At a packed Fabian Society conference today Jeremy Corbyn put fairness at centre of his keynote speech. He called for fairer housing, fair wages, a fairer economy.  His speech highlighted just how unfair so many of the current Government's policies are, hitting the poorest hardest, and making life easier for the wealthy.

My Fair London had an exhibition stand at the conference and we were busy all day talking to delegates.  Thanks for so many good conversations and to the 80+ people who signed up to our mailing list.

Much of Corbyn's speech could have been written by My Fair London.  He described how inequality is bad for jobs and growth, how it is neither necessary nor inevitable, and how people at the top have taken too much.  One of his proposals, heavily trailed in the media, was to link companies paying dividends to shareholders to whether they pay a living wage to their lowest paid employees. He spoke about the need for wage ratios, a key My Fair London campaign objective.

At lunchtime Labour's mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan spoke about London's housing crisis, setting out some very practical proposals to tackle our broken housing market. Inequality seemed to underpin much of Sadiq's message but he could have emphasised it's impact on London more explicitly. Rampant inequality is the root of so many of London's problems.

Come along to our meeting on 20th January to help us develop our campaign ideas for the Mayoral election.

Lots of press coverage of the speech - there's detailed report in the Guardian here

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/16/jeremy-corbyn-to-confront-big-business-over-living-wage

Very exciting to see a significant US Presidential candidate setting out how inequality is one of the central problems facing America. The UK (and London) not there yet, but the international child poverty figures he uses show the UK is second only to the US in levels of child poverty.  London has been leading Britain towards a more unequal society, where the very richest take more and more. It would be great to see some of our Mayoral candidates learning some positive from America.

Check out the video at https://berniesanders.com/issues/income-and-wealth-inequality/

2016 MFL Programme

We have monthly meetings often with prominent speakers held at UCLH, 250 Euston Rd, London. Please sign up for more details

Our current dates for 2016 are:

January 20th 

February 18th

March 21st

April 19th

May 18th

June 16th 

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

Latest Interim Report from London Fairness Commission

Lord Victor Adebowale, Chair of the London Fairness Commission, said of the report:

‘Our interim report draws attention to the shadow of unfairness that hangs over London. Now we want to understand what Londoners think should be done to dispel it. We want to harness the talent, energy, creativity and sheer can-do attitude of Londoners to create a fairer city’

Read the Full report here

The Trailer

My Fair London