She claimed: “All of those things will help tackle inequality, which has been improving.” She had clearly forgotten that just over two weeks ago Ms Harman launched a report on inequalities in the UK which revealed that under Labour inequality has grown to the highest level since just after the Second World War. The report by the National Equality Panel looked at two different measures of inequality, both found that Labour failed to narrow the gap between the rich and poor:
“The first measure is the 90:10 ratio which we have been using above, which is one way of summarising inequality across the bulk of the population ... It declined in the mid-1990s and again at the start of the 2000s, but grew between 2004-05 and 2007-08, so that the latest figure available exceeds its value of ten years before.”
“The second summary index for inequality is the Gini coefficient. This (expressed as a percentage) takes a value from zero, if everyone has the same income, to 100 if one person has all the income and everyone else none. It is affected by income differences at every point in the distribution, including at the very top and bottom as well as in the middle. Given the increasing incomes of those at the very top in particular, this index fell less rapidly than the 90:10 ratio in the mid-1990s and first part of this decade, and the increasing inequality after 2004-05 meant that by 2007-08 it had reached its highest level in the years covered. We do not have figures before 1961 on this basis, but comparison with measures based on tax records suggests that this is the highest level of income inequality since soon after the Second World War.”
(National Equality Panel, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: A Report of the National Equality Panel, January 2010, p39
Harriet went on to claim: “The Conservatives in the House of Commons voted against the Equality Bill.”
Actually they didn't. The Tories welcomed the Bill. They tabled a reasoned amendment on the Equality Bill at Second Reading in the Commons and abstained at 3rd reading because of specific concerns they had about elements of the Bill. To say they voted against the Bill is inaccurate.
Thirdly, she claimed: “There’s fewer people unemployed, there’s an increase in jobs in this country than there were when we first came in and unemployment is one of the major issues if you are trying to tackle inequality.”
Fact: Unemployment currently stands at 2.458 million, compared to 2.050 million in May 1997.
Three strikes and she's out?
29 comments:
"For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it."
And that, in truth, is what New Labour think of us.
So many meaningless numbers, twisted so unrecognisably, that nobody cares whether to believe or to disbelieve any more.
So they just keep churning out the tractor stats.
D
It's her aristocratic brain Iain.
"There's so much inbreeding in that family even the bulldog's got a club foot"
H. Rawlinson. Mid-70's probably. Rawlinson End.
More to the point, why do none of the interviewers ever pull them up on these lies?
Until someone in the media actually holds the cretins in government accountable for the guff they spout we'll just have to put up with it.
Only "good"thing, is once the Tories get in, they'll suddenly start having a backbone again. - Another advantage of a Tory government - no sycophantic media.
It is about time the broadcastimh company's employed interviewers who have a smidgeon of knowledge to tackle the type of porkies that seep from politicians' mouths.
Who interviewed her? Tim Marshall? for if it was he she was on safe ground on the evidence of his Geo. Osborne interview yesterday.
Glad to see Geo. turn the tables and ask why no questions asked of Milliband about Lord May that well known non-dom and supporter of the Labour party and one G Brown.
oooops - meant Lord Paul as the labour paymaster!!!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7027370.ece
So much for the Tories restoring honesty...
Labour might be liars but it's the entire political class that is a disgrace.
Iain
Why don't you stop trying to be an MP and join the Today programme on Radio4 as an interviewer instead?
Just to be pedantic, I don't think Pinocchio is an appropriate comparison. He suffered when he lied.
"She who permits herself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual."
Now that's Harriet.
I am no Hattie fan but surely the fact that the UK population grew by 7.5 million between 1997 and 2009 ( office of statistics) has a bearing on the unemployment figure comparison ?
'The Tories voted against.....'
Typical New Labour: typical Gordon Brown. Tell a lie and then attack the lie.
A Labour variant on this may be seen in a recently circulated Labour rag in my own constituency (South Ribble - David Borrow, (who he you may well ask?)) where it talks about what the Tories will "probably" do, and then attacks that.
Expect more of the same from an increasingly desperate New Labour.
Turning into Pinocchio!
Her nose already took out the Channel Islands
Tim Marshall is an embarrassment. I have written to tell Sky so.
Labour politician + speaking = lies
its no surprise as i don't think hattie is left in charge of the tea-club in labour due to her imbecility over anything economic.( as her husband mr dromey was the labour party treasurer who claimed he had no idea where any of the millions rolling in to the coffers at the time came from one wonders who does the accounting chez harman..the poor loves must have terrible trouble.........) And that she wasn't pulled up over it is all par for the course...those sky auto-cuties aren't paid to know silly things like unemployment levels are they?. Only yesterday gillian joseph calmly announced not once but twice that the latest brave soldier to lose his life was from the ITALIAN grenedier guards........it beggars belief.......
"surely the fact that the UK population grew by 7.5 million between 1997 and 2009"
That'll be all those teenage pregnancies.
Andrew Lansley makes an ass of himself and Tories claim more than half of girls in the most deprived areas fell pregnant before their 18th birthday and this is what you post about ? lol
I smell an election on the horizon
way to spin a bad day for the Tories though iain well done !
Unemployment does redress inequalities. Genuine statistics show that during this recession the percentage of men loses their jobs is very much higher than for women.
Harriet Harman proving that she is any man's equal as a propagandist - Mr Goebbels, you're toast !
Alan Douglas
That is of course ignoring the one-and-a-bit million working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job and the millions on disability benefit (paying slightly more than standard unemployment benefit) most of whom would take a paying job if they got the chance.
The so-called increase in employment is made up of women being classified as employed in child-care etc who were previously classified as economically inactive while doing exactly the same thing and civil servants making sure we fill in all the extra forms for all the extra regulations introduced by New Labour. Productive employment has gone down while the population has risen. The main reason why the official numbers have not yet matched the 1930s is because more than half the 16-21s are being educated rather than working or looking for work
I wish there were figures for "usefully employed", rather than the easily manipulated "unemployed" (hey, he's on a training course now, take him off the list!)
I mean people employed in this country for private organisations which make no more than 10% of their turnover from public money.
I suspect the figure would be depressingly small.
They're not called Liebore for nothing.
Minymor
"surely the fact that the UK population grew by 7.5 million between 1997 and 2009"
I think you'll find the growth is something under 4 Million, so that's 3 whoppers for Hattie and 1 for Minymor. And if Hattie meant that the unemployment RATE had come down (rather than unemployment itself) she would have used the word "rate". But if she had done that there's a (slim) chance the interviewer might have pulled her up on it.
I lost it with the "fairness" brigade a long time ago. If only life was fair we could all join hands and sing kumbaya and live in an egalitarian paradise for ever more.
Trouble is life ain't never going to be fair. Thgus Hattie's equality bill that aims to make us all more equal will only succeed in being unbfair to everybody.
This is always the result of such initiatives.
<a href="http://www.greenteethmm.com/if_only_the_world_were_fair,shtml
Learn from this Iain. Do not fall into the trap of lying.
My novel called 'Street Politics' has the perfect slogan - 'We tell no lies, only the truth' (slightly changed for here). It works and it is something a lot of politicians could do well and remember.
I wish you luck in your attempts to be selected and if you did live up to that all the better for you and the rep of parliment.
Labour don't want real inequality to be eliminated for it is that which sustains the envy that Labour milks for all it is worth. It is Labour's shame that they are content to have a vast swathe of our population (30% and rising) entirely dependent on benefits for one reason and one reason only, and that is to provide Labour with core voting fodder.
Sympathise but "usefully employed" includes doctors, teachers and nurses, most of whom are employed by the state; I referred to "productively employed" because all of us - children, working, retired and unemployed/non-employed have to live off the fruit of their labour. I work (hard) in a service industry (my firm gets zero from the government) but I do not produce anything that anyone can eat or wear so I need to justify my pay by the indirect benefit to the economy.
"depressingly small" - absolutely right: employment in manufacturing industry has fallen by over 40% under New Labour.
Socialists = liars
A few months ago, Jeff Randall wrote a wonderful piece in the Telegraph entitled, "Come home, Harriet, your work is done," positing that with her background Ms Harman is actually a Conservative mole. Randall pointed out that nobody could do more harm to Labour unless they were doing it on purpose. Keep going, Harriet, you're doing our job for us!
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