Let’s get out there and enjoy this holiday, which we richly deserve. Perhaps the weather may not be the best ever, but if we are going to get depressed by the odd shower then we are probably living in the wrong country. There are plenty of things that we could this weekend indoors and outdoors, including visiting a number of local trade union festivals  (this is not just being “worthy”, the one taking place in Dorchester on Sunday afternoon is basically a mini rock festival) – and more traditional May Day events.

Turning back to those 1970s negotiations for a moment , one part of the May Day deal that has largely become lost in the mists of history was that 1978 was the first year when compensatory days were given when the Christmas and boxing day bank holidays fell at the weekend. This was  an important gain for working people. I can recall being quite disappointed soon after I started work when we knocked off on Friday on Christmas Eve and clocked on again at 8 pm on Monday morning. For those who are not abstemious, imagine having to get up at 6.30 AM after boxing day!

Because we are human our efforts at work will always ebb and flow. The restorative effect of time off  helps to explain why the extra bank holidays of the 1970s had no measurable effect whatsoever on the UK economy.

Rumours of the demise of big firms are premature. In fact, 49. per cent of private sector employees still work for large businesses (defined as employing 250 people or more), 15.5 per cent work for medium sizes businesses (50-249 employees) and 34.8,  work for small businesses (1-49 employees).

Without underplaying the contributions that small enterprises make to the UK economy, it is also a fact that 3.4 million UK businesses are sole traders – eg they consist of 1 self-employed person working alone. Sole traders account for 75.6 of all UK businesses. Most will at best continue to be  “trundlers” rather than taking off in a big way.

Finally, add the public sector into the equation, and we find that just 8,600 enterprises account for 52.2 per cent of all UK employees.

Source: http://www.bis.gov.uk/analysis/statistics/business-population-estimates 2011.

The human cost of redundancy for workers is very clear, but do companies really have to engage in a “sack-race” every time the economy slows down? This question will be the topic of the TUC’s Alternatives to Redundancy summit on 26 April.

Racing to redundancy can cost businesses an awful lot of money. As well as the direct costs of paying off their workers, there are also the indirect costs of the management time spent implimenting the process. Once the redundancies are complete there is inevitable damage to staff morale and productivity in the subsequent period. Finally, when the economy begins to recover, there are the costs of recruitment and training to re-fill the jobs that people had previously been paid to leave the organisation.  

There are a range of other strategies that businesses can use to improve efficiency or reduce costs. These include improving business planning and targeting investment to improve productivity (and remember that the money may well be there as the UK corporate sector is currently sitting on record levels of financial reserves while business leaders wonder what will happen next), and proper planning and development of workplace skills.

A strategy to minimise redundancies would also include a freeze on recruitment (this sounds obvious, but does not always happen). With  the support of the employees and their trade unions, it might also include working reduced hours or even temporary stoppages for a short period. There could often also be a role for secondments, lending out some key workers and recovering some of the cost of their wages.

In order to help employers and trade unions develop better strategies, the TUC is holding an Alternatives to Redundancy summit here at Congress House 1.00-3.00 on Thursday 26 April, with contributions from:  

• Brendan Barber, General Secretary TUC
• John Taylor, Chief Executive ACAS
• Sarah Anderson CBE, Chair Call Britannia
• David Lennan, Co-Founder StaffShare
• John Duncan, Group HR Director, Royal Mail
• Sir Steve Bullock, Chair of the Workforce Board, Local Government Association

Andrew Burke, Chair of Crisp Thinking will moderate the debate.

Registration is free, using the link below:

http://redundancyisntworking.eventbrite.com/

Please note that this event will be filmed for future release.

London is very different though. Here, house prices rose by 4.2 per cent in the past year and the average sale price was £354,300 

Turning to the stamp duty increases on mansions valued over £2 million, the  latest figures show that there were 103 sales in December 2011, of which 80 were in London. December is traditionally a very quiet month for house sales.  

The chancellor could have chosen to levy some extra stamp duty on all house sales worth over £1 million. For comparison, there were 488 sales worth more than £1 million in December and 355 of those were in London.

* Note. The Land Registry Figures include the fair minority of house sales that are completed without a mortgage.

Today’s Land Regsitry House Price Index Report: http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/

There is a long history of the exchequer paying for roads. By the fourteenth century royal grants were already paying for a few roads between  towns to be paved. By 1654 revenue from the rates was being used for the first time to build and improve public roads. The private sector came on the scene soon afterwards, when the first turnpike road was constructed in 1663. Toll roads had a good run, but by 1870 the  turnpike sector was completely annihilated by competition from the railways. Since then, the vast majority of roads have been constructed and maintained by public sector.

In the last 100 years the construction of bridges sometimes been accompanied by tolls. However, unsurprisingly there is evidence that drivers don’t like tolls. In some cases, tolls have the effect of diverting traffic away from the locality as well as bearing down on poorer drivers who have no other way of getting to their homes, which is why the Scottish Government abolished all bridge tolls in 2008. This is also the reason why the town of  Porthmadog abolished the toll across the Cob embankment leading across the estuary into the town.

People are willing to pay to cross the Severn because there is no easy alternative, but they will tend to avoid tolls when they can. This is why the M6  toll road has never quite met expectations (despite a slightly Panglossian evaluation from the Highways Agency which show the road ticking all the boxes – except the missing box of carrying high volumes of traffic).

In August 2005 a Highways Agency study showed that usage had settled at around 50,000 vehicles per day (about two-thirds of the predicted 74,000) but that traffic volumes on the M6 had reduced slightly. Later unconfirmed reports suggest that the onset of the recession might have driven usage of this road down nearer to half of the predicted traffic volumes. (Please comment if you can verify or deny these reports).

It follows that if the Government really wants to revive this transport policy from the time of Charles II they will be pushed to find anybody to finance toll roads without massive Treasury sweeteners, as experience suggests that the required revenue will not roll in readily.

The problem is that the Government’s cuts agenda is still depressing the economy. This is generating uncertainty about employment which feeds into a reluctance to buy which is reinforced by the difficulty in obtaining affordable finance and the continued slow fall of house prices (down 1 per cent in England and Wales since last year according to the official Land Registry**) .  Furthermore, recent changes to Right to Buy are likely to accelerate the decline of the social housing stock.

Home ownership in the UK started to decline slightly from 2009 onwards, whilst private sector renting has risen to meet the shortfall (Source: DCLG Housing Statistics).

Local authorities enjoyed a very modest revival in 2010/2011 – up from just a few hundred to a still-modest 3,000 starts across the whole UK. This is nowhere near what is needed. Between the private sector crisis and the long-running social housing famine, local authority waiting lists have now now stand at a record 1.8 million for England alone (DCLG).

Unfortunately, we also estimate that the Governments “reinvigorated Right To Buy” , which was re-announced in the budget, will lead to about 10,000 more social homes being sold off before the next election and only around 1,500 being replaced.  

We don’t think that the claim that the receipts “will be used to ….. replace, on a one-for-one basis, the additional properties sold with new affordable homes for rent” (Budget Report, p40)  is worth the paper that it is written on.

The reason is simply that the government will continue to take  75 per cent of the money from sales. This is much too high, and effectively militates against local authorities replacing homes lost through RTB sales. In addition, local authorities also have to assume an income stream from social housing sales that they have to fulfil before they can begin to think about building replacement homes. This leaves 15 per cent of recipts on average.

 The Government’s own analysis suggests that sales of 8 or 12 social homes per year for each authority would lead  to the provision of between zero and 3 replacements, which also points to the replacement rate being around 15 per cent.

As well as stabilising the private sector housing market and helping first time buyers, what is also urgently needed is sufficient funding from central government and more access to affordable finance so that local authorities and social landlords can build the new social homes that are required to ensure that everybody can be decently housed.

Of course, construction is also a very efficient motor of economic growth.  Unfortunately, the current budget leaves the housing motor just crawling, and social housing stuck in reverse.

** http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/

With average pay settlements running at around 3 per cent and RPI inflation at 3.9 per cent, we believe that there was room for the LPC to do more this year. We are obviously very concerned about youth employment, but the LPC has been able to find no evidence that the NMW has played any part in this. I certainly do not believe that we could somehow price young people into work by lowering wages. Rather, it seems most likely that employers would simply pocket any savings. Furthermore, UK businesses are facing lack of demand at the moment, and squeezing wages will simply make this situation worse.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

“It is wrong to deny young people an increase this year, as there is no evidence that the minimum wage has had an adverse impact on jobs. The reason why firms have not been hiring enough new workers is because they lack confidence in this government’s ability to set the UK on course for a sound economic recovery. There is now a real danger that young people will view minimum wage work as exploitative.

 “We welcome the LPC’s modest increase for apprentices and its rejection of calls to freeze the adult rate. Many of the business representatives that called for the minimum wage to be frozen are also complaining about the lack of consumer spending. Boosting demand is vital – but this will not be achieved by squeezing the low paid even further.

“Low-paid workers, like hairdressers, shop workers and care assistants, tend to spend 100 per cent of any salary increase in local shops and businesses so, as well as providing some relief to hard pressed families, a well-judged rise in the minimum wage helps stimulate demand across the UK economy.”

NMW rates from October 2012:

The LPC predicts that the increases will benefit 938,000 people in October of which 61 per cent will be women**. The range of coverage is impressive but the depth of the pay increase could have been a fair bit more.

We shall have to fight hard for low paid people to catch up next year, as they are falling behind.

PS – The minimum wage is enforced by HM Revenue and Customs. Phone the Pay and Work Rights Helpline on 0800 917 2368.

* http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=423769&NewsAreaID=2

**Low Pay Commission Report 2012, p150.

It is certainly true that developments in technology mean that many of us could work from home, or in a business drop-in centre or some other location rather than trekking into the office. Developments in technology have also made video conferences and other forms of virtual meeting a lot easier and more effective.

Research commissioned by Microsoft* suggets that more firms are offering flexible working, but they are not rolling it out very effectively. In addition, it identifies some tensions between staff who can work flexibly and those who are unable to do so.

There really should be a win-win-win outcome achievable here:

• about one in five employees wants to work from home or to work more flexibly (Source: third Work Life Balance survey)
• Employers often report higher productivity and retention for homeworkers and flexible workers. They may also save on office space.
• We all benefit if we can reduce travel congestion and emissions. 

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber says “If managed properly, more flexible working can generate huge dividends – for the organisation, and individual employees and their families. Of course not every job can be done from a variety of different locations, but there is still a great potential for change. The onus must be on employers to make remote working, home working and other forms of flexibility available to as many staff as possible, taking care to explain what it might mean for individual jobs. Then new ways of working are more likely to be accepted, and employees will be able to spend more time working, and less time commuting and travelling to unnecessary business meetings on the UK’s overcrowded roads and public transport network.”

*”Attitudes towards flexible working” A study by Microsoft/ Vanson Bourne

Anywhere Working Website: http://www.anywhereworking.org/

Anywhere Working Week: http://www.anywhereworking.org/tag/anywhere-working-week/

In many ways this is a year of contrasts and changes  when it comes to working time with, for example, the extra day of the leap year is matched by the extra bank holiday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This rare day it would be a good time for the more careless employers to resolve to clean up their act when it comes to working time.

Does anybody lose out because its a  leap-year? Not as far as I can see. Those who are paid by the hour will simply be paid for working today. Those who are paid by salary will not get paid any more for working today, but leap years have always implicit in all our working patterns.

They have certainly been around for a long time. Indeed they were also a feature of the Julian calender, which preceded our current Gregorian calendar. In fact, it appears that leap years came to the UK shortly after the Roman  occupation, as Julius Caesar adopted this form of calendar in 45 BC.

Our currnet Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox in the same relationship with the date of Easter. Other calendars all have similar arrangements, otherwise over a long time key festivals would gradually slide into a different season.

The vernal equinox year is therefore the key measurement and this is about 365.242374 days long – (so  every 400th year is not a leap year – but we actually won’t have to worry about that again until the year 2,400!

In case you were wondering, the vernal equinox is the point in the spring when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth’s equator (I had to use a tennis ball, a grapefruit and a marker pen in order to visualise this).

All in all, from the point of view of working life, leap years are relatively trivial things. However, while we are thinking about working time i would like  to ask employers to think about three other things during the coming year and to make a leap year’s resolution to address them. Good employers already know the value of managing working time properly but our task must be to get more to follow best practice. My three wishes are:

• to end excessive working time. 3.0 million UK employers regularly work more than 48 hours per week and 1.8 million of them say that they want a shorter working week (Source: Labour Force Survey). Long hours are closely associated with an increased risk of contracting heart disease, stress, depression and diabetes.
• to enforce the law on annual leave. Far to many employees are not still not getting 5.6 weeks annual leave. In some cases contracts have simply not been updated, in other cases, employees are simply never given time to take all their leave.  According to ONS, 3.8 million full-time employees currently report that they have less than 20 days paid annual leave (the law provides for 28 days, but this may include public holidays, so 20 days is the minimum possible entitlement). Enforcement is only possible by taking an Employment Tribunal case.
• and, quite urgently, to ensure that all employees benefit from the Diamond Jubilee bank holiday. Some employers did themselves no favours at all by ignoring the Royal Wedding Bank Holiday last year. They should note that it is still possible to be labelled “Scrooge” in June.  The Government could easily ensure that every employee benefits by making a simple amendment to the Working Time Regulations.

Flexibility at work can be a good thing, but it has be about give and take. The problem is that our current economic difficulties mean that more employers have been choosing to rely on staff doing unpaid hours and that all “take ” and no “give” is obviously a bad thing.

Unpaid overtime has traditionally been concentrated in mid-career employment between the ages of 35 and 55. However, using unpublished data from the ONS Labour Force Survey the TUC has found a big increase in older workers doing unpaid hours in the past decade. An extra quarter of a million workers aged 55-64 now work unpaid overtime, and the number aged 60+ has increased by 45 per cent. This is most likely to stem from concerns about retirement income, which have been intensified by the loss of many company pension schemes and the effect of of the recession on the yields from private pensions.

This means that those who work unpaid overtime are now continuing to work in the same roles and not taking early retirement or winding down before retiremmnt. This change in behaviour is affecting those at the other end of the age scale, as longer working lives also mean fewer vacancies created by retirement.  

 Too many working hours lead to health problems, more sickness absence, falling quality of work and no time to pursue training and outside interests. Its obvious that that the issue of improving productivity in core time should be a win-win. The smartest employers alerady understand this, so the real debate is about how we spread best practice on working time more broadly.  

Other successful countries don’t have this problem to the same extent that the UK does, so it is clear that change is possible. Individual employees should talk to their friends at work about this issue, to their unions where they are present, and to their bosses (unless they happen to be an unapproachable ogre, of course). Managers should think about how they can manage working time to avoid excessive unpaid hours whilst improving productivity and output, and Government and employer’s organisations should try to help employers to move away from long hours – with a helping hand proffered by the TUC and trade unions if they wish.

See: http://www.worksmart.org.uk/workyourproperhoursday/ for more advice about working your proper hours.

Also worth looking at the 2005 DTI/CBI/TUC report “Practical ways to reduce long hours and reform  working practices” which is all about better work organisation: www.bis.gov.uk/files/file14239.pdf

I’m off to lunch now!

It seems to have become like an article of faith, making their stance difficult to shift with even the most rational argument.

As the dole queue rises, it certainly can’t be down to a shortage of workers.  It doesn’t seem right that 3 million employees – about 1 in 8 – should still work risky long hours while unemployment pushes two million – surely the UK can do better than that!

There is a wealth of research stretching back for decades showing links between excessive working time and heart disease, stress, depression and diabetes. That is why the EU brought forward the Working Time Directive in the first place.

The latest study adds to the case by confirming a link between working long hours of overtime and ”predisposal” to major depressive episodes.

For those who like to see some of the numbers:

“In prospective analysis of participants with no psychological morbidity at baseline, the odds ratio for a subsequent major depressive episode was 2.43 (95% confidence interval 1.11 to 5.30) times higher for those working 11+ hours a day compared to employees working 7–8 hours a day, when adjusted for socio-demographic factors at baseline. Further adjustment for chronic physical disease, smoking, alcohol use, job strain and work-related social support had little effect on this association (odds ratio 2.52; 95% confidence interval 1.12 to 5.65).”

Scientific caution rightly means that the authors stop short of saying that long hours increased the risk of contracting clinical depression by about x2.5 in this group of workers, as the causal link is a complex one. However, for those actually contracting heart disease, the difference between “predisposed” and “caused” might seem rather a fine one.

The particular value of this study of the health of UK civil servants is that it has a big sample (around 11,000) and it has been running for more than 20 years, making it one of the most reliable sources for studying working time and health.

…and earlier research from the same source found a worrying 60% increase in the risk of contracting heart disease amongst those working overtime.

There is obviously a serious risk here and yet the state and business leaders oppose taking action to protect people – simply scandalous!

King’s argument was that inflation had been kept high by the rise in VAT, higher import prices and soaring energy costs.

“The consequence has been a ferocious squeeze in the purchasing power of take home pay. That led to a fall in consumer spending which accounted for much of the weakness in growth in 2011″

Mervyn King points out that consumer demand fell by a full 5% in 2008. He might have chosen to add that it has continued to fall more slowly and that it is not expected to return to stronger growth until at least 2013.

So there we have it, just as the TUC suspected, we have become stuck in recession because we have not had big enough pay rises.

This is a serious problem, because at the level of the individual firm it might superficially seem quite logical to pay as little as possible in hard times, but the net result will be that the economy gets stuck in a vicious circle of low demand. The Government has no appetite for coordinated action to increase wages – and doubly so in the public sector – but that is exactly what is needed now if we are going to kick start the economy.

This is not just pie in the sky, as the money is alreday there to use in most of the bigger companies. It is a little known fact that the UK’s corporate sector is sitting on an ever greater pile of financial reserves rather than investing and spending. Once we get a firm recovery going, that money could be unlocked and flow into the economy quite quickly – but this can’t be done while real pay is falling.

Turning back finally to last night’s “state of the economy” speech, there are quite a few matters where Mr King’s analysis of what is needed differed from my view, but I will gladly give him the last word on a point where he is absolutely correct:

“The legitimacy of a market economy will inevitably be challenged if rewards go disproportionately to a small elite”.

Perhaps the Chancellor is just toying with the idea of tweaking around the edges of the public sector pay scales.  Certainly to push for full localisation would be foolhardy, as it would cause significant detrimental economic side effects and would be likely to lead to the Government having much less control over the public sector pay bill.

The main risk is that the less well-off regions and nations of the UK would be made poorer by localisation. Columnist Chris Giles was making the case for localisation  in the FT today, but he admits with cutting irony that:

“cutting public sector pay in poor areas is as likely to generate local dynamism as the austerity measures currently imposed on Greece.”

Second, the mechanisms needed for local bargaining would not be very efficient.  National bargaining brings economies of scale to public sector pay setting. Local bargaining would mean committing significant extra resources. For example, the NHS has 161 acute hospital trusts. Each of these would have to gather labour market intelligence, draw up a negotiating position, hold a number of negotiating meetings involving senior staff, and set up new pay-roll systems and so-on.

Significant differences in pay between localities, regions and nations would also provide an incentive for public servants to migrate away from the poorest areas, causing new skill shortages.

Localising pay might well also reignite the legal battles over equal pay, with all the expense and uncertainty that would entail.

Perhaps most worryingly for the Government though, genuine localisation of public sector pay would take a great degree of control away from the chancellor. Local determination is not compatible with pay freezes and caps.

Furthermore, although local market pressures may bear down on public sector pay in a recession,  what would happen in a boom? The answer is likely to be that trade unions would be very astute about playing off public sector  employers against each other in negotiations, as the bargaining “game” would then become a contest between national unions with full-time negotiators and local employers . The process of ramping up settlements by singling out the weakest employers first is known in industrial relations jargon as “whipsawing”. This could well lead to the overall public sector pay bill rising more quickly.

This strategy might benefit some public sector workers, but this would be to some extent at the expense of others. Unions do not pursue  this route now as it would simply be unfair .

The overall outcome would be that those who live in rich regions would get richer whilst those in poorer areas would lag even further behind – simply the antithesis of us “all being in it together”.

The tone of the piece is that we are all working longer but that we are reasonably happy about it. However, reading between the lines there is a more interesting story here – “the average worker …. is made to feel angry by bosses once a day.” – sounds like there is still a strong need for trade unions here!

On the continued rise of unpaid overtime holding back job creation, it’s worth noting that the service sector has both the highest incidence of unpaid overtime and the highest rate of profit (15.9% according to the Jan 2012 ONS figures). In addition, balance sheets show that large companies are sitting on piles of cash while directors fret about the economy.

If some of these companies got off of the fence and started hiring then we could make progress towards a better work-life balance.

3 million UK employees currently work more than 48 hours per week and the LFS shows that 80% of them want to cut their working time. Inhuman working hours damage family life and squeeze out participation in volunteering and civil society. We simply can-not build a 21st century country with 19th century working practices!

The rise will put a bit of extra cash in the pockets of the UK’s lowest-paid workers at a time when they are feeling very squeezed, which is worth a cheer,but the increase will have to be bolder next year.

- NMW rates from October 2011

Cuts in public services and benefits are hitting the working poor the hardest and this increase is not enough to protect them from falling living standards.

An increase that is set at the highest level possible without causing net job losses would push more money into the economy, as research suggests that minimum wage workers spend 100 per cent of any rate increases.

The LPC also says that the latest increase should benefit the public finances by £230 million as tax and national insurance rates increase and the benefits bill falls. It is important that employers pay their share at a time we are fighting cuts in public finances.

Its also worth who gets the National Minimum Wage, as this helps us to see that it has so far been a socially progressive instrument – and we believe that there is still more potential to be fulfilled.

Minimum Wage employee jobs 2010

Derived from LPC report 2011, p22, fig 2.5. Based on LFS figures.

NMW jobs by location 2010

Source: LPC report 2010, p21

Number and proportion of NMW jobs by industry

Derived from LPC report 2010, table 2.2.

The BBC  Panorama programme also wants to hear from those who have been wrongly denied the National Minimum Wage – contact: panorama.reply@bbc.co.uk in the next week or so.

We support the interns campaign groups and investigative journalism because it is important to build up a compelling body of evidence on this deplorable scam. In the coming months we want abusive internships that fail to pay the minimum wage to become too hot to handle .

Yesterday I raised the issue of unpaid interns on the You and Yours programme on Radio 4. This was a step in our campaign to persuade the Government to enforce the existing law, which will be discussed at next week’s TUC Congress and which we will be ramping up in the coming months.

There is a real chance that the Government might move on this issue if there is enough pressure to do so. The political calculation may be changing as many middle-class parents contribute significantly to their childrens’ education and are faced with the cost increasing sharply. The rapid growth of unpaid internships means that an extra delay is developing before young people start earning. This is expected to lead to parents taking a jaundiced view of employers who demand free work as the price of entry into a career – and of the  government if it lets this state of affairs persist.

“The impact of the public sector cuts on private sector jobs remains a concern. A total of 20% of private sector employers now say they will have either a quite serious or serious impact on them.” - Recruitment and Employment Confederation Jobs Outlook survey, 23 August 2011

The impact is twofold:

• loss of trading opportunities in the public sector; and
• loss of consumer demand as public sector workers are displaced, or fear that they will be displaced.

No surprise then that employers organisations (such as REC) are belatedly starting to worry about Government policy.

In my view, the snag is that  we cannot have a stable economic recovery until the banks are once again willing to lend reasonable amounts  of money.

The reasoning runs as follows – the credit crunch was caused by the banks stopping lending, which then sparked the recession, caused house prices to fall and severely depressing consumer demand. Nobody is spending at the moment because credit is hard to come by and both employers and workers are waiting to see what happens to the economy next.

However, an end to house prices falling is a necessary condition for the revival of consumer demand, which in turn is needed to encourage firms to invest. The availability of sufficient mortgage finance under reasonable conditions of access is therefore a precondition for a stable economic recovery.

The Government has agreed targets for lending with banks, but has allowed them to fall way short with impunity. Time to employ some sanctions with teeth.

“It is a fact that the aggressive cuts Osborne laid out last year are … hampering our economic growth”.

Not my words, but those of Jim Armitage, business correspondent of the Evening Standard – usually rather a fan of Government policy. There are many straws in the wind that suggest that the business community is getting twitchy about the direction of government policy, having belatedly woken up to the fact that public sector cuts will both depress consumer demand and reduce the number of contracts let to the private sector. As this will in turn reduce tax revenues, there is a real danger of that the economy will enter a “vicious circle”.

My nasty suspicious mind can’t help thinking that it must be first group that the authors are really worried about – after all, the poor are rarely known to hire accountants.

According to this story, the UK is “seventh worst” when it comes to high taxation. This is in a table of 19 selected countries that goes rather beyond the fair comparators of OECD or EU membership. Significantly, the table includes Dubai, where the zero rate of tax means that you can keep all of your earnings – although you will also likely to find that you will have to spend quite a bit of your pay-packet on things that we get for free in the UK.

This article is basically just an attack on taxation – and by extension, on public services. Watch out for more of these stories as the UK cuts start to bite.

However, away from the glare of politics in the media, there are some faint signs that thinking business people are beginning to worry that deep cuts will hurt the private sector, through lost contracts and deflated consumer demand.  If some big business players really are getting cold feet about cuts, then they have a duty to speak out.

Read the “high tax” story in full in the Metro.