Pre-May 2010 we had moved into growth. Subsequently, we moved into recession and are only just moving back out of it – albeit very tentatively, as has been discussed, and as Mr Carney has explained.



I don't think that anyone has suggested that, but please feel free to provide evidence that they have.

What [ihas[/i happened – and what [iis[/i happening – is that the financial crisis and subsequent recession/s have been taken by some businesses as an opportunity, to be used to [iforce[/i staff onto fewer hours, worse terms and conditions, and lower pay.

For instance, the growth in homecare workers being limited to 15 minutes per visit is very recent. As is the use of contracts for them that do not pay for time taken to travel between 'clients'.

If you want to prepare a balance sheet of legislation introduced to protect, promote and nurture the majority of the population, as opposed to further advantaging the privileged few. You'd best prepare for incoming

Here's a beaut: [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25945052Three men to be prosecuted for taking food that had been thrown into Iceland store bins[/url.

Now, to stress: Iceland says that it did not report them and is as mystified by the charges as most other people.

On the basis of what we currently know – quite unbelievable.

As an update – [url=http://blog.cps.gov.uk/2014/01/cps-statement-iceland-foods-case.htmlthe CPS has now dropped the case[/url.

I see the CPS say this illustrates their willingness to review / reconsider cases! I would have thought it illustrated their incompetence and waste.

I also suspect it also illustrates the Met's desire for what they perceived an easy win in their bid to improve their clear up stats. (and possibly bullying).

I work indirectly in this sector, so I have some experience of what you're talking about.

It's rather missing the point to suggest that homecare businesses have seen an 'opportunity' to bear down on the working conditions of their employees; rather, since the swingeing cuts to LA health and social care budgets introduced under the coalition government's austerity programme (according to Adass, £2.7bn in the three years to April 2013) they have had little choice. In response to those cuts, LA's have zeroed in on the charges of private providers in tiny detail and forced many of them to shave out every possible extra cost. In order to continue to operate under the resultant reduced hourly rates on offer from LA's, refusing to pay travel time and introducing more short calls are often survival mechanisms, as opposed to a means to larger profits. I can tell you with certainty that it's very difficult to become a fat cat out of homecare - it operates on very narrow margins and is thankless, heavily regulated and very volatile. Equally, the home care providers I've encountered would much rather *not* do short calls at all - they know it's wrong and is driven by cost rather than by the needs of the individual. I extricated a client from a large contract in this very sector after the CCG reduced it's hourly rates by 30% and *advised* the assembled providers to stop paying travel time AND mileage allowances to their staff.

In short, I agree with most of what you said, but I think you've identified the wrong bad guy; not to say that there aren't some unscrupulous operators in the sector but in my experience, the decline in working conditions of homecare staff is attributable to the coalition governments stealthy use of austerity to justify attacking the sick and disabled, rather than homecare operators being opportunistic.

Delusional? You are indeed :-
1. I never said nor suggested this "stuff only started" under this government. I don't know if it did, or it didn't. Certainly it is now commonplace and seemingly spreading like wildfire, so it has been an issue which has become serious and the government of the day should have got straight on the case. The can find time to legislate for many things that are trivial in comparison.

2. You will find that it is a "coalition" not a "Tory government", despite who wears the trousers in the relationship.


Oddly enough. I think I'm at liberty to make a point, and not then have to write a dissertation on every other thing ever done by anyone, to compare them all. But if you'd like to expand the discussion to historical events, perhaps you could start by giving an example of a union-imposed restrictive practice that was as comparatively bad and immoral for a working person as making them be at work for 60 hours, but get paid for only 20. This should be interesting.

I bashed the immorality of what is happening in those instances. This was not because the government in power is on the right, but because the practices they seem to ignore are fooking immoral and they damn well SHOULD step in. I would make precisely the same point whoever was not doing anything about it.

How so? It was the Met who brought the charges, not the CPS.

Didn't that turncoat Vince come on the TV a few months ago and dismiss concerns about zero-hours contracts, saying something to the effect that it suits some people so it's OK.
That it is no sensible basis on which to plan a life financially for most folk matters not a jot.
What a caring individual you are Vince.

Come the revolution....

Vince Cable leaped aboard every opposition bandwagon at any opportunity before 2010, so much so that he convinced most that he actually knew what he was talking about and was hailed as The Chancellor That Never Was.

Unfortunately Vince found himself in a position where he had to start doing real things and not just talk about them and Vince has found it hard to come to terms with the fact that criticising something is not the same thing as fixing it, not anything like the same thing really.

Vince doesn't appear on TV half as much as he used to.

I entirely understand that and agree with your analysis.

If memory serves me correctly, though, there were issues in this area before the last general election.

I'm fairly certain a piece I did with two homecarers in Scotland, which centred on the issue of unpaid travel between visits, was pre-2010.

But it's massively increased since and, as you say, as a direct consequence of the cuts.

According the reports linked to the CPS ran with it until the press / Iceland got hold of it then they reviewed the public interest element.