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John Wood

John Wood

I’m Campaigns and New Media Officer at the TUC, working on campaigns and advice online, as well as chipping in with issues around how new media (particularly social media) are impacting on industrial relations. I’m always tinkering with the system behind this blog (so if something’s broken it’s likely my fault) and on housekeeping duties to help out the other contributors.

I’ve been at the TUC since 2002, and before joining the team here, I worked on websites, eCommerce and online campaigning for Oxfam GB. In busman’s holiday style, I spend some of the spare time my kids leave me in blogging and online activism.

Web: http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk
  • Blogging

    Touchstone Economic Dashboard: Charting a way to recovery

    12th December 2011 — Filed under: Blogging

    John Wood John Wood

    Another month and another gloomy set of employment results. We’ve been tracking economic indicators since the start of the recession in our Economic Reports series, but sometimes you need to take a step back from the snapshots to see the longer term trends as well, if you’re going to appreciate the depth of the hole we find ourselves in.

    So we’re using Touchstone blog to launch a new Economic Dashboard, giving a quick way to see trends on many of the main economic indicators since 2008. Every month, we’ll update the charts, so we can plot any progress the country is making towards recovery, or help make the case for policies that will make a difference.

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  • Economics

    Unhappy families: Big hits in living standards for typical households

    9th September 2011 — Filed under: Economics

    John Wood John Wood

    Wages failing to keep up with inflation, tax and benefit changes and cuts in public services all combined are going to dramatically reduce the living standards of many British families by 2013, according to our latest research.

    In Unhappy Families, the first analysis of this ‘living standards gap’, we’ve looked at the effect on four typical British families, and found their living standards are set to be hit by between 6% and 10%. Have a look at the headline results we’ve found for our families:

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  • Public services

    VIDEO: Welcome to the New NHS

    2nd September 2011 — Filed under: Public services

    John Wood John Wood

    A not entirely seriously filmed video from UNISON, highlighting a very serious point. Clause 168 of the Health and Social Care Bill removes the restriction on the amount of income a Foundation Trust can make from private charges – the so called “private patient income cap”.

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  • Working Life

    Trench warfare, Chartered Management Institute style

    9th June 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    John Wood John Wood

    Battle for the BoardroomI’ve been playing the Chartered Managment Institute and Institute of Consulting’s new promotional web game (in my lunch break, honest!). It’s a novel way to convince young people that a career in business is for them, especially in one of the noble disciplines of management or consulting.

    But if Battle for the Boardroom offers us a peek into the psyche of British managment, I’m a little worried.

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  • Working Life

    Tell DCMS: “Don’t mess with May Day”

    12th May 2011 — Filed under: Working Life

    John Wood John Wood

    “Give us your ideas for a new Bank Holiday” runs the heading on DCMS’ latest press release. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, as the TUC have been suggesting for quite some time that adding a new bank holiday to the UK’s calendar could help end our embarrassing honour of having the fewest public holidays in Europe.

    However, on closer inspection, Tourism and Heritage Minister John Penrose’s latest wheeze is not actually a “new bank holiday” but rather a recycled old one – the tease! He’s running a “pre-consultation” on whether we should move the May Day bank holiday, and if so, where we should stick it.

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  • Economics

    Tax Credit changes calculator: How will cuts affect you?

    6th April 2011 — Filed under: Economics, Society & Welfare

    John Wood John Wood

    Tax Credit changes are taking effect from today that could leave families thousands of pounds out of pocket. Along with Mumsnet, we’ve put together a quick online Tax Credit changes calculator to help you find out how your household will be affected.

    It lets you add your details, such as income level and number of children, and it’ll estimate how they will be affected by the tax changes taking place from today and from April next year.

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  • Society & Welfare

    Property buyers not quite ‘all in it together’

    26th November 2010 — Filed under: Society & Welfare

    John Wood John Wood

    The latest figures from the Land Registry for England and Wales are out, and they show house sales increased by a rather paltry 1% from August 2009 to August 2010. Looking closer though, a significant chunk of that 1% increase (43.8% of it in fact) has been in the form of million pound plus properties, which despite these austere times seem to be going like hot cakes – a whopping 44% increase in Millionaire’s Row sales.

    With the same report showing house prices up 3.4% overall (7.6% in London), first time buyers and low- and middle earners are being priced even further out of the property market than they already were. Such diverging experiences of the property market hardly bode well for us all being in it together.

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  • Labour market

    Jobs figures don’t tell the same story everywhere

    14th July 2010 — Filed under: Labour market

    John Wood John Wood

    Launch the interactive jobs mapThe jobs figures are out today, and show a headline rate of five JSA claimants chasing every job vacancy listed at Jobcentre Plus. This doesn’t tell the whole story though, and there are huge regional variations, from 43.2 claimants competing for every job opening in Hackney North, through to just 0.7 in Lichfield.

    I’ve made (with the help of some great code made available by Tim Craft) an interactive map, that lets you see what this data means at a glance. You can also plot the same constituencies by political party returned at the last election, to get more of a sense of the areas represented.

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  • International

    ITUC survey looks into dark places for workers’ rights

    9th June 2010 — Filed under: International

    John Wood John Wood

    The ITUC’s new Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights and makes for grim reading. Last year, there was a sharp increase in the number of trades unionists killed around the world. 101 were murdered, an increase of 30% on 2008, with another 10 attempted murders and 35 serious death threats. And this is against a background of growing pressure on fundamental workers’ rights around the world, as the impact of the global economic crisis on employment deepened during 2009.

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  • Labour market

    Employment and the election: Three to watch this week

    20th April 2010 — Filed under: Labour market, Politics

    John Wood John Wood

    Week three of the election, and with the health of the economy featuring highly in the battle for votes, we’re going to be looking very closely at what we can learn from three new sets of official statistics.

    The first will be tomorrow’s unemployment figures. Unemployment is lower in this recession than in previous ones, but that doesn’t mean that it’s no longer a problem. Tomorrow we’re hoping to see movement on a few important indicators:

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