Unison’s general secretary Christina McAnea said in a statement that Jermy Hunt, the chancellor holds the key to unlock the damaging health pay dispute and rebuild the NHS, but he’s not even trying.

“No plan for the economy can succeed unless the government also focuses on essential services. Paying proper wages will halt the staff exodus and mean there’s more money to spend in the local high street.”

 The TUC  accused the chancellor of ignoring the “crisis” in public services and the “fundamental issue of public sector pay” and “massive staffing crisis” hitting the country’s schools, hospitals, care homes and other key services.

The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, said, “Public servants will be deeply worried about the chancellor’s warnings of further restraint. We know that is usually code for cuts.”

Jeremy Hunt ‘not even trying’ to settle NHS pay dispute, says Unison – UK politics live (theguardian.com)

 European People’s Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian-democratic conservative and liberal-conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Christian-democratic parties in 1976, it has since broadened its membership to include liberal-conservative parties and parties with other centre-right political perspectives. (Wiki)

It has 175 seats in the European Parliament.

Manfred Weber, the president of the European People’s Party is shilling for the military-industrial complex.

He is calling for the EU to move to a wartime economy.

 “A year after the start of the war, the armaments companies have hardly received any orders,” he said.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists doomsday clock  stood at 100 seconds.

It was updated on January 24th 2023. It now stands at ninety seconds to midnight.

 George Bernard Shaw’s play, Major Barbara posits the war dealers point of view – Undershaft, an arms manufacturer, estranged father of Major Barbara, who is in the Salvation Army, describes his satisfaction in his chosen profession:

Undershaft:. Here I am, a manufacturer of mutilation and murder. I find myself in a specially amiable humour just now because, this morning, down at the foundry, we blew twenty-seven dummy soldiers into fragments with a gun which formerly destroyed only thirteen.

Lomax Well, the more destructive war becomes, the sooner it will be abolished, eh?

Undershaft. Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it. I am obliged to you for making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it.. All the spare money my trade rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always done so; and I always shall. Therefore your Christmas card moralities of peace on earth and goodwill among men are of no use to me. Your Christianity, which enjoins you to resist not evil, and to turn the other cheek, would make me a bankrupt. My morality—my religion—must have a place for cannons and torpedoes in it.

Money matters, morality does not.

“The European Union should move its economy to a wartime footing amid the Ukraine conflict, Manfred Weber, the president of the European People’s Party (EPP), suggested on Thursday. He said that the move is required to ramp up the bloc’s own defence potential, and that of Kiev.

Speaking to the newspapers of the Funke media group, Weber called for the reorganization of the EU arms industry. The MEP believes that the bloc needs “a kind of war economy… in order to be able to guarantee stability and security”.

“The European states are currently not in a position to provide the necessary armaments quickly enough, neither for our own defence, nor for Ukraine,” he lamented. To remedy the situation, Weber argued, the EU should “break new ground,” pointing out that complex allocation structures are not working the way they are supposed to.

The MEP pointed out that Germany had established a €100 billion ($109 billion) special defence fund amid the Ukraine conflict, but “hardly anything happens because the bureaucracy is paralysing.” “A year after the start of the war, the armaments companies have hardly received any orders,” he added.

His comments come after both the US and Germany on Wednesday approved the delivery of 31 M1 Abrams and 14 Leopard 2 tanks respectively to Kiev. However, the decision comes amid numerous warnings by EU officials that the bloc’s own arms stockpiles are running low.

Last month, Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said that the Ukraine conflict had become “a brutal wake-up call” for the bloc’s policymakers and its military industry, which had been underfunded for years.

The military aid for Ukraine comes from army stocks and “everybody agrees that this stockpile has been quickly depleted because they were almost empty,” he admitted at the time.

Russia has repeatedly warned the West against supplying Ukraine with weapons, arguing that this would only prolong the conflict but would not change its outcome. On Wednesday, commenting on the Western tank shipments, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov reiterated that this armour “would burn as [did] the rest of it.”

“They [tanks] are quite expensive, and this will fall and is falling on the shoulders of, first of all, European taxpayers,” the spokesman stated, suggesting that Washington would likely financially benefit from the deliveries.”

26\1\23

Dave C

 While placing the blame upon Russia for “…the worst food crisis, the worst humanitarian crisis since world war 2” Cindy McCain, the US ambassador to the UN agencies for food and agriculture, couldn’t avoid pointing to another cause.

She urged speculators in the financial markets not to take advantage of the turmoil to drive up prices further.

Asked whether speculation could be having an impact, McCain said: “Probably so. I say that without a lot of exact information, but sometimes there are bad players.”

She declined to say whether such speculation should be penalised, but said she would speak out against it. “You can’t tolerate it – people are starving. Speculation does nobody any good during a crisis…”

Russia to blame for ‘worst food crisis since WW2’, says US envoy | Cindy McCain | The Guardian

  Located in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, Dharavi is Asia’s biggest slum, around 283 hectares, that became famous through the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire.  Out of the 22 million population of Mumbai, around 42 percent live in slums and Dharavi houses more than a million people. 

Of the world’s most poverty-stricken people, around 250 million “extreme” or “absolute” poor, 60 million of them are slum dwellers. 

Inequality is at its worst  in India where the top one percent of its population now owns more than 40 percent of the country’s wealth while bottom 50 percent holds only less than 3 percent of the same. 

 In continuation of many aborted attempts in past years to redevelop Dharavi, another one of world’s biggest slum redevelopment plan, Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP), has begun by Adani, India’s largest and the third-richest global corporate billionaire, through private-corporate initiative under the pseudonym of public-private-partnership (PPP).

 Dharavi is going to be another source of fabulous wealth appropriation for Adani whose business empire has ballooned in recent years primarily through real estate and speculation involving both large-scale displacement of the people from their habitat and outright plunder of nature.

Speculative profit from real estate business will be far-reaching including massive displacement of the slum dwellers. Adani’s interest obviously lies not in the rehabilitation of slum dwellers but in the sale component of residential and commercial spaces in the very heart of the city of Mumbai. It is in addition to this that 47.5 acres of Railway land in Dadar, in central Mumbai has been handed over to Adani as an incentive, for which the Railway Ministry is set to get only a paltry 0.21 percent of the profits as per the agreement. 

Policy-decisions in corporate board-rooms and superimposed on the residents by the most corrupt crony capitalist regime in gross disregard of even namesake people’s participation, without seeking people’s concerns in any manner, and totally keeping them in the dark without sharing any details of the agreement between Adani and the regime. It also goes against the Maharashtra Slum Act that provides for people’s participation mandatory for slum redevelopment and rehabilitation. Many people will be evicted and thrown out mercilessly.

The Dharavi renewal project earmarks 65 percent of the construction for rehabilitation and 35 percent for sale in the open market. It will deny housing right for more than half of the residents.  Those who are lucky to to be accommodated will be confined to a corner of the buildable area which is fixed at around 150 hectares only,   permitting residential and commercial space available to Adani under what is called Transferable Development Rights (TDR) for sale in the open market.

 Dharavi is not an ordinary slum, but has a sustaining informal economy providing employment to manyof its residents. It is a hub of tens of thousands of unorganised enterprises manufacturing a wide variety of products such as leather, footwear, textiles, cloths, pottery and even medicines. Thousands of small units employing around 25000 people are engaged in sorting out and recycling almost 80 percent of Mumbai’s solid waste. 

Now, in the guise of Adani-led redevelopment and rehabilitation, this ‘ecosystem’ is going to be destroyed leading to a new ‘ghettoisation’ of Dharavi, even as half of the residents being ‘ineligible’ will be evicted and thrown out with the backing of state power, as exemplified by the notorious Vizhinjam port project in Kerala, which is destined to be nonviable both economically and ecologically.

For the  Adani conglomerate, Dharavi is only the latest in the series of construction projects undertaken by it.  These property projects which are under PPP are also categorised as infrastructure investments today. Hence, together with government grants, many tax and fee concessions, Adani (and others of his kind also) can avail thousands of crore of bank loans for such real estate businesses on the basis of mere ‘good-will’ which are eventually written off as Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) leading to unprecedented crisis of public sector banks in India, a fact recently acknowledged by the RBI Report itself.

 The ‘robber barons’ corporate billionaires with Adani now in the lead are accumulating fabulous wealth primarily concentrating on money-spinning businesses such as the stock market, real estate and outright plunder of nature rather than from the productive sectors of the economy.

 On account of his close proximity and nexus with Modi, Adani has been the most successful crony capitalist in this process. This has been the political basis of his success in many controversial deals pertaining to projects such as coal mines (including the controversial Australian deal), power generation, transmission and distribution, gas distribution, agribusiness, ports, airports, financial services, media, digital services and data centres, and many other infrastructural and real estate projects. No doubt, this gobbling up of country’s resources is backed by a series of pro-corporate laws, fiscal and monetary measures including many tax exemptions and corporate tax reductions. 

The other side of this corporate logic is the manner in which many millions are driven to hitherto unknown levels of poverty, deprivation and destitution.  dark days are ahead for the one million residents of Dharavi.

Dharavi, Asia’s Biggest Slum To Become The El Dorado Of Adani, India’s Biggest Crony Capitalist? | Countercurrents

 London’s Metropolitan Police are looking into allegations of sexual and domestic abuse involving approximately 800 officers, Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has revealed. The statement came shortly after a member of the force, David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 such offences, including dozens of rapes.

Rowley revealed that 1,633 cases of alleged sexual and domestic abuse over the past ten years are currently being looked into. On top of that, all 45,000 Met personnel will be rechecked to see if any past offensives were missed, he said.

Carrick, whose case has brought a spotlight on the problem, admitted to six more counts of sexual abuse on Monday, bringing the total to 49. The officer is believed to have committed the crimes against 12 women across two decades.

Commissioner Rowley apologized to the victims for the Met’s failure to investigate Carrick for so long, adding that the latter “should not have been a police officer.”

“We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down,” he said.

He added the force is aware that the high-profile case has likely shattered the trust in Met officers among many women in the British capital, something 10 Downing Street also said, on Monday.

Rowley admitted the police force has not “applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals.”

Questions were raised after it was revealed that multiple complaints against Carrick had in fact been filed with the police from as early as 2000 all the way to 2021.

Accusations previously made by the man’s former partner also did not prevent him from successfully passing the Met’s vetting procedure back in 2001. He even faced claims by another ex-partner during his probationary period – but the mounting complaints did not get in the way of Carrick’s subsequent vettings.

Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman described the revelations as “sobering” for the Met and “the whole policing family throughout the country.””

RT 17\1\23

Dave C,.

 London’s Metropolitan Police are looking into allegations of sexual and domestic abuse involving approximately 800 officers, Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has revealed. The statement came shortly after a member of the force, David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 such offences, including dozens of rapes.

Rowley revealed that 1,633 cases of alleged sexual and domestic abuse over the past ten years are currently being looked into. On top of that, all 45,000 Met personnel will be rechecked to see if any past offensives were missed, he said.

Carrick, whose case has brought a spotlight on the problem, admitted to six more counts of sexual abuse on Monday, bringing the total to 49. The officer is believed to have committed the crimes against 12 women across two decades.

Commissioner Rowley apologized to the victims for the Met’s failure to investigate Carrick for so long, adding that the latter “should not have been a police officer.”

“We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down,” he said.

He added the force is aware that the high-profile case has likely shattered the trust in Met officers among many women in the British capital, something 10 Downing Street also said, on Monday.

Rowley admitted the police force has not “applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals.”

Questions were raised after it was revealed that multiple complaints against Carrick had in fact been filed with the police from as early as 2000 all the way to 2021.

Accusations previously made by the man’s former partner also did not prevent him from successfully passing the Met’s vetting procedure back in 2001. He even faced claims by another ex-partner during his probationary period – but the mounting complaints did not get in the way of Carrick’s subsequent vettings.

Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman described the revelations as “sobering” for the Met and “the whole policing family throughout the country.””

RT 17\1\23

Dave C,.

 London’s Metropolitan Police are looking into allegations of sexual and domestic abuse involving approximately 800 officers, Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has revealed. The statement came shortly after a member of the force, David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 such offences, including dozens of rapes.

Rowley revealed that 1,633 cases of alleged sexual and domestic abuse over the past ten years are currently being looked into. On top of that, all 45,000 Met personnel will be rechecked to see if any past offensives were missed, he said.

Carrick, whose case has brought a spotlight on the problem, admitted to six more counts of sexual abuse on Monday, bringing the total to 49. The officer is believed to have committed the crimes against 12 women across two decades.

Commissioner Rowley apologized to the victims for the Met’s failure to investigate Carrick for so long, adding that the latter “should not have been a police officer.”

“We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down,” he said.

He added the force is aware that the high-profile case has likely shattered the trust in Met officers among many women in the British capital, something 10 Downing Street also said, on Monday.

Rowley admitted the police force has not “applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals.”

Questions were raised after it was revealed that multiple complaints against Carrick had in fact been filed with the police from as early as 2000 all the way to 2021.

Accusations previously made by the man’s former partner also did not prevent him from successfully passing the Met’s vetting procedure back in 2001. He even faced claims by another ex-partner during his probationary period – but the mounting complaints did not get in the way of Carrick’s subsequent vettings.

Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman described the revelations as “sobering” for the Met and “the whole policing family throughout the country.””

RT 17\1\23

Dave C,.

 The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research by the Climate and Community Project and the University of California finds.

It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target.

The global demand for lithium, also known as white gold, is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040, driven predominantly by the shift to electric vehicles. Lithium deposits are geologically widespread and abundant, but 95% of global production is currently concentrated in Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Large new deposits have been found in diverse countries including Mexico, the US, Portugal, Germany, Kazakhstan, Congo and Mali. Grassroots protests and lawsuits against lithium mining are rising from the US and Chile to Serbia and Tibet amid rising concern about the socio-environmental impacts and increasingly tense geopolitics around supply. Lithium mining is, like all mining, environmentally and socially harmful. More than half the current lithium production, which is very water intensive, takes place in regions blighted by water shortages that are likely to get worse due to global heating. 

Lithium extraction has a track record of land and water pollution, ecosystem destruction and violations against Indigenous and rural communities. In the US, only one small lithium mine, in Nevada, is currently operational, but the drought-affected state has at least 50 new projects under development, opposed by some environmentalists, ranchers and Indigenous tribes. In Chile and Argentina, the world’s second- and fourth-largest lithium producers respectively, broken promises by corporations, water scarcity, land contamination and the lack of informed consent from Indigenous groups has fueled resistance and social conflicts.

Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the US – and the only sector in which emissions are still growing. Over half of the nation’s car sales are predicted to be electric by 2030, and states like New York and California have passed laws phasing out the sale of gas cars. This is good news but there’s a catch: lithium.

Electric vehicles are already the largest source of demand for lithium – the soft, white metal common to all current rechargeable batteries. Mining lithium because of the demand for EVs is contributing to more social and environmental harm – and global supply chain bottlenecks. If Americans continue to depend on cars at the current rate, by 2050 the US alone would need triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market, which would have dire consequences for water and food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, according to the report Achieving Zero Emission Transportation With More Mobility and Less Mining. How much lithium depends on policy decisions taken now, according to the report.

 Policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%. In fact, this first-of-its-kind modeling shows it is possible to have more transport options for Americans that are safer, healthier and less segregated, and less harmful mining while making rapid progress to zero emissions. The largest reduction will come from changing the way we get around towns and cities – fewer cars, more walking, cycling and public transit made possible by denser cities – followed by downsizing vehicles and recycling batteries. 

If Americans can’t wean themselves off cars with big lithium batteries, increasing the density of metropolitan areas and investing in mass transit would cut cumulative demand for lithium between 18% and 66%. Limiting the size of EV batteries alone can cut lithium demand by up to 42% by 2050.

 Despite the cultural addiction to driving, fewer cars on the roads would not mean a sacrifice in the quality of life, convenience or safety for Americans, according to coauthor Kira McDonald, an economist and urban policy researcher.

 In addition, expanding mass transit systems would improve pedestrian safety and air quality, generating health and economic benefits.

Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc | US news | The Guardian

 Britain’s poorest households are among the worst hit by the cost-of-living crisis as living standards are struggling to keep up with inflation, according to the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Household Finances Survey on Wednesday.

The median disposable income for the poorest fifth of the population dropped 3.8% in the financial year through March 2022, while wages and benefit payments also failed to keep up with skyrocketing inflation.

The data exposes how the squeeze is increasing inequality in the UK as an unbridgeable gap opens up between the highest- and lowest-income households. It also shows the struggle to raise living standards since the nation voted to quit the European Union in 2016 as Britain’s slowing economy weighs on wages.

The median household disposable income declined by 0.6% from the 2021 financial year, with worse expected to come as inflation topped four-decade highs last November. By the end of the period covered by the ONS data, inflation had surged to 7%.

Meanwhile, the richest fifth enjoyed 1.6% growth versus a 3.8% drop for the worst off and a 2.4% slump for the second-poorest fifth of households.

Since the Brexit vote, living standards in Britain have barely increased. The poorest fifth have seen their median disposable income plunge from just above £16,217 ($20,027) in 2016-17 to £14,508 ($17,918) in 2021-22. By contrast, the richest fifth have gone from £63,201 ($78,044) to £66,002 ($81,503).

During the latest year, the increasing divide was driven by wages and salaries, which dropped 7.5% for the poorest households and grew by 7.8% for the richest.”

https://www.rt.com/business/

Dave C.

 According to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Agricultural Organization and other United Nations agencies growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty.

Nearly a half-billion people, more than eight in 10 of them in South Asia, were undernourished in 2021 and more than 1 billion faced moderate to severe food insecurity, the report said. 

 The report says nearly a quarter of children in the Asia-Pacific are affected by stunting, or small height for their ages.

One-third of women in Asia aged 15-49 are affected by anemia, which causes fatigue and, in its most severe forms, can cause lung and heart damage.

In Afghanistan, 70% of people are facing moderate or severe food insecurity as the economy has collapsed after the Taliban seized power in August 2021, driving millions into poverty and hunger as foreign aid stopped almost overnight.

In Cambodia, half of the population faces moderate or severe food insecurity.

 Nearly one in 10 Thais were undernourished in 2019-2021, according to data in the report — a higher proportion than several years earlier

For the world, the prevalence of food insecurity rose to more than 29% in 2021 from 21% in 2014.

Nearly 2 billion people — or almost 45% of people living in Asia — cannot afford healthy diets, contributing to problems with anemia and obesity as well as hunger.

FAO: Rising prices, food insecurity add to ranks of hungry | AP News