“Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error may we bring truth. Where there is doubt may we bring faith. And where there is despair may we bring hope.” Remember that nauseating quote from a newly elected Margaret Thatcher on the steps of Downing St on her first day in office in 1979?
This was a woman who went on to put troops on the streets of the UK; who declared class war on trade unions and open war on the miners and mining communities; who presided over almost 15 years of police corruption, most of which is just now seeing the light of day through events like the Hillsborough inquiry; and who caused untold damage to British industry and those who worked in it.
The warnings and predictions just keep on coming. Following the World Bank statement earlier this year that the rise in Global Inequality is partly due to the decline of trade unions, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has released its own warnings about accelerating global inequality. The report notes that the Global Labour Market and the nature of employment is changing significantly.
Only 25% of workers currently have a stable, long term employment relationship with their employer. The other 75% (60% of whom do not have a contract) are exist in zero hours, self employed, part time, temporary or even intern contracts. Even in the so-called stable economies of Europe and North America over 33% of workers work in `precarious work` employment.
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_368252/lang--en/index.htm
A new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has tracked three decades of income (1980 to 2010) and found that as unionisation declined, the wealth of the richest 10% in advanced countries showed a continuous increase. The decline in unionisation explained about half of the rise in incomes for the richest 10% and half of the increase in the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality).
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/jaumotte.htm
Councils in the most deprived areas of England have been hardest hit by cuts to their funding, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has said. Austerity cuts have not been applied equally since 2010, with local authorities in the poorest areas seeing the biggest reductions. The MPs warned further cuts could undermine councils' financial stability and threaten statutory services.
Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge MP, said: 'These cuts have not hit all local authorities equally, with reductions ranging between 5% and 40%. Councils with the greatest spending needs - the most deprived authorities - have been receiving the largest reductions'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31012671
An extensive article and research by Kevin Farnsworth on the Renewal website examines the extent to which UK public policy is skewed in favour of private companies – placing business tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and a weakening of employment rights etc in the context of a corporate welfare state. ‘Direct and indirect public provision that is aimed at private companies accounts for a significant share of state expenditure. During these times of austerity and public sector cuts, a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of corporate welfare is essential to weigh the direction, emphasis and trade-offs associated with corporate welfare’
http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-british-corporate-welfare-state/
Google searches sometimes provide the most unusual results, in this case by providing a link to the Queens Speech under “Arts and Entertainment”. This proves one of two things - either Google has a sense of humour or is a sadist, because there was nothing entertaining about this legislative programme.
This government revels in its declaration of the green shoots of recovery, proclaiming that the economy is improving and that everything is getting better. Meanwhile in the real world the percentage of those working but living in poverty continues to increase, as demonstrated by the increases in those in work claiming housing benefit.
There is no quick fix solution to reversing the long term decline in the share of wealth received by workers over the past 30 years argues Stephen Smellie, Deputy Convenor of UNISON Scotland. While the current upsurge in pay militancy is a welcome antidote to the low levels of industrial action since the national pensions in 2011, the labour movement must commit to ‘a sustained strategic, political and industrial campaign to change the structure of wealth distribution, workplace democracy and relative power within the workplaces and society. No matter the result of the current ballots, the campaign for a fairer distribution of wealth to the workers through higher wages and increased benefits and universal services must be built and continued’
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4625-A-fairer-distribution-of-wealth-is-what-we-need#.U4XCx1pwbIU
The World Development Movement is raising the alarm that a new wave of corporate trade deals threaten to increase global inequality, undermine democracy and hand public service provision to multinational companies.
Email your MP today and seek support for full transparency on the TTIP negotiations - to protect democracy, public services and the environment by opposing this aggressive new trade deal.
An Oxfam briefing paper published in January outlines the 'serious and worrying trend' of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation:
• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
• The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
UNISONActive budget analysis: The world that we understand is one where living standards are plummeting as costs increase and public sector wages are deliberately held down, where the greatest growth in trade is in food banks, and where inequality increases daily. In our world, public sector workers are constantly looking over their shoulders to the spectre of redundancy, benefit claimants know that the smallest deviation from the prescribed Ian Duncan Smith regime ends in benefits being arbitrarily withdrawn and an entire generation has been condemned to the horrors of private landlordism.
'The election in 2015 will be an important juncture for our public services – the course pursued after this point will determine whether they can play an effective role in the future in overturning the social determination of poor life chances. The twin pressures of rising demand and shrinking resources are forcing a choice. Either to continue, as this government has largely pursued, the course of salami-slicing Whitehall budgets, squeezing separate services and tinkering around the edges of traditional modes of delivery. This will lead to the decline, retrenchment and residualisation of public services with ever-higher thresholds for use and the termination of some altogether', writes Manchester Labour leader Sir Richard Leese in a New Statesman article arguing for greater localism to tackle regional inequality:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/03/labour-must-challenge-myths-about-decentralisation
New research by the Labour Party confirms that the most disadvantaged communities in England are facing the biggest local government cuts. Between 2010/11 and 2015/16 the percentage cut in spending will be 10 times greater in the most deprived areas than in those least deprived. The research highlights that the 10 most deprived areas, including Liverpool, Hackney, Manchester and Middlesbrough, which face an average reduction in spending power of 25.3% in stark contrast to the 10 least deprived areas, including St Albans, Elmbridge, Waverley and Wokingham, which are dealing with an average cut of just 2.54%. The big question is how fast an incoming Labour government will reverse this iniquitous redistribution of social wealth even within the self imposed straitjacket of Con Dem 2015/16 overall spending plans?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25953444
Following interviews given by Sir Merrick Cockell, Tory Chair of the Local Government Association, on the eve of Conservative Party Conference, there is a slowly dawning realisation in the broader realm that council funding cuts are threatening the very future of local democracy as we have known it. To many within the sector, particularly in England, this is not breaking news and has been the stuff of waking nightmares for some time.
This is what happens when you put public school boys in charge of policies they have no concept of understanding. As a product of University College School Tristram’s view of the world is clouded by an idealistic education that so called independent ‘parent led’ schools will not and do not now replicate. Will it be the parents of children from households where no one is working, living on a sprawling council estate that will get together to form parent led independent schools or it will be the sharp-elbowed middle-classes sucking the life blood from scarce local resources that take up this so called offer of support?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24510283
Inequality has been rising in the UK for the past 30 years of rampant neo-liberalism and the gap between rich and poor is the widest since the second world war. If current trends continue, the country will have reached Victorian levels of inequality in 20 years. Watch this excellent video and sign up for weekly email briefings from: http://inequalitybriefing.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOJ93tAbPP0&feature=youtu.be
#TUC13 ‘A cursory glance through the 2013 TUC Agenda highlights the extent of the ever-growing employment rights problems facing workers in all sectors of our economy. Whether it's on health and safety, unfair dismissal, redundancy, maternity or equality issues, this government has ignored all the evidence and sidestepped opposition to force through changes that not only turn back the clock but are now destabilising the very bases of our industrial relations settlement,’ writes Carolyn Jones of the Institute of Employment Rights in a Congress preview:
http://www.ier.org.uk/blog/greater-union-presence-essential-heal-divided-britain#.UicHDAuDUlM.twitter
‘Since the early 1980s, living standards for most of the UK’s workforce have becoming progressively detached from growth. The gains from a growing economy became increasingly unevenly divided in favour of a small group at the top, leaving significant sections of the rest of the population (roughly the bottom 60 percent) lagging behind the average rise in prosperity, and at an accelerating rate’ writes Howard Reed. As well explaining the declining wage share Reed proposes a new social contract to...
