It’s not pay rises for ordinary workers that are fuelling the rise in inflation, it is corporate profiteering.
We’ve so often heard calls for hard-pressed public sector workers to show ‘pay restraint’, so that we can combat inflation. Indeed, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, previously provoked outrage when he said workers should not ask for big pay rises.
Even in recent days, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has hinted that he is unlikely to accept the recommendations made by public sector pay bodies for pay rises for public sector workers, including teachers and health service staff, in an attempt to tackle soaring inflation.
Millions of public sector workers who are struggling to make ends meet are expected to just put up with dwindling pay packets. And yet very little is said about the eye-watering corporate profits among those at the top that are driving inflation, with the Tories and right-wing press determined to keep the focus on those at the bottom and hard-pressed families.
Let’s be clear. It’s not pay rises for ordinary workers that are fuelling the rise in inflation, it is corporate profiteering.
UK has lost leadership in climate action and almost all targets are being missed, Committee on Climate Change finds
The government’s plans to hit net zero have been comprehensively criticised in a withering report by its own advisers that warns targets are being missed on nearly every front.
Fewer homes were insulated last year under the government-backed scheme than the year before, despite soaring energy bills and a cost of living crisis. There is little progress on transport emissions, no coherent programme for behaviour change, and still no decision on hydrogen for home heating.
Meanwhile the installation of new wind and solar farms and the upgrading of the electricity grid are still too slow to meet net zero, according to the Committee on Climate Change, which says that the lack of urgency of government and a failure of political leadership means progress has stalled.
Neither party is showing much appetite for the hard policy decisions that are necessary to cut CO2 emissions – and time is running out
The Conservatives are lagging far behind on the climate crisis, that much we know. But the Labour party is not showing the leadership that the country needs on reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has warned.
“If you lead, then there are bound to be people who would prefer you not to have made those decisions,” Deben said. “And what we are seeing at the moment is not only in government but in opposition, people being unwilling to lead lest some people don’t like the decisions that are being made. But these decisions have to be made, and there will be some people who disagree with them, and it is no good hoping that it will all go away.”
He added: “Right across the political spectrum, there is an unwillingness to lead.”
UK urged to use trade deals as bargaining tool to protect marine mammals
Dolphins and other marine mammals are being failed by the UK government, MPs have said, as they call for ministers not to sign trade deals without considering cetacean welfare.
The UK has poorer protections for dolphins, whales and seals than other countries, a report by the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee has found.
MPs said trade deals were still being struck with countries that hunted whales and dolphins, including Norway, Iceland, Japan and the Faroe Islands, the autonomous Danish territory in the north Atlantic.
Ministers should use their “soft power” to encourage these countries to stop killing marine mammals, the committee recommended, using trade deals to incentivise the halting of the practice.