England and Wales are less ethnically segregated than they have ever been. 

 Rather than treating the Myanmar military junta as a pariah state, many armament corporations are doing lucrative business with it. 

Companies in 13 countries across Europe, Asia and North America are assisting Myanmar’s junta – either indirectly or directly – by supplying materials to the stated-owned entity that produces the military’s weapons, a report by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) has found. The weapons are then being used to commit human rights atrocities.

The report by the SAC-M found that dozens of companies based in Austria, France, China, Singapore, India, Israel, Ukraine, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US were supplying raw materials, machines, technology and parts to the Directorate of Defence Industries (DDI), a state-owned company responsible for producing military equipment for Myanmar’s armed forces.

“It’s more or less a military-owned enterprise,” said Yanghee Lee, a former UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar and founder of the SAC-M, which is a group of independent experts, including former UN officials. She added that the DDI could use these imported supplies “to suppress and commit human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide”. Countries also have a role in ensuring their companies are not inadvertently facilitating human rights violations, according to the report. “Failing to do so makes them complicit in the Myanmar military’s barbaric crimes,” Lee said.

The Austrian company GFM Steyr is believed to have provided computer numerical control machines for the manufacturing of gun barrels.

 Dassault Systèmes in France is said to have supplied 3D electromagnetic simulation and analysis software, and computer aided design (CAD) software for 3D modelling. 

The Germany-based Siemens Digital Industries Software is thought to have provided multiple types of software.

 Ukraine’s Ukrspecexport is believed to have supplied types of transfer technology for the production of 2SIU self-propelled howitzers, BTR-4 armoured personnel carriers and MMT-40 light tanks.

“The fact that weapons used in … attacks have links to countries who are claiming ‘impartiality’ in the face of brutal and widespread repression of democratic aspirations is simply scandalous,” said Dr Gerard McCarthy, an assistant professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, who specialises in the politics of welfare and development in south-east Asia. “The hypocrisy here is mammoth,” McCarthy said. 

Myanmar’s democratically elected National Unity government had been “stonewalled internationally” in its attempts to procure defence capabilities, he said. “Yet many of the same countries claiming not to want to ‘intervene’ in Myanmar are turning a blind eye to their own companies directly and indirectly arming the dictatorship.”

Western firms facilitating production of Myanmar junta’s weapons, says report | Myanmar | The Guardian

 Dementia is a growth market with 1.6 million people predicted to be living with the disease by 2040, up from 900,000 today. Four out of five older people in residential care homes in England are now looked after by private providers – over 300,000 people – far more than in not-for-profit, council and NHS care homes

Gordon Sanders owns Runwood Homes, the UK’s sixth largest for-profit care home group, which charges residents more than £1,000 a week, with bills often covered by the taxpayer. Runwood bought many of its homes from local councils struggling to afford their operation including several from Essex county council in 2000, six from Nottinghamshire county council for £1.2m in 2011 and five from Doncaster council for £1.5m in 2012.

Problems reported by inspectors include not enough care workers, meaning residents unable to get to the toilet, stuck in bed, lacking activities, feeling “trapped” and “at risk of harm”. Inspectors heard reports of “awful” food and found some staff who were not trained or checked for criminal records. In one home, inspectors found residents were restrained by staff strapping a table top to a chair. Several of the homes breached Care Act regulations including for a lack of staff to look after people safely and protecting people from abuse. In 2018, an official investigation into Runwood’s Dunmurry care home in Northern Ireland found “a horrific catalogue of inhuman and degrading treatment”. The commissioner for older people for Northern Ireland concluded many people spent the last months of their lives “in appalling circumstances”.

Sanders paid himself at least £21m in five years despite inspectors finding multiple breaches of staffing, safety and leadership rules, with residents left in dirty incontinence pads and staff accused of rough handling. He owns a mansion in Essex and a flat in London’s Knightsbridge that Zoopla estimates suggest are worth about £4m and £4.7m respectively. In addition to £18.6m in dividends paid in the last five years to Sanders, who holds 100% of the share capital, Runwood’s accounts show Sanders drew £2.2m in salary in 2017, as the highest paid director. The highest paid director between 2019 and 2021 received £10.1m in total. That person is not named in accounts but may be Sanders, who served as chief executive until last summer, potentially pushing his five-year earnings to £31m.

Runwood also reported it accepted £12.3m in government grants in 2020 and 2021 related to the Covid pandemic, including for infection control and the job retention scheme. Over the same years it awarded salary to the highest paid director and dividends totalling £14.3m.

Another beneficiary has been the former chief executive Nadarajah Logeswaren, 59, who was paid £15.8m in 2018 “in relation to a long-term incentive scheme”, accounts show. Directors’ salaries and dividends drawn from the company totalled £57m over five years.

Runwood provides close to 5,000 beds. In the last two years for which accounts are available the firm made £43m in profit after tax on turnover of £301m – a 14% margin.

Profitability among the largest care home chains in the UK ranges from 11% to 42% of revenue. The five largest groups made £578m in profit in 2020 – a 22% average return when counted using the profit measure known as Ebitdar. Unlike Runwood, which is a family-owned business, several of the other large chains are owned by private equity firms, offshore investors or international investment trusts, making their profits harder to trace.

The earnings illuminate the cash generated by some care businesses at a time when there are warnings of a “national crisis” in care safety. More than half of residential homes in England offering dementia care reported on by inspectors last year were rated “inadequate” or requiring improvement – up from less than a third pre-pandemic.

There are 165,000 staff vacancies and rising in England’s care homes. That is equivalent to more than one in 10 posts unfilled. Wages averaged £9.50 an hour last April. Care assistant jobs are currently being advertised by Runwood at £10 an hour – the same as a McDonald’s crew member. The current national minimum wage for workers aged over 22 is £9.50 rising to £10.42 on 1 April.

Helen Wildbore, the director of the Relatives & Residents Association, said: “There will, rightly, be anger from residents and their families at these eye-watering payouts whilst they are suffering the impact of such poor care.

“Supporting people affected by dementia should be an honour and a privilege, not a way to make millions. This highlights the sad reality of care as a commodity, where owners have very little accountability to those they should be serving.”

Owner of UK care home group paid himself £21m despite safety concerns | Social care | The Guardian

 The government pledged to resettle family members in the UK of Afghans who helped the NATO occupying forces but at the moment there is no mechanism for them to do this.

More than 100 charities and campaigners have accused the government of abandoning Afghans in danger who were promised the right to reunite with family members in the UK.

It has been a year since the scheme for Afghans rescued under Operation Pitting, known as the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), was launched. The 6,300 Afghans who have been brought to the UK under the scheme but who had to leave their families behind in Afghanistan say their close relatives are in grave danger. They do not know if and when the government will allow them to be reunited with family members.

 Safe Passage International highlights that vulnerable family members – including women, girls and those from persecuted religious and minority ethnic communities – have been forced to live in hiding in Afghanistan, putting their lives at great risk. Campaigners are asking the prime minister to honour the commitments made to Afghan families. The government’s own guidance, published in September 2021, committed to helping families of members of those in the UK under ACRS. A factsheet for Afghans evacuated to the UK, published in April 2022, promised “further information will be made available in due course about options for reuniting’ with family”.

Beth Gardiner-Smith, the chief executive of Safe Passage International, said: “It’s been 18 months since families were torn apart when Kabul fell. The government has effectively abandoned Afghans, leaving them without a process to reunite with loved ones who are at risk despite repeated promises made. Afghans remain one of the top nationalities risking their lives to cross the Channel, but rather than create the safe routes that would allow them to reunite with family, the prime minister prefers to concentrate on new laws to further punish refugees.”

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said, “The lack of any visible action from government is only making the situation worse, with many of the people we support feeling increasingly helpless.”

UK government urged to honour pledge to Afghan refugees’ families | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

Oxfam revealed that almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%.

The charity said the best-off had pocketed $26tn (£21tn) in new wealth up to the end of 2021. That represented 63% of the total new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99% of people.

The report said that for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90%in the past two years, each billionaire gained roughly $1.7m.

Despite small falls in 2022, the combined fortune of billionaires had increased by $2.7bn a day.

Oxfam said for the first time in a quarter of a century the rise in extreme wealth was being accompanied by an increase in extreme poverty.

Policies introduced to combat the economic impact of Covid 19 – such as cuts in interest rates and the money creation process known as quantitative easing – boosted the value of property and shares, which tend to be owned by the rich.

Oxfam said:

Food and energy companies had more than doubled their profits in 2022, paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry.

Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue came from wealth taxes, and half the world’s billionaires lived in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.

A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7tn a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

 The super-rich were also key contributors to the climate crisis, the charity added, with a billionaire emitting a million times more carbon than the average person. They were also twice as likely to invest in polluting industries, compared with the average investor.

Danny Sriskandarajah, the chief executive of Oxfam GB commented: 

“The current economic reality is an affront to basic human values. Extreme poverty is increasing for the first time in 25 years and close to a billion people are going hungry but for billionaires, every day is a bonanza. Multiple crises have pushed millions to the brink while our leaders fail to grasp the nettle – governments must stop acting for the vested interests of the few. How can we accept a system where the poorest people in many countries pay much higher tax rates than the super-rich?”

Call for new taxes on super-rich after 1% pocket two-thirds of all new wealth | Inequality | The Guardian

 According to a report from the International Labour Organization (ILO), more workers will be forced to accept lower quality and poorly paid jobs this year due to the global economic slowdown, according to a report from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“The current slowdown means that many workers will have to accept lower quality jobs, often at very low pay, sometimes with insufficient hours”, the ILO’s 2023 World Employment and Social Outlook Trends report warned.

 ILO warned that “high and persistent” uncertainty over the state of the global economy was eroding real wages and pushing workers back into informal employment, which can involve street selling, domestic work or refuse-picking through landfills.

The slowdown will stall the previous rise in living standards for global workers who will have fewer opportunities available to them. 

“Progress in poverty reduction achieved over the previous decade has largely faltered and convergence in living standards and work quality is coming to a halt as productivity growth slows worldwide,” the report said.

The ILO said the ongoing shortage of better job opportunities was likely to worsen with the projected slowdown, “pushing workers into jobs of worse quality and depriving others of adequate social protection”.

The cost of living crisis, in which incomes have failed to keep up with rising inflation, is also pushing people into absolute or relative poverty across the world, the ILO explained. Price inflation was reducing demand for goods and services from low and middle-income countries, threatening employment and quality jobs.

The ILO said it does not expect the drop off in employment growth to be recovered until at least 2025, and raised further concerns over a projected slowdown in productivity, which it said was “essential for addressing the interlinked crises we face in purchasing power, ecological sustainability and human wellbeing”.

Global economic slowdown ‘to force more workers into poorly paid jobs’ | Global economy | The Guardian

 Oxfam has accused major food companies of “crisis profiteering” amid global economic upheaval. The organization asserted that food companies have used climate change, the surging cost of living, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to increase prices for consumers.

Food companies that have increased their profits as inflation surged should pay windfall taxes to help tackle global inequality, Oxfam said.

Oxfam analyzed 95 companies that posted windfall profits and found that most pass on these profits to shareholders while charging consumers higher prices.

Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher told the AP, “The number of billionaires is growing, and they’re getting richer, and also very large food and energy companies are making excessive profits.” 

“Pandemics, conflicts and not least the Russian war of aggression have set us back years in terms of poverty, hunger, health and education  —  while the rich have become even richer,” Germany’s Development Minister Svenja Schulze explained.

 At Davos, Oxfam calls for a windfall tax on food companies – DW – 01/16/2023

 An analysis which tracked all child deaths in England between 2019 and 2022, found overall mortality dipped during the pandemic due to a decrease in infectious illnesses, but that numbers of deaths have since returned to pre-pandemic levels. This included a 32% increase in trauma deaths and a 13% rise in sudden unexpected death in infancy or childhood (Sudic) last year compared with pre-pandemic rates.

Prof Karen Luyt, the programme lead for the National Child Mortality Database, based at the University of Bristol, said the figures could be “the first mortality signal” from families struggling with the cost of living crisis.

“This is worrying and I think we’re likely to see things getting worse,” she said. “Certainly for childhood illness and mortality, we know there’s a strong social gradient and we know that more families are now living in poverty.”

Of the children who died in the Sudic category, four times as many came from the most deprived fifth of the population, compared with the least deprived fifth.

Prof Monica Lakhanpaul, at University College London, who has studied the effects of homelessness on child health, said the link between child mortality and poverty was well-established and described the latest figures as a “tragic” result of worsening inequalities.

“The poorer the children, the higher the risk of mortality, but nothing’s been done,” she said. “We’re in a high-income country and this is on our doorstep…We talk about parental neglect a lot … but I see this as societal neglect.”

Child mortality from trauma and sudden death rising in England, study shows | Poverty | The Guardian

India’s top 1% owned more than 40.5% of its total wealth in 2021, according to Oxfam.

In 2022, the number of billionaires in the country increased to 166 from from 102 in 2020.

 Last year in the UK there were nearly 40,000 excess deaths – that is, deaths above a five-year average.

 In the last two weeks of 2022, deaths were a fifth higher than the average from 2016 to 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year), and that’s taking into account factors such as a bigger, ageing population.

According to the Office for National Statistics, there have been about 170,000 excess deaths in England and Wales since the pandemic began. Most of these can be directly attributed to Covid-19 itself: after all, the virus’s name is scrawled on the death certificates of more than 212,000 UK citizens. Some of those who died may have been vulnerable or infirm, but in other circumstances years away from death. As the pandemic waned, we could have expected excess deaths to shift to below average levels over time. This has not happened.

By the beginning of last year, the number of deaths was similar to 2019. As the actuary Stuart McDonald points out, we had been through the worst of a pandemic in which many frail members of society died, and normally mortality falls year on year, so to only equal the death toll of 2019 was already indicative of a worrying trend.

There were about 2,200 additional deaths in England associated with A&E delays in December alone. Average ambulance response times in England are now the worst on record, and more than half of patients are waiting for more than four hours at A&E for the first time since records began in 2011.

Britain’s excess death rate is at a disastrous high – and the causes go far beyond Covid | Owen Jones | The Guardian