Even the disappointment and loneliness of starting out as a writer doesn’t have to be terrible – if you can find a reader you can trust I’m lying down, Best Beloveds. This is as close as I get to a hobby. Over the weekend I attempted to establish sleeping as a further leisure activity, but I’m afraid that the vast list of things I have to do before most days break – or, indeed, I myself break – made that impossible. So lying down and working – it’s almost as good as a rest. Not that I am complaining about being in work. Being in work is a good thing. Being in work when you are self-employed and me – and your employer is therefore almost as mentally sturdy as Charlie Sheen – is a less good thing. Not that I’m in any way chemically enhanced, or unhanced – I can forget why I’ve ended up in the kitchen again and am holding a single shoe without any assistance from prescribed or clandestinely imported substances. When I shake my head my brain thumps against its sides like a neatly parcelled corpse in the boot of a slewing car. Meanwhile, I have been asked to write a little about the typist’s progress from hoping-to-be-published-anywhere-at-all-ever to dear-God-shoot-me-just-in-the-shin-then-I’ll-get-a-day-off. This is, of course, both a happy progression and something that should be much better organised in my case. Here, I’ll try and look at what we might call the very early days. The awful and wonderful early days. So, to begin at the beginning. My own experience of starting out was haphazard and almost certain to fail. I didn’t really intend to write, I was simply living in a tiny, cold bedsit with no other ways of being constructive. (And if your only way to prove yourself useful is by producing a steady trickle of maimed and ugly short stories, you should probably take a good look at yourself.) I joined a writer’s group and then remembered that I don’t like groups. I sent off stories without really researching my target magazines who duly returned my efforts, often accompanied only by a scribble on a square of paper slightly larger than a commemorative stamp. I had occasional successes, and an encouraging letter of rejection, or – dear God – an acceptance, or – good heavens – not just a free copy of “Quentin’s Quarterly Gallimaufry”, but a check for 20 quid, could light up my month. I was more often disappointed than not, but I was also learning that I cared about this. I cared so much that I would start again after every sad envelope flopped in, write something else, forget that it hurt to be knocked back. I was writing by hand with later multicoloured corrections as nervousness and tinkering racked up rewrites. There weren’t really any personal computers about (imagine that). A bit of planning before I’d started and then stepping back for an overview would have helped me much more than altering things blindly and investing affection, rather than criticism. As it was, I ended up with page after page of Jackson Pollocked nonsense. I didn’t know any better. I wanted advice, but I was afraid that someone well-informed would simply tell me I shouldn’t bother because I was incurably dreadful. I felt lonely and pointless and hungry. If you’re at that stage now then you have my sympathy – it’s horrible. And it’s worse now: opportunities to get involved with tutoring, or reviewing, or workshops are evaporating; the publishing landscape is ever-shrinking as are advances; there are fewer magazines out there and fewer anthologies; there are fewer places for new books in bookshop chains. And, yes, it may be that you don’t ever get published and reach anyone’s shelves. You may be a risk that someone would have taken 10 years ago, while today you seem unaffordable. You may be a good writer, but unlucky. There may be a day when you fold that set of ambitions away and set your mind to something else. We have to consider this. But if you haven’t given up yet, I can say – and I think I am being honest about this – that even this initial grind needn’t turn out to be 100% horrible. Really. It needn’t. When everything about writing is a slog and you seem to be getting nowhere, your lack of pressing demands from numerous admirers does mean you have the time to sit back and consider why you’re putting all this effort into what appears to be an unrewarding relationship. You’re flinging out the best love letters you can, you’re breaking your heart and no one’s answering, but on you go regardless – why? If your answer is that you love what you’re doing and couldn’t abandon it without being someone other than yourself, then you probably have to keep slogging. The certainty that you have to write can be a pain in the neck, but it’s also a great, firm truth to build around – the shysters and manipulators and compromise-peddlers won’t be able to shake you, if you fasten yourself to that. And if you are eventually successful and your work as an author does take off in one direction or another it’s not unlikely that there will be other times when, for other reasons, you come to doubt if the effort is worth it, or if you’re suited to it. Your experience in those first, hard times will be there for you then. If you’ve not had enough money and not had enough support (or any support), if people have thought you were crazy and yet you’ve kept on and tried to learn your craft and taken notes and practised observation and made horrible mistakes and pondered giving up and listened and puzzled and fretted and wasted your time and woken at three in the morning being shaken by the best idea you’ve ever met and fought sentences for days until they’ve actually rolled over and let you win, then you already, deeply, know that you’re a writer. You already know that you kept writing, even when you had no reason to. You already know that it calls in you, that it’s a good thing, a life-changing thing and that you’d be foolish to ignore it. Way back when I was at my beginning I summoned up the courage to find my local writer in tesidence – we had one, funded by the Scottish Arts Council – and he read my material while I felt nauseous. Then he showed me how to make cocoa. Thinking back on it, making cocoa is probably all he could think of to do with someone who was clearly a ball of pure tension and liable to cry, if not faint, at any moment. I’ve been in his position since and it’s hard to be correctly tender and correctly firm with someone who’s just handed you an armful of their dreams – cocoa might not be a bad distraction. Someone who has fully committed to their work, pressed everything they can into word after word – because half-measures won’t cut it – they will have more than a little interest in what you think of the results. I sat and pondered my gradually cooling mug while he talked me through the two or three stories I’d handed over and was factual about their flaws and kicked the crap out of one of the endings – I still remember – and generally bludgeoned me. It was sore by the time we’d finished, but it was wonderful, too. Here was a writer who was talking to me as if I were a writer. I wasn’t a good writer – what I’d done was full of flaws and holes and silliness – but somebody qualified had read my work and thought it had enough merit to deserve close examination. I left knowing how to make cocoa – I still use his method – and feeling bruised. But I also knew it was all right. Somehow, it was going to be all right. I would start again, and I would rewrite. So Dear Readers, I wish you the very best attentions of a reader you can trust. Quite possibly this won’t be all 38 variously deluded members of your workshop, or your partner, or a secretly embittered relative, or a stranger on a bus, or anyone you have to pay. You’ll need somebody who cares about writing, who wants to help, quite possibly who wants to pass along the help they received when they were starting out. I wish you a Good Reader. Onwards. Fiction AL Kennedy guardian.co.uk
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How a Tunisian man’s self-immolation in December 2010 erupted into pro-democracy rebellions across the Arab world Garry Blight Sheila Pulham
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I’m interviewing Hammond on Thursday. What would you like me to ask him? Everyone’s got a gripe about transport. Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, is the man in charge of dealing with them. I’ve got an interview with him on Thursday and I’d like to know what you want me to ask. At the moment the biggest project on his plate is high-speed rail, which, depending on your view, is either a far-sighted investment that will transform Britain’s economy or a wasteful, multibillion vanity project. There’s a speech from Hammond setting out the case for high-speed rail here, the consultation document is here (pdf), and the Department for Transport’s high-speed rail site is here. For a summary of the case against, this polemic from Andrew Gilligan is a good starting point. But I don’t want to focus exclusively on HS2 (high speed two – HS1 is the line from London to the Channel Tunnel). On Monday this week Hammond announced a series of measures relating to drink-driving, including his decision not to lower the drink-drive limit. Other recent announcements have been on subjects like repairing winter potholes, changing the rail franchise system, modernising rail carriages and promoting electric cars . I’d be interested to hear suggested questions on these topics, or anything else in the transport portfolio. I might also try some questions about the general political situation. Hammond was shadow chief secretary to the Treasury before the election and we’ll be speaking on the day after the budget. His thoughts on the coalition may be worth hearing too. A fairly conventional Conservative (here’s his Wikipedia entry), Hammond is now teamed up with the leftish, free-thinking Liberal Democrat Norman Baker, who is based in the department as a junior minister. I’m curious about how they’re getting on. Transport policy Transport Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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SNP minister Nicola Sturgeon says that Scotland will avoid private sector involvement in its health service if it regains power The former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson once observed that the NHS was the closest thing the British had to a “national religion”. If that’s true, then for the past four years its high priestess in Scotland has been Scottish National party MSP Nicola Sturgeon. And with elections to the Scottish Parliament just weeks away, she now has her eyes on a second term in office. “I think it would be a very complacent politician who says yes, I’ve achieved everything I wanted to,” she told Guardian Healthcare. “I’ll always look back and think there’s more I could have done. But there has been a reduction in waiting times for cancer patients, and a massive reduction of 17% in hospital infections.” Indeed, such is Sturgeon’s record as health secretary, even her political opponents are privately full of qualified praise. “Safe pair of hands”, says one, “a politicians’ politician” another. Sturgeon’s stature has also risen after four years at the helm of the Scottish health service, no mean feat given the tricky nature of her brief. So does she think the SNP – rather than Labour – can now claim to be the party of the NHS? “I don’t think any political party should claim the NHS as its own, but yes, I think we have significantly increased our credibility – I don’t think anybody could reasonably say we can’t be trusted with the NHS after the past four years.” The SNP is acutely aware of the political potency of healthcare. Alex Salmond, the party’s leader and first minister, has already pledged to protect the NHS from cuts if he wins a second term. But while the ring fencing of health spending in England makes it possible to protect funding in Scotland for the foreseeable future, Sturgeon’s approach to healthcare delivery is orthodox compared with the modernising approach of Andrew Lansley south of the border. There, says Sturgeon, “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it will end the NHS in England as we know it”. “It’s interesting that they’re majoring on GP commissioning,” she adds, “and although I wouldn’t favour that model, that’s not actually the most objectionable part of what they’re trying to do. Rather it’s the ‘any willing provider’ part – that will open up the health service to private companies cherry-picking the most profitable bits, while the NHS is left with the less profitable stuff.” Sturgeon’s hostility to private involvement in the NHS is well known, and she has no ideological hang ups in admitting as much. Critics say it proves she’s not a creative thinker, with no desire for radical reform. Instead Sturgeon prefers more cautious change, pursuing efficiency savings and consolidation of existing services, while she expects the Christie Commission, a review of the Scottish public sector due to report after the election, to result in more structural reform. “Now I’m not a big fan of structural reform,” says Sturgeon, “not least because it doesn’t save that much money and distracts you from more important considerations. But I think in the next Parliament we will want to drive forward integration of health and social care. We also want to see special health boards working more closely together, with back-room services increasingly being shared and moves towards central procurement – these are the directions we’re already going in.” Another direction the SNP has committed to going in is a 25% reduction in senior NHS managers in the next parliamentary term. Sturgeon’s keynote speech to her party’s pre-election conference also included an ambitious initiative to improve the early detection of cancer, backed by £30m from the extra £1bn already committed to the health budget over the next four years. “We’ve got a really good record on cancer,” explains Sturgeon, “but we’ve not made the impact on cancer survival I’d have liked. We’re behind the rest of Europe because too many people in Scotland – by the time they actually see a doctor – are already too far advanced.” But if there’s any unfinished business from the SNP’s first term in government, it’s minimum pricing for alcohol. This clearly still rankles with Sturgeon, who calls Labour’s decision to vote against the provision “shameful”. But will it stand any more chancing of winning parliamentary support after the election? “Yes, I think it will,” says Sturgeon. “Labour being belligerent in year three/four of a Parliament when there’s an election coming up is very different from the early years of a new Parliament in which the SNP have a renewed mandate. We will fight for this.” So how does Sturgeon think her congregation perceives its high priestess? “In the community of health professionals some will support the SNP, some won’t; some will think I’m doing a good job, and some won’t,” she says diplomatically. “I hope, generally speaking, the SNP is seen to be doing a good job for the NHS. I think – I hope – that for the past four years the SNP and the health service have been pretty much on the same wavelength.” This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Healthcare Network to receive regular emails on NHS innovation. Scotland Strategy England Suppliers GP commissioning Efficiency Health and social care Finance Policy guardian.co.uk
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Police release images of Sian O’Callaghan leaving Suju nightclub last Saturday hoping they will jog memories Detectives investigating the disappearance of Sian O’Callaghan, who disappeared after a night out with friends in Swindon, have released CCTV footage of her last known movements. The 22-year-old disappeared after leaving Suju nightclub in Swindon at about 2.50am on Saturday to walk the half mile home to the flat she shared with her boyfriend, Kevin Reape. Analysis of O’Callaghan’s mobile phone records suggests that 32 minutes after she left the club her phone was somewhere in the 4,500-acre Savernake forest, near Marlborough. Police say the journey there could only have been made in a vehicle and they are continuing to search the forest. Wiltshire police released footage of office administrator O’Callaghan leaving the Japanese-themed nightclub and hope it will jog revellers’ memories about what she was doing at the club and who was with her. The footage shows her walking downstairs, past a reception desk and out on to the street past a small group of men. Police stressed the times shown on the CCTV are inaccurate and urged anyone who remembered seeing her to contact them. O’Callaghan’s boyfriend led the appeal for help in finding her at a press conference called by the police. “We all want to know where Sian is and we want her home safe and well,” he said. “Sian is a bubbly, lively person and is instantly liked by everyone she meets.” Reape, 26, who raised the alarm at 9.45am on Saturday when she had not returned to their flat, added: “Someone out there must have seen or known where she is and we just want them to come forward and contact the police. “This is a terrible time for all of us and we are praying for Sian’s safe return. “If Sian is listening and doesn’t want to contact us I beg her to at least ring the police.” Police say her disappearance is totally out of character. Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Inspectors criticise EDF Energy for electricity failures and ‘unplanned shutdowns’ at its reactors in East Lothian last year EDF Energy, the company that runs Britain’s nuclear power stations, has been reprimanded by government inspectors after a series of safety blunders at reactors in Scotland. Two reactors at Torness in East Lothian have suffered failures in electricity supplies, several “unplanned shutdowns”, and a seaweed blockage. It was the loss of power caused by the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the still unfolding nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan . The revelations have reignited concerns about the safety of Britain’s nuclear stations. French-owned EDF Energy admitted that it had not followed the correct procedures, but insisted that there had been no danger to the public. A report posted online by the UK government’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) discloses that there were two significant safety “events” at Torness in the last three months of 2010. “Correct operational procedures appear not have been observed,” says the report. In one incident, an equipment malfunction cut off the electricity supplied to a gas circulator. Gas circulators are critical components because they ensure that air is kept moving to cool reactor fuel and prevent it from overheating. The second incident also involved problems with electricity supply, though this time to a radioactive fuel dismantling facility at Torness. According to EDF Energy, the two events, which both occurred last September, were “entirely unconnected”. The NII report says: “The events included contributions from operators not complying in full with the instructions provided to ensure safe limits and conditions are observed during plant operations.” Nuclear inspectors have written to EDF Energy requiring more information about the incidents, and have received a response. The NII is satisfied there is “no immediate safety issue” but has left open the possibility of taking enforcement action in the future. The report, which covers the final three months of 2010, also reveals that one Torness reactor had “several unplanned shutdowns, requiring action to correct adverse conditions which affected operation of the reactor”. This happened after the reactor had restarted after a planned maintenance shutdown. In addition, the second reactor at Torness had to be manually shut down because the screens that take in seawater for cooling were blocked by a large mass of seaweed. Inspectors identified “a number of areas where further enhancement may be possible” in the safety arrangements for dealing with seaweed. “These are all events that should ring very loud alarm bells,” said Pete Roche, an Edinburgh-based nuclear consultant and editor of the no2nuclearpower.org.uk website . “As we’ve seen with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima, a combination of unexpected events all happening at once can quickly lead to a serious accident because of the highly dangerous nature of the fuel used to power these reactors.” The Scottish Nationalist MSP, Shirley-Anne Somerville , said: “EDF Energy must confirm that these issues have been resolved and that they have every measure in place to make sure there are no further problems at the plant.” She added: “The SNP’s opposition to nuclear power has been long held and while there are nuclear power stations operating in Scotland we must take every possible step to ensure their safety.” EDF Energy, which owns British Energy, operates eight nuclear power stations across Britain. It is also the lead company bidding to build a new programme of nuclear power stations in England . The director of Torness, Paul Winkle, argued that the company had a good safety record and welcomed input by the NII. The problems with electricity supplies to the gas circulators occurred because “one piece of a group of equipment failed”, he said. “While power to one gas circulator was removed, others operated as normal, as they are designed to do, and there was, therefore, no possibility of losing cooling.” The issue with power supplies to the radioactive fuel dismantling facility was reported to the NII because “we hadn’t followed procedure exactly as we should”, he added. According to Winkle, the seaweed blockage had been predicted by “sophisticated monitoring systems”. None of the incidents had caused any danger to staff, plant or the public, he insisted. Nuclear power Energy EDF Energy Rob Edwards guardian.co.uk
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One billion people lack basic water supplies and 2.6 billion lack access to sanitation. But we must invest wisely and locally Tuesday is World Water Day, an occasion to celebrate water and its crucial contribution to human life in all its forms. To mark the occasion, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a report that gathers available evidence on the benefits of investing in water and sanitation services. The emphasis of the report is on presenting the facts and figures in a way that can grab the attention of policy-makers and investors. So let’s start with the facts: almost 1 billion people lack access to safe water supplies, and 2.6 billion are without access to basic sanitation. Approximately 10% of the global burden of disease worldwide could be prevented with improvements to water, sanitation and hygiene and better water resource management. Wastewater often reaches the environment untreated or insufficiently treated, resulting in major impacts on surface waters and associated ecosystems as well as economic activity that uses these resources. Providing access to clean drinking water and sanitation can reduce health risks and can free up time for education and other productive activities, as well as increasing the productivity of the labour force. In times of budget austerity, sanitation and hygiene promotion can be an extremely efficient allocation of public resources. An earlier study, produced by the Disease Control Priorities Project , a World Bank-funded NGO examining health priorities in the developing countries, found that hygiene and sanitation promotion cost respectively $3 and $11 per DALY averted (disability adjusted life year – a measure of overall disease burden ), compared to $922 per DALY for the provision of antiretroviral therapy against Aids for example). The cost-effectiveness and multiple benefits of investing in sanitation are now being investigated in further detail by SHARE , a DFID -funded research consortium with a £10m budget over five years, which aims to accelerate progress on sanitation and hygiene in developing countries by generating research, and ensuring new and existing solutions are adopted at scale. Depending on when and how such investments are carried out, some “disbenefits” may emerge along the way, however. Lessons can be learned from history there. The Great Stink of London in 1858, which prompted MPs to support the construction of what became the first major sewerage system in the western world, was partly the result of the introduction of the advanced pour-flush toilet, seen at the time as more modern and technologically advanced. This resulted in a massive influx of water, causing cesspits to overflow into the Thames and its affluents. Investment must be holistic and intelligent. Today’s developing world is laden with examples of projects that created more harm than good when not combined with sanitation investments and hygiene education, as more water going through taps and toilets can cause more dirty water pools on the streets, attracting flies and spreading diseases. Despite the fact that investing in water and sanitation generates clear benefits (with benefit-to-cost ratios as high as 7-to-1 for basic services in developing countries), the sector remains woefully underfunded. Sanitation, in particular, is the poor parent and one of the most off-track UN millennium development goals. Governments are commonly unaware of the costs of inaction. The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable, safe and sustainable access to water and sanitation services, estimated that Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam lose an aggregated $9bn a year due to poor sanitation, equivalent to 2% of their combined GDP. This is comparable to the impact from climate change in the region estimated by the Stern Review – however, economic losses from sanitation are acutely felt in the present, as opposed to far away in the future. In Indonesia, WSP found that the results of this study contributed to raising awareness and facilitated a major realignment of government priorities onto improving sanitation as a way to underpin economic growth. So, does the water and sanitation sector need its own Stern review, to highlight the urgency and the magnitude of the needs at global level? The OECD report shows that this would be extremely challenging and of comparatively more limited use than for climate change. The magnitude of the benefits from water and sanitation can vary significantly depending on local factors, such as the prevalence of diarrheal diseases, population density or the quality of receiving waters. The full magnitude of the benefits often cannot be measured, as they would include non-economic benefits that are difficult to quantify , such as improvements in dignity, social status, cleanliness and overall well-being. Most importantly, remedial actions are to be taken at the local level. A global, coordinated policy response (assuming it were feasible) would be of less use for water and sanitation than for climate change. Instead, the report calls for developing a coherent methodology to estimate the impact of inadequate water and sanitation and conveying these critical messages to local decision-makers. Reliable benefit information could be used to encourage users to invest in their own services (particularly when demand is weak, as for sanitation), to support critical public investment decisions, to optimise investment strategies and to allocate costs to those who are most willing to bear them. • Sophie Trémolet is an independent consultant in the water and sanitation sector, who blogs on her company’s website here . She was the lead author of the OECD report on benefits of investing in water and sanitation and is a core member of the SHARE research consortium, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Water Millennium development goals Sanitation Hygiene guardian.co.uk
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Former Israeli president set to appeal after being jailed for raping one woman and sexually harassing two other staff Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav has been sentenced to seven years in prison for rape and other sexual offences following a year-long trial which ended with his conviction in December. Katsav, president from 2000 to 2007, said he was innocent and was being persecuted by the courts and Israeli society at large. He is expected to appeal. Katsav was convicted of two counts of rape of an employee at the tourism ministry, where he was minister from 1996-1999. He was also convicted of the indecent assault and sexual harassment of two other employees at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem during his presidency. The president was given the chance of a plea bargain in which he could admit lesser charges but chose to fight all charges in a trial which, although conducted in private, was accompanied by leaks from both sides in the media. The judges told the court: “The crime of rape damages and destroys a person’s soul … Due to the severity of the crime, the punishment must be clear and precise. The defendant committed the crime and like every other person, he must bear the consequences. No man is above the law.” Katsav, 65, sobbed and interrupted the judges repeatedly. “You are all wrong. It’s all lies … The women know they are lying. They are laughing at this judgment,” he said. The former president was also ordered to pay 100,000 shekels (£17,000) to the rape victim and 25,000 shekels to each of the other victims. The rape victim, known in public as Complainant A, told the Israeli press on Monday: “I am not vengeful, but I think the court should send a message. Regardless of how many years he spends in prison, Katsav will always be a villain. The number of years is not the issue here, but the harsh verdict, which proved that Katsav committed these despicable acts and raped me.” While police investigations and trials of prime ministers and ministers is reasonably common in Israel – the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert and current foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman are both currently being investigated on suspicion of financial crimes – the enormity of Katsav’s crimes has shocked Israel. Katsav migrated to Israel from Iran in 1951, his early life was typical of the hardship experienced by many Middle Eastern Jews who migrated to Israel. He and his family lived in a succession of tented transit camps until one was renamed the development town of Kiryat Malakhi, which became his political base. Many Middle Eastern Jews felt discriminated against by the European elite in the early days of the Israeli state. Katsav’s political career mirrored the growing self-confidence of Middle Eastern Jews which translated into the rise of the Likud party, which eventually broke the Labour party domination of Israeli government. The first day of Katsav’s incarceration has not yet been made public. He has been given 45 days to appeal to the supreme court. Israel Middle East Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
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Saturday 26 March will see Britain’s largest single protest since the anti-Iraq war march of 2003. Thousands upon thousands will travel to London to protest against a wide range of government cuts. Patrick Kingsley talked to six of them about what they’re fighting for Holly Sprake-Hill, 31, mother, Manchester My four-year-old daughter Willow goes to a Sure Start nursery in Longsight, down the road from where I live in Manchester. I’m protesting about how the council is selling off the childcare element of the nursery. It’s going to have a very big impact on her. We don’t yet have the specifics, but she might have to change locations. At the very least, there will be a high staff turnover, and a decrease in the continuity of care. The council has already offered voluntary redundancies to a lot of the workers, and four of the senior staff will be leaving in April. This will mean she’s not going to get the same people looking after her as she’s used to – and that’s mad. Kids like regular, continuous care with people they know and trust. The quality of her everyday childcare is going to be massively affected. For me, it’s also massive. I work about 25 miles away. So it’s very important for me to know that she’s being looked after in a place that I can trust, is getting quality childcare and good pre-school education. It would change my working life an awful lot, too. I’m a children’s healthcare worker, so I know what effect the loss of these provisions would have on both my child, and the children I work with. But this is just one small part of what’s going on in Manchester at the moment. At least 23 other children’s centres in Manchester are affected. They also want to close down leisure and youth services, there are cuts to libraries, and they tried to close our local swimming baths. It’s ridiculous, because there will soon be a massive public outcry about how there’s nowhere for kids to go. We’ve hopefully managed to save the swimming baths, and we did a lot of local protesting to sort that out. A lot of local schools use that pool. It’s been really important for the community to keep it open. I hope the march will make the government really listen to people. There’s a group of up to 50 people coming down from Levenshulme, which is quite a deprived area of Manchester. We’re quite good at motivating ourselves for protests. It has been a real coming-together of everybody. Yusuf Molade, 17, year 12 student, London I’m going on the march because the education funding reforms are unjustified. I’m worried about the debt I may find myself in after I leave university. There will be the tuition fees of £27,000, plus a maintenance loan, which could be as much as £7,000. So I’ll have £34,000 of debt by the time I’m 22. It’s crazy to say the least. In a recession, we need highly educated workers. But putting up tuition fees to £9,000 a year will achieve the opposite: it’ll ward off a lot of students from going to university. A few people I know have just dropped out of college because of the scrapping of the educational maintenance allowance (EMA), and the rise in tuition fees. They don’t feel the debt would be worth it. I can understand slightly why the government is cutting the EMA. It’s not really necessary after the first couple of months of college, because you’ve bought all your books by then. But it should have just reduced the threshold for the time being – to about £10,000 or £15,000 a year – to ensure that people below that threshold definitely get their £30 a week. The government has talked about replacing the EMA with a national scholarship scheme, where the money is given to the college, and it, in turn, decides what to do with it. But I don’t think that’s a very good idea. It’s better it comes straight from the government because it’s less complicated, and because it’s embarrassing for students to have to go to their colleges and explain their situation. I want the march to make the government recognise just how many people are against them. The government is supposed to represent the people, but we don’t feel it is doing that. It is making choices that we do not agree with at all. That said, I’ll be going with people from my college, and I don’t think we’ll get as big a turnout from there as we did for the protests over the winter. People are quite pessimistic because they feel they’ve been defeated. They think democracy’s a joke, and that the only time they can voice their opinion and hold the government to account is at the ballot box. And, obviously, people of that age don’t yet have the vote. So they’re waiting for the general election in four years’ time. Nora Pearce, 62, midwife, Kingston upon Thames I’m going to be there to defend the NHS. I’ll be with a very large group from Kingston hospital, where I work, and a couple of my grandchildren, and we’ll all be carrying two flipping heavy banners. We feel the NHS is under attack. Before the last election, Nick Clegg and David Cameron used Kingston hospital as a backdrop to say that the NHS would be safe in their hands. But now the government has said the NHS must have £20bn worth of efficiency savings, despite maintaining that no frontline staff will be cut. And at Kingston we have been told that over the next four years we will be losing nearly 500 staff – 20% of whom are nurses and doctors. Now, if that ain’t frontline staff, then what is? The hospital is saying that no services will be affected. Yeah, right. It is also saying there will be no redundancies. I half-believe that, because it could achieve staff reductions through people retiring. But it ain’t about redundancies: it’s about the service. You can’t run a hospital without the staff. At Kingston, we have 22 consultants, and 214 nurses and midwives. They’re not exactly sitting in the cupboard twiddling their thumbs. So I hope the march will make the government seriously rethink these reforms. They just don’t get the ethos of the health service. I don’t know how to say this without sounding pious, but I’ve worked for the NHS for 30 years, and I don’t work there for the pay. I work there out of public duty. People in the health service work much more than their hours. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve gone without a break – how many times I’ve worked past the end of my shift when the people I was looking after needed me to stay. The plan to sell off the blood transfusion service, which will be run by private companies for profit, is a perfect example of how the government doesn’t get what the NHS is about: people don’t give their blood for profit. If they bring in all these private companies, pity the poor sod who has got multiple health problems – the private sector won’t want you. They won’t want to do your hip operation if you’re diabetic, epileptic and elderly, because it’ll cost too much money. The other thing that’s upsetting us is our pensions. When they talk about the “gold-plated” NHS pension, I don’t know what Mickey-Mouse world they’re living in. I don’t think a £5,000 pension is particularly gold-plated. A few people in the public sector get very good pensions, but the vast majority of us don’t. Caroline Johnson, 46, care worker, Birmingham We’ve got 15 coaches coming down. There has been a huge uptake in Birmingham, particularly from people working in social care. Every service that provides what we think of as critical help for vulnerable people is suffering massive cuts. Aldridge Road day centre, where I worked, closed in Christmas 2009, and the cuts will lead to more closures of centres for adults with learning disabilities. There are two proposals: one is to put everybody with disabilities on an individual budget, from which they will have to buy their own care; the other is to cut services for people the council deems no longer eligible. There are 4,000 Birmingham service users who will be told they don’t qualify at all. It’s not true that people with critical needs won’t be affected. There’s a very complicated new way of working out whether somebody has critical or substantial needs. On the form, there’s a question: “Does your neighbour do your shopping?” And if their neighbours do, then that would count against them receiving help. What the council’s doing is heartbreaking. Mary Cooke, 72, pensioner, Peterborough A group of us from the Peterborough Pensioners Association have booked seats on a coach. We are concerned about what’s happening in the country. We’re worried about the lack of jobs for young people. We’re worried about our grandchildren, because children’s services are being underfunded. We’re worried about underfunding of adult social care. We also don’t think the plans for a flat-rate weekly pension of £140 are a good idea. Over time, it’ll reduce pensioners’ income. We want the money to be collected while people work. But what is happening to the NHS is the most dreadful thing. We’re especially worried about privatisation and the way the Tories are letting GPs control local funding. We don’t think GPs should be in charge of funding, in addition to the medical examination of patients. We don’t want GPs to be in a situation where they have to make judgments about who they put forward for treatment because they haven’t got enough money. Fancy experimenting with the NHS! How dare they. Leave it alone, and get young people into work. Alex Scott, 26, UKUncut activist, Liverpool I’m coming down with about 50 people from UKUncut Liverpool. The cuts are sure affecting me directly: there are very few chances for employment in Liverpool at the moment. Here, the main employers are the public services, and when I left university last year, I wanted to get a job as either a 999 operator, or with the council. But when the cuts were announced, they closed down all applications. So I couldn’t find a job, and I was stuck working at a Subway shop, which I left to work at a coffee bar – only to lose my job soon afterwards. My girlfriend is also affected – her disability benefits are getting cut savagely. And you can imagine that for someone with mental health problems, this is extremely stressful. As well as her boyfriend, I’m also her carer, and her disability living allowance is where my carer’s money comes from. So I’m living on the goodwill of other people at the moment because the government won’t give me my money for looking after her. And she requires 24-hour care – someone to be with her, especially when she’s going through a very bad phase of depression. Protest Cuts and closures NHS Health Pensions Economic policy Students Tuition fees Social care Public sector cuts Public sector careers Older people Patrick Kingsley guardian.co.uk
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Punch Taverns chief executive Ian Dyson said that the company’s current structure is unsustainable Pub chain Punch Taverns has unveiled plans to split its heavily indebted business in two and hive off almost 3,000 pubs. By demerging its managed pubs from its leased estate, Punch hopes to finally get to grips with the £3bn debt pile that has helped to destroy 95% of the company’s value in the last four years. Chief executive Ian Dyson admitted on Tuesday morning that Punch’s current structure is unsustainable. The company plans to demerge Spirit, the managed pubs division that includes brands such as Chef & Brewer and Bar 38. This will leave Punch with almost 6,000 tenanted pubs which it rents to landlords. It will then sell around 500 of these leased pubs per year, until it is left with a core estate of 3,000 sites. “A demerger will provide the platform to enable both businesses to focus on the very different strategies required to deliver shareholder value and will provide choice and liquidity for investors,” said Dyson, who joined Punch from Marks & Spencer last year. Dyson believes that Spirit will enjoy an immediate fillip once it is released from the shackles of Punch, whose future has been threatened by its debt mountain. Rebuilding the leased pubs arm will take longer, he said. The plan will need the approval of Punch’s bondholders, and Dyson said this morning that he “needs to engage” with them with a view to “optimising the capital structure”. It is not clear how receptive bondholders will be to such negotiations. Punch has reported encouraging financial results in recent months . However, the industry is experiencing a tough time, with cheaper alcohol from supermarkets encouraging thrifty drinkers to stay at home. The company believes that this trend will continue – forecasting a 3.1% per year decline in drinking out in pubs over the next five years. In contrast, it expects the market for eating out in pubs to increase by 3.5% over the same period. Punch grew rapidly through the last decade under former chief executive Giles Thorley. He funded this expansion by borrowing against Punch’s property assets, a process known as securitisation. Thorley was hailed by the City as one of its brightest stars, but Punch’s fortunes crashed as the credit crunch struck. Thorley resigned nearly a year ago , following a £375m rights issue that kept the company running. There had been predictions that Punch might simply hand its leased estate to its bondholders. Dyson said he had considered it, but concluded it was not in anyone’s best interests. “It would remove the opportunity to create equity value in the leased business and would negatively impact the management, operation and valuation of the entire group,” he said. Having peaked at almost £14 in May 2007, shares in Punch fell as low as 35p in early 2009. They rose 2.1p in early trading on Tuesday, to 74p. Punch Taverns Food & drink industry Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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