Nigel Stanley

The BBC is reporting that the Prime Minister is to

say Labour will create “more middle class jobs than ever before” and the party represents the “mainstream majority”. And he will suggest middle class voters would suffer disproportionately under Tory plans to cut public spending. In the past, Mr Brown’s opponents have accused him of waging a class war.

But on the radio coverage it is also reported that allied to this is a call by Lord Mandelson for the 50p top rate tax to be lifted as soon as possible.

The media and politicians of all parties are very confused by class. In a common-sense world where words mean what they are meant to, middle would mean half way between top and bottom. That puts someone middle class on about £21,000 a year. Indeed this is what US politicians mean by middle class – the great mass of working joes and joannas who are not poor but earn well short of what we would call the professional middle classes.

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Owen Tudor

David Cameron walked into a hail of NGO opposition today when he argued that his commitment to match Labour’s pledge to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on overseas aid could be partly fulfilled by spending on a new stabilisation and reconstruction force capable of working in “high risk environments” such as conflict zones. The force, which would include military personnel as well as officials from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development (DFID), would take on tasks such as repairing infrastructure and restoring local governance.  The NGOs who reacted so strongly are not given to intervening in politics, so their concern is genuine and important. But why are they so worried about what could be considered just joined-up government? Is this a return to Conservative policies that, notoriously, once included expenditure on paying British companies to build the environment-destroying the Pergau Dam in the overseas aid figures?

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Owen Tudor

The idea of a financial transactions tax is beginning to appear everywhere. In the last couple of days, Prime Minister Gordon Brown mentioned it today in his article on international development in the Independent; TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber mentioned it in his response to the news that JP Morgan was spending billions on bonuses; and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka mentioned it on Monday in his speech to the National Press Club.

These are all people who are already known to support the idea of a financial transactions tax, so it’s not news that they support it. What’s news is that the tax is becoming a commonplace idea, one that crops up again and again, whatever the issue under discussion. And that’s important – especially for an idea dismissed as pie-in-the-sky just a year ago.

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As you’ll know if you’ve already had a look through our latest ToUChstone Extra pamphlet, “Getting it in proportion?”, there are as many electoral systems out there as there are elections. But which to choose?

Well to help, we’ve made a clever little test. Give it your opinion on a list of statements about the way you’d like elections to be handled, and it will recommend those of our main 5 systems that most closely match your preferences.

Try it out now, and see how you might handle electoral reform.

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Today we publish the latest Touchstone Extra report, “Getting it in Proportion?”. It asks whether we need a new electoral system for Westminster elections. You can click on the image to download a copy. It is designed to help implement the resolution carried at our 2009 Congress that called for a debate within the trade union movement about whether we should move to a more proportional system for electing the House of Commons. It does not come to any conclusion but describes different systems and assesses their strengths and weaknesses.

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• Letters: Poverty and parenting both affect children | Society | The Guardian
  Professor Kathleen Kiernan challenges David Cameron on child poverty, demonstrating that both poverty and parenting impact on child development.

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Adam Lent

A while back I wrote about the threat to the economy that might arise from the poor judgement calls of the Bank of England on interest rates. I admit this year it will be exceptionally hard to decide what to do with interest rates but that uneasy feeling I had during 2008 (when the Bank made a series of duff decisions) began to return as I read Andrew Sentance’s comments to The Guardian. 

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Adam Lent

The Tories’ latest campaign offering is rapidly turning into the most spoofed election poster since “Demon Eyes” Blair.  Rather predictably, this is my favourite.

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Adam Lent

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition today.  Just as Google decides it’s had enough of the Chinese Government’s disregard for the rights of businesses and of its own citizens, Carlyle Group (the private equity firm that  specialises in the arms industry) steps up its role in the country.

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Owen Tudor

The American TUC, the AFL-CIO, reports that progressive think tanks have produced a report which sets out how immigration can work for both the economy as a whole, existing workforces and the migrants themselves. In Raising the Floor for American Workers, the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center indicate that the current US system is unsustainable.

Attempts to close the border and crack down on illegal immigrants don’t work. What is needed, instead, is to ensure that everyone working in the US is treated fairly, and migrants should be offered a path to citizenship so that they don’t disappear into the informal economy. This is pretty much the same prescription as the TUC and others have advocated for the UK.

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