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Low Pay Commission chief: minimum wage hike may cost more than 60,000 jobs

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
English coins, July 2010 by Images Money

The head of the Low Pay Commission warned on Sunday that the minimum wage hike proposed by chancellor George Osborne may cost more than the 60,000 jobs previously predicted.

David Norgrove, chair of the independent body responsible for recommending what the minimum wage should be, claimed that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate for job losses following the minimum wage rise was not as certain as it appeared.

Speaking to the Financial Times, he said:

“[The OBR’s] estimate of 60,000 is as good as anybody else’s; they’re a very expert group of people, but they’re hugely uncertain. I think it’s probably a bit of an exaggeration saying nobody has a clue, but I think they’re extremely uncertain.”

Minimum wages have been controversial among economists since before governments in the Western world began putting them into place, with many fearing that a pay floor might price the low-skilled out of the jobs market.

Under Tory plans unveiled in July the minimum wage is set to rise to £7.20 an hour for over 25s next April, up from £6.70 today for over 21s, and later to £9 for over 25s in 2020 – a higher hike than the commission would recommend at present.

Norgrove has previously said the Low Pay Commission’s research has shown no signs of increased unemployment as a result of the minimum wage since its introduction in Britain in 1999, but he worries that the “living wage” proposed by Osborne will disproportionately hit the care, retail and hospitality sectors.

If this happened, he said, it would mean that local government would have to increase spending in care, even as councils face ongoing pressure to cut spending as part of Osbo’s austerity drive.

Norgrove also claimed the commission was informed about the rise just a few days before Osborne announced it in July, promoting it as a “living wage” in a bid to move into Labour’s territory just as the Tories sought to rebrand themselves as a “workers party”.

The chair can be seen in the video below discussing the effect the minimum wage has had on low wages since its creation under Tony Blair’s New Labour government:

A full version of the Financial Times interview can be read here.

Image Credit – English coins, July 2010 by Images Money

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Anti-austerity protestors attack and intimidate Tory conference delegates

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
George Osborne, September 2014 by Gareth Milner

A small group of anti-austerity protestors spat on and intimidated attendees at the Conservative conference in Manchester on Sunday, with one Tory being hit on the forehead with an egg.

Journalists from Channel 4, the Huffington Post and LBC Radio were all reported on Twitter as having been spat on by protestors, with Channel 4 even filming an incident in which police had to intervene.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/vb.6622931938/10153261098396939/?type=2&theater” width=”650″ height=”366″ onlyvideo=”1″]

One Tory who was stood on Oxford Road was hit with an egg to jeers of “Tory Scum!”, forcing him to retreat from the baying crowd.

Other protestors picketed the entrance to the conference, telling “soulless Tories” that they were not elected in Manchester and that they were “not welcome here.”

Many protestors also made a point of referencing the recent piggate scandal, in which Tory leader David Cameron was accused of performing a bizarre ritual involving a pig’s head.

Despite this police reported that most of the 60,000 protestors were well behaved, with chief superintendent John O’Hare of Greater Manchester Police telling the Guardian:

“Today around 60,000 people took part in a demonstration and I would like to thank them for their cooperation. The overwhelming majority of people have exercised their democratic right to protest with dignity and good grace. The fact that only four arrests have been made throughout the day so far was particularly pleasing.”

Image Credit – George Osborne, September 2014 by Gareth Milner

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Ed Miliband’s spin doctor soon to be working for City of London

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Bob Roberts on Daily Politics, May 2015

One of the spin doctors employed by Ed Miliband, who spectacularly lost the general election in May, is to head up comms for the borough in both a commercial and political capacity.

Bob Roberts, formerly of Press Association and the Daily Mirror, was part of Labour’s team of three spin doctors who helped craft Miliband’s attacks on “predatory capitalism”, alienating many businesses across Britain.

He is also part of the same group that failed to establish Labour as an economically credible party with the electorate, which political scientists have highlighted as one of the two main factors that contributed to the party’s defeat.

The other reason, Miliband’s poor credibility as leader, was not even accepted by Roberts in the wake of the defeat, with the spin doctor telling the BBC’s Daily Politics that he did not accept voters did not trust the Labour leader:

“In the end, a lot of people thought Ed had a decent campaign. Ed came across as exactly who he was, a decent man for ideas and principle.”

Instead Roberts laid the defeat at the feet of the Scottish National Party, which demolished Labour in Scotland:

“There was a social and political revolution in Scotland which neither Ed Miliband or the Labour Party could do anything about. It swept us away north and affected us south.”

But at a Hansard Society event early in September, John Curtice of Strathclyde University specifically played down the importance of prospective deal between the SNP and Labour in moving votes, despite its centrality to later Tory campaigning.

Roberts said he was “delighted” to take on the role in the City, which will begin on November 2nd.

John Barradell, chief executive and town clerk of the City, said: “My colleagues and I are looking forward to working with Bob, who will bring a wealth of experience to this role.”

At least someone’s making a buck after Labour’s meltdown…

Image Credit – Bob Roberts on Daily Politics, May 2015

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Northern Powerhouse will roll out to Sheffield as city grabs transport powers

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Sheffield City Hall, October 2012 by Ed Webster

Sheffield is to join Manchester as the second northern English town to grab a host of powers from Whitehall as chancellor George Osborne seeks to devolve significant oversight of transport to the region.

Under the plans the Steel City will vote for an elected mayor in 2017 to preside over a region spanning South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

However the Sheffield mayor appears to risk being labelled a glorified transport commissioner, much like the current mayor of London, as the highlighted policies from a government press release concern little else:

  • Responsibility over the region’s transport budget, with a multi-year settlement to be agreed at the Spending Review
  • Responsibility for franchised bus services, which will support the Combined Authority’s delivery of smart and integrated ticketing across its councils
  • Responsibility for an identified Key Route Network of local authority roads that will be collaboratively managed and maintained at the city region level by the Combined Authority on behalf of the Mayor
  • Powers over strategic planning

City devolution has been a pet project for Osbo for a number of years, and the “Northern Powerhouse” slogan regularly featured in the Tories’ general election campaign.

Victorian Britain boasted a number of powerful city governments, as evinced by the grand city halls still used by many of the local councils, but by the end of the Second World War much had been centralised in Whitehall.

Whilst Osborne continues to flaunt his devolution credentials he has come under fire for not putting enough public money into regions outside of London, a position justified by Conservative claims that too much public investment discourages the private sector from investing.

Under the new plans for Sheffield the central government will invest £30m a year over the next 30 years, in what the government claims will allow the Steel City to “boost local growth and invest in local manufacturing and innovation” – a policy seemingly inconsistent with the “crowding out” thesis.

For the deal to go ahead all local councils must agree to it, with the regions affected detailed in this map below from the Big Investment Project:

Sheffield City Region Map by Big Investment Project

Image Credit – Sheffield City Hall, October 2012 by Ed Webster

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Charlotte Church is right to say climate change could have fuelled the Syria conflict

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Drought, April 2009 by Bert Kaufmann

Scribblers from both the Spectator and Guido Fawkes are having a dig at musician Charlotte Church for her contributions to Thursday night’s Question Time, where she brought up the role of climate change in the Syrian conflict.

“Another interesting thing with Syria – lots of people don’t seem to know about this – there is evidence to suggest that climate change was a big factor in how the Syrian conflict came about, because from 2006 to 2011 they experienced one of the worst droughts in its history.

“This of course meant that there were water shortages and crops weren’t growing, so there was a mass migration from rural areas of Syria into the urban centres, which put more strain [on things]…which apparently did contribute to the conflict there today.

“No issue is an island, so I also think we need to look at what we’re doing to the planet and how that might actually cause more conflict in the world.”

Church may well be referring to a piece of research from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, which linked climate change to the Syrian conflict as follows:

“There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers.

“Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone.

“We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.”

As with much in academia, the conclusions are softer than the headlines that journalists like to write. The authors of that study use the word “implicated”, whilst Church used “contributed”, rather than suggesting climate change is the sole or only cause.

This has not stopped Guido Fawkes running with the headline “Charlotte Church blames Isis on climate change”, whilst the Spectator quoted a number of tweets that fudged what Church had said:

The view that mankind has had a role in affecting our climate is not disputed by scientists, though the specifics of it remain contested, as is common of just about every subject science bothers to investigate.

How that precisely relates to the drought in Syria between 2007 to 2010 is an issue that Fleet Street hacks and musicians are unequipped to answer – but it seems a plausible statement to make and has been suggested in studies other than that quoted above.

Image Credit – Drought, April 2009 by Bert Kaufmann