Nuggets by category

Relation between privatisation and adult male mortality rates in post-communist countries, 1992–94

Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published the latest annual update of its "minimum income standards" (MIS). These standards provide a measure of how much various types of households need to earn to reach what members of the public think is a minimum acceptable standard of living.

... in contrast to official inflation over the past decade of 23%, minimum budget costs have risen by 38% over that period, largely because of increased costs of food (37%), bus fares (59%), and council tax (67%). This demonstrates the often cited reality that price inflation for goods that dominate the budgets of poorer households is greater than for the average household’s budget; this is important because the official inflation figure is used to update all state benefits, and these form a higher proportion of income for people on the lowest incomes...

A single person who could just manage in 2000, and whose income has only kept pace with inflation, will by April 2010 have been nearly £20 a week short of what he or she needs to meet the minimum budget. What will these people have had to go without to avoid getting into debt? If they are unemployed, as 29% of UK single adults of working age are, the basic out of work benefits provide less than half the MIS a single adult needs. For unemployed couples with children benefits provide about two thirds of what they need. Working couples with two children now need an income of £29 700 a year to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living (including childcare costs). This equates to £7.60 an hour, but the minimum wage is only £5.80 an hour, and around 23% of full time workers and 39% of part time workers aged 22 and above were paid less than £7 an hour in 2009,3 so low pay must affect the wellbeing of many households.

The cut in central government public services spending as a share of national income now planned by the Coalition will more than reverse the entire increase we saw under Labour. We are looking at the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since World War II.

On the tax side, yesterday’s package added up to an £8 billion net tax increase in 2014–15, but this comprised roughly £20 billion of tax increases offset by roughly £12 billion of tax cuts. When Mr Osborne said that “the years of debt and spending” made the £13 billion increase in VAT unavoidable you might just as well say it was his desire to cut other taxes that made it so.

Turning to the distributional impact of the Budget, Mr Osborne and Mr Clegg have been keen to describe yesterday’s measures as “progressive” in the sense that the rich will feel more pain than the poor. That is a debateable claim...

The Budget looks ... somewhat regressive – when you take out the effect of measures that were inherited from the previous Government, when you look further into the future than 2012–13 and when you include some other measures that the Treasury has chosen not to model... [P]erhaps the most important omission in any distributional analysis of this sort is the impact of the looming cuts to public services, which are likely to hit poorer households significantly harder than richer households.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

In 1999, Britain's arms sales to Israel... were worth £11.5m; within two years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms, grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks. There were a few refusals after Israel used modified Centurion tanks against the Palestinians in 2002, but in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade against Hizbollah's "world terror", Britain granted over 200 weapons licences.

Some British equipment, of course, heads for Israel via the US. In 2002, Britain gave "head-up displays" manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for Israel. The EU did not object. In the same year, it should be added, the British admitted to training 13 members of the Israeli military. US planes transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were refuelled at British airports (and, alas, it appears at Irish airports too). In the first three months of 2008, we gave licenses for another £20m of weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Apache helicopters used against Palestinians, says Cronin, contain parts made by SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.

UK budget deficit: £175 billion
Bank bailouts:
* £400 billion - asset purchasing and lending
* £289 billion - nationalising banks
* £200 billion - cash

Total for the banks: £889 billion

Income from corporation tax: £47 billion

Oh - and Africa's entire debt to Western nations: £128 million

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