The pay of the top 1% of earners across the UK – those already on more than £170,000 a year – is rising at an average annualised rate of 9.1%.

At the same time, those in the lowest 10% – those earning below £8,000 a year – have seen their pay rise by just 1.3%. 

the rate of inflation, currently at a 40-year high of 9.4% and forecast by the Bank of England to hit 13% in the coming months. 

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, says such stories are familiar up and down the country. “Working people are at breaking point, having been left at the mercy of soaring bills after a decade of standstill wages and universal credit cuts. But for the wealthiest, it’s business as usual. It’s not just pay at the top that is soaring. Bonuses in the City are at a record high and dividend payouts to shareholders are booming. Without urgent action, the cost of living crisis will deepen the class divide in this country even further.”

‘Some people must be earning millions’: inequality in the UK’s highest-earning constituency | Inequality | The Guardian

 Not often that this blog has very much positive to say about the UK military but this is an exception.

Gen Sir John McColl, who served in Afghanistan as the first head of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and other ministers should “hang their heads in shame” in regard to the treatment of Afghan refugees.

Two RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals. The MoD sources accused other parts of Whitehall of “struggling” to know what to do, and failing to put adequate plans in place.

Britain’s original evacuation of Afghans was “random” and at times dogs had been prioritised over people, he said, adding: “The system was broken when we withdrew from Kabul last year and it remains broken. It was a source of shame then and it continues to be a source of shame.”

Sources at the MoD said that about 1,050 people who were brought out of Afghanistan under Arap were currently in hotels in Pakistan, awaiting processing and transportation to the UK or another destination.

About 6,200 people – including some 1,200 “principals” who worked for the UK, and typically four to five members of their families – are currently understood to be eligible for relocation under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), one of two government programmes. The figure includes some who are still in Afghanistan and others who have made it out, more often than not to Pakistan, though Afghans have also attempted to cross the border into Iran, where the strained relationship between Britain and the regime in Tehran complicates the ability to help people. The Arap scheme has brought more than 10,100 eligible Afghans to the UK while another, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), will allow up to 20,000 to settle in Britain.

However, there has been strong criticism that the UK has effectively abandoned many Afghans to persecution and execution under the Taliban for the crime of having worked with British forces and officials.

Nine expert groups on Afghanistan criticised the British government’s resettlement schemes as “unjustifiably restrictive”. They said it was deeply concerning that the government was currently not offering a safe route for many Afghan women and girls or to oppressed minority groups.

UK treatment of Afghan refugees ‘continues to be source of shame’ | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

 The Kent Miners’ Festival is back on Saturday and Sunday 27th to 28th August (from 10am), and Kent & Sussex branch has booked a pitch in the heritage and community exhibitors marquee.

Eight of the 14 areas of England are now classified as being in drought, with hosepipe bans being implemented across increasing areas of the country.

The Environment Agency recently called for water company bosses to be jailed for serious pollution, after finding the water firms’ performance on pollution had declined to the worst seen in years.

 The bosses of England’s water companies have been criticised for banking £58m in pay and benefits over the last five years. Since privatisation, shareholders have been paid £72bn in dividends. The cash came from big debts, with companies borrowing £56bn, and big bills, with prices rising 40%.

Stuart Singleton-White, head of campaigns at the Angling Trust, said: “The profits being made by water companies, who are in effect private monopolies, the dividend payments to shareholders, the inflated salaries and bonuses to the CEOs, and the debts that have been run up by these companies, mostly to support dividends and inflated salaries, rather than finance investment, is a clear sign this is a broken market.”

He pointed out that no new reservoirs have been built in England since water companies were privatised, and that years of underinvestment had led to “unacceptable levels of leaks”. Water companies currently leak around a quarter of their supply through old pipes, with 2,954m litres a day seeping away last year.

“When the crisis hit, our water system was not ready”, Singleton-White said, blaming “the greed of the water companies, the weakness of the regulators and the complacency of the government”.

Former Conservative environment minister Rebecca Pow said, “These salaries are unacceptable if they can’t with a clear conscience provide clean, plentiful and sustainable water.”

Thames Water

Area: Greater London, parts of Kent, Essex and Gloucestershire

Chief executive: Sarah Bentley

Pay: £2m

Tenure: September 2020-present

Bentley landed £2m in pay and bonuses last year. She held senior roles at the telecoms giant BT, the consultancy Accenture and Severn Trent Waterbefore joining Thames Water with a £3.1m “golden hello”, including two £727,000 one-off payments. Last year, the firm was fined £4m for discharging raw sewage in two Oxford streams.

Anglian Water

Area: East of England including Norfolk and Cambridgeshire

Chief executive: Peter Simpson

Pay: £1.3m

Tenure: 2013-present

Last month he had landed a £337,651 bonus despite the company notching up one of the worst pollution records in the industry.

Severn Trent

Area: Stretches from the Bristol Channel to the Humber, and from mid-Wales to the east Midlands

Chief executive: Liv Garfield

Pay: £3.9m

Tenure: 2014-present

 The firm was fined £1.5m for dumping sewage in Worcestershire last year.

Pennon

Area: South-west England

Chief executive: Susan Davy

Pay: £1.6m

Tenure: 2020-present

 South West Water has faced criticism over pollution levels affecting the Cornwall and Devon beaches.

Wessex Water

Area: Parts of south-west England including Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire

Chief executive: Colin Skellet

Pay: £975,000 last year

Tenure: 1988-present

Wessex Water has issued a warning about “non-essential” water use and he has a 40ft swimming pool at his home in a village outside Bath, thought to be worth more than £3m. Wessex Water paid out £975,000 over raw sewage spills in Dorset in 2018.

United Utilities

Area: North-west England

Chief executive: Steve Mogford

Pay: £3.2m

Tenure: 2011-present

Northumbrian Water

Area: North-east England, Essex, Suffolk

Chief executive: Heidi Mottram

Pay: £648,000

Tenure: 2010-present

Southern Water

Area: Hampshire, West Sussex, Isle of Wight, parts of Kent

Chief executive: Lawrence Gosden

Pay: Undisclosed

Tenure: 1 July-present

Last year Southern was fined a record £90m for deliberately pouring sewage into the sea.

Yorkshire Water

Area: Yorkshire, north Lincolnshire, Derbyshire

Chief executive: Nicola Shaw

Pay: Undisclosed

Tenure: 9 May-present

The former National Grid UK executive director, who was also boss of High Speed 1, is likely to receive similar pay to her predecessor, who received £1.4m.

Scottish WaterArea: Scotland

Chief executive: Douglas Millican

Pay: £558,000

Tenure: 2013-present

 Aramco reaped a half-year income of $48.4 billion in profits between April and June this year, compared with $25.5 billion last year. The company enjoyed a similar surge in profits for the first three months. Half-year-earnings reached nearly $88 billion.

Aramco President Amin Nasser said the results reflected “an increasing demand for our products,” and predicted that the trend would continue. “In fact, we expect oil demand to continue to grow for the rest of the decade…”

Saudi oil firm Aramco profits skyrocket amid global instability | News | DW | 14.08.2022

 There is a shortage of bread in Lebanon and when it is available, it is very expensive. For weeks, people have been having to queue for hours at bakeries. Despite state subsidies, a package of six flatbreads officially costs 13,000 Lebanese pounds (ca. €8.50 or $8.80). On the black market, it often goes for at least twice that.

There had been a glimmer of hope when it was reported that the Razoni, the first ship to set off from Ukraine after Moscow and Kyiv struck their deal last month to establish a grain corridor, was on its way to Lebanon. However, before arriving at its destination in Tripoli, the second-largest city in the country, the ship was turned away with 26,000 tons of grain. The official explanation is that the buyer no longer wanted the cargo because it was five months too late. Furthermore, the president of the Food Import Association of Lebanon, Hani Bushali, told German news agency DPA that the country needed wheat, not corn. It appears that the corn was originally intended as animal feed.

In many countries, it is wheat that is the number one staple food. Despite this several of the subsequent ships that left Ukraine were loaded with corn or sunflower meal.

The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) set up by the UN to facilitate the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative did not respond to an inquiry by DW as to why this was the case. In its FAQs about the initiative, the UN states: “The shipping companies decide on the movement of their vessels based on commercial activity and procedures. The Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul authorizes the movement of vessels in and out of the Black Sea based on the requests it receives from the Ukrainian port authorities.” Only some of the shipments are intended for the UN World Food Program to alleviate hunger around the world, but the JCC has no say in where the rest of the grain should be delivered. Turkey, Britain, Ireland and South Korea are just some of the possible destinations.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a briefing this week that these were “commercial transactions” and it was only normal that the ships “go where the contract stipulates that they go.” 

Ukraine: No smooth sailing for grain via the Black Sea | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 13.08.2022

 Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said she would not publish five reports or research on the benefit cap, deaths of benefits claimants, the impact of universal credit (UC), and benefit sanctions, and that she had no plans to publish two further reports on unpaid carers and work capability assessments although her Conservative predecessors as secretary of state had promised to publish several of the reports.

Ken Butler, a policy adviser at Disability Rights UK, said: “We’re not talking about just one report and one subject. We’re talking about a whole swathe of reports about important aspects of the system. The DWP are operating behind a wall of secrecy.” he continued, “We’re being told this isn’t a priority at the moment and basically being dismissed,” Butler said. “When you’re moving two million disabled people on to a new benefit all these issues are really relevant…”

“Thérèse Coffey has set out to minimise the evidence published by the department and a consequence of this is that public trust in the department has been badly damaged,” said Stephen Timms, the chairman of the Commons work and pensions select committee.

British minister accused of trying to hide reports on impact of Tory welfare reforms | Benefits | The Guardian

Workers at Starbucks have held over 55 different strikes in at least 17 states in the US in recent months over the company’s aggressive opposition to a wave of unionization.

The Starbucks Workers United union have created a $1m strike fund in June 2022 to support Starbucks workers through their strikes and several relief funds have been established for strikes and to support workers who have lost their jobs.

Over 75 workers have been fired in retaliation for union organizing this year, and hundreds of allegations of misconduct by Starbucks related to the union campaign are currently under review at the National Labor Relations Board, including claims of shutting down stores to bust unions, firing workers and intimidating and threatening workers from unionizing. 

Amid the wave of union elections at Starbucks, the company has rolled out new wage increases and benefits corporate-wide, but has withheld the new pay increases and benefits from unionized workers despite the calls from these workers to enact these changes for them as they push for the company to negotiate a first contract with the unionized stores.

Starbucks workers hold strikes in at least 17 states amid union drive | US unions | The Guardian

Another war in Europe brings unimaginable horrors which will fall chiefly on the working people. The lessons of the  past have so far been but faintly grasped by workers. Once a war is upon us, bid farewell to civil “liberties,” to the relative freedom of speech for the rule of the “patriot” is imposed and the fortunes of the profiteers guaranteed.  

Capitalism only knows the law of the jungle,“woe to the weak,” and in the fight for markets advantage is on the side of the big battalions of finance, industry and the armed forces. Capitalism is in its nature predatory and aggressive. It will always fight for markets, and in the fight it will always aggravate and exploit the differences of language, religion and custom in order to reap some economic advantage at the expense of rivals. Capitalism cannot but breed national hatreds. Not until capitalism has been abolished will world peace become a reality.

Capitalism as an economic system causes antagonism between capitalists, today organised in colossal cartels and corporations. These conflicts of economic interest often lead to war. We have seen the most senseless acts of violence and depravity on all sides in an orgy of blood-letting, fatal and otherwise, and we have lived with the foulest hypocrisy of selective condemnation on all sides — hypocrisy that is as aggressive, vicious and futile as the activities it condemns.

As socialists we recognise what passes for democracy in capitalism simply as a weapon useful to a socialist-conscious working class in the establishment of socialism; as a political condition that, from a working-class standpoint, is superior to its alternatives insofar as it permits the organisation of our class for the democratic conquest of political power and the abolition of government of people and establishment of a democratic system of such administrative controls as are required to secure the material basis of a full and happy life for all. We have no “moral” standpoint on the question — we don’t consider, for example, that a soldier, invested with the support of millions has any more “right” to use arms in the service of capitalism than has any terrorist supported by a few thousand people. Our political “morality” is based, like all political “morality”, on the needs of our class and if we reject the idea of minority violence or violence at all, it is simply because our socialist objective can only be achieved by the conscious act of a majority of socialists.

It will also be noticed that the capitalist is never at a loss for an excuse for refusing workers’ demands. If Britain were at war the excuse would be the war and the need to make sacrifices for it. As Britain is not at war then the reason is still the same,  the excuse is the need to make sacrifices for peace, for armaments for some possible future war, or to capture foreign markets.  The workers who are already suffering from a long-existing rise in the cost of living are told they must wait, pending the development of the corporative conscience. They are told that they are selfish but it will not be overlooked  that the concerns making huge profits did not have to wait, even when the workers get their promised rise, some at least of them will have to work longer hours for it. Haven’t we all heard a lot lately about the nearly extinct rich, bled white by taxation?

In Britain and the USA, parties supposedly representing the interests of working people have got to explain why they receive financial support from big business, the exploiters of the workers. There is an answer, a simple answer — complicated for the working class by the same mad social conditioning that allows them to babble idiocies about violence, that answer is socialism; the establishment of a society of production for use, a society where the resources of nature and the mental and physical skills of people will combine, not to produce things for sale and profit, but produce an abundance of the things we require sufficient to permit of free and equal access to our needs. Only in such a society will the material basis of division and dissension, that has erupted into conflict, can be finally banished. Eventually, the world’s workers will respond to capitalism’s inhumanities to the extent that they understand and desire the socialist alternative – production for use and the end of exchange relationships. Then socialist ideas will be prevalent.

 Haiti is trapped in a hunger and security crisis. 

4.5 million people experiencing acute food insecurity (IPC3 or higher).

Haiti is currently experiencing a major economic crisis, with inflation at 26%, making it difficult for families to afford food and other essentials, or to sell crops at local markets.

Across the country, hunger is becoming a norm for children, many of whom have no idea if they will get food tomorrow. Malnutrition can cause stunting, impede mental and physical development, increase the risk of contracting deadly diseases, and ultimately cause death.

Entha, a 7-year-old girl from the southwest region of Haiti, lost her home, crops and belongings in last year´s earthquake. 

Entha explains, “When I don’t eat, I don’t feel good because that makes me sad. I can’t go play anymore. It’s because I am hungry…”

Perpetue Vendredi, Director of Programme Operations, Save the Children in Haiti, said, “In the past 12 months we have seen a worrying trend of hunger increasing across Haiti. Increasing numbers of hunger cases is becoming a great challenge for children and their families; more help is needed…The humanitarian response is still woefully underfunded as this crisis has been largely ignored as other global events have taken over…Children and their families are in desperate need of food, nutrition, health, safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and social protection and livelihoods support to prevent widespread malnutrition, illness, starvation, and death…”

Haiti: Hunger, economic crisis stall recovery a year after devastating earthquake – Haiti | ReliefWeb