The Palestinians have parked Yasser Arafat in a broom cupboard in Ramallah, while Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, at least sounded yesterday like a man embarking on a round of tough negotiations.True, the practical concessions have been limited. But Mr Sharon did not repeat, as Mr Powell pointed out, his insistence on the absolute cessation of Palestinian violence as a precondition for starting on the first phase of the road-map process.The way the road-map is designed, both sides could do a number of relatively easy things to build confidence during the first phase. Israel could act against those settlements in the occupied territories that even it deems illegal; the Palestinians could lock up some Hamas leaders.If Mr Bush meant what he said on 8 April, he can make it happen. After the war in Iraq, his reputation beyond America's borders depends on it.. The gini coefficient is not the stuff of soundbites.
Yet it holds a central place in the Labour Party's unofficial theology because it is a statistical measure of inequality The gini coefficient is not the stuff of soundbites. It comes as some surprise, therefore, to discover that the Gini coefficient for disposable income in the UK has risen since Labour came to office – from 34 to 36 per cent. This means that incomes, after taxes and benefits, have become less equally distributed.Despite all Gordon Brown's clever tax credits and the welcome increases in support for children, and despite the minimum wage, those at the bottom failed to keep up with those at the top.The Office for National Statistics reports that the latest figures show that incomes were as unequal as they were in 1990, after the sharp increase in inequality that occurred during the Thatcher years. Statistically, lefties should look back nostalgically on the years of the socialist John Major, who presided over a trend towards more equal incomes.While statistics never lie, however, they sometimes struggle to explain the many factors behind something as complex as the distribution of income throughout a nation the size of Britain.Some of the changes over the past two decades are explained simply by economic growth. As earnings rise, they tend to outstrip state benefits and pensions. The tendency to slightly more equality during the Major years was, therefore, largely a product of recession; while the growth in inequality under Tony Blair is associated with the period of growth which he inherited from his predecessor.But that is not the whole story, because the amounts of tax taken from the richer half and the amounts in pensions and benefits paid out to the poorer half of the population make a big difference to the shape of the final outcome.There are three important implications of this analysis.One is for the Government's ambition to abolish child poverty by 2019.
This aspiration is framed in terms of the numbers of children living in households existing on 60 per cent of average incomes. So it should be, because what matters is poverty in relation to other families rather than to an absolute standard. But it means that, for the pledge to be fulfilled, the distribution of income must become more equal.The second is for pensions. One of the important causes of greater inequality over the past 20 years was the ending of the link between state pensions and average earnings. Mr Brown has done a lot, but the take-up of his complex credits is low and justice for the wartime generation has not been done.The third is for the pay of company directors.
