Grocery prices in the UK have surged to a new record of 17.1% in the four weeks of February, according to the latest figures released by market researcher Kantar on Tuesday. Milk, eggs and margarine are showing the fastest price growth, data shows.

The report says food inflation in the country is at its highest since the firm started tracking the figures in 2008, adding £811 ($980) to the typical annual shopping bill and forcing UK households to change their consumption habits.

“This February marks a full year since monthly grocery inflation climbed above 4%. This is having a big impact on people’s lives,” the head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, Fraser McKevitt, said.

He noted that surging food prices were the second most important financial issue for the public after energy costs, adding that one in four shoppers in Britain were now struggling financially.

According to a BBC study, some essentials have almost doubled in price over the past two years. For example, a 500g bag of pasta that cost 50p two years ago is now priced at 95p.

UK families face an even tighter squeeze on their finances this year as the government cuts back support on household energy bills, while mortgage rates continue to rise, worsening the cost-of-living crisis. Although overall inflation in the UK fell to 10.1% in January from its highest levels in more than 40 years, food prices continue to rise, forcing shoppers to turn to discounters, the economists said.

RT 28\2\23

Dave C

The international crisis is escalating at the present time. The drive towards war is assuming irresistible dimensions. Elaborate preparations, hidden and open, are being made for a new showdown. Diplomatic and military preparations are going on in every country in Europe. There is only one way to prevent war and if it breaks out to end it, namely, by the overthrow of capitalism, the real cause from which war arises. Capitalism is a system based upon exploitation. Violence, repression and war are necessary to maintain that exploitation. The World Socialist  Movement has always been striving for peace between nations. Its energies have been directed towards the elimination of the causes of war. You are really not against war if you are not for the overthrow of the system that produces war. You  are not really for peace if you  are not for the overthrow of the system which makes peace impossible. The first casualty of war is democracy. It must be obvious to anyone who is not politically naive, that no government undertaking or treaty has ever been kept for longer than it was expedient to do so.

The profit system is the cause of all wars today. The capitalist class owns all things, and it wants a market in which to sell them. Besides, the capitalist class has billions of dollars (profits) which it wants to invest in some other country in order to make more profits. And this is the cause of all capitalist wars. The capitalists all want to seize, or to hold, territory in foreign, undeveloped countries. They want to have a military in order to protect these foreign investments from the capitalists of other countries. Wars are caused by the competition of various national capitalist groups for new markets, new natural resources and  for new investments. The Sociaist Party cannot agree with those who attribute the cause of war to the behavior of this or that political leader.

Socialism will prevent wars because it means the ownership of the factories, mines, shops, lands and all other instruments of production and distribution by the workers who use them. It means the abolition of the profit system. You can make the whole world your world with a united working class. But you must have an educated, organised class.

The way to cure a disease is not to put salve upon the symptoms, but to remove the cause. The profit system is almost the only cause of war today. Discard the system and remove the cause of war. The profit system is the cause of nearly all the suffering poverty, sickness, crime, as well as war. It is the great enemy of the working people. Amidst the horrors of famine, poverty, crime and war there is one way out for the working class of every country. There is one way that means victory for the useful workers of that country. That way means socialism (or industrial democracy).

So long as capitalists profit by privileged wealth, whilst the working people are crushed, there will always be wars for markets, mines, etc., which are require idn order to maintain the privileged’s  wealth. Never in history were the burdens and the terrors of war more horrible, than just now. We argue that the cause of war is capitalist society.

Under capitalism we have a world which is divided into rival and competing nations, which struggle with each other over the control of markets, trade routes and natural resources. It is this struggle which brings nations into armed conflict with each other because militarism is the violent extension of the economic policies of propertied interests. War cannot be isolated from the economic relationships of production or the general object of capitalist production, which is to advance the interests of those privileged class minorities who monopolise the whole process of production.

It follows that no working class of any country has any stake or interest in war, and we have always said that workers should never support war. Our stand since we were established has been to oppose every war. Armed with this understanding of the cause of war we are committed to working politically with workers of all countries to establish world socialism, because that is where the interest of the working class lies. We have never participated in the hideous cause of capitalism at war.

We are saying that socialism is the only guarantee that war will not take place because it will completely remove the cause of war. But we are saying more than this. All the time capitalism exists, war will remain because the threat of military force, and its use, is a necessary instrument of vested economic interests.

 The Israeli rights groups Peace Now and B’Tselem also described the attacks as a settler “pogrom” supported by the Israeli government.

300 attacks, including shootings and arson in the Nablus area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say, in what has been described as a “pogrom”

37-year-old Palestinian, Samih al-Aqtash was shot and killed by settlers protected by the Israeli army in the village of Zaatara south of Nablus.

390 Palestinians were injured across the villages of Huwara, Zaatara, Burin and Asira al-Qibliya.

Stabbings and attacks with metal rods and rocks, and one person in hospital with a fractured skull after being beaten in the head with a rock. Another was beaten with a metal rod to the face, 30 Palestinian homes and 100 cars were set on fire by settlers.

Video shows the attacks taking place under the protection or in coordination with the Israeli army, sometimes with soldiers and settlers shooting side by side.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/27/unprecedented-israeli-settlers-wreak-havoc-on-occupied-nablus

Jordan hosted a meeting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Aqaba attended by Egypt and the United States, called in order to discuss steps to de-escalate tensions.

The closing statement of the Aqaba summit, said: “The Government of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority confirmed their joint readiness and commitment to immediately work to end unilateral measures for a period of 3-6 months. This includes an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorisation of any outposts for six months,”

After the statement was announced, Netanyahu said that there “will not be any freeze” with regards to settlement construction.

“The building and authorisation in Judea and Samaria will continue according to the original planning and building schedule, with no change,” he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.

A number of top ministers in Israel also confirmed that the Israeli government will not temporarily halt the announcement of new illegal settlement units.

Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, who headed the Israeli delegation at the summit, said “Contrary to reports and tweets about the meeting in Jordan, there is no change in Israeli policy,”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, “…there will not be a freeze on construction and development in settlements, not even for one day,”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/27/403

“The speed and efficiency in which settlers take over Palestinian lands by building farming outposts is coupled with a lot of violence,” Dror Etkes, Kerem Navot founder and settlement researcher, told Al Jazeera.

According to the latest United Nations figures, 2022 recorded the highest number of settler-related incidents since the international organisation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs started monitoring them in 2006.

Etkes said that the establishment of outposts is usually associated with a huge amount of violence…Israeli human rights group Yesh-Din data from 2005 to 2022 show that 93 percent of all investigations into ideologically motivated crime in the West Bank are closed without an indictment.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/27/israeli-settler-outposts-threaten-palestinian-bedouins

Israeli group B’Tselem summed it up.

“This isn’t ‘loss of control.’ This is exactly what Israeli control looks like. The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it…”

 “Through their most notorious organs of science, such as Dr. Ure, Professor Senior, and other sages of that stamp, the middle class had predicted, and to their heart’s content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampire like, could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too…Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies…. they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour.,..To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”

Karl Marx, Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association. 1864

The 1833 Factory Act and the 1842 Mines Act began to ameliorate  the ages that children could be exploited and restricted the hours they could work.

The  1878 Factory Act prohibited work anywhere before the age of 10.The 1880 Education Act made it compulsory  for children up to ten years old  to go to school This  then became up to twelve years old.

Child labour laws were not enshrined in the United States until The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

A piece in RT by Bradley Blankenship, 24\2\23, examines the efforts by American capitalists to reintroduce child labour.

“Amid an ongoing push for higher wages by US workers, including union-building efforts and a national railway strike that was averted last December, some states are finding ways to undercut the working class.

One method, as Business Insider reports, is for the US to start allowing children aged 14-17 into the workforce. The federal government has said this practice is already increasing in an illicit fashion, too.

In the last month, Republican lawmakers in Iowa and  Minnesota have introduced legislation that would allow exceptions to existing child labour regulations. This is aimed at ameliorating the ongoing labour shortage in the US, which is also plaguing other countries, predominantly in the West.

The proposed bills in these states would allow children to work more hours and “protect employers from liabilities due to sickness or accidents,” which could help specific industries like construction and meatpacking that are being hit hard in these states.

The federal government also create a new rule in January allowing people wishing to be professional truck drivers to obtain their Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) at the age of 18 instead of 21. This was done because, as CNN reports, “the head of the American Trucking Associations said the industry needed about 80,000 more drivers.”

Minnesota wants to see 16 and 17-year-olds allowed to work in construction, which can be a dangerous job. Iowa wants to see even younger children allowed to work in their meat-packing plants.”

Dave C.

 The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.’

Karl Marx  and Friedrich Engels: ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party.’

Capitalism (and State Capitalism) is Global. Its damaging effects affect everyone. The present  pandemic of inflation across various countries is no exception to the rule  that capitalism impacts negatively on the working class and especially the poor.

Charles Dickens character, Mr Micawber, who is always hoping that something will turn up, epitomises the everyday struggles that millions face.

‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.’ Inflation causes the  annual expenditure to increase with nothing to show for it or, for a belt tightening that disproportionately affects those least able to weather the effects of continually rising costs.

The mental health implications caused by the stress of ever more expensive day-to-day living are another of capitalism’s horrors.

Japan is the latest country to face these head-on.

“More than half of Japanese households have experienced worsening living standards as a result of soaring inflation, the latest survey conducted by the Bank of Japan has shown.

In its quarterly report, the BOJ said 53% of people surveyed admitted that their wealth had slumped last year compared to 2021, while only 3.7% said their livelihood had improved. This is the highest percentage of households reporting financial problems in almost 13 years.

The report indicates that consumers will be unwilling to increase their spending without growth in wages as a record 63% of respondents named inflation as a decisive factor for their spending activity this year.

Data shows that price growth is spreading across various sectors of the Japanese economy and companies are passing on the burden of rising costs in energy, food and raw materials to households. Aside from utility bills, prices rose for a broad range of goods from fried chicken to smartphones and air conditioners in a sign of mounting inflationary pressure.

In December, price growth in Tokyo exceeded forecasts and reached 4% for the first time since 1982, data from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs showed.

The Bank of Japan also expects that prices will continue to rise and has doubled its inflation forecast for the coming year to a record 10%.”

RT 13\2\23

Dave C.

 A report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a thinktank, showed that spending plans outlined at the autumn statement in November included cuts to public services worth £1,000 a household by 2027-28. 

It warned that Rishi Sunak’s government is hiding £28bn of “stealth cuts” to public services over the next five years. 

 In the autumn statement, the government promised to increase spending by 1% a year after inflation. However, this was underpinned by Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, which had assumed inflation would fall below zero.

The thinktank said this was unlikely to happen because the Bank of England would be expected to intervene to keep inflation close to its 2% target rate. NEF said that if inflation remained close to 2%, this would imply real-terms cuts – not growth – to spending worth £28bn.

NEF said that if inflation remained close to 2%, this would imply real-terms cuts – not growth – to spending worth £28bn.

Alfie Stirling, the chief economist and director of research at NEF, said the government was “exploiting a curious feature of the OBR’s forecast” to make its promise. “It allowed the chancellor to play smoke and mirrors with the future of public services last autumn,” he said.

UK government is hiding £28bn of ‘stealth cuts’ to public services, says report | Economics | The Guardian

 War casts the darkest of shadows over all — civilians as well as combatants. The Socialist Party shares nothing in common with those that preach peace but continue to prepare for war.  Under the cloak of patriotism and national interest, millions of workers are thrown against each other in battle. They do not know that they are fighting to defend or to extend the interests of the class that lives by robbing them of the fruits of their labour. For the working class in all countries every death, every wound and every hour of suffering is in vain. War solves no working-class problems, and from a working-class point of view, is a war crime in itself. Our attitude is in line with the interests of the working class.

Capitalism is a system of society which produces goods incidentally. Fundamentally its aim is the amassing of surplus value. Productivity and profit are interchangeable and synonymous terms. There is a complete divorce of production and consumption. Production is earned out for profit and not for use. Thus we have the exploitation of the majority of society as a means to enrich a small minority—the capitalist class. Capitalism is contradictory and anti-social. Governments of all countries seek to maintain this social relationship of owner and non-owners, buyer and seller. Each is struggling for the monopoly. Commercial rivalries set capitalist states and empires one against the other. The class which has property and privilege must maintain armed forces to protect their property and to make secure the social system which affords them their privileges. 

The moment war is declared the majority of the people, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, and conscripted in all parts of their lives, for the destruction of other people. Symbols of patriotism become the dominant feature of the media. Loyalty becomes the sole test for citizenship. Anything pertaining to the enemy becomes taboo. All the activities of society are linked together as fast as possible for the central purpose of making a military offensive or national defence.

Patriotism groups people according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism groups working people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. Patriotism in every nation masks class antagonisms to the great benefit of the ruling class; through it, they prolong and facilitate its domination. It is good, it is useful, it is indispensable for rulers that workers of every country consider the rich who exploit them, not as enemies, but as friends, allies and even brothers.  Workers who give their lives for their country are duped.

The Socialist Party looks at war in a fundamentally different way from people with other political persuasions. We contend that war in the modern world is caused by the workings of capitalism with its struggles over trade, investments, oil and other resources. The workers of the world have an identity of interest and have nothing at stake in the thieves’ quarrels of their masters. The working class owns none of the resources; they have nothing to fight for and everything to gain by uniting to end the system that enslaves them and produces wars and other terrible problems. Working people have no country. The differences which exist between nations are all superficial differences. There is only one war which is worthy and that is class war, social revolution.

Under capitalism, it is the owners of capital who decide the object of production, and that is not consumption but the creation of profits. That is the nub of the whole problem. To produce for use today presupposes the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. Without common ownership, a planned economy is an impossibility.

So long as capitalism exists, so long as capitalism rules, so long as the state is in the hands of the capitalists, so long as the capitalists hold power, then so long will there be wars.

 War is a vital necessity for the ruling class. To cover up its murder, capitalism has always raised the cry for freedom. Wage slavery is capitalism’s freedom for the working class. 

The Socialist Party rejects the plea of the “left” that national liberation is worth dying for. This amounts to workers killing each other to determine who shall be their future exploiters. Nationalism is a divisive anti-working class concept. Capitalism is the cause of war. To abolish war we must abolish capitalism. This is the whole crux of the matter. Many on the left support war and take one side or the other, thus lending themselves to the shedding of working-class blood for the profits of the capitalist class.

The establishment of socialism demands the unity and co-operation of the workers of the world. Such unity and cooperation can only arise from socialist understanding, which means a clear recognition of the need to change society. To establish a system without frontiers or armed forces, where the scramble for trade and profits no longer exists. The resources of the earth, instead of being a class monopoly used to exploit and destroy, will be commonly owned and used solely to satisfy human needs.

 On a global scale, meat consumption continues to rise: It has multiplied by almost five over the past 60 years, growing from 71 million tonnes in 1961 to 339 million tonnes in 2021, according to statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This production has massive consequences for climate change: The livestock sector is responsible for 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions derived from human activities and half of the emissions of the agricultural sector worldwide.

In France, a mere quarter of the population describes itself as flexitarian, eating meat only occasionally, while 2.2 percent describes itself as vegetarian.

 Agricultural economist Carine Barbier, a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and The International Research Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED) explained, “It’s the principal cause of dietary-related greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the whole food industry already represents 25 percent of French emissions, this includes the entire process, from the production to our plates as well as imports. Animal farming alone represents 9 percent of total emissions.”

Due to emissions of three types of greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide and methane – into the atmosphere, animal husbandry is costing the planet dearly. “CO2 emissions come from the use of fossil fuel for transportation, namely imports, (and) the use of machinery in agriculture as well as in the food processing industry and large retail outlets,” the expert explained. Nitrous oxide (N2O), on the other hand, “comes from the use of mineral nitrogen fertilisers in fields”, and methane is produced by the digestive system of cattle. Although not as well known as carbon dioxide, the latter two gases are not less harmful: N2O reflects 300 times as much heat as CO2 while methane reflects 28 times as much.

“Therefore we have to differentiate between ruminants, swine and poultry”, Barbier said. “Due to their particular digestive system, ruminants have a larger impact on the climate.” According to the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), a kilogram of beef represents around 14 kilograms of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which includes CO2, nitrous oxide and methane, 10 times that of poultry.

On top of its climate impact, animal farming is also responsible for detrimental effects on the environment. According to a 2015 report by the Physics Institution, livestock production accounts for 78 percent of terrestrial biodiversity loss, 80 percent of soil acidification and atmospheric pollution as well as 73 percent of water pollution.

“We also have to cut down on imports of animal feed. I’m thinking of, for example, soybean meal imported from Brazil that leans heavily on transport. Currently, transportation represents more than one-fifth of the food industry’s carbon footprint,” Barbier continued. “Why not return to crop-livestock systems in which farmers grow most of what the animals need by themselves?” But to make further progress in transforming large-scale farming methods, “it’s absolutely necessary to start reducing herd sizes”, Barbier insisted. These practical changes would set into motion a virtuous cycle. “For example, by cutting back on meat in our diets and decreasing cereal fodder and oil and protein crops used in animal feed, we would increase the area of arable land that we can use to grow crops for human consumption,” she added.

In addition to purely ecological thinking, she also advanced several nutritional arguments. “In any case, we consume too much protein, around 80 percent more than what we need,” the expert continued, pointing to oft-illustrated cardiovascular risks linked to overconsumption of meat. In 2019, a commission formed by the medical journal The Lancet estimated that Europeans should cut their red meat consumption by 77 percent while doubling fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes in order to respect the limits of Earth’s resources and to maintain their own health. “Reducing our consumption to reflect our real needs will considerably decrease the carbon footprint of our diets.”

“If we stick to the most moderate scenario, then we need to cut down two-thirds of our meat consumption and half that of milk products”, she explained. “By no means do we seek to remove meat completely from the entire population’s plates. It is a question of developing our diet and animal-farming practices to reach carbon neutrality.

‘A wake-up call for the industry’: Meat production in France under scrutiny amid climate change (france24.com)

 “The UK government needs to “take command” of local food production, the deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said on Saturday, warning that an ongoing shortage of fruit and vegetables across the country could be just the “tip of the iceberg.”

According to Tom Bradshaw, the deficit of some fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes and cucumbers, has been caused by volatility arising from geopolitical events, and climate change, which is putting intense pressure on supply chains.

“What we saw last summer with 40°C heat is climate change in action,” Bradshaw told Times Radio, adding that the weather had exacerbated a supply-chain crisis triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Bradshaw also said geopolitical tensions have driven up inflation, particularly energy inflation, to unprecedented levels, leaving UK farmers struggling to meet energy costs.

Moreover, Britain has been facing the additional challenge of “repositioning” itself with trading partners since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the union chief said.

He noted that the country’s exit from EU structures, in which it had favourable trade relations, has inevitably inflicted damage on its own cross-border trade.

“It’s really interesting that before Brexit we didn’t used to source anything, or very little, from Morocco but we’ve been forced to go further afield and now these climatic shocks becoming more prevalent have had a real impact on the food available on our shelves today,” Bradshaw concluded.”

RT 26\2\23

Dave C.

 The USA has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world, but with diminishing safety standards. The rail-roads are almost exclusively used for freight and are owned and maintained by a handful of private transport giants, which together spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political lobbying.

Rail workers and unions have complained about mass layoffs and a declining culture of safety. Much of this has been blamed on the widespread adoption of so-called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which improves efficiency, but according to its detractors, is just a blunt cost-cutting measure that sacrifices safety for profits. Since 2017, railroads have slashed their workforce by 30%. workers warned that lax safety standards would eventually lead to a catastrophic derailment.

 Overworked rail workers are given barely enough time to walk the length of the train when inspecting carriages, with trains getting longer and more haphazardly assembled, inspection points being closed, and a culture of fear instilled in the much-diminished workforce.

Ohio chemical spill draws focus on railroad dangers – DW – 02/24/2023