A letter by Islington Green Party Member, Andrew Myer
It was a timely reminder from Prof Richard Wilkinson in a recent edition of the Islington Tribune that income levels are getting less and less equal in the UK (‘One day we will live in a society … not an economy,’ June 27).
A more equal society works better for everyone, whether richer, poorer or in between, but George Osborne’s view of a healthy economy seems to be unsustainable growth in the financial sector making a small number of people ridiculously wealthy while incomes for the great majority stagnate or go backwards.
So on Thursday 10th July public sector workers will be striking against an austerity regime which has seen local government workers’ pay reduced in real terms by almost 20 per cent since the Coalition came to power.
The Green Party has long argued that our aims as a society should be for a pay differential where bosses earn no more than 10 times the lowest paid, and for an economy which serves people’s needs rather than the other way round.
Boris Johnson’s vision, on the other hand, includes a London housing market where the very wealthy snap up the majority of new homes purely as somewhere to invest their money, while growing numbers of Londoners simply can’t afford anywhere secure to live.
Prof Wilkinson suggests the pendulum is at last starting to swing back towards a fairer distribution of wealth and that strong trade unions will be an important voice in the change. Let’s hope the professor is right and that someday soon we will indeed live in a society rather than just in an economy. The strike on Thursday will be a step in that direction.
ANDREW MYER
Islington Green Party
This letter was first published in the Islington Tribune on 4th July 2014