The Tory manifesto was artfully targeted at making everyone a weeny bit richer, and some a lot richer. It offered to raise the income tax threshold to £12,500 (though the rich get more from that than the poor), to lower tax on those on the minimum wage, to raise the higher rate income tax threshold […]
Posts Tagged ‘Equality’
Aspiration for all would be fine, but neither the Tories nor the Blairites will deliver it
May 14th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.1,000 richest Britons worth £547bn, 13m others now in poverty, half in work
May 1st, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Murdoch’s Sunday Times has just published its Rich List for 2015 which shows that the richest 1,000 persons based in Britain now have wealth valued at £547.1bn. That works out at an average level of wealth of nearly £550 millions per person, though there are wide variations between the threshold level of £100 millions at the […]
Labour needs a shadow Minister specifically to tackle inequality
Oct 18th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The gravy train rolls on reaching ever more sickening heights of greed, selfish gratification and disregard for the ever deeper miasma of poverty that disfigures our country. The latest figures show that the richest 10% of the UK population, who already owned 52% of UK wealth just before the 2008 crash, have become significantly richer […]
To reinvent our economy we need to reframe the debate
Sep 12th, 2014 by Dave Watson.The left needs to reframe the debate by imagining a different way of running our economy. In his Guardian column last week, Oliver Burkeman commented on the reclining airline seats ‘war’ by saying, “Stop arguing. Capitalism already won this stupid war“. It’s not the fairness of reclining or not, it’s because airlines cram so many […]
Fast Facts: Gender social inequality and austerity in Europe
Mar 11th, 2014 by Tom Gill.Europe’s austerity fetish and longer term neo-liberal reforms promoted by Big Business, Governments and the EU Commission hurt women disproportionately. Here’s a few facts to illustrate the point. Europe wide The gender pay gap is around 16% It ranges from more than a quarter (27%) in Estonia to around a fiftieth (2%) in Slovenia. The latest figures […]
Why the IMF & World Bank should accompany neoliberalism into the dustbin of history
Jan 19th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.We are constantly being told that 2014 is the centenary of the start of the First World War, but rather less – or indeed nothing at all – is being made of the fact that this year is also the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the IMF and World Bank. That is more than […]
Parliament tomorrow debates the impact of Tory welfare reforms on poverty
Jan 12th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Two events in this last week point up both the savagery and mindlessness of the Tories’ continuing and relentless assault on benefits. One was Osborne’s declaration that, after lopping off £25bn from the social security system in this parliament, he will make additional £25bn cuts in the next parliament half of which will be severed […]
Top 1% now on £1,917 per week, average incomes of 90% down 9%
Dec 2nd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Is there no end to rising inequality? Probably not, until the 90% take a stand and push back hard, refusing to take it any more. Reaching that point of real resistance would be helped by the Labour party telling the truth that austerity is not about paying off the deficit – we’ve already suffered enormous […]
Mothers facing brunt of Tory attacks
May 26th, 2013 by Marshajane Thompson.The economy may for now have escaped a ‘triple-dip’ but women, particularly those of us who are mothers, have experienced a triple- whammy from cuts which hit us as workers, as claimants and as carers. As the Fawcett Society recently identified: Women are being hit hardest by job cuts in the public sector; Women are […]
The Sunday Times Rich List – the antidote
Apr 26th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.The best antidote I have seen to the annual Sunday Times Rich List! A beautiful film illustration of the realities of wealth inequality. And in order to eliminate inequality, we don’t have to change the distribution to what most people regard as the ideal. We only have to change it to what people think it […]