Cuts ,just had this sent from my cousin in Manchester .

Forget for a moment about how much these services are paid.last week in the town where I live two people died waiting over five hours for an ambulance,it's the public because of the cuts who are going to suffer.disabled people who live on there own are only given fifteen minutes care package in the morning and late afternoon to get them up and put them to bed,one of them being my neighbour who is Paralysed.i had never heared of food banks till these cuts.austerity is a choice

Nissan said it was likely that it would leave the north east if Britain left the EU

Of course cuts to all areas of public service have impacted negatively on crime including knife crime. I wouldn’t support Camilla Kidsclub in any way.

no? nobody wishes to comment on mothers from black communities?

I wonder if the escalation of shootings/ stabbing/ drug running ( particularly in London) would have been as bad if Kids Company had still been operating.
I know Camila was a very diversive figure but she kept a huge amount of children off the streets who would have gone the wrong way.
It was only 3 yrs ago that the charity folded.
I supported it from the very beginning and went to many art exhibitions where some of these very disturbed children could only tell their story through art.

so back to the Mothers from Black Communities who wish to see Stop and Search reinstated?

I think some of these are factors in being involved in gang membership, machismo, status, control and lack of male role models. Some of those characteristics are evident indrill videos glorifying violent acts, the participants often obscure their faces with scarves. Harriet Harman is right to say they are pernicious, but she has been criticised by Momentum for doing so.

Sajid Javid ( Home Sec) allocated £150,000 yesterday to allow more businesses join the ‘safe haven’ schemes for youngsters when they leave school in the afternoons, as part of an £18 million effort to reduce violent crime.
About £500,00 will go towards targeting young people up to age 25 who are being exploited or at risk through criminal
Drug dealing operations.
Yes Terri the ‘drill’ music ( ghastly) and drug turf wars are
Are horrible.

There has been a horrible increase in these unnecessary deaths.

It is mainly within a particular community: poor black youngsters.
It coincides with cuts to police funding/ numbers in the Met.

The previous mayor, at the time, had the ear & support of the government.

Is it a councidence that, since Sadiq Khan has been mayor, funding for improvement to police funding has not been forthcoming?

Regarding knife crime, which several posters have alluded to on this thread. I don't want to comment on stop and search, I can see arguments for and against. However, reading about, what seems to be an almost daily occurrence, young men being stabbed to death, often so young they have baby faces, I heard one commentator say these stabbing used to be about "respect" now it's all about drugs and turf war. Harriet Harman, and she should know, her constituency covers Peckham, has made the observation that "drill" music, an offshoot of hip hop is a driving factor in this type of gang warfare, maybe it just pertains to London, I don't know. The modus operandi of this new phenomenon is for gang members to upload their videos on to YouTube where they rap about their murderous intentions, and if they have, been able to wipe out an opponent, then they go into a graphic description of how that was accomplished. Needless to say, like all tech companies, YouTube have not being censoring the content and have done very little to take these drill videos down. That should be their job, surely it's against the law to incite violence in this way.

MPs have £77k annual salary plus expenses. Non London/ home counties MPs have to maintain two residences and pay for staff.
Some MPs may earn every £ of their money..there are few great people motivated by the drive to improve the lives of their electotate. Some do not! Many of course earn additional salaries.
Personally I would want to see tighter controls on "expenses".
However I know my friend whose husband worked for a large IT company now has a million plus valued home basrd entirely on the fact that when they had to move for work there was a very generous removal package which was claimed to the max : all removal / legal costs/ estate agent fees , money for new furniture & fittings etc. etc. So sometime private business can be a good deal too!

Considering I live in a very impoverished part of the country we don’t have a great deal of serious crime here . I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in London where it seems there are murders every day suggesting the link isn’t as cut and dry as some would believe .

I simply think folk who work hard and conscientiously day in and day out should be rewarded for their labour whatever their occupation.
I resent those who have highly paid sinecures (MPs come to mind) or are paid a fortune for 'endorsements' (e.g. sports stars).
I hate to think that the powerful and cynical can encourage dissent and dissatisfaction in the workforce as a whole while they take in their millions.

Lemongrove of course I remember the crash. I have several friends & relatives who ran their own businesses, who lost their pensions and income as their firms collapsed.
I worked,for a time, for a local authority and saw first hand the decimation of services through reduction of personnel: social care, SEND provision, highways, education, refuse collection etc etc.
The public, understandably, want the same level of service as when there was better investment.
I am fully aware too of the need for value for money..which does not just mean cuts! It means efficiency..cut too far and efficiency is not possible.

The people to direct anger and disgruntlement at are not other workers in different organisations but the profit hungry fat cats at the top level of multi national global companies and their political chums.
Capitalist governments rely on the fact they can divide and rule the electorate. If they can make workforce A blame workforce B or the indigenous worker blame an immigrant worker for all the ills citizens are suffering then at least the government can get on profiteering for themselves and their mates!

Crime is at a 40 year low in Scotland ,knife crime is down considerably with NO thats NO deaths from knife crime in Glasgow in 2017 .Stats aren't in for this year.Police numbers are up and according to the nursing union, nurses and midwife applications are up for the 5th year in a row,just read that online .
Now that may be because they are getting a decent rise or because nursing burseries have gone up to £10,000 a year .
Whatever is helping we should be happy that government policy here is making sure we get people in jobs we need ,especially when we'll lose some with Brexit .My cousin who sent me the OP is on the verge of moving here although she has never lived here and was born south of the border and she sends me posts about how bad things are becoming in her area

.By the way Michelin in Dundee are closing because they never updated their production line and the tyres they were making aren't really in use much now.The SNP leader has promised to try to persuade Michelin to upgrade the plant .She has got a good reputation on saving jobs as she has saved otherfactories by stepping in recently.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2018/03/cutting-number-stop-and-searches-behind-rise-crime

Since when did “genuinely working hard” have any bearing on how much anyone is paid?

Likewise the Tyneside factory worker should not be over taxed /NI in order to appease powerful public sector unions requests for increased wages for their members .

I don’t think the wages of an average guy on the line at Nissan compare with those of a FF, nurse, police officer etc. But I get what you mean.

I should have said relatively generous wages which possibly compare with Nissan.
PECS is right, I believe. It must be extremely difficult for small business owners to meet all the costs imposed on them BUT please don't let's buy into the 'divide and conquer' philosophy.
Remember the phrases 'hard-working families' 'just about managing' and the laughable 'all in it together '?
Don't ring true, do they?
If folk genuinely work hard they deserve to be paid for their labour and the Scottish firefighter isn't to blame for unfair wage deals in NE factories.

gilly is right, and as most of my family, both working and retired have been in the public sector, policemen ,teachers and nurses, I can say that they are well paid everywhere in the country ( bear that in mind, in areas where housing is fairly cheap, not all live in London.)
Their jobs are far more protected than the private sector and their pensions guaranteed and safe ( yes, they do have to pay quite a lot in) but better that, and a good retirement pot.
Which is why, although they are all wanting salary rises and more money for whichever service they are in, they are actually in better positions than anyone in the private sector on similar wages.
Public spending had to be slimmed down....anyone remember the financial crash? No, thought not.
Things are recovering now and so gradually public spending will increase.

I don’t begrudge public sector workers a penny PECS crikey my sister is one. She talks about how badly she is paid. She is effectively a pen pusher and earns far more than anyone could get doing the same in the private sector up here. She also has a very generous pension to look forward to. I just wish people could understand that we cannot all work for the public sector can we?

see this week's news about the loss of nearly 1 000 jobs as the Michelin factory is closed - a factory known for paying generous wages

Which is probably why it is having to close mcem (I bet they are moving production abroad). The only private sector employer up here that pays anywhere near decent wages (probably rubbish for down South, but okay for here up North) is Nissan. Everyone is holding their breath as they are making huge cut backs and making extended shut downs too.

The problem as I see it employers can only pay whet they are able to charge out. Employers NI is very high, likewise enforced pensions, insurances, rents and rates (that’s before they pay a penny out in wages) . No wonder many of our large employers are shipping out.

gilly The proportion of a salary that goes into the good work pension of public service jobs is quite high. It is not good to bear a grudge against public workers doing essential jobs and comparing to wages in industry. I know a couple, a London firefighter & a nursery nurse, who really struggle to make ends meet..they live in social housing and do not own a car . SiL is fortunate that my DD is earning well. He never had a 2nd job after his first 2 yrs when he helped out occasionally in his mum's business doing labouring.
Small & specialised industries are badly served by successive governments thst seem to be " owned*" and at the beck and call multinationals who seem to hold all the power. Direct your understandable anger at them not at other working folk.

www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/firefighter

Wow gilly you must be right about geographical differences.
I'm not jumping down your throat but that really isn't typical here and this isn't a terrifically wealthy area - see this week's news about the loss of nearly 1 000 jobs as the Michelin factory is closed - a factory known for paying generous wages.
Teachers, police officers and fire fighters are reasonably well paid but not high earners.
Given the cuts that all public services are enduring I think they earn every penny.
Also bear in mind that their public sector pensions depend on the length of time they've served and their personal contributions to their pension fund. The more they put in the more they get out.
Admittedly, it's not an option for everyone but not a government funded freebie either.

Many firefighters have second jobs too (a lot work for local funeral homes around here) as (thankfully) I can’t remember the last actual fire we had in this town. Before anyone jumps down my throat I know they do more than attend fires.

Well I don’t know what to say to that to be honest PECS except for maybe it is relative to where in the country you live. Here in the NE fire personnel (I never know what on earth to call them these days), teachers, police officers are among the very highest paid and the only ones who come out was good pensions too. Pity help the lowly factory worker round here is you consider a fire person to be badly paid .
My dads friend was a “fireman” he worked in the fire service for 30 years and has been retired for the same length of time on a massive pension. He brags to my dad that he gets more than the average working man. He is 80 the same as my dad . Can we really pay these kinds of pensions out for 30,40,50 years? No wonder there are having to be cutbacks.