Archive for September, 2008
Need Not Greed
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008I was asked to write a piece for the Compass Website about Need Not Greed, our campaign to encourage people to move out of cash-in-hand work and into the formal economy.
The article is generating some lively debate! Contribute your own comments over here.
End Child Poverty: Keep The Promise Rally, Oct 4th
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Speaking at the Labour Party Conference yesterday in his Leaders Speech Prime Minster Gordon Brown said: “The economic times are tough of course that makes things harder- but we are in this for the long haul - the complete elimination of child poverty by 2020. And so today I announce my intention to introduce ground-breaking legislation [...]
Unlocking Poor Neighbourhoods
Monday, September 22nd, 2008“The Community Allowance would allow community organisations to pay local people to do work that strengthens their neighbourhoods without losing their benefit status”
Jess Steele delivered a compelling presentation about the the Community Allowance at last weeks Development Trusts Association’s conference. Jess is chair of the CREATE consortium (of which Community Links is a member) and was encouraging the DTA membership to adopt the [...]
London Olympics 2012: community engagement
Friday, September 19th, 2008There is genuine excitement and expectancy amongst many local people in east London about the coming Games; in part driven by sporting success of of team GB in the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics.
Now that the Olympic Flag has been handed over by the Chinese to the new host city London the focus tuns sharply towards [...]
Chain Reaction Programme launched
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008The LinksUK team have today been busy with the launch of the Programme for our new initiatve Chain Reaction.
On the 17th and 18th November we’ll be bringing together social leaders, community activists, policy makers, business leaders and young people from around the globe for an event at London’s Southbank to share learning and to generate new ideas [...]
The ineffective ‘Earnings Disregard’
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 photo credit: Carl Blake
Getting a job is difficult enough but when a system, supposedly designed to support you, actively works against you producing a disincentive to finding work - then you’re in trouble.
More than three years ago we looked at one mechanism within the benefits system designed, we thought, to encourage people off benefits and into [...]
DWP apply Jobcentre Plus success to Anti Benefit Fraud Campaign?
Thursday, September 11th, 2008The Jobcentre Plus has been hailed by the DWP Select Committee as a success story thanks to good management and most importantly the high levels of experience at the top and the involvement of local ground staff in shaping the changes.
Edward Leigh MP was “keen to highlight the critical part played by the senior management [...]
Low pay in London
Friday, September 5th, 2008The Greater London Assembly’s economics unit report no.22: ‘Patterns of low pay in London’ highlights (yet again) the numbers of people and the conditions that keep many in poverty.
Between 15-19% of London’s workforce is low paid (earning less than £7.05 an hour), that’s between 481,000 and 609,267 working poor. Low pay more frequently affects employees [...]
The geography of life expectancy
Thursday, September 4th, 2008I was reminded recently of the London Health Observatory statistic that for every tube stop on the Jubilee line going east, from Westminster to Canning Town, life expectancy decreases by one year.
A more shocking report from the World Health Organisation last week claimed that life expectancy in two different neighbourhoods of Glasgow (a 10 minute [...]
DWP Welfare Reform - No One Written Off?
Monday, September 1st, 2008I came across a poignant letter in the Guardian (read it here) in response to the announcement of the recent DWP Green Paper“No One Written Off”. We support people like this unfortunate letter writer every day at Community Links.
We are hosting a small roundtable meeting at the end of September with a number of Newham’s employment [...]
We spent a week debating the way poverty is portrayed in the media, generating over 20 fascinating posts from a wide range of authors. 