Poll shows there is more inequality than people want or know
A new opinion poll shows that, when they are asked how much different jobs should be paid, people tend to propose higher pay for the low-paid jobs and lower pay for the high paid ones.
The opinion poll was conducted by ComRes for Pay and Tax: The Radio 4 Debate, due to be broadcast tonight at 5pm.
One thousand people were asked what they thought different jobs should pay.
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Suddenly Nick Cohen realises counter-terrorism laws can be abused
Nick Cohen actually has a good article in the Observer today (no, I’m not joking!) about the so-called Twitter trial. Read the whole thing, though this bit caught my eye specifically:
Beyond the law lies the politics. The hounding of Paul Chambers stinks of Labour authoritarianism. The prosecuting authorities showed no respect for free speech. They could not take a joke. They carried on prosecuting Chambers even when they knew he was harmless. They turned a trifle into a crime because a conviction helped them hit performance targets. Inside their bureaucratic hierarchies, it was dangerous to speak out against a superior’s stupidity. Better to let an injustice take place than risk a black mark against your name.
What surprises me is that anyone thought it was going to turn out any other way.
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Ashcroft to resign; criticises Tory campaign
Lord Ashcroft, the controversial billionaire Tory donor, has written a tough public critique of what he sees as the costly flaws in the Conservative Party’s election campaign.
He informed David Cameron, the Prime Minister, on Friday night that he will resign as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party at its board meeting in eight days’ time.
On Monday Lord Ashcroft will publish his verdict on the party’s failure to win an overall majority in the May general election. In his analysis, the Tory life peer criticises the party for:
- Failing to get its “message” and “brand” across to the voters.
- Relentless counterproductive attacks on the Labour Party and Gordon Brown.
- Agreeing to a televised debate of political leaders which enabled the Liberal Democrats to seize the “real change” initiative.
Poll: Over half of LD voters – Clegg ‘sold out’
52% of Lib Dem voters at the election say Clegg has “sold out”. 40% say they would have voted differently if they had known about Tory coalition.
These are the findings from a new Comres Poll out tonight, for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday.
Full questions and answers:
By going into coalition with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems appear to have sold out on their principles
Agree: 52% (41% May) Lib Dem voters 52%
Disagree: 28% (47% May) Lib Dem voters 32%I would have voted differently at the election if I had known that the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives would enter into a coalition
Agree: 19% Lib Dem voters 40%
Disagree: 64% Lib Dem voters 47%I don’t really know what David Cameron stands for
Agree: 37% (was 53% in July 2009)
Disagree: 51% (was 42% in July 2009)I don’t really know what Nick Clegg stands for
Agree: 57% Lib Dem voters 42%
Disagree: 31% Lib Dem voters 47%
More questions:
(“Lib Dem voters” say they voted Lib Dem in 2010. In subsequent questions, “Lib Dem supporters” refers to respondents who say they would vote Lib Dem in a general election tomorrow.)
The spending cuts proposed by the Coalition Government go too far
Agree: 52% Lib Dem supporters 48%
Disagree: 32% Lib Dem voters 37%The Conservatives have more to gain than the Liberal Democrats by being in the coalition
Agree: 54% Lib Dem supporters 64%
Disagree: 26% Lib Dem voters 25%Replacing student tuition fees with a tax on all graduates
Support: 34% Lib Dem supporters 41%
Oppose: 34% Lib Dem voters 27%Cancelling the schools building programme to save money
Support: 24% Lib Dem supporters 24%
Oppose: 59% Lib Dem voters 59%Renewing Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine fleet
Support: 24% Lib Dem supporters 19%
Oppose: 50% Lib Dem voters 63%Building new nuclear power stations
Support: 48% Lib Dem supporters 45%
Oppose: 30% Lib Dem voters 37%Raising VAT to 20%
Support: 26% Lib Dem supporters 35%
Oppose: 64% Lib Dem voters 57%The Government commitment to cuts across spending departments of up to 40%
Support: 43% Lib Dem supporters 50%
Oppose: 40% Lib Dem voters 34%
Charles Moore: Peter Tatchell a “crank”
Here is Charles Moore, chair of the think-tank Policy Exchange, in the Daily Telegraph today:
The BBC and Channel 4, culturally hostile to religion anyway, happily aired the critics. Peter Tatchell, the energetic crank whose life’s work is to reduce all human history to the question of gay sex, was virtually declared infallible.
Nothing at all to say about the Vatican sex abuses cases – it’s all Tatchell’s fault for being such a “crank”.
Nice bit of homophobia there – I doubt most Tories will even raise an eyebrow though.
The Papal visit stand-off doesn’t help secularists or the religious
Allow me, as Aggressive Atheist Man, to declare the result of this week’s all-star Religion v Secularism deathmatch: Bullshit-Spouting Octogenarian Priest 1 Hyperventilating Celebrity Atheists 0.
It’s a game the secularists were always fated to lose. A Papal visit is a forensically planned and meticulously crafted advertising bonanza for the church. It’s going to draw hundreds of thousands of men, women and children across the country; news coverage is going to reflect the joyous blah-blah of the stately waffle-arse.
Cut to a bunch of polysyllabic, placard-waving atheists bumming out everyone’s mellow by shouting about child abuse and condoms. That, there, is an own goal in a country like ours – Britain, as a nation, looks on protest as if it were a form of masturbatory public indecency.
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Incapacity benefit – the truth
Iain Duncan Smith recently announced that he intends to move 500,000 IB claimants onto Job Seeker’s Allowance, at a saving of £1,500 a year each to the public purse.
Supposedly.
In fact, like all the Coalition’s welfare reforms, this is not so much about cutting the tax bill as transferring the money from those who need it to their own friends.
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World’s largest miner: we need alternatives
THE world’s largest miner, BHP Billiton, has weighed into the climate change debate, warning that Australia should ”look beyond coal” and towards other energy sources.
The chief executive of BHP, Marius Kloppers, said Australia’s economy will suffer if it does not significantly reduce its carbon emissions in anticipation of a global carbon price .
…
Mr Kloppers stressed the need for a clear price signal on carbon emissions and recommended a combination of a carbon tax, land use actions and a limited emissions trading system, which could apply to electricity generators.
He said Australia’s energy production was particularly carbon intensive and the highest among OECD countries in terms of tonnes of carbon emitted per unit of energy. Coal-fired power stations account for almost half of the country’s emissions.
”Australia will need to look beyond just coal towards the full spectrum of available energy solutions,” he said.
…more at Sydney Morning Herald
via @johnB78)
Our society should be about more than just ‘growth’
contribution by Aled-Dilwyn Fisher
Writing here recently, Left Outside said, “if a fairer society as I imagine could be shown to consistently reduce growth then my life as a Socialist would become far more problematic.”
I find this conclusion, frankly, very strange. To illustrate just how useless economic growth is as a measure of anything but the level of production in a given space at a given time, I often point out that oil disasters, car crashes and train derailments add to economic growth – as does anything that involves production, whether objectively ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Growth across the board does not necessarily mean growth in the most useful areas of society – such as health, education or environmental industries – just as recent finance-dependent growth in Britain has shown.
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Nick Clegg: Libdems no longer a party of the left
Nick Clegg has declared that there is “no future” for the Liberal Democrats as a left-wing alternative to Labour as he appealed to his party to show “patience” and maintain a united front with the Conservatives.
In an interview with The Independent on the eve of Liberal Democrat conference starting today, he promised his party it would reap the electoral rewards if it held its nerve about its slump in the opinion polls.
He said: “There were some people, particularly around the height of the Iraq war, who gave up on the Labour Party and turned to the Liberal Democrats as a sort of left-wing conscience of the Labour Party.
“I totally understand that some of these people are not happy with what the Lib Dems are doing in coalition with the Conservatives. The Lib Dems never were and aren’t a receptacle for left-wing dissatisfaction with the Labour Party. There is no future for that; there never was.”
Sunny adds: Good thing I joined the Labour party then, and thanks to Nick Clegg for making that clear for us lefties.
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