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“Sounds like a step in the right direction. So glad we now have a ‘can-do’ council in Birmingham.”
(tweet from @gogwit to @politicsinbrum, 8 August 2012CE at 1809)
I’ll stand by that. It has been fashionable for those in power, particularly over the past quarter-century, to wring their hands, shrug their shoulders and pass unemployment off as inevitable and dismiss the ideal of full employment as a naïve pipe dream. It gives me inordinate pleasure to hear our elected representatives talk again of “eradication” of long-term unemployment as a worthy and worthwhile aspiration. For socialists it must always be an aim, for it is a cornerstone of the *real* big society, the one wherein all contribute according to their means, be it by hand, or by brain, or both, for the benefit of all.

Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

Birmingham City Council have today announced that they will be launching the Birmingham Youth Unemployment Commission, to tackle the problem of youth unemployment in Birmingham. They say the commission will bring together key players from business, education, the third sector and national experts to tackle the city’s youth unemployment.

Birmingham has real issues with youth unemployment, with over 2,500 young people long term unemployed in the city, with inner-city wards reporting as much as 40% rates of long term unemployment amongst young people (long term unemployment is defined as more than 6 months out of work).

Nationally, there are over 1 million young unemployed people, a figure that has risen sharply in the past few years, as school leavers face the worse economic conditions since the great depression, and extreme competition for jobs – earlier this year, when Jaguar expanded their Solihull operations, they had 20,000 applications for…

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Gove the Giver: Schools Given Away.

The following recommended read from Michael Rosen‘s blog continues and augments a theme covered before in Gogwit’s Blog – that of The Great Public Asset Vanishing Trick.
(If I were better with words I’d have tried to give this a title which would have SCAM as an acronym – perhaps ‘Scandalous Con – Asset Misappropriation’ or some such?)

http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/gove-giver-schools-given-away.html?spref=tw

Please do read and consider following Mr Rosen’s blog, guaranteed thought-provoking.

Gogwit.

Disabled Woman Took on Welfare System and Won.

I present for readers a link received as feedback from a recent piece reblogged from Disabled People Against Cuts via Birmingham Against the Cuts (http://href.li/?http://birminghamagainstthecuts.wordpress.com)

http://atosvictimsgroup.co.uk/2012/08/13/disabled-woman-took-on-welfare-system-and-won/

Please do read and support: disseminate, donate to DPAC, or both!

gogwit

Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

Join The Atos Games!
On your marks, get set…
for a week of Paralympic fun and games against Atos!

From Monday 27th to Friday 31st of August, join Disabled People Against Cuts for The Atos Games – five days of action against a company that’s sponsoring the Paralympics but wrecking disabled people’s lives.

We are calling on disabled people, disabled activists, families, colleagues, friends and supporters to come together and fight back against Atos’s attacks. Atos represents as dangerous an opponent as any government, law or barrier the disability movement has faced in its long history. It’s not just welfare, but our very identity and our place within society that is under attack.

And we are asking the whole of the anti-cuts movement to join us in our opposition to the company most responsible for driving through the government’s brutal cuts agenda. Let’s make it Games over for Atos!

Read…

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