It's now commonplace to say Francois Hollande has got a great deal wrong in France, and to some extent that's true. But not this one, from the FT:
France's socialist government, under strong pressure to reform its big and costly social welfare system, has unveiled plans to make annual net savings of €1.7bn in its generous family benefits regime.
The relatively modest savings, a first step in a series of welfare reforms promised this year by President François Hollande, are to be achieved mainly by reducing tax breaks for the better-off to avoid a politically sensitive departure from the principle of universal child benefits.
This would be the right direction of travel for Labour.
Cutting higher rate pension relief still further would be welcome.
Giving tax relief on venture capital trusts, enterprise management incentives, enterprise investment schemes and even (candidly) ISAs makes little or no sense when universal benefits are under threat.
That's where I'd like to see Labour making threats, not on winter fuel allowance, which opens the door to many more cuts.
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Jeremy Paxman made Ed Balls look daft on yesterday’s Newsnight.
The two Eds are rapidly turning into a “comedy act”. I’m afraid it is going to be left to the unions to stand up for ordinary working people!
I didn’t watch….
But I am increasingly convinced of the vital role of trade unions and am proud to be a member of Unite and to work for them and other unions
I see Polly Toynbee is getting an absolute pasting in the comments section of her latest (sycophantic drivel) column in the Guardian, as is the subject of her article, Ed Balls. Doesn’t bode well when the party faithful (and it seems the people criticising are not Tory plants)are so scathing both of her and of Ed Balls.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/03/labour-iron-man-ed-balls
Interesting times – maybe Labour are not such a certain bet after all for the next election.
I have to say Polly Toynbee is wrong on this one
Labour at any price is not worthwhile if it’s jut more neoliberal dogma that replaces neoliberal dogma
I’m not interested in political labels. I want real change
I think Polly is wrong, we erstwhile Labour supporters are entitled to shout ‘betrayal’ and I’d challenge her on the inefficacy of being morally right and out of power. I’d rather vote for a morally ‘right’ party that seemingly had no chance of power. Labour allowed the hopes of this generation of young people to be savaged by the greed of the corporate world. They now can’t afford homes, live on low wages that will barely allow them food and allowed speculators to treble the Housing Benefit bill, allowing the Tories to wheel-out the ‘scrounger’ argument with some success. Whether Labour gets elected again is a matter of indifference to me. Only the name is left (in both senses).
You can have mass immigration of all and sundry into the UK putting demand on scare UK resources or you can have an all encompassing welfare state.
You can’t have both.
Wrong
Immigration pays for benefits
Instead of trying to means test benefits, why don’t they just tax them, like they do for pensions, etc?
the inequality in our society has reached gross proportions – I’m not sure we can sustain the concept of Universalism anymore as an unquestioned principle. It made sense years ago because we did not hear of absurdly high wages but this has changed over the last 30 years. If Cameron claimed DLA for his late son do we say that this is a token of society’s appreciation of the vulnerable regardless of wealth and keep this on principle as a token of our humanity? I’m personally not clear about this just as if Richard Branson claimed the old Incapacity benefit because he became ill would we say ‘society owes you this on principle.’?
I want to know who defines a living wage? Is it the people who will actually have to live on it? Without locks on living costs is it possible income gains from living wage could be wiped out? And how is a move towards lowering unemployment by moving people into minimum wage jobs, including use of workfare, any different from ConDem plans? How is ending Universalism, rather than increasing taxes at top, which deprives a huge number of people who need access to Social Security any different from the ConDem method of removing Social Security from those who need it?
may be they should sort there own house out first with the tax dodging .
As far as I can see there was no dodging by Labour
The law says they can receive shares
The donor ythinks he dodged – that’s a different issue