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A group of public service workers have recorded a cover of this classic song, to raise awareness and solidarity ahead of 30 November’s day of action on public service pensions. Watch the great video and buy a download copy of the single to help it up the charts.
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Nineteen bishops write to The Observer to oppose the ‘benefits cap’ in the Welfare Reform Bill. They quote Children’s Society research that estimated it will cut support for 210,000 children, leaving up to 80,000 homeless.
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Graciete Cruz and Wanda Guimaraes, International Secretaries respectively of the CGTP and the UGT - the two main trade union confederations in Portugal – write together about this week’s General Strike in Portugal. The issues will be familiar to anyone in Britain: government austerity measures and who pays for the crisis are the key concerns.Workers in Portugal face an unsustainable level of unemployment, insecurity and precariousness, reductions in income and of social protection, increases in the cost of living and of social inequality. The CGTP and UGT, Portugal’s two union confederations, have called a General Strike for Thursday 24 November, appealing to both men and women, permanent and precarious workers, from the private and public sectors, unionised or not, to demand a change of policy, for decent work, against unemployment and precariousness, for better wages and pensions, in a Portugal of economic and social progress and of justice and solidarity.
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Owen Tudor
The Robin Hood Tax is becoming the subject of much more heated debate: a sure sign that it is getting much closer to actual implementation. The UK Government has ramped up the anti-Robin rhetoric, with the German Government fighting back. The UK Government position confuses British interests with those of the City of London (along the lines of the US aphorism that “what’s good for General Motors is good for the US”).
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Caroline Lucas
The solar industry is still struggling to come to terms with the scale of the damage inflicted on them by the Government’s sudden announcement last month that feed-in tariffs to support the installation of solar PV are to be more than halved.
While it’s always been accepted that the tariff would be revised in line with falling installation and running costs, this hasty reduction – originally planned for April – suggests an alarming degree of disorder in Government policy.
By failing to give people and organisations time to plan ahead and adapt, Ministers now risk reversing the significant achievements of this burgeoning industry.
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Paul O'Connor
The crisis in the UK Border Agency has attracted much media commentary and coverage over the past two weeks. The vast majority of this has focused on the “she said/he said” spat between Theresa May and Brodie Clark. Sadly, this misses the real story.
The government is cutting the UKBA workforce by a third from 2010 to 2015. The simple fact is that they do not have enough bodies to do the job. That is the entire rationale for the Agency’s move towards the “risk-based” security controls at the heart of the spat. Both May and Clark have an interest in maintaining the lie that the pilot has improved efficiency. In reality, it has always been about keeping down queues at ports and airports because there are not enough staff to process them.
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Alice Hood
The TUC published analysis today that shows more than 800,000 low paid public sector workers – 9 out of ten of them women – could lose out despite a government commitment to protect low earners from pension contribution increases.
The government is seeking an additional £2.8bn a year in contributions from members of public service pension schemes by 2014-15, phased in over the next three years. This is an average of 3.2% of pay, roughly a 50% increase on the contributions currently paid by many in the schemes (find more on our pensions justice site).
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Éoin Clarke's family story shows why workfare is a threat to workers and to unemployed people – people with no option but to claim benefits forced to do unpaid work that would otherwise have been done by workers paid the rate for the job.
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Duncan Weldon
A few weeks ago at the Conservative Party David Cameron’s speech looked set to contain a call for households to pay off their debts. Thankfully the Prime Minister dropped this line a few hours before his address.
I can’t think of a time that a major political leader has ever stood up and essentially argued – ‘we face a renewed risk of recession – therefore you should probably spent less’, if an opposition figure made the same case they would undoubtedly be accused of talking the economy down’.
But what makes this call doubly odd is that the Office of Budget Responsibility’s forecasts are premised on a large rise in personal debt. They forecast household borrowings to rise from £1,560bn in 2010 to £2,126bn by 2015, an increase of 36.3%.
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Howard Johns
The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster ride for those of us working in the solar industry and the thousands of people involved. Just today, as a result of Government plans to cut its support for the industry, I have seen York Council cancel 3000 planned social home PV installations, Westminster cancel 1000 social home PV installations, Anglesey cancel 300, Reading Council cancel a £5M solar project, Shoreline Housing Partnership (Grimsby’s largest social housing landlord) cancel 3,300 solar PV systems installations, Ashford Borough Council cancels £1.2M scheme.
It’s hard to fathom, so I will attempt to unpick what is really behind the roller coaster ride of the last year.
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Neil Foster
As the full social economic implications of the closure of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter at Lynemouth are digested in Whitehall, it is worth considering what lessons must be learned.
Yesterday, I highlighted how the cumulative impact of energy policies, including the proposed carbon tax, has substantially increased costs for Energy Intensive Industries within UK manufacturing. The Alcan aluminium smelter at Lynemouth is one of hundreds of others firms across the UK now exposed to considerable energy cost rises and levies. It is essential that George Osborne announces relief and additional support as soon as is practicable so that other companies aren’t tipped over into choosing closure.
The second part to the equation is the aggressive profit targets Rio Tinto sets its sites.