The widening gap between rich and poor that has disfigured and weakened our society over recent decades is widely deplored, but there is surprisingly little understanding of how that growing inequality has been brought about. For most people, it simply reflects the natural order; the rich have each individually taken their chance, as anyone would, to [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Inequality’
Trade union freedom or growing inequality: your choice
Mar 12th, 2013 by Adrian Weir.Just before Christmas, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and the Campaign for the Repeal of the Anti-Union Laws merged to launch a new organisation to campaign for trade union rights, the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom (TUF). Its launch rally is being held on 23 March at Friends House, London at 1:30 pm. [...]
Unequal wealth – the best illustration ever
Mar 5th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.This film will take just six minutes of your life. It is a fantastic illustration of just how unfair is the distribution of wealth. Not only is there a massive gap between the way people think things are and the way they think they should be (left and right alike), but there is an even bigger gap [...]
When is Labour going to assert that recovery depends on greater equality?
Jan 30th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.In all the debate about economic recovery inequality is scarcely mentioned. Yet gross inequality is not only deeply resented and demoralising in wider society, it is also profoundly inimical to recovery and growth. This of course stands on its head the conventional wisdom of the last 30 years of neoliberal capitalism which asserts that inequality [...]
Poverty Britain
Jun 20th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The Experian Public Sector survey released today of families in work but at risk of a slide into destitution is very telling. There are 7 million adults in this category, in addition to the 5.5 million working-age adults already living in poverty (i.e. less than 60% of the national median income) – a total of [...]
FTSE-100 chief execs down to their last £92,308 a week
Jun 13th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Another story for ‘We’re all in it together’. A survey just published by Manifest/MM&K has found that the average pay of chief executives of FTSE-100 companies is now £4.m millions a year , just under £100,000 a week (though that threshold will probably be crossed next year). The average pay in their remuneration – salary, [...]
Glencore-Xstrata shenanigans show corporate managerial power out of control
Jun 3rd, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The joint stock company, the foundation unit of modern capitalism, is dead. But corporate managerial capitalism is alive and kicking. Whatever the constitutional theory that shareholders are in ultimate control, this myth is daily confounded by repeated evidence of management takeover from the inside. Shareholdings have become so remote and so fragmented, and the tentacles [...]
Another unmentionable word in the Queen’s Speech: wealth
May 10th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Apart from assuring us that the government’s main objective was economic stability – the stability of the graveyard it seems in this government’s case – the only other significant things in the Queen’s Speech were what it didn’t contain, not anything it did contain. Nothing about housebuilding, an infrastructure bank, reviving manufacturing, boosting capital investment, [...]
Yes they’re all in it together
Apr 16th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.It’s a relief that even a City investor group (PIRC) is now challenging the accounts of Barclays, RBS, and HSBC, initially when the pay deal for Bob (greedy as Croesus) Diamond is put to the Barclays AGM in a fortnight’s time. It is proposed to pay him £17m, largely made up of an executive share [...]
Tory privilege
Apr 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Words that we will never hear again will continue to resonate the caustic hypocrisy of Tory politics. ‘We’re all in it together’, a piece of flagrant brazenness when it was first trailed by Osborne in 2010, has now become a millstone around the Tory neck. Everything they have done in the last two weeks contradicts [...]
