Yes, I know Toynbee is a naughty lady who advocated voting for Bliar (I didn't) but her campaign for the low paid, if illogical beside her support for Bliar, is still worthwhile.
Don't shrug off low pay
The government is too scared to admit that it is partly responsible for Gate Gourmet-style injustices
Polly Toynbee
The spectacle of the Gate Gourmet picket line will linger on in public memory. The sight of low-paid, middle-aged Asian women in unaccustomed revolt will stay indelibly linked to BA, which so cavalierly contracted out its reputation along with its lowest-paid workers. Desperate to recover its mistake, BA has offered Gate Gourmet an extra £10m to help resolve the dispute.
But that £10m has a certain delicious resonance. David Bonderman, the US financial tycoon who founded and runs Gate Gourmet's parent company, spent exactly that same sum on his birthday party recently. He hired Bellagio, LA's most extravagant casino, and entertained his guests by hiring the Rolling Stones and Robin Williams. He is estimated to be worth about £15bn. His Gate Gourmet employees, however, were on £12,000 until they were sacked to hire cheaper agency workers, mainly from Somalia and Eastern Europe. "That's the way the world is," wrote one airline analyst this week, with a metaphorical shrug. "That's globalisation", as if gross inequity were immutable destiny - which it is not.
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However, migration is only one factor in Britain's growing inequality. This week's survey of social mobility by the Office for National Statistics found that people are moving marginally up and down, but those in the top and bottom fifths remain pretty securely fixed. Comparing mobility in Tory years 1991-1997 with Labour years 1997-2003, it concludes depressingly that "there were no large differences between the two different time periods". This is despite there being fewer poor children and pensioners since 2000. Labour has redistributed far more through tax credits for low earners - yet market forces rushing in the opposite direction stay unchecked.
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The definitive answer is in epidemiologist Dr Richard Wilkinson's book, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier. Examining worldwide statistics, the most violent and sick countries are also the most unequal. However rich a country is, it will be unhealthier, unhappier, more crime-ridden and homicide-prone in direct proportion to its inequality. So Greeks live longer than Americans. People in Harlem die before those in Bangladesh, not due to violence or drugs, but heart disease. Is that bad diet? No, diet has far less effect than the stress and depression of living at the bottom of the social ladder, lacking respect. Low-status monkeys in a group develop heart disease that high-status monkeys escape. (Their health improves if moved to groups they can dominate.) It is the pecking order that matters: poor children know their lowly place from their first day at school. Money is status and low pay tells people how little they are worth.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1556685,00.html