It is little more than a mile from Everton Brow to the shiny new conference hall on the Liverpool dockside where the Liberal Democrat party is holding its annual conference. But the two places are a world apart.<\/p>\n
Those LibDems who are preening themselves that this is the party\u2019s first conference in government for 65 years might do well to make the short journey. If they did, they would discover the consequences of their decision to renege on their manifesto pledge not to back public spending cuts as hard or as fast as Conservative ministers have decreed.<\/p>\n
They might meet Danny Vaughan, a 29-year-old who is doing community work under a scheme called Future Jobs. He is a tall taciturn young man who, until he joined the project, had been on the dole for six months after getting laid off from a labouring job. \u201cI tried to get another but there\u2019s just no work out there,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n
He is standing in the foyer of the West Everton Community Centre \u2013 know to everyone locally as The Wek, pronounced with a guttural Scouse click on the k. He is talking to Ann Roach, who is the chair of the centre and also the supervisor of the Future Jobs scheme. \u00a0\u201cDanny is so keen he comes in at 7.30 though he\u2019s not supposed to start till 9am,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
His job is to help old people locally with their cleaning, decorating and other odd jobs. \u201cDanny is the new Yosser Hughes,\u201d Ann says referring to the character from The Boys from the Blackstuff<\/em>, a tv drama series from the 1980s recession who became famous for his catchphrase \u2018Gizza Job\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll do any job. I\u2019ll go down the sewer and sort the hard shite from the soft shite if you want,\u201d says Danny eloquently, \u201cso long as it gives me a job.\u201d<\/p>\n The task he has been given is more mundane but far more useful. \u201cYesterday we got a call from an 80 year old lady whose house was full of wasps,\u201d he says. \u201cI went in and killed 50 then we got someone in from the council to take the nest away. There are lots of old folk in the community who need help, who are stuck in their house and never go out, and where no-one normally ever knocks on the door.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Future Jobs scheme, which pays its workers \u00a3157 a week, is to be axed in the Coalition cuts. It is by no means all. Liverpool City Council has been told its Area-Based Grant budget \u2013 the money local councils get from central government \u2013 is being cut by \u00a39.28m for the current financial year. And that is before the Coalition cuts proper start next year.<\/p>\n Already being axed are funds for a project to help unemployed people in the most deprived areas of the City set up their own businesses. A project to speed up the rehousing of people made homeless by mortgage repossessions will go. Free sports and recreational facilities for young people have already gone. Free fruit and vegetables for primary school children has been reduced. A keep-fit programme to help the elderly stay active has been cut which will almost certainly send some of them into residential care earlier than need be the case.<\/p>\n Quit Smoking and Cut Down on Booze projects have been cut. So has handyman services available to help the old and frail cope. Grants available for families with children with Special Educational Needs have been cut. So has a scheme to provide free smoke alarms for the old and vulnerable.<\/p>\n The scale of the cuts has prompted a number of Liberal Democrat councillors in the Merseyside region to defect from the party. One, in Liverpool itself, is Ian Jobling.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a LibDem representative on the Merseyside Police Authority,\u201d he tells me. \u201cJust two weeks into the coalition we received an instruction to cut \u00a34m from the current in-year budget. I was shocked. This was in breach of the LibDem manifesto which had said no cuts before 2011\/12 because earlier cuts would harm the recovery and cost jobs. Indeed we\u2019d said we\u2019d put 3,000 extra police on the beat with the money we saved from scrapping ID cards. And now here we were faced with having to cut 70 officers on Merseyside.\u201d<\/p>\n As the weeks passed the extent of his party\u2019s turnaround on cuts became evident. Liverpool lost \u00a3350m for 26 new schools when Michael Gove slashed the Building Schools For The Future programme. \u201cThen the Area-Based Grant was given an immediate \u00a310m cut which will hit schemes to help older people and plans for new street lights in crime hotspots,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople voted for us on our manifesto and then we got into bed with the Tories and junked it,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI mulled on it for a few months. Labour had taken control of the council in May and had begun to do rather a good job so last month I decided to join them.\u201d It was not him who defected, he feels, but the Liberal Democrats from their pledges.<\/p>\n Back at the WECC two men in their late twenties have arrived in hard hats and fluorescent yellow jackets. They are the proof that the doomed Future Jobs scheme really works. Dean Powell and Darren Jones were given placements with a local construction firm, Conlon, by the scheme. They did so well that they have now both been employed by the company.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d been on the dole for years,\u201d says Dean. \u201cI\u2019m a single parent. I wanted to get a job to show my seven year old that life on the dole is no good and that you need a job. I came down here to the Ways to Work project and they helped me with my reading and writing twice a week. Then Future Jobs got me onto Conlons.\u201d<\/p>\n Sitting next to him is the firm\u2019s site manager, Gordon MacKenzie. \u201cWe weren\u2019t looking for the best qualified but for local lads who need a bit of a lift,\u201d he says, proud of his firm\u2019s involvement with the local community. \u201cAs the time has passed they have become much more focused and settled.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got my construction work certificates and an NVQ,\u201d adds Dean, \u201cand I\u2019ve learned flagging and paving and concreting which are all skills for the future. I was going to get a fork-lift qualification but the funding has just been axed.\u201d<\/p>\n That is not all that is to go. The next cohort of jobless people entering the Future Jobs scheme in March will be the last. \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy,\u201d says Jane Corbett, the area\u2019s Labour councillor who has for two decades been a human dynamo in the regeneration of West Everton where unemployment is currently 44 per cent. \u201cThe scheme has been rooted in the community and local people have felt treated with dignity and respect in a way which they don\u2019t down at the JobCentre. These people are not workshy; there is just no work.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s noticeable, she observes tartly, that the Area-Based Grant has not been cut whatsoever in local authorities in the constituencies of David Cameron, Michael Gove and Eric Pickles. She is the lead councillor on education for Liverpool and has written to the Education Secretary to say that if he will find just half of the money for rebuilding the city\u2019s schools local people will raise the rest. She has yet to receive a reply.<\/p>\n Nor is there much faith in the Coalition\u2019s insistence that the private sector will step in to create jobs to replace those thrown out of work by the cuts. \u201cThe idea that the private sector will provide the jobs has no logic in it,\u201d says Conlon\u2019s engineer, Gordon MacKenzie. \u201cAxing the building of schools will make the private sector contract too.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like eating your seed corn. It\u2019s a travesty. National politicians just don\u2019t understand what it\u2019s like on the ground. They haven\u2019t put enough thought into where the axe should fall. I\u2019m a Scot but it\u2019s obvious to me that a place like this needs special attention.\u201d<\/p>\n A group of current Future Jobs workers have gathered in the WECC offices. \u201cI don\u2019t know what will happen when I\u2019m finished here in December,\u201d says Amy Bebb. \u201cThere are just no jobs out there.\u201d She has had 24 part-time jobs since she was 16 so she knows how to work when it is available. She was been doing youth community work on the scheme. \u201cThe experience here has been invaluable,\u201d she says, \u201cit has rebuilt my confidence\u201d. She had hoped to train as a drugs counsellor. \u201cGod knows they\u2019re needed enough round here. But it doesn\u2019t look likely to happen for me now.\u201d<\/p>\n So what will?\u00a0 She is silent. \u201cIt\u2019ll be back to JobCentrePlus,\u201d says one of her colleagues,<\/p>\n Dave Pattie. At 29 he had been on the dole for 10 months. \u201cI did all kinds of things before \u2013 labouring, bar work, window cleaning. But there\u2019s none of that available now<\/p>\n They even want qualifications \u2013 health and safety \u2013 to do window cleaning. I have done everything the dole office have suggested to boost my chances but nothing has come of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The group is withering about the service provided by JobCentrePlus. \u201cHere at the WECC it\u2019s different. You feel valued, you\u2019re appreciated and it\u2019s great at the end of the week to know that you\u2019ve earned a wage,\u201d Dave says. \u201cBut at the JobCentre you get looked down on as if you\u2019re idle or don\u2019t want a job. It made me feel angry every time I went in there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t get to know you in the jobcentre,\u201d says Darren. \u201cYou see a different adviser every time you go in.\u201d The staff there expect claimants to go after any job they tell them to, says Jane Corbett,\u00a0 \u201ceven if it\u2019s not an appropriate one or they are not ready for it. They just get rejected and that knock people\u2019s confidence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not really interested in helping you,\u201d adds Dean. \u201cThey\u2019re only interested in telling you haven\u2019t filled this form in right and you\u2019ll get your money docked. They\u2019re aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a palpable sense of glowering impotent indignation among the group as they consider a future blighted by Coalition cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThese politicians, have they every had to struggle to get a real job,\u201d explodes Dave Pattie. \u201cHave they ever known what it is like to have only pennies left at the end of the week?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt feel like a big black hole is about to open up \u2013 and as we all fall in they\u2019ll throw more and more mud on top of us,\u201d says the Future Jobs supervisor, Ann Roach, who will lose her job too. \u201cThey are burying the poor alive\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then they\u2019ll wonder why people turn to crime,\u201d says Amy Bebb in an acid coda.<\/p>\n The man who defected from the Liberal Democrats, Councillor Ian Jobling, feels his former party has betrayed the poor. \u201cI came into politics to help the poor and frail and elderly. I am ashamed at what my old party is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is little more than a mile from Everton Brow to the shiny new conference hall on the Liverpool dockside where the Liberal Democrat party is holding its annual conference. But the two places are a world apart. Those LibDems who are preening themselves that this is the party\u2019s first conference in government for 65 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,40,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coalition-britain","category-ethics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2494"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7446,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions\/7446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}