Ministers considering renationalising England and Wales probation service | S... Ministers are considering renationalising the entire probation service in England and Wales, the Guardian understands, in the latest twist in a long-running saga to unwind Chris Grayling’s disastrous changes to the sector. Under Grayling’s widely derided shake-up in 2014, the probation sector was separated into a public sector organisation managing high-risk criminals and 21 private companies responsible for the supervision of 150,000 low- to medium-risk offenders. Last year the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced that all offender management would be brought under the state-run National Probation Service (NPS), while contracts for rehabilitation services such as the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes were to be offered up to the private and voluntary sector. But the Guardian can reveal that the government suspended the competition for contracts last week and after an internal MoJ review it is considering renationalising probation services in their entirety.
Bienvenue en Trumplandie (ou le mythe raciste des « prolétaires qui votent Trump ») Je travaille dans une université de la Ivy League du nord-est des USA : une petite île heureuse de politique de gauche et de privilège économique. Mes étudiants sont gentils, doux, studieux. Peut-être est-ce parce que j’enseigne dans un liberal arts college [1] mais les jeunes que je rencontre quotidiennement sont idéalistes - même s’ils sont respectueux des règles jusqu’à la déférence – attentifs au recyclage, ouverts à la diversité sexuelles et de genre, bien élevés, sensibles, cultivés. Beaucoup d’entre eux sont privilégiés de naissance (comme n’importe qui dans ce pays qui peut se permettre de débourser jusqu’à 50 000 dollars par an entre emprunts, dépenses d’alimentation et de logement). Même les conservateurs (peu nombreux, en vérité) sont gentils, polis – des jeunes qui semblent sortis d’un film du début des années 50, avec leur cravate regimental, leur pantalon beige, leur blazer bleu, leur raie dans les cheveux. Les étudiants de mes cours sont traumatisés. 3. 4.
Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries | Jason Hickel | Global Development Professionals Network We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nations of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill. This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. What do these large outflows consist of?
Marketisation of social work education: should we be concerned? Photo: zinkevych/fotolia By Teresa Cleary I sought to capture the previously under-researched voice of UK-based social work academics regarding the possible influence of ‘marketisation’ in universities on the delivery of social work education. It has emerged that this voice has been stifled within what is now a highly competitive, and potentially insecure, working environment. ‘Inclusion in public discourse’ Concerns about the quality of social work education had in 2014 become the focus of two government inquiries, by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, but the study was prompted by a reported plenary discussion at the Joint Social Work Education and Research Conference (JSWEC) that July. There has been some resistance to this research from some academics, who perhaps feel the subject should not be ‘aired in public’ in a climate where policy initiatives in social work education appear to be favouring alternative, practice-based qualification routes.
The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers If nearly a decade interviewing the wealth managers for the 1% taught me anything, it is that the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor have a lot more in common than stereotypes might lead you to believe. In conversation, wealth managers kept coming back to the flamboyant vices of their clients. It was quite unexpected, in the course of discussing tax avoidance, to hear professional service providers say things like: “I’ve told my colleagues: ‘If I ever become like some of our clients, shoot me.’ The clients of this Geneva-based wealth manager also “believe that they are descended from the pharaohs, and that they were destined to inherit the earth”. If a poor person voiced such beliefs, he or she might well be institutionalized; for those who work with the wealthy, however, such “eccentricities” are all in a day’s work. As Lane and Harburg put it in the libretto of the musical Finian’s Rainbow: Many even present themselves as homeless – for tax purposes – despite owning multiple residences.
5 Myths About Israel Boycotts That Every Theater Lover Should Consider – The Forward Ever since a group of surprisingly high-profile theater artists called on Lincoln Center to cancel its upcoming production of an Israeli state-sponsored play, New York City’s theater community has been reeling with discomfort. While many theater professionals sympathize with the Palestinian cause, few, in their heart of hearts, want to cancel a play, especially in today’s hostile cultural environment, where the president plans to eliminate the NEA and Trump supporters are interrupting Julius Caesar. In the anti-cultural era of Trump, all of those who work in culture want more discourse — not less. So why do so many of us on the cultural left support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the state of Israel? As a Jewish playwright who believes strongly that BDS is the only path toward a just peace in Israel/Palestine, it’s important to me that my fellow theater artists understand what the boycott is all about, and what it’s not all about.
What the NHS can learn from the introduction of markets in social care The Health and Social Care Act was controversially enacted by the coalition government, introducing competition into the NHS. Looking at the market in state funded social care that was created over 20 years ago, Marianna Fotaki draws lessons for the NHS and about how markets in state funded care services operate when resources are constrained. She finds that the introduction of competition had a negative impact on the quality of care, the pressure of the competitive market has led to the de-professionalisation and casualisation of the social care workforce, and that the failure of care providers is an inevitable consequence of any care market with significant impacts for patients and service users. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 seeks to create a market in state funded health care services and to enable private sector providers to bid for NHS services. First, the introduction of competition in order to reduce costs has had a negative impact on the quality of care. About the Author
The John Birch Society influencing American politics, 60 years later click2x The retired candy entrepreneur Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society 60 years ago to push back against what he perceived as a growing American welfare state modeled on communism and the federal government’s push to desegregate America. Although Welch’s group has never amassed more than 100,000 dues-paying members, it had garnered an estimated 4 to 6 million sympathizers within four years of its 1958 formation. As a scholar of political history and social movements, I find many parallels between today’s far right and its predecessors. Just as the John Birch Society emerged in the midst of the civil rights movement, today’s far-right movements formed as a reaction to the election of Barack Obama – a milestone for racial equality. The Birchers The original “Birchers,” as John Birch Society supporters are known, were Republicans who believed their party had grown too moderate. Birchers expressed a belief in domestic communist conspiracies. Despite Goldwater’s loss to incumbent Lyndon B.
Ireland set to have 1st openly gay prime minister Ireland's governing Fine Gael party has elected Leo Varadkar, the gay son of an Indian immigrant, as its new leader and the country's likely next prime minister. Varadkar defeated rival Simon Coveney in a contest to replace Enda Kenny, who resigned last month. Coveney won the votes of a majority of party members, but Varadkar was backed by most lawmakers and local representatives to give him victory Friday under the centre-right party's electoral college system. Ireland same-sex marriage referendum: 'Yes' wins He is highly likely to become prime minister in Ireland's coalition government, although not immediately. At 38, Varadkar will be Ireland's youngest leader, as well as the first from an ethnic-minority background and the first openly gay leader. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Indian doctor and an Irish nurse. He also will have to steer Ireland during complex divorce negotiations between Britain and the EU. ANALYSIS: The Brexit effect on Ireland
A race to the bottom in social care provision | Social care | The Guardian Much recent commentary about the poor and declining pay and conditions of care workers (Cuts forcing care firms to break minimum wage laws, 23 October) has rightly drawn attention to the contributory role of cuts in local authority budgets. What has received much less comment has been the role of the marketisation of social care services. Since the 1980s, governments – Conservative, Labour and coalition – have pursued policies intended to increase competition in social care provision. One upshot of this is that the majority of care is outsourced to often non-unionised charities and, increasingly, private companies. Action is clearly needed to counter the adverse consequences of these developments for both staff and the clients they serve. Is it too much to hope that the Labour party will commit itself to act in this way? • Your headline is wrong to suggest that owners of social care companies are forced to further underpay their workers – they choose to do so.
It’s All Over Is there any way to intervene usefully or meaningfully in public debate, in what the extremely online Twitter users are with gleeful irony calling the “discourse” of the present moment? It has come to seem to me recently that this present moment must be to language something like what the Industrial Revolution was to textiles. A writer who works on the old system of production can spend days crafting a sentence, putting what feels like a worthy idea into language, only to find, once finished, that the internet has already produced countless sentences that are more or less just like it, even if these lack the same artisanal origin story that we imagine gives writing its soul. There is, it seems to me, no more place for writers and thinkers in our future than, since the nineteenth century, there has been for weavers. This predicament is not confined to politics, and in fact engulfs all domains of human social existence. But something’s wrong here. What to do, then?