United Kingdom Anarchoblogs

Protect the commons wherever it is. 

From our friends on the east coast.

Hey, why not choose both? Thursday evening offers two talks at convenient intervals with cheap falafel to be found on the way between the two venues.

First, at 5:15 there’s Mark Fisher

“Blogger and Author of Capitalist Realism, Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, and contributor to The Guardian, Frieze, The New Statesman and Sight & Sound, Mark Fisher is among the most acute and respected cultural and political commentators writing today. On Feb 28, he will give a lecture entitled ‘The Slow Cancellation of the Future’ as part of the History of Art department at Edinburgh University’s Graduate Research Seminar series. Free and open to the public [at Edinburgh Art College, Lecture Room 1, Minto House, 20 Chambers Street]

Then at 8pm, SolFed are launching their Fighting for Ourselves book at ACE with a talk and discussion.

We are living in times of unprecedented attacks on our living conditions on all fronts, of rising social tensions and sometimes violent eruptions of class conflict. And yet if anything, the surprise is not that there has been riots and the odd strike, but that there have been so few. How are we to make sense of this. How are we to fight back, to take the initiative? Against capitalism, what do we w…ant to put in its place? The 20th century discredited state socialism, and rightly so. But with it, a whole history of international class struggle, of revolutions and counter-revolutions, victories and defeats, spontaneous uprisings and vast workers’ organisation has been eclipsed too.

The book aims to recover some of the lost history, in order to set out a revolutionary strategy for the present conditions.

11am – 1pm, meet at exit to to Princes Exchange car park on the corner of Lothian Road and Lauriston Place (http://g.co/maps/q8xbw)

On the 44th anniversary of the Abortion Act, SPUC will be holding “kerbside vigils” against reproductive rights in towns and cities across the UK. One of these vigils will be held in Edinburgh, so we’re going along to counter their lies and propaganda.

Meet at exit to to Princes Exchange car park on the corner of Lothian Road and Lauriston Place (http://g.co/maps/q8xbw) for an 11am start. Bring banners, SPUC supporters haven’t confirmed exactly where they will be holding their vigil, but they will be heading out from a church on Lauriston Place at 11am, so this will provide us with a lookout point to see where they set up their “pro-life chain”.

SPUC and other pro-life groups oppose abortion, as well as certain types of contraception, pre-natal testing, IVF, and the use of foetal cells in medical research. They often distribute false information, for example, telling women that an abortion will increase her risk of breast cancer or mental illness, despite the fact that this has been disproved by numerous studies.

Worldwide, it is estimated that around 20 million women will seek an illegal abortion every year because they cannot obtain the procedure legally, and 80,000 of them will die as a result of the unsafe conditions these are carried out in.

Support women: keep abortion free, safe, and legal.

Facebook event here.

Forcing frontline staff to bear the brunt of social care cuts is not a long term solution.

Voluntary sector providers of care and support services for people with disabilities have recently implemented cost cutting measures after the City of Edinburgh Council cut funding by 10% in early 2011. Now a race to the bottom is developing as organisations try to put themselves in a ‘competitive’ position ahead of further funding cuts expected in 2013.

In 2009 the City of Edinburgh Council attempted to sell off housing support services for people with disabilities through a flawed tender process. In early 2010 the process was finally stopped after legal challenges and a hard fought campaign by service-users, workers and advocacy groups. 18 months later Choices Care, the private company that stood to win the biggest contract, went bust demonstrating just what happens when companies try to deliver services at cut price rates.

After the failed tender process the Council imposed a 10% cut in funding on existing voluntary sector care providers with many organisations voluntarily making further cost cutting measures.

This has caused major attacks on pay and conditions of care and support workers that seriously threaten the future of the social care workforce. While employees of most organisations have been denied pay rises for a number of years others have recently suffered pay cuts. UNISON members at one social care provider recently calculated that their pay has lost 15% of its value in 6 years.
Elsewhere working hours have been increased, sick pay cut and annual leave reduced.
Another strategy to seek savings from frontline staff has been the cutting of overtime pay to below regular wage levels coupled with staff only being offered 30 hour contracts. In this set-up services are deliberately left short-staffed while workers are given the opportunity to make their hours up to full time by working an extra shift for less money and with no holiday or sick pay.
Initially such measures seem successful to the management of voluntary sector organisations. Extensive savings are made at the expense of frontline staff while the personnel and the structure of the service remain the same. In this way many organisations have retained their excellent care commission gradings.
But care and support workers are being forced to subsidise the service they provide – twice! We all pay for vital services through taxation. Now, as budget cuts are implemented, the workers, already on low incomes, are being forced to fill the funding gap through cuts to pay and conditions.
This is not a long term solution. Most care and support workers care deeply about their work and are desperately trying to deliver the same quality of service under increasingly difficult conditions.
The early 2000s saw adequate funding lead to a well trained, experienced and well resourced workforce achieving a very high standard of care in Edinburgh.

However, as training budgets are cut back and more and more of the social care workforce is pushed towards poverty by attacks on pay and conditions the chances of retaining and developing good quality, experienced and well trained staff are fading.
The future of care for people with disabilities in Edinburgh looks set to face a chronically underfunded, low paid, unskilled and understaffed workforce trying to do what should be considered one of the most important jobs in any ‘civilised’ society.

This does not bode well for the people with physical disabilities, learning disabilities or mental health issues that depend on these services.