Mike Murphy

Since you mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved: • Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40% • Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished • Basic rate: 33% → 25% • Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986) • Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990) • Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third • Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners • Home ownership: 55% → 67% • Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults • Foreign holidays: roughly doubled • Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten • Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms • Infant mortality: down almost 40% • Real GDP: up by almost a third • GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s • Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s • Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million • Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon • Britain became a net oil exporter • London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986 • Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90 • National debt: 47% of GDP → 28% • State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39% • The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000 • Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25% • Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms • Higher rates of income tax: nine → one • Death duties: fourteen rates → one • Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years • 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector • The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987 • British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90) • BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen • “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986 • British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline” • The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed Over to you.

Millions more people face having to work until they are 68 before being able to claim their pension under plans to bring forward a rise in the state retirement age, @oliver_wright reports The state pension age is due to gradually rise to 68 between April 2044 and April 2046. It will reach 68 for those born on or after April 6, 1978 However, Treasury officials have told the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s fiscal forecaster, that the “current policy” is to bring the increase in the retirement age forward by at least seven years, to 2037 This would mean that about five million people who are aged between 49 and 55 at present would have to work for an additional year before being eligible for their state pension, costing them about £12,500 The decision would save the government about £6 billion a year from 2037 compared with the present timetable Last year ministers launched a review of the state pension age led by the Government Actuary’s Department and Suzy Morrissey, deputy director of the Pensions Policy Institute. It is due to make recommendations on when the pension age should rise before the government legislates for any change. Ministers have insisted no final decision has been taken However, in a response to the OBR, the Treasury said the government’s intention was to bring forward the pension age rise towards the end of the next decade The OBR said: “We assume that the state pension rises to 68 in 2037-39. The Treasury has confirmed to us that this is the government’s current policy position, rather than the legislated increase set in the Pensions Act 2007.” thetimes.com/article/b74703…

Changing who governs Britain isn’t enough. We need to change how Britain is governed. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…