Adam Lent
The right-wing bloggers are slowly beginning to lay into the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax which was launched today. Two early starters have taken the usual patronising tone describing the idea as a “fairytale” and ”lunatic“.
Nigel Stanley
The IFS data - which I looked at yesterday - also has a useful table showing which sectors have seen growth in public sector staff since 1997, and by how much.
The small-state right would like us to think that these were all pen-pushers – somewhat oddly as I doubt that many people in either the private or public sector have a pen as their main workplace tool any more.
And of course efficient public services need their share of administrators and managers too. I suspect most people would prefer to get a renewed passport on time, rather than be told we’ve shut the passport service down as it was full of bureaucrats.
Brendan Barber
The Department for Work and Pensions launched an important new consultation today, on setting up an Employers Liability Insurance Bureau. Creating a system like this will be of real benefit for people who develop diseases as a result of being exposed to asbestos or other dangerous substances.
Currently, because of the length of time between exposure to a chemical or asbestos and the development of diseases, it can be very difficult to trace who the insurer was at the time of exposure. This means that, in many cases, someone who contracts an work-related disease as a result of their employer’s negligence is unable to get the compensation they are entitled to.
Philip Pearson
Is the Robin Hood Tax on banks’ transactions the key to the $100 billion a year the UN promised developing nations in its Copenhagen Accord? Last December, the UN said new funds on this enormous scale are needed annually to satisfy the needs of developing countries for low carbon technologies and to adapt to climate change impacts that we, the developed nations, have set in train.
Owen Tudor
The TUC is backing the Robin Hood Tax for a number of reasons: the revenue raised would protect vital public services from cuts, and would be used to create jobs and combat poverty in the UK. The tax would also produce money for climate change, and act as a brake on risky financial speculation. But the TUC also wants the tax used for combating global poverty – the realisation of our campaigning for many years through Make Poverty History and so on.
We are reaching out to trade union partners in the global south – in Brazil and South Africa, for instance, who are members of the G20 but still face enormous problems of poverty and inequality at home, far greater than ours in Britain. The Robin Hood Tax could raise as much as £60 billion a year to fight poverty around the world, and there are many examples of what it could be spent on.
Owen Tudor
In the UK we call it the Robin Hood Tax. In Germany, it’s the Tax Against Poverty. And in the US it’s the financial speculation tax. But in all those countries – and many more – popular campaigns are building support for a financial transactions tax to raise money for public services, combating poverty and tackling climate change. Existing groups like Americans for Financial Reform and Europeans for Financial Reform (the latter set up by the ETUC and the Party of European Socialists) are also backing these campaigns.
John Wood
Almost twice as many people would support a financial transaction tax as oppose the idea (53% against 28%), according to a YouGov poll carried out for Oxfam late last year.
Not sure if this exactly equates to “feared by the bad, loved by the good“, but it’s a pretty good start for the new Robin Hood Tax campaign, which is launched today.
The Robin Hood Tax could raise hundreds of billions of pounds to help repair the human damage caused by the global economic crisis, protect public services at home, fight poverty abroad and help foot the bill for climate change, through a levy on banks’ financial transactions. The rate would vary according to the type of transaction, but around an average of 0.05%.
Okay, not really a banker, but Bill Nighy pretending to be a banker in Richard Curtis’ new campaign video – That’s nearly as good, no?