Seven handy hints to improve your chances of preparing a successful job application and impressing at interview. Under pressure, kept late after work, probably not in the best of moods: welcome to…Read more…
Unite fears for sign language interpreters as further privatisation looms
Union fears cuts could affect deaf people during a vital medical procedure or on trialRead more…
UNISON Special Conference – Out to lunch?
Delegates to UNISON’s Special Local Government Conference next Tuesday have now received the Final Agenda (about which I shall blog further shortly).
As you might expect, the timetable for the day is set out in the documents. The Conference will open a…Read more…
Covert police unit spied on union members
An undercover police unit that monitored political groups over a 40 year period gathered intelligence on members of at least five trade unions, a whistleblower has revealed. Former undercover police…Read more…
Public services – more austerity carnage ahead
#Budget2015 The cuts to public services projected in yesterday’s Budget speech by Tory Chancellor George Osborne are unprecedented and a timely TUC analysis confirms that ‘departmental spending is…Read more…
Unite members take action against “out of control” benefit sanctions
Union says far from helping people back into work, sanctions undermine physical and mental healthRead more…
130 years of West Ham North MP’s
Hat tip to excellent local history website “E7 Now & Then” for a fascinating and topical post on the MPs who have served the Forest Gate part of West Ham North.
Amazing that we once had an Austro-Hungarian Baron as our MP, another who was re…Read more…
BREAKING: Blacklisted author handcuffed and thrown into police van
Dave Smith charged with obstructing the highway after protesting at Crossrail sacking at Construction AwardsRead more…
Barking mad! Bosses send dogs to picket line
Striking GMB members met by security guards with dogsRead more…
UK Budget 2015
If you are going to tell porkies, tell big ones. That seemed to be the Chancellor’s strategy in today’s budget.
It was as if the past five years didn’t happen. The worst fall in real earnings in…Read more…
The Budget changes nothing: the road from austerity has led only to more austerity, not to prosperity
My budget reaction has been published on Left Foot Forward. I take issue with the Chancellor’s statement: “This is a Budget that takes Britain one more big step on the road from austerity to prosperity” (Chancellor’s Budget Speech) Austerity has not led to prosperity; it has led only to more…Read more…
#Budget2015: Osborne’s ‘savings culture’ provides more bonuses for the already wealthy
George Osborne concluded his Budget speech today with a crescendo: the Chancellor aims to create a “savings culture”, and announced four major new steps in “our savings revolution”. However this rhetoric will not mean much at all to so many of the population for whom the concept of saving is simply…Read more…
But what benefits are they planning to cut?
In his Budget Speech George Osborne repeated that he intends, if re-elected, to cut £12 billion in benefits (plans first announced in January of last year), but you’ll search the Budget documents in vain for any indication of just how he plans to go about this. These cuts have to be implemented,…Read more…
Total spending set to fall MORE in years ahead than Chancellor previously planned
Hidden away in the OBR’s charts are some important figures on ‘Total Managed Expenditure’ – essentially all of the money government spends on services, pensions, help for low income workers and capital investment. These data show that in the years immediately after the…Read more…
Brutal, senseless, savage, draconian … unions tell “smug” Osborne what they think of his Budget
TUC says most people will not recognise picture Chancellor paints of UK economyRead more…
Housing: #Budget2015 spins “signs of normalisation”
“There continue to be signs of normalisation in the housing market” says the government (Budget Report 2015, 915, para 124). With home ownership in retreat, rents rising and 1.3 million on the social housing waiting lists, the situation seems much more like an entrenched crisis than…Read more…
#Budget2015: Growth of good jobs? Good luck!
When it comes to jobs growth figures, one would expect the Chancellor to, at minimum, get his speech to agree with his own analysis, better still for that analysis to be accurate. When presenting at the despatch box this afternoon, Mr Osborne stated: “Today’s figures show that since 2010, 1000 more…Read more…
#Budget2015: No Budget for a sustainable industrial future
A classic Osborne Budget: a further £1.3 billion in tax breaks for North Sea oil and gas (and presumably onshore shale) but precious little of substance for the green economy. Measures to welcome include the £25m compensation scheme for energy intensive industries, brought forward to this October….Read more…
Don’t mention the cuts
This year’s budget showed the two faces of George Osborne. Within three months he’s come up with two different sets of figures for public spending plans over the next five years. The autumn statement in December showed a true Tory Chancellor wanting to force through colossal cuts. It was a bleak future of near-permanent […]
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#Budget2015: The worst public spending cuts are still to come
There was much pre-Budget speculation that the Chancellor was going to use today’s Budget to ease off on austerity and reduce the scale of planned public service cuts in the year ahead. But although he’s made some minor changes to his future forecasts, the scale of spending reductions…Read more…