The Scottish independence campaigners have a long list of grievances. But they ARE treated equally

...as KJ explains to Fee..

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 27th February)

Government accused of suppressing the damning report that its flagship welfare reforms are forcing ever more people to turn to food banks

The report was finally published by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs today morning amid suggestions that it had been “slipped out” while the floods were still in the news. It concluded that there was “growing demand” for emergency food because of increased need. This directly contradicts the position of Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud, who claimed last summer that the expansion of charities such as The Trussell Trust had driven the demand. INDEPENDENT

Atos seeks early exit from fit-to-work tests contract

Staff carrying out work capability assessments for Atos have received death threats online and in person, according to the Financial Times. In a statement, Atos pledged to carry on undertaking the tests until a new company was in a position to take over. But the government said that standards at Atos had declined unacceptably. Disability campaigners have described the work tests as "ridiculously harsh and extremely unfair". BBC NEWS

Atos awarded contract for NHS records

The beleagured firm Atos has been given the contract to extract patient records from GP surgeries as part of the controversial NHS data sharing scheme. MPs expressed concern when Max Jones, director of information and data services, for the Health and Social Care Information Centre, disclosed that the contract to extract data from GP records will be held by Atos, a firm which has attracted previous controversy. Mr Jones said that once data has been extracted from GP surgeries, it would be held in a “safe haven” held by the centre. Select committees raised fears that the disclosure could further damage public confidence in the NHS data scheme, raising fears that personal medical data would be passed to those assessing benefit claims. TELEGRAPH

IMF study finds inequality is damaging to economic growth

The International Monetary Fund has backed economists who argue that inequality is a drag on growth in a discussion paper that has also dismissed rightwing theories that efforts to redistribute incomes are self-defeating. The Washington-based organisation, which advises governments on sustainable growth, said countries with high levels of inequality suffered lower growth than nations that distributed incomes more evenly. Backing analysis by the Keynesian economist and Nobel prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz, it warned that inequality can also make growth more volatile and create the unstable conditions for a sudden slowdown in GDP growth. And in what is likely to be viewed as its most controversial conclusion, the IMF said analysis of various efforts to redistribute incomes showed they had a neutral effect on GDP growth. This last point is expected to dismay rightwing politicians who argue that overcoming inequality robs the rich of incentives to invest and the poor of incentives to work and is counter-productive. GUARDIAN

RBS to reignite bankers' pay row with bonus pot of £550m set to be revealed amid £8bn annual loss

RBS, which is just over 80 per cent owned by the Government, is thought to be heading for an annual loss of close to £8billion for 2013 after it stunned the City last month by revealing a string of scandal-related financial charges worth more than £3billion. Its latest round of provisions include £1.9billion to cover mainly US penalties over mortgage-backed financial products, an extra £465million to payment protection insurance (PPI) compensation and another £500million for mis-selling of interest rate swaps to small businesses. The bank was already facing bad debt write downs of up to £4.5billion in the creation of an internal 'bad bank' to wind down toxic loans. DAILY MAIL

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ATOS exits from fit-to-work testing. Did they fail? Or just do their job: make us think vast numbers are faking disability

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Graphs at a glance: the little fibs that provide cover for the Tory policy of cutting benefits

February 2014 saw a spat on morality between Catholic and Anglican bishops on the one side and Conservative politicians on the other. While the angels may have been with the bishops, the angles were clearly with the Tories. In response David Cameron wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph titled  

"Why the Archbishop of Westminster is wrong about welfare: Our plan for Britain is not just about saving money, but about doing what is right".

Apparently the Tories are very confident that the electorate back their welfare cuts. In his letter to the Telegraph Cameron trotted out some of the key angles used to keep us voters onside. We take a closer look at these.

1) Benefits claimants are raking in over £60k a year in handouts:
Cameron wrote:

"in London there were people claiming truly astonishing sums of £60,000, £70,000, £80,000 a year."

The reality, shown in a report done for the Department of Works and Pensions in 2011, is that only 160 people out of 4.8 million benefited from a handout of more than £50,000 for housing benefit. That is fewer than 1 person in 30,000. 96% of claimants received less than £10,000 per year.

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It’s not only food banks. 5,000 were admitted to hospital with malnutrition in the last year

Chris, Fee and KJ take a step closer to understanding Cameron's moral compass...

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 20th February)

Unpaid intern sues British fashion house Alexander McQueen for wages

The fashion house founded by the late designer Alexander McQueen is being sued by a former intern who worked unpaid for four months. Rachel Watson – not her real name but the one her lawyers want used – is claiming up to £6,415 in "lost wages" and says the fashion house broke the law by not paying her the national minimum wage. Watson's internship in 2009-10 included drawing artwork for embroidery, repairing embellished clothing, and dyeing large quantities of fabric. GUARDIAN

More than one million workers face the axe in 'largest public sector cull for 50 years'

As many as two in every five public sector workers could face losing their job over the next five years if the government goes ahead with its planned cuts. However because the government has ringfenced cuts to the NHS and schools, the rest of the workforce, in areas such as policing, defence and public administration, faces an even higher ratio of job cuts. The cuts would dwarf cuts of 350,000 seen in the early 1990s. The increase of 600,000 in the public sector seen under the Labour governments of the first decade of this century would be more than reversed. The impact of the decline in public sector employment will vary in different parts of the country, and dramatically changing the nature of the UK labour market. The percentage of workforce in the public sector is largest in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North East and smallest in London, the West Midlands and the South East. DAILY MAIL

Over 2.6m households spend more on bills than they earn - and their monthly shortfall has doubled in a year

Figures from Legal & General show that one in eight homes (12.6 per cent) are struggling to cover their bills – up from one in ten last year. Households who struggle to pay their bills suffer a shortfall of £85, up by over 50 per cent in the last year. In some regions the average shortfall is considerably higher. The dire findings by Legal & General’s 'Moneymood survey' comes despite the fall in inflation to 1.9 per cent, which is likely to ease the strain on household's disposable incomes. But although inflation dipped to a low last seen in November 2009, the number of people who don't have enough cash for their bills has shot up by 756,000 to 2.6million up from 1.9million last year. The cost of gas and electricity has been one of the largest contributors to inflation over the last 27 months. DAILY MAIL

SFO charges three ex-Barclays bankers over Libor rigging

The charges were announced by the SFO and takes the total number of individuals facing criminal proceedings over allegation linked to Libor-rigging to six. The SFO is continuing to investigate the manipulation of benchmark interest rates and further charges are expected. David Green, director-general of the SFO, described the investigation into Libor as "enormous" and said he was "sure" more individuals would be charged in connection with the allegations. The three charged men, Peter Johnson, Jonathan Mathew and Stylianos Contogoulas, were among a list of 104 current and former Barclays bankers who last year attempted to keep their identities anonymous as part of a legal case brought against the bank by a care home operator that claims it was defrauded into buying interest rate hedging products. Barclays declined to comment. TELEGRAPH

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So the Giant NHS Database Care.Data has been postponed. Is that a good thing?

The "Care.Data" national health database has been postponed because in spite of the NHS apparently sending leaflets to every household in England (I can't remember receiving one) most people don't know about it. As, according to the BBC, there is a 66% chance you don't remember either, we will help you out.

For balance, we offer you two videos at the bottom of this post:

1) From the NHS explaining what Care.Data is and why it is a good idea

2) From a YouTube video, forwarded to us by an old friend, explaining why it isn't. (This video starts off in a foreign language, but after 40 seconds moves into English).

The key issue is whether our personal data will remain confidential. What do we think? Well, confidentiality of this data will be maintained so long as you trust politicians

a) to stand up to the generous lobbying of those who would like to intrude into our confidentiality. 

b) not to use the database to further cut public spending by filtering and selecting which of us will and won't get the benefits of public services and allowances.

There are those who will swear misuse of the data will never happen. But in February 2014 the Department of Health proposed that a patient's economic value should be taken into account when deciding on healthcare. Sir Andrew Dillon, head of the National Institute for Healthcare and Excellence (NICE, who set national healthcare budgets and priorities), disagreed saying:

"What we don't want to say is those 10 years you have between 70 and 80, although clearly you are not going to be working, are not going to be valuable to somebody.

Clearly they are. You might be doing all sorts of very useful things for your family or local society. That's what we are worried about and that's the problem with the Department of Health's calculation.

There are lots of people who adopt the fair-innings approach; 'you've had 70 years of life you've got to accept that society is going to bias its investments in younger people."

Sir Andrew may resist. But you only have to look as far as the Department of Education's defenestration of the chair of OFSTED to see how easy it is to replace the Sir Andrews of this world.

Saving money by limiting healthcare for older people is easy - it's hard to hide your age. Will Care.Data make it hard to hide your aches from NHS accountants?

But we wouldn't want to influence you, so we won't tell you what we think. Just see the videos:

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Cutting benefits will push people into work? There are 5 seeking work for every 1 available job!

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Graphs at a glance: What else will be washed away in the flood of public spending cuts?

It has to be said that David Cameron had a heavy dose of bad luck with the floods in the first part of 2014. If only the flooding had waited another two years then his party's performance at the 2014 local elections and the 2015 General Election would have been better.

Cameron's government took the bet that cutting spending on flood defences would not be noticed during his term in office. Rather like a man who reckons he won't get caught driving without insurance so long as he doesn't get into a crash. 

A gambling man would say it was a good bet. A gambling man would look at the statistics from the Met Office to see there hasn't been such a deluge in over 60 years since the 1940s. Chances were it wouldn't happen, but chancers usually get caught out in the end.

Cameron, in a Louis XV of France "Après moi, le déluge" moment, gambled on the deluge coming only after he had gone. Louis XV's prediction came true after he had handed over to his son Louix XVI who lost his head in the French Revolution. For Cameron the deluge came early.

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Graphs at a glance: Why does top pay keep soaring? See how corporate lions and donkeys keep scrambling up the pay escalator.

Does Great Pay come with Great Performance? In our earlier post we showed evidence from Verum Financial that the link between pay and performance doesn't actually exist. 

Which explains why ordinary executives get extraordinary salaries.But that in itself doesn't explain why salaries of the top 1% have been booming away while pay for the 90% has stagnated.

Paris School of Economics http://g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/topincomes/

The Verum report also sheds light on this. Their analysis shows that pay for poor performance has a more insidious effect than simply giving extraordinary pay to ordinary people. The undeserved pay bonanza doesn't only annoy us ordinary Britons, it also annoys the real high performing executives who see the low performers getting rewarded for lowly performances.

The graph below shows that the variation in bonuses of high performing executives and the herd is much less than the variation in their performances. In plain terms the donkeys get paid not much less than the lions.

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