|
Youth
Aug 6, 2013 15:55:07 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 6, 2013 15:55:07 GMT
www.theworker.org.uk/blog/?p=853Train Young People Properly for a Productive Economy
Aug 06 2013 The call by Tory ministers to employ and train young British workers, while taking no legislative action, exceeds their usual hypocrisy. It was the Thatcher Tory government which abolished the training levy on firms, resulting in the virtual destruction of a successful apprenticeship system.
The training levy also dealt with a major disincentive for firms to train. Those who did not invest in training could poach skilled workers from firms who had. The levy meant all firms in the industry paid for training and then recovered some of the costs if they set up an approved training scheme. At the time the trades unions had a large input into these schemes, ensuring high standards of skills and proper regulation in areas like health and safety. While the system was mainly used in the engineering industry such principles could be applied in all industries.
Trade Unions and the community owe the youth and unemployed a campaign for real action on training. A scheme similar to the old training levy would be a start. Instead of ‘Zero Hours Contracts’ let’s have proper jobs and training. We will then have a real and productive economy.
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 11, 2013 18:49:42 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 18:49:42 GMT
The war against young people
WORKERS, DEC 2011 ISSUE
As capitalism stares into the pit it has dug for itself and us, it still has time to twist language. “Austerity”, for example, should involve some kind of stern self-disciplined sobriety, but those imposing it are sparing themselves.
The main targets of this so-called austerity are not the bankers or the tax havens and tax avoiders, not the boardroom Billy Bunters gobbling up vast “remuneration” (for what?), not the new scum landlords. The recipients are all the rest of us, but in particular the old, the ill and the young.
The rulers of Britain have particular scorn for the young. They have drowned them in vitriol, surrounded them with ASBOs, turned their schools into obstacle courses to please OFSTED, attacked future pension rights, loaded them with debt mountains for a university education – and most importantly, denied them a future. Over a million people between the ages of 16 and 24 are registered as out of work, excluded from making a productive contribution to society.
In the real world there are almost no paid jobs around. Government policies are forcing older people to work longer before a (meagre) pension, reducing the number of vacancies still further. “Internships” have spread out of their strongholds in fashion and publishing into definitely non-creative retail. Now job centres are forcing young people to work for nothing for up to two months, stacking shelves in Poundstretcher or Tesco, or lose their benefit. That’s not austerity, that’s slavery.
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 12, 2013 12:27:00 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 12, 2013 12:27:00 GMT
Blanche Edwards being arrested during the battle of Cable Street in 1936...The famous shot, of three policemen arresting and carting off Blanche, one of the anti-fascist demonstrators who stopped Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the battle of Cable Street in 1936....In a couple of years the coppers too would be dodging Fascist bombs. Coming quietly" is.......... ....not part of her vocabulary......
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 14, 2013 16:13:30 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 14, 2013 16:13:30 GMT
Famous shot, of three policemen arresting and carting off Blanche Edwards, one of the anti-fascist demonstrators who stopped Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the battle of Cable Street in 1936. At the age of 88,(2010) Blanche heard from the families of those policemen and from an another elderly fellow-protester who lives nearby. Quite striking how Blanche manages to dominate the picture, despite all "6 footers," City Bobbies, surrounding her. In what was called "a low dishonest decade." Blanche Edwards stood head and shoulders above the British ruling elite--and their minions.
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 14, 2013 17:04:59 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 14, 2013 17:04:59 GMT
Pupils of Langdon Park School were joined by 106-year-old peace campaigner Hetty Bower last week for a performance based around the Battle of Cable Street.
Among those protestors was Hetty Bower, who is the oldest survivor of the battle, and who has since dedicated her life to campaigning for peace.
The school invited her to attend, and she spoke to the pupils about the battle, and the importance of campaigning against intolerance. Teacher Jim Lamey, who organised the event, paid tribute to her extraordinary spirit and passion.He said: “She has single-mindedly struggled for peace and justice, but she never talks about her achievements. The response the kids gave her was the best thing about the whole event - it was a fantastic atmosphere.
“It was such an inspiring event, which we will build upon next year and something which the kids will have learned from.”
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 19, 2013 18:44:24 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 19, 2013 18:44:24 GMT
What future for young people? We need to shape and change the future – what we have is death but what we want is life, hence the next generation taking responsibility... What future for young people?WORKERS, FEB 2013 ISSUE This article is an edited version of a speech given at a CPBML public meeting in London last November.November 2012, London: students march against cuts and fees.Photo: WorkersAll the talk about youth, young people, anything which creates special people or divides people, people who live to shop, people who cannot communicate without “social media”, really gets up my nose. So I want to say from the beginning that I’m looking at a continuous process, a sense of generation – passing knowledge from the older to the new and from the new to the yet to be born.We are all walking contradictions: we are for change but like continuity; we want the next generation to have a better lot than we did or our mothers and fathers had but we don’t want to forget our roots. We don’t want them to make the same mistakes we made. But we want people to learn and you learn from practice and experimenting. So we trust the next generation to take up the weapons that we did, hone them, refine them and move the world forward. Do better than us.What future for young people? We ask simply because we need to shape and change the future – what we have is death but what we want is life, hence the next generation taking responsibility.Forwards or backwards?Is the world going forward or is it going backward? The period from 1945 to 1979 was dubbed as a period of great social democratic compromise. We, the working class and they, the capitalist class, could all find an accommodation and live together. One grand happy home. That 34-year period, born out of the Second World War, has to be now seen as an aberration in capitalism's history. An illusionary era where people thought real social progress and justice was occurring not only in Britain but across the world.What changed in 1979? The election of Margaret Thatcher and a bunch of ideologues basing their ideas on an ignored Austrian economist, Hayek, is what happened. No more living together. The great divorce. It wasn’t an accident: the ruling class had analysed class struggle in Britain during the previous decades, our strengths and weaknesses. And then we, organised labour, voted for her pie-in-the-sky, get-rich-quick, beggar-your-neighbour, greedy illusion that we didn’t have to be workers any more.Hayek had one idea: all power to the market. In practice that means – because it is still being pursued by Cameron, Osborne and previous and present Labour Party leaders – the unprecedented domination of capitalism over us and the complete roll back of everything we, as workers, have ever achieved.Millions of workers uprooted, cast adrift, cast on the scrap heap. Millions of people who are now so accustomed to being made redundant that they are anaesthetised and accept it.So a future for hundreds of thousands of young people means no jobs, or non-productive jobs. No education. No housing. And no pension. No work means not in the union – no aspiration, no expectation, no hopeYou can add all the European Union dimensions as discussed at our last meeting and covered in Workers. But mass importation of cheap labour, as with cheap goods, destroys our ability to build, plan and direct our future. What period in history has weighed down the next generation with millstones round their necks before they start as now?Rolled backWhat may have been won in the 1960s, 1970s but then rolled back in the 1980s, 1990s, to today, is not just because of some obscure fascist economist. Nor is it because we have some guilt trip about how we’ve let this generation down and not done enough. How silly. We’ll never have done enough until we’ve finally won. We’ll never finally win because struggle is dynamic: what you achieve today is not enough for tomorrow.We have no more let this generation down than those workers one hundred years ago, who led such militancy and near-revolution – “The Great Unrest” – only to be slaughtered in the First World War. We are part of an on-going class war which has ebbed and flowed for hundreds of years. We are in retreat, and we have never faced such a period as this before. But we don’t need sackcloth and ashes and moaning about our lot in the world.The TUC held a massive march on 20 October 2012 – and it was basically ignored across all media. What was the TUC calling for? “A future”, “You can make a difference”, “A better world is possible”. All motherhood and apple pie, business trade unionism and let’s have more flags and giant balloons.Junk languageSo frightened are the trade unions that we don’t dare challenge the ideas of Hayek, the market, so-called neoliberalism and all the other junk language that they use.We need to look to ourselves. We are workers, we know that ideas change the world; we know that ideas fight, ideas make things happen. We should be saying capitalism does not and never has worked. We must replace it. We must work out what socialism means for us in 21st-century absolutely declining, failing, dying British capitalism. This is not Russia, China, Cuba or wherever, it’s here, it’s us, it’s now, it's Britain the first capitalist country – and it will be the first capitalist country to destroy itself.At the Armistice Day commemorations last November, Cameron said he wants every school to visit the cemeteries of France, and £50 million has been found to commemorate the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014.We should not let them steal our history. The millions of dead were workers, millions were young workers. We cannot allow them to commemorate a war among slave owners fighting to be the biggest slave owner in the world whereby we were the cannon fodder.What solution for a generation without hope and work? Have another war! We cannot permit that.A future for young people means we fight for peace not another re-division of the globe amongst the rich and parasitic.For young comrades and friends in the audience I want to say a few words about the Party. As a Communist Party we do not divide our class, we do not divide our members over superficial difference. We do not have and do not need a youth wing, a women’s section, a gay and lesbian group, a black members’ section, an unemployed section. We are communists in a Communist Party. We have workers who understand the vital importance of being a Communist and being organised to deliver as a collective.We work on the basis that clarity of thought and unity of purpose is what is necessary for today, tomorrow and the future. Today’s youth is tomorrow’s pensioner; the battle remains the same only the point in time changes.ProtractedThe future for young people is and will be grim if we do not tackle today’s battles. We cannot understand today’s battles without understanding the protracted timeline of the struggles that we are engaged in, where we have come from and where we need to go. What we are fighting for has run over centuries, it will run over more.The question is have you joined in the battle or not? Do you understand what needs to be done or are you looking in the wrong direction? Do you take the right decision or flounder around chasing diversions and cop-outs? Are you brave enough to make a lifetime’s commitment to struggle, and winning the future?The Party needs to bring into its ranks the next generation; all bring some contribution, some experience, some value, all learn. Better that we keep mixing old and new wisdom to constantly create a heady, vibrant, dynamic and forward looking mind-set.Clarity arises from studying, discussing and applying ideas, Marxist ideas. You get that focus of intensity and clarity by being in this Party.
|
|
|
Youth
Aug 20, 2013 16:47:54 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 20, 2013 16:47:54 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_1110/young.htmlBack to Front - War on the young
WORKERS, NOV 2010 ISSUE
Attitudes towards the young are a litmus test of any government’s intentions. The welfare, health and education of babies, children and youth are the foundations of any civilised society, underpinning of the health of the whole population and providing the building blocks for a decent future.
It’s no accident that socialist countries like Cuba express progress in terms of improvements in infant mortality rates, literacy levels, average calories provided in diets of the young, training and employment levels, and so on.
Treatment of the elderly matters, of course, but the young are the future.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown how severe is the attack on the young and their families (and the welfare of children can’t be seen outside the context of their family). This is no accident. The young are expensive, and this government has a very different future in mind for them and the country they will inherit. It is the interests of capital which are served by a capitalist government – of course, what else would we expect? The future of Britain does not concern them, except as a source of profit.
The change this year is the degree to which our capitalist government feels able to attack our young openly, savagely, because they doubt our strength to resist, or even to oppose at all. Are they right?
The organised labour movement in Britain overall is undoubtedly in a parlous state. We have allowed ourselves to be weakened by the utterly divisive preoccupation with equalities, chasing the hare of what divides us instead of focusing on what unites us.
Governments have been canny in seizing on this – witness the change in women’s retirement age and pension entitlements for the worse, in the name of equality with men, and the use of mass immigration to undermine our pay and conditions sold to us in the name of international solidarity. We have been seduced to see our movement in terms of a collection of interest groups – men/women, black/white, young/old etc – with probably the most destructive of them all being the obsession with racism. No progress has come through these concerns, just the opposite.
This delusion can even lead to the grotesque triumph of individualism (Thatcher’s particular drive) of the University and College Union’s campaign for the “right” to have no fixed age of retirement, in the name of “diversity” and freedom of choice. What would our ancestors who fought for the right not to work until they dropped dead think of that particular victory?
One concept we should reject immediately is that of “fairness”, or worrying about “vulnerable workers”, a kind of ghastly 19th-century Christian charity “deserving poor” view of a working class, with an implied guilt if you are not (yet) on the poverty line. The Labour Party objects to the spending review on the basis that it is not fair – so if we all suffer at the worst level, that will be all right then?
French youth have understood that pensions and retirement are issues which acutely affect the young. We need to lift the level of debate here too, to see the context, the bigger picture of Britain in the 21st century. We are not victims nor do we seek charity. Dignity for us lies in asserting that our interests as workers are the common interests of the whole of our class, and that by fighting on our particular working issues we are fighting for a decent future for our children and young people.
|
|
|
Youth
Sept 15, 2013 15:01:18 GMT
Post by dodger on Sept 15, 2013 15:01:18 GMT
SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 Awakening of the youth It is their first time to attend a protest rally to add their voice to the clamor against the pork barrel, and it became a learning experience as well.By ANNE MARXZE D. UMILBulatlat.comMANILA – The mobilization for the abolition of the pork barrel system is continuing to gain its momentum as President Benigno S. Aquino III remains deaf to the call for its total abolition.The Forward March on Friday, Sept. 13 mobilized not only groups that consistently bring people’s issues in the streets but also first timers who went to the rally to express and voice out their disgust over scandals and corruption in the Aquino administration.“I really want to participate in the people’s movement (for the abolition of pork barrel). It is important to show the youth’s support to this issue so the government will know that we too are aware of what is going on in our country,” said Abegail Laguinday, 17, first year BS Education student in Philippine Christian University (PCU).Laguinday and 20 of her classmates went to Forward March in Luneta to support the people’s calls for the abolition of the pork barrel system and to re-channel the funds to basic social services. It is Laguinday and her classmate’s first time to participate in a protest action.(Photo by Ronalyn V. Olea / Bulatlat.com)Laguinday said that as future teachers, she said it is only right to stand for the future of children. “I was a volunteer teacher for street children and I saw how eager they are to learn. They are willing to walk from Mall of Asia to Malate where we teach them if our service car has no more space to accommodate them,” Laguinday told Bulatlat.com. That is why, she said, the government should rchannel the pork barrel to social services like education.The Forward March followed the Million People March last Aug. 26 and the Edsa protest lead by Church groups on Sept. 11.Many youth groups and students from different schools in Metro Manila participated in the Forward March. “Today the present generation of the youth disproved the myth of apathy and has gone full-force to denounce the continued existence of the pork barrel system,” said Victor Villanueva, spokesman of Youth Act Now, an alliance of youth and students against corruption and pork barrel.‘It’s the people’s money’Joanna Bolanio, 17, taking Business Management in Eulogio “Amang” Rodriguez Institute of Science and Technology (EARIST) joined for the first time the protest action against the pork barrel system. “I have a sister who is working and she said that the biggest deduction in her salary is the tax. But looking at the government’s social services like education, it is obvious that our money was not spent on where it is supposed to. I am here not only because of my sister but also for my parents and other people who are paying their taxes,” she told Bulatlat.com.She added that the Filipino people, especially those who are underprivileged should be prioritized.“They (politicians who are involved in the scandal) are benefitting from the people’s money. But the money they spend for luxury is not theirs,” said Syd Austria, 16, Mass Communication student of St. Scholastica’s College. She believes that the pork barrel system should be abolished and the funds should be re-channeled to social services.Geraldine Morales, 25, BS Education of PCU also said the same. “They should return what they stole from the people and use it for those who needed it the most.”“While they are becoming richer, the poor are getting poorer,” Clarisse Calendas, 17 BS Education of PCU told Bulatlat.com.Mary Jane de Jesus, 17, Business Administration from EARIST said that the corruption, the expose’ on how the public funds were misused should unite the Filipino people. “It is time for us, especially the youth, the future of the nation, to be a part of the movement for change.”A learning experienceIt was also the first protest action attended by Donna Marie, 19, third year Political Science student from the St. Scholastica’s College. She was surprised but happy with her experience. “I was overwhelmed to find out that we too can speak out (against pork barrel) without being constricted,” she told Bulatlat.com. She said that she learned something socially relevant like how the pork barrel or the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) was being misused.“Today I realized that it was worth it going to rallies and voice out what you feel and get to know things that concerns the Filipino people like the PDAF,” she told Bulatlat.com.During the rally, youth solon Terry Ridon of Kabataan Partylist discussed how the funds allotted for the pork barrel could benefit the masses if the funds are re-channeled to social services like health, education and housing.“Our movement, however they want to suppress it will continue until the government heeds the people’s call. It like a river that will continue to flow and will finds its way to the ocean,” said Father Joe Dizon of Solidarity Philippines during the Interfaith on Luneta.“More and more people from all walks of life are disgruntled and angered by the turn of events. Expect the youth to be at the forefront of dissent in more and more demonstrations in the coming days as we continue the strong public opposition to the bankrupt system of government that has not only robbed billions of taxpayers’ money but also worsened the already bleak future of the youth and our nation,” Villanueva said. (http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/09/15/awakening-of-the-youth/#sthash.Wfphx3La.dpuf
|
|
|
Youth
Sept 29, 2013 11:23:28 GMT
Post by dodger on Sept 29, 2013 11:23:28 GMT
As a new university year begins, many students are arriving for their courses having signed up unwittingly to a lifetime of debt. Meanwhile, the promised land of higher graduate earnings may turn out to be a mirage... The next mis-selling scandal: why most of today’s students may never clear their debtsWORKERS, OCT 2013 ISSUEFor decades young people have been told that the path to prosperity is to study hard and go to university. But for many of today’s students a university place has become the first step on a ladder of debt that will be with them for the whole of their working lives.After the degree, the lifetime of debt. Yet few students seem to realise what they are in for.Photo: sippakorn/sutterstock.comAnd it’s not just the students who will be saddled with debt. The way the government has organised the loan system means that its own finances are due to take a big hit from loans that will never be repaid. That doesn’t affect it much now, but in two decades’ time there is likely to be a £100 billion hole in the public finances. No wonder the system been called another Private Finance Initiative.What today’s new students may not realise is that they are entering a world of painful cost. One teacher, reported the Daily Mail, asked 150 students what the maximum tuition fee was, and they all knew. He then asked what the interest rate was on the loans – and none of them knew. They will soon.The extent of the pain is detailed in “Squeezing our students?”, a report issued in July by the Intergenerational Foundation (an independent non-party-political charity). Britain’s tuition fees are the highest of any public university system in the world.To add to the burden, the rates of interest on Britain’s student loans are not just twice as high as the average in the industrialised world (6.6 per cent in July against an average of 3.3 per cent in OECD countries), they are the highest in Western Europe. Only Mexico and the Czech Republic charge higher rates, and their fees are much lower to begin with.The government even added an extra vindictive twist by linking loan interest rates to the Retail Prices Index (RPI) rather than to the generally lower Consumer Price Index (CPI), which it uses when it calculates increases on benefits. The TUC estimated that just that one-letter change in acronym will cost students thousands of pounds and add years to the time needed to repay their loans.The result will be a debt that the average student may never pay off. The Foundation’s report explained why.How the government’s loan repayments work WARNING: If what follows sounds complicated, it’s because it is. The government has made its loans so complex that most students don’t really know what they are signing up for. According to this year’s Student Money Survey, run by www.savethestudent.org, 55 per cent of them admitted they don’t understand the repayment conditions. All the following details apply to government loans taken out after 2010/2011, when the system was changed.
While students are studying their loans accrue interest set at the Retail Prices Index plus 3 per cent, starting the moment they take out the loan. After graduation the interest falls to RPI, until their income hits £21,000. It then increases to RPI plus 0.15 per cent for every £1,000 of additional income, up to a maximum of RPI plus 3 per cent for an income of £41,000 or more.
Students don’t have to begin repaying their loans until they earn at least £21,000. At that point they pay 9 per cent of everything they earn over that sum – effectively, a graduate tax. But the interest on their loans keeps accumulating. Worse, the repayment rate is calculated on the borrower’s gross income, before income tax and national insurance, and paid out of net income. Anything not repaid after 30 years is written off.
So, for example, a graduate starting work at a typical salary of £22,000 would repay £90 of their loan in their first year. But interest would be accumulating at the rate of RPI plus 0.15 per cent. With RPI at 3.3 per cent (the latest figure) and a typical total loan at the end of graduation for students starting this year of, say, £40,000, this ex-student would be accruing interest of £1,360 a year. So most graduates won’t be paying off any of the debt, just part of the interest. Overall, for a graduate starting work on £22,000, the debt would rise by £1,270 in year one.
Graduates earning less than £21,000 – and even among those who find work straight away many earn less than that in the first couple of years – don’t have to repay anything. But their debt will increase by RPI each year. After 12 months their £40,000 debt will be £41,320.
You’d think higher-earning graduates – and there aren’t that many of them – would find it a lot easier to pay off their loans. Not so. The top interest rate of RPI plus 3 per cent is applied to the whole loan. As the Intergenerational Foundation points out, a law graduate starting at £42,000 a year but owing £40,000 would be repaying £1,890 of the debt. Yet interest will be accruing over the year to the tune of £2,640. Truly, another year older and deeper in debt. ■What this means is that the average graduate, whose degree is supposed to mean higher wages, will be paying out 9 per cent of their gross income over £21,000 for 30 years – and even so never clearing the debt. According to the Foundation, the average ex-student will have nearly £17,000 still outstanding at the end of 30 years. (After 30 years, the debt is written off.)Read the small printIt gets worse. Students who take out these exorbitantly expensive loans are signing agreements with small print that allows the government to vary the repayment terms. That means the government can raise interest rates without having to go to parliament for consent.That particular fact came to light when an investigation published in The Guardian in June revealed government ambitions to privatise the Student Loans Company, which administers the loans. City banker Rothschild, which was advising the government, reckoned the company was not suitably attractive to investors and recommended raising the interest rates as one option.Of course, for most students the government loans for fees and maintenance won’t actually cover all the costs students have to face – not just fees but rent, subsistence, books, travel etc. So they will have extra loans in the form of overdrafts with banks. With all that burden, no wonder many sixth-formers are thinking twice about going to university.The government went into the £9,000 fees era knowing that many students would not repay their loans. It estimated that around 30 per cent of the value of the loans would not be repaid. That estimate has crept up, with Vince Cable talking about 34 per cent earlier this year, and the Treasury muttering about 40 per cent. The £100 billion holeWhat does this mean, in real terms? Well, given that student loans will cost the government £12 billion a year by 2015/2016, according to the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, 40 per cent of that will add nearly £5 billion a year to public debt if not repaid. The debt to the student may be wiped off after 30 years, but it remains, transferred to the taxpayer. The Intergenerational Foundation predicted last year that the loans system would add £100 billion to public debt by 2030.The change from giving universities money directly for teaching students to lending the money to students won’t just drag students and the public purse into debt – it costs up to twice as much as well.Take the money and run It’s not generally known, but students from the European Union are eligible for student loans on the same basis as students from Britain. So British taxpayers are forking out for loans to students from France, Germany and so on to come here and take up state-funded university places. And for many of them, it’s a completely free ride.
In theory, these EU students have to repay their loans on the same basis as British students. In practice, only just over half of them are repaying the loans as they should, while a third of them don’t even start repaying their debt.
That fact was neatly obscured for a while when minister David Willetts said in parliament on 2 July 2012 that 9 per cent of EU students who had loans from the British government “were considered to be in arrears”.
What Willetts forgot to add, and was buried in a report from the Student Loans Company last year, was that there were a further 33 per cent classified as “not currently repaying – further information being sought” (which is to say, the Student Loans Company had lost track of them). Only 2 per cent of British students fall into that category. ■It is as if the aim of the system is not to save money, but to ensure that a generation of skilled workers will be in debt before they start work and throughout their working lives. And if public finances 20 years down the line are wrecked, well, so be it. If Britain ends up short of much-needed graduates, so be it. It’s the kind of recklessness that typifies capitalism.On the face of it, the whole thing seems mad. It’s Wonga-type government, with subprime loans that the borrowers will never be able to repay, and which will lead to a hole in the public finances of £100 billion. To put that in context, it’s about the size of the entire NHS budget in 2011. But the real purpose will be clearer when the Student Loans Company is sold off – there are fortunes to be made for bankers managing large debts. So it’s not just the students who have been mis-sold. It’s the whole of Britain. Well, is it worth it?In return for a lifetime of debt, graduates are promised that they will receive higher wages than non-graduates. Universities Minister David Willetts told the Conservative party conference in Birmingham in 2010, “On average it boosts your earnings by £100,000 over a lifetime.”Beware figures like £100,000. They are normally too round to be true. That figure is based on a handful of guesses and some figures around average earnings of graduates compared with people who gained two A-levels but did not go to university. There’s actually very little evidence for it.And even if the figure were true, it’s not good. The average person starting work after school – not even the average for someone with two A-levels – is £14K. So after three years a graduate has debts of around £50K, while the averagenon-student has earned at least £42K. Then add in the cost of repaying the loans. Still worth it (in financial terms)?The truth is that no one has properly analysed the financial benefit of a degree. Universities UK – as you might expect, the body that represents British universities – came up with a lifetime benefit of £160K in 2008. But even its analysis recognised a vast difference between different disciplines, with a lifetime benefit of £341K for dental and medical graduates but just £51.5K for a humanities graduate and £40K for an arts graduate.Falling numbersIt’s obviously worth taking a degree if you want to become a doctor, a dentist or a lawyer, since you can’t become one without a degree. But otherwise, it’s starting to look as if the sums don’t add up. No wonder last year saw an overall dip in the numbers of students starting courses, despite an increase in the number of overseas students. That has to be dire news for Britain.It’s a sign of the times that students themselves are not taking this up as an issue for the whole country – and that the labour movement generally is silent. When in July this year Business Secretary Vince Cable suggested scrapping the loans and introducing instead a graduate tax, the National Union of Students welcomed the idea, calling only for a “fair” system.Aaron Porter, the union’s president, said, “Vince Cable’s support for the principle of a graduate tax is to be welcomed as is his recognition that those who earn most after university should contribute more back as and when they do so.” There seems to be no conception that society must fund higher education because without it Britain will cease to exist.It’s not about applying reactionary policies “fairly”. If you tax graduates because they earn more, then why not tax A-level or BTEC students for their education? How about a tax to pay for the new apprenticeships? Come to think of it, what about a tax on people who went to nursery school?The government may be happy about higher education becoming the preserve of the rich and foreign students, but what about the rest of us? This is not just an issue for the National Union of Students, but for all unions. We need people to go to university, to study, to acquire and pass on new knowledge. We cannot rely on importing graduates from abroad.
|
|
|
Youth
Sept 30, 2013 7:37:30 GMT
Post by dodger on Sept 30, 2013 7:37:30 GMT
communist-party.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1390:alienation-in-our-cities-only-a-radical-response-will-work&catid=159:community&Itemid=215ALIENATION IN OUR CITIES: Only a radical response will work Doug Nicholls is National Officer of Unite Youth and Community workers. He argues powerfully in the Morning Star, for a radical and working class-led response to the alienation of sections of young people.
I have a picture in my office that shows the high-rise opulence of Canary Wharf, the centre of financial gambling, and in front a young person in a hoodie. The caption reads: "There is more crime in the suites than crime on the streets."
This is worth bearing in mind as young people again become the demons for all society's ills.
The opposite is of course the case. Sociologists and educationalists all over the world have shown how the condition of youth has changed in the neoliberal economies with acute degrees of inequality.
The more unequal a society the more violent and alienated young people become.
They turn against each other in gangs and against the high street trappings of wealth from which they are excluded. Young people in Knightsbridge won't be rioting.
The classic account of this new reality is in the brilliant book by Henry Giroux called Youth In A Suspect Society, Democracy Or Disposability?
Giroux looks at the severe trends of youth alienation and disaffection in the United States, the society with the least welfare state provision and the highest extremes of market madness and inequality. But these trends are all too clear in Britain now.
The policies of a few are wrecking our communities. The Tories particularly have targeted youth services not for cuts but for closure.
The significance of this is very great. Young people saw the new government come in and without a mandate to do so raise student tuition fees, get rid of the education maintenance allowance and then begin its most serious assault on the architecture of services closest to young people's hearts.
What is little recognised is that one of the public services substantially built by young people in their own interests, the youth service, could be the first public service to disappear.
Already a number of Tory councils have abandoned it and London Boroughs has been reckless in its neglect, with £17 million proposed to go from 15 already threadbare London youth services in the last half of this year.
The youth service was created 50 years ago in its modern form as a service that young people choose to get involved with. This element of personal choice means it becomes a service that young people shape and mould themselves. It's part of our democracy.
It is designed to give free association and fun, experience of collective decision-making and above all a democratic voice.
Youth workers fundamentally are political educators whose subtle work to assist personal and social education belongs to a long progressive tradition of community learning and development.
They work alongside young people on their agenda and do not approach them as "problems" or deficient individuals requiring "cure."
Most youth councils have been created and sustained by youth workers.
At a deeper level, literally millions of young people who once saw no hope or who lacked self-esteem, communication skills and felt miserable about their predicament have been transformed into active positive citizens by the youth service over the generations.
It is a vital service in working-class communities where many other services have disappeared already or where services are about doing things to young people rather than with them.
Youth workers empower young people and this empowerment is the best foil to the sense of hopelessness and worthlessness that mass unemployment and poverty breed.
Around this service over the years a range of other support services developed for young people, advice and information, youth arts, disability and sexual issues support, street work, mental health services and legal guidance.
Look at any study of the cuts and you will see that these are the first and hardest to be hit.
Lifeline services which our young people need and help to create have been wilfully and deliberately targeted. Even the hardest-hit charities are those supporting children and young people. Many are closing.
Fifty-seven per cent of young people volunteer in a positive way in their communities. For every one pound spent on youth work a further eight pounds are generated in voluntary activity.
Youth workers are not just trained to engage responsible and properly treated volunteers in positive community activities, they area also trained to fund-raise.
A third of the amount invested by local authorities in youth services is raised from other sources by youth workers keen to see young people resourced and supported.
There will be 400,000 fewer young people engaged in voluntary activity in their neighbourhoods this year as a result of cuts to youth volunteering projects.
Alongside the closure of Connexions services and youth services have gone the closure of vital street level advice and legal services.
Also, hundreds of youth centres which have been the only source of safe, warm and creative activities in rural and urban areas have closed.
In boroughs like Haringey and Hackney huge 75 per cent cuts to youth services have been proposed.
Young people have campaigned tremendously and very responsibly against this vandalism of their services throughout the country, but Haringey's campaign was a shining example.
Young people used and reused every element of the existing political machine to make their point.
But, as in so many parts of the country, councillors and MPs simply have not listened to the voice of the disenfranchised with no vote.
Despite some of the largest petitions ever gathered in defence of public services in many parts of the country against youth service cuts, Tory and Lib Dem councillors have ignored all of the warnings.
Like the TUC and the British Youth Council, we say it is time for votes at 16. Alienation and frustration have been compounded as young people feel the established political system simply does not listen or care.
At the end of this summer term I cautioned publicly that this was going to be the worst summer for young people since the second world war as the devil makes work for idle hands and the combined effect of youth unemployment and destruction of their services outside school, together with the feeling of being a target and being ignored, was creating a new cocktail of frustration and anxiety.
A recent parliamentary select committee showed how about 85 per cent of young people's waking hours are spent outside formal education, yet each year local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than they do on providing services for young people outside the school day.
The committee went on to condemn the government for saying that youth service expenditure represented large slugs of public money and congratulated the sector for its long-standing dexterity in making limited resources go a long way.
Yet the government is attempting to ignore this report and proceeding with the daftest set of youth policy papers ever produced. These are under the misleading title "positive for youth."
Never has a government been more negative for youth as this one. It is managing a disposable generation of unemployed and unwanted young people who will not even be a reserve army of labour as the predicted double-dip recession now begins to bite.
If policy is based on the idea of young people as being disposable, then it sheds any democratic aspirations.
Even the "big society" bank originally designed under Labour to provide funding for youth organisations, has been redesigned as little more than a scam for the banks to recycle loans to each other for a profit.
From our perspective we must show that our progressive labour movement will be the source of engagement and nurture and political activity for the young.
Trade unions must re-engage with young people as never before. The young people who have come forward to lead hope for the future must be welcomed more into our meetings at community and national trade union level.
This is essential as these disturbances are different from the Notting Hill riots of the 1950s or the Brixton, Toxteth and other riots of the '80s.
This time there is a lack of any semblance of direction, there is a lack of any faith in the public sphere to solve community problems.
There is a turning in on each other as reflected in the continuing instances of youth-on-youth violent crime.
The average age of the young people caught up in the disturbances is 16. Society has to offer something better and fast or next year's problems as the economy goes into tailspin will be even worse.Society should treasure our young, not vex them to this intense degree.
|
|
|
Youth
Oct 8, 2013 13:26:45 GMT
Post by dodger on Oct 8, 2013 13:26:45 GMT
Fascinating study of the terrible way we treat our young people, 8 Oct 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth (Paperback)
Ed Howker is an investigative journalist on Channel 4's Dispatches programme and Shiv Malik is a Guardian staff writer.
In the 20 years after Thatcher came to power, public housing spending fell by 64 per cent. Buy-to-let boomed, to 1.5 million buy-to-let mortgages. London rents rose eight times faster than incomes in 2012.
In the three years to 2015, £35 billions of housing benefits will go, not to those who need it, but into the pockets of private landlords, while just £4 billion of public money goes to build homes. The largest development firms keep build rates low, to keep their profits high. The government's Help-to-Buy scheme will add to demand, fuelling the bubble. But the problem is supply - lack of - not demand.
In 2005, Blair told the Labour party conference, "Our purpose is not to resist the force of globalisation but to prepare for it, and to garner its vast potential benefits." When he said `our', some at the conference might have thought he meant them, but Blair meant his people, the tiny minority of capitalists. Wages for those aged 16-29 fell between 2003 and 2011. The authors note that immigration "adds to the labour surplus and drives down earnings."
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith wrote in the Daily Mail, "It's small wonder that businesses have hired so many foreign nationals in the past decade or so. The fact is that they can't find the employees of quality that they need from the available British workforce." This insulted the entire British working class, more than 90 per cent of the population, and backed the free movement policy, which at other times Duncan Smith affects to deplore.
Britain spent less than Spain or Portugal, as a share of GDP, on getting people into work, less than the OECD average. Yet Michael Portillo wrote in the Sunday Times, 30 August 2009, "Idle young should be entitled to nothing."
The OECD found in 2009 that British companies' investment level was 35th out of the world's 37 richest countries. Public sector investment was low too, down from 7.3 per cent of GDP in 1967-8 to 5.6 per cent in 1975-6, and, since 1979, never above 2 per cent.
The authors point out how the free market has failed. They conclude, "The jilted generation needs homes. Build them. They need skills. Train them. They need jobs. Employ them and please pay them."
|
|
|
Youth
Nov 1, 2013 8:21:53 GMT
Post by dodger on Nov 1, 2013 8:21:53 GMT
Paris Hilton--wots not to luv???
|
|
|
Youth
Dec 2, 2013 20:09:40 GMT
Post by dodger on Dec 2, 2013 20:09:40 GMT
A lit candle on an unmarked grave in San Joaquin Parish, Palo Leyte. (Photo by Pom Cahilog-Villanueva / Bulatlat.com) DECEMBER 2, 2013 They are people with stories to tell
By POM CAHILOG-VILLANUEVA Bulatlat.com They were the first people I noticed as we approached a mass burial in front of San Joaquin Parish Church in Palo, Leyte: two teenage sisters standing over an unmarked grave with only a single candle protected from the wind by a plastic cola bottle. It is an image that will probably stay with me for a long time.
I did not even get their names; my intention to interview them was lost when I approached and saw them trying to comfort each other through their tears. They just buried their mother, and two of their siblings’ bodies have yet to be recovered from the swamp. I asked them if I can take photos of the grave. They both nodded and one sister sobbed in Filipino: “We don’t even have flowers to offer to Mama.”
After I took photos I murmured my condolences and stood quietly beside them as the priest led the prayers. One of the sisters said it would be dangerous for them to attempt to recover the bodies by themselves. “We help each other because we get no help from the government.”
Earlier that day, in Dulag, Leyte, a group of kids followed me around as I took photos of the damage to their village. I talked to them as we sat near the beach among the uprooted coconut trees. We talked about their school and their favorite games. I, in turn, told them about how scared I was of helicopters as a kid as we watched one with relief goods hovering above us. Ten-year-old Marie Grace recounted how one truck with relief goods passed by their village days after the typhoon and how they all ran out of the schoolhouse where they were staying upon seeing it. The truck did not stop. “Maybe we scared them off,” she said. “But we are not really rowdy; we are just hungry.”
In barangay Diit, Tacloban City we met a family rebuilding their house from scraps of wood and metal sheets they salvaged from the debris. As the parents talked about taking temporary shelter in an abandoned van in front of where their house used to be and surviving on a piece of sweet potato once a day I noticed their youngest daughter who kept looking at me. I smiled at her and she promptly hid behind a house post. I took her photo and was finally rewarded with a smile when I showed it to her. Her name is Diday and she is four years old. I tried to talk to her but she could barely understand Tagalog, and I do not speak Leneyte-Samarnon. I tried a few Cebuano words and her face would light up when she recognized some words. “Maalam,” she said with a smile whenever I said something she understood. I noticed a broken school medal she was holding so I offered to fix it so she can wear it around her neck. Diday’s brothers who were playing nearby told me the medal was their eldest sister’s medal for academic excellence. She left right after the typhoon to try her luck in Manila. She is 16 years old and they have not heard from her since she left.
As I fixed the medal Diday and I kept our conversation going. She asked what I was doing there and I tried to explain as best as I could about my job. I asked her what she likes doing best and she said “What do I want?” I nodded. “I want a biscuit. That’s what I want now.”
I thought of the pack of biscuits in my bag. It was all the food I had allotted for myself that day. I knew it won’t be enough for herself and her brothers, but I gave it to her anyway. I told her to share them with her brothers, but they declined saying their sister needed it more than them.
There were more people whom I have met in Leyte those first few days after Typhoon Yolanda. I could go on and on about the stories they told me. A grandmother and her five year old granddaughter who walked for hours to find food and water for their family. The little boy who lined up for four hours outside Tacloban’s City’s Legislative Hall and only received a few pieces of bread, two small bottles of water, a cup of instant noodles and two packs of coffee. Five-year-old Janelle who lives in an evacuation center, misses her home and wants to go back to school. The mother who could not hold on to her son during the storm surge and has yet to find him. The grandmother from MacArthur, Leyte who took a ride to Dulag town with us and made us laugh with her stories. Other people I met when I walked down the streets, the same people one columnist so callously described as walking like “zombies”, who still managed to smile, greet me “Kumusta?’(How are you?”) or prod me and my camera with “Ate, picture!” (Aunty, picture)
Many people told me it was a pity I did not see how beautiful the province was before Yolanda. I believe I saw that beauty through every person I have met there. I feel honored to have met them and I hope I am telling their stories well.
Back in Manila a friend asked me what was the most horrible thing I saw while I was in Leyte after Yolanda. After thinking the question over I believe it was not the bloated bodies on the streets. It was not even the sight of entire villages totally wiped out. It was actually the amount of food; the sacks of rice; the boxes upon boxes of bottled water; the mountains of relief goods in the ports, at the airport and in government houses we visited. Seeing those (hardly being moved by government people and relief agencies) and knowing that so many people were still desperately hungry; seeing those and remembering the children who only had a piece of sweet potato once a day because their parents do not know where to get more food. To me, those were beyond horrible. It was President Benigno Aquino III himself, on national television the night before Yolanda struck, who promised the relief goods were “prepositioned” and were ready for distribution. Then I met Marie Grace, Diday, the two sisters and many others, still struggling, still hungry, still waiting for their government to help days after the disaster began. (http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/12/02/they-are-people-with-stories-to-tell/#sthash.JcITJowi.dpufnnnnn
|
|
|
Youth
Jan 25, 2014 14:18:24 GMT
Post by dodger on Jan 25, 2014 14:18:24 GMT
Vitality, the youth’s contribution to the revolution
Twenty-five members of a Kabataang Makabayan cultural group staged a performance during the CPP’s 45th anniversary celebration in a subregion of Southern Mindanao. Demonstrating their enthusiasm, agility and cleverness, they clearly delivered the message of revolution through acting, song and dance. Their movements provided a glimpse of the revolution’s vibrant future.
The group, composed of youth ranging in age from 15 to 22, was formed in mid-2013. They are currently busy performing in various places. Their membership is voluntary and has the blessings of their parents who are usually members of revolutionary mass organizations themselves.
Aside from performing in schools, plazas and evacuation centers, they also teach topics under the Pambansang Demokratikong Paaralan or PADEPA.
They not only teach by lecturing. They stage plays, recite poetry and present songs to help the students grasp the topics being discussed. This is a highly effective method, especially for peasants who do not know how to read and write or find it difficult to do so.
Courses also run more quickly. Topics that become long-drawn when taught through lectures are shortened when lectures are augmented by plays, songs and poems. This method is also a big help especially to the Lumad masses because the language gap is bridged through a simple play or presentation. Some examples are plays depicting the history of the Philippine revolution, and human rights abuses perpetrated by the military and big foreign plantations and mining companies.
From the time they become politically conscious to the time they provide education and engage in cultural work, the young cultural workers’ capabilities and talents will have been honed for the revolution. Leaders and potential cadres, instructors and Red fighters will have emerged. Because of such early training, they are able to perform revolutionary tasks even before they reach the minimum age of 18 years to become Red fighters. By that age, they will have already learned a lot and added to their capabilities. They will have become ready to enrich their abilities further, this time in the theater of war.
Their usual problems are those that come naturally with youth. “Of course, we sometimes miss our parents and siblings. This is a normal part of the struggle. Sometimes, decadent culture beckons, but we are able to overcome this for the masses,” explains Ron, a 15-year old leader. “When I turn 18, I will join my elder sister in the Red army,” adds Khan, a 17-year old.
|
|
|
Youth
Feb 1, 2014 6:40:18 GMT
Post by dodger on Feb 1, 2014 6:40:18 GMT
FEBRUARY 1, 2014 AFP counterinsurgency drive inside public schools
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star In pursuing its counterinsurgency program, dubbed “Oplan Bayanihan,” the Armed Forces of the Philippines has used schools, hospitals, clinics, and religious places in blatant violation of certain national and international laws and conventions.
From July 2010 to December 2013, the human rights alliance Karapatan said it had documented 18 cases of minors as victims of extrajudicial killing and 132,633 others — mostly children — as rights violation victims in the course of the AFP’s use of such venues for military purposes.
Many voices have been raised decrying the victimization of Filipino children in this way. Numerous organizations here and abroad have repeatedly urged the AFP and the Aquino government to pull out military personnel from communities and schools and to stop the killings and other rights violations.
But no positive government action was taken on these appeals.
In a case discussed in this column on August 13, 2011, the Blaan Literacy School and Learning Center in Upper Suyuan, Malapatan, an indigenous community in Sarangani province, was occupied by soldiers for three months.
The school’s organizers filed complaints, supported by affidavits of victims and witnesses, with the Ombudsman and the Commission on Human Rights. They charged six officers and soldiers of the Philippine Army’s 73rd Infantry Battalion with harassment, threat and intimidation, and violation of RA 7610 (which provides special protection against child abuse, exploitation and discrimination).
Another case (discussed here on July 21, 2012) pertained to protest by 118 teachers and directors of literacy and non-formal schools in northeastern Mindanao against soldiers who had occupied their schools, interrogated the teachers, conducted classes, and branded their schools as “rebel schools.”
The delegates to a “Mindanao Conference in Defense of Schools under Attack,” held in Davao City, demanded the immediate pullout of AFP troops and paramilitary units from their schools and communities. Neither action nor response came.
Recently Karapatan documented other related cases, but this one is particularly interesting:
Starting July 1, 2012, Grade 6 and high school students were required to participate in AFP-conducted counterinsurgency lectures during class hours in Baguio City public schools.
The lectures were authorized through Memorandum No. 68 of the Department of Education-CAR, which allowed the 5th Civil Military Operations Battalion, 5th IDPA “to conduct a counter-insurgency campaign, a 1-hour symposium, in all public elementary and high schools in this Division…”
The memo explains: “This is to enhance pupils’/students’ consciousness about the deceptions and clandestine operations of the Communist Terrorist Movement.”
One year later, in July 2013, after a mid-term assessment of Oplan Bayanihan’s implementation, AFP Chief Gen. Emmanuel Bautista set guidelines in the conduct of AFP activities inside or within the premises of schools or hospitals. (Bautista, main author of Oplan Bayanihan was named AFP chief months earlier.)
Letter Directive No. 25, authorized by Bautista, refers to the following laws and conventions:
• RA 7610 (earlier cited), which declares children as “zones of peace” and calls for monitoring and reporting on children in situations of armed conflict. It also prohibits the use of schools, hospitals and rural health units for military purposes (as command posts, barracks, detachments, supply depots, etc.);
• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict;
• UN Security Council Resolution No. 1612 establishing monitoring and reporting mechanisms on Grave Child Rights Violations in Situations of Armed Conflict; and
• UN Security Council Resolution No. 1882, which calls for decisive state actions on abuses against children in situations of armed conflict.
Specifically, the letter-directive defines as its purpose “to prevent the occurrence of the six (6) Grave Child Rights Violations,” in compliance with UNSC Resolutions 1612 and 1882. These violations are: killing or maiming children, using them in armed conflict, rape/sexual violence, abduction, denying children humanitarian access, and attacks against schools/hospitals.
On Dec. 13, 2013, in relation to Bautista’s guidelines and invoking the same laws and conventions, Education Secretary Armin Luistro issued a memorandum “to protect the rights of children even during armed conflict.”
Memorandum No. 221 set the procedures for the approval and monitoring of AFP requests to conduct activities in public schools, including the submission of post-activity reports by school principals and reports on any violations of the AFP guidelines.
Despite the guidelines — or because these are intentionally so crafted — AFP units have continued to violate the very laws and international conventions that they are supposed to obey.
For instance, the guidelines state that “non-combat or non-traditional” activities inside schools, such as civil-military operations, “must not be in the nature that is within the context of armed conflict in order to avoid undue labeling, tagging and branding of persons/groups/organizations…”
The fact, however, is that “civil-military operations” are intrinsic to counterinsurgency.
Thus, in the CMO counterinsurgency lectures in Baguio — which have been extended to freshman orientation in colleges and universities — video presentations are used to tag progressive people’s organizations and partylist groups as CPP-NPA “front organizations,” according to Karapatan.
It’s probably because the guidelines say — in outright deception — that “the conduct of anti-insurgency information campaigns inside schools and hospitals is forbidden” ONLY “in the course of traditional activities, such as combat or intelligence operations.”
- See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2014/02/01/afp-counterinsurgency-drive-inside-public-schools/#sthash.SrnK3luo.dpuf
|
|