Corporation seeks more job losses as it holds considers other cost-cutting measures such as reducing daytime output The BBC is planning to cut up to a quarter of its workforce by 2016 in order to make the necessary savings following the six-year licence fee freeze . More than 1,000 job losses have already been announced – including 650 at the World Service and 360 from the BBC’s online operation – and this figure is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. BBC executives are understood to be working with a 25% staff reduction figure as they draw up plans to meet director general Mark Thompson’s target of a 20% cut to the corporation’s costs in the coming years. According to BBC internal figures, as of September 2010 about 21,927 full-time staff were employed by the corporation, including 1,865 at commercial arm BBC Worldwide. This suggests total job losses could top 5,000, although BBC sources said no specific jobs figure could yet be put against the 25% staff reduction as a number of factors are still being worked out. For instance, the number of job cuts may be reduced if greater than expected savings are made in areas other than staff cost. The September 2010 BBC staff figure also excludes World Service employees. The BBC spent just over £1bn on salaries during the 12 months to the end of March 2010, out of a total licence fee income of £3.6bn. A BBC spokesman said the savings being made will “transform the BBC”. “Whilst we cannot speculate about job losses because it is far too early to say, there are many other ways of make savings and it will depend on what we can achieve in areas such as technology and finding better ways of working,” the spokesman added. “That is why we are asking staff for their ideas and input now including how we become a simpler organisation, and how we can attract, retain and inspire the best people. We recognise that this is difficult for staff and will be providing as much support as is possible to those areas affected.” However, BBC source said: “The only way to make the savings is by cutting headcount. The BBC has made so many efficiencies, it is very lean already.” The issue of how big the BBC should be is being planned out as executives gear up for moving out of BBC Television Centre in west London . BBC children’s, learning, sport, BBC Breakfast and parts of technology and Radio 5 Live are moving to the BBC’s new northern headquarters in Salford by next year, while BBC News is moving to the redeveloped Broadcasting House in central London. Remaining staff, such as BBC Vision employees, are due to be housed in buildings in White City just down the road from Television Centre, alongside BBC Worldwide. The iconic Television Centre is due to be emptied by about 2015/16 and sold, although the BBC is considering keeping a small presence there and renting some studios. Alongside the proposal to cut 25% of staff, there is a series of internal discussions about savings, under the banner Delivering Quality First. According to reports, one idea being mooted is to cut BBC2 daytime output and replace it with footage from the BBC News Channel. Those familiar with the situation say it could save between £12m and £15m a year. One executive said: “Politically it’s a good statement and would not be terribly bad share-wise. It would also help prop up BBC1′s Weakest Link, which is expensive and has been hit a bit by ITV’s The Chase.” However, the outgoing BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, said last week at his farewell speech at the London School of Economics that cutting BBC2′s daytime to fill it with news in order to save money is “not the preferred option” and he thinks it “unlikely” it will end up being a proposal put to the trust. ‘Staff are incredibly stressed and getting more so by the day’ As the BBC considers the impact of the licence fee freeze, the picture for programme-makers at the coal face is already bleak in some areas. One BBC producer claimed efficiencies are so tight on BBC4 series Timeshift that producers could not afford camera crews and are having to “self-shoot” while researchers and assistant producers learn how to record sound. In addition, they are having to travel with kit on National Express coaches, rather than more expensive trains or cars and work very long hours. One source said: “Although the health and safety policy and risk assessment will dictate a day no longer than 14 hours, this isn’t always adhered to because there just isn’t money for hotels. “People will say that they’re fine and that it’s going well, to save face with the executives, when behind the scenes the staff are incredibly stressed and getting more so by the day.” The insider alleged that staff feel pushed and are “too exhausted and stressed to follow health and safety procedures”. “These schedules don’t work, they don’t encourage a creative atmosphere but they do create stressed staff.” Another producer said that in their division contracts of around one or three months were increasingly “the norm” as the BBC tries to save money but said it is leading to job insecurity and lack of loyalty. •
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enlarge These days the news cycle is compressed and chaotic. About the time I think it’s safe to look at something longer than 5 minutes, something else blows up. Rest assured, it’s all intentional. Just for the heck of it, I decided to look at the top news in six key states: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. Here are some samples of the headlines: Michigan – Emergency manager bill headed to Michigan governor LANSING, Mich. Emergency financial managers appointed by the state to run struggling cities and schools would have broad new powers under legislation approved by the Michigan House. The main bill in the package was approved Tuesday by a 62-48 vote in the Republican-led chamber. The Senate has passed the bill, which now goes to Gov. Rick Snyder for signature. Managers who are appointed would have the power to terminate union contracts held by school teachers and local government employees. Local elected officials would lose some of their powers. Ohio – Gov. Kasich Proposed Budget Cuts From the sidebar: Libraries will see a 5 percent cut. A 25 percent cut per year in the Local Government Fund for two years. An 11.5 percent cut in K-12 education for fiscal year 2012 and a 4.9 percent cut for fiscal year 2013. That includes elimination of one-time federal stimulus money. Closing seven regional Taxpayer Service Centers, including one in Youngstown, and eliminating 99 jobs. That’s a savings of $1 million over the two years, not including the staff reductions. A 6 percent cut in fiscal year 2012 for the state’s seven business incubators, including the one in Youngstown, and the elimination of all funding for the incubators in 2013 to save a total of $15.9 million over two years. The state is expected to fund the incubators through the new JobsOhio program in 2013, however. Pennsylvania – Corbett, Legislature sued over adultBasic expiration Gov. Tom Corbett and other state officials have been named as defendants in a lawsuit for allowing the expiration of adultBasic, a state health insurance program for the working poor. The complaint alleges that the state government is violating the law – specifically, the Pennsylvania Tobacco Settlement Act and the state constitution — by allowing adultBasic funding to drop to zero. That’s because the state law, according to the complaint, requires that a portion of the annual tobacco settlement money go to adultBasic. The governor on Monday reiterated that the state was trying to save money. “I would remind everybody, including those people who have filed the lawsuit against whoever they have filed the lawsuit, that this was a program that was not sufficiently funded,” Mr. Corbett. Kansas – Kan. governor details budget cuts Gov. Sam Brownback is cutting $56.5 million from the current Kansas budget, taking the biggest chunk from aid to the state’s 289 public school districts. Florida – Florida governor’s budget will hurt schools: Moody’s Florida Governor Rick Scott’s budget proposals calling for sweeping corporate and property tax cuts are a credit negative for school districts in the fourth most populous U.S. state, Moody’s Investors Service said on Thursday. Also: Governor May End Beach Renourishment Funding Some Brevard County residents told WFTV Tuesday that one of the Governor’s plans to save money could cripple the economy he’s trying to help. The Cocoa Beach pier has not always been so wide and residents said they could lose everything if the Governor stops funding beach renourishment. And: Teacher reform bill set for final vote Wednesday Opponents tried one last time — and failed — to make changes to a bill that would dramatically reform the way public school teachers are evaluated, paid and hired. Now the fast-track legislation is one step away from the desk of Gov. Rick Scott, who has indicated he will sign it. The Florida House moved along Senate Bill 736, which would tie teacher pay to student test scores, eliminate so-called tenure for new hires as of July 1 and end layoffs based on seniority. The chamber will take a vote on the proposal Wednesday afternoon. Wisconsin – After weeks of divisiveness, lawmakers extend an olive branch Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, on Tuesday rescinded a series of fines and penalties aimed at Democrats, including a contempt order that could have prevented the minority party from voting in committee meetings the next three weeks. Arizona – Bill for Flat Income Tax Clears Arizona House The bill would gradually reduce them to a flat rate of just below 2.1 percent. It also would repeal some current credits, deductions, adjustments and exemptions. Democrat critics of the bill said there’s evidence that the bill actually could increase taxes paid by Arizonans. What each of these state-related stories has in common: A Republican governor, a Republican legislature, union employees, and a budget deficit. The last item is being used as an excuse for the first two items to slam the union employees and teachers, make a lot of noise, stir up a lot of dust, and pander to the US Chamber of Commerce in the process. I have a theory. It’s only a theory and I might have to put my tinfoil hat on while I’m sharing it, but it goes like this. Jobs were the wedge that kept everyone disengaged during the midterms. That got a bunch of Club for Growth governors elected, who are now paying off their business cronies, at which time we will see jobs begin to emerge again. In other words, a deal was struck: Kill the unions, we’ll start hiring. Removing my tinfoil hat now. Tell me what you think.
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The singer lent his gangsta croon to chart-topping singles by Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey and Eminem Hip-hop star Nate Dogg, who has just died at the age of 41, isn’t as familiar a name as his friend and long-time collaborator Snoop Dogg, who even your Grandma has heard of. But Nathaniel D Hale, always an immaculate figure in his suit and trademark bowler hat, had his gangsta croon all over dozens of hit records. A
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Italian PM says sexual schedule too much for man half his age, and adds his girlfriend would ‘scratch his eyes out’ anyway Silvio Berlusconi has ridiculed the case against him on vice charges, saying that the number of women with whom he was alleged to have had relations defied belief. “I am 75 years old”, he told the centre-left newspaper, La Repubblica. “And even if I am a rascal, 33 girls in two months seems to me to be too many, even for a 30-year-old. It’s too many for anyone.” With three weeks to go before his trial, Berlusconi was signalling the launch of a vigorous counter-offensive. In fact, Italy’s prime minister is 74 years old, and the prosecutors do not claim he had sex with all the female guests who attended dinners at his mansion home outside Milan, some of whom stayed on for alleged, so-called “bunga bunga” parties. Berlusconi portrayed them as “Carefree, elegant dinners”. Asked why, in that case, the women had been paid large sums of money by his accountant, he said it was because of his charitable nature. “I pay for operations, the dentist [and] university fees to all those who have need of it”, he said. The prime minister, who split from his second wife in 2009, said that another reason for disbelieving the prosecution case was that his girlfriend would have “scratched my eyes out” if he had done the things of which he is accused. He had earlier been quoted as saying he had a steady female companion. But, despite fevered speculation in the Italian media, she has never been identified. Berlusconi said that “fortunately, I have managed to keep her out of this dirt”. On 6 April, he is due to go on trial charged with paying an underage prostitute and then trying to cover up the alleged offence by abusing his position. The young woman at the centre of the case is a Moroccan immigrant, Karima el-Mahroug. Documents published on Tuesday showed prosecutors believe she was only 16 years old – and not 17 as previously believed – when she first visited Berlusconi. In May 2010, she was taken to a police station on suspicion of theft, but then released after the prime minister telephoned to say, erroneously, that she was the grand-daughter of the then Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. Berlusconi has insisted he believed this to be the case, and was trying to avert a diplomatic incident. But in his latest interview, and for the first time, he appeared to place responsibility for the misunderstanding on Mubarak. “I can swear that a week before I had spoken to Mubarak about this girl for at least 15 minutes,” he said. Berlusconi added that, at the time, he was “dealing with the crisis between Libya and Switzerland. I thought: what would happen if the relative of a foreign prime minister [sic], in this case Mubarak, were to be jailed in Italy?” In 2008, relations between Libya and Switzerland were pitched into crisis following the arrest of Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Hannibal, and his wife for allegedly beating up their servants. Silvio Berlusconi Italy John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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‘Right to be forgotten’ would ensure users of Facebook and other sites could completely erase personal data The European Union is to enshrine a “right to be forgotten online” to ensure that, among other things, prospective employers cannot find old Facebook party photos of someone wearing nothing but a lampshade. In a speech to the European parliament, the EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, warned companies such as Facebook that: “A US-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules.” In a package of proposals to be unveiled before the summer, the commissioner intends to force Facebook and other social networking sites to make high standards of data privacy the default setting and give control over data back to the user. “I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing,” Reding said. “The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary.” Under the proposals, national privacy watchdogs will be endowed with powers to investigate and launch legal proceedings against companies with services that target EU consumers. Reding’s spokesman, Matthew Newman, said: “A year ago she issued Facebook a warning because the privacy settings changed for the worse and now she’s legislating to put flesh on those bones.” Facebook profiles have been accessible by default since January last year. Users have to opt in to ensure that their photographs and other information can be viewed only by friends. Newman said companies “can’t think they’re exempt just because they have their servers in California or do their data processing in Bangalore. If they’re targeting EU citizens, they will have to comply with the rules.” Privacy settings are often so complex that a typical user does not know how to use them, Reding’s staff say. The new legislation will ensure privacy is inbuilt and not tacked on later as an added extra. The rules will also outlaw the surreptitious gathering of data without the user explicitly giving permission. Newman said that the laws would make the EU the first jurisdiction to deliver a “right to be forgotten”. “Maybe you’ve been at a party, up until four in the morning and you or someone you know posts photos of you,” he said. “Well, it’s a harmless bit of fun, but being unable to erase this can threaten your job or access to future employment.” The rules would give consumers a specific right to withdraw their consent to sharing their data. “And after you have withdrawn your consent, there shouldn’t even be a ghost of your data left in some server somewhere. It’s your data and it should be gone for good,” he said. Facebook believes it is already compliant with EU law and says it is working alongside Brussels officials in the revision of data protection legislation that was enacted in 1995, in the early days of the internet. “Facebook is fully engaged in the debates around the review of the European Union’s data protection directive,” said a company spokeswoman, Sophy Silver. “We work closely with data protection authorities across the EU and with the European commission and parliament.. Silver said Facebook users were already able to remove their data completely from view, after which it took a few weeks to clean up the company’s servers. Social networking Facebook European Union Internet Europe Leigh Phillips guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Hill has an article with some interesting information about what the ConservaDems and anti-American-workers faction of the Obama administration want to do with Social Security as the budget fights move along. The Hill: Social Security reform is splitting President Obama’s economic and political advisers. Obama is being pulled in opposite directions by those whose priorities are fiscal and those whose No. 1 concern is electoral Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Sperling’s deputy, Jason Furman — leading figures in the president’s economic team — are pressing Obama to cut Social Security benefits if necessary, say sources familiar with their positions. But Obama’s political team, led by David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Jim Messina, are urging the president to understand that backing benefit cuts could prove disastrous to his 2012 reelection hopes, sources say. The political team is winning the argument so far, but internal debate rages at the White House as Republicans in Congress insist sweeping efforts to restore government finances must include Social Security reform. “Gene Sperling and Jason Furman and some of the Treasury people started with the posture that we’re the best people to reform Social Security — that was when the Democrats had a majority in both houses of Congress,” said a Democratic policy expert who has met Obama’s economic policy team over the past two years. “The same people have continued to make that argument even as they’re now responding to conservatives who are stronger in the Congress,” the source, who strongly opposes benefits cuts, told The Hill. “There are two camps,” the source added. “One camp wants to be able to throw a bone to Republicans and some [centrist] Democrats. “The political people would prefer not to be accused of being the party that cuts Social Security in those ways. Some political people would like to see the president out there defending the program and making the case that it has nothing to do with the deficit.”… read on I label anyone who wants to cut benefits from Social Security anti-working-class family , so if this article is correct, then Geithner and that crew of “centrists” can go screw themselves. There is no problem with Social Security. Why would anyone with a D in front of their name want to cut benefits? It’s nuts. Every poll shows quite clearly that even Republican voters do not want a cut in these benefits. If Sperling’s argument is about reforming Social Security and Medicare without taking away from them, then OK, but that’s not what I’m reading here. Do these creatures only listen to Villager gasbags that want working class Americans to be the only people to share the sacrifice and suffer in America after Wall Streeters and their partners caused the Great Recession? You can always count on Jonathan Chait to play the Beltway bipartisan fetish card: There’s a benefit in bashing Republicans for going after Social Security. But that assumes they do go after Social Security, which, despite all their rhetoric, is far from certain. I’d argue that, politically speaking, obtaining a bipartisan deal on the deficit is likely to be popular. While the specifics of cutting entitlements are extremely unpopular, the general meta-message of bipartisan cooperation is highly popular. And people tend to follow the broad heuristics of whether the parties are getting along rather than the specifics, which is why the health care law, whose policies were mostly very popular, was so unpopular. Americans do like some bipartisan agreements, but not when it comes to cutting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. It would be political suicide for President Obama to agree to any type of cuts because of some ‘can’t we all just get along” idiocy, and his base will not forget it. Americans will not stand for it either. Let’s be clear about something else that Geithner doesn’t understand: Republicans who support cutting benefits for the Working Joe will never give Obama any credit for doing the wrong thing either. The partisan breakdown of the results shows that Republicans, Democrats and independents agree that cutting Social Security is the least acceptable option of the three presented in the poll. It came in third among all respondents who made a choice. The President needs to stand strong against the Republicans’ call for for a government shutdown over the debt ceiling and insane budget cuts. If Obama’s team is really looking for new ways to fire up the base, then this ain’t one of them. For now, the Obama team is unveiling few new ideas specifically keyed to firing up core constituencies. A recent White House conference call urged young voters to hold roundtables, which administration officials may attend, to discuss priorities and offer feedback. President Obama has become a rallying point for Conservatives, so If Republicans do gain all the power in 2012 and then proceed to cut the programs, all hell will break loose. A Democratic President can never propose such an idea, especially when a program like Social Security is NOT in trouble.
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One approach is to patronise the locals, another is to immerse yourself in a culture. Failing that you could just hate robots They’ll let just about anyone present a travelogue these days. Caroline Quentin’s got one. Kate Humble’s got one. Justin Lee Collins has got one. So how could you get one too? Here are five things you need to remember … Become famous for something completely unrelated to travel You don’t need to be an experienced travel presenter to present a travelogue. Or a presenter. You don’t even need to particularly enjoy travelling, for that matter. Here, more or less, is how the modern travelogue commissioning process works: one bag contains the names of people off the telly (Griff Rhys Jones, Piers Morgan, Robbie Coltrane, Joanna Lumley, Caroline Quentin, Martin Clunes), and another contains some locations (Dubai, India, the B roads of the United Kingdom, Guernsey, all of Africa as seen from a hot air balloon). Then they get drawn together, FA Cup-style. Have a clear reason for making the travelogue Covering the battle of Anzio for the British army’s Film and Photo Unit instilled in Alan Whicker a deep love of capturing the world on camera. It was this love that prompted him to become an international reporter for BBC’s Tonight , which in turn spurred him on to make a beloved travel-based documentary series of his own. Meanwhile, in the first episode of Channel 5′s recent travelogue Turning Japanese , Justin Lee Collins unveiled a different, but no less worthwhile, motivation: “I’m not particularly well-travelled, I’ve never really been outside of my comfort zone … I don’t like robots”. Which is basically the same thing if you think about it. Please don’t think about it. Where possible, link travel with food If you want to see a country, look at its food. This is why so many travelogues shine a light on the cuisines of far-flung lands. And, if you’re after a food-based travelogue, it’s important to find your niche. There are presenters who’ll eat anything, such as Anthony Bourdain . There are presenters who’ll drink anything, such as James May and Oz Clarke. There are presenters who’ll eat everything, such as Adam Richman from the brilliant Man v Food. However, there has never been a presenter who goes abroad, only ever orders chips regardless of location and still somehow manages to contract an explosive form of food poisoning that rears up at spectacularly inopportune moments. Commissioning editors, call me. Develop advanced condescension skills A great deal of your travelogue will be taken up by your interaction with real locals, and your experiences with a culture that you might not be familiar with. And, while it’s important not to directly judge them, you are allowed to be a bit condescending. Just like Caroline Quentin during her travelogue A Passage Through India, really – especially the moment when she meets a housewife who has to cook for 10 people every day much to Quentin’s obvious dismay. And the moment when a local tells her that the Ganges river has antiseptic properties. And, oh, pretty much everything else she does. Go native If you want to fully immerse yourself in a different culture, like Bruce Parry , then you have to follow a different set of conventions. First you must throw yourself into any gruesome initiation ceremony that your host tribe requests of you, even if it does look like it’s been cooked up to make you look like a fool. And second, always end your travelogue with a shot of a tribeswoman saying how handsome you are. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t actually say you’re handsome because she’s saying it in a language that hardly anyone speaks, so you can just subtitle whatever you like. Not that Bruce Parry does that, you understand. But I would. Travel TV Television Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
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Report concludes that Sistema Scotland project to immerse deprived children in classical music is having a positive effect and can achieve ‘social transformation’ Raploch, on the outskirts of Stirling in the heart of Scotland, may boast a stunning location between Stirling Castle and the city’s famous monument to William Wallace, benignly overlooked by the Ochil Hills. But it is one of Scotland’s most deprived estates, with 33% unemployment, grave problems with drug and alcohol abuse, and poor health. Only four children out of every 100 make it to higher education. But since 2008 an audacious project to change the future for Raploch’s young people by immersing them in classical music has been working with 80% of children at nursery and primary schools. And now a new report commissioned by the Scottish government has concluded that the project, Sistema Scotland , has the potential “to achieve social transformation”. Though the report acknowledged that the success of the long-term aims of the scheme – including hopes that children will be driven towards higher educational achievement and, ultimately, out of poverty – are impossible to evaluate at the moment, it concluded that the scheme was already having an overwhelmingly positive effect on the children involved. The programme is based on the Venezuelan El Sistema, the celebrated music-education and social-inclusion project founded in the 1970s, which has produced musicians such as Gustavo Dudamel , the music director of the LA Philharmonic, and the acclaimed Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra . Sistema Scotland has 388 children involved, of whom 90 have joined the Big Noise Orchestra, playing music together for up to 20 hours a week, and receiving intensive tuition from experienced musicians. During term-time the children in the orchestra receive tuition in after-school clubs, and in the holidays they are taught five times a week. Of the parents questioned for the report, all felt that their child’s confidence had improved as a result of their involvement, and over 90% felt that their child was happier. Nearly 80% believed that their child was better able to concentrate, was more disciplined and more focused after their involvement in Sistema Scotland. The report said that “the holistic, immersive approach of Big Noise is central to achieving significant transformation, particularly to the lives of the most vulnerable children”. Sistema Scotland was initiated by Richard Holloway, a former bishop of Edinburgh, after he visited Venezuela and was impressed by the profound social effects that El Sistema had on the young people involved. The scheme costs £474,000 a year, with 11% of the funding coming from public sources, including Stirling council. The organisers of Sistema Scotland are now keen to increase fundraising efforts to establish versions of the scheme in other parts of the country, and aim to be working with two more communities in the next two years. Scottish culture minister Fiona Hyslop said: “This evaluation shows that Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise Orchestra is a great cultural experience for the children involved, which is having a positive impact on their lives. They are learning through creativity and aspiring to be part of something bigger.” Classical music Scotland Young people Social exclusion Poverty Arts in schools Charlotte Higgins guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Latest official figures show public sector unemployment is accelerating – and that’s before the spending cuts start to really kick in More gloomy data on public services jobs today – and this is before the spending cuts have really taken hold. Latest figures show that public sector employment fell by 132,000 in 2010, with local government accounting for the biggest chunk of job losses, and Yorkshire, the north west and Scotland shouldering a big share of the pain. Office for National Statistics data reveals that the cull of public sector jobs started under the last government, but accelerated under the Coalition in the last two quarters of 2010. These increases almost certainly reflect the first phase of Coalition cuts, announced in the emergency budget in June, which took out £1bn of local government spending in-year. It will also include public workers who have taken voluntary redundancy packages as councils and other organisations react to the bigger round of spending cuts announced in the comprehensive spending review in October. Of the 132,000 job losses, local authorities accounted for 66,000. Losses were, as expected, higher in areas where dependency on public sector employment is highest and the private sector weakest: the north of England, the south west of England, and parts of London. The 2010 figures include public corporations – such as the nationalised banks like Royal Bank of Scotland – a sector which which account for around 215,000 public sector jobs overall. But strip out the banking job losses and public services still account for 123,000 axed posts. In the final quarter of 2010, 45,000 public sector jobs were lost, reducing the total number of state employees to 6.2m. Within this, local government employment slumped by 24,000, central government by 9,000 and Civil Service by 8,000. There were interesting variations within public service sectors. The social work workforce grew in the third quarter of 2010, for example, as did the number of NHS staff, while police and armed forces numbers went down. The numbers are likely to increase: the latest GMB union count of “jobs at risk” in UK local authorities , published on Tuesday night, shows that over 170,000 posts are under threat of redundancy at 318 (out of around 500) councils and police and fire services – up from 163,000 at the last count , on 21 February (I’ve discussed the robustness of the GMB figures on a previous blog post ). The GMB’s council figures are based on HR1 notifications submitted by employers. These must state a time for when the redundancies will start. According to the GMB, the most common date on the HR1 forms in 31 March 2011. Even allowing for councils which delete fewer posts than they first anticipated, this suggests there will be a statistical spike in the public sector unemployment figures from next month. The GMB also includes job cuts totals (compiled by Unison and the TUC-backed False Economy Campaign) for the NHS (49,000) and other public sector bodies (6,208), making, it says, a total of 226,472 public sector jobs at risk. Official estimates suggest that 330,000 public sector jobs could be lost over the next four years. But according to John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, that figure may have to be revised: “Figures showing that public sector employment had already fallen by 123,000 in the year to December 2010 suggest that the eventual cull of public sector jobs by 2015 could be considerably higher than current Office for Budget Responsibility estimates suggests. Public sector cuts Public sector careers Local government NHS Patrick Butler guardian.co.uk
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Women writers are failing as much as ever to win the recognition they deserve, so they need the publicity the award brings I’ve never been a huge fan of the Orange prize . I’ve liked many of the books nominated, and I’ve enjoyed the awards ceremony because after the winners are ushered on to the stage with a burst of thumping, triumphant power chords, which is delightful. But on the question of whether the prize should exist at all, I have always agreed with AS Byatt that it was sexist. “It assumes there is a feminine subject matter,” she said. So why, this year, have I changed my mind? The past year or so has been a bad one for women writers. Not for writing produced by women. As always, lots of it has been excellent (and some has been terrible, much like the writing produced by men). It’s been a bad year for women writers because it has become more apparent than ever that they are failing to receive the recognition they deserve. The February publication of Vida research demonstrating the astonishing under-representation of women in literary magazines and criticism didn’t surprise me. I’d had many conversations with women writers to whom editors had expressed a lack of interest in publishing work by women. But I had hoped that it was just a coincidence that so many people I spoke to had witnessed these kinds of attitudes. Maybe less coincidental is the fact that an upcoming new anthology of short stories – a project I felt was really exciting – features work by a mixture of new and more established writers, 80% of whom are male. I was also perturbed to see that an LA Times article about the Orange Prize-shortlisted author Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad winning the National Book Critics’ Circle fiction prize last week was illustrated with a photograph of Jonathan Franzen, because, as the article’s headline – Egan Beats Franzen … – seemed to indicate, his loss was considered more newsworthy than her win. Then there’s the fact that David Nicholls’s One Day has been such a runaway success among both men and women, despite the fact that it succeeds as a novel because of its careful adherence to the tropes of so-called women’s commercial fiction (but, hey, it has a manly orange cover). It’s easy to come up with reasons other than sexism to explain why women seem to get short shrift. It’s just not especially easy to come up with valid ones, as TLS editor Peter Stothard demonstrated when he responded to the Vida data with the assertion that the 75% of books reviewed in his publication were by men because “we know [women] are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS”. Evidently, he means fiction written by women. I would like it to be possible for women writers to combat sexism simply by focusing on producing great writing. But then women have been doing that for centuries and the attitudes are still entrenched, even though, as Alain de Botton pointed out when the Orange prize was launched in 1996, there is nothing “distinctive from being a man when it comes to picking up a pen”. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that the experiences of male and female writers after they set their pens down are often distinctively different. That’s why I’ve changed my mind about the Orange prize. I still agree with Byatt that the idea of female-specific subject matter is spurious, but I don’t think that’s what the prize rewards. As long as women writers are forced to continue the exhausting battle for equal billing, they need the Orange prize to demonstrate the accomplishment and variety of their work. Orange prize for fiction Fiction Awards and prizes Jean Hannah Edelstein guardian.co.uk
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