Now Tories propose £10 charge to see GP!

One wonders just what will happen to our NHS if the Tories are elected at the next election. After one of Dave Cameron's darlings described the NHS as a 60 year-old mistake(here), another of his golden tory boys proposes to charge us £10 to see our GP.




Read more here

Tory NHS critic's hero is... not Dave?

"Controversial Tory MEP Daniel Hannan has caused fresh embarrassment for Conservative leader David Cameron after naming Enoch Powell as his political hero.

Mr Hannan recently provoked controversy by describing the NHS as a '60 year mistake', saying that he 'wouldn't wish it on anyone'.

Now in an interview with US internet television channel reason.tv, he has cited anti-immigration campaigner Mr Powell as his political influence."

Dave must be so proud.



Read more here

Dumbed-down defenders of their own turf

General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank former UK Chief of Defence Staff speaks up about the Mod in todays Times:

"Britain is at war, but one would never know it walking around Whitehall. For too many politicians it is merely another day of awkward things happening in far away places. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan appear no more than inconvenient blips — something to be muddled through until things return to normal.

And muddle is the word, as was manifest in a scathing report into defence procurement leaked this week. Its author, the former Labour adviser Bernard Gray, an experienced observer of the defence scene, blamed incompetence and “political fudge” for £35 billion of defence project overspending.

Moreover, The Times revealed that poor decisions about software have kept eight Chinook helicopters, costing a total of £259 million, in climate-controlled hangars during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. Such an error would never happen in the private sector without dismissals and a plain identification of where the buck stopped."

Read the article here

And then they come for us?

Crunch time for council workers’ golden pensions reports the Times, today:

"Millions of public sector workers will have their pensions slashed under plans to deal with a massive shortfall in the value of local government pension funds, The Times has learnt.

The move by ministers to strip council workers of their “gold-standard” final-salary pensions is likely to trigger widespread industrial action.

It comes as the gap between public and private sector pensions widens. Yesterday Royal Bank of Scotland became the latest company to reduce final-salary benefits to existing staff. John Denham, the Communities Secretary, is drawing up a series of proposals to overhaul the pensions of two million council workers, covering short, medium and longer terms."

Read the article here

Recycling in the SPVA

PCS and SPVA are committed to Sustainable Development, and to recycling wherever and whenever possible.

We’d like to take this opportunity to ask that you, the members, help promote Recycling in the workplace.

Why recycle?

Not a question that should really require an answer but there are many reasons:

· Recycling saves trees – Half of the Earth’s rainforests have gone now. Trees take in the carbon dioxide we breathe out and in turn expel the oxygen we need.
· Recycling helps curb global warming – By recycling just one ton of glass energy savings of more than 300% can be made, and carbon dioxide emissions reduced by almost 3.5 tons.
· Recycling reduces water pollution – Turning trees into paper is the most water intensive industrial process today in the United States and other countries. Paper recycling mills use far less water, and consequently produce far less pollution.
· Recycling reduces the need for landfills – Most of our planet is water. We have a finite amount of land in which to “dump” unwanted items. Recycling will therefore reduce the amount of land needed, and also reduce the toxic pollution produced by landfill which escapes into the air and into the ground.
· Recycling saves energy – It is less labour intensive and polluting to recycle materials than to produce new materials, this means that energy and fuel is saved. The fossil fuels currently in use by most large companies won’t last forever.
· Recycling saves money – Selling recyclables materials offsets the cost of collecting and processing them. This makes recycling a cheaper option than new production.

What can you do in the office?

You can do your bit, no matter how small. If all staff in the SPVA recycled items the savings, both to the Department, and at home, would surely mount up in time.

1 Emails Do you need to print an email? If you need to save it for future reference then move it to a folder on your PC. A manager giving feedback to staff as a result of an email, for instance, needs only to send it to staff, give them time to read it, then feedback. They don’t need to print it out and hand a copy to each member of staff. We all know there are occasions however, when an email does need to be printed. In that case, please ensure you long edge (double side) your printing. This would halve the amount of printed paper produced immediately.

2 Re-use Finished with a piece of paper? Turn it over, use the blank paper left for any notes you need to make. Don’t just throw it because you’ve finished the current piece of work it was needed for.

3 Recycle Every office has confidential waste sacks. When you’ve finally finished using the paper, or documents are no longer necessary and must be removed, put them in these sacks. And remember the same can be done for the cardboard boxes that stationery etc is delivered in. Break them down and put them in sacks for recycling.

Do you have recycle bins? Many offices have recycling bins. If you have, put your empty cans, bottles etc in them. If not, ask your management how to get them installed.

Do you have any ideas you would like to see PCS take forward to help sustain the environment? Please forward them to your local PCS Environmental Rep.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Alison Platt
Environmental Rep
Veterans Agency (National Branch)

Brown: I will cut spending

£25bn Trident nuclear weapons system may be among key projects delayed or cut, according to The Independant today:

"Gordon Brown is to issue a list of specific spending cuts before the general election in an attempt to convince voters that Labour will reduce the soaring deficit in public finances.

The Prime Minister has been reluctant to use the word "cuts", fearing that Labour would look no different to a Conservative Party committed to spending less than Labour. But The Independent has learnt that as a key part of Mr Brown's autumn fightback he will change tack on the issue which will be the central battleground in the election expected next spring.

Mr Brown will deny he is redrawing his favourite "dividing line" – contrasting "Labour investment versus Tory cuts". However, he has come under pressure from Cabinet ministers, led by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to change his language on public spending amid fears that Labour could lose the argument."

What money on our jobs going before nuclear weapons?
Read the article here

"60-year-old mistake"

Leading Tories describe the NHS as a 60-year-old mistake.

A bigger mistake would be to vote for THEM.

The Observer (today) can reveal that leading Tory MPs – who include Cameron's close ally Michael Gove – are listed alongside controversial MEP Daniel Hannan as co-authors of a book, Direct Democracy, which says the NHS "fails to meet public expectations" and is "no longer relevant in the 21st century".

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/16/tory-mps-back-nhs-dismantling

Civil service compensation scheme

7 August 2009 - Government intends to tear up longstanding agreement on terms and conditions to cut jobs on the cheap

The Cabinet Office has published proposals for changes to the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS). If implemented, the changes will leave many PCS members tens of thousands of pounds worse off in the event of voluntary or compulsory redundancy.
This is a disgrace, and is particularly cynical at a time when we can clearly see that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk over the next few years.

The CSCS is the redundancy and early retirement payment scheme for the civil service and many other public bodies.

If your employer is in the principal civil service pension scheme (PCSPS) you will be covered by the CSCS and the benefits from the scheme are accrued entitlements that we believe the government have no right to remove. As it is a statutory scheme changes have to be agreed by parliament.

PCS, with the other civil service unions, have been in negotiations with the Cabinet Office about the scheme since the autumn of last year. The published proposals which have not been agreed with the unions do not represent the best offer that could have been made.

The employer refused to put a further offer that would have given some protection during transitional arrangements when PCS was not prepared to be coerced into giving an undertaking to recommend acceptance.

Even this revised offer was completely unacceptable and would still have meant a detriment to the vast majority of existing staff, particularly those facing a redundancy situation in the future.

We believe the proposals are an outrageous attempt to cut people’s jobs on the cheap at a time when many are worried about job security.

Read more here

You don't have to be MoD to work here...

In Private Eye No.1242, 7-20 August, In The Back,

they report that the Ministry of Defence accounts, sneaked out at the end of the parliamentary term, shows that the "MoD is still losing hundreds of millions of pounds on two shambolic schemes highlighted in the Eye."

Firstly chaos still reigns at the DSDA where "particularily high discrepencies" were largely responsible for the National Audit Office refusing to vouch for the accounting of £6bn worth of equipment - including £155m worth of Bowman radios whose whereabouts are unknown.

But perhaps of more interest to our members is that "elsewhere in the MoD empire, the unified forces payroll system designed by the p***poor IT firm EDS is still causing havoc three years after it began. Last year the system made overpayments of £204m to some personnel while underpaying others by £64m. As the NAO concludes: "Several step changes are still required before the end-to-end military pay process including JPA can be considered fit for purpose." In English, that means that the EDS system is still... rubbish."

Read it here

Further comment from us would just seem churlish.

Would you let your teenager...

...prescribe Tamiflu?

An NHS call centre is employing 16-year-olds to assess suspected cases of swine flu.

They earn up to £16.40 an hour reading out a prepared script of questions.

It is their responsibility to hand out powerful anti-viral drugs such as Tamiflu - known to have violent side-effects.

Read more: here

PCS Pay Update No 20 - August 2009

Update on negotiations

MoD management have failed to make any attempts to resolve our pay dispute and have not offered any meetings on this matter.

Members will be aware that we invited Susan Scholefield. Director of Civilian Personnel to meet with PCS members impacted by pay and pension cuts. She has however declined our offer and is not willing to talk to members. Instead she has suggested a meeting with the MoD pay team responsible for devising the cuts to members pay.

We are now writing to the Secretary of State for Defence with a request that he meet with members so that he can understand the impact on our lives of the imposed pay and pension cuts. We are also suggesting that he directly intervenes in this dispute and helps address the concerns of PCS members. We will report his reply back to members.

Pay Data

A number of members have asked that we point out the different pay rates that now exist in the Department. We are happy to do so and these are set out below:

Position
Maximum salary – the ‘rate for the job’
E2 Pay Band Maxima
£17,072 (cut from £19,315)
E1 Pay Band Maxima
£20,074 (cut from £23,534
MoD – SCS grade 1*
£116,000 (no cut proposed)
MoD – SCS grade 3*
£205,000 (no cut proposed)
Permanent Under Secretary*
£174,999 (no cut proposed)
Secretary of State for Defence*
£141, 866 (no cut proposed and does not include expenses etc)

*Figures from the Office of Manpower Economics website

Please note that:

!. The MoD management view of the above salaries is that those of staff working at E1 and E2 are ‘too high’ and therefore need to be cut.
2. These figures do not include bonus payments. This year MoD is proposing the following arrangements for the bonus (maximum payments achievable):

E2 staff - £360 before tax.
E1 staff - £390 before tax
MOD SCS grade 3 - £22,000 before tax
Permanent Under Secretary - can achieve a bonus of up to 20% (£34,000) of his basic salary, before tax.

PCS Legal Action

Our union is continuing to progress a major legal challenge to the imposed pay cuts for our members. All members impacted have been asked to complete a complaint letter and to complete an individual grievance and lodge this with the department. If you haven’t already done so, we would urge you to do this now.

We will notify member shortly of the arrangements for the grievance hearings and we hope that every member will attend the hearings.

12 Employment Tribunal claims are being lodged this month and we will notify members of the dates for the Department’s appearance in front of the Tribunal as soon as we can.

National Pay Campaign and Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS)

PCS members in the MoD will continue to play a full role in the national PCS campaign that you will be consulted about during the next few months.

Members will be aware that PCS, with the other civil service unions, have been in negotiations with the Cabinet Office about this scheme since the autumn of last year. The published proposals have not been agreed with the unions.

The proposals are an outrageous attempt to cut people’s jobs on the cheap at a time when many are worried about job security. They amount to a cut in accrued and contractual rights to decent redundancy compensation at a time when we can clearly see that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk over the next few years.

They would mean a huge financial loss amounting to tens of thousands of pounds for the vast majority of existing staff, particularly those facing redundancy, whether that be compulsory or voluntary. The proposals will be considered at an emergency meeting of the PCS National Executive Committee (NEC) on 6th August. The NEC is determined to defend members' rights and will consider all options.

We will be seeking to meet Cabinet Office ministers and, considering the detailed and positive legal advice we have received, to determine whether we should seek a judicial review to halt this process.

PCS MoD Group will update members on the outcome of the NEC meeting and how this impacts our ballot for action in MoD over pay shortly.

Remember together we are stronger – ask your work friends to join our union now!

Yours sincerely
Paul Barnsley Chris Dando KC Jones
Group Secretary Group President Group Vice President