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Sterling plummets to $1.47. Cue orchestrated panic in sections of the press. Analysts bombard me with e-mails saying the currency is “facing the abyss”. Highly paid economists weigh in to remind the government – current and incoming – to slash the wages of low paid public servants, close museums and let social housing crumble. But hold on a minute. In April 2009 sterling was $1.37
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Philip Pearson
Our seas are a massive, renewable energy resource. The newly-formed RenewableUK (formerly BWEA) found a new focus yesterday in calling on Government to invest a further £150-£200 million in two renewable technologies – wave and tidal energy. Companies like Siemens and Vattenfall are keen to invest in wave and tidal power, in places like the Pentland Firth. The driver here, surely, is the Government’s high level commitment to get 15% of our total energy from renewables by 2020. This means generating a third of our electricity supply from technology that only now being developed and built.
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Ben Morgan of Oxfam's UK Poverty Programme highlights just why the cash that the Robin Hood Tax would generate for use in the UK is so desperately needed.
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Ed Miliband
If we hit DECC’s current target of getting 15% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020, the employment prize will be enormous – up to half a million good, well-paying jobs across the UK.
The target itself is already bringing dividends. Firms like Mitsubishi and Clipper Wind are committing major new investments to build wind turbine factories in the UK. This means thousands of new jobs, both directly and in their suppliers. They see that the Government is serious and has a clear vision, and this creates the necessary confidence to invest in Britain for the very long term.
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Tim Page
Today’s Financial Times reports on the TUC’s call for a new strategic investment fund, with a budget of £5bn, to invest in key industrial sectors. This is one of a number of recommendations set out in our new policy paper, ‘Developing UK industrial policy: lessons from France’.
Five years ago, many would have rejected the idea that we could learn much from across the Channel. But after an economic downturn in which the French have suffered markedly less than the UK, the TUC felt it was prudent to understand why this was the case, and to see if there were lessons to be learned .
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Adam Lent
The FT is reporting today that the bankers’ bonus tax will generate £2.5 billion in revenue for the Treasury – nearly three times more than the Treasury itself expected. Interestingly, those wise people around the Adam Smith Institute predicted that the tax would be avoided making the policy a meaningless gesture. Or as ASI guru Madsen Pirie called it “political rhetoric largely empty of substance”.
Worth noting maybe that these are some of the same people making dire predictions about the impact of the Robin Hood Tax.
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John Wood
Today we’ve got a new ToUChstone Extra pamphlet out, “In Sickness and in Health? Good work – and how to achieve it“. It’s challenging the Government and employers to ensure that workplaces don’t just prevent staff from becoming ill, but actively promote good health and well-being through the idea of ‘good work’.
We spend around a third of our waking hours at work. More than being just an economic process where employees simply trade their time for a wage, work is centrally important to us as human beings. It helps us define our identities, our physical and emotional well being, and even how long we live. We all deserve a fulfilling working life, with job satisfaction and the opportunity to achieve more of our full potential.
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Forty per cent of people were more concerned that state services would be cut back too deeply. Meanwhile, only twenty five per cent said that their greater fear was that the deficit would not be tackled with sufficient speed.
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International
DFID’s new education strategy: tough on ignorance but not tough enough on the causes of ignorance
Owen Tudor
The Department for International Development (DFID) issues today its new education strategy, designed in particular to educate the 72 million children who currently don’t go to primary school, and the 300-400 million who get inadequate schooling. There are welcome proposals to build at least 15,000 classrooms a year; train at least 130,000 teachers a year (although the world needs another 10.3 million teachers by 2015); and raise DFID spending on education to over £1 billion a year.
But the strategy is almost all about the supply of education places and the quality of teaching – and access and quality are simply not the reason so many children currently don’t get an education. To tackle that would require a challenge to child labour: and as so often, DFID ignores the labour standards element of poverty reduction.
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Owen Tudor
Funny thing, journalism. The Daily Telegraph reports today that the Japanese Foreign Minister has backed the idea of a financial transactions tax – following up earlier reports of support from more junior ministers. It then says that the idea has failed to gain “major traction among leading governments”. And then cites other supporters of the idea – UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. So, no leading Governments there then! The Japanese coming on board of course puts the Robin Hood Tax on the table in a majority of the G7 richest nations on the planet. The USA remains to be persuaded, but campaigners there, including the AFL-CIO, are working on that.