Owen Tudor
I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the
Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of
TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the
Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee.
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Posted on September 2nd, 2010 by Owen Tudor
In less than three weeks, the UN will hold a review summit on the Millennium Development Goals (set in 2000, they are due to be achieved in 2015 so we ought to be two thirds of the way there – and we aren’t). Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and International Development Secretary of State Andrew [...]
Filed under: International development, Transactions tax | No Comments »
Posted on August 26th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
There is one implication of today’s immigration statistics that might see the TUC and the Government in agreement. The number of asylum applications in the second quarter of 2010 was down by nearly a third, from 6,110 in the same quarter of 2009 to 4,365. And the main reason was that the number of people from Zimbabwe [...]
Filed under: Human rights, Migration | No Comments »
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 by Owen Tudor
According to the Sky News report of a Nick Clegg public question and answer session on Saturday, the Deputy Prime Minister “confirmed he was looking into the option of introducing a financial transaction tax – or so-called Robin Hood tax – on banks as a way of generating extra funds.”
Filed under: Transactions tax | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 8th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
Peter Boone has a paper in the Summer issue of CentrePiece which argues for restricting or redirecting aid to programmes such as education or health which can guarantee outputs. In part, he is arguing in line with the stated objective of the current DFID Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell – to change DFID’s expenditure pattern [...]
Filed under: International development | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 1st, 2010 by Owen Tudor
Two articles this weekend explain the nature of the crisis in the USA. In the Financial Times, Edward Luce writes a long article about what’s gone wrong with the American dream - not just the recession, but the great stagnation of the last thirty-forty years. And in the New York Times, Robert Shiller explains why jobs [...]
Filed under: Economics, Globalisation, Health, Middle Britain, Recession, Social mobility | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 1st, 2010 by Owen Tudor
One of the aspects of the coalition agreement that the TUC unambiguously welcomed was the plan to increase overseas aid spending to the UN target of 0.7% of GNI, and to put that commitment into law. It wasn’t a surprising commitment because it had been the policy of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats during [...]
Filed under: International development, Public spending | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 24th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
The debate rages in the Financial Times comment columns – should we continue the fiscal stimulus as the TUC argues, or cut the deficit as fast as possible, as the Coalition Government is doing? And it rages around the world. The latest paper from the US-based Center for Economic Policy and Research, “Alternatives to Fiscal [...]
Filed under: Economics, Public spending, Recession | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 22nd, 2010 by Owen Tudor
At the International AIDS Conference in Vienna this week, Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, the joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS, has called for a Robin Hood Tax to raise money for causes like the eradication of HIV/AIDS. He said: “The financial crisis should not be an excuse to flat-line or scale back. In fact, it is [...]
Filed under: International development, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 16th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
One of the things we believe a Robin Hood Tax could do is pay the bill for tackling climate change announced at Copenhagen last December – around $100 bn a year, globally – pretty much exactly a quarter of what the Robin Hood Tax is likely to raise globally. And it seems we’re not the [...]
Filed under: Environment, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 16th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
Two reports out this week at international level indicate that the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions is beginning to pile up support. First, the Leading Group for Innovative Financing to Fund Development (a body of 55 national governments including the UK) has published a report saying that a currency transactions tax of 0.005% would [...]
Filed under: Europe, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 5th, 2010 by Owen Tudor
OK, only the Austrian employers seem to have come out in favour recently, but it’s a start, and their reasons for supporting a financial transactions tax (FTT) are worth others thinking about: they want an FTT rather than a bank levy because it would be more easy to pass the costs of the latter on to consumers [...]
Filed under: Europe, Transactions tax | 5 Comments »
Posted on July 2nd, 2010 by Owen Tudor
Too good – if unoriginal - a headline to resist! Foreign Secretary William Hague has delivered the first of four promised speeches elaborating what he says will be a new strategic vision for Britain’s foreign policy. Most of today’s speech was old or borrowed, and little was identifiably blue. But there were some good new ideas too. [...]
Filed under: Europe, Globalisation, Politics | 1 Comment »
