The Covid-19 pandemic in Britain’s industrial heartlands and left the jobless rate higher than after the financial meltdown of the late 2000s, a report has found. In the first comprehensive study of its kind, researchers from Sheffield Hallam university have revealed the scale of the setback from twin health and economic emergencies on parts of the UK that went into the crisis lagging behind in terms of prosperity and wellbeing. The report by Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill warned large parts of the Midlands, the north, Wales and Scotland would continue to struggle when the economy eventually recovers from the pandemic. About one-third of the UK’s population lives in the industrial towns, regional cities and former coalfields covered by the study. It found:

1. In the nine months between the start of the crisis in February last year and November 2020, unemployment rose by 310,000 in older industrial towns, 100,000 in the former coalfields and 140,000 in the main regional cities.

2. Over the same period claimant unemployment among 16-24-year-olds in older industrial Britain roughly doubled.

3. If one-third of the workers on furlough at the end of October were to lose their jobs, redundancies would increase by 230,000 in the older industrial towns, by 80,000 in the former coalfields and by 80,000 in the main regional cities.

4. By late 2020, the economic downturn had pushed the numbers on all out-of-work benefits across older industrial Britain to almost one-in-six of all adults of working age, and in some local authorities – such as parts of Middlesbrough, Knowsley and Blaenau Gwent – as high as 20%.

5. Up to the start of 2021, the rate of confirmed infections in older industrial Britain was on average 10-20% above the UK average, seen by the researchers as evidence of fewer people able to work from home.

6. The cumulative death rate in older industrial towns and the former coalfields was on average 30% above the UK average – a reflection of an older and less healthy population.

 Federal lands are the source of about 10% of U.S. oil and gas supply. Fossil fuels produced on federally managed lands and waters contribute nearly 25% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Biden vows to toughen regulations and stop issuing new permits on federal lands, part of his sweeping plan to combat climate change and bring the economy to net zero emissions by 2050.

 But Biden’s promised ban on new oil and gas drilling on federal lands would take years to shut off production from top shale drillers because they already have stockpiled permits. The seven companies that control half the federal supply onshore in the Lower 48 states have leases and permits in hand that could last years.

“We have always been very confident that we will continue to develop and drill on federal acreage,” said David Hager, executive chairman of Devon Energy Corp, the biggest oil producer on onshore federal land in the Lower 48 states. “It’s embedded into the rights we have in the leases…”

Other top producers on federal land have issued public statements saying they have solid stockpiles of federal permits and an ability to meet tougher emissions regulations expected under Biden. They have also said they can quickly shift drilling to state or private acreage once federal permits dry up. EOG has said it has at least four years of federal permits.

 “When it comes to access to federal lands, that’s one of the things we’re not really worried about in our business. We have a lot of potential outside of federal land, too,” Chief Operating Officer Billy Helms said during an investor conference last year.

Occidental said last year it had well over 200 federal drilling permits in hand and had requested another roughly 200 permits on New Mexico acreage, where some of the richest reserves lie beneath federally owned property. Ameredev II, which produces about 10,000 barrels of oil per day in New Mexico’s Permian, also has federal drilling permits to last at least four years.

Big U.S. oil drillers have federal permits to mute effect of any Biden ban | Reuters

You may well have not noticed but the world has just banned nuclear weapons.

An international treaty banning all nuclear weapons that has been signed by 51 countries. The treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (TPNW) outlaws the creation, ownership and deployment of nuclear weapons by signatory states and places obligations on them to assist other victims of nuclear weapons use and testing.

There is no prospect of the world’s leading nuclear powers endorsing it. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of Nato, said in November the treaty disregarded the realities of global security.

Kate Hudson, CND’s general secretary, called on the UK government “to cease its intransigence and engage constructively with the new treaty.”

We can be sure that the government aren’t listening. 

Recent years have seen a gradual erosion of global nuclear controls, with the 1987 intermediate nuclear forces (INF) treaty, which kept nuclear missiles off European soil, allowed to expire in 2019 amid mutual recriminations from Russia and the US.

The new strategic arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia, which limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, is due to expire on 5 February.

The new US president is very unlikely to halt the modernisation programme of its older nuclear weaponry. After all, it was not Trump but Obama who authorised the financing for the up-grading to the newer more deadly technology. 

 Presidential Address

(Between the Lines)

My fellow citizens, this is my pledge,

Words I’ll never say and you’ll never hear.

I darn well know things aren’t as they appear,

That many of you live close to the edge.

I’ll speak of making our nation healthy,

Of healing divisions, being reconciled,

A people united where none are reviled;

But really I’m just here for the wealthy.

I’ll strive to divide by colour and creed,

Talk job creation, fairness, yet facts are facts,

Profit’s best served by zero hours contracts

And work discipline is imposed by need.

As President, I will without pause or hitch,

Serve the people, stuffed and trussed, to the rich.

D. A.

 Nearly nine million people had to borrow more money last year because of the impact of coronavirus, government figures show.

Blow the fan-fare trumpets. America has a new president and we should not underestimate the importance. The United States is the most powerful and the wealthiest nation in the world and whatever actions its politicians take has global effect. To the supporters of either side, the 2020 election is described as a struggle between good and evil. The election of politicians to power in a capitalist state is a business in which the expectations of the electorate play an important role. To begin with, the working class like to feel that their leaders are strong men who can control and influence events, even if for most of the time they are not sure of how this is to happen. In many ways this means that something is expected to happen simply because a politician says it will; it is enough for one of them to spout a nationalist slogan like Trump’s Make America Great Again for the problems of poverty, bad housing, social despair, to melt away. At the same time the workers prefer their leaders to have some contact with what they, rather selectively see as reality.

Capitalist parties continually promise to solve the workers’ problems and when they fail, as fail they must, the workers all too often decide that political democracy itself has failed. All capitalist parties stimulate the fallacies of patriotism among their working class. This patriotism is only a short step from extreme nationalism, express ing itself in violence and dictatorship. In this situation, the parties have often fallen into confusion and bitter internal quarrels, heightening the impression that they are crooks and muddlers. As long as capitalism lasts there can be no security for democracy. Capitalism itself provides the tools with which demagogues can undermine democratic rights. The political ignorance by which capitalism lives is always ready to be exploited. Why haven’t the workers in America grasped the fact before now, that the candidates of all the capitalist parties are basically the same? Biden will issue an avalanche of presidential orders but remember, these are only taking the situation back to what it was before Trump. The gloomy prospect is that there will also be a disillusionment with elections and politics as such, that the workers will blame the tools which are misused rather than realise how they misuse them.

BLM protests against some of the symptoms of capitalism was often a bloody, brutal business where the cities erupted into fire and warfare. It was an event almost predictable. Although Biden has made a number of promises such as a wealth redistribution which was a programme to guarantee a minimum basic wage and to increase some income taxes on the rich, none of the changes fundamental, or permanent, they are the stuff of which electoral victories are made and will continue to be made as long as the working class fail to face the real issues but attempts to paper over the deprivations of capitalism.

Biden’s fellow-travellers, the liberal progressives on the US left, work to deceive and confuse workers as to the nature of capitalism, so they are liable to react in a confused and misled manner and to the reorganising their poverty.

 A new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF)Global Risks Report has revealed mass unemployment, digital inequality and prolonged economic stagnation as some of the risks that could pose a danger in the next two years.

“Job losses, a widening digital divide, disrupted social interactions, and abrupt shifts in markets could lead to dire consequences and lost opportunities for large parts of the global population,” said the report. “The ramifications — in the form of social unrest, political fragmentation and geopolitical tensions — will shape the effectiveness of our responses to the other key threats of the next decade: cyberattacks, weapons of mass destruction and, most notably, climate change.”

“Hard-fought societal wins could be obliterated if the current generation lacks adequate pathways to future opportunities — and loses faith in today’s economic and political institutions,” the report warned.

 “Climate action failure” and “extreme weather” identified as most likely long-term risks for the third straight year.

“The biggest long-term risk remains a failure to act on climate change. There is no vaccine against climate risks, so post-pandemic recovery plans must focus on growth aligning with sustainability agendas to build back better,” said Peter Giger from the Zurich Insurance Group.

Yet one more report on the poisoned air we daily breathe

The WHO estimates air pollution kills more than 7 million people each year and is one of the leading causes of sickness and absence from work globally. Cities, with their crowded streets and high energy use, are hotspots for illness and disease linked to air pollution.

The WHO recommends that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) not exceed 10 milligrams per cubic metre of air, averaged annually. For nitrous oxide (NO2), the threshold not to be exceeded is 40mg/m3. 

A study, published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal, estimated the premature death burden due to these two pollutants in nearly 1,000 cities across Europe. It found that reducing PM2.5 and NO2 to safe WHO levels could prevent 51,213 premature deaths each year. Nearly 125,000 deaths annually could be saved if air pollution levels were reduced to the lowest recorded in the study, its authors said.

Mark Nieuwenhuijsen of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) said the research “proves that many cities are still not doing enough to tackle air pollution”.

“Levels above WHO guidelines are leading to unnecessary deaths,” he said. 

On average, 84% of the population in cities studied were exposed to PM2.5 levels above the WHO guideline. Nine per cent were exposed to higher-than-recommended NO2 levels, the study found.

NO2 levels in Madrid, for example, responsible for 7% of annual deaths there. Cities in the Po Valley region of northern Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic were the highest in mortality burden, with the Italian cities of Brescia, Bergamo and Vicenza all within the top five for PM2.5 concentrations. 

Sasha Khomenko, co-author of the study from ISGlobal, said it was important to implement local emissions reductions measures in light of the high variability in mortality linked to poor air.

“We need an urgent change from private motorised traffic to public and active transportation (and) a reduction of emissions from industry, airports and ports,” she said.

Limiting air pollution ‘could prevent 50,000 deaths in Europe’ | Air pollution | The Guardian

 A new regulator will be established with powers to ban the use of dangerous building materials, following evidence at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that manufacturers covered up safety issues. They have also ordered a review of product testing because of “abuses” in the testing system.

United Nations agencies, Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization are warning that more than 350 million people in the Asia-Pacific region are going hungry as the coronavirus pandemic destroys jobs and pushes food prices higher.

The report issued Wednesday by four agencies says the pandemic is making it difficult for 1.9 billion people to afford healthy diets. It follows an earlier report that forecast that in a worst case scenario that 828 million people might suffer from acute hunger because of the crisis.

The latest estimate is that nearly 688 million people globally are undernourished, more than half of them in Asia. The largest share is in South Asian countries like Afghanistan, where four in 10 people are malnourished.

The report is mostly based on data up to 2019, before the pandemic struck. But it also estimates that an additional 140 million people were likely to have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020 due to the impact of virus outbreaks and lockdowns. By the end of last year, some 265 million were estimated to be facing acute food insecurity.

A key factor is food affordability, a problem in wealthy nations like Japan as well as impoverished places like East Timor and Papua New Guinea. Across Asia, high prices for fruits, vegetables and dairy products have made it “nearly impossible” for low income families to have healthy diets, the report said. FAO data show food prices rose to their highest level in nearly six years in November. Many in the region instead end up consuming high-calorie, cheap processed foods that contribute to problems with obesity and diabetes but lack vitamins and minerals.  it is more expensive to eat a healthy diet in Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia, at about $5 per day, than it is in New Zealand and Australia, at less than $3 per day. A nutritionally adequate diet tends to cost $2 to $3 per day in most countries, rich or poor, but is more expensive in Japan and South Korea. In most countries, the cost of a nutritious diet is two to three times that for a one just sufficient to provide enough energy.

 Disruptions and job losses due to the pandemic are preventing families from getting enough to eat in many places. That’s evident in the long lines seen at food banks even in the United States.

In India, broken supply chains and transport problems, especially during pandemic lockdowns, have prevented surplus grain stocks from reaching all those in need. Day laborers and migrants are the most vulnerable, despite a massive public distribution system that entitles 75% of the rural population and half of those living in cities to subsidized food grains.

The cost of long-term deprivation is seen in higher rates of death and illness. Tens of millions of children suffer from wasting or stunting, failing to grow well and unable to achieve their full potential. The report said that five of the 45 countries requiring food assistance were in South, Southeast or East Asia. They include Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and Myanmar.

UN: Pandemic, surging food prices leave many in Asia hungry (apnews.com)