As Book Week Scotland draws to a close, figures sourced by SPICe have revealed that over 83% of primary school children have signed up to participate in the First Minister’s Reading Challenge. The initiative, backed by the Scottish Reading Trust, aims to encourage children to enjoy books. 

So far, two thirds of Scottish primary schools have registered with the initiative.  Every P1 child will receive three picture books, while P2 and P3 child will receive a gift pack of books, games and other materials aimed at improving numerical and literacy skills at home.  Commenting, SNP MSP Jenny Gilruth, said: “As a former teacher, I know how important it is to encourage children to read.  Developing crucial numerical and literacy skills at an early age can have a significant impact on children’s academic abilities. “The First Minister’s Reading Challenge is a great way to get children into books, educating our children through the pleasure of reading.“The SNP is delivering on our promise to close the education attainment gap and this initiative will go a long way in securing a positive future for children across Scotland.”

It is ABC founder Simon Collyer’s birthday today: November 25th. 

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I would just like to say a special thank you to all those who have helped me found the ABC and this includes Christopher Johnson - a finer friend no one could have. Without the help from Chris I would have not have made it this far. A big thank you to Chris for being my helper, strategist, sounding board and mate!! 

I would also like to say a special thank you to, Tomas Kasiulis, Volunteering Coordinator, of the Essex University, Student Union VTeam, who is giving us so much support currently. Essex are one of the UK’s finest universities with an international reputation, [especially] in Politics. We are going to have a student crew from the University working with us early next year, and I am looking forward to meeting you all next week.

I would especially like to thank Gareth Bickerton, a [former] director and expert practitioner from UnLtd, who saw the potential of the ABC and put me forward for a Millennium Award. A great honour and the spark that ‘lit the ABC fire’. Also, we must thank our friends at BIG Lottery for their support.

We have some exciting plans, but for now we have been steadily building up the content and building up our relationships with a wide range of people and organisations. There are many other people I could mention, whose help has been invaluable.

I was excited this week when mid-week, I found that if you typed ‘Autumn Statement’ into Google - the ABC was featured just below the Government website, but just ahead of the BBC!! 

Next year, as ABC founder - I am featuring in a documentary film series by Applecart Films about the effects of poverty on people. A counter to the Jeremy Kyle/Benefit Street offer, that has so derided the image of job seekers and others managing on low incomes.

The ABC are partners of the Electoral Commission [promoting registering to vote by this hard-to-reach group] and this year I attended a business course at the renown Cambridge University, Judge Business School, thanks to Social Incubator East. We have had a lot of additional help locally from Colchester Community Voluntary Service, an umbrella organisation that helps organisations with a social mission.

We have worked in conjunction with Oxford University, and the Colchester Institute Film and Media Department, winning a prestigious ‘Collins Award’ for a documentary film featuring a ‘Career in Watersports' with Brightlingsea sailboard legend, David ‘Whitey’ White.

And much more of course....

I may not be very productive today! But thank you all,

Best Wishes,  

Simon COLLYER

ABC Founder

Image: Interior of the Cambridge University, Judge Business School.

There were 857,000 young people (aged 16 to 24) in the UK who were not in education, employment or training (NEET), an increase of 14,000 from April to June 2016 and up 3,000 from a year earlier.

The percentage of all young people in the UK who were NEET was 11.9%, up 0.2 percentage points from April to June 2016 and up 0.2 percentage points from a year earlier

Wages of young people have declined:

Graph courtesy of the Institute of Fiscal Sudies (IFS)

The new £5 note was issued on Tuesday 13 September.

The New Fiver is the first note to be made from polymer, a flexible plastic material, and it features Sir Winston Churchill.

You can continue to spend paper £5 notes as usual until 5 May 2017. After this they will cease to be legal tender. 

According to the Manchester Evening News: 

Serial numbers that could see you make money if you list them on eBay. 

AA notes are currently listed on eBay for as much as £500.

AK47 notes are also selling on the site for as much as £80,000.

There's been an initial print-run of 440 million new £5 notes to mark the start of the old notes' withdrawal.

The notes can be used to de-ice your windscreen, but like using your debit or credit card - buying a plastic scraper may be a better option! 

Have you ever complained about to cost of fuel? Here is an interesting table that gives some food for thought.

The Index starts in 2010 at 100 and you can see that prices have actually fallen recently, in the post-recession period.

Petroleum costs are an indicator of economic activity. The use of new technology - drilling ever deeper undersee and new extraction methods - such as tar sands, are reasons for the price falling. Not to mention slower growth in world economy and alternative energy sources. Countries like Saudi Arabia rely on oil sales for the state machinery to function. Thus, petroleum sales continue, even when prices are low. 

Plastics, fertilizer, transportation, food shipping and the cost of looking for a job, or going to work. The price of petroleum affects almost everything in the modern world.  Money cannot buy you love they say, but you cannot top up your car without it.   

If you want to compare fuel prices to your salary at the time, you can use the: Bank of England - Inflation Calculator.

Please click below:

Fuel costs since 1977. The Index starts in 2010

Not quite ready to join the BREXIT crowd? EURES is the European Job Seekers portal. The website is full of useful information about working in EU countries. 

The purpose of EURES is to provide information, advice and recruitment/placement (job-matching) services for the benefit of workers and employers as well as any citizen wishing to benefit from the principle of the free movement of persons.

EURES is much more than the Job Mobility Portal that you are visiting right now.

EURES has a human network of more than 850 EURES advisers that are in daily contact with jobseeker and employers across Europe.

In European cross-border regions, EURES has an important role to play in providing information about and helping to solve all sorts of problems related to cross-border commuting that workers and employers may experience.

Set up in 1993, EURES is a co-operation network between the European Commission and the Public Employment Services of the EEA Member States (The EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and other partner organisations. Switzerland also takes part in EURES co-operation. The joint resources of the EURES member and partner organisations provide a solid basis for the EURES network to offer high quality services for both workers and employers.

Click below to visit the NEW website:

A very moving talk about austerity and benefit cuts. Jack Monroe (born 1988, Southend-on-Sea) is a writer, journalist and activist who has campaigned over poverty issues, particularly hunger relief, and has published a blog and several books of "austerity recipes". 

TED is a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. TED believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. On TED.com, they are  building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers — and a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other, both online and at TED and TEDx events around the world, all year long.

As a talk it could have you in tears. Be warned!

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, has today (8 September 2016) announced that he will present his first Autumn Statement to Parliament on 23 November 2016.

The Autumn Statement is based on the latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility for the economy and public finances.

Key Points

• Earnings Taper to drop from 65p to 63p
• Means claimants can keep slightly more of the money they earn over the earning threshold of £192 per month (£397 if receiving housing help)

Earnings Taper for Universal Credit

What the Earnings Taper is and how this affects Universal Credit?

The Earnings Taper is a reduction to your Universal Credit based on your earned income. The taper rate is to drop to 63%. This means for every pound you earn over the Work Allowance (if you are eligible for one) you will keep 35 pence.

To work out the taper that applies to your award, Universal Credit will:

Take your total monthly earnings figure after tax, National Insurance and relevant pension contributions have been taken off.

Deduct your monthly Work Allowance (if you are eligible for one), which is the amount you can earn without your benefit being affected.

Apply the taper rate by multiplying the balance by 0.65.

This is the amount that will be taken from your Universal Credit maximum amount when calculating your award.

Click here for more information:

Note: According to the Child Poverty Action Group

The Treasury is briefing that a single parent with one child and no housing costs working 15 hours a week will gain £170 per year from the lower Universal Credit ‘taper rate’ announced today, but in reality today’s announcement simply means this lone parent will lose £3000 a year, rather than £3,170 a year, as a result of the substantial package of cuts announced in the Summer 2015 Budget.

Responding to the Autumn Statement, Alison Garnham, Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group, said:

“For all the talk, this was a rescue package for ‘just managing’ families that failed to turn up.  That’s hugely disappointing for those of us who felt that the Prime Minister was going to take robust action to help hard up families.  The Chancellor applied a sticking plaster to family budgets haemorrhaging losses imposed on them by his predecessor’s budgets.  

“The Prime Minister knows the country isn’t working for just managing families.  These families have been left worse off and horribly exposed to rising prices. So it was surprising and disappointing that today the Government chose the better off and businesses, rather than ’just managing’ families, when it chose to spend billions on raising personal tax allowances and cutting corporation tax.

“The rhetoric on just managing families will end up being meaningless if the Government intends on largely persisting with policies that will tip the just managing into hardship and more children into poverty

Controversial plans that would require anyone needing healthcare in England’s hospitals to provide two forms of identification, including a passport, were relayed to Westminster’s public accounts committee yesterday.
 
The Department of Health’s most senior civil servant, Chris Wormald, said the scheme had already been piloted in places with “high immigrant populations” such as in London and Peterborough. A hospital in London cited “maternity tourism” as the reasoning behind the scheme – whereby pregnant mothers without the correct papers could be refused NHS care and referred to the Home Office with the threat of deportation.
 
The civil servant admitted that these plans were controversial and not in keeping with the “culture of the health service up to now… but what we want is a culture of everybody who works in it to understand financial rigour.  We need a culture where we are more careful with the tax pound”.
 
Clare Haughey MSP and Deputy Convener of the Health and Sport Committee said:
 
“To demand that patients show their passport at hospitals in England goes against the founding principles of the NHS – and the civil servant proposing this even admits that these plans are completely out of step with the culture of the health service.
 
“This measure could see UK citizens being turned away from hospitals or indeed not going to A&E because they don’t have any ID. NHS staff should be left to treat patients that come through hospital doors rather than having to act as gatekeepers for a penny-pinching government. 
 
“I am embarrassed at the thought of a pregnant mother being refused treatment in England because she does not have the relevant paperwork and I hope the government will denounce these plans immediately. This is a grim insight into what a post-Brexit UK could look like.”

ABC Comment:  Passports are expensive and not everyone has one or can afford to renew their passport if they are out of work. 

Will Quince MP (Conservative, Colchester) has responded to a letter sent as part of a campaign regarding, Universal Credit.

We regard cutting of benefits as a major case of hardship and suffering. The High Wage economy – well that’s another myth for most folk, who are born with a 'plastic [not a silver] spoon in their mouths'.  

To our way of thinking, wealth is being transferred to the rich in a way that even the most cynical person cannot fully comprehend, thanks to the philosophy of George Osbourne.

One person who knew what he was talking about was the late, Sir James Goldsmith.

Goldsmith (a committed enviromentalist) ideas were prophetic, yet he was a Conservative, till he launched the 'Referendum Party'.

He was an investor and businessman first and politician second, and like Donald Trump, Goldsmiths ideas were pragmatic, not mearly ideological. Like Trump, arguing with him would not have been a good strategy. Like Trump, he was lampooned by the media and a frequent target of Private Eye magazine.

We appreciate Will's - or should we say ‘the Governments’ reply, however. However we are pleased to see that Will Quince MP is getting involved in the debate.