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The Northern Ireland Commissioner for children and young people's assessment of the Welfare Reform Act and the other welfare reforms concludes:
"The incomes of families with children in Northern Ireland have already been badly affected by welfare reforms introduced since 2010, with consequent lowering of living standards for those in the bottom half of society. Those families face a further drop in living standards over the coming three years and the Assembly needs to move to protect families with children in any way it can."
Northern Ireland has a relatively large proportion of households with children and higher levels of disability, so it will be especially hard hit.
The document also includes a useful timeline for welfare reforms affecting families with children since 2010.
ToUChstoneblog's Archive — Page 2
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Robert Reich sets out an election-winning strategy for President Obama: growth not austerity, greater income equality, tackle mortgage arrears, and capping fuel prices.
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The web page for the campaign to save Sure Start, with links to campaign resources developed by UNISON and the Daycare Trust and useful facts and figures.
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GMB analysis of figures for employment in councils for the third quarter 2011 shows that women account for 68.2% of the reduction in employment in local councils in England & Wales.
The South East is the worst affected region, with women accounting for 75.6% of the drop but they are more than 50% in every region. In 20 of the 375 councils, women account for 100% or more of the drop.
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The Welsh Assembly’s new Jobs Growth Wales scheme will create 12,000 jobs for 16- to 24-year-olds. The jobs will last forsix months, and pay at least the Minimum Wage for at least 25 hours per week.
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Campaigning in Wales in the local government elections Vince Cable denies that the government will impose lower pay on Welsh public sector workers. Apparently, he says: “It would be wrong to do so and it’s practically impossible”. Well fancy that.
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Here’s another quick outing for five of the most popular or interesting posts by Touchstone bloggers during March:
- More benefits nastiness
Richard looks into Steve Webb’s announcement of further large cuts to Social Fund Crisis Loans. - Time to tax Elgin’s CO2 leakage
Philip argues for taxing carbon leakage, in the light of Total’s North Sea gas leak. - Osborne rips up his ‘new economic model’
Duncan writes for new politics blog Shifting Grounds on how the vision George Osborne set out two years ago is rapidly unravelling. - Did the 50p tax rate really raise less than £1 billion in 2010/11?
Guest blogger Howard Reed examines the evidence behind the Chancellor’s top rate tax cut. - Is permanent austerity inevitable?
Nicola takes issue with claims that demographic changes will create a permanent hole in our future public finances.
- More benefits nastiness
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Paul Krugman has a graph that says it all, charting EU nations' fiscal policy against their real GDP growth, 2007-11. And guess what?
There's a strong positive relationship between change in real government consumption as a proportion of initial GDP and change in real GDP.
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Alphaville presents a Moddy's review of US corporate cash piles – an amazingly high proportion is held by Apple:
"Apple alone represents $64 billion or 36% of the total $179 billion increase in corporate cash since 2009. And in 2011, overall corporate cash would have actually declined by $6 billion had it not been for Apple’s $46 billion increase. …
"Apple alone could represent 12% of total corporate cash, about three times more than the next cash king. …"
As Alphaville notes, America's top five companies account for 22% of the total.
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Paul Krugman has a great short answer to the "we've maxed out our credit card" argument.
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The report of the 2011 TUC Poverty Conference, with speakers including Frances O’Grady, Christine Blower, Natascha Engel MP and Owen Jones (author of Chavs).
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BBC News Magazine compares benefits now with poor law benefits paid before the “New” poor law of 1834 (which brought in workhouses).
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