There are many issues here. Just to give my own case as an example: I retrained as a teaching assistant last year as I needed a job with school hours and holidays. I qualified in July. Since then, there have been precisely three jobs for teaching assistants within travelling distance (15 miles)(it’s now November). One of them was 10 hours a week, the other two full time. One of the full time jobs attracted 197 applications. I am on the bank staff for my county council’s learning support service, but they have not called me in yet. So now I’m having a complete re-think (again)applying for admin jobs, for which I am not qualified or experienced, but the job centre need to see that I am doing something. I have had my JSA suspended twice over beaurocratic mistakes or technicalities, and this is extremely stressful – I am desperate to get off it. Yesterday, I had a call ‘reminding’ me to attend a meeting at 3.30 today, which I had not had any notification about at all. The timing means my children will have to make their own way home from school and let themselves in. But I don’t dare ask for it to be rearranged for another time as past experience tells me they will mark me down as unco-operative and suspend the JSA again. My friend, also a lone parent, was advised that she should leave her children unattended while she worked during school holidays ( her youngest was 10 at the time). I am having to think what else I can do, but am not prepared to leave the children for long periods unattended, and the only local jobs are male oriented (welding, plumbing, HGV) or shift work (care work) or shop work requiring weekend shifts. I have a Masters degree, but it is absolutely no use to me whatsoever, and in fact I rarely mention it on application forms as I think it’s more of a liability.

To generalise, what I think will happen is that these pressures will lead to an increase in crime, prostitution, children being left alone or with unsuitable carers (grans with alzheimers, bullies, irresponsible teens). Many lone parents will be in a worse position than me, as I am currently running a car (not sure for how much longer), without which two of my three teaching assistant jobs would have been impossible (not on a bus route).

Sorry for the protracted whinge. I am by nature extremely upbeat normally and I hate to depress people. I just thought it might be useful for you to hear how it is at the front line.

You will be missed in this arena, even as you will surely be welcomed in another.

I wouldn’t expect the good ol’ Torygraph (or any of the rest of the tory press for that matter) to credit the Lib Dems with any achivements in government, but here’s some evidence of Lib Dem influence in the Duncan-Smith/ George Osborne debate:

http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/10/01/ids-credits-clegg-in-winning-welfare-war-with-osborne/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

No doubt there are some areas where Lib Dem aims overlap with ‘wet’ Tories. But as the Telegraph pointed out this morning, the real clash in this coalition is Tory vs Tory (IDS/Fox vs Boy George, for example). The Libs appear just as much on the sidelines in government as they did when in opposition, to the coalition and the country’s detriment.

Dennis McShane’s approach seems to be – this is Europe’s solution and therefore must be the best one. That is not necessarily right*. It’s very easy to equate a refusal to agree with Europe’s approach to an allegation that the Government doesn’t care about human trafficing but that’s bad logic (but I acknowledge good publicty).

It is unreasonable to expect the coalition agreement to cover every eventuality of government. Events, dear boy, events.

It is unrealistic to argue that every coalition policy/action must reflect Lib Dem policy and not Tory policy. There are 300 odd Tory MPs and 50 or so Lib Dem ones. Judge the coallition by comparision with what a minority Tory govenrment (followed (probably) by a majority one after an election within a year of today) would have done. You can assert that the coalition government is exactly the same as right wing Tory government if you want to, (as politicans in opposition do for self-serving reasons) but I have already demonstrated (and you have agreed) that this is not the case.

*(I should say I have not examined the merits of the EU proposal vrs the UK approach.)