Them & Us


Classless Ukip?

Ukip claims to represent ‘all social classes’. So what is the commons voting record of Ukip’s newest MP, Tory defector Douglas Carswell?

He voted for: £9,000 a year tuition fees; the bedroom tax; reducing the rate of corporation tax; ending financial support to 16-19 year olds in further education and training; the privatisation of Royal Mail; restricting the scope of legal aid; capping civil service redundancy payments; privatising forests…

He voted against: a bankers’ bonus tax; restrictions on fees charged to tenants by letting agents; a mansion tax; equal gay rights; raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices; slowing the rise in rail fares…

Not much support for the working and middle classes here then!


Private landlords in England are receiving in excess of £32 billion earnings in rents from tenants a year, or nearly £2.7 billion a month


Less is more

In the last decade, gas and electricity customers have seen their bills rise a massive 52% above inflation, adding an average £410 per household according to Which, the consumer magazine. This is despite, and probably leading to, domestic energy consumption falling by 17% over the same period.


Caring Labour

Care UK strikers in Doncaster recently lobbied local MP and Labour leader Ed Miliband for his support in their months-long pay cuts battle and to defend the NHS.

Perhaps Ed could have a word with former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn – now the Con-Dems government’s social mobility tsar. The Blairite ex-minister also happens to be on the European advisory panel to Bridgepoint Capital the private equity company which owns Care UK.


The world’s richest 1% own nearly half of $263 trillion global wealth


Living wage

Don’t hold back when demanding a pay rise from your boss. Tyrel Oates, an employee of Wells Fargo in the US, co-emailed 200,000 fellow workers with a message sent to the company’s head: “My proposal is take $3 billion, just a small fraction of what Wells Fargo pulls in annually, and raise every employee’s annual salary by $10,000.”

In response, the company says its workers’ wages are “market competitive”. Wells Fargo made $5.7 billion profit in the second quarter of 2014 and paid its CEO $19 million last year.


Affordable housing

The National Housing Federation reckons workers need an £108,500 annual wage in order to buy a home across London as a whole. However, in Kensington and Chelsea a house buyer needs an annual salary of £378,380 to buy an averaged priced home.