Press Release: 'This Government Has Been A Disaster For Working Women' - Rachael Chrisp

Reading Labour Party Women's Officer, and Park candidate, Rachael Chrisp has labelled the Tory-led Government "a disaster for working women" in a message issued to mark International Women's Day.

Ms Chrisp points out that one of the first cuts George Osbourne made was in help with paying for childcare, and goes on: "And then Mr Osbourne froze Child Benefit, made women work longer before reaching pension age, and cut Tax Credits - 450 working women in Reading will lose £75 a week as from April 1st because they are working less than 24 hours a week. And those that want to work longer hours are often being frustrated because the Government is offering big retailers the chance to use people on 'work experience' instead, people pushed into putting in the hours without getting the pay.

"Mr Cameron promised that this would be the most family-friendly government ever," she says, "but as with so much else he promised it has been anything but. The truth is that working women who did not cause the banking crisis are being made to pay for it. There are twenty-two male millionaires in the Cabinet and only 49 women among 305 Tory MPs, so perhaps that's hardly a surprise."

ENDS.

Read More

Opinion: So Whats Reading Young Labour All About?

by
Richard Wood (@richard28wood)

Founded in 2010, Reading Young Labour was set up to be the youth wing of the Reading Labour party taking in all people under the age of 31 in the two CLPs.  We aim to promote young people and their interests in the party and council while also representing Labour to young people in the wider electorate.  We also set clear aims, to be a strong voice for young people in the Labour movement, to be a campaigning machine that engages with the public in new and effective ways and to promote young people to officer roles and elected office. We do this alongside Reading Labour Students but they include students in Reading who normally live outside Reading's two CLPs.  Ian Stevens is the current Chair of RYL, Will Cross is the Vice-Chair and I'm the newly elected Secretary.

As young people in the party we use Young Labour to engage with people like us who have a passion for the Labour movement and who look to the party to promote our views and interests.  To a young person, agendas, AMMs, ECs and minutes can all sound a bit too much, Young Labour is there to ease young people into the party and support them. Rather than formal meetings we have informal socials and occasional discussions which have no minutes or agendas to provide a relaxed atmosphere where young people can take about Labour and other issues. In turn we use our influence in our branches, the AMM and our seat on the EC to try and influence the party on issues important to us. A founding target of RYL is also to encourage wards to endorse young people as candidate, as only a demographically representative Council group can truly stand up for young people, something we hope to start achieving in 2014.

We also put campaigning as an important pillar of our organisation, it's what we enjoy after all, why should the party take us seriously if we don't pull our weight? A recent get-together of our members voted to set wards including Park and Church as our priority wards, valuing Park's endorsement of Rachael Chrisp (aged 28), while Church includes the University and is a marginal seat. In these seats we will show young people we are a campaigning force to be reckoned with, producing literature for young people, leading youth campaigns and joining in canvasses. We are also encouraging young members to help in their own wards when needed.  We pride ourselves in our innovative campaign ideas and feel our presence has already been influential in the campaigns of 2011 and on-going 2012 campaign.

We hope over the coming years we continue to be an effective voice of young people in the party, and that our campaign activities continue to help elect Labour councillors, win overall control on the council and to win back Members of Parliament. Young people are returning to Labour, their natural home, when we set up Reading Young Labour we had 56 members today we have over 150, let's hope this continues and young people are given a strong voice in this party and in Reading.

(Note: This blog was originally produced as part of our guest blog series on Cllr Sarah Hacker's blog http://www.cllrsarahhacker.blogspot.com)

Read More

Opinion: The Green Council Tax Rise - Wrong For Reading, Wrong For Park

by
Rachael Chrisp (@rchrisp)

One of the main stories of last month's budget in Reading was the Greens' proposal to raise council tax by 3.5% (around £40 each), arguing that the extra money this would raise could be spent on funding for vulnerable people.  In the end, Labour secured a cross-party agreement with the other groups, and passed its budget, securing a freeze in council tax for the next year.  Reading has been faced with a huge cut in central government funding but Labour has managed to protect almost all front line services, while restructuring the council to save hundreds of thousands of pounds, such as abolishing the chief executive position or removing backroom inefficiencies. This is something I as a Labour member am proud of.

The Greens' budget amendment to rise Council Tax 3.5% offered no specifics, no suggestion of what new services would be funded or created, simply referring to "vulnerable people". This for me is gesture politics of the highest level, there are vulnerable people that need help and Labour has worked incredibly hard to protect them, reducing Daycare costs, restoring bus passes before 9am for the disabled and their carers and increasing the number of beds for the homeless; for the Greens to simply stroll into a budget making council meeting and present an amendment with no plan of what it will do, where the money will be spent or what impact it will have was poor, they knew that without a coherent plan the other parties wouldn't vote for it but they didn't care because they simply wanted a headline for their next newsletter.  Labour has prioritised the funding of services that help vulnerable people, without having to resort to raising the council tax. Had Labour accepted the Greens' amendment, the council would have lost the government's £1.7 million freeze grant, and out of the extra £2.4 million in council tax would only have kept £700 thousand of it to spend in Reading.

To put this into perspective:

• Out of the £40 per household tax rise, £30 would go straight to central government, leaving only £10 for Reading
• Labour is protecting services by restructuring the council, not by raising taxes.
• The Greens' amendment was presented without any detail, no details of what services it would fund of what the impact it would have, it was just gesture politics.

When Labour regained minority control of the council the Greens told everyone that they would hold the balance of power and be able to get the best deal for Park ward residents - a year on I see very little evidence of this. The Greens have resorted to gesture politics, you can see this in their lack of coherent vision for Reading, for example in Park ward the Greens are campaigning to have the Cemetery opened up to make it a walkthrough (at a cost of £10,000 I should add), whereas in Caversham the Greens are campaigning against the amount of cyclists that ride through a local cemetery, saying it shouldn't be used a shortcut.

My party is making the tough decisions in a fair way that is right for Reading, the Greens may believe that it's fair to ask everyone to pay an extra £40 per year in council tax, but I know for a lot of families that's a weekly shopping trip and in this economic climate people can't afford to be £40 out of pocket - I hope that at the local elections the voters of Park ward choose to elect a Labour councillor to stand up for Park in a Labour-controlled council.

Read More

Analysis: Thursday, 1st March's By-elections

by
Duncan Bruce (@duncanqbruce)

In what may become a regular feature I will be looking at some of the by-elections that occur every Thursday around the country and see what those results may mean for Labour and whether it could indicate a national or regional trend.

This week there we two by-elections, Castle ward (Cumbria County Council) and Abbey ward (Shropshire County Council, the most interesting of the two being Castle ward as it features all three major political parties vying for control.

The by-election in Castle ward promised to be a showdown, the seat was fairly safe for the Liberal Democrats but in 2011 they were hit with a massive swing against them, and Labour gained it the City Council seat.  The question for Carlisle Labour was would that trend hold? and would they be able to gain the County Council seat in the ward?, the results are in:

Labour: 407
LibDem: 369
Conservative: 93
Green: 54
UKIP: 22

Based on the County Council elections of 2009, thats a huge 8.2% swing from Liberal Democrat to Labour, but when you take into account the 2011 Carlisle City election you find that its actually just over 2% swing back to Liberal Democrat from Labour. This is fairly in keeping with by-elections, Labour tends to poll lower because our vote, partially due to demographic, only votes when there is a town/city/country-wide election.

2010 Carlisle General Election Result

What is also interesting about the result is the poor Tory showing. The Conservatives in Carlisle have a problem, in 2010 they did what many said was impossible and gained the Carlisle MPs seat, a seat which had been held by Labour since 1964; However all is not perfect as their victory was small, they gained the seat by a little over 800 votes making it one of Labour's top targets to gain in 2015 and making it almost impossible for them to hold.  As well as this the Conservative control of Carlisle City Council has begun to fade, Labour currently has 24 Councillors with the Tories on 22 and the Liberal Democrats on 3 - The Conservatives are currently hanging on to minority control of the council with the 'unofficial' support of the Independents and the Liberal Democrats.

The other by-election was for Shropshire County Council and saw the Liberal Democrats win a seat off the Conservatives. The reason I am not going to focus on this one is that simply its hard to form an analyses without having Labour in the mix, however one thing that does appear to be developing which could be a factor in 2015 is that when its Labour vs. LibDem, Labour almost always win, but when its Tory vs. LibDem the LibDem vote does tend to hold (although that did not happen here in Reading in Tilehurst ward). The results:

LibDem: 550
Conservative: 542
Green: 123

A swing of 10.2% to the Liberal Democrats from the 2009 election.

Graphics courtesy of the BBC.

Read More