The TUC is putting the issues of low pay, poor job security and increasing living costs in the spotlight with Fair Pay Fortnight. Here is a contact centre worker’s personal account of being employed…Read more…
#TTIP: battle hots up over NHS and workers’ rights
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom was in London yesterday, and there was a lot of talk about the EU-US trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In particular, as has been the case for months, the hot topic wa…Read more…
Labour’s Plan for Business: a TUC response
Labour’s new industrial policy document, ‘A Better Plan for Britain’s Prosperity’, is an important step forward in thinking about the world of work in the coming years. I’ve just taken a quick look through the full 79 page document. There’s much that we knew before: Labour promises, for example, a…Read more…
Government cuts to legal aid made on the basis of no evidence, reveal Public Accounts Committee
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has released a report of their inquiry into the impact of the cuts to the civil legal aid budget, introduced under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO). The report provides a damning indi…Read more…
In a fast-changing world, how should a curriculum and assessment system enable all learners to achieve?
William Stewart is a reporter at the TES. Opinions on the kind of curriculum pupils should be taught have tended to become steadily more polarised in recent years. On the one side is the…Read more…
Germans showing solidarity with Greeks
If you get your news from the papers or broadcasters, you’d think that the dispute over Greek austerity and debt is a national struggle between (primarily) Greece and Germany. In reality, of course, this is simplistic and wrong. The German government – and in particular the CDU members…Read more…
We should worry if excessively low inflation persists
CPI Inflation is currently at its at the lowest level since this measure of inflation began (1996). This is wrongly being spun as purely good news. Here’s what the bank of England actually says about undershooting its inflation target (my capitals) “The inflation target of 2% is expressed in terms…Read more…
Energy efficiency: Small businesses certainly don’t have money to burn
The UK’s largest small business organisation, the UK Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), is campaigning and lobbying to help small and microbusinesses to become more energy efficient. It’s an organisation with over 200,000 businesses and is concerned to help them to reduce emissions, become low…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 58 per cent of benefit cuts will hit working families
As we come up to the election, the government’s plans for benefit cuts are going to be a vital issue. The reality of this policy is that most of these cuts have hit families in working poverty, but the politics of this debate mean that the key issue is whether the government can persuade…Read more…
What David Cameron should do if he’s serious about getting Britain’s workers a pay rise
Politics is a funny business isn’t it? David Cameron has presided over the longest squeeze on living standards since Victoria was on the Throne. And yet there he was on Tuesday getting up at the British Chambers of Commerce, less than 90 days away from a general election, and saying with an…Read more…
UK household debt: still amongst the highest in the world
With the publication of the McKinsey report, Debt and (not much) deleveraging, debt is back in the news. But while McKinsey (an ultra-prestigious consultancy) appears to seek deleveraging, the UK is poised to head in the opposite direction. As widely r…Read more…
Why Cameron’s belief in freedom doesn’t extend to workers
If David Cameron really wants workers to get a pay rise, then he’s got a funny way of going about it. Over the last five years we have seen a sustained attack on workers’ rights and protection at…Read more…
Trumped up charges for organising a May Day rally in Turkey
Turkish liberal democracy is under assault from those supposed to uphold and protect it. Ordinary, law-abiding trade unionists are being penalised and violently attacked for legitimate and peaceful…Read more…
A qualified workforce – what was said
Alan Thomson is editor of InTuition magazine. The first seminar in ATL’s Developing collaborative expertise in the FE sector programme took place on 30 January 2015 at ATL’s offices in…Read more…
Yes, leaders, it is worth appealing to a core green vote
More than a quarter (28%) of electors surveyed this January said, “I could not vote for this party if they did not have a strong policy on tackling climate change”, according to a new ComRes poll. Across the spectrum, the party climate “switchers” were 18% of Conservatives, 33% of Labour and 35% of…Read more…
STUDY EXPLODES EU MYTH
A study by two academics has shown that the idea that most of our legislation comes from the EU is a complete myth and, far from producing too much legislation, the EU is only producing a small…Read more…
TUC Economic Quarterly Report 6
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…