1.
Legislate to ensure that CEO's,
executives and shareholders are not allowed to earn more than 50 times more
than their lowest paid employee (pro-rata).
In
an article from the Guardian, they note that average UK full time salaries
decreased by 3.5% during 2011 and part-time equivalents fell by 11.2% (both in
real terms). Meanwhile the article goes on to quote that executive pay
increased by 15% and the pay of corporate managers also went up by 7.2% on
average. The economic context for these changes were of high (5% on average)
CPI inflation, and low economic growth (roughly 0.5%). In short, the article
alludes to class war with low skilled workers suffering a reduction in their
standards of living, which appears to fund the growth in the salaries of those
they are responsible to. Despite the lack of growth in the economy, the
managerial classes have been paid far beyond the contributions they have made
while low skilled workers suffer by comparison, I guess we’re not all in it
together. National Minimum wage increased by 2.5% in 2011 however this reflects
an actual wage cut when considered against average inflation of above 4%.
Indeed the 22% increase in minimum wage between 1999 and 2010 looks reasonable
until we consider that this works out at less than 2% per year. Indeed, in only
3 of twelve years has national minimum wage outstripped RPI inflation or
conversely, in nine out of the last twelve years the UK’s lowest paid workers
have effectively received wage cuts. Meanwhile, as Ed Miliband noted in his
speech to the TUC in September 2011, CEO pay has quadrupled during the same
time period.
Even
when the economy is growing it is clear that only the already rich are
benefitting, and when times are hard the low paid are asked to bear the brunt.
This results in a rapidly increasing income gap which has grown faster in the UK
since the 1970’s than in any other rich nation. The idea of the movement away
from collective bargaining and privatisation since the 1980’s has been that we
might all get a smaller slice of the cake, but the cake will be bigger and thus
through trickle-down economics we all benefit by getting more overall. This is patently untrue, as
Barrack Obama recently noted when he stated that trickle-down economics has
stopped working. Fundamentally,
we have to ensure that everyone in our economy benefits from growth that we all
create. By limiting the pay of the highest earners within an organisation to 50
times that of the lowest earner (pro-rata), maximum pay would be just over an
entirely reasonable £500,000 for any business that employs people on minimum
wage terms. Currently the average salary of a CEO within a FTSE 100 company is £2.7m,
if we limit the salary depending on wage increases for the lowest earners, just
watch average pay go up!
2.
Reform political funding to
stop business and Trade Union donations. Publicly fund all parties. Let's stop
public officials benefitting privately or politically from making public
decisions.
Cameron’s [alleged] sale of dinner for £250,000 a time has many things
in common with Blair’s [alleged] sale of honours. Both play to the vanity of
potential donors, Cameron allowing them access to the PM and Blair’s; titles
and possibly office. Both are devices which potentially use the trappings of
office to generate money for the incumbent political party and if that had been
proven in anything beyond common sense terms, would be deemed illegal. Most
importantly however both can provide political power to the unelected. If
Blair, gave peerages, he offered donors position directly and with it not
inconsiderable power. While Cameron’s [alleged] approach, circumvents the need
to provide high profile appointments by giving access to policy central itself.
In either case those who can afford to make large donations may have
effectively bought the ability to influence political decisions that should be
made in the public interest. In short, allowing this situation to endure is
undemocratic and corrupt. The money itself we are told – and these are
considerable sums - the Conservative Party has received £159,484,285.40 since
Cameron became leader according to DR. Eoin Clarke - is needed for political campaigning
and the running of the party in general. Much of the money seems to be spent on
vulgar ad campaigns however, that inform us through Bill Boards just how
incompetent, inefficient or misguided the purchasing party’s competitors
actually are. They say very little about the policies that parties plan to
implement and even less about how they plan to implement them.So then, what we probably have is a situation where large donations to political parties are used by those with the means to purchase a seat at the decision makers table and with it a chance to directly affect decisions which should be made in the public interest. The money that this generates for political parties is then used to criticise their competition. This should all be banned. Political parties do not need to campaign negatively, and should not even have the opportunity to allow donors to bypass the democratic process. Therefore, each MP elected should have attached to them a small amount for positive campaigning and administrative expenses. Parties and individuals must be forced to operate within this budget and to ensure that this can happen air-time should be provided for debates in the national free to air broadcasting media. Any donations to political parties should be against the law.
3.
Outlaw negative political campaigning
and demand that parties publish manifestoes which explain the measures that
will be used to action their policies. Any lies in these documents should lead
to a General Election and prosecution.
While
we are on the subject of political campaigns, I do not want to know why Cameron
thinks I shouldn’t vote for labour, or why Miliband thinks we should boycott
the Liberal Democrats. They are obviously biased and thus their thoughts on
each other are not a sound basis for any of us to make a decision. The only
sound basis in fact for a decision is a clear breakdown of each party’s
policies and clear description of how these would be implemented. For example,
the Conservative Manifesto unformed us that should they be elected there would
be no further ‘Top-Down’ reorganisations of the NHS. I don’t want to know what
they won’t do, I wanted them to tell me that they planned to turn the NHS into
a franchise where private companies would produce all of their services at a
significant profit. I wanted to know that a company (McKinsey) who were already
advising the party would benefit substantially from the non-described reforms
and yet were being given an architect’s role in devising them.
Of
course, had Cameron published the idea clearly, or told us that
by “opening up education to competition” he actually meant privatising schools, no
one would have voted for him. If we want politicians to be honest
about what they are going to do, and then do what we vote for we have to be
able to hold them to account. Therefore, all policies should be published - including
steps required for implementation - prior to the election. Politicians should only be allowed to discuss their own policies and why they expect them to work
during campaigning, making no reference to the competing policies of other
parties. If a single policy is changed in substance or implementation once a
party has been elected, a new General Election should be triggered, and the
full cabinet jailed!
4.
Limit the size of business
organisations and make executives and shareholders legally responsible for
their actions.
The
size of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s balance sheet is estimated at £1.4tn and this is not even close to being one of the world's largest companies. To provide a little context, the size of the UK
economy is estimated at £1.4tn, roughly the same size as the RBS balance sheert,
and less than the £1.5tn that HSBC commands. Ever wonder why bankers are so
powerful? Because they threaten to take their huge businesses elsewhere unless
they get the laws they want, the tax breaks they want and the concessions they
want. For example HSBC employs almost 170,000 people, Tesco – 240,000. Now
these businesses are not just going to move somewhere else, the size of their businesses is
down to the effectiveness of the labour they have found in our service based
economy. However, each time they lay off employees it causes massive
problems for UK governments who have to deal with headlines concerning rising
UK unemployment or falling economic growth - thus, they don’t take the chance, nor do they risk losing possible
donations from the cash rich organisations. Generally they do as they are told and that is why our banks became
too big to fail, it is why 1 in every £8 spent in the UK is spent in Tesco and
it is why Nissan get over £50m per year in tax breaks to locate here.
No
business should be able to dictate policy to national governments. This is
destructive to democracy and contrary to the public good. Therefore, any
business with more than 25,000 employees or 15% of a market should be forced to
divest parts of itself until it no longer has the ability to dominate its market
or the politics of its host country. Unless large businesses accede to these
laws they will be forbidden from operating in this country and all of their assets
seized by the government. Additionally, we need to force boards of directors and
shareholders to take legal accountability for the actions of their corporations and remove the veil of limited liability that “business leaders” hide behind
when things go wrong. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see senior bankers go to
jail when the deals they made undermined the global economy and lowered all of
our standards of living.
5. Legislate for a maximum 35 hour working week and enforce it.Despite being the second largest economy in the EU, Britain has the third longest working week (on average 42.7 hours). Before you link this to the “success of our economy please note that we work considerably longer hours than Germany, the EU’s largest economy, but less than Greece, so clearly long working hours are not a pre-requisite for economics success. As ABC News have noted, large corporations are hoarding stockpiles of cash and not recruiting employees for expansion due to the difficult economic times.
Meanwhile,
The Office for National Statistics reports that there are over two million
single parent families in the UK with 26% of children raised in single parent
households. Conversely, only 2.2 million children have the luxury of a stay at
home parent according to the BBC meaning three quarters do not have a parent at home to
look after them. The UK still has the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe,
knife crime is at epidemic proportions and as the Telegraph notes, teen drinking in
the UK is among the worst in the world. The BBC highlights that children left alone
tend to do less homework, drink more alcohol and are more likely to get
themselves into inappropriate sexual situations. Let’s give parents the chance
to parent, and children the chance to be children with the appropriate role-models,
guidance and support. Let’s get more people into jobs and improve the work life
balance in the UK. Let’s make sure adults have the opportunity to take an
interest and an active role in society. All of this is possible with more
stringent and effectively enforced working week rules. Please note, I do not advocate
a return to the over idealised 1950’s housewife model. Feminism has been a
force for good, but families should have the option to choose a work / family
balance that benefits them.
In
economic terms this would benefit us as a country since we would be forcing
corporations to employ more people reducing unemployment and thereby put more money into the hands of
working people. This would increase the demand for goods and services within
the economy and lead to a virtuous circle of increasing growth, income and
confidence. For example the increase in income tax alone would help to reduce
the deficit in the government coffers.
·
Considering the EU
I
do not say this lightly, but given European law the UK would need to withdraw
from the EU, at least temporarily in order to make the above changes since EU
law over-rides UK law. I passionately believe in the philosophy of the social, political
and economic integration that the EU represents, however in order to make these
reforms stick and protect our economy as they do so, we would need some
protectionist policies in place. The EU is a noble experiment, but it assumes
that the countries involved are socially, politically and economically ready to
homogenise laws and what is good for one will be good for all. This is patently
not the case since EU law currently provides a significant barrier to the necessary
reforms that have been highlighted above.
