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Michael Gove vs Reality
Short video from the NASUWT documenting education secretary Michael Gove’s long struggle with reality.
Lessons for Labour from France: manage expectations
Francois Hollande’s popularity recently hit a record low for a French head of state, with a whopping 67 per cent of the French population disapproving of the President. The lesson from France should perhaps be that the most sensible thing to do in the current climate is to keep expectations low, or at any rate ensure they never approach anything like that generated in the run up to the election of Francois Hollande.
The Daily Mail: How the poor die and how the rich die
The Daily Mail’s reaction today to the tragedy of Michael Philpott’s multiple manslaughter of his six children is not only quite disgusting, but it also shows the paper’s double standards:
How fair are changes to the benefits system?
To get an idea of just how fair the changes to the tax and welfare system are, Left Foot Forward have compiled a quick overview of some the changes and given them each a fairness score out of 10.
Paolo Di Canio: “a fascist but not a racist”. That’s ok then
I have no idea whether or not Paulo Di Canio is a racist, just as I have no clue whether everyone who waddles through Trafalgar Square on May Day with a giant portrait of Stalin believes in the necessity of the Gulag or a bullet to the back of the head. I would, however, hesitate to put such people in positions where they have authority over people who their political heroes regarded as expendable.
Making work pay…by freezing the minimum wage
The chancellor George Osborne will make a speech today in which he will say the government is “making work pay” through tax and benefit changes. Making work pay is an admirable goal and something that everyone on the left supports. The problem, however, is that the government’s idea of making work pay is radically different to that of most progressives, as a quick glance at today’s Daily Telegraph makes clear.
Families £891 worse off from April, new figures show
Families will be an average of £891 worse off from next week because of tax rises and cuts to tax credits and benefits introduced since 2010, according to new figures.
This week’s most read: Immigration, the death of Lucy Meadows and Boris the clown
The most read articles on Left Foot Forward this week.
Union membership and the arc of inequality (graph)
A fascinating graph by Colin Gordon for Dissent magazine shows the relationship in the United States between union membership and inequality.