31 January 2020
Brexit Day
Whilst the Foundation does not have a stance on Brexit, it would be remiss of us not to mention Europe on this historic day. One image which we really like is this one, a graphic showing which nations Europeans joke about most. Italians don’t seem to have a specific target and mainly poke fun at themselves, whilst no-one has the Swiss as the butt of their jokes which is a big plus as their flag clearly shows.
To the more serious business of what we learned this week:
Metro Mayors are leading the way in improving pay and job security
Monday brought the welcome news that Manchester businesses have agreed to ban zero-hours contracts. More than 60 businesses have signed the Good Employment Charter, which includes a voluntary boycott of zero-hours contracts, with a further 100 in the process of signing up, the Financial Times has reported. The charter was created by Andy Burnham, the region’s mayor.
Ethnic minority pensioners ‘worse off’
The People’s Pension, a pensions provider with nearly five million members, reported the grim news on Thursday that minority ethnic pensioners are, on average, 24% – or £3,350 a year – worse off than other people their age.
‘Entrepreneurs Relief’
The Chancellor is reportedly considering cutting the tax break known as ‘Entrepreneurs Relief’ in the Budget. Costing over £2bn a year, Resolution Foundation’s Adam Corlett says of this tax relief: “if this were a spending programme it would already have been scrapped for poor value for money.”
Harry Benson: Number 10 needs a Family Policy Unit
Harry Benson makes the case for a Family Policy Unit. He argues that most of what we know about family policy comes from US research, not all of which is transferrable to the UK. Such a Unit would “encourage the development of UK research into mainstream family stability, instability, and its consequences”. Later in the year we are publishing research on the current and future economic well-being of an increasing social trend; adults in their 20s living at home with their parents.
Tree loss: Visualised
Bloomberg has produced an amazing graphic showing how many trees we are losing. You can do something about it simply by changing your search engine.
Thanks to the following for their tweets this week: @AndyBounds, @adamcorlett, @harrybenson6, @undertheraedar, @rupert_jones, and @climate
Copyright Standard Life Foundation 2020.
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