Thousands of shopping basket essentials have risen sharply in price, with some products doubling in just one year, it has been revealed.

The figures come from an analysis of more than 25,000 products and make clear that budget items, which many have turned to during the cost of living crisis, are rising fastest.

New research from Which? shows the annual inflation rate for popular food and drink in February was 16.5 per cent across eight big supermarkets.

On average, budget range prices are up by a higher 22.9 per cent with own-brand up 19.7 per cent, premium supermarket lines by 13.8 per cent and big brands by 13.3 per cent.

The increases are adding hundreds of pounds to annual food bills and are way ahead of rises in salaries, pensions and benefits. 

Earlier this month, Bank of England policymaker Catherine Mann warned ‘greedflation’ might take its toll on ordinary people if companies use the cost of living to justify large price hikes.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11888217/Supermarket-essentials-DOUBLE-price-BoE-warns-companies-profiting-greedflation.html

The US Department of Defence announced on Monday that it will send Ukraine another $350 million worth of military aid. The further supplies come as Ukraine reportedly gears up for a spring offensive, despite suffering heavy losses in Donbass.

The package is the 34th tranche of military aid doled out to Ukraine by the US since August 2021. It includes ammunition for Kiev’s US-provided HIMARS rocket artillery systems, 155mm artillery rounds, high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs), riverine patrol boats, and other anti-tank and mortar systems.

Amid reports of dwindling stockpiles at home, the Pentagon no longer discloses how much of each ammunition type its arms packages include. These figures have been omitted from every such statement since the beginning of January, but a comparison of the supplemental fact sheets released with each package suggests that the US has sent Ukraine at least 500,000 155mm shells since the beginning of March 

These NATO-standard shells are in desperate demand, with Ukrainian Defence Minister Aleksey Reznikov claiming earlier this month that his forces need 594,000 per month to fire their Western-provided guns at full capacity. Aside from those provided by the US, Reznikov has asked the EU to provide 250,000 shells per month. 

At a meeting on Monday, however, 18 EU countries committed to providing just a million of these shells within a year, a figure that falls well short of Kiev’s demands.

Media reports have warned  or months that the effort to arm Ukraine has depleted military inventories in the US and Europe. With Kiev reportedly ignoring Western advice and refusing to surrender the encircled city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine), US and EU officials are now concerned that its forces may lack the ammunition for a springtime offensive against Russia, the New York Times reported last week.

The US has given Ukraine more than $32.5 billion in military aid since last February, out of more than $110 billion allocated by the administration of US President Joe Biden for military and economic assistance to Kiev. Russia has repeatedly warned that such military outlays will not change the outcome of the conflict but make Western nations de-facto participants in the hostilities.

Four Republican congressmen have entreated US President Joe Biden to send cluster munitions, a controversial weapon banned in 110 countries, to Ukraine, dismissing concerns about escalating the conflict as misplaced in a letter to the White House on Tuesday.

The Biden administration shouldn’t hesitate to send cluster munitions – specifically dual purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) – because of “vague concerns about the reaction of allies and partners and unfounded fears of ‘escalation’,” Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) wrote in their letter. After all, they said, other countries have already sent such weapons without triggering Russian retaliation.

Acknowledging the weapons’ horrific effects, the signatories argued that while Ukrainian leaders are “aware of the risks to non-combatants,” the “existential threat posed by Russia’s invasion and daily acts of barbarity” is more important. Additionally, they claimed, “d,” US DPICM are equipped with “technologically advanced measures” that limit collateral damage.

A 2008 UN treaty banned cluster munitions in 110 countries, including three-quarters of NATO member nations. It has been signed by another 13 countries, though neither Russia, Ukraine, nor the US are on that list. Ukraine is the only country where the deadly devices are currently in use, and both sides have been accused of deploying them in the conflict.

Aside from one attack in Yemen in 2009, the US has not used cluster munitions since it invaded Iraq in 2003 and has not produced any since 2016. Central Command has admitted the hundreds of smaller bombs they contain are often left unexploded across the strike area, posing risks similar to landmines to anyone – especially children – who encounter the odd-looking little “petal mines.”

While the White House initially balked at Kiev’s request for DPICMs in December, it stopped short of a hard “no,” and the issue is reportedly still under consideration if the US runs out of available ammunition to ship overseas. 

In April, 27 members of Congress denounced Russia’s alleged use of cluster munitions, calling them “barbaric and indiscriminate weapons” and urging Biden to join the UN convention. The current policy, they said, was “wholly unacceptable given what we know about the immediate and long-term damage done to societies on which they are deployed.”

While the Republican Party’s 2022 campaign platform stressed curtailing the Biden administration’s blank check to Kiev, the Pentagon announced another $350 million in weapons just this week, to be drawn from the US’ own stockpiles.

21/3/23

Dave C

 Real wages in the UK will not return to their 2008 level until 2026 despite an easing of inflation, the Resolution Foundation, an independent think tank, reported this week in its analysis of the new budget.

According to the report, the country is on track for a “disastrous decade” of stagnant incomes and high taxes, with cuts to public services.

The publication highlighted that real wages fell at an annual rate of 3.9% in January, noting that the bigger picture for wages is “one of long-term pay stagnation.” 

The decrease in household disposable incomes this year and next are the worst in a century, the think tank stressed.

“Britain’s economy remains stuck in a deep funk – with people supported into work but getting poorer, and paying more tax but seeing public services cut,” it wrote.

The UK is forecast to have gone through “the biggest energy and inflation shock since the 1970s, while avoiding a recession, with unemployment peaking at just 4.4%,” Resolution Foundation added.

According to the study, taxes as a share of GDP are expected to hit 37.7% by the end of the forecast period, representing a 70-year-high and a 4.7% increase since 2019-2020.

The freeze on income tax thresholds since 2022-23 means that typical households will be worse off by £1,110 ($1,337) by 2027-28 when the freeze ends, it noted.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, stated that “Jeremy Hunt’s first budget was a much bigger affair than many expected, combining improvements to the dire economic and fiscal outlook with a significant policy package aimed at boosting longer-term growth in general, and the size of the workforce in particular.

“But stepping back, the UK’s underlying challenges remain largely unchanged. We are investing too little and growing too slowly. Our citizens’ living standards are stagnant. We ask them to pay higher taxes, while cutting public services,” he concluded.

RT 19/3/23

Dave C

 Private firms are making increased profits as the government pays millions of pounds a day to put up asylum seekers in the UK.

 Across the U.S., hundreds of thousands of nursing home residents are locked in a wretched bind: Driven into poverty, forced to hand over all income and left to live on a stipend as low as $30 a month. In a long-term care system that subjects some of society’s frailest to daily indignities, Medicaid’s personal needs allowance, as the stipend is called, is among the most ubiquitous, yet least known.

Nearly two-thirds of American nursing home residents have their care paid for by Medicaid and, in exchange, all Social Security, pension and other income they would receive is instead rerouted to go toward their bill. The personal needs allowance is meant to pay for anything not provided by the home, from a phone to clothes and shoes to a birthday present for a grandchild.  Congress hasn’t raised the allowance in decades. Medicaid was created in 1965 as part of the Great Society programs of Lyndon B. Johnson. A 1972 amendment established the personal needs allowance, set at a minimum of $25 monthly. Unlike other benefits like Social Security, cost-of-living increases were not built into personal needs allowance rules. Had it been linked to inflation, it would be about $180 today. But Congress has raised the minimum rate only once, to $30, in 1987. It has remained there ever since.

When Marla Carter visits her mother-in-law at a nursing home in Owensboro, Kentucky, the scene feels more 19th-century poorhouse than modern-day America. With just a $40 allowance, residents are dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs or hospital gowns that drape open. Some have no socks or shoes. Basic supplies run low. Many don’t even have a pen to write with.

“That’s what was so surprising to us,” Carter says, “the poverty.”

In nursing homes, impoverished live final days on pennies | AP News

 Spaniards are facing surging prices for tomatoes and pork amid burgeoning demand for the products from abroad and geopolitical tensions, the Financial Times reported this week, citing the billionaire owner of Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona.

According to the businessman, who is ranked as Spain’s fourth-richest person, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has heavily weighed on tomato prices as it resulted in sharp surge in prices for natural gas, forcing farmers to shut down production of vegetables in greenhouses in Northern Europe due to high heating costs.

As a result, buyers flocked to Spain’s solar-powered growers, pushing up prices from €1.39 per kilogram in January 2021 to €2.05 today.

“The cost has gone up by a whopping 66 cents. We’ve raised prices by 50%,” Roig said, as quoted by the newspaper.

“So we had two options: either buy tomatoes or leave customers without tomatoes. And we believed it was more important to have tomatoes at €2.05 than to not have tomatoes.”

According to Roig, the price of pork, vital for making Iberian ham, has skyrocketed due to soaring demand from China, for which Spain is a major supplier.

“There are one billion Chinese people,” the businessman said. “How much did they ask for?     don’t know. What I do know is that pork cost €1.05 [per kilogram in January 2021] and now it costs €1.96.”

Earlier this week, the country’s national institute of statistics (INE) reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food stood at 16.6% in February, marking the highest level since 1994. This is despite the IVA (Spain’s sales tax) reductions adopted during the previous month.

RT 19\3\23

Dave C.

 The United States remains one of the most dangerous wealthy nations for a woman to give birth. Compared to other countries, the maternal mortality rate was twice as high in the US than in the UK, Germany and France; and three times higher than in Spain, Italy, Japan and several other countries,

 There are now more food banks across the UK than there are McDonald’s outlets.

 While demand has soared, donations have plummeted – in some cases by up to 70%. Protein-rich foods donations in particular have become a scarcity.

“It’s crazy and indefensible,” says the MP Charles Walker. “Venison is a wonderful, sustainable resource but is seen as too posh to eat, ergo – very few people eat it and it ends up being made into dog food. It’s a contradiction of mind-bending proportions.”

Thanks to a two-year pause in culling during Covid, the deer population is at its highest level for 1,000 years: at about 2 million animals – 50 years ago, the population was at 450,000. These herds are growing exponentially: at the current rate, there will be almost 2.4 million deer in the UK by the end of the year.  At least 750,000 animals need to be culled this year just to stop this enormous population increasing further. Thanks to post-Brexit complications in exporting the meat, however, and the lack of a UK market for venison, only 350,000 animals are currently being culled each year.

At the same time, a growing number of families hit by the cost of living crisis need healthy food, particularly from protein-rich food groups including meat.

Forestry England, Farm Wilder and the Country Food Trust have created a pipeline funnelling protein-rich, low-fat, low-cholesterol venison meals to food banks, schools, hospitals, the armed forces and prisons across the country. By the end of the year, it is hoped 1 million visitors to food banks will have dined on wild venison ragu. And that’s just the pilot: the aim is to roll the scheme out nationally.

Forestry England will supply 5,000kg of wild venison from forests in Devon and Cornwall to Farm Wilder this year. It will process the venison into ragu and the Country Food Trust will distribute it. 

“These meals have literally been a lifesaver,” said Gill Bates, the manager of the Bexley food bank in Erith. “Demand from families is up by 150% but we often have no protein in stock at all. This is a problem because from a health point of view, proteins are the building blocks of life, far more so than the white carbohydrates we get donated in far greater bulk.”

‘Deer are destroying habitats’: push to get venison on to UK dinner plates | Food banks | The Guardian

 Research from the Trades Union Congress based on ONS data covering the third quarter of 2022 found that 16.7% of London workers did unpaid overtime work in 2022, more than any other region in the UK. 

£7.3 billion worth of unpaid overtime work, more than the next two regions – the South East and the East of England – combined.

These employees performing an average of 8.4 extra hours per week, also the highest in the UK, 

The average loss per employee was £10,796.

Unpaid overtime was more common in the public sector, where 14.8% of employees reported working extra hours without pay, compared to 11.7% in the private sector.

“Nobody minds putting in longer hours for time to time,” TUC Regional Secretary Sam Gurney said. “But some workers in London put in thousands of pounds worth of unpaid overtime last year. Unpaid hours should never be a regular habit – that’s just exploitation. With staff shortages in many industries, work intensity and pressure to work longer days is a big problem.”

Overtime pay: Londoners did £7.3 billion worth of unpaid work last year | Evening Standard

RS

 The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning of a “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance. Five million deaths are associated every year due to antimicrobial resistance, according to the release.  2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result,

“Antibiotic resistance is one of the major concerns in modern medicine today,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital on Long Island, New York, explained. “There is a dearth of safe, effective and inexpensive agents to use to treat many of these significant infections. It is critical that new and innovative products be investigated.” Glatt added.

Pharmaceutical companies must invest in the research and development phase to find an antimicrobial agent that will combat drug resistant pathogens, experts say. Yet these drugs are as likely to fail during this process as drugs for other diseases that may yield a much better return on the investment, such as cancer and heart drugs. 

It’s often simply cheaper to bring ‘me-too’ drugs to the market than try and completely redesign a new drug. Look at how many different statin drugs we have that are basically identical. How many SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] depression drugs are available with minimal differences.

You only ever need an antibiotic ideally for a brief period of time, yet a cholesterol drug or an HIV antiviral is forever.

‘Silent pandemic’ warning from WHO: Bacteria killing too many people due to antimicrobial resistance | Fox News