Tag Archives: agency

Is this why the Environment Agency chairman wants to go easy on sewage-dumpers?

Rivers of Sh*t: partially-cleaned and harmful crap is going directly into our rivers. The former head of bankrupt corporation Carillion, now in charge of the Environment Agency, wants to go easy on the companies doing it. Why is that, do you think?

Read this, and we’ll have a word about it down below:

The Environment Agency should not be issuing penalties of £250 million to water companies who dump sewage, its chairman has said.

Speaking to Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Alan Lovell said penalties of £10-20 million would be more appropriate, and stressed there was a difference between an EA penalty and a court fine.

Last month, Environment Secretary Therese Coffey was criticised for reportedly backing down on plans to increase penalties to £250 million.

According to Feargal Sharkey (yes, that Feargal Sharkey): “Before becoming chairman of the EA Alan Lovell was a NED [Non-Executive Director] at Carillion, largest ever corporate bankruptcy in British history leaving £7 billion in debts.

Considering that, ask yourself: why would he say what he did about penalties for privatised water companies?


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Is Coffey’s plan to get 114,000 UC claimants into jobs a bid to break coming strikes?

Therese Coffey: is her latest attack on UC claimants an attempt to break forthcoming industrial disputes?

I spotted this on David Hencke’s Westminster Confidential site, which you really should be reading.

Let’s set the scene:

The Department of Work and Pensions is to tighten the rules significantly to force 114,000 existing Universal Credit claimants into work as job vacancies soar across Britain.

She is changing the rules so far more people will have to go on what is known as an intensive work search regime where they will be monitored continually by work coaches on how many jobs they have applied for and why they didn’t get them.

The [Social Security Advisory] committee approved the idea on February 4 but agreed to keep the decision secret until last week when it published the minutes of a meeting between DWP officials and the committee.

To make the change the government is using a regulation to uprate what is known as the Administrative Earnings Threshold – a device which sets the level of benefit and earnings dividing those who only receive ” a light touch” regime – ie occasional checks whether they are seeking work – from their local job centre and those put on intensive work search programmes. Those who refuse or don’t co-operate properly with face benefit cuts as a sanction.

It will move the level from £355 to £494 a month for a single claimant and from £567 to £782 a month for a couple. At present some 250,000 people covered by the intensive work search programme are in work – this will increase the number by 50 percent. The government justify it by saying the new level brings it into line with recent rises in the national minimum wage for those in work.

Some of us already knew the above. I’ve reported it already.

But here’s the really nasty part:

Questioned about the current job vacancies level encouraging this move officials said: “the vacancies position the labour market is considered by some to be hot which could be driving inflation.”

In other words by getting more of the unemployed into work, employers would have a bigger pool of labour and would not have to offer higher wages or even compensate people for the rising cost of living.

There may now be an even more compelling reason as Therese Coffey wants this to be law from September 26, since the government plans to use agency workers to break the coming strike wave. What would suit ministers would be if the unemployed could be drafted in as agency workers leading to confrontation with striking workers on trains, buses, schools, the NHS, and the post office with shouts of ” scab” and bringing the police in to make mass arrests of strikers.

How vindictive. How very Tory.

Source: Coffey sneaks through tough plan to push 114,000 Universal Credit claimants into jobs while Parliament is in recess | Westminster Confidential

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Is UK government creating problems for itself by detaining a P&O ferry?

Moored: P&O ferries in harbour. It seems that’s exactly where the UK government wants them to stay.

This is potentially problematic. What’s to stop P&O from complaining that the firm is being victimised by the government because of the way it sacked 800 workers – and that the Tories are trying to run it out of business as a result?

A P&O Ferries ship has been detained in Northern Ireland over safety concerns.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said the European Causeway passenger boat had been held in Larne over multiple issues.

The MCA said there had been “failures on crew familiarisation, vessel documentation and crew training”.

Unions have raised concerns over a lack of experience of new crew, introduced after 800 of the firm’s staff were sacked eight days ago.

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Sink, Britain, Sink: The Tories had six years to fix the UK’s flood defences and failed

Builth Wells: This mid-Powys town stood at a relatively high altitude – and under a considerable amount of water in February 2020.

The Environment Agency will have to resort to pumps and temporary flood barriers to ensure thousands of homes are protected this winter, it has been revealed.

According to the National Audit Office,

the Government awarded the Environment Agency £120m extra funding to repair [last year’s] damage, but the Agency will only complete 80 per cent of the work before the end of this year.

This means

one in five damaged flood defences will not be repaired in time for this winter’s stormy weather.

Oh, I know. There’s been a huge crisis to do with a pandemic disease called Covid-19 since the last floods, and it has been taking all the cash that’s available and slowing down maintenance work such as this.

That would be a good excuse.

But the simple fact is that successive Tory governments have had more than six years to stop our homes from flooding and they simply couldn’t be bothered.

To them, it’s a waste of money to take preventative action – even though the cost of fixing the damage is, cumulatively, far more.

I explained the problem in This Site, waaaaaaay back in 2014 [boldings mine, at time of writing this]:

This is a result of bad planning – by water and sewerage companies that have failed to implement successful drainage schemes or to divert floodwater from rivers in order to prevent overflow, and by planning authorities that have allowed housing to be built in the wrong place.

We live in a country where management of the water supply went into private hands several decades ago. When that happened, it became impossible to have any kind of integrated plan to deal with the supply of water, droughts, floods and storage. Water supply became a commodity to be bought and sold by rich people according to the golden rules of capitalism: Invest the minimum; charge the maximum.

So reservoirs have been sold off to foreign water companies, meaning we have no adequate response to droughts. None have been built, meaning we have no adequate response to floods. Concerns about river flooding have been neglected. There has not been the investment in extraction and storage of floodwater that repeated incidents over the last few years have demanded.

The government is reducing its budget for handling these issues. Not only that, but it is delaying implementation of a new policy on drainage.

In short, there is no joined-up thinking.

There will be no joined-up thinking in the future, either – unless the situation is changed radically.

Meanwhile, the cost racked up by the damage is huge – in ruined farmland, in ruined homes and possessions, and blighted lives. And what about the risk of disease that floodwater brings with it? The NHS in England is ill-equipped to deal with any outbreaks, being seriously weakened by the government-sponsored incursions of private, cheap-and-simple health firms.

Something has to give beneath the weight of all this floodwater. Change is vital – from commercial competition to co-operation and co-ordination.

Privatisation of water has failed. It’s time to bring it back under public control.

Is anyone opposed?

It turns out that a majority were not. Reversing the privatisation of water and restoring a joined-up policy is supported by most of the UK’s voting population, according to polls.

In 2012, it was said that 71 per cent of voters wanted renationalisation. By 2018 this had risen to 83 per cent.

But millions of people voted Conservative at the ballot box so water has remained in private hands and the government has refused to stump up the cash to pay for what has become an annual – and therefore predictable – disaster.

The Environment Agency reckons it has a strategy to “build up the resilience of millions more homes and businesses” in the coming years.

What happens if the Tories strip away the funding for it?

Source: Damaged flood defences won’t be repaired in time for this winter’s storms

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Private employment agencies are making a killing by paying nurses a pittance

What do you think of this little racket?

Remember when the Conservative government introduced privatisation into NHS procurement? It means the health service in England can hire nurses from private agencies.

There is a shortage of nurses, meaning that agencies like Thornbury Nursing can pretty much ask whatever price they fancy, and NHS England will have to pay.

The agency then pays its nurses less than half of what it charged the NHS – making the work unattractive to all but those who are most desperate for cash, and perpetuating the staffing crisis.

Here’s the punchline: Thornbury Nursing is run by a private equity fund owned by a major donor to the Conservative Party.

I’m not saying this person pulled strings to ensure that a situation developed from which they could profit.

I don’t have any information either way.

But if that isn’t what’s happening, why doesn’t this company either lower its charge, or increase the amount it pays its nurses?

Source: Private agencies paying workers less than half what they charge NHS to hire – Mirror Online

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Abuse of DVSA staff increases by more than 50 per cent in a year. Why?

Body-worn cameras will be trialled by DVSA.

What is the matter with everyone? Have we all suddenly decided we’re entitled to treat other people like dirt?

Are we copying our government’s behaviour – for example, to the unemployed and disabled?

Or is there another, underlying reason?

The latest organisation revealed to have been hit by the abuse epidemic is the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, which employs driving examiners, vehicle testers and roadside enforcement staff.

Between April 2016 and March this year, more than 300 staff suffered physical or verbal abuse while doing their jobs – an increase of more than 50 per cent on the previous year.

According to the organisation, attacks on staff have included:

• verbal abuse and death threats;
• damaging staff cars and offices;
• serious physical assaults;
• lorry drivers trying to run DVSA enforcement cars off the road; and
• failed driving test candidates driving off with their examiner still in the car, against their will.

The DVSA is launching a campaign to stop the abuse, which it describes as “completely unacceptable”.

At driving test centres, learner drivers who swear at or verbally abuse staff will be forced to:

•use a different test centre the next time they take a test; and
•take future tests with an extra supervisor present.

Anyone who threatens or assaults examiners, drives off with an examiner still in the car, or damages DVSA property will:

•be reported to the police; and
•face the strongest possible penalties.

Although it is extremely rare, driving instructors sometimes try to influence the results of a driving test by harassing or threatening examiners. They face being:

•banned from specific driving test centres;
•removed from the approved driving instructor register.

At the roadside, at operator sites or authorised testing centres, DVSA will:

•record any abuse from commercial drivers and vehicle operators as evidence for any investigation by the traffic commissioners – they have the power to suspend or take away driving licences and operator licences; and
•report serious incidents to the police.

In some busy sites, enforcement staff are starting to trial body-worn cameras to capture evidence of abuse.

 

There’s no excuse for abuse against people who are simply trying to make our roads safer.

But is this campaign a good idea? Or does it go too far?

Your opinions are invited.


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NHS agency staff provider to be privatised – for profit, not service

The staffing agency will be sold off with the aim of creating a 'profitable business model' [Image: Rui Vieira/PA].

The staffing agency will be sold off with the aim of creating a ‘profitable business model’ [Image: Rui Vieira/PA].

Wasn’t the NHS criticised recently for being too reliant on agency staff instead of permanent employees?

Yet now the Conservative Government intends to privatise the main provider of agency staff, in order to create a “profitable business model”.

Hmm.

And the quality of service doesn’t enter anywhere into the Tory calculations.

This is because a nationalised service like the NHS – used as a necessity by millions of people – is an automatic money-maker.

The aim is clearly to rip off patients by providing the worst possible care for the highest possible price to the health service…

… and then claim the service is failing and push it further towards complete privatisation.

But it seems nobody with a vote wants to accept that fairly obvious fact. Why?

The Government is to privatise the NHS’s in-house, publicly-owned provider of agency staff, ministers have announced.

NHS Professionals, the health service’s main staffing agency, provides 90,000 health workers to around a quarter of NHS trusts, covering two million shifts a year.

In a written statement issued on Thursday as most MPs headed back to their constituencies, the Government announced it would sell off a majority stake in the orgnaisation to the private sector with the aim of “creating a profitable business model”.

Source: Government quietly privatises the NHS’s in-house agency staff provider | The Independent

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NHS Wales should be praised for employing agency nurses to keep care standards high

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The facts about health service pay: If NHS Wales is having to employ agency staff, perhaps it is because the Conservative Government does not provide enough funding for NHS employees. Maybe this is why so many have been lured abroad by higher pay and better standards of living.

A Freedom of Information request by the Welsh Conservatives has revealed that NHS Wales had to spend £190 million on agency doctors and nurses in the last four years. Shame on NHS Wales, right?

Well, no. This merely demonstrates the cack-handed way the Conservatives have been running the health service since taking office as part of the Coalition Government in 2010.

Does anybody remember reports last year that the Conservative-led Coalition Government had dumped 4,000 senior nurses since 2010, considering them to be “disposable” and “a quick way to save money”?

Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said at the time: “We are facing a Europe-wide shortage of nursing staff and the last thing the NHS should be doing at this time is treating its highly experienced staff as disposable.

“We need to be doing everything we can to retain the skills we have in the NHS rather than using them as a quick and easy way to make savings.”

These words clearly fell on deaf ears in the Department of Health, which continued to cut nursing staff. Cuts in health spending in England are mirrored, via the Barnett formula, in funding provided to the devolved health services elsewhere in the UK, meaning that the Welsh Government has had to reduce money provided for other services in order to address the cut in spending – and service standard – caused by Tory changes.

That has taken several years to accomplish – as this blog has made clear in previous articles. The Westminster government’s grant to Wales has been cut by a massive 10 per cent since 2010.

And what has happened to our highly-qualified NHS staff members in the meantime? It seems they have been attracted abroad by foreign health services that treat their workforce with more respect.

Vox Political commenter karenmarieuk, responding to a recent article, told us: “My daughter now lives in South Africa and is treated by British staff at both her GP surgery and her local hospital.”

She asked: “Why do our health care professionals have to emigrate to earn the respect they deserve? Our nursing staff are canvassed regularly by Australia, being offered incentives such as housing and vastly improved lifestyles as well as pay that puts the UK to shame! This is just one country from many.

“When, I wonder, will the UK stop this mass exodus and try keeping staff here?”

When indeed? Never, under a Conservative government.

The Welsh Tories have shot themselves in the foot (again) with their ridiculous claims following this FoI request. The total amount spent on agency staff by NHS Wales comes to 1/120 of funding every year, to be compared with the 10 per cent cut from Conservative and Conservative-led Westminster governments.

Conservative politics has caused the problem, not a Labour-run health service.

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The REAL Charities are the Ones worth supporting – Jayne Linney

140901charityhardsell

[Image: Daily Telegraph.]

Vox Political is saddened to learn that fellow blogger Jayne Linney has been struggling with depression; however she has written an article today based on this Daily Mirror piece – “Top charities spend 60% of cash raised on private firm which hounds people to donate”.

“I’ve argued for many years that far too much money given to these agencies, fails to reach the people the organisations purport to aid,” she writes. “I’ve even disappointed my 84 year old mum, who readers know I adore,  when I refuse to buy the raffle tickets she receives twice a year, regular as clockwork, from several of these orgs. For me the Top ‘Charities’ no longer qualify as such, and it’s time for the Charities Commission to do its job and remove this status, lets call them what they are Big Businesses.

“I worked in the voluntary sector for many years, providing a real service to local people. Such projects are run by regular people, who find themselves  forced to battle with these multi-million pound companies, in their efforts to raise less money than Stroke pay for fund-raising to keep their service going.  I do not believe this is Right and I’m not convinced people who donate hard earned money, expect it to go to the same company who then hassle them by calling them at home with a Hard Sell?”

The lady makes a good point. Visit her blog to read the rest of the article and see her conclusions.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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The reality of the Coalition’s crackdown on tax credits

Nothing more to say: This Tax Credits advert was intended to warn people to keep up-to-date with information they send HMRC about their Tax Credits claim; now it seems the message is much simpler - they want to stop paying you anyway.

Nothing more to say: This Tax Credits advert was intended to warn people to keep up-to-date with information they send HMRC about their claim; now it seems the message is much simpler – they want to stop paying you anyway.

A guest blog by ‘Mimismum’.

What follows was posted to Vox Political as a response to Tax Credits and Debt Collection Agencies: Peachy’s Comment. It details the facts of the situation for just one struggling family and as such was worth a larger audience than it would have received as a comment on another article.

This government scares the s**t out me. I don’t know how much more stress I can take now. It has gone beyond anything like “austerity” or “in it together” rhetoric and is now a witch hunt against the poor or low earners, sick and disabled – even going as far as blaming us for our own predicament.

We have seen our family income go from £800 from my other half’s wage back in 2009 to just under £350 now, due to successive redundacies. He works and has never had any unemployment in the past 12 years, and yet each time he calls tax credits to say there is a change in our income they lower the award (ha! thats a rich term for it now, its garbage to call it an award) based on his predicted income, even though its gone down and down.

Last year he worked overtime for two weeks, got paid an extra £20 in the month and they hammered us by cutting his Working Tax Credits by £30 a week for the entire year! He recently got made redundant again and is now working two temp jobs (one of which is zero hours) and he has got hours bouncing around all over the joint. Family life has been shot to s**t, and when he rang Tax Credits to tell them they just said, “Oh well, as long as it’s over the 24 a week you are okay.”

Today they shoved some money in the bank. He rang to ask what the hell it was for; they can’t tell him because “We haven’t had the renewal paperwork in.” For goodness’ sake, we just wanted to know what this extra money is, it’s not rocket science! The guy refused to tell us!

My other half had to use it to pay bills because his wages were short due to the zero hour contract job changing how they pay wages now – because of that stupid pension scheme c**p the government forced on everyone. Even though he already has one from his previous job, this company took money for their pension and said they wouldnt pay into his! Oh, and because his old employer forgot to send his P45, he had to pay emergency tax as well!

We can’t do this any more. The stress of him working two jobs, my disability, and having children is driving a wedge between us. One of our children has autism, and I am struggling to maintain a routine that they desperately need – and I can’t. The other half is now on National Minimum Wage for both crappy jobs; both want exclusivity out of him and now keep rostering him on during the other job’s time. Both knew he had a second job when they took him on, and now we find out that tax credits can send debt collectors and bailiffs around for money they say anyone owes, just like that.

I wish to god Tony Blair had not invented tax credits, because it gives employers a get-out clause for paying decent wages. I can’t get hospital transport fees out of the NHS for trips I have had to make and even though they were claimed within the time allowed – no payment has been forthcoming because “it’s too late now” for them to pay out. I have another appointment in two weeks’ time which I have to cancel as I cant get there, because my other half can’t take time off work from either job – and my physio is about to strike me off for the same reason.

I am sick of this mess; we dont deserve this, and if we find out Tax Credits have overpaid us as well I don’t know what we would do. We have an income of less than average and we pay our own rent; we don’t claim Housing Benefit because the council stuffs it up and we get into arrears so we manage on our own.

We claim less of what we are entitled to because I am scared they will want it back, and now they are playing this game with tax credits.

I don’t want to be punished any more for being disabled, a parent or married. I have had enough of being poor and scared. All I want is for my other half to have a decent job with a decent wage, and there is nothing out there now.

No jobs, nothing, and it’s getting worse.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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