Owen Tudor

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at the end of this week is likely to adopt an Eminent Persons Group report which trumpets the shared commitment of Commonwealth nations to democracy and human rights. It’s not entirely unjustified: the Commonwealth is one of the few multilateral bodies which regularly suspends countries falling short of its democratic requirements (currently, Fiji: in the past, Pakistan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and others). But there’s one set of rights that the Commonwealth leads the world in abusing – the rights of LGBT communities. And that has to stop.

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Nigel Stanley

As I write MPs are debating a call – mainly from the Eurosceptic right – for a referendum on EU membership.

Of course there are many arguments that can be put for a referendum (you can read here for one Labour MP’s take) but the clearest new argument that seems to be coming from the right was put by Bernard Jenkin on the Today programme this morning  . This is that EU rules are preventing us from taking the measures that we need if we want to restore growth.

But there’s a fallacy here.

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Richard Exell

Two sets of data published today are troubling, because they confirm the low level of demand in the economy.

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Owen Tudor

I’m not making this up. The Vatican has come out as the latest supporter of a financial transactions tax (FTT) after campaigners engaged in dialogue with the Pope’s officials in Rome ahead of the G20 summit next week.

This morning at a press conference in the Vatican City Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson (President of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Council), Msgr. Mario Toso (the Secretary) and Prof. Leonardo Becchetti (Professor of Political Economy, Second University of Rome and member of the Scientific Committee of Zero Zero Cinque, the Italian Robin Hood Tax campaign) presented the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace note “For a reform of the international financial system in the perspective of a public authority with a universal jurisdiction”.

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Richard Exell

More than a million families could lose 16% or more of their council tax allowance under government proposals to replace Council Tax Benefit (CTB) with local authority-run schemes. But the language could lull you into acquiescence …

If you visit the Department for Communities and Local Government’s website you’ll find a consultation on plans reassuringly entitled “Localising Support for Council Tax in England.” (You can see the TUC response to the consultation here.)

What this means is that in England from 2013-14 Council Tax Benefit will be abolished.

Of course, there are millions of families who simply can’t afford Council Tax, so the abolition is a serious matter for them. The consultation document insists that CTB will be replaced with “localised schemes” in which local authorities decide “who should pay less council tax and how much less they should pay”.

All in accordance with the spirit of localism I suppose. But there are limits – whatever schemes local authorities design, they will have to continue to protect pensioners and to “support the positive work incentives that will be introduced through … Universal Credit”. The consultation document hints that schemes in which “council tax support is withdrawn quickly on entering work” will not be approved.

Well, that sounds fair enough, you may think.

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Richard Exell

Today’s Labour Market Report looks at record unemployment figures, falls in employment and particularly bad results for young people. The government claims our employment problems are imported from the Eurozone, but the latest data shows that industrial production is up in the rest of Europe but down here ….

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Owen Tudor

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Executive met last week and urged European governments to change course over their response to the current crisis. Central to the ETUC message is the analysis that the medicine is worse than the cure and the deterioration of the economic situation in countries like Greece and Portugal shows the total failure of the shock treatment. The ETUC recognised the gravity of the situation and the crucial nature of the European Summits taking place ahead of the G20 in Cannes. But the ETUC is concerned that European citizens and workers are ‘reaching the end of their tether’.

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Owen Tudor

A third of the world’s Heads of Government (and a small trade union delegation) are gathering this week in Perth, Western Australia, for the twice yearly Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), presided over by the Queen herself. And yet, what’s this? Fiji’s Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama is proud to announce that he’s been invited to speak at the ‘prestigious’ International Telecommunications Union ’Broadband Leadership Summit’ in Geneva instead. His Attorney-General (who is the one who really runs the country) says it is a great honour to have been invited, and shows what progress Fiji is making. Presumably that includes the newly introduced Essential Industries Decree which bans strikes and collective bargaining in the Fijian telecoms industry?

Here we begin to see the issue a little more clearly. The Decree is the latest in a long line of repressive measures introduced by Fiji’s military dictatorship, and is another example of what got Fiji suspended from the Commonwealth in 2009. Which is the real reason Frank is in Geneva this week instead of Perth: his peers don’t want him there – suspended countries can’t attend.

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Jim Cooper

DECC’s “penny-wise and pound foolish” approach to supporting low carbon technologies will mean the UK will miss the opportunity to lead the world in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.  Negotiations between the developer ScottishPower and the Government collapsed on Wednesday, leaving the UK with no CCS demonstration project.

Not only does this result in the loss of vital employment in Fife and the surrounding areas, but the Longannet design would have provided a model that could have been retro-fitted to coal and gas power stations around the world.

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Philip Pearson

“Certainty on Government action,” was rightly the key theme of  the Coalition’s green strategy, Enabling the Transition, published in August. What to make, then, of the mixed messages now emerging from a new government consultation on wind and solar projects?

Proposed cuts in support for the onshore wind industry will have a negative impact on deployment. Offshore wind support would reduce in April 2015, and again in April 2016 making offshore wind projects “more marginal,” according to RenewableUK. Onshore wind deployment would fall from 12 gigawatts (GW) to 10.4 GW by 2017. Wave and tidal project should receive much higher support. But, meanwhile, possible cuts to the emerging domestic solar power seem to be spooking the industry.

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