Same-sex marriage cannot be the same as heterosexual marriage | Michael White

Having read this, it seems that some people get all worked up about something when I personally don't care. As far as I'm concerned, if people want to marry, they can. Gay, straight or whatever I couldn't care less. My own form of religious tolerance: couldn't give a shit

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/feb/14/same-sex-marriage-heterosexual-marriages

The deserving or undeserving poor?‏

And that mention of the wealthy raises an intriguing final thought, which might make tax evaders and big bonus bankers uneasy. If we are now more prepared to talk about the "undeserving poor", who are the "undeserving rich"?


I'm very uncomfortable about removing people's benefits entirely. I understand why they're doing it but I'm not convinced it's the right course of action

The untold story of poverty in working households

"it suits politicians of all parties to claim that work is the route out of poverty. Such a message wraps a snarling toughness directed at workless adults inside a saccharine justification: you must work for the sake of your kids.

The truth is very different. Work that does not provide a sufficient income is now much more to blame for poverty than worklessness"

Very true, and a real key issue. Jobs, equality and poverty are the most important issues in my politics. I'm soon to experience being without work for the second time in a year and I'm not looking forward to it.

Is there institutional sexism in the Labour Party?

discussion from Julian Ware-Lane's blog

i think there is a far deeper issue of sexism in the country. i heard on some media or other that more coverage was given to the clothing of the leaders wives than to any female politician.
women are very rarely taken seriously by the media and i'm sure that puts many women off. Ed Balls has admitted that he wanted to stand aside for his wife to stand but she declined, which is sad as she would have got my vote.
It's right that we are having this discussion, that's for sure

Labour's tax and benefits strategy has closed the income gap, thinktank says | Politics | The Guardian‏

Thirteen years of Labour government have improved the incomes of the poorest households while the richest have suffered large cuts, according to a study by a leading thinktank.
An increase in taxes on the wealthiest households has been matched by an increase in benefits for the poorest, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said today following a long-term study of Labour's impact on incomes since 1997.
Top stuff, don't hear that every day. Good news


"An overhaul of tax credits in 2003 created a £13bn system of benefits that rewarded families for taking a job and remaining in work."
Goes against the usual line from the Express and Mail. So let me think about this. On the one hand you have a statistical analysis body, on the other you have two cynical, morally outraged papers who have a line to tow. I think I'm going with the IFS on this


"In the recession it has provided a safety net for many families and allowed them to accept part-time work when in a previous era it would have paid them to leave work and claim benefits. Families where the main wage earner is forced to take a large cut in hours will see their incomes largely maintained by tax credits."
Looks like Gordy worked the system out well. Well done lad, nice one.


"Since 2003 the cost of the tax credit system, which includes child tax credits and the working tax credit, has soared. Figures from the budget showed the combined bill had reached £20bn by 2008-09 and this year is expected to reach £23bn."
Sadly, worth-while things like this cost money. But a worthy investment.

Tories' gay views have changed, says Nick Herbert‏

It'll be good if we have a more egalitarian consensus in the UK.
It's also true that Cameron has opposed the egalitarian proposals made by Labour. Cameron is one leopard that does change spots

Mark Easton's UK: Is inequality iniquitous?‏

It's all about equality. Here are some graphs

Rich-poor divide 'wider than 40 years ago'‏

A sad indictment of the policies of recent governments, and shocking that a Labour government didn't seriously arrest this trend

Unequal Britain: richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest

It concludes that the government has failed to plug the gulf that existed between the poorest and richest in society in the 1980s. "Over the most recent decade, earnings inequality has narrowed a little and income inequality has stabilised on some measures, but the large inequality growth of the 1980s has not been reversed," it states


"A central theme of the report is the profound, lifelong negative impact that being born poor, and into a disadvantaged social class, has on a child. These inequalities accumulate over the life cycle, the report concludes. Social class has a big impact on children's school readiness at the age of three, but continues to drag children back through school and beyond" - just goes to show it's all about class. Class divisions still exist and are still relevant.


Overall, it points to a radically more equal society after the neo-liberal excesses of the 1980s, but a Labour government from 1997 that needed to be just as radical in order to put right some of the mess it inherited. But, as we all know, it was too timid. Too scared of its own shadow and the ghost of 1983.


""The evidence we have looked at shows the long arm of people's origins in shaping their life chances, stretching through life stages, literally from cradle to grave. Differences in wealth in particular are associated with opportunities such as the ability to buy houses in the catchment areas of the best schools or to afford private education, with advantages for children that continue through and beyond education. At the other end of life, wealth levels are associated with stark differences in life expectancy after 50," the report states" - very important that


"It echoes other recent research suggesting that social mobility has stagnated, and concludes that "people's occupational and economic destinations in early adulthood depend to an important degree on their origins". Achieving the "equality of opportunity" that all political parties aspire to is very hard when there are such wide differences between the resources that people have to help them fulfil their diverse potentials, the panel notes." - Also known as stating the bleedin obvious.

Ethnic minorities 'no longer always disadvantaged'‏

So class is the defining factor, more so than race.
That much is bloody obvious, always has and maybe always will.
Success in just about any area of life, from income to longevity, comes down to class. Class and race may be linked, so certain ethnic groups may do better or worse, but class is the one that is always there.
It's a shame that Labour hasn't really tackled it in their 12 years in power, but not too surprising given the New Labour ideology.
The Tory take on this is pathetic opportunism, perfectly exemplified by the quote in this piece.

Faith schools must implement anti-homophobic policies, says Clegg in pitch for gay vote | Mail Online‏

Pretty disgusting stuff, branding tolerance as 'fascism'. Typical Mail.

The comments page s far worse. Disgusting

MPs' backgrounds

"Those who make it their business to look at parliament's composition from a broad, non-partisan perspective are worried about what the 2010 intake will say about social mobility. Dr Lee Elliott Major, research director of the Sutton Trust, which campaigns to increase opportunity for non-privileged children, said: "Our big fear is that the golden generation who managed to be socially mobile in the post-war period are going to turn out to be a blip, and in terms of the domination of a lot of public life, things are now moving in the opposite direction.""

I'm from a decent background, probably lower middle class. I was lucky in that I went to a very good state school. But even I feel that politics is largely ruled by people from a class above me and they ignore me for being poor, uneducated and unorthodox.
I have no problem with where people come from: Bevan and Foot are my heros (to some extent). Bevan was from a poor mining community, Foot was born and bred in the lap of luxury and his family had Prime Ministers round for tea.
But there is a serious problem with representation in politics. If even I feel unrepresented (middle class, good school, masters degree) then what must most others feel like?

Recession

"who is affected most by these trends? Confounding early predictions of a 'white collar recession', the statistics show that it is the same people who were hit by previous recessions who are most exposed this time round – the 14.3 million low-paid, low-skilled workers"
There's a surprise.

My solutions:
Keep people in work.
Support the low paid through the direct taxation system to save on admin and the costs of admin.
Government subsidised internships.
Even the smallest bit of compassion in the benefits system.
More equality of income and wealth.

Possible solutions from the article:
"As well as measures to improve responsible lending, more low-cost, out-of-court remedies, like the Debt Relief Orders are also needed to support those people in unsustainable debt or for whom repossession is the only remaining option.

Safety nets are vital, but work is nearly always the best route to maintaining economic independence for any household. This is particularly true for low earners, who are more dependent on their earned income than other groups due to their lack of savings and their lack of eligibility for many means-tested benefits. Expanding the eligibility criteria for working tax credit to include training as well as paid employment,would make it easier for people to access training while in work thereby insulating them against the risk of redundancy.

For those people who do lose their jobs, the focus must be on maintaining their proximity to the labour market and it is this measure that should be used to evaluate the effectiveness of government schemes such as the Future Jobs Fund and the Work for Your Benefit pilots. Enhancing the existing 'light touch' skills assessment that takes place at 13 weeks after someone has lost their job, and defining 'sustainable' employment as 12 months rather than 13 weeks could also make a real difference to low earners who find themselves out of work."

Cameron's poverty rhetoric

To some extent, Labour has failed since 97.
My party has not made this country more equal by all measures. That should be Labour's bread and butter, even if it suffered the howling moans of the right-wing press and their hatred for the poor.
But this little piece picks apart Cameron's criticisms, and his solutions.
Criticisms - over the top, based more on words than facts.
Solutions - no big government i.e. none.
What cures poverty and makes people more equal? Redistribution.
When Cameron comes out as a proper Robing Hood, maybe i'll believe him. In the mean time, he's as shallow and empty as usual.

Cameron's poverty nonsense

"Yesterday Kate Green, chair of of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, said:

“We welcome the fact that Conservatives are taking seriously the scandal of four million children in poverty in the fourth richest country in the world. But their proposals miss the point that without real income redistribution to close the inequality gap we will never reach that goal.”"

income redistribution, sounds like a job for BIG GOVERNMENT!

Status or money?

Which is more important, status or money? Having read that "More women than men in the UK now work in high status professions", I got thinking.
Now, it is stated that woman are paid less for the work they do, and I often wonder whether anything is treated as having 'status' these days. But it raises some interesting things about which is better. if either.

Class and knowing your place

Just listening to a bloke being interviewed on TMS lunch time.
He was talking about Upstairs Downstairs, and saying how good it was when everyone knew their place and no-one was aspirational.
I remember Phillip Blond, the 'red Tory', going on about how good it was back in the day when everyone knew their place.
Funny how the upper classes are always going on about it being good when people know their place. Funnily enough, there don't seem to be too many of the lower classes who pine for the good old days of what amounted to pretty much a caste system.
'Knowing your place' makes me sick. Some say class politics is dead, I think the upper classes' enthusiasm for people being stuck with their lot and knowing their place shows it's still alive and well

In defence of Harriet Harman

Not a very popular thing to do, but Harman has been been defended.
I'm not as bothered by sexual politics as I am by (class) inequality issues. Sexual equality is an equality issue, so something which I am interested in.
Partly because she's Labour, partly because she's talking about equality, partly because I think the abuse she gets has been unfair, i'm sick of the abuse she's been getting.
So well done for defending her and making the case for what she's calling for re: sexual equality.
Now, I went to a Fabian Society thing recently where all different ethnic groups were represented. BUT, despite the colours of skin, I was distinctly LOWER CLASS than many of the others, despite me being white and British. I'm not posh, didn't go to public school then Oxbridge, my parents aren't connected. The point being that this is CLASS inequality, and that skin colour is as irrelevant as sex/gender compared to what's inside and each person's class position.

Working in a supermaket

I know I shouldn't, but I was reading something in the Daily Mail.
I've worked in a supermarket, part time. It was horrible. The staff were treated like crap, we weren't allowed to talk during the shift other than to help customers. All I was doing was staking shelves.
I'm lucky that I didn't have to stay there long, and I wouldn't want to go back. I've had other simular jobs, working in what i called the 'arse end of the service industry' and others have agreed with that assessment.
What struck me about the article was how horrible and rude most people are, how people expect things to be landed on their plates, not only from the people mentioned in the article but the comments section too.

Powerful gay people, the 'Pink List'

The Independent ran a little thing on the most powerful gay people here.

One idiot responded with:
"We have the Pink List. We have any number of Black Lists. We have Female lists so what's wrong with being White, Male and Straight? Why can't we have an exclusive list showing our achievements?"

to which my response was "because we rule the world already". Seems obvious enough to me