Graphs at a glance - British Social Attitudes Survey shows Tories and Labour have lost swathes of their core supporters. Politicians should be very afraid of us. Don't let them forget it! Make sure you Vote!

[Updated Aug 2016]

Whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn, one thing he's done that all the others in the Labour or Tory parties haven't, is get hundreds of thousands to join the party.

Corbyn's strongest card is his promise to go much further than this. To get a significant portion of the millions who never vote, to vote Labour. Can he do it? Who knows. But getting non-voters to vote is no longer crazy talk. Think UKIP. Think Brexit. 

It matters because, for decades, UK elections have been decided as much by who doesn't vote as by who does. 


In politics how high you reach depends less on how tall you stand and more on who you stand on. For decades political parties have gained power standing on people who don't vote.

In the twilight weeks of the electoral cycle, like little children at bedtime, politicians see terrors lurking on every sofa across the land. Millions of zombie voters who might be roused if they get annoyed enough. Not to vote for what they are for, but to vote against what they are against.

Consider the sudden ejection of Maria Miller from her role as the Secretary of State for Culture. Miller was given the boot in the month before the May 2014 local and European elections. When Jeremy Hunt, the previous Secretary of State for culture (what is it about that ministry?), was caught up in far more serious allegations David Cameron rescued Hunt by promoting him to Secretary of State for Health. Luckily for Hunt there were no key elections in sight then. What ultimately did for Miller wasn’t her sin but her timing - getting caught during the witching hours that run for the few weeks before the Local and the European elections.

This is a lesson you must remember dear voter. It is a lesson you must not let our politicians forget you remember. You must keep them afraid of you.

Once the dark electoral hours have passed, politicians of all parties forget about us electors. For example the key strategy of successive Tory governments is to appear to cut taxes and spending. A graph from the 2013 British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey shows fewer than 1 in 10 Britons have wanted this in the 30 years since 1983. More than 90% have consistently wanted the level of tax & spend to remain the same or to increase.

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David Cameron claims 'Big Society' is the work of Jesus

Fee and Chris can't quite agree...

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Graphs at a glance: Tories abolished 50% tax rate for people earning more than £150k. But did you notice the stealthy 51% tax rate for graduates earning more than £43k?

Did they or didn't they? Did the Tories abolish the 50% tax rate, or didn't they. 

Actually, they did and they didn't: 

a) They Did: People earning more than £150,000 have been spared the 50% rate (52% including 2% National Insurance). 

b) They Didn't: People with student loans earning more than about £43,000 are heading for a 51% rate (including 2% National Insurance).

This is illustrated by a graph in the IFS report "Payback time? Student debt and loan repayments: what will the 2012 reforms mean for graduates?" showing the marginal tax rate for people repaying student loans.

Graduates will start paying an additional 9% of their earnings once their pay exceeds £21,000. The 40% income tax rate kicks in at about £43k (assuming 1% annual increases in the upper earning limit). Marginal rate = 40% (income tax) + 2% (NIC) + 9% (Student Loan) = 51%.

Added on 5th December 2014, after the Autumn Statement:
The government announced a new £10,000 postgraduate student loan, starting in the 2016/17 academic year, to be repaid concurrently with the undergraduate loan. The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculated the effective marginal 'tax' rate for a postgraduate who took loans for both undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Paul Johnson, boss of the IFS, stated this highly qualified individual once over the £21,000 earnings threshold would be paying 50% as a basic rate taxpayer, and 60% as a higher rate taxpayer:

"it is worth saying that those who take out the loan would face rather high effective marginal withdrawal rates on earnings of 50% for basic rate taxpayers (20% income tax, plus 12% NI, plus 9% repayment of undergraduate loan, plus 9% repayment of postgraduate loan) and 60% for higher rate taxpayers."

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 10th April)

Bupa 'harming NHS' by offering patients “bribes” of £2k to use public services instead of private hospitals

Bupa is accused of offering the cash handouts to customers who agree to undergo cancer, heart, gynaecological and other operations on the NHS. A letter from the private health giant to a male cardiac patient explains: “The cash payment takes the place of private treatment funding... If you are admitted to hospital under the NHS as an in-patient for any of the above procedures, we will pay you a fixed sum amount.” Operations can cost fives times more than the cash payments offered by Bupa. For example, private hospitals charge a minimum of £10,000 for having a pacemaker fitted. So Bupa is offering its customers £2,000 to have it done on the NHS. This effectively passes Bupa’s costs onto the NHS. The cash payments have been condemned as “outrageous” and “disgusting” by doctors. Bupa raked in a staggering £2.57billion in revenue last year, and pocketed £139million in profit - up 26% on 2012. Bupa denied that the cash offers were bribes, and insisted it was simply “offering customers choice”. MIRROR

Benefit cheats face higher fines and losing their homes

Welfare cheats will be forced to sell their homes and pay higher fines to reimburse taxpayers for the money they have wrongly claimed, under plans to tackle benefit fraud. The plans form part of a major campaign from ministers this week to publicise reforms to the welfare system, which the Conservatives regard as among their most popular, vote-winning policies. A publicity campaign, including posters urging claimants to report those whom they suspect to be cheating the system, and letters warning individuals to check they are not receiving too much. TELEGRAPH

MP expense pong: Ex-Culture Secretary Maria Miller bought a £1.2m mansion with proceeds of '2nd home'

Maria Miller’s stunning new home, a sprawling barn conversion complete with oak beams, wood-burning stove and library cost her £1.2million - almost exactly the profit she made selling a property funded by taxpayers. Mrs Miller made taxpayers fund some of the mortgage payments on her London property, then sold it and used the whopping profit to buy this ‘charming’ Tudor house in Hampshire. It boasts five bedrooms, a spectacular vaulted gallery and its own woodland set in more than an acre of land. DAILY MAIL

Are high frequency traders rigging stock markets? Split-second sharks accused of profiting at expense of ordinary investors

US financial firms are being accused of using speed - an advantage of just a few thousandths of a second - to fleece big money rivals and by extension ordinary savers and investors. The allegations have prompted the US Justice Department to say it is probing high-speed trading for possible insider trading violations. The FBI and US financial watchdogs are also investigating the industry. The book focuses on Wall Street share trading, but one City insider has commented: 'The same players are in the UK and Europe – if it’s happening in America, it’s happening here too.' DAILY MAIL

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MP expense fraud LATEST: End this Maria Miller MP witch hunt, says architect of benefit scrounger witch hunt

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IPSA can't be over-ruled when giving MPs a bumper payrise, but can be over-ruled when taking back MPs excessive expense claims

Compare and Contrast

1) IPSA decision that cabinet minister is required to repay over-claimed expenses:

• IPSA: Recommends that Maria Miller repay £45,000 for mis-claimed expenses

• MPs: Over-rule IPSA, reducing the amount to be repayed by £39,200 down to £5,800

2) IPSA decision that MPs get bumper payrise in 2015:

• IPSA: Recommends MPs get an 11% payrise, taking their basic salaries up from £66,396 in 2013 to £74,000 in 2015

• MPs: State they are forced to accept this salary hike as they have no power to over-rule IPSA. With great reluctance they will courageously loosen their belts and swallow it.

 

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Graphs at a glance: Budget2014 document shows it was household spending that pulled us out of recession. Rather than cutting wages and benefits, Britain needs a payrise!

It's the oldest trick in the book. Convince your competitor to lower his guard, and then biff him.  

Adam Smith, the capitalist icon, believed everyone scuffling selfishly for their own benefit would result in an ‘invisible hand’ distributing a nation’s wealth pretty fairly. 

Smith’s advice was based on the reality that you can’t trust anybody else to pull for your benefit. You can only really trust people who are pulling in the same direction as you. And any student of tug-of-war will know it is all much less strenuous if the other side simply drops the rope and stops pulling.

Graphs from the “Budget 2014: Background Briefing”, produced by Parliament's impartial House of Commons Library, show how ordinary Britons have been tricked into dropping the rope in the great economic tug-of-war. It also shows how those who want Britain to be a more prosperous place, whether of the left or of the right, should stiffen up and grab the rope again.

From Budget 2014: Background Briefing

The Budget Briefing report shows between 2007 and 2014 average earnings have dropped more than 12% in real terms. The same graph shows that household consumption (i.e. spending) has almost returned to its peak level. Consumption that has been helped by household debt rising to record levels according to a report in November 2013 by Iain Duncan Smith's "Centre for Social Justice".

A separate graph using ONS data shows that the fall in wages is not a short term effect of the recession triggered by the banking crash. In the decades since the 1960's the share of GDP paid to employees has dropped from around 60% down to around 54%.

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Bring back Dad's Army banks, says George Osborne!

Fee, Chris and KJ agree. Kind of...

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 3rd April)

Lib Dems must oppose bedroom tax, says party president Tim Farron

In a damning assessment of the policy, Mr Farron said it impacted on the most vulnerable and was “wrong and unnecessary”. The Liberal Democrat president, who is currently developing the party’s housing policy, also said it reduced the amount of money available to invest in new homes. The policy means that tenants have their housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent if they have one spare bedroom, and 25 per cent if they have two or more spare bedrooms. The idea is for them to move to a smaller home. But thanks to a critical shortage of housing stock, many are stuck with a benefits cut because there are no smaller homes for them to move to. INDEPENDENT

Bring back Dad's Army banks, says George Osborne

Chancellor George Osborne has hailed Captain Mainwaring as a role model for today's bank managers. He said the bumbling Dad's Army character was at the centre of his community and knew all of his small business customers.  Asked about Lloyds Bank's recent decision to axe half of its small business advisers, with the loss of 1,000 jobs, Mr Osborne said banks should be focusing on building closer relationships with their customers. He singled out two relatively new banks to the UK - Handelsbanken and Metro Bank - as leading the way. Handelsbanken is Sweden's biggest bank and now has 170 branches in the UK. It specialises in "traditional" banking, with customers having a more active relationship with their bank manager. Osborne said of Captain Mainwaring: "the bank manager was at the very centre of local life, knew all the businesses, knew the people who ran the businesses and was empowered to make judgements about who had a good idea, who maybe had had a couple of failures in the past - but that wasn't their fault - and had a good idea going forward.” BBC NEWS

Atos quits £500m work capability assessment contract early

The £500m agreement to carry out work capability assessments had been due to end in August next year but following widespread public and political anger over the tests, which have been criticised by MPs and campaigners as crude and inhumane, the agreement will now end early next year. There has been mounting evidence that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people have been wrongly judged to be fit for work and ineligible for government support. Last year the work and pensions select committee said the government's handling of the assessment was damaging public confidence and causing claimants "considerable distress". The committee said the problems with the computer-led, points-based assessment "lay firmly with the DWP", but added that the department was failing to apply "sufficient rigour or challenge to Atos". More than 600,000 appeals have been lodged against Atos judgments since the work capability assessments began, costing the taxpayer £60m a year. In four out of 10 cases the original decisions are overturned. GUARDIAN

At last! Rip-off pension charges capped at 0.75%

Rip-off charges which can wipe out more than a third of the value of a worker’s pension pot will be banned next year. Pensions Minister Steve Webb described the crackdown in which charges will be capped at 0.75 per cent as ‘a full frontal assault on poor value for money’. Over the next ten years, workers who diligently save into a pension will be around £200million better off as a result of yesterday’s announcement. This is because the money will go into their pension pots, rather than being siphoned off in high charges by well-paid fund managers. DAILY MAIL

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Nike’s England shirt is £90. An excellent early lesson for your kids on the power of having a monopoly

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