Statistics released today show that UK productivity is at a lower level than it was in 2007 prior to the economic recession; this seven-year period has shown the lowest levels of productivity growth since the Second World War. This then leads to questions about how the UK can be classed by the Conservatives as the fastest growing major economy. The underlying truth is that UK wages are extremely low in comparison to the EU power-economies like Germany & despite stagnated productivity; many UK businesses are now generating higher profits than in 2007. So whom do we blame for low-paid demographic areas of the UK, is it the Conservatives? It is a matter of fact that the Conservatives under occupation rules for social housing & housing benefits has excluded single adults without children from anything but the most undesirable high rise hovels in the most socially excluded areas. It is also true that Conservative universal credit policies trialled in towns such as Oldham was targeted solely at unemployed single people who had previously been identified as the demographic that had the least to gain from the new benefit system. Families in receipt of tax credits & child benefit already cost the benefit system in Oldham ten times more than the job seekers allowance bill prior to the introduction of Universal Credit for single unemployed people & the resultant crass Victorian sanctions placed on those people for the slightest non-compliance. Low wages in Oldham & for that matter the minimum wage only effects people without children; fact! For example, a single person working 39 hours per week for the minimum wage is entitled to no tax credit payment at all. The average tax credit payment to working families with children in Oldham is £9,796 per annum. This system of what can only be termed as rewards for having children both removes social responsibility from many potential parents decision making & suppresses localised wage scales as low paid parents have nothing to gain from pay rises that would be deducted from tax credit awards. This suits the Conservatives who like to push for a return to a family orientated Victorianism of poor society where it is quite acceptable in 2015 to have food banks & austerity cuts to services whilst the party gives £44 million to the Church of England, which has a £4 billion surplus of its own, to repair church roofs. Therefore, do we blame Labour for low-paid demographic areas of the UK such as Oldham? We certainly have to blame Labour for immigration numbers and a tax credit system out of control that has created a low paid economic bubble the effects of which are suffered by single people & those without children on repressed wages who also bare the disproportionate brunt of tax contributions. The average wage in Oldham has been the lowest in Greater Manchester in 1998, 2001, 2003 & every year since 2006 up to the end of 2014. For ten of those seventeen years the Labour Party has been in control of Oldham Council 1998-2000, 2003-2007 & 2011-2015. For another cumulative five years, no political party had overall control of Oldham Council leaving just two years when the Liberal Democrats were in charge. Let us also not forget that despite Oldham Council & healthcare partners constantly referring to “an aging population” the percentage of the Oldham population that is 65 or older is lower than the percentage in over three quarters of all the 650 UK Parliamentary Constituency areas whilst we have three wards with sixty per cent more children than the England average. It is about time that the social & economic costs of working age indigenous & migratory non-contributory Oldham demographics to the benefit system & healthcare services was published for all to see. It would make an interesting comparison to the constant jibes at the costs of aging generations that had no comparable system when they were working age to the current overly generous tax credit family free for all. None of this is set to change with the current Labour Councils fifty years of regeneration debt publicly funding a cinema, restaurants, hotel & a new retail development all of which will only create jobs in the lowest paid UK employment sectors thus preserving the social & political status quo.
