Nigel Stanley
So Barclays has managed to secure a capitalisation deal from a mix of members of Gulf Royal families and sovereign wealth funds. No doubt champagne corks are popping now that bonuses can keep on flowing. And it is good to know that at least one UK bank has convinced a significant investor that it is not a basket case.
Nigel Stanley
George Osbourne’s speech today marks a very clear dividing line between the government (with the Lib Dems) and the Conservatives.
In his interview on the Today programme he has clearly lined up the Conservative Party in opposition to a Keynesian response to recession. Indeed he used ‘Keynesian’ as a term of abuse and said:
“You can’t spend your way out of recession.”
This is very redolent of the arguments that used to take place during the early 1980s recession. Labour’s Jim Callaghan was the first to use this argument in a speech setting a strategy that did not result in a Labour victory at the 1979 election. But it was Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe who practised the full-blooded monetarism that raised taxes, cut spending and saw record levels of unemployment.
Owen Tudor
David Lammy MP has said something sensible about the ‘white working class’ issue that’s been rearing its ugly head again recently. Trade unionists are rightly worried about suggesting it’s sensible to segment the working class by race (interesting note – apparently it’s ok to talk about the working class – normally discouraged by politicians as old-fashioned and antagonistic – when you’re discussing something even more old-fashioned and antagonistic, eg race!) But clearly we do need to address the possible racism that could really divide working people.
Adam Lent
There is already a growing debate about why the Bank of England are acting so late on interest rates given the rapidly deteriorating economic situation.
Nigel Stanley
I’ve just spotted on the HMRC website that the contact details for the national minimum wage helpline are next to:
National Yachtline For information about sailing your yacht or pleasurecraft to and from the UK
Yes, I know that not all yachts are owned by Russian oligarchs and some are modest, but it still says something about the state of the nation that these two should be together.
Nicola Smith
Women working full-time in the UK get paid 17% less than men. As this is equivalent to women working the last two months of the year for free, the Fawcett Society have calcuated that today marks women’s no pay day – from today until the end of the year many women are effectively working for free, their labour valued at far less than that of a comparable male employee. You can ask Peter Mandelson to challenge this injustice here.
Nigel Stanley
When the economy is growing and unemployment low, political debate is about how to distribute the fruits of growth.
Of course that can be intense and ideological. In as much as there has been a dominant issue in recent elections, it has been tax cuts v public services. But just as easily the debate becomes a difference in emphasis that does little to involve people beyond the already politically opinionated. Almost everybody can be given their little share in progress, or at least some hope that they might.
Nicola Smith
The European Parliament has voted in favour of the Directive on Equal Treatment of Agency Workers, meaning that agency workers in the UK will now have the right to receive equal treatment to permanent staff after 12 weeks of work with an employer. Roger Helmer, Conservative MEP, reacted to this progress with the following statement:
This is a bad piece of legislation… [It will] deny thousands upon thousands of people the right to work at all … It makes our labour markets less competitive and less flexible. It damages our economies at the very time we can least afford to have them damaged … You could not ask for a clearer example of the way the EU subverts democracy in Member States
Nigel Stanley
Terry Macalister in today’s Guardian reports on the call by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for a green new deal to both deal with the environmental challenge and help revive the economy.
