Because it benefits us all...

In ysterday's Guardian, there is an article that reveals that the government have been in secret talks concerning banks taking some responsibility for providing student loans. This is yet another move towards the commercialisation of education.

This angers me a great deal. For too long have we allowed the idea that it is simply the individual who benefits from higher education and in turn this has allowed governments (and I include New Labour in this) to move away from the idea of universal education towards an idea of privately funded education.

In my mind, there is no reason why, if one supports free access to education at age 5, that same person will therefore not agree with the same principle at age 18.

This principle does not have to be agreed with on the basis of having a socialist outlook, although of course it is on my part. Indeed, as a country we need to move to a consensus where we appreciate that we all benefit from a highly educated workforce.

It is important that everyone is encouraged to achieve their potential, and it is foolish to believe that introducing privately financed loans on top of extortionate tuition feels will not discourage poorer students from doing so.

My honest belief is that higher education should be fully funded through general taxation. Tuition fees be scrapped and we should move towards the principle of free universal education at all points in life, starting from a child's first day at school, and continuing through to mature students.

It should be the intention of anyone who believes in equality of opportunity to ensure that funds are set aside to educate the population, and it is essential that the extreme cuts put into place by the current government are overturned to ensure that the UK can have high quality education provision, at all levels.

An Under-Valued Asset

When I was a staff briefing last week, one of my colleagues took a great deal of exception to the use of the word "asset" when referring to buildings, but not when referring to staff. This is in the light of a briefing to a department facing cuts of 55% by next April.

Now, of course this is just a matter of semantics. Yes, of course staff are an asset to the employer, or at least they should be. In this instance however, the speaker was referring to the council's Asset Strategy, which specifically refers to council land and property.

However, over the last couple of days, this matter has come to the fore again. Thankfully not yet in my neck of the woods, although this is only a matter of time. Our near neighbours, Birmingham City Council, intend to outsource over 100 jobs to India in a cost cutting strategy. From what I can tell, this is purely because staff costs are too high over here. However, these posts are from the IT teams, which, in local governments generally, pay far below private sector employers in the field. It certainly seems that Birmingham City Council do not see existing staff as a valuable asset.

Then this morning, whilst reading the paper, I came across an article which revealed that Oxford County Council plans to replace professional librarians with volunteers. Now, firstly this beggars the question as to whether the Council is meaning to replace Library Assistants with volunteers, or the postgraduate professionals who are already under valued.

For those of you who may not know, I am a fully qualified librarian, having achieved a postgraduate diploma in Information and Library Studies in 2008. Three years on, I have yet to find a qualified post, and the paraprofessional posts are either disappearing, or wanting more and more for the money. When I speak of the poorly paid librarian, put this into perspective; last month there was a College Librarian post advertised in Worcester asking for less than 13k per annum. This was a full time post and specified that a professional qualification was needed.

If therefore it is the Librarians who are to go, one must ask as to how such poorly paid employees within local government can be replaced by volunteers. Is the state to fund the three years of undergraduate or one year of postgraduate study that would equip them for maintaining a collection? There is a great deal that goes on in those offices behind the Issue Desk, and I'm not sure that Oxfordshire County Council quite realise.

The cynical part of me thinks that maybe they do, and this is their ploy to destroy librarians from within. If they fail themselves, it's not the council who make the cuts. I call it the Eric Pickles mentality.

The Greenest Government Ever?

In May 2010, David Cameron and Nick Clegg spoke about bringing together the "greenest government ever" (1). In the light of news coming out in May 2011 about the world being on the brink of a climate disaster (2), it is essential that the developed world combines knowledge and policy to work to avoiding catastrophic results in relation to our future environment.
 
So what has this government done to support these green credentials?
 
So far, not a lot. Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs found herself under pressure by the public to change policy on allowing the sale of public forests (3). Now Eric Pickles is fixated on the idea that weekly bin collections must be reinstated, despite evidence suggesting that such an act would inevitably push back the inroads that have been made in local recycling, with an additional 1 million tonnes of recyclable waste being sent directly to landfill (4).
 
One of the central ideas within this "greenest government ever" spiel is the green investment bank. It is too early in its implementation to be able to fully assess the merits of this policy and whether the bank will prove a strong force for environmental development. Already, concern has been expressed as to whether the government's pledged £1billion will be enough to fund the necessary changes to the UK's infrastructure.
 
"According to accountants Ernst & Young, the UK needs to spend £450bn on its energy infrastructure by 2025 in order to meet its long-term target of an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050, enshrined in the Climate Change Act of 2008" (5).
 
Whilst this government makes high level claims, their actions speak differently. They speak of the importance of getting the country's debt levels under control for the interests of future generations; yet the world for future generations won't exist if we do not fully invest in green policies.
 
 
(1)http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/14/cameron-wants-greenest-government-ever
 
(2)http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-nuclearpower
 
(3)http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12488847
 
(4)http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/30/local-rubbish-collection-council-incentive
 
(5)http://www.theecologist.org/investigations/politics_and_economics/691428/green_investment_bank_faces_critical_test_over_funding_shortfall.html

You've got to fight! For your right!

This week the government seem inclined to introduce two policies that I think are particularly offensive. The first relates to those starting out on their post-school career and the second relates to those already in employment. Clearly these two parts of society are in it together. Employers on the other hand, less so.

So the first piece that filled me with horror was the idea voiced By David Willetts MP that students who could afford it could pay for extra university places in lieu of obtaining a place on merit. Now it seems that this has now been pushed aside as it drew noises of horror once the Guardian story broke.

Now this idea is outrageous for a number of issues. Firstly, many rich applicants to universities already benefit from having paid to attend a private school. Research shows that undergraduates from state schools are more likely to succeed at university, even if they had achieved lower grades at school or college, and this is certainly what I experienced myself at university.

Yet state school educated pupils accounted for 88.8% of university entrants across the country in 2010. For Oxford this falls to 54.3%, with Cambridge performing only slightly better, with 59.4% of the intake coming from state education. Now I don't have the figure to hand as to the percentage of pupils who study at state schools, but it sure as hell is significantly higher than 88.8%, never mind Oxford's measly intake.

Society benefits as a whole from an educated workforce, and we should be working towards enabling everyone to achieve their potential. This doesn't need to be a degree, but we should all have access to the same opportunities, based on merit and not ability to pay.

Now David Willetts angered me a while back in regard to his view that feminism was to blame for a lack of jobs for men, which is a frankly disgusting remark that highlights succinctly why feminism still plays an important role in society. Again, this relates specifically to the need for us all to be able to achieve what we want to be, without any limits based on any arbitrary factor.

The second thing that really got me metaphorically screaming at the government was a Liberal Democrat led policy to further limit employment rights to make it harder for employees to counter discrimination at work, which is already hard enough to prove anyway. That, my friends, may be economically liberal, but it sure as hell isn't socially democratic, and it is the following of these policies that show that the dominating force in the parliamentary Liberal Democrats is that of the Orange Bookers, and the Social Democratic left of the party seems to be nowhere to be seen.

The Morning After

One of the main points I was predicting when it became increasingly likely that the No vote would end up the victorious today was the likely impact of the Conservative right's opinion regarding their leader.

Now many Labour voting and other left wing friends of mine, and strangers too, had extolled the need to "punish Clegg" and give him the bloody nose he deserves after acting as a prop to the Tory-led government. And, as a result, people were arguing that it was the only way to break the coalition.

I have a different view of the affair, which is probably down to my own views on the need for electoral reform. I think otherwise; the worst thing for the current government would be for the Yes vote to have won. Cameron would have lost all support from his right wing MPs, and Clegg would have at least gained something from entering government alongside him. In that case, the Tories would have faced a few years of in-fighting whilst they end up having to find a new leader, Clegg would still be damaged anyway, and it would be opposition parties who would benefit.

Instead, we will have a happy bunch of Tory MPs, and some miserable Lib Dems. The Lib Dems won't want to leave the coalition until their support has recovered somewhat, and the Tories are strengthened, and have less need to succumb to Lib Dem demands.

For me, on the face of it, whilst it has been a fantastic polling day for the SNP and a reasonable day for the Labour, it's not been too bad a day for the Tories either.

The Biggest Vote in a Generation

Tomorrow will be the most important vote I have made so far in my voting career. It will be time for the country to go into schools, churches, and a range of public buildings in order to make our mark for or against our current voting system.

From a politically biased point of view, I am all for expressing the opinion that "if Cameron thinks it's good, it's not for me, ta". However, we can't blindly fall into the trap about making this about our own personal thoughts on the parties and politicians representing us today. 

I fully believe that if (as is looking highly likely) if the country says "No to AV" tomorrow, the whole argument for electoral reform will be swept away for another few decades. The political elite (whose best interest it is in to maintain the status quo) will take it as read that the British public have no apetite for a fairer voting system and we will be stuck with the one that has resulted in repeatedly providing us with "strong majority governments" who were often not elected on the strong mandate that First Past the Post arguably gives them.

Take for example our current MP, with 39.5% of the votes in Worcester in the last election, he represents the interests of 100% of his constituency. Working where I do, I have seen some particularly unattractive sentiments expressed to colleagues by our beloved representative which not only showed a lack of understanding of both the subject matter, and of the need to support individuals within a very harsh society. I am secure in the knowledge that because of the ideas he expressed and lack of understanding he betrayed, this man cannot represent the interests of the majority of his constituents, having as I do a strong belief in the inherent goodness of humankind.

Sadly, what we are left with in this referendum is a choice between two electoral systems I do not agree with. If you remember back in those Spring-like days of the New Labour government in the late 1990s, the Jenkins Commission recommended AV Plus, which would lead to more representative government. I, on the other hand, am a supporter of full Proportional Representation. 

Tomorrow is, however, not a choice between these four or even more electoral systems, it's presented to us as a choice between just two; whether we should maintain the status quo or whether you would prefer to have slightly more opportunity to express an opinion on what kind of ideals you want your MP to express.

Indeed, if under AV our current MP was voted in with over 50% of the vote, I might not like it, but at least he would have a mandate to follow his policies in the interests of his constituents.

So tomorrow I will go into our local primary school and vote "Yes to AV", not because I think it is a perfect system, but because I think it is much better than the current one, and only by voting in favour of one piece of reform can we show those dominant political elites that we really do have the stomach for reform.

Not in My Name

For the last eight years, I've been finding myself getting increasingly angry at decisions made in my name. Instead of fighting back, and pushing what I believe in, I've been punishing myself. Well no more! I'm tired of taking the bulk of my anger in on myself.

So here I am back in the blogging sphere. Those of us who believe in better, and in the inherent good of what we as a species can accomplish must gather together where we can to promote our thoughts.

For years "Worcester Woman" has been used as a catch all term for what seems to me to denigrate female voters living in this beautiful city in the West Midlands, and I want to claim it back!

In all seriousness, I am a female voter in a marginal Westminster seat, with our sitting MP having been elected with only 39.5% of the vote. If Worcester Woman was once the typical voter parties needed to court, maybe it's time they all listened.