The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) seems to have won a landslide in this weekend’s General Election, displacing the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which, more than any other around the world, represented liberal capitalism. The DPJ is not a socialist party by any means, but in today’s crisis-ridden world, its victory is still enormously important [...]

Filed under: Politics, Recession | 1 Comment »

QE or not QE – that is the question Chris Cook, LabourList's economics guru, explains how quantitative easing works and suggest a less banker friendly way of doing it. Professional Pensions defends the public sector Media guidelines: Reporting the TaxPayers’ Alliance The usual mix of insight and humour from the indispensable Other TaxPayers' Alliance Dave [...]

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With TUC Congress only weeks away we are all too busy to do much blogging at the moment, but this is too good to miss. There is of course much comment on Adair Turner’s splendid remarks on finance, including serious arguments on both sides. But then there is this: Howard Wheeldon, of the stockbroking firm [...]

Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

Today both the Morning Star and the Daily Express, from their very different perspectives, predict that we are in for an “autumn of discontent” as there are a number of possible strikes in the pipeline. I rather expect that there will be more of sightings of discontent in the next few days, given that even the Press Association’s [...]

Filed under: Labour market | Comments Off

Read the TUC Recession Report for August 2009 Our latest Recession Report concludes that long-term unemployment will continue to rise for a long time. This month, for the first time in this recession, the number unemployed over 6 months passed the 1 million mark, reaching 1,002,000 – it has been below that level since July [...]

Filed under: Earnings, Recession, Recession Report | 1 Comment »

The Guardian deserves much praise for Polly Curtis’s story today finding that 50% of private school pupils get A grades in their A levels. Polly writes that this is: “prompting claims that attempts to break the middle-class stranglehold on entry to higher education have failed this year.” (our emphasis). But going to private school does not [...]

Filed under: Inequality, Media, Middle Britain, Social mobility | 7 Comments »

The Migration Advisory Committee has published another report on reforms to the Points-Based System of migration, and the TUC’s response welcomes some of the steps proposed (we’ll issue a more detailed, considered response in due course) which could tighten up the protections against abuses of the migration system. As always, our concern is to prevent exploitation [...]

Filed under: Migration | 1 Comment »

Yesterday’s news that France and Germany  have moved out of recession gave us some much needed summer cheer. Both economies grew by 0.3% in the three months to the end of June, surprising commentators. Since, between them, Germany and France account for almost 48% of eurozone GDP , the eurozone itself fell by only 0.1% in the last quarter. [...]

Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Labour market, Recession | Comments Off

How many people want work but can’t get it? A lot more than you’d think. The unemployment figures never tell us the full story about recessions, the true measure of how many men and women are frozen out of jobs is always much higher. By the middle of 2009 there were four and a half [...]

Filed under: Labour market, Recession, Welfare | 2 Comments »

Today the latest labour market statistics show that during the period April – June 2009 unemployment hit 2,435,000, a national rate of 7.8%. This is a quarterly increase of 220,000, which is the 4th highest on record (the top three places were filled at the height of the 1980s recession and by the 244,000 increase [...]

Filed under: Labour market, Recession | Comments Off

At last, the gloves are off. After months of political discussion dominated by the expenses scandal – politics at its worst – a dogfight has begun between George Osborne and Peter Mandelson about the nature of progressive politics and, in particular, whether Labour or the Conservatives have the greater claim to that description.

Filed under: Politics | Comments Off

Don’t rush to judgment on performance of women in boardroom Ruth Sunderland challenges the latest research on women's apparent business failures. The study concluded that boards with women were better at monitoring and supervising the behaviour of executives, but that this was counterproductive at well-run companies, where it was allegedly correlated with lower profits and [...]

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