Richard Exell
This week Francis Maude is due to announce plans to make the internet the only channel to access government services, with Post Offices helping people without internet access. Campaigners have raised concerns about the position of elderly people, especially those in rural areas. The implications for other public services could be very significant.
Owen Tudor
In his barely-remarked upon speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday 15 November, David Cameron completed a century-long story arc for British foreign policy. The defining statement was this:
“pursuit of our national interest – has been at the heart of everything I have said this evening.”
Obviously this was not a wholly remarkable approach, and he did admit that this was what every PM said, from different perspectives. That, together with the way the speech was so comprehensively quoted in advance by the broadsheets, probably limited the commentariat’s response (I could find no comment on it in the FT, Guardian or Telegraph). But the speech was indeed gimlet-eyed about self-interest, and that is, I think, a new narrative. He made clear that, although there would be altruistic elements such as the welcome commitment to reach the UN target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, and support for human rights (eg in Burma), the objective of UK foreign policy henceforth would be economic wealth and national security. Everything else will be a welcome by-product of that.
Richard Exell
If anyone is going to gain from the cuts it’s the outsourcing companies, but even they are taking a hit. At the beginning of the month Serco got into trouble for trying to pass on their government ‘cashback’ to subcontractors; this week Capita surprised their investors with an announcement that the cuts would hit their profits for the second half of the current year.
Markets did not take kindly to the news that “pressures on public spending … will subdue revenue growth in the second half of the year more than previously anticipated.”
Shares in the company fell yesterday and again today, though most analysts expect they will recover eventually. The company’s line seems to be that the cuts will hit the quality of services, not their profits.
Now there’s a reassuring thought.
Richard Exell
Age UK has said that it fears that the Housing Benefit reforms will hit up to 80,000 older people. The UK’s leading charity for older people has said that it has particular concerns about the Government’s strategy of using HB cuts to force tenants to negotiate lower rents from their landlords won’t suit older people, who may choose to cut back on essentials like food and heating, rather than lose their homes.
Paul Sellers
David Cameron is right to say that he’s in favour of creating a one-off bank holiday to celebrate the Royal Wedding. I’m only a very lukewarm Royalist at best, but I still have happy memories of the 1973 and 1981 Royal Wedding Bank Holidays, which I spent having a good time at local street parties.
UK workers have been very hard pressed during the last couple of years and its time that they got something to cheer them up. With another special bank holiday for the Queens Diamond Jubilee already announced for June 2012, the Government should now think again about introducing Community Day as a permanent bank holiday in 2013.
Richard Exell
Today’s Civil Service Statistics provide an answer to all the stories in the newspapers about over-paid civil servants. The figures show that, in 2010, half of all civil servants have gross annual earnings below £22,850; for those working full-time, half earn less than £23,680 (in the 2009 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings the equivalent figure for full-time employees generally was £25,800.)
A quarter of all civil servants earn less than £17,800.
It would be nice if some of the politicians who are planning cuts to public services would recognise that many of the people who work in those services are badly paid.
Alice Hood
The Guardian has uncovered further huge cuts to museums this week. The cuts, tucked away in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Business Plan, will affect up to 20 institutions classed as ‘non-national’ which receive DCMS funding. The affected museums and galleries will have their grant from DCMS entirely removed in 2015.
For some institutions such as the National Coalmining Museum in Wakefield, this represents about 80% of their funding. Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums is not a single institution, but a body that manages a dozen museums and galleries in Tyne and Wear, all of which are expected to be affected as this article from the Newcastle Journal explains.