Public Sector Pay Down 20% through ‘Conservative Austerity’ years yet Public Servants are expected to absorb an £81 per month drop in living standards?

 The 1997 introduction of ‘agenda for change’ in the NHS and ‘Single Status’ in Local Government was extremely progressive towards achieving pay and gender equality in English and Welsh public services.

The system ran well for many and with pay being based on responsibility level and not gender it drove adult training, supporting further education establishments as the ambitious workforces wished to increase their income level through being able to perform and accept higher levels of responsibility.

But it is a system that can be stymied by political tacticians and after the 2010 General Election the system was seriously eroded through Conservative austerity which hit budgets for both the NHS and Local Government so voraciously that further education was placed behind the nine ball through the loss of custom.

It's been noted by many that ‘Conservative Austerity’ has eaten into public services so hard in the recent spring budget the Chancellor has demanded an alteration in the way National Insurance is harvested to fund care and wellbeing and that's on top of Unitary Councils annual stealth tax levy to attempt to safeguard care for the elderley. It has also left thousands of workers cut off from ambition and stuck on grades that as staff leave the sector they have been simply expected to absorb and take on higher levels of responsibility without an increase in grade or salary level.

Trade Unions and Think Tanks agree that real time wages in the public sector have fallen by around 20% since 2010 and at the moment early calculations show that the mismanagement of the economy will cost the public sector workforce and extra £81 per month in inflationary costs outside London which has unique problems all of its own.

The public sector is at rock bottom and demands from Trade Unions for a three year public sector inflation busting pay deal beginning with a 12% pay rise in October 2022 is the only way to stop services including education and care collapsing and the Chancellor should take notice immediately before the ‘New Titanic’ of public services sinks below the 

GMB, are right to point out that the river Blyth’s emerging energy businesses need to pay top dollar and NFU’s call to increase the available workforce should be heeded.

 

With the news that the aggressive tactics of JobCentre plus has led to a fall in unemployment to well below pre-pandemic levels and that many of the last of the 'baby boom’ workforce have decided to not look for further employment has thrown the jobs market into complete disarray.

The office for National Statistics ONS, said there were 1.34million unemployed in the quarter to January, down 88,000 on the previous million recorded in December to February 2020, with unemployment sitting at the lowest level for 40 years, 3.9%.

They also recorded that wages had gone up and the figures for ‘false self-employed’ had dropped accordingly with a jump in the number of workers on payrolls up by 275,000 to a fresh record of 29,700,000 with the demand for workers very strong indeed with an increase in vacancies of 105,000 taking the vacancy figure to 1,3 million.

Huge organnastion have made recent comments, led by the National Farmers Union following the release of the ONS report, they have urged Home Secretary Priti Patel to lift the ban on asylum seekers taking paid employment - saying the business case for lifting the ban is "more urgent than ever". They have joined voices with recruitment agency Adecco,  and law firm DLA Piper and among others saying: "Recruiters, labour providers and hiring businesses are struggling to fill the vacancies that exist in today's labour market. Yet there are thousands of people in the UK, skilled, resilient and willing, who could be working but are not allowed."

This follows in the wake of the following comment from the General, Manufacturing and Boilermakers (GMB) trade union. Local convenors for Northumberland commented on the shortage of workers and pointed out that the new emerging energy companies settling in the river Blyth estuary area who expect to recruit over 8000 workers as they come online, will have to pay very competitive rates of pay in order to secure the long term workforce of employees which the new businesses will have to skill up at their own cost to produce the tactile energy products required for the future.

 

Levelling down the North East to help West Country Tories is an abominable policy!

 

It doesn’t take much to send a shiver down the spine of Tory ministers for them to abandon policy in secret in order to protect their own. We notice that they now think that Northumberland, even though more people voted Conservative than Labour across the County, is no longer to be supported in real terms as they reel from losing a seat in the West Country to the friends they almost fatally damaged, the Lib Dems. 

With the LibDems now climbing all over Jacob Rees Mogg's constituency as poverty grows in Parishes entrapped in his holding and with the proposed Boundary changes expected to gift him even more less well-off areas he is in a panic and to shift cash to support their eccentric friend and protect his riches someone else has to suffer.

Those who will suffer most live here in the North East through the release of a single growth pointer, that more new homes have been developed and sold in the North East than anywhere else in the UK over the last eighteen months, is now the catalyst for change.

The actual fact that this figure simply replaces the data that more people over thirty still lived with their parents in 2019/20 than anywhere else in the UK doesn’t seem to matter and that the cut in stamp duty allowed them to use all their savings as deposits on new homes doesnt seem to have entered the little or is that belittling minds of the Tories in power so Northumberland has to take the strain while the West Country is visited by the banner of St George.

Their first hits have already been determined, with the slashing of the pupil premium at a time when child deprivation and poverty is growing across Northumberland at the fastest rate since the Thatcher era where a school in Ashington has taken the biggest cut in the UK, the offer of cuts to Universal Credit and the slashing of the Tories prime promise to pensioners of their governments full support for the ‘Triple Lock’ about to be abandoned across a County which is home to more pensioners than children its plain to see that they have abandoned the County just as the disgraceful bullying actions of a controversial Tory County Council are about to be exposed and when linked with the shift in Government support including the shelving of East Coast HS2 rail begins to hit home illustrates its the most northern of the North of England who will take the greatest hit to protect those in the West.

This government is engaged in a toxic culture war to divert attention from its failures

Article by Allan Hepple from Cramlington

The torrent of racism suffered by members of the England Team is nothing short of disgraceful. The support they received from mainly young people was remarkable and sadly at odds with messages from government. Despite Priti Patel, Home Secretary, saying it was “gesture politics”, their message in taking the knee in each game demonstrated their commitment to end racism and demand equality and should be applauded not vilified. The team after all is racially diverse much like the country

It is no surprise that young people have a different view challenging and rejecting the government’s toxic culture war. 

Of course, this government are perpetrating the culture war to defect attention from their failures to govern fand the evidence is clear 

• Priti Patel’s - who as one commentator said is likely to switch off your life support to charge her mobile phone – from ‘gesture politics’, photo shoots of evicting asylum seekers to criminalising genuine asylum seekers, against international law, in her Nationality and Borders Bill and 

• Johnson’s description of those of African dissent as ‘piccaninies’ and ‘watermelon smiles and Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’

• Not denouncing the minority of England fans booing their own players taking the knee

The UK has always been a welcoming country where difference has been accepted and tolerated. But the government as Tyrone Ming’s said ‘stokes’ the culture war giving license to racists to boo and send racist messages on social media to England players

Their focus should not be on a culture war but on the real problems facing this country: -

• A fractured and underfunded NHS

• Increasing child and pensioner poverty

• The mess created by Brexit not least the disaster of the Northern Ireland protocol

• Tackling unemployment and particularly youth unemployment

• Supporting businesses and people still affected by Brexit

This is an agenda and priorities we can all support I’m sure.

Privatisation of the NHS here we come!

 The Layman welcomes the new Journalists from Cramlington,  Alan Hepple former Northumberland County Councillor and ex town councillor. 

We should all be very worried about the Tory Health and Care bill, which should be called the Corporate Takeover Bill. The bill will reshape the NHS to provide 42 new integrated care systems (ICS) placing private health care companies at the heart of the NHS. ICS boards, upon which private health companies will sit, will be responsible for commissioning health and local council care services. It could see private health companies being awaded contracts without going through a tender process. Labour should and must oppose this Tory bill!

Northumberland gigafactory Planning Permission approved

 

Northumberland County Council has approved plans for an electric vehicle battery "gigafactory" that could create up to 3,000 jobs. Britishvolt has secured planning permission for the facility, which will be built on the 235-acre site of the former Blyth power station. Britishvolt says the facility will be operational by 2023, and will bring "much needed" employment to the area. By 2027, the plant is expected to be producing enough batteries for 300,000 electric cars a year.

 

Alex Wallace, Labour’s County Councillor for Sleekburn ward where the gigafactory is to be sited said: “This is transformational, Britishvolt has worked hard to engage with us locally and we very much hope that will continue.

“I know opportunities like this come along rarely. To see Cambois and Northumberland leading the way in green energy car battery production is wonderful. It has my full support.”

 

Council’s opposition Deputy Leader, Liz Simpson said: “This is brilliant news for Northumberland, Wansbeck and Blyth Valley that planning has been agreed to move this project one step further forward”, “The plant which is predicted to provide jobs for up to 3000 people and will draw in other industries to resettle in South East Northumberland will certainly help the local economy which has suffered from a lack of investment for decades”. “We now have to see the corporate plans of the Council to ensure that such a large plant and its additional industries can be integrated into the local environment and ensure undue pressure is not unfairly placed on existing communities as our current vital services infrastructure will require major investment to ensure that schools, housing, health services and the Unitary County Council along with its Parish Colleagues can absorb the massive change that’s about to arrive on our doorsteps”.

Rearranging the Deckchairs on the Titanic will certainly lead to a further catastrophic split in Northumberland Conservatives?

Ian Levy MP has issued a news article, printed in the News Post Leader stating that Blyth Valley will exist after the Boundary Commission’s national consultation on changes designed to draw in 10 additional safe conservative seats and further reduce the power of any opposition party to remove the Tories from Government in future.

These proposals have already been knocked back by Parliament on two previous occasions and abandoned but PM Boris Johnson decided that as the proposals aid his party he would remove the final vote on decision making by MP’s and redefine the Boundary Commission, gifting it the ability to operate as a type of NGO, outside of democratic regulation and historical acceptance by the people and for the people and make changes willy nilly as it sees fit.

The proposals, to slash back the number of constituencies across the UK (probably to allow everyone to sit down in the about to be newly modernised at great expense Palace of Westminster) contains proposals which show that people are only numbers and that traditional boundaries and historical communities are to be defined by algorithms in future and that history doesn’t matter, changing people's view of locality forever.

So how does that work in reality and why is Ian Levy’s promise to retain Byth Valley intact a non-starter?

Firstly, the Boundary Commission has decided that it no longer has to take the population of an area into consideration when playing out its numbers game and will only work on the number of folk registered to vote.

Secondly in Northumberland the Commission has decided that one constituency has to disappear and as only Blyth Valley has anywhere near enough voters to meet the requirements of the commission its voting populus must be shared to help out areas containing less voter numbers (not people you notice).

The proposals for Northumberland contain two outside of Northumberland cross boundary constituencies and may weaken the Conservatives from an overall perspective in the longer term and MP’s may force through an early election in 2023 in order to miss the changes until 2028.

But the proposal that is most interesting is one we will call Seaton Valley with Whitley Bay as during 1973 referendums were held across Seaton Valley which was much larger than today and some communities decided to join up with Blyth Valley a District Council dominated by a historical County and others with North Tyneside a proposed at that time Metropolitan Borough Council sitting within a new County structure that was eventually abolished.

Now that people are back in public life with talk circulating more freely in pubs and clubs we are led to believe that the top Tory from Cramlington, County Councillor Wayne Daley covets this seat but as you will see from the article link below Ian Levy is desperate to hang onto Cramlington and is backed by the Morpeth Mob who would use their current standing to slash and burn all other constituencies to save their man and leave Wayne Daley who opposed the mobs unlovable leader Ghengis Peter Jackson and aided his removal from office.

So as voters across North Tyneside, Durham and Northumberland who are now linked together through the numbers game and not democracy we will have to watch this emerging picture and see how much support is gifted to Ian Levy by those sitting in their capital of the North, Morpeth, well below Boris Johnson but may be influential from a County Boundary perspective.

https://www.newspostleader.co.uk/news/politics/mp-column-blyth-valley-will-not-be-abolished-3268295