Elizabeth Murdoch’s McTaggart Lecture

It’s not quite the damascene conversion some in the press have claimed it to be, but Elizabeth Murdoch’s call for business, particularly the media industry which she is a part should aim to be about more than simply profit is perhaps the first serious high level response to the public anger and revulsion at the corporate greed and bad business practice culture that has been part of UK business for decades and brought it so low in recent years.

It’s well worth a read and quite lengthy, the full text is HERE 

Why the silence over AWEMA?

I know its recess, the August bank holiday weekend is a few days away, AWEMA has been wound up and the Wales Audit Office report on the Welsh Government’s relations with the charity isn't due till the autumn, but is that reason enough for so little reaction, political or otherwise to the damming verdicts in the two AWEMA employment tribunals held over the summer?

Are two highly critical verdicts of the conduct and management of the former Chief Executive Nas Malik and Chair Dr Rita Austin involving unfair dismissal and sexual harassment while running a tax payer funded organisation with links to the governing party not worth commenting on?

Perhaps I’m in a minority and the majority are satisfied the scandal has reached it’s natural conclusion, but given the outcry from the public, politicians and the media when the scandal broke at the beginning of the year it's all to predictable this latest sorry episode in Welsh public life is simply fading from view with no real answers or accountability while the Welsh political circus moves on to Autumn conferences and reheated debate over the Welsh NHS.

Do we care about unemployment and the unemployed anymore?

Last Wednesday (15^th Aug) saw the release of the latest monthly ONS employment and unemployment data and statistics for the UK and it brought with it a welcome drop of 7,000 in the number of people unemployed in Wales after increases in previous quarters.

But while any drop is good news the overall unemployment figures remains unacceptably high at 126,000 or 8.6% and is actually up 0.1 on the same period last year as well as being above than the UK average of 8.0%.

The Labour Force Survey also showed the employment rate for those aged 16-64 in Wales was 68.6 per cent, up 0.5 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.  The UK average was 71.0 per cent, up 0.4 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.

The economic inactivity rate for those aged 16-64 in Wales was 24.9 per cent, down 0.4 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.  The UK average was 22.6 per cent, down 0.6 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.

And the claimant count rate (Job Seekers Allowance) in July 2012 for Wales was 5.5 per cent of the workforce, up 0.2 percentage points on July 2011 (UK rate 4.9 per cent, up 0.1 percentage points over the year).

It obviously points to a sluggish economy and jobs market in Wales like the rest of the UK, but with every passing month of new unemployment data showing worrying levels of unemployment, is the impact lessening on the general public about the full impact of sustained high levels of unemployment on individuals, families, communities and wider society, now and in the future.