[Puppets and voices by Peter Reynolds and Helen Casey.]
OUR RELATED STORIES:
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LATEST: Think you’re paying less tax now? The withdrawal of Working and Child Tax Credits leaves low earners paying a 73% marginal tax rate, and medium earners paying even more
...And this government says it cuts taxes for poor working households!
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RIP-OFF NEWS ROUND-UP, OUR PICK OF THE LAST WEEK'S MEDIA
Drug firm Novartis tried to 'scupper' trials of a cheaper version of eye medicine
Has Austerity caused the UK’s first decline in life expectancy in 20 years?
Kellogg's effectively paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2013, +more stories...
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YOU'RE FIRED?! We are already nearly the most easily fired people in the developed world
Only the US and Canada make it easier, says the OECD’s Worker Protection Index
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EYE OPENER: Housing Equity Withdrawal took off in 1979. Since then almost all UK growth has suspiciously equalled the amount we took out. Looks like it’s pensions next
Osborne’s new rules allow you to spend your entire pension pot now. Same mistake, different pot
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DID YOU KNOW? MPs are getting a 10% pay hike in May, to £74k
...and in 2010, 137 MPs put family members on parliament's payroll. Now it's soared to 167
GOOD DEBT
PENSION CRAZY
BANKSTER PAY
MPs' 2nd JOBS
TAX IS THEFT?!
FAILING SCHOOLS
AFFORDABLE NHS
1m WORK IN POVERTY
JAIL THE ACCOUNTANTS
RICKETS IS BACK
UN-NATIONALISED RAIL
LOW WAGE BRITAIN
BANK OF MUM & DAD
UK: A PRISONER OF CUTS
TAXING LIES
WATER CANNON BORIS
UNIVERSAL C.. OCKUP
FULL TIME JOBS? WHERE!
Friday, 13 December 2013
[Puppets and voices by Peter Reynolds and Helen Casey.]
OUR RELATED STORIES:
The Top 1% pay more income tax? ‘cos their income’s doubled since 1995 whilst bottom 90%'s has stagnated
Thursday, 12 December 2013
Rise of 'closet borrowers' who hide debts from their partners
An estimated 11 million people are not telling their partners or family the truth about their borrowing. This secrecy poses a risk to both their relationships and finances, warns the Debt Advisory Centre (DAC). One in ten of these "closet borrowers" owes more than £10,000. The DAC warns that keeping debt secret makes it impossible for households to manage their budgets, and borrowing through credit cards and payday lenders increases the risk. Londoners are the "most duplicitous", with nearly one in three hiding the true scale of their borrowing. But their neighbours in the wider south east were either more open with their families - or less honest to survey takers - with only 16 per cent admitting that they had secret debts. Younger borrowers keep more secrets than older, with around third of those between 25 and 44 holding hidden debt. TELEGRAPHLloyds fined record £28m for mis-selling: 100,000 may get compensation
The Financial Conduct Authority said that incentive schemes created a failure in its sales process between 2010 and 2012 where staff across the group's high street brands - Lloyds TSB, Bank of Scotland and Halifax - were put under pressure to hit targets to avoid being demoted. It said such incentive plans "can create a culture of mis-selling". The products included critical illness, income protection, life cover and "expenses on death" cover. Investments included personal investment plans, Individual Savings Accounts (Isas) and Open Ended Investment Companies (Oeics). The regulator said the banks persuaded customers to take out more protection cover than they needed. It could also be that customers were urged to invest in funds when this wasn't suitable for them. Salespeople got commissions as high as £1,600. TELEGRAPH
RBS fined $100m by US for deliberate Iran sanctions violations
The Royal Bank of Scotland has been fined $100m (£61m, 73m euros) by US regulators for deliberately violating US sanctions against Iran, Sudan, Burma, and Cuba. The settlement follows from a 2010 internal investigation by RBS into its historical US dollar payment processes and controls. The violations took place between 2005-09. Bank procedures removed location information on payments made to US financial institutions from countries like Iran and Cuba. RBS employees in the UK "received written instructions containing a step-by-step guide on how to create and route U.S. dollar payment messages involving sanctioned entities through the United States to avoid detection". In total, more than 3,500 transactions, totalling approximately $523m, were routed through New York banks in violation of US sanctions. BBC NEWS
Ofcom says TV payday loan adverts have risen sharply to 400,000 a year
Television viewers were exposed to nearly 400,000 payday loan adverts last year, according to the regulator, Ofcom. In 2011 there were 243,000 such adverts, increasing to 397,000 in 2012, a rise of 64%. On average, each adult viewer saw 152 such adverts in 2012, while children watched 70. Labour has already called for all such adverts to be banned during children's TV programmes. BBC NEWS
ONS figures show families spending more on heating and maintaining homes, with those on lower incomes cutting spending on food
The Office for National Statistics said a decline in disposable income since the banking crash had tightened the financial screw on the average household, which had £489 to spend in 2012, compared with £526.40 in 2006 after accounting for inflation. The ONS said the harsh winters of 2011 and 2012 were also likely to have played a part in driving up energy bills. For the lowest-income families the jump in costs meant they spent 25% of their income on housing, compared with 9% among the richest households. Overall, the richest 10% of homes spent an average of £1,065.60 a week and the poorest 10% spent £189.30 a week. Some of Britain's biggest retailers said the continuing squeeze on family budgets meant they were braced for a difficult Christmas. GUARDIAN
Fleeced by the pension sharks: Middlemen make a fortune duping elderly savers
Elderly savers are being stripped of thousands of pounds by middlemen when they retire, a report claims today. They are handing big chunks of their pension pots to insurers, brokers and financial advisers for transfer services they assumed were free. Losses on a £100,000 fund can be as high as £6,000. Every year, more than 400,000 retirees turn their pension pots into an income for life – an annuity – in a business worth £12billion. In four out of 15 cases examined by the consumer panel, firms claimed there was no charge. However, the pensioners were charged between £1,500 and £3,350 for moving their £100,000 pot. DAILY MAIL
MPs' pay: Politicians criticise 'inappropriate' 11% rise
Plans to award MPs an 11% pay rise have been criticised across Westminster, with one minister describing them as "utterly incomprehensible". Parliamentary watchdog Ipsa is set to recommend a rise of £7,600 to £74,000, to come in after the 2015 election. MPs currently earn a basic salary of £66,396 but the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is expected says that their pay has fallen behind in recent years and a substantial "one-off" rise is justified. Conservative defence secretary Philip Hammond said he would not personally be accepting the pay increase, saying "Whatever the rights and wrongs of whether MPs' pay is too high, too low, comparable to other people, at a time when we are asking people across the public sector - nurses, doctors, teachers - to accept pay restraint, members of Parliament have to be seen to be leading the way." BBC NEWS
Almost twice as many men get full £107 basic state pension as women, despite push to improve retirement income
Office of National Statistics figures show that as of September 2012, 80 per cent of men were getting the full basic state pension of £107.45-a-week, compared to just 46 per cent of women. This represents a fall from the 87 per cent and 48 per cent respectively who were entitled to the full amount in Autumn 2010, which was just after a rule change designed to ensure that more people can get the maximum. The ONS puts the still-high gap between men and women down to the fact women are more likely to have broken work histories or part-time work patterns and so didn't build up the full state pension entitlement. DAILY MAIL
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
Fee explains it all to KJ...
OUR RELATED STORIES:
Graphs at a glance: MPs are paid more than 95% of Britons, and that doesn't even include their expenses
Graphs at a glance: Absurd Oxbridge and private school over-representation in parliament
Sunday, 8 December 2013
In a previous post we complained about the coalition government's plan to reduce spending on public services to the lowest level since before 1948.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) provides a good (i.e. dreadful) example of this blind rush to cut costs.
Rather like someone looking for a miracle diet, the MoJ showed it was prepared to swallow anything to lose costs. Sadly this is the same with all the ministries chasing the government's strategy of cutting costs. They measure success by the number of pills they take, and not by the effectiveness of the resulting 'body shaping'. They rush because they know the pill-box may be taken away from them at the next election (though Labour say they will pop the same pills, so it is doubtful us ripped-off Britons will be any less ripped-off).
Outsourcers tempted by this careless slopping out of public sector contracts claim they improve services and lower costs by deploying their ninja-like private sector skills. In practice, their bright ideas are focussed on extracting profits.
Probably the key innovation the private sector brings is cutting staff pay and benefits. Cutting the pay of public sector staff is a very blunt instrument that could be done without outsourcing to the private sector. However governments dare not do this directly because the public sector workforce is better organised by unions to resist. Privatised employees are broken off from this mutual support and become easier prey. A report by IDS, who do independent research on employment issues, shows that the private sector pays worse in general, and exceptionally worse when it comes to female employees:
A stark example of this unthinking wage-cutting was exposed by the House of Commons’ Justice Committee inquiring into the Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) calamitous outsourcing: the provision of foreign language interpreters. Interpreters are required in courts and tribunals to help ensure non-English speaking defendants receive justice. Ironically interpreters are mainly freelance contractors - they are already 'private sector'. The MoJ seemed to simply want someone else to take on the task of cutting the interpreters' pay.
The startling incompetence with which the MoJ chose the outsourcer, Applied Language Solutions (ALS), had already been described in a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) in September 2012. The NAO observations suggest the MoJ seemed to take the “justice is blind” thing too literally. The NAO commentary reveals:
a) The MoJ ignored a report it itself had commissioned, that advised ALS was too small to take on such a big project. The report recommended giving ALS contracts worth no more than £1million a year, a small fraction of the actual £200 million plus value of the outsourcing deal over five years. The MoJ was too dazzled by ALS' cost cutting promises.
b) The MoJ was blindly impressed that a respected expert had given his views on ALS’ proposal, but had failed to find out what those views were. The NAO report states:
“The Ministry was partly influenced in this decision by the knowledge that ALS itself had sought the views of a specialist in Public Service Interpreting from Middlesex University, Mr Brooke Townsley. However, the Ministry did not ask to see Mr Townsley’s views in full and ALS did not tell the Ministry about what Mr Townsley described to us as his profound reservations about the validity of the proposed tiering system and about applying in-work assessments for interpreters who had recently completed their Diplomas in Public Service Interpreting.”
“Our efforts to obtain a full picture of the current effectiveness of interpreting services were hampered by the absence of any substantiation from frontline staff. In the course of our inquiry it became apparent that HMCTS [Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service] had issued an edict to its staff instructing them not to participate in our online consultation, established to invite direct observations of ALS performance, an approach which we had found productive in previous inquiries. We consider that the actions of the Ministry in this case were unhelpful and contrasted with the approach they took in our previous inquiries. We consider that their actions may have constituted a contempt of the House, but as we have sufficient evidence from other sources to make a reliable judgement, we have not asked the House to take further action on this matter, although we gave serious consideration to doing so.”
Having signed the MoJ contract in October 2011 the boss of ALS sold his business to Capita in December 2011. You may make of that hurried disposal what you will. Anyway, Mr Andy Parker, Joint Chief Operating Officer of Capita Plc, appearing in front of the Justice Committee described how the business worked in practice:
“We provide a booking portal. We give a service where we have a central complaints service. We ensure all the vetting is done. We ensure all the interpreters are correctly tiered and correctly qualified. We liaise with the court and then we provide a booking service for the courts on our IT. The courts make the request, either by telephone to our call centre or directly on to the portal, and then the interpreters have the ability to take those jobs without intervention by looking at our portal. If a job isn’t fulfilled by the portal, we would phone up a variety of interpreters based on their relevant skill sets. But on the basis that they don’t actually work for us we’re not really controlling who does what; we’re just making the job available.”
“ it is evident that some professional interpreters had registered with ALS despite having no intention of accepting work, and others had deliberately registered spoof identities, including a pet rabbit; this exposed the fact that ALS were automatically inviting all those who had registered on the supplier database to accept work, despite the company not having sought verification of their identities or credentials."
The report commented:
"The MoJ was, at best, naïve to view the new arrangements simply as an “outsourced booking process”. Interpreters had repeatedly raised significant concerns about the new terms and conditions under which they were expected to work"
The way some interpreters were being procured was stated in written evidence to the committee:
“Fortunately for ALS there are many immigrants in this country who are unemployed or in low paid jobs and speak reasonable conversational English. Though most of these do not comply with the educational and language training standards required for a Tier 2 interpreter, ALS has largely ignored these quality requirements and the MoJ has, so far, not asked the relevant questions. “
That the MoJ had already closed its mind to asking 'relevant questions' is shown by the then minister, Crispin Blunt, who said in Parliament on 12th March 2012
“Some of the problems, strangely enough, came from the interpreters who, on finding that under the new payment regime they could no longer earn six-figure salaries, as they could under the previous Administration, did not co-operate.”
Perhaps Blunt had confused interpreters with MPs topping up their incomes to six figures with expenses, employing spouses, and 'consultancy fees'. In written evidence to the Justice Committee inquiry Kasia Beresford, a professional interpreter, contradicted Blunt, stating:
“In my experience the real remuneration an interpreter working full time in an in-demand language and available 24 x 7 could earn was at the £15,000–£30,000 p.a. level. That is not attractive remuneration for graduates with additional specialist qualifications, taking on all the risks of self-employment and working unsociable hours. It is certainly not excessive."
Kasia Beresford’s written evidence (well worth reading) goes on to show the effective hourly rate net of travel expenses offered by Capita to professional interpreters was as low as £4.44 an hour. Less than the minimum wage.
The report states that the Ministry of Justice is achieving savings, but this is being done by Capita simply picking up the additional costs. While Capita losing money may seem like a rare case of justice at the MoJ, the report states:
"We are concerned that the existing arrangements are financially unsustainable in the sense that Capita TI is propping up the continuation of the Agreement, so the Department’s savings are effectively being secured at the company’s expense. There is a distinct risk that the MoJ will not be able to continue to realise the same level of cost savings in the future and that when the time comes to re-tender the contract there may be an insufficient supply of professional interpreters to furnish it. The MoJ would then be left with fewer savings and an enduringly poorer quality of service."
It is questionable whether the MoJ would worry about 'an enduringly poorer quality of service', as their priority is to cut costs. And from Capita's point of view even though it was left with a short term loss on supplying interpreters, with public sector revenues of £1.1billion in 2012-13 Capita can be confident of overall healthy profits.
Outsourcing, from schools to prisons to hospitals to justice, has been an effort by successive governments to cut costs and stuff public money into private sector profits regardless of the impact on public services.
In a previous post we complained about the coalition government's plan to reduce spending on public services to the lowest level since before 1948.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) provides a good (i.e. dreadful) example of this blind rush to cut costs.
Rather like someone looking for a miracle diet, the MoJ showed it was prepared to swallow anything to lose costs. Sadly this is the same with all the ministries chasing the government's strategy of cutting costs. They measure success by the number of pills they take, and not by the effectiveness of the resulting 'body shaping'. They rush because they know the pill-box may be taken away from them at the next election (though Labour say they will pop the same pills, so it is doubtful us ripped-off Britons will be any less ripped-off).
Outsourcers tempted by this careless slopping out of public sector contracts claim they improve services and lower costs by deploying their ninja-like private sector skills. In practice, their bright ideas are focussed on extracting profits.
Probably the key innovation the private sector brings is cutting staff pay and benefits. Cutting the pay of public sector staff is a very blunt instrument that could be done without outsourcing to the private sector. However governments dare not do this directly because the public sector workforce is better organised by unions to resist. Privatised employees are broken off from this mutual support and become easier prey. A report by IDS, who do independent research on employment issues, shows that the private sector pays worse in general, and exceptionally worse when it comes to female employees:
A stark example of this unthinking wage-cutting was exposed by the House of Commons’ Justice Committee inquiring into the Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) calamitous outsourcing: the provision of foreign language interpreters. Interpreters are required in courts and tribunals to help ensure non-English speaking defendants receive justice. Ironically interpreters are mainly freelance contractors - they are already 'private sector'. The MoJ seemed to simply want someone else to take on the task of cutting the interpreters' pay.
The startling incompetence with which the MoJ chose the outsourcer, Applied Language Solutions (ALS), had already been described in a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) in September 2012. The NAO observations suggest the MoJ seemed to take the “justice is blind” thing too literally. The NAO commentary reveals:
a) The MoJ ignored a report it itself had commissioned, that advised ALS was too small to take on such a big project. The report recommended giving ALS contracts worth no more than £1million a year, a small fraction of the actual £200 million plus value of the outsourcing deal over five years. The MoJ was too dazzled by ALS' cost cutting promises.
b) The MoJ was blindly impressed that a respected expert had given his views on ALS’ proposal, but had failed to find out what those views were. The NAO report states:
“The Ministry was partly influenced in this decision by the knowledge that ALS itself had sought the views of a specialist in Public Service Interpreting from Middlesex University, Mr Brooke Townsley. However, the Ministry did not ask to see Mr Townsley’s views in full and ALS did not tell the Ministry about what Mr Townsley described to us as his profound reservations about the validity of the proposed tiering system and about applying in-work assessments for interpreters who had recently completed their Diplomas in Public Service Interpreting.”
“Our efforts to obtain a full picture of the current effectiveness of interpreting services were hampered by the absence of any substantiation from frontline staff. In the course of our inquiry it became apparent that HMCTS [Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service] had issued an edict to its staff instructing them not to participate in our online consultation, established to invite direct observations of ALS performance, an approach which we had found productive in previous inquiries. We consider that the actions of the Ministry in this case were unhelpful and contrasted with the approach they took in our previous inquiries. We consider that their actions may have constituted a contempt of the House, but as we have sufficient evidence from other sources to make a reliable judgement, we have not asked the House to take further action on this matter, although we gave serious consideration to doing so.”
Having signed the MoJ contract in October 2011 the boss of ALS sold his business to Capita in December 2011. You may make of that hurried disposal what you will. Anyway, Mr Andy Parker, Joint Chief Operating Officer of Capita Plc, appearing in front of the Justice Committee described how the business worked in practice:
“We provide a booking portal. We give a service where we have a central complaints service. We ensure all the vetting is done. We ensure all the interpreters are correctly tiered and correctly qualified. We liaise with the court and then we provide a booking service for the courts on our IT. The courts make the request, either by telephone to our call centre or directly on to the portal, and then the interpreters have the ability to take those jobs without intervention by looking at our portal. If a job isn’t fulfilled by the portal, we would phone up a variety of interpreters based on their relevant skill sets. But on the basis that they don’t actually work for us we’re not really controlling who does what; we’re just making the job available.”
“ it is evident that some professional interpreters had registered with ALS despite having no intention of accepting work, and others had deliberately registered spoof identities, including a pet rabbit; this exposed the fact that ALS were automatically inviting all those who had registered on the supplier database to accept work, despite the company not having sought verification of their identities or credentials."
The report commented:
"The MoJ was, at best, naïve to view the new arrangements simply as an “outsourced booking process”. Interpreters had repeatedly raised significant concerns about the new terms and conditions under which they were expected to work"
The way some interpreters were being procured was stated in written evidence to the committee:
“Fortunately for ALS there are many immigrants in this country who are unemployed or in low paid jobs and speak reasonable conversational English. Though most of these do not comply with the educational and language training standards required for a Tier 2 interpreter, ALS has largely ignored these quality requirements and the MoJ has, so far, not asked the relevant questions. “
That the MoJ had already closed its mind to asking 'relevant questions' is shown by the then minister, Crispin Blunt, who said in Parliament on 12th March 2012
“Some of the problems, strangely enough, came from the interpreters who, on finding that under the new payment regime they could no longer earn six-figure salaries, as they could under the previous Administration, did not co-operate.”
Perhaps Blunt had confused interpreters with MPs topping up their incomes to six figures with expenses, employing spouses, and 'consultancy fees'. In written evidence to the Justice Committee inquiry Kasia Beresford, a professional interpreter, contradicted Blunt, stating:
“In my experience the real remuneration an interpreter working full time in an in-demand language and available 24 x 7 could earn was at the £15,000–£30,000 p.a. level. That is not attractive remuneration for graduates with additional specialist qualifications, taking on all the risks of self-employment and working unsociable hours. It is certainly not excessive."
Kasia Beresford’s written evidence (well worth reading) goes on to show the effective hourly rate net of travel expenses offered by Capita to professional interpreters was as low as £4.44 an hour. Less than the minimum wage.
The report states that the Ministry of Justice is achieving savings, but this is being done by Capita simply picking up the additional costs. While Capita losing money may seem like a rare case of justice at the MoJ, the report states:
"We are concerned that the existing arrangements are financially unsustainable in the sense that Capita TI is propping up the continuation of the Agreement, so the Department’s savings are effectively being secured at the company’s expense. There is a distinct risk that the MoJ will not be able to continue to realise the same level of cost savings in the future and that when the time comes to re-tender the contract there may be an insufficient supply of professional interpreters to furnish it. The MoJ would then be left with fewer savings and an enduringly poorer quality of service."
It is questionable whether the MoJ would worry about 'an enduringly poorer quality of service', as their priority is to cut costs. And from Capita's point of view even though it was left with a short term loss on supplying interpreters, with public sector revenues of £1.1billion in 2012-13 Capita can be confident of overall healthy profits.
Outsourcing, from schools to prisons to hospitals to justice, has been an effort by successive governments to cut costs and stuff public money into private sector profits regardless of the impact on public services.
Saturday, 7 December 2013
A train is dangerous if you run into its path or you refuse to get out of its way. Otherwise trains are perfectly useful and amiable. Rather like our amiable chancellor, George Osborne, into whose path the country placed itself when fleeing from the previous Labour government. George Osborne whose boyish smile eloquently smirks “How come they haven’t found me out yet?”A graph from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), a body created by the government in 2010 to provide independent economic forecasts, shines a light into a dark corner of Osborne’s mind. This graph shows Osborne’s current economic strategy will bring government consumption to the smallest share of GDP since before 1948.
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| Office of Budget Responsibility "Economic and Fiscal Outlook December 2013" |
“Government Consumption” includes money spent buying goods and services. It does not include transfers of money from one group of people (taken in taxes) to another (e.g. paid in benefits and pensions). Government Consumption includes paying for public services such as health, education, transport, justice, defence and the like.
Money is raised from a population in two ways:
a) Take money away from people (in the form of income tax; VAT; & other taxes)
b) Don’t give money to people in the first place (low pay lowers costs and boosts profits)
The income of 90% of Britons has stagnated for decades, through Labour and Tory governments alike. Plenty of money has been taken from the 90% in withheld pay.
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| Paris School of Economics http://g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/topincomes/ |
The vast contribution to the nation’s finances by the under-paid is hardly ever mentioned. Paying nurses, cleaners, shop assistants and social workers what they are actually worth in cash would cost businesses and government a fortune. Government consumption pays the 90% of Britons in kind by providing education, health, justice etc. It is the cheaper alternative to paying them enough to buy their health and education privately.
These cuts have nothing to do with 'benefits' - which are not part of "Government Consumption" spending. Osborne’s radical cuts are about taking away from ordinary Britons the public services they themselves already pay for by accepting poor wages and conditions. And it is not just the public services that are snatched away. These cuts also take away public sector jobs as numbers in the police, army, hospitals etc are reduced. And take away private sector jobs as the government cuts back on investing in infrastructure.
The reality in Britain: it is not the rich who subsidise the poor with what they give. It is the poor who subsidise the rich with what they do not take.
With Government Consumption falling to pre-1948 levels the Tory led government is simply keeping the national balloon afloat by throwing people out of the basket. A basket these same falling people paid for.8/12/13 Update: One of our readers has postulated the graph showing Government Consumption above is a 'lie'. We agree that it seems unbelievable. However the graph is a straight cut&paste from a government sponsored report. Click >>here<< and go to page 75 of the report (page 80 of the Adobe document). While we too hope it never happens, it shows what the coalition government intends.
A prime minister once said: "I see only one road, however difficult it may be and whatever further consideration it may require as one progresses from step to step, and that is the policy of separate areas."
That prime minister was Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd speaking in 1961 as he introduced apartheid in South Africa. Cuts to public services will increasingly mean if you can't afford to buy your own education, medical care, legal representation then you can't have it. Britain is in danger of heading for economic apartheid.
Friday, 6 December 2013
OUR RELATED STORIES:
The Bank of England admitted its £375bn Quantitative Easing gave a £600bn asset boost to the richest
What does banking contribute to UK Plc? 7 myths exposed, and why we must rein them in
For perspective: Benefit fraud=£1bn; Tax avoidance=£5bn; Total all tax dodging=£35-£100bn+
Include VAT etc and the bottom 20% pay more tax per £ than the top 20%, says ONS
The share of national income paid to all workers has dropped almost 20% since the 1970s
Government debt? Yet hardly a sound about record private debt which is FOUR TIMES HIGHER
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Serious Fraud Office called in over Royal Bank of Scotland’s role in High Street collapses, including Peacocks, Clinton Cards and HMV
The taxpayer-controlled RBS was accused in a Government-backed report last week of ‘systematically’ profiting from vulnerable, mainly small, business customers placed in a division called its Global Restructuring Group (GRG). The SFO is already considering a criminal investigation into the treatment of these small businesses. A whistle-blower has provided the SFO with a dossier of what he claims is evidence that RBS conducted alleged ‘systematic institutionalised criminal fraud’. In a letter sent to SFO director David Green, the whistle-blower says: ‘Officers of RBS deliberately acted contrary to interests of other parties . . . to maximise their own interests at RBS to [the bank’s] unjust enrichment.’ DAILY MAIL
Paying below the minimum wage: HMRC has prosecuted ONLY TWO companies in four years
Paying less than the National Minimum Wage (NMW) is illegal, yet over 300,000 people in the UK earn less than the NMW. HMRC has investigated 10,777 firms since 2009 for allegedly breaking the law on low pay, collecting £15.8m in arrears payments and imposing £2.1m in fines. However, only two firms have been prosecuted, and despite ministers' repeated pledges, only one has ever been named and shamed: Treena Professional Hair and Beauty in Leicester, which in 2010 paid a member of staff £342 for 20 weeks' work when she was entitled to £3,703. GUARDIAN
EU fines banks £1.4bn over rate-rigging
The European Commission has fined eight banks - including RBS - a total of 1.7bn euros (£1.4bn) for forming illegal cartels to rig interest rates. The rates are used to set the price of trillions of dollars of products, including mortgages. The record-breaking fines cover yen Libor and Euribor, the European equivalent of the rate set in London, and follow similar fines by financial regulators in the UK and US. UBS and Barclays stood to pay the largest fines of 2.5bn euros and 690m euros, but avoided paying anything because they assisted the investigation. Aside from RBS, Barclays and UBS, the other organisations involved were Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, JP Morgan, Citibank and the brokers RP Martin. Banks that have not yet settled fines but are being investigated are HSBC and Credit Agricole. A handful of individuals are facing criminal charges. BBC NEWS
British Gas under fire for insulation plan lobbying
After it failed to meet existing mandatory targets for solid-wall insulation, British Gas persuaded ministers to lower industry targets by two-thirds . Rival energy firms say British Gas's lobbying has put up to 10,000 jobs at risk and may jeopardise the fledgling solid-wall insulation industry. Some firms created large teams of home insulators and were on schedule to complete the work on time. But British Gas insulated only one in six of the solid-walled homes it was supposed to. British Gas said there were cheaper ways to save on bills and cut carbon emissions, and denied that they supported lowering the target because cold homes would mean more sales of gas. An industry source pointed out the Old Etonian link between Mr Cameron and Sam Laidlaw of Centrica, which owns British Gas. BBC NEWS
Biggest drop in household savings for 40 years, says Bank of England
Bank figures show £23 billion were taken out of long-term savings in the past 12 months, equivalent to £900 for every UK household. However, the withdrawals may also have helped to power Britain’s economic recovery, with much of the cash being spent on consumer goods. Experts said that the figures would raise fresh fears about the sustainability of the recovery. Ros Altmann, a former Downing Street policy adviser, said: “The problem is no economy can thrive in the long run without people saving. You can’t run it on borrowing and debt, you need to save and invest for the future. If you just withdraw money and spend you are talking about a recipe for long-term economic decline.” TELEGRAPH
Minister Lansley claimed £6,000 expenses for London hotel stays despite having his OWN £1million flat just 15 minutes' walk from Parliament
Tory Cabinet minister and House of Commons Leader Andrew Lansley declared dozens of overnight stays at a hotel. Yet his Georgian home in Pimlico is just a mile from Parliament, meaning the former Health Secretary - who earns a ministerial salary of £134,565 - could walk there in 15 minutes. His constituency home is just a 50-minute train ride away. Records show Mr Lansley has not rented out his London property. In 2009, as shadow health secretary he spent £4,000 he claimed back renovating a thatched Tudor country cottage - and sold it shortly afterwards. He redecorated with premium paint in some rooms at a cost of £2,000 and spent more than £500 having the driveway re-shingled. He is then said to have 'flipped' his expenses to a Georgian flat in London and claimed for thousands of pounds in furnishings, including a Laura Ashley sofa. DAILY MAIL
Hunger in UK has reached level of 'public health emergency', warn medical experts
Food poverty has reached the level of a “public health emergency” and the Government may be covering up the extent to which austerity and welfare cuts are adding to the problem, leading experts have said. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities have identified a surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases. This represents “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write. Ministers maintain there is “no robust evidence” of a link between sweeping welfare reforms and a rise in the use of food banks. However, publication of research into the phenomenon, commissioned by the Government itself, has been delayed, amid speculation that the findings may prove embarrassing for ministers. INDEPENDENT
Energy bill "green levy" rollback: government energy advisers condemn changes
The government has removed the ECO “green levy” on energy bills, to save consumers £50 on average. A government spokesman said the 40% of ECO spent on insulating the homes of the fuel poor had been protected. But most of the saving comes from cutting the requirement for energy companies to insulate hard-to-treat properties. Derek Lickorish, chair of the government's Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, warned: "The £50 saving, as welcome as it is, could be gobbled up by a small rise in the wholesale price on the global markets." Consumer Futures, the UK's official consumer watchdog, said: "The review to cut bills has failed consumers by cutting the only levy, ECO, that directly helps them." Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, said: "Watering down our energy efficiency commitments at precisely the time they are most needed will mean more cold homes, more winter deaths, and job losses in the construction industry." GUARDIAN
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
SOURCE GUARDIAN: Energy bill "green levy" rollback: UK government energy advisers condemn changes
The government has removed the ECO “green levy” on energy bills, to save consumers £50 on average.
A government spokesman said the 40% of ECO spent on insulating the homes of the fuel poor had been protected. But most of the saving comes from cutting the requirement for energy companies to insulate hard-to-treat properties. Derek Lickorish, chair of the government's Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, warned: "The £50 saving, as welcome as it is, could be gobbled up by a small rise in the wholesale price on the global markets." Consumer Futures, the UK's official consumer watchdog, said: "The review to cut bills has failed consumers by cutting the only levy, ECO, that directly helps them." Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: "Watering down our energy efficiency commitments at precisely the time they are most needed will mean more cold homes, more winter deaths, and job losses in the construction industry."
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