You can always trust Britain’s pampered corporate bosses to express their greed at the most inauspicious moments, but to do so when Osborne is set for the most inequality-expanding budget in living memory at the expense of the poor is insensitive even by their standards. The heads of Britain’s biggest companies already make more in a day than a worker on the minimum wage in a year. Yet now they’re demanding 20-30% increases in their basic pay because the EU has placed a cap on bonuses at 200% of the basic salary. They also object to bonuses being withheld for longer periods (3 or 5 years) as a check that the bonus was properly earned and not just a device for topping up basic pay. Continue reading
Posted in Benefits
The Labour leadership candidates should turn to Barbara Castle
As the Labour leadership election picks up pace, and some of the dividing lines between the candidates are beginning to emerge, I feel that it is becoming increasingly necessary for the some of the so-called frontrunners to revisit the career of Barbara Castle.
One of the most esteemed figures from Labour’s history, Castle proved that power is not incompatible with principle and providing a real opposition to Tory policy. Her politics in government and opposition always drew the red line of championing the cause of ordinary people. What would she have made of some of the triangulations over fundamentals, like welfare and immigration, on display today? I imagine she would have had stern words for those entertaining the idea of supporting a welfare cap or playing dog-whistle politics about “factories where no one speaks English”. Continue reading
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Immigration and benefits: the political economy of scapegoating
Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. I can barely remember a time when these weren’t commanding headlines or the imaginations of politicians. One might say that this is no surprise, seeing as they are both hot button issues for the public – though it might be said these issues are fabricated and amplified by those with vested interests to do so.
Left critics of this kind of pernicious scaremongering rightly call it out for what it is: the politics of divide and rule. I’ve done it myself. That, however, is as far as it goes. Too often the deeper political economy, the economic pressures of which politics is but a concentrated impulse, either remain unexplored with regard to these matters or, when they are analysed, they tend toward crude conclusions and deeply problematic politics. Continue reading
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What can we expect from renewed austerity?
The new Tory government will renew its austerity offensive shortly with the publication of an ‘emergency Budget’ on July 8. It is simple to demonstrate that the previous austerity programme caused the economy to grind to a halt (and with it the improvement in government finances).
Supporters of austerity like to claim that austerity led eventually to recovery. But this is logically impossible. A force applied from one direction, the downward pressure on the economy, cannot sequentially have the effect of lifting the economy. Most children learn these cause and effect relationships through play at the ages of 2 to 4, with marbles, wheels and water. Continue reading
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The coming tabloid assault on charities
A couple of straws in the wind, perhaps, but I have a feeling something’s a-brewing.
Exhibit one: Olive Cooke, a 92-year-old poppy seller and giver to charitable causes took her own life after, apparently, being repeatedly pestered by cold callers asking for more cash (she already gave to 27 charities every month) and receiving dozens of begging letters, week in, week out.
Exhibit two: Robert Newman, a 80-year-old pensioner received a begging letter from The Children’s Society asking him to cough up a cool £100k over three-year monthly installments. The charity explained this has been sent out in error and was intended for wealthy would-be patrons. Continue reading
