A new National Care Service could provide the leadership, recognition and identity the sector so desperately needs
Tag: communities
Roads to nowhere: how infrastructure built on American inequality : The Guardian
It’s a little after 3pm in Detroit’s 8 Mile neighbourhood, and the cicadas are buzzing loudly in the trees. Children weave down the pavements on bicycles, while a pickup basketball game gets under way in a nearby park. The sky is a deep blue with only a hint of an approaching thunderstorm – in other words, a muggy, typical summer Sunday in Michigan’s largest city.
“8 Mile”, as the locals call it, is far from the much-touted economic “renaissance” taking place in Detroit’s centre. Tax delinquency and debt are still major issues, as they are in most places in the city. Crime and blight exist side by side with carefully trimmed hedgerows and mowed lawns, a patchwork that changes from block to block. In many ways it resembles every other blighted neighbourhood in the city – but with one significant difference. Hidden behind the oak-lined streets is an insidious piece of history that most Detroiters, let alone Americans, don’t even know exists: a half mile-long, 5ft tall concrete barrier that locals simply call “the wall”.
“Growing up, we didn’t know what that wall was for,” says Teresa Moon, president of the 8 Mile Community Organization. “It used to be a rite of passage to walk on top of the wall, like a balancing beam. You know, just kids having fun, that kind of thing. It was only later when I found out what it was for, and when I realised the audacity that they had to build it.”
Source: Roads to nowhere: how infrastructure built on American inequality : The Guardian
Universal credit flaws pushing claimants towards debt and eviction : Guardian.
When launching a new or revision of benefit it is usual practice to do this, initially, via a pilot where any problems can be noticed and sorted before an enlarged rollout. It is my understanding that such a pilot was under took for Universal Credit and with the degree of current problems should not been subject to the larger rollout until the problems had been sorted. To reduce the intendant rollout should never have been considered, let alone allowed to occur. To many if not all of the claimants the benefits they receive are their only sources of income and they should not be expected to exist on no income for any period of time, let alone 6 weeks.
This is gross incompetence on behalf DWP and to say they are working with local authorities to provide extra support at a time when the Government is drastically cutting local authority funding is adding insult to injury. DWP have for some many years proved they and their processes are ‘not fit for purpose’.
Lives torn apart and assets lost: this is what a Labour privatisation would mean | Aditya Chakrabortty | Opinion | The Guardian
The battle under way in the capital should trouble us all. Proponents call it innovation, but I say it’s an assault on the poor
Labour MEPs to vote for EU action to save steel industry and protect UK jobs and communities
As a Muslim woman I was never fearful in Britain. But today I’m afraid | Masuma Rahim | Comment is free | The Guardian
Since the Paris attacks, people who look like me are given hell every day. I no longer think it will get better
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