Some years ago, a man fell off the top of the Empire State Building. Eyewitnesses in offices on the way down said he had a strangely complacent smile on his face; as he hurtled past, some heard his last words:
“So far, so good, so far, so good, so far…”
Employment statistics are notoriously a ‘lagging indicator’ [...]

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This is what makes the current political situation so frustrating.  Reading this week’s editorial in The Spectator, it is clear that the right haven’t got anything coherent or of any interest to say on the economy. The genius who wrote this rejects calls for fairer taxes to revive the public finances.  The alternative: cut government waste [...]

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Extraordinary intervention by David Blanchflower.  I’ve been thinking what to say about his comments but he pretty much says it all. 
Blanchflower is often described as an inflation ”dove” by reporters suggesting that he thinks growth is more important than rising prices.  He rejects that arguing that the Bank’s remit is to prevent inflation falling below the 2% target as [...]

Filed under: Macro-economic policy | 2 Comments »

Here we go again.  Struggling investment fund Hendersons Group is moving its HQ to Ireland to escape the barbaric way we tax businesses in the UK.  That just adds to the vast flow of firms that the City and the CBI repeatedly tell us will quit.  Er, in fact, just three this year.  Maybe they’ll all [...]

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The World Health Organisation has reported that it is within the possibilties of public policy to reduce health inequalities within a generation. A key part of their proposed solution is ‘Fair Employment and Decent Work’. Given the Conservative Party’s recent interest in highlighting the ongoing inequalities in UK health, I look forward to hearing their [...]

Filed under: Inequality, Labour market, Quality of work | No Comments »

The broadcast media this morning are spinning the pay figures from Income Data Services as a sign that inflation is now driving up wages.  They’ve even found some ill-informed and/or self-interested pundits to claim this is the case.  As I posted yesterday, the figures don’t show this at all.  There’s a very balanced report on [...]

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Jeremy Paxman is appalled that middle class white men are facing ongoing discrimination in the television industry.  As the Fawcett Society has noted, the problem doesn’t exist in the first place, and unsurpsisingly it is women working in the media who are in the minority.  On the other hand, real labour market injustice is not [...]

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The latest figures from Income Data Services show that pay settlements between April and July represented a 3.5% rise in salaries. Hardly inflation busting.
The figures also show how diverse and responsive the UK’s pay bargaining process now is, with some sectors, such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals settling at around 4.5% while retail and the not-for-profit sectors are sticking at [...]

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Women are more likely than men to be paid less than the minimum wage, and migrant women the most likely of all. As The Guardian has reported, research we published last week leads us to believe that around 35,000 newly arrived women accross the UK are facing illegal poverty wages. This isn’t surprising - evidence of [...]

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Welcome to the ToUChstone blog. This is an informal blog by TUC staff about policy issues that are in the news, or that ought to be.

Filed under: Blogging | 1 Comment »