Heroes: Inequality is Rife 

 

‘Mr. cab driver won’t you stop to let me in 

Mr. cab driver don’t you like my kind of skin 

Mr. cab driver you’re never gonna win’ 

 

We start with the Metropolitan police, and a report from Louise Casey which was leaked leaked to the Guardian, that finds the force still stricken with deep-seated racism, sexism and homophobia. 

Senior government and policing figures are aware of its contents, with one describing it as ‘horrible‘ and another as ‘atrocious‘.  

The force commissioned the report in 2021 after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, Wayne Couzens.  

In 1999, a report by Sir William Macpherson on the failings that helped the racist killers of Stephen Lawrence escape justice identified institutional racism as a cause of some of the problems. Whilst 10-yrs on from that report the Met said the label no longer applied, Casey says significant problems persist, and she will raise the question of what should happen to the Met if it cannot reform. 

The report found that the Met’s biggest recent disasters, such as the cases of Couzens and the serial rapist David Carrick, were not one-offs but symptomatic of how profound and serious its failings were allowed to become. It will criticise poor past leadership and say pernicious cultures took hold and grew in the Met. 
 

‘pernicious cultures took hold and grew in the Met’

 
Couzens and Carrick were judged as fit to carry a gun and served in the same unit, the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, which Casey will highlight as having unacceptably high levels of problematic behaviours. 

Casey will say austerity cuts to police budgets, have had a damaging effect on the Met, its neighbourhood policing and its relations with the communities it serves. Some officers and units have been left overworked. 

The police, we are told, do a difficult job, I used to think they just did it badly. However, this goes beyond that, clearly they attract the wrong sorts, racists, homophobes, and perhaps worst of all, misogynists, who see the job as an opportunity to prey on woman. 

We turn now to other public servants, nurses who, like the police do a difficult job, unlike the police they execute their role beyond all possible expectations. 

 The fact that the government is having to back-down and agree pay increases to NHS staff should come as no surprise to anyone. Despite some derisory attempts to portray nurses as ‘militants’, the electorate was never likely to be fooled. All the government has achieved is thousands of lost appointments and operations, inflicting extra suffering on patients while lengthening the politically damaging waiting lists. 

Despite a potential settlement being close, it is not without issues. Lower grades are likely to benefit the most, meaning that valuable senior experienced nurses fall behind and could be wooed into jobs outside the health service. Part of their reason for striking was due to the deteriorating state of the NHS, and their terrible working conditions as they cover for 47,000 nursing vacancies. With no new money for the NHS or social care in the budget, they will return to exhausting 12-hour shifts in the same conditions.  
 

‘thousands of lost appointments and operations, inflicting extra suffering on patients while lengthening the politically damaging waiting lists’

 
Funding is still woefully inadequate, the promised ‘40 new hospitals‘ will remain just a figment of the governments imagination. Funds have diverted from digitisation, meaning that ancient PC’s remain unconnected to a wider network, meaning that scans and notes are not shared, and the prescriptions necessary for discharging patients fail to come through. This is all the fault of the Tory’s enforced austerity leading to a decade of the lowest ever NHS funding increases. 

Other damage includes a 9% fall in the number of new entrants to nursing last year. Since nursing bursaries were axed, students run up C.£50,000 of debt, even though they spend half their time working, theoretically ‘supernumerary’ – but inevitably, actually caring for patients. In addition, Brexit stopped the flow from the EU, 48% of new nurses last year came from abroad. 

Staying with care we turn to last week’s budget and the Chancellors plans to expand free childcare which was a main giveaway in his budget last week, which Critics say, will ‘absolutely guarantee‘ the closure of more nurseries, the departure of staff and a fall in places if there is not a substantial increase in the funding behind it 

The plan proposes 30 hours a week of free childcare for all children aged from nine months to four years, though its introduction will be staggered. At present, parents of three and four-year-olds can claim 15 or 30 hours of free childcare, depending on their circumstances. 

To fund this, Hunt promised an increase of free hours funding of £204m from this September, eventually rising to £288m next year. However, it is well below independent estimates of the costs nurseries face and full funding details have not been revealed. 

The system now effectively relies on the fees paid by the parents of younger children offsetting the underfunding of ‘free’ hours handed to older ones. But under Hunt’s plan, the expansion of free hours would prevent that happening. 

Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of National Day Nurseries Association, said: ‘The more funded children that [nurseries] are taking, the more losses they’re making. On average, providers lose £2.20-2.30 per child, per hour. That’s the gap at the moment. Unless proper funding follows, all we’re doing is exacerbating the problem.’ 
 

‘As a result, nurseries are closing in their thousands and pay for staff is a major problem’

 
As a result, nurseries are closing in their thousands and pay for staff is a major problem: an average salary in the sector is about £15,000 a year, while for the typical worker it is closer to £28,000. 

To add insult to injury, this was a policy stolen from Labour, who, should they win the next election will now have to find extra money to make an underfunded policy actually work.  

People have described the budget as being carefully calibrated to show that the Tories are back in the game, and a warning to Labour lest complacency creeps in. It also highlighted the old Tory failing of bailing out the very wealthy, without realising, or caring, how bad it looks to everyone else. 

In this instance it was the removal of the lifetime cap on tax-free pension savings, to stop NHS consultants retiring early on the grounds that their retirement savings are now so enormous that they’re attracting crippling tax bills. If it was supposed to be targeted it is remarkably scatter-gun, allowing anyone earning up to £240,000 a year to benefit. In addition, there is also inheritance tax benefits, as pension pots are usually passed on free of inheritance tax. Whilst the retiree pays income tax on what they drawdown form the fund, the bigger the pot the more likely it is not to be fully drawn before the owner dies. 

Both the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation thinktank argue it is an inheritance tax loophole ripe for exploitation 

Inherited money is becoming increasingly important is less obvious ways, E.G., it is one of the few things propping up the housing market in London and the south-east. By 2025, it’s estimated that about £100bn a year will be passing down from an ageing baby-boomer generation to their children in what’s been dubbed the ‘great wealth transfer’, comprising both legacies and so-called ‘lifetime gifts’ handed over while the donor is still alive. By 2047, that figure could have more than trebled.  

For the lucky ones it will be life-changing, but it can only exacerbate the already deep divides between those who are in line for inheritances and those who aren’t.  
 

‘it can only exacerbate the already deep divides between those who are in line for inheritances and those who aren’t’

 
Whatever the Tory’s ability to reinvent itself, like all political parties they have blind spots and vested interests, and problems it knows it should solve but can’t for fear of upsetting its electoral base.  

The reality for many is stark; by March 2028, the OBR predicts, Britons’ living standards will still be below where they were on the eve of the pandemic in March 2020. Whatever Hunt says about this being a budget for growth it feels very much like an actual recession 

He said nothing about public sector pay, even though TUC analysis shows the typical public servant earns about £200 less a month than they did before George Osborne’s first budget in 2010. He had zero to offer on investment in the public sector, even though this winter sick people died while waiting for ambulances and education is falling apart. 

Does Labour offer anything different? City researchers Capital Economics has been through Labour’s plans, and found; ‘A tight grip on public finances is likely by whichever party is in charge … Labour may struggle to do much better than the Conservatives.’  

However, for some there is much to celebrate with billions in profit, bonanzas for the executives and shareholders, while there are only real pay cuts on offer for workers 

In the last financial year, UK Power Networks, the National Grid power distributor, made a £1.3bn pre-tax profit. 

In the first half of 2022, FTSE 350 companies saw their margins up by an average of 89% on the same period in 2019. In the US, economists call it ‘price gouging’, and economists have identified a ‘second round’ of inflation as many companies raised their prices well above their costs in a conscious attempt to boost profits. 
 

‘a ‘second round’ of inflation as many companies raised their prices well above their costs in a conscious attempt to boost profits’

 
In 2021, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda doubled their combined profits compared with 2019 to £3.2bn. Likewise, big brand food manufacturers such as Nestlé and Unilever have seen their corporate profits soar.  

In 2021 the big-four agribusiness corporations, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, made profits of $10.4bn(£8.6bn), an increase of 225% on pre-pandemic levels. In petrol pump supply chains, refineries and oil companies are smashing corporate profit records. Last year, BP recorded the biggest profits in the company’s history – £23bn. 

Probably the most blatant examples of all this planned, untouchable corporate profiteering are the container shipping giants like Maersk, Cosco and Hapag-Lloyd. Between 2019 and 2022, the container industry boosted its profits from $7bn to $210bn (£5.8bn to £174bn), and in 2022 they are set for an even bigger bonanza. Port owners, such as DP World and CK Hutchison, have also seen huge profiteering gains, as did the biggest road freight operators whose profits rose by 149%. 

We are confronted by this cost of profiteering because of the stark inequalities in wealth and power that govern Britain. Capital, boosted by favourable governments, has managed to win enormous power that in turn allows it to set the rules of the economy and reap the rewards accordingly. The system isn’t only broken, it is rigged. 

‘Half the time 

 

As I sit in disarray 

I am thinking of a dream I never had’ 

 

This week we consider the ongoing issues with inequality.

We have the Met who seem to regard anyone who isn’t white and male as fair game. Despite all the attention and reports this doesn’t seem to be going away, if anything it seems more prevalent.

Staying with the public sector the NHS disputes look like settlements are within reach, and not before time. The government’s somewhat pathetic attempts at playing politics here have failed miserably, as they were always going to.

Turning to the budget, there was the headline stealing child care proposals, which were stolen from Labour. However, in true Tory fashion it’s all smoke and mirrors, and nowhere near as good as they try to make out.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of lifting the lifetime allowance which will be a beano for higher earners. There is the additional kicker of inheritance benefits too, which will nicely exacerbate the wealth gap. We are now increasingly split between the minority ”haves” and the majority “have nots”. Quite when this pot will boil over is hard to say, but when it does Brexit could look like a stroll in the park.

Still, all isn’t lost. It’s reassuring to see many corporates behaving like, and making out like bandits due to inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. One thing is certain everything that has increased in price won’t go back down when normality returns.

Lyrically, we mark racism with Lennie Kravitz’s “Mr Cab Driver”. To finish one for the kids, the Teardrop Explodes and “Tiny Children”. Enjoy!

 
@coldwarsteve
 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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