A standoff between British Gas  and the GMB trade union will come to a head on 1 April, when scores of the engineers responsible for servicing and repairing office and home boilers will be forced to accept longer working hours or lose their jobs entirely. Hundreds of engineers could be dismissed in this bitter nine-month long “fire and rehire” battle.

British Gas set out the fire and rehire plans last summer to “streamline” its employment contracts and increase productivity. Trade unions said the plan amounted to “bullying” by threatening to “set fire to jobs, terms and conditions”.“For the last nine months it has been the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. The pressure we’re under is terrible,” says one veteran British Gas engineer. “Honestly, it’s made me ill. It’s made everybody ill. We just can’t understand how badly we’ve been treated – why?”

 This strike was not about money, it was about time. Under the new terms, full-time engineers would be required to work an extra three hours a week, 40 hours in total, and would not be paid a higher rate to work when required on weekends and public holidays.

“A kick in the teeth is probably the best way to put it,” says Ciara Arrowsmith, 37, who resigned from British Gas in protest last month after 13 years as a service and repair engineer. “It just became a really toxic atmosphere. I felt completely betrayed and it wasn’t good for my mental health. I had to go on to medication…”

For workers at British Gas, faced with a choice between working for less and unemployment, there are less than three days left to decide.

‘A kick in the teeth’: British Gas engineers face losing their jobs or longer working hours | Centrica | The Guardian

 Shanna Swan is a professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai school of medicine in New York City, studying fertility trends. In 2017 she documented how average sperm counts among western men have more than halved in the past 40 years.

“People are recognising we have a reproductive health crisis, but they say it’s because of delayed childbearing, choice or lifestyle – it can’t be chemical. I want people to recognise it can. I am not saying other factors aren’t involved. But I am saying chemicals play a major causal role. It is difficult to use that word, “cause”, but it’s a body of evidence. We have mechanisms, animal studies, and multiple human studies.”

 “If you follow the curve from the 2017 sperm-decline meta-analysis, it predicts that by 2045 we will have a median sperm count of zero. It is speculative to extrapolate, but there is also no evidence that it is tapering off. This means that most couples may have to use assisted reproduction.”

Shanna Swan: ‘Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045’ | Fertility problems | The Guardian

Michael Barton who was head of crime operations for policing nationally, and chief constable of Durham constabulary until 2019, plus, Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police and former vice-chair of the police chiefs’ body warned that new protest laws move Britain dangerously in the direction of “paramilitary policing” and that UK ministers are “flexing their muscles via their police forces” like repressive regimes around the world.

 They told the Guardian they held deep concerns about the dangers the new laws posed for civil liberties already reeling from a year of emergency Covid laws. The police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, currently passing through parliament, will afford new powers to officers to tackle protests, including measures aimed at static protests and a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”, which is in part defined as causing “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”. Police will be able to impose a start and finish time and set noise limits at static protests and apply these rules to a demonstration by just one person.

Barton said the move represented a change in the British style of policing by consent, with officers being “citizens in uniform” who are part of their communities and not above them “because police officers are telling people what to do, not negotiating with them”. He added: “I don’t see anything wrong with the current laws. Protests sometimes means people are inconvenienced.”

Barton said: “I’m not in favour of even more restrictive measures. Surely after an historically unprecedented year-long curfew, in peacetime, the government could show some common sense and gratitude for such incredible forbearance to allow civil liberties to once again flourish. Or are they happy to be linked to the repressive regimes currently flexing their muscles via their police forces?

“Fortunately, in the UK we are not a paramilitary-style police force. But these powers dangerously edge in that direction. Police chiefs will be seen as the arbiters of what is and is not allowed when it comes to protest. Democracies thrive on protest. This government has condemned what has happened in the Ukraine but those same protesters would fall foul of our new laws.”

Fahy, another former senior policing leader, said the proposed protest laws were a mistake and posed a danger for policing. He said lessons from the past suggested danger, citing the quashing this week of 1970s convictions of trade union activists including the actor Ricky Tomlinson as a warning from history.

He explained, “It is short-term and politically driven,” he said. “It is a reaction to what happened with Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter [protests], in the same way Ricky Tomlinson was a reaction to the industrial strife of the 1970s. Policing was drawn into a particular stance and pose. “It reminds me of the miners’ strike when policing was mobilised for a political reason. It took policing a long time to recover. Policing should be very careful not to be drawn into the situation of being arbiters of which protests can go ahead, and become stuck in the middle. The policing of protest can cause long-term damage.” Fahy added: “Policing is not always about the majority, sometimes it is about protecting rights of the minority. I’m not sure a mature democracy should have the police deciding which protests should go ahead.”

Metropolitan police were accused of heavy-handed tactics at a vigil on Clapham Common, London, in memory of 33-year-old Sarah Everard. In Bristol, riot police were deployed in what was seen by many as an over-reaction to the situation. While in Manchester, Kill the Bill protesters were forcibly removed and arrested  in a peaceful blockage of the tram system

Protest laws move UK towards paramilitary policing, says former chief | Police | The Guardian

 The United States of America is victim of its own propaganda. Since being founded, the USA has always depicted itself as a beacon of democracy and liberty, a land of opportunity and hope where a person can accomplish rags to riches through hard work and initiative. For many the American Dream is viewed as a reality and can we be surprised that the Statue of Liberty’s inscription is taken literally:

The impoverished peoples in countries south of the United States suffering deprivations unimaginable to the majority of Americans have sought escape from failed nation-states, crime ridden societies and the encroaching effects of climate change to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. 

However, rather than a welcome, they meet with a wall, not just the physical one Trump tried to build but a wall of indifference and outright rejection. Political commentators declare that America can no longer afford to accept any more newcomers, no matter how ‘deserving’ or contrary to international treaties it has signed up to. The present pandemic is even being used as justification to turn away the needy and the vulnerable. The change of president has brought a superficial change of policy at the southern border but it has not departed from being one of deterrence, albeit Biden’s approach is ‘softer’ than Trump’s draconian hard attitude. Biden remains attached to the belief that the solution is better management to slow down and reverse the flow of peoples wishing to make the USA their new home. He still does not treat the migration of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans as a genuine humanitarian crisis where the proper response would be to facilitate and expedite the reception of these desperate people. America has dealt with mass migrations in the past such as the Dustbowl and the Black exodus from the Southern states, not to mention the influx of European migrants arriving at Ellis Island. The United States is now far better placed to allocate the necessary resources.

A common argument made by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, but even by some on the liberal left, is that the United States is full, that it is already an over-crowded country and no longer able to take any extra people. Such claims are providing ‘intellectual’ succor to the mass-murderer, Patrick Crusius, who targeted Hispanics and killed 23 at El Paso in Texas.

But just how many is too many? 

Using 2019 figures and the present migrant bottleneck US state of Texas as an example

There is approximately 7,268,730,000 people on the planet. The land-mass of Texas is 268,820 square miles (7,494,271,488,000 square feet). If we divide 7,494,271,488,000 square feet by 7,268,730,000 people, we get 1,031 square feet per person. This is enough space for everyone on earth to live in a town-house while altogether fitting on a landmass the size of Texas. And we’re not even accounting for the average four-person family who would most likely share a home. 

Of course, there are large tracts of Texas uninhabitable and we have not included the necessary space for the resources to support such a population. This is just to give an idea of how it isn’t actual space that is lacking but to show that America is not running out of room any time soon.

Again, we can compare actual density of the United States by taking the example of New York City which is far and away the most populous city in the U.S., home to an estimated 8.5 million people in 2016. More people live in this one city than in the entire states of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, Vermont, and the District of Columbia combined. For sure, New York City is rather crammed, but it is certainly not an uncomfortable place to live in terms of space as many New Yorkers would affirm. Besides, many cities in other countries are far more densely populated.

New York City consists of five boroughs spanning five counties, the most densely populated of which is New York County. This county, which consists principally of the island of Manhattan, is far and away the most densely populated county in the U.S., housing 72,000 people per square mile. At that population density, the entire population of the United States could reside in the tiny State of Connecticut. Brooklyn has slightly less than half the population density of Manhattan. The top four most densely populated counties in America are all in New York City.

If all Americans lived at the same population density as the average population density of all five of New York City’s boroughs (approximately 28,000 people per square mile), we’d all fit comfortably in the combined area of Delaware and Maryland.

Or we can take the 10 million plus residents who call Los Angeles County home. If you are familiar with Los Angeles County, you know that life at this level of urbanization is not too uncomfortable nor unbearable, providing ample parks and open spaces. At a similar population density of Los Angeles County, the entire U.S. population could fit inside the state of New Mexico.

Again, in reality we would still need to figure in access to adequate water resources and would need much more land area to account for agricultural purposes, public services, transportation and, of course, sustainability and conservation. But, this is merely another thought experiment to demonstrate that if America has enough room to fit its entire population comfortably into an area the size of New Mexico, the US has enough space for far many more people from outside its borders unlike what the anti-immigration lobby assert. 

If truth is to be said, the USA’s fertility rate is falling below the replacement rate for the existing population and only because of immigration has an actual population decline been avoided and a future demographic problem averted. Rather than US politicians reacting with sanctions to turn away arrivals, for the health and wealth of the nation, they should be welcoming many more newcomers. 

Numbers don’t matter, the type of system matters. It is not overpopulation that is the problem but the chronic underproduction that is a built in feature of capitalism. The ‘overpopulation problem’ is really a misuse of resources problem. Capitalism, as a system of rationing via the market, is justified in people’s minds by a belief in scarcity. ‘There isn’t enough to go round’, so we must be restricted in what we are allowed to consume. It has become a cliché to speak of, ’this overcrowded country.’ 

We should not give the impression that everything is easy, that a massive expansion of available resources is a simple matter. For one thing, there maybe environmental implications. But a socialist society is the best-equipped to handle these implications and to strike a balance. Not only is capitalism in effect a system of artificial scarcity, it is also a system of organised waste. Socialist society will use the resources of the Earth to ensure that every man, woman and child is amply fed, clothed and sheltered. Capitalism cannot do this — it does not exist for this purpose.

I end by quoting the great American socialist Eugene V. Debs:

If Socialism, international, revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the exploited and oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare. Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.

Sources

Texas accommodating the world’s population: Overpopulation Is A Myth | We Are Change

NYC and LA population densities: Overpopulation? Is America Running Out of Space to Live? No. Here’s Why | LifeNews.com

The Debs quotation comes from the July 1910 issue of International Socialist Review. For an account of the development of Debs’ views on immigration, see this blog post.

Taken from the World Socialist Party of the United State website

Immigrants: how many is too many? | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)

 Nigel Farage, Brexiteer, has criticised climate activists Greta Thunberg for “alarmism” and said wind power is “economic insanity. ” He holds a long record of scepticism if not outright climate change denialism. 

In 2013, he told the European parliament that “we may have made one of the biggest and most stupid collective mistakes in history by getting so worried about global warming”.

challenging the overwhelming consensus of the global scientific community as well as international bodies such as the United Nations, Farage claimed that “science was not settled” on the climate, and said that “measures we are taking to combat what may or not be a problem are damaging our citizens”.

Farage blames the “explosion” of the population in countries such as China for increasing global emissions, rather than accept the generally higher per capita emissions of citizens of richer countries. Under Farage’s leadership UKIP consistently argued against climate action in the European Parliament. 

The Dutch Green Business Group which trades and plants trees in the lucrative carbon capture market has now hired Farage for his services in introducing political contacts and his supposed skills in mass communication of ideas, or more truthfully, his ability to deceive.

Carbon offsetting theoretically allows polluting activities to be “carbon neutral”, but many environmental campaigners argue that it offers a front for polluters to continue their business without directly addressing their emissions.

 Farage’s new employers claim that they will “harness free market forces and the access to capital needed to rapidly accelerate the reforestation of Earth”. Reforestation “represents an exciting opportunity for the capital markets and for private individuals”, according to the website. It added that it will “act in great service to all life and to the Creator”.

A politician willing to prostitute himself for filthy lucre does not surprise the blog in the slightest. A business willing to exercise hypocrisy when there is an opportunity to make more money does not come as a surprise this blog,

Nigel Farage appointed to advisory board of green finance firm | Nigel Farage | The Guardian

 What’s new with the over-population argument and its proponents. Very little as this Socialist Standard article from 1927 suggests.

A pamphlet presents the case for reducing Britain’s population so to increase its prosperity. It is not only familiar to modern ears but is accompanied by all the usual fallacies. R. B. Kerr, the pamphlet’s author, ignores the enormous inequality of wealth existing within every nation, whether thickly or thinly populated.  He blames over-population as the cause of modern wars.  Kerr dismisses the Socialist Party’s  contention that nature is sufficiently bountiful for our needs.

There obviously can be problems with population densities, but the problem of working peoples’ poverty is not one of these. 

 Adar Poonawalla is chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine producer, which even before coronavirus struck was making more than 1.5bn jabs a year for everything from polio and diphtheria to tetanus, BCG, hepatitis B and the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccinations.

 He and his family extraordinarily wealthy. They are now the sixth richest family in India with an estimated $15bn (£11bn) fortune. The family home is Lincoln House, a Mumbai mansion which is the former US embassy to India. At $113m it was the most expensive Indian home ever sold when they bought it in 2015. And this week he signed a deal to rent a London house, a Mayfair mansion for a record £50,000 a week. The property, which at 2,3oo sq metres (25,000 sq ft) is 24 times the size of the average English home, comes with an adjoining guest house and backs on to one of Mayfair’s “secret gardens”. He is renting it from Polish billionaire Dominika Kulczyk, who bought it for £57m last year.

Poonawalla, who was educated at £30,000-a-year St Edmund’s School in Canterbury and the University of Westminster. He travels by helicopter and private jet, a converted Airbus A320 . He owns paintings by Picasso, Dalí, Rembrandt and Rubens, and has a collection of 35 rare luxury cars including several Ferraris, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, as well as a Mercedes S350 converted into a replica Batmobile.

Producing vaccines was not Poonawalla’s idea. His father, Cyrus, founded SII in 1966 as a sideline to his 81-hectare (200-acre) thoroughbred racehorse stables Poonawalla Stud. (Serum from purified horse blood was used in the production of early vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, and scarlet fever.)

 After he watched a Bill Gates talk in 2015, in which the billionaire Microsoft co-founder-turned philanthropist warned that the world was not prepared for a new viral pandemic, e doubled the firm’s production facilities and began producing more vaccines for developing countries on behalf of the World Health Organization and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), the vaccine charity supported by Gates and of which Poonawalla is a board member.

“Maybe not in my lifetime, but at least in my children’s lifetimes, there’s going to be another global pandemic,” he told Bloomberg. “And I’m willing to bet anything that pandemic will be far worse than this.”

The world’s misfortune guarantees the wealth of his dynasty well into the future.

‘Vaccine prince’: the Indian billionaire set to make Covid jabs for the UK | Pharmaceuticals industry | The Guardian

 PM Boris Johnson  attributed the UK’s vaccine success to “capitalism” and “greed”. It’s extremely difficult to see how greed will help ensure the vaccine is made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge.

 Mariana Mazzucato is professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, and the founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) explained that private enterprise and entrepreneurship  was not the key to the rapid development and roll-out of a COVID-19 vaccine. The private sector takes the plaudits but more importantly it also takes the profits.

The “AstraZeneca” vaccine was created by scientists at the University of Oxford and developed and distributed by the pharmaceutical giant.

The leading six vaccine candidates have received an estimated $12bn (£8.7bn) of taxpayer and public money, including $1.7bn for the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab and $2.5bn for the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate. 

 Governments have committed to guarantees that private companies that successfully produce a Covid-19 vaccine are amply rewarded with huge orders.

 Britain’s lack of capacity to manufacture sufficient doses is far from a given. Britain’s long-term failure to support its domestic manufacturing base reflected in recent quarrels between the EU and UK over the supply of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab. Prior to the crisis, the UK had been disinterested in investing in a domestic industrial base to mass-produce vaccines and other life science products.

Addressing pharmaceutical companies’ monopoly over the science, know-how and technology, and sharing this with as many countries as possible, will be essential to scaling up and decentralising vaccine manufacturing across the world. The World Health Organization has established a voluntary Covid-19 technology access pool (C-Tap) to enable governments and companies to do just this. In addition, South Africa and India have tabled a proposal to the WHO, backed by more than 100 countries, to temporarily waive intellectual property rights for Covid-related technologies. A recent poll found that 74% of people in the UK are supportive of these positions. In response, the government has overlooked the C-Tap and blocked the temporary waiver on intellectual property.

When greed is a government’s guiding philosophy, “vaccine apartheid” is all but guaranteed. Already, 56% of more than 455m doses of vaccine have gone to people in high-income countries and just 0.1% have been administered in the 29 lowest-income countries. Covax, which aims to vaccinate up to 27% of the population in 92 of the poorest countries, is unlikely to be enough on its own.

Capitalism won’t save us from Covid, no matter what Boris Johnson might think | Coronavirus | The Guardian

A well-intentioned yet a doomed futile political initiative has been launched in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

The Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICBM) Act, introduced in the House and Senate on Friday, would stop funding on the proposed new missile, known as the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) which is projected to cost a total of $264bn over its projected lifespan, and discontinue spending on a linked warhead modification program to transfer $1bn in funding from a controversial new intercontinental ballistic missile to the development of a universal Covid vaccine by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid) for development work on a universal coronavirus vaccine. 

“The United States should invest in a vaccine of mass prevention before another new land-based weapon of mass destruction,” Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, co-author of the bill, said. “The ICBM Act makes clear that we can begin to phase out the cold-war nuclear posture that risks accidental nuclear war while still deterring adversaries and assuring allies, and redirect those savings to the clear and present dangers presented by coronaviruses and other emerging and infectious diseases.”

“With all of the global challenges we face, the last thing we should be doing is giving billions to defense contractors to build missiles we don’t need to keep as a strong nuclear deterrence,” Ro Khanna, Democratic congressman from California and the bill’s co-author in the House, said.

In September 2020, Northrop Grumman was awarded an uncontested bid for the $13.3bn engineering, manufacturing and development phase of GBSD.

Even so the proponents of this bill aren’t totally humanitarian.  They seek an independent study to “explore viable technical solutions to extend the Minuteman III” intercontinental ballistic missile to 2050.

Democrats call for $1bn shift from weapons of mass destruction to ‘vaccine of mass prevention’ | US news | The Guardian

 DOVE OF PEACE

 In the USA a national moratorium on water shutoffs could have prevented almost half a million Covid infections and saved at least 9,000 lives, according to new research.

Amid pressure from public health experts and rights groups, hundreds of utilities and states suspended disconnections for overdue bills to ensure households kept running water for hand-washing and sanitation. But many refused, others let the bans expire after a few months, and Congress refused to step in with a national moratorium. 

This patchwork protection cost thousands of American lives between April and December last year, according to research by Cornell University and the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch (FWW). Researchers found that states which suspended disconnections significantly reduced their growth rates of Covid infections and deaths, compared to states without similar orders. The biggest reduction was seen in states with comprehensive bans covering all private and public utilities. If similar policies had been adopted across the US, the study model shows that Covid cases might have been reduced by 4% and deaths by 5.5% in the 41 states without a full moratorium.

“This research clearly shows us that the pain and suffering caused by the pandemic was exacerbated by political leaders who failed to take action to keep the water flowing for struggling families,” said Wenonah Hauter, FWW’s executive director.

 There is growing pressure on Michigan and New York state officials to extend their state moratoriums, both of which expire at the end of March. Failure to do so would leave a further 27 million people at risk of losing their water supplies for unpaid bills, as concerns grow about a potential third wave.

An investigation by the Guardian last year found millions of Americans were facing unaffordable bills even before the pandemic as ageing infrastructure, environmental clean-ups, changing demographics and the climate emergency fuelled exponential price hikes in almost every corner of the US. Federal funding for water systems has plummeted since peaking in 1977.  

Mildred Warner, a professor of local government at Cornell University, said: “This study shows the importance of a national standard for access to water, especially for low-income households.

Ban on US water shutoffs could have prevented thousands of Covid deaths – study | US news | The Guardian