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 [...]
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 [...]
How income tax has become such a nightmare for so many October 29, 2012 WHENEVER you hear a politician promising that a painful measure will be purely temporary, run for the woods, tin hat in hand. The most painful of all policies, the income tax, was first introduced in Britain as an emergency measure to pay for the Napoleonic wars. From the beginning, as Kwasi Kwarteng and Priti Patel, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
TUC and NEF claims on local pay criticised July 15, 2012 PLANS to vary public sector wages by region could hurt both jobs and output, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and New Economics Foundation (NEF) have claimed today. The rationale for the plan is that wages and the cost of living vary widely across the country – the familiar London weighting is a blunt example of [...]
ECB rejects Greece’s bailout negotiation July 2, 2012 THE GREEK government should stop wasting time and money trying to renegotiate its bailout deal, and focus on implementing reforms to get its economy back on a path to growth, a top European Central Bank (ECB) official said yesterday. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras wants to ease some of the tough austerity conditions attached to the [...]
Britain must embrace 30pc tax revolution to boost growth May 21, 2012 IT is time for Britain to make a vital choice. Our economy is stagnant, with unemployment at horrendous levels, crippled by excessive public spending and a punitive tax system. There are two options. We can either tweak the status quo – try to keep a lid on spending, reform bits of the public sector and [...]