Tag: news

Hold Your Nerve – More Individualised Solutions to Structural Problems!

Millions of UK homeowners face huge increases to their mortgage repayments as interest rates continue to increase (1)

According to the Office for National Statistics, the average monthly repayment for a mortgage on a semi-detached house in the UK rose 61% to year ending December 2022.

This increase will be even greater now… the news over the last week has focused on how another 2 million people are coming off lower fixed rate mortgage deals between now and 2024, meaning their interest rates are going to increase from around 2% to 6%.

I’m one of these people, my current 2% rate ends in September this year, and I’ll have to switch onto a higher rate, which with my current provider is 6% or 5% on a two year fixed deal. I might of course switch, but that gives me a bench mark, I don’t imagine I’ll get much better than that.

Thankfully my current mortgage is so low that it’s not a big deal for me to manage the increase in repayments In fact if I just extend the mortgage by a few months I can keep my repayments level, which for me means pushing it back from 5 years of repayments to around 5 years and 3 months.

However, obviously I’d rather pay less than more over the next five years or so and it’s difficult to make a judgement as to whether I’m better of fixing now at say 5% for three years, or slightly higher at 5.5% for the full five years, or just going onto the 6% variable rate.

Obviously fixing for a longer period is the strategy IF interest rates are going to go up, while going on the variable rate is best IF interests rates are going to come down.

The problem is I don’t know what’s going to happen to interest rates, but it’s 100% on me to make a decision and 100% on me to bear the consequences of paying more in mortgage interest if I make the wrong the decision.

What’s causing inflation?

The bank of England keeps putting interest rates up because of high inflation, inflation being the rising cost of living.

The government put this down to a squeeze of food and energy because of the legacy of covid and the war in Ukraine putting a squeeze on supply chains, and all of this hasn’t been helped be Brexit making it more difficult to trade with the EU.

Personally I also think there’s a longer term trend of the rise in middle class consumers in countries such as India and China, which will increase demand for all goods and services

neoliberalism is also a problem – as increasing inequality means more wealth sits in tax havens not being used for innovation and more money gets sucked upwards, increasing inequality meaning a higher proportion of our resources go on meat and yachts for rich, which also pushes up prices.

Finally, the UK government has been printing money for years in response to various crises, which reduces the value of the pound. It’s printed almost £1 trillion since 2009 in Quantitative Easing Measures.

In short, there is no obvious immediate end to this inflation crisis because all of the causes are outside of the Government’s control, and many of its responses to global forces over the last decade have made matters worse.

Individualised solutions to Structural Problems (Again)

As to the solutions to the current mortgage crises, all that the current super-rich PrimeMinister Rishi Sunak has is to suggest people should ‘hold their nerve on interest rates‘.

In short, ‘just suck it up’, you’re on your own, deal with it, folks.

Signposting and Sources

This post is really just a general reminder of how damaging neoliberal economic policies are to ordinary people in the long run.

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(1) https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/17/uk-homeowners-face-huge-rise-in-payments-when-fixed-rate-mortgages-expire

Why is Phillip Schofield Trending News…?

The scandal surrounding Phillip’s Schofield departure from This Morning has eclipsed many other news items over the past week.

The scandal is that several years ago Schofield had an affair with man 30 years his junior while at This Morning who he’d initially met when the younger man was just 15 years old, and then he had lied to This Morning bosses and everyone else about having had the affair when questioned.

So he held his hands up last week and quit, not only This Morning, but he says his TV career is now over.

This whole event has been headline news for a week. It’s a very popular news item, according the the BBC’s most read item list Philip Schofield’s career ending is more interesting than the government potentially losing its legal battle over breaching covid rules, for example.

The above screen capture was taken on Friday 3rd June, the same day Schofield did a brief interview with the BBC in which he was questioned about his relationship with the young man, it was emotional, but content thin.

Interestingly around the same time the BBC also did a similar style interview with the scumbag Andrew Tate, in which he is challeneged about his misogynist views, but that is nowhere in trending.

It seems people are much more interested in trivia compared to critical issues of power and politics.

Why is Schofield Trending?

I think probably the pluralist view is the most applicable here: Schofield has been a presenter on national British T.V. for decades, many people grew up with him, and here he is having his career ending early.

And it’s a tragic end in real life to a great career, brought down by one mistaken relationship and one little white lie, it’s a real tragedy, a real life drama.

People love this kind of thing, this is just pure demand for drama and entertainment and so the media provides.

I don’t think we can find any support here for the Marxist theories of the media which argue this is all about media manipulation of content and agenda setting to keep people stupid, this event just happened too quickly for that to be the case.

Of course maybe the public have been trained to need this kind of content over the longer term, so this could be a result of a long term drip-drip effect of trivia in the mainstream media, which may offer some support for Marxist theories, but this is very difficult to prove empirically!

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Should Britons just accept they are poorer?

Consumer price inflation has been floating at around just under 10% for a year now, since May 2022, and this means that people in Britain are, on average, worse off financially than they were a year ago.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics recently found that seven in ten adults are spending less on non essential items and a recent IPSOS poll found that half of us are worried about our finances.

The Bank of England’s chief economist has called on workers to stop asking for wage increases and for companies to stop passing on their increasing costs to consumers by raising prices.

In short he thinks that Britons to accept the fact that they are getting poorer and are just worse off and that this will lower inflation.

An individualised solution to a structural problem?

This strikes me as possibly the ultimate example of what Bauman would call an individualised solution to a structural problem: one of the global elite asking individuals to solve inflation.

Whereas in reality the cause of the current inflation is structural: it is 40 years of neoliberal economic policy which has sucked hundreds of billions, probably trillions of dollars out of the UK economy over those 40 years and into tax havens, benefitting the global elite (and many non-British people).

Of course the elite themselves blame our current ‘cost of living crisis’ on Covid and the Ukraine War, but Britain’s economic decline predates both of these events.

In a neoliberal system it becomes easier for investors to extract profit from state enterprise because of deregulation, and so what we’ve seen now for 40 years is lack of investment in infrastructure and education and health and social care and huge profits getting sucked out the country.

We could have, over the past 40 years, invested more in green energy, more in local food production, more in creating a highly skilled, high wage workforce, but the neoliberal Tories (and New Labour) chose not to, and hence we have inflation and the ordinary people suffering.

Sources

The Guardian April 2023 Britons need to accept they’re poorer

Gov.uk accessed May 2023: Consumer Price Inflation, March 2023.

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The Tory Spring Budget

The Chancellor’s Spring Budget was a conservative and reactionary mixture of soft-policies which do little for ordinary people and probably won’t help sort out Britain’s economic problems…

The three main priorities of the budget were to

  • reduce inflation
  • Stimulate economic growth
  • Bring down government debt.

Taken together these are very conservative and reactionary goals, nothing at all radical.

The government repeatedly says that current high inflation rates of around 10% are due to Putin’s war in Ukraine increasing energy prices, but many people know this is just a simplification, as there are many other causes of inflation… such as Brexit pushing up the cost of doing business and quite possibly just the failings of the capitalist system in general.

This and bringing down government debt are the government reacting to events that have already happened – the debt in large part being due to the government’s chosen response to the Covid Pandemic and Liz Truss.

This feels like a government catching up rather than driving the country forwards. If we use Anthony Giddens’ ‘steering the juggernaut’ analogy, it feels very much here like the global economy is out of control of the government, and there’s not a lot they can do!

One also has to question whether economic growth is the right strategy. Not only because the growth forecasts are dismal, but also because redistribution seems to be a more sensible goal.

Dismal Economic Growth Figures

There is plenty of money in the form of wealth out there, as the Equality Trust points out, what we need is for the government to tap into that and use it effectively to improve the quality of people’s lives through, for example, massive investment in education and green technologies.

At least one area of policy makes the rich richer: increasing the amount people can put in their pensions tax free from £40K a year to £60K a year: a really nice little perk for very high income earners, but 90% of population see no benefit from this.

The rise in Corporation Tax from 19% to 25% for companies making annual profits of more than £250 000 seems like a fair move to make, and the government have to be commended on this, it seems like a roll back of neoliberalism, but we will still have the lowest rate in Europe, and also remember that we only dropped it to 19% relatively recently, so let’s not get sucked into a false sense of this being radical, it isn’t, it’s just going back to a slightly higher version of a low tax norm!

The extension of childcare

This is a significant move – that 30 hours per week of free childcare will be offered for children aged one and two, rolled out gradually from 2024, extended down from the current age of three.

This should go at least some way to tackling the gender pay gap as it is mainly women who take time off work to look after younger children.

To my mind this is long overdue and should have been tackled many years ago, I know so many people with young children that struggle with childcare costs just because they are working and lack the friend and family network to look after them.

The Budget: Final Thoughts

There’s nothing radical or really big-picture in here, it just feels like a failing State struggling to keep up with global economic forces that are making a life a challenge for British people.

But most of what is being proposed is like a sticking plaster, rather than the government committing to really improving people’s lives in the long term.

Also consider that there’s no mention of funding public sector wages for teachers and nurses, for example, no mention of how to tackle soaring inequality, no real long term vision.

It’s just an epic fail on nearly every level.

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Free School Meals for All London Pupils

All primary pupils in London schools are going to get Free School Meals from September 2023 according to an announcement from the Mayor of London on Monday.

This new policy will cost £130 million, save the average family £440 a year and benefit around 270 000 children.

In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme (20/02/2023) Henry Dimbleby, former head of the government’s national food strategy, explained the benefits of universal free school meals and the ideological barriers which have prevented this policy being enacted at a national level.

Trials had been done under the Labour government way back in 2013 in some local authorities including Newham, Durham and Islington which revealed that providing universal free school meals to all pupils significantly improved the academic performance of children who had previously been on free school meals, but the the performance of ALL children improved.

Those who had previously been on free school meals saw the most academic improvement, one theory for this change being that when ALL pupils can access free school meals it changes the culture of the school, removing the stigma of poverty at mealtimes and thus makes poorer students feel more included.

What about the rich kids who don’t need free school meals?

All children already benefit from free education which includes access a whole range of other material resources such as text books, so adding on free school meals isn’t that big a deal!

There is also evidence that all children benefit from this policy and it closes the inequality gap: A more recent study from Sweden showed that the introduction of universal free school meals improved the lifetime income of poorer students by 6% and the richest people’s only rose by 2%

The biggest drag on our economy is long term sickness, and the biggest cause of this is poor diet.

Why don’t we have free school meals in England?

According to Henry Dimbleby the current Tory government are ideologically opposed to universal benefits and this is the main reason we do not have free school meals for every child in England and Wales.

Both Nick Clegg and Michael Gove were in favour of universal free school meals when we had a coalition government, but since then neoliberal ideology means the government isn’t prepared to find the money to care for the poorest children in society.

Signposting

This material is relevant to the compulsory education aspect of the AQA’s first year of A-level sociology.

It is especially relevant to the topic of social class differences and education, as universal free school meals seem to be one of the most effective policies which can reducing the effects of material deprivation on educational achievement.

It is also a reminder of the continued harms of neoliberal education policy.

Sources/ Find out More

The Guardian (20/02/2023) London to offer free school meals to all primary pupils for a year.

Why are Teachers Striking?

Over 90% of National Education Union Members who were balloted voted for a series of six days of strikes which start today (1st February 2023) and go on approximately every two weeks until the 15th of March.

The main reason teachers are striking is over poor pay and long working hours, which are the main reasons why teachers are leaving the profession.

Teachers have had a real terms pay cut of 20% since 2010 because their annual pay increases haven’t kept pace with inflation and this year the government has only offered a 5% pay increase when inflation is running at 12%, meaning a 7% real terms pay cut.

And the government is currently residing over a recruitment crisis in teaching. There simply aren’t enough people who want to train to be teachers under the current pay and working conditions.

Understaffed schools mean that the teachers who are working have to soak up the difference, mainly by taking on larger class sizes which contributes to their intense work loads.

Overworked teachers and higher teacher to pupil staff ratios ultimately mean children suffer a poorer quality of education. Teachers are not superhuman after all and they can only do so much, hence the strikes.

It must be remembered, despite the rhetoric of the ultra-wealthy, tax-dodging, massive national-debt creating (Liz Truss) and morally bankrupt Tory party that teachers do not want to strike, they are doing so as a last resort because of Tory failure to manage the economy competently so that there is sufficient money to pay public sector workers a wage which reflects the work they do serving the public.

Relevance to A-level Sociology

The fact that it’s not just teachers striking, but also many other public sector workers demonstrates the harms that 40 years of neoliberal policy have done to the UK economy. There isn’t enough money being raised by taxes to pay decent wages for those working in the health and education sectors.

Striking is a good example of collective mass action, the final resort that the working classes have to demand fairer pay and conditions, and if you want to you can show solidarity with ordinary hard working public sector workers by attending one of the local rallies on one of the strike days.

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Take Action: Support the Strikes

If you want to support striking teachers you can find a list of rallies on strike days on the NEU website.

Remember, solidarity can help with positive social change!

Zahawi’s Tax ‘Carelessness’

Nadhim Zahawi is the Conservative Party Chairman and previous Chancellor of the Exchequer who this month paid around £5 million in tax, which included a 30% penalty from the HMRC for underpayment of previous taxes.

Nadhim Zahawi: The Ex Chancellor who doesn’t know how to fill in his tax return form.

To understand why Zahawi received this tax penalty we need to go back to the year 2000 when Zahawi co-founded the well known polling site YouGov.UK.

At that time Zahawi’s partner received 40% of the YouGov shares, while Zahawi received none but another 40% of the shares went to company called Balshore Investments which is located in Gibralter and has a history as a tax haven.

Later on it emerged that Balshore Investments was owned by Zahawi’s parents who don’t live in the U.K. and he claims he he gave them those shares to in exchange for advise on how to set up YouGov.

Balshore, or Zahawi’s parents, eventually went on to sell said shares for a capital gain of around £27 million, which, had this been based in the U.K. would have been taxed at around £3. 7 million.

There are YouGov documents showing that one dividend cheque for £99 000 was redirected to Zahawi,

YouGov financial documents reveal that a share dividend of £99 000 was redirected from Balshore to Zahawi, suggesting that he was benefiting financially from these shares.

Analysis by Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer, suggests that Zahawi has basically just been made to pay ALL of the tax due on the sale of those shares (£3.7 million) plus a 30% fine by the HMRC because he was ‘careless’ in reporting his capital gains from the sale of these shares.

Carelessness or Tax Evasion?

The fact that HMRC charged Zahawi a 30% penalty means they classified his omission of information from his tax return as ‘moderately serious’, it was a result of ‘carelessness’ rather than it being a deliberate omission.

‘Careless mistakes’ on a tax return are penalised by 30% penalties whereas deliberate withholding of information for financial gain is regarded as tax evasion which carries a prison sentence of up to 7 years.

Now technically this investigation into Zahawi is over and legally his failure to report his tax affairs accurately in the past have been constructed as ‘carelessness’.

And I am sure that technically he has done nothing wrong in the eyes of international law or British Laws: using your parents’ company in a tax haven stash shares which then grow in value and then sell as a profit technically isn’t tax evasion.

But hang on…. HMRC have made him pay tax on the profit he made from those shares…? So surely this was an example of tax evasion?

Maybe his carelessness was that he tried to use loopholes to evade tax deliberately but then one document created a paper trail and that messed up his despicable scheme?

So maybe the serious fraud office and the national crime agency should be investigating this too?

At the very least we have to question the morality of a former Chancellor over this, and this certainly doesn’t fit into the demands by Rishi Sunak that the Tory Party should display ‘Integrity, Professionalism and Accountability’ going forwards!

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

This material is most relevant to Crime and Deviance.

It is a useful reminder of how crime is socially constructed in that the financial crime of misreporting taxes has layers of seriousness to it which can be interpreted flexibly by the HMRC.

It seems that this flexibility gives people the opportunity to push the boundaries and risk withholding information without financial gain with a reduced threat of going to prison, the maximum penalty being a 30% fine on what profit you’ve made, which for the very rich, that might just be worth the gamble!

Sources

(1) BBC – Ross Atkins on Nadhim Zahawi’s Tax Affairs.

The Guardian – HMRC boss tells MPs ‘innocent errors’ aren’t penalised after Zahawi tax row.

Kinsella Tax – Tax Evasion Penalties – HMRC UK.

Bias in Presenting Quantitative Data

Newspapers can ‘bias’ the presentation of quantitative data by stretching out the scale of the data they present, making differences between bars seem larger than they actually are (or vice versa!).

Quantitative research methods are usually regarded as being more objective than qualitative research methods as there is less room for the subjective biases and interpretations of researchers to influence the data collection process in quantitative research.

However, bias can still creep into quantitative research and one way this can happen is over the decision in how to present the data in even a basic visualisation.

Specifically, one can take the same data and stretch out the scale of a graph displaying that data and give the impression that the differences between the subjects under investigation are wider than in the original presentation.

Bias in scaling graphs

A recent example of what I’m going to call ‘bias in scaling graphs‘ can be found in how an article by The Guardian displays recent data on how much GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has grown in different European Countries between 2019 to 2022.

the same data from the Office for National Statistics in a more ‘stretched out’ scale which

The Guardian article (September 2022) in question is this one: UK is only G7 country with smaller economy than before Covid-19 which displays the following graphical data to show how the UK’s GDP is falling compared to other G8 Nations.

Source: The Guardian, 2022

Now you might think ‘this is quantitative data so it’s objective’ and on that basis no one can argue with what it’s telling us – the U.S. economy is doing VERY WELL compared to most Euro nations, growing more than TWICE as fast is the impression we get.

And after all, this is fair enough – a 2.6% growth rate is more than twice as fast as a 1% or less growth rate!

Same data different scale…

However you might think differently about the above when you see the same data (almost) displayed by the UK Government in this publication: GDP International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators which features the graph below:

Source: Commons Library 2022

Note that the data is ALMOST the same – except for Britain’s data being different at 0.6% positive rather than negative – the Guardian article was written after the UK Gov report on the basis of the UK Economic growth forecast being downgraded, but everything else is the same.

My point here is that the data above is (almost) the same and yet the graph has been ‘squashed’ compared to the graph showing the same data in The Guardian article – note the scaling is the same – if you look above you can see that the US Bar is twice as high as the EU bars, but the difference APPEARS smaller because it’s not as stretched.

The Guardian achieves its stretched out scale by displaying the bars horizontally rather than vertically – that way there is more room to stretch them out and make the differences appear larger in a visual sense.

And with the UK now in an economic downturn it makes Britain seem further behind compared to other countries than what would have been the case with the more squished presentation in the Government’s version.

But aren’t they both biased…?

In a word yes – someone has to decided the format in which to present the data which is going to skew what people see.

But the reason I’m calling out The Guardian on this is for two reasons:

  1. it’s unusual to display bars horizontally, the standard is vertically, but there’s not way you can stretch out the visualisation vertically without it looking very odd.
  2. The differences are quite small – we are talking 1-2% points of change so having a more squished scale to represent the small differences seems appropriate, The Guardian has chosen to exaggerate these from the original display possible to make them seem larger than they actually are.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material should be of interest to anyone studying Research Methods.

It’s also a useful example of Left Wing bias in the media, most sociologists focus on right wing bias!

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Liz Truss’ Energy Price Cap Will Benefit the Rich more than the Poor

State hand-outs for TNCs and more support for the rich – this is neoliberalism on steroids!

The New British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, recently announced her plans to help families and households through the current cost of living crisis.

The main policy to be introduced is an energy price cap which limits the average amount each household will pay capped at £2500.

NB this policy doesn’t mean that every household will pay a maximum of £2500 , that figure is the ‘easy to understand’ figure based on what the new price-per-unit of energy that OFGEM has to work with will be, which will mean an average house going forwards will be paying £2500 on energy until October 2023 (those calculations based on how much energy an average household has been using historically).

Of course if one ‘average household’ keeps the heating up at a toasty 25 degrees all winter they will still be paying more for energy than a similar household which keeps its thermostat at a more reasonable 18 degrees.

And so larger houses will be paying more than £2500, smaller houses and flats probably less than £2500.

HOWEVER, the cap on the unit-of-energy price still benefits the rich more than the poor, and. one simple chart from The Guardian shows how…

According to the figures above the following types of household save the following amounts per year with Truss’ new energy policy…

  • Detached houses save £1400
  • Semi-detached save £1150
  • Mid terraced save £950
  • Purpose built flats save £650

And as a general rule it is the wealthier and higher income earners who live in detached houses, while it’s the working and lower classes who live in mid terraced and flats.

So what we see here is that this Tory Policy saves the average wealthy household £750 a year more than the average poorer household.

This becomes clear when we see just HOW MUCH the richest households spend on energy, which was revealed in a recent 2022 report: A ‘Variable Energy Price Cap’ to Help Solve the Cost-of-Living Crisis by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research…

As you can see from the above the richest households spend almost twice as much on energy as the poorest households, which means any uniform energy price cap will benefit them proportionately more.

This is one of the reasons why the above report proposes a more nuanced policy approach of a variable cap and energy prices increasing the more households use, which would help the poor more compared to the rich and make the wealthier households contribute more to dealing with rising energy prices.

According to Bloomberg the current Tory policy could cost tax payers as much as £130 billion over two years, which is a CHOICE by a TORY to make the people pay rather than energy companies who are likely to make sufficient profit to be able to pay for the ENTIRE increase themselves and STILL make a decent profit on top!

The Tories allow the Corporations to Keep their Profits

According to UK Treasury figures Energy firms are expected to make an additional ‘unexpected’ £170 billion in profits over the next two years due to the increase in energy prices.

One policy the government could have pursued to tackle rising energy prices is thus to use a windfall tax on the two major UK energy corporations – Even just a 10% tax on £170 billion would raise £17 billion to help weather the storm.

However Liz Truss is part of the same Transnational Elite as the international energy companies. She used to work for Shell and she accepted a £100 000 donation from BP towards her leadership campaign.

And now she is repaying them by guaranteeing to allow them to keep ALL of their profits from this crisis, be effectively using tax payers money to pay them everything above the price cap for at least another year.

The most likely situation is that MOST of our

New Fracking and Oil Exploration Licenses

A more longer term policy (or lack of it) is to issue several new licences to allow firms to drill and frack for oil and natural gas in the North Sea and (probably) poorer parts of the United Kingdom.

Given Liz Truss’ pro-corporate and light regulation stance it’s unlikely these licenses will come with terms which see the profits from such resources go back to the people – far more likely is light regulation, low tax and profit extraction to distant lands.

Liz Truss’ Energy Policy – Relevance to A-level sociology

Probably the best fit for this material is within the Global Development module or the Theories part of Theory and Methods.

This policy is very much neoliberal – she is not taxing large corporations and giving out new licences for corporations to suck out our natural resources (NB we don’t have details, but I’m anticipating very lax regulation here).

We might even call this hyper neoliberalism – Truss is proposing a straight transfer of tax payer funds to Corporations – naked and visible and no effort to hide it, usually with pro-privatisation policies this is obscured, but not here.

Meanwhile her energy cap does little to help the poorest and more, proportionally to help the richest.

It’s also worth going back and reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine – that seems to apply here – we have a crisis and the right wing use it to pass even more wealth to the rich…

So this evidence also suggests support for the Marxist view that the government, ultimately (or at least in its current form) works in the interests of the elites and Transnational Corporations.

The Covid-19 Pandemic Exaggerated Health Inequalities in England

The Pandemic has increased health inequalities in England, according to a recent report by the Institute of Health Inequalities – Build Back Fairer – The Covid-19 Marmot Review: The Pandemic, Social and Health Inequalities in England.

Prior to the Pandemic, from 2010 to 2020, health inequalities between the least and most deprived were increasing in England.

Pre-pandemic, increases in life expectancy had stalled, but life expectancy for the most deprived 10% of the population actually decreasing in some regions (such as parts of the North East and London) during some years in that 10 year period.

Covid-19 increased health inequalities

The charts below show the mortality rates per one thousand between March and July 2020.

As you can see, there are drastic differences already between the least and most deprived deciles – 600/ 100 000 for the poorest decile, compared to 400/ 100 000 for the wealthiest decile.

But the difference is greater when we look at the covid related mortality rate – this is 200/100 000 for the poorest, compared to nearly 100/ 100 000 for the wealthiest.

So health inequalities increased from a difference of 1.5.1 to nearly 2:1 as a result of the Pandemic.

Some of this difference is explained by the different levels of exposure due to occupation – as a general rule, professional workers are more able to work from home and stay isolated, while manual workers and care workers need to actually go to work in person, and this is reflected in the different mortality rates by occupation (‘social class’) for the same period as above:

Explaining health inequalities… it’s not ALL about the Pandemic

Professor Marmot is at pains to point out that these health inequalities were in existence BEFORE the pandemic, and that government health policies between 2010 to 2020 explain WHY poor people have died in such huge numbers from covid-19 and why England has the highest covid related mortality figures in Western Europe.

In particular Marmot points to the following government policies:

  1. A political culture that undermined social inclusivity and cohesiveness and failed to promote the common good
  2. Widespread inequality, which is bad for socio-economic outcomes in general, with the most deprived ‘steered’ towards poor living conditions and unhealthy lifestyles.
  3. Government austerity policies – an underfunded health and social care sector.

In terms of what to do, the report makes a number of suggestions, mainly to do with introducing policies to improve health outcomes of the most deprived, and this will take a broader/ deeper approach to social change rather than just being about health!

Relevance to A-level Sociology

This is a VERY sociological report – putting the covid mortality rate in longer term context.

The point is that we can’t just blame the Pandemic for killing people – certain types of people (the poor) died in larger numbers proportionality to the rich – which means there was a social cause to the high covid death toll in England.

And that cause was, according to this report, already high levels of existing inequality.

This is a rare example of some long-term quantitative analysis, it sounds almost like Functionalism/ Positivism in its approach.

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