Marlyn Glen
Charles Dickens, Dundee and Hard Times
28 December 2011
The Christmas - New Year period has its own popular book, film version and ghost story all in one - the evergreen A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, an allegory on the redemption of a greedy man who redistributes his wealth to the less fortunate.
Dickens is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest writers, and 2012 will see many events to mark the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth.
His fame is such that he is one of the few writers with an adjective named after him to describe a social condition - "Dickensian"
In October 1858 Dickens visited Dundee and gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol in Dundee .
The Dundee "Advertiser" reported :"On Friday night Mr Charles Dickens gave his first reading – the Christmas Carol –in the Exchange Hall, Bank Street, in presence of a very large and fashionable audience, who had met to see and hear the most popular novelist of the day."
After a two-hour reading,"Mr Dickens concluded amid loud applause."
Lenin, on the other hand, was far less praiseworthy.George Orwell tells that " the story was read to Lenin on his deathbed and according to his wife, he found its ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ completely intolerable. "
However, Karl Marx declared that Dickens " issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together."
Dickens’ novels highlight the plight of those failed by a Victorian society and who were pre-destined for the workhouse, the debtor’s prison, begging, squalor, and endless hours of spirit-breaking toil in the mills.
Dickens was not , of course, the only observer of the dire straits of the poor.
Below is an extract from a local book, written in 1850 by James Myles, a contemporary Dundonian, called "Chapters in the life of a Dundee factory boy: an autobiography".
His minimalist prose tells simply but effectively how child labour left its lifetime mark.
"When I went to a spinning mill, I was about 7 years of age, I had to get up out of bed at 5 o’clock, commence work at half-past five, drop at nine for breakfast ,begin again at half past nine, work until two which was the dinner hour, start again at half-past two , and continue till half-past seven at night.
"However, although these hours were long, they only made up the working dayIn reality, there were no regular working hours, masters and managers did with us as they liked."The working conditions were unhealthy.
"About a week after I became a mill boy, I was seized by a strong heavy sickness that few escape on becoming mill workers
" The cause of the illness which is known as ‘mill fever’ is the pestiferous atmosphere produced by so many breathing in a confined space together with the heat and exhalations of grease and oil.
"This fever is slow and dull, and painfully wearisome in its operation."It produces a pale sallow and debilitated look, destroys rosy cheeks , and unless the constitution be very strong , leaves its pale impress for life. "
However, whereas people such as Myles sought fact to make their case for the betterment of conditions, Dickens sought fiction, through his novels instead.
In Hard Times, published in 1854, Dickens describes how the massive changes wrought by the industrial revolution had fashioned the fictional "Coketown" and the lives of its people.
He wrote,
" It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all daylong, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next….. So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions."
Hard Times has been regarded by some as an indictment of laissez-faire capitalism.
George Orwell was less persuaded , saying "its whole moral is that capitalists ought to be kind, not that workers ought to be rebellious….if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens provided a vivid analysis of the troubles of society, but didn’t suggest a collective, political remedy.
Personal changes in behaviour were his solution rather than whole-scale political and structural changes in society.
Dickens was no paragon of virtue himself.
In his private life, he became progressively detached from his wife of 22 years who had borne him 10 children and who had suffered several miscarriages.
They separated in 1858, with Dickens somehow regarding his wife as responsible for him having to support so many children financially and for her "lack of energy" as well.
What Orwell said about Dickens’ attitudes to capitalists certainly applies to Dickens himself – " if men would behave decently the world would be decent."
Dickens’ time was an era of extreme poverty judged by its standards of drinking water, provision of food, sanitation, health, housing, literacy and education, and information.
Yet, the poor were regarded by many of the comfortable classes as the source of their own predicament, an undeserving, feckless underclass on whom philanthropy and public money would be wasted.
Dickens viewed his novels as the best means to attack such beliefs and to rouse the conscience with stories of the unscrupulous ill-treatment and subjugation of the lives of his memorable characters pitted against a backdrop of glaring class inequalities.
And with his books being so popular, their message could not be easily dismissed.
If Dickens had been our Ghost of Christmas Present what would he be asking us to confront morally in what are today indeed hard times?
His great-great grandson, Gerald Dickens, is in no doubt.
He has said that the present day issue of bankers’ bonuses " sums up A Christmas Carol in a nutshell".
As we know today, appeals against selfishness calling for changes in the personal behaviour of bonus-wealthy individuals, as Dickens would have favoured, have been shown not to work.
There has to be legislation by Government to achieve this, just as progressive thinkers after Dickens’ time advocated government intervention in implementing programmes for improvements in health, housing, education and employment.
However, none of this detracts from Dickens’ ability to remind those in authority of their moral responsibility towards those they employed.
He never had to look far for evidence of the need for that accountability as this contemporary incident from Dundee shows :
In 1846 the case of "Six unfortunate and unprotected factory girls of Dundee" between the ages of 14 and 20 employed as flax-spinners in Baxter’s mills reached Parliament.
40 women in the mill had seen other workers in the same flat as themselves awarded a three pennies a week increase in wages and, not unnaturally, the women had asked for a similar rise.
Their request was refused, and they took the afternoon off for recreation as others at the mill sometimes did.
The rules of the mill meant that they could expect a fine of time and a half deduction from their wages.
However, on returning to work next day, they were detained in a room by four men , kept there till noon, whereupon they were marched through the streets of Dundee to another private room where waited a magistrate, a member of the Baxter family and the mill manager.
The six women then signed a paper which was then used against them duplicitously as a "confession"
The magistrate sentenced the six factory girls to ten day’s ‘ imprisonment with hard labour.
The matter was raised in Parliament with a call for a select committee to be set up" complaining of the illegal Trial and Imprisonment of Jane Bennett and other Factory Girls", but it was voted down.
30 December 2011
16 December 2011
Marlyn Glen : Dundee in 2015
Dundee in 2015
Marlyn Glen
16 December 2011
Last month I took part in what was one of the most memorable events in the story of the Labour Movement in Dundee – the 8,000 demonstration against Tory Government attacks on decent retirement pensions for public sector workers.
It was a feat of organisation, a procession of people power with hundreds and hundreds of brightly coloured flags and vivid banners, and expressions of unity as a light to guide us down the long grim tunnel that this decade will be.
By contrast, the Tory Government’s attempts to portray their deficit reduction policy as a crusade of national solidarity – "We’re all in this together" - were rudely dispelled last week when David Cameron pleaded with the rest of the EU for special treatment for just one group in Britain – the banks, the same institutions that have got the country into the mess we’re in.
The other 26 countries in the EU, some with governments that are on the Centre-Right of politics want to impose a Robin Hood-style tax on banks’ transactions.
However, David Cameron stood firm for Bankers’ Rights, for the same institutions still revelling in bonuses, that will not lend today to businesses that want to borrow money to create jobs.
In the 2010's Dundee faces a "lost decade" in which its "lost generation" will see its living standards slump to levels not experienced in many years.
Employment in Scotland is forecast not to return to previous higher levels until the early 2020s.
A couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002.
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Male pay in Dundee has slumped by 7 per cent on average in the past year.
A pay freeze will endure in the public sector till 2013, and Chancellor George Osborne plans to limit pay rises to 1 per cent till 2015 thereafter.
As prices rise, real wages fall, reducing living standards.
The new economic model is the old belief that government should be acting in the same manner as the household does.
This says that when a household hits hard times, it cuts back , and therefore a government in the same straits should cut its spending and as quickly as possible.
Decades ago, this argument was disproved by Keynes with his "paradox of thrift".
For Keynes, national economies cannot be run like individual household budgets.
The more money a person saves or cuts back on, the less money is available for buying the goods and services that are being produced, leading to job losses and less taxation coming into Treasury.
The next few years are almost certain to be less healthier times.
Not surprisingly, personal health worsens as insecurity heightens.
One of the best ways of keeping people healthy is to keep them in a job.
Job loss and job insecurity can make people more vulnerable to illness through loss of self-worth, lower income, exclusion from previous social activities because of lower incomes, and living with no control over daily life.
The Child Growth Foundation has already expressed concerns that huge job cuts mean less income, resulting in people turning to cheaper calorie-rich food higher in fat, risking higher levels of diabetes and obesity.
Cuts in voluntary sector funding puts greater stress on an already overstretched NHS, at a time when the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen to its lowest in 4 years.
Local government faces a cut of some £700 million in real terms till 2015.
Councils have received a "flat cash freeze" in their revenue allocation from the Scottish Government as a result.
These dire assessments describe how everyday life will be in the first few years of this decade .
The 30th. November rallies across Britain against pensions "reform" are unlikely to be the last.
Pensions are very much a personal rather than a political issue.
Bear this comparison in mind …. last weekend, world-wide publicity was given to Moscow, ( population 11 million, the most populous city in Europe), saw 60,000 demonstrators take to the streets last week in protests against election-rigging by Vladimir Putin.
In Dundee, (population 140,000,) the strength of opposition to Tory plans to cut public sector pensions saw over 8,000 take to the streets.
Dundee 2015 figures
Pay
The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that a couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002
In 2002, the median weekly pay for men in Dundee was £358.
In 2011 it now stands at £ 405 .
In 2002 the median weekly pay for women in Dundee was £241 .
In 2011 it stands at £309 .
(Source : Office of National Statistics )
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Dundee City Council spending – the Flat Cash Freeze
Dundee City Council’s revenue allocations from the SNP Government to provide services in the city remain frozen, meaning a cut in real terms spending and services.
2011-12 £317million
2012-13 £316milllion
2013-14 £318million
2014-15 £318 million
The number of teachers in Dundee is now the lowest in 6 years.
NHS Tayside spending
NHS Tayside’s current budget of £596milllion is forecast to increase in real terms by just £6million by 2015, a 1 per cent increase, at a time when health service costs are rising annually by 4 per cent.
Overall in Scotland total health sending is set to decrease by £319million in real terms.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 4 years.
Fuel Poverty
1 in 4 households in Scotland lives in fuel poverty.
A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, it would be required to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel.
This year, as energy companies pushed up prices even higher, the SNP Government all but abandoned its promise to "eradicate" fuel poverty in Scotland by 2016.
The SNP Government has also slashed funding for fuel poverty support by one third – from £71 million last year to £48 million this year.
Obesity
Over 1 in 4 of all adults in Scotland is obese, with the highest level, almost 40 per cent in the age group 55-64 .
The percentage of children aged 2-15 with a body mass index "outwith the healthy range" rose to its highest level last year to over 30 per cent.
Diabetes
NHS Tayside over 19,000 diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2011 almost 1 in 20 of the population.
Almost ten years previously the figure had been 11,200.
16 December 2011
Last month I took part in what was one of the most memorable events in the story of the Labour Movement in Dundee – the 8,000 demonstration against Tory Government attacks on decent retirement pensions for public sector workers.
It was a feat of organisation, a procession of people power with hundreds and hundreds of brightly coloured flags and vivid banners, and expressions of unity as a light to guide us down the long grim tunnel that this decade will be.
By contrast, the Tory Government’s attempts to portray their deficit reduction policy as a crusade of national solidarity – "We’re all in this together" - were rudely dispelled last week when David Cameron pleaded with the rest of the EU for special treatment for just one group in Britain – the banks, the same institutions that have got the country into the mess we’re in.
The other 26 countries in the EU, some with governments that are on the Centre-Right of politics want to impose a Robin Hood-style tax on banks’ transactions.
However, David Cameron stood firm for Bankers’ Rights, for the same institutions still revelling in bonuses, that will not lend today to businesses that want to borrow money to create jobs.
In the 2010's Dundee faces a "lost decade" in which its "lost generation" will see its living standards slump to levels not experienced in many years.
Employment in Scotland is forecast not to return to previous higher levels until the early 2020s.
A couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002.
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Male pay in Dundee has slumped by 7 per cent on average in the past year.
A pay freeze will endure in the public sector till 2013, and Chancellor George Osborne plans to limit pay rises to 1 per cent till 2015 thereafter.
As prices rise, real wages fall, reducing living standards.
The new economic model is the old belief that government should be acting in the same manner as the household does.
This says that when a household hits hard times, it cuts back , and therefore a government in the same straits should cut its spending and as quickly as possible.
Decades ago, this argument was disproved by Keynes with his "paradox of thrift".
For Keynes, national economies cannot be run like individual household budgets.
The more money a person saves or cuts back on, the less money is available for buying the goods and services that are being produced, leading to job losses and less taxation coming into Treasury.
The next few years are almost certain to be less healthier times.
Not surprisingly, personal health worsens as insecurity heightens.
One of the best ways of keeping people healthy is to keep them in a job.
Job loss and job insecurity can make people more vulnerable to illness through loss of self-worth, lower income, exclusion from previous social activities because of lower incomes, and living with no control over daily life.
The Child Growth Foundation has already expressed concerns that huge job cuts mean less income, resulting in people turning to cheaper calorie-rich food higher in fat, risking higher levels of diabetes and obesity.
Cuts in voluntary sector funding puts greater stress on an already overstretched NHS, at a time when the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen to its lowest in 4 years.
Local government faces a cut of some £700 million in real terms till 2015.
Councils have received a "flat cash freeze" in their revenue allocation from the Scottish Government as a result.
These dire assessments describe how everyday life will be in the first few years of this decade .
The 30th. November rallies across Britain against pensions "reform" are unlikely to be the last.
Pensions are very much a personal rather than a political issue.
Bear this comparison in mind …. last weekend, world-wide publicity was given to Moscow, ( population 11 million, the most populous city in Europe), saw 60,000 demonstrators take to the streets last week in protests against election-rigging by Vladimir Putin.
In Dundee, (population 140,000,) the strength of opposition to Tory plans to cut public sector pensions saw over 8,000 take to the streets.
Dundee 2015 figures
Pay
The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that a couple living on average wages in 2015 will be no better off than they were in 2002
In 2002, the median weekly pay for men in Dundee was £358.
In 2011 it now stands at £ 405 .
In 2002 the median weekly pay for women in Dundee was £241 .
In 2011 it stands at £309 .
(Source : Office of National Statistics )
So a couple in Dundee with a joint weekly income of £714 this year will be worse off in 2015 than the same couple in Dundee were in 2002 with a joint income then of £599 .
Dundee City Council spending – the Flat Cash Freeze
Dundee City Council’s revenue allocations from the SNP Government to provide services in the city remain frozen, meaning a cut in real terms spending and services.
2011-12 £317million
2012-13 £316milllion
2013-14 £318million
2014-15 £318 million
The number of teachers in Dundee is now the lowest in 6 years.
NHS Tayside spending
NHS Tayside’s current budget of £596milllion is forecast to increase in real terms by just £6million by 2015, a 1 per cent increase, at a time when health service costs are rising annually by 4 per cent.
Overall in Scotland total health sending is set to decrease by £319million in real terms.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 4 years.
Fuel Poverty
1 in 4 households in Scotland lives in fuel poverty.
A household is defined as being in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime, it would be required to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel.
This year, as energy companies pushed up prices even higher, the SNP Government all but abandoned its promise to "eradicate" fuel poverty in Scotland by 2016.
The SNP Government has also slashed funding for fuel poverty support by one third – from £71 million last year to £48 million this year.
Obesity
Over 1 in 4 of all adults in Scotland is obese, with the highest level, almost 40 per cent in the age group 55-64 .
The percentage of children aged 2-15 with a body mass index "outwith the healthy range" rose to its highest level last year to over 30 per cent.
Diabetes
NHS Tayside over 19,000 diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2011 almost 1 in 20 of the population.
Almost ten years previously the figure had been 11,200.
6 December 2011
Marlyn Glen : NHS Tayside staffing - Three Facts and An Admission
Marlyn Glen
NHS Tayside staffing : Three facts and an admission
6 December 2011
Three significant NHS staffing figures were published last month and one highly significant admission was made.
*The latest official government figures show that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continues to remain below the level it was at when Alex Salmond’s SNP Government took over in 2007.
*The overall NHS workforce in NHS Tayside is now over 300 less than it was two years ago .
*Around 1 out of 4 student nurses in abandon their courses.
and
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the number of nurses and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland is now lower than the number was under Labour.
Let’s look at the first fact.
The latest official government figures show that numbers of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continue to fall under Alex Salmond’s SNP Government.
They remain at a level below the number of nursing and midwifery posts in the health board when the SNP came into government in 2007.
It’s now 23 whole–time equivalents in staffing numbers below what the figures were back then.
The headcount figure is also down on the 2007 level.
This trend stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In the last 4 years, under Labour from 2002-2006, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside increased each year , and increased in total by over 230.
Let’s look at the second fact again now.
The overall number of NHS staff in NHS Tayside is now over 300 fewer than it was two years ago .
Today there are 13,914 staff in the health board, including GPs and dentists, ( using the SNP Government’s preferred choice of headcount figures.)
This is a decrease of around 320 from the 14,230 staff level reported two years ago.
This trend also stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In its last 4 years, under Labour, the overall number of staff in NHS Tayside increased each year and increased in total by almost 900.
These figures were already anticipated because of the SNP Government’s failure to match the Labour-led Scottish Executive’s growth in health spending.
The third fact is that the number of nursing students who drop out of their courses, known as the "attrition rate" still affects around 1 in .
The reasons for this are well-known and long-standing and include the need for childcare assistance and better support for clinical placements as well as financial difficulties and problems with career prospects.
This last issue, career prospects, now looks like taking on a greater significance.
In terms of demand, as the population ages there will be more need for nursing staff
In term of supply, there is a need to replace an ageing NHS workforce with younger staff .
Some 10,000 of Scotland’s nursing workforce are now over 55
In addition more of them are needed to meet the rising demand from the elderly.
However, student nurses can now see their career opportunities being restricted as the number of nursing posts in the NHS in Scotland falls - 2,000 lost in the past year, and so these diminishing career prospects will create anxiety, disquiet and perhaps a career re-decision.
And what of the highly significant admission ?
Earlier last month, ( 10th. November ) Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s failure on nursing numbers which are now below those under Labour.
She stated,
"The number of nurses and midwives has reduced by 0.2 per cent from
the level that we inherited. "
No Government or health secretary can afford to have declining health staff numbers , particularly when you have previously declaimed that you " will protect the health service during the lifetime of this Parliament " with fewer nursing and midwifery staff.
Why is the NHS in this condition ?
The SNP Government simply just pass on cuts from the Tory Government in Westminster.
Furthermore, more money being spent on the SNP’s populist 5-year council tax freeze means of course less money for spending on the health service.
As a consequence of more and more duties being demanded with no increase in resources for the NHS in Scotland, career options for loyal staff such as voluntary redundancy packages have their
appeal.
This, however, will result in a further loss of nursing skills, with overworked and under-pressure dedicated staff remaining.
The extent of this working environment is revealed in a new poll of its members by the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland where more than 1 in 3 said that there were discouraged or told not to report their concerns over issues such as staffing levels or patient safety.
When RCN Scotland appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee last month, their observation resonated with many :
"Nurses think they are very much on their own and that they are being targeted for savings……Nursing has lost a sense of all being in it together."
Three significant NHS staffing figures were published last month and one highly significant admission was made.
*The latest official government figures show that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continues to remain below the level it was at when Alex Salmond’s SNP Government took over in 2007.
*The overall NHS workforce in NHS Tayside is now over 300 less than it was two years ago .
*Around 1 out of 4 student nurses in abandon their courses.
and
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the number of nurses and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland is now lower than the number was under Labour.
Let’s look at the first fact.
The latest official government figures show that numbers of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside continue to fall under Alex Salmond’s SNP Government.
They remain at a level below the number of nursing and midwifery posts in the health board when the SNP came into government in 2007.
It’s now 23 whole–time equivalents in staffing numbers below what the figures were back then.
The headcount figure is also down on the 2007 level.
This trend stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In the last 4 years, under Labour from 2002-2006, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside increased each year , and increased in total by over 230.
Let’s look at the second fact again now.
The overall number of NHS staff in NHS Tayside is now over 300 fewer than it was two years ago .
Today there are 13,914 staff in the health board, including GPs and dentists, ( using the SNP Government’s preferred choice of headcount figures.)
This is a decrease of around 320 from the 14,230 staff level reported two years ago.
This trend also stacks up poorly against the record of the previous Labour-led Scottish Executive.
In its last 4 years, under Labour, the overall number of staff in NHS Tayside increased each year and increased in total by almost 900.
These figures were already anticipated because of the SNP Government’s failure to match the Labour-led Scottish Executive’s growth in health spending.
The third fact is that the number of nursing students who drop out of their courses, known as the "attrition rate" still affects around 1 in .
The reasons for this are well-known and long-standing and include the need for childcare assistance and better support for clinical placements as well as financial difficulties and problems with career prospects.
This last issue, career prospects, now looks like taking on a greater significance.
In terms of demand, as the population ages there will be more need for nursing staff
In term of supply, there is a need to replace an ageing NHS workforce with younger staff .
Some 10,000 of Scotland’s nursing workforce are now over 55
In addition more of them are needed to meet the rising demand from the elderly.
However, student nurses can now see their career opportunities being restricted as the number of nursing posts in the NHS in Scotland falls - 2,000 lost in the past year, and so these diminishing career prospects will create anxiety, disquiet and perhaps a career re-decision.
And what of the highly significant admission ?
Earlier last month, ( 10th. November ) Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted to the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s failure on nursing numbers which are now below those under Labour.
She stated,
"The number of nurses and midwives has reduced by 0.2 per cent from
the level that we inherited. "
No Government or health secretary can afford to have declining health staff numbers , particularly when you have previously declaimed that you " will protect the health service during the lifetime of this Parliament " with fewer nursing and midwifery staff.
Why is the NHS in this condition ?
The SNP Government simply just pass on cuts from the Tory Government in Westminster.
Furthermore, more money being spent on the SNP’s populist 5-year council tax freeze means of course less money for spending on the health service.
As a consequence of more and more duties being demanded with no increase in resources for the NHS in Scotland, career options for loyal staff such as voluntary redundancy packages have their
appeal.
This, however, will result in a further loss of nursing skills, with overworked and under-pressure dedicated staff remaining.
The extent of this working environment is revealed in a new poll of its members by the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland where more than 1 in 3 said that there were discouraged or told not to report their concerns over issues such as staffing levels or patient safety.
When RCN Scotland appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee last month, their observation resonated with many :
"Nurses think they are very much on their own and that they are being targeted for savings……Nursing has lost a sense of all being in it together."
28 November 2011
Marlyn Glen : Pensions and 30th. November
Pensions and 30th. November
Marlyn Glen
The “Daily Mail” couldn’t have put it better.
“State-owned Royal Bank of Scotland is to lavish around £500million in bonuses on its 'casino' bankers - despite a collapse in profits.
“Hundreds of traders and investment bankers who were bailed out by taxpayers at the height of the financial crisis are expected to walk off with pay and perks packages worth more than £1 million each.
“The huge handouts will fuel fury at City greed at a time when politicians and religious leaders are speaking out about corporate excess.”
(7th. November this year )
This is what others have described as “Socialism for the bankers” while its obverse, “capitalism for the workers” will be the cause of a massive national demonstration on Wednesday.
The moral debate is still about the reckless actions of those who were rewarded for failure, who required a large bonus simply to do their job, versus the rights of those who did not cause the financial crisis, but who are now being asked to work longer and to pay more to receive less of a pension as a result of it.
The political debate has been transformed into the hoary Tory myth of the “bloated” public sector with “gold-plated”, “unaffordable” pensions paid for by the taxpayer, and of Labour’s “rampant spending in office” , which was in fact vital to prop up the private banking sector from collapsing, an action repeated by other Governments .
Wednesday’s action has been described as a “women’s strike” and for good reason.
Almost two-thirds of public sector employees are women and when the public sector is hit hard by Tory cuts that are inevitably accompanied by punishing job losses, it’s women who suffer the most in terms of jobs, pay and pensions.
The Tory-led Government’s belief was that the clear out of jobs in the public sector would be the signal for the private sector to absorb these redundancies by creating more jobs for those losing theirs in the public sector.
That has never happened in any large measure - nor was it ever likely to - but for those that this has affected, it’s almost certainly meant a loss of pay for most of them.
The gross hourly rate for full-time women in the public sector is on average around £4.20p an hour higher than in the private sector.
The same rate for part-time female workers is on average £2.90p an hour greater in the public sector than in the private sector.
Added on to that disadvantage is what the TUC describe as “ a growing gap between public and private sector pensions caused by the employer retreat from decent pensions in the private sector”
Pension provision should include as one of its main objectives the levelling up of pensions in the private sector to those in the public sector.
It’s not about levelling down pensions in the public sector to the level of those in the private sector.
The claim about the “spiralling costs” making for unsustainable nature of public pensions is based on the belief that pension costs will absorb greater costs as more and more people live longer.
However, the UK Government’s Office of Budget Responsibility Fiscal Sustainability Report has already delved into the likely costs of pensions in the 2030s and the 2060s
It predicts that the cost of public pensions will have fallen to 1.8 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product by 2030 and will fall further still to 1.4 per cent by 2060.
As for “ gold-plated” pensions in the public sector, the average pension for women in the public sector is around £2,800 a year, and in the health service £3,500
Unions are angry about the claim of the Tory-led government that under their pension proposals, all those earning under £15,000 a year will see no increase in their pension contributions.
However, these figures refer to what a person would earn if they were working full-time in practice or in theory.
So a part-time worker earning £8,000 a year would not be exempt from increases in contributions because their “full-time pay” would be the equivalent of £16,000 a year, above the £15,000 threshold.
Employees face average increases of 3 per cent - a pay cut of 3 per cent by any other name -and the majority of these part-time workers are women.
Meanwhile, the TUC PensionsWatch reports that the directors of the top echelons of UK companies can expect average pension payments of almost £250,000 a year.
The report indicates that the leading 362 directors have stored up final salary pensions worth on average £3.9 million each.
Is there a particular Scottish dimension to the pensions issue?
The SNP Government believes that there is.
It is to debate the issue of pensions in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday.
However, the entrance qualifications for anyone who wishes to participate in the debate is that they will firstly have to walk across the picket line at the Scottish Parliament.
Scottish Labour MSPs will be absent en masse from the Parliament on Wednesday along with the Scottish Green MSPs.
In his strong reproach of the SNP Government and its failure to listen to the voices of public sector unions to close down Holyrood next Wednesday, the Greens Parliamentary leader, Patrick Harvie, described it as “ an utterly cynical move”
He went further:
“On November 30th, the country will see the strongest wave of coordinated action for generations, all to challenge the UK Coalition’s ideological and counter-productive cuts. On that day, the SNP and the Coalition parties will sit together as an unholy alliance on the wrong side of the picket lines. Is this really what the SNP stand for now?
“No doubt there will be empty rhetoric from Ministers about supporting the right to strike – despite knowing that Parliament can only meet if employees and MSPs alike cross the picket lines.
“The SNP claim they’re on the other side of the argument from the Tories and LibDems.
“Wrong.
“The picket line is the argument, and the SNP have picked a side, the same side as the parties primarily responsible for this brutal attack on pay and pensions.
“The unions have been very clear about how MSPs can support them – by joining them at pickets and rallies right across the country. That’s the work we should be doing on November 30th.”
Patrick Harvie is the leader of a very different political party from that other one that is also in favour of an independent Scotland.
The pensions issue, like so many others, has its roots in the financial crisis of 2008.
Before then, the financial sector was revered for its “special place” in the economy and its “productive” risk-taking which entitled it to the jaw-dropping salaries and eye-watering bonuses.
However, Economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, puts it differently.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, by and large, the members of the super-elite are overpaid, not underpaid, for what they do.
“Very few of them are Steve Jobs-type innovators; most of them are corporate bigwigs and financial wheeler-dealers. One recent analysis found that 43 percent of the super-elite are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18 percent are in finance and another 12 percent are lawyers or in real estate. And these are not, to put it mildly, professions in which there is a clear relationship between someone’s income and his economic contribution.
“Executive pay, which has skyrocketed over the past generation, is famously set by boards of directors appointed by the very people whose pay they determine; poorly performing Chief Executives still get lavish paychecks, and even failed and fired executives often receive millions as they go out the door.
“Meanwhile, the economic crisis showed that much of the apparent value created by modern finance was a mirage. As the Bank of England’s director for financial stability recently put it, seemingly high returns before the crisis simply reflected increased risk-taking — risk that was mostly borne not by the wheeler-dealers themselves but either by naïve investors or by taxpayers, who ended up holding the bag when it all went wrong. And as he waspishly noted, ‘If risk-making were a value-adding activity, Russian roulette players would contribute disproportionately to global welfare.’ “
17 November 2011
Marlyn Glen : Dundee's Misery Index is over 10 per cent
Marlyn Glen
Dundee’s Misery Index is over 10 per cent
16 November 2011
There is such as thing as The Misery Index.
It’s the sum of the rate of unemployment plus the rate of inflation, and added together they give an indication of the financial misery that accompanies unemployment, under-employment and the fear of an uncertain future for individuals and their families.
Strictly speaking, the Misery Index applies only to countries.
However, taking some degree of licence to make a point, the Misery Index for Dundee would be 10.6 per cent just now ( 5.0 per cent rate of inflation last month plus the 5.6 per cent rate for unemployment in the city )
The overall rate of unemployment in Dundee masks its most troubling tale - the age 16-24 age group in the city has an 8 per cent unemployment rate, and in the past three and a half years, the number of unemployed in that important age group of future Dundonians, has risen from 945 to 1,605.
There are dire forecasts of more misery to come , in the day-to-day running of family budgets hit by rising food prices, higher energy and fuel costs, and particularly for women.
Many of them are now the breadwinner in the family, whether it be in full-time or in part-time work, and they face the horrendous odds.
That’s why the latest figures for those who are "economically inactive" in Dundee ( those) show that 3,600 such women in Dundee want a job.
The corresponding figure for men is less, at 3,200.
People who are "economically inactive" are generally speaking those are beyond retiral age, and those who cannot work for reasons such as illness, disability, or those who remain at home to look after family.
Family responsibilities are the most common reason given for women being economically inactive.
The increase in the number of women in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance in Dundee since last June is greater than in men, 365 to 312, probably reflecting in part changes in the Lone Parent Obligation.
Women make up the majority of employees in the public sector, such as the NHS, education, local councils, and it is this sector that is being targeted and shredded in this recession.
Women’s working skills are needed now as much as they were in the past.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 5 years .
The number of school teachers in secondary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, almost two-thirds of whom are women
The number of school teachers in primary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, 90 per cent of whom are women.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
A view from America ( current Misery Index of 13) - an editorial in the "New York Times" - "Britain’s self-inflicted Misery" - lays the blame forcibly and truly where it belongs :
"Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.
Britain’s economy has barely grown since the budget cuts began taking effect late last year. The most recent quarterly figures showed the economy flat-lining, with growth at 0.1 percent.
New figures reported Britain’s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment — now 8.1 percent — to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.
Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. … Britain’s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.
Slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. .
Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron’s failed experiment. "
One of the band of economists who predicted the banking crash and the extent of the present recession ,and an ex-member of the Bank of England’s interest rate committee was by David Blanchflower, who has studied the long -term effects of unemployment on young people.
He looked at data from the National Child Development Study, which examined the lives of children born in one particular week in 1958.
He found that while those in their early 20s who had lost their jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s managed to make good again, the pyschological mark of being without a job in the earlier years remained with many of them, in some cases into their mid-forties.
They were more likely to be earning less than those with uninterrupted employment and they were less likely to be healthy and happy with their work.
Below are some figures for levels of unemployment in Dundee across all age groups in that same period :
If David Blanchflower’s argument is correct, the question arises, how many amongst those who were born in the late 1950s and who lost their jobs in the 1970s and 80s felt the effect of its misery into their middle aged years, and still feel it even today?
Dundee’s Misery Index is over 10 per cent
16 November 2011
There is such as thing as The Misery Index.
It’s the sum of the rate of unemployment plus the rate of inflation, and added together they give an indication of the financial misery that accompanies unemployment, under-employment and the fear of an uncertain future for individuals and their families.
Strictly speaking, the Misery Index applies only to countries.
However, taking some degree of licence to make a point, the Misery Index for Dundee would be 10.6 per cent just now ( 5.0 per cent rate of inflation last month plus the 5.6 per cent rate for unemployment in the city )
The overall rate of unemployment in Dundee masks its most troubling tale - the age 16-24 age group in the city has an 8 per cent unemployment rate, and in the past three and a half years, the number of unemployed in that important age group of future Dundonians, has risen from 945 to 1,605.
There are dire forecasts of more misery to come , in the day-to-day running of family budgets hit by rising food prices, higher energy and fuel costs, and particularly for women.
Many of them are now the breadwinner in the family, whether it be in full-time or in part-time work, and they face the horrendous odds.
That’s why the latest figures for those who are "economically inactive" in Dundee ( those) show that 3,600 such women in Dundee want a job.
The corresponding figure for men is less, at 3,200.
People who are "economically inactive" are generally speaking those are beyond retiral age, and those who cannot work for reasons such as illness, disability, or those who remain at home to look after family.
Family responsibilities are the most common reason given for women being economically inactive.
The increase in the number of women in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance in Dundee since last June is greater than in men, 365 to 312, probably reflecting in part changes in the Lone Parent Obligation.
Women make up the majority of employees in the public sector, such as the NHS, education, local councils, and it is this sector that is being targeted and shredded in this recession.
Women’s working skills are needed now as much as they were in the past.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now the lowest in 5 years .
The number of school teachers in secondary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, almost two-thirds of whom are women
The number of school teachers in primary schools in Dundee is now at its lowest since 2005, 90 per cent of whom are women.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
A view from America ( current Misery Index of 13) - an editorial in the "New York Times" - "Britain’s self-inflicted Misery" - lays the blame forcibly and truly where it belongs :
"Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.
Britain’s economy has barely grown since the budget cuts began taking effect late last year. The most recent quarterly figures showed the economy flat-lining, with growth at 0.1 percent.
New figures reported Britain’s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment — now 8.1 percent — to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.
Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. … Britain’s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.
Slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. .
Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron’s failed experiment. "
One of the band of economists who predicted the banking crash and the extent of the present recession ,and an ex-member of the Bank of England’s interest rate committee was by David Blanchflower, who has studied the long -term effects of unemployment on young people.
He looked at data from the National Child Development Study, which examined the lives of children born in one particular week in 1958.
He found that while those in their early 20s who had lost their jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s managed to make good again, the pyschological mark of being without a job in the earlier years remained with many of them, in some cases into their mid-forties.
They were more likely to be earning less than those with uninterrupted employment and they were less likely to be healthy and happy with their work.
Below are some figures for levels of unemployment in Dundee across all age groups in that same period :
If David Blanchflower’s argument is correct, the question arises, how many amongst those who were born in the late 1950s and who lost their jobs in the 1970s and 80s felt the effect of its misery into their middle aged years, and still feel it even today?
.
Year Average Number unemployed in Dundee
1979 8,668
1980 10,861
1981 14,723
1982 15,611
1983 15,943
1984 16,423
Year Average Number unemployed in Dundee
1979 8,668
1980 10,861
1981 14,723
1982 15,611
1983 15,943
1984 16,423
3 November 2011
"Nurses " at breaking point
Nurses "at breaking point"
NHS Tayside revenue budget forecast to increase by just over 1 per cent
Marlyn Glen
3 November 2011
NHS Tayside revenue budget forecast to increase by just over 1 per cent
Marlyn Glen
3 November 2011
In these times of diminished hopes, the fears of dedicated but demoralised nursing staff in the NHS were revealed a few weeks ago by RCN Scotland’s survey of members.
It showed that only 30 per cent of nursing and healthcare support staff felt that their job was "secure". This was a drop of over 40 per cent compared with the 74 per cent recorded two years ago.
Furthermore, under 40 per cent would recommend nursing as a career, compared with 54 per cent in 2009.
Nursing staff were described as being " at breaking point".
The doctors’ professional body, BMA Scotland, stated last month that the NHS in Scotland was braced for "unprecedented " reductions in budgets in real terms money, and that the "rising costs of health inflation could jeopardise the range and quality of services the NHS currently provides.
"It is vital that the Scottish government and managers take a long-term view for the NHS and work with health professionals to identify how services can be made more efficient and where cuts should be made without compromising patient care."
The Scottish Government has a different perception of the condition of the health service from those who work in it and use it day-by-day.
Thus, First Minister Alex Salmond claimed in June,
"Even in these difficult times, health employment in every single category—through medical consultants, general practitioners, dentists and nurses to allied health professionals—is substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007".
Unfortunately for Mr. Salmond, the figures on the NHS say something different.
The Scottish Government’s own database states that details of the number of general practitioners and dentists employed " is currently unavailable due to changes in methodology and data quality issues"
The figures for the total NHS workforce minus GPs and dentists shows that in the past 4 years it has risen from 130,245 to 131,914 - just a 1 per cent increase - "substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007"?
The same database shows that there are now over 360 fewer nursing and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland than there were when Mr Salmond became First Minister.
In fact, in each of the past two years, the number of total NHS staff has fallen, and the Scottish Government’s own figures also show that some 2,300 posts in the NHS in Scotland will go in this financial year.
These same figures on staffing, this time for NHS Tayside, tell a different tale as well from the "substantially up" story.
According to them, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has decreased by 21 ( full-time equivalents) and is not "substantially up" since Mr. Salmond became First Minister.
It showed that only 30 per cent of nursing and healthcare support staff felt that their job was "secure". This was a drop of over 40 per cent compared with the 74 per cent recorded two years ago.
Furthermore, under 40 per cent would recommend nursing as a career, compared with 54 per cent in 2009.
Nursing staff were described as being " at breaking point".
The doctors’ professional body, BMA Scotland, stated last month that the NHS in Scotland was braced for "unprecedented " reductions in budgets in real terms money, and that the "rising costs of health inflation could jeopardise the range and quality of services the NHS currently provides.
"It is vital that the Scottish government and managers take a long-term view for the NHS and work with health professionals to identify how services can be made more efficient and where cuts should be made without compromising patient care."
The Scottish Government has a different perception of the condition of the health service from those who work in it and use it day-by-day.
Thus, First Minister Alex Salmond claimed in June,
"Even in these difficult times, health employment in every single category—through medical consultants, general practitioners, dentists and nurses to allied health professionals—is substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007".
Unfortunately for Mr. Salmond, the figures on the NHS say something different.
The Scottish Government’s own database states that details of the number of general practitioners and dentists employed " is currently unavailable due to changes in methodology and data quality issues"
The figures for the total NHS workforce minus GPs and dentists shows that in the past 4 years it has risen from 130,245 to 131,914 - just a 1 per cent increase - "substantially up today on the level that we inherited in 2007"?
The same database shows that there are now over 360 fewer nursing and midwifery staff in the NHS in Scotland than there were when Mr Salmond became First Minister.
In fact, in each of the past two years, the number of total NHS staff has fallen, and the Scottish Government’s own figures also show that some 2,300 posts in the NHS in Scotland will go in this financial year.
These same figures on staffing, this time for NHS Tayside, tell a different tale as well from the "substantially up" story.
According to them, the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has decreased by 21 ( full-time equivalents) and is not "substantially up" since Mr. Salmond became First Minister.
In NHS Tayside in "Allied Health Professionals", a category quoted by the First Minister, there has been a average rise of just 5 more staff in each of the past 4 years from a base of 803 - "substantially up on the level that we inherited in 2007"?
Some Allied Health Professionals in NHS Tayside have fallen in number.
In Occupational Therapy there are 23 fewer compared with 2007.
Over recent months ( March to June), there have been a fall in the number of staffing posts in Dietetics, Orthotics, and Therapeutic Radiography.
In the past 2 years, 12 posts have been lost in physiotherapy.
We are constantly told by Scottish Government Health Ministers that they are now providing "record funding" for the NHS.
The same can be said of generally of employers who are providing "record wages" for their employees.
However, do these "record wages" keep up with those record prices in the shops , in energy bills and transport costs?
It’s when the Scottish Government’s "record funding" is scrutinised in this light that the real picture emerges.
The Scottish Government’s " Spending Review and Draft Budget for 2012-13" provides its preliminary ( but not finalised) figures for NHS expenditure till 2014-15.
The total expenditure , in real terms, taking inflation into account, is forecast to fall by £319 million by then.
To give just a few possibilities in individual specialities, in real terms expenditure ,
General Medical Services face a cut of £53 million
General Dental Services face a cut of £30 million
Ophthalmic Services face a cut of £7 million
Nursing Education and training face a cut of over £11 million
Clean Hospitals/MRSA Screening face a cut by £2million
Alcohol Misuse programmes face a cut by £3 million
NHS Tayside’s initial revenue allocation budget, currently just under £600 million a year, is anticipated to increase by less than £1 million in real terms in the coming year, an increase of just 1 per cent.
By 2014-15, it will rise by just over £6 million in real terms on the initial budget to just over £600 million. Over the four year period, the overall rise will be just over 1 per cent.
However, health service inflation costs - drugs and equipment in particular - are currently running at around 4 per cent.
On top of that are the "efficiency savings" .
These are serious financial demands.
3 per cent "efficiency savings" were ordered from budgets this year, with no real let up forecast for future years.
The Christie Commission reported on the struggle that the public sector services such as the NHS have in meeting increased demand, chiefly from an ageing population and chronic health problems , while the Scottish Government has set itself upon a low-taxation policy.
The Commission estimates that the shortfall in funding to meet this demand could rise to £3 billion by the middle of this decade.
It said,
"Our public services are now facing their most serious challenges since the inception of the welfare state.
"This rising demand for public services will take place in an environment of constrained public spending.
"In the absence of a willingness to raise new revenue through taxation, public services will have to achieve more with less."
This means nursing and other clinical posts vacancies being left unfilled and the re-deployment of existing staff.
It means front-line posts disappearing.
It doesn’t mean that the same standard of service for patients can be provided with fewer staff.
This is what happens when the Scottish Government’s core policy is a 5-year council tax freeze which no one knows how it can be paid for.
A sweetshop without prices.
Some Allied Health Professionals in NHS Tayside have fallen in number.
In Occupational Therapy there are 23 fewer compared with 2007.
Over recent months ( March to June), there have been a fall in the number of staffing posts in Dietetics, Orthotics, and Therapeutic Radiography.
In the past 2 years, 12 posts have been lost in physiotherapy.
We are constantly told by Scottish Government Health Ministers that they are now providing "record funding" for the NHS.
The same can be said of generally of employers who are providing "record wages" for their employees.
However, do these "record wages" keep up with those record prices in the shops , in energy bills and transport costs?
It’s when the Scottish Government’s "record funding" is scrutinised in this light that the real picture emerges.
The Scottish Government’s " Spending Review and Draft Budget for 2012-13" provides its preliminary ( but not finalised) figures for NHS expenditure till 2014-15.
The total expenditure , in real terms, taking inflation into account, is forecast to fall by £319 million by then.
To give just a few possibilities in individual specialities, in real terms expenditure ,
General Medical Services face a cut of £53 million
General Dental Services face a cut of £30 million
Ophthalmic Services face a cut of £7 million
Nursing Education and training face a cut of over £11 million
Clean Hospitals/MRSA Screening face a cut by £2million
Alcohol Misuse programmes face a cut by £3 million
NHS Tayside’s initial revenue allocation budget, currently just under £600 million a year, is anticipated to increase by less than £1 million in real terms in the coming year, an increase of just 1 per cent.
By 2014-15, it will rise by just over £6 million in real terms on the initial budget to just over £600 million. Over the four year period, the overall rise will be just over 1 per cent.
However, health service inflation costs - drugs and equipment in particular - are currently running at around 4 per cent.
On top of that are the "efficiency savings" .
These are serious financial demands.
3 per cent "efficiency savings" were ordered from budgets this year, with no real let up forecast for future years.
The Christie Commission reported on the struggle that the public sector services such as the NHS have in meeting increased demand, chiefly from an ageing population and chronic health problems , while the Scottish Government has set itself upon a low-taxation policy.
The Commission estimates that the shortfall in funding to meet this demand could rise to £3 billion by the middle of this decade.
It said,
"Our public services are now facing their most serious challenges since the inception of the welfare state.
"This rising demand for public services will take place in an environment of constrained public spending.
"In the absence of a willingness to raise new revenue through taxation, public services will have to achieve more with less."
This means nursing and other clinical posts vacancies being left unfilled and the re-deployment of existing staff.
It means front-line posts disappearing.
It doesn’t mean that the same standard of service for patients can be provided with fewer staff.
This is what happens when the Scottish Government’s core policy is a 5-year council tax freeze which no one knows how it can be paid for.
A sweetshop without prices.
12 October 2011
Women win Nobel Peace Prize - and Women win an apology from David Cameron
Women win the Nobel Peace Prize - and Women win an apology from David Cameron.
Marlyn Glen
12 October 2011
Last month three events with the rights of women at their core took place.
Firstly, the Nobel Peace Prize this year is to be shared between three women in recognition of their work in the " non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".
The three women are :
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberai, the first woman to have been elected as head of state in Africa,
Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian activist,
Tawakul Karman from Yemen , the first Arab woman to have won the prize, for her role in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy in Yemen, and who has been the victim of several jail sentences.
In awarding the Peace prize to three women, the Nobel committee hoped that it would :
"help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent".
It added,
"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women achieve the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,"
Secondly at the same time, the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt referred the United Nations General Assembly to the "unmet human, economic and social rights" of 3.5 billion women and girls across the world.
He said that women do more work than men, produce 50 per cent of the food, but earn just 10 per cent of the income and 1 per cent of the property.
" They are not allowed to fulfil their potential as powerful drivers of economic development, as well as of peace and security, " he continued.
"I see gender equality not as a crucial human rights issue, but also a question of smart economics.
"I would urge all representatives sitting in this room: Imagine what it would mean in terms of economic growth for your countries if women were allowed to fully participate in society."
And then thirdly, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for patronising remarks which he made towards two female MPs.
These were Angela Neagle during a Commons debate - telling her to "calm down, dear".
His remarks has been made months earlier - in April - which Mr. Cameron had described initially as "light hearted" and for which he then made no apology.
The other was Nadine Dorries whom he described in the Commons as " extremely frustrated ", an adolescent double-entendre, which provoked Ms Dorries to storm out of the Commons.
The ritual apology followed on from the contents of a leaked Downing Street memo which indicated real unease amongst the Tories about their grasp on the votes of women which is now slipping away from them alarmingly.
The high-water mark of Tory support in polls in May 2010 indicated women’s preferred voting choices, with some thoroughly surprising results.
The socio-economic groups are ranged from the highest ( AB) to the lowest (DE) :
AB Labour 32% Tory 30 %
C1 Labour 27 % Tory 42%
C2 Labour 19% Tory 49%
DE Labour 50 % Tory 29%
However in just over one year of austerity programmes, following child benefit being frozen for three years, the scrapping of the £190 health in maternity grant for all pregnant women past their 25th. week, the withdrawal of child tax credits for the highest earners, the ending of the long-term investment that baby bonds promised with a £250 trust find payment at birth, these have all ensured that only a third of women now say that they are prepared to consider voting for the Tories.
The explanation is fairly simple.
The Tories came back into power to slash social services to "pay for" the public funding that Labour used to shore up the economy against the global crisis created by the reckless, profit-hungry banks.
Women and their families are the main users of public services from nursery schools, the NHS, and care for the elderly.
They’ve experienced at first hand the effects of the "too fast and too deep" cuts and they abhor them.
So while some Bullingdon Club behaviour from the Prime Minister has entangled him in unwanted headlines over his treatment of women, larger minds on the world stage of politics have been celebrating the achievements of women.
And in Europe , there’s been another blow for the Cameron-Osborne austerity doctrine from Denmark, which like Britain has retained its own currency.
The new Danish Government is to spend almost £1billlion on public investment in roads, railways, housing repairs, raising environmental standards, and temporary tax credits for companies that invest in research and development, all part of a stimulus package to create over 130,000 new jobs.
The new Danish Prime Minister leading the plan for economic recovery is Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a woman.
22 September 2011
Creating Kids as Consumers Piles Pressures on Parents
Creating Kids as Consumers Piles Pressures on Parents
22 September 2011
It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who declared that there were four freedoms - freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship, freedom from fear, and freedom from want.
Today in more affluent times, a less laudable one might be added - the freedom to shop till you drop.
Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass, the Left-of-centre pressure group, noted an article in the "Times" Style magazine earlier this year on young girls’ preferences in handbags with the sub-heading "If you want to belong in the playground, you got to have the right arm candy".
Girls as young as 8 are being targeted.
If children were driven by markets rather than raised by parents, childhood would be as short as possible, so that children and youths become young consumers.
This month UNICEF reported on the comparative states of contentment of children in the UK, Spain and Sweden.
All parents surveyed were deeply committed to their children, but the unhappy grip that pervasive consumerism has on the lives of some parents in this country was in evidence.
Research in each of the countries discovered that the children surveyed regarded "happiness" as having a stable family and plenty of things to do , especially outdoors, rather than owning the latest piece of electronic technology or the latest brand in clothes.
By contrast, some of the UK parents surveyed were " continually buy new things both for themselves and their children.
"Boxes and boxes of toys, broken presents and unused electronics were witness to this drive to acquire new possessions, which in reality were not really wanted or treasured.
"Most parents realised that what they were doing was often ‘pointless’ but seemed pressurised and compelled to continue.
"UK parents were often buying their children status brands believing that they were protecting them from the kind of bullying they experienced in their own childhood.
"This compulsive acquisition and protective, symbolic brand purchase was largely absent in Spain and Sweden where parents were clearly under much less pressure to consume and displayed greater resilience."
UNICEF looked at the effects of inequality.
The Gini coefficient is a standard statistical measurement of inequality of income in a country. Its values range between perfect equality -0 per cent - to complete inequality -100 per cent.
Sweden is a much more equal country than Britain, and had a Gini coefficient of around 23 per cent .
Scotland is a much more unequal society than Sweden with Scotland’s Gini coefficient rising over the past three years from 33 to 35 per cent (In the UK overall, it has remained the same at 36 over the same period.)
Spain’s Gini coefficient is around 35.
The research found that sensitivities about differences in possessions emerge by secondary school .
"At this stage material goods and brands began to play an important part in identifying and categorising people. …Inevitably, expensive brands symbolised wealth with the rich and the poor marked out clearly by their possessions…"
Being a "have" or a "have-not" of the latest products of turbo-charged consumerism created unease amongst children in all three countries to some extent, but the UK parents seemed far more of a "consumer generation" than parents from Sweden and Spain.
UNICEF reported,
" We find children’s growing awareness of inequality as they approach secondary school and the role of consumer goods in identifying and creating status groups within peer groups. Children have a very ambivalent attitude to those who appear to be able to afford all the latest status goods.
"Whilst many UK parents are complicit in purchasing status goods to hide social insecurities this behaviour is almost totally absent in Spain and Sweden. "
"Deprivation for Swedish parents was understood as living in an area where personal safety was threatened, whilst for Spanish mothers not being able to spend time with your children was seen to confer disadvantage relative to others."
" In the UK inequality was also seen in access to outdoor, sporting and creative activities, with poorer children spending more sedentary time in front of screens whilst the more affluent had access to a wide range of sports and other pursuits."
What makes the contents of the report especially troubling is that it is low-income parents already struggling to make ends meet who feel most pressurised and can least afford to buy new consumer goods for their children.
They are also some of the ones who work some of the longest hours.
Tired-out parents who are trying to balance family budgets daily on the edge of unremitting insecurity, will find it very difficult to provide theirs and their children’s priority - more time together as a family.
UNICEF have called upon the UK Government to introduce a Living Wage for all its employees and sub-contracted workers to help establish a better work life balance for parents to work less and so spend more time with their families.
A Living Wage , as determined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is the minimum income required by a family or individual to maintain an acceptable standard of living.
Currently the minimum hourly wage rate stands at £7.20p an hour but this leaves part-time workers, mainly women, earning less than the accepted Living wage.
At the same time as UNICEF, Save the Children and the Daycare Trust have been highlighting the rocketing cost of childcare in Scotland, one of the highest world-wide, as low -income families find that its cost leaves comparatively little left for living costs, putting affordable work beyond their reach.
The Daycare Trust established that in Scotland the cost for 25 hours of nursery care was over £420 a month.
By comparison in Sweden a maximum rate is set at just over £100 per month for full-time care. Families pay less for further children, around 1 per cent of the family’s income.
As a consequence of the high cost of care in Scotland, many parents inevitably have to cut back on spending as a result.
An estimated half of those in deep poverty cut back on food.
Save the Children are calling on the Scottish Government to increase the numbers entitled to free childcare and nursery education.
It says that just a handful of Scottish councils are providing 15 hours of free nursery education for three and four-year-olds, which is a statutory obligation in England.
What is worrying is that as society overall has become more affluent, markets have trespassed into childhood just when children are developing ideas about who a child is, what a child should have, and how he or she is regarded by other children.
Fearful that their child will be the odd one out in the class without the latest transient favourite toy, gadget or clothes now on sale, some parents relent.
Children grow up to become parents themselves and have children who will be subject to the same influences of consumerism that they were, such as television.
Children are one of TV’s most captive audiences.
The viewing habits of children under 5 in Scotland were revealed in the 2009 report "Growing Up in Scotland" with over a third watching more than an hour and a half of TV a day, and one child in ten watching more than two and a half hours of TV every day….and advertisers know that children can wield great power over adults to purchase for them.
That’s why, since 1993, in Sweden television adverts aimed at the under 12 are banned before, during and after main time TV programmes because children in that age group cannot distinguish between a programme and an advert which is essentially a biased statement.
In Britain, the Bailey Report on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children has just been issued, and amongst its recommendations is the banning the employment of children under 16 as brand ambassadors and in peer-to-peer marketing
The culture of consumerism may bring instant status , but it doesn’t bring long-term well-being nor long-term satisfaction.
It sharpens inequalities between those whose parents can afford and those who cannot, and there is a wealth of evidence showing that children who live in relative poverty or experience the effects of income inequality will continue to feel their effects beyond childhood and throughout the whole of their lives.
Being caring and tolerant towards others are more important than the defining people by what they possess as market-based economies generally do.
"What’s good for business" and the "freedom of individual choice" are not what’s best for families.
Today in more affluent times, a less laudable one might be added - the freedom to shop till you drop.
Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass, the Left-of-centre pressure group, noted an article in the "Times" Style magazine earlier this year on young girls’ preferences in handbags with the sub-heading "If you want to belong in the playground, you got to have the right arm candy".
Girls as young as 8 are being targeted.
If children were driven by markets rather than raised by parents, childhood would be as short as possible, so that children and youths become young consumers.
This month UNICEF reported on the comparative states of contentment of children in the UK, Spain and Sweden.
All parents surveyed were deeply committed to their children, but the unhappy grip that pervasive consumerism has on the lives of some parents in this country was in evidence.
Research in each of the countries discovered that the children surveyed regarded "happiness" as having a stable family and plenty of things to do , especially outdoors, rather than owning the latest piece of electronic technology or the latest brand in clothes.
By contrast, some of the UK parents surveyed were " continually buy new things both for themselves and their children.
"Boxes and boxes of toys, broken presents and unused electronics were witness to this drive to acquire new possessions, which in reality were not really wanted or treasured.
"Most parents realised that what they were doing was often ‘pointless’ but seemed pressurised and compelled to continue.
"UK parents were often buying their children status brands believing that they were protecting them from the kind of bullying they experienced in their own childhood.
"This compulsive acquisition and protective, symbolic brand purchase was largely absent in Spain and Sweden where parents were clearly under much less pressure to consume and displayed greater resilience."
UNICEF looked at the effects of inequality.
The Gini coefficient is a standard statistical measurement of inequality of income in a country. Its values range between perfect equality -0 per cent - to complete inequality -100 per cent.
Sweden is a much more equal country than Britain, and had a Gini coefficient of around 23 per cent .
Scotland is a much more unequal society than Sweden with Scotland’s Gini coefficient rising over the past three years from 33 to 35 per cent (In the UK overall, it has remained the same at 36 over the same period.)
Spain’s Gini coefficient is around 35.
The research found that sensitivities about differences in possessions emerge by secondary school .
"At this stage material goods and brands began to play an important part in identifying and categorising people. …Inevitably, expensive brands symbolised wealth with the rich and the poor marked out clearly by their possessions…"
Being a "have" or a "have-not" of the latest products of turbo-charged consumerism created unease amongst children in all three countries to some extent, but the UK parents seemed far more of a "consumer generation" than parents from Sweden and Spain.
UNICEF reported,
" We find children’s growing awareness of inequality as they approach secondary school and the role of consumer goods in identifying and creating status groups within peer groups. Children have a very ambivalent attitude to those who appear to be able to afford all the latest status goods.
"Whilst many UK parents are complicit in purchasing status goods to hide social insecurities this behaviour is almost totally absent in Spain and Sweden. "
"Deprivation for Swedish parents was understood as living in an area where personal safety was threatened, whilst for Spanish mothers not being able to spend time with your children was seen to confer disadvantage relative to others."
" In the UK inequality was also seen in access to outdoor, sporting and creative activities, with poorer children spending more sedentary time in front of screens whilst the more affluent had access to a wide range of sports and other pursuits."
What makes the contents of the report especially troubling is that it is low-income parents already struggling to make ends meet who feel most pressurised and can least afford to buy new consumer goods for their children.
They are also some of the ones who work some of the longest hours.
Tired-out parents who are trying to balance family budgets daily on the edge of unremitting insecurity, will find it very difficult to provide theirs and their children’s priority - more time together as a family.
UNICEF have called upon the UK Government to introduce a Living Wage for all its employees and sub-contracted workers to help establish a better work life balance for parents to work less and so spend more time with their families.
A Living Wage , as determined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is the minimum income required by a family or individual to maintain an acceptable standard of living.
Currently the minimum hourly wage rate stands at £7.20p an hour but this leaves part-time workers, mainly women, earning less than the accepted Living wage.
At the same time as UNICEF, Save the Children and the Daycare Trust have been highlighting the rocketing cost of childcare in Scotland, one of the highest world-wide, as low -income families find that its cost leaves comparatively little left for living costs, putting affordable work beyond their reach.
The Daycare Trust established that in Scotland the cost for 25 hours of nursery care was over £420 a month.
By comparison in Sweden a maximum rate is set at just over £100 per month for full-time care. Families pay less for further children, around 1 per cent of the family’s income.
As a consequence of the high cost of care in Scotland, many parents inevitably have to cut back on spending as a result.
An estimated half of those in deep poverty cut back on food.
Save the Children are calling on the Scottish Government to increase the numbers entitled to free childcare and nursery education.
It says that just a handful of Scottish councils are providing 15 hours of free nursery education for three and four-year-olds, which is a statutory obligation in England.
What is worrying is that as society overall has become more affluent, markets have trespassed into childhood just when children are developing ideas about who a child is, what a child should have, and how he or she is regarded by other children.
Fearful that their child will be the odd one out in the class without the latest transient favourite toy, gadget or clothes now on sale, some parents relent.
Children grow up to become parents themselves and have children who will be subject to the same influences of consumerism that they were, such as television.
Children are one of TV’s most captive audiences.
The viewing habits of children under 5 in Scotland were revealed in the 2009 report "Growing Up in Scotland" with over a third watching more than an hour and a half of TV a day, and one child in ten watching more than two and a half hours of TV every day….and advertisers know that children can wield great power over adults to purchase for them.
That’s why, since 1993, in Sweden television adverts aimed at the under 12 are banned before, during and after main time TV programmes because children in that age group cannot distinguish between a programme and an advert which is essentially a biased statement.
In Britain, the Bailey Report on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children has just been issued, and amongst its recommendations is the banning the employment of children under 16 as brand ambassadors and in peer-to-peer marketing
The culture of consumerism may bring instant status , but it doesn’t bring long-term well-being nor long-term satisfaction.
It sharpens inequalities between those whose parents can afford and those who cannot, and there is a wealth of evidence showing that children who live in relative poverty or experience the effects of income inequality will continue to feel their effects beyond childhood and throughout the whole of their lives.
Being caring and tolerant towards others are more important than the defining people by what they possess as market-based economies generally do.
"What’s good for business" and the "freedom of individual choice" are not what’s best for families.
18 September 2011
Girls outperform Boys at school - so why is the Gender Pay Gap still there?
Marlyn Glen
Girls outperform Boys at school - so why is the Gender Pay Gap still there?
16 September 2011
In my previous piece ( link ) I looked at explanations of why girls generally perform better in education than boys, and the belief for some that Margaret Thatcher was a suitable role model for girls to emulate in adult careers.
While there was little evidence of this from her polices and her lack of identity with women and their needs as a group, Thatcherism, the term that came to describe her politics, certainly had its effect upon males.
Thatcherism directly challenged male identity in working class areas with traditional industries.
As life and jobs were stripped out of communities across the country, and millions were sent to the dole queues, the identity of men with their work was broken.
Broken too was the link between boys striving to be academically successful at school to ensure a good start in adult working life.
There were simply not such jobs in these communities, and hence the value of education for boys' future fell.
Coming back up to date, the hope that the higher levels of success displayed by girls and young women as opposed to boys and young men at national exams would have ushered in the beginning of the end for the gender pay gap has yet to be borne out.
This year and last , two heavyweight institutions, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Home Office found that this permanent reminder of inequality was still as spacious as ever and that progress to close it was " grinding to a halt"
The HRC declared,"Despite women now doing better than men in every aspect of educational qualification, the mean gender pay gap for women and men working full time was 16.4% in 2009. "The gap is lowest for the under 30s, rising more than five-fold by the time workers reach 40, when women earn on average 27% less than men of the same age."
The Home Office report on "Women and work" noted that almost half of this country’s workforce are women, but that "evidence from a range of studies suggest our labour market is still failing to make the best use of people’s talents. "
In particular, pay levels for women, while improving, still do not reflect their qualification levels.Last month , the EHRC published "Sex and Power" which estimated that over 5,000 women were missing from the top positions of power in the public and private sector
It reported that while women graduates on average had higher degree passes than men and the number of women graduates continues to grow, this is not reflected in their numbers in senior management categories in employment after graduation.
The percentage of women in positions of influence included :
22 per cent of MPs
17 per cent of the Cabinet
13 per cent of local government council leaders
22 per cent of local authority chief executives
14 per cent of university vice-chancellors
10 per cent as national newspaper editors
The dearth of women in top positions resulted from factors such as the "outdated" culture of long-working hours and "the unequal division of domestic responsibilities"
EHRC emphasised that ,
"If Britain is to stage a strong recovery from its current economic situation, then we have to make sure we’re not wasting women’s skills and talents."
The reluctance to tackle this significant division of priorities at the centre of women’s working lives, which is virtually absent from the lives of many men, between the needs to earn to bring up a family and the dependent needs of those same family members has its consequences for the economy.
Many women choose part-time work to resolve these competing demands.
The TUC has reported that the Gender and Employment in Local Labour Markets study recorded 54 percent of women working part-time as being ‘employed below their potential’ – the equivalent of 2.8 million women.
The TUC emphasised , "What this means is that previously they had worked in jobs that demanded higher qualifications/skills or more responsibility than the jobs they now did
"If employers offered more high status and better-paid jobs on a part-time basis or with other flexible arrangements these women would be able to apply for these opportunities."
So while some progress has been made through women gaining better educational qualifications, the gender pay gap remains firmly in its place.
Shifting the work-life balance more in favour of women now takes on a new importance.
This means that that many employers must be made to recognise that :
women would be better employees if their ( unpaid) domestic and caring duties could be integrated more harmoniously with their ( paid) work.
women face considerable obstacles in career progression as the standards set for such advancement were made initially by men to accommodate men’s working needs.
women’s work is consistently undervalued compared with that of men, and that their work is rewarded accordingly.
Girls and young women have come a long way in education in a relatively short time.
If we want to close the gender gap significantly, then employers must also make a similar journey in a much shorter time scale.
Girls outperforming Boys at School : The XX Factor
Marlyn Glen
Girls outperforming Boys at School : The XX Factor
7 September 2011
The gender gap in school educational qualifications that shows girls outperforming boys is now a well-established trend.
It's been around now for at least two decades in Scotland - or three generations of the 6 year secondary school session
The Scottish Government summarises the gap as follows :
"Nowadays in Scotland, more girls than boys stay on at secondary school after the compulsory school leaving age;
"Girls leave school with more and higher qualifications than boys on average;
"Girls are more likely than boys to go on to further and higher education after leaving school, with young women now making up the majority of entrants in both sectors.
This year’s SQA exam results show that girls are ahead in subjects long regarded as the bastion of the boys such as Physics and Mathematics.
For Scotland as a whole, these are :
Higher Maths Pass Rate Girls 73% Boys 72 %
Advanced Rate Maths Pass Rate Girls 71% Boys 63 %
Higher Physics Pass Rate Girls 82% Boys 76%
Advanced Higher Physics Pass Rate Girls 86% Boys 78%
The gender qualification gap is not purely a Scottish or British experience; it's to be found across Europe , the US and beyond.
Academic research frequently explains the gap through factors such as girls working harder, applying themselves more, having better skills in language, recognising the value of an education more, treating school more seriously, , being better organised, more mature, more respectful of authority, and a more "female-friendly" learning environment, and seeing more career opportunities becoming available to them as a result.
It is fascinating to put female education into the wider perspective of women struggling for the right to have their place in society, at work, in the home and in democracy recognised.
A century ago it was extraordinarily difficult for most girls to benefit from education.
They received a restricted curriculum, with a school leaving age at just 14, and horizons set for many at the level of the factory or in domestic service.
Arguments were expounded that education would wasted on women because they would just get married.
They might threaten the livelihood of professional men by competing with them for jobs.
Education might make girls "strong-minded".
In "A Woman's Place", Judy Batson describes the obstacles placed in women's path to achieve equal access at university.
Citing Oxford University, she wrote,
"By 1906, all colleges theoretically admitted women to lectures, although individual dons could exclude them if they wished.
"At first, the University only allowed women to take special women's examinations, despite the argument that, if their higher education was ever to be taken seriously, then women should be judged by the same standards as men.
"Some feared that access to ancient literature and modern physiological research would be morally detrimental to young women.
"Others doubted that women's physical and mental health could endure the strain of taking university examinations."
100 years ago a woman could enter a school classroom to teach, but not to vote in a General Election.
Arguments against Votes for Women pressed the case that women could " not be trusted with the vote " because of their "emotional" thinking, whereas emotions never swayed male decision-makers, particularly those in positions of power.
Advance now to the 1980s when women now had the vote and when a female decision-maker was in such a position of power with Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s first female Prime Minister.
Successful role models are frequently projected as examples of achievements for both girls and boys to aim for in modern adult life, and Margaret Thatcher has been one such favourite for some.
The young Margaret Thatcher showed some early signs as a potential advocate for the cause of women.
Writing in the now-defunct Sunday Graphic in 1952 she said,
"Why have so few women in recent years risen to the top of the professions?
"One reason may be that so many have cut short their careers when they marry. In my view this is a great pity.
"For it is possible to carry on working. taking a short leave of absence when families arrive, and returning later.
"Should a woman arise equal to the task, I say let her have an equal chance with the men for the leading Cabinet posts. Why not a woman Chancellor—or Foreign Secretary? "
However once installed as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher did very little to promote such women, with just one woman promoted appointment to her Cabinet in 11 years.
Add to that the figure of one million women in Britain who became unemployed during the second term of her premiership, and the conclusion is that Margaret Thatcher had little interest in being an advocate for women and their rights.
However, the doctrine that became Thatcherism does have some part to play in explaining boys’ educational performance.
That’s for my next article …as is the question … if the gender qualifications gap favours girls over boys why does the gender pay gap favour men over women?
It's been around now for at least two decades in Scotland - or three generations of the 6 year secondary school session
The Scottish Government summarises the gap as follows :
"Nowadays in Scotland, more girls than boys stay on at secondary school after the compulsory school leaving age;
"Girls leave school with more and higher qualifications than boys on average;
"Girls are more likely than boys to go on to further and higher education after leaving school, with young women now making up the majority of entrants in both sectors.
This year’s SQA exam results show that girls are ahead in subjects long regarded as the bastion of the boys such as Physics and Mathematics.
For Scotland as a whole, these are :
Higher Maths Pass Rate Girls 73% Boys 72 %
Advanced Rate Maths Pass Rate Girls 71% Boys 63 %
Higher Physics Pass Rate Girls 82% Boys 76%
Advanced Higher Physics Pass Rate Girls 86% Boys 78%
The gender qualification gap is not purely a Scottish or British experience; it's to be found across Europe , the US and beyond.
Academic research frequently explains the gap through factors such as girls working harder, applying themselves more, having better skills in language, recognising the value of an education more, treating school more seriously, , being better organised, more mature, more respectful of authority, and a more "female-friendly" learning environment, and seeing more career opportunities becoming available to them as a result.
It is fascinating to put female education into the wider perspective of women struggling for the right to have their place in society, at work, in the home and in democracy recognised.
A century ago it was extraordinarily difficult for most girls to benefit from education.
They received a restricted curriculum, with a school leaving age at just 14, and horizons set for many at the level of the factory or in domestic service.
Arguments were expounded that education would wasted on women because they would just get married.
They might threaten the livelihood of professional men by competing with them for jobs.
Education might make girls "strong-minded".
In "A Woman's Place", Judy Batson describes the obstacles placed in women's path to achieve equal access at university.
Citing Oxford University, she wrote,
"By 1906, all colleges theoretically admitted women to lectures, although individual dons could exclude them if they wished.
"At first, the University only allowed women to take special women's examinations, despite the argument that, if their higher education was ever to be taken seriously, then women should be judged by the same standards as men.
"Some feared that access to ancient literature and modern physiological research would be morally detrimental to young women.
"Others doubted that women's physical and mental health could endure the strain of taking university examinations."
100 years ago a woman could enter a school classroom to teach, but not to vote in a General Election.
Arguments against Votes for Women pressed the case that women could " not be trusted with the vote " because of their "emotional" thinking, whereas emotions never swayed male decision-makers, particularly those in positions of power.
Advance now to the 1980s when women now had the vote and when a female decision-maker was in such a position of power with Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s first female Prime Minister.
Successful role models are frequently projected as examples of achievements for both girls and boys to aim for in modern adult life, and Margaret Thatcher has been one such favourite for some.
The young Margaret Thatcher showed some early signs as a potential advocate for the cause of women.
Writing in the now-defunct Sunday Graphic in 1952 she said,
"Why have so few women in recent years risen to the top of the professions?
"One reason may be that so many have cut short their careers when they marry. In my view this is a great pity.
"For it is possible to carry on working. taking a short leave of absence when families arrive, and returning later.
"Should a woman arise equal to the task, I say let her have an equal chance with the men for the leading Cabinet posts. Why not a woman Chancellor—or Foreign Secretary? "
However once installed as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher did very little to promote such women, with just one woman promoted appointment to her Cabinet in 11 years.
Add to that the figure of one million women in Britain who became unemployed during the second term of her premiership, and the conclusion is that Margaret Thatcher had little interest in being an advocate for women and their rights.
However, the doctrine that became Thatcherism does have some part to play in explaining boys’ educational performance.
That’s for my next article …as is the question … if the gender qualifications gap favours girls over boys why does the gender pay gap favour men over women?
Nurses, Who's loking After Them?
Marlyn Glen
Nurses, Who's Looking After Them?
1 September 2011
This week , a figure intruded into the world of Scottish Government spin.
The type of figure that no photocall by Government Ministers could ever distract from
An example of sound evidence winning against soundbites .
That figure was the one showing that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now lower than it was when Alex Salmond's Scottish Government took power in 2007.
The number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside is now 4,974 full-time equivalents.
In 2007 , at the time of the annual staffing census, the number was 4,995.
That's 21 more nursing and midwifery staff than there are today.
All across Scotland, similar figures are standing up for the NHS against the Scottish Government.
This is the second year in succession that the number of nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen as a result of the imposition by the Scottish Government on the health board of "efficiency savings", a softer-sounding version of the word "cuts".
As a result, last year, across the entire range of front-line health services in the health board, 190 posts were lost.
The consequence of cuts of this severity will damage the quality of patient care as rising demand continues, with nursing staff, fewer in number, being overstretched.
Last year, the Scottish Parliament’s Health Committee report on health boards’ budgets made clear its concern about the effect of planned reductions in staff on the quality of service in the NHS through "vacancy management", by pointing out the problems created by the filling of vacant posts by existing staff and how the quality of service would be affected.
It highlighted that the remaining staff "may be left to cope, with implications in terms of increased stress and sickness absence, damaging the quality of service.’ RCN Scotland work in unflagging pursuit of what's best for their members, and 5 months ago they unveiled another stark side of the upshot of hundreds of the "efficiency savings" that the NHS was commanded to find.
Their members' survey indicated :
Only 10 per cent regarded staffing where they worked as satisfactory
Over 95 per cent stated working beyond the hours of their contract, and over 25 per cent of them stating that this occurred on every shift.
Almost 30 per cent said they missed meal times at work three times each week
Over 15 per cent said that they rarely or never took entitled breaks.
Around 20 per cent displayed "presenteeism" in the past 6 months - being unwell but still at work.
It's small wonder then that RCN Scotland are campaigning for the recommendations of the Boorman Review to be implemented by all health boards in Scotland.
Boorman's study of the NHS in England recognised that a healthier NHS staff would lead to improvements in patient care and, at the same time, save significant sums of money.
His work claims that the number days lost by illness absence alone could be reduced by one third, resulting in an additional 3 million working days per year, and annual savings of over £500 million to the NHS.
Among its recommendations are :
service-wide culture transformation to promote better understanding health and well-being issues from board to ward level
an improved provision of wellness and early intervention services for staff
a national minimum standard of occupational health Teamwork is at the heart of working in the NHS, as it should be for all other organisations and individuals working with the NHS.
We, as a society, should take better care of those who, one day, will take care of us.
In this financial year, the NHS in Scotland has been ordered to find record "efficiency savings" of £350 million.
Scottish Studies - No place for playing time added on at Bannockburn
Marlyn Glen
Scottish Studies : No place for playing time added on at Bannockburn
26th. August 2011
The Scottish Government is to introduce "Scottish Studies" as a new compulsory course in schools , described in the SNP manifesto as a "distinct strand of learning on Scotland and incorporating Scottish History, Scottish Literature, the Scots and Gaelic Languages, wider Scottish culture and Scottish current affairs."
Education Secretary Mike Russell adds that "Scottish horticulture or Scottish Cookery could even be looked at", risking the potential for the soundbite - "Clootie Dumplings on the Curriculum".
Questions galore are already being asked about this proposed new course which will begin in primary schools and continue throughout secondary schooling with an externally marked exam.
If Scottish Studies is compulsory doesn’t that mean less time for pupils to study traditional exam subjects, on which their future career opportunities depend so much?
What’s the point of this new subject , if it’s already covered elsewhere across a range of subjects? Where are the teachers to come from, given that the Scottish Government did away with 3,000 teaching posts in its first four years in office?
Others are concerned that the subject is to be compulsory, and not an option, raising fears of a political agenda behind its introduction.
Some fear the possibility of "Scottish Studies" being another "National Conversation" , the Scottish Government consultation with the alias of the "Nationalist Conversation".
Let’s be gracious at its outset and accept without equivocation that the intention of the course is to promote a wider understanding of Scottish literature, history and culture for the educational benefit of Scottish pupils.
Let’s look firstly the "wider Scottish culture" feature of Scottish Studies that would include science and mathematics in Scotland.
Scottish science and mathematics should not be portrayed as exceptional.
The work of the famous 19th. century Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell may have been described by Albert Einstein as the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Isaac Newton", and there are certainly other famous Scottish scientists and inventors.
However, Scottish Studies should make the case that the same can be said for many other countries where the remarkable achievements of their scientific sons and daughters can engender a quiet patriotism.
The work of scientists in modern-day Scottish institutions, and Scottish scientists in similar institutions abroad is international in its outlook, and its most important method of explanation, mathematics, also has no national identity or boundaries.Scottish pupils should and do learn of the work of their country's writers, poets, and artists, and of how they have depicted life in our communities and beyond.
Good literature and art lifts its reader or viewer up above his or her immediate location and time to present a broader perspective of their country and of the world, of shared experiences and common goals.
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Scottish Studies in fostering a distinct Scottish culture is the resident Americanisation of Scottish, and indeed English, as well as European popular culture.
This is a particular problem because those studying Scottish Studies, the pupils, are the most enthusiastic consumers of US cultural imperialism, which has stormed the commanding heights of millions of living rooms and bedrooms across Scotland through television screens, DVD players, and music downloads.Why do Scottish pop singers sing with American accents?
Why do they sing about Tennessee rather than about Dundee, Chicago rather than about Glasgow?
Will the teaching of Scottish Studies be intended to address the pervasive influence of American popular culture upon Scotland and the rest of the world?
The study of History is probably the subject of greatest contention.
How does understanding Scotland's past help us understand present-day Scotland?
How does judging past events and beliefs in their own contemporary setting and the changes that they created help prepare young Scots for the society they will live in?
Tom Johnston was the legendary Secretary of State for Scotland in Churchill's wartime Cabinet .
His political career included 5 years as Labour MP for Dundee in the 1920s.
Before then he wrote two famous books, "A History of the Working Classes in Scotland" and " Our Scots Noble Families"
This is most definitely not the Scotland of Walter Scott's novels such as "Tales of A Grandfather".
Right from its relentless introduction, Tom Johnston's "Our Scots Noble Families" never lets up thereafter :
"Show the people that our Old Nobility is not noble, that its lands are stolen lands - stolen either by force or fraud; show people that the title-deeds are rapine, murder, massacre, cheating, or court harlotry; dissolve the halo of divinity that surrounds the hereditary title; let the people clearly understand that our present House of Lords is composed largely of descendants of successful pirates and rogues; do these things and you shatter the Romance that keeps the nation numb and spellbound while privilege picks its pockets."
Johnston dismisses the sanctified image of Robert the Bruce in one sentence.
"The Bruce, a Norman, convinced our forefathers that his fight against the English was for Scottish freedom; and lo, when the invading hosts were driven back, the Bruce handed our common fields to his fellow Normans."
What place in Scottish Studies' perspective on Scottish history will Johnston's work have? or will it be dismissed as being too radical or as propaganda?
There's a TV series on Scottish history waiting to be made of Johnston's work and it should be on everyone's booklist.
If there is to be one common theme running through Scottish Studies' treatment of Scottish history, then perhaps Kenny MacAskill has provided us with it.
Almost 10 years ago, the present Justice Secretary wrote an article in the "Sunday Times" telling some traditionalists in the SNP that it was time to move on from its annual Bannockburn rally :
"Bannockburn’s position in the psyche of the party and the people must change. We must advance — both as a party and as a nation — and stop defining ourselves in terms of a victory over the English....
"What is it about the Scots that makes us hark back to a romanticised idea of that and other battles? Other nations have important junctures in their history but do not act as we do. Few go back 700 years in their celebration. While this may be testimony to the fact that we are an ancient nation, what does it say about us as a modern country...
"For too many people history commences with Bannockburn and ends with the Union in 1707, both events defined by our relationship with England. "
Something other than a military history of Scotland is called for; something other than a history of royal aggression; something other than the identification of "Scotland" with the territorial ambitions of its vain, warrior kings of small status.
That might go some way to quell the unease of the sceptics.
Inequality and the Gini Coefficient
Marlyn Glen
Inequality and the Gini Coefficient
17 August 2011
"Lower the Gini Coefficient!" isn't a compelling slogan that you'll see on a banner at a Labour movement rally.
Nor is it the subject of the chant : "What do we want? When do we want it?
The Gini coefficient is the most commonly used measure of income inequality.
It reflects the gap between the rich and the rest, the kind of society we live in, and its inequalities.
If we had a society where there was perfect equality of income, the Gini coefficient would be 0, full inequality 100.
In Scotland over the past three years, the value of the Gini coefficient has risen from 33 to 35, meaning that inequality has increased .
(In the UK overall, it has remained the same at 36 over the same period.)
(In the UK overall, it has remained the same at 36 over the same period.)
In the USA, the coefficient is a stark 47 per cent.
However not far from us are Sweden, Norway and Denmark, countries which have values for the Gini coefficient much lower than Scotland's.
They are some of the lowest measured in the world - recent values are Sweden at 23 per cent, and its neighbours, Denmark( 24) and Norway (25)
All three feature regularly in the top grades of international surveys which assess people's satisfaction with their lives alongside the quality of life in housing, income, their communities, education, health, and the work-life balance.
The latest world-wide survey of the OECD Better Life Index (data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) saw Denmark come first, with Norway third and Sweden in sixth place.
Generally speaking, fairer societies such as the Scandinavian ones are healthier societies.
So let's look at statistics that compare important health indicators in Sweden with Scotland.
Let's examine life expectancy, the number of years a child at birth is expected to live.
Life expectancy at birth for males in Sweden - 79
Life expectancy at birth for males in Scotland - 76]
Life expectancy at birth for females in Sweden - 84
Life expectancy at birth for females in Scotland - 80
Men in Sweden can expect to live three years longer and women four years longer than they can expect to live in Scotland.
Comparing Norway with Scotland shows the same life expectancy gap.
Life expectancy figures can be supplemented by Healthy Life Expectancy figures.
These indicate the percentage of life that a male or female at birth can expect to live in a healthy condition.
It measures the quality of life.
Healthy Life Expectancy for a male in Sweden is 88 per cent of his life
Healthy Life Expectancy for a male in Scotland is 79 per cent of his life
Healthy Life Expectancy for a female in Sweden is 83 per cent of her life
Healthy Life Expectancy for a female in Scotland is 77 per cent of her life
Both men and women in Sweden can expect to live longer and to live longer in better health than men and women in Scotland.
The annual report of Scotland's Chief Medical Officer of Health, published last November, states candidly,
"At present, Scotland has the lowest life expectancy of all Western European countries.
"On another important indicator of health, infant mortality, the Chief Medical Officer of Health states that Sweden, Norway, Denmark, (Finland and Iceland) all have "significantly lower" infant mortality rates than Scotland."
Health inequalities arise from the lack of control that people have over their lives.
The less order that people have over their jobs, and their family situation, the greater their insecurity.
Low income, job uncertainty, underemployment and unemployment, all make people more vulnerable to stress which can express itself in unhealthy behaviour, and ultimately, disease.
Everyday experience tells us that despite decades of life-enhancing landmarks in new medical technology and scientific discovery, the relatively poorer health of the least advantaged persists.
In February of last year, the Marmot Review published its study of health inequalities in England for the UK government.
This intra-national contrast in health demonstrated the same degrees of inequality that international ones had found.
People who live in the least well-off areas of England are likely to die, on average, seven years earlier than those in the most affluent areas.
As the report said," People with higher socioeconomic position in society have a greater array of life chances and more opportunities to lead a flourishing life. They also have better health. The two are linked: the more favoured people are, socially and economically, the better their health. This link between social conditions and health is not a footnote to the ‘real’ concerns with health – health care and unhealthy behaviours – it should become the main focus."
The report produced a startling calculation - " If everyone in England had the same death rates as the most advantaged, people who are currently dying prematurely as a result of health inequalities would, in total, have enjoyed between 1.3 and 2.5 million extra years of life.
" They would, in addition, have had a further 2.8 million years free of limiting illness or disability. "It is estimated that inequality in illness accounts for productivity losses of £31-33 billion per year, lost taxes and higher welfare payments in the range of £20-32 billion per year, and additional NHS healthcare costs associated with inequality are well in excess of £5.5 billion per year."
A Scottish version of the calculation would possibly reveal a total sum of around £5 billion - roughly half the value of Scotland's NHS resources budget - a budget of over £10 billion this year.
The healthier you are, the more productive you are, and the more you help society.
While pointing out health differences between Scotland and Scandinavia, we mustn't delude ourselves or romanticise about society in Scandinavia.
The healthier you are, the more productive you are, and the more you help society.
While pointing out health differences between Scotland and Scandinavia, we mustn't delude ourselves or romanticise about society in Scandinavia.
All have recently witnessed populist penetration by the far Right into their politics in recent years, challenging the long periods of dominance by the Scandinavian Left.
However, in his essay in Policy Network, Mikko Kuisma says that this entry was " symptomatic of poor political strategy" of the left of centre parties.
"Research shows that certain core values of social democracy are still alive and that there is a future for progressive politics.
"Recent evidence of the widespread acceptance of not only the values of welfare but the broad structures and policies that maintain the welfare state comes from Denmark.
"According to a Danish newspaper , around 66% of the Danish population is happy to maintain the current level of taxation.
"This is in and of itself a remarkable result, as the levels of taxation in Denmark are the highest in the world."
Challenging health and income inequalities won't come by the "Lend a Hand" voluntarism of David Cameron's Big Society.
Reductions in them come from the actions of an interventionist government.
Challenging health and income inequalities won't come by the "Lend a Hand" voluntarism of David Cameron's Big Society.
Reductions in them come from the actions of an interventionist government.
The abolition of maternity leave and "blue skies thinking"
Marlyn Glen
4th. August 2011
The abolition of maternity leave and "blue skies thinking"
Management- speak, the identity language of upper-echelon, fast track career advance - has a phrase that's been heard by those amongst the humbler ranks of life - "blue skies thinking"
Its terrestrial equivalent is " horizon-shift thinking" and it's this that Steve Hilton, one of David Cameron's closest policy advisers at 10 Downing Street , was supposedly indulging in when he advocated that maternity leave should be abolished in order to help small businesses.
It's no good dismissing the proposed ending of maternity leave as just a thought, because before it is even considered publicly , it has to be measured against what we insist are the bedrock criteria of a responsible society , which includes maternity rights for working mothers.
In the UK maternity leave is 52 weeks.
In the European Union countries, the minimum is 14 weeks.
In thinly-populated Iceland it is 9 months in total , 3 of which is to be taken by the mother, 3 of which must be taken by the father and the remaining three months decided between them.
Even in the US where maternity rights lag extremely far behind our own, unpaid leave is the law of the land.
From a purely employment perspective, maternity leave allows the recruitment and retention of competent , highly-skilled experienced women, a necessary step for any successful business.
The TUC have welcomed figures published earlier this year showing that there is now virtually no difference between the percentage of women with and without dependent children in work ( 66 to 67 per cent).
The TUC described these figures thus : " The rising proportion of mothers in work over the last 15 years is a ringing endorsement of family-friendly working practices such as better parental leave and pay, and the right to request flexible working."
However, progress in maternity rights in one area have come at the same time as setbacks in others.
Late last year, the EU council of Ministers, lobbied by Tory MEPs, shelved plans passed by Euro MEPs to extend the maternity leave to a statutory 20 weeks on full pay throughout the EU.
New figures show that in the past 5 years, in Employment Tribunals verdicts in Scotland, only 1 case in 10 was successful on the grounds of dismissal from the job or disadvantage at work related to preganancy, childbirth or maternity. Out of 660 cases only 51 were successful.
If maternity leave were to go, then by the same logic the cessation of paternity leave would surely follow , as ending a further "barrier" to the smoooth running of small businesses.
So it is reassuring to know that this present UK Government is encouraging paternity leave.
Evidence from Europe of the benefits of paternity leave is that a mother's future earnings can rise by an average of 7 per cent for each month that the father takes paternity leave, and so helping to close the gender pay gap. (Swedish Institute of Labor Market Policy Evaluation, March 2010)
However the workplace remains an important area where women's hard-won rights have to safeguarded and progressed and it is no place for a whimsical "thoughtshower", to quote management-speak, on abolishing maternity leave.
So do all of these outlandish outpourings mean anything more for us other than just the sound of a Tory eccentric winding back the clock?
Yes they do.
He may have already advocated the abolition of consumer rights, shutting down Job Centres, and, when the Tories were in opposition, using "cloud-bursting technology" to give us all more sunshine .
However, Steve Hilton is not just any old policy adviser of David Cameron.
Steve Hilton is the architect of David Cameron's Big Society.
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