Refugees fleeing conflicts or persecution do not have the luxury of entering Britain legally. If they had the time and opportunity to apply for a UK visa they would not in essence be refugees. Seeking asylum routinely involves entering a territory without prior permission.

Regards the Boris Johnson and Priti Patel planned deportation of refugees Gillian Triggs, the assistant high commissioner at the UNHCR,  accused the UK of “attempting to shift its burden to a developing country” and warned that the arrangement signed off by Patel “would not comply with the UK’s international legal responsibilities”, adding: “All the indications are that it will be unworkable.”

The proposals seemed designed to appeal to anti-migrant sentiment in the UK, she suggested.

 Triggs said, “… we are in an environment in which populist governments will appeal to their rightwing, anti-migrant sentiment and this would presumably be part of that.”

Triggs also warned that the UK was introducing a discriminatory approach towards refugees, offering an uncapped scheme for asylum seekers from Ukraine and a “draconian” system for refugees from other countries.

“At the political level, we are seeing levels of discrimination,” Triggs said. “We are deeply concerned that the processes appear to be discriminatory. One of the fundamental principles of international law is non-discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnicity or nationality.”

Rwanda’s population density is almost double that of Britain’s. It is a country almost twice as crowded as ours. Yet per capita it already hosts five times as many refugees as the UK. As well as hosting Congolese and Burundian refugees, Rwanda has recently offered itself as a host country for the emergency evacuation of refugees trapped in dire conditions in Libya.  Rwanda is among the world’s 25 poorest countries. The UK is among the world’s 10 richest countries. 

UN refugee agency condemns Boris Johnson’s Rwanda asylum plan | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

 Last month there was a lot of fuss about the non-dom status of Akshata Murthy, wife of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak. This meant she did not pay tax in the UK on her income from elsewhere (she is the daughter of a big Indian IT boss and is said to be richer than the queen).

Socialists do not take sides on how the capitalists divide up the payment of taxes among themselves, but one aspect of this whole discussion was well worthy of comment. Many reports referred to Murthy’s earnings. But her income, from dividends and profits, was certainly not earned by her.

Workers earn when they sell their labour power for a wage, whether it is in the factory, office, shop, call centre, school, hospital, building site or what have you. They have to work for an employer, enabling whoever employs them to make a profit.

In contrast is unearned income, which is ‘income not acquired through work. Examples of unearned income, also known as passive income, include interest from savings accounts, bond interest, alimony, and dividends from stocks’ (Investopedia). The dividends, and presumably various forms of interest too, constitute Murthy’s income, which is certainly not earned in the ways that the wages or salaries of the vast majority of people are earned.

So when you read about the supposed ‘earnings’ of the super-rich, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, think a little about what that means. They do not get their vast wealth from their own labour and do not earn it: they become rich through exploiting the rest of us. ‘Unearned income’ is in their case a euphemism for exploitation.

PB

 The World Bank has estimated that for each one percentage point increase in food prices, 10 million people are thrown into extreme poverty worldwide. 

Rich countries avoided the worst economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic but poorer ones continue to deal with debilitating debt, the UN said in a report released on Wednesday, contributing to a global “great finance divide.”

According to the report, 77 million people slipped into poverty in 2021 as governments struggled to service debts and secure early vaccine access.

Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said the new findings were “alarming” and called for “collective responsibility to ensure hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of hunger and poverty.” Mohammed of the UN warned “it would be a tragedy” if rich donor nations increased military expenditures at the cost of cutting aid to developing countries.

Produced by the UN’s Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, the report found that significantly higher borrowing rates for poorer countries had particularly hamstrung pandemic recovery and development spending there.

The poorest countries pumped billions into servicing debts and were forced to cut spending on education and infrastructure, the report noted, while developed countries could borrow far more at “ultra-low” interest rates and stave off the worst economic with comparative ease.

On average, rich countries spend 3.5% of their revenue on servicing debt while less rich nations use up to 14% of revenue, four times more, according to the UN.

The report said some 20% of countries will not return to pre-2019 levels of GDP per capita by the end of 2023 — that’s before absorbing the costs of the Ukraine war.

Ukraine war is likely to burden poorer countries further. Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s biggest food and fuel exporters and additional impacts of the war on developing economies are already becoming visible. Sri Lanka defaulted on its debts this week as the country’s foreign exchange coffers dry up. In Nigeria and Kenya, fuel shortages have crippled businesses and forced tired residents into long fuel queues. Even developed economies, including the US and most of Europe, have been struggling with a sudden spike in inflation after more than a decade where inflation had been difficult to stimulate.

The new UN report also comes as poorer countries suffer the worst effects of climate change because of limited funds to adapt.

UN warns of ′great finance divide′ as Covid shocks, debt, hits poorest hardest | News | DW | 13.04.2022

Loss Leaders

The Great Helmsman! Father of the Nation!

Or king, or queen, or tsar, or president

Or panjandrum…whatever the intent,

Good or bad, honorific adulation

Sits ill with democracy. To be led

Is to surrender self to other’s whim,

To live or die in another’s name:

Cenotaphs list the obedient dead.

Someone motivated by vanity,

Someone focused on the national mission,

Someone blinded by personal ambition,

Someone with no sense of humanity,

Someone who’s so qualified to succeed

As leader, should not be allowed to lead.

D. A.

 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the world does not give equal attention to emergencies affecting black and white people. Only a fraction of the help given to Ukraine was given to other humanitarian crises.

 Public sector pay for jobs such as NHS workers, teachers and civil servants fell further behind price rises in the three months to February, figures show.

   “Without immediate radical action, we could be witnessing the most profound collapse of humanity into extreme poverty and suffering in memory,” said Oxfam’s international executive director, Gabriela Bucher.

The rising price of food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased energy costs could push a quarter of a billion more people into extreme poverty, Oxfam has warned.

Indebted governments could be forced to cut public spending to meet the rising cost of importing fuel and food.

The World Bank had already estimated that 198 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic. 

But Oxfam estimates that 65 million more people are at risk if the invasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices are taken into account. 

It also estimates that 28 million more people will be left undernourished as a result.

Quarter of a billion people now face extreme poverty, warns Oxfam | Global development | The Guardian

 Pensioners and benefits claimants will see the value of their payments fall to the lowest point in 50 years.

According to the latest UK economic outlook report from PwC, British households are set to be £900 worse off this year in a “historic fall” in living standards. It found that inflation will hit 8.4% later this year.

Helen Barnard, the associate director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an anti-poverty group, explained that pensioners and benefits claimants had seen the value of payments fall in real terms in eight out of the last 10 years. “It means that in terms of their values, how much bread and milk you can buy in the shops, it is the biggest fall in value since 1972.”

She added: “We know the majority of people in poverty now are in working households. One of the problems is that too many jobs are not just low paid, but they’re insecure – you don’t know what money you’re getting one week to the next, you don’t get sick pay; you don’t get protection if something goes wrong. People are struggling to afford the basic essentials and having to rely on charities for toothpaste and toilet rolls. It’s humiliating for a lot of people.”

Cost of living crisis: UK benefits plunge to lowest value in 50 years | Cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 Our Anti War Statement in Japanese

 ロシア連邦は、ウクライナに対して全面的な攻撃を開始した。世界社会主義運動(WSM)は、この戦争のいわゆる善悪や国際法の礼儀が破られたかどうか、ウクライナの主権が無視されたかどうかには関心をもたない。我々は、労働者として、大国が繰り広げる地政学的なゲームのために血で代償を払うのは、同胞の労働者であることを痛切に感じている。ウクライナは、西側の政治家やメディアが主張するような「民主主義」ではない。実際、ウクライナの政治・経済の上部構造は、ロシアの上部構造と大差ない。だから、ウクライナは「民主主義」だがロシアはそうではなく、「民主主義の価値」を守るために「我々」はウクライナを支持しなければならないという主張は誤りです。東欧に住む労働者にとって厄介なのは、歴史が彼らに悪い手を与えたということです。EU-USかロシアのどちらかに支配されるしかないのです。どちらの側の政府にとっても、ウクライナの人々は自分たちの利益を増進させるために利用する手先なのです。どちらのブロックが自らの勢力圏のために領土を奪えるかを決めるこの資本主義的対立において、どちらの側を支持するためにも、労働者の血は一滴も流されるべきではない。ウクライナ国家であろうと、ドネツクやルガンスクの分離共和国であろうと、労働者の命を犠牲にする価値はないのです。WSMは、町や都市が男性、女性、子どもの死体で散乱していることに異議を唱えないすべての人々の態度を非難する。何のために？これは、単なる支配者の変更のために行われた戦いであり、それぞれの側が偽りの主張のためにウクライナとドンバスの労働者を犠牲にしている。