The plan is to cut, cut and cut again. Didn't anyone tell the minister?
? "We must do more to help young carers in our communities." So says the children's minister Tim Loughton. Busy man, Mr Loughton. Too busy, one might guess, to read much of what his colleagues have been up to. Had he done so he might not have sent his rallying call unsolicited to MPs to coincide with Carers Week. Indeed, he might have seen the Action for Children survey of 23 young carers projects, which suggests that services supporting 1,192 young carers have had their budgets cut by up to 30%. Another 192 young carers rely on services that have suffered budget cuts of 40% or more. The Hertfordshire Young Carers Group has lost its grant and is about to close. The Young Carers Support Project in Suffolk, meanwhile, has been cut by 17% this year and won't receive any funding at all from March. Then there are cuts in the education maintenance allowance of up to �30 a week; they'll hit young carers struggling to stay at school or college. That said, an appeal from the minister to honourable members is not the worst idea. They might donate some of the money they have been collecting for the Queen's diamond jubilee.
? Everybody out, say the unions. No, everybody stay put, says Big Dave. Stay put, says the echo from Labour's high command, much to the annoyance of those who assumed new- generation Labour would do things differently. And certainly they had reason to think that, for during the leadership battle when union support was vital, the big beasts struck a notably different tone. "I am right behind Dave Prentis's call last week to stand up for public sector workers' pensions," said Ed Balls, rummaging for votes last year via the website Unions Together, and promising to fight the cuts "tooth and nail". Ed Miliband, now leader, also hummed the right tune back then. "It is vital that Labour commits itself to fight on the side of the public sector against the savage and unfair cuts," he told the comrades. Still, if a week is a long time in politics, nine months is another age.
? For things happen suddenly. One minute you are in the inner circle, the next you are heading for the exit. And this appears to be the fate of longstanding Green party communications chief Spencer Fitz-Gibbon. He learned he was to be made redundant and was, it is alleged, only given three weeks' notice. Then, when he challenged that edict, he apparently found himself facing charges of gross misconduct. Accusations fly thick and fast and form part of a motion members aim to put before the Green party conference in Sheffield in September. Where to start? It says a disciplinary panel was held in his absence where they found him guilty of misconduct, with no union rep or anyone else present to defend him. That, "between 1999 and 2010 the party has made four out of court settlements to former employees who challenged the manner of their dismissal". That between November 2008 and the end of 2009, six people quit ? many of the departures due to "acrimony" with the party's ruling executive. And that attempts were made to conceal the worrying developments from the membership. The Green party "must strive to be a model employer, as to fail in that duty would leave us open to calls of gross hypocrisy ? preaching one thing while practising another," it says. Quite.
? And we wouldn't want that, party sources tell us. Especially as steps have been taken over the past year to improve employee relations. So what will become of poor Spencer? That's an internal matter. "No comment."
? Dark days, finally, for the Independent's award-winning columnist Johann Hari, who admits inserting quotes from other sources to make his tongue-tied interviewees sound more articulate. It's dishonest, say his critics. It's common practice, says Johann, questionably. But perhaps the biggest downer must be the fact that yesterday he found himself on the receiving end of moralising lectures from the writer and activist Toby Young, who has never quite faced down allegations of plagiarism levelled by the New York Times and others. Johann, that's just not a good place to be.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/28/hugh-muirs-diary-tim-loughton
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