Inequality still growing...
Clinton's speech at Labour Party conference made the point that New Labour, unlike Bush in the US, had cut inequality. That is the opposite of the truth. The Guardian's latest survey of boardroom pay - http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1886010,00.html - shows average earnings in the UK rose 3.4% last year, while the average pay of chief executives of the top FTSE 100 rose 28% - following 16% and 23% rises in previous years. What this means is that the average worker today gets about £400 a week, a worker on the National Minimum Wage gets £185 a week, while chief executives in top companies get on average £46,154 per week - 160 times more than their lowest paid workers. These colossal and growing inequalities are obscene.
We should raise the NMW from £5 to at least £7 an hour. We should tax bonuses, so called fringe benefits, share options and other tax avoiding remunerations of the super rich at the marginal rate. And we should require meetings, in all medium and large companies, where representatives of each main grade in the company, including from the boardroom, present their pay claims for the next year, and have to justify them to all other employees in the company.