We email a newsletter to all our supporters, like the one below, rounding up all the inequality-related news for the past month. If you want to get the latest inequality news quicker and sent direct to your inbox, just sign up to The Equality Trust newsletter here. Thank you.
Monthly News From The Equality Trust (December 2017 – January 2018)
The past couple of months have been exceptionally busy for The Equality Trust. We held the Inaugural Richard Wilkinson Lecture on 7th December (film coming soon!) and announced our link up with pioneering pay ratio campaign, Pay Compare, which will take our campaigns around corporate governance and pay inequality to a whole new level. This is clearly needed given the grim pay inequality revealed by our Fat Cat Thursday analysis early in the new year. We also had time to send out our annual supporter survey which will close shortly. Please do give us your views if you haven’t already – just click here.
This month has been dominated by the mobilisation around Fight Inequality Week where, as UK and European convener, we have played a major role and have been supported by our brilliant activists and local groups. Looking ahead, we will soon be focusing on the campaign to activate the Socio-economic Duty (currently dormant within the Equality Act 2010) and will be releasing national, local and individual manifestos to help people take action against inequality across the UK. In the longer term we are planning for the release of the follow-up to The Spirit Level (entitled The Inner Level) from Profs Wilkinson & Pickett which is expected to be published in early June.
As well as the iniquitous fallout from Carillion, we have kept up our coverage on social media of the UK’s ongoing disasters of homelessness, poverty (in particular food poverty) and the failures of Universal Credit. These accumulating crises all interlink and undermine the ridiculous assertion made by some politicians and commentators that inequality is falling in the UK. For all other recent news and views relating to inequality, please see below… Best wishes, The Equality Trust Team.
And thanks to the amazing support we received from our supporters in the Big Give week in late November / early December we have now started the prep work for our Young Equality Campaigners project. Thank you.
LATEST LOCAL GROUP NEWS: Our wonderful local groups continue to do amazing and varied work to tackle inequality in the UK from practical action to awareness-raising and educational outreach. Read on to find out more…
LATEST BLOGS AND COMMENT
- PICK OF THE MONTH: Stats and Stories: The True State of Inequality in the UK
- End The Age Of Greed: Fight Inequality This Week (19-26 Jan)
- Lifelong Learning: Essential For A Fairer, Better Society (Guest Blog)
- Declaration from The Fight Inequality Alliance
- Equality Trust and Pay Compare To Join Forces to Tackle Pay Inequality
- The End of Hierarchy? The Inaugural Richard Wilkinson Lecture
- Please Ask Your MP To Support The Socio-Economic Duty
- Fat Cat Thursday: UK Top Bosses ‘Earn’ 242x Minimum Wage Worker’s Annual Salary
KEY DEVELOPMENTS AND REPORTS
- PICK OF THE MONTH: End Child Poverty Shocking child poverty stats (and interactive map)
- Life expectancy goes into reverse in the UK
- Important poverty report from JRF – 2018 to be a tough year
- Another important poverty report from the IFS focusing on debt impact
- Resolution Foundation says shifting work patterns driving inequality
- LSE blog says UK most unequal country in Europe (bar Estonia)
- RSA calls for Basic Income to address poverty and growing insecurity
- Sutton Trust research shows UK Government getting more elitist
- New dataset suggests Piketty underestimated wealth inequality
- Huge UK rich/poor health gap revealed
- Latest from the Green Economy Coalition on progress in 2017
- It’s an unequal world but it doesn’t have to be…
- JRF reveal that a fifth of the UK population live in poverty
INEQUALITY IN THE NEWS
- PICK OF THE MONTH: Ahead of Davos even the 1% are worrying about inequality
- Unpaid internships are preventing UK social mobility
- Automation threatens to make inequality worse
- Universal Credit poses significant risk and won’t save much money
- Luxury flats lie empty amidst UK housing/homelessness crisis
- Economic insecurity is now the new normal
- Rough sleeping rises for seventh year in a row
- Archbishop of York tackles inequality and references The Spirit Level
- Our Exec Director commenting on Davos and the Fight Inequality Alliance
- Oxfam report ahead of Davos shows richest are creaming off the wealth
- Govt to target greedy company bosses who betray their workers
- Rich/poor spending gap revealed in ONS figures
- Inequality and violence: Police Chief call to teach 5 year olds about knife crime
- The quiet rise of homelessness in the countryside
- Greedy Persimmon boss says he deserves £110m bonus
- The return of the Baby Bonds idea in the US
- The rise of “no fault” evictions in the UK driving homelessness
- Number of people relying on charity to survive soars in the UK
- Music mogul announces Royal Bedding Day as alternative to Royal Wedding Day
- Our homelessness crisis shames the UK
- Problems with Universal Credit affecting free school meal entitlement
- Rich/poor education gap growing in primary schools
- Taxes made more progressive in Scotland
- New rules to curb excessive top pay at universities
- Board of Government’s Social Mobility Commission quits in protest
BEST INEQUALITY READS
- PICK OF THE MONTH: The Psychology of Inequality
- Some good news from the US – how co-ops are tackling inequality
- What rich people should do instead of going to Davos
- Post-work world? Could it really happen and what about inequality?
- Is failure to tackle inequality related to “Western thinking”?
- Inequality is under attack but what should equality really look like?
- A journey through extreme poverty in the US
- Social mobility: It’s the Giraffe in the room
- Inequality in the UK – a statistical review
THANK YOU FOR READING AND FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT!