Monthly Archives: August 2010

David Cameron is going to warn us that worse is to come when he marks his first 100 days in power this Thursday. A study by the TUC last week revealed that of the government’s £13bn cuts drawn up since they were in power it is young families, the unemployed and under 25s who will be hit the hardest.

The savings over the next three years will be made in schools, playgrounds in child trust funds, job schemes, child benefits and in universities. As Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary rightly stated, it really isn’t fair to expect children and young people to pick up this tab, but that’s exactly who will end up paying for it. You can read the full article in today’s Sunday Mirror here.

Implications to other cuts came to fruition this week, this time it was universities which would come under fire.

The cuts to university funds mean that they will have to reduce the number of students they are able to admit, and the impact means that some 200,000 students will not get into university. And today the Sunday Telegraph revealed that as many as 3,500 students with straight A grades at A-level face missing out on university. David Willetts, the Higher Education Minister said that exceptional students who had failed to list a back up choice could miss out on their first choice and therefore not get into university.

A Level results are out this Thursday and I can only imagine what a tense time it will be for thousands of students who are holding on to the hope that they will get the results they need to get into uni – and this year the results are more important than ever.

It must have been very unsettling for council tenants who over the last couple of weeks were told that they didn’t have a right to a council house for life. Another throw away policy casually announced by the Prime Minister without realising fully the consequences his words would have on all those families who take pride in their communities and don’t just live in a council house but have built a home for them and their families.

Nick Raynsford MP had a letter published in the Guardian which you can read here and his words sum up the mood many of us feel.

In the weeks since May 6^th political commentators have seemed almost as enthusiastic in their dismissals of the impact of the web as they were in their pre-election proclamations of its ‘game-changing’ potential. The Observer’s Peter Preston declared ‘TV has dominated this campaign, the rest of the media were spear-carriers’, whilst Iain Dale, writing in The Telegraph, labelled the web ‘the dog that hasn’t barked’. But is this a fair analysis, was the internet really such an irrelevance?

I don’t think so and nor, it seems, do the contributors to the Internet and the 2010 Election; the Hansard Society’s recent attempt at cutting through the hype and exploring the potential of online campaigning. The numbers engaged in political tweeting may have paled in comparison to the viewing figures for the election debates, whilst many bloggers were so wary of unwittingly damaging their party’s fortunes that their contributions were too bland to have much of an impact but, as the Hansard Society suggests, the role of the internet was more than incidental.

Analysis carried out by academics Gibson, Cantijack and Ward in the volume shows a marked increase in involvement. Whilst e-campaigning barely penetrated the public consciousness in 2005, during the last election just under half of internet users engaged in some sort of political activity, whether that was seeking out information on policy, subscribing to party emails, commenting via social media sites, or posting and forwarding links to political material. Yes, most people still get most of their election news through the usual channels, but it is clear that the web has much scope for enhancing political engagement, overcoming barriers to involvement and increasing the effectiveness of existing campaign strategies. Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere are a useful, increasingly essential, means of talking to the base; of energising volunteers and activating the activists. Email, too, appears vital in disseminating information and eliciting action.

There is a need for both realism and caution. It is unlikely that we’ll ever replicate the mass e-mobilisation of the Obama campaign: our party structures are more enduring and less responsive, our parties less likely to excite the sort of enthusiasm that can surround an individual, inspirational candidate. It is also important to recognise that use of interactive mediums must be more than tokenistic. Social media should move political debate closer to the grass-roots, not simply provide a new forum for existing political elites. The internet hasn’t revolutionised electioneering, nor will it, but it is already changing the way we engage in politics and it still holds much potential to do more.

Labour’s General Election campaign should have featured more women. Labour’s record on increasing women’s representation is one to be proud of, yet it is taken for granted. It should be better and I will continue to campaign for more opportunities. However, by failing to strongly enough contrast Labour’s record with that of both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, voters were not reminded about which Party works for and has delivered most for women. Tony Blair established Cabinets that were comfortable for the first time with a substantial female representation. Labour’s record of improved schools, health, Sure Start centres, and improved maternity provisions all gave an excellent story which has not been fully told. My campaign experiences were that this message had not got through to the electorate. The consequences of this are rapidly becoming clear.

Home Secretary Theresa May has scrapped the Labour legislation to ban dometic abusers from victim’s homes. When brought in all parties supported the legislation so why have the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats changed their mind?

Money is the answer as Theresa May said:

“in tough economic times, we are now considering our options for delivering improved protection and value for money,”

Further confirmation that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are putting women second came from Yvette Cooper MP’s work which showed 70% of tax revenues will come from women, £6bn of a total £8bn. Today it is reported that Theresa May has warned the Chancellor that cuts may affect women disproportionally and give rise to a challenge under (Labour’s) equality legislation. How long before we see more equality legislation rolled back?

One aspect of the reporting of this story is that it has not recognised the impact the Conservative and Liberal Democrat changes will have on children. From my time running Gingerbread the single parent’s charity I know that 90% of single parents are women. When there is an acrimonious split with abusive behaviour it is not just the partner who suffers, it is the children. This is consistently under reported and it is predominantly although not exclusively  men who are abusive to women. So when Theresa May scraps this legislation it is children who will suffer when men return to the family home against the mother’s wishes. Labour needs to identify which government introduced this child supportive legislation, and not be afraid of pointing out that the government’s cuts will affect vulnerable children. This is not being emotive, it is just stating the facts.