While there is still no clear Tory employment rights policy, ongoing media reports are confirming that the Conservatives are no friends of hard working people. Alan Duncan sets the general tone, warning of small businesses drowning in seas of red tape and unnecessary regulation. However, this non-specific ranting provides no clarity about which specific regulations…
I thought this would happen just not so soon. Those ‘compassionate conservatives’ are already using the threat of recession to argue for a reduction in workplace rights. This is no backbench fundamentalist sounding off. It’s a major intervention by Mark Prisk who is, apparently, the Shadow Business Secretary and Chris Grayling, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. Prisk, in…
Two key pillars of the New Labour economic policy are consigned to the dustbin today and a third might be waiting by the front door ready to be dumped in the same way.
As the F-Word has highlighted, David Willets is concerned that with so many women going to university men are being prevented from becoming family breadwinners. Apparently the ‘evidence’ shows that when men are “no longer given the opportunity to bring home the bacon” and to command a “decent wage” they are unable to “hold a…
Although the Conservatives are talking about ‘fairness’, this doesn’t mean fair treatment at work. The new Conservative website documents no proposals on employment rights, apart from committments to ‘simplify employment law to make it easier to hire people’ and ‘reduce the burden of regulation’.
The frustrating thing about this Government is that they sometimes fail to follow through on good intentions with effective policies. Example: we are still waiting for a clear policy programme to deliver on the 2006 commitment to 100,000 jobs in the green economy let alone the recent commitment to one million green jobs.
Today Gordon Brown committed Labour to increasing social mobility in the UK. He is not alone, with politicians from accross the specturm increasingly keen to commit to a socially mobile Britain. But are any of them willing to define how far their policy prescriptions would actually take us? And what are their visions for how…
We do not yet know how much the financial crisis will destabilise the ‘real’ economy where most people live and work, (usually in complete ignorance of what the recipients of big City bonuses actually do), but there is no doubt that we are in for a rough ride.
Jeremy Paxman is appalled that middle class white men are facing ongoing discrimination in the television industry. As the Fawcett Society has noted, the problem doesn’t exist in the first place, and unsurpsisingly it is women working in the media who are in the minority.