At last some facts.
 
I had intended blogging on Monday – it’s been a week since I last posted something and I know that twice a week is the minimum you are meant to do.  And anyway I wanted to get a rant off my chest about Migrationwatch, following the usual mob-stirring Little Englander nonsense they put out earlier in the week blaming the housing shortage on immigrants.
 
But if you are going to take people like that on, you have to make sure that you are doing so from a firm evidence base.  We all know their agenda.  But we cannot fight prejudice with prejudice: we need to make sure that we have truth as well as right on our side.  And, to be frank, there is a shortage of really good quality data out there to make the case.
 
Which is what makes today’s report of the impact of immigration from Eastern Europe on social housing availability so welcome.  At a blow, it nails the lie that “they are coming over here taking all our housing”, as the BNP has been wont to claim.  In truth, just 1% of social housing has been allocated to the hundreds of thousands of EU accession states immigrants who have come here over the past two years.  Far from them robbing people on the council house waiting lists of their birth-right, they are in truth squeezed into the worst housing this country has to offer: private housing overseen by slum landlords or exploitative employers.
 
Which is scarcely, of course, cause for any real satisfaction.  Yes, we can be reassured that it is not “our” people who are losing out.  But I am not sure we can really take any pleasure at the thought of the welcome we are giving to the people who will be so vital to our nation’s economic future.

OK - let’s not start with the usual “how tough/strange/wonderful it is to be back at work” shtick.  I had a really nice, relaxing time off, thank you and hope you did too.  But all that is oh-so 2007 and in the thrusting, modern world of 2008 we have no time for such fripperies.
 
All purple prose aside, it does feel very different from the heady days of six months ago.  The economic downturn has now moved from speculation into accepted fact.  The Government is embattled rather than triumphant, desperately trying to turn around a deteriorating political and financial position.  And all around are the signs so familiar to those of us who experienced the crises of the 70’s and 80’s: warnings of rises in unemployment and bankruptcies, soaring oil prices and the ritual call and response of Government demands for pay restraint and union demands that their members be protected from pain.
 
And of course we are experiencing that ourselves in Shelter too.  The debate about the changes we are suggesting to the way Shelter works has now reached the end game, with negotiations over (sadly without agreement) and implementation begun.  Predictably, the inevitable posturing has also reached a climax, with the usual brandishing of bogus statistics (despite what is said to the contrary, for example, only around a quarter of Shelter staff have actually voted to reject our proposals) in support of claims that we are being corrupted by the private sector.
 
Which is sad.  There is a debate to be had, and a serious one at that.  The voluntary sector is changing and having to respond to the pressures imposed by the world outside.  Wage pressure is certainly one of those, and from both directions.  How you look at wages depends of course on who you’re talking to and where you are on the scale: “I am underpaid, you get what you deserve, he is a fat cat”.  But in Shelter, we have always tried to control our pay differentials, making sure those at the bottom are decently paid relative to the market and the salaries of those at the top not allowed to balloon in the way that happens in some other organisations.  In the changes we are making, those principles remain and we are being very careful to protect the interests of those affected as much as we can.
 
But bucking the market is not easy.  Two years ago, I spent a long while successfully persuading a talented candidate for my Senior Management Team to take a pay cut to join us.  Three months later, he was tapped up to apply for an identical job in the public sector on twice the money (fortunately, he is still here).  And as anyone who has tried to recruit a Finance Director with experience of helping to run a £50 million organisation will know, the sort of people you need will also be attractive to private sector organisations willing to pay far higher salaries than we are. 
 
And, in the end, we can only spend money we have to spend.  If our costs are too high, there is an inevitable knock-on effect on income: voluntary donors may rightfully question whether we are giving value for money, and we are shut out of any competition for statutory funding.  Change is hard.  But, as the current debate about funding structures for the public sector indicates, Shelter is not alone in facing some grim financial choices.