This quarterly TUC report provides an analysis of UK economic and labour market developments over recent months, and includes a spotlight feature on the composition of current economic growth. Summary There is growing evidence that the recent revival in growth is flagging. Overall, the recovery…Read more…
A few thoughts on industrial policy, productivity … and Italy!
Sadly, most Touchstone readers won’t be able to watch this fascinating discussion between Mariana Mazzucato, author of ‘The Entrepreneurial State’, and Yoram Gutgeld, economic advisor to the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi. It took place on ‘Otto e Mezzo’, a discussion programme broadcast on…Read more…
It gets worse: Osborne’s ‘recovery’ is twice as slow as the slowest recovery on record
Looking at GDP per head, the UK economy grew by 5 per cent between 2009 and 2014. Previously, the slowest recovery on a per head basis was from 1886 to 1901, when the economy grew by 10 per cent: twice as fast. The average recovery speed over five years for previous major recessions is 13.7…Read more…
Osborne’s pre-crash economy: riding high on booming property
Approaching half of the growth in the UK economy in 2014 was driven by industries related to the booming property market and the outsourcing of public services (in green); with manufacturing accounting for only eight per cent of growth, this is hardly the ‘march of the makers’; on the other hand,…Read more…
Parents: If you want to improve turnouts get your kids to the ballot!
2,400 or so years ago an ancient Greek, possibly the philosopher Socrates, said: “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they…Read more…
The fathers who are missing out on better leave and pay rights
In around 50 days’ time, working parents will have access to the new system of shared parental leave that allows women to share up to 50 weeks of their maternity leave and 37 weeks’ pay with their partner. The opportunity it will give some fathers to take time off work to spend with their…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 85 per cent of tax and benefit “savings” have been at the expense of women
Yesterday the Independent Inquiry Into Women and Jobseeker’s Allowance published Where’s the Benefit. Chaired by Amanda Ariss of the Equality and Diversity Forum and co-ordinated by the Fawcett Society, the Inquiry reported important findings about how JSA indirectly discriminates against women….Read more…
An Eagle eye on the environment
Keeping climate change off the current political agenda won’t make it go away. A clear majority of us agree that, “The floods last winter showed us what we can expect in the future from climate change,” according to a new poll. Mind, too, that during this Parliament half a million people signing a…Read more…
Government policies still hurting heavy industry
If major employers like Unifrax in Widnes and Sheffield Forgemasters are hurting, as the evidence shows, as a result of government policies introduced during this Parliament, then the government has some way to go to preserve the international competit…Read more…
Probation contracts handed to the private sector despite falls in reoffending
On 1 February, 70 per cent of the probation service was handed to the private sector, yet only last week, the government’s own statistics revealed that the probation service was working relatively well prior to the government’s disastrous reforms in 2014. These recent MoJ figures…Read more…
The Greek election result demands our solidarity
Syriza’s spectacularly successful election campaign was described as being about hope. The Greek people have shown faith in that campaign. Their courage, their defiance and their optimism have given us a true lesson in democracy in the country that invented the system so many centuries ago. They…Read more…
Unions and Fracking: the need for an “honest conversation”
It’s been a busy week for the debate on fracking. A new report said that the current debate on fracking “reveals a lack of public acceptance, or social licence, for it”. The Scottish Parliament put a moratorium in place pending an inquiry. Westminster MPs backed Labour’s stronger…Read more…
Why Making Up Lost Ground on Pay is so Important
Last week’s employment figures showed the annual increase in average weekly earnings (regular pay) rising to 1.8 per cent, higher than the most recent inflation figures (1.6 per cent for the Retail Price Index, 0.5 per cent using the CPI). It’s a bit early to celebrate, though. The reality is that…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 800,000 children live in families that are behind on their energy bills
(Warning: long post.) This week’s headline comes from Show Some Warmth, an excellent new report from the Children’s Society that looked at the problem of energy debt – families falling into debt because they cannot pay their energy bills. The report found that 3.8 million children live in…Read more…
Why is BusinessEurope doing the banks’ dirty work?
BusinessEurope, the body which represents employers’ organisations around Europe (the CBI is its UK member) wrote last week to European Union finance ministers in a last ditch attempt to derail the European financial transactions tax (FTT, aka the Robin Hood Tax) that a group of Eurozone…Read more…
In fact, this is the slowest UK ‘recovery’ ON RECORD
A second look at historic GDP data shows the current ‘recovery’ is the slowest on record (which extend back to 1830), rather than the slowest recovery in modern history, as we reported yesterday. This chart shows index numbers of recoveries in GDP from the bottom of each recession to…Read more…
The slowest recovery in modern history slows down
GDP figures today disappointed expectations, with growth slowing for the second quarter in row, and increasingly departing already from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility forecast. In numbers: growth slowed to 0.5% in the last quarter of 2014, from 0.7% in the third quarter. This defied city…Read more…
Syriza’s impact on Europe: forget what the ‘serious people’ say
Paul Krugman is apparently bemused by the comparative performances of the US and European economies. The US, allegedly the home of responsible and prudent public finances, has outperformed the EU (and especially the eurozone) by deploying spendthrift, …Read more…
CDC pensions are better for the economy
At the TUC’s ABC of CDC conference, my good friend Bernard Casey of Warwick University asked Gregg McClymont, the Shadow Pensions Minister, the sources of the superior projected performance of CDC compared to individual DC. “Different speakers have emphasised the “main” advantage of…Read more…
Making up lost ground on pay
What is happening to workers’ pay is becoming one of the central arguments in the run up to the general election with the Government making much of the latest statistics on earnings and inflation. The collapse in the world price of oil has forced inflation on the CPI measure down to 0.5% while…Read more…