Them & Us


‘I’m posh, gizza job’

According to the government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission top UK companies are elbowing aside working class job applicants in favour of privileged, “polished” candidates.

The study conducted by University of London concluded that top companies are “systematically excluding bright working-class applicants” from their workforce. Candidates from fee paying and selective schools made up 70% of graduate trainees in the study, despite being only 7% and 4% of the UK population respectively.

Wise words

“I do worry that we have 140 billionaires in London and yet hardly any of them are taking the trouble to ensure that the companies they lead or invest in are paying their employees the London living wage (of £9.15 an hour).”

Paying a higher minimum wage above the current paltry £6.50 an hour would end the practise of “subsidising companies who are not paying their staff properly.”

Surprisingly these comments come from the Tory MP for Croydon South, Chris Philip. Is it a case of ‘those who come to Jesus last’ or, a worry that ‘the pitchforks are coming’? We suspect the latter.

Gold plated pensions

Younger readers probably aren’t aware, but many workers used to be on final salary pension schemes, before most employers abolished them entirely or switched to less generous ‘career average’ pensions.

MPs were also supposed to switch from their final salary scheme to a career average pension, in return for this year’s £7,000 pay rise. However, it turns out that under “transitional protection” arrangements 212 MPs will get both the pay hike and retain their gold-plated pensions.

RBS give-away

In the 2008 financial crash Gordon Brown’s Labour government bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), using £45.8 billion of public money to buy a 80% stake. This majority public ownership didn’t stop fat cat RBS bosses continuing to pocket massive bonuses, salaries and pension payments.

Now, Tory chancellor Osborne is putting the government’s remaining stake into a fire sale to partly offset the government’s widening budget deficit (along with slashing welfare services).

Brown’s government bought RBS for £5 a share – the current market price is £3.58 a share. No wonder the sell-off is being compared to the government’s botched privatisation of Royal Mail in 2013 when £1 billion was lost to the public purse.

Taxpayers will be ‘short-changed’ by at least £7.2 billion for RBS, while grasping investors who helped cause the economic crisis will get shares dirt cheap after years of publicly funded bailouts. The greedy banks should be nationalised!