Food inflation has accelerated in the Netherlands with prices surging 18.4% year-on-year in February from a 17.6% January reading, data shared on Tuesday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) shows.

Clothing was also considerably more expensive, surging 11.8% last month from 9.4% in January. Experts point out that these two items in particular contributed to inflation last month, which amounted to 8%.

An economist at the third-largest Dutch bank ABN Amro, Aggie van Huisseling, said that unusually high energy prices continued to fuel inflation in the country. The increase in food prices stems mainly from the soaring costs of fresh vegetables, as products like tomatoes currently come mainly from greenhouses that are heated with gas, Van Huisseling explained.

At the same time, fuel prices eased somewhat, declining 9.4% in February compared to the same period last year, figures from the CBS showed.

According to the European harmonized consumer price index (HICP), consumer goods and services in the Netherlands were 8.9% more expensive in February than the previous year and up from 8.4% in January.

Economists from ABN Amro expect inflation to cool this year and decline to 4%, but warn that a rise in energy prices will be passed on to the cost of other products.

Annual inflation in Poland accelerated in February to the highest level since 1996, data released by the national statistics service GUS showed on Wednesday.

Consumer prices rose 18.4% year-on-year in February, up from the 16.6% recorded in the previous month.

Economists are predicting that the latest surge will mark the peak of the current cycle, but Polish consumers say they are struggling to pay household bills and buy basic groceries, with price growth at its steepest in more than a quarter of a century.

The figures show that the February reading surpassed the previous high of 17.9% recorded in October 2022, with food prices, transport and energy costs rising fastest last month.

Prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages saw the most significant annual increase in February of up to 27%, compared to 26.6% in January. Housing-related rates jumped 22.7% while the cost of heating fuel, water and central heating increased, the report said.

The Polish economy slowed in 2022 amid soaring inflation and a plunge in consumer spending brought on by the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine and the impact of sanctions on Russia.

Food prices in Finland saw a historic jump of 16.3% last month in annual terms, according to official data released on Tuesday. The figure represents the highest price growth since 1964, the country’s statistics agency reported.

Data showed that the high cost of electricity, food, and increased loan interest rates were the main drivers of inflation on an annual basis.

According to the report, the core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy prices, continued to rise sharply and reached 6.6% in February.

Jukka Appelqvist, chief economist of Finland’s Central Chamber of Commerce, said that while prices may not continue to rise as rapidly as in February, the persistence of inflationary pressures is a major economic risk. The official noted that there were no signs of an uncontrollable spiral of prices and wages falling in the country. However, he warned that a stable and low inflation rate is unlikely to happen in the near future.

The prolonged tight monetary policy and rising interest rates could lead to a deeper recession than anticipated, Appelqvist suggested.

The EU nation sank into recession in the fourth quarter last year after GDP had shrunk more than expected from the previous three-month period. The decline was led by exports, investments and consumption, official data shows.

Economists have projected a mild recession for the Finnish economy this year before a rebound in 2024.

RT 17/3/23

Dave C.

Britons are facing the biggest decline in living standards since records began in the 1950s, and the highest taxes since the World War II as the economy grinds to a halt this year, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, real household disposable income, a measure of real living standards, will drop by 5.7% over the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.

“While this is 1.4 percentage points less than forecast in November, it would still be the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956-57,” the report said.

A surge in energy and consumer goods prices triggered inflation, which currently stands above nominal wages and has led to a historic fall in disposable incomes, the OBR noted, adding that “this means that real living standards are still 0.4% lower than their pre-pandemic levels.”

According to the forecast, living standards will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2028 and the tax burden remains on course to be the highest since the Second World War.

The UK “continues to see the tax burden reach a post-war high of 37.7% of GDP at the forecast horizon in 2027-28, including the highest ratio of corporation tax receipts to GDP since the tax was introduced in 1965,” the watchdog said.

The British economy is expected to shrink by 0.2% this year despite claims by the government that the country is set to avoid a recession.

RT 17/3/23

Dave C.

Statue of Limitation

Set high upon a lofty plinth

From flawless marble fashioned,

A great libertarian stands,

An advocate impassioned

By the ideal of tongues being free

To speak at will, unrestrained,

Brooking no dark despotic moves

Towards having words detained.

This patrician rhetorician

Raised in the free market place,

For all his lofty appearance,

He’s a second, hidden face

That looks in favour of free speech

And open democracy,

“Unless,” his cold eyes seem to say,

“You dare to contradict me!”

D. A.

 The drop in real household disposable income would represent “the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s,” Richard Hughes, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said.

 In South Africa, men spend on average only two years in retirement.

In Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia and Russia – as well as in Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa – men spend on average less than 10 years in retirement.

Iceland, Israel and Norway have the oldest retirement ages at 67. However, life expectancy is also about 81 – meaning on average men in these countries spend 14 years in retirement.

Where in the world can you have the longest retirement? | Interactive News | Al Jazeera

 Life expectancy in the UK has grown at a slower rate than comparable countries over the past seven decades, according to researchers, who say this is the result of widening inequality.

According to a new analysis of global life expectancy rankings published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine the UK lags behind all other countries in the group of G7 advanced economies except the USA.

While life expectancy has increased in absolute terms, similar countries have experienced larger increases. 

In the 1950s, the UK had one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking seventh globally behind countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but in 2021 the UK was ranked 29th. This was partly due to income inequality, which rose considerably in the UK during and after the 1980s.

Prof Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “That rise also saw an increase in the variation in life expectancy between different social groups. One reason why the overall increase in life expectancy has been so sluggish in the UK is that in recent years it has fallen for poorer groups. While politicians invoke global factors, especially the effects of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine, the reality is that, as in the 1950s, the country suffers from major structural and institutional weaknesses.”

One of the co-authors, Dr Lucinda Hiam of Oxford University, explained, “A relative worsening of population health is evidence that all is not well. It has historically been an early sign of severe political and economic problems. This new analysis suggests that the problems the UK faces are deep-seated and raises serious questions about the path that this country is following.”

Dr Jonathan Filippon, senior lecturer in health systems at Queen Mary University of London, said social inequality had worsened in the UK and US because of the “predominant ideologies”.

“The major liberal approach to nation states inaugurated by the duo Thatcher and Reagan had disastrous consequences to their population’s levels of equality,” he said. “While markets can continue to thrive in countries – even during a crisis such as we’ve seen recently with the UK energy sector – they can also exacerbate inequalities as well.”

UK life expectancy growing at slower rate than rest of G7, research shows | Life expectancy | The Guardian

 Asylum seekers and refugees who were already only barely surviving. In the UK, asylum seekers are generally barred from work until they have attained refugee status. If they do not receive an initial decision on their asylum claims within 12 months, they may apply for jobs only on a list determined by the Home Office to be in short supply in Britain, including nurses, social workers and engineers. 

Although the Home Office says asylum claims are usually processed in six months, the Refugee Council charity published a report in 2021 showing that the average wait time for even an initial decision is likely to be one to three years with some waiting up to five years. Advocacy groups estimate that this waiting time has not decreased since then.

Asylum seekers who report being destitute are provided with accommodation but cannot choose where they live. They are entitled to a £45 weekly allowance to buy essentials. 

It is an amount that works out to £2,340 a year. 

This is less than a tenth of the £25,500 that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the poverty alleviation charity, recommends as necessary for a minimum acceptable annual standard of living although this sum includes housing, which destitute asylum seekers do not need to pay for. Experts say that there are usually long delays for asylum seekers to receive this allowance. Many wait up to a year.

In the UK, once asylum seekers are given refugee status, there is a 28-day period before all their support comes to an end.

 A report by the British Red Cross and the UN Refugee Agency in August revealed that futile attempts to secure employment to pay the bills have driven asylum seekers and refugees into domestic servitude, labour exploitation and forced criminality.

“One month after asylum seekers get refugee status, they no longer get shelter or support. But just because you’re now a refugee, it doesn’t mean you speak the language or have a job.”

 The British charity Maternity Action reported that in 2021, its specialist support line helped 407 pregnant asylum seekers and refugees in the UK who had been erroneously charged for healthcare with fees beginning at around £7,000. Asylum seekers and refugees are legally exempt from healthcare fees charged to foreigners by the National Health Service (NHS).

Pip McKnight, a former community midwife specialising in immigrant maternal health and a teaching fellow at Coventry University, suggested that pregnant asylum seekers might not know how to navigate the healthcare system when they arrive.

“This could be because of difficulties with language or just anxiety over a healthcare system that looks quite different to the one in their home countries,” she said. “And the NHS doesn’t always understand these women’s needs or that they shouldn’t be charged.”

Asylum seekers in the UK are excluded from the state-run Healthy Start scheme, which offers vouchers for fruit and vegetables and milk for low-income pregnant women. That means they end up having to “spend what little allowance they have on these things, … and that obviously makes a huge dent,” McKnight said.

Asylum-seeking and refugee women are also being forced into making difficult sacrifices just to keep their families going, according to Sarah Taal, advocacy and policy director at the Baobab Women’s Project, a grassroots advocacy group in Birmingham, UK.

“Those with pre-existing [health] conditions feel shamed by their doctors for buying processed food instead of fresher options, which they simply can’t afford,” she said. “Mothers are also struggling to prepare nutritious meals or buy clothes for their growing children.”

“We’ve also heard about women starving in order to purchase items needed for their personal hygiene,” Taal said. “This can include shampoo, soap, menstruation products and so on.”

Özlem Ögtem-Young, who is head of research on poverty, precarity, savings and debt at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said charities that are themselves hit hard by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have been struggling to support the increasing numbers of asylum seekers in need of food and clothing.

“There are reports of outbursts at food banks when people are turned away, causing anger, desperation and distress,” she explained. Many charities that have witnessed cuts in funding and resources have been forced to put their services on hold, Ögtem-Young said.

 Community organisers are increasingly concerned about asylum seekers losing safe spaces where they can find support and also socialise, seek out learning opportunities and gain a sense of belonging. Rising prices are likely to force desperate refugees into slavery or trafficking. 

 Lifting the existing ban on asylum seekers’ access to the labour market would save the economy more than £333 million a year. That would include about £249 million in tax contributions and the rest through savings on some subsistence support that could be reduced for those who find work.

 Ireland is a country showing a positive example. In 2022, Ireland launched a scheme to give the country’s 17,000 undocumented people legal access to its labour market without fearing deportation or arrest. Earlier, during the pandemic, it became the first EU country to offer hardship payments to undocumented non-citizens. Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Spain are also making moves towards giving undocumented people the legal right to work.

Instead of spending millions of pounds on detention camps and hotel accommodations for refugees and asylum seekers, the government, for instance, could subsidise regular housing for them,  helping asylum seekers and refugees integrate better into their new neighbourhoods.  

Can asylum seekers in Europe survive the cost-of-living crisis? | Refugees | Al Jazeera

“Over the last 12 years, Britain has experienced the longest phase of real wage stagnation since the early 19th century,” Scott Lavery, a lecturer in politics at the University of Sheffield, told DW. “Since the financial crisis, we’ve seen sustained real wage decline.”

Real incomes — after accounting for inflation — have fallen 5.1% since December 2007, according to UK government figures. This coupled with the inflation crisis, which Lavery said was “eroding living standards dramatically,” has left British workers struggling to stay afloat.

“In France, there is a sense of defending an existing standard of living, while in the UK, people feel that whatever used to exist has gone,” Sam Moorecroft, vice president of the Trades Union Council in the city of Sheffield, told DW. “When Thatcher defeated the miners’ in the 1980s, many believed that the trade union movement had been completely defeated. But now, there is a move to return to the same level of union participation as the past,” Moorecroft added.

Moorecroft noted how non-unionized workplaces are increasingly mobilizing for better pay and conditions, citing a recent strike at Amazon’s largest UK fulfillment center, in Coventry. Around 300 workers at the 1,400-strong warehouse walked out several times over the past two months over low wages and grueling round-the-clock shift patterns.

While the US tech firm’s French and German workers have previously staged several strikes, particularly around the Black Friday sales, Amazon has so far refused to recognize Britain’s GMB union, which fights for the rights of the firm’s employees in the UK. 

Unions are reaching out to younger workers, who are more likely to be on the minimum wage, and a third of whom are on zero-hours contracts. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) calculated recently that nearly 90% of those under 30 on low to median incomes in Britain work in the private sector, which is mostly non-unionized.

The Low Pay Commission, which advises the UK government, found last month that many UK employers were failing to incorporate annual hikes to the national minimum wage — a phenomenon known as wage theft. Before the pandemic, around 22% of minimum wage earners were underpaid but by April 2022, that figure had grown to almost a third.

Public support for walkouts in the UK has always been mixed as memories of the Winter of Discontent linger. During the coldest months of 1978-9, the country was brought to a standstill by large-scale private and public sector strikes that caused food shortages, weeks of uncollected garbage and, in one city, the dead to lay unburied. This time, however, with public services already defective, the cost of living crisis hitting everyone’s pockets and living standards lower than a decade ago, the public’s backing for strikes is noticeably higher.

A poll by Sky News in January found that 63% of Britons strongly support or somewhat support walkouts by healthcare workers, with 49% backing wider public sector action.

“There is certainly a sense that those core public sector workers that kept the economy running during the pandemic have strong public support … particularly nurses, despite their strikes having potentially life or death consequences,” Lavery said. 

Lavery told DW, “The UK already has some of the most restrictive anti-union legislation in the Western world and Sunak is trying to tighten up further … so he’s far from being a peacemaker.”

Why the British are suddenly so strike-happy – DW – 03/15/2023

 The British government has announced an unexpected one-off payment to state broadcaster the BBC. The £20 million ($24.13 million) tranche will be transferred to the broadcaster over the next two years, the UK Foreign Office said on Monday.

The package comes as part of an Integrated Review program document advocating for a ‘Global Britain’ originally adopted under former PM Boris Johnson.

The money is set to be funneled to the BBC World Service and will be used to “support English-language broadcasting,” as well as to “counter disinformation,” the foreign office explained, implying the funds will be specifically used to counter Russia. 

“The refreshed Integrated Review concludes that democracies like the UK must go further to out-cooperate and out-compete states that are driving instability. Developments over the past year, particularly the conflict in Ukraine, have shown the importance of being able to counter the hostile use of disinformation and tackle the spread of harmful state narratives,” it claimed.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly praised the decision, hailing the BBC as “the world’s most trusted international broadcaster,” as well as a “vital” tool “in the fight against the spread of disinformation around the world.”

“This funding will ensure people across the globe continue to have access to accurate, high-quality journalism,” Cleverly asserted.

The statebroadcaster, which recently suspended a freelance sports presenter over a tweet criticizng government policy, received a similar lump sum payment in 2021, with the same proclaimed goal of battling purported fake news.

Back then, however, the payment was more than twice as modest as the new one, with ‘only’ £8 million allocated at the time to “tackle harmful disinformation, challenge inaccurate reporting around the world and improve digital engagement.”

RT 13\3\23

Dave C

 Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite

UK Power Networks, the National Grid power distributor made £1.3bn pre-tax profit. Billions in profit, bonanzas for the executives and shareholders, while there are only real pay cuts on offer for workers.

The profiteering crisis isn’t just a few “bad apples” like UK Power Networks: it’s systemic. In the first half of 2022, FTSE 350 companies saw their margins up by an average of 89% on the same period in 2019. 

In 2021, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda doubled their combined profits compared with 2019 to £3.2bn. Likewise, big brand food manufacturers such as Nestlé and Unilever have seen their corporate profits soar. From energy to food, hikes in our bills are seen in these soaring profits.

 2021 saw the four giant agribusiness corporations, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, reaping profits of $10.4bn(£8.6bn) – up on pre-pandemic levels by an astonishing 255%. In petrol pump supply chains, refineries and oil companies are smashing corporate profit records. Last year, BP recorded the biggest profits in the company’s history – £23bn.

Between 2019 and 2022, the container industry boosted its profits from $7bn to $210bn (£5.8bn to £174bn). 2022 is set for an even bigger bonanza. Port owners, such as DP World and CK Hutchison, have also seen huge profiteering gains, and the biggest road freight operators were on the same page as their profits zoomed by 149%.

 Market pricing systems have allowed some companies, such as energy firms, to reap massive windfalls while their real production costs haven’t changed. State-licensed monopolies have handed historic profits to North Sea oil extractors, electricity grids, privatised water operators and transport companies.

Big retailers or suppliers have exploited their “market power” to push up prices in circumstances of high demand and a limited supply of products. But we have also seen “price gouging” when crises create opportunities for what amounts to price fixing across sectors.

We are confronted by this cost of profiteering because of the stark inequalities in wealth and power that govern Britain. Capital, boosted by favourable governments, has managed to win enormous power that in turn allows it to set the rules of the economy and reap the rewards accordingly. 

The system isn’t only broken, it is rigged.

Why are we talking about Britain’s cost of living crisis? The real culprit is bosses’ ‘greedflation’ | Sharon Graham | The Guardian