Recent Articles

Is public sector pay really higher than private as Cameron claims?

by Nicola Smith     June 29, 2011 at 10:56 am

Yesterday afternoon the Prime Minister stated that according to the ONS, “average gross pay in the public sector is now higher than in the private sector”.

The implication is that overly generous pay justifies the pay freeze, increased pension contributions and heightened risks of redundancy that workers across the public sector are currently being asked to bear.

But as I have previously argued (and TUC analysis has previously shown) to claim that pay across the public sector is outstripping private sector earnings is simply wrong.
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Is Britain mostly middle class or working class?

by Sunny Hundal     June 29, 2011 at 10:33 am

A new report by the research group BritainThinks, launched today, says that a majority of Britains see themselves as middle-class rather than working class.

Their (weighted) online poll of 2,000 people suggested that 71% of people place ourselves in one of the ‘middle class’ categories.

More specially, they asked:
If you had to say which social class you belong to, which would it be?
- Upper
- Upper Middle
- Middle
- Lower Middle
- Working
- Not Sure

BritainThink’s Deborah Mattinson told me:

It’s supported by focus groups where anecdotal evidence tells me people have changed: more confident about saying middle, more concerned about being ‘working’ as our survey, published this week, shows

My whole point is that being middle class is nowadays less about work and more about lifestyle (cafetiere etc.)

This chimes with a survey by YouGov last year that produced similar results.

At the time, Yougov also found that three-quarters of those polled considered an annual salary of £20,000 to signify working class while the majority set the income for the middle classes at between £40,000 and £60,000.

That would put most people in the working class category by income. But the key point BritainThinks emphasise is that income alone isn’t enough to determine class. Which is why they ask what social class people think they belong to.

But it’s not so clear-cut.

When the categories of class are expanded, then more people slot themselves in the working class category.

A poll by Policy Exchange earlier this year found that 48% of people percieved themselves as working class (36% working class, 12% upper working class). Only 42% perceived themselves to be middle class (17% lower middle class, 23% middle class, 2% upper middle class).

Amongst ABC1 people 55% self-identified as middle class, 38% as working class. Amongst C2DEs, 62% self-identify as working class, 28% as middle class.

Those questions were also more based around income.

In other words you can get different answers to the class question depending on how you divide up the segments.

That said, it still seems clear a majority of Britons don’t see themselves as working class any more.

Tories plan to ban abortion charities on advising women

by Sunny Hundal     June 29, 2011 at 9:30 am

The assault on organisations offering independent abortion advice, counselling and services will intensify, as we feared.

It seems the government is determined to restrict basic abortion rights.

The Guardian reports today:

Charities which provide abortions could be stripped of their ability to also counsel women, under plans being considered by the government.
…
The announcement has sparked alarm among abortion providers who warned the change would delay women accessing the treatment they needed and insisted there was no evidence that the current system was not working.

Charities including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes offer the compulsory counselling women must undertake before they make a decision on termination.

The Department of Health are also pushing for the amendments by Nadine Dorries and Frank Field to become a reality without the need for a vote in parliament, as we pointed out last week.

To no surprise, Dorries welcomes this on her own blog.

I believe that for the purpose of clarity and in order that any change cannot be easily reversed in the future, that the provision requires primary legislation. I have sought a meeting with the Secretary of State to discuss how we can best meet our joint objectives in the full knowledge that this amendment has huge public support”

She not only want to push it through without a vote, she wants to make it much harder for a future Labour government to reverse these changes.

Update: Marina S has an excellent model letter on her blog that you can send to Anne Milton or the Dept of Health.

Ed Miliband needs to be braver, by supporting the union strikes

by Sunny Hundal     June 29, 2011 at 8:40 am

I was disappointed by Ed Miliband’s unwillingness to support the unions yesterday, in their fight to maintain pension schemes.

I’m sure the unions expected it, since they did not offer any criticism in response. But this is an electoral mistake for the Labour leader.

And it ignores the very analysis that he offered during the Labour leadership.
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The worst fall in household income since 1977

by Richard Exell     June 28, 2011 at 3:06 pm

The squeeze on families’ spending is still biting, with today’s Quarterly National Accounts showing that in the first quarter of 2011 there was a 0.8 per cent fall in “household disposable income” – that is, the money we have for spending and saving.

Compared with the first quarter of 2010, the fall was 2.7 per cent, the worst since the third quarter of 1977. Today, the ONS also published the results for the 2010 calendar year, which also show a 0.8% fall – also the worst since 1977.
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Diane Abbott attacks no-vote on abortion rules

by Sunny Hundal     June 28, 2011 at 2:00 pm

Labour’s Shadow Public Health Minister Diane Abbott today criticised the Government’s proposals to push through sweeping changes to abortion without a Parliamentary debate or a vote.

We pointed out last week that Frank Field MP (Labour) and Nadine Dorries MP (Cons) are trying to push their amendments on abortion through Parliament without even a vote.

Diane Abbott said:

It’s wrong for the Government to go about these sweeping changes without a proper debate and proper scrutiny in Parliament. I am deeply concerned that nobody has voted for this.

I think the way the Government is going about these changes, behind closed doors and without discussion with women and in parliament is showing arrogant disregard for millions of women and families across the country.

If the Government wants to change this, the public must be given a say, and Parliament must be given a vote.

The Department of Health also indicated it was considering a broader ban on counselling by abortion clinics, so that religious nutjobs such as Life can take their place.

The TaxPayers Alliance and their disingenuous polling

by Unity     June 28, 2011 at 11:50 am

Today, the ‘Tax Payers’ Alliance’ are touting a new opinion poll which, so they claim, ‘reveals that the public support billions in spending cuts to foreign aid, high speed rail, trade union funding and a Green Investment bank’.

The poll, itself, is pretty much standard TPA fare – a stream of questions asking whether the public would support cutting expenditure on thing that appear to be pretty expensive but about which the majority of the public know and understand far too little to make anything that remote resembles an informed choice.
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Labour grassroots rebel against Gen Sec “fix”

by Sunny Hundal     June 28, 2011 at 9:56 am

Reports that senior Labour party officials have already “fixed” who will be next General Secretary before a short-list has been drawn up, has come under vociferous attack by the grassroots.

Yesterday, Dan Hodges at the New Statesman revealed that Chris Lennie was already chosen by senior party officials, even though the selection process hadn’t quite finished.

That report attracted an avalanche of criticism directed at the party.

LabourList editor Mark Ferguson wrote:

What is happening here is a classic clash between the old politics of stitch-ups and the new politics of transparency. The latter had better win. Attempts to brief an inevitability campaign wont impress those who want to see the party turn over a new leaf. Insider briefings that seek to override party democracy is exactly what we need to move beyond.

Labour members deserve better than this. Now it’s time for Ed to prove that his promises mean something.

He was echoed by the popular grassroots activist Johanna Baxter, also a member of Labour NEC:

Who knows who Ed’s choice is – I certainly don’t. But if he’s serious about his commitment to Refounding Labour, to changing our party to give greater power back to the members, I wouldn’t have thought he would have wanted the NEC to be excluded from, or cajoled, in this process.

The (departing) Fabian Society General Secretary Sunder Katwala also weighed in this morning:

So it may be that Hodges’ senior party sources aim to persuade rival candidates to withdraw ahead of the contest. But this idea expressed in the piece of excluding strong contenders in case they might prove more impressive at interview in their vision of the role should be flagged clearly offside – and explicitly rejected by the leader and NEC.

Elsewhere, Jon Lansman at Left Futures also deplores the stitch-up.

A lesson from Greece: you can’t run a government without taxes

by Richard Murphy     June 28, 2011 at 9:36 am

I’ve been reflecting on the situation in Greece and have pointed out that much of what is happening is the inevitable consequence of neoliberal thinking.

So too is the fact that Greece suffers endemic tax evasion. It is thought that 30% of revenues are lost to evasion in Greece, with the rich being especially prone to non-payment.

There is a reason for this: neoliberal thinking reinforces the often held view that the payment of taxes is detrimental to a person’s well-being.
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Support for unions, on pensions remains high

by Sunny Hundal     June 28, 2011 at 8:54 am

A new poll by Comres out today shows that a big majority of the public – 78% – agree that it is unfair for low paid public employees to pay the price for mistakes made by bankers before the financial crisis. Only 12% disagree.

This seems to be the strongest line of attack unions can take, and should probably be made at every interview opportunity.

The latest polling shows that public support for unions remains high despite desperate attempts by the media to malign them.

By 49% to 35%, people also agreed that public sector workers have a legitimate reason to strike.

By 46% to 35%, people believe that the Government would be wrong to change public sector pensions if most workers affected oppose them.

It seems attacks by the right-wing media on unions have had little impact so far on support for union stance on pensions.

But it was not all good news.

By a margin of 50% to 32%, people agree that the Government should ban public sector strikes unless there has been a turnout of at least 50% in the strike ballot.

In response to this – my suggestion would be that unions simply point to low turnouts at by-elections.

By 55% to 26%, people believe that public sector workers will not get public sympathy if they hold co-ordinated strikes.