Rob Holdsworth

The abolition of education maintenance allowance (EMA) is currently winning the race to be 2010′s least favourite cut among Touchstone readers.

My personal hunch is that this is because it ticks a number of boxes. Scrapping EMA is a) irrational – as the IFS has pointed out EMA has improved education attainment and supported social moblity, b) unfair – it’s targeted at those on low incomes and c) it’s current and fits in with the general anger over how funding for young people’s education has been cut so savagely.

Oh, and the government promised not to scrap it before the election but let’s face it, the promise to keep EMA is hardly the first one that’s been broken of late.

There’s still plenty of time to vote for you least favourite cut if you think there are worse examples out there.

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Scarlet Harris

I blogged earlier this month on the disproportionate effect of the government’s cuts on women and families. Far from ending with the CSR, the attack on gender equality appears to be a sustained attack with no end in sight. There seems to be a new announcement about cuts that will affect women on an almost weekly basis. In recent weeks we’ve seen cuts to legal aid, the abolition of the Women’s National Commission, the decision to subsume the work of the Government Equalities Office into the Home Office, to name but a few cuts and reorganisations which will have a negative impact on women. The latest depressing news story about gender equality came earlier this week when BIS announced that, as of April 2011, there would be no further funding for the UK Resource Centre for Women (UKRC). 

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• Vulnerable children will be hit by drastic cuts to funding from London Councils
  "Children and Young People Now" reports that vulnerable children and young people will be hit by London Councils' 63.5 per cent cut in funding for 200+ voluntary organisations. The £16.5 million saved by this move will be returned to the Boroughs but, because it will not be ‘ringfenced’ the charities are unlikely to receive as much from the individual authorities as they received from the LBGS.
• Increase Wages to End the Crisis (Says the IMF!) « Duncan’s Economic Blog
  The IMF says raising wages is the route to recovery. Right on, comrades.
• 19 Minute Target Scrapped
  The GMB says that the government's decision to scrap the target for category B calls for an ambulance to be answered within 19 minutes will cost lives. "Scrapping the 19 minute target means that the ambulance service will now become like the police service and people will just have to wait until they turn up if they turn up at all," said Justin Bowden GMB National Officer for the ambulance service.

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Richard Exell

This month’s figures for the GfK NOP Consumer Confidence Index show that people are still too pessimistic about next year to give demand the boost it needs. Compared with last month, the overall index has stayed the same, but that is only because one element is much improved – whether this is a good time for major purchases. This is almost certainly because people are taking next month’s VAT increase into account.  The other elements have all fallen:

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Richard Exell

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report on Youth Unemployment and the Future Jobs Fund highlights two facts that are very embarrassing for the government: the decision to abolish was made before there was any evidence to justify it and the decision was rushed through, leaving young unemployed people without adequate support.

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Richard Exell

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs plans to cuts spending on key environmental agencies by up to 21 per cent over the next four years. Today DEFRA published its Budget for its agencies and other arms length bodies and “indicative allocations for each of the remaining years of the Spending Review period.” The cuts include:

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Richard Exell

The government has decided the details of the cut in the grant for university teaching. In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Vince Cable and David Willetts announced that next year’s teaching grant will be 6 per cent lower than this year’s – once inflation is taken into account this is an 8 per cent real terms cut.

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• Introducing a new economic comparator: Pudsey
  Nigel has a post on False Economy about communicating the scale of the cuts with a cute bear

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Nigel Stanley

US economist and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman has been writing about the UK again. It’s so short, I’m sure he’ll forgive us for quoting it in full:

Oh, my: I missed this, but ran across it when doing some research:

‘Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.’

George Osborne, 2006

It’s also worth noting that Osborne’s push for austerity now was based, to an important extent, on the widespread belief among conservative commentators that Irish austerity was a smashing success story.

I guess the special relationship remains: in Britain as in America, what we see politically is the survival of the wrongest.”

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• Cost of credit sends growing number into poverty
  The "Independent" reports on the campaign for the Consumer Credit Bill.

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