Asylum seekers and refugees who were already only barely surviving. In the UK, asylum seekers are generally barred from work until they have attained refugee status. If they do not receive an initial decision on their asylum claims within 12 months, they may apply for jobs only on a list determined by the Home Office to be in short supply in Britain, including nurses, social workers and engineers. 

Although the Home Office says asylum claims are usually processed in six months, the Refugee Council charity published a report in 2021 showing that the average wait time for even an initial decision is likely to be one to three years with some waiting up to five years. Advocacy groups estimate that this waiting time has not decreased since then.

Asylum seekers who report being destitute are provided with accommodation but cannot choose where they live. They are entitled to a £45 weekly allowance to buy essentials. 

It is an amount that works out to £2,340 a year. 

This is less than a tenth of the £25,500 that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the poverty alleviation charity, recommends as necessary for a minimum acceptable annual standard of living although this sum includes housing, which destitute asylum seekers do not need to pay for. Experts say that there are usually long delays for asylum seekers to receive this allowance. Many wait up to a year.

In the UK, once asylum seekers are given refugee status, there is a 28-day period before all their support comes to an end.

 A report by the British Red Cross and the UN Refugee Agency in August revealed that futile attempts to secure employment to pay the bills have driven asylum seekers and refugees into domestic servitude, labour exploitation and forced criminality.

“One month after asylum seekers get refugee status, they no longer get shelter or support. But just because you’re now a refugee, it doesn’t mean you speak the language or have a job.”

 The British charity Maternity Action reported that in 2021, its specialist support line helped 407 pregnant asylum seekers and refugees in the UK who had been erroneously charged for healthcare with fees beginning at around £7,000. Asylum seekers and refugees are legally exempt from healthcare fees charged to foreigners by the National Health Service (NHS).

Pip McKnight, a former community midwife specialising in immigrant maternal health and a teaching fellow at Coventry University, suggested that pregnant asylum seekers might not know how to navigate the healthcare system when they arrive.

“This could be because of difficulties with language or just anxiety over a healthcare system that looks quite different to the one in their home countries,” she said. “And the NHS doesn’t always understand these women’s needs or that they shouldn’t be charged.”

Asylum seekers in the UK are excluded from the state-run Healthy Start scheme, which offers vouchers for fruit and vegetables and milk for low-income pregnant women. That means they end up having to “spend what little allowance they have on these things, … and that obviously makes a huge dent,” McKnight said.

Asylum-seeking and refugee women are also being forced into making difficult sacrifices just to keep their families going, according to Sarah Taal, advocacy and policy director at the Baobab Women’s Project, a grassroots advocacy group in Birmingham, UK.

“Those with pre-existing [health] conditions feel shamed by their doctors for buying processed food instead of fresher options, which they simply can’t afford,” she said. “Mothers are also struggling to prepare nutritious meals or buy clothes for their growing children.”

“We’ve also heard about women starving in order to purchase items needed for their personal hygiene,” Taal said. “This can include shampoo, soap, menstruation products and so on.”

Özlem Ögtem-Young, who is head of research on poverty, precarity, savings and debt at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said charities that are themselves hit hard by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have been struggling to support the increasing numbers of asylum seekers in need of food and clothing.

“There are reports of outbursts at food banks when people are turned away, causing anger, desperation and distress,” she explained. Many charities that have witnessed cuts in funding and resources have been forced to put their services on hold, Ögtem-Young said.

 Community organisers are increasingly concerned about asylum seekers losing safe spaces where they can find support and also socialise, seek out learning opportunities and gain a sense of belonging. Rising prices are likely to force desperate refugees into slavery or trafficking. 

 Lifting the existing ban on asylum seekers’ access to the labour market would save the economy more than £333 million a year. That would include about £249 million in tax contributions and the rest through savings on some subsistence support that could be reduced for those who find work.

 Ireland is a country showing a positive example. In 2022, Ireland launched a scheme to give the country’s 17,000 undocumented people legal access to its labour market without fearing deportation or arrest. Earlier, during the pandemic, it became the first EU country to offer hardship payments to undocumented non-citizens. Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Spain are also making moves towards giving undocumented people the legal right to work.

Instead of spending millions of pounds on detention camps and hotel accommodations for refugees and asylum seekers, the government, for instance, could subsidise regular housing for them,  helping asylum seekers and refugees integrate better into their new neighbourhoods.  

Can asylum seekers in Europe survive the cost-of-living crisis? | Refugees | Al Jazeera

“Over the last 12 years, Britain has experienced the longest phase of real wage stagnation since the early 19th century,” Scott Lavery, a lecturer in politics at the University of Sheffield, told DW. “Since the financial crisis, we’ve seen sustained real wage decline.”

Real incomes — after accounting for inflation — have fallen 5.1% since December 2007, according to UK government figures. This coupled with the inflation crisis, which Lavery said was “eroding living standards dramatically,” has left British workers struggling to stay afloat.

“In France, there is a sense of defending an existing standard of living, while in the UK, people feel that whatever used to exist has gone,” Sam Moorecroft, vice president of the Trades Union Council in the city of Sheffield, told DW. “When Thatcher defeated the miners’ in the 1980s, many believed that the trade union movement had been completely defeated. But now, there is a move to return to the same level of union participation as the past,” Moorecroft added.

Moorecroft noted how non-unionized workplaces are increasingly mobilizing for better pay and conditions, citing a recent strike at Amazon’s largest UK fulfillment center, in Coventry. Around 300 workers at the 1,400-strong warehouse walked out several times over the past two months over low wages and grueling round-the-clock shift patterns.

While the US tech firm’s French and German workers have previously staged several strikes, particularly around the Black Friday sales, Amazon has so far refused to recognize Britain’s GMB union, which fights for the rights of the firm’s employees in the UK. 

Unions are reaching out to younger workers, who are more likely to be on the minimum wage, and a third of whom are on zero-hours contracts. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) calculated recently that nearly 90% of those under 30 on low to median incomes in Britain work in the private sector, which is mostly non-unionized.

The Low Pay Commission, which advises the UK government, found last month that many UK employers were failing to incorporate annual hikes to the national minimum wage — a phenomenon known as wage theft. Before the pandemic, around 22% of minimum wage earners were underpaid but by April 2022, that figure had grown to almost a third.

Public support for walkouts in the UK has always been mixed as memories of the Winter of Discontent linger. During the coldest months of 1978-9, the country was brought to a standstill by large-scale private and public sector strikes that caused food shortages, weeks of uncollected garbage and, in one city, the dead to lay unburied. This time, however, with public services already defective, the cost of living crisis hitting everyone’s pockets and living standards lower than a decade ago, the public’s backing for strikes is noticeably higher.

A poll by Sky News in January found that 63% of Britons strongly support or somewhat support walkouts by healthcare workers, with 49% backing wider public sector action.

“There is certainly a sense that those core public sector workers that kept the economy running during the pandemic have strong public support … particularly nurses, despite their strikes having potentially life or death consequences,” Lavery said. 

Lavery told DW, “The UK already has some of the most restrictive anti-union legislation in the Western world and Sunak is trying to tighten up further … so he’s far from being a peacemaker.”

Why the British are suddenly so strike-happy – DW – 03/15/2023

 The British government has announced an unexpected one-off payment to state broadcaster the BBC. The £20 million ($24.13 million) tranche will be transferred to the broadcaster over the next two years, the UK Foreign Office said on Monday.

The package comes as part of an Integrated Review program document advocating for a ‘Global Britain’ originally adopted under former PM Boris Johnson.

The money is set to be funneled to the BBC World Service and will be used to “support English-language broadcasting,” as well as to “counter disinformation,” the foreign office explained, implying the funds will be specifically used to counter Russia. 

“The refreshed Integrated Review concludes that democracies like the UK must go further to out-cooperate and out-compete states that are driving instability. Developments over the past year, particularly the conflict in Ukraine, have shown the importance of being able to counter the hostile use of disinformation and tackle the spread of harmful state narratives,” it claimed.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly praised the decision, hailing the BBC as “the world’s most trusted international broadcaster,” as well as a “vital” tool “in the fight against the spread of disinformation around the world.”

“This funding will ensure people across the globe continue to have access to accurate, high-quality journalism,” Cleverly asserted.

The statebroadcaster, which recently suspended a freelance sports presenter over a tweet criticizng government policy, received a similar lump sum payment in 2021, with the same proclaimed goal of battling purported fake news.

Back then, however, the payment was more than twice as modest as the new one, with ‘only’ £8 million allocated at the time to “tackle harmful disinformation, challenge inaccurate reporting around the world and improve digital engagement.”

RT 13\3\23

Dave C

 Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite

UK Power Networks, the National Grid power distributor made £1.3bn pre-tax profit. Billions in profit, bonanzas for the executives and shareholders, while there are only real pay cuts on offer for workers.

The profiteering crisis isn’t just a few “bad apples” like UK Power Networks: it’s systemic. In the first half of 2022, FTSE 350 companies saw their margins up by an average of 89% on the same period in 2019. 

In 2021, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda doubled their combined profits compared with 2019 to £3.2bn. Likewise, big brand food manufacturers such as Nestlé and Unilever have seen their corporate profits soar. From energy to food, hikes in our bills are seen in these soaring profits.

 2021 saw the four giant agribusiness corporations, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, reaping profits of $10.4bn(£8.6bn) – up on pre-pandemic levels by an astonishing 255%. In petrol pump supply chains, refineries and oil companies are smashing corporate profit records. Last year, BP recorded the biggest profits in the company’s history – £23bn.

Between 2019 and 2022, the container industry boosted its profits from $7bn to $210bn (£5.8bn to £174bn). 2022 is set for an even bigger bonanza. Port owners, such as DP World and CK Hutchison, have also seen huge profiteering gains, and the biggest road freight operators were on the same page as their profits zoomed by 149%.

 Market pricing systems have allowed some companies, such as energy firms, to reap massive windfalls while their real production costs haven’t changed. State-licensed monopolies have handed historic profits to North Sea oil extractors, electricity grids, privatised water operators and transport companies.

Big retailers or suppliers have exploited their “market power” to push up prices in circumstances of high demand and a limited supply of products. But we have also seen “price gouging” when crises create opportunities for what amounts to price fixing across sectors.

We are confronted by this cost of profiteering because of the stark inequalities in wealth and power that govern Britain. Capital, boosted by favourable governments, has managed to win enormous power that in turn allows it to set the rules of the economy and reap the rewards accordingly. 

The system isn’t only broken, it is rigged.

Why are we talking about Britain’s cost of living crisis? The real culprit is bosses’ ‘greedflation’ | Sharon Graham | The Guardian

 In the Irish Republic there were 307 anti-migrant protests in 2022, while in 2023 there have already been 64 demonstrations. The far-right protest outside asylum reception cases, scaring and intimidating the people inside, including families.

Niall McConnell, leader of the Irish Nationalist Catholic Party, claims “The indigenous Irish are being racially discriminated against.” In reference to England’s colonisation of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries, where land was seized and settlers were brought in to ‘anglicise’ the local population, McConnell asserts, “History is repeating itself. The blood of our holy martyrs seeps the Irish soil. The indigenous Irish will continue in our ancestors’ footsteps. We will oppose this new plantation as they did in the past. God save Ireland.” he continued, “Any resources available in Ireland should be given to the indigenous Irish people first,” suggesting free housing, social welfare, health care and education should be taken away for migrants.

Aoife Gallagher, an analyst at ISD Global thinktank pointed out that, “The far right has been able to rally support by tapping into people’s very real grievances”. Anti-migrant protests have been most common in “ignored and deprived” areas, says researcher Aoife Gallagher – which also happens to be where asylum-seekers are disproportionately housed. “The far right is a mixture of the reactionary forces in response to these liberal changes in the country… and the old school Catholic conservatives,” she said. The far-right is ultimately a byproduct of Ireland’s failed political system that has failed to get to grips with the multi-pronged crisis gripping the country, claims Gallagher.

Brian Killoran of the Immigrant Council, links the growth of the far right to several crises gripping Ireland, including a housing emergency and crumbling health services, traced back to the 2008 recession and the period of austerity that followed.

“The far right is a lightning rod,” he explained. “They are harnessing dissatisfaction in communities and blaming migrants when actually there are much bigger structural problems.” He said the movement was losing sight of the “bigger picture” and proposing “simplistic and short-term solutions”.

Attitudes towards immigrants in Ireland are among the least positive in Europe. Among Irish-born adults, some 58% support white foreigners moving to the country, but only 41% for Muslims and 25% for Roma people, according to a study by the Economic and Social Research Institute.

‘Keep Ireland Irish’: Say hello to Ireland’s growing far right (yahoo.com)

 In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)  there is a humanitarian crisis that regional and international powers have allowed to fester. It has led to people abandoning their homes because of fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government last month. According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 800,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict since last March.

Failed attempts to secure a ceasefire have allowed fighting to continue unabated between M23 and government troops in a region already scarred by the presence of dozens of armed groups.

Angele Dikongue-Atangana, the UNHCR’s representative in DRC explained, “We need peace so that civilians stop being collateral damage of the conflict, and so that forced displacement in eastern DRC ends.”

Emmanuel Lampaert, the DRC coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in central Africa, said the conflict has created a heavy humanitarian burden.

“It’s the same places, the same filthy conditions. Families living in self-made small settlements, unworthy, inhuman,” Lampaert said. “…Suddenly, after one year, they’re saying they want to stop this crisis being forgotten. My question is, where the hell have you been?” he said.

 Thomas Fessy, a senior DRC researcher for Human Rights Watch, said M23 had left behind a “trail of war crimes”.

“We’ve documented horrific crimes that M23 rebels committed against civilians, including summary executions and forced recruitment,” he said. “The warring parties have increasingly appealed to ethnic loyalties, putting civilians in remote areas of Masisi and Rutshuru at a heightened risk, and pitting communities against each other.”

Jean-Mobert Senga, a researcher for Amnesty International in DRC, said the violence could worsen this year. “No one seems concerned with addressing the real causes and drivers of the conflict, including widespread impunity for serious atrocities committed in the DRC for nearly 30 years, endemic corruption, or poor governance in the DRC.

“The focus on the M23, which is just one of hundreds of armed groups that kill, rape and loot every day, is proof of the cynical approach in eastern DRC that only prolongs the suffering of millions of men, women and children on the frontlines of the conflict.”

UNHCR has asked for $233m (£192m) to support its work, but only 8% has been pledged.

‘Trail of war crimes’ left by DRC rebel group as recent attacks leave 300,000 displaced | Global development | The Guardian

 As the cost-of-living crisis impacts British households, many are cutting down on food while living in cold homes, according to the latest findings from the ‘Which?’ consumer insight tracker.

The monthly survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) revealed that 8.1% of households missed a housing, bill, loan or credit card payment in February. One in seven people (15%) said they had skipped meals due to rising costs.

Just over a quarter (27%) said they had gone without some foods, up from 21% in November. Meanwhile, 9% had prioritized meals for other family members above themselves, and 4% had used a food bank.

Nearly 60% of households reported making at least one adjustment to cover essential spending such as utility bills, housing costs, groceries, school supplies and medicines in the last month. According to the report, adjustments include cutting back on essentials, dipping into savings, selling possessions and borrowing.

Consumers have also been looking for ways to save on their energy bills, with seven out of ten (72%) saying they have turned down the heating due to spiraling costs, while 39% having used less hot water and 19% having had fewer cooked meals.

“Whilst the majority of consumers have used the heating less due to price rises, this behavior will be more extreme in some households than others. Whilst some may be able to save money on heating whilst still keeping their house sufficiently warm, others will not,” the report said.

Three in ten (29%) of those who reportedly reduced their heating said they have often or always felt in physical discomfort this winter as a result. A further four in ten (41%) noted they have sometimes felt physical discomfort, while 29% have rarely or never felt that way.

Data suggests that consumer confidence has recovered but remains low. With confidence in current household finances dropping slightly in February, 38% of consumers described their financial situation as good, and nearly a quarter (24%) as poor.

RT 14/3/23

Dave C.

 A SONG OF REVOLUTION

You toilers of the world, arise!

To bravely speed the day,

When all your forces organise

King Capital to slay,

And from the master class you’ll wrest

The Powers of the State,

Which, wielded in your interest,

Your class emancipate.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

Your lot in life is darkest gloom;

You sow and others reap.

And want and mis’ry are your doom,

While idlers treasures heap.

Why have they riches, you distress,

Though you all wealth have wrought?

It is because the few possess

The earth, while you have nought.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

While you an idle class maintain

For pittances you’ll toil.

To own your products you must gain

Possession of the soil

And of all means the workers need

To found the Commonwealth,

And thus enable all to lead

Full lives of peace and health.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

Arise! the message to proclaim,

The message full of cheer:

That Labour’s freedom is your aim,

That brighter days are near.

To men exhausted by the fray,

To women in despair,

To children wanting food and play,

To all the message bear

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

 Words & Music by H. J. Neumann

One in five students at Russell Group universities are considering dropping out because of the cost of living crisis, and a quarter are regularly going without food and other essentials, the Observer can reveal.

In the largest study of its kind, new research by the Russell Group Students’ Unions – which represents 24 of Britain’s most elite higher education institutions, including Oxbridge, UCL and Edinburgh – for the first time lays bare the devastating impact soaring prices are having on all but the richest students.

More than half of those surveyed said their academic performance had suffered as a result of the cost of living crisis. Students reported having to take on additional paid work to cover costs, concentration issues caused by poor nourishment and financial stress, and skipping lectures because they couldn’t afford travel fares.

Researchers said unless urgent action is taken, the damage being done by the crisis could lead to universities being “only open to the most privileged” – undoing decades of progress on broadening higher education access.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/12/one-in-five-students-at-top-universities-consider-dropping-out-over-cost-of-living

 There’s a good explanation of why the Silicon Valley Bank failed here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-00086586

“Silicon Valley Bank has been bleeding deposits as the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised borrowing costs to fight inflation. Higher interest rates bludgeoned many of the tech businesses that had deposited their money with the bank. As venture capitalists retreated from offering companies fresh infusions of capital to sustain their businesses, startups needed to burn through the cash in their accounts to stay afloat. Deposits the bank had on hand have fallen steadily over the last several months, according to S&P Global Ratings. Higher rates also meant more investments offered an attractive yield, leading some clients to pull out their deposits and put them elsewhere.”

To try to compensate for this, the Bank sold off its holding of government and other bonds. Unfortunately for them, rising interest rates meant that the price of bonds went down and they couldn’t raise enough. And they went bust.

“When banks run into trouble, they can be forced to sell off investment assets, typically U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities, that they purchased to earn a return on their customers’ deposits. As interest rates climb, the price of those older securities fall — which means the banks sell those investments at a loss.”

If banks could, as some claim, simply create money to lend “out of thin air” and get interest on it, why would losing deposits make any difference? 

If a bank was short of money, all it would have to do would be create some more to lend and get the money as interest on them.

That this didn’t happen shows that banks cannot create money out of nothing but are only financial intermediaries borrowing money at one rate of interest to cover loans at a higher rate.

Our theory of the nature of banking stands confirmed. 

New wealth can only be created by humans applying their mental and physical energies to change the form of materials that originally came from nature, not by banks practising magic or financial alchemy.

ALB

For more see: The Magic Money Myth – worldsocialism.org/spgb