On Monday, Finance Ministers from EU member states will meet for the first time since French President Francois Hollande instructed his Finance minister to stop obstructing the Austro-German push for a broad-based financial transactions tax (FTT) , and…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 145,000 people using food banks because of benefit delays
I have difficult feelings whenever I see a report about the Trussell Trust. On the one hand, I admire them more than any other charity (and I kick myself if I get to the check-out at the Co-op and realise I’ve forgotten to include a tin for the food bank). But on the other hand…Read more…
Web links for 22nd January 2015
Training is essential in the labour market of today and tomorrow Skills and qualifications are needed more than ever and at every level, writes unionlearn’s Tom Wilson. The number of jobs needing no qualifications fell from 28% in 2006 to 23% in 2012; jobs requiring a degree rose from 20% to…Read more…
While the ECB print money, was ex-Governor Lord King calling for fiscal stimulus in the UK?
On Monday evening at the London School of Economics, Lord King, former Governor of the Bank of England, and Sir Alan Budd, former chief economist at HM Treasury and a founder member of the Monetary Policy Committee, had ‘a conversation about central banking’ with Professor Charles Goodhart in the…Read more…
Today’s employment figures (Jan 2015)
I have a post up at Left Foot Forward, looking at today’s labour market statistics. What seems to be happening is that the quality of employment is improving, but the increases in employment and falls in unemployment are slowing down. The prospects for earnings are still quite poor: at the…Read more…
100 claimants with mental health problems have their benefits stopped every day
Figures obtained by the Methodist Church from the Department of Work and Pensions have revealed that claimants thought to be unfit for work due to mental health problems are disproportionately and increasingly likely to have their benefits stopped under sanctions. The DWP’s own figures show that in…Read more…
£1billion a year essential for new flood defences
£1billion a year must be spent on flood defences over the next decade to cope with the rising threat of flooding, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and campaigners like Friends of the Earth. In a new initiative, they argue for an end to building new homes in flood-risk areas,…Read more…
Can we make 2015 the year of good work?
What is a good company? This morning, the Co-operative Bank announced an update of its ethical policy based on responses from 74,000 customers and staff. As a result, the bank will not lend to companies involved in irresponsible gambling, payday lendin…Read more…
Could the Greeks bring us gifts this Sunday?
This Sunday, the Greek people go to the polls in what must be one of the most important elections not just for Greece but for Europe as a whole. What is at stake is the future of democratic control of the economy, and the European establishment’s love affair with austerity. Nowhere in Europe…Read more…
Are the improvements in the labour market recovery being overstated?
Employment levels may be rising to record levels; however, this is partly a result of the rising numbers in the working population. The employment rate at 73.0 per cent only recently returned to its pre-crisis peak; whereas the 6.0 per cent unemploymen…Read more…
What more will it take to get corporate courts out of the EU-US trade deal?
This week, the European Commission finally released the results of the consultation forced on it nearly a year ago about Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the EU-US trade deal. While …Read more…
IMF: looking on the bright side, or the ‘right side’?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) doesn’t have a fantastic reputation around the world for the damage it did to developing and Asian economies during the years of the neoliberal ‘Washington consensus’. Confessing to getting its analysis of the Greek economy catastrophically…Read more…
Growing funding crisis in local government threatens public services
A growing funding crisis in local government is threatening the future of local public services in England. According to new analysis published today in Austerity Uncovered significant cuts have already been made to statutory adult social care and children’s services – with more cuts to come….Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: Most Remploy workers never got another job
In 2012 the government closed down the subsidy for the disabled workers in more than fifty Remploy factories around the country. By September 2013 all but three had closed; the GMB estimates that 2,700 workers lost their jobs. Some of those weren’t disabled; the House of Commons library estimates…Read more…
Employers named and shamed for not paying – a warning for retail.
The government has today named another 37 employers who have failed to pay the proper minimum wage. Between them they owed £177,000 to their workers* This brings the total named this year to 92. It is good to see those who don’t meet the legal minimum requirement being publicly named in this…Read more…
Core inflation is very far from “relatively stable”
There’s a lot of “good deflation” stories in the media today. (‘Almost certainly’ so, according to the FT.) One of the common themes sets the large fall in headline inflation against a rise on the month in ‘core’ inflation (i.e. inflation excluding energy,…Read more…
Wall Street or Main Street? US Democrats plan ‘high-roller fee’
For years we’ve been told that a Robin Hood Tax in Europe or the UK won’t work because the US will never implement one. That day is, admittedly, still a way off. But this week, senior Democrats in the House of Representatives took a massive step forward, with the senior Democrat on the…Read more…
Deutsche Bank U-turn on deflation
At 0.5%, CPI inflation in December fell below the consensus forecast (0.7%) and way below the Bank of England’s November Inflation Report forecast for 1.0%. This is approaching deflationary territory, and I set out my own views yesterday. Understandably the government is desperately trying to…Read more…
Time for energy democracy
How much more coal, oil and gas including shale gas can we continue to burn and still have a 50:50 chance of keeping the rise in global average temperatures below 2 degrees C? The Coalition’s Infrastructure Bill would make it legally binding on government to “Maximise the economic…Read more…
19 days pay a year lost through missed lunch breaks
Long live the lunch break – its under pressure and its worth defending. Work would be a more stressful and boring place without it and less productive too. Yet a new study* commissioned by a well-known cheese manufacturer published today suggested that UK workers skipping their lunch break…Read more…