Environment synopticity

http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/26/green-campaigners-attack-government-climate-change

Shale gas investments 'could be worth £4bn a year to UK economy' | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Shale gas investments 'could be worth £4bn a year to UK economy' | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

'via Blog this'

Griff Rhys Jones's letter in response to Jeremy Leggett on renewable energy | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Griff Rhys Jones's letter in response to Jeremy Leggett on renewable energy | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

'via Blog this'

Green deal: MPs blast government for failure to quantify success | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Green deal: MPs blast government for failure to quantify success | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

'via Blog this'

Welfare reform - excellent podcast. Jones vs Young

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/04/the-view-from-22-north-korea-and-asias-arms-race-and-owen-jones-vs-toby-young/

Listen from 13 mins 20 seconds for a debate that sums up many different points of view on the current issue of welfare reform. Very useful for edexcel unit 3.

"Frack off"

Frack Off | Extreme Energy Action Network

Link to discussion on welfare issues

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011v8ky

Tape the three hour special on welfare? Can't face listening to the whole thing?
No matter as the BBC have carved up the highlights. One of them is at the link above.

Wide ranging crit of Coalition welfare reforms

If Beveridge delivered his report now, would we listen? | Polly Toynbee http://gu.com/p/3c7fj

Question Time Nov '11 on Coalition Environment record

Friends of the Earth on Coalition's Environment record

Greenest government ever?

IDS and Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) on on welfare reform

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9763000/9763398.stm

The government will further outline its strategy for welfare reforms today, in particular capping the benefits of people with a certain number of children.

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), told Today presenter John Humphrys that she is "very worried" about the announcement.

"Six out of ten poor children live with a working parent," she explained.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9763000/9763456.stm

The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith says it is "madness" that taxpayers are supporting families with large numbers of children to live on benefits.

Young Vs. Millar over coalition education policy

Toby Young and Fiona Millar are two educational campaigners on opposite ends of opinion over the coalition. Toby Young is famous for his journalism and his comic novel How To Lose Friends And Alienate People (adapted for screen starring Simon Pegg). However he is more recently known as a pro-Free Schools campaigner who actually setting up the http://www.westlondonfreeschool.co.uk/.

Fiona Millar is an an educational journalist and campaigner who is married to Blair's famous 
spin doctor Alister Campbell.  She is an ardent critic of Gove, Free Schools New Academies etc. 

Here is a vitriolic Young attack on Millar from a couple of years ago:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100063414/five-questions-for-fiona-millar/

Here are links to Millar's Guardian articles


http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/fionamillar

Both of these characters are excellent suggestions for synoptic knowledge for education policy in this unit. 

It’s not heartless to replace welfare with work - Telegraph.

It’s not heartless to replace welfare with work - Telegraph:

"The fundamentals upon which today’s benefits system was built were straightforward enough. They represented a moral response to the privations and penury of the urban poor in the years after the industrial revolution. The aim was to help people to help themselves and to provide a safety net for those who couldn’t, or who found themselves in temporary difficulties either through illness or unemployment. An essential principle for Chadwick and Lloyd George – and for William Beveridge, too – was that benefits should not be set so high as to deter a low-paid worker from taking a job  [see Medicine Through Time GCSE History textbook! - RWG]. They all recognised the dangers of creating what we now call a dependency culture, whereby state payments are so generous that the rational choice for recipients is to live on them rather than take what might be an arduous and poorly rewarded job."

....and Tom Chapman was there to witness the speech!!!! Chappers perhaps you could comment below on the speech and the atmosphere in the crowd. Is there any 'Thick of It' style political gossip to tell?



Does this represent the end of Cameron's 'compassionate Conservatism' or is it a reassertion of it? Do these ideas fit in with the coalition's current 'universal credit' which will be slowly introduced over the next couple of years?


Predictably Toynbee (a leftist's leftist - and therefore a gift for synopticity marks in the exam) counters (full article) here...

Behind in the polls, David Cameron cleaves to his one truly popular policy:cutting welfare. Pollsters say people want it cut even more. His speech hits every button, stirring up those on quite low incomes against those on very low incomes, dividing and ruling, distracting from the lifestyle of the rulers. With the rottweiler tendency on his backbenches growing restless, he throws them the vulnerable to chew on – all those luxuriating in the "culture of entitlement" on £71 a week unemployment pay. Politically, it works well – for now.
A red mist of despair poured from children's and disability charities, stunned at yet another assault on those they try to defend. Already the £18bn benefit cut is "without historical or international precedent," according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Cameron's 17 "ideas" may not all see the light of day, but another £10bn will be cut: housing benefit and US-style benefit time limits yield the big money.

....and a full scale attack via Guardian editorial here (if it's in an editorial, then the paper really mean it!

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What do critics of coalition cuts say the impact on vulnerable groups is?

Disabled and elderly see their day centres and key services disappear as budget cuts bite | Society | The Observer:
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Telegraph VS Guardian over IDS speech on Welfare

Good for undertanding two opposing interpretations of the same news story this (i.e. synopticity).

Telegraph VS Guardian

Glossary/mini textbook on various Welfare issues

Thanks to Aisling for reminding me about this...
Introduction to Social Policy:

'via Blog this'

The new Draft Energy Bill: A gift for A2 Politics Environment

Telegraph
Guardian

Guardian Q&As on Energy policy/issues.

All sorts going on in Energy policy. A new draft energy bill is on the way which will mean 5 key developments:

1. A stimulus to the nuclear power industry. Good news for them.
2. A 'dash for gas'
3. Bad news for renewable energy companies
4. Bad news for environmentalists who want massive investment in renewables and bill payers
5. Allegedly bad news for Cameron and the Coalition's so-called "greenest-government-ever" image

1. A stimulus to the nuclear power industry. Good news for them.
The government wants to extend the life of old nuclear power stations instead of decommissioning (which was the previous plan). Anti-nuclear campaigners are angry and LDs will clearly be unhappy that their long term anti-nuclear policy has been ignored.

2.  A 'dash for gas'
The Chancellor hailed the 'dash for gas' in the 2012 budget, "Gas is cheap, has much less carbon than coal and will be the largest single source of our electricity in the coming years. And so the energy secretary will set out our new gas generation strategy in the autumn to secure investment. I also want to that ensure we extract the greatest possible amount of oil and gas from our reserves in the North Sea." Though the recent North Sea gas leak has raised concerns that it is not without environmental costs, and ultimatley gas is a finite resource. The opening up of 'fracking' has also caused concerns over tremors and worries over gas getting into the water supply (so say campaign group FRACK OFF - synopticity).

3. Bad news for renewable energy companies
Renewable companies are concerned that they will lose out, because the current system of subsidies will be replaced with a complex new system of support that could favour big companies over their smaller rivals. This new system – known as contracts for difference – would allow companies to sign long-term contracts to supply electricity. But the prices on such contracts could be higher or lower than the price of electricity in the wholesale market – the attraction to companies is supposed to be that the long-term nature of the contracts gives them the stability and certainty they need to invest. However, several renewables companies told the Guardian they thought the contracts would push smaller suppliers out of the market. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, called for an exemption for small suppliers in order to encourage competition in the market.  Many critics also see the move away from renewables as a missed opportunity to invest in the economy, create jobs and help get the economy growing again.

4.  Bad news for environmentalists who want massive investment in renewables and bill payers
The bill is fatal to the hopes of building a low-carbon economy in the UK, according to green campaigners, and could leave consumers hooked on an increasingly expensive fossil fuel, with the soaring price rises that could entail. The UK's own supplies of natural gas in the North Sea are being rapidly depleted, making consumers heavily dependent on imports and the price volatility that brings. As any new gas-fired power stations would be expected to carry on operating – and producing CO2 – for at least 25 years, this would also make the UK's climate change targets in the 2020s increasingly hard to meet.

5. The greenest government ever?

• Osborne has made ungreen speeches
• Subsidies for solar cut
• Tory MPs rebelled over wind turbines
• Coalition split over nuclear between Tories (pro) and LDs (anti)

Independent article here.


Excellent Ch4 Video below and article here

Health groups: for or against the NHS Bill?

NB - the 'summit' was a Downing Street meeting between the PM, Lansley and certain health related organisations (see below).

Against the bill(None of these organisations were invited to the Downing Street summit)
British Medical Association
Cautiously welcomed the July 2010 white paper which set out the coalition's NHS plans. As concern grew, it adopted a policy of "critical engagement": lobbying ministers to amend or drop proposals it deemed too risky, damaging or ill thought-through. But rising anger among grassroots doctors, and deep frustration that Lansley did not really heed their concerns, prompted BMA last November to adopt policy of all-out opposition.
Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of GPs
Recently made the same switch as BMA, and, after initially seeking major amendments to it, now want the bill scrapped, which is also Labour's position.
Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Concerned that letting non-NHS providers start treating NHS patients, paid for out of NHS funds, will see patients denied physiotherapy sessions they need through the opening up of more NHS services to outside bodies through the "any qualified provider" policy.
Royal College of Pathologists
Concerned aboutcurrent and future impact of the combination of the changes this bill brings, the current "manner and pace of reconfiguration of services, including managerial, and the arbitrary removal of 20% from NHS spending on pathology services".
Royal College of Radiologists
Has "grave concerns" about "many serious and as yet unresolved issues", including the risk that the shake-up will widen health inequalities between richer and poorer patients. It is also "alarmed that the dangers of unfettered competition as outlined in the bill will adversely affect integrated care in both clinical oncology and clinical radiology".
Royal College of Psychiatrists
"Believes the bill is fundamentally flawed and "will not improve the health and care of people with mental illness", said Professor Sue Bailey, its president.
Unite and Unison
Fear the extension of competition in the NHS, and anticipated greater use of private healthcare firms to provide NHS services, will lead to the break-up and privatisation of the NHS.


Undecided(All were invited to the summit)
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Obtained some concessions but still has "grave reservations that the bill carries risks for England's 11 million children and young people". "Opposition to the bill among some paediatricians is increasingly hardening", according to president Professor Terence Stephenson. The results of a survey of its members are due later this week.
Royal College of Physicians
Its emergency general meeting next Monday could see it switch from being critical of the bill on some issues – such as competition and raising the amount hospitals can earn from private patients – to a more hardline stance.
Royal College of Surgeons
The one medical royal college to refuse to sign a strongly-worded joint statement, organised by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges last month, saying the bill was unfit for purpose in its current form. It denies it actively supports the bill.
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
Agreed to support last month's joint statement but later withdrew its support, after being lobbied by Lansley. "We have never said we fully support the bill. Instead we have always stated that we have concerns with elements of the bill which we have tried to address through the NHS listening exercise and meetings with the Department of Health and politicians," said president Dr Tony Falconer.

For the bill(All were invited to the summit.)
National Association of Primary Care
Group of entrepreneurial GPs that has supported Lansley's plan from the start. It welcomes family doctors gaining control of £60bn worth of contracts to GP-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to spend as they see fit on treatment.
NHS Alliance
Has embraced the NHS shake-up, though recently voiced fears that CCGs' independence could be threatened by the new NHS national commissioning board.
Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations
Chief executive Stephen Bubb is a keen advocate of extending competition in the NHS in order to drive up standards and reduce costs.