No way out

From The F Word

More than 15,000 women called the Women’s Aid helpline last year suffering from physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuse at the hands of a partner. And the support group warned that controlling boyfriends and husbands were making life even harder by withholding and threatening to withhold money.

Margaret Martin, Women’s Aid director, said vulnerable women were trapped amid fears of increased poverty, losing their home and the effect it would have on their children. “Domestic violence is a huge problem within Irish society,” she said. “This year we are particularly concerned about the impact of the recession on women experiencing domestic violence from their boyfriends, husbands and partners.”

This is truly truly grim but unsurprising as people in powerless positions, especially women experiencing domestic violence, will be inevitable casualties of the economic meltdown.

Neither is neoliberalism supportive of equal opportunities. The gap between rich and poor has widened under NL. On the issue of women and pay, latest research has shown that women are being pushed into traditional jobs, along with gender pay gap,widened to 22.6% from 21.9% in 2007.

Mark France’s appeal date

Just as a recap Mark France was sacked for gross misconduct.

And bizarrely, it seems that the DWP are tracking Mark’s every comments (my blog was mentioned here in reference to the reasons for Mark’s sacking…and thanks to Mark for letting me know).

SU on the subject here.

The sacking is an attack on freedom of speech and civil liberties overall.

Mark France has an appeal hearing on 25th September at JobCentre Plus Regional HQ, Duchess Place, Birmingham.

Good luck with that comrade.

Brown: Cuts, Cuts, Cuts…..

Labour will cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets,” he said. “But when our plans are published in the coming months, people will see that Labour will not support cuts in the vital frontline services on which people depend.

Part of Brown’s  speech to the TUC.

Reactions from head honcho bureaucrat of the TUC …though I am not sure which parallel universe Brendan Barber lives on.

Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, rallied to the Prime Minister’s support last night. “This was a jobs versus cuts speech, and he chose jobs,” he said. “Unions are naturally concerned about the best way to tackle the deficit once we have real recovery. But again the Prime Minister made clear that there will be a real choice at the next election.”

Thankfully John McDonnell understands only too well what Brown is saying and sums the speech up as, “unconvincing and disappointing”, adding that his party had become unrecognisable from the Tories. “He has offered people an indiscernible choice at the forthcoming general election,” he said. “Underlying everything he said was the confirmation of Mandelson’s policy that the economic crisis created by the banks will be paid for by cuts to services to ordinary people.”

Mark Serwotka (General Secretary of the PCS) is right as well: “The speech confirmed my worst fears,” he said. “It was lacklustre and he did not take the opportunity to show that he is different from the Tories. His plans to rob £500m from his own workers is a scandal.”

Again it makes me think of Naomi Klein when she wrote:

During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector.