Posted in Young People

Young Labour committee votes to discuss policy no more than every two years

Young Labour on the March for the AlternativeAt October’s Young Labour national committee meeting, committee members, including chair Simon Darvill and NEC rep Bex Bailey, voted to reject two motions as agenda items: on the grounds that it was not the committee’s place to pass substantive motions, and that this should be left to the biennial policy conference.

This has a very worrying implication: that Young Labour will never again be able to take a substantive position on the majority of issues as they arise. The central argument for voting against hearing the motions was: Young Labour does not need to have motions in order to do stuff. We can simply organise meetings and campaigns, so long as we mention it at meetings. But to have no proper process for officially endorsing political positions and priorities between conference is surely unsafe. Continue reading →

Roll back the State? No – We must roll back Austerity

laaa-tall-smallThe Chancellor of the Exchequer was recently heralding a 0.8 per cent increase in gross domestic product as a recovery. Growth of any amount should not be attacked in the context of the longest recession since the Victorian era. However growth of this level is pitiful, and no sign that the government’s policies are working or that the country is on any road to prosperity.

The very rich may be getting richer and property prices in parts of London may be soaring again, but in most parts of the country and for most people there is no sign of things getting better. The government is keen to portray their politics of austerity and the privatisation of public services as leading to a flourishing of enterprise. However the reality is that ordinary people are making real sacrifices, with public services being cut, wages slashed, underemployment on the rise and people struggling to survive on ever-reducing welfare payments. Continue reading →

Take action against the student loan book privatisation

WillettsStudents have declared next week a “week of action” against the proposed privatisation of the student loan book. On Friday 18th October, students will gather outside the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to protest the plans, which have worrying implications for students past, present and future.

An Early Day Motion (no. 542) has been launched in Parliament, spearheaded by a number of left-wing MPs working with students, who are concerned that “in order to make the student loan book profitable for private companies, [the privatisation] would need to be accompanied by either subsidies from the taxpayer or an increase in the financial burden placed on graduates.” The Student Assembly Against Austerity has designed a helpful tool for lobbying MPs to sign up to the motion – just put in your postcode, change the message if you so please, and you can send off an email to your MP on the subject. Continue reading →

Aspiration Nation: where the young don’t even have a safety net

NO MORE BENEFITS BASEBALL CAPThere are 1.09 million people between the ages of 16 to 24 who are neither earning nor learning. They can’t find jobs, but are unwilling to retrain. There are some who have, since leaving school, actively refused to improve themselves through the dignifying act of work and plan to live, forever, on jobseekers’ allowance. This is a terrible, expensive state of affairs. But there is no need to worry, because as was made clear at The Conservative party conference, the Tories are planning to swoop in and give them what for.

In plans that I, perhaps naively, found shocking in their sweeping severity, the Conservatives have announced the potential reduction and removal of benefits for the under 25s. All at a time when there are at least three applicants chasing every job vacancy. Continue reading →

The reality of low-hour contracts – zero is just the surface

Empty supermarket checkoutsThis week, it seems that everyone is talking about zero-hour contracts. Yet the problem is far wider – with many workers facing similar insecurities through agreements of slightly different shapes. At the supermarket where I work, many of us are on contracts of ten hours or less a week – in my case, four hours. Others are on “flexible” contracts, which basically translates as “you get hours if we need you, and good luck if we don’t”.

This may sound quite familiar to many. While the affects of the economic downturn trundle on like an army of weary orcs, so many of us must  jobs that previously only existed in the wet dreams of Victorian free marketeers. And the best thing about it is, we are meant to be grateful to our wealth creating betters for providing us with them.
Continue reading →