young People’s Services you are considering another massive cut of £12 million, involving a complete reorganisation of integrated services, which will see work focused on only 300 families, with little or no early intervention and preventative work being undertaken, and which also includes a reduction in the numbers of already overworked social workers, and downgradings of almost exclusively female admin staff. In addition you are planning a complete decimation of our youth service, only a few months after we saw the country engulfed by riots. Children and young people are our future – but their life chances are being badly affected by the public spending cuts, and this, as the recession of the 1980s has taught us, will come back to haunt us in future years.
As a trade union we are of course concerned by the proposed staffing cuts, which will not only impact on the council’s ability to deliver services, but will also have major equalities impacts because over two thirds of council employees are women, and many are part-time and low paid. In addition the economic impact of public sector job cuts is already taking its toll, with Weston super Mare seeing the 14th largest increase in unemployment in the country. A 25% reduction to the workforce of the council, which is still the district’s largest local employer, will have further serious implications for the local economy.
Over the next few months, up until when you set the budget on 21st February, you will have to decide whether your budget proposals also include enough concrete actions to mitigate the impact of the cuts, or whether you will need to use all or some of your reserves and contingency to lessen their impact, or indeed whether the proposals contain such serious equalities impacts that the legal duties imposed on you mean you cannot implement these cuts. We firmly believe that if you go ahead and implement many of the proposals in this plan then the worst case scenario is that people will die, while the best case scenario is that people will take legal action against the council, as they have done in Birmingham and more recently the Isle of Wight.
Unusually for a North Somerset Council meeting there were 10 members of the public who spoke - many of them about Youth Services, emphasising the point that young people are our future.
Many of the young people who spoke talked about the help they had received from youth workers when they had experienced bullying, and that youth services had also helped them with training and new skills. Charlie Lane, leader of the Portishead Youth Club campaign, told the councillors that they were stealing her future.
One adult speaker warned the council that using untrained volunteers in youth clubs may mean children are subjected to extreme political and religious views. She also told them there were good economic reasons for retaining youth services, which would avoid extra costs for schools, the youth offending service and prisons. She went on to say that if North Somerset cuts the Youth Service there will be costs to the community in terms of anti-social behaviour. Another speaker warned the councillors that the young people present would become the councillors of the future and would be involved in making decisions about them, when they are older and vulnerable.
The budget, was as per usual, listed as the last item on the agenda. Earlier in the day we had put in a request for it to be moved up the agenda, so that the young people could hear what their councillors had to say and then would be able to get back home at a reasonable hour. Our request was denied.
At the last minute they did agree to bring the item up the agenda. Opposition councillors got up to express their concerns about the budget and the budget setting process. This took about 15 minutes, and then the councillors voted to endorse the medium term financial plan as a policy document, and to refer it and opposition alternatives to scrutiny panels. DEBATE WAS EFFECTIVELY SHUT DOWN. Hopefully people in North Somerset will see the coverage on both BBC and ITV local news, and when we demonstrate again in February there will be more speakers, and more people shouting, until the councillors here us.
ITV News link here -
http://www.itv.com/westcountry-east/fears-over-youth-cuts61243/
Councillor Blatchford, Executive member for Children and Young People was on the 6 pm ITV Local News comparing the preventative work done with young people to fixing potholes. Doesn't Councillor Blatchford realise that Youth Services is preventative work, and in any case as a result of the council's reorganisation of Children's Services to focus on only 300 families, there will be no preventative work done.
UNISON Speech to Council
This is the speech I would have made if I hadn't been cut short by the Chairman
Those of you that were here in February may remember that I expressed UNISON’s view that the public spending cuts are unfair, because they hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, and are also unnecessary, because there are other ways to cut the deficit, such as clamping down on tax avoidance, introducing a Robin Hood tax and making our taxation system fairer. 9 months since I last spoke at a council meeting, we are now starting to see more clearly the impact of the cuts, and we are also seeing greater anger at our very unequal and unfair society – anger that ordinary people are being made to pay for the financial crisis with cuts to services, jobs, pay and pensions, while those who caused the crisis are actually getting richer. Occupy protests are springing up all over the world, including in nearby Bristol, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have recently expressed their concerns over corporate greed and massive inequality.
As I have also said previously we have some sympathy for councillors because the cuts have been imposed on you by central government. BUT the party that governs North Somerset is the party that governs the country – at least currently. And you have a duty to your constituents to make it very clear to your colleagues in Westminster how the cuts are affecting local people, and demand that they change their course of action. BUT it is also our view that you as a council have made the situation worse for yourself by previous actions you have taken, including outsourcing services, whereby you have effectively put large parts of your budget outside your control. Councillors might want to ask what penalties are being imposed on the support services contractor for the delay in procurement savings?
This evening you are considering the medium term financial plan – appendix 3 of which contains a spreadsheet of figures representing money and jobs to be cut. But what this spreadsheet doesn’t tell you – is anything about the impact of these cuts on people’s lives - for that you need to talk to your constituents and you also need to look at the equality impact assessments. Those assessments with high impacts have been summarised for you in Appendix 6, but you should really download them in full from the council’s website. Once you’ve read them, you will need to seriously consider whether the statements made in these assessments about how the council will mitigate the impact of these cuts go far enough, or are even in fact possible, given the current financial situation.
I want to briefly mention some of the cuts you are considering.
In Adult Social Services you are proposing to cut a massive £14 million from the services you provide to elderly and disabled people. Councillors will be aware that in a recent survey commissioned by the disability charity Scope, which assessed the impact of local authority cuts to services for disabled children and adults, North Somerset came out 7th from bottom out of 152 local authorities. Your budget also contains proposals to cut the services you provide to people suffering domestic abuse, services to prevent anti-social behaviour, reoffending, and homelessness – all of which will have huge impacts for some of our most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens, and will also have a significant impact on the council’s ability to meet its equalities duties.
In Children and Young People’s Services you are considering another massive cut of £12 million, involving a complete reorganisation of integrated services, which will see work focused on only 300 families, with little or no early intervention and preventative work being undertaken, and which also includes a reduction in the numbers of already overworked social workers, and downgradings of almost exclusively female admin staff. In addition you are planning a complete decimation of our youth service, only a few months after we saw the country engulfed by riots. Children and young people are our future – but their life chances are being badly affected by the public spending cuts, and this, as the recession of the 1980s has taught us, will come back to haunt us in future years.
As a trade union we are of course concerned by the proposed staffing cuts, which will not only impact on the council’s ability to deliver services, but will also have major equalities impacts because over two thirds of council employees are women, and many are part-time and low paid. In addition the economic impact of public sector job cuts is already taking its toll, with Weston super Mare seeing the 14th largest increase in unemployment in the country. A 25% reduction to the workforce of the council, which is still the district’s largest local employer, will have further serious implications for the local economy.
Over the next few months, up until when you set the budget on 21st February, you will have to decide whether your budget proposals also include enough concrete actions to mitigate the impact of the cuts, or whether you will need to use all or some of your reserves and contingency to lessen their impact, or indeed whether the proposals contain such serious equalities impacts that the legal duties imposed on you mean you cannot implement these cuts. We firmly believe that if you go ahead and implement many of the proposals in this plan then the worst case scenario is that people will die, while the best case scenario is that people will take legal action against the council, as they have done in Birmingham and more recently the Isle of Wight.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Friday, 11 November 2011
UNISON lobby of Council Budget Meeting - 15th November
Members of North Somerset UNISON will be joined by members of Portishead Youth Club on 15th November at 5.30 pm at the Town Hall in Weston super Mare to lobby North Somerset Council as they debate their budget proposals which involve cutting £50 million from services to our most vulnerable citizens.
We need as many of our members and other residents of North Somerset to join us on the 15th November to make it clear to councillors that we won't accept these cuts.
We need as many of our members and other residents of North Somerset to join us on the 15th November to make it clear to councillors that we won't accept these cuts.
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Impact of the cuts on Women
I've just read Bristol Fawcett Society's report on the impact of the cuts on women in Bristol. You can download it here
http://www.bristolfawcett.org.uk/
It shows that the impact of public spending cuts in the areas of: employment, housing, incomes and poverty, education and training, violence against women, health, social care and other support services, legal advice services, women's voluntary organisations, and transport are likely to disproportionately impact on women in Bristol, and that the cumulative effect of the cuts have serious equalities and human rights implications for women in Bristol. It makes for very worrying reading indeed.
http://www.bristolfawcett.org.uk/
It shows that the impact of public spending cuts in the areas of: employment, housing, incomes and poverty, education and training, violence against women, health, social care and other support services, legal advice services, women's voluntary organisations, and transport are likely to disproportionately impact on women in Bristol, and that the cumulative effect of the cuts have serious equalities and human rights implications for women in Bristol. It makes for very worrying reading indeed.
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