Marlyn Glen : Austerity and another Lourdes

Marlyn Glen : Austerity and another Lourdes

20 July 2012


Scotland became less unequal last year.

The gap in incomes between the rich and the rest, fell in 2010-11 , reversing a trend of growing inequality in recent years.

The gap now stands where it stood in the halcyon days of Labour’s General Election victory in 1997.

The gap in incomes, as measured by the Gini coefficient was 30 per cent

(A Gini coefficient of 0 per cent would mean equality of incomes, 100 per cent would mean complete inequality of incomes. 30 per cent is still far behind Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Sweden with much lower income gaps.)

The UK gap narrowed only because , while the recession has lowered all incomes , it has hit the very wealthy the most, percentage-wise.

But austerity amongst the rich must be many shades lighter than it is amongst the remainder, and at the centre of the UK of government austerity policies , more cuts, this time of a much larger scale, are looming.

The Glasgow-based Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR) estimate that around three quarters of cuts in spending on services in Scotland have still to take place - just under £3billlion by 2016-17, with the deepest coming after the proposed Referendum.

Inevitably, the health of the most vulnerable will suffer.

One health board’s evidence submitted to the Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee examining the effects of the Welfare Reform Act concluded that “ illnesses in adults and children requiring inpatient care are likely to increase as a consequence of the health impacts of the Welfare Reform Act.

“These include mental, cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses resulting from low income, income inequalities, housing difficulties and fuel poverty and specific additional obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes, arthritis and cancer arising from poorer nutrition.” (NHS Highland )

A recent review “General Practice at the Deep End” gathered information from GPs working in the 100 most deprived areas in Scotland on the consequences of austerity for their patients’ well-being.

Patients ranged from those in work feeling the pressure of cuts in public spending, seeking additional work to make ends meet, and displaying “presenteeism” ( turning up for work when their symptoms indicated that they shouldn’t have) to those with recognised long-term health problems but classified as “fit for work” and their benefits cut.

While the GPs’ priorities were patients’ health, the patients’ priorities were lack of money for food and heating.

Observations included,

“ Perhaps most striking is the growing number of individuals and families experiencing fuel poverty – the combination of increased costs and falling benefits resulting in a choice between heating and eating.

“Practices reported cases of an elderly patient going to a friend’s house in order to wash; families relying on relatives to pay for food and cigarettes (unable to stop smoking due to stress);….

“In my surgery I am hearing from patients who for 2–3 days a week cannot afford to heat their houses (many use metered cards which are more expensive than direct debit payments). “

Assessments carried out under the Work Capability Assessment had a dramatic effect on the health of those whose benefits were cut, with mis-matches between people’s clinical condition and the assessments finding that they were “fit for work”

Corunna House , the Glasgow Disability Benefits Centre where the Work Capability Assessments are carried out, was known locally as “Lourdes” because “all of the sick emerge from it cured.”

GPs, through BMA Scotland , have called for the Work Capability Assessment to be scrapped, saying that the system needs to be replaced by “a more vigorous and safe process which takes into account the needs of long term sick and disabled patients.”

The biggest single group facing the fiercest brunt of the cuts, are women, with a triple whammy - cuts in jobs in the public sector where women are the majority workforce, reductions in the public services used by women, and women being left to ”plug the gaps” with their own personal efforts when council provision falls because of cuts in services for dependents, all of which is counter=productive to maintaining personal health.

So there is wealth of evidence and experience to indicate how the next wave of austerity cuts will impact upon health.

However, what of those on the other side of the story of the cuts, whose actions lie amongst the root causes of the prevailing austerity?

Before The Crash, there was a high-octane macho culture in casino banking whose banality of vision was the size of the bonus earned, even when the reward was for failure, and the strategy was reckless. These ultra-competitive men, were the “wealth creators”, the magicians of the market, proclaimed to possess “special skills” that were not subject to dispute.

The “Guardian” columnist George Monbiot refers to the work of Nobel Economics Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman which starkly challenges the illusion of omnipotent thinking at the top in the financial sector.

He studied the performances of wealth advisers over an 8-year period to determine whether or not “there were persistent differences in skill among them and whether the same advisers consistently achieved better returns for their clients year after year.”

He found a correlation of zero, saying

“the results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill. .

“The subjective experience of traders is that they are making sensible educated guesses in a situation of great uncertainty.

“In highly efficient markets, however, educated guesses are no more accurate than blind guesses.”

There was no correlation, no connection, no consistency.

In short, success depended heavily on luck, not on evidence, never the basis for a secure future, and so it has proved , to the detriment of us all.

There are no shared sacrifices in this austerity , no choices for the wealthy between having to eat or heat.

Instead it’s tax cuts for them rather than benefit cuts.

And it isn’t working.

In a recession, cuts in spending do not just magnify falling demand and reduce business investment.

They also diminish people’s health and well-being.

Women and the Referendum

Marlyn Glen

Women and the Referendum

29 June 2012

Media froth claims that the campaign to keep Scotland in the UK has the alleged deficiency of “lacking passion” compared with that of the pro-independence movement.

Passion, however, is no substitution for reason, and we have been here before regularly in politics.

For “passion” read instead :

Style rather than substance

Personalities rather than policies

Assertion rather than evidence.

We are entitled to expect a case based on reasoned argument to be the mainstay of the pro- independence campaign, and the largest single group in Scotland that the pro-independence campaign needs to persuade of this is women.

Opinion polls in Scotland have consistently shown that women are far more sceptical than men of the case for independence.

Indeed, YouGov’s poll of those who voted SNP in last year’s Scottish Parliament elections found that that while 71 per cent of male SNP voters woud vote for an independent Scotland in a referendum, only a minority of female SNP voters – 45 per cent- would .

With women holding the key to the outcome of the Referendum, issues such as family, health, education and care of the elderly in an independent Scotland should be of primary concern.

So far though, much of the debate has focused predominantly on membership of NATO , and the size and location of Scotland’s armed forces, predominantly of interest to men.

Men were for the main part the front of the launch of the pro-independence campaign.

Male international stars jetted in or gave a video message to talk about their passion for Scotland, while at the same time unwittingly lending support to the observation that some of those who are the most enthusiastic for constitutional change are those who live furthest away from it.

The only matter even approaching a "women’s issue" if it could ever be called that, to be raised so far , concerns just one woman – Elizabeth II – who would remain head of state in an independent Scotland, according to the First Minister who now talks fondly of "Elizabeth, Queen of Scots"

Much of the media coverage of the referendum campaign has consisted of the process of the Referendum .

While they have engrossed themselves in matters such as one or two questions, Salmond meets Moore, devo-max, challenge in the courts, wording of the question, Alex Salmond may hold his own referendum , etc., etc., people in Scotland have told pollsters what their own real, important issues are - the economy (51%) ; Unemployment ( 21%); education (21%) , public spending cuts ("20%) and independence only 16 per cent) - Future Scotland poll.

And it appears that most have already made up their minds on how they’ll be voting in the Referendum.

Polls tell us that amongst those expressing a voting intention for any party , only 13 per are undecided on how they will vote.

The figures drops to 11 per cent amongst those who say they are certain to vote.

Polling predicts that turn out could rise to almost 80 per cent

So, if these polls are accurate, then the rival campaigns will be competing for a relative small minority of voters.

Undecided women voters who are still waiting for the debate to begin on their preferred issues of importance, will also have the record of the Nationalists in power to consider.

Women make up the majority of the workforce in many parts of the public sector such as the NHS and local government.

The experience of women there has been the loss of thousands of nursing posts in the NHS , and thousands too in councils across Scotland.

Political representation should mirror civic society.

Yet, the gender balance amongst SNP MSPs is only 19 women out of 69 in toal ( just over 1 in 4 )

Jenny Marra’s amendment to the Police and Fire Reform Bill, calling for a minimum representation of 40 per cent women and 40 % men on the new single police board was voted down by the SNP at the Bill’s committee stage.

At present, the pro-independence tactic is to soothe away fears and misgivings about separating with a "you won’t notice the difference" assurance - the £ will be retained ( under foreign control), the Queen will remain as head of state, and Scotland will be a member of NATO.

Such " the more things change, the more they remain the same" approaches are double-edged, which will leave many women concluding, "Why change at all, then?"

And there’s yet another matter of importance to women.

I’ve written before that ,

"It's the heckling, name-calling, rudeness, finger pointing, aggressive, competitive, ego-preening behaviour of some male politicians that turn a lot of women off politics."

The broadcaster, Lesley Riddoch, in that vein, makes this important observation on what may await women over the next two years of the campaign.

"Women are generally dubious about men with an overriding sense of mission or a throbbing vein on the forehead when they speak.

"Toughing out controversy and appearing to spoil for a fight may earn respect from male commentators and small armies of cyber-angry, anonymous men.

"Clever dick answers, snide-sounding put downs and swaggering arrogance turn off watching women as swiftly as they appear to engage watching men. "

Let’s hope as well that the referendum campaign can produce a new national identity that replaces the obstinately masculine Scottish identity through symbols such as Wallace, Bruce, and a separate Scottish international football team.

Let’s include women in that identity , let's celebrate their achievements and their potential in post-Referendum Scotland .... and let's be aware that Scotland’s male international football team’s FIFA world ranking is currently 41; Scotland’s international female football team’s FIFA world ranking is 21.

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A school closure in Dundee

Marlyn Glen

A school closure in Dundee

19 June 2012

A school closure has recently occurred in Dundee which has closed its doors to new entrants to the midwifery course at Dundee University.

This academic year’s new intake of students has been its last.

Two other Scottish Universities , Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian , have also been forced to close down their undergraduate midwifery courses, when the Scottish Government cut the numbers of training places by almost half –from 183 to 100.

The reasons given include a lack of sufficient posts after graduation, and an “over-production” in a profession that’s traditionally been well-staffed in Scotland.

However, midwives see things differently.

Their professional body, the Royal College of Midwives say, : “ Scotland’s midwifery workforce is ageing. What we need to see therefore is not a downward trend in the number of new student midwife places, but an upward trend.”

Midwives are eligible to retire at 55, and the report Midwifery 2020 warns that by then some 40 per cent of midwives in Scotland will have retired.

The age profile of midwifery staff in NHS Tayside bears this figure out :

14 per cent are already in the age band 55-59

18 per cent are between the ages of 50 and 54, with 23 per cent in the age group 45-49.

The prospect of shortages in midwife care is compounded by the rising birth rate.

In Dundee, for example, there has been an overall upward trend in the number of births in Dundee in the past decade, rising from over 1,400 in 2001 to over 1,700 in 2010.

And some women in the city are postponing children till later in life, with 39 women in the city over the age of 40 gave birth last year

All of this should require more not less midwives, but in recent trends, over the past three and a half years, the number of midwifery staff in NHS Tayside has fallen by 8.

The threat of shortages are acknowledged by the Scottish Government which concedes that "There will be a potential under-supply in the future assuming that all the variables remain constant”

2021 is forecast to be the crunch year if things go on unchecked.

This issue deserves to be looked at from the broader perspective of overall Scottish Government spending, and in particular the 5-year council tax freeze.

Taxing Scotland estimates that it costs the Scottish taxpayer £155 million to freeze the council tax of the wealthiest 10 per cent in Scotland for 5 years .

A council tax freeze aimed primarily at making the rich its chief beneficiaries has consequences such as cuts in health spending, in this instance the ending of midwifery courses at Dundee University

Compare too the midwifery school closures with the manner in which the Scottish Government has supported a jobs decision taken by the £200,000- a year head of Scottish Enterprise, Lena Wilson.

With full blessing of Alex Salmond, Ms. Wilson has been permitted to work, in addition to her post with Scottish Enterprise, one day a month for the FTSE-100 company Internek.

Two points emerge here.

Firstly , there should be no extra job for someone in charge of a public body such as Scottish Enterprise whose priority is the revival of Scotland’s troubled industries – “ it’s the economy, stupid,” to quote a famous political slogan.

Secondly, for working 1 day per month -12 days a year, the head of Scottish Enterprise will receive £55,000 a year.

It costs on average £12,000 a year to train a midwife over a three year midwifery course.

So the earnings from the £55,000 12-days a year additional job are more than the cost of training 4 midwives for one year of their course.

Allowing a highly-paid public servant to take on another highly-paid part-time job while thousands of nursing and midwifery posts have been cut isn’t most people’s idea of fairness in Scottish society.

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Work-related stress is a major social problem

Work-related stress is a major social problem

Marlyn Glen

25 May 2012

The Chief Inspector of Ofsted in England , Michael Wilshaw, recently described how teachers in schools should be treated :

“If anyone says to you that staff morale is at an all-time low, you know you are doing something right.”

In the NHS, in one year in the last decade, the Department of Health in England estimated that “£96 million was spent on replacing staff who have left their jobs due to bullying”

Scotland is not immune from the confrontational macho style of relations at work either.

UNISON Scotland reported earlier this year that almost one in three of their members in Scotland have either have been bullied, or have witnessed bullying in a six month period..

The websites of unions in education such as the EIS, SSTA and UCU, all carry detailed information on how to deal with bullying.

What should be of major concern is that bullying is occurring in the public sector.

The spirit of the public sector is supposedly one of dialogue, co-operation, dignity at work , and benefit for the common good.

Instead, we see all too often light-touch scrutiny of those at the top, while top-heavy micro-management of those at work.

With the banks now in partial public ownership, the consequences of failure are a bonus for those in command, but P45s for its employees

The higher echelons can accept the rewards that high salaries and secure jobs bring, but they can refuse to accept responsibility or culpability when things go wrong.

The buck stops somewhere else down the line.

Common sense assumptions that the hazardous consequences of stress for health is mainly the fate of the high-powered in authority who have to take make-or-break decisions are contrary not just to academic research but daily workplace experience.

Those who suffer stress-related illnesses such as anxiety and depression tend to be those in the lower grades upon whom demands are highest and where control over one’s work is lowest.

Stress also comes with a financial cost to the organisation affected through long term absence, reduced production , and increases in statutory sick pay.

With the public sector still to face much greater cuts in spending than have been made so far, women face added pressure from job losses, since they make up the majority of most public sector organisations.

The 2010 British Academy study “ Stress at work” reported :

“Work stress has increased since 1992, especially for women. In the past year these levels have risen at an alarming rate and there are no effective measures in place to prevent the situation worsening.”

This was its “disturbing finding” - a 25 per cent increase in the number of women suffering from job strain over the 14 year period between 1992 and 2006.

The latest TUC survey of union safety reps indicates that stress is by far in the most quoted problem for health and safety at work with longer hours, heavier workloads, less staff and unrealistic targets at its root.

The TUC itself declared that “ stress is most often found in the public than in the private sector”

Meanwhile, the Labour Force Survey found that last year 77 000 people suffered from work-related illness in Scotland , and that the sectors in which stress had been most prevalent in the UK were health, social work, education and public administration

Much more work-related stress seems almost inevitable unless attitudes and behaviour towards preventing stress from taking its toll on the workforce is made a priority.

There are Management Standards produced by the Health and Safety Executive on how employers should deal with work-related stress.

The TUC says that such standards “, based on the risk assessment approach, are seen as the most useful method of tackling stress in the workplace”, but that is only because of “ the absence of specific legislation “

The British Academy study emphasises this point by asking,

“With no legislation in the UK specifically on this issue, the report questions the effectiveness of the current voluntary code of practice that is meant to guide employers in matters of work stress. “

Work-related stress is major social problem.

Tax Cuts before Tax Credits

Marlyn Glen

In 2003, Michael Portillo, erstwhile aspirant to lead the Tory Party , took part in a BBC “reality “ TV programme entitled “My Week My World” .

It featured senior politicians taking on the jobs and lives of everyday people to see how they could cope with its stresses.

Mr. Portillo’s task was to look after 4 young children while also deputising for their mother as a classroom assistant and working in ASDA.

All of this was to be done within a family budget of £80 a week.

BBC noted that Mr. Portillo said that his week’s work “was harder than anything he had faced in the Commons.”

As from last month life has become intolerably harder for hundreds of families in Dundee as the Tory Government introduced changes that will take away from them almost £80 a week of working tax credits unless they increase their working hours by half.

Over 430 families and 760 children in the city are affected.

These are the couples earning less than some £17,700 a year who benefited from Working Tax Credit and work between 16 and 24 hours a week.

The Tories have ordained that unless they increased the number of hours by 50 per cent, the tax credits would be withdrawn.

To find extra hours of work in a collapsed economy is difficult, particularly in a city such as Dundee which already has the highest percentage of those working part-time in mainland Scotland.

The difficulty of finding extra hours escalates when we consider the number of those already “underemployed” in Dundee – those seeking extra hours of work – 5,200, or 1 in 10 of the working population.

Working Families is a major charity in the field of work-life balance.

It reports that just only 17% of employers were confident that they could accommodate requests for an additional eight hours of work.

It commented,

“The change to the Working Tax Credit rules are harsh.

"Parents will find that it is no longer worth staying in work.

“Many of our callers have one parent (often the mother) in a part time job, struggling to make ends meet after the other parent has been made redundant.

“It isn’t for want of trying that these parents can’t get more work.

“Our survey shows employers can’t offer them what they need to stay out of poverty.”

An acknowledgement of the actual day-to-day experience of such families is a very rare commodity in the Tory Party.

And so, at the opposite end of the social scale, in a world of different lifestyles, expectations and opportunities, millionaires are deemed by the Tories to be in need of a tax cut windfall.

As the Party of the Wealthy, the Tories will continue to deliver for them.

Marlyn Glen : Living side by side - Underemployment and Unpaid Overtime

Living side by side : Underemployment and Unpaid Overtime

Marlyn Glen

8 March 2012

The last Thursday in February was specially designated by the TUC as " Work Your Proper Hours Day"

This was to highlight the issue of unpaid overtime , which , according to the TUC, results in an extra 6 hours a week on average being worked by 1 out of every 5 members of the workforce in Scotland.

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary described the practice thus :

"The heroic amount of extra unpaid hours put in by millions of workers makes a vital – but often unsung – contribution to the UK economy.

"While many of the extra unpaid hours worked could easily be reduced by changing work practices and ending the UK's culture of pointless presenteeism, a small number of employers are exploiting staff by regularly forcing them to do excessive amounts of extra work for no extra pay."

UNISON estimate that last year the scale of unpaid overtime in the UK that it gave their employers £29.2 billion of " free work." , and this is occurring at a time of a public sector pay freeze.

Overwork takes its toll on health with greater sickness rates and a general decline in the quality of life outside of work.

Union surveys on the gruelling culture of long working hours have found that a third of their members said that they did not have enough time to be with their families.

Community involvement , social life, and even hobbies all fell victim to disproportionate working hours.

The recession is driving the excessive hours culture whereby job insecurity mounts through tougher workloads resulting from less staff and shrinking budgets.

Compare this with its mirror image , those who need to and want to work longer and be paid for that work.

They are struggling on their present income to provide for themselves and their families and want to work more hours per week simply to make ends meet.

Late last year the STUC called this situation Scotland’s " full-time employment deficit" and measured it last month to stand at a vast 502,000.

This is its estimated number of those amongst the unemployed, the economically inactive and the underemployed who would like full-time employment .

What would Dundee’s "full-time unemployment deficit " look like?

Using the same methods as the STUC, there would be around 3,800 amongst those currently unemployed who would wish for full-time employment as opposed to part-time employment.

Amongst the economically inactive , those who are currently not working because of illness, raising a family, etc, the figure would be some 4,600, although it is acknowledged that many of the economically inactive would require support to return to working.

"Underemployment" is usually associated with people being overqualified for a job they are currently doing because qualifications, while required for for good jobs in the past, today can no longer guarantee them in a deteriorating labour market.

However, here it is defined as :

those people who are in work but wanting another job in addition to their current job(s);

or

wanting another job with more hours instead of their current job(s);

or

wanting to increase the total number of hours worked in their current job(s).

The Scottish Government retains figures for the number of Scots who are underemployed in every local authority area with Dundee’s now standing at 5,200, or almost 10 per cent of the 16-64 year old population.

So the "full-time employment deficit" in Dundee could be over 13,000.

The smaller figure of 5,500 receiving Job Seekers Allowance in the city last month which is the usual measure of joblessness simply does not reflect the numbers looking for a better level of employment to raise their standard of living.

Billions of pounds worth of unpaid overtime is living alongside thousands of people desperate to work more hours so that they can provide a higher standard of living for their families.

The match up between is unlikely to be completely even , and so the remedy for both is an expansion of the economy that puts people back into full-time work.

When economic confidence returns , job insecurity and presenteeism should retreat.

Increasing job prospects reduces fear of losing a job , and it raises morale at work.

However, unemployment, underemployment and the flatlining economy are the price still being paid for Government immobility on jobs.

The NHS and the Council Tax Freeze

The NHS and the Council Tax Freeze

Marlyn Glen

3 February 2012

Who was it who said that the SNP Government "cannot continue to hide behind messages that they're protecting NHS funding"?

And who was it who added , "Chipping away at the workforce in this short-sighted manner has the potential to really harm patient care and overburden remaining staff."

It was Theresa Fyffe of RCN Scotland, a formidable defender of her members’ and patients’ rights and of the NHS, regardless of which party is in power in the Scottish Parliament.

Her comments come after the Salmond-Sturgeon assertions on the National Health Service -

"We will protect the NHS over the duration of this parliament" - Alex Salmond

and

"We will protect the NHS budget for the whole of the next parliament " -Nicola Sturgeon

These assertions exist in a different world from the inescapably grim reality of the state of the NHS that their own Government figures show.

On staffing, the number of nursing and midwifery staff is now lower than the level that the SNP Government inherited from Labour in 2007.

2,000 nursing and midwifery posts have been cut.

On expenditure, provisional figures indicate that in the next financial year, 2012-13, health expenditure is expected in Scotland to fall by £ 68 million in real terms,

In the following year, 2013-14 , it is forecast to drop by a further £88 million

In financial year 2014-15, Referendum time, it will decline further by £163 million.

By complete contrast, in an effort to establish its credentials as a low-tax party, the SNP Government’s over-riding concern above all else has been to freeze the council tax till 2016-17, at considerable cost to the public sector.

So while spending on health plummets by £319 million in real terms between now and 2015, the demands of freezing the council tax over the same period will cost £420 million.

The independent SPICe (Scottish Parliament Information Centre ) has produced figures which show the colossal sums involved in the council tax freeze.

The total cumulative cost of freezing the tax from its introduction in 2008-09 to the end of this session of the Parliament in 2016-17 is estimated to be £3.1 billion.

Compare £3.1 billion with this year’s total budget for all of Scotland’s health boards - £7.5 billion.

£3.1 billion is broadly equivalent to 40 per cent of all of Scotland’s health boards’ revenue budgets in the coming financial year.

The fine blog Taxing Scotland comes up with some pretty impressive information on who benefits from the council tax. ( http://bit.ly/wAGfkF )

There’s a novel twist to the well-established view that the very well-off benefit the most from the freeze.

Taxing Scotland ask – how much does it cost to freeze the council of the richest 10 per cent in Scotland ?

Taxing Scotland estimate it costs £155 million to freeze the council tax of the wealthiest 10 per cent for 5 years .

They further estimate that the cost of freezing the council tax of the top 20 per cent of income earners in Scotland is £280 million over 5 years.

The £155 million that it costs to freeze the council tax over 5 years breaks down to around £30 million a year - the equivalent of paying the wages of an extra 1,000 nurses at £30,000 a year.

The 5-year council tax freeze is undoubtedly populist, representing in the words of its enthusiasts " hundreds of pounds of help to hard-pressed families" ( without adding that the "hundreds of pounds" is spread over several years ).

In everyday life, those on middle income benefit by around £2-£3 per week

The council tax freeze is paid for by councils being forced to increase their charges for their services to council tax payers and the shedding the jobs of thousands of council workers who provide essential services that the community depend upon.

Eventually all populist politics have a political cost .

A 5-year council tax freeze is simply not a viable option, and will loom over the period of the Referendum as an example of the consequence of low taxation for public services in Scotland.

No one is under any illusions about the scale and the severity of the problems that any Scottish Government whatever its political colour would face from the Coalition cuts now cascading out from the UK Government

However, the Scottish Government’s priority should not be freezing the council tax payments of the wealthy who can easily afford to pay a modest increase to protect public services.

Neither is this a time for the pursuit of the SNP Government ’s Holy Grail of lowering Corporation Tax for businesses to 12 per cent with all the serious concerns that this would pose for the funding of public services.

Just as populist politics has its eventual political cost, so Government by Assertion delivered by Soundbite meets its nemesis amongst the very own cuts that it makes.

Last month, RCN Scotland made the perfectly reasonable case for an increase in places for student nursing in 2012-13.

They argued that this was necessary to meet the increasing demand on the NHS in the near future and to replace the many nurses who will soon be of retirement age.

The SNP Government’s response was to cut the intake for student nursing and midwifery numbers to their lowest level for 15 years.

"Protecting the NHS over the duration of this parliament" ?

Marlyn Glen : Charles Dickens, Dundee and Hard Times

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.

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.

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."