The government has quietly drawn up proposals to lend other countries £1bn of public money so that they can buy British-made bombs and surveillance technology.
The plan was revealed in a single sentence slipped into this month’s budget. Unveiling a new £2bn lending facility for projects supporting clean growth, the government also announced the creation of “a new £1bn fund to support overseas buyers of UK defence and security goods and services”. The fund will be overseen by UK Export Finance, which gives loans to help foreign countries, especially those with developing economies, buy British goods and services.
“Even in times of crisis, the government is showing that it will go to any length to sell as many weapons as possible,” said Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade. “The arms deals being supported with this money could be used in enabling atrocities and abuses for years to come. Government should be regulating and controlling arms sales, not using public money and doing everything it can to promote them.”
In 2018, the latest figures available, the UK won arms contracts worth £14bn. Between 2008 and 2018 the UK was the second biggest arms exporter in the world, with 19% of the market share. Three-fifths of arms sales over the period went to the Middle East. £5.3bn of arms have been licensed to Saudi Arabia since the war in Yemen began.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/revealed-1bn-of-taxpayers-cash-to-help-foreign-countries-buy-british-arms
Farmers need foreign workers
Charter flights to bring in agricultural workers from eastern Europe are needed as a matter of urgency, otherwise fruit and vegetables will be left unpicked in Britain’s fields. Some large farms have already been chartering planes to bring in labour from eastern Europe. British growers have been contacting companies in the hospitality sector to recruit laid-off staff.
90,000 workers are needed, many in just a few weeks’ time. One leading supplier, Concordia, was looking to bring in around 10,000 labourers – half from the EU and the rest from Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Barbados. But all of the non-EU countries are closed. In a big setback, Ukraine extended its lockdown from 2 April until 23 April.
Stephanie Maurel, Concordia’s chief executive, said: “Our recruitment outside the EU is stalled which leaves us with Lithuania, which has closed borders, Romania with no airplanes, and Bulgaria which is our little beacon.”
Nick Marston, the chairman of British Summer Fruits, said. “They may be people from eastern Europe who were working here in the hospitality sector, who are relatively young and don’t have that many ties and want a job paying reasonable pay in reasonable conditions.”
Workers make the world run.
Workers for Instacart, the Silicon Valley start-up that employs 175,000 people to deliver groceries nationwide via its online platform, plan to walk off the job Monday if the company does not immediately provide them with hazard pay and increased safety precautions to protect them from the deadly coronavirus now ravaging the nation.
Instacart’s delivery workers are demanding hazard pay of $5 per order, free hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes, and paid sick leave for workers with pre-existing medical conditions that would make COVID-19, more dangerous if they contract it.
Like millions of sanitation workers, pharmacy and grocery store employees, and healthcare workers across the country, said Instacart worker and strike organizer Vanessa Bain, the company’s shoppers “are working on the frontlines in the capacity of first responders”—all while many other Americans are able to work from home.
“Instacart’s corporate employees are provided with health insurance, life insurance, and paid time off and [are] also eligible for sick pay and paid family leave,” Bain told Vice. adding that the company’s gig workers “are afforded none of these protections.”
“We deserve and demand better,” Bain added. “Without [us], Instacart will grind to a halt.”
Bain slammed the company for “profiting significantly off of this pandemic” and planning to hire 300,000 new shoppers to keep up with demand and capitalize on the unemployment crisis resulting from the pandemic, while failing to ensure the safety of its current workers.
“Instacart has been busy crafting a rather heroic public image as the saviors of families sheltered-in-place, and as the economic saviors of laid off workers,” Bain explained. “In truth, Instacart is providing no protection to its existing gig workers.”
Instacart’s current sick leave policy for its delivery workers allows them to take two weeks of paid leave only if they test positive for the coronavirus. With tests in short supply and many Americans being told by healthcare providers that they don’t qualify for testing, Instacart could be forcing many of its shoppers to work while ill—or at least contagious. Providing the workers with safety supplies and a fair paid sick leave policy could actually save lives.
Considering delivery and grocery workers are just some of the millions of Americans considered “essential” during the public health crisis, “it’s especially cruel to withhold these guarantees from the very workers keeping millions of people fed,” tweeted Joelle Stangler, a field director for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Instacart would be nothing without the laborers they treat so poorly—people now deemed ‘essential’. No employee, especially those who work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, should be forced to work in unsafe conditions. Workers at Amazon warehouses worldwide continue to raise concerns that their employer is not doing enough to protect them from exposure to COVID-19
The pandemic proves that low-waged workers make the world run. Hopefully, history books will record 2020 as the year when people began to mobilize and launch the long-overdue political and social revolution. Common sense tells us it is now time to change what up until now has been considered “conventional” behavior. Now is the time to build a movement for radical social change. We are all in this together. Hopefully 2020 will be remembered as the moment of transformational change when working people finally awoke.
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
Shelley
Coronavirus and the Class Divide
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall left London for the Balmoral estate only hours before the government instructed everyone else not to flee to the country, for fear of spreading infection or overloading rural health services – aren’t alone in hightailing it out of town. His mother, the Queen, is safely ensconced behind the thick walls of Windsor Castle.
While some of the super-rich seek to ride out the epidemic in hastily rented moated mansions, or on deserted tropical islands, the weekending affluent have quietly decamped to second homes in Devon or Norfolk or Cumbria.
Houses that normally sit shuttered and forlorn until Easter started opening up again the minute the schools shut – and so many people have been trying to book hideaway cottages on remote Scottish islands that ferry crossings are being restricted.
This virus is mainly exposing the class divisions that we already knew existed. We hardly needed a virus to tell us that the royals are privileged, work is precarious for many, and some families have resources others don’t – whether that’s a cottage by the sea or a garden to play in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-prince-charles-covid-19-test-old-divisions
While some of the super-rich seek to ride out the epidemic in hastily rented moated mansions, or on deserted tropical islands, the weekending affluent have quietly decamped to second homes in Devon or Norfolk or Cumbria.
Houses that normally sit shuttered and forlorn until Easter started opening up again the minute the schools shut – and so many people have been trying to book hideaway cottages on remote Scottish islands that ferry crossings are being restricted.
This virus is mainly exposing the class divisions that we already knew existed. We hardly needed a virus to tell us that the royals are privileged, work is precarious for many, and some families have resources others don’t – whether that’s a cottage by the sea or a garden to play in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-prince-charles-covid-19-test-old-divisions
Hiring Filipina Nurses
Inadequate salaries and bad working conditions drive Filipino nurses to seek employment in other countries, including Europe, the Middle East and the US. In 2013, the Philippines and Germany signed an agreement that allows Filipino health workers to get an employment in Germany.
The average salary for nurses in a government hospital is around $250 (€228) to $350 (€319) per month. In private hospitals, it ranges from $200 to $250 per month. Last year, the Supreme Court set the minimum monthly salary for nurses in public hospitals at $600 per month. It has not been implemented.
“You can’t blame our nurses for leaving the county. The government needs to improve their working conditions and increase their salaries so that they can stay,” said Maristela Abenojar, president of the Filipino Nurses United (FNU) association.
The average salary for nurses in a government hospital is around $250 (€228) to $350 (€319) per month. In private hospitals, it ranges from $200 to $250 per month. Last year, the Supreme Court set the minimum monthly salary for nurses in public hospitals at $600 per month. It has not been implemented.
“You can’t blame our nurses for leaving the county. The government needs to improve their working conditions and increase their salaries so that they can stay,” said Maristela Abenojar, president of the Filipino Nurses United (FNU) association.
Germany plans to bring in at least 75 Filipino nurses to Germany to assist in the country’s fight against the novel coronavirus. The “Hessische Krankenhausgesellschaft,” an association of over 150 hospitals in the German state of Hesse, reportedly said they “received a special permit” to fly in the Filipino nurses.
The Philippines Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello told DW that the move had been put on hold until further notice.
“Our nurses are needed more at home.”
The Philippines has recorded over 550 coronavirus cases so far, but health experts say the number could be much higher due to limited testing facilities in the country. The virus could spread exponentially in the country in the coming weeks, they warn. The Philippines has only conducted about 12 COVID-19 tests for every million people, falling far behind regional neighbors like Malaysia — 422 people per million — and Vietnam — 159 people per million. Philippine authorities are bracing for a spike in coronavirus cases following a scheduled increased testing after the country procured 100,000 testing kits last Saturday. Earlier this week, private hospitals in Manila announced they couldn’t take in more coronavirus patients as they had reached full capacity.
People Aren’t Disposable
These are scary times. The COVID-19 is revealing the true nature of our society. Politicians are weighing up how many lives a point on the stock exchange is worth. We’re seeing how governments will only suspend profit-making activities when they have the proverbial gun at their heads. We’re seeing the well–being of Big Business placed above that of ordinary people. Nothing that threatens their profits will get done if there is any way to avoid it. Don’t be fooled by the ruling class’s concern for ordinary people who will die because of COVID-19 and the expected recession. For the capitalist, workers are expendable people. Workers are to be made into sacrificial lambs on the altar of the blessed marketplace. This is the savage class rule of capitalism.
COVID-19 is exposing the capitalist system for what it is – the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on humankind. This economic system cannot suspend its activities for even a few weeks without going into visible signs of collapse exposes it for what it is. It is showing us how we need to live if we are to have any hope of progressing as a civilisation. Now is the time for socialists to present the ideal of a society ordered to human well-being to our family, friends fellow-workers and neighbours.
What we must do is insist that production be devoted to the people. Are we capable of imagining such a thing? Can we envision building a totally new world? It could be ours, if only we insist on it. Can we imagine a world of automation that serves people rather than displaces them? Can we picture our roads free of traffic around the clock. Imagine air cleansed of the CO2 and pollution of those factories producing unnecessary products that only end up in land-fill. Now is our chance to change things and demand better. We deserve much better. We are worth much more.
Poverty in the UK Grows
100,000 more children are living in poverty and it has been branded “shocking”, even before the coronavirus lockdown of the economy bites.
The increase, part of a 600,000 surge since the Conservatives came to power a decade ago, means 4.2 million youngsters in the UK – or 30 per cent – are living below the breadline.
Overall, the number of people living in poverty soared by 500,000 to 14.5 million in 2018-19, the highest total since the statistics were first collected in 2002.
Sam Royston, director of policy at the Children’s Society, warned the figures showed poverty was “not just rising, but deepening” with two-thirds if children now in severe hardship.
“The current coronavirus crisis is likely to see this number continue to rise as parents face job losses and falls in earnings.”
“We are facing a child poverty crisis,” warned Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, “Unless concerted action is taken now, this week’s laid-off workers and their children will be adding to next year’s poverty statistics.”
Becca Lyon, head of child poverty at Save the Children, said: “Even before coronavirus, our country’s safety net was failing too many children. Now there’s a danger that even more children will fall through the net.”
The year 2020 was the target of the Tony Blair’s government pledged to abolish child poverty altogether, a vow put into legislation in 2010.
However, it was abolished by Iain Duncan Smith who called it an “unsustainable” commitment
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/child-poverty-uk-austerity-conservatives-economy-coronavirus-a9428531.html
Production for Use in a Pandemic
Profit Vs Human Solidarity
Memories are short and most people worry about one problem at a time. So we are not surprised that lessons are not being learned quick enough from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those of us in the Socialist Party have been often asked the question, how quickly can we transition to a system of production-for-use from the existing one of production-for-profit.
Well we can see quite clearly now from the COVID-19 pandemic and the experiences of those around the world have been suffering from shortages in medical equipment such as ventilators and even hospital beds that the answer is very quickly.
In Wuhan, the Chinese built a fully functioning hospital in two weeks.
While in the UK, the Ineos corporation said it would build two hand sanitiser factories in ten days.
Many public buildings have been transformed into make-shift hospitals. The armies of many countries have set up emergency field-hospitals.
Then there are manufacturers who are re-tooling their production processes to make ventilators and face masks. In Italy, the UK and the US, car manufacturers have offered to use their manufacturing and design expertise to boost the production of ventilators.
Britain has placed an emergency order of 10,000 ventilators designed at breakneck speed by bagless vacuum cleaner company Dyson. Rolls-Royce, BAE, Airbus and Siemens UK which will help existing medical device makers such as Penlon and Smiths Group to ramp up production. British engineer Babcock has also joined forces with a leading medical equipment company and experts from London’s Royal Brompton Hospital.
A medical tech firm that specialises in 3D printing is now developing products to help tackle Covid-19. Axial3D creates models of the human anatomy to assist surgeons in critical operations. But the firm is now working on parts that will be used in new ventilators being built for the NHS. The company is now manufacturing valves and splitters for ventilators
Designer label, Ralph Lauren is to start making medical masks and gowns. Luxury coat brand Canada Goose said it would begin making surgical gowns.
So we now know that the capitalist production system can rapidly transform itself into one that is devoted satisfying people’s needs. It shows just quickly socialist society will be able to clear up the mess inherited from capitalism. And how the disarmed military, in the early days of socialism could have a useful role in quickly building airfields and using their drones to deliver medical supplies instead of bombs.
Quote of the Day
“Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan
The War in Yemen Goes On
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Nearly a third of all Gulf coalition air raids on Yemen have hit civilian targets including hospitals, schools and food stores, new data has revealed.
According to the Yemen Data Project, more than 18,400 civilians have been killed or injured by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies since they launched a bombing campaign in 2015 to oust the Iran-backed Houthis and restore the government.
Over 8,600, a quarter of them women and children, were killed across tens of thousands of raids, marking 70 per cent of the total civilian death toll documented by rights groups.
The same report said over the last five years coalition aircraft have bombed medical facilities including hospitals and clinics 83 times, killing 95 civilians and injuring a further 116.
Over 60 food stores have also been hit, alongside 134 water and electricity facilities.
“The data clearly shows that over the five years [the coalition] has been consistently hitting civilian targets. That’s indisputable,” said the Yemen Data Project’s Iona Craig, adding that on average the alliance causes 10 civilian casualties a day. “It’s not just hospitals and medical facilities you have to take into account. It’s the bombing of water and electricity infrastructure, the impact on food supply lines with food storage facilities and crucial road bridges being hit too,” she added.
According to Oxfam, 17 million people – more than half the population – have no access to clean water.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana released an extensive report last week saying in total between 2015 and 2018 there were 120 attacks on the health care sector committed by all sides of the conflict.
It said the Gulf coalition, its affiliated forces, the Houthis and their allies have all damaged or destroyed health facilities through airstrikes and shelling, occupying medical facilities and excluding civilian use as well as assaulting medical professionals.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana released an extensive report last week saying in total between 2015 and 2018 there were 120 attacks on the health care sector committed by all sides of the conflict.
Mwatana spokesperson Osamah al-Fakih said it was not just bombing campaigns and artillery fire which had destroyed the country.
“All sides have committed violations including enforced disappearances, torture, as well as child recruitment,” he told The Independent. “The Gulf coalition has also restricted humanitarian access to Yemen through a blockade and closure of Sanaa international airport. It has also established arms groups in different parts of the country, a huge long-term problem, undermining the future of Yemen. “
Human Rights Watch warned the training of proxy groups was behind a new crisis brewing in the east of the country, Mahra, a province which until now has escaped most of the conflict. In a report on Wednesday it said Saudi military and Yemeni forces it was affiliated to, have carried serious abuses arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, and illegal transfer of detainees to Saudi Arabia.
Former detainees said that they were accused of supporting Saudi Arabia’s opponents and had been interrogated, and tortured at an informal detention facility at the city’s airport.
“Saudi forces and their Yemeni allies’ serious abuses against local-Mahra residents is another horror to add to the list of the Saudi-led coalition’s unlawful conduct in Yemen,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi Arabia is severely harming its reputation with Yemenis when it carries out these abusive practices and holds no one accountable for them.”
