就某些方面來看，英國經濟已經逐漸走向復甦。今年第二季GDP成長0.6％，房價較去年同期成長近4％，然而許多人的荷包並沒有變大，特別是中低收入者。雖然通膨相對緩和，但薪資水準遠遠落後。由政府出資的研究顯示，52％的英國人維持穩定收入有困難。
另 外有將近4成處於工作年齡的英國人，必須縮減許多過去視為理所當然的開支，例如網路、手機費用等。他們收入屬於後段班，但無法如同收入最低的10％的人口 可以擁有津貼。這群人面臨的困境始於2000年代初期，當時GDP成長和薪資開始脫勾，導致中位數收入者也開始無法支付生活成本。
追根究柢問題的根源在於勞動市場結構的改變。隨著工業基礎建設減少，英國經濟不再需要那麼多中階技能勞工。多數新創造的職位偏向兩極化發展，不是高薪就是低薪，另一方面許多中階收入者缺乏向上移動所需的技能，因而被迫降至低收入階級。
過去歷任內閣接連以稅賦優惠措施，增加可支配所得。根據英國解決方案基金會的統計研究，1977年政府以1％的國民收入補助這群人的薪資，2008～2009年比例提高至3.7％。這群人在總體國民收入的佔比從30％降至22％。
英國勞動市場已愈來愈朝向沙漏型發展。根據英國工會聯盟的研究顯示，至2012年12月為止，增加的就業機會當中有五分之四屬於低收入。一如過往，手頭吃緊的中階收入者必須以信用卡補足缺口；2013年第一季，英國的存款率降至4.2％，為2009年以來的最低點。
這些身處困境的選民，成了左右選舉的關鍵，特別是影響最後選舉結果的英國南部和中部選區。已有政治人物號召，在於2015年舉行全國性的「生活水準 選舉」。不過，想出口號是一回事，達成目標則是另一回事。工黨最近持續攻擊生活成本提高等問題，卻沒有提出詳細的解決方案；英國政府不斷誇耀其所提出的解 藥（例如提高所得稅級距、減低啤酒稅等），但大部分效果卻因為實質收入下滑而抵消。儘管近期的教育及社福改革值得贊許，卻仍無法有效改變根本問題。
公 民顧問局的透納（Kerry Turner）指出，越來越多人提著塑膠袋來到公民顧問局，袋中裝滿了債權人寄來、但尚未開封的信件。然而這些人只能對這些信件視而不見，繼續借更多貸款 好應付開支。他們無法革除借款習慣，也不願面對現實；他們就像是在告訴大家，英國的經濟復甦到底出了什麼問題。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
The twin aims of the Citizens Advice service are:
There are also Citizens Advice Bureau organisations in Australia [1], New Zealand [2], Israel [3], and The Bronx, New York, USA [4].
When referring to more than one local CAB, the abbreviation CAB is sometimes pluralised as CABx because bureau is a French word with the plural bureaux, although CABs is also used.[1]
The first 200 bureaux opened on 4 September 1939, four days after World War II started. Many of these initial bureaux were run by 'people of standing' in the community, for example the local bank manager. By 1942, there were 1,074 bureaux in a wide range of improvised offices such as cafes, church halls, private homes and air raid shelters. Mobile offices also became important in ensuring that people could access advice. Many of the issues dealt with during that time were directly related to the war. These included the tracing of missing servicemen or prisoners of war, evacuations, pensions and other allowances.
Many war time bureaux closed at the end of the war, although it was apparent that there was still a need for the services that had been established. A particular problem was the chronic housing shortage in the years immediately following the end of the war. In the 1950s, the funding was cut and by 1960 there were only 415 bureaux. In 1972, The Citizens Advice service became independent. Before then, the national organisation was part of NCSS (National Council of Social Services) and most bureaux were run by the local CVS (Council for Voluntary Service).
In 1973, the government funded NACAB, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, to enlarge the network. In 2003, this changed its name to Citizens Advice (in England and Northern Ireland) and Cyngor ar Bopeth or "Advice on everything" (in Wales).
In 2003, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NACAB) changed its name to Citizens Advice. In Wales, it was renamed Citizens Advice Cymru (Cyngor ar bopeth Cymru).
In 2008/9, there were 416 member bureaux offering advice from over 3,300 locations in England and Wales and a further 22 bureaux in Northern Ireland all of which are independent charities.
The 1984 afternoon television drama series Miracles Take Longer depicted the type of cases that a 1980s branch would have to deal with.
The Citizens Advice service, both locally and nationally, also uses clients' problems as evidence to influence policy makers to review laws or administrative practices which cause undue difficulties to clients, in a process referred to as "Social Policy".
Each local bureau or group is a separate independent charity with independent trustees. Many bureaux are also limited companies and may have a board of directors, who will also be the organisation's trustees. Bureaux throughout the UK have varying community needs and very different resources, and consequently offer different styles and levels of service.
All bureaux in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are members of Citizens Advice, the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. Northern Ireland bureaux are also members of the Northern Ireland Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NIACAB). Bureaux in Scotland are members of Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS), part of the Scottish Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux.
Citizens Advice and CAS act as umbrella bodies for the bureaux in the UK. They provide access to information, training courses and consultancy services for all bureaux, and regularly audit individual bureaux against the requirements of their respective membership standards.
All bureaux try to ensure their services are accessible to all sections of the community, so that provision can be made for the housebound, immigrant communities, rural inhabitants, elderly and disabled as appropriate.
They often receive significant funding by local authorities, and local solicitors may agree to provide limited legal advice pro bono. With the ever-increasing complexity of queries, many bureaux are having to resort to employing more staff to cope with constantly changing legislation.
Information on clients' problems and the advice offered to them is entered into the CASE national database, the use of which has been compulsory since 2008. Although the data on CASE is centrally stored and backed up by Citizens Advice, the data can only be accessed by the bureau that entered the information.
A replacement for CASE, Petra, has been in roll-out since 2011. Petra is based on the Microsoft CRM product.
Another initiative has been allowing university students to train as advisers to gain credits toward their degree. This was pioneered by a partnership between the University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Citizens Advice Bureau and is also now available at Birmingham City University, University of Reading, University of Northampton, Glasgow Caledonian University, and University of Glasgow.
Media related to Citizens Advice Bureau at Wikimedia Commons
另 外有將近4成處於工作年齡的英國人，必須縮減許多過去視為理所當然的開支，例如網路、手機費用等。他們收入屬於後段班，但無法如同收入最低的10％的人口 可以擁有津貼。這群人面臨的困境始於2000年代初期，當時GDP成長和薪資開始脫勾，導致中位數收入者也開始無法支付生活成本。
追根究柢問題的根源在於勞動市場結構的改變。隨著工業基礎建設減少，英國經濟不再需要那麼多中階技能勞工。多數新創造的職位偏向兩極化發展，不是高薪就是低薪，另一方面許多中階收入者缺乏向上移動所需的技能，因而被迫降至低收入階級。
過去歷任內閣接連以稅賦優惠措施，增加可支配所得。根據英國解決方案基金會的統計研究，1977年政府以1％的國民收入補助這群人的薪資，2008～2009年比例提高至3.7％。這群人在總體國民收入的佔比從30％降至22％。
英國勞動市場已愈來愈朝向沙漏型發展。根據英國工會聯盟的研究顯示，至2012年12月為止，增加的就業機會當中有五分之四屬於低收入。一如過往，手頭吃緊的中階收入者必須以信用卡補足缺口；2013年第一季，英國的存款率降至4.2％，為2009年以來的最低點。
這些身處困境的選民，成了左右選舉的關鍵，特別是影響最後選舉結果的英國南部和中部選區。已有政治人物號召，在於2015年舉行全國性的「生活水準 選舉」。不過，想出口號是一回事，達成目標則是另一回事。工黨最近持續攻擊生活成本提高等問題，卻沒有提出詳細的解決方案；英國政府不斷誇耀其所提出的解 藥（例如提高所得稅級距、減低啤酒稅等），但大部分效果卻因為實質收入下滑而抵消。儘管近期的教育及社福改革值得贊許，卻仍無法有效改變根本問題。
公 民顧問局的透納（Kerry Turner）指出，越來越多人提著塑膠袋來到公民顧問局，袋中裝滿了債權人寄來、但尚未開封的信件。然而這些人只能對這些信件視而不見，繼續借更多貸款 好應付開支。他們無法革除借款習慣，也不願面對現實；他們就像是在告訴大家，英國的經濟復甦到底出了什麼問題。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
Living standards
Squeezing the hourglass
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: August 14, 2013
From The Economist
Published: August 14, 2013
Aug 10th 2013 | SOLIHULL |From the print edition
Growth is back. But for many Britons, it does not feel like it.
MARK CARNEY is a man on a macroeconomic tightrope. On August 7th the new governor of the Bank of England promised that interest rates will stay low until the unemployment rate, now 7.8%, has fallen to 7.0% or lower. He gave himself two get out clauses: his pledge is off if inflation gets out of hand or if Britain's banks start to wobble. Mr Carney's announcement reflected the balancing act demanded of him: he must spur economic confidence without allowing inflation to erode wages and savings. The severity of the slump in British living standards shows just how tricky that task will be.
By some measures, the economy is moving from "rescue to recovery"—in the words of George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer. GDP grew by 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013 and house prices by almost 4% year-on-year. Yet the wallets of many, particularly those on lower and middle incomes, bear little evidence of it. Inflation is relatively modest, but wages lag far behind. A recent government-funded study found that 52% of Britons are struggling to keep up with the bills.
Even comfortable areas are pinched. In Solihull, a leafy suburb of Birmingham, unemployment is below average, but the cost-of-living crisis is acute. In 2010 only one client of its three Citizens Advice Bureaus (CAB) needed an emergency food parcel. Today they give out one every two days, some to people in work who run out of cash before payday. A record 16,000 people (nearly 8% of Solihull) passed through the charity's advice cubicles in 2012. Most frequently, they sought help with debt.
One such customer, David, used to make a decent living as a skilled tradesman, but is now unemployed. He is behind on once-affordable gas, water and rent bills. His CAB adviser reckons he will never again earn what he used to, so is helping him cut costs he once considered essential, like internet access and mobile phones, from his family's budget.
A Spartan future awaits the 40% of working-age Britons who, like David, are falling behind. They are in the bottom half of the income scale but, unlike the poorest 10%, predominantly live off wages, not benefits. Their predicament dates to the early 2000s, when GDP and earnings peeled apart. Living costs have since left median wages far behind.
The plate tectonics of the labour market offer the best explanation for this. With a declining industrial base, the British economy needs fewer mid-level skilled workers. Most new posts are low- or high-paying ones. Many in the middle lack the skills to move up and are pushed towards the low-wage end of the economy. Machinists and tradesmen become cashiers and call-centre workers.
Successive governments have bolstered the disposable incomes of the 40% with tax credits. According to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, in 1977 the state supplemented their wages by one percentage point of national income. By 2008-09 the top-up was 3.7 percentage points. This helped disguise the decline in the group's share of national original income from 30% to 22%.
Today the government crows about the failings of past administrations while presiding over an intensification of the same problems. At current rates, real earnings will have shrunk by £6,660 ($10,250) over the 2010-15 parliament. The hourglass shape of the labour market has become more pronounced: research by the Trades Union Congress shows that four in five net jobs created up to December 2012 were in low-wage sectors. As before, the squeezed middle is turning to credit cards to compensate; in the first quarter of 2013 the savings ratio fell to 4.2%, its lowest since 2009.
Solihull's economy is a microcosm of the national one. Job vacancies are up 2% on pre-recession levels, but mortgage and secured-loan arrears are 30% higher. The collapse of a local vanmaker, LDV, pushed many into low-quality service jobs. A noticeboard in a local CAB is crammed with advertisements for part-time or temporary work in supermarkets and cleaning agencies. "It's hard for someone used to a job as a production manager on £25,000 to find themselves stacking shelves on minimum wage," says Kerry Turner, the local head of Citizens Advice.
Desperate times, plastic measures
Such struggling voters are electorally crucial, especially in the southern and Midlands seats that swing national results (in Solihull the Liberal Democrat MP has a majority of just 175). Politicians are right to call the nationwide polls scheduled for 2015 the "living-standards election".
Coining a phrase is one thing, living up to it is another. The Labour Party's recent offensive on living costs was long on point-scoring and short on detailed solutions. The government boasts of its remedies (increasing the income-tax threshold and cutting beer tax, for example), but most are more than offset by the fall in real incomes. Recent education and welfare reforms are broadly commendable, but do little to change the fundamentals. Britons lack vocational skills and are underemployed. As the firms they work for invest at an alarmingly low rate, their productivity stagnates.
Ruminating on the state of the nation, Mrs Turner describes the increasing number of people who come to the CAB with plastic bags stuffed with unopened post from creditors. They ignore the letters, and take out more loans to make ends meet. Unable to kick the debt habit and unwilling to face reality, they are a reminder of what is wrong with Britain's recovery.
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
A Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) is one of a network of
independent charities throughout the UK that give free, confidential
information and advice to help people with their money, legal, consumer
and other problems.Growth is back. But for many Britons, it does not feel like it.
MARK CARNEY is a man on a macroeconomic tightrope. On August 7th the new governor of the Bank of England promised that interest rates will stay low until the unemployment rate, now 7.8%, has fallen to 7.0% or lower. He gave himself two get out clauses: his pledge is off if inflation gets out of hand or if Britain's banks start to wobble. Mr Carney's announcement reflected the balancing act demanded of him: he must spur economic confidence without allowing inflation to erode wages and savings. The severity of the slump in British living standards shows just how tricky that task will be.
By some measures, the economy is moving from "rescue to recovery"—in the words of George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer. GDP grew by 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013 and house prices by almost 4% year-on-year. Yet the wallets of many, particularly those on lower and middle incomes, bear little evidence of it. Inflation is relatively modest, but wages lag far behind. A recent government-funded study found that 52% of Britons are struggling to keep up with the bills.
Even comfortable areas are pinched. In Solihull, a leafy suburb of Birmingham, unemployment is below average, but the cost-of-living crisis is acute. In 2010 only one client of its three Citizens Advice Bureaus (CAB) needed an emergency food parcel. Today they give out one every two days, some to people in work who run out of cash before payday. A record 16,000 people (nearly 8% of Solihull) passed through the charity's advice cubicles in 2012. Most frequently, they sought help with debt.
One such customer, David, used to make a decent living as a skilled tradesman, but is now unemployed. He is behind on once-affordable gas, water and rent bills. His CAB adviser reckons he will never again earn what he used to, so is helping him cut costs he once considered essential, like internet access and mobile phones, from his family's budget.
A Spartan future awaits the 40% of working-age Britons who, like David, are falling behind. They are in the bottom half of the income scale but, unlike the poorest 10%, predominantly live off wages, not benefits. Their predicament dates to the early 2000s, when GDP and earnings peeled apart. Living costs have since left median wages far behind.
The plate tectonics of the labour market offer the best explanation for this. With a declining industrial base, the British economy needs fewer mid-level skilled workers. Most new posts are low- or high-paying ones. Many in the middle lack the skills to move up and are pushed towards the low-wage end of the economy. Machinists and tradesmen become cashiers and call-centre workers.
Successive governments have bolstered the disposable incomes of the 40% with tax credits. According to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, in 1977 the state supplemented their wages by one percentage point of national income. By 2008-09 the top-up was 3.7 percentage points. This helped disguise the decline in the group's share of national original income from 30% to 22%.
Today the government crows about the failings of past administrations while presiding over an intensification of the same problems. At current rates, real earnings will have shrunk by £6,660 ($10,250) over the 2010-15 parliament. The hourglass shape of the labour market has become more pronounced: research by the Trades Union Congress shows that four in five net jobs created up to December 2012 were in low-wage sectors. As before, the squeezed middle is turning to credit cards to compensate; in the first quarter of 2013 the savings ratio fell to 4.2%, its lowest since 2009.
Solihull's economy is a microcosm of the national one. Job vacancies are up 2% on pre-recession levels, but mortgage and secured-loan arrears are 30% higher. The collapse of a local vanmaker, LDV, pushed many into low-quality service jobs. A noticeboard in a local CAB is crammed with advertisements for part-time or temporary work in supermarkets and cleaning agencies. "It's hard for someone used to a job as a production manager on £25,000 to find themselves stacking shelves on minimum wage," says Kerry Turner, the local head of Citizens Advice.
Desperate times, plastic measures
Such struggling voters are electorally crucial, especially in the southern and Midlands seats that swing national results (in Solihull the Liberal Democrat MP has a majority of just 175). Politicians are right to call the nationwide polls scheduled for 2015 the "living-standards election".
Coining a phrase is one thing, living up to it is another. The Labour Party's recent offensive on living costs was long on point-scoring and short on detailed solutions. The government boasts of its remedies (increasing the income-tax threshold and cutting beer tax, for example), but most are more than offset by the fall in real incomes. Recent education and welfare reforms are broadly commendable, but do little to change the fundamentals. Britons lack vocational skills and are underemployed. As the firms they work for invest at an alarmingly low rate, their productivity stagnates.
Ruminating on the state of the nation, Mrs Turner describes the increasing number of people who come to the CAB with plastic bags stuffed with unopened post from creditors. They ignore the letters, and take out more loans to make ends meet. Unable to kick the debt habit and unwilling to face reality, they are a reminder of what is wrong with Britain's recovery.
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
The twin aims of the Citizens Advice service are:
- To provide the advice people need for the problems they face.
- To improve the policies and principles that affect people's lives.
There are also Citizens Advice Bureau organisations in Australia [1], New Zealand [2], Israel [3], and The Bronx, New York, USA [4].
When referring to more than one local CAB, the abbreviation CAB is sometimes pluralised as CABx because bureau is a French word with the plural bureaux, although CABs is also used.[1]
Contents
History
The origins of the modern Citizens Advice service can be traced back to the Betterton Report on Public Assistance from 1924.This report recommended that advice centres should be set up to offer members of the public advice to help them with their problems. During the 1930s, as preparations and plans were drawn up for the possibility of war, the role that the voluntary sector should have was determined. The National Council for Social Service (NCSS) called a meeting in 1938 in which plans to establish 'Citizens Aid Bureaux' were devised in the event of war.[2]The first 200 bureaux opened on 4 September 1939, four days after World War II started. Many of these initial bureaux were run by 'people of standing' in the community, for example the local bank manager. By 1942, there were 1,074 bureaux in a wide range of improvised offices such as cafes, church halls, private homes and air raid shelters. Mobile offices also became important in ensuring that people could access advice. Many of the issues dealt with during that time were directly related to the war. These included the tracing of missing servicemen or prisoners of war, evacuations, pensions and other allowances.
Many war time bureaux closed at the end of the war, although it was apparent that there was still a need for the services that had been established. A particular problem was the chronic housing shortage in the years immediately following the end of the war. In the 1950s, the funding was cut and by 1960 there were only 415 bureaux. In 1972, The Citizens Advice service became independent. Before then, the national organisation was part of NCSS (National Council of Social Services) and most bureaux were run by the local CVS (Council for Voluntary Service).
In 1973, the government funded NACAB, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, to enlarge the network. In 2003, this changed its name to Citizens Advice (in England and Northern Ireland) and Cyngor ar Bopeth or "Advice on everything" (in Wales).
In 2003, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NACAB) changed its name to Citizens Advice. In Wales, it was renamed Citizens Advice Cymru (Cyngor ar bopeth Cymru).
In 2008/9, there were 416 member bureaux offering advice from over 3,300 locations in England and Wales and a further 22 bureaux in Northern Ireland all of which are independent charities.
The 1984 afternoon television drama series Miracles Take Longer depicted the type of cases that a 1980s branch would have to deal with.
Principles
The Citizens Advice service in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland is guided by four principles. All Citizens Advice Bureaux and workers for the bureaux must adhere to these principles, and bureaux must demonstrate that they adhere to these principles in order to retain membership of the national umbrella bodies.- A free service
- Confidentiality
- Impartiality
- Independence
- Accessibility
- Effectiveness
- Community accountability
- The client’s right to decide
- A voluntary service
- Empowerment
- Information retrieval
- A generalist service
Work
A lot of the Citizens Advice service's work involves providing advice on issues such as debt management and welfare benefits, housing, immigration and asylum, employment, consumer complaints and landlord/tenant disputes. Advice is available in the bureaux, but also in community venues, in people's homes, by phone, by email and at www.adviceguide.org.uk.The Citizens Advice service, both locally and nationally, also uses clients' problems as evidence to influence policy makers to review laws or administrative practices which cause undue difficulties to clients, in a process referred to as "Social Policy".
Organisation
The Citizens Advice service is one of the largest volunteer organisations in the UK with over 20,000 volunteers. The majority of these are part-time volunteer advisers, but the figure also includes trustees and administrators. While volunteers have varying levels of training, they are all required to receive basic training to ensure they fully understand the nature of the service including the four basic principles. Typically there will be a paid bureau manager, advice session supervisors and in some cases some paid advisers. Some staff may be qualified to give specialist legal advice or to advise on immigration.Each local bureau or group is a separate independent charity with independent trustees. Many bureaux are also limited companies and may have a board of directors, who will also be the organisation's trustees. Bureaux throughout the UK have varying community needs and very different resources, and consequently offer different styles and levels of service.
All bureaux in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are members of Citizens Advice, the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. Northern Ireland bureaux are also members of the Northern Ireland Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NIACAB). Bureaux in Scotland are members of Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS), part of the Scottish Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux.
Citizens Advice and CAS act as umbrella bodies for the bureaux in the UK. They provide access to information, training courses and consultancy services for all bureaux, and regularly audit individual bureaux against the requirements of their respective membership standards.
All bureaux try to ensure their services are accessible to all sections of the community, so that provision can be made for the housebound, immigrant communities, rural inhabitants, elderly and disabled as appropriate.
Funding
Both Citizens Advice and CAS are registered charities and are financed partly by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, although both organisations are completely independent of central government. Member bureaux also pay heavily-subsidised subscriptions for the services offered.They often receive significant funding by local authorities, and local solicitors may agree to provide limited legal advice pro bono. With the ever-increasing complexity of queries, many bureaux are having to resort to employing more staff to cope with constantly changing legislation.
IT support
Membership of Citizens Advice gives each bureau access to the national information portal, known as AdviserNet and to internet access provided through a Virtual Private Network.Information on clients' problems and the advice offered to them is entered into the CASE national database, the use of which has been compulsory since 2008. Although the data on CASE is centrally stored and backed up by Citizens Advice, the data can only be accessed by the bureau that entered the information.
A replacement for CASE, Petra, has been in roll-out since 2011. Petra is based on the Microsoft CRM product.
New initiatives
Despite the large number of volunteers working for the organisation, level of demand for the service often far outstrips resources. Citizens Advice has recently begun looking at ways to reach all members of the community through new mediums such as email advice and digital TV.Another initiative has been allowing university students to train as advisers to gain credits toward their degree. This was pioneered by a partnership between the University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Citizens Advice Bureau and is also now available at Birmingham City University, University of Reading, University of Northampton, Glasgow Caledonian University, and University of Glasgow.
References
- ^ "Merton & Lambeth CABx". Retrieved 3 March 2010.
- ^ "Citizen's Advice Bureau Website".
External links
Media related to Citizens Advice Bureau at Wikimedia Commons
沒有留言:
張貼留言