Time to raise our game

It warns that the aren't just a few tens of thousands of low-paid workers in this country, although that would be bad enough.

Instead, a third of women and one in five men earn less than the living wage of £8.30 an hour in London and £7.20 outside the capital.

More than 600,000 people worked for less in banking, finance, insurance and property sales, with another 600,000 ekeing out a living in manufacturing, 260,000 in transport and computing and 180,000 in construction.

In fact, over six million people across Britain work for less than the living wage.

IPPR director Nick Pearce points out that there is no business case for this gross underpayment.

It would appear that this is just a case of firms maximising their profits at the cost of their lowest-paid workers.

This includes tens of thousands of people working in the lower echelons of banking, in which bonuses for the select few run into the millions every year.

There are also 2.65 million out of work and this figure will rise as further job cuts hit the public sector.

Another report, by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), is warning that the UK jobless rate will increase to 10.7 per cent by 2016 compared with the current 8.3 per cent, leaving it higher than at any time since 1995.

Unemployment in Wales is forecast to increase to 10.5 per cent, the highest since comparable records began.

For an economy outside the eurozone which, supposedly, isn't facing the same problems as economies such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy, the poverty policies of British austerity are remarkably similar.

But all of this isn't going without remark or response, on the streets or at the ballot boxes, although people's reactions are almost unbelievably moderate given the blatant nature of the rip-off by the wealthy and powerful.

The French people were voting for a president today and the favourite was socialist Francois Hollande who at least presents a more socially conscious profile than President Sarkozy. Surprise, surprise, the capitalist press suddenly started claiming a shock improvement in the polls for Sarkozy.

In Greece, which is also going though an election, the economic plight of the country is far starker. Bur read the Greek domestic press and there's little reflecting any alternative policies to IMF loans and EU blackmail.

But the common point with France is a massive rejection by working people of the strictures of so-called austerity, the blatant strategy of capitalism to plunder ordinary families to pay for its failures.

In Britain, the coalition has been massively rejected in the council elections with over 700 councillors being thrown out.

But it has been a relatively muted response given the scope of the ruling-class offensive.

Much of this is due to the efforts of a multi-billion propaganda industry to diminish the possibility of another, socialist, alternative strategy.

Scan the entire media industry and the voices for socialism are tiny by comparison with the broadsides of the broadsheets and the distortions of the red-tops.

This carries a clear message to us, the producers, readers and supporters of the Morning Star.

It is time for us to redouble our efforts and raise our voices loudly and clearly. There is another way. It's a way worth fighting for and it is people's power and socialist change.