Harry's Place

On Leftfoot Forward, Jack Lofthouse of the Institute of Public Policy Research cogitates on a recent article by Jonathan Cribb, Andrew Hood, Robert Joyce and David Phillips (source PDF here on the Institute for Fiscal Studies site) and how it reflects on the incentives the benefits system offers childless working-age adults to become hard-working [...]

This is a guest post by Sarka
Having lived abroad for more than two decades I have often been asked where I am from, and often spontaneously offered the information as explanation for the imperfections of my Czech. Automatically, naturally, never having made some conscious policy decision about the matter, I have always used [...]

Cogitating in April on the increasing use of food banks in the UK, Leftfoot Forward carried a bar chart based on figures released by the foodbank charity, the Trussell Trust.
This showed an increase from 60 to 130 to 350 thousand claims for assistance in each of the respective years since the Coalition entered Government. [...]

There is a fair point to say that people who have reached retirement age should expect a social contract to be honoured with whatever benefits the system of the day considers pertinent. Yet, in an unpleasant viewing experience which I have recounted on HP before, the already comfortable beneficiaries of the current largess appear [...]

Cheap/inexpensive clothes are good. Where once the great many on very modest means would have had to take especial care of often literally shoddy garments as the Mrs. Jellybys of the world were well garbed, now three t-shirts can be bought for £10.
Relying on sweatshops in buildings which are both literally and figuratively are [...]

Aesthetically, I find the Wonga-Wonga insta-loan ads more annoying than a troop of Ewoks onboard Babylon-5. At Left Foot Forward, Carl Packham cogitates on a more pernicious aspect: the rise of payday loans, which can turn a debilitating need for a few pounds extra towards the end of the month into an utterly crippling [...]

Part of the rationale for capping the increase in basic benefits to less than inflation was to signal approval for those in work and who had not enjoyed a similar pay-rise.
A pay-rate which the authorities do have direct control over is the minimum wage, and this is to be increased by 12p per [...]

The Office of National Statistics recently covered the rise of underemployment during the Great Recession.
Although the definition of the term can be subjective – individuals who merely are prepared to work more hours whilst currently being in full-time (or near enough) employment, or some of the multitude of university graduates who believe working in ice-cream [...]

It was earlier this year that financial and banking CEOs – smarting from the costs for mis-selling compensation and other unplanned expenditures – proposed ending ‘free banking’ through measures such as charging for maintaining current accounts (even those in credit) or expanding surcharges for withdrawing money from auto-tellers; a proposal which quickly elicited derision from [...]

Cross-posted from James Bloodworth at Obliged to Offend

During his lifetime many of the late Christopher Hitchens’s most vociferous critics were former allies from the political left. How, it was asked, could a once radical polemicist have become a cheerleader for the neo-conservative project to remake the world? The late American author Studs Terkel probably echoed [...]