Pouvoir d'achat

The cost of living. What a phrase. Even just getting by breath to breath comes with bill attached. And the bill got higher last year "A study released this week by Ernst and Young shows that an average UK household is now 15 percent worse off than five years ago. " And that wasn't taking the price rises in food into account.

Also, "Graham Turner of GFC economics points out in the Independent that wage settlements are falling: “Many workers cannot afford to go on strike and are fearful of losing their homes should they get behind with their repayments. Real incomes are being squeezed hard.”

But both main parties in Britain support below inflation pay 'rises', cuts in public spending, privatisation and the erosion of workers' rights. So can't strike, voting doesn't make a difference and your standard of living is going down. If the Tories had won, by some collective fluke in 1997, could the outcome upto now have been any worse? Speaking of which,

The by-election in Haltemprice and Howden is being contested by the Tories, the Greens and the. . .Socialist Equality Party. Whilst it's a foregone conclusion about the actual result, the moral victory is already with the SEP. It's contender Chris Talbot (who works at Huddersfield Uni - hurrah!) writes accurately that the Tories' "concern is that Labour has gone too far and too fast, to the point where the government is undermining the legitimacy of parliament and creating the conditions for explosive political struggles in defence of democratic rights. [They] want to confine this to a limited protest under [their] tutelage that will not get out of control and threaten the dominance of big business and its parties."