Graphs at a glance: Why don't the young vote? If you really support your local candidate, get your kids out of bed to the ballot!

2,400 or so years ago an ancient Greek, possibly the philosopher Socrates, said:

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

2,400 or so years later another figure from the past, Michael Gove MP formerly Secretary of State for Education, was still searching for bright ideas to get the young to do the right thing. Gove encouraged teachers to discipline wayward youths by getting them:

"to do extra work, or to repeat unsatisfactory work; to write lines, or an extra essay...picking up litter, or washing graffiti off a wall, tidying a classroom, clearing up the dining hall."

People often complain about the youth of today, imagining things were better when they were young. The evidence of the last few millennia suggest young people have always been really annoying.

However, there is one way today's young have clearly fallen behind earlier generations of youngsters. According to the British Election Study, it is only since 1997 that young people really got out of the habit of voting.

Combining data from three sources,

• Population, from the Office for National Statistics
• Voter registration, from the Electoral Commission
• 2010 General Election turnout from Ipsos-Mori

we can see young people are bad at registering for the vote, and also bad at turning up to vote:

Note that 18-24 band is 7 years wide, while others upto 84 are 5 years wide.

More worryingly, a report commissioned by the Electoral Commission from Essex University states that the habit of not voting isn't a passing phase that the young will grow out of. It is a habit they are holding on to as they age:

"the effective British electorate is becoming progressively older, election by election. 

Moreover, it seems unlikely that this is a ‘life cycle effect’ in which currently young non-voters will turn into voters as they get older. 

On the contrary, the spread of relatively high levels of non-voting to all three of the younger cohorts suggests that, over the last 30 years or so, habits of non-voting acquired in youth have tended to be carried forward into middle age – and will perhaps continue even into old age."

Changing a person's habits, whether young or old, is very hard. But to get them to do just one thing just once is much easier. Look no further than your local supermarket to see the science of manipulating us into impulse buying. Various academic papers suggest over 50% of our supermarket purchases are unplanned. So why not get the youth to impulse vote? Even if they make the wrong choice, as tends to happen with impulse shopping, at least they get into the habit of choosing and learning from their mistakes.

Political parties, its time to get your older supporters to get their juniors out to vote. Parents, it's time to get your voting age offspring to vote. You know what motivates them better than Nige, Nick, Ed, Dave etc.

It's particularly worth it in certain constituencies, where 18-24 year olds can be nearly a quarter of voters:

And it's particularly worth it in constituencies where just 1 in 20 non-voters voting for the second placed candidate would topple an MP (all other things being equal):

According to a report for the Electoral Commission by Essex University, after the 2005 General Election:

“The single most powerful way in which turnout in British general elections could be increased would be to increase the sense of civic duty among the young, particularly among the under 40s.”

Surely in this 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, this 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death, that can't be so hard? 

Remind them of their Civic Duty! If you need help, then try this:

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 29th January)

Tax crackdown on the rich: HMRC Affluent Unit nets an extra £137m

HMRC's Affluent Unit covering UK residents on annual incomes over £150,000 - or wealth over £1m - raised £137.2m in tax, up from £85.7m in 2013. The Affluent Unit, set up in 2011, doubled in size in 2013 with the recruitment of an additional 100 tax inspectors. About 500,000 UK residents fall into its remit. Also, HMRC's ability to investigate people has been made easier by a computer system called Connect. Costing £45m, Connect was launched in the summer of 2010 and designed by the defence contractor BAE Systems. The computer system collects data on people from multiple sources, including banks, local councils, and even social media. However, tax expert Richard Murphy, from Tax Research, said: "HMRC is supposed to collect £167bn of income tax this year, of which at least a quarter will be from the top 1% of income earners... In that case, to collect just £127m as a result of investigations into this group when the official tax gap is £35bn suggests that much less attention is given to them than any other group." He added: "The investigation success rate is way below anything that could be expected given that we know tax avoidance is mainly undertaken by the wealthiest... If these statistics prove anything it is that HMRC need many more resources to collect tax from those most likely to owe it." BBC NEWS

Benefits cuts mean those with children in the lowest 10% of earners lose £1,223 a year on average

Coalition changes to taxes and benefits have cost the average UK household £489 a year. Some households have lost a lot more than this, but others have gained from the changes the coalition has introduced, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Low-income working-age households have been hit hardest, losing the most as a percentage of their income. Those with children in the lowest 10% of earners lost £1,223 on average. The richest 10% of households with children lost £5,350 a year. Middle-income working-age households without children have gained the most. Pensioners were "relatively unaffected" on average, as their gains from the "triple lock" on the state pension were largely offset by a hike in VAT. James Browne, a senior research economist at IFS and co-author of the report said: "Increases in the tax-free personal allowance have played an important role in protecting middle-income working-age households meaning that those without children have actually gained overall." By household alone, the poorest households lost around 4% of their incomes, compared with around 3.5% for the next poorest tenth, between 2.5% and zero for middle-income households and a loss of about 2.5% for the richest. The hardest-hit region was greater London, where households lost an average £1,042, followed by south east England, the West Midlands and north west England. BBC NEWS

Apple’s global tax dodging: it made sales of AUS$6 billion in Australia last year, paid just AUS$80.3 million in tax: a tax rate of 0.01%

Apple has been in the spotlight over its taxes in Australia, after an investigation by Fairfax Media last year showed it had shifted AUS$8.9 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to Ireland in the past decade. Apple's Australian entity describes itself as a company that markets products and sells digital software and services.  It is controlled by Irish holding company Apple Operations International. While tax is calculated as a proportion of profit, not revenue, multinational companies including Apple have been criticised for booking revenue offshore, in low-taxing places like Ireland or Singapore, to minimise their reportable profit and therefore their taxes in places like Australia. The company's local revenue was down slightly from AUS$6.1 billion a year earlier, when it paid just AUS$36.4 million in tax. It is one of the companies expected to be hauled in front of a Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance, with hearings due to start as soon as March. It follows efforts by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to clamp down on profit shifting, as governments around the world become increasingly desperate to shore up revenue. This week Apple's fiscal first-quarter profit hit a record $US18 billion, on sales of $US74.6 billion. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

€1.1 trillion Eurozone quantitative easing helps the rich only, warns Soros

Speaking at a dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the 84-year-old billionaire investor George Soros, who was born in Hungary, voiced concerns that an "excessive reliance on monetary policy tends to enrich the owners of property and at the same time will not relieve the downward pressure on wages." But he emphasised that he expected the European Central Bank (ECB) policy to drive economic growth in the European Union. He also said there was another powerful way of boosting the Eurozone economy. "There is one large untapped source of triple-A credit, and that is the European Union itself - that has practically no debt, but it has taxing power," he said, urging the EU to spend more on financing infrastructure projects, such as energy pipelines, electricity networks and even roads. BBC NEWS

Ofsted can now inspect academy chains, but Dept for Education will keep its own ratings secret

Last week, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan announced a U-turn, saying that Ofsted should be able to publish information about the performance of academy chains. But it will not be allowed to make judgments about whether a trust is effective or not. Now a union boss has called on the Department for Education to publish the internal ratings it gives to academy sponsors. Kevin Courtney, the deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers has questioned why these grades, which the Department for Education gives to academy trusts, are not made publicly available. He said: “It now appears that the DfE is happy for Ofsted to publish information about the performance of academy chains... It throws into sharp focus the fact that the department itself already assesses the performance of academy sponsors and produces ratings for them but is not willing to share this information with the public. Why not?” The issue of Ofsted not being able to inspect academy chains had been raised last year at Education Select Committee hearings. Mrs Morgan had told MPs that inspectors already had sufficient powers to look at the work of chains when it looked at their individual schools. She dismissed the idea that Ofsted needed new powers to directly inspect academy chains. At the time committee chairman, Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart said the decision was bizarre. YORKSHIRE POST

Osborne's £10bn Pensioner Bond is another gift to the wealthy at the expense of the taxpayer

The government is borrowing £10bn by selling bonds to pensioners. If you’re 65+, you can buy a one-year bond, paying 2.8%, and a three-year one, paying 4%. But the only people who can afford pensioner bonds are pensioners with spare cash. If the government really wanted to borrow money, it’s perfectly able to. HMG can go to the market and issue a gilt (a UK government bond) for, say, one year. Investors buy that gilt, and the government pays them 0.36% for the privilege of holding their money. So, when the government chooses not to do that – and instead borrows ten billion big ones from pensioners (and pensioners only!) far above market rates – that’s all well and good for the pensioners. But when you think about it, when our government purposefully borrows above market rates, unless you’re directly benefiting yourself, you’re footing the bill. On top of all this, this sop to the over-65s does absolutely nothing to put the older generation’s cash to work in the real economy where it can actually do some good. In fact, all it does is tie up savings in a manner that they cannot get to work in the real economy – because they’re stuck inside the bond for its duration. MONEY WEEK

Student loans: the real cost could be £40,000 more than official estimates

The analysis, compiled by RedSTART, an education arm of the consultancy firm Redington, claims the Government’s mathematicians have used “outdated” sums to calculate the size of repayments graduates will make on student loans taken out after 2012. The report claims someone graduating this year on an average starting salary of £29,000, will make total student loan repayments of £62,272 over 30 years, compared to £33,346 if official numbers are used. It also found students set to graduate this year with a starting salary of £38,000 will face the largest repayments, and can expect to repay £100,146 in total. This compares to a much smaller £55,000 estimated repayment if official assumptions are used in the calculation. The figures are based on a full-time student borrowing £15,000 a year for three years (£45,000) and going on to work in a full-time role after university. The report has criticized the Government for calculating how much future payments will be worth in today’s money terms by using what its author describes as an “insanely high” measure of inflation, as measured by RPI, plus 2.2pc – a measure decided upon in 2010. By assuming a higher rate of inflation, future repayments appear lower. Another key reason why graduates will repay more under the new system is because the repayment period has been extended from 25 years to 30 years. Frederick Patten, the report’s author, refutes government claims that the changes mean most students will be better off under the new system, maintaining that the vast majority of students will be much worse off. TELEGRAPH

New banking shame: two million credit card holders to get up to £270 compensation for paying for 'security' policy they already got for free

Security products were sold to customers of 11 high street banks, including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Santander and The Royal Bank of Scotland, according to the Financial Conduct Authority. Issued by Affinion International Limited but sold under names including 'Card Protection', 'Sentinel', 'Sentinel Protection' and 'Safe and Secure Plus', the policies were marketed as offering protection if the card was lost or stolen.  However, the bank or issuer usually offers – free of charge when you take out the card - cover for everything over £50 if transactions take place before the card is reported missing, so for many the product would be redundant. The policies cost £25 per annum and have been on sale since 2005. Therefore if someone had paid out for ten years, compensation could be as high as £250 plus eight per cent interest – around £270. Card holders who could be eligible for compensation will receive letters in the next few days about a voluntary redress scheme and must vote in favour in April or May for it to go ahead. If a majority of customers agree, then the scheme must be approved by the High Court and compensation will be paid out later this year. There has been no formal investigation by the FCA, nor any finding of wrong-doing. The announcement from the Financial Conduct Authority comes after a similar, but much wider-reaching, compensation scheme saw seven million banking customers share a pot of £1.3billion after they were missold card protection insurance by CPP. DAILY MAIL

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Our NHS is short of £5bn a year. But comparable countries' public/private mix costs them even more

We're told we'd need to find an extra £5bn every year to be able to afford an NHS that maintains standards, free at the point of delivery.

We're told it's only possible if we allow the private sector to take on more of our healthcare delivery.

We're told that other countries, including the progressive lefty ones, use a mix of public and private to be able to afford modern healthcare.

But a look at the data from other countries shows...

• Our system is the most efficient and cost effective.
• We’re spending less than almost everyone else – i.e. not enough.
• If we spent more, it should be on the system that is the most efficient and cost effective. Ours.

First, here’s the graph from a report by NHS England, showing how funding is falling behind spending requirements.

Now take a look at the costs, per head, of all the OECD countries. You’ll see that every nation has a mix of public and private provision, to varying degrees. What it shows is that the UK spends less than almost any nation comparable to ours.

  

What else does it tell us? If we had almost any of the other comparable nations’ public-private mix, we’d be spending more than that £5bn extra already. 

• Any other system we choose that costs approximately $125/head (=£83/head) more than ours, will end up costing us more than that £5bn the NHS needs.
• 60m people in the UK
• 60m X £83 = £5bn

Let’s now dig a little deeper into the performance of each country: quality, accessibility, efficiency, and results. The Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare think tank based in the US, ranks a range of comparable countries, by different criteria. The UK came top in most, and overall.

You’ll note that the UK comes almost bottom in one, very important criteria: Healthy Lives.

Compared to these other nations, our overall mortality rates, infant mortality, and life expectancy figures are indeed among the worst. But isn’t that because we’re spending less than the others, rather than because we don’t have enough private provision?

There is no doubt one big advocate for spending that extra £83 per head: the private healthcare companies and their friends in government, on condition none of it is spent on the NHS.

Looking forward, our healthcare system will need to find extra billions not just for one year, but for every year due to ageing populations and more expensive yet better treatments. But so will every other nation, whatever their mix of public-private delivery.

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Graphs at a Glance: Is the quickest route to voters ballots via their newspapers?

Some newspapers claim to be able to swing their readers like bats beating carpets. Figures from Ipsos-Mori, the polling organisation, show a clear difference in the swing magnitude between the various papers' readerships.

While the Sun and the Daily Star have the greatest swings, they also have the lowest voter turnouts. 

The graphs below show Sun readers appear to have shifted from Labour to Tory. The Daily Star's swing seems to be less due to readers shifting from Labour to Tory than to readers shifting from Labour to any party other than Tory.

In the interests of balance we offer below the voting histories of each of the papers' readerships in swingingest order:

 

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Increasing NHS spending makes good business sense

Fee and KJ pitch Chris with a brilliant idea it seems no one's thought about...

SOURCE GUARDIAN: NHS will need an extra £65bn by 2030, say analysts

The Health Foundation analysis identifies the sum as the extra amount of Treasury funding the NHS will need by then because it is unlikely to meet unrealistically optimistic productivity targets. It says the NHS will need its budget to rise by 2.9% a year above inflation each year between 2015-16 and 2030-31 if it is to maintain the standard of services and avoid having to ration access to treatment. That 2.9% is higher than the expected 2.3% annual rise over that period in gross domestic product, which means the government will have to boost NHS spending faster than the economy is growing. The £65bn will also be needed because the health service is likely to make only 1.5% annual gains in productivity and not the 2% and 3% envisaged in the Five Year Forward View, NHS England’s recent blueprint for securing the service’s uncertain future. The Health Foundation wants whoever forms the next government to make reaching “a public and political consensus” on the NHS’s long-term funding needs a priority, and also to give it further additional money from April as a “transformation fund”, so new ways of delivering healthcare can be created.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

Higher Ed and GP reforms? Thousands more admin jobs, no more teachers/nurses

NHS budget is protected? In terms of pounds and pence, yes-ish. But our growing and ageing population means it's a £5bn/year cut

Cuts to the NHS, Military, the Courts, Prisons, Benefits, Passports... Will fixing the chaos end up costing more than the cuts saved?

Graphs at a glance: The UK has the worst investment record of the 27 EU nations

Liebrary: PFI saves us virtually nothing, if you believe the NAO’s figures. If you believe the Commons Treasury Committee, it costs us a vast amount that nobody has yet quantified

Graphs at a glance: how cuts have slashed the number of available hospital beds since 1987

House of Lords refuses to block bill forcing NHS to tender services, and taking away their right to reject dodgy providers

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 22nd January)

Firms benefiting from lower oil price should raise wages, says Cameron 

A glut in global oil supplies has caused Brent crude prices to more than halve in little more than six months. Britain's political parties are competing to try to show they can best help voters benefit from the fall, as a national election looms in May. "I want to see companies' success passed through in terms of wage increases," he was quoted as saying by the BBC on Saturday. "It has to be done in a way that's affordable, and in a way that companies can continue to grow. We need to see productivity increase." Cheaper oil has handed Cameron and his ruling Conservative Party a political gift ahead of the election by helping to lower prices for everything from petrol to food and thereby blunting rival Labour's attack over a "cost of living crisis". Sliding oil prices have driven down inflation, so that wages are finally rising faster than prices in the UK, but the main opposition Labour Party argues that, in real terms, workers are worse off now than they were five years ago. REUTERS

Jobcentre ‘hit squads’ are tricking claimants into failing tests and losing benefits, says former official

The written statement, by a former jobcentre official, John Longden, says frontline staff were ordered to “agitate and inconvenience” customers so they fell foul of the rules, enabling staff to stop their benefits payments. Longden claims that staff used several tricks to set up claimants. On several occasions jobcentre advisers purposefully booked job appointments without informing the claimant, ensuring they could be sanctioned when they failed to attend. Claimants would be set unreasonable job search targets, referred for jobs for which they were clearly unsuited, or ordered to sign on every day in the hope they would fail in a task, miss an appointment or be late. He added: “Customers were being deliberately treated inappropriately in order to achieve [staff] performance [targets] without regard for natural justice and their welfare.” Staff who failed to meet sanctions targets each month were threatened with disciplinary action. Longden claimed: “Staff were threatened by the cluster manager that their jobs would be taken by other people if they didn’t do what they were told.” Longden’s evidence covers events he says he witnessed at Salford and Rochdale jobcentres between 2011 and 2013. The PCS union, which represents jobcentre staff, said the evidence chimed with its own straw poll of members, which found almost two-thirds had experienced pressure to refer claimants for a sanction inappropriately, while more than a third had been placed on a formal performance improvement plan for not making enough referrals. A sanction involves the stopping of claimants’ benefit payments for at least four weeks – equivalent to almost £300 – as a penalty for breach of benefit rules and conditions, typically failure to look for work or attend jobcentre appointments. Ministers introduced tighter rules for claiming benefits in October 2012, saying sanctions were a “last resort” that would encourage claimants to “engage” with jobcentres. However, this evidence, being collected by the Commons work and pensions select committee, which is investigating benefit sanctions policy, seems to show that jobcentres are increasingly neglecting to help claimants find jobs and are instead focusing on finding ways to impose financial penalties on them. GUARDIAN

Amazon tax dodge clawback? European Commission investigates online retailer's special tax deal with Luxembourg

Brussels alleges that Amazon’s European hub was founded on favourable and selective tax treatment that amounts to an illicit state subsidy, which may need to be clawed back. The cap on income taxable in Luxembourg is less than 1 per cent — approximately €75m in 2013 on Amazon operating company turnover of around €13.6bn. The investigation has political significance because Amazon’s tax deal was negotiated in 2003 while Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, was serving as Luxembourg’s premier. It follows thousands of pages of leaks that have piled pressure on Mr Juncker by showing how other multinationals operating in the Grand Duchy pay negligible tax. Other deals under investigation include Ireland’s arrangements with Apple and Luxembourg’s clearance of structures used by Fiat, and Holland’s approval of Starbucks’ tax base. The commission is empowered to order countries to recoup any illegal aid stretching back up to 10 years. It is aiming to conclude some of its investigations in the Spring. FINANCIAL TIMES

Fine supermarkets if they have unfairly squeezed milk suppliers, say MPs

The environment and rural affairs select committee said ministers must bring forward measures before the general election to give more powers to Christine Tacon, the groceries code adjudicator, a position that was created after years of investigations into the big supermarkets using their muscle to squeeze farming suppliers. The MPs want the watchdog to be able to punish the big retailers if they are found to have misused their market muscle to overly depress prices to dairy farmers. This could be done quickly using parliamentary procedures and would not require new legislation. Large numbers of smaller dairy farmers in particular are unable to meet the costs of milk production after prices plummeted from nearly 34p a litre a year ago to as low as 20p a litre. Dairy farmers have been hurt by increasing volatility on the international markets for milk products, including fresh and frozen milk, cheese, dried milk, cultured milk and other products. This has been driven bumper production in key areas, such as New Zealand, flooding the market while prices have also taken a hit from the Russian trade ban and faltering demand in China as the rate of economic growth there has stuttered. GUARDIAN

North-South divide worsens: one job created in the North for every 12 in the South since 2004

As the General election looms, the UK's main political parties battle to engage in a 'race to the top' on cities policy and devolution. Now a report from the Centre for Cities has found that the north-south divide widened between 2004 and 2013. The starkest reflection of this can be seen in the jobs sector, where Southern cities had 12.4 per cent more jobs available in 2013 than they did in 2014. This far outstripped the 0.9 per cent growth seen in cities elsewhere in the UK, the report says. Dividing jobs growth between the private and public sector puts the North-South city divide into even sharper focus. Southern cities had 12.6 per cent more private sector jobs in 2013 than in 2004. But cities elsewhere in the UK had 1.1 per cent fewer private sector jobs in 2013 than they did ten years ago. London enjoyed the biggest increase in private sector jobs, with an 18.4 per cent increase from 2004 to 2013.  Meanwhile the population of cities in the South grew at double the rate of cities elsewhere in the UK. Milton Keynes was the fastest growing city, with its population surging by 16.5 per cent between 2004 and 2013. As well as Milton Keynes, four other cities - Peterborough, Swindon, Luton and Cambridge - saw their populations grow even faster than London when considered in proportion to their size. Outside of the South, only two cities, Northampton and Cardiff, feature in the top 10 cities for population growth. A surge in demand has pushed housing across up across Southern cities, the report says. Back in 2004, the average house in a city in the South was nine times average earnings. Meanwhile wages are still 12.6 per cent lower now than they were at the beginning of 2008, the report says. Despite this, by 2014 the price of a house in the South surged to more than 13 times the average wage in the UK. But, in other cities across the UK, there was virtually no change in terms of housing affordability, the report says. By 2014, the average price of a house in London (£501,500) was nearly 16 times average wages, up from 9.5 times in 2004. DAILY MAIL

Big Brands screw small suppliers: delaying payments by up to 4 months amounts to 'abuse'

US consumer giant Heinz has more than doubled the length of time it is making small British suppliers wait for bills to be settled. It is understood to have told suppliers they must wait up to 97 days for their invoices to be paid, up from 45 days previously. In a separate development, beer company AB InBev, which brews Stella Artois and Boddingtons, was slammed for routinely taking up to four months to pay its small suppliers. Brewpack, based in Egham, Surrey, which supplies conveyor belt systems to drink manufacturers, told the BBC that it could no longer afford to take orders from AB Inbev because of delays in payment. Premier Foods last year climbed down on demands for suppliers to stump up cash under a plan dubbed ‘pay to stay’, following an outcry. The company, whose brands include Mr Kipling cakes, said the policy had been misinterpreted. Mothercare, which tightened its terms to suppliers in 2012, and Halfords are among others whose practices have attracted criticism. Unease has been mounting during the economic downturn about the behaviour of large firms towards their suppliers. Critics point out that ultra-long payment terms amount to an interest free loan to big companies at the expense of small firms. Leading lobby group the Federation of Small Businesses said large companies were being ‘tarnished’ by their treatment of small suppliers and that their behaviour is damaging the reputation of business as a whole. The FSB has called a meeting with politicians from the main parties to stamp out poor payment practice. ‘No-one should expect to wait four months to get paid, not least smaller companies that simply cannot absorb the impact these terms have on their cash flow,’ said Mike Cherry, national policy chairman of the FSB. DAILY MAIL

Election rigging: one million voters are "missing" from the electoral register in England and Wales, says Labour

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, blamed the "hasty" introduction of the new system of individual voter registration for the problem, saying students were particularly affected. People must now register to vote individually rather than one member of a household filling in a form. Labour has claimed the number of people registered to vote has fallen sharply in many university towns, blaming in part changes which mean universities and colleges can no longer block-register students living in halls of residence to vote. Labour said 307 of 373 local authorities that provided data had recorded a reduction in their electoral roll. Overall, there had been a reduction of 950,845, the party said. According to the Electoral Commission, about 30% of 18 to 24-year-olds are currently not registered to vote compared with fewer than 5% of those aged over 65. The government said 4.5 million people had applied to register since the new system came into place in June and it was spending £14m this year on national and local initiatives to "maximise" voter registration before 7 May. BBC NEWS

Specialist products for over-50s including car insurance often a 'rip-off' claims new research from consumer watchdog Which? 

These products, often advertised by older celebrities, are are presented as being tailored to this age group, with the implication of lower prices, but the consumer watchdog found this is often not the case. In terms of car cover, some specialist insurers quoted prices which were four times higher than the most competitive deals for the same age group. It tested five over-50s specialists – Age UK, Castle Cover, Insure4Retirement, Rias and Saga – and 10 leading non-specialists for low and high-risk scenarios. For a low-risk 60 year-old driving a Ford Focus, of the six cheapest quotes, only one was from a specialist – Age UK. The cheapest was from the Co-op at £177 while Saga quoted a far higher £329. On the higher-risk scenario of a 70 year-old with a BMW 120d, the most reasonably priced policies were from Direct Line at £367 and LV at £398. But shockingly, some of the quotes from the specialists were nearly four times higher, with Castle Cover coming back with £1,442, Rias £1,426 and Age UK £1,147. Saga was more reasonable with a £524 quote. When it came to home insurance, Which? found a similar pattern. Admiral and LV quoted £176 and £198 for cover on a five-bedroom house in Croydon for a 70 year-old. Rias and Insure4Retirement offered quotes at £262 and £272, while Saga came in at £540. The Which? research revealed that over-50s life insurance plans usually offer poor value compared to whole-of-life plans. It also shows that equity release schemes are an expensive way to borrow money, even if as a last resort. DAILY MAIL

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Graphs at a Glance: Has inequality reduced since the Conservative-LibDem government of 2010? Yes, and No.

In a bakery not far away there was a baker, who treated his customers extremely unequally. To some he gave plain buns, others spiced buns with candied fruit, and to others iced buns. He said the bankers worked harder than the nurses, and so deserved the icing. And the accountants were cleverer than the teachers but didn't work as hard as the bankers, so they deserved the candied fruit buns. Iced buns are much better than plain buns, inequality was very great.

One day the icing machine crashed, due to a leak in the water pipes leading it to flood. With no icing there were no iced buns. The bankers could only get the spiced variety. Now spiced buns are better than plain buns, but less so than iced buns. Inadvertently, inequality was reduced! At least until the icing machine got bailed out.

The Tories are claiming that inequality has reduced since 2010. They are correct. Since the banker induced crash that started in 2007/08 the incomes of the top 20%, as shown by this graph from the ONS, fell more sharply than everyone else. 

As the rewards of the boom years weren't shared with those on low income, like the icing on the buns, they didn't see so much downside on income when the economic machine broke. Thus the Tories can say 'inequality' has fallen.

The standard measure of inequality is the GINI Coefficient, which looks at income but not at wealth. So the Tories are correct: income inequality, GINI, did fall marginally in the years immediately after 2010.

On the other hand, since the banking crash and the policy of QE (Quantitive Easing) asset prices have grown strongly. The BBC provide a 1 minute explanation of what QE is:

 

Those left wing firebrands at the Financial Times provide another useful primer on the effect of QE:

The speaker, Professor John Kay of the London School of Economics, states among other things that the policy of Quantitative Easing is like:

• “pouring water into a leaking pipe in the hope that some might dribble through"
• “those who have assets [including home owners & shareholders] benefit in relation to those who don't"

According to a report by Credit Suisse, in 2013-14 household wealth has done extremely well, with a close to 20% increase:

A 20% increase in assets helps those with most assets the most, and those with no assets not at all. In relation to its £325 billion of QE, the Bank of England's report states:

"the total increase in household wealth stemming from the Bank’s £325 billion of asset purchases up to May 2012 of just over £600 billion... In practice, the benefits from these wealth effects will accrue to those households holding most financial assets."

The Office for National Statistics "Total Wealth In Great Britain, 2010-2012" report shows how all wealth (Financial; Property; Physical; Pension) is distributed. You will notice that the bottom 50% have virtually no Financial Assets:

A report by Ed Conway of SkyNews, estimates how much each decile (the '10th' in the graph below is the wealthiest 10% etc) benefited from QE by 2012:

A billionaire hedge-fund manager in the USA, Stanley Druckenmiller, commented about the US policy of Quantitive Easing:

"This is the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich ever."

So, in answer to the question "has inequality reduced since the Conservative-LibDem government of 2010", the answer is:

Income: Yes, a little bit.  

Wealth: Hell no!

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