The IPPR is suggesting that anyone who works in London should be entitled to an increased minimum wage, £1 higher than the rest of the country. One assumes this is due to higher living costs. Strangely the IPPR does not advocate a reduced minimum wage in areas like Wales or the North East where living costs may be below the national average. Funny that.
UPDATE: The ususal ignorant idiots have infested the comments, deliberately twisting what I wrote. I am not advocating a lower minimum wage for the North East and Wales, I am merely pointing out the perverted logic of the IPPR. Sigh.
56 comments:
Farm wages need to go up!!
The minimum wage has to provide a better income than benefits or too many people are going to claim handouts and the soft touch Labour government is going to carry on giving them for fear of alienating their sclerotic sponging base. A cut in Wales has to be accompanmied by an even greater benefit cut. It would be an idea to put it up in areas like Wales and the North East to help end the vast sponging problem that we have.
This woudl be inline with teaching pays that give a higher salary to those in central/inner/outer areas of london. Stop trying to batter the welsh and the north. There are obvious reasons why londoners should receive more than other parts of the country but no reasons whatsoever why this should be at the detriment of welsh and northern collegues
theo, you're such a dirty communist. Why don't you just shut it?
Let's face it Iain. The Tories would be happy to be still paying people peanuts and £2 an hour. Your government ruined the North,(that's why you have no support in the region) so i would hardly advocate giving the people a reduced wage.
I am told by a cousin who used to live in West Wales that when the minimum wage was first introduced some local wages went down. The argument was, "By law, we no longer have to pay you more than £x".
Usual tory boy small minded nonsense.
In the 97 election the tories assured us that if a minimum wage was introduced , 3 million jobs would be lost.Ah, as if.
Lets get some punitive tax rates for the useless overpaid tossers running British business, recent research shows they are virtually unemployable internationally, and for their overpaid brats in the city
The current minimum wage is not I think a "living wage" for most people even in the "cheap areas". The IPPR should be calling for a living wage everywhere and not just cherry picking London.
Re: new banner. Iain, I'd touch up that bit of grey hair on the left if I were you. It would make you look 8.5 years younger.
The BBC ran a story 24th July 07 that the government was considering lowering the minimum wage in NI, Scotland, Wales and the north east of England.
Much as I wish the current government was Tory, I'm afraid it isn't.
My question would be why not regional benefit's levels also based on actual need rather than socialist greed ?
the remaining great taboo of the left, mr paul.
why do the public sector jobs all have to be paid at the same rate, from islington to aberdeen?
differential pay rates, which can tuned to local conditions and demand, are the way forward
"Lets get some punitive tax rates for the useless overpaid tossers running British business"
Usual Labour boy class war crap!
You clearly have no understanding of the real world of business, as you no doubt spend your days idling away in some publicly funded job.
The socialists, should really do some growing up. Non-productive managers, are eventually found out in modern businesses, the shareholders demand value in big businesses and smaller businesses cannot afford to carry passengers. Redundancy is an often used tool to clear out the dead wood.
This is, of course, the complete opposite of the Public sector, which waste 10s of billions of pounds of taxpayers money every year so that more parasites will vote Labour by offering them a job for life and a untouchable pension, just for surfing the net all day!
Wer ist der (oder die) I P P R
Comments like yours explain why there are no Tory MPs in the NE of England.
Our industry was deliberately destroyed by your precious party.
That is why you are so despised.
I have a set of mugs lovingly preserved from the 2001 GE campaign. One has a picture (rather faded by frequent visits to the dishwasher) of William Hague. On the other side is a quote from him: "The minimum wage is the height of irresponsibility".
Given that Dave’s career as your glorious leader seems to be following an uncannily similar (and, we must hope, just as unsuccessful) path to William's time as ditto, can you get him to come up with a similarly reactionary quote on this topic?
Here's a story everyone missed except BBC Northern Ireland:
"Prime Minister Gordon Brown is considering plans which could see the minimum wage reduced in Northern Ireland, it is believed."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6914470.stm
Could it possibly be that the ignorant idiots are taking their cue from you Iain?
If the Tories are to win more seats in the north of England, they need to make an attempt to understand the place.
Comments like yours show how far away you are from doing so.
No matter what you intended, your words were insensitive.
Those who have criticised you are not ignorant idiots.
It is you who are ignorant.
You clearly have no idea at all about this part of your own country.
Iain,
It's simply not the case that living costs are lower in the Wales and the North East. The minimum wage was introduced after two decades of take home pay in those regions sliding behind the national average. I vividly recall working for the council at the time and receiving correspondence from the now ex-MP for Langbaugh Michael Bates who claimed that low pay was better than no pay etc. (this was in response to some employers paying 1.50 an hour locally).
The IPPR proposals would not even raise London wages to the London Living Wage and would certainly not damage economic competitiveness.
I think we are seeing the real side to what a Tory Britain would look like here.
The Northern Ireland story is not one I'd rely on. Would be useful to know Iain whether you now support (a) the minimum wage per se (b) the minimum wage with regional weighting (c) a living wage calculated in each area according to real cost of living.
Thers should not be a minimum wage. It should be between the employer and employee and is nothing to do with the Labour government. I think it holds wages down for a mass of people.
No Iain: you are so correct. The minimum wage should be kept for wales! They do deserve it after all. The minimum wage for all welsh MP's failing to serve English constituencies properly, should be rewarded, accordingly.
Surely the Welsh do not need a minimum wage. See recent "panorama" prog.!!
The Telegraph also had the minimum wage story in July:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/22/nwage122.xml
The reasearch was done by The Economic Research Council.
"The council's study, which used a raft of official labour market and price data, said the minimum wage for Londoners should be boosted to £6.90 an hour. It also said the level in the north-east should be cut by 57p to £4.78 an hour, while workers in Yorkshire should get a minimum of £4.95, employees in Northern Ireland should be paid at least £4.80 and those in Wales more than £4.84."
Ignorant idiot from the north east,
The greedy and corrupt Union barons destroyed industry in the north NOT the Tories! Your heroic union commisars used the working class as an Army to blackmail the elected governments of the day, from the fifties on! The fat greedy union thugs destroyed industries like ship building with no thought of the workers. All those fat corrupt trade union barons are now on fat pensions and cushy nonjobs while the workers languish on the dole!
I am sick and tired of the lies and deceit that the leftists always trot out about how the Tories are to blame for the demise of heavy industry! If it werent for the class war leftists striking all the time for no other reason than to bring about a socialist revolution then we would still be an industrial giant!
It was the Thatcher government which closed the coal mines, not the "union barons" of your rabid imagination, English "Democrat".
The complete absence of Tory MPs in the NE is due to people up here preferring the truth to regurgitated Thatcherite dogma.
What of poor dear Oona, weeping because she never made it to Minister?
Poor woman is better out of the Commons. Such a tender plant.
Ignorant idiot
Congratulations, you have chosen your name well.
When you look at what actually happened to various industries in this country had far more to do with nationalisation and union militancy than it ever had to do with Conservative governments. On the contrary the Thatcher administration set up the conditions to start the recovery of industry in the North East
You are just repeating the lies of the socialists who want power over you, and regret the loss of the influence of the unions. Those lies and gerrymandering socialist policy of keeping people in dependence on the state are what stop the people of the north supporting the party that would do far more for them than the Labour government is doing.
You might believe those lies, but don't expect others to be as naive as you are.
Ignorant idiot from the North east,
I come from a Notts pit town and many of my family worked down the pit so dont go telling me what I know or dont know!
The Notts minors stood firm against Authur(plastic Joe Gormley)Scargill when he took out the miners without a vote AND without cause JUST to bring down the Tory government! He tried and failed to emulate the 1974 strike which destroyed Heath! Our family fought against the NUM scum who tried their level best to destroy our mines JUST to make a political point! I was there! Were YOU?
That bully boy Scargill destroyed the coalminers NOT Thatcher!
Its time you read a book or two instead of listening to the NUM scumbags!
The Labour regime you love so much has been stealing the miners compensation money and giving it to their crooked lawyer chums! so why dont you save your fake indignation for that Eh?
ignorant idiot from the north east [3.06 PM] You say, "Our industry [in the north east] was deliberately destroyed by your precious [Tory] party.
Tell me, IIFTNE, why do you think the Tories would DELIBERATELY destroy the heavy industries of the north east? What would be their motives? A dislike of cloth caps and ferrets, perhaps?
Why do you think your shipbuilding yards lost out to Korea? Anything to do with late deliveries, sub-standard workmanship, lousy management, intransigent trade unions, etc.? etc.
No, don't tell me: None of it was your fault. It was all down to the wicked witch, MARGARET THATCHER.
The North, Scotland and Wales are going to stay 'ruined' until they grow up and stop expecting the government to do everything for them. Nationalised industry and handouts for people and business were not sustainable and were going to ruin the country in the long term.
If some vest-wearing cider-swilling fat men in Cwmbran and Hull and Glasgow (the ones who haven't worked since 1988 and expect the people of London and the South East and the one taxpayer on their street to pay for their sorry lifestyles) can't get over Margaret Thatcher it is their problem.
The new generation need to be given a pro-enterprise, work-for-yourself education with input at every stage from the private sector that the provinces both can't hack and rely on for subsidy and fag money.
I have heard anecdotal evidence that immigrants are working informally for less than the minimum wage. They don't complain because it is still much more than they could earn at home.
This might explain why it seems to be having such little impact on the number of people claiming benefits.
It does occasionally break into the mainstream news.
Personally, like most people in the private sector, my pay has been set based on the local labour market for years so I don't see why public sector pay and DSS benefits shouldn't be the same.
I grew up 200yds from one of the biggest, and best known, nationalised industries.
This vehicle manufacturer was a busted flush in the 1970s and everyone locally knew it. It was propped up by tax payers money (presumably from the affluent south). As soon as Maggie came in and stopped/slowed the subsidies, it fell over in slow motion.
In the real world, that manufacturer was trading while insolvent. There was very little self-sufficient 'heavy industry' when Maggie came in. Though there was a lot of terminally-loss making heavy industry.
Incidentally, I understand more manufacturing jobs have gone under Labour since 1997 than under the Tories.
In fact, anon@6:58pm, taxpayers live in all parts of the country, not just in your beloved "affluent south".
To repeat a point (you obviously find it hard to follow an argument), we know who hit us hardest.
That is why we do not vote Tory.
"It was the Thatcher government which closed the coal mines, not the "union barons" of your rabid imagination, English "Democrat"
OH Please!! Previous governments (including Labour) closed loads of coal mines, it had been in decline for decades. The bulk of the mining industry around Sedgefield, for example, had dissapeared by the mid-seventies, the arse end of it was left in the '80s.
http://vision.edina.ac.uk/data_rate_page.jsp?u_id=10056998&c_id=10001043&data_theme=T_IND&id=3
Why the hell should tax-payers pay to prop up dieing and uncompetitive industries, when most of those taxpayers do not have that safety net to support them? How did the parasitic trade unions repay the generosity of the Taxpayer?? That's it, they went on strike all the time and tried to wreck the economy and he job security of the hard-working tax-payers who were propping up their jobs!
This country is soooooo much better for the decline of trade union dominated industries. The current Labour administration have definitely benefited from it, as they don't have Winter's of discontent to deal with anymore, that were created by their Communist revoluionary paymasters!
Dear ignorant Etc Etc,
Instead of reading from the big red BBC book of socialist lies why dont you take the time to read about your heroic NUM commisars and how they took millions out of the union funds and diverted it for their own pension pot! Or how about the money they took from the KGB/USSR! where did that money go? because it didnt go to the foot soldiers in the NUM revolution!
I notice you have not had the balls to answer my question about the miners compensation theft by ex NUM commisars and crooked NULAB lawyers! Whats the matter ignorant, cat got your tongue?
Your union commisars live in comfort after feathering their own nests while the rank and file got nothing more than a few quid redundancy and a life on the dole or a job at Tescos!
The working class were betrayed by the leftists/socialists only you are too thick to see it!
"I am not advocating a lower minimum wage for the North East and Wales"
Well you ought to be! In fact, you should be advocating a lower minimum wage nationally, say precisely zero, zilch, diddly squat. It's none of the state's business!
By the way, Iain, going by your new photo you appear to be gradually turning into Rob Halford..
It is people like you Sir that is slowing down our country.
Whatever happened to individual responsibility?
Silly me obviously it's much easier blaming the great institution that is "Government".
Dwelling on the past does not, and will never help anyone.
Remain ignorant - perhaps it's for the best.
Dear English etc
I am afraid I missed your earlier comment.
I repeat my point, which is unarguable, that it was the Thatcher government which closed the pits, not the NUM.
Scargill waged a class war, true. He retired in comfort (unlike may miners), also true.
Was that a good reason to destroy the livelihoods of all miners?
No.
There is a difference between being badly led by your own and attacked and destroyed by your enemies.
Protecting Oonie, are we?
I think she'd do great in The Big Brother House, wailing about her lack of advancement.
She might even find a way to advance herself.
What's the IPPR and what business is it of theirs what commercial enterprises pay their employees? Agree with Anon 7:55.
Anon 2:09 - What about some punitive tax rates for the jerks in Parliament who don't do a day's work and enjoy privileges the taxpayer pays for?
That Oona's a nasty piece of work and her father was a draft dodger.
Don't think the days of the massive struggle at BL between Red Robbo and Michael Edwardes wasn't serious.
I interviewed Edwardes some years ago and he told me that the trades unions involved had received help from the Soviet government. He had evidence - including visits to Moscow - but claimed the papers at the time wouldn't touch it.
Of course, the Commies saw these industrial battles as way to de-stablise the UK.
The big BL strikes were seen by the state as so serious, Edwardes also told me, that whenever a Union meeting took place in a West Midlands pub during the strike, he had a transcript on his desk the next morning.
And think we can all work out how that happened....
From the impression I gained at the time, Edwardes might yet spill the full unbelieveable story of those times.
Perhaps 2010, when the records can be released (I think - 30 year rule?) will be the time for such a book.
It would have been good to carry on, and perhaps even conclude, the debate, but with "moderation enabled" this is just not possible.
As a director of a small company, I'm a recent convert to the concept of the minimum wage - and one set at a sensible level. Given the political reality that benefits can't be cut substantially, other financial ways must be found to encourage the underclass from welfare dependency into the workplace. A substantial increase in the minimum wage, coupled with a dramatic decrease in corporate taxation (ie remove emplyees NI contributions) could be a good win-win policy for all concerned. It would be good to see the Conservatives adopt some very radical ideas like this - almost fits in as one of Tim Montgomerie's "Politics of and".
IPPR = a think tank consisting of idiots who have never lived in the real world.
However I'm touched that anyone in the North East thinks that the champagne "socialists" of this government give a stuff about them either, you all live way too far South for that pets!
The coal mines closed thanks to Scargill who was unable to see when he should have settled. He could have made all sorts of deals with the government, but no he led his men into a war they could not win. He was the bigest disaster for the miners.
When will Labour be opening the mines again then?
Iain
Living (and housing) costs are indeed higher in London but that's not actually the main reason why we are arguing for a higher minimum wage rate for low paid workers in the capital.
The minimum wage has been a big success - boosting the pay of over a million and a half workers with no negative impact on jobs. But it is doing a far less effective job in London than across the rest of the UK.
London is the only part of the country where the gap between the low paid and average earners has got wider over the last decade (it has decline everywhere else).
This is because wages at the bottom have gone up slower in London than amongst low paid workers in every other region, while middle and higher earners in the capital have seen much faster than average pay growth.
Wages in London are pulling apart, while everywhere else the minimum wage has helped to keep the wages of those at the bottom of the labour market in touch with those in the middle.
Also, minimum wage workers in the capital earn just a third of the average London wage. The equivalent figure for all other regions is around a half.
In short, the London labour market is an outlier - justifying this particular policy response. There is no justification for lowering the minimum wage in other parts of the country - not least because there is no evidence that the minimum wage has had any negative impact on jobs in these areas.
Finally, London also has the highest percentage of working households that are still in poverty. And a minimum wage would - as some of your readers suggest - boost work incentives.
Thanks for your interest in the story
Graeme
Researcher, ippr
"a minimum wage would - as some of your readers suggest - boost work incentives"
So would a benefit cut.
Graeme Cook - Who gives a shit?
How is this the business of the government, which couldn't run a child's birthday party?
Trust the market. Cut "temporary charity payments" - aka by the friendlier, less judgemental word word "benefits" -completely (except genuine disability) and watch the market find its own level.
That's what it's all about. The market.
I'm also mulling the idea that charity would have to be repaid, in tiny increments, after work has been found (by force).
You've come to the wrong blog, Graeme, if you think anyone here thinks people deserve charity from the government or forced charity from employers.
The market decides. It's a cold, hard world out there, and those of us who aren't researchers for IPPR, whatever the hell that is, manage to make our own way. So whatever IPPR is should be shut the hell down.
No passengers, and that includes you.
Graeme, Has Gordon given the IPPR its own office at No.10 yet? Or does one not need to be that close physically to act as cheerleader for policies the Government want to implement? This Minimum Wage stuff sounds remarkably like a policy that Brown was said to be considering a month ago. And Jenny's recent report on Energy Security, it turns out, bases its technology assessments not on real examples but on DBERR's generalizations. I'm sure the Government won't be citing either of these reports to justify policy-announcements, will they?
The "no negative impact on jobs" bit is a joke. The only way employment levels have been kept up is by creation of public-sector jobs to compensate for private-sector stagnation. According to government statistics (source linked from here), between summer 1999 and winter 2005/6, 1.5m jobs were added to the economy. That included 1.6m jobs in "Public admin, education and health" (PAEH). In other words, the number of jobs in the rest of the economy actually declined in the period, while the PAEH sector grew like topsy.
I suppose the 3 million or so people on disability benefit are really all sick from some anonymous pandemic that struck in the last few years, are they? The fact that 20% of households with working-age occupants are entirely dependent on benefits is an anomaly in a roaring employment market? Yeah, right.
For those arguing about manufacturing jobs, you can get the figures from the same place above. Manufacturing jobs declined as a proportion of the whole under Thatcher, but only because the total number of jobs grew strongly. The absolute number of manufacturing jobs did not decline dramatically. The real decline occurred first with a big step down in Major's early years (White Wednesday no doubt a major factor), and then an even larger sustained decline under Blair and Brown.
Strangely the IPPR does not advocate a reduced minimum wage in areas like Wales or the North East where living costs may be below the national average.
They're not. We earn less, but -surprise surprise- we don't get any discount on the cost of living.
Graeme Cooke
You claim the current minimum wage has not affected employment, convieniently forgetting the 5 million+ who are "economically inactive".
The fundamental problem with your highly socialist analysis is that you see the minimum wage as a means of redistributing wealth. As a right wing supporter of the minimum wage I see it as a means of getting people off benefits (which are already too generous) and onto the bottom rung of the job market. However, without a commensurate reduction in employers costs it will continue being ineffective in creating jobs.
http://www.livingwage.org.uk/
The vision is of a city and country where everyone in work is paid enough to provide adequately for themselves and their family. The Living Wage Campaign aims to make poverty wages history.
Ignorant idiot
Could you also add "hypocritical" to your name?
"To repeat a point (you obviously find it hard to follow an argument), we know who hit us hardest."
It is however you who are not following the argument, or even admitting there is an argument.
For a start you don't know who hit you hardest, you assert that it's Thatcher but you cannot justify that assertion with anything resembling a coherent argument.
On the contrary you ignore the strong arguments made against your point, to state that it "...is unarguable, that it was the Thatcher government which closed the pits, not the NUM". This is a blind - you are trying to get people to forget the cause of the pit closures, which was the communist Scargill, by focussing on the agent of the closure, which is not relevant. You either are unable to understand the distinction or you are being disingenuous.
Your irrational hatred of Thatcher is clouding your judgement. You cannot accept that she was right, that the fault lay elsewhere and she had the solution, because you have invested too much in your belief in socialism, an economic philosophy that has been proved to be fundamentally flawed.
It is obvious to anyone who looks objectively rather than with a predetermined answer, looking to for "proof") that the destruction of British industry predates Thatcher. She had no reason or capability in the time frame to destroy it.
Oona King - dontcha just hate her?
Crap as a speaker - crap as a writer - so crap that no newspaper expect for MOSY is even interested in her self interested outpourings.
MP accesses internet porn on the official Commons monitor!
Shuck, Oonie babes - Mark Oaten got there before you -- such a nearly girl weren't you sweetie?
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