Vicki Peacey

From today 68,000 lone parents are losing their entitlement to Income Support (IS). Parents whose youngest child is aged 10 or 11 will be moved onto Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) or ESA over the next few months. In 2010, the age limit will reduce down again so that by the end of the reforms, all parents whose children are seven or over will have to look for work as a condition of benefit receipt. The changes are part of Government’s wider welfare reforms and also part of the attempt to reduce child poverty by getting more lone parents into employment.

The parents affected from today are the second wave to be moved off Income Support. Over the last year, about 100,000 single parents whose youngest child was between 12 and 15 were moved onto JSA. Gingerbread has just published qualitative research with some of these parents which has produced some useful insights into parents’ experiences of the JSA regime.

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Paul Sellers

We have now truly bid farewell to summertime. The clocks have changed, the nights are drawing in and the leaves are starting to fall. Wouldn’t it be great if we had another bank holiday today to cheer us all up?

The TUC has joined together with the main voluntary organisations to call for a new bank holiday called ‘Community Day’, on the last Monday in October (i.e. it would be today if we had it this year) to celebrate volunteering and encourage people to take part in community events.

We think the new holiday should be introduced in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics with a fanfare to seal a triumphant year for volunteers across the UK. Here’s a joint letter we’ve sent to the press:

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• How the recession is hitting low earning households hardest
  The Resolution Foundation's Sophia Parker argues on Left Foot Forward that low-paid, low-skilled workers at the sharp end of a flexible and global service economy are being hit hardest by this recession.
• Are those shoots any greener?
  The Guardian asks Brendan and other economic commentators for their thoughts on the prospects for economic recovery.
• Twice as many people sympathise with the Postal Workers rather than the Royal Mail management in the postal dispute
  Results of a ComRes poll for BBC Newsnight
• The Times: City workers: ‘We’re worth our bonuses"
  Six beneficiaries of fat City bonus cheques explain why they deserve the money, and how their pay packets benefit us all. They didn't persuade us

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Adam Lent

Today’s poor growth figures for the UK throw something rather stark into relief.  Those countries that have spent the last decade claiming that financial innovation, low tax, ultra-flexible labour markets, laissez faire industrial policy and popular asset ownership have driven their “economic miracle” are now not only the source of the world’s economic troubles but are actually lagging behind those countries which remained more sceptical of the whole approach. While Germany, France and much of  Asia are now on the upswing, it’s the UK, USA and Ireland that still look sickly.

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Philip Pearson

Today’s news of an extra £100 million for the Government’s vehicle scrappage scheme will bring the total budget to £400 million, covering up to 400,000 vehicles. This new stimulus is vital. Today’s GDP growth figures show the economy is still extremely fragile. As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said today, “Any halt in economic stimulus – or even worse, cuts in spending in a premature effort to close the deficit – could easily send us into another downwards spiral.”

There’s a double dividend here – the scrappage scheme has boosted UK car production and put us on track to meet the EU target for vehicle CO2 emissions of 130g/km of CO2 by 2012. That’s the verdict of Clean Green Cars, which found that average new car CO2 fell by 5.5% in the first nine months of 2009. For nerds, this is from an average of 159.31g/km in September 2008 to 150.56g/km in September 2009.

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Adam Lent

What is really worrying about today’s bad GDP growth figures is how they compare to other countries.  France and Germany are already out of recession and China, and Asia more widely, is bouncing back big time.  There is a huge risk that the UK will suffer for years to come as other countries are better placed to seize global market share while we limp along. 

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Brendan Barber

This morning’s growth figures from the Office of National Statistics show a 4% GDP drop for the third quarter of 2009. This means we are now in the longest recession in modern economic history. Even the co-ordinated world-wide stimulus has not been able to halt the damage done by the financial crash.

Even if we had achieved a technical recovery today, it would not feel like a recovery to the thousands losing their jobs or afraid that they will join the dole queue in the months ahead when unemployment will continue rising. It takes more than a statistical read out and the return of big bank bonuses for a real recovery.

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Philip Pearson

Skimming the papers today, I was confused there for a moment by a couple of news items. “Scientists claim fossil as missing link was really a dead end”. And then, “Tories  blown off course by Clarke’s windfarm verdict”.

Shadow Business Secretary, Ken Clarke, told the Policy Exchange yesterday that mainland Britain was “not suitable” for onshore windfarms. Sigh. Meanwhile, I read that Ida, the 47m-year-old primate, was not, after all, our earliest ancestor, but an evolutionary dead-end.

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Janet Williamson

David Walker’s review of bank governance acknowledges the lack of effective engagement between UK companies and their shareholders and the contribution this made to the financial crisis. But it fails to recognise that weak shareholder engagement and control leaves a gaping hole in the UK’s corporate governance system.

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• Poorest communities remain forgotten post-recession: lessons need to be learnt
  The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have released the results of research into 30 years of the effects of recession on local communities, finding that many deprived communities continue to suffer long after economic recovery.
• A sombre warning
  Mervyn King thinks that the government’s efforts to fix the financial system have not gone nearly far enough – and could even be founded on a delusion, according to the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders.
• A new look at welfare
  Jonathan Rutherford hangs a thoughtful CommentIsFree piece about the future of welfare on the back of the TUC’s poverty conference

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