Author: ajohnstone

The poor will get poorer

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The average low-income family in the UK’s most deprived areas  is likely to be worse off under universal credit, according to a study by the Resolution Foundation.



The study says those living in the poorest areas will be on average worse off. The thinktank says the economies of those areas with high numbers of disabled, unemployed or single-parent claimants – all groups likely to lose out under the new system – will see falls in spending power when universal credit is fully rolled out.
On average, families will be worse off under universal credit, include places that unexpectedly voted for the government at the last election such as Blackpool, Middlesbrough, Redcar, Hyndburn and Wolverhampton. Other areas where families are on average likely to be worse off when they move on to universal credit include Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Burnley, Kingston-upon-Hull, Blaenau Gwent, Knowsley and Hartlepool.
While overall UK benefit spending will be maintained under universal credit, this masks a “substantial redistribution” of support between different areas of the country, says Resolution, with resources skewed towards families in high-rent areas like London and the south-east over the north and Midlands. The thinktank illustrates this by highlighting the effect on Liverpool and its surrounding boroughs, where 52% of all claimants will be worse off on universal credit by 2024, compared with a national average of 46%. This rises to 65% for Merseyside families with a disabled member (60% UK-wide). On average, Merseyside families will lose £7 a week. Its qualitative research with claimants in Liverpool – supported financially by Liverpool city region – found that despite official insistence, there was no evidence that claimants believed that digitally administered benefits under universal credit were an improvement on the old system.



The Socialist Party for the planet and its people

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Both Trump and Greta Thunberg are at the World Economic Forum at Davos presenting their very contrasting views on the environment.



Let us make our goal very clear. It is to achieve a civilisation in which cooperation, not competition, will be society’s code. It will be about sharing our planet with other peoples and also with its other forms of life. This does not rule out a certain amount of economic growth, necessary to end poverty. The issue for socialists is not that there will be no economic growth but of what kind growth. We will apply the appropriate technology, no longer making working people slaves to the machines. Producers and consumers at local, regional and global level will exercise shared stewardship and joint control by over products and production processes. The only things worth producing will be the good for all and neither privilege nor diminish anyone. 



Participatory democracy means individuals and communities acting as facilitator, adjudicator, monitor and consensus builder, the dispersal of authority in a wide variety of forms, multi-tiered, with the elimination of all manner of formal barriers to involvement. People will know their participation makes a real difference to their lives, of the lives of other people and to their natural surroundings they are interested in. It means individuals satisfying the need for belonging to, and being part of something bigger than oneself, adding to one’s own significance. People will understand the distinctions and differentiation between centralisation and decentralisation; from ‘think locally and act globally’, to ‘think globally and act locally’; from hard technologies to soft ones – renewable energy sources, solar energy, wind power, not fossil fuels; eco-agriculture not industrial farming; global, regional and local food production and processing; re-use – repair – recycle. Capitalism has now run its course. Without change we might succumb to global inundations, economic and social collapse. Life on the planet might become restricted and reduced.

 

What about human nature? Aren’t we wired to? Aren’t we born greedy and lazy and seek to acquire a lot of material things? But our other human traits such as empathy and cooperation are historically greater than the desire to compete and dominate. Even today people work together in times of disaster. It is capitalism which encourages competition, over-consumption and individualism because that is what makes capitalism thrive. This is why those aspects of human nature seem to be the only ones. No cure for capitalism’s deadly excesses can be found in capitalism itself. The message of the Socialist Party is that humanity cannot survive if it allows those whose existence is determined by pursuing profit to determine our future—if we want that future to be a liveable one for all species.



The Socialist Party reaches out to eco-activists for a dialogue but more oftener than not it is a monologue. is really a monologue, as most campaigners in the environment movement are not interested in socialism. Our assessment is many greens are not prepared to take their analysis to its logical conclusion in that they propose class-collaborationist solutions with politicians and corporations. They expect the capitalists to act against their own material interests.



The Socialist Party’s aim is to replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership, and in which the preservation and restoration of ecosystems will be central to all activity. Environment destruction is not an accidental feature of capitalism, it is built into the system. The capitalist system’s insatiable need to increase profits cannot be reformed away. Capitalism’s insatiable need for growth means that it is very unlikely that we will see effective mitigation policies from any major capitalist country. Anything they do will be too little, too late. Capitalist will “solve” global warming, but their solution will be catastrophic for the great majority of the world’s people. It will do what capitalism always does — it will impose the greatest burdens on the most vulnerable, on poor people and subject nations. The most barbaric forms of capitalism will intensify and spread. Climate refugees will be persecuted and untold numbers will die.



What is in a name?

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In the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand Indian railway officials announced that the signboards of all railway platforms which have names of railway stations written in Hindi, English and Urdu will now be written in Hindi, English and Sanskrit.



According to 2011 census data, the exact number of Sanskrit speakers in the state is 386, while Urdu speakers are more than four percent of the population at 425,752 persons.





Critics say is part of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party‘s (BJP) attack on Muslim cultural heritage.

Professor Chandan Gowda, who teaches sociology at the private university Azim Premji in the southern city of Bengaluru, said the BJP “is hell-bent on Hinduising India”.



“I am actually shocked to see this. How are these Sanskrit signs going to help when you have so few speakers in the state?” he said. “This government started with changing Mughal names or Muslim-sounding names, now they are going after the language, it is highly unfortunate,” he told Al Jazeera.

In October 2018, the BJP government in neighbouring UP state renamed the cities of Allahabad to Prayagraj and Faizabad to Ayodhya, saying it was “correcting wrongs” made by Mughal rulers during the medieval period.

In the same year in August, the UP government renamed the iconic Mughalsarai railway station near Varanasi – the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya station.



There have already been calls to change the name of Agra, where the famous Taj Mahal is located, to Agravan, or Agrawal and Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat state, to Karnavati.



The BJP has also been accused of attempting to distort history by either removing or rewriting the Islamic past and Muslims’ contribution to nation building.



https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/sanskrit-replace-urdu-railway-signboards-uttarakhand-200121104707381.html

What’s natural?

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The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history. It is ahistorical and unscientific. Humans transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been.



This has been confirmed by recent research. The impact of humans on nature has been far greater and longer-lasting than we could ever imagine, according to scientists.





We are now negatively impacting the world and the species that live in it more than ever before. But this does not mean that we used to live in true harmony with nature in the past,” said study researcher, Dr Søren Faurby of the University of Gothenburg. “We are extremely successful in monopolising resources today, and our results show that this may have also been the case with our ancestors.”



Co-researcher Alexandre Antonelli of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said the view that our ancestors had little impact on the animals around them is incorrect, as “the impact of our lineage on nature has been far greater and longer-lasting than we ever could ever imagine”.



https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51068816

Climate Refugees

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Although non-binding on countries, the United Nations now recognise the category of climate refugee. A UN panel which stated that climate refugees seeking asylum cannot legally be sent back to their home countries if they face life-threatening conditions due to the climate crisis.



 “Without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to a violation of their rights,” ruled the U.N. Human Rights Committee, “thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states.”



 The committee handed down its ruling earlier this month in a case brought by Ioane Teitiota, a man who applied for asylum in New Zealand in 2013 after sea level rise and other conditions in his home country of Kiribati forced him and his family to leave. Kiribati is expected to be uninhabitable in the coming decades—as soon as 10 to 15 years from now, according to Teitiota’s case—as rising sea levels leads to overcrowding on the Pacific nation’s islands. Teitiota took his case to the committee in 2016 after being deported back to Kiribati by New Zealand’s government the previous year. He argued that the lack of fresh water and difficulty growing crops in Kiribati has caused health problems for him and his family, as well as land disputes.



The committee ultimately rejected Teitiota’s case this month, saying in its ruling that since he argued that Kiribati is expected to be uninhabitable in 10 to 15 years, the country and the international community have time to move the population to safety or to make the islands safe.

 Amnesty International praised the decision as “good news” and said in a statement

that it could help prompt the international community to take concrete action. 



Amnesty International said, the ruling held promise for the 143 million people who are expected to become climate refugees by 2050—many of whom reside in Pacific Island nations.



“The decision sets a global precedent,” said Kate Schuetze, Pacific researcher at Amnesty International, in a statement. “It says a state will be in breach of its human rights obligations if it returns someone to a country where—due to the climate crisis—their life is at risk, or in danger of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The message in this case is clear: Pacific Island states don’t need to be underwater before triggering those human rights obligations,” Schuetze told The Guardian. “I think we will see those cases start to emerge.”

Prof. Jane McAdam of the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales agreed with Amnesty’s assessment, saying that while the ruling was not in Teitiota’s favor, “the committee recognized that without robust action on climate at some point in the future it could well be that governments will, under international human rights law, be prohibited from sending people to places where their life is at risk or where they would face inhuman or degrading treatment.”

“Even though in this particular case there was no violation found, it effectively put governments on notice,” she told The Guardian.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/20/climate-refugees-cant-be-returned-home-says-landmark-un-human-rights-ruling

Global Inequality

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The 42 richest people in the world have as much wealth as half the world put together.



 The world’s richest 2,153 people controlled more money than the poorest 4.6 billion



 The 22 richest men in the world have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa, according to an Oxfam report



Half the world’s population continue to live on less than $5.50-a-day. Figures show that 82 per cent of all wealth created last year went to the richest 1 per cent. They claim that 0 per cent went to the world’s poorest half



Women and girls are putting in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work every day, such as looking after children and the elderly, which amounts to a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year – more than three times the size of the global tech industry. Women, especially those living in poverty, “do more than three-quarters of all unpaid care work. 42 per cent of women are outside the paid workforce because of unpaid care responsibilities compared to just six per cent of men.”





The 42 richest people in the world (estimated wealth in billions)



Bill Gates ($86), Warren Buffet ($75.6), Jeff Bezos ($72.8), Amancio Ortega ($71.3), Mark Zuckerberg ($56), Carlos Slim Helu ($54.5), Larry Ellison ($52.2), Charles Koch ($48.3), David Koch ($48.3), Michael Bloomberg ($47.5), Bernard Arnault ($41.5). Larry Page ($40.7), Sergey Brin ($39.8), Liliane Bettencourt ($39.5), S. Robson Walton ($34.1), Jim Walton ($34), Alice Walton ($33.8), Wang Jianlin ($31.3), Li Ka-shing ($31.2), Sheldon Adelson ($30.4), Steve Ballmer ($30), Jorge Paulo Lemann ($29.2), Jack Ma ($28.3), Beate Heister and Karl Albrechet Jr.($27.2), David Thomson ($27.2), Jacqueline Mars ($27), John Mars ($27), Phil Knight ($26.2), Maria France Fissolo ($25.2), George Soros ($25.2), Ma Huateng ($24.9), Lee Shau Kee ($24.4), Mukesh Ambani ($23.2), Masayoshi Son ($21.2), Kjeld Kirk Krstiansen ($21.1), Georg Schaeffler ($20.7), Joseph Safra ($20.5), Michael Dell ($20.4), Susanne Klatten ($20.4), Len Blavatnik ($20), Laurene Powell Jobs ($20), Paul Allen ($19.9)

https://inews.co.uk/news/business/oxfam-richest-people-inequality-gap-514545https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/worlds-22-richest-men-more-wealth-325-million-women-africa-1369761





Hunger in Canada

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Canadians who cannot afford regular meals are more likely to die early, according to a study showing that people are dying from hunger even in wealthy countries. More than 4 million people in Canada struggle to get enough to eat, official data show, a problem that ranges from running out of food or skipping meals to compromising on quantity and quality. Globally, more than 2 billion people lack access to adequate healthy food, putting them at risk of health problems, including 8 percent of people in North America or Europe, according to the latest data from the United Nations.



The study of more than half a million Canadian adults found that hunger was linked to raised mortality from all causes of death except cancer.



But infectious diseases, unintentional injuries and suicide were twice as likely to kill those who faced severe problems finding enough food as those who do not, said the paper, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.



“It’s like we found third-world causes in a first-world country,” lead author Fei Men, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.



“Food insecure people in Canada are facing problems like infections and drug poisoning that we would expect people from developing countries to be facing,” he said.



“The results are pretty striking to us as well. In the developed world such as Canada, food insecurity can still cause deaths,” Men added.
Not having enough to eat leads to both “material deprivation and psychological distress” which in turn results in chronic inflammation and malnutrition, it said.



They are also less able to manage chronic conditions, Men said.



“If they have diabetes, they are more likely to not adhere to their treatment and drugs so it might have much bigger and harmful effect on them.”

The findings show public health efforts to prevent and treat diseases and injuries should take into account people’s access to adequate food, the authors said.



https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/wealthy-canada-millions-hungry-report-200120070208864.html

Poor Education for the Poor

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A new study has revealed that one out of three adolescent girls from the poorest households around the world has never been to school.



 “Countries everywhere are failing the world’s poorest children, and in doing so, failing themselves,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “As long as public education spending is disproportionately skewed towards children from the richest households, the poorest will have little hope of escaping poverty, learning the skills they need to compete and succeed in today’s world, and contributing to their countries’ economies.”



The UNICEF study finds that “education for children from the richest 20% of households are allocated nearly double the amount of education funding than children from the poorest 20% of households.”



Disparities in education spending are particularly high in ten African countries, with four times as much funding allocated to the richest children compared with the poorest.



Guinea and the Central African Republic are the countries with some of the world’s highest rates of out-of-school children, with the richest children benefitting more from the public education funds than the poorest children.

More than half of children living in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple story by the end of primary school.



https://www.dw.com/en/one-in-three-girls-from-poor-households-has-never-attended-school-unicef/a-52064084

White Power on Display

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On Martin Luther King Day could you imagine if thousands of African-Americans paraded in the streets with rifles, many masked and in combat gear.



 Today white pro-gun advocates including some white nationalists, far-right militia members, anti-government extremists, and neo-Nazis are protesting in Richmond, Virginia against proposed gun-control law. Governor Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency and banned guns from the capital. The ban does not appear to being enforced.



 What would the reports on Fox News be if thousands of blacks were openly carrying weapons. History recalls the  reaction of the State when a few decades ago, the Black Panthers armed themselves for self-defence. Ronald Reagan then governor of California passed gun control laws with the support of the NRA. 



 White fear of armed black people overcame the NRA’s defence of the 2nd Amendment. 



 And the media made little protest as members of the Black Panthers were murdered by police.



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