Boris Johnson faces legal threat to London Living Wage campaign November 5, 2012 MAYOR Boris Johnson yesterday announced that the London Living Wage – the amount required to meet basic living costs – has increased from £8.30 to £8.55 per hour, substantially higher than the national minimum wage of £6.19 per hour. But his call for all local authorities to pay the higher sum could be illegal, according to [...]
London has never been this important to the UK economy | City A.M. March 17, 2013 IT is an astonishing story. London’s share of the UK’s economic output has just reached an all-time high of 21.9 per cent. Yes, that’s right, despite the crisis, and the City’s woes, London accounts for more of Britain’s economy that at any time in recorded history. The last time it came close was in 1911, [...]
Will 2012 be remembered by the public as a good year for the coalition government? December 20, 2012 YES David Skelton It’s been a tough year for so many people – the cost of living continues to rise and the economy continues to flat-line at best. Given that background, it might seem odd to argue that 2012 has been a good year for the coalition. But it has. Indeed, I would argue that [...]
The chancellor must stop tinkering and face up to his UK deficit failure December 4, 2012 TODAY is not going to be George Osborne’s finest day as chancellor – whatever he does and whatever he says. He is veering wildly off course in his plans to eliminate the deficit and to start to get our soaring national debt under some semblance of control. As always, the first step to addressing a [...]
High childcare costs needn’t give you a case of baby blues November 25, 2012 RISING childcare costs are deterring British mothers from returning to work. According to a 2011 Eurostat survey, 48.8 per cent of women with three or more children are in employment in the UK, compared with 71.3 per cent in the Netherlands and 68.2 in Finland. But family formation patterns have changed over the past few [...]
The government should learn from big companies on local pay policy October 30, 2012 THE Heseltine Review, written by former deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine is published today. It recommends how growth might be spurred across the country by public sector bodies interacting more effectively with the private sector. One essential part of this plan – although unfortunately not included by Heseltine – is reform of how public sector [...]
Westminster think-tank calls for end to national pay bargaining September 3, 2012 PAYING government workers the same as local private sector employees could save £6.3bn and create more than a quarter of a million new jobs, a Westminster think-tank claims this morning. Public sector workers are often paid considerably more than in equivalent private sector jobs in their area, Policy Exchange says. The report argues that wages [...]
Welcome to the New Normal: Pay can go down as well as up September 17, 2012 WE in the West are not used to getting poorer. Ever since the industrial revolution put to an end to millennia of stagnation, and barring catastrophes such as world wars, or short recessions, a belief in perpetual progress and ever rising incomes has become a defining characteristic of the psyche of all developed nations. Yet [...]
Great boost to the economy – but public still feeling pain October 25, 2012 IT is not every day that the British economy gives us cause to celebrate, so we should all make the most of yesterday’s excellent third quarter GDP growth figures. The economy bounced back by one per cent compared with the second quarter, which was very good going by any measure. The figures need to be [...]
Most workers unaware of automatic pensions September 9, 2012 MILLIONS of British workers do not realise they are about to be automatically enrolled into pension schemes, according to a Scottish Widows study out today. Within the next month staff at the largest UK firms will be automatically put into a pension scheme, unless they opt out – yet 52 per cent of workers, or [...]