It made sense for the daughter of socialist folkie Woody Guthrie to ask our own political troubadour Billy Bragg to set a bunch of her late father's lyrics to music. The resulting Mermaid Avenue album was a gem. On tour, he'll be combining Guthrie numbers with some of his own, as well as championing "the cause", this time the GMB campaign to include young people in the minimum wage set-up. Support comes from quirky popsters and fellow Essex boys Hefner.

JOHN REDWOOD, the Shadow Trade Secretary, accused Peter Mandelson of not having read the minutes of evidence given before the independent Monetary Policy Committee yesterday.

THE GOVERNMENT is to be challenged over poverty and low wages by the Labour Party's biggest single financial benefactor.

THE PAY gap between men and women has widened for the first time in a decade and the gulf between the highest and lowest paid is also expanding, official data revealed yesterday.

THE PAY gap between men and women has widened for the first time in a decade and the gulf between the highest and lowest paid is also expanding, official data revealed yesterday.

From a speech by the general secretary of Unison to the TUC in Blackpool

DAVE NELLIST

THE MINIMUM wage will deny people the chance to work, the new CBI president said yesterday. The pounds 3.60-an-hour rate, to be implemented by the National Minimum Wage Act, was at the "top end" of the range the CBI saw as being "workable", said Sir Clive Thompson, chief executive of Rentokil Initial. "What I'm really against is the issue, simply because I think it denies people the opportunity of being employed," he told the BBC1 Breakfast With Frost.

Jobs warning

A NATIONAL minimum wage does cost young employees' jobs, says an authoritative new report issued yesterday, vindicating the Government's controversial announcement of a lower minimum wage for young workers up to the age of 21.

Outlook

SMALL BUSINESSES

Lisa Dugdale is 22. And she thinks that the minimum wage plan will turn young people into second-class citizens.

MINIMUM WAGE