LABOUR MARKET STATISTICS IRELAND - The labour market statistics were published today by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

July’s proposed redundancies highest of 2021

• 850 redundancies were proposed during July 2021, taking the total number of proposed collective redundancies in the last twelve months to 6,090, nearly a third less than the number recorded in the previous twelve months (8,790).
• During July 2021, 250 redundancies were confirmed, taking the annual total to 5,750.  This annual total was 81% higher than in the previous year (3,180).

NI Claimant Count (Experimental Series) decreased for the fifth consecutive month

• In July 2021, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 50,000 (5.1% of the workforce), which is a decrease of 800 (1.5%) from the previous month’s revised figure.  The July claimant count is 22% below the recent peak in May 2020, and 64% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.

Payrolled employees now higher than pre-COVID for the second consecutive month

• The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in July 2021 was 762,600, an increase of 1.1% over the month and 3.1% over the year.  This is the highest on record and the second consecutive month that employee numbers were above pre-COVID levels.
• Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,887 in July 2021, an increase of £39 (2.1%) over the month and £148 (8.5%) over the year.

The unemployment rate increased over the quarter and over the year

• The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16+ who were unemployed) for the period April-June 2021 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 3.8%.  The unemployment rate increased by 0.4 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and increased by 1.2pps over the year.  The annual change was statistically significant and likely to reflect real change.
• The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased over the quarter by 0.9pps and was unchanged over the year at 71.1%.  Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.
• The economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 who were not working and not seeking or available to work) decreased over the quarter by 1.3pps and over the year by 0.9pps to 25.9%.  Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.
• Put into the context of the UK, NI had the second lowest unemployment rate, the lowest employment rate and the highest economic inactivity rate of all the UK regions.

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SNP - Two-thirds of people in Scotland are opposed to the Tory UK government plans to cut Universal Credit in October.

In a poll by YouGov, 35% of people supported the £20 uplift being maintained until the country’s financial position was ‘more stable’. 28% of people asked wanted the uplift to be made permanent.

Citizens Advice Scotland, who commissioned the polling, said cutting support would mean Universal Credit’s real terms value would drop to a lower rate than when it was introduced in 2013.

Commenting, SNP MSP and convener of the social security committee Neil Gray said:

“The majority of people in Scotland want the Universal Credit uplift to be maintained, showing how utterly out of step the Tories are.

“It is concerning that in the face of this evidence and previous findings that cutting Universal Credit would plunge 20,000 children in Scotland into poverty that the Tories are still going ahead with it.

“During the pandemic, the uplift has been a vital lifeline for families across Scotland. Cutting it in October would be devastating and this polling shows that the majority of people in Scotland recognise that and want what is best for everyone that lives here– why can’t the Tories?

“This demonstrates how Scotland is living a tale of two governments, the one in Edinburgh that is building a social security system built on fairness, dignity and respect. Whereas the one in London is prepared to plunge thousands of families into poverty despite the majority of people in Scotland seeing the real benefit of keeping the uplift in place.

“We cannot trust the Tories to protect the future of the people of Scotland and that is why we cannot put Scotland’s recovery into the hands of the Tories. Scotland must have a choice over its future in a referendum for recovery

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UNITED STATES - Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, today announced 12 new Compassionate Allowances conditions:  Charlevoix Saguenay Spastic Ataxia (ARSACS), Choroid Plexus Carcinoma, CIC-rearranged Sarcoma, Congenital Zika Syndrome, Desmoplastic Mesothelioma, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy – Adult, Pericardial Mesothelioma, Refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma, Renpenning Syndrome, SCN8A Related Epilepsy with Encephalopathy, SYNGAP1-related NSID, and Taybi-Linder Syndrome.  

Compassionate Allowances is an initiative that quickly identifies severe medical conditions and diseases that meet Social Security’s standards for disability benefits.

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UNIVERSAL CREDIT  - The August bank holiday is always on the last Monday of this month - this year it falls on August 30.

If you are due to be paid Universal Credit on Monday the 30^th August this will be paid on Friday 27^th August.

The same goes for other benefits such as working tax credits and child tax credit, as well as child benefit.

Universal Credit is paid on the same day each month. Tax credits are typically paid every four weeks or weekly, while child benefit is usually every four weeks on a Monday or Tuesday.

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HIGH COURT - Two million Brits who claim benefits could get £1,500 in back pay if the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) loses a court challenge next month.

The argument being brought to court was whether it was fair to exclude those on old-style legacy benefits from the £20 a week uplift.

Extra financial help wasn’t extended to include those still on legacy benefits such as Employment Support Allowance (ESA), Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) and Income Support which on balance seems very unfair.

A hearing will take place next month. Two claimants have been given the green light to take legal action against the DWP in April. The outcome will be watched by many with keen interest.

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POST OFFICE - The Post Office card account (POca) service is coming to an end. Customers can phone the DWP Customer Service centre on 0800 085 7133 (opening hours are 8.30am to 4.00pm, Monday to Friday) to provide new account details for their benefit or State Pension payments.

All POca customers who are unable to provide a bank, building society or credit union account will be moved to the DWP voucher-based scheme called the Payment Exception service which provides access to payments via the PayPoint network. Payment Exception service payments can also be accessed via the Post Office network from the end of August 2021.

Customers will start to be moved to the Payment Exception service from the end of August 2021 if they haven’t yet contacted DWP with new account details.

Find out how and when your benefits are paid

Image: Post Office Colchester. 

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JAKE DAVIDSON - One cannot draw too many conclusions from one specific case, but no doubt the feelings of hopelessness experienced by this young man Jake Davidson that drove him to carry out a violent ‘spree killing’ can be partly understood.

All thankfully in similar circumstances will not react in the same way and we must be very careful not to conclude anything from a single very isolated and rare case. Davidson's actions should not be categorized as normal.

Currently, many young people are trapped living at home either workless or in low-paid jobs, unable to afford to move out. This can create simmering bitterness and ill-feeling between siblings and their parents. The Tory planned cuts to benefits will only make matters worse. Youth unemployment is officially around 10% however unemployment figures do not reflect the full picture, or the individual suffering that accompanies them.

House prices have been driven upwards by Quantitative Easing, printing money. The world economy was facing a massive crash in March 2020, and this could lead to deflation. Deflation is when prices fall and people withhold purchases because what they are planning to buy now, could become cheaper in the future. Modest inflation of some 2% is what economists feel is optimal.

Miraculously Covid arrived to save the day(!) economically at least. The world economy has spluttered along since the 2008 Great Recession. During the Covid crisis, governments printed money on a vast scale. In America, people on low wages found they were getting more money on the stimulus packages provided by the US government than they were in work.

If you want to change society create a crisis. In the 1980s Japan’s economy was still run as a war economy. It was a system called ‘Window Guidance’. In a war economy, the government decides what needs to be produced and will amalgamate companies to achieve optimal outputs. The government will decide the amount of profit a firm makes on its sales.

The Japanese government decided via the Ministry of Finance what industries to stimulate and directed finance and loans accordingly. The US wanted the economy to change to one of the free markets where US banks and speculators could come into the Japanese economy as investors. To initiate change a huge ‘bubble’ was created by Japan’s Central Bank flooding money into the economy.

In economics the amount of money in an economy equals the number of goods and services sold, - so if you increase the money supply but not the amount of output the value of money falls and prices rise. The US managed a fantastic trick after WW2. They had the US Dollar made the world's reserve currency at Bretton Woods. Many commodities are traded in US dollars. So, the US could increase the number of dollars in circulation without seeing a fall in the value of the currency as more money was demanded. This was called the Petrodollar system. In 1971 President Nixon disconnected the link between the value of Gold [the Gold Standard] and increased the number of dollars in circulation to fight the Vietnam War (approximately by 30%). This ultimately led to very high inflation in the 1970's. The value of money fell.

If this money (profits) in US dollars was repatriated to Japan (for argument's sake) a country that was producing cheap goods, it would be converted into yen. Buying yen to buy Japanese goods would force up the price of yen, so Japanese goods would become more expensive and less competitive. So countries producing cheap goods started keeping their $ money made from sales in UK and in Europe. This created the Eurodollar market eventually, where a pool of US dollars was kept in Europe, the City of London for example.

To create a crisis to bring about change far more money was pumped into the property market in Japan in the 1980s than was needed. The price of property skyrocketed. The Emperors Garden in Tokyo was worth more than the whole of Canada and worth more than all the land in California.

When ABC founder Simon Collyer visited Japan in 1989, he found that a pint of beer in the Giza business district cost £100 and the entrance to a nightclub the same. A flat would cost over £6,000 a month in rent.

A huge crash followed, and then major reforms. Lifetime employment working for one company was no longer guaranteed and hidden away at the recent Tokyo Olympics were Japan’s homeless. Japan has experienced a period of deflation and low economic growth since its economic bubble burst in the early 1990s
The US and the World Bank and the IMF repeated these actions in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia in 2002. Indonesia is cited as the place globalization started following a very bloody and violent civil war.

Before Covid and since 2010 and the great recession the world economy has spluttered along while the world population has continued to grow. The wealth created is having to be shared amongst a greater number of people. Information technology has made it possible for those at the top to hoover up the wealth that is being created leaving those at the bottom relatively poorer. Poorest of all in the developed world are those on state benefits such as those in the UK who are faced with their incomes being slashed by £20 a week as the Universal Credit uplift is cancelled, which will make it impossible to live.

Women have sought equal rights which is perfectly understandable. However, the benefits system has enabled women to manage without men. Bringing up children is no longer a team effort. Once inseminated, women can manage without men, and they can solicit an income from the state to live independently.

Women, it is argued by some, have all the bargaining chips.

Housing policy in the UK under the Tories has benefitted wealthy landlords. 60% of the Conservative front bench make their money from the rental income. Driving up house prices suits the banks because they need security for asset-backed loans, but for ordinary young people, a place to live they can own or even rent is a fading dream.

Unemployed and economic failures in a world that celebrates wealth, some women are showing they can manage without men. Female assertiveness has been on the rise in general. Tattoos, drunkenness, and foul language feature on our streets as part of the ‘night-time economy’ as it is called. There’s a whole generation of young men from the UK to Tokyo locked away in bedrooms seeing the world only through the lens of the Internet and they will never have the intimacy that comes from a personal relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

Jake Davidson will be cited as an oddball and a ‘loser’ and someone mentally ill, but the fact is we all come from somewhere and the society and times he was living in may have been a factor that shaped his actions.

ABC Note: If you feel unwell, seek help. Many organizations can help and there is no shame in asking. If you feel desperate the Samaritans can be contacted here: 0330 094 5717. You may feel your situation is unique, but the tragedy is there are lots of people suffering it is not only you.

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NORTHERN IRELAND - Rural Affairs Minister Edwin Poots has visited a multisensory centre for people with learning, physical and sensory disabilities to see how a grant of almost £40,000 is being invested.

Aspace2 is one of 12 social enterprises across Northern Ireland that have received money from DAERA’s Rural Social Economy Investment Scheme which has already invested £500,000.

The scheme aims to strengthen rural communities and the rural economy by making a positive difference to the lives of rural dwellers by providing opportunities for training and employment.

“Aspace2 offers terrific training and development opportunities for adults and young people with additional needs. So I’m delighted to see for myself how they are investing the almost £40,000 my department has provided to help them make a positive difference to the lives of local rural dwellers,” said Minister Poots.

“The social enterprise sector delivers a significant positive impact on the Northern Ireland economy, so it is critical that we help them to grow whilst they support those who live in rural areas.

“People living in rural communities face particular challenges such as reduced connectivity, poorer health, lack of access to employment and inferior infrastructure. I am fully committed to helping these rural communities and the Rural Social Economy Investment Scheme is a clear demonstration of that,” the Minister added.

“I have also recently launched a public consultation on Northern Ireland’s first ever Rural Policy Framework that aims to create a sustainable rural community where people want to live, work and be active.

“Completely tailored to our unique circumstances, demographically and geographically it will have stakeholders at its heart, so I would encourage everyone to respond.  I am particularly keen to ensure rural dwellers have their say and tell us what they think about the framework, this is vitally important work,” said Minister Poots.

The consultation will run through Citizen Space until 6 September 2021. You can find out details about the DAERA webinars and enrol at: https://www.daera-ni.gov.uk/consultations/rural-policy-framework-northern-ireland-consultation

There are also a number of online webinars that you can register to attend including one on employment which is on 17 August at 7.00pm. 

Image: Rural Affairs Minister Edwin Poots pictured at a visit to Aspace2 with (L-R) Colleen Quigley, Eduaction Lead, Aspace2, Michael Flanagan Accountant, Aspace2, Phelim Sharvin Associate Director, Community Finance Ireland, Martina Bell Managing Director, Aspace2.

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MENTAL HEALTH - Mental health is as important as the physical well-being of an individual. Our elders, in particular, need intense support to induce positive mental health. This is the need of the hour because retirement takes away the working lifestyle of the people. With health issues, meager pensions, and increased stress of loneliness, many elders succumb to depression, anxiety, and fatal stressful situations. It is essentially important to provide Whittier assisted living for the elderly in the city, and all around America.

As we age, our mental health becomes more prone to be damaged. The more unstable our mental health is, the more will be the chances of a constantly stressful lifestyle. Elder people need proper assistance to enhance their positive mental health. This Whittier assisted living can be attained through the help of the Association of Pensions and Benefits Claimants CIC. This independent organization has been running to bring ease and convenience to the lives of the elders of the state.

10 ways to promote positive mental health in the elderly:

The mental health problems faced by elders are challenging but not impossible to deal with. There is a list of 10 positive mental health tips that can help in eradicating the trials and challenges faced by elderly people.

Increased emphasis on health:

Health is one of the most sensitive aspects of an adult’s life. Taking necessary and immediate steps to keep yourself healthy is essentially important. Regular checkups and consultations can help in reducing the risk of any expected disease.

Stay socially connected:

The warmth of love and affection is highly important for the elderly. At this age, elders may feel lonely and depressed. Keeping in touch with friends or family members can help them express their feelings and feel connected with their loved ones.

Financial management:

A retired person may or may not receive a significant amount of pension. The low pension can lead to increased stress among the elderly because it becomes hard to make both ends meet. Furthermore, people at an older age may find it difficult to do odd jobs to sustain a healthy, happy lifestyle. Therefore, financial management consultation can be taken, as given by the Association of Pensions and Benefits Claimants CIC, to effectively manage the pension cost-effectively.

Consultation of an Elderly Support Organization:

It may not seem necessary to most people, Elderly support groups are very important to provide an all-in-one solution for the positive mental health of adults. There lies a deep feeling of comfort in being able to discuss issues relating to mental health with someone who understands and provides positive solutions.

Stay active:

Staying active is a must when it comes it mental health. A healthy body is a healthy mind, which signifies how some exercise, a jog, or walk can induce positivity in your life.

Learn and adapt to technology:

Although many adults find it difficult to use technology, it is the need of the hour. Older people must learn the new technology to stay connected with the outside world and feel more interactive.

Pets can help:

Pets like dogs, cats, and even birds can help in lowering stress levels. Studies prove that owning pets can help elders in feeling comfort and control. Therefore, keeping a pet of choice can elevate positive moods among people, particularly those who live alone.

Assistant for care:

Even if you don't need it, there is no shame in hiring a caregiver or helper for work. This will allow the elderly to rest and talk to their caregivers and inform them immediately in case of an emergency.

Learn and explore:

There is no age to stop learning. Elders can indulge in activities like pottery, art, painting, yoga, etc. to keep themselves physically and mentally at peace.

Spirituality and meditation:

According to one’s beliefs, it can be significantly helpful for people of older age groups to stay spiritually positive. Meditation, yoga, and prayer can help in feeling positive and purposeful at this age.

We at the Association of Pensions and Benefits Claimants CIC aim to support the elderly to enjoy the best retirement life they truly deserve. Older people’s health, safety, security, financial planning, and caregiving are some of the most integral engaging activities performed by this association. Association of Pensions and Benefits Claimants CIC was founded in 2012 with the sole purpose of giving state benefits and pensions to the people of the state, and help them in maintaining a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

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DISABILITY - Diabled people need more time. Disabled people must be given a six week extension to provide crucial feedback on the Health and Disability Green Paper, say over 100 disability organisations.

In a letter to the Minister of Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson MP, the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) – expressed concern that the millions of people impacted by the policies being consulted on in the paper will not be able to respond if they aren’t given more time.

After two years of waiting for the Health and Disability Green Paper it was published on the 20 July 2021 – just a few days before the Government’s summer break, but still with the standard 12 week consultation timeframe. This, the organisations argue, does not make the ‘reasonable adjustments’ that millions of disabled people need. Instead, they state the timeframe puts ‘people in a position where they are either not able to respond in time, not going to be able to respond properly, or do not have time to engage with the people they work with in developing their responses’.

Ahead of the publication, Z2K asked over 1420 people¹ with experience of the benefits assessment process about their views on the Health and Disability Green Paper. The majority (88%) said they were either ‘not at all confident’ that the Government would use the feedback to make changes to the benefit assessment process, and over two thirds (74%) thought the Government wouldn’t listen to the changes people – who have been through the assessment process themselves – wanted to see made.

Ella Abraham, Z2K’s Policy and Campaigns Manager and Campaigns Co-chair of the DBC, said: “The Health and Disability Green Paper is a really important consultation, with proposals that could have detrimental consequences for disabled people. Yet the Department of Work and Pensions published it a day before Parliament went on summer recess. 

“We’re calling on this Government to stand by their 2019 manifesto commitment to empower and support disabled people and act as an ally. They must at the very least extend the consultation period of the Green Paper. This will support the very people impacted by the policies being consulted on to be able to respond meaningfully and for these potentially very far-reaching policies to be properly thought through.” 

Ellen Clifford, on behalf of the DPAC, said: “Proposals in this green paper will directly impact on the lives of millions of disabled people, potentially in very serious ways, so it’s imperative that there is an opportunity for people to have their say. Too often over previous years, changes have been made to the social security system that have caused widespread detriment.

“Measures included in the paper such as merging Personal Independence Payment with Universal Credit threaten an end to non-means-tested disability benefits which would severely reduce the ability of many disabled people to look for and stay in employment. They cannot be taken lightly and legally Ministers must take steps to ensure they fully understand the impacts of policies before they introduce them.” 

Anastasia Berry, Policy Manager at the MS Society and Policy Co-Chair of the DBC, says: “It is only fair that after the long wait for the Health and Disability Green Paper to be published, disabled people, including those with MS, are given the time they deserve to feedback. With five chapters, and over 40 questions which range from thoughts on advocacy support to changing the whole system, this is a mammoth consultation. The standard 12 weeks simply doesn’t allow for the ‘reasonable adjustments’ many disabled people need to respond.

“The Government has said it wants to be able to bring forward a white paper quickly, but it is far more important that people with MS are given the time to digest and engage with the consultation properly. If we can wait two years for them, then surely they can wait six weeks for us.”

Read the DBC and DPAC’s full letter to the Minister of Disabled People here.

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