UNIVERSAL CREDIT LIFELINE TAKEN AWAY FROM 70,000 NORFOLK PEOPLE

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Community and tagged austerity, benefits, Brexit, chloe smith, clive lewis, Community, cuts, disabled people against cuts, featured, Great Yarmouth, norfolk, Norfolk Against Universal Credit, norwich, Tory, uk, uk politics, Universal Credit, universalcredit, welfare, work.

by Sean Meleady

Thousands of people across Norfolk are facing financial struggle after the government cut the £20 a week uplift to the Universal Credit benefit in October. Although it was intended as a temporary measure to help with the economic effects of the lockdowns, it has become a lifeline for many.

It is estimated that 14,907 people in Norwich have lost £1,040 of their income with around 40% of them in employment. In June 2021 69,895 people were on Universal Credit in Norfolk alone.

CAPITALISING ON CRISIS: BILLIONAIRES, PATENT WARS AND SURVEILLANCE IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged amazon, antivax, austerity, Big Pharma, billionaires, capitalism, coronavirus, Covid-19, crisis, cuts, David Harevy, disaster, economy, featured, health, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, patents, privatisation, revolving door, speculation, surveillance, tax the rich, tech, vaccines.

by Tesni Clare

It’s not an original idea: opportunistic, peripatetic capitalism works by capitalising on its own crises. The idea rings even truer for neoliberal capitalism.

It’s what Naomi Klein has dubbed ‘disaster capitalism’. Amidst public disorientation following a crisis, control is achieved by the imposition of economic shock therapy, or in other words, economic liberalisation – public spending is withdrawn, large scale privatisation occurs, and disaster is transformed into a shiny new investment. Private contractors move in, gobble up funding for their efforts to ‘clean up’, and billions get cut from government budgets.

KEEP CALM & WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged benefits, benefits culture, Boris Johnson, conservatives, CSJ, cuts, deportation, dwp, featured, gender gap, george osborne, health, Iain Duncan Smith, NHS, pension, pension scheme, retirement, statistics, Tories, unions, vulnerable, welfare, welfare cuts, women, work, workers.

by Jonathan Lee

“New pension plans to work till you die are no cause for alarm” says arch-Tory overlord Ian Duncan Smith. A recent report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), the Tory think-tank which brought us Universal Credit, has recommended the government raise the retirement age from 65 to 70 by 2028, and to 75 by 2035.

The Tories are not content to simply make workers’ lives as miserable as possible through underfunding schools, unaffordable housing, food poverty, and the greatest devaluation of wages in modern history. They now seek to steal the last golden years of life from the majority of working class people who cannot afford a private pension in order to retire early.Continue Reading

A TRULY RADICAL NUS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #2

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #FreeEdNOW, #NUSNC18, 2010 student protests, academic staff, anti-apartheid, Barclays, Barclays boycott, Beyond Tuition Fees, Blair era, boycott, bureaucracy, centrism, corbyn, cuts, direct action, Divest Barclays, divestment, featured, filibustering, fossil free, fossil fuels, Free Education, higher education, Labour, lgbt+ rights, living wage, mental health, NCAFC, NUS, occupation, plastic, South Africa, student activism, student mental health crisis, student welfare, tuition fees, UCU, uk, universities, university staff, USS strikes, votes at 16.

By Robyn Banks

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

Over the last year the NUS has been a shadow of its former self, riddled with accusations of bullying from its President and marked by its failure to engage with the largest upswelling of campus activism this country has seen in years. It was bizarre enough that it refused to back demonstrations for Free Education last year, implying a denial that the end of tuition fees would be a benefit for students. But that pales in comparison to the extraordinary lack of NUS involvement in the recent UCU strikes. While its members joined the picket lines and entered occupation up and down the country, NUS chose to stay silent when our academic staff most needed their support. Continue Reading

WHY WAGES MATTER

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged benefits, cuts, decline, denmark, economy, featured, Ghent, housing, IFS, livelihood, pay gap, recession, salary, statistics, trade union, TUC, uk, unions, wages, welfare, workers.

by Edward Grierson

It goes without saying that the current wage situation in the UK is not good. Following the disastrous speculation on the banks’ behalf that led to the recession, real wages for UK workers fell by 10.4% from 2007-2015, a decline only matched by Greece. Even worse has been the combination of this wage drop with the continued pay gap between employees and the people who employ them: as of 2015, the salary of a UK CEO was nearly 130 times that of the average UK worker’s salary.

The reason why this is a concern, why we should be worried about falling wages, surely is obvious.Continue Reading

WHO BENEFITS?

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged assessment, benefits, claims, cuts, disability, discrimination, DLA, ESA, featured, funding, government, JSA, lazy, new year, personal, Perspectives, PIP, privatisation, theresa may, workshy.

by Alice Thomson

cw: mentions of suicide

Hurray, 2018 is upon us. January always seems like a month of reflection and contemplation to me, mainly because nothing much happens, and most people are recovering from December. Although, I feel this way as I type, there is a niggling dread at the back of my mind for 2018. I’m probably not the only one that feels this way. A new year invites new opportunities, but it also means that these openings provide an element of risk or failure.Continue Reading

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. ‘AT LEAST IT CAN’T GET ANY WORSE, RIGHT?’

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged conservative party, cuts, depression, medication, mental health, NHS, waiting lists, wellbeing.

By Zoe Harding

Content warning: mental health, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorder, suicide.

This article is not written in the Radical’s usual style, with all the froth and fury about parts of society that might be ‘broken’ or ‘harmful’ or ‘dog-fucked beyond human comprehension by a swarm of grey-suited sociopaths inexplicably elected by a suicidal electorate’. There will be no solutions, no imprecations, no lights shone into dark places because everything’s fine.Continue Reading

BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY – TWO YEAR DEGREES REVISITED

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged career focus, class, class divide, competition, cuts, economics, education, fast track degrees, first time buyers, Free Education, free school meals, government, grades, HE policy, higher education, ideology, interest, isolation, lower socio-economic backgrounds, market economics, mental health, mental health services, middle class, minority government, module diversity, money grab, overwork, state funding, student debt, student finance, student loans, student support, student welfare, students, teaching, teaching quality, The Student Room, time pressure, Times Higher Education, Tories, tuition fees, two tier system, two year degrees, underfunding, wealth inequality, working class, working class students.

by Robyn Banks

Back in March, the MinoriTory government announced the idea of running fast track two year degree courses in the hope of saving students money. Last week the Times Higher Education supplement revealed that surveyed students from lower socio-economic backgrounds would be more likely to take this option up if it existed. Could the Tories’ apparently hare-brained scheme in fact be justified?

WHY THE TORIES DON’T CARE ABOUT NURSES

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #MayDUP, #OurNHS, activism, Brexit, Brexit negotiations, bursary cuts, crisis, cuts, DUP, employment, EU, EU students, EU workers, European Economic Area, european union, Free Education, frontline services, future, government, government cuts, health, healthcare, hospitals, How Come We Didn't Know?, Institute of Employment Studies, King's Lynn, magic money tree, Marion Macalpine, migrants, migration, NHS, NHS bursaries, NHS Norfolk Action Group, norfolk, norwich, nurse horror stories, nurses, nursing, nursing student applications, nursing students, politics, privatisation, Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn, research, Royal College of Nursing, St Margaret's Church of Art, staff shortage, student applications, student debt, student loans, students, Sustainability and Transformation plans, The Telegraph, Tories, tuition fees, UEA, underfunding, universities, workers rights, workforce, workforce crisis.

by Robyn Banks

CW: death, disease, corpses.

Last week we heard that the number of people applying to become nursing students has fallen by 19% in the past year. As this is the first application cycle since government cuts to NHS bursaries, for many this will not be much of a shock. It’s clear that the government’s decision to take away this provision that allowed many students to attend their courses will have serious detrimental effects, not only for the institutions that train nurses but for the NHS as a whole.

JO JOHNSON IS RIGHT FOR ONCE – SOUTHAMPTON UNI SHOULD BE ASHAMED

Posted on July 7, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academic staff, budget cuts, conflicts of interest, corruption, course closures, cuts, fair pay, government, HEFCE cuts, higher education, higher education cuts, inequality, jo johnson, pay cuts, pay gap, pay inequality, pay rises, pensions, senior management, Times Higher Education, Tories, universities, university closures, University of Southampton, university staff, university vice chancellors, vice chancellor pay, wage gap.

by Robyn Banks

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: I agree with Jo Johnson. A couple of weeks ago the Tory Universities Minister told university leaders and Vice Chancellors that they needed to “stop ratcheting up pay”. This was a reaction to the news that the VC at Southampton University has received a £125,000 pay rise in the space of 5 years.

cuts

UNIVERSAL CREDIT LIFELINE TAKEN AWAY FROM 70,000 NORFOLK PEOPLE

by Sean Meleady

CAPITALISING ON CRISIS: BILLIONAIRES, PATENT WARS AND SURVEILLANCE IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19

KEEP CALM & WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH

A TRULY RADICAL NUS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #2

WHY WAGES MATTER

WHO BENEFITS?

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. ‘AT LEAST IT CAN’T GET ANY WORSE, RIGHT?’

BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY – TWO YEAR DEGREES REVISITED

WHY THE TORIES DON’T CARE ABOUT NURSES

JO JOHNSON IS RIGHT FOR ONCE – SOUTHAMPTON UNI SHOULD BE ASHAMED

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