The difference in pay between men and women has fallen to a record low amount, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced according to their latest figures.

The gender pay gap in April stood at 9.4% which was down from 10% the previous year. This figure was at 17.4% in 1997 when ONS began it’s records.

When commenting on the figures, the Liberal Democrat minister for equalities Jo Swinson said, “It’s good news to see a significant reduction in the pay gap over the last year. We should value the contribution of women and men in the workplace equally, so our vision has to be eliminating the pay gap completely.

“The Government will continue to tackle the causes of gender pay inequality. Shared Parental Leave will help to tackle the unequal split of caring responsibilities, and we are promoting pay transparency by making free analysis software available to employers.”

The Liberal Democrats have been leading the campaign on the issue of the gender pay gap. The party’s manifesto states a commitment to introduce a legal requirement which would see companies which employ more than 250 people having to publish the average pay of their male and female workers.

At the last full meeting of Bury Council I asked a question of Bury’s representatives to Transport for Greater Manchester about their plans for ‘Real-Time’ bus information at bus stops.

People might be familiar with the signs that we now have on Metrolink Platorms which show (after many years of them being unused) show what time the next trams are coming. People might also have seen the same thing at bus stops in other towns in this country, and also abroad.

The answer seems to be that Greater Manchester has NO plans for real-time bus information displays at bus stops. It does have plans for a ‘smart phone’ app which would enable people to look on their phone when the next buses were coming to their stop. This is great, but obviously no use at all for people who do not have smart phones, which is probably includes quite a few people who use buses.

What people have found in other places is that bus stop information increases people’s confidence in the bus system, and is one of the ways that people can be encouraged to use public transport more.

So why not Greater Manchester? We invested the computer here, surely we can manage some automated signs on key bus stops (I don’t think anyone is suggesting every single bus stop, but at important/busy stops this could be very useful.)

The answer we were given is: “I take your point but we’ve got many thousands of bus stops in Greater Manchester so for example we might be able to have them in somewhere like Bournemouth but Greater Manchester is just too big.”

We asked friends from around the country and here are just some of the places – big and small – that already have real-time bus information at their bus stops.

Birmingham
Sheffield
Leeds
Edinburgh
Norwich
Southampton
Maidenhead
London (all over, not just central London)
Milton Keynes
Reading
Guildford
Reigate
Redhill
Woking
Nottingham
Bedford
Bristol
Oxford
Brighton
Halifax
Huddersfield
Cambridge
Huntingdon
Maidstone
Cardiff
Gwynnedd
York
Abbots Langley
Aberdeen
Horsham
Crawley
Worthing
Chelmsford
Guildford
Poole
Hull
Newhaven
Aylesbury
Peterborough
Eastleigh
Sandwell
Colchester
Harrogate

Greater Manchester needs to do better!

Tim Pickstone- Holyrood Councillor