Author Archives: Rick

The most interesting proposal in Matthew Taylor’s report on employment is this one: Government should ask the Low Pay Commission (LPC), in its next remit, to advise on the impact of bringing in a higher National Minimum Wage for hours … Continue reading →

Dick Whittington, Vic Brown, the Three Girls and the crowd in London Irish all moved to the capital to seek their fortunes. Or to escape from the places they grew up in. Either way, as our films and literature tell us, the … Continue reading →

Strange times these. This time last year the IMF and OECD were urging governments to borrow more, now we have central bankers urging workers to demand higher pay. Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe did just that last month. The Bank … Continue reading →

The team behind Game of Thrones is bringing a new series to HBO. It’s set in an alternative present. In Confederate the south won the American Civil War. Consequently, the Confederate States of America and slavery still exist in the 21st … Continue reading →

Yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court declaring employment tribunal fees to be illegal came as a surprise, even to the experts. As Darren Newman said: Whatever side of the employment law fence you sit on, we should first of all … Continue reading →

Sometime in the late 1980s, a friend who was on the libertarian right of the Conservative Party explained the idea of the property-owning democracy to me. The point, he said, was to detach the respectable working class from their poorer … Continue reading →

Here’s a situation I’m sure will be familiar to many of you. You embark on a major organisational change programme. At first things go well but soon you run up against a problem. There are important decisions that need to … Continue reading →