Tim Page

Today’s FT finds Jonathan Guthrie on combative form. Discussing the motor industry, he argues (‘An industry running on romance alone‘): “Cars themselves, through convergent evolution, have achieved a peak of excellence that renders them uniform”, but adds, “Yet still consumers love them. Governments too. Status-conscious premiers fear that unless they support something vaguely resembling an indigenous car industry, other first ministers will thump them and pinch their lunch money at the G20″.

Guthrie picks an interesting week to discuss the motor industry. A week that began with Nissan’s announcement of more than £200m to be invested over five years in a new battery factory to service electric cars, creating 350 jobs and bringing the promise of electric car production to Sunderland.

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Owen Tudor

The doyen of migration economics, Prof Christian Dustmann at UCL, has published research showing that East European migrants pay more in taxes than they use in social protection. Indeed they put in 30% more than they take out, unlike UK-born adults who claim more than they pay!

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Owen Tudor

One of the most sickening features of globalisation is the hyper-exploitation of the poorest countries on the planet by the ghouls of the financial world. What these so-called “vulture funds” do is buy up a poor country’s defaulted debt from a financial institution at an enormous discount, then find a court willing to let them sue the Government of that heavily-indebted, poverty-stricken country for recovery of the whole of the debt. As long as the court awards them more than the discounted rate they bought the debt for, they make a handsome profit – often millions of pounds for virtually no work at all.

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Nigel Stanley

Adam and I have both been depressed by the recent debate on public spending. Indeed there now seems to be a BBC editorial policy that allows presenters to assume that the case for immediate cuts in spending to reduce the deficit is as obvious as Neil Armstrong’s first footsteps on the moon. Perhaps we will soon get a quirky Radio 4 programme investigating whether those who think the moon landings were a hoax are all Keynesians too.

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• Just a thought
  Tom P: "Imagine if the economic crisis had been caused by trade unions, by constantly pushing for higher wages and using industrial action in support of short-term objectives, regardless of the long-term consequences. Imagine if at every stage in the run-up to the crisis when government or regulators or the public had tried to curb their behaviour, or urged restraint, they had simply responded with threats to withdraw their labour (in the traditional sense, not by relocating overseas…).

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• Frances O’Grady on Open Left
  The TUC's Deputy General Secretary contributes to the DEMOS open left project led by James Purnell

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Philip Pearson

To the USA, for the Labour Leaders Climate Forum in upstate New York.

We debate the three initiatives that are set to transform the US into a low carbon economy and deliver new rights and opportunities for US labour – the stimlus package, the Clean Energy Act and the Employee Free Choice Act. The organisers, Cornell Global Labour Institute, update delegates on the latest science of climate change and its accelerating pace. Speakers from the ITUC set out their stall for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen – including the bid for a Just Transition clause in the forthcoming climate change agreement, and call on global affiliates to the ITUC to work with their government to endorse this principle.

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Owen Tudor

Over the weekend of 16-18 October 2009, international development campaigners (including trade unionists) will be lobbying MPs and possible Parliamentary candidates all over the UK, calling on them to support some key demands about climate change and global poverty. Events in schools and religious gatherings will also form part of the UK end of a global event organised by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. In the UK, the weekend will be dubbed ‘The Great Persuasion’, and you can join in.

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Richard Exell

Read the TUC Recession Report for July 2009

Today we publish our latest Recession Report, which focuses on how disabled people have fared over the last ten years and the story so far of how the recession has affected them. In the report we look at employment and unemployment rates, and the ‘disability gaps’ – the gaps between the employment and unemployment rates for disabled and non-disabled people.

The evidence shows that disabled people are among the most disadvantaged groups in our society, with a massive employment rate gap of 27.1 points in 2007. Incredibly, the picture was even worse in the mid-1990s, and the relative position of disabled people has been gradually improving over most of the lifetime of the current government.

Research into what happened over the last 30 years seems to show that the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s seriously harmed the relative position of disabled people. So, the £64,000 question is: has the same thing happened again in this recession?

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Nigel Stanley

Steve Richards has a very interesting piece in today’s Independent that is well worth reading. He argues that Wednesday’s Climate Change White Paper is a seminal moment in British politics as it is the first time that government as a whole (rather than individuals within it) have begun to face up to the challenge of climate change.

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