Tesco argues equal pay claim disregards ‘economic reality’ - "Tesco has alleged that paying its store assistants the same as workers in its warehouses would “disregard economic reality” and had “the potential to inflict serious damage” as it tries to head off an unequal pay legal claim that could cost it billions of pounds... The case against Tesco, one of the UK’s largest private sector employers, dates back to 2018 and argues that store workers, most of whom are women, are paid far less than employees in the supermarket’s distribution centres, where nearly 90 per cent of workers are men. About 60,000 workers have joined the claim, which is also seeking back-pay for six years between 2012 and 2018... The employment tribunal in Reading held a so-called material factor defence hearing on Friday, in which the supermarket had to lay out why pay differences are unrelated to gender. Tesco wrote in legal arguments that it was “an extraordinary case” and argued that its pay differentials were shaped by market conditions and “genuine pressing operational needs”. “It reflects the commercial and operational judgements that any employer of this type and size was required to make if it was to remain viable, competitive and able to continue employing hundreds of thousands of colleagues across the UK,” it wrote. Tesco also warned that an adverse finding against it could prompt potential industrial action at its warehouse over pay and could lead to workers being paid more than their managers. “Tesco submits that, the law not being an ass, this is not an outcome that should ever be reached. But this is that for which the Claimants nonetheless contend.”"
max tempers on X - "The largest supermarket in Britain, that operates on razor-thin margins, is about to be crushed for the crime of paying different jobs different salaries, while our legislature shrugs. How dare they suggest that “so-called market rates” can exist in Soviet Britain."
Kelsey Piper on X - "for those of you who are unaware, British employment commissions have in the past found that you need to pay people the same salary for *completely different jobs* if one job attracts more men and the other more women. and that this claim can be backdated to bankrupt you."
You'd think if the jobs were really so similar, women would just go work in the higher paying job. But left wingers think women are too stupid to go and get a similar but higher paying job, so the government needs to force equal pay
On Price Deniers - "This week the Chancellor has been publicly floating what would be, in a crowded field, the most damaging economic policy of her tenure so far. Rent control. Generally, economists agree on very little. Ordinarily, the joke goes, put two economists in a room and you’ll end up with three opinions. And yet the overwhelming majority of economists on both the left and the right agree that the state fixing rents is an almost uniquely destructive policy. Britain suffered from rent control through the middle of the 20th Century, largely killing off the private rental market. As academic Samuel Hughes has identified, “Maintenance standards immediately cratered because landlords could easily find tenants for underpriced properties, however decayed they might be. This meant Inner London rapidly became extremely shabby, while owner-occupied suburbs remained well maintained”. Crucially according to Hughes this period of rent control, eventually abolished by Margaret Thatcher, meant that “Build to rent vanished completely, except for certain small decontrolled markets. Since Britain has more demand for renting flats than buying them, this killed off densification”. Our cities remain amongst the lest dense in Europe today. Inner cities went from being desirable and well maintained to squalid hotbeds of crime and disorder. The middle classes ceased to rent, and the effects were felt from our increasingly ageing and unmaintained rental housing stock to mass exodus to sprawling owner-occupied suburbia. So why then is the Chancellor now toying with a policy that has wrought such damage to this country in its recent history? Two words: panicky populism. Before the election, Rachel Reeves argued against rent control. She cited the recent experience in Scotland, telling LBC in 2023, “if you take Scotland for example they’ve got rent control and yet Edinburgh and Glasgow are two cities in the UK that had some of their highest increases in rent so these things don’t always work.” Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook said earlier this very month that “there is sufficient international evidence from countries such as Sweden and Germany ... as well as the recent Scottish experience, to attest to the potential detrimental impacts of rent controls on tenants.” So Labour used to cite Scotland, Sweden, and Germany.
Berlin’s recent rent freeze (2020-2021) did exactly what rent controls always do: it made rents cheaper for the lucky insiders who already had a flat that they liked and who did not want to move, and made the city hell for everyone else. Advertised supply fell by an extraordinary 40%, while applicants per flat surged into the hundreds. In more desirable districts, there were over 400 applicants per rent controlled home on the market.
Sweden’s rent control system has been an international warning sign for years. In Stockholm, the average wait for a “first-hand” contract is over a decade. Instead, a black market thrives where tenants pay significantly higher prices to sublet “second-hand” properties often with no security despite regulations designed to stop precisely that.
Scotland’s rent control disaster (2022-2024) followed a similar pattern. Sitting tenants were protected from sharp rises. But anyone trying to move, arriving in a city, leaving a relationship, changing job, or finding a first flat had a torrid time. The controls didn’t end rent inflation. Instead they bottled it up, shifted it onto new tenants, frightened off landlords and investors, and forced the Government into carve outs once the supply damage became impossible to ignore.
The truth is Reeves and Pennycook could have cited anywhere else on the planet that instituted rent control without significant exemptions or concurrent population collapse. Tight Parisian rent control that lasted from the first world war to the 1950s led to a collapse in housing supply relative to other European countries, and housing quality. It led to the crazy situation whereby in the mid 1950s, over 80% of Paris apartments did not have their own bathroom. This statistic collapsed following the repeal of rent control. Ultimately the point is this: prices mean something... When the supply of homes is constricted, rents rise. You can’t legislate away those price rises without more homes. All you do is ration the shortage in a different way. And that different way is worse is a worse way. A way worse way. Prices aren’t just an arbitrary tax on the consumer. A price is a signal wrapped in an incentive. Without government meddling, higher prices mean more entrants rush to the market, as they spot a way to enrich themselves: by providing more supply. That extra supply then brings down those prices, and suppliers competing for custom keeps those prices low... when prices rise, politicians suppose the villains are those who are raising their prices. They heap costs on businesses from plastic taxes to wage floor hikes, and then act shocked and angered when the cost of food wrapped in plastic or a pint poured by a minimum wage young bartender shoots up. Most shockingly of all, when a global energy shock leads to prices shooting up on the shelves, instead of allowing more oil to be drilled instead this government hauled supermarket bosses in to Downing Street for a dressing down. The Chancellor lectured bosses on so called ‘profiteering’ (supermarket profit margins average 2-3%), instead of accepting the reality that lower supply relative to demand leads to higher prices. Telling (or worse, forcing) producers to cut their prices leads to shortages, and less production than there otherwise would be. Politicians on the left and on the right need to accept there is only one way to credibly get prices down: let the market work, and get out of the way to allow more supply to come on stream. Denying the reality of prices with price controls leads to rationing, black markets, shortages, and a very broken economy. The most maddening thing is that Rachel Reeves does know this. The saddest thing is that she just too weak to make the case for reality."
Left wingers think prices are fake, together with their other denials of reality, which is why they end up executing more and more people as scapegoats when their system collapses
Dan Carden on X - "Rent control isn't some Soviet idea dreamed up by radicals. Britain had it for most of the 20th century: it was mainstream; it was normal; and it worked. It’s history is part of the story of Britain 🧵"
Anthony Cox on X - "No doubt this MP would criticise Gove for the ‘had enough of experts’ comment, yet at the same time support rent control which 98% of economists reject and has a terrible historical & contemporary evidence base. Rent control is the ‘MMR vaccine causes autism’ of economics."
The left wing cope is that economics is fake
Derek Thompson on X - "I'm glad that the author of "Rent Control Is Fine, Actually" calls themself Unlearning Economics, bc it's good to just state things clearly, such as the open animosity that many left economic populists have for the field of economics and economists themselves. Economists aren't gods, and economics isn't a divine truth, but economists are good--better than most--at something critical for making public policy: They're good at identifying tradeoffs. "Rents are too high, so freeze them" is compelling politics. But in the absence of other pro-supply policies, if you make it illegal to increase rents, landlords will stop upgrading units and convert them to condos, which reduces the supply of units for rent, reduces mobility, and drives up rents for everybody else. The left econ populists have some clear, and clearly stated, policy ideas:
- Rents are too high, so freeze them.
- Electricity is expensive, so stop rate increases.
- Homes are too expensive, so ban institutional investors.
- Power prices are rising, so ban data center construction.
... All these policies feel like solutions because they're brisk, they name enemies, and they take on the most visible source of frustration. But they are much better as villain-naming exercises than they are as a complete public policy. On their own, each creates other problems: less housing built, less clean electricity built, abdicating energy policy by encouraging AI firms to build data centers abroad in unsavory countries with more emissions, etc. I can't think of a single economic populist idea that wouldn't be helped with a little dose of economics, which is why it's troubling when I see the left participating in, and even celebrating, the great unlearning of economics."
Report highlights cost to economy of VAT on private school fees - "Imposing VAT on private schools has cost the Scottish economy £60 million and 900 jobs, according to a new report. An economic consultancy commissioned by the Scottish Council of Independent Schools (SCIS) warned the policy would hit public finances, estimating it will effectively cost the Scottish government almost £200 million annually within a decade... During the 2025-26 financial year, the report said, the £58 million collected in VAT from the sector in Scotland was likely to exceed the cost of educating pupils who have left, giving a net gain to the public purse of £10 million. However, the report projected this would turn into a deficit in 2026-27. “It is expected that the VAT collected will be less than the fiscal impact arising from reduced pupil numbers, giving a net loss of £16 million to the public finances,” it said. “Over time, these effects are amplified as the number of pupils leaving the sector compounds, with the net loss to the public finances expected to rise to £181 million by 2037-38.”
Lin Mei on X - "£80,000 as a salary is fantastic if you have no children and live at home. That’s why many young left wing people have these views “increase taxes for those earning over £80,000 as they age rich” …..most live at home, don’t own business, property etc so don’t understand life and bills."
Thread by @iealondon on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "🇬🇧 We asked Brits where the UK ranks vs US states in income per person. Average answer: 7th. Wealthier than 43 states. The reality: 51st. Dead last. Below Mississippi. Below Arkansas. Below every single US state. 🧵
😱 When people find out the truth, the reaction speaks for itself. 27% shocked. 22% concerned. 15% disappointed or embarrassed. 14% motivated for change. That emotional jolt is exactly why this data matters — it opens the door to reform.
🇨🇭 Most Brits think they are as wealthy or wealthier than the average American, Swiss, Singaporean and German. They are wrong on every single one. The UK is poorer than all of them — and most people had no idea.
💪 When asked unprompted what the main strengths of the UK economy are — 40% of Brits said there are none. Rising to 55% among those who rate the economy as poor. That is a devastating verdict on fifteen years of stagnation. 📉 67% of Brits say the country is heading in the wrong direction. Just 21% say right direction. The national mood is one of decline. People feel it every day — in their bills, their wages, their prospects.
⛔️ We're not coasting at the top. We're falling behind — and most of us had no idea. The first step to fixing a problem is understanding how serious it is. Read the full report at iea.org.uk/attitudes-to-e…"
Clearly there's a lot of room to destroy the UK economy in pursuit of the left wing agenda
There was a lot of cope around this, citing healthcare, life expectancy and crime, without understanding why the US does badly on those measures. When Poland becomes richer than the UK, they'll have to look for more copes
Tom Harwood on X - "I think a huge part of the reason why no government has been able to enact difficult pro-growth reforms is that the average voter still believes we remain a rich country. You hear this in politicians’ rhetoric “the sixth richest country in the world”. We’re the sixth largest economy but now far from the richest. Per capita we’re tanking down the rankings. One of the reasons why Poland or China have been able to have growth miracles in recent years is they think like a developing country. They know they were poor and they have to build to get rich. We think we are rich and that we don’t have to build anything anymore, or that when we do, it has to be the most expensive possible version of what we build. Bat tunnels. Fish Discos. Kittiwake hotels. We think we’re rich so we can afford to chase some wealth creators away, afford to mandate public biodiversity net gain on every development in the country, and afford to ratchet up state pension spending five times faster than the rate of growth in the economy. We’re suffering from acute ‘rich country delusion’. It’s only once we realise we’re far poorer than we should be that we can start to fix this nonsense."
Time to blame "capitalism" again
Wolf 🐺 on X - "Britain is plagued by the corruption of a dying country. 95% of airport runways in Europe are built for £10,000-£100,000 per metre. Britain’s is going to cost £1 million per metre. Rising to £5 million per metre when you include the foundations and additional taxiways. The cost of building the terminals, aircraft gates, baggage systems, and car parks were also among the top 10% in the world. Major infrastructure projects in Britain are held up by planning laws, environmental laws, judicial reviews, etc. But above all they’re held up by corruption and money men who view them an opportunities to inflate costs with no accountability. We need to review the expenditure of our major infrastructure projects and we should consider seizing the assets or applying a windfall tax to the profits made on these projects. I won’t have men made rich on the back of ripping off their countrymen."
Fruit-picking jobs rejected by nearly 85 per cent of British workers who showed interest - "Fruit-picking jobs are being rejected by nearly 85 per cent of British workers who initially registered their interest. The Alliance of Ethical Labour Providers said it had received 36,000 applications of interest following a nationwide appeal for recruits, but only 6,000 had come forward to be interviewed for a role when selected. Some of the reasons for turning down the job included the length of the contract, location of the farm, and inability to work full time because of care responsibilities."
Clearly, the problem was that the job didn't pay well enough and it's a myth that locals don't want to do it. Of course, when fruit prices rise, this will be due to "greed"
Review & Outlook: Scrap the 50% Tax Rate - WSJ - "The main argument one hears for taking half of all income above £150,000 a year is that it's only "fair" for the wealthy to pay more at a time when unemployment is near all-time highs and there's a gaping budget deficit to close. Yet preliminary figures suggest the rate may have actually reduced tax revenue, leaving the budget in no better shape and certainly not helping those further down on the income scale. What's more, many Britons seem to labor under a misapprehension about just how progressive the U.K.'s income-tax system really is. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the top 1% of tax payers (who are, roughly, those subject to the 50% rate) paid 28% of all income taxes in the tax year just ending. The top 10%, who mostly pay the 40% rate, paid 58% of all income taxes, while the top half of earners accounted for 90% of income-tax receipts. Compare that with the 1978-79 tax year, when the top rate was an eye-watering 83% (yes, eighty-three percent), and yet the top 1% accounted for just 11% of taxes paid, and the top 10% just 35%... the U.K.'s income-tax system has become more and more top-heavy even as the top rates have fallen. Those with the "broadest shoulders," in Prime Minister David Cameron's words, already bear far and away the heaviest tax burden."
From 2012. Clearly, it is preferable to have a high marginal tax rate because left wingers want the illusion that they are stiffing the "rich"
It’s immoral to make future generations pay for our instant gratification - "Another crisis, another bailout, though at least this one is on hold for now while everyone waits to see what happens in the Gulf. In the Commons, Rachel Reeves said every option was on the table for offering targeted help with energy bills in the event that the Strait of Hormuz stays closed... It should be apparent to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of political history that governments in the past did not step in with financial assistance. Instead they offered advice such as wrap up warmly against the cold, drive more slowly, or not at all, turn off the TV and stock up on candles... The country is £3tn in debt, representing around 100 per cent of GDP or about £100,000 per household. The interest payments amount to more than £110bn, more than is spent on defence and police combined. It represents £3,400 in tax for the average household every year and the debt mountain grows inexorably. The budget deficit in February was £14.3bn even as borrowing costs have risen to their highest level since the financial crash of 2008... Debt is not in itself bad. Without borrowing most of us would not have our own home for a start. A mortgage is debt paid off with interest over the long term. It enables us to be wealthier and independent and have something to pass on. But what about the national debt? If the money is borrowed for infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, power stations, railways – provided the costs are controlled – it can be justified since it is leaving something for future generations. But that is not the case when politicians simply add to debt in order to protect people from the vagaries of life today when there may be even greater privations ahead for those who come after us. The money tree has been stripped to provide free childcare, breakfast clubs, TV licence exemptions, triple-locked pensions, reinstated winter fuel allowances. None of these existed even a few years ago. Now they are immutable. In the early 1980s, the national debt was around £100bn, representing about 45 per cent of GDP. By 1990, it was down to 35 per cent. The Office for Budget Responsibility reckons that on current trajectories, largely because of the soaring welfare bill, debt will be not far off 300 per cent of GDP by 2070, beyond anything seen outside wartime. These are the consequences of decisions taken by modern politicians in response, it must be conceded, to a public used to instant gratification and no longer prepared to put up with hardship or belt-tightening. Reeves blamed mythical “price gougers” and has imposed taxes on producers and wealth creators that have killed off the one thing that would pay down the debt in the long term, namely economic growth. The Chancellor once again said she was determined to bring down the national debt and yet everything she and her predecessors have done has increased it. As a nation we have become addicted to welfare, bailouts, state intervention and the avuncular arm of government around our collective shoulders. We have a moral obligation to future generations to rein in this spending, otherwise they will look back on our fecklessness with opprobrium, and rightly so. We are handing them the bills for our lifestyle, rather than paying for it ourselves. It needs to stop."
Why are Left-wing fanatics all so screamingly posh? - "Few readers, I suspect, are feeling tremendously well disposed towards Arthur Clifton. This 25-year-old hard-Left firebrand is one of the ringleaders of Take Back Power, the radical new anti-capitalist protest group whose members recently flung apple crumble and custard at the Crown Jewels while brandishing a sign that read “TAX THE RICH”. And, as we reported this week, Mr Clifton has informed his fellow revolutionaries about the next stage of his plan to “rebuild society from the bottom up”. In gangs of “50 to 100”, they are to shoplift London branches of Waitrose, and “redistribute” their plunder to “the local community”... this budding tribune of the people just happens to have been privately educated at Latymer Upper School, the 400-year-old West London institution which charges fees of £31,095 a year (including VAT) and whose other old boys include Hugh Grant. Meanwhile, his father is an executive at a major insurance brokers which provides coverage for superyachts. Perfect. I love it. Because few things do more to spread joy in this gloomy world than the news that some fervent young anti-capitalist is in fact a fabulously privileged public schoolboy with a mega-rich daddy. No matter how many such reports we read, the pleasure never palls. Of course, it’s important not to make sweeping generalisations, because not all militant Left-wingers are public schoolboys. Many are public schoolgirls. Take the exquisitely named Phoebe Plummer, a Just Stop Oil protester who lobbed tomato soup over a Van Gogh in the National Gallery. Naturally, Miss Plummer grew up in a multimillion-pound Chelsea townhouse and was educated at St Mary’s School Ascot (boarding fees £65,736 a year). In recent times, in fact, so many upper-class girls have become involved in radical activism that Tatler ran a feature on them. “Tatler types do indeed swell the ranks of Extinction Rebellion,” it reported. “Old Paulinas block-print the XR symbol on to T-shirts at its events; OE financiers fund it.” Among the charming interviewees was “25-year-old XR member Flora”, who explained that driving a car doesn’t make her a hypocrite, because climate activism is about “looking for systemic change, not personal change”. Entertaining as this phenomenon may be, however, we should note that it’s nothing new. Over a hundred years ago, PG Wodehouse wrote Comrade Bingo, a short story in which one of Bertie Wooster’s bone-idle upper-crust chums tries to impress a girl by becoming a Bolshevik. Bingo is particularly anxious to win the approval of the girl’s father, who leads a group of local communists. “You must meet old Rowbotham, Bertie. A delightful chap. Wants to massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane, and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy. Well, nothing could be fairer than that, what?” Anyway, I do look forward to hearing more about Mr Clifton, and his noble campaign to destroy the system that produced him. In the meantime, I suggest the Bullingdon Club take a leaf out of Take Back Power’s book. Chuck a few bread rolls in a restaurant, and the Left will denounce you as repulsive Tory toffs. But hurl your pudding over the Crown Jewels, and they’ll hail you as heroes. So you still get all the fun of a food fight, but with a splendid glow of righteousness to boot."
Zynx on X - "The UK has a far flatter income distribution than the Communist Soviet Union. The UK take home minimum wage for working a full time job (40-hours) is now £22,555. At £100k salary, the take home is £68,558. That is a net income ratio of 3.04:1 We are now at the point where the wage compression and taxes in the UK means that the difference between minimum wage and a top 5% salary is a net income difference of only ~3x. In the USSR using the same comparison, this figure never fell below 5:1 It's actually even worse in reality because the person earning £100k in the UK often has student loans. Britain is nominally capitalist but functionally communist. China is nominally communist but functionally capitalist. Funny how that works."
max tempers on X - "Seems remarkable but it's true: in terms of P90/P10 ratio, wage compression in the UK is similar to the USSR at its most compressed. Soviet min wage also peaked at ~60% median income, while we've just hit 66%. Social democracy has achieved greater egalitarianism than communism."
This won't stop left wingers from screeching about "taxing the 'rich'" but praising the USSR
