Nicola Smith

We all know that prices are rising fast, with CPI now at 4 per cent and RPI just over 5. With today’s data showing us that in December wage growth held steady at 2.3 per cent (regular pay) it’s self-evident that wages are being outstripped by inflation.  A few weeks ago Mervyn King spelt the problem out: according to the Bank of England’s forecasts by the end of 2011 real wages (the actual value of wages once inflation has been taken into account) will be worth the same as 2005.

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Richard Exell

The latest inflation figures are very depressing. Using the Consumer Price Index that the government favours, prices are going up at a rate of 4.0 per cent a year – up from 3.7 per cent last month. Using the Retail Price Index that most union negotiators prefer, the figures are even worse: 5.1 per cent, up from 4.8 last month. The fact that the CPI is so much lower than RPI means that the government’s decision to switch to CPI for uprating benefits and public service pensions is going to hit a lot of people on low incomes. Its also going to increase the pressure for a substantial increase in interest rates that could end up costing thousands of jobs.

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Another clip from today’s TUC/IDS pay conference. In it, Richard discusses the major impact that the Government’s seemingly minor switch in the method used to calculate inflation will actually have on low and middle income workers and pensioners. Apologies for the rather restricted view of Richard himself – he is there behind that laptop, honest!

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Here’s a video from today’s TUC/IDS conference: The Pay Challenge in 2011 – Pay bargaining in an age of austerity. Adam’s contribution was an outline of the prospects for the UK economy in 2011 and beyond, with a particular focus on the TUC’s analysis of the challenges for growth.

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Owen Tudor

There wasn’t much love lost this Valentine’s Day when independent trade unionists demonstrated outside the headquarters of the discredited official, state-run Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). But this was more important than revenge for the ETUF’s call to workers to support President Mubarak and resist the Egyptian revolution. It was a sign that ordinary Egyptians want far, far more than just a new elite to replace the former regime. Egyptian workers want better wages, more rights, and a say over how their unions and their country are run, as their statement issued on Sunday shows.

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John Monks

At the end of 2010, EU leaders agreed a permanent crisis mechanism to try to safeguard the stability of the euro area. But the big risk now is that the EU will act towards weaker economies more in line with the punishment provisions of the Treaty of Versailles after 1919 than the generosity of the Marshall Plan after 1945.

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• In Defence of Welfare
  A new report from the Social Policy Association making the case for a welfare state
• Half of domestic violence services could lose funding – Channel 4 News
  New research from women’s aid finds that to date only a quarter of the UK’s women’s refuges have had their contracts extended beyond March.

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Richard Exell

How many disabled people on benefits are really fit for work? It’s an important question, prompted by the leak to the BBC of the results of a pilot programme that were due to be published tomorrow. Ministers are claiming that these results show that two thirds of people who get Incapacity Benefit or Income Support on the grounds of incapacity are “able to work.”

Put like that it sounds as though two thirds of people on these benefits are swinging the lead – and this is certainly the story newspapers have been telling recently.

But that is entirely the wrong way of looking at it.

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Philip Pearson

The temporary reprieve on forests sales, following Defra’s rushed announcement last weekend, can’t mask the threat to the independence of environment bodies in the UK from Schedule 7 of the Public Bodies Act. The Committee on Climate Change is at risk. Without further legislation or debate, under Schedule 7 Ministers will have the power to close public bodies like the CCC, change their constitution, cut funding or  transfer their functions without further consultation.  The CCC’s impartial, evidence based advice has helped shaped the UK’s energy and green investment priorities since the groundbreaking Climate Change Act 2008. Recently, it challenged government over the “lack of clarity over long-term energy and related technology policy objectives”. 

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Owen Tudor

This week, campaigners around the world will be lobbying French, German and UK embassies in more than 20 countries to make real progress on a Financial Transactions Tax during the French G20 this year: there will be a global day of action on Thursday 17 February, the day before the G20 Finance Ministers meet in Paris. The host country, France, does at least seem to be listening, and cites popular support asd a key reason for keeping up the pressure. In today’s Financial Times, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde says:

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