The TUC have just come out with the brilliant idea that workers should only do a 4 days week. Have they seen the state of the high street? Companies are dropping like flies and before long many TUC members will be enjoying 7 days a week off.

I am all in favour of flexible working hours but they expect to work less for the same pay. Well I want a date with Kylie and that aint going to happen either.

It's all show and nothing else. The problem has always been globalisation.
I didn't vote for Brexit, but completely understand the frustrations of the people that did vote for it, but Brexit won't give you the salary increases you're looking for just like the forced share issues are unlikely to as well.
If you can make an Iphone in Taiwan, where the daily wage is 20p, then there is very little chance wages in the UK are gonna go up, barring insane inflation.
Now the shares may well yield dividends, but I can think of one better solution than forcing companies to give their employees shares and that is for the Government to take a 50/50 stake in all patents that tax payer money has subsidised. It's actually quite ludicrous the amount of tech grants there are flying around and the gvrnt literally has no payback of it.

What? Have you ever worked in an FCA registered business? You're FORCED to do things all the time. For that matter have you ever worked in a company? They are all FORCED to pay tax every year. What a scandal.

If you look at the level of business investment it's in the doldrums. Businesses are sitting on huge piles of cash and more and more they are repatriating huge amounts to shareholders. This is bad for the economy. It's one of the main reasons corporate productivity since 2008 has been so awful.

Talking of productivity, had workers’ wages kept track with the rise in their productivity since 1990, the average employee would today be 20% better off. Or they could have three-day weekends all year long and still get paid the same.

Furthermore, labour had been getting smaller and smaller slices of the pie: from 70% of national income in the 1970s to 55% now. By the reckoning of the Bank of England's chief economist, employees get proportionately less now than they did at the very outset of the Industrial Revolution in the 1770s.

Given that shareholders benefit from limited liability and the infrastructure which the public pay for, plus all the upside of outperformance, there should be more of a compunction for companies to be part owned by their employees or the state. We're talking 10% max, not mass state ownership. This should have been happening years ago, and should have formed the basis of a sovereign wealth fund. What's more we should go further and have state owned VC and PE vehicles which provide funds for start ups in sectors such as tech, medicine, engineering etc. which then would retain 5-10% of the shares on any listing and plough the profits from listing or sale back into public projects such as infrastructure and education.

This policy I predict will be hugely popular. It's a shame (but not surprising) that the right wing rags have barely reported on it for fear that their readers would (rightly) think it rather a decent policy and one worth voting for.

Another person who should read the new corporate governance code. In LSE listed companies you should not give rises to top executives in excess of average rises within your company.

Edited by Mapletree (24 Sep 2018 10.36pm)