Happy New Year

Image from: http://baristanet.com

This year I have been involved in a number of new writing projects and therefore have published less articles than usual on my blog.

Thank you for visiting anyway and enjoying my monthly story. I hope you will all continue visiting 'All Around UK' in the months and years to come.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year to all of you, precious readers...

Federica

Generation Rent

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The expression Generation Rent has been increasingly used by journalists since 2011, as more and more twenty and thirtysomethings are privately renting instead of stepping on the property ladder.

There is also a considerable number of forty-something adults who belong to the same Generation, unfortunately.

Data released in October by the Office for National Statistics revealed that private rental prices paid by tenants in Great Britain rose by 2.7 per cent in the twelve months to September 2015.

As the years pass by, those who cannot afford to buy a property now will not get any closer to having their own place. In fact, it is likely they will be renting for many years ahead and will also be sharing with more and more people as rents increase. 

The worst-hit city is London, where rents went up 4.1 per cent over the year to last September.

On average, someone earning the London Living Wage of £ 9.40 per hour has to spend more than half their salary on rent and there is hardly one borough in the capital where somebody with a similar income can live affordably.

A single room in a not too glamorous area of London can cost £ 700 a month, not to mention about prices in the renowned areas of the capital.

Are politicians doing anything to help the Generation Rent?

When it comes to housing issues, the Government normally focuses on council houses and special right-to-buy schemes.

No much is on the agenda for those single tenants or lodgers in full time jobs who bear the brunt of skyrocketing rents. As a consequence of them being caught in a rent trap, most tenants of this Generation struggle to save enough money for a mortgage.

A report released earlier this year by economists at accountancy firm PwC suggests this trend will continue. By 2025, a quarter of all households will privately rent, they predict, with the biggest increase among those aged 20-39, where “a clear majority” will be private tenants within 10 years.

And it will not come as a surprise, considering that the average UK home would be worth around £360,000 by 2020.

Is this a teaching crisis?



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School is that important place where teachers play a strategic role in determining the future of students and society altogether. Teaching is more than a job. In fact, it is a mission.

At least, this is the general understanding of what the relationship between teacher and student should be.  

However, media have been telling us for a while now that a worrying teaching crisis is threatening education in our country.

Early in 2015 around 1,200 teachers signed an open letter from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) union, asking for more Government support, as the constant Ofsted monitoring and fear of being judged to be failing, is putting the profession at risk.

Moreover, figures based on the Department for Education data show that nearly four in ten tutors leave in their first year, while the number of wannabe teachers who complete their training but never actually enter the classroom has tripled over the last six years.

Further data made public by a Department for Education official highlight a record 50,000 teachers have left the profession in a year.

There is no wonder that many schools in the UK are conducting a mass recruitment initiative abroad in order to tackle teacher shortages in their classrooms. More specifically, the Government is encouraging foreign tutors to consider moving to England by building relationships with target countries.

According to Mary Bousted, the ATL general secretary, teachers work more unpaid overtime than any other profession and their work life is filled with constant pressure and stress.

Children clearly bear the burden of this bureaucratic system, as they constantly sit tests since a young age.

Besides this, young learners will face further challenges in the years ahead.

Education secretary Nicky Morgan has in fact announced plans to reintroduce externally marked exams to measure the progress of seven-year-old pupils and make sure their assessment is rigorous enough.

The proposal has not been welcomed by the teaching unions and according to them, a formal testing at KS1 could only increase the pressure on children and teaching staff.

Is there a risk that some schools will concentrate even more on results to boost their position in the league tables, rather than focusing on the curriculum and the specific requirements of the young students?

Chances are this is going to happen.



CRACK+CIDER: the project to keep homeless people warm

Crack+Cider leaflet. Photograph by Federica Tedeschi

The world’s first shop for homeless people, CRACK+CIDER, has opened last week with the aim of keeping many rough sleepers warm during the winter. 

Goodwill shoppers can buy a hat, socks and gloves set for £7 or a backpack for £15, while a winter jacket costs £25. 

The project has been entirely conceived and funded by strategist Charlotte Cramer, 25 and advertising executive Scarlett Montanaro, 26 who met at the University of the Arts in London whilst studying Advertising:

“Living in London, we were walking past many homeless people every single day without doing anything and we felt really bad about it.

“But it wasn’t until we came up with this idea that we started researching and found out the scary statistics on homelessness”.

Charlotte Cramer explained her concern about facts being much worse than government statistics show. She and her business partner have contacted a couple of organisations and found out the actual figure of people sleeping rough in the capital is around 7,000 a year.

“Because the Government statistics are inaccurate, the problem is not receiving the amount of attention it should. We wanted to help homeless people during the winter and chose a provocative name to stimulate discussion among the public”, said Ms Montanaro.

CRACK+CIDER is a provocative name indeed and so far this nonprofit project has received media coverage almost on a daily basis. Even the Labour party and Hackney Council have taken an interest in the debate.

“The topic deserves this type of discussion, it deserves a provocative name because passers-by reluctance to give money to homeless people is based on the assumption that their donations will be spent on crack and cider. This concept has driven the entire project and to ignore it would feel like we have been unnecessarily apologetic”, stressed Charlotte Cramer. 

“We have received a few negative comments about the name CRACK+CIDER, but none of them from a homeless person!

“So many rough sleepers have reached out to us to leave positive comments. During our launch night a homeless man came in asking about the distribution dates and he was very thankful for our idea”, added Scarlett Montanaro.

The initial sales proceeds of CRACK+CIDER are a clear indicator of success and any profits will be reinvested.

“We had initially set ourselves a target of £1,000 stock to be sold during the month of November, but we cleared that in online sales before the actual launch and made another £2,000 during the following 48 hours!

“We feel we have to keep it going with such a positive response and have decided to stay open until the 23^rd of December”, said Ms Montanaro.

CRACK+CIDER relies on five independent distribution partners that work across the capital and their support is really important in order to ensure that all the purchased items  are allocated among those who actually need them. 
“Considering the response so far, we may have to get more distribution partners!”, emphasised Ms Montanaro.

What is the incredible success of CRACK+CIDER really about?

“The project is providing an answer to something that people question every single day, as homelessness is never too far away from us in London. Most CRACK+ CIDER customers are young Londoners between the age of 18 -28 who share the unpleasant feeling of not being able to help those rough sleepers they regularly see on the streets.

“The way our project works is so straightforward that people can understand where the money goes and the impact each donation is going to have. By giving them a tangible benefit of their goodwill, we enable people to donate even more. Not by chance, the average contribution through our website has been £26, while the average donation to a charity is about £9”, highlighted Ms Cramer.

Talking about the future, the two young entrepreneurs really seem determined to expand their project:

“With CRACK+CIDER we would love to set up in another city in the short term, while we think this is a big opportunity to develop a new approach to charitable giving in the long term”.

The project is also a big opportunity for clothing brands to work closely with CRACK+CIDER and contribute to the community.

Goodwill shoppers can visit pop-up shop CRACK+CIDER  in 73 Kingsland Road, Hackney, until December 23. The website, which offers the same items, will remain open after the shop closes: http://crackandcider.com/

Are supermarkets' promotions misleading?

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Last July the Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) published a document that highlighted how supermarkets in the UK are confusing customers with their aggressive sales tactics and widely varying prices and offers.

Among the various misleading deals, the Authority denounced the well-known ‘was/now’ promotion, where the discount sales price is advertised as a promotion for longer that the higher price applied.

It was the consumer campaign group Which? to raise the alarm in April and according to CMA senior Director Consumer, Nisha Arora, the complaint has been a chance to collect and examine a great deal of further evidence on the strategies supermarkets put into place to attract shoppers.

Refocus consumer protection is without doubt one of CMA’s main goals, along with extending competition frontiers and delivering effective enforcement. The creation of the Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) itself was first suggested by the Confederation of British Industry who called on the Government to combine the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission into a Single Competition Agency.  They hoped it would streamline the previous two-stage process in which the merger review and the market investigation were carried out by two different authorities.

According to the CMA’s report, while shoppers enjoy a wide range of choices and 40 per cent of their grocery spending goes on items on promotion, there are still hundreds of misleading offers on the shelves every day and a lack of easily comparable prices, considering the limitations of unit pricing.

Despite the fact that retailers want to comply with the law to avoid such problems occurring and that dubious offers are not happening in large numbers across the whole sector, there are still areas of poor practice that could be in breach of consumer law and confuse shoppers.

Following its most recent investigation, the CMA has announced a new set of measures to bring businesses into line and work closely with them to stop promotional misleading practices and improve compliance, while bringing greater clarity to shoppers and simplifying the regulations.

Hopefully the next report from the Competitions and Market Authority will contain more reassuring data and clear information for the consumer. If not, Which? will surely be there, standing up for the consumer rights once again.