Unfit To Govern

Research out today indicates seven in 10 poor teenagers would drop out of school if the Educational Maintenance Allowance is scrapped

Students are holding a day of action to focus attention on government plans to scrap the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) that pays poor teenagers to stay on in education.

What a difference a year makes? At a Cameron Direct event, in January last year before the election, David Cameron responding to Save EMA campaign director James Mills, says that he supports EMAs.

YET ANOTHER BROKEN PROMISE – Will the electorate ever believe a politician again?

Well, it’s been interesting watching and reading the coverage of the first 100 days of the coalition.  Those that are pro coalition said how wonderful they were but I didn’t see any details of any good that had been achieved.  For those, like myself, who believe that the coalition is going to bring the country to it’s knees it was very easy to cite examples of poor government, blunders, arrogance and downright incompetence. Here’s a reminder of a few of these;

David Laws’s resignation. The new coalition government was plunged into its first crisis as the Liberal Democrat cabinet minister charged with cutting the £156bn deficit resigned following revelations about his expenses.

NHS reorganisation. Government has embarked on massive NHS restructuring, even though Tories said before the election that these restructuring exercises caused “terrible” disruption.  For further details see the UTG blog posts on this subject.

The Michael Gove fiasco of the cancellation of the ‘Building for Schools Programme”. Michael Gove should get the incompetence prize for the way he announced the cancellation school building projects. See UTG Blog posts.

The economy.  Despite many warnings Osborne and the coalition are bulldozing ahead with their cuts which is almost certainly going to result in a ‘double-dip” recession.  The plan relies on new jobs being created in the private sector to replace the 600,000 or more which will be lost in the public sector as a result of the cuts. Cloud cuckoo land.

Refusal of the £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters being challenged. Its chief executive said directors were willing to sell shares, contrary to what Cameron and Clegg said.

Capital gains tax. Coalition agreement said CGT would go up to rates “similar or close to those applied to income”, but George Osborne only raised it to 28%, not 40%.

VAT increases to 20% in January.  Despite the Lib Dems stating they were against a VAT rise in the run up to the election the Chancellor  announces the poor targeted inflationary VAT rise.

Stabilisation of Fuel prices ruled out. Back in the summer of 2008 Shadow chancellor George Osborne told the BBC the party was looking at plans to cut fuel duty when oil prices rise and increase it when prices fall. This has now been ruled out.  Another case of saying one thing in opposition and another when you get into power.

Abolished The Film Council. This is the body which promoted the British film industry and provided funding for many top British films.

No Crackdown on Tax Avoidance.  There has been a complete lack of any announcements regarding how the coalition is going to plug any of the Tax Avoidance loopholes.

Cancelling The Child Trust Fund.  Stopped this progressive idea which has been copied by other countries.

Scrapped the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) – the Commission’s latest (and last report) shows that even the modest measures that the previous government introduced to save energy and water and reduce waste have cut the state’s annual bills by £60m to £70m.  See UTG Blog Post.

Scrapping of ASBOs. Abandoning the whole ASBO system suggests the ConDems are returning to a  mentality where  police will only act after a crime has been committed.

Abolition of the Regional Development Agencies. This decision will once again centralise regional decisions in London reversing 10 years of gradual de-centralisation which is being adopted by other European countries.

Scrapping of ID Cards.  Political decision with no real rational behind it.  This will make it harder to catch criminals and terrorists than it would have otherwise been.  Also to illustrate the arrogance and  unfeeling nature of the Government they have refused to refund the relatively few people who have signed up for the trial.

Scrapping of Home Information Packs. This one affected me directly as it closed down my expanding business at a stroke without warning. This move alone increased unemployment by 3000 people with a total of 10,000 being affected. This was done without embarking on a 100 day consultation period which was promised prior to the election.  In doing we have returned to our old, slow and  inefficient house buying and purchasing system.

Announcing a spending review which will result in job losses of at least 600,000 in the public sector. All department (except NHS and overseas aid (why overseas aid)) have to find between 25 and 40% budget savings.  A conservative estimate puts resulting job losses at, at least 600,000.

The Abandonment of Regional House Building Targets.  Desperately need more housing, despite this the Coalition has abandoned targets which aimed to have 3 million more homes by 2020.

I really do hope we do not have 100 more days of the above.  Unfortunately I fear it can only get worse.  The polls indicate that at the moment it appears that it is possible to fool most of the people all of the time.

Further Reading: 100 facts about the coalition’s first 100 days, LabourList 50 mistakes series

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, appears to have problems with his figures?  He rushed the ‘Academies’ Bill through Parliament on the understanding that over 1000 schools were ready to apply to be academies. However it has now been revealed that only 153 have actually applied and probably won’t get the go ahead before the start of the new academic year in September.

So what was the rush? Was this just another blunder by Michael Gove or was it more sinister, as suggested by Shadow Home Secretary and Labour Leadership Candidate, Ed Balls. As reported in the Guardian Ed Balls is quoted as saying “It seems to me that the real reason for the rush was to avoid proper scrutiny for a deeply flawed piece of legislation”.

Further reading here: Guardian  Left Foot Forward  Paul Waugh

Michael Gove is accused today of planning to let schools select pupils after a leaked government document questioned the future of the admissions code that stops schools favouring children they believe are more likely to produce better results.

See the full article from the Guardian here.

Business Secretary Vince Cable seems determined to tax graduates out of existence with his recent announcement that this tax is inevitable.

Has he done his homework I wonder?

I was the product of a fully state funded degree education in the 70’s and as a result have been lucky enough to secure relatively well paid work ever since. The result is that I have more than repaid my debt to the state with higher tax payments.

This is an incredibly short sighted view that I am happy to share with journalists from at least 2 of the countries leading daily newspapers;

The Guardian’s article – ‘Graduate tax is not the only choice.’

by Sirena Bergman, guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 July 2010

… and …

The Telegraph’s article – ‘Vince Cable’s brainless way to pay for universities‘

By Simon Heffer Published: 6:00PM BST 16 Jul 2010

Now there are other journalists who belive this proposed tax is not ‘double taxing’ the graduate. These people are falling into the trap of believing that the student/graduate is the sole beneficiary so must pay.

So I call on Vince Cable to do his homework and find an alternative method to fund this most important investment in our country’s future and to stop regarding them as easy targets.

Michael Gove will admit the list he put out was full of errors.

Hundreds of schools checked a list, published by the Department for Education on Monday, to see whether their rebuiling plans were going ahead. It has now emerged that the list had 25 errors.

Michael Gove, is to “apologise unreservedly” for dashing the hopes of scores of schools across the country after mistakenly promising them new buildings.