Positive thinking

Kate Pickett, University of York and Richard Wilkinson, University of York   To end austerity and make the economy work better for the whole country requires transforming the tax system. It is time for the UK to have a grown-up, national conversation about tax, to gain support for a radical tax regime that will allow it to end austerity, adequately fund public services and reduce inequality. And we need tax records to be publicly available. It’s time to end the British coyness about money. We have written extensively, in our books The Spirit Level and The Inner Level , about the damage caused by income inequality to population health and social cohesion, and the need to reduce inequality as part of a transition to a sustainable economy that maximises well-being rather than GDP. But the UK already has a policy framework and (theoretical) commitment to reducing income inequality, as this is in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UK signed up to those g...

Sergei Bachlakov / Shutterstock.com Edward Yates, University of Sheffield   Conditions for young people in the UK are bleak. Young people are more likely to be unemployed than all-age workers, and are more likely to be in low-paid jobs when employed . National minimum wage laws allow lawful discrimination against young people as they mean a young worker can be paid less than those over the age of 24 for doing the same job. Young people have worse pension opportunities than previous generations and suffer from a housing market characterised by high rents and purchase costs. They are also paying record levels of tuition fees for university, as well as spending more on accessing training and skills in a system of provision that is increasingly driven by profit. Media portrayals of young people compound the problem and are rife with discriminatory language. Young people are labelled lazy, idle “ snowflakes ” and are blamed fo...

Koldo Casla, Newcastle University   The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, is in the UK on an official UN mission . He is meeting with civil society groups, academics, public authorities and above all with people living in poverty and dealing with the consequences of years of austerity. Alston, an independent expert from Australia, is seeking evidence on poverty, inequality and the effect of austerity on local government funding. This official UN visit takes place at a critical juncture for the 66m people living on these islands. With Brexit’s bridge to nowhere in sight, Britons have been promised “the end of austerity” by their prime minister. However, think tanks such as the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies agree that the recent budget from the chancellor of the exchequer is far from an end to austerity, and that uncertainty about the future relationship with the EU leaves all financial prospect...

What happened to  Great Britain?  We are in 2018, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, considered the fifth world economy and we have poor people who use food banks to survive. It is absurd. The food banks should not exist. There are more than 100 billionaires in this country. In 2017, the market for the sales of yachts has increased by 14% by the estimates of Berthon sales division. In London, in in the same year, an apartment was sold for about £90 million in a charming area of the city between Hyde Park and Harrods not far from the Bulgari Hotel. This type of property is provided with SPA, valet parking and landscaped garden. These are very few examples of the richness of a country that still houses one of the most important financial centres in the world and where models of great hospitality and organisation were given with the recent Olympics of 2012. Is this the contradiction of modern capitalism? In 2009/10, 41,000 were the people to use the service pr...

   Danny Dorling, University of Oxford and Lucinda Hiam, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine In the first seven weeks of 2018, over 10,000 (12.4%) more people died in England and Wales than was usual for the time of year . No official explanation from government health officials for this sharp rise in mortality has been forthcoming. It became crystal clear in early 2018 that the health and social care system was not coping with the demands being placed upon it. On January 2, in an unprecedented step by the NHS, thousands of non-urgent operations were cancelled. Many hospitals were already at, or beyond, their safe working levels, even though the weather was warmer than normal so any surge in demand was not due to unusually cold conditions. Another suggestion has been that the main reason for there being so much demand was a rise in influenza. Our analysis of the first available data finds that flu only accounted for a very small part of the o...

Children's services in "perilous state", children's charity warns More than half of councils in England are planning to slash costs by cutting spending on services for children. These measures include closing children’s centres, reducing support for disabled children and cutting child protection teams. Analysis of council financing by the Bureau reveals a local government crisis as the costs of supporting vulnerable children pushes almost all councils over budget. This has prompted cuts to services. Across all, nine out of ten councils will spend more money than they bring in by the end of March this year - with one overspending by £14m. The Bureau has scrutinised hundreds of financial forecasts published by local authorities and analysed their historical spending records during a four-month investigation.  In budget plans for the coming year published by 101 councils responsible for children’s services, the Bureau found 57 planning to make cu...