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Not quite instant bestseller. Japanese author Takiji Kobayashi wrote The Crab Ship (described as the Japanese equivalent of the Ragged Trousered Philanthopists) in 1929. Since then it’s sold a steady 5,000 a year. Now it’s taken off, because, “Young people…see themselves and today’s situation in the novel. ” 79 years on it has just sold half a million copies. Unfortunately Takiji won’t be counting his royalties. He was tortured to death by the secret police in 1933.

Mind the gap. Brad Mills, boss of platinum mining company Lonmin, gets £8.2m a year. That’s just 790 times as much as the firm’s average wage of £10,410 that workers in South Africa get for risking life and limb in one of the most dangerous industries in the world. Mills reckons the pay gap is down ‘in large part’ to the lower cost of living in South Africa. So that’s all right, then.

Parliamentary expenses: Tony Blair as PM was on around £190,000 (a sum that he regarded as a poverty wage). So he claimed for his TV licence! Gordon Brown also claimed for his TV licence.  He claimed £55,000 over three years towards his second home despite having the run of a ‘grace and favour’ apartment in Downing Street. He also claimed £15,000 to fit up his London flat, £2,300 for food, and £4,980 for cleaning. He then had the temerity to claim for his council tax. Prudence indeed!

Never mind the Olympics medal table. Here’s a table to watch. Boston Consulting Group has drawn up a table of millionaire households. To get in you have to have more than $1 million of assets under management. So you can’t include your house or your Lear jet. The USA is top with 4.5 million millionaire households. We’re third with 610,000. Hurray!

Former
Bristol Rolls Royce Convenor and Amicus Executive member Jerry Hicks has lodged
a complaint with the government appointed Certification Officer over the undemocratic
extension to office of Derek Simpson, the Joint General Secretary of Unite, beyond
his retirement age next year. In a change of rules agreed as part of the merger
between Amicus and the TGWU last year Simpson’s period of office was extended
to December 2010 when he will be 66. Simpson was elected as General Secretary
of the AEEU in 2002 after successfully challenging the change in rules to
extend Sir Ken Jackson’s period of office beyond retirement without an
election.

Everybody loves LS Lowry’s ‘matchstick man’, paintings of working class people in Salford in the Great Depression.  Everybody now includes luxury group Burberry who have created a Lowry handbag selling at just £1,395. He also has a luxury hotel named after him and his paintings go for up to £3.7m.

Transport Minister Tom Harris remarked that if the Tories hadn’t privatised the railways, New Labour would have done it in 1997. We invest three times as much as when the industry was nationalised through our fares and taxes. The train operating companies alone get £2bn. £800m goes straight out without even touching the sides to private ‘investors’ (looters), some of whom get a 30% rate of return. You couldn’t make it up!

Financial Times June 3rd 2008. “Alistair Darling has bowed to a business backlash over proposed changes to the taxation of foreign profits by agreeing to give a forum of multinationals a ‘key input’ in shaping the proposals, delaying a consultation that had been due next month.” Translation: Multinationals can write their own tax laws. Nice for some.

PFI alert: “The recent release of the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh and Hairmyres hospital contracts in Scotland and their analysis by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert show shareholders will reap dividends of £168m on an equity stake of £500,000 for the infirmary, and £89m on an equity stake of £100 for Hairmyres hospital.” Allyson Pollock, writing in the Guardian’s ‘commentisfree’. These figures are NOT a misprint.

‘Reforming’ the NHS: in 1997 there were 198,000 hospital beds. Now there are 32,000 less. What’s going on?

So Peter Mandelson, the ‘Prince of
Darkness’ is incredibly back in the government after having had to quit on two
previous occasions. His is to take up the job of Secretary of State for Business,
Enterprise & Regulatory Reform – naturally. 
People new to politics may wonder what all the fuss is about, not least
since Mandelson has been hiding away in euro-bureaucracy land for the last four
years as EU Trade
Commissioner.

The new merger and forming of Unite in November has massive potential in the construction industry. The Amicus section is mainly made up of electricians, pipefitters,
plumbers and steel erectors from The Electrical, Electronic,
Telecommunications and Plumbing Union days.