The gap between Britain’s richest and poorest is wider than ever before, according to the Hills report.

A detailed and startling analysis of how unequal Britain has become offers a snapshot of an increasingly divided nation where the richest 10% of the population are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society.

The new findings show that the household wealth of the top 10% of the population stands at £853,000 and more – over 100 times higher than the wealth of the poorest 10%, which is £8,800 or below (a sum including cars and other possessions).

When the highest-paid workers, such as bankers and chief executives, are put into the equation, the division in wealth is even more stark, with individuals in the top 1% of the population each possessing total household wealth of £2.6m or more

guardian.co.uk

Up to 42,000 mail centre staff and network drivers launched a 24-hour strike, while 78,000 delivery and collection workers will walk out tomorrow.

CWU members voted by 3-1 in favour of a national strike in a ballot complaining that jobs were being axed, pay cut and working conditions made worse.

Union shows its true colours

People are saying we are against modernisation as a union but we are not,” he said. “Sixty-thousand jobs have gone from this business in the last five years in agreement with the union. That’s not a union against modernisation. What we want to do is get Royal Mail fit for the 21^st century, but it’s got to be through agreement, not dictatorship or imposition.

History of conflict

Shortly after the union announced that the strikes would go ahead, the government published figures showing that almost 1m working days have been lost due to industrial action at Royal Mail since 2000

guardian.co.uk

America must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world’s reserve currency as US dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, World Bank president Robert Zoellick warns today.

Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, Zoellick said that it was time for a “responsible globalisation”, in which decision-making is more fairly shared between the old economic powers and fast-growing developing countries such as China and India.

Ever since the post-war Bretton Woods agreement, which cemented the dollar’s ascendancy over sterling, Americans have been able to rely on borrowing cheaply from the rest of the world as governments banked on the dollar as a safe bet. But Zoellick said the greenback’s status could now be under threat from the growing strength of the Chinese renminbi and the euro.

guardian.co.uk

Mexico and Central America are said to be one of the regions most affeted by the crisis. The often illegal economic migration to the USA was traditionally a mitigating factor. A study prepared for the BBC by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that in the past three years the number of new migrants from Mexico to the United States fell considerably, dropping from 653,000 between March 2004 and March 2005 to only 175,000 in the same period in 2008 and 2009.

the following statistics are from BBC mundo

Mexico — 12.5 million work in informal sector.

ILO say 500 000 workers sacked in Central America.

5 .1 million people in food poverty in Mexico.

50% suffer chronic nutrition in Guatemala.

Half of population of El Salvador, Honduras y Nicaragua suffer malnutrition.

When there is no money, the first who stop eating are the under threes, there is not a family that does not take this decision….according to the specialist the real impact of the crisis in infant nutrition will start to be apparent in 5 years

bbc.co.uk