The Hostile Environment Still Deters Migrants

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Undocumented migrants are dying from Covid-19 because they are too afraid to seek help, charities have warned amid renewed calls for the Home Office to suspend NHS immigration checks. 



 In one case, a Filipino man died from suspected coronavirus last week after not accessing healthcare for fears of being reported to the Home Office. The man is said to have died in his home on 8 April after suffering from a fever and a cough for two weeks.  He was too afraid to go to the hospital for fear that he would be charged for his treatment, which he could not afford, and that he would be reported to immigration authorities. His wife, also an undocumented Filipino national, is currently suffering with similar symptoms but is also too afraid to access healthcare. Before he fell ill, the man who had been in the UK for about 10 years, was working as a cleaner and sending money back to his family in the Philippines. His wife, a domestic worker, was reportedly in their home with her husband’s body for 24 hours before an undertaker arrived to take his body away. 



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-undocumented-migrants-deaths-cases-nhs-matt-hancock-a9470581.html

An Imminent Food Crisis?

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British farmers are warning they have been forced to throw millions of gallons of milk down the drain because it no longer has a buyer, cheesemakers are binning artisan cheese and meat processors have an overabundance of sirloin, rib-eye steaks and prime roasting joints. 



Britain’s food supplies are set to come under increasing strain as lockdown is extended for at least another three weeks and could go on for much longer.



The problem is not that there is not enough food but that the well-established routes that supply it have been upended so abruptly.



the primary cause of empty supermarket was not inconsiderate stockpile hoarders, as some government ministers claimed, but the fact that a massive part of the food industry had been shut down overnight without a plan in place for how hundreds of millions of meals would be redirected. 



In normal times, 35 per cent of the food we eat – around 70 million meals every day – is prepared outside our homes, by restaurants and caterers, in cafes and school canteens. Because restaurants’ needs are very different to those of people cooking at home, billions of pounds of produce was suddenly left without a buyer. 



 Redistributing a third of Britain’s food is an impossible task without full national co-ordination. For farmers, who cannot quickly change the crops they grow or the animals they rear to suit the new reality, the problems are building up.



 Tim Lang, professor of food policy, at London’s City University, argues that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of our food system; a system which stretches out over thousands of miles, dozens of countries, and is reliant on migrant labour and air freight. That system has been reshaped, according to Professor Lang’s analysis, largely to suit the interests of nine companies which sell 90 per cent of the food we buy. Supermarkets have been happy to rely on sprawling supply chains that are left exposed during a crisis, as long as the price is right and the product sells.



As a nation, we import half of our food from abroad and, according to some analysts, the true figure could be as high as 80 per cent. Known as “the Hungry Gap” which stretches from the end of the winter season and the start of the summer in late May or sometimes even early June. Historically, it is the leanest part of the year for Britons, when the carrots, onions, potatoes and swede stored through the winter have run out but asparagus – the first sign of summer, in vegetable terms at least – has not yet fully grown. For several decades now, it is the period when we are most reliant on imported food. This year the countries we source much of our food from, notably Spain and Italy, experience their own problems getting enough labour onto farms and seeds in the ground.



 “Coronavirus has really highlighted the vulnerability of our current food system and that’s only going to get worse,” says Ashley Wheeler, a small-holder, who points to delays planting crops in Southern Europe that could lead to problems in a few months.



 The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation forecasts that the Covid-19 pandemic will cause shortages of some crops this year. In that scenario, producer countries are likely to prioritise their home markets over exports, increasing the onus on British producers to supply this country’s needs.



 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coronavirus-lockdown-uk-food-supplies-strain-supermarkets-a9469476.html

A cure for Covid-19: a profit-making strategy

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As the pandemic continues, there is an increasingly desperate need for a drug that will be effective against Covid-19 and not too unsafe in other respects. 



On March 19, at one of his daily self-display sessions for TV and the press, ‘Dr.’ Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine – a drug used to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis – as a remedy for the coronavirus. He did not permit his medical adviser, Dr. Fauci, to say a word. New French and Chinese studies have confirmed that hydroxychloroquine is indeed quite ineffective against Covid-19. It also causes heart complications. Nevertheless, the demand for hydroxychloroquine shot up, jeopardizing supply to the lupus sufferers whose lives really do depend on the drug. See here.



Why did Trump do it? Some suggested that his motive was to push up the value of stock he owns in companies that manufacture hydroxychloroquine. However, Philip Bump in The Washington Post argues that although Trump and his family do own some shares in one such company, the French firm Sanofi, they are worth $1,500 at most – mere ‘loose change’ for a billionaire.[2] Moreover, Trump has been equally willing to promote other drugs. The hype is best viewed as part of Trump’s effort to reassure the public and prepare the ground for an early end to the lockdown. 



The most promising drug



It is generally agreed that the most promising drug is remdesivir, the patent for which is owned by Gilead Sciences, an American company specializing in antiviral drugs. Originally developed to treat Ebola during the West African epidemic of 2014–16, it was no longer being manufactured when the current pandemic broke out, though the company still had a small inventory. Production has now resumed and is undergoing rapid expansion.[1]



A preliminary study was based on data for 53 patients with severe Covid-19 who received at least one dose of remdesivir over the period from January 25 to March 7. At follow-up 2—3 weeks later, two-thirds of the patients (36) showed improvement; almost half (25) had improved enough to be discharged; and only 7 had died – an impressively low death rate given the severity of these cases. Admittedly, this was not a properly organized clinical trial: it was very small and had no control group.[2] 



An interim report of an ongoing clinical trial at a Chicago hospital, published on April 16, revealed even more encouraging results. At this hospital 125 people with Covid-19, including 113 with a severe form of the disease, received daily infusions of remdesivir. Nearly all made rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms and were discharged within a week. Equally encouraging results have been obtained in the UK. Results like these suggest that it may not be premature to speak of a ‘cure’ for Covid-19.



Six large clinical trials are now underway. In March Gilead Sciences started two transnational trials – one for severe and one for moderate cases. In addition, it is supplying remdesivir without charge for the other four trials: one in the US, one in Europe, and two in China’s Hubei Province. 



‘Compassionate use’



Prior to completion of clinical trials and approval by the US Food & Drug Administration (or by the corresponding regulatory agency in another country), an ‘investigational drug’ – which may be a new drug or, as in this instance, an old drug being put to new use – is not usually made available to treat patients, apart from those enrolled in the clinical trials. An exception is made for so-called ‘compassionate use’ – also known as ‘early access,’ ‘expanded access,’ ‘managed access,’ or ‘emergency access.’ The approval of the FDA must be sought in each individual case. The application is submitted either by the patient’s physician after obtaining the consent of the manufacturer or by the manufacturer at the physician’s request. Approval is subject to the following conditions:



There is an immediate threat to the patient’s life. No comparable or satisfactory alternative treatment is available. The patient cannot be enrolled in a clinical trial of the drug. The potential benefit to the patient justifies the risks of treatment with the drug. Providing the drug will not interfere with clinical trials that could support development of the drug or marketing approval for it.

It is true that this system was not designed with pandemics in mind. Under normal circumstances applications for compassionate use are few and far between. Nevertheless, it provides a legal device that could be used to get timely help to a much larger number of people when an epidemic does occur.  



Gilead Sciences began accepting physicians’ requests for compassionate use of remdesivir on January 25. As the existence of the drug was not widely known, the number of requests was initially manageable. However, on March 20 Trump talked on his show about remdesivir and drew attention to the option of compassionate use. The result was a sudden flood of new requests. On March 23, the company complained that it had been ‘overwhelmed’ by this flood and suspended intake of new requests except in cases where the patient was a pregnant woman or a child under the age of 18. The number of patients who had received the drug for ‘compassionate use’ by the end of March was ‘over 1,000.’  



In an open letter published on March 28, Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day announced that the company was switching to a new program for receiving and processing requests for ‘compassionate use.’ It was going to build up a network of ‘active sites’ (or ‘study locations’) – hospitals, medical centers, and research centers participating in the program.[3] Requests could now be submitted in batches, but they had to come from one of these hospitals or centers. ‘While it will take some time to build a network of active sites,’ wrote O’Day, ‘this approach will ultimately accelerate emergency access for more people.’ 



Ultimately. One of those who did not get emergency access was Dr. Frank Gabrin, who on March 31 became America’s first Emergency Room physician to die of Covid-19. He worked at East Orange General Hospital in New Jersey. Although New Jersey is the state with the largest number of ‘active sites,’ this hospital is not one of them. 



Profit-making strategy



There is no need to accept the company’s public explanations at face value. Gilead Sciences is clearly very good at projecting a ‘caring’ image. However, had it really wanted to bring timely help to as many patients as possible, it could surely have hired and trained the additional staff needed to handle the increased flow of requests. The switch to the new program had the initial effect of halting the flow almost completely. The flow would then increase again, but only gradually, as the network of active sites expanded. This gives the company time. Ultimately – in fact, fairly soon – clinical trials will be completed, the company will obtain FDA approval to start marketing the drug, and there will be no further need for any ‘compassionate use’ programs. What we have here is actually a cleverly designed profit-making strategy.  



It is not because the drug is in short supply that Gilead Sciences is slowing down the flow of requests for ‘compassionate use.’ In January 2020 the company had an inventory of 5,000 courses of remdesivir – that is, enough to administer a ten-day course of treatment to 5,000 patients. But by late March over 30,000 courses were on hand. The company aims to produce over 140,000 courses by the end of May, over 500,000 by October, over a million by December, and (if required) several million in 2021 (see here).



The size of the inventory was 30,000 courses in late March and must have reached about 50,000 by mid-April. The number needed for the clinical trials does not exceed 10,000.[4] Even allowing a couple of thousand courses for the expanded-access program, most of the inventory is being held back for later on.



Results from the clinical trials being conducted by Gilead Sciences are expected in late April (for patients with severe Covid-19) and May (for patients with moderate Covid-19). In view of the urgency of the situation, perhaps the FDA will give approval for marketing before the end of May. By then the inventory will contain some 140,000 courses, with production continuing at a rate of 50–100,000 courses per month. 



Why is Gilead Sciences holding back most of its accumulating inventory when so many people are in desperate need of the drug? The drug courses assigned for clinical trials and for ‘compassionate use’ at the present stage have to be provided free of charge, as the FDA has not yet given its approval to market remdesivir. Once it does, however, Gideon Sciences can be counted upon to sell its accumulated stock as fast as it can, while continuing to expand its productive capacity. The company will set a high price and make a lot of money. 



In the past companies in India and China have manufactured generic forms of expensive Western drugs for sale at lower prices, leading to conflicts over intellectual property rights between these countries and the United States. The same thing is set to happen with this drug. In February it was reported that BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology Company, based in Suzhou in China’s Jiangsu Province, had succeeded in producing a copy of remdesivir (here). The Wuhan Institute of Virology has also applied for a Chinese patent on the drug (here).   



Notes



[1] Information is provided on the company’s website.



  [2] Twenty-two patients were in the United States, 22 in Europe or Canada, and 9 in Japan. Jonathan Grein et al., ‘Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19,’ The New England Journal of Medicine, April 10. 



[3] At the time of writing (April 16), 46 sites are active in the following countries: the United States (31), France (4), Germany (2), Italy (3), Spain (2), Switzerland (2), and the UK (2). In the US the states with the largest numbers of sites are New Jersey (8), California (7), New York (5), Florida (3), and Louisiana (3). See here.  



  [4] I am not in a position to calculate this figure exactly. The total number of participants in the six trials is 8,301. Some subgroups receive only a placebo; others receive courses of 5, 10, 15, or 20 days. Sizes are not given for all the subgroups. 

Stephen Shenfield

General secretary of the World Socialist Party of the United States



TV Streaming Steaming Ahead

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Netflix has become a more valuable company than the US oil giant ExxonMobil , as the streaming service benefits from increased viewing of television and films during coronavirus lockdowns.



Shares in Netflix moved 5% higher in early trading on Wall Street on Thursday to a new record high of $448 (£360), taking its market value to $196bn. 
At the same time ExxonMobil’s share price fell 3% to $39.30, giving it a market capitalisation of $166bn as the price of oil slumped. As recently as 2013 the company was the most valuable in the world, but is now worth about 13% as much as tech titans Apple and Microsoft.
Netflix was boosted by lockdown measures were imposed around the world. Rivals, such as Amazon’s Prime Video, with an estimated 118 million users, and Disney’s new streaming service, also benefited from new users.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/16/netflix-now-worth-more-than-exxonmobil-as-value-reaches-187bn

“They only care about their money.”

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Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory – a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River – is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city. 



 On 15 April, Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor’s office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state.



The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed “essential” and must remain on the front lines. 



The workforce at Smithfield is made up largely of immigrants and refugees from places like Burma, Ethiopia, Nepal, Congo and El Salvador. There are 80 different languages spoken in the plant. Estimates of the mean hourly wage range from $14-16 an hour. Those hours are long, the work is gruelling, and standing on a production line often means being less than a foot away from your co-workers on either side.



If employees were to quit, they would be ineligible for unemployment. Advocates are hearing from visa-holders who fret that even if they were to apply for unemployment, they might be considered “public charges” which could render them ineligible for permanent residency under a new rule enacted by the Trump administration last year. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act excludes anyone living in a mixed-status household with an undocumented family member. 



“They do not qualify for anything,” said Taneeza Islam, the executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace and an immigration lawyer. “Their choice is between putting food on the table, and going to work and getting exposed.”



The BBC spoke to half a dozen current and former Smithfield employees who say that while they were afraid to continue going to work, deciding between employment and their health has been an impossible choice. 



“I have a lot of bills. My baby’s coming soon – I have to work,” said one 25-year-old employee whose wife is eight months pregnant. “If I get a positive, I’m really worried I can’t save my wife.” 



“Smithfield – they don’t care about employees,” said Neela. “They only care about their money.”



According to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.



According to Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, union officials approached management at Smithfield in early March to request multiple measures to increase worker safety, including staggering shifts and lunch schedules, which can pack 500 workers into the factory cafeteria at once. He said they also requested personal protective gear like masks and overcoats, temperature-checking at the doors and sanitation stations.



“This was before anyone at the plant tested positive,” said Caraway. “Management dragged their feet, didn’t take worker demands seriously.”



“If the federal government wants the company to stay open, then whose responsibility is it to make sure these companies are doing what they have to do to keep them safe?” said Nancy Reynoza, founder of Que Pasa Sioux Falls, a Spanish-language news source who said she’s been hearing from distraught Smithfield workers for weeks.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52311877





Share-holders in clover

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Britain’s biggest companies handed out almost half a trillion pounds in dividends and share buybacks in the years before the coronavirus crisis struck, according to a report warning that the scale of the pay-outs has undermined their resilience.



According to research from the Common Wealth thinktank, around £400bn was paid in dividends and £61bn of cash returned to investors in share buybacks between 2011 and 2018 by the 100 biggest UK companies.

Analysing dividends for the 100 largest non-financial, UK-domiciled firms on a database managed by the credit ratings agency Moody’s, it found that payouts had steadily risen since 2011 and were equivalent to 68% of the companies’ net profits.



The study also found that 700 executives at 86 of the companies held a collective £6bn in shares at their firms, representing nearly £8.5m per director.



Mathew Lawrence, an academic, said: “Shifts in ownership and company rules have turned the corporation into an engine of wealth extraction for senior management and shareholders. Companies have become less resilient and more unequal as a result.”



As expected though the only proposals being offered is not system change but to “transform ownership to make business democratic and sustainable” – to fix capitalism, an impossible task rather than do away with it.



 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/400bn-paid-in-dividends-by-uk-companies-before-coronavirus-crisis

India’s forgotten health workers

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900,000 female community health workers are on the frontline as part of India’s battle against Covid-19. But they are poorly paid, ill-prepared and vulnerable to attacks and social stigma.



“The government is paying us 1,000 rupees ($13; £10) a month for corona-related work. That is 30 rupees daily for putting our life in danger.” says Alka Nalawade, a community health worker in the western state of Maharashtra. “The value of our life is just 30 rupees [less than $1], according to the government,” she adds. Ms Nalawade is among the state’s 70,000 Ashas, short for Accredited Social Health Activists. She is a single mother, and has been doing this job for 10 years now in Pawarwadi village, where she lives.  Ms Nalawade says, the compensation does not reflect the dangers she and her colleagues face.

Ashas are drawn from local and largely rural communities, and are a crucial element in India’s primary and community health programmes. They go door-to-door educating people about maternal and child health, contraception, immunisation and sanitation, as well as enrolling them in health programmes and monitoring the results. Their role in the fight against Covid-19 is not that different – they visit the homes they have been assigned, educate families about isolation, and monitor people for symptoms of the virus. But the risk is far greater than anything they have faced before. For one, they don’t have the right gear, including masks or sanitiser. 
Several Ashas told the BBC that they use cotton masks which they wash daily so they can re-use them – and for sanitiser, they have a bottle of spirit that they mix with water. One of them, Karuna Shinde, says she carries a scarf with her, which she uses to cover her face. 
Rajendra Yadravkar, Maharashtra’s junior health minister explains, “Ashas have been putting their lives in danger on a meagre salary. They should be protected. It’s the government’s responsibility to support them.”
They also face stigma for simply trying to do their job – people often stop them from entering their homes and make them stand outside while answering their questions for fear that the Ashas may infect them.
“We are working for the people, but if the same people are going to behave with us this way, what are we supposed to do?” asks Ms Nalawade.
The women also complain that they receive little recognition for their efforts.
“Nobody even mentions our work,” says Anjana Wankhede. “From the prime minister to the chief minister, everybody only praises doctors and police.”
She says that’s unfair since the government relies on the data that Ashas collect daily.
“We visit each and every household and provide these numbers to the government. The government talks based on these numbers, but they don’t talk about the Ashas who collect the numbers.”






Food Rots While People Go Hungry

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U.S. food pantries have faced unprecedented demand while billions of dollars in produce has gone to waste due to supply chain disruptions from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Farmers, without their usual foodservice markets, are being forced to dump milk, eggs, and produce—even while there is an urgent, unprecedented need at food banks. And while there are efforts underway to address the gap between production and distribution, in between are many questions about how our food supply and distribution systems are set up—or not—to respond to disruption.



 About $5 billion of fresh fruits and vegetables have already gone to waste, The Hill reported, citing the industry trade group Produce Marketing Association. 



 The group’s CEO Cathy Burns said that “there’s product literally wasting on the ground and then you have a whole population of people that are in dire need of nutritious foods. We have hundreds of thousands of farmers sitting on product,” said Burns. “Because they don’t have the financial means to ship and distribute it throughout the country, there is good, nutritious food going to waste while there are thousands of people going hungry.”



 Coronavirus-related lockdowns and business closures this year have led to “staggering” levels of job loss, roughly 22 million people have applied for unemployment insurance since mid-March. Those job and income losses have driven up demand for assistance from U.S. food banks and soup kitchens. In recent days, social media have been filled with images of people seeking help from food banks.



“This year, the COVID-19 crisis is driving more of our neighbors into food insecurity and putting a strain on food banks to provide more meals,” Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said. “Never has the charitable food system faced such tremendous challenge, and we need all the resources we can get to help our neighbors during this terrible time.”



Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the United States, has a national network of 200 food banks. A recent survey of those food banks found that through April 1, 98% saw an increase in demand, 59% had less inventory, 67% needed more volunteers, 95% had higher operational expenses, and 37% faced “an immediate critical funding shortfall.”



“The only thing we can do is ration and give families less,” Eric Cooper, president of a food bank in San Antonio said of the rising demand for food aid. “I would challenge our federal government to put systems in place that allow for wasted food to go to families we are feeding. It’s unconscionable.”



Food distribution is falling apart, as is the medical equipment supply chain. It is time to do things differently. These developments should push people towards a fundamental rethink of how things are done. Tragically,  working people remain blind to other possibilities. The combination of both tradional and innovative farming techniques can feed the world, the internet enables global cooperation, robots will free people from the drudgery of physical and mental effort to benefit all.

Flint – Not Forgotten

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VICE have published an “astounding” and “important” exclusive report on how Rick Snyder, a Republican who served as Michigan’s governor from 2011 to 2019, “knew about Flint’s toxic water—and lied about it.”




The report, based on a year-and-a-half investigation, comes almost six years after an emergency manager appointed by Snyder switched Flint’s water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River. Since that move on April 25, 2014, city residents have endured health consequences resulting from a deadly Legionella pneumophila bacterial outbreak and exposure to heavy metals and cancer-causing contaminants. The waterborne bacterial disease may have killed at least 115 people in 2014 and 2015, and potentially more whose pneumonia wasn’t officially considered Legionnaires’ disease, the illness caused by Legionella. In addition to the outbreak, Flint’s water supply was contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, harmful bacteria, carcinogens, and other toxic components. This wreaked havoc on Flint residents, leaving them with a laundry list of illnesses, including kidney and liver problems, severe bone and muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems, loss of teeth, autoimmune diseases, neurological deficiencies, miscarriages, Parkinson’s disease, severe fatigue, seizures, and volatile mood disorders. Beyond this, the long-term effects of heavy-metal poisoning takes years to develop, meaning many ill residents’ conditions are worsening as the years go on.


VICE reveals a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint’s deadly water from going public—while there was still time to save lives—and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines. The report detailed actions of local and state officials both leading up to and during the public health crisis, which continues today. VICE noted that with Flint about to enter its sixth year of the water crisis, “the clock for justice is also ticking.” Unless the Republican-controlled state legislature intervenes, the statute of limitations for filing new felony misconduct-in-office charges will run out next week. 


Karen Weaver, then-mayor of Flint,  told VICE that the governor’s office repeatedly dangled “a pot of money for different things” and pressured her to publicly claim that the city’s water was safe. The outlet reported that “after repeated attempts by the Snyder administration to get Mayor Weaver to cooperate proved unsuccessful, the promised funding suddenly became unavailable.”




The report highlighted a few findings from the Flint criminal investigation documents:


Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.


Snyder had knowledge of the Legionella outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, six months after the water switch—and 16 months earlier than he claimed to have learned of the deadly outbreak in testimony under oath before Congress.


Communication among Snyder, his top officials, and the state health department spiked in October 2014 around the same time state environmental and health officials traded emails and calls about the Legionella outbreak in Flint.



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/16/flint-water-crisis-enters-sixth-year-astounding-report-exposes-lies-ex-gov-rick

Camouflaging their Class

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As the top 1% of the population pulls economically further ahead from the rest, elites, it would appear, are keen to stress their “ordinariness” as they become increasingly sensitive to public opinion, and afraid of being labelled “snobbish, self-interested and out of touch”.



Researchers examining entries in Who’s Who and Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs  found a correlation between elites embracing the more common pursuits of football and pop music at the same time as rising inequality. Over the 120-year period, they found a significant shift from traditional aristocratic pursuits, such as hunting and opera, to more “everyman” interests of family and pets. The trend was particularly marked in the past 30 years.



The research  by Dr Sam Friedman, an associate professor at the department of sociology at the London School of Economics, and Dr Aaron Reeves, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s department of social policy and intervention found elites were more recently adopting a blend of the highbrow and ordinary, suggesting an attempt to find commonality with the rest of the population, while still signifying their eliteness.



It was most clear from the 1990s onwards, said Friedman, “coinciding neatly with the continuing rise of the top 1%. Of course, this is only an association. Yet, we would speculate that these patterns may be connected. Put simply, as elites have pulled away economically, there is mounting evidence that they are increasingly insecure about their moral legitimacy, and increasingly sensitive to public concern they are snobbish, self-interested and out of touch.”



How elites presented their cultural lives had become a key PR battleground, he said. “Performing ordinariness may provide a very effective means of shoring up authenticity in an era of rising inequality.”



Friedman likened it to Boris Johnson declaring his hobby of making model buses during last year’s Conservative leadership campaign, “when he actually enjoys incredibly highbrow painting and Greek literature”, which he chose not to talk about.

Reeves said it mattered what people played on Desert Island Discs, which was an even more public performance of cultural identity. “Tony Blair famously convened a focus group – as he did for many things – to help him calculate what to play,” he said. Reeves said: “The move towards mundane and everyday leisure pursuits doesn’t necessarily mean elites are actually becoming ordinary, of course.”More, it revealed how they wished to present themselves. Researchers found traditional aristocratic recreations, like horse-riding and polo, were still mentioned alongside the more commonplace.



Elites were, perhaps, trying to forge a sense of commonality and connection, added Friedman. “And the way they do that is to try to cultivate a cultural profile that they feel looks like the ‘everyman’…”



Who’s Who has just 0.05% of the UK population featured.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/apr/16/study-whos-who-suggests-elite-keen-to-convey-ordinariness




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