RISHI'S RAW DEAL -Pay £10 more tax and get £2 off

Poster campaign launched today in Wellingborough where Labour candidate, Gen Kitchen is campaigning to replace disgraced Tory MP, Peter Bone.

Hat tip Independent "From Saturday, the main rate of national insurance will be cut by two percentage points to 10%, as promised by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the autumn statement in November.

Ministers have previously said cutting the main rate for employees is a tax cut worth £450 for the average employee on £35,400 in 2024/25.

But Labour point out that income tax and national insurance thresholds, which have been frozen since 2021, mean that many families have been drawn into higher tax bands.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Under Rishi Sunak’s raw deal, for every extra £10 people are paying in tax they are only getting £2 back.

“Working people know that this month’s tax con is just a cynical giveaway from a weak and out-of-touch Tory government that is desperate to cling onto power, rather than a credible plan to fix our broken economy".

"Homeowners £326,000 richer than renters over 30 years, report finds"

Check out the indie.  The problem is not so much home ownership, but the fact (in my view) that the market is rigged by the Government in favour of home ownership above other tenures. 

Now prices are so high then this may change since in many areas "Buy to Let" landlords cannot pay off their mortgages despite charging sky high rents. 

Cameron’s premiership saw least housebuilding since 1923

"David Cameron had the worst housebuilding record of any Prime Minister since 1923. An average of 123,560 houses were built in England and Wales during each year of his premiership, according to data released by the independent House of Commons library. 

Fourteen per cent fewer homes were built in England than under Gordon Brown and 21% fewer than under Tony Blair. Launching a new report in Parliament, John Healey MP, who commissioned the research, called for a new “progressive devolution” of housing, aiming to give disadvantaged areas fresh powers and funding. 

The report, written by the Smith Institute, found devolution in housing has widespread support, but progress is “slow, piecemeal and undermined” by “inappropriate” national programmes.  The Independent"

(Not that Blair or Brown ensured that enough homes were built either but...)

Don't let the Tories Kill the Health Service: Vote Labour on May 7th

This has not been commissioned by the Labour Party but by The Independent who invited ad agency companies to think up posters for all political parties. Actually, I hope the Party uses it!

Myths and Misconceptions about Welfare

A very good report in the indie about voters being "brain washed by Tory Welfare myths".

I would go further and say these are not myths but deliberate lies and distortions being put out by this Tory led Government to justify ideological attacks on the most vulnerable.

Not only on the chronically sick and the unemployed but mostly the working poor who depend upon the state to top up their employer poverty wages.

Actual benefit fraudsters should be dealt with harshly as they are thieves and criminals. However, so should the many City and business thieves who in practise steal far more from the public purse, yet rarely end up facing the justice at the Criminal Courts they deserve.

UPDATE: Check out Channel 4 FactCheck here on more Tory welfare porkies.

Newham's own £1 Fish Man for Xmas Number 1!

Good luck to the East Ham Queens Market musical fish monger Muhammad Shahid Nazir and his bid to become Christmas Number One in the charts. 

Check out this report from The Independent "the One Pound Fish man (£1 Fish Man) Muhammad Shahid Nazir is also set to take on the ITV giants with his new re-vamped single (see above). He's got odds of 33/1 at the moment, and William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said:

To put that in perspective, he is twice as likely as Justin Bieber to take the top spot and four times as likely as Sir Cliff Richard.”.

Molins to Workforce: give up your pension...or else!

It was another bad week for employees last week. At around the same time that the Conservative hedge fund multi-millionaire and sponsor, Beecroft, published his report recommending that companies should be able to sack their employees if they don’t like them, Molins, a FTSE listed UK engineering company was found to have threatened its workforce with the sack if they don’t leave their pension fund!

They decided to close their scheme but their trust deeds did not allow it. So they have issued a section 188 notice to the government saying they are intending to dismiss everyone and then offer to re-engage them on condition that they do not join the pension scheme.

Molins claims that that they cannot afford to run its existing defined benefit scheme. Which is rubbish. It is making good profits and is financially secure.

Pension’s Week suggest that there may be a problem with attracting investment but that is not what they are telling their workers. I think it is just cost cutting and they want to cut the wages of their employees with a substandard pension contribution which will not be enough to give their workers enough money to have security and dignity in their old age.

I gave a statement to “Pensions Week” (part of the FT group) as Chair of the AMNT Working Group to defend and promote Defined Benefit Pension schemes. Part of which they quoted

“This is a test to the 2006 pensions regulations, which quite clearly state an employer’s consultation with the workforce has to be meaningful,” said John Gray, Association of Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT) committee member.

“Molins appears to in breach of its own ethics policy. Threatening to sack their staff in order to get out of providing them with a decent pension does not appear to us to be anything like the highest standards of ethical behaviour.”

The AMNT has launched a campaign to support trustees of DB schemes under threat of closure.

What Molins has got to realise is that closing their pension scheme will not make their liabilities disappear. It could make things much, much worse.

Current Pension deficits are worked out using a completely artificial and discredited accounting standard called “mark to market”. Due to a double whammy of recent exceptionally low fund management returns and a 200 year low in the yield of gilts make things appear far more negative  than they actually are.

Not only that but if you panic and close your scheme in response to these meaningless figures then the company faces having to pay even more into the scheme since the fund rapidly becomes cash deficit and has to invest into low yielding bonds and gilts with no equity premium.

Ironically last week I goggled “Molins” and “Pensions” and came across this story from "The Independent" business pages in 1992. The Molins pension scheme was then in surplus by £90 million.

The company was trying to take out £18 million out of the pension scheme to cut company debt and fund acquisitions (and increase benefits). I don’t know if were able to take this money out of their scheme but if they did what would have been the scheme funding now if they did not take out £18 million in 1992?

(NB to be clear this post is my own and not necessarily the views of the AMNT)

UPDATE: Professional Pensions has a good article on this case here