Unsubscribe
View in your browser

Hi ,

Our goal at the Equality Trust is your goal: a more equal UK. We know the vast majority of the UK public support this too, and we’ve built a movement of thousands of activists. But we’ve always been up against an entrenched system and we, ourselves, are a small charity. 

Today we’re letting you know that we’re facing a serious financial shortfall and have restructured our operations. As a result, we’ve sadly lost some of our valued colleagues.

We said that this was going to be a pivotal year in the fight against inequality and we’ve tried meet that challenge:

Like a lot of charities, we’ve lost large amounts of funding as the devastating American foreign aid cuts, the rise of AI, and growing societal crisis have forced funders to urgently shift or cut their plans.

We’re working as hard as we can to ensure the Equality Trust’s work continues.

We’re about to launch new research exposing the growing power of a new class of super-rich. We’re facing huge elections in Scotland, Wales, and swathes of England with the threat of overseas oligarchs financing and manipulating politics. The voice of the people most affected by inequality is more important than ever. These fundamental issues haven’t changed and we need to stay in the fight.

If you want to help us, we have two key asks:

First, nothing helps us more than regular supporters. We've had more people than ever sign up to give us a monthly donation this year and it's helped us do so much more of the work we think is most important. If you're already donating regularly, you're a hero.
I'll become a monthly supporter

Secondly in December, we’re launching a matched fundraising drive that will double donations. We’ve already secured funds for the matching, but we’ll need your help to raise the £25,000 we need to unlock that match funding and keep our work going next year. To double your one-off donation, wait for emails at the beginning of December about the Big Give.

Thank you for all that you’ve done over the years. You’ve signed the petitions, come to the protests, lobbied your MPs, held talks, shared research and so much more – together, we’ve shifted the public’s perception of inequality enormously. 

If you want us to be in this fight, then we’ll need your support this December.
Petition: Stop oligarchs buying democracy!

Ahead of our new research, we're launching a petition to crack down on some of the most egregious ways oligarchs are buying influence over our system: enormous, shady political donations. 

Our system has proven unable to keep on top of the web of family members and shell companies that route large amounts of money that inevitably influence political parties. That's before you add in ideas like Elon Musk giving Reform UK $100 million. 

We've got big elections coming up in Scotland, Wales, and swathes of England – we need immediate bans.  
Sign and share now
 

We're aware that when clicking links in our newsletters, some users are being warned that the link is unsafe. This is due to a problem between Microsoft and our email provider, SendGrid. The links are safe to open.
 
Weekly Poll
 

The weekly poll is away this week, but will return next week. Results from last week's poll are reported below. 

How could we build a more equal media ecosystem? You said:

  • "Until and unless social media providers are treated as publishers, i.e., under the same constraints and rules as newspapers, any attempts to build a more equal media ecosystem will be pretty much irrelevant."

  • "Not allowing politicians to run TV programmes. No additional jobs for any MPs. No donations from news companies to politicians. More fact checking. Fake news is getting worse any solutions to help stop that.."

  • "(I don't often listen to the radio these days, more usually to podcasts, but there was no option for this)

    We have the strongest basis for public service media with the BBC - we should protect and re-strengthen that, and ensure it is free from the kind of political /personal manipulations occurring this week. It is difficult with the globalisation (/Americanisation) of news & media, but we should do what we can to make our own UK media as healthy as possible. Regulation, public funding, support for local media, and anything to reduce the clickbait culture that currently prevails."


  • "Make news media education in schools a priority."

  • "Turn off the internet! Anyone?"
Inequality in Numbers

Share on Bluesky, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter
In The News
TaxWatch: Gov losing billions in potential tax

TaxWatch's annual State of Tax Administration report is out and it shows two key things ahead of a tax-raising budget. Firstly, it once again shows that hiring more HMRC staff to investigate tax evasion leads to more tax being collected from would-be evaders. The reason we have to repeat this point every six months is related very much to the second key finding: the recruitment of new HMRC staff keeps being promised, but this hiring is happening incredibly slowly. At the same time, HMRC is also getting a 1.5% real terms budget cut and a capital spending cut of 24%, which TaxWatch point out is by far the biggest cut for any government department. Pretty hard to increase tax revenue by cutting the tax collectors.
Read more
We need an international panel on inequality

Founders and patrons of the Equality Trust Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have joined 600+ other economists and academics to call for a world panel on inequality. Inequality is a problem of globalisation, they say: the richest 1% of the world captured 41% of all new wealth created since 2000 while the number of people facing food insecurity has risen by 335 million since 2019. To combat the threat caused by a globalised super-rich, they're calling for an international panel similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. South Africa, the host of this year's G20 meeting, is pushing for inequality to be a key topic in discussions among world leaders.
Read more

The Equality Trust
Square Root Business Centre
Windmill Road
Croydon CR0 2XQ

+44 (0)20 3637 0324

info@equalitytrust.org.uk