The BBC hasn’t been very pro-active in examining Labour’s claims about the so called ‘Living standard’s crisis’ but at least someone is having a go…..and it’s not Tory Central Office…..
Rafael Behr, political editor of the New Statesman examines ‘Milibandism’.…but along the way he mentions this…leading in with a quote from Miliband’s conference speech…..
“For generations in Britain, when the economy grew, the majority got better off. And then somewhere along the way that vital link between the growing wealth of the country and your family finances was broken,” he said.
Average wages began stagnating around 2003, even as the economy looked buoyant in national statistics. For many households, there has been a relative decline in income, which was masked by Treasury tax credits and rising personal debt. Benefits (a substantial portion of which goes to people in work) and credit cards covered up for the systemic failure of our economic model. Those at the top of the income scale were spared the squeeze as the proceeds of growth flowed upwards to a narrow wealthy elite.
So…hang on…..Labour’s new line of attack, now that Plan B has been quietly binned, is the ‘Living standards crisis’…..the ever growing gap between average wages and prices and the highest earners…..caused by the Coalition’s policies.
Doesn’t Behr blow that line of attack apart by saying such a gap began in 2003 under Labour….‘Average wages began stagnating around 2003‘…..hidden by massive state spending and borrowing?
Will the BBC Newsnight team pick up on that as they interview Behr or is it just a PR exercise for the Chosen One?
In which I take seriously the idea that Milibandism is a thing: http://t.co/fJtvzCg2St (Thought experiment continues on Newsnight tonight)
— Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) November 20, 2013
The BBC is on board….spreading the word….and the word is ‘Milibandism’.
“Average wages began stagnating around 2003”
Wouldn’t be anything to do with mass immigration driving wages down, would it? Still, at least the wealthy got wealthier.
There is no greater example than the building trade. It provided decent well-paid jobs with prospects for school leavers with few qualifications. Starting as a labourer it was possible to learn a trade, work your way up the scale, moving on to perhaps management or self-employment.
In 1997 the day rate for unskilled labour was around £80 to £90. Today it is as little as £60 from a reputable employer. Less than that with some. You go where the work is so there can be substantial travel expenses, sometimes accommodation too.
On many building sites now you will only find East Europeans. Often sleeping in cars on site.
I’m sure a lot of other jobs that have been similarly affected, though few to the same degree. Mass immigration has been an utter disaster for large sections of our society. Quite literally it has destroyed their life chances. Wages have plummeted, and at the same time increased demand has forced house prices skyhigh.
The BBC reports at length any academic study showing a benefit of immigration, but ignores any evidence to the contrary. There is plenty of evidence out there, if only one of their 8500 journalists could be bothered to go out and look for it. It really wouldn’t be difficult to find. But then a real investigation into the “cost of living crisis” would reveal it is almost entirely due to labour.
2003. I remember it well.
I think it was the year I bought my first Nokia mobile phone to replace a HUGE Motorola.
I think it was the year I had to upgrade my computer so I could access websites like Boo.com which eventually failed.
I think it was the year that my council tax went up slightly more than I was comfortable with.
I think it was the year that my local doctors surgery was knocked down and replaced with a MEGA 24HR MEDICAL CENTRE – which is now just a normal GP practice. Not 24 hour. The 24 hour dental surgery was also closed. Shame – I could have made use of that recently.
However, we DO have a mega GP surgery in the sense that it feels like walking into a multiplex cinema! All for a town with a population of less than 20,000! I’m hoping it does become a multiplex cinema.
(For reference it’s the Stapleford Health Centre, Nottingham.)
Thank you Labour! We are forever in your debt! – Or is that our debt? Thank you to those local councilors who thought it was a good idea to make the biggest building in our town the doctors’!!! You self-serving shits!
And then, as we all know, council tax increased in an uncomfortable above inflation rate, to cope with the generous public sector pension bill.
I could be wrong, but I have recently heard that at least 30% of council tax goes towards public sector pensions!
That’s why average wages have stagnated. Nothing to do with the economy. It’s all about Labour’s legacy and our commitment to it.
Hey fella, look on the bright side – at least everyone in the country is putting money aside for old age.
Not their own old age, but someone else’s. Still you got to start somewhere.
‘The State – a fiction whereby everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense’
Bastiat.
I could be wrong
Sadly, I don’t think you are wrong – 25-30% seems to be the range.
Nottingham – I recently watched one of those BBC 4 programmes which look back at stuff. It featured a a housing estate in Nottingham which, surprisingly enough, turned into a hell hole. The site is now occupied by a supermarket. From build to demolition in 20 years. Chalk another one up to those Nottingham councillors.
Yeah, that’s Hyson Green. You should have seen Balloon Woods flats! Bigger and knocked down earlier. Then there was Basford flats – 4 20-story buildings demolished after just 14 years!
That has to be some sort of record for civic planning failure!
Failure is the general word I would use to describe the local councils around here.
Hyson green is a Pakistani colony.
Good, they can teach new Roma rivals how to be British
/sarc
I meant “arrivals”, not rivals….no, cancel that.
That’s not far off the mark, but the last time I was down there the police had rounded up about 40 east Europeans (not sure exactly which country) who had congregated outside the post office on Gregory Boulevard for some unknown reason.
My other half is a librarian who works all over the city and she says they have problems in Sneinton with Bulgarians who seem to be intimidating people visiting the library.
The problems are already here. The addition of Romanians will probably trigger social unrest between migrants, but it will be the poor buggers living in the Labour voting cities that suffer most.
And the Leftists refuse to believe that we are as badly off as Greece and should do as they did in cutting public ‘service’ pensions to the bone!
Not only can we not afford them, inflated as they have been by Brown’s largesse with public sector salaries and our money, our grandchildren can’t afford them. Leftists still bleat that the ‘rich’ should pay even more, of course.
If I want to change jobs, the salaries being advertised are the same I started on in 2001. In some cases even less
… and as for the pretrendy left weeping about ‘wealth disparity’.
When you have a society where a large slug of it chooses not to work, and another large slug of it chooses to work don’t howl because (guess what) the workers get wealthier than the non-workers.
That ain’t economics, sociology, or politics. It’s arithmetic.
Don’t talk to the left about higher mathematics such as arithmetic – it confuses them.