Tagged with The Rich

Is Thatcherite ideology working?

thatcher-flagIn a general election a great number of things will be said, but only a few or even one really matters and that will determine who wins. This 2015 election is in effect a referendum on Thatcherite ideology. Here is what Labour should be saying, but isn’t.

Point 1: For 35 years since 1980 the Thatcherites, which includes for this purpose Brown and Blair, have been pursuing major cuts in corporation tax on the grounds that that would stimulate the economy, produce a surge of investment, unleash higher wage jobs, and thus increase government tax revenues to pay down the deficit. The opposite has happened: corporation tax has been cut from 52% in 1980 to 21% today, and the proportion of government revenues generated by corporation tax has almost halved to just over 5%. But none of the benefits promised have materialised, so why do we not reverse this failed policy? Continue reading →

Russell Brand v the Sun: long may the war continue

When I was poor and I complained about inequality, people said I was bitter. Now I’m rich and I complain about inequality, they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want inequality on the agenda because it is a real problem that needs to be addressed.”

Normally something to pin on your tumblr, this week it’s become something of a prophecy. Russell Brand was ambushed on Channel 4 news (two million views and rising) for having the temerity to stand with New Era Estate residents against the sale of their homes to American-based property sepculators. Scenting an opportunity to shift a few papers, The Sun joined C4 with front page attacks on Brand on Wednesday and Thursday. And so it came to pass that the Dirty Digger’s tabloid terriers went to war with Russell Brand.

I pity the fools. Continue reading →

Things Labour needs to do to beat UKIP #2: raise pay and cap the cost of living

a shopping cart is filled with coinsWhilst Ed Balls stuck stubbornly to accepting that the economy was now growing rather than “flatlining“, with his disastrous conclusion that you couldn’t fund spending by borrowing in the up-swing, Ed Miliband was absolutely right last year to focus on the cost of living. “The first and last test of economic policy is whether living standards for ordinary families are rising,” he said. And they’re not. Instead we have payday lenders, low-skilled jobs and stagnating wages. Predatory capitalism. Ed Miliband recognised that “the average doesn’t tell you the whole story.”

In their book on the rise of UKIP Revolt on the Right, the new gurus of the topic, Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin explain the rise during the Thatcher and Blair years of the “left behinders” – the crucial group of working class voters who fell behind the average, that once were loyal to Labour and are now moving in their droves to UKIP. Here Ford & Goodwin explain what happened at the hands of Blairite “reformers”: Continue reading →

Labour needs a shadow Minister specifically to tackle inequality

class inequalityThe 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 since the crash because of the rise in value of financial assets, during a time when averages income have fallen 8% in real terms. Britain now has 2 million dollar millionaires, if the value of equity in houses is included, up by almost a third since last year. There are also now 44 billionaires in Britain, up from 8 in 2000.

The individual excesses continue apace, only getting ever more outrageous. British Gas has just appointed a new chief executive, Helge Lund, previous boss of Norway’s Statoil company, with a £15m ‘golden hello’ and potential earnings of an additional £14m a year. At the other end of the scale are 70 former NHS care workers for the disabled in Doncaster who have taken so far 85 days’ strike action resisting the further crushing of wages and terms and conditions for the lowest paid. Their jobs were outsourced, holidays cut, and take-home pay cut by a third. Care UK which won the contract and ousted them is owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital and its chairman John Nash was recently made a peer after donating a quarter of a million pounds to the Tory party. Continue reading →

Ignore the special pleading of millionaires against mansion tax

Lord LevyWe never have had much time for the knocking copy regularly provided by a bunch of has-beens who never backed Ed Miliband in the first place. When things get tough, you can guarantee that they’ll parade their disloyalty through the newsrooms and TV studios. And so it was this weekend that the first pair of traitors – Lords Levy and Noon took their spite somewhere that always welcomes an opportunity to get back at Ed – Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times – and without a hint of irony chose the mansion tax as the stick with which to lash out at Ed.

Under the heading “Labour barons hammer ‘death-wish’ Miliband“, Blairite fundraiser Lord Levy (aka “Mr Cashpoint“) attacked the mansion tax as “totally inappropriate” and having “no validity whatsoever”, warning that the Labour leader had to do more to win over business chiefs whose financial support the party needed. Lord Levy, who made his fortune advising celebrities in the music and entertainment industry how to avoid tax and based his own investment company, Wineart, in a tax haven, owns a multi-million pound ‘hacienda style” mansion in north London complete with with swimming pool and tennis courts (where Tony Blair was a regular partner) so he is hardly without a vested interest.  Continue reading →