The other week I heard something astonishing. People say that they are prejudiced but only at times where there's a queue for housing, schools, food and jobs. In other words, all of the necessary things all of us need to make our proper contribution to our society. Presumably, they are no longer prejudiced when it is no longer necessary to access the queue for housing, schools, food and jobs.
I am reminded of Mark Twain's view of bankers, which is remarkably similar to our people who express this prejudice with conditions. 'A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.'
These people who express this 'conditional' prejudice seem able to state that immigrants are simultaneously taking their jobs and also spongeing off our benefit system, which is very clever of them.
All political parties have robust very anti-discrimination rules both in their party's constitution and also in their manifesto. The BNP (British National Party) pledge that they are not racist. Although, the BNP do not buy into the the idea that immigration is a valuable contribution to not just our public services but also to our communities. In the 1950's, immigration was very necessary as there was a huge number of vacancies that the indigenous Brits didn't seem able to fill, for one reason or another.
Many of these West Indian families have settled here and despite their encountering prejudice, even while they were in the process of helping us heal our broken post war, nearly bankrupted Britain, they went on to grow their communities. A substantial number of them grew businesses and grew local employment. Pretty well all of them started at the bottom, cleaning public toilets, hospitals and schools.
UKIP have recently done very well in elections. Perhaps the same UKIP voters were well aware that using the Euro elections as a means of protest is a different thing to voting UKIP in a parliamentary election. Otherwise, they would need to be certain that they are OK with paying to go and see their doctor, having their paid annual leave reduced to 14 days, having Employment Acts amended so that they have fewer rights of redress than now.
7 December 2014
The Autumn Statement?
Remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years? Like the enormous supercomputer's answer '42' the government is not going to like the answer because it has been asking the wrong question.
The question the government should be asking is, how can we regenerate demand? They don't ask this question for two reasons.
The answer to our problems, in part, is to increase demand. After this has been achieved, the government can quite rightly focus on reducing the deficit and debt.
For demand to increase, a very sizeable number of extra people have to be earning a lot more than the National Minimum Wage. The 2014 (current rate) is £6.50, with 18-20 year olds receiving £5.13, under 18 year olds receiving £3.79 and apprentices receiving £2.73 per hour.
Add to that, the number of people on either temporary, short-term and of course zero hour contracts, then it is small wonder that such a large number of people are effectively frozen out of the plan to move Britain forward. A Britain fuelled only by Black Fridays. And it is small wonder that the economy is so slow to move out of recession into a recovery, of sorts.
There is a compelling business argument to move people up, in these income brackets, to receive what is called the Living Wage. The UK Living Wage for outside of London is currently £7.85 per hour. The London Living Wage is currently £9.15 per hour.
Even Boris doesn't view this as unpalatable, it's just that all these years employers have been claiming it would bankrupt the country and also cost jobs. That seems to have changed. For productivity to change, workers need to see that there is a future for them. Otherwise, why bother? They can surely get more on benefits? The government's argument seems to be that benefits are far too attractive!
An inconvenient truth for the government is that sadly, working for a living, in many cases, isn't not only not attractive, but also not viable. When you are lucky enough to leave benefits behind and get a job, you are pushed towards a financial cliff of around a £300 to £600 shortfall while you have your benefit stopped and you wait for your first salary. Looking at it from a coalition government perspective, the best plan is to cut social benefits on the pretext that these are too high. It doesn't occur that salaries and wages might be too low.
Just as we think we're hearing a new spring of worker appreciation from Boris, winter draws on from the CBI.
Labour’s rather modest commitment to raising the national minimum wage (NMW) to £8 per hour by 2020 should it win the next general election, has been condemned by business groups like the CBI.
This is at the same time where bankers are given millions of pounds in bonuses to deliver a bank from 2011 to 2012 with no significant improvement whatever. The Libor scandal has further undermined trust in banks. Barclays has been singled out for fiddling the Libor rate to increase its profits.
The deputy governor of the Bank of England went so far to call the Libor market a "cesspit" which seems to imply that Barclays is not the only bank "at it!" These same people who line their own pockets also seem bent on denying hard working people of the chance of earning decent money for extra effort, These bonus laden bankers, who often also get their income tax paid for them as well, seem oblivious to the thought of even 'setting a moral example'.
Contrast this to families who have had their salaries frozen for 5 years, it is clear that 'setting a moral example' is something that the low paid, hard working people alone must comply with.
A little bit less 'we're all in this together' then?
Google, Starbucks and Amazon avoid paying any UK tax at all, due to fancy fiscal footwork. Starbucks alone paid £20 million back to the UK government in 2012. So out of their $13 billion revenue they will get to keep $12.9 billion. We Brits really drive a hard bargain!
Suppose the Chancellor succeeds in taxing all these companies' profits at just 10% each? (Just under half of the income tax % of someone earning £25,000 per year).
That's still a lot of new hospitals and schools.Also libraries we could re-open (that the Coalition government closed from 2010 onwards).
Wouldn't the government be doing us all a favour as tax payers if they helped the poor keep more of their income? Not enough income for poor people means that we force them to choose the rip-off pay day loan companies that are unbelievably allowed to advertise on ITV with interest rates of 1700% APR. These legal loan sharks, suck any benefit that the government may have given them.
The government could also do the community a power of good by:
If it sticks in the craw of this coalition government that they're actually giving a helping hand to low paid, hard working people, then they could at least console themselves that it would actually do the demand-starved businesses in this country a big favour.
Consider:
How can we create an environment where we can deliver income tax Black Friday give-aways just before the election so we can get in again?
The question the government should be asking is, how can we regenerate demand? They don't ask this question for two reasons.
- They won't like the answer
- They see low paid working families benefiting as being anti-recovery.
The answer to our problems, in part, is to increase demand. After this has been achieved, the government can quite rightly focus on reducing the deficit and debt.
For demand to increase, a very sizeable number of extra people have to be earning a lot more than the National Minimum Wage. The 2014 (current rate) is £6.50, with 18-20 year olds receiving £5.13, under 18 year olds receiving £3.79 and apprentices receiving £2.73 per hour.
Add to that, the number of people on either temporary, short-term and of course zero hour contracts, then it is small wonder that such a large number of people are effectively frozen out of the plan to move Britain forward. A Britain fuelled only by Black Fridays. And it is small wonder that the economy is so slow to move out of recession into a recovery, of sorts.
There is a compelling business argument to move people up, in these income brackets, to receive what is called the Living Wage. The UK Living Wage for outside of London is currently £7.85 per hour. The London Living Wage is currently £9.15 per hour.
Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too. There are now over 2,200 employees working for companies with contracts from the GLA who are benefiting from the London Living Wage.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
Even Boris doesn't view this as unpalatable, it's just that all these years employers have been claiming it would bankrupt the country and also cost jobs. That seems to have changed. For productivity to change, workers need to see that there is a future for them. Otherwise, why bother? They can surely get more on benefits? The government's argument seems to be that benefits are far too attractive!
An inconvenient truth for the government is that sadly, working for a living, in many cases, isn't not only not attractive, but also not viable. When you are lucky enough to leave benefits behind and get a job, you are pushed towards a financial cliff of around a £300 to £600 shortfall while you have your benefit stopped and you wait for your first salary. Looking at it from a coalition government perspective, the best plan is to cut social benefits on the pretext that these are too high. It doesn't occur that salaries and wages might be too low.
Just as we think we're hearing a new spring of worker appreciation from Boris, winter draws on from the CBI.
Labour’s rather modest commitment to raising the national minimum wage (NMW) to £8 per hour by 2020 should it win the next general election, has been condemned by business groups like the CBI.
This is at the same time where bankers are given millions of pounds in bonuses to deliver a bank from 2011 to 2012 with no significant improvement whatever. The Libor scandal has further undermined trust in banks. Barclays has been singled out for fiddling the Libor rate to increase its profits.
The deputy governor of the Bank of England went so far to call the Libor market a "cesspit" which seems to imply that Barclays is not the only bank "at it!" These same people who line their own pockets also seem bent on denying hard working people of the chance of earning decent money for extra effort, These bonus laden bankers, who often also get their income tax paid for them as well, seem oblivious to the thought of even 'setting a moral example'.
Contrast this to families who have had their salaries frozen for 5 years, it is clear that 'setting a moral example' is something that the low paid, hard working people alone must comply with.
A little bit less 'we're all in this together' then?
Google, Starbucks and Amazon avoid paying any UK tax at all, due to fancy fiscal footwork. Starbucks alone paid £20 million back to the UK government in 2012. So out of their $13 billion revenue they will get to keep $12.9 billion. We Brits really drive a hard bargain!
Suppose the Chancellor succeeds in taxing all these companies' profits at just 10% each? (Just under half of the income tax % of someone earning £25,000 per year).
That's still a lot of new hospitals and schools.Also libraries we could re-open (that the Coalition government closed from 2010 onwards).
Wouldn't the government be doing us all a favour as tax payers if they helped the poor keep more of their income? Not enough income for poor people means that we force them to choose the rip-off pay day loan companies that are unbelievably allowed to advertise on ITV with interest rates of 1700% APR. These legal loan sharks, suck any benefit that the government may have given them.
The government could also do the community a power of good by:
- injecting cash into development grants for licenced Credit Unions.
- taking away the licences of all payday loan companies who charge above 40% APR.
If it sticks in the craw of this coalition government that they're actually giving a helping hand to low paid, hard working people, then they could at least console themselves that it would actually do the demand-starved businesses in this country a big favour.
Consider:
Britain should move toward being a fair and equal opportunity society
'A fair days' pay for a fair days' work'.Surely, if we did that, won't we all be better off in the end?
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