Managing director of Kingspan’s insulation boards division and as a director of the plc, Peter Wilson will stand down.

Wilson was in charge of the insulation division since 2001, during which time it launched Kooltherm K15, a plastic foam insulation used on the Grenfell tower. Kingspan tested the foam in fire in 2005 and it passed, but then changed the chemical composition which made it more flammable, the public inquiry into the disaster heard. However, it continued to use the previous test pass and said it was safe for tall buildings.

Kingspan has an annual turnover of €3.5bn and its share price has fallen 15% in the last month. Shortly before evidence about Kingspan was revealed at the public inquiry, triggering a share price fall, Wilson sold share options worth £1.6m, sparking anger among bereaved and survivors. 

Gene Murtagh, the chief executive and Gilbert McCarthy, another director, also sold shares worth £3.1m and £1.8m respectively.

 Newham council,  one of the UK’s poorest boroughs, said its universal free school meals (USFM) scheme was no longer affordable as a result of funding cuts, leaving thousands of deprived youngsters at risk of missing out on a nutritious dinner.

The USFM, which has run for 11 years, guarantees all three- to 11-year-olds in the east London borough a free dinner during term time. The proposed cut would force thousands of families to contribute up to £270 a year for each of their children in years 3 to 6. 

Half of all children in Newham live in poverty, making it the second poorest borough in England after Tower Hamlets. Hunger is a growing problem in the borough during the pandemic, and already just under a quarter of Newham’s children are food insecure, meaning they regularly miss meals or go hungry. 

Sarah Ruiz, Newham council’s cabinet member for education and children social care, said the unprecedented economic situation facing the borough “leaves us with no choice but to look very carefully at how best to make the savings we need”.

 Ben Levinson, the headteacher at Kensington primary school in Newham, said the UFSM scheme had made a “life-changing” difference to the community, especially to children from struggling working families and migrant households, neither of whom were eligible for free school meals.

Free school meals scheme in one of UK’s poorest areas faces axe | School meals | The Guardian

 Deal? No Deal? Bad Deal!

Narrow island in a turbulent sea

And islanders who think themselves ill matched

With the continent to which they’re attached

By bonds of geography and history.

Colour of the passport is of concern

It seems, blind pride when the flag is unfurled,

Rather than a clear vision of a world

Free for all, without boundaries to discern.

Surely time to look beyond Britannia,

See in common weal what capital lacks,

The country’s built on bent and beaten black backs

Triangulated out from Africa.

In Europe or out, the sovereign nation

Remains the keystone of exploitation.

D.A.

 According to a report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), “Research reveals consistent accounts of severe mental health conditions.”

Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and self-harm “among people of all ages and backgrounds” have emerged as byproducts of the hopelessness and despair after years of confinement and detention on Greece’s Aegean islands, Lesbos, Samos and Chios. One in three have contemplated suicide. One in five reported have  actually attempted to take their lives. As many as three out of four have experienced symptoms such as sleeping disorders, depression and anxiety. Over the year there has been a rise in the proportion of people disclosing psychotic symptoms, from one in seven to one in four. Disclosures of self-harm have increased by 66%.

 Psychologists concluded that the situation in the camps had worsened considerably since fires broke out in Lesbos displacing 13,000 refugees. 

The mental health toll had been aggravated by lockdown measures that had kept men, women and children confined to facilities.  The restrictions were stricter for refugees and migrants than those applied elsewhere in Greece, IRC support teams found a marked deterioration in the mental wellbeing of people in the camps since lockdowns were enforced.

Describing conditions in the camps as dangerous and inhumane, the IRC said residents were still denied access to sufficient water, sanitation, shelter and vital services such as healthcare, education and legal assistance to process asylum claims.

Kiki Michailidou, the psychologist in charge of the IRC’s psychosocial support programmes on Lesbos, pointed out, “After the fires we saw what could happen. There were transfers to the mainland and children were relocated to other parts of Europe. That’s proof that where there’s political will and coordinated action, the lives of people in these camps can be transformed.”

Thousands of refugees in mental health crisis after years on Greek islands | Global development | The Guardian

 Unicef for the first time in its  history to has launched a domestic emergency response in the UK  help feed children hit by the Covid-19 crisis. Unicef  said the coronavirus pandemic was the most urgent crisis affecting children since the second world war.

In May the charity Food Foundation found 2.4 million children (17%) were living in food insecure households. By October, an extra 900,000 children had been registered for free school meals.

Anna Kettley, the director of programmes at Unicef UK, said: “This is Unicef’s first ever emergency response within the UK, introduced to tackle the unprecedented impact of the coronavirus crisis and reach the families most in need. This funding will help build stronger communities as the impact of the pandemics worsen, but ultimately a longer-term solution is needed to tackle the root causes of food poverty, so no child is left to go hungry.”

Unicef has pledged a grant of £25,000 to the community project School Food Matters, which will use the money to supply 18,000 nutritious breakfasts to 25 schools over the two-week Christmas holidays and February half-term, feeding vulnerable children and families in Southwark, south London, who have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The food delivery firm Abel & Cole will also provide 1.2 tonnes of fruit and veg worth £4,500 to include in the boxes.

The founder and chief executive of School Food Matters, Stephanie Slater, said: “We’re so grateful to Unicef for providing this timely funding. The response to our summer breakfast boxes programme has shown us that families are really struggling and many were facing the grim reality of a two-week winter break without access to free school meals and the indignity of having to rely on food banks to feed their children. By providing our breakfast boxes, families know that their children will have a great start to the day with a healthy nutritious breakfast. Our breakfast boxes programme has also shown us that the threshold for free school meal eligibility is too low to capture all the families in need of support…”

Unicef to feed hungry children in UK for first time in 70-year history | Food poverty | The Guardian

 FAQ Bread and Circuses pt.1 – introduced by Mike Foster, 11th November 2020

FAQ Bread and Circuses pt.2

Attachment Theory pt.1 – Tim Kilgallon, 13th November 2020

Attachment Theory pt.2

New Atheism pt.1 – Nigel McCullough, 20th November 2020

New Atheism pt.2

 More than half a million households have fallen behind on their energy bills since February, taking the total number of billpayers in arrears to more than 2 million.

Citizens Advice said an extra 600,000 households owed payments to their energy suppliers, with the coronavirus outbreak leading to record high redundancies this year.

On average, billpayers who have fallen behind on their payments owe their energy suppliers about £760 for electricity and £605 for gas, according to Citizens Advice.

The findings show that about 16% of homes that use energy prepay meters – or almost 700,000 households – have not been able to afford a top-up since March.

Citizens Advice warned that financial woes were likely to deepen through the colder months and that an estimated 7 million households were expected to struggle to pay their winter energy bills this year.

Alistair Cromwell, the acting chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “We’re heading into the coldest months of the year and the full financial impacts of the pandemic are still to be felt.”

More than 2m UK households in arrears on energy bills | Money | The Guardian

A quarter of a million New Zealanders held in state care suffered some form of abuse with the true number believed to be higher.

A royal commission into abuse in state care is investigating historic abuse of children, young adults and vulnerable adults by state-run institutions between 1950 and 1999, as well as in affiliated religious institutions, such as church-run orphanages. It is the largest and most complex royal commission ever undertaken in New Zealand.

Those most frequently abused by the state were society’s “most disadvantaged or marginalised segments of the community … particularly from Māori whanau [family], Pacific families, children from impoverished backgrounds, disabled people and women and girls”.

The report found that many children were removed from their homes due to issues related to poverty, but were returned from state care to their families severely traumatised. Māori were over-represented in the number of children entering state care and the number of those who suffered abuse, and the “discriminatory attitudes” of officials contributed to this, the report found. Māori children continue to be over-represented in the state care system, making up 69% of children in state care, and 81% of children abused in care, despite representing only 16% of New Zealand’s population of five million.

Physical and sexual abuse was the most common type of abuse reported to the commission, but abuse also included the use of medication and medical acts [electro-convulsive therapy] as punishment, unjustified solitary confinement and isolation, improper strip searches and vaginal examinations, verbal abuse, racial slurs and “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”, as well as widespread neglect.

Those who complained were routinely silenced or abused again as punishment, and the commission also found attempts at active cover-ups.

Glenis Philip-Barbara, assistant Māori commissioner for children, said, “It’d be a mistake to think that what happened in the past is not still happening today.”

At least 250,000 suffered abuse in New Zealand’s state care system, inquiry finds | New Zealand | The Guardian

 It has been revealed almost half of Singapore’s migrant workers have been infected with Covid-19 in the past nine months.

 Sweden has so far recorded about 341,000 infections and more than 7,600 deaths from the pandemic with one of the highest per capita death rates in the world.

 Nearly 90% of fatalities were of elderly at least 70 years old and half of them were in long-term residential care.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven admitted the country’s officials did not adequately care for the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mats Melin, the chair of an  independent commission made up of political scientists, crisis management experts and public health experts, explained, “The government should have taken measures to ensure the elderly care was better equipped to deal with the pandemic.”

The commission concluded that the “ultimate responsibility for these shortcomings rests with the government in power – and with the previous governments.”

The commission said there were “structural shortcomings that have been well-known for a long time” which “led to residential care being unprepared and ill-equipped to handle a pandemic.” Such shortcomings included a lack of protective equipment and delays in testing. The report warned of they described as “fragmentation” in the Swedish healthcare systems. Elderly care is divided between 21 regions and 290 municipalities. 

Coronavirus: Sweden admits lapses in elderly care | Coronavirus and Covid-19 – latest news about COVID-19 | DW | 16.12.2020