In The Spirit Level, two sober academics – Richard Wilkinson and his partner Kate Pickett, both medical epidemiologists – have published strong evidence to prove that in unequal societies everyone suffers – even those who think they have it made for generations to come.

They looked at 20 of the richest nations and compared various social and health problems, measuring those against an index of equality.

The US, Portugal (feudal in the near past) and the UK are the most unequal nations, with the top 20 per cent earning nine times more than the bottom 20 per cent.

Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden are where the money gap is smallest.

Teenage pregnancies, mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, illiteracy, homicide, crime are all worse in the states of greater inequality and not only for the poorest but for all citizens and residents.

Spain is more equal than its neighbour, Portugal and you can see how vastly different are the social ills in the two countries.

There is even evidence that in unequal societies, the people have higher levels of stress hormones ...

The US spends more on healthcare than anywhere in the world but a baby in Greece has a higher life expectancy than a baby in the planet's the richest nation.

The prison population in Britain has doubled since 1990 and quadrupled in the States since the 1970s.

Trust and cohesion are abysmally low in these states. The sense of injustice on the one hand and paranoia on the other makes social ease impossible ...

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Independent  23 March 2009

It is in the countries most committed to what British-based criminologists Michael Cavadino and David Dignan describe as "minimal and residual, mainly means-tested benefits with stigmatised entitlement" that prison populations are highest. Research by the men confirms there is "an almost watertight divide between the different types of political economy as regards imprisonment rates" in a study of 12 contemporary capitalist countries.

... a new publication from think-tank the Crime and Society Foundation makes matters more explicit. Examining research across US states, then replicating it across 18 OECD countries including the UK, the foundation has found an intimate link between the amount of welfare spending and the level of imprisonment. The seven countries with the highest imprisonment have the lowest rates of welfare spending, while the eight with the highest welfare have the lowest imprisonment rates. ...

Deborah Orr - The Independent 22 November 2006

House prices have nowhere to go but down

With first-time buyers unable to get on the ladder, the property market is shuddering to a halt

pablito69
30 Aug 2010, 1:18AM

And another thing that doesn't help is the current situation where an owner-occupier can get a mortgage for 2.19% and first time buyers are priced in at 5-6% or more...

Guardian  30 Aug 2010        

The distributional effect of tax and benefit
reforms to be introduced between June 2010 and April 2010

Executive Summary

The Chancellor claimed in his Budget speech that the June 2010 Budget was a 'progressive Budget'.

Initial analysis of this claim showed that this was not true if measures announced in the Budget were analysed in isolation, or if their effects were considered over the longer term.

Furthermore, HM Treasury analysis (as well as our own, in our post-Budget briefing) of the distributional effect of Budget measures did not include the effects of some benefit changes whose effects were difficult to allocate precisely to households.

These measures represent £4.1 billion of the £11 billion of welfare cuts announced in the emergency Budget.

In this paper we attempt to allocate the effects of these changes to housing benefit, Disability Living Allowance and tax credits to households.

We do this by making assumptions about the impact of changes to Disability Living Allowance and tax credits, and by using analysis published since the Budget by the Government on the impact of the changes to housing benefit.

Inevitably, though, these estimates will be less precise than those obtained directly from our tax and benefit microsimulation model.

Our analysis shows that the overall effect of the new reforms announced in the June 2010 Budget is regressive, whereas the tax and benefit reforms announced by the previous Government for introduction between June 2010 and April 2014 are progressive.

Low-income households of working age lose the most from the June 2010 Budget reforms because of the cuts to welfare spending.

Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution.

This is because they do not lose out from cuts in welfare spending and are the biggest beneficiaries from the increase in the income tax personal allowance.

The biggest change to welfare policy in the June 2010 Budget in fiscal terms was the decision to link benefits with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than the Retail Prices Index (RPI) or Rossi index from April 2011.

1. This is very likely to mean less generous benefits in the years ahead.

The savings from linking to a lower index will compound over time.

The change is predicted to save the Government £1.2 billion in 2011, rising to £5.8 billion in 2014-15.

...

Conclusion

It is clear that the measures introduced in the June 2010 Budget are regressive overall.

Once we consider all reforms to be introduced by April 2014, the cash losses are smallest for the seventh, eighth and ninth income decile groups, and are very similar for all of the bottom seven expenditure decile groups.

The progressive nature of the pre-announced measures is not sufficient to offset this, so the overall package of tax and benefit reforms is also slightly regressive, at least within the bottom nine income decile groups.

The biggest losers from the June 2010 Budget are low income households of working age, while better off working-age households without children lose the least.

Low-income pensioners are less affected than other poor groups from the welfare cuts in the Budget, but richer pensioners lose more than richer households of working age from the Budget as they do not benefit from the increased personal allowance.

The biggest change to benefit policy in the June 2010 Budget in terms of the long-run saving to the government was the decision to link benefits with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than the Retail Prices Index (RPI) or Rossi index from April 2011.

This is very likely to mean less generous benefits in the years ahead.

The Government argued that the CPI is a better measure of inflation than the indices to which benefits are currently linked because the way it is calculated allows for the fact consumers are able to protect themselves from price changes by substituting towards relatively cheaper good, and because the goods and services it covers better reflect the "inflation experience" of households receiving benefits.

We find the first of these arguments to be sound whereas the second is more questionable.

IFS  2010    Back to 1931 with George Osborne    'We are all in it together'

What are the links between shame and poverty?

Emergency Budget ‘will hit poor hardest’

Poor families bear brunt of coalition's austerity drive

Child poverty 'will rise as cuts hit families'

Budget hits families and pensioners twice as hard

Budget hits the poorest hardest

Living 'costs at least £14,400' for a single person

More than one million people 'take out payday loans'

" ... some companies (are) charging interest rates of more than 2,500% a year ...

And why do people take out loans at 2,500%?   First, because there are no usury laws; second because the greedy banks don't want to loan to the hoi polloi; and third, because credit unions have never received the encouragement they deserve from the state.

Research by Consumer Focus suggests that 1.2 million people are now taking out a payday loan every year, borrowing a total of £1.2bn ...

... if the loans are rolled over, debts can quickly escalate.

Dressmaker Stephanie Derby from Finsbury Park in London took out a pay day loan after she fell behind on rent and bill payments.

She was already overdrawn and at her limit on her credit cards.

"I didn't feel I had any other option, I had just graduated and all my debts were mounting up, it really was a last resort," she said.

"I borrowed £400 hoping to pay it back a few weeks later but I was unable to.

"Each month it cost another £56 to renew the loan and after six months the initial loan of £400 ended up costing me nearly £800," she explained ...

BBC NEWS  14 Aug 2010    Pawns or Players?

Try paying fair wages and tax

Repossession threat as Government reduces home owner support

Bonuses are up – so the economy must be doing well, right?

We're all in it together?

It is only in mahogany-panelled boardrooms that things are looking up ...

Executive pay specialists Hewitt New Bridge Street have released their annual report on packages in the FTSE 100, which shows that although companies have been more restrained on basic salary awards, bonuses have risen.

Median pay for the highest paid directors in the FTSE 100 has risen from around £2.5m to £3m, and the typical bonus earned was about 120% of salary ...

The main problem with the bonus spiral ... is social.

It is divisive to have a super-class operating several cloud levels above the rest of society, being rewarded for activities that are not always obviously beneficial to society as a whole.

A couple of modest proposals: bonuses should be a fraction of salary, not a multiple, and FTSE 100 executives should sign up for Warren Buffett's charity drive.

Guardian  11 Aug 2010

Is capitalism the only game in town?    Pawns or Players?    Wealth Log

Company bosses enjoy £500,000 pay increases

Corporate pay Britain

'Fat cats' still have some slimming to do

How incentive bar was set so low that executives could hardly fail

Older workers 'trapped in long-term unemployment'

Youth unemployment for two years or more soars by 42pc

Youth unemployment rising in most regions

High cost of borrowing may be the legacy of the credit crunch

Interest rates may have fallen but households are finding the cost of borrowing is rising – and may remain high ...

The decade of easy money came to an abrupt halt in August 2007 but what has emerged since is a divided Britain in which young adults are paying the price of the credit crunch while their parents have landed a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Existing borrowers are enjoying the windfall of a lower Bank of England base rate, while new borrowers are either locked out of the market or face permanently higher loan costs ...

The long-term implications are worrying. Well-off parents will be able to access the equity in their homes and use the money to help their offspring put down a deposit on their first home. But the children of low-income families may find themselves permanently excluded.

"What's happening with deposits will tend to accelerate divides in society," adds [Ray Boulger, of mortgage brokers John Charcol] ...

Guardian  09 Aug 2010    Banking Commission    Fractional Reserve Banking    Is capitalism the only game in town?

Cable fears banks are still 'structurally dangerous'

The rich want a better world? Try paying fair wages and tax

"Philanthrocapitalism", as it has been called, veers towards tackling symptoms of poverty and distress rather than underlying causes. Gates has done admirable work against TB, malaria and Aids, and begun work against diarrhoea and pneumonia, which are much bigger killers. He and his wife Melinda have started to talk about clean water supplies, inadequate housing, public health infrastructure and agricultural productivity. They are undoubtedly among the most sophisticated of the new philanthropists.

But it seems doubtful they will move into considering issues of, say, land ownership and distribution. The Gates Foundation wants to "give where we can effect the greatest change". But the greatest change is likely to come from transforming the economic system and the pattern of property ownership. Will Gates fund projects that undermine his own power and economic status?

There is another danger: that the poor are written out of their own story, that business tycoons, accustomed to getting their own way, do things to the poor, rather than with them ...

Guardian  05 Aug 2010    Economic Democracy

philanthrocapitalism

Life expectancy gap 'wider than in Great Depression'

The health inequality gap in Britain is greater than it was during the post-World War I slump and the Great Depression, a study suggests.

Despite the continued rise in life expectancy, it is well documented that the gap between richest and poorest has actually been widening in recent years.

Researchers from Sheffield and Bristol looked at early death rates since 1921 ...

The researchers analysed mortality data for England and Wales, obtained from the Office for National Statistics, and for Scotland, obtained from the General Register Office for Scotland.

Between 1999 to 2007, for every 100 deaths before the age of 65 in the richest 10th of areas, there were 212 in the poorest 10th.

This compared with 191 deaths in the poorest areas from 1921 to 1930 and 185 deaths from 1931 to 1939 ...

Lead researcher Professor Danny Dorling said the findings were a "stark reminder" of the challenge facing the nation.

"Health and wealth are directly linked and, unless we tackle the income gap, we could well see life expectancy actually starting to fall for the first time in the poorest areas." ...

BBC NEWS  23 July 2010

Only the Poor Die Young

Jarvis staff set to lose £28m in back pay

More than 1,000 employees of the collapsed engineering company Jarvis stand to lose the £28m they are owed in back wages, holiday pay and other benefits, its administrator has warned. Deloitte said the "unhappy" fact was that unsecured creditors, such as former staff, were unlikely to receive any of the money they were entitled to ...

Observer  11 July 2010

2,000 jobs at risk as Jarvis collapses into administration

Productivity does not explain wage differentials

The co-option of “fairness” by the UK's new government has unnerved many on the left. Yet in reality, all sides have always drawn on the language of fairness. What is at stake is really the interpretation of the causes of inequality; a matter of economics. This article suggests how we should interpret the inequalities of modern society from a post-Keynesian perspective ...

openDemocracy  07 July 2010

Living 'costs at least £14,400' for a single person

Minimum weekly budget:

• Single working age: £175.34
• Pensioner couple: £222.22
• Couple with two children: £402.83
• Lone parent with one child: £233.73

BBC NEWS  06 July 2010

A minimum income standard for the UK in 2010

Britons on the breadline

Thousands of people could be forced to rely on food parcels because of benefit delays, as the Government's plan to slash the country's welfare bill is put into effect.

Charities that run foodbanks warned this weekend that the prospect of people having to rely on Third World-style food aid – despite Britain being among the richest nations in the world – is a real possibility for 1.5 million people who will be moved off incapacity benefit (IB).

The number of people who are turning to foodbanks as they can't afford to feed their families has soared, rising from 26,000 in 2008-09 to 41,000 in 2009-10 – 37 per cent of whom were referred to foodbanks because of delays with their benefits ...

Chris Mould, director of the Trussell Trust, said: "What worries us is the amount of people who come to us because their benefits status is being reassessed and they've had their benefits stopped; if hundreds of thousands of people are being reassessed, we fear there will be huge problems."

The Government recently announced that everyone on incapacity benefit will have to go through tests known as Work Capability Assessments to see if they are fit for work. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that, of the 1.5 million people currently on IB, 750,000 will move on to jobseeker's allowance, 300,000 will move on to other benefits, and 450,000 will come off benefits entirely ...

Independent  04 July 2010

Food Stamps USA

Trussell Trust

Ministers consider scheme to hand out food vouchers to unemployed

The line of travel is probably to replace benefits with food stamps.

The government is considering plans to distribute food vouchers to people on the dole as part of a wider drive to empower charities to supplement the support provided by the welfare state.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has given his provisional backing to JobCentre Plus staff handing out vouchers that can be exchanged for food parcels.

The parcels, which contain enough donated items to keep a family fed for six days, are administered from 65 food banks across the country run by the Trussell Trust, a Christian charity ...

The Trussell Trust, which fed 41,000 people last year, already relies upon front-line professionals such as a teachers, social worker and doctors to give the vouchers to people they encounter who do not have enough money to feed themselves.

Until two years ago, a few Jobcentre Plus offices also let their staff distribute vouchers on an ad hoc basis.

That practice, negotiated locally, was stopped by the Labour government in 2008, after a ruling that Jobcentre Plus advisers "must not act as an agent for handing out any form of support, such as food vouchers" on behalf of charities.

Labour ministers were thought to have been concerned that the Trussell Trust parcels would give the impression welfare payments were insufficient ...

Chris Mould, director of the Trussell Trust, said a growing proportion of the charity's clients were "on the edge" because they had been refused a crisis loan or had their benefits halted as officials reassessed their entitlements ...

Figures released by the DWP revealed that 37,000 people waited 17 days or more for their jobseeker's allowance last year, while 20,000 had to wait more than 22 days ...

Guardian  02 July 2010

Food Stamps USA

Trussell Trust

Poor in UK dying 10 years earlier than rich

The life expectancy gap between rich and poor people in England is widening, despite years of government and NHS action, a hard-hitting National Audit Office report reveals today.

Extensive efforts have failed to reduce the wide differential, which can still be 10 years or more depending on socio-economic background, says the public spending watchdog. While life expectancy has risen generally, it is increasing at a slower rate for England's poorest citizens.

In Blackpool, for example, men live for an average of 73.6 years, which is 10.7 fewer than men in Kensington and Chelsea in central London, who reach 84.3 years. Similarly, women in the Lancashire town typically die at 78.8 years – 10.1 years earlier than those in the London borough, who reach an average 89.9.

The gap in life expectancy between government-designated areas of high deprivation and the national average has continued to widen, so Labour's aim of reducing it by 10% will not be met, the NAO concludes ...

Guardian  02 July 2010    Blog

Life expectancy gap 'is widening'

Britain faces drink, drugs and obesity health crisis

A sadistic attack on the jobless

People who have lost their jobs are shocked ... to discover they are expected to eat, pay their bills, clothe themselves and get around – including for job interviews – on just £64.45 a week if they are over 25.

For those under 25, weekly subsistence must be attained on just £51.85.

Osborne's announcement that the rate at which benefits rise will decrease, by linking them to the consumer price index (CPI) rather than, as currently, the retail prices index (RPI), was actually set out by the Treasury under the heading "Fairness".

On current figures, with the RPI at 5.1%, and the CPI at 3.4%, jobseeker's allowance was due to rise next year, to £67.87 a week for the over 25s, and a princely £53.77 for those under 25.

Instead, the figures will be, respectively, £67.22 and £53.25. The loss is 65p a week for the over-25s, and 52p per week for the under 25s.

Those pennies all add up, as the government itself understands, calculating that this flick of the scythe across the benefit system will save it £1.17bn in 2011-12, and almost £6bn by 2014-15.

Over a year, somebody unemployed over 25 will lose £33.80, while the under-25s will each be £27.04 worse off.

Before the election, I wrote that this poverty level of unemployment benefit, and the cruelty of a system that allows people to earn just £5 in part-time work before additional earnings reduce the benefit pound for pound, was a scandal no party was prepared to address.

Donald Hirsch, author of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on the minimum needed for an acceptable standard of living – £13,900 last year, he found, way above jobseeker's allowance penury – said: "Everybody knows you cannot survive on that level of benefit." ...

Guardian  27 June 2010

A minimum income standard for Britain in 2009

Budget crises, health, and social welfare programmes

The recession of 2008 has had profound economic consequences for many countries.

How and when to reduce budget deficits was a major focus in the recent general election in the United Kingdom and continues to make headlines around the world.

The new government has already begun to make large cuts in public expenditure, even though the UK’s projected underlying debt, as a share of gross domestic product, is less than that of other industrialised countries, it has longer than many other countries before it is required to refinance loans (table 1), and the actual deficit in 2009-10 was considerably less than expected.

Leading economists have widely divergent views about whether the cuts will aid or hinder economic recovery, but have paid scant attention to the potential effects of reductions in health and social expenditure on population health/

We examine historical data for insights into how lower levels of public spending might affect health ...

Sir Michael Marmot’s recent review on health inequalities in the United Kingdom concluded that "Austerity need not lead to retrenchment in the welfare state.

Indeed, the opposite may be necessary."

The current economic difficulties could be viewed as an opportunity to reorganise provision of services to those in need, creating a broader set of services that reflect the increasingly complex needs of a society facing health challenges as varied as fast food and dementia.

It would be unfortunate if this opportunity were wasted.

If the first priority of a government is to protect the lives of its people, a statement often made in response to the perceived threat from terrorism, then it should take account of the implications of its economic policies for health.

BMJ  24 June 2010

Cutting welfare budgets could cost lives

Ring-fence social care like the NHS

Outcry over plans not to extend free school meals

Network Rail bonuses 'daylight robbery'

Network Rail (NR) today announced six-figure bonuses for its top directors, sparking a storm of protest led by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond.

Last month, Mr Hammond wrote to NR urging restraint and pointing out the company's top management already enjoyed "handsome" annual salaries.

But today, NR said its top directors were getting bonuses totalling more than £2.25 million, including £641,000 for chief executive Iain Coucher whose annual salary is £613,000 ...

There was ... criticism from the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) whose chief executive Bill Emery had branded NR's performance for 2009/10 "mixed" and who had also written to NR warning about the level of bonuses.

The ORR said it was now up to NR's remuneration committee - which had decided on the bonuses - to "fully justify how it has reached its decisions" ....

Independent  24 June 2010    A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log

Budget will hit poor harder than rich

Noting that Britain was facing the "longest, deepest, sustained cuts in public spending since the second world war, Robert Chote, the IFS director, said:

"Osborne and Clegg have been keen to describe yesterday's measures as progressive in the sense that the rich will feel more pain than the poor. That is a debatable claim. The budget looks less progressive – indeed somewhat regressive – when you take out the effect of measures that were inherited from the previous government, when you look further into the future than 2012-13, and when you include some other measures that the Treasury has chosen not to model."

The IFS estimates that the squeeze on poorer families would increase in the second half of the parliament as welfare cuts kicked in and the two-year increase in child tax credit ended ...

The IFS found that the richest 10% would be 7.5% worse off by 2014-15 because of measures coming into force during the current parliament but that almost seven percentage points of that was due to Labour changes.

The poorest 10% were left almost untouched by Labour's plans but would see their incomes cut by more than 2.5% over the next five years.

With the IFS estimating that some government departments could face cuts, in real spending, of up to a third during this parliament, Chote added:

"Perhaps the most important omission in any distributional analysis of this sort is the impact of the looming cuts to public services, which are likely to hit poorer households significantly harder than richer households." ...

Guardian  23 June 2010

George Osborne facing budget backlash

Osborne 'punishing the virtuous' according to David Davis

... 110 entrepreneurs have published an open letter to the chancellor condemning "a unilateral blanket increase in CGT, which would mean start-ups, talent, investment, jobs and tax revenues will head elsewhere over coming years".

According to Treasury calculations, a single percentage point rise in capital gains tax would raise just £10m this year, rising to £130m the following year.

The apparent hardening in the chancellor's language will raise many Conservatives' hackles, though a spokesman insisted Osborne had meant to say "avoidance" rather than "evasion" of the tax.

Senior political figures, including David Davis and John Redwood, have already expressed deep concerns over draconian action planned by Osborne.

Davis said: "These are the people, not the rich, who will pay the lion's share of the increased capital gains tax. When they reach retirement age they will not be able to defer selling their share portfolio, holiday cottage or buy-to-let flat. They will need the money. So if we are not very careful, we will be punishing the virtuous." ...

Guardian  21 June 2010

Backbenchers' revolt succeeds in watering down reforms to CGT

Cameron trying to face both ways - a coalition dilemma - he wants to both raise tax thresholds (LibDem) and avoid 'punishing savers' - code for keeping CGT low. Expect a fudge in the budget.

A controversial rise in capital gains tax to pay for an increase in the income tax threshold will be announced in next week's Budget, David Cameron confirmed yesterday ...

"We are finding a lot of people turn income into capital in order to evade the tax system and we're losing over £1bn by that. So there's a problem we have to address," he told BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show. "But I do not want to do anything that actually unfairly punishes savers – I don't want to go back to very high rates of marginal tax."

Independent  17 June 2010    Inequality

Government warned over CGT rise

Osborne must be more radical

Employment Rate falls to 72.1 per cent

Or, as The Grauniad prefers to put it: Headline UK unemployment rate drops

Correction: the number claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance dropped.

'Inactivity' went up.

The employment rate for the three months to April 2010 was 72.1 per cent, down 0.1 on the quarter.

There was a small increase of 5,000 in the number of people in employment compared with the previous quarter to reach 28.86 million.

The number of full-time workers fell by 56,000 over the quarter but the number of part-time workers increased by 61,000.

The number of employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased by 45,000 on the quarter to reach 1.08 million, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992.

The unemployment rate for the three months to April 2010 was 7.9 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter.

The number of unemployed people increased by 23,000 over the quarter to reach 2.47 million.

The number of people unemployed for up to six months fell by 42,000, to reach 1.17 million.

However, the number of people unemployed for more than twelve months increased by 85,000 over the quarter to reach 772,000, the highest figure since the three months to April 1997.

There were 5.2 unemployed people per vacancy, up 0.1 on the quarter.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (the claimant count) decreased by 30,900 between April and May 2010 to reach 1.48 million.

This is the first time the claimant count has been below 1.5 million since March 2009.

The number of claimants of up to six months duration fell by 20,400 on the month to reach 901,200 while the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance for over twelve months increased by 6,500 between April and May to reach 258,700.

The inactivity rate for the three months to April 2010 was 21.5 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter.

The number of inactive people of working age increased by 29,000 over the quarter to reach a record high of 8.19 million.

This is the smallest quarterly increase in inactivity since the three months to October 2009.

Most categories of inactivity, including the number of students not in the labour market, fell over the quarter, but the number of people in the “long-term sick “category increased by 58,000 to reach 2.07 million.

The number of vacancies for the three months to May 2010 was 492,000, up 7,000 over the quarter.

All industrial sectors showed small movements in vacancies over the quarter.

The earnings annual growth rate for total pay (including bonuses) was 4.2 per cent for the three months to April 2010, down from 4.3 per cent for the three months to March.

The earnings annual growth rate for regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 1.9 per cent for the three months to April 2010, down from 2.0 per cent for the three months to March 2010.

ONS  16 June 2010    'Reserve Army'

Headline UK unemployment rate drops

CPI fell in May

CBI calls for reduced taxes on rich and big spending cuts

Richard Lambert, the CBI's director-general urged the chancellor to bring the top rate of income tax back down from 50% to 40% ...

In its budget submission that drew accusations of special pleading from the TUC, the employers' organisation called on George Osborne to water down plans to raise revenue from the better-off through tougher CGT rules and by restricting tax relief on pensions. The CBI also said it wanted the chancellor to bring the top rate of income tax back down from 50% to 40% as quickly as possible.

Richard Lambert, the CBI's director-general said it was vital for the government to restore financial market confidence in the public finances by bringing Britain's record peacetime deficit rapidly under control.

The submission said there should be four pounds of spending cuts for every pound of tax increase, but said infrastructure spending should not be cut excessively.

Lambert set out a three-point plan for making savings in the public sector:

• controlling workforce costs through curbs on pay and hiring;
• eliminating waste and duplication through sharing back-office functions, outsourcing and more efficient procurement;
• re-engineering public service delivery, including treating more patients at home ...

Guardian  10 June 2010

Labour's Frank Field to head poverty review

... the Review on Poverty and Life Chances will look at whether measures need to be reformed, how children's learning is affected by their home life and recommend action to reduce poverty for the least advantaged "consistent with the government's fiscal strategy".

He will work with officials from a number of government departments, including the Treasury and Home Office, as well as Work and Pensions.

Mr Field told the BBC he will look at new ways of measuring poverty and of measuring how effective public spending is in helping to tackle its root causes ...

BBC NEWS  05 June 2010    Benefits_Welfare    'Broken Britain'

Victorian Contrasts

Welfare 'trapping' people in poverty

Competition for jobs takes heavy toll on starting pay

Starting salaries for workers taking new jobs fell by 3 per cent last month, despite the rising cost of living.

According to a report, the average salary for recruits was £31,871 in May, against £33,220 in April and £33,414 in December last year, as increased competition among applicants allowed employers to limit pay offers.

Wages are becoming more of a flashpoint between workers and employers as companies try to limit costs while inflation continues to rise. The Bank of England’s preferred measure of CPI inflation jumped to 3.7 per cent in April, up from 3.4 per cent in March, while the wider RPI measure, which includes housing costs and is seen by many as a better indicator of the cost of living, jumped to a near-20-year high of 5.3 per cent.

The data on new salaries in the Reed Job Index comes weeks after official figures showed that private sector pay, excluding bonuses, for new and existing workers rose by only 1.2 per cent in the first three months of the year as companies continued to freeze pay ...

Times  01 June 2010    

Workers suffer from fall in income

Average wage rises have increased by just 0.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent, according to a respected monthly survey from Incomes Data Services (IDS).

The study compared the three month period to the end of February with the three month period to the end of March.

This average rise of 1.9 per cent is well below the rise in the cost of living, which hit 3.4 per cent during March according to the Consumer Prices Index, as the price of petrol jumped and food bills remained stubbornly high.

This suggests that in real terms workers are, in effect, suffering from a pay cut ...

A separate study from the think tank CEBR last week suggested that the average UK family was £2 a week worse off in March 2010 than a year ago, with just £153 of disposable income a week left after paying their key bills, because most people's costs are rising faster than any salary increases ...

VocaLink, a company that processes millions of workers' pay through the Pay As You Earn scheme, calculated annual pay increases fell from 1.5 per cent in March to 0.9 per cent in April, the lowest level it has recorded since it started its monthly survey in 2004 ...

Telegraph  06 May 2010

Social mobility in England 'lags behind other countries'

The study – commissioned by the Sutton Trust – suggested that pupils born into families with a history of underachievement were still much more likely to be resigned to low-paid jobs when they grew up.

Sir Peter Lampl, the charity’s chairman, said failure to improve social mobility risked pushing the UK to the “bottom of the class in education’s world order”.

"Education mobility points the way to the level of future social mobility in this country,” he said.

“While there are some signs of progress, we are still not serving the needs of the current crop of school pupils as well as we should and parental background remains a much more significant determiner of children's life chances in the UK than elsewhere.” ...

“A major obstacle to education, and consequently social mobility, is therefore the high levels of social segregation in English secondary schools.”

Researchers at Essex University analysed the test scores of thousands of children born in 1989/90 ... and compared them with results of equivalent exams by children born at a similar time in other nations.

The findings show that in England, 56 per cent of children of degree educated parents were in the top quarter of test results at the age of 14, compared with just nine per cent of youngsters whose parents left school without any O-levels – a gap of 47 percentage points.

This was twice the equivalent gap seen in Australia – 23 percentage points – and bigger than the 37 point gap in Germany and 43 point gap in the US ...

Telegraph  26 Apr 2010    Education for the Good Society

Parents' class is the key in England's exams system

Top comprehensives 'more exclusive than grammar schools'

'Communitarian Citizenship'

Neoliberalism and education

Fortunes of super-rich soar by a third

THE richest people in Britain have seen a record boom in wealth over the past year.

Their fortunes have soared by 30% even though much of the UK is struggling to recover from recession and the near-collapse of the banking system.

It is the largest rise in wealth since the list was first published 21 years ago.

Much of the increase is a result of the rebound in stock markets and property values after the government injected hundreds of billions of pounds into banks and the wider economy to stave off collapse ...

... the 1,000 richest people in the country increased their wealth by £77 billion last year, bringing their total wealth to £335.5 billion — equal to more than one-third of the national debt.

The number of billionaires has risen from 43 to 53, with nine seeing their wealth rise by £1 billion or more during the past 12 months ...

Times  25 Apr 2010    

Invasion of the booty snatchers: how greed is spreading out from the City

"People are just the new domesticated livestock to be exploited"

Blogger Halo572 has it right. It used to be said of the army that the squaddies were considered to be Class C stores: easily replaced. This is the, er, 'thinking' behind the mechanistic modelling of human beings to accept the grotesque disparities in wealth which, according to Lord Griffiths - vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs - is an essential pre-requisite to, er, "greater prosperity for all". Goldman Sachs is no stranger to the hubris that comes with globalised wealth, it's CEO having previously informed us that he and his colleagues are "doing God's work". Milton Friedman has, presumably, had a word with the Almighty since moving over to hobnob with Adam Smith, and all that Sermon on the Mount stuff has been quietly abandoned.

Richard Lambert, the director general of the CBI, recently warned the small corporate elite being paid enormous sums that they seemed to "occupy a different galaxy from the rest of the community" and risked being treated like beings from another planet.

His words appear to have had little effect.

This year's season of annual meetings is shaping up to be a stormy one as executives defy the credit crunch with enormous rewards packages ...

Roger Bootle of Capital Economics says: "The pay culture of the City has affected expectations elsewhere. The whole climate is relevant here, because bad pay practices drive out the good ... Executive pay reflects a deeper underlying failure revealed by the banking crisis. The whole system of boards and non-executives has been a major failure. And scrutiny by shareholders hasn't worked." ...

In the decade to 2009, the average FTSE 100 chief executive has seen his rewards jump 125%, while the heads of smaller quoted firms have seen their pay increase by 80%, according to remuneration specialists.

This contrasts markedly with the experience of the rest of the population.

As Lambert pointed out, in 2000 the average chief executive earned 47 times as much as an average employee, but that ratio has now swelled to 81 times.

Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that, in the past decade, real income growth in almost all households was under 1% ...

Observer  18 Apr 2010    Corporate Sociopathy    Wealth Log

Goldman Sachs finds $5bn for pay and bonuses amid fraud investigation

BNP can't count on Barking breakthrough

The free market dogma has never been explained to voters in this country, most of whom are unaware of the con that has been perpetrated on them It's very convenient, therefore, that immigration takes the flak whilst conventiently - for Davos Man - it does it's prime job: keeping wages depressed, and employed people in fear of the P45. People can vote for the BNP if they wish, but there's no road away from the global con by scapegoating migrants. They're just victims of the IMF and WTO, like the rest of us.

Nick Griffin has racialised housing issues but the area's problems aren't unique and BNP success can be rolled back ...

A key contest in this election is in Barking, between the BNP's Nick Griffin and Labour's Margaret Hodge.

On the face of it, all the ingredients for an electoral breakthrough by the BNP appear to be here: rising unemployment, housing problems, deep poverty, a growing proportion of immigrants and asylum seekers, and a local Labour party that has presided over decades of impoverishment.

The decline of industry in Barking and Dagenham, accelerated by Ford Dagenham's decision to cease car production in 2002, means the proportion of local people employed in manufacturing has fallen from 40% in the early 1990s to less than half that figure today.

Unemployment in the borough now stands at close to 10% and average incomes are the lowest in London. The borough has some of the lowest literacy and numeracy levels in the country and more than a third of its children are born into poverty ...

What is specific to Barking is the pace of change.

Its overall population, not just its proportion of ethnic minorities, is one of the fastest growing in the country.

This population competes for scarce resources. Council housing stock has fallen from 40,000 to 18,000 as a consequence of Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy initiative in the 1980s, and the failure of Barking and Dagenham council to build any public housing for the past quarter of a century.

There are now more than 28,000 people on the local social housing waiting list ...

Guardian  16 April 2010    Global Labour Market    Housing

Bosses stir up executive pay row with mega salary packages

The boss of Xstrata, Mick Davis, banked almost £29m for 2009, providing a potential embarrassment for the Conservatives as he is a high profile supporter of their campaign against the government's proposed increase in national insurance ...

Meanwhile Matt Emmens, chairman of Shire Pharmaceuticals, the drugs group that abandoned the UK two years ago and moved its headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes, made £10.5m despite only being a non-executive director.

News of the bumper payouts comes hard on the heels of details of the salary and bonus awarded last year to the boss of Reckitt Benckiser, owner of Cillit Bang kitchen cleaner.

The publicity-shy Dutchman Bart Becht smashed all previous payout records by collecting more than £90m in cash and shares in one year, the equivalent of £2.85 every second.

That payout followed his collection of £36.8m in 2008 when he topped the Guardian's annual pay survey of FTSE 100 bosses.

Since 2005 he has collected more than £200m.

It also comes after the CBI director general, Richard Lambert, warned that bosses risked being regarded as "aliens" living in "a different galaxy from the rest of the community" because of the fast-widening gap between average pay and boardroom handouts.

"For the first time in history it has become possible for a manager – as opposed to an owner – of a large public company to become seriously rich," he told a business audience last month ...

Guardian  11 Apr 2010    Corporate Sociopathy

Executive pay and bonuses

Gas chief pockets £28m after 26 per cent dip in profits

His remuneration included a base salary of £1.1m and a reduced cash bonus of £1.6m. The largest part of the remainder of the package came from Mr Chapman's exercising £15.5m of share options in September ...

Independent  05 April 2010    Corporate Sociopathy    

Town Hall Rich List 2010

Key Findings

• At least 1,250 council staff enjoyed remuneration of £100,000 or more in 2008-09. This is up from 1,099 in 2007-08, a 14 per cent increase.

• There were 166 earning over £150,000 in 2008-09. This is up from 135 in 2007-08.

• The average remuneration package for those on the Rich List was £125,745, or £2,418 a week.

• The average pay rise for the people on our list was 5 per cent. This is compared with a 2.7 per cent pay rise for a nurse and 2.3 per cent pay rise for a teacher.

• In 2008-09, 31 council staff earned more than the Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. This is up from 19 people in 2007-08, a 63 percent increase. 219 received more money than cabinet ministers in 2008-09.

• Based on our responses, the county council with the most staff earning £100,000 or more is Kent with 27. The metropolitan district with the most is Liverpool with 22.

TaxPayers' Alliance  01 April 2010

Rise in top council earners

Barclays president's £60m pay deal

The bumper pay deal awarded to Bob Diamond, one of the City's wealthiest bank chiefs, came despite attempts by the government to curb the amounts paid to high-flying bankers.

The package is based on a £384,000 salary, but through a combination of perks including share bonuses, Mr Diamond – who was praised for waiving his bonus last year – could earn more than 150 times that amount.

Barclays's annual report yesterday revealed that Mr Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital, earned £26.8 million through selling his shares in Barclays Global Investors.

He was also given £6 million in Barclays shares, with the possibility of earning another £12m in shares over two years if performance related targets are hit.

Mr Diamond, 58, also made £15.6 million from two sets of bonuses he was awarded in 2005 under a long-term incentive scheme ...

Telegraph  20 Mar 2010

Bob Diamond

OECD: UK has worse social mobility record than other developed countries

The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries ...

Highlighting the UK's lack of social mobility, the Paris-based thinktank said the chances of a young person from a less well-off family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents was "relatively low" ...

It added that there was a hefty wage premium associated with growing up in a better-educated household and a corresponding penalty for being raised in a less-educated family ...

In the UK, the OECD found that 50% of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers have over low-earning fathers is passed on to their sons.

By contrast, in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries, less than 20% of the wage advantage was passed on ...

mugclass
10 Mar 2010, 1:58PM

In my town, if you live in one of the less well off area, your children will go to one of three schools, all of which have just received damning reports from Ofsted. For a bright child from a low income family there is no hope. You will be educated in a school with high truancy, high level of behavioural problems, high levels of disruptive behaviour, a high teacher turnover and frequent teaching by supply staff.

My husband and I were fortunate to benefit from the grammar school system, and although our families were both low income we went on to excellent universities and good careers.

Labour have managed to achieve great equality - the equality of ensuring that if you are from a poorer background, no-one will do well. They have achieved equality of failure.

Guardian  10 Mar 2010    Economic Democracy    Education for the Good Society

OECD

A Family Affair

Frustrated pupils 'bored by their factory schools'

UK low in social mobility league, says charity

HSBC's highest-paid executive defends huge payouts

In which we learn of Mr Gulliver's deeply touching concern for the poor

• £10m bonus makes Stuart Gulliver best-paid executive
• Bank reports 24% fall in pretax profits for 2009 to $7bn
• Michael Geoghegan give his payout to charity

Stuart Gulliver, whose £10m pay deal made him the highest paid banker at HSBC last year, defended the practice of big payouts today as Europe's largest bank reported a 24% fall in pretax profits ...

Gulliver said the bank helped to fund deals and create employment around the world. "The whole point is that globalisation has lifted a lot of people out of poverty," Gulliver said.

Being top of the pay league made him "uncomfortable", Gulliver said, borrowing a word used earlier by Geoghegan when he announced he was handing his £4m bonus to charity.

"It is uncomfortable for my wife and I to make public things that we have endeavoured to keep very private," said Geoghegan, whose wife, Jania, chairs the Education Africa charity, which is receiving part of the donation over the next three years.

The bank could not answer whether the charity would also benefit from Gift Aid, which allows charities to reclaim the basic rate of tax ...

Guardian  01 March 2010

Stephen Hester ... circus messiah

Stephen Hester is a man on a mission. Not the biggest restructuring of a bank ever undertaken. No, forget that. He wants Royal Bank of Scotland off the front pages – buried behind real news about adulterous footballers and bullying politicians. ...

Now that's a challenge. Especially with someone as loquacious as Hester in charge.

It all started so well ... then up popped Hester, talking about "tightropes" and "crosses to bear" like some circus messiah.

Most of our staff, he added, earn less than a bus driver (£20,400, for the record, according to the Office for National Statistics).

OK. But what about RBS's 16,800 investment bankers on an average of £175,000. Are they more socially useful than bus drivers, one wag asked.

"Are journalists socially useful?" Hester punched back.

Fair point. But the going rate for a hack is two bus drivers, not nine ...

Telegraph  25 Feb 2010

Language skills 'lag a year behind in poorest children'

The Sutton Trust study looked at the results of a series of vocabulary tests carried out by 12,500 British children at the age of five.

It found those from the poorest homes were nearly a year behind in their results.

It also looked at the factors common to poorer children that might influence their development.

It found that just under half of those from the poorest fifth of families were born to younger mothers under 25 ...

The Sutton Trust study looked at the results of a series of vocabulary tests carried out by 12,500 British children at the age of five.

It found those from the poorest homes were nearly a year behind in their results ...

... just under half of children from the poorest homes were read to every day at the age of three, compared to 78% of children from the richest fifth of home.

The authors noted that the UK had invested 4.3% of GDP on early years education in 2006.

But they called for a more effective early years strategy that would prevent greater numbers of children from disadvantaged backgrounds "falling behind their more fortunate peers before school has even begun".

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl said the findings were both shocking and encouraging - revealing the stark educational disadvantage experienced by children from poorer homes before they reached school.

But it also showed the potential for good parenting to overcome some of the negative impacts that poverty could have on children's early development ...

BBC NEWS  15 Feb 2010    'NEETS'

Sutton Trust

Healthy living is cut short by 17 years for poorest in Britain

The poor not only die sooner, they also spend more of their lives with a disability, an "avoidable difference which is unacceptable and unfair", a government-ordered review into Britain's widening health inequalities said today.

Despite 10 years of the largest public spending increases on health since the creation of the NHS, and rising prosperity levels generally, people in England living in the poorest neighbourhoods will, on average, die seven years earlier than others living in the richest parts of Britain, the study finds.

Not only is life expectancy linked to social standing, but so is the time spent in good health: the average difference in "disability-free life expectancy" is now 17 years between those at the top and those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the report says.

The report, entitled Fair Society, Healthy Lives, says the government will fail to meet its promise to reduce the 10% mortality gap between deprived areas and the rest of the UK. For men in poor areas the gap has widened by 2%, and for women the figure is 11%.

Health inequality is now so pronounced that in the wealthiest area of London, a ward in Kensington and Chelsea, a man will now have a life expectancy of 88 years.

A few miles away in Tottenham Green, north London, one of the capital's poorer wards, male life expectancy is 71 years, a period less than that found in Ecuador, China and Belize, countries all poorer with no national health systems ...

Guardian 10 Feb 2010

Birmingham city council to cut up to 2,000 jobs and close care homes