Gender inequality worsening
Women working full time will be paid £369,000 less over their working life than their male counterparts according to government figures. Men are paid 17% more than women for full time work. The difference for part timers is even greater, with men being paid 36% more. The male/female pay gap is widening at present rather than closing.
Labour’s out of control leaders
New Labour’s leaders have already made it almost impossible for any Labour Party members opposing their line to be Labour candidates for parliament. Now, their control is being extended within parliament. Their new chief whip, Nick Brown, is proposing that any Labour MP who has voted against the government in the past year should not be allowed to sit in the all-party parliamentary committees. These committees are supposed to hold government ministers to account. Little chance of that if this measure is carried out.
War pays well for some
Sir David Manning, a leading foreign office advisor to Tony Blair, who helped to prepare the war on Iraq, has become a non-executive director of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Among its numerous ‘products’, Lockheed makes a hand-held Javelin anti-tank missile and the helicopter-launched Hellfire missile – both of which have been used by the British army in Iraq. Yet another example of a rich civil servant friend of New Labour benefiting personally from government policy – in this case the brutal onslaught on Iraq – which he himself had a hand in.
