Homelessness and the Private Sector

I see that Grant Shapps MP has "called on councils to start forging closer links with landlords and letting agents", presumably because with waiting lists for council housing running to years in most authorities and the coalition starving housing associations of the funding which would have allowed more homes to be built, there is very little option but to put homeless people into private rented accommodation. In reality, a lot of councils already do this - my partner has worked in Homelessness for 20 years and says that most placements of homeless families in our authority are now in private rental properties.

Mr Shapps has stated that "[councils] will need to ensure that vulnerable or at-risk families are not inappropriately housed. And they must ensure that the accommodation is suitable, safe and secure and available for a minimum of 12 months", which sounds lovely and supportive, doesn't it? Private landlords are benevolent and have the best interests of their tenants at heart, so what could possibly go wrong?

Case History

My sister and her husband have never been wealthy; they managed to get by on a low income in rented accommodation, supported by HB and tax credits. Five years ago, they took the decision to relocate in order to be closer to my elderly parents. My brother in law, employed by HMRC [the irony of someone administering Tax Credits only surviving financially because of them was not lost on them], applied for a transfer on compassionate grounds and was told this would be possible.They started searching for properties in East Devon, but were unable to find anything suitable initially. Then my mother had to go into hospital for a knee operation and required substantial care on her return home; at the same time, my niece was due to start secondary school so in order to minimise disruption for her, my sister and the two children moved down and stayed with my parents while my brother in law remained in the midlands, awaiting news of his transfer. 

Eventually this came through, but the only job they could offer was in an office which was difficult to commute to (he's a non-driver in a rural county which has minimal rail services, thanks to Beeching). Their only option was to move nearer to the office, which would have meant my niece changing schools again after only a few months; this was untenable so he started looking for alternative jobs nearer to 'home'. Eventually, he was able to find a job in the town (albeit with a substantial pay cut), but still nowhere to live, so they ended up living with my parents - 4 adults and 2 children (4 and 12) in a 3 bedroomed semi. The council agreed that they were homeless, and that they had local connection, but simply did not have anywhere they could offer them. There are also precious few housing association properties in the area, so they were looking at private rental sector. 

Eventually, after a rather fraught 6 months, they found a property and were able to put down some roots and get their furniture out of (expensive) storage. For a while, things were fine, but then the owner, who had put the house up for rental while working away, came home again, so they were served with notice to quit. this time, they were luckier and managed to find a suitable property in a village about 5 miles away from my parents. Nice house, good landlord, all going well....

... and then the marriage failed. My sister ended up back at mum and dad's; my brother in law stayed in the house until he could find himself a smaller flat. After another six months back with my parents, my sister thought her luck was beginning to change, when the letting agent for the previous house contacted her to say that it was available again and was she interested? It was a three bedroomed house and there were now only two of them, but the rent was within HB limits and, with a lot of borrowing of deposits, etc, she was able to move in in time for Christmas.

At last things, seemed to be calming down and the following May she came to stay with us for a much-needed holiday. On her return, she found a notice to quit; her initial 6 month assured tenancy was up and the owner had decided to sell. The house was never advertised as being on the market, and it was a cash sale, so we now suspect that it had already been earmarked for sale and my sister brought in to maximise income while it was being sorted out. Quite apart from the disruption (again), and having been a model tenant (twice), my sister was very hurt that she'd been 'played' by someone she had thought was a responsible landlord.

Her furniture went back into storage; for the second time in as many years, I spent part of my holiday helping her move house; and back to my octogenarian parents again, not quite what they had had in mind for their retirement.

She has now managed to find a very small, 2 bedroomed house, and is just about surviving, although she lives in permanent fear of what the changes to HB and Tax Credits will do to her limited income. As if things weren't bad enough, she has now been diagnosed with a debilitating (permanent) medical condition and has had to reduce her hours of work and start to negotiate the labyrinth of DLA/ESA application processes. but again, her landlords (a lovely couple) may need the house back at any time and she has no security of tenure. With failing health, she is even less secure.

The irony is that Devon is considered an affluent county. Many of the 'golden generation' of post war property-owning, final-salary-pensioned older people retire there in some comfort and yet, for the majority of younger residents (those who man the schools, the care homes, the local shops) life is pretty hard. The council housing waiting lists run to a dozen years in some areas, there is little or no other social housing, and house prices are prohibitively high in an area where most wages are low.

As ever with the Tories (as with New Labour), the presumption that private is always the answer will cause disruption and misery for millions of people. We're not talking Rachman-esque slum landlords here, but a private landlord, as opposed to a social housing provider, will always put income above the needs of the tenant. You can't expect them not to - it's a business. Legislation might give limited protection from wrongdoing, but does not encourage longevity and settled communities. My grandparents never considered buying property, but by renting from the right private landlord (a man with a small number of properties which provided him with a moderate, regular income) and by being good tenants, were afforded 50+ years in their 'home.'

"Private landlords" are not just business people with a portfolio of properties; they are also homeowners who put their own homes on the rental market when they can't sell or are temporarily elsewhere. This builds an instability into the market and offers very little protection to tenants. The new class of 'amateur' private landlord - fuelled by the buy-to-let craze - has no real stake in the housing supply, and is usually in it for short term gain rather than long term investment.

So really, Mr Shapps, there is no point putting all your housing eggs into the same private basket. Without considerable investment in new affordable housing, we'll never solve the homelessness 'problem'. A "minimum of 12 months" is great, but there is little protection beyond that. Would Mr Shapps, or any of his coalition colleagues, relish a house move every 12-18 months, with the attendant disruption? That is the reality for many people in private rental accommodation.

'Homelessness' isn't simply the lack of a roof over one's head, but the lack of a secure home. At present, we have a lot of families who are housed, but still "home"-less.

The Undeserving Poor

A horrible concept, redolent of a bygone age, and one which I thought had gone the way of covered piano legs and child chimney sweeps. For a start, who determines which of us is "undeserving"? It's a very subjective thing, and I'm not sure I would want the responsibility of turning someone away as "undeserving" only to find they had come to harm. Even for a hardened atheist such as myself, the phrase "there but for the grace of God go I" still informs much of my opinion-forming. Bad luck, bad choices, stupidity, ignorance, fate all play a part in how life turns out for us


But it seems the concept is back. Now I can accept this from the Tories - their world view has always been that anyone can succeed and if you don't it's down to a flaw in your personality. An easy, if stupid, conclusion to come to if you either have 'made it' or happen to be a self-made aristocrat who's never wanted for anything material, and with a network of advantage behind you from cradle to grave. 


More worrying is that it's creeping into Labour thinking as well. Yes, there are hard-working, low-paid people who are financially worse off than those on benefits; and yes, there are (a small number) of families who seem to relish their long-term joblessness and  reliance on state benefits. But the latter group, by far the smallest proportion of those living on benefits, could be classed as The Ungracious Poor - those who, having been given support from the state (and therefore their fellow citizens), proceed to rub our noses in it. It's infuriating for those of us who pay our way, but are they really 'undeserving'? Selfish, thoughtless, maybe, but are they any worse that the champagne-guzzling traders or bankers who wave wads of cash at protesting nurses, who are also not 'paying their way' because they have accountants who can minimise their tax bills? 


In proving that Labour understands the "squeezed middle",  let's also stand up for those who life has kicked in the teeth. Ed Milliband may be talking about: 


"some of those on benefits who were abusing the system because they could work - but didn't"


But what the majority will hear is "all those on benefits". Unless you've had to survive on benefits, you have no idea how tough it is. It's not that benefits are too high, but that wages for most of the working population are too low. And what about those who are unable to work through disability? Better people than me have written at length on the daily battles of living with disability in today's culture. And of those who, despite debilitating conditions, continue to try and work and contribute and fulfil "their duty to each other"? The insidious drip-drip-drip of public discourse (encouraged by the tabloid press) is that all benefit recipients are scroungers, despite the fact that we are all one piece of bad luck/judgement away from ill health or unemployment.


And even those families with multi-generational worklessness that we're all supposed to vilify because they 'take' from hard-working ordinary people's taxes? Is no-one querying why, after successive Tory and Labour governments have made it increasingly difficult to get unemployment benefits (regular interviews, training schemes, sanctions for refusing 'suitable' employment), such families remain unemployable? Seemingly, we have been content to allow them to remain outside the mainstream world of work - that seems to me a massive dereliction of duty on our part. Are they 'undeserving' or are we 'uncaring'? 


So before we formulate any policies on welfare reform, let's first change the culture - no-one is "undeserving", and if public opinion believes that some are, then we should be challenging public opinion, not feeding it. I'm all in favour of being part of "the party of the grafters", but I'd also like the grafters to acknowledge that the vast majority of benefits claimants would love to be able to graft, and that we are all potential 'benefits scroungers.'

Charlie Brooker's trending...

Charlie Brooker wrote a piece today about the phone hacking scandal. This has produced a few comments online of the "that's rich coming from someone who takes the p**s out of TV for a living" variety. He's taken in in good part, admitting that he never said he wasn't also "making the world worse" (except that he makes in immeasurably better for some of us).


What such people miss is that Brooker has no patience with bad, lazy TV (or journalism; rather the point of his piece). When something is good, he's very positive, and I defy anybody to have come up with a more genuine, appreciative tribute to Oliver Postgate than this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAftt3UnzoI



If Brooker is scathing about you, it's probably because you deserve it.

My Audience with Vince

The Right Hon Vince Cable MP came to Levenshulme today. Ostensibly, this was to meet local business people but I suspect it was actually because Leve's LibDems are severely rattled at the prospect of losing their grip on local politics in May. 


I wandered along, not expecting much to be going on, although I'd heard that there might be a demonstration to welcome him, and I thought I'd go and man the barricades! In the event, I was invited in by one of those business people inside (I'm a regular customer), and was waved past what passed for security (the obligatory Hennigan). 


Vince was over 40 minutes late and was ushered in through the back door to avoid the crowd outside. He shook our hands, in that politician's way (I have to report he has a limp handshake, the sure sign of a wrong 'un, according to my old mum), and commenced a short speech. You will not be surprised to hear that they inherited a mess, times are tough, etc, etc.


The crowd outside were good natured but vociferous and their chants could be heard over Vince. His speech was then curtailed by one of the demonstrators trying to charge into the building; it took several minutes for the police/PCSOs to subdue him and lead him out through the back of the bar. There was a bit of harrumphing, but frankly not as much as I expected. 


Vince then cut straight to questions. These ranged from locally grown produce (he was surprised Manchester has an agricultural sector), through the inability of successive governments to get to grips with excessive bank charges ("If we succeed, it's in spite of banks rather than because of them") to the iniquities of the Compulsory Purchase Order legislation. His responses were pretty bland, most of them seeming to be of the 'can't comment on specifics' variety, and in spite of his assertion that small businesses are the key to growth, didn't elaborate on how this might happen in an area with little disposable income and a high proportion of public sector workers who have either lost their jobs or had pay freezes. Still, nice know there will be a recovery - not sure when, but.....


You'll be pleased to hear, though, that he enjoys a good relationship with David Cameron (not what it looks like from Twitter this morning, but there you go).


I didn't ask any questions. I had a feeling that I was being given the evil eye by the Party faithful as a possible infiltrator (which I suppose I was!); what I wanted to ask was:


Why, in the 20+ years I've lived here, under both Tory and Labour governments, my local elected (LibDem) representatives have done nothing to halt the decline of the area? It's all very well to blame the Labour majority on Manchester City Council, but if they can't bring about change, why should we vote for them? (I think this thought may appear in previous blogposts).


Why, if he feels David Cameron's views on immigration are wrong, he signed up to the Coalition agreement (the non-EU immigration limits are on page 21, I understand)?


Can he remember where he left his integrity? (my thanks to @Isdancing for that one).


Eventually, the meeting dissolved into photo opps with the candidate and associated movers and shakers (or what passes for them in LibDem circles) and out again through the back door where (I believe) there were some more friendly protestors waiting to greet him. It was a pretty lacklustre performance all round, really, and it didn't sound a if he'd won anyone round who wasn't already going to vote LibDem in May. At least he had the good grace to look haunted and weary.


Actually, lacklustre pretty much describes how the LibDems have been around here. Heavily dependent on their core vote, they don't reach out to the rest of the community. Far too keen to claim a bit of credit, whether it's due or not, and AWOL when things get sticky. How hard did they fight for the swimming baths in 2010? According to Labour, the council received no representations from any of our LibDem councillors - I sincerely hope that isn't true.


The very fact that they've dragged a (relative) big hitter like Vince up from London for a local election campaign suggests they're worried. It's notable that the usual 'LibDems winning here' placards are notably absent from windows and gardens this year. As they said in their election leaflet, "Only LibDems or Labour can win here." May's going to be interesting.

Chancellor Snivelling Little Worm Shocker!!

Today's Mirror is running a story about George Osborne's expenses claims, in particular the fact he is claiming petrol expenses for driving in his constituency.


Now let's leave aside the feeling that as a millionaire he has little need of reimbursement for this (MPs are entitled to claim some expenses and to get rid of this entitlement will inevitably preclude all but the very wealthy from standing for parliament) and have a look at some the detail:


"Mr Osborne asked to be reimbursed for £32.80 in one bill - 40p per mile - for an 82 mile journey from "Macclesfield to Wilmslow"


82 miles? How in hell did he manage to clock up 82 miles?! Macclesfield to Knutsford is, according to Google maps, 12.8 miles each way, even if he'd just gone from point A to point B. Let's assume, though, that he had to visit a number of places around the consituency - we're in the heart of Cheshire, don't forget, where some of the drives are longer than my journey to the shops. I did a bit of fiddling around with additional destinations to see if I could bump it up a bit, and I managed to do so. 86.7 miles, to be precise, but then I did have to go via Stafford to get that!


Another issue here, of course, is the rigour with which the claims are scrutinised (proved wanting under the old system, so one would hope improved under IPSA). Did no-one sitting in London, think to question this? Or is it just that if it's outside the M25 it's bandit country where no reliable maps are available? In my years as a pen-pushing, back office, enemy-of-enterprise local government officer, I dealt with travel and expenses claims for peripatetic staff. Had anyone put in a single claim for 80+ miles within their normal working area, I would have undertaken some serious questioning before agreeing it, because it was public money I would be spending, and (as a taxpayer myself) I always took the expenditure I was responsible for extremely seriously.


Of course, the story is in the Mirror, so will inevitably be looking to portray Osborne in the worst light (not that he needs much help with that!). It's possible that the claim was, in fact, thrown out, but the story highlights two things:


That, despite his personal wealth, he sees nothing wrong with claiming substantial amounts from the taxpayer. Would it hurt him to absorb the costs, if only for the PR coup of being able to claim that "we're all in this together"? [Cue High School Musical dance routine]. (Sorry, this always springs to mind when they trot this cliche out).


That the administration of the expenses system is still far from robust. A little local knowledge goes a long way - my fear is that stuck in an office somewhere in Westminster (and probably underpaid and overworked), IPSA staff may not recognise when the wool is being pulled over their eyes. True I have a bit of local knowledge - Cheshire is the bit us Manchester proles are allowed to visit at the weekends if we want our kids to see a cow - but if it took me 30 seconds to Google it, it really isn't that hard to work out whether someone's working the system.


I'd have thought the name "George Osborne" on the claim form would give that away!

Social Mobility (Revisited)

One of the pleasures of researching you family history is finding out where you come from.


I, for example, have discovered an ancestor, Joseph Maiden, who was a hunt servant in Cheshire and Staffordshire during the 19th century. His reputation was such that there is a chapter devoted to him in a history of the Cheshire Hunt and he appears in a  prominent position on a painting which hangs in the Hall at Tatton Park. There's certain irony in the fact that I have always been vociferously anti-blood sports, but yet owe my existence to fox hunting. Conversely, I am immensely proud of this ancestor, of low birth but revered by the aristocrats for whom he worked.

Moving on a couple of generations, my paternal great-grandfather, born in a small village near Bridport, Dorset, also spent his life in service to the aristocracy, becoming stud groom for the Earl of Guildford at his stately home in Kent. My grandfather also started his working life on the estate as a stable boy, but became a mechanic/chauffeur when his lordship invested in horseless carriages. World War I saw him enlist as a driver, and afterwards he joined Kent Police. With the advent of the Road Traffic Act in 1930, he was put in charge (as a sergeant) of the force's Transport section. He was a well-regarded officer whose reputation remained in the force long after retirement.


On my mother's side, my grandfather, abandoned by his father when his mother died, joined the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of Chief Petty Officer.


My parents were bright kids. My dad won a scholarship to the local grammar school (pre-1944 Education Act) and my mother trained as a typist at a Commercial School (a forerunner of the Technical schools which came along in the 1950s). Dad had a career as an insurance underwriter, specialising in insuring transport fleets, and my mum realised an ambition to run her own dancing school. They grew up in wartime, with rationing, but for the whole of their adult lives they were able to enjoy free healthcare, a full, uninterrupted employment record, a retirement in their early 60s with a generous (non-contributory) final salary pension scheme. They sold their house in the south east and retired to Devon (a long-held ambition) and had over 20 years of leisure, supported by a good GP who kept them in good health well into their 80s.


I was part of the generation of girls, born in the 1960s, who were encouraged to believe that they could achieve everything that their male counterparts could. I, too, went to a grammar school (it was Kent, which never fully embraced the concept of comprehensive education). With a white-collar father and a dancing teacher mother, we had become middle class; not cash-rich but with the values and aspirations of the post-war middle classes. 


I was the first generation to go to university. I forged a career in local government, providing administrative support in Education (in line with my philosophy that in order for teachers and schools to operate effectively, they need excellent admin support from a local authority which can serve the whole community). 


Overall, then, our family has been one which has benefited from social mobility over the last 150 years. Each generation has done a little better than the last, and while none of us have changed the world individually, all of us have made a small difference. Joe Maiden proved that it was possible to beat the toffs at their own game; my grandfather went from serving the aristocracy to serving the public; my mother defied convention by running her own business at a time when married women did not usually go out to work (and giving up a 'safe' job in an office to do it). 


So why, now, have we come to a point when this social mobility is moving rapidly into reverse? My local government career ended when I was outsourced and subsequently paid off. My partner, also a lifelong public servant, took a substantial pay cut in an organisation decimated by the sudden departure of hundreds of his colleagues before himself taking voluntary severance. My son, also a bright kid, is unlikely to be able to afford to go to university, thus reversing a one-generational trend of educational improvement. My daughter will have to overcome not only the challenges of having a disability, but the institutional discrimination of a welfare system which presumes malingering and fraud and insists on "work" at all costs while failing to offer support to the vulnerable in the workplace who will inevitably struggle in this new age of entrepreneurs (am beginning to hate that term!)


"Middle class" now seems to encapsulate people who would have been considered "very wealthy" when I was growing up, and who, to be frank, are little different from the super-wealthy who ran the country as their plaything under the coalition and the Nasty Party Redux that followed. Politicians were obsessed with "kids from poor backgrounds" while ignoring the millions of ordinary families who are above the breadline and not claiming benefits, but for whom social mobility is now proving just as difficult as for those from the poorest households. The difference is that there are no pupil premiums, bursaries or targeted schemes for them. One of the positive things about EMA was that it allowed families with an income of just under £30k pa to benefit in a small way (£10pw). There is very little support for anyone who is not actually on a "benefits-only" income. So, obviously, it was scrapped by Michael Gove in an early act of political spite. Tax credits are being reduced so even the small amounts that moderate earners receive is being scaled back, and now restricted to only the first two children, unless the mother can prove she was raped (how is that for dystopian?)


My partner and I spent nearly 20 years quietly contributing to the wellbeing of others. We were the sensible kids who worked hard at school, got our qualifications and sensible jobs. We sensibly paid into pension schemes. We did not earn huge bonuses; our salaries were modest (but good by local government standards). We were never in danger of losing our Child Benefit due to our income level. We did not live extravagantly or have huge amounts of personal debt. We had just reached a point where we did not have to check our bank balances before making any outgoing payment, and had even dared to hope we might be able to afford a second holiday each year. We have done everything that society has told us to do to be good citizens. And then all that was stripped out from under us. 


Not only is the gap between the very rich and the very poor widening, but there is now a vast chasm opening up between the lower- and upper- middle classes and it is a cultural, rather than an economic divide, stoked by populism born of xenophobia. Despite the bleating of a few London journalists, most of us are never going to earn £80,000 a year (or anything close to it) no matter how aspirational we are or how hard we work

For those of you considering voting for the "strong and stable" government of Theresa May's Conservatives, know this. Despite her conciliatory tone on the steps of No 10 when she fell into the job of Prime Minister (most of us have to go through rigorous recruitment and selection to even get a job, much less run the country) she doesn't have ordinary people's best interests at heart. Another Tory government will be the end of the NHS, our children will again be subject to the educational segregation of grammar schools and we will be governed by those who think we should be grateful to do low paid work while they enjoy a good salary, expenses and substantial earnings outside of politics.

The Labour Party is not perfect, and anyone who's seen some of the right of the party pontificating on social media (and regular readers of this blog) will know how utterly venal some of its members can be towards so-called comrades, but the policies the party is putting forward now represent a sea change from the timid neoliberalism of the New Labour years. We've gone from "not wanting to be the party of people on benefits" to being"the party of giving a toss about things" in just a few short years

So you don't like Jeremy Corbyn? He's "unelectable" (apart from two leadership elections and most of the by-elections fought under his leadership). He's "not a leader" (as if hiding away from the public in your £1,000 leather trousers and only taking questions from chosen journalists is "leadership"). OK, so which of his policies don't you like? Only taxing the 5% at the top of the income scale? Building really affordable homes? Keeping the NHS free from US-style markets and insurance-based services? No. Most objections seem to be that he's a bit weird/scruffy. The most serious charge levelled against him ("friend of terrorists") might be defendable if it weren't for the people his opponents call friends. Let's face it, compared with the dystopian future we all face under the Conservatives, I think we can put up with a man with a bike and a beard, don't you?

Oh, and fox hunting? My ancestors notwithstanding, it's a barbaric sport which should have died out in the 19th century.

Why I'm Marching (Virtually) Today

I was 16 and taking my O Levels in a Home Counties grammar school when the Conservatives last came to power in their own right. I left school two years later in the middle of a major recession. I was lucky - with 2 A levels I was able to get a succession of temporary jobs and, eventually, a permanent post with a local authority. It didn't pay well, but the work was interesting and, at eighteen, I got the public service bug.


I was the product of a One-Nation Tory household, and worked for a Tory council. The funny thing is that over the course of the six years I spent there, I came to realise that the Conservatives did not have the answers to the problems of the age. Two things happened:


During the miners's strike, a miners' wife applied to me for a uniform grant for her 12 year old son. These grants were only payable when the child moved from primary to secondary school, so I approached my supervisor to see if an exception could be made due to their financial hardship. "No", came the reply (from an otherwise decent human being, for whom I had great respect), "It's his father's choice to be on strike." The Kent coalfield (an area where I had family; my dad's cousin was a Bevin Boy) is now long gone, of course, and who knows what happened to that woman, her husband and her son - I doubt any of them benefitted from the 'economic miracle' of the Yuppie era.


In 1985, I happened to be off sick during the week of the Labour Party conference and happened to be watching the TV coverage of 'that speech' from my sofa. Wrapped in a blanket, and downing Lemsip, I suddenly realised that what he was saying made more sense to me than the conservative values I'd been brought up with. 




A couple of years later, I realised that I probably should have gone to university after all, and took the decision to leave my local authority job and return to full-time education. I moved to Manchester and found, to my delight, that I felt 'at home' in a way I no longer did in the south east.  As a mature student, I was eligible to receive a full grant. I had a part-time job while I was a student, which helped a bit, but I was able to live well, if frugally, on a student grant and left more or less debt free in 1991, emerging back into the workforce in the middle of another Tory-fuelled recession!


At this point, young (ish), and with a good degree from a decent university, I could have headed for the private sector, but I chose to return to local authority work. I spent the next 17 years working to improve the education and life chances of Manchester children. I went in at a fairly low level (this was before the days of graduate recruitment schemes) and it took a while to work my way up the career ladder, but I was proud of the organisation I worked for and that I was giving something back to the city I love. Slowly, my partner and I built quiet, unassuming careers in local government, had children (one of whom is on the autistic spectrum and therefore has a lifetime of misunderstanding and discrimination to overcome in addition to the difficulties her generation will suffer). Life was pretty good from 1997 onwards. We weren't wealthy, but we were finally comfortable (and not having to check every outgoing expense to make sure we weren't overdrawn), our children benefitted from good local authority-run nursery provision and excellent state schools


Nearly two years ago, my career was whipped out from under me like the tablecloth under a full-laid dining table in that rather cheesy Variety trick. The government project I'd been working on was put out to tender, a national contract so large that Manchester City Council was unable to bid for it and it went (inevitably) to one of those faceless BPO's who run so many of our back-office 'public' functions these days. So I, and about 50 colleagues with 200+ years of accumulated experience, were outsourced (and subsequently laid off). And this, it pains to to say, from the New Labour government who were just as blinded by the "private always more efficient" mantra that the Tories trot out. Having now worked in both sectors, the most charitable description I can come up with is that the private sector isn't more effective, it's just differently ineffective.


Nearly a quarter of a century after I first arrived in Manchester, I'm still here, still loving it and desperate about what's being done to it by the current, mandate-less coalition government. I was in local government when George Osborne was doing his (short) stint in Selfridges; I was working for local people when no-one had heard of Nick Clegg (actually, that doesn't give it much age, does it?). For how this government is affecting our family, see my post Incandescent elsewhere on this blog


Only an idiot would claim that no cuts were necessary - thanks to the mess we inherited from an under-regulated banking sector - but I am furious at being labelled a 'deficit denier'. I know that there's a deficit, I acknowledge it needs to be brought down. What I do not accept is that it needs to be brought down at the speed proposed by the coalition, at the expense of growth and by targeting those least able to defend themselves from the impact of the cuts. There is also no way that the un-mandated 'reform' of the NHS or Michael Gove's education policies will bring the deficit down - quite the reverse. They should be seen for what they are - the means by which this morally-bankrupt administration can feather the nests of its shadowy, neocon supporters in the health, education and BPO companies all currently snuffling around the trough.


So, I am not marching today - despite the fact that it's their future we're marching for, I don't want to subject the kids to the tender mercies of the Met, and it would not be fair to subject an autistic child to the level of (good) noise and crowds. I did, though, run my partner into the city centre at 6.30am so he could pick up the Unison coach, and will be doing what I can from a computer.


There is an Alternative, and we should insist on it before George Osborne's ineptitude wrecks the country completely.