Wednesday 29 September 2010

Quote of the Day (Grown-up-debate edition)

Uber-Blairite journalist John Rentoul writes about Ed Miliband's speech in the Independent:
"The weakest line in the speech was the response to being called Red Ed. “Let’s have a grown-up debate,” he said. All right, what about his policy of a living wage? How do the economics of that contradict the idea that his instincts are of the unrealistic left? Who is going to pay for something much higher than the minimum wage at a time of recession and a public spending squeeze?  How is he going to get people off benefits by encouraging employers to pay higher wages to the marginally employable?
Perhaps we will have the grown-up debate soon."
Perhaps, indeed.

2 comments:

another anon and me said...

Still not distracted from the real main news today, the letter from Dr Liam Fox to David Cameron. For full letter see the Telegraph, the below is an extract:
“Deletion of the Nimrod MR4 will limit our ability to deploy maritime forces rapidly into high-threat areas, increase the risk to the Deterrent, compromise maritime CT (counter terrorism), remove long range search and rescue, and delete one element of our Falklands reinforcement plan.
Some risk to civil contingent capability, including but not limited to foot and mouth, fire-fighting strikes, fuel shortages, flu pandemics, Mumbai style attacks and the 2012 Summer Olympics ….”
Serious and grave concerns, which in my mind are far more important than what John Rentoul thought about Ed Milibands rather weak speech.

An Eye On... said...

Who is going to pay for something much higher than the minimum wage at a time of recession

Bearing in mind that the next election is 2015, if we are still in recession and struggling then, then we will be eating rats and living in caves.

£7.60 an hour gross, for a full time week for someone over 21 is to expensive? Joke surely. Just think on - anyone earning that already with a kid is being handed hundreds of pounds of taxpayers money each month in tax credits which come form? Your pocket.

It's an absolute disgrace that wage levels in this country are so low that 7 out of 10 children in this country in WORKING families receive tax credits.

In fact tax credits are encouraging employers to pay low wages because they are using the the tax credits system as a subsidy and thus just as guilty of milking the system as benefit cheats and probably more so.