The UK has become one of the most unequal countries in the world

Share of total income going to the richest 1% has grown faster in the UK than in most other advanced economies

To download the full pdf, click here

Explaining the data

This data comes from the World Top Incomes Database, which measures top incomes in over 45 countries around the world. Based on household surveys in each country, we have used the latest data available for each country. You can access the full data here: http:// topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu 

Visit Inequality Briefing

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Are you a tax-dodging racist Tory?

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Debating the future of the "Left" in Northamptonshire: Do you want to join in?

I recently posted the following observation on Twitter/Facebook and it prompted the following exchange of views between two friends from Northampton.

I have reproduced it here because I believe it is worthy of further debate and discussion. Do you want to join it? If you do, please post your comments.


ME: Only good news coming from elections seems to be total wipe-out for BNP, English Democrats and their ilk. But hate taken on by UKIP #dangers

• • David Huffadine-smith In effect, Northants voters have endorsed all the Tory cuts made to date, and opened the floodgates for more of the same thing. And the Tories can now rightfully claim a mandate for this. And all because the left of centre parties spend more time squabbling amongst themselves than setting out a clear set of policies and motivating people to go out and vote for them. 

    May 3 at 8:18pm · Unlike · 1
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    John Dickie David,everywhere I look your repeating the canard that the centre-left is squabbling.What you really mean to say is the centre is scrabbling to find something worthwhile to say.The left i9s fairly coherent in its world view,indeed I have never known the factions of the left to be so united.I find it encouraging that the initiative by Ken Loach(onetime SLL/WRP doyen)-Left Unity is gaining traction.It's starting to feel like those who founded the Labour Representation Committee must have felt all those centuries ago.Added to which the creation by Unite of the Community branches is also echoing a return to first principles of trade unionism.Perhaps we are moving towards the sort of movements that are starting to happen again all over Europe!

    Saturday at 9:58am · Unlike · 1
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    David Huffadine-smith My observations about lack of unity amongst the centre-left is confirmed by your comments (on other threads) about the Labour group actions at the most recent Northampton Boro Council meeting. It seems to me that Northampton Labour desperately needs the guidance of experienced and gifted elder statesmen who can do a useful turn in the kind of rhetoric that wins peoples hearts & minds. As well as see through political traps, and counsel against playground theatricals. Those who, for one reason or another, now find themselves outside the traditional Labour umbrella could usefully wave an olive branch. Its a win-win, in that so long as Labour does not insist on those individuals eating 'umble pie, it regains the talents that are currently missing, and losing seats as a result of a split vote will become a thing of the past. Isn't it about time that both sides buried their egos for the sake of the common good?

    Saturday at 2:22pm · Unlike · 1
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    John Dickie David, wwere it all that simple.The problem is that the Labour party that I once knew and worked for despite all its imperfections(Callaghan,Kinnock,etc) is long gone.What we appear to have is a hollowed out shell that lacks ideology and only has a strong desire to provide a small group of people with a professional career structure that ends on green benches.Right now in Northampton there are far more ex-labour party members with considerable talent and experience than there are still within that palsied organisation.It utterly breaks my heart to see it stumble and fail at every hurdle,but I think that the time is about right to create a new movement that brings together the multi-faceted left into a rainbow coalition of ideas.it will certainly not be a socialist organisation but it wil be a damn sight nearer one than what we have at present.I would hope that those few remaining socialists in the Labour party would understand that they are flogging a horse that was eaten as a Tesco burger years ago.The creation of Left U*nity and the Unite Community branches are both steps in the right direction.The Tory hegemony is a dreadful spectre haunting Northampton,and the advances of the BNP in suits is distasteful too-but one feature of us old lefties is optimism-without it we'd all think that Blair was the answer instead o0f being the problem!

    Saturday at 6:36pm · Unlike · 1
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    Paul Crofts It appears I have prompted an important debate. Please continue and it may be worth reproducing as a pamphlet/blog to get debate going involving even more people too.

    Saturday at 7:37pm via mobile · Like
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    David Huffadine-smith I could not give a [insert expletives of your choice] about the Labour Party as currently represented in Westminster, or indeed the previous Blair/Brown Labour Government. What I see is the Tories systematically destroying Northampton (+ shire) culturally, economically, morally, aesthetically and socially, not necessarily in that order. The people who used to be motivated, at least in part, via a powerful and effective Trades Union movement can no longer be reached because the Trades Union movement has been emasculated. There is no longer a popular left wing press, although middle class armchair socialists seem well catered for, and so those who would support a left wing movement are increasingly difficult to reach. I do not know what the solution to this situation is, but having several weak left of centre political parties that do not seem willing to work together does not seem to be a very good game plan for defeating those who would, given half a chance, consign us all to serfdom.

    Saturday at 7:48pm · Like
  • 

    John Dickie David, your arguments are persuasive and depressing,and remind me very much of what has been going round within the left generally for what now seems decades.I started my political life as what the Americans call a 'red diaper baby',growing up in a CP household,a working class family that itself was a rarity in CP circles even then.I was the youngest member of the YCL in London and seemed ddestined for an apparatchik role in the party.However the sixties radicalised me and it seemed that Peace in Vietnam was not as good a slogan as 'Victory to the NLF'.But even then it did seem that the extra parliamentary route was something of a blind alley, there are only so many times you can demand the TUC call a General Strike today! and only so long you can dismiss the labour Party as lackeys of the boss class.I joined the Labour Party at the height of the leftward shift,when despite the PLP and the leadership exciting initiatives wee happening in local government-Liverpool,London,Glasgow,even bloody Sheffield! (remember Blunkett the red scourge!) We tried to make Northampton a red bastion-we failed of course but in the process attracted some very bright and able young activists.But then came Thatcherism and the sickening dark period of ugliness.In 1997 we would accept almost anything,even Blair,rather than another decade of demoralisation and dispair.But that led the labour party into the capitulation of 'tolerating the filthy rich' and even becoming in some cases the filfhy rich.Watching Ken Loach's film 'Spirit of 45' and hearing Attlee talking about a socialist future showed how far backwards we have come.However my glass is not empty, I believe that the Occupy movement,inchoate and confused though it may be,has seeds of optimism.I think a range of single issue authonomous movements are emerging and the trick is to get them to converge.That does mean detaching the brightest and most able from the moribund Labour Party,that has become the Liberal Party of the 1900's, and create a new and vibrant view of socialism that will encourage many more local solutions,building bases in communities and reviving a spirit that the British people once had, the spirit that created the trade union movement,and yes the Labour Party.It's the job of us old greybeards to encourage and nurture and then get out of the way as quickly as possible!Sorry to take so long,but being old also means being long winded.

    Sunday at 3:16pm · Like · 1
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    John Dickie paul, I think this is the debate that's kicking off within Left U*nity-maybe we need to bring to9gether all the strands of left,green,unaligned and gently loopy into a Northamptonshire Convention of 21st century Levellers,Diggers and people like me who think of myself as a Jeffersonian Marxist!(I pinched that designation from Chomsky)

    Sunday at 3:20pm · Like · 1
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    John Dickie Another thought occurred to me, if this debate is to go anywhere it really needs one of the smart and hip young gunslingers from New labour-sorry One nation Labour to explain how ideology-lite labour will move on from listening campaigns to political action.It would be interesting to find out what motivates them now beyond the cliche and stating the bleedin' obvious!

    Yesterday at 9:37am · Like

  
  

  
  

  
  

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Public Meeting: What future for the welfare state

Thursday February 28^th

2013 @ 7.30pm

Victoria Centre, Palk Road

Wellingborough NN8 1HT

Speakers:

Wilkie Wilkinson

Social Worker and UNISON shop steward

(personal capacity)

Disabled People Against Cuts (invited)

Public & Civil Services Union

(Department for Works and Pensions Branch)

(invited)

Stop attacks on the poorest

and vulnerable

Defend our welfare safety-net

STOP the Government:

·       Attacking the Disabled

Cutting Disability Living Allowance will take away

£2 billion from disabled people

·       Attacking Families

The “bedroom tax” takes 14% from the housing benefit of 660,000 families deemed to have one bedroom too many.

Council tax benefit is being abolished,

and discretionary responsibility is being passed to local councils already coping with cuts

·       Attacking the Young

Reducing housing benefit from the under 25s will condemn thousands of vulnerable young people to homelessness,

and is denounced by homeless charities

·       Sowing Division and hatred

The Government tries to set employed against unemployed, poor against the event poorer

Benefit claimants are branded “shirkers,”

but most claimants are in work but paid lousy wages

·       Cutting our Local Services

County Council cuts have hit libraries, preventive services, adult social care, the youth offending service, foster care, trading standards, fire and rescue, Police, early years, meals on wheels, education services and many more.

Council employees face unprecedented attacks on

pay, conditions and pensions.

COME AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE ATTACKS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM

DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!!

An event organised by

Wellingborough Labour Party

and Independent Socialists in Wellingborough

For more information ring: 078 72 83 64 63

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"No Pets. No DSS": the demonisation of a new group?

During the 1960s it was not uncommon to see signs on houses or flats that were to let that stated "No pets, no Irish and no Blacks". Quite rightly it would now be considered totally unacceptable to publish such racist and discriminatory signs - and they are also now illegal.

However, I recently discovered similar signs on display in an estate agents in Wellingborough. This time, however, the group now being discriminated against are those in receipt of welfare benefits (DSS) and the cards in the shop window read: "Sorry (sic!). No pets. No DSS" - see photos of the cards on display below. 

I must say that I was shocked that a new group of people are now being collectively demonised and discriminated against in such a demeaning way when trying to find housing for themselves and/or their families. Could this be the consequence of the recent high profile attacks by some politicians on welfare "scroungers" and attempts to set so-called "deserving"/working poor from those less "deserving" who are not in work. Or is it simply reflective of the fact that housing benefit no longer covers the rental of even the cheapest of private rented accommodation? So where will the poor - whether "deserving", "undeserving", working or not working  - going to live? What sort of society are we?

Although we may have moved on a little from the racism of the 1960s, are we now re-creating new groups to exclude and dehumanise? Sometimes I wonder how much progress we are really making and how little we seem to learn from the nasty activities of the past.

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Tory lies on the cost of public sector pensions

Thanks to Rab at  his "Media Studies is Shit" blog:

This is the exchange between Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude (FM) and interviewer, Evan Davis (ED) on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme on 30 June 2011. You can find it elsewhere but I just wanted to cut and paste it into this blog so that I (and you) can find it easily everytime you need to be reminded what a shower of lying fucking bastards are running the country…

ED: I want to just ask about your credibility. The prime minister said the other day [that the pension system is in danger of going broke]. Do you stand by that claim?

FM: Well, I’ll just quote what Lord Hutton said, the former Labour pensions secretary, when he did his report. He said very clearly the status quo is not tenable.

ED: That’s not a quote, is it. Because I did my little control f key search on the word tenable [ie, a word search] on his report [and] couldn’t find it in his report.

FM: He has said that the system is not tenable.

ED: Did you say that it was going broke if nothing was done. Because I can only find that graph which shows the cost falling in terms of GDP. It has been repeated so often that it’s unaffordable, it’s out of control. I just can’t see it in his report. He doesn’t say it’s unaffordable. He says it’s not fair. And that’s a very different justification for reforming pensions than it’s unaffordable.

FM: And he said that if we want the system of defined benefit pensions, which few people elsewhere have, to be sustained into the future, long-term reform is needed.

ED: Is it unaffordable?

FM: It will be unless we make these changes.

ED: That’s not what he says.

FM: Well it will be. The cost to taxpayers of supporting public sector pensions has gone up by a third. It’s £32bn a year. What Lord Hutton said in his report is that the extra costs of people living longer – because the average 60-year-old today is living 10 years longer than they did in the 1960s.

ED: Have you read the report?

FM: Yes, of course I’ve read the report.

ED: Can you tell us why does it show the cost falling over the decades in terms of the proportion of GDP going to public sector pension recipients? Just explain why it’s going down, because if you’ve read the report you will know the answer.

FM: The answer is that the expenditure on pensions by the taxpayer has increased by a third.

ED: Why is it going down? In his report, the big picture is it’s going down. Why is that? Just explain to the public why the cost is going down.
FM: Well, the cost to the taxpayer is going up. That’s the point.

ED: As a proportion of GDP?

FM: The cost of the increase, the cost of paying pensions to people who are living longer, which is obviously good news – you cannot continue to have more and more people in retirement being supported by fewer and fewer people in work. That’s why it’s so important that we’re going to ask people, if you want to continue to have very good pension schemes which are a guaranteed level of pensions available to few others, that’s got to be paid for by higher contributions by those who are going to have those pensions, and to ask them to draw those pensions later.

ED: I’m going to read you a line and ask you whether you think the account you’ve given is the same as the one he gives. “There have been significant reforms to public sector pension schemes over the last decade. Some of these changes have reduced projected benefit payments” – blah, blah, blah – “Projected benefit payments fall gradually to around 1.4% of GDP after peaking in 2010-11 at 1.9%.” That’s just saying it’s not unaffordable, we don’t want to afford it. It’s cheaper. It’s going to be 25% cheaper in the next few decades in terms of the burden on GDP than it is at the moment.

FM: What he’s saying is that long-term reform is needed.

ED: Absolutely. For different reasons.

FM: The point is, there’s been widespread pension reform across the economy. People in the private sector have seen old, defined benefit schemes disappear. What John Hutton has said – and we’ve totally agreed with – is we do not want to see a race to the bottom.

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"I am gobsmacked. I had no idea...."

In today's Northants Evening Telegraph the deputy leader (by the way, whatever has happened to the leader?) of Wellingborough Council, Cllr. Paul Bell, attempts to respond to recent reports that they have been acting in a secretive manner and/or are not informing the people of Wellingborough of the extent and impact of cuts to services they are proposing to introduce.

To take the latter point first, I merely need to quote the deputy manager of Weavers Leisure Centre:

"I am gobsmacked. I had no idea. I knew cuts were being made but I didn't know that withdrawing that much of the centre's funding was being discussed. Where has all this come from? When are they going to tell us? There are 10 of us working here and this is the first I have heard of it".

Without my intervention last Tuesday at the full Council meeting (which has prompted all the fuss to date) the closing date for views on the cuts would have been next Monday! Given that the list of proposed cuts had not even been published how could people, such as those at Weavers Leisure Centre and others who will be affected by the cuts, have responded by this date? It has now been announced by the Council that the consultation period has been extended to February 9 - still not very long, but better that this coming Monday I suppose.

I firmly believe that this would not have happened without my intervention at the council meeting and the subsequent pressure from the ET. Nor would the list of proposed cuts have received such prominence and profile were it not for the determination of Evening Telegraph's journalists to get to the truth.

Cllr. Bell makes an interesting comment in his statement (see report below) which requires a little more un-picking: "We have opposed charging for the car park and we have no desire to close the market, or The Castle Theatre and these decisions will stand until at least 2012" (my emphasis). Interestingly there are no references to all the other proposed cuts, so we must assume the worst for these. I have also not seen any list which says these are the proposals we have "ruled out".

The reference to "2012" is, of course, important to note as are the words "no desire". Cllr. Bell knows only too well that government funding is not only being cut for the next financial year 2011/12, but further government cuts to councils will continue in subsequent years and for the foreseeable future. Whatever Cllr. Bell may "desire", he knows that he will have no choice but to make further severe cuts in the future. These cuts are just the start - not the end - of what this government plans for local services. Cllr Bell, however, is clearly in denial on these matters - as he was up until one week ago when he continually denied that proposed cuts will affect "front line services" even whilst planning cuts behind closed doors which he knew would devastate front line services. See: Denial cuts will affect front line services.

Under the heading "Consultation" the Evening Telegraph reports today that Wellingborough Council allege they posted the list of new proposed cuts on their web-site on Wednesday (note that this was after the council meeting on the Tuesday and no announcement of this intention was made at the council meeting - indeed rather the reverse - the Mayor and other Councillors tried to stop me referring to the existence of the list!). I still challenge anyone of reasonable intelligence and knowledge of the internet to find this list on the Council's web-site that in any way makes it accessible or transparent to the people of Wellingborough.

Finally, and this may seem rather pedantic in the scale of things, the language used by Cllr. Bell informs us a great deal of what lies behind this saga. Cllr. Bell continues to use the word "save" in describing what the Council is planning to do. "Save" sounds cuddly, softer and desirable. To "Save" is a good idea isn't it - we tell children that saving for the future is a good thing. We act responsibly by "saving by for a rainy day". But what Wellingborough Council are doing or proposing is not to "save". It is to cut, to savage, to devastate to ruin, to destroy - public services, lives, hopes and aspirations. To describe this as to "save" is both an abuse of the language and takes the people of Wellingborough for fools.

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Liar Liar

Captain SKA - Liar Liar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFwxw57NBI

Paul O'Grady tells it how it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE88U5CocpM&NR=1


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A Tribute to Jimmy Reid

Following the recent death of Jimmy Reid a friend gave me a copy of his address to Glasgow University students and Governors, as their recently elected Rector, back in the early 1970s. What he said back then is worth repeating and is still highly relevant to the situation we face over 30 years later.

At that time Jimmy was the elected spokesperson of the Upper Clyde shipbuilders during their work-in to defend thir jobs and industry in the face of Tory attempts to butcher them both. He was at that time a member of the Communist Party and on its National Executive Committee. In subsequent years he joined the Labour Party and later in life the Scottish Nationalists. He maintained throughout his life a passionate belief in social justice, particularly for working people. I hope that he would appreciate me reproducing some of what he had to say at that time.

In a direct address to students he said:

"Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties in all that is happenning around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid up member of the rat pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit."

"Profit is the sole criteria used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity, from the rat race to lame ducks.... the facts are there for all to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy."

"All that is good in man's heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an unashamed acknowlegement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit. In "Why should we idly waste our prime..." he says

"The golden age, we'll then revive, each man shall be a brother,
In harmony we shall live and till the earth together,
In virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,
And time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature"

1932-2010

For a fully copy of this speech go to: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/still-irresistible-a-workingclass-heros-finest-speech-2051285.html

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A taster of what is to come

At the Resources Committee of Wellingborough Borough Council tomorrow evening we have a taster of what is to come by way of cuts to services and capital projects. I say “taster” because the full implications of cuts to Wellingborough Council’s funding from government is yet to be fully known and may not fully kick-in until the 2011-12 financial year. So these cuts are merely the start.

Firstly there is a paper on what is euphemistically called “alternative service delivery”. What this is code for is the elimination of Wellingborough Council’s independence in employing its own staff – but rather to either (1) share staff with other local authorities (but do not expect staff number to remain the same and improved services – but rather the services in two authorities will have be carried out with significantly reduced staff and a decline in service) or (2) - and this is the most likely option for many services – privatisation. This will result in reduced staff, staff having to work harder, with lower pay and worse terms and conditions (such as pension rights). During the 1980s many services were privatised resulting in litter bins remaining full, dustbins not collected with many authorities having to bring them back “in-house” in order to ensure there was a service at all when companies went bust or they breached the terms of the contracts.


Secondly, there is a report called the “Capital Programme Update”. This anticipates making cuts to the council’s capital programme of £350,000 per annumover the next four years. The cuts that are now proposed include:

•No allotment improvements (cut of £4,600)

• Improvements to public spaces cancelled (cut of £4,500)

• Improvements/maintenance to swimming pool and leisure centre cancelled (cut of £149,000)

• Cancellation of improvements to buildings to conform with the Disability Discrimination Act (cut of (£75,000)

• Improvements to Glen Bank cancelled (cut of £10,800)

• Improvements to parks and open spaces cancelled (cut of £1000)

• Carbon Footprint programme cancelled (cut of £135,000)

• Highway litter bins not purchased(cut of £48,000)

• Contribution towards Wrenn School tennis facility halted (cut of £80,000)

• Support for community centres reduced (cut of £79,000)

In addition to all the above, the following cuts will also be made

• A cut of £110,000 in Renovation Grants (to nil) from 2011

• A cut of £25,000 towards heritage and shop front improvements

• A cut of £200,000 this year, and £800,000 in future years, to improve the town centre

Thirdly, following the ConDem government's cancellation of funding for the free swimming programme for children and the over-60s, Wellingborough Council will now cease this provision from July.

There is also a confidential report on the Castle Theatre, but I cannot say anything about this because, well, it’s confidential. What I think I can say thought is that it is likely that previous council decisions to waste of thousands of pound to put the Castle contract out to tender is likely to go on, and on, and on…. Watch this space.

Remember… this is just the beginning!

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