So we're back to where we were before the financial crash caused by the banks etc, are we?

Have we caught up yet with the state of growth from pre-May 2010?

And are you suggesting that, by Christmas, every man and woman of working age will have a job – and enough hours to pay them a decent living wage?

1.9% growth coming out of a recession that deep is positively anaemic. Under Major we came out of recession with a growth of 4%.

That is what is supposed to happen after a recession, the economy grows quick to take up the slack. Given we have a larger population than back in 1994 so the economy has an intrinsically bigger capacity shouting about growth of 1.9% as if this is a great achievement is economically illiterate. It's good politics if people fall for it as you and others clearly have.

"the strongest since 2007" covers a multitude of sins such as there wasn't any growth for part of the intervening period when we were in recession and we went through a period of low growth thereafter. In other words it is selective reporting. Politics once again, which you have fallen for once again.

And where on earth have you got this idea fromThe BoE know they made a mistake in announcing they would review interest rates by tying to unemployment. They are now sensibly easing out of that position because they do not want to put any obsticles in the way of the recovery.'"

To be answered at the end of May 2015

Any decent government would step in and end the absolute scandal of ordinary full-time jobs being turned into zero-hours contracts.

Any decent government would step in and immediately make illegal totally immoral sharp practices like not paying care workers for the time they spend travelling from one house to another. And restrict their "allowable time" to (say) a mere 20 minutes per household - knowing damn well that many caring people will do more as they feel guilty about rushing in and out and not doing the job remotely properly. So they may work 60 hours but be paid for 18.

The shame is that there are plenty in the country - including some on here - whose attitude to that would be "well, nobody is forcing them, get a better job if you don't like it". If these sort of scams were made illegal then desperate people couldn't be fleeced and abused like this.

It's the 'government' that fund this and so they do it deliberately. The electorate need to organise themselves to stand up against it if they disagreee. Lobby your MP and get eveyone you know to.

That wasn't case pre-May 2010?

I don't that austerity is working in the North on any kind of large scale, there are some shoots of recovery.

In the SE it looks like things are more positive

So this stuff only started under this Tory government? delusional - this stuff is has been going on for ever. Compared to some of the restrictive practises that were in place during the hey days of union power these are kids play. Of course it is easy to excuse those on the left in your haste to bash those on the right.

Pre-May 2010 we had moved into growth. Subsequently, we moved into recession and are only just moving back out of it – albeit very tentatively, as has been discussed, and as Mr Carney has explained.



I don't think that anyone has suggested that, but please feel free to provide evidence that they have.

What [ihas[/i happened – and what [iis[/i happening – is that the financial crisis and subsequent recession/s have been taken by some businesses as an opportunity, to be used to [iforce[/i staff onto fewer hours, worse terms and conditions, and lower pay.

For instance, the growth in homecare workers being limited to 15 minutes per visit is very recent. As is the use of contracts for them that do not pay for time taken to travel between 'clients'.

If you want to prepare a balance sheet of legislation introduced to protect, promote and nurture the majority of the population, as opposed to further advantaging the privileged few. You'd best prepare for incoming

Here's a beaut.

Now, to stress: Iceland says that it did not report them and is as mystified by the charges as most other people.

On the basis of what we currently know – quite unbelievable.

As an update – rlthe CPS has now dropped the caserl.

I see the CPS say this illustrates their willingness to review / reconsider cases! I would have thought it illustrated their incompetence and waste.

I also suspect it also illustrates the Met's desire for what they perceived an easy win in their bid to improve their clear up stats. (and possibly bullying).

I work indirectly in this sector, so I have some experience of what you're talking about.

It's rather missing the point to suggest that homecare businesses have seen an 'opportunity' to bear down on the working conditions of their employees; rather, since the swingeing cuts to LA health and social care budgets introduced under the coalition government's austerity programme (according to Adass, £2.7bn in the three years to April 2013) they have had little choice. In response to those cuts, LA's have zeroed in on the charges of private providers in tiny detail and forced many of them to shave out every possible extra cost. In order to continue to operate under the resultant reduced hourly rates on offer from LA's, refusing to pay travel time and introducing more short calls are often survival mechanisms, as opposed to a means to larger profits. I can tell you with certainty that it's very difficult to become a fat cat out of homecare - it operates on very narrow margins and is thankless, heavily regulated and very volatile. Equally, the home care providers I've encountered would much rather *not* do short calls at all - they know it's wrong and is driven by cost rather than by the needs of the individual. I extricated a client from a large contract in this very sector after the CCG reduced it's hourly rates by 30% and *advised* the assembled providers to stop paying travel time AND mileage allowances to their staff.

In short, I agree with most of what you said, but I think you've identified the wrong bad guy; not to say that there aren't some unscrupulous operators in the sector but in my experience, the decline in working conditions of homecare staff is attributable to the coalition governments stealthy use of austerity to justify attacking the sick and disabled, rather than homecare operators being opportunistic.

Delusional? You are indeed
Oddly enough. I think I'm at liberty to make a point, and not then have to write a dissertation on every other thing ever done by anyone, to compare them all. But if you'd like to expand the discussion to historical events, perhaps you could start by giving an example of a union-imposed restrictive practice that was as comparatively bad and immoral for a working person as making them be at work for 60 hours, but get paid for only 20. This should be interesting.

I bashed the immorality of what is happening in those instances. This was not because the government in power is on the right, but because the practices they seem to ignore are fooking immoral and they damn well SHOULD step in. I would make precisely the same point whoever was not doing anything about it.

How so? It was the Met who brought the charges, not the CPS.