By a striking coincidence turkey-fattening season in the City, otherwise known as bonus time, happens to be rolled out at the same time as the rest of the population is being told that the pay freeze, after last year’s big 4.2% drop in real wages, is now expected to last till 2020. However, for the […]
Posts Tagged ‘Equality’
Why does Labour find sado-masochism so appealing?
Jan 9th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.It is astonishing that sado-masochism, so beloved of the English upper classes in their sexual antics, is so infectious in the Labour Party, albeit in a very different context. There seems to be an obsession in some sections of the party that once the Tories go down the route of self-destructive austerity, we must at […]
Share:
Cameron’s move on fat cats’ pay is just showbiz
Jan 8th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.First Cameron’s grandstanding: “We need to try give people a sense that we have a vision at the end of this of a fairer, better economy”. Then the idea: stop top people handing out hugely inflated salaries + bonuses + incentives + shares + share options to each other. Then the awareness that what has […]
Share:
A widening social divide destroys prospects for economic recovery
Nov 24th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The latest ONS (Office of National Statistics) figures on incomes tell a frightening story. Average earnings fell last year in real terms by 4.6%, a huge drop. Since UK median earnings are now £410 a week and inflation is now running at 5% a week, that represents a fall in disposable income of nearly £19 […]
Share:
Profits and austerity in the industrialised economies
Nov 15th, 2011 by Michael Burke.A previous article examined the profit rate in the Irish economy which is rising even though the economy continues to contract. Yet at the same time Ireland’s level of investment is falling. Corporate incomes – profits – are rising even though total economic activity is falling. Arithmetically, this can only occur by reducing the income of […]
Share:
No more will the super-rich escape scrutiny
Nov 1st, 2011 by Michael Meacher.How did the super-rich get away with flaunting the extreme and disgusting excesses of wealth for so long, without hardly a ripple of disapproval? And why is the issue now being propelled to the front of the political agenda, first by the August riots and now only 2 months later by Occupy LSX?
Share:
Labour – winning as the party of the bottom 99%
Oct 24th, 2011 by Lee Brown.The occupy movements across the world have already succeeded in focussing the debate on the huge disparities between the very wealthy and the “bottom 99%”. This slogan mainly reflects the immediate anger felt across society to how a crisis that originated in the financial sector is now driving down the majority’s living standards, through the […]
Share:
Millionaires, bankers’ friend, no wonder we have the most right-wing government ever
Oct 4th, 2011 by Owen Jones.You have to admire the Conservatives’ courage as they launch their annual get-together in enemy territory today. Manchester is a Tory-free zone. Not one of them sits on the council and the city hasn’t sent a candidate sporting a blue rosette to Parliament for nearly three decades. The party faithful won’t be rattled by a bit of […]
Share:
How the super-rich rationalise their greed
Sep 13th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The super-rich may not be much good at running the country, having engineered the worst financial crash for nearly a century, but they are certainly assiduous at justifying their own greed. Yesterday the Vickers Commission on Banking proposed a firewall between retail and casino investment banking designed to check profiteering from reckless speculation which is […]
Share:
We shouldn’t cut taxes for the rich – we should raise them
Sep 8th, 2011 by Owen Jones.Yesterday, we learned that right-wing economists don’t like progressive taxation. Not a bombshell, you would think: but a letter signed by 20 economists (£) calling for the 50p tax band to be scrapped was deemed important enough to be the BBC’s main news story. If you’re wondering who’s behind this initiative, it’s being funded by […]
