Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

The UK is going Back to the Future on Social Equality and Fairness

I recently discovered that in the UK, if you're late doing your taxes, you get fined ten pounds a day.

To put it into perspective, it's more than the cost of unlimited travel for one week across London if you live on the outskirts, or it's a week worth of groceries for two.

Now London's tax system is a little bit different in that the state waits for your employer to tell them how much you earned and how much tax you've already paid. The adjustment is then done for you. Nice.

Otherwise, if you're self-employed, you do your taxes yourself. That's when the fines come in. 

But being self-employed could mean working as a casual cleaner or in some other low paid job, or writing down some equipment you bought for a business. Who is this fine really going to hurt and who is it going to help?

If you're wealthy and/or have an accountant then that's fine - you either pay the fine and it doesn't hurt at all, or you have an accountant you pay to get your tax return done on time. Great.

But otherwise, if you're too busy working all those hours for low pay, running your business, unwell or have some sort of issue in your life which means you're a little late putting in those figures in to HMRC, then you're fined 10 pounds a day.

It does add up and it hurts. It might even mean any return you had coming to you is cancelled out by paying more to the government.

It's a punitive measure that only punishes those that can't afford it. And for what? It might make the small percentage that's doing the wrong thing sit up and take notice, but ultimately it's a measure which means that those that can least afford it get hit.

It's a pattern that resembles the change that's been sweeping through Britain, demonstrating a punitive policy culture that's settling into this country from the top down, and it makes me rather nervous.

Discussions about cuts to housing benefits for young people, university fees sky-rocketing, high unemployment, equally high youth unemployment with numbers of young people in neither education nor training climbing for the first time in years. Private companies profiting off carers and the jobless in the same way vultures circle for the kill in a drought-starved land.

It's almost as if we are punishing the working poor and unemployed for no reason other than being underpaid or unemployed.

It wouldn't be so jaw droppingly shocking if the top tier - the 1% shall we say - were hurting as well. But they're not. Figures show that the rich have really done well out of the financial crisis and their quality of lives have been maintained or even improved.

Now with Barclays and the Libor scandal - we're seeing more of our nation's riches shoved into the pockets of bankers but no charges yet to punish those responsible. Rather odd given something criminal did take place.

Certainly the banking industry is yet to get a flogging equal to that which the poor or young and jobless are receiving.

What really makes me nervous is that all these policy decisions are being made by a Prime Minister who is really very wealthy himself.

Mr Cameron would never have had an issue with housing, given he inherits a rather nice structure. His only private sector job paid 90 thousand pounds a year and his wife's mother got it for him.

Regardless of political background - Tory or Labour - you want to know that the man or woman making the decisions for the so-called good of the economy really understands what he or she is doing. You want to know that Mr Cameron has lived the lives we've lived and gets it. (It's not unheard of, many of Australia's PM's have come from humble beginnings).

If Mr Cameron had experienced a hard-luck life and still thought the cuts were good for the country, maybe people would swallow it and carry on - in the great British way.

But this is a man who has had nothing but privilege. It frightens me that a man like that speaks for us all. A man who had it all rather easy, who was never, ever going to have his cheek near the rough edge of the road at any point in his life, no matter if he failed school, made the wrong career choice and saw his wages fall or accidentally got a woman pregnant.

That someone from that background tells us to trust him when he guts the paths to social equality and social mobility? I don't know, I'm finding it hard to swallow.

What I would expect is for business to be told in no uncertain terms - do not drive down wages, put more of your profit margin in your people so that quality of living is maintained, so that recruitment agencies aren't tempted to hire people who will work for much less (to the detriment of those people and the rest of us whose wages they undercut). So that we can afford the rent or the mortgage and so people don't have to rely on benefits. 

Start employing and training young people and pay them a decent, living wage so that they don't need to subsidise their income with a housing benefit.

In other words, don't expect a government handout for your business just so you can make a profit while underpaying your workers - Wallmart style.

If you ask for the business (and banking!) sector to help share the load, rather than just cut, cut, cut government spending, maybe then I'd be happier about what was going on.

I'll tell you what - how about in return for Libor - a promise from Barclays to give 25 per cent of young unemployed or underemployed people from poor backgrounds traineeships with great first year pay?

Maybe then I wouldn't cringe as transport costs rival the mortgage repayments, as I struggle to get to work and as I lay down after a 14 hour day, just as exhausted as David Cameron, but no where near as filthy rich.

Monday, 2 July 2012

I Love It: London Rioters Get Jail But Bob Diamond of Barclays Keeps His Job


This opinion piece in the guardian makes the point - a man got six months jail for stealing bottles of water in the London riots, where as who is facing criminal charges and jail after the giant Libor/Barclays bank rigging scandal? And what about all the other major banks who are involved?

It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds and who actually, if anyone, ends up in jail. But it does hark back to the days when you could be wealthy in England and get away with murder, but be poor and steal a piece of bread and you're sent on a perilous journey to Australia.. you know.. back in the 1700's.

Addendum: Diamond has finally fallen on his sword  - though he was apparently pushed rather than willingly jumped.. I'm sure it was this post which tipped him over the edge ;) I wonder how many more heads will roll?

Monday, 4 June 2012

Could Sourcing be the Answer to Britain's Journalism Woes?

As News International's ex-executives and editors are arrested and charged left, right and centre, the Leveson Inquiry continues to drill into why Britian's journalism culture has led it to a plethora of phone hacking and police corruption all in the interests of a front page.


Apart from those in power being in the pockets of journalists, police and vice-versa -- could anonymous sourcing be, well,the source of the issue?

This bit by Charlie Brooker's Newswipe explains it all.

If British Journalists had to TELL people where they got information from unless it was absolutely imperative they hide their source (Watergate style)...Then could we see the end of naughty journos and their even naughtier police officer and politician buddies?

Watch the video and see for yourself, but methinks Leveson needs a new inquiry with sourcing at its core...

Addendum: This has really got me thinking about journalism in Australia and I think we suffer from something similar.. the number of times I had to pick apart a story in the newspapers while I was working at the ABC, only to find that apart from not being clear on who the original source was, the details were wrong, or misrepresented and blown out of proportion. It always left me wondering whose bidding we were all doing...

Sunday, 6 May 2012

Here's Nick Clegg's Turn

His reaction to the Lib Dems massacre in the UK local elections...

On Penguins and Politics

More Guardian fun on a bank holiday morning with Charlie Brooker, Penguin politics and the UK local elections...

It's hard not to feel a tinsy bit sorry for Cleggy's Lib Dems. A penguin-costumed contender beat a Lib Dem candidate in Edinburgh...

UK Meritocracy? I'm not so sure...

This is a real corker! American writer Gary Younge making a few well-aimed points in The Guardian about the UK's class system.

He argues it must be tough to be someone with inherited wealth telling poor people to 'buck up' in tough economic times...

I took one thing away from it -- I would LOVE a starting salary of 90,000 pounds! Where do I sign up?