We still haven’t printed it yet – it may be over a week or so.

“For poorer regions, inflexible public sector salary scales do damage in another way: they handicap the private sector,” she declares.

It was in sharp contrast to the interview which I think was with Professor Carol Williams on a report by the National Inequality Panel, entitled An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, a summary of which can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_01_10_inequality.pdf

Professor Williams was suggesting minutes earlier in the programme that there is no evidence in poorer regions of the public sector crowding out the private sector. There was in fact evidence of crowding in.

Anyone who has tried to build and maintain a private enterprise in such poorer regions knows that these economies and therefore their own chances of creating wealth and employment depend on public sector expenditure. The economies are so frail even at the height of the recent boom.

The programme then went on to feature an interview of both Professor Richard Wilkinson and Michael Gove, which illustrated the use to which Gove and Cameron (who it would seem reads Wilkinson’s The Spirit Level every night) are putting his research. Those who have never heard a Tory campaign strongly against inequality should listen here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8490000/8490718.stm

Wolf’s line stuck out as so London-centric, that I thought I could here that good old Yorkshire man, Richard Wainwright, spinning in his grave.

If Paul is willing to review her pamphlet, perhaps he might consider contrasting it with these two other views.