Cuts will be 50 per cent higher, NHS bosses told

Hospitals could have to make savings of up to 50 percent higher than initially outlined by the government in order to meet guidelines under the NHS reform programme.

Monitor, the independent foundation trust regulator, wrote to health officials around the country to warn them that they might face a “substantial challenge” in trying to meet the coalition’s drive for efficiency.

The regulator suggested hospitals could have to make savings of up to 7 per cent a year to be granted foundation trust status compared to the four percent previously outlined by the Department of Health (DoH).

The government is trying to convert all hospital trusts into foundation trusts by 2014, meaning they would be free from central control. It wants to cut £20bn across the NHS by 2015 and reduce administrative costs in non-front line organisations by 33 percent over the same time period.

Number of women on dole highest in 15 years

The good cheer felt by the Treasury at yesterday’s unemployment figures, which less bad than expected, will be tempered by the knowledge that some groups are being hit worse than others. The number of women claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance is at its highest for 15 years.

Women have been particularly affected by unemployment as part-time posts, and jobs in the service and retail sectors, which have traditionally been held by women, have been among the first to be axed.

Changes to benefit rules have also seen women switching from income support to Jobseeker’s Allowance over the past two months. If current trends continue, more women in the UK will be unemployed than men for the first time since records began, a woman’s campaigning group has claimed.

According to a forthcoming report by the Fawcett Society and the Women’s Budget Group, the situation for women will get worse with public sector job losses as they hold 65 per cent of positions in the sector.

They predict job cuts in the public sector could run into the hundreds of thousands.

“For the first time, after decades of steady progress, we will be turning the clock back on women’s access to the jobs market,” said Fawcett’s chief executive, Anna Bird.

This article appeared here in The Independent. 

Some food for thought from inside Fortnum & Mason

The occupation of Fortnum & Mason, best known for providing picnic baskets to the Royal Family, was held in typical UK Uncut style. Followers were directed to the secret meeting place by groups brandishing green and red umbrellas at Oxford Circus. At 3.30pm, 400 anti-cuts protesters, including me, entered the Piccadilly department store for a demonstration punctuated by poetry readings and guitar playing.

Shelves stocked with jars of marmalade, silver platters and bottles of champagne were soon home to carefully crafted banners, such as “Closed by UK Uncut” and “Big Society Bail In: We Won’t Pay for their Crisis”. While I was checking incoming tweets from news channels documenting the escalating violence outside, UK Uncut members were busy holding a meeting around the three-storey spiral staircase. They decided all actions via consensus-decision making, whereby you can indicate approval of an action by a quick show of jazz hands.

Unlikely stars step into the limelight

Keisha Riley-Douglas, 21, is holding a measuring tape against a teenage boy to fit him for his costume for tonight’s performance at Sadler’s Wells theatre. It is not her first time working as a project support officer for All Change, a community-based arts project set in Islington, but it seems a long time since she first got involved in the organisation seven years ago as a fourteen-year-old new mother.

 Two weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Nataleiah, Riley-Douglas decided to join a group of young parents in her borough that was working with professional artists and a local organisation to create a unique arts project. The premise then was simple: All Change believed that introducing a range of art forms to communities that might not otherwise experience them could give young people the skills to take control of their futures. Riley-Douglas, it seems, proves they were not wrong.

Postgraduate Profile: Maastricht University is experiencing a British invasion

It is known as the most international university in the Netherlands, but until last year there were only 50 UK students enrolled at what is one of the top universities in the country. Now, with more than twice the number of British students than this time last year and with almost four times as many UK graduates signing up to study for a Masters degree, the University of Maastricht is hoping to be the next big benefactor of Britain’s cuts to higher education.

With the Coalition’s plans to allow English universities to charge up to £9,000 per year from 2012 and with cuts to higher education totalling 40 per cent over the next four years, staff at what has been ranked the 111th best university in the world said they are determined to attract more UK students to the Netherlands.