The vegetarian option for welfare reform

Today's conference on welfare reform began to identify some important policies and actions that would match the help to find work with reality.  I'll be writing this up shortly, but in the meantime here are some good quotes:

"There is nothing inevitable about the economic upturn. " (delegate)

"No one got rich on Incapacity Benefit" (Brian Gibbons)

"The new welfare system is likely to cause huge, huge distress in our communities" (Steve Fothergill)"

"Jobcentres have refused to write to blind people in Braille - this is a fundamental failing" (RNIB Cymru)

"Benefit reform needs to be the vegetarian option - lots of carrots" (Terry Mills)"

There were plenty more but no chance to write them down.

Welfare reform

At tomorrow's conference on welfare reform (at Rhondda Heritage Park Hotel 10 - 4 if you are interested) we will be looking at the prospects of achieving the government's targets (in a word, nil). But with the reforms pressing ahead, there will also be calls for the Welsh assembly government to set up a task group to look at what needs to done here, not least to join up all the different aspects of the changes with key issues such as childcare, transport and learning. Watch this space

Qualifying the unqualified

At yesterday's Bevan Foundation discussion on post 16 learning, Sarah Lloyd Jones of the People and Work Unit  delivered a damning indictment on provision for people without any qualifications. Lack of planning, patchy provision, lack of support, meaningless barriers to entry and lack of effective delivery were just some of the gaps she identified.  The unqualified are much more likely to be out of work or live in poverty. Services e.g. basic skills and pre-vocational learning should have the same universal provision and universal access and security of funding as schools and colleges.  An article on this will appear in the next issue of our magazine, out in June.

The very long goodbye

Rhodri Morgan this morning gave his last speech as First Minister to the Welsh Labour Party conference. "There will be a vacancy for my job before the year is out", he told the audience in Swansea.

The wording is significant. The assumption has always been that he would trigger a leadership election over the summer to enable his successor to take over around the time of his 70th birthday in September. But I understand Rhodri Morgan intends to delay his departure until the turn of the year.

It is thought that the First Minister intends spending the summer taking a Grand Tour around Wales, bidding his people farewell. A contest would not then take place until the autumn and he may not stand down as First Minister until January.

Some members of the Cabinet are not pleased. Contenders have been holding back from launching their campaigns until Rhodri Morgan had triggered the contest, but some are now getting restless. It is likely that after June's Euro elections their patience will break and they will begin to set out their positions more directly.

In the meantime, in the midst of an economic and political crisis, Labour is in limbo.

Jobs news

Is it just me or are fewer job losses being reported now? Or perhaps there are so many they're no longer news .....
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Effectiveness not efficiency matters

Pre-budget gloom and doom abounds, with the Western Mail forecasting £1bn cut from the Assembly's budget, to be achieved by easily said, harder to achieve, 'efficiency savings'.  There is no doubt there are savings to be had. In many years of public service I have been astonished at what savings can be made - and improvements to service made at the same time - when backs are against the wall.  But trimming here and snipping there are ultimately doomed to fail, because they don't challenge basic thinking about services and their delivery.  There does indeed come a point when there is no fat left to cut.

Much better would be 'effectiveness savings', where anything that didn't make a big difference to the Government's objectives got the chop. This is just one simple example, but there are lots more.  The Welsh Assembly Government currently provides money to local authorities to pay a school uniform grant when children from low income families start secondary school. It is only £100 or so, which all are agreed is inadequate in lots of ways, and it only goes to prop up a rip-off school uniform industry. So, why not do something more radical, like getting rid of uniforms altogether, or else having a standard low cost uniform on which you can sew your school's badge.  The money saved could be spent on something more useful, like more teachers.

Merthyr not a shanty town says Times

They just can't help it can they? A report in today's Times, by Martin Fletcher, looks at Merthyr under the heading of 'austerity Britain'. In an otherwise fair and reasonable report is the pearler - 'Merthyr is not a shantytown, of course'.  Of course it isn't Mr Fletcher.  Why on earth do you think there is any question that Merthyr - or anywhere else that has suffered multiple economic kicks - might be a 'shanty town'? It might not be Marlow or Maidstone, but in many ways it offers a better quality of life than Wales's big cities. But of course that's not headline news is it.

Where Next for Post-16 education?

If you want to have your say about top-up fees, cuts in FE budgets, NEETS and school reorganisation (just for starters), the April Bevan Foundation discussion will cover them all. 28th April, 6 - 7.30pm, Ty Hywel, Cardiff Bat. Speakers are Siriol Burford, Howard Burton, Greg Walker and Sarah Lloyd Jones chaired by Jeff Cuthbert AM. Free, but you MUST register first via events@bevanfoundation.org

Child poverty measure by-passes main bodies

The proposed Measure on child poverty is a laudable idea, but seems to lose something in the detail. All kinds of new duties are proposed for various 'Welsh authorities', who will then have to get on and get rid of child poverty. The measure is not only about income poverty, it also covers inequality in health and education. So, the list of 'authorities' that will have the task of tackling child poverty includes, understandably, local authorities, and also local health boards, the Wales Centre for Health, and ... the Countryside Council for Wales, the National Park Authorities, and the fire service. Much though I have a lot of time for these latter bodies, I am less persuaded that they are as important to tackling child poverty as, for example, further education colleges, the national public health service, the arts council or sports council, all of which are absent from the list for some reason.

Fascinating fact

Interesting piece in The Telegraph on Tory preparations for the General Election; buried within it is the following nugget:

A private poll of Unite members – the biggest private sector union in the country with more than of two million members and a major contributor to Labour funds – showed that 34 per cent favoured Labour and 31 per cent the Conservatives.

A sign of the times?

A banking tale

A banker has to decide whether to lend to a scheme whose product is 'money' or to a factory, making real things. He chooses the latter, his institution misses out on vast profits that the 'money-making project' makes for a rival, and he is duly suspended. Something I read in today's FT maybe? No, the sub-plot of Mary Poppins, currently showing at the Millennium Centre. No wonder it was packed out.

(Sadly, what then happens is as unrealistic as when Mary Poppins floats off on her umbrella - the 'money' project crashes, the factory project booms, and the banker is reinstated. At least his quadrupling of salary has a ring of truth).

No more posts for me for a week or so - taking a break.

Why don't people 'get it'?

I'm not an 'environmentalist', whatever that means. I think I'm fairly ordinary. Until two years ago I was reasonably content living in the Cardiff Bay bubble, gossiping, pontificating and lunching politicians.

But two years on, trying to do 'my bit', I'm growing increasingly alarmed about the way our politics works and the way we live.

I was never any good at science, I always used to muck around in lessons. So I make no claim to understand the complexities of global warming. But I do know that those who do understand it are shouting at the top of their voices to warn us about a growing crisis.

And every week the emerging evidence grows more alarming. Here's this week's: "A lot of the impacts we're seeing are running ahead of our expectations," said William Hare of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

However, all the experts seem to agree that it still not yet too late to turn it round. But it is urgent.

I don't believe it will happen though. I'm fairly pessimistic. All my experience over the last two years is that when presented with practical things that must be done now to help bring about the change, politicians and officials at all levels of Government don't want to leave their comfort zone.

In fairness to them, they don't want to get too far ahead of public opinion. The fate of Ken Livingstone and the outcome of the Congestion Charge Referendum in Manchester is alive in their minds.

The Sustainable Development Commission (hardly a radical outfit) has just published a report which said that 2009 will be a defining year. They say “this is a moment that demands unprecedented leadership, robust policy, and decisive action…The economic crisis of 2009 has the potential to seed the economic opportunities of tomorrow. But it demands courage and vision today”

We need not be too concerned though, WAG are working on another new strategy.

...perhaps I'll book a holiday in New Zealand.

Sustainable investment for a sustainable future

The Sustainable Development Commission's Sustainable New Deal, launched today, argues for a £30 billion fiscal stimulus package to be announced in the budget on 22nd April. But rather than generally encouraging consumption, they set out a costed programme of investment in 6 key areas that are proven to make a difference to the UKs carbon emissions AND that offer a return to the public purse. They are: 1. upgrading the housing stock 2. renewable energy 3. enhancing the national grid 4. sustainable mobility 5. improving public buildings and 6. training and skills.

Welsh Assembly Government take note.

Contest, what contest?

The Western Mail reports that Health Minister Edwina Hart is "secretly seeking support for a Welsh Labour leadership bid among her union contacts". The BBC's Dragons Eye reports that Education Minister Jane Hutt is canvassing support to stand.

Avid readers of this blog will know that I think this is healthy and long-overdue.

But, simply in the interests of context you'll understand, here are some figues to reflect on:

Labour majorities in the 2007 Assembly election :

Vale of Glamorgan: 83 (0.2%)
Swansea West: 1,511 (6.6%)
Gower: 1,192 (4.3%)
Bridgend: 2, 556 (10.4%)
Merthyr: 4, 581 (21.8%)


Oh dear.

G20 on Touchstone blog

The posts on the Touchstone blog make an interesting and refreshing contrast to the current debates on most Welsh blogs. Go see.

Bevan Blog makes top 100!

According to the Wiki blog rating this was the UKs 88th top blog! Now 88 is quite a way down the list and is some way behind Peter Black at no. 31 but it is nevertheless the first top 100 hit in my life. Chuffed or what? See the others (who are ahead of this blog) at http://www.wikio.co.uk/blogs/top/politics

Recession highs and lows

The discussion on the recession on Tuesday showed how far politics in Wales has come, in that the debate was lively, thought provoking and expertly chaired by Mick Bates AM. I can't replicate the discussion but here are some (personal) highlights and lowlights:

Highlights
1. The recognition across the board that the problems the economy face are huge, although there was some disagreement about just how deep and how long the recession will be - David Melding AM was probably the most pessimistic.
2. Martin Mansfield's (Wales TUC) argument that anti-recession efforts must be targetted on the worst affected areas - and that those are areas that already had very deep-seated problems as a legacy from the last recession.
3. The points from the floor that the recession could have a lasting impact on people's health (including mental health) and on social cohesion. We were told the next but one economic summit will look at social issues.
4. The emphasis on the critical importance of upskilling the workforce by all speakers - whether it was David Melding stressing the importance of Master's degrees for new graduates or the others stressing the importance of keeping craft and other skills.
5. The common feeling that somehow Wales needed to get ahead of the game, through a transition to a low carbon economy (Martin Mansfield), greater entrepreneurship (David Melding) or local purchasing and action (Ieuan Wyn Jones).

Lowlights
1. The lack of a clear vision of post-recession Wales and how to pave the way there.
2. The limited ability of the Welsh Assembly Government to do much in the face of huge national and international shifts in the economy. At one point David Melding looked like he was about to argue for independence - but no, he didn't.
3. The views of some in the audience that the future is bleak indeed.
4. The 15 people who booked places and didn't turn up.

Next discussion - post 16 education on 28th April.

Too many pupils, too little help?

Doing some work on education in the Heads of the Valleys area, where there are high levels of pupils who need extra support with their learning. And what do we find? There are MORE pupils per teacher in the area than the Welsh average. For example in primary schools there are 20.7 pupils per teacher compared with Welsh average of 19.9 pupils per teacher. This isn't a huge difference, granted, but when you then look at figures on free school meals (23.9% children in the Heads of the Valleys receive them compared with 16.1% across Wales as a whole), you might expect that there would be fewer pupils per teacher not more, so that they could get the help they need. Am looking into it more, so watch this space. More stats for the anoraks amongst you here: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/theme/spatial-plan/spatialplanareas/southeastwales/?a=0&lang=en