Archive for the ‘British current affairs’ Category
The scandal that is the WCA
January 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Nine months ago, I did a posting about how I had accompanied a good friend of mine with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to an interview as part of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) because he had applied for the new Employment & Support Allowance (ESA). He was refused the ESA, he appealed, and he has now been […]
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When ACE became NCU
December 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In 1985, I was a national official with a trade union called the Post Office Engineering Union, although most of our members did not work for the Post Office (they were then in newly-created British Telecom) and they were not engineers (they were technicians who liked to think of themselves as engineers). We were about […]
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When the front door was underground
December 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In the mid 1980s. the bitter miners’ strike was over and the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers had moved north to Sheffield. At the time, I was a negotiating official with the then National Communications Union and had a meeting at the new NUM offices in Sheffield. When I reached the building, I […]
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The disenfranchisement of voters
December 14th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
On my web site, I describe the political systems of some 11 nations. Sometimes i am asked which country has the most democratic system. This is not a question that one can really answer, but one day I intend to write an essay for my web site setting out the criteria one would adopt in […]
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And now we have the CHUKS
December 10th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In an earlier posting, I explained which nations made up the BRICs, the PIGS, and the CIVETS. From this week, we have a new acronym for a group of countries. It is CHUKS which means: Czech Republic, Hungary, United Kingdom and Sweden. And what do they have in common? They are the four members of […]
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Gap between rich and poor becoming even wider
December 6th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
A recurrent theme of this blog is that inequalities in income, wealth and power are damaging to social cohesion and individual life chances. Therefore an up-dated transnational study of income inequality in developed countries – including the UK and the USA – provides compelling messages. The gap between rich and poor in OECD countries has […]
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The link between social mobility and income inequality
November 30th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
“The idea that anyone can, by their own merits and hard work, improve their social and economic position is one of the dominant political themes of our times. Encouraging social mobility, both within a person’s lifetime (intra- generational social mobility) and from one generation to the next (inter- generational social mobility), has become a key […]
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How are we going to curb excessive pay?
November 22nd, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Today the High Pay Commission publishes its final report, “Cheques with Balances: Why tackling high pay is in the national interest”, shows stratospheric pay increases which have seen wealth flow upwards to the top 0.1% away from average workers. It sets out a 12-point plan based on transparency, accountability and fairness to halt spiralling high […]
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The high price of excessive inequality
November 8th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you […]
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The Occupy London protest
November 5th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
On 15 October 2011, an Occupy London (actually Occupy the London Stock Exchange) protest began and now looks like being around for a long time. The protest was a British version of a protest that started in New York’s financial district and has since spread all around the USA and indeed the world. The protesters […]
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