THE COST OF DOING NOTHING

At our session at Progressive London, we ask you which ideas you wanted us to campaign on youth unemployment and how you wanted to campaign on this.

We also invited a cracking line up of speakers who are organising for young people right across the country - Sam Tarry, Hope not Hate Organiser and Chair of Young Labour, Nizam Uddin, President of University of London Union, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Black Students’ Officer for NUS, Mercury Music Award Winner – Speech Debelle and Rowenna Davis, Journalist at Guardian, Independent & Headliners.

Here's what Rowenna advised young activists on how to campaign on youth unemployment.

"As a facilitator I don’t feel it’s my place to impose a particular campaign on you, but I wanted to offer you three pointers that I think good campaigns to tackle youth unemployment will build on. I’m particularly interested in what might get you coverage in this rather cynical media industry that I work in.

Make the most of the numbers

One in five young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) is an absolutely shocking statistic. It sticks in people’s minds, it’s easy to repeat to friends and it reminds us that all young people are facing this problem now – not just those in a particular group.

As a bit of an example, I had to do an article the other day about NEETs and I put the word out that I needed interviewees. I got some guy’s number and an incredibly upper class male answered the phone. I asked him if he was a NEET. “By Jove!” he said, “Golly, I do believe I am.” What I’m trying to say is – we’re all NEET now.

Highlight the cost of doing nothing

We always here about the cost of action, but the cost of inaction is often much higher. Already youth unemployment is costing us an estimated £500m a year in benefits, not to mention an untold amount in foregone earnings. If you’re NEET, you’re more likely to be engaged in crime, and if you’re female and NEET, you’re 22 times more likely to undergo teenage pregnancy.

There is also evidence to suggest that youth unemployment has particularly high costs – it’s the worst age to be unemployed. A gap on your CV after 10 years of work looks like bad luck, but a gap straight after education? It looks terrible. It can also have particularly bad effects on a young person’s self esteem – they don’t have so many past successes to prop up their confidence.

Find the power inequalities in society

The third and final point is a little different. It’s where I put my lefty hat on. If you want to solve youth unemployment, you have to locate it in the broader context of power inequalities in society. Despite my earlier reference to the “middle class NEET”, youth unemployment still disproportionately effects the poorest in our society.

Young NEETs are twice as likely to live in social sector housing, and their parents have a 15% chance of having higher educational qualifications as compared to 40% in the general public. NEETs are twice as likely to have caring responsibilities, and they’re more likely to have learning disabilities.

Any solutions to youth unemployment we put forward should take account of these power inequalities, and help solve them. It’s not about shoe horning all young people into the nearest job – we need to look at who is getting what jobs where. At the moment, over 90% of the UK is state educated, but only 40% of our politicians; 14% of our journalists; 3% of our scientists and scholars and just 2% of our judges went to state school.

If your solution to youth unemployment is simply unpaid internships, you’ll never change this divide. Those at the bottom simply won’t be able to afford to participate.

These are incredibly deep and complicated problems, and I don’t pretend to have a fraction of the answers. I look forward to hearing what you and the other panel members have to say."

Rowenna Davis

Want to get involved in our campaign on youth unemployment All Doled Up. What will you pledge?

1. Join the campaign
2. Come to our events
3. Tell us your idea

LAUNCH OF NEW COMPASS OXFORD WEBSITE

Compass Oxford is a forum for debate committed to the goals of the democratic left at Oxford University. Its purpose is to fill a gap in the Oxford political landscape by offering a space for plural dialogue on the future of the left, born from the convictions that:

* Both Old Labour and New Labour have had their day.

* The future of the democratic left will only be as strong as its intellectual foundations.

The group seeks to act as a vessel by means of which the varied backgrounds and perspectives of the Oxford academic community can contribute to the necessary and inevitable debate on a new social contract for the 2010s, on a new ideological framework at the juncture between liberalism and socialism. It does not claim to offer definitive answers, but strives to open up new fields of debate by bringing together a cross-section of the democratic left, limited to no one political party or ideology. It also publishes a termly academic journal, the Oxford Left Review.

Compass Oxford is the campus branch of Compass Youth, an autonomous organisation within the pressure group and think tank, Compass. The principal object of Compass Youth is to promote debate and discussion of ideas and values, initially as set out in the Compass founding document, with a view to developing a programme for a progressive government.

REGISTER FOR DISABLED STUDENTS CONFERENCE

We are pleased to announce that you can now register delegates for Disabled Students Conference. You can do this by clicking on the following link:

http://www.officeronline.co.uk/events/276862.aspx

The NUS Disabled Students’ campaign conference is the largest gathering of disabled students and their representatives in the UK.

The annual conference enables disabled students to network and socialise together in a safe, secure environment. It also sets the policy, priorities and direction of the NUS Disabled Students’ campaign in a democratic environment. The conference holds the NUS disability representatives to account and elects new officers and committees to direct the work of the campaign over the year.

The event is free of charge for one disabled student representative from each Students’ Union in the UK. It is held at an accessible venue and this year will be from 1st to 3rd March 2010 in Manchester.

This year we are celebrating our 10th anniversary and the campaign is determined to double its participation. It is so important for the campaigns voice to get bigger and build on its successes in recent years. Therefore I urge you to register 1 delegate for free and maybe 1 or 2 observers (£250 each) so your union and your disabled students have a voice at national level and can learn about campaigns that they can bring back to your union.

Please note that the closing date for registration is the 12th February 2010 at 1pm.

Thank you so much for your support and please spread the word to anybody who you think will be interested in attending.

NUS Disabled Students’ Committee

If you have a progressive campaign you want us to showcase, email us now at youthchair@compassonline.org.uk

CURL IT LIKE CRUDDAS

Not sure if Jason Cowley has a penchant for David Beckham but compare his descriptions of James Purnell and Jon Cruddas.

"He was wearing jeans and flip-flops and seemed extraordinarily at ease, less like the career politician he is than, say, a working actor between jobs, at large in his own hood."

"In person, hair cropped military-short at the sides and back, in rumpled, open-necked shirt and sleeveless sweater."

Let's leave the guy who used to be the most fashionable right winger...to get back in the England team and let's start with James Purnell. No one written off? Many benefits claimants know that when JP was Work and Pensions Secretary, he was always spot on at giving them free kicks where it hurt, telling them to work even if they were seriously ill. And even though his Blairite creed is definitely has been, we all know they keep making their comebacks. So, James, I'm honestly willing to take you at your word, when you say "I feel I've been released from prison," were all of your welfare reform policies forced upon you by GB and deep down it hurt you too knowing the impacts of the ESA on those who are the most vulnerable? And rather than penalising care, you would reward it? If that were really the case, then like the Welfare Reform Green Paper you drove through, I would also agree that even in politics, "No one is written off". Curl it like Cruddas Maybe what brings both Cruddas and Purnell together is that they've had enough of the very unbeautiful tribal game - "symptomatic of our insularity, of our hollowing out as a vibrant political force." Indeed, people don't listen any more to the rhetoric on local community that all parties bang on about, because what they see is supermarkets being allowed to crush any competition from local shops. They don't listen any more to the rhetoric on fairness when what they see are fat cats bailed out once again lapping up the caviar and champagne from their bonuses, while young people are forced to lap up the rhetoric on the age of austerity and accept pay cuts and job cuts. And they don't listen any more when faceless MPs who never rebel on our behalf just in case they get pushed off the greasy careerist pole, start rebelling to maintain their juicy perks. When we get MPs who'd rather get a windfall payout than continue to represent their local constituents, we know that the game's up for the politics of greed and envy. After all, why should MPs care about young people, when the only people they need to convince are "swing voters"? So when Cruddas say he is prepared to build coalitions across parties and more importantly civil society groups, it is refreshing and when he argues that "we should have an election around why the little guy is going to pick up the tab for the crisis." he nails it on the head.

“What matters is the real issues - of political economy, the future of social democracy, what's happening on the right . . . It's fair to say that Compass, myself and a few others will make sure that we have a contribution to make when the time comes."

We will indeed...