Journalist Eve Livingston writes about her experience as a mentor on the award-winning MCR Pathways programme - which is changing the lives of young people but is threatened by budget cuts.
ONLY five of 45 private clinics offering pregnancy scans in Scotland are registered with the national regulatory body, prompting fears unqualified people are wrongly advising pregnant women, an investigation by The Ferret has found.
Much of The Edinburgh Fringe programme remains inaccessible to disabled audiences, prompting criticism from campaigners and advocates as the 2022 festival gets underway.
On September 4, 1939, less than 24 hours after Britain and France declared war on Germany, 200 Citizens Advice Bureaux sprang up in homes and public buildings around the country.
Who do you think of when you think of the working class? A factory worker, perhaps, or a manual labourer. Maybe the phrase evokes images of miners and shipbuilders and dockyard; of black and white footage of picket lines and marches. It’s likely the people in your mind’s eye are men. It’s likely that most of them are white.
This week, the UK’s Conservative-run government pledged the biggest employment support package in the nation’s history: state-funded grants to cover 80 per cent of each worker’s salary, up to the value of £2,500 per month. Dubbed the coronavirus job retention scheme, the payments will last until at least March and will be extended as long as is necessary. Announcing the measures, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said there was no limit to the amount of money that would be paid out.
Had you been asked a few months ago what the most valuable work in modern society was, what would you have said? Having long been conditioned to make such assessments on the basis of salaries, profits and social capital, private sector CEOs and finance experts might have been expected to top the list alongside the likes of doctors and teachers.
AT the first union branch meeting I attended, the male chair made a joke about woman drivers and everybody laughed. It came after a female member had hovered politely by the tea and coffee table making sure everyone was adequately refreshed, and after it was assumed that another was there to take notes rather than to participate in the meeting. Cast any images of the 1970s out of your head: this was the 2010s.
WORK is good and unemployment is bad. Jobs mean productivity, prosperity and economic growth; not having one means benefits and struggle and a poor quality of life. Full employment is the goal. Statistics are the measure.
