Society daily 18.05.11

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • Nick Clegg threatens to veto health reforms over role of NHS regulator • Government urged to abandon NHS IT programme • Elderly people hurt in falls being failed by the NHS, report finds • Minister issues child grooming warning • Public workers vote on strikes over pensions • Unemployment falls for second month in a row • Lawyers demand pause in legal aid reforms • Female pension campaigners to march on parliament • Oxfam launches clothing appeal after fire All today's SocietyGuardian stories Other news • Public sector redundancies are cancelling out job recovery in the private sector , according to localgov.co.uk. It says new figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and KPMG show that large-scale public sector job losses are overwhelming the slight rise in private sector recruitment, and more than half of public sector organisations are planning redundancies in the second quarter of 2011. • Ed Miliband has urged Labour councillors to forge coalitions with the Liberal Democrats to run local authorities , according to the Independent. It says a Labour circular leaked to the paper tells the party's councillors: "If Liberal Democrat groups/ councillors, who are committed to standing up to the unfair policies imposed by the government, wish to join Labour in running the council then we should look to form locally progressive coalitions." • Nick Clegg is to urge business leaders to hold their "nerve" and back the spending cuts programme in an effort to turn the UK economy around, reports the BBC. It says the deputy prime minister will insist in his speech to the CBI annual dinner on "no blinking", adding that the coalition "has a plan to restore stability and we will stick to it". • Volunteering charity TimeBank will make about a third of its staff redundant after missing out on central government funding, according to Third Sector. The charity is to shed 11 of its 34 employees as a result of its application for £500,000 of funding from the Cabinet Office's strategic partners programme being rejected. On my radar ... • Andrew Lansley , who this morning addressed the King's Fund's leaders conference (see the Twitter hashtag #nhsleaders ). My colleagues Randeep Ramesh and Rowenna Davis are covering his speech and all the rest of the day's health service news on the NHS reforms live blog . But, as Paul Waugh points out : Lansley is *not* taking questions at end of his King's Fund speech. Maybe his 'listening' mode is switched off today...? Meanwhile Paul Corrigan blogs on the BMA's opposition to competition in the health service : ... given the BMA could bring the private sector interests in the NHS to its knees and won't, what are they trying to achieve with their policy against private sector work? What they are trying to achieve is to stop any changes in the cartels their members are working with at the moment. They want the benefits from their current private sector experience without having the bother of dealing with new entrants that would create new ways of working. What worries them about competition is that it brings challenges from outside – challenges that must be met. And Health Policy Insight's Andy Cowper decodes the language of the political row over Monitor's role : "... what they are saying is they won't "establish" Monitor as an economic regulator. Not that it won't become one over time. That may be over-cynical of me, but it's probably worth a watching brief as the next draft of the Bil develops." • Nadine Dorries, who said while a guest on the Channel 5 Vanessa Show earlier this week that her abstinence education for girls could help tackle child abuse. The Too Much to Say for Myself blog reports the apperance ... Vanessa Feltz suggested that very young children are in fact being taught to say no, that they are being taught these things very sensitively and carefully. Dorries' response to this was simply astonishing: "Well do you know that's really interesting because one of the reasons for this is that some of the evidence that I've heard is that if a stronger just say no message was given to children in school that there might be an impact on sex abuse. Because a lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don't realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do ... Society is so over-sexualised that I don't think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we'd probably have less sex abuse." Her comments have provoked an angry response online. A petition is circulating calling for her resignation , and Vanessa [not Ms Feltz] on the Nightmares and Boners blog urges people to contact Dorries directly about her comments: "I don't know whether a thousand emails would change her mind, but please, don't sit back and let her carry on like this: blaming those who have no-one else to stand up for them." Milena Popova has posted an open letter to the MP on her blog: "There is enough victim-blaming going on in our society, without prominent politicians such as yourself having to reinforce it. Victims of sexual violence and rape who speak out ... are constantly questioned, smeared, intimidated. Most do not come forward, precisely because they fear this kind of treatment. You have just given your stamp of approval to this attitude. Not only will your proposed abstinence education for girls not decrease child sexual abuse; your victim-blaming comments are likely to lead to less abuse being reported and stopped." Dorries herself blogs that the appearance was "one of the more pleasurable media experiences I've ever had". • The Guardian Public Services Awards 2011 , which launch today. Read about last year's winners and find out how your team can enter . • This new RSA report, which says unemployment isolates women much more than men. The Powerful Places report by the Connect Communities project finds unemployment doubles the likelihood of men being isolated but more than quadruples the effects on women. The RSA claims "the Big Society is currently dominated by the so called 'usual suspects' – an existing civic core of well educated, middle aged professionals – and more should be done to improve the social networks of isolated people such as the retired and unemployed" • This examination of the issue of means testing and social care funding on the Fighting Monsters blog: "The costs are increasing rapidly and, this is the rub, no-one wants to pay for social care. No-one. Whether they have £50 in the bank or £5000 or £5000000 – people have become used to receiving health care free and seem to make assumptions about the provision of social care on the same basis until they are actually made aware of the costs involved. One of the most perfidious arguments I come across is the 'I/my mother/my gran worked hard all her life so why should she pay when Mr Brown who has been on benefits all his life doesn't?'. Perhaps because you/your mother/your gran actually have the money to pay and Mr Brown doesn't. There is a lot of righteous indignation around in this country with people measuring what they have against what others have and what they get against what others get and seeing things as 'unfair'. Unfair is a government that gives those who 'have' a free ride even if they have assets in the hundreds of thousands and restrict access to services for people who have the same and higher needs and fewer assets to pay for them." • Some amazing stats on social media in this video from Erik Qualman, via Shirley Ayres , who asks: At a time when public support is urgently needed for social work and social care why are we not using social media to engage with our stakeholders? • This latest post from the ever-excellent We Love Local Government blog. What can you find out about local government teams by examining the contents of the staff fridge ? "If ever there was evidence of silo working it's the council fridge. Open the average fridge and you'll find at least three or four bottles of milk, and nearly all of them will have black marker scrawled over them detailing the exact team who 'owns' that milk. And on Friday the poor old cleaner will end up having to throw away four three quarter used bottles of milk. Why don't people work together to share the milk? Why don't people work together to solve other wider problems? It's simple really, 'I bought 'have the budget' for the milk 'service', we need the milk 'service' and those tight accountants will keep stealing it unless we make it clear who owns the milk 'budget'… Or something like that." In today's SocietyGuardian supplement • Is Cameron's 'big society' reserved for the rich? • Big Issue celebrates 20 years on the streets • Foster care: 'The best job I've ever done' • Guardian Public Services Awards 2011: a chance to celebrate All the features and comment from the SocietyGuardian section On the Guardian Professional Networks • Live Q&A, 12-2pm: How can local government work with GP consortiums? • How University hospitals Birmingham chief executive Julie Moore managed the trust's move into its new £545m Queen Elizabeth hospital • Despite the recession, more people are giving to charities as the sector reports increase in donations for third consecutive year , writes the head of Rapidata Services SocietyGuardian blogs Patrick Butler's cuts blog Joe Public Sarah Boseley's global health blog SocietyGuardian on social media Follow SocietyGuardian on Twitter Follow Patrick Butler on Twitter Follow Clare Horton on Twitter SocietyGuardian's Facebook page SocietyGuardian links SocietyGuardian.co.uk Guardian cutswatch - tell us about the cuts in your area Public Leaders - the Guardian's website for senior managers of public services The Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs SocietyGuardian acting editor: Anna Bawden Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected] SocietyGuardian.co.uk editor: Clare Horton Email the SocietyGuardian.co.uk editor: [email protected] Interested in education policy and news too? 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