There was a lot of press at the weekend on the general theme that ‘money buys happiness’, prompted by the ONS well-being analysis issued on Friday. But thinking more about the results that were covered briefly here on Friday, these headlines might draw the wrong conclusion. There is a…Read more…
Britain in the red: Households with problem debt up by more than a quarter since 2012
Today saw the first release of findings by the Centre for Responsible Credit (CfRC) from the joint TUC and Unison commissioned ‘Britain in the Red’ project. The project is looking at available aggregate and household survey data to track the extent of household over-indebtedness: assessing the…Read more…
More bad news on UK manufacturing
Today the EEF (Engineering Employers’ Federation) affirmed the weakness of the UK manufacturing sector, halving their forecast for manufacturing growth in 2015 to 0.7 per cent. The chart below of ONS figures shows manufacturing proceeding since the 1990s in a series of fits and starts. Over the…Read more…
ONS show just how hard ‘well-being’ is hit by low incomes and wealth
The ONS report ‘Relationship between Wealth, Income and Personal Well-being, July 2011 to June 2012’ may not be hugely surprising , but vividly shows the how dependent personal well-being is on a decent standard of living. For the ONS, well being has four aspects, ‘life satisfaction’, ‘sense of…Read more…
Unions and investors unite to oust Sports Direct Chair at AGM
Ahead of next week’s Sports Direct company AGM, the company’s Chair Keith Hellawell is coming under increasing pressure from unions and minority shareholders
The post Unions and investors unite to oust Sports Direct Chair at AGM appeared first on ToUChstone blog.Read more…
Q1. Is Canada in recession because of China? Q2. Will their newly-published ‘Federal Balanced Budget Act’ help?
Yesterday, as market volatility continued, GDP figures were issued showing Canada now in ‘technical’ recession. It was a close call, with quarterly growth in 2015 Q2 at -0.1 per cent, following a fall of -0.2 in Q1. But few seem in doubt that conditions in this G8 economy are a worry. The chart…Read more…
Cameron’s EU workplace rights strategy pleasing no one
The Financial Times reported last night that David Cameron had dropped plans to demand widespread exemptions from European Union workplace rights. The TUC has been warning that those demands were on his agenda for months (often pooh-poohed by ‘experts’), and we have been arguing that…Read more…
Chancellor discarding £33bn solar power industry?
Over 100 organisations have appealed to the Prime Minister over the Chancellor’s plans to cut support for the solar power industry. The government, strangely shy about the employment impact of hazarding a £33bn industry. All DECC will admit to in its consultation paper is: “There is likely…Read more…
Trans issues: on our agenda
The new Women and Equalities Select Committee – a cross-party group of Members of Parliament – decided that its first action would be to hold an inquiry into the position of transgender people in the UK. The initial consultation period has just closed and the TUC made a submission (which you can…Read more…
Will the new Immigration Bill throw foreign students that work too many hours in jail?
The Immigration minister James Brokenshire yesterday announced more details about the forthcoming Immigration Bill. He stated that: “Through our new immigration bill, illegal workers will face the prospect of a prison term and rogue employers could have their businesses closed, have their licences…Read more…
The largest one-day fall on FTSE since 2009 in its historical context
Yesterday global stock exchanges had their worse day for many years, for some unmatched since the financial crisis of 2008. The FTSE fell by 4.55%, the largest daily fall since 2 March 2009 (when down 5.3%); when markets shut the index was at 5899, its lowest ‘close’ for almost three…Read more…
“There are growing fears about the health of the global economy”, headlines BBC News at Ten
Yesterday (20 August) Robert Peston’s report on the growing crisis in emerging market economies was given top billing on the BBC News at Ten (you might still be able to catch it here). Motivated mainly by the slowdown in China, and covering an array of stock market, exchange rate and other economic…Read more…
Yesterday’s ‘core’ inflation figures are misleadingly strong, driven by erratic items
Yesterday the ONS reported headline CPI inflation in July 2015 at 0.1%, marginally higher than last month’s zero and market expectation of no change. But subsequent attention has focussed heavily on the rise in core inflation to 1.2%from 0.8%. As we have often argued, core figures are likely…Read more…
Migration Advisory Committee report: no evidence for government net migration target
Today the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), the independent research body that advises the government on migration policy, published its report on whether raising salary levels might reduce the number of migrants entering the country. The government asked the MAC to undertake this research to…Read more…
What’s happening to earnings?
This is one of those ‘one chart says it all’ posts. Yesterday I was too busy looking at the regular labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics to notice they’d also published a Supplementary Analysis of Average Weekly Earnings. It’s well worth a read, and…Read more…
What should China do now?
Global markets are understandably jittery at what has become the biggest fall in the remnibi, China’s currency, since the 1990s. Duncan Weldon explained what is going on with his customary clarity on last night’s Newsnight programme. In a nutshell, between the reforms of the late 1970s and the…Read more…
Jobs gaps – the forward march of egalitarianism halted?
I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s monthly employment statistics (it’s an exciting life at the TUC) and I’ve been thinking about the employment and unemployment gaps between men and women. In some respects, the convergence of men’s and women’s employment opportunities that we’ve got used to over a…Read more…
What if Mao still ran China?
I’ve always been a sucker for those ‘What if?’ historical scenarios. What if John Smith hadn’t died in 1994? Would New Labour ever have happened? How would social democracy look today in the UK? Or: What if Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro had not been kidnapped and killed by terrorists in 1978?…Read more…
Chutzpah on global migration from the Foreign Secretary
There were many things that made people’s blood boil about Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond’s statement that Europe’s social infrastructure was under threat from migrants fleeing war-torn or poverty-stricken countries in Africa and the Middle East, like the scaremongering…Read more…
Cracking down on migrants or on exploitation?
The Home Office Immigration Minister James Brokenshire MP (who, lest we forget, replaced Mark Harper MP in the role after Harper was exposed as having employed an ‘illegal immigrant’ as his cleaner) has announced a crackdown on those who employ illegal immigrants, promising Border Force…Read more…