The number of British households plunged into destitution more than doubled last year. It has emerged that there were 220,000 more households living in destitution by the end of last year, potentially more than half a million people.

The increase in destitution – from 197,400 to 421,500 households last year – is defined as a two-adult household living on less than £100 a week and a single-adult household on less than £70 a week after housing costs.

The disproportionate economic impact on regions such as the north-west of England that were placed under stricter restrictions during the tier system last autumn. National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimated that the number of households living in destitution in north-west England was three times the UK figure.

Louise Casey, Johnson’s adviser on homelessness last year, said she would be willing to be a part of a review, warning Britain had been “torn apart” by the pandemic.  She said. “By March, there will be 6 million people on Universal Credit. Almost 4 million are furloughed, and those still working are on less income. Unemployment has doubled and will keep rising. If 25% of your population is affected, then you can’t just tweak old policies, working out the least expensive, least challenging thing that can be done. You need big new policies.”

“We need to move into Royal Commission territory,” she said. “A new Beveridge report. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Government can, if it wants to, do something on a different scale now. The nation has been torn apart, and there’s no point being defensive about that. We’ve got to gift each other some proper space to think. We’ve got to work out how not to leave the badly wounded behind.”

Professor Jagjit Chadha, the director of NIESR, repeated a warning that the official unemployment rate of 5% “seems to be under-reporting the true level”. He said: “As a result of lockdowns, levels of destitution seem to be rising across the country. But what’s terribly worrying is that in certain regions – in the north-west in particular – we might see some 4, 5 or 6% of the population living in destitution.

Call for new Beveridge report as number of destitute UK households doubles during Covid | Poverty | The Guardian

 New York governor, Andrew Cuomo , has fallen from grace. Last year he was the media’s darling, the Democratic Party’s caring public face to Donald Trump’s detachment with his hands-on approach to the Covid-19 pandemic in his state. This blog, however, was not impressed and back in May 2020 posted a critique about his callous policies towards the elderly in care-homes. Well, the chickens have truly come home to roost and Cuomo’s political reputation has withered away. Cuomo now faces calls for his resignation, an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors, and angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who want to strip him of the emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic.

Covid deaths in New York nursing homes which accounted for almost a third of the total death toll of about 46,000. Cuomo directed nursing homes to accept patients back from hospital who were infected or might be infected with coronavirus. The homes had to admit anyone who was “medically stable” – no resident was to be denied readmission “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19”. The motivation behind the notice was clear – there was an “urgent need” to expand hospital capacity in order to meet the surge in Covid cases. In other words, free up hospital beds by getting older patients back to their nursing homes.

Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had admitted to Democratic leaders in a conference call that the administration had withheld the true nursing home death toll from state lawmakers and the state revised its official tally from 8,500 to more than 15,000 deaths – making a mockery of Cuomo’s longstanding boast that his state had among the best records in the country with regard to nursing homes Covid fatalities.

‘Meet the governor we’ve known all along’: how Cuomo fell from grace | Andrew Cuomo | The Guardian

 End of the Year Review – Meeting held online via Discord, introduced by Mike Foster & Bill Martin, 30th December 2020

 While Texas slowly recovers from its power outages and Texans become accustomed to freezing temperatures, clean water shortages, empty supermarket shelves and sky-high utility bills, some are celebrating the disaster. 

 Dallas billionaire and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is cashing in on the crisis. Demand for what little natural gas the state can access has soared amid the crisis as millions have gone without power this week, and consequently, wholesale gas prices have gone up nearly 300-fold. 

The chief financial officer of the natural gas company owned by Jones, Comstock Resources Inc., had this to say on a call with investors about the crisis:

 “Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices…. Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production.”

The company could be selling their product at anywhere from six to 74 times what they were selling for on average last quarter.

Such news warmed the cold callous hearts of investors   as the company’s stock shot up about 12 percent. Jones, who had $1.1 billion invested in the company in 2019, will likely profit handsomely off of this energy crisis that experts now say was largely caused by failures of the natural gas industry in the state at large.

Billionaire Dallas Cowboys Owner and Oil Man Cashes in on Texas Blackout Crisis (truthout.org)

 Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. 

An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, 

And the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. 

More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic,  they will be less likely to find jobs and fulfil their potential, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.

People who have lost their main source of income are struggling to feed their immediate households and are unable to send much-needed remittances to their families in rural areas.

Industrialised countries have spent up to 20% of their GDP on stimulus packages. But for the poorest countries, that figure is less than 2%.

Pandemics, world recessions and the climate crisis do not respect national borders. The answer must be global. Strong and sustained cooperation is essential. The longer the delay, the deeper the damage will become.

A “business as usual” approach will not deliver. 

The number of people in need is frightening – we need a global response | Debt relief | The Guardian

Belgium’s statistical agency, Statbel, released the first official study on the diversity of the Belgian population. The picture that emerged is one of an increasingly diverse and heterogeneous society. The study revealed that while Belgian citizens of Belgian ancestry make up just more than two-thirds of the country’s population (67.9 percent), the rest is comprised of Belgian citizens of foreign ancestry (19.7 percent) and foreign nationals (12.4 percent).

 The Belgian far right used the results of Statbel’s study to spread misinformation, distort reality, demonise immigrants and stir up racism,  expressing consternation, fear and outrage.

Tom Van Grieken, the head of the anti-immigrant Flemish nationalist political party, Vlaams Belang, tweeted a the comment “Omvolking. It is going fast”.

The Dutch word “omvolking” has its origins in the German word “umvolkung”, which was originally used by the Nazis to describe the perceived dilution of the superior Germanic race through assimilation with other, inferior races.

 Vlaams Belang doubled down on their claims that the Belgian population is currently subject to a so-called “ethnic conversion”. Vlaams Belang MEP Tom Vandendriessche described “omvolking” as a strategy utilised by so-called “cultural Marxists” in a supposed “cultural war”. “This is a deliberate policy,” he claimed, “if we continue with mass migration, we will become a minority in our own country.”

 Vlaams Belangallude to conspiracy theories, including the “great replacement” and its more extreme variations “white genocide” and “Eurabia” which are becoming increasingly popular, a belief that multiculturalism is a smokescreen for a global plot to dilute, weaken, replace or wipe out the white race. They  combine elements of classic anti-Semitism and anti-leftism with more recent elements of Islamophobia. According to the far right and neo-Nazis, a global cabal of either “cultural Marxists (Jews and leftists)” or “globalists (rich Jewish capitalists)” are conspiring to destroy white civilisation by “importing” millions of brown and Black people, especially Muslims, to the West, reflecting anxiety and a sense of inferiority at the heart of contemporary white supremacy.

That these “theories” enjoy currency and are given credence reflects the credulity of those who believe in them, as well as their ignorance of science, genetics and demographics among other things. The growing preponderance of these theories is also testimony to the far right’s skilful manipulation of social media to spread misinformation.

There is no “great replacement”, let alone a “white genocide” in progress anywhere in the world, including Belgium. The very idea is preposterous. So-called “white people”, ie people with pale skin, are in absolutely no danger of dying out – neither through immigration, nor interracial mixing.

Despite decades of large-scale movement, native Belgians still make up the overwhelming majority of the population, and whites are the overwhelming majority everywhere in Europe. The immigrants and people with immigrant backgrounds living in Belgium are not the dark-skinned non-Europeans that the far right claim are “invading Europe”. They are actually white Europeans from neighbouring countries who have taken advantage of the European Union’s freedom of movement.

 The most radical changes that have swept Belgian society, like elsewhere in the world, have little to do with immigration. Scientific and technological progress, as well as autochthonous social and cultural developments, are responsible for the lion’s share of change.

This will come as a shock to those who have been told for decades by the right that immigrants are nothing but spongers but not only do immigrants provide essential manpower in the medical and care sectors, among others, they also play a pivotal role in keeping Belgium’s healthcare and pensions system afloat. Without the taxes and social security payments coming from immigrants, Belgium’s welfare system may well have collapsed by now. In light of falling birthrates, demographers have long been warning that Belgium’s population would decline, with dire consequences for the ageing population. Luckily, immigration has made up the difference.  Judging by the large numbers of children with a mixed or foreign background currently making their way up through the school system, Belgium will become even more reliant on immigrants and their taxes in the near future.

Beyond the economic imperative, diversity is a beautiful thing in and of itself. Contrary to what anti-migration activists and politicians claim, a multicultural society is no more prone to conflict than a monocultural one. But it offers the additional advantages of dynamism and cultural richness. That the next generation is even more diverse than ours fills us not with fear but wonder and hope for the future. 

Humanity provides us with such a delicious range of cultural choice to feast on that it is a pity to stick to the same set menu. Rather than trying to stamp out multiculturalism, bigots should give themselves the chance to savour its delicious diversity.

The fictional menace of multiculturalism | Islamophobia News | Al Jazeera

 The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines , said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights. 

“While Rome is burning, we are fiddling around,” said De Gama. “The first effective vaccines were ready four or five months ago. Do you think it would have made a difference if we had the capacity to manufacture? I certainly think so.” De Gama said more structural change was needed to enable countries to make their own vaccines instead of relying on terms set by donors or profit-driven companies. “The infrastructure right now is providing a minimum and leaving the rest to the private sector,” said De Gama. “I don’t think governments should be outsourcing their responsibility for public health to private companies who are responsible to shareholders only.”

Backed by dozens of developing countries, the proposal, introduced by South Africa and India, argued that by-passing intellectual property rights would allow more of the world’s population to be quickly vaccinated by boosting production.

Supplies are low after rich countries bought more vaccines than they needed to, leading to predictions that many low-income countries may not be able to reach mass immunisation until 2024.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Thursday called for urgent delivery of vaccines to lower-income countries in order to avoid further mutations of the coronavirus, such as the 501Y.V2 variant that has spread throughout southern Africa.

Roz Scourse, a policy adviser for MSF Access, said the EU had been “hypocritical” in its recent outrage over undelivered AstraZeneca vaccines while blocking the proposed patent waiver, alongside other countries that host big pharmaceutical companies, including the UK.

“This is really showing the EU and other rich countries what happens when you hand over all the rights and control of the manufacture and distribution of Covid vaccines in the time of a pandemic to huge multinational corporations,” said Scourse.

South Africa leads backlash against big pharma over access to Covid vaccines (msn.com)

 California’s Proposition 22 exempted some major tech firms from fully complying with labor laws. In November, California voters passed Prop 22, with 58.63% of voters in favor of the amendment to exempt app-based gig workers from California assembly bill 5, which granted gig workers the rights of employees such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, minimum wage, and collective bargaining. Uber, Lyft, and other gig companies refused to comply with AB5 and threatened to shut down operations in the state of California if they were forced to do so. Prop 22, authored by Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash, went into effect in mid-December 2020 after an aggressive public relations campaign of more than $200m launched by the companies. The companies out-spent opponents to Prop 22 by 10 to one, making it the most expensive ballot measure in California’s history.

“It’s clear that as soon as Prop 22 passed, it was open season to start cutting my pay again,” said Peter Young, a rideshare driver for four years in Los Angeles. “If you try to earn money, just purely on the delivery fee, it comes out to about $5 an hour. A good day for me is maybe earning $100 before gas and expenses off eight hours of work,” said Young.

Ben Valdez has worked part-time as an Uber driver in Los Angeles for five years.

“I was under the impression that I was going to get an additional $0.30 per mile after Prop 22,” said Valdez, but he hasn’t received that extra compensation. “A lot of drivers were duped because they expected they were magically going to be able to qualify for benefits that the companies made it sound like they were going to pay for up front and that drivers were going to be getting reimbursement for the mileage,” said Valdez. “They also made drivers believe that if Prop 22 didn’t pass then Uber and Lyft were going to leave the state of California because they couldn’t afford to pay drivers as employees.”

“Prop 22 hasn’t made anything better because the companies still don’t take into consideration the waiting time and driving time to stores, so their guaranteed 120 percent of minimum wage is fraudulent,” said Okawa. She pays about $180 a week to rent a car through Uber’s partnership with Avis and spends about $90 on gas a week. She works five to six days a week from 7.30am to 6pm. She claimed the gig companies had changed base pay without giving a reason.

A study by labor economists at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2019 found Prop 22 guarantees a minimum wage of $5.64 an hour, as only engaged time is accounted for in the wage calculations. The minimum wage in California is $14 an hour as of January 2021, and $13 an hour for employers with less than 25 employees.

 Several gig apps announced fees for customers in California would increase to cover the costs of Prop 22 driver benefits after several of the apps used fear of prices increases  if Prop 22 didn’t pass.

‘I can’t keep doing this’: gig workers say pay has fallen after California’s Prop 22 | California | The Guardian

 In all the other mature democracies when it comes to election reforms the purpose is to encourage participation and make it easier for electors to vote. Not so in the USA. There are at least 165 bills pending in 33 states that would make it harder to vote, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Georgia has unveiled sweeping new legislation that would make it dramatically harder to vote in the state, following an election with record turnout and surging participation among Black voters.

The bill would block officials from offering early voting on Sundays, a day traditionally used by Black churches to mobilize voters as part of a “souls to the polls” effort. It would place new limits on the use of mail-in ballot drop-boxes, restrict who can handle an absentee ballot, and require voters to provide their driver’s license number or a copy of other identification with their application for a mail-in ballot. It would also require voters to provide the same driver’s license information on the mail-in ballot itself or the last four digits of their social security number if they do not have an acceptable ID.

The bill gives voters less time to request and return mail-in ballots, not only moving up the deadline to return an application but also limiting requests to start 78 days ahead of an election instead of the current 180. It requires election officials to reject ballots mistakenly cast in the wrong precinct and bans organizers from offering food or water to voters standing in line to cast a ballot.

A separate bill under consideration in the state senate would eliminate no excuse absentee voting, something Republicans wrote into law in 2005, only allowing people to vote by mail if they are 75 or older or have an excuse.

The effort to shorten mail-in voting comes after many voters saw severe delays in getting their mail-in ballots because of delays with the United States Postal Service and overwhelmed election offices. About one third of early votes in the state were from Black voters and Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the mail-in vote in Georgia. The problem with early voting is simple: too many African-Americans in Georgia used it.

“With exacting precision, the bill targets voters of color,” said Nse Ufot, chief of the New Georgia Project, one of the groups that mobilized voters of color in Georgia. “Georgia Republicans saw what happens when Black voters are empowered and show up at the polls, and now they’re launching a concerted effort to suppress the votes and voices of Black Georgians.”

Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, one of the groups that helped mobilize Black voters last year, said there was no justification for the bill. One of the ways Butler’s group helped voters ahead of the election was by assisting them in returning their absentee ballot applications to election officials. The Republican proposal would prohibit that.

“There’s no reason for it other than this ideology and this misinformation that there was fraud. There was no fraud in the election. The governor, everyone said there was no fraud,” she said.

“The right lost! So now they are trying to change the rules and make it harder to vote,” Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another group that worked to mobilize Black voters, said 

Georgia Republicans in sweeping new effort to make it harder to vote | Georgia | The Guardian

  Rich countries are on course to have over a billion more doses of COVID-19 vaccines than they need, leaving poorer nations scrambling for leftover supplies.

The advocacy group, the ONE Campaign, which campaigns against poverty and preventable diseases, said wealthy countries, such as the United States and Britain, should share the excess doses to “supercharge” a fully global response to the pandemic and that a failure to do so would deny billions of people essential protection from the COVID-19-causing virus and likely prolong the pandemic.

To date, the United States, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan have already secured more than 3 billion doses – over a billion more than the 2.06 billion needed to give their entire populations two doses.

“This huge excess is the embodiment of vaccine nationalism,” said Jenny Ottenhoff, ONE Campaign’s senior director for policy. “Rich countries understandably hedged their bets on vaccines early in the pandemic but with these bets paying off in spades, a massive course correction is needed if we are going to protect billions of people around the world.” 

The analysis found that, along with other COVID vaccine supplies procured by the global COVAX vaccine-sharing plan and in bilateral deals, the excess rich-country doses would go a long way to protecting vulnerable people in poorer countries. This would significantly reduce the risk of deaths from COVID-19, it said, as well as limiting the chances of new virus variants emerging and accelerating an end to the pandemic.

Rich nations stockpiling a billion more COVID-19 shots than needed: report | Reuters