200,000 children are at risk of being left homeless this winter, charity Shelter said.

A poll carried out by YouGov for Shelter found that 104,000 families in privately rented homes received eviction notices in the last month, or were behind on their rent and were in danger of losing their homes. Shelter estimated that 55,000 children, along with their families, have already been evicted in the last three months.

Shelter’s research also showed that 71% of renting families would struggle to find another home this winter, and 21% say their children knew they were struggling to pay the rent. Of those surveyed, 11% said their children worried about becoming homeless.

Shelter’s chief executive, Polly Neate, said: “No child should have to worry about losing their home this Christmas, let alone 200,000. But so many families will spend every day with the threat of eviction looming over them, not knowing if they will still have a home next year.

“Eviction notices have started dropping on doormats and our services are working round the clock to help families who have nowhere else to go.”

200,000 UK children could be made homeless this winter, warns Shelter | Homelessness | The Guardian

 South Korea’s total population of nearly 52 million is set to decline 0.18% by 2021 year-end, for the first time since the country began collecting census data, according to figures released by Statistics Korea.

The country’s fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.8 children per woman.

The government institution in charge of statistics and census data also mapped out a worst-case scenario, according to which the present population will drop to around 12 million by 2120 — around 23% of today’s population. 

Moreover, Statistics Korea predicted that the average age of the population is set to rise, from a median of 43 in 2021 to 62 by 2070.

 The combination of an aging population and falling birth rates spells trouble for renewing the workforce, while the country faces a bigger spending burden in the form of tax revenue and health care.

$188 billion, €167 billion has been spent in the decade up until 2020 on financial incentives for couples to have children. But so far, the increased spending has had little effect in boosting birth rates.

Figures released by the Seoul Metropolitan Government on December 16 show that the number of marriages in the city has fallen by 43% in the last 20 years, down from 78,745 in 2000 to 44,746 last year. The average age of first marriages was 33 in 2020, up from 29 two decades ago.

What′s behind South Korea′s population decline? | Asia | An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 21.12.2021

 The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, bringing the nation’s count to 331.8 million people. 

There was a net increase of nearly 245,000 residents from international migration but only about 148,000 from new births outnumbering deaths.

In more than two dozen states, most notably Florida, deaths outnumbered births. Deaths exceeded births in Florida by more than 45,000 people.

“We have an aging population and that means fewer women in child-bearing ages,” William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said. “We see younger people putting off having children and they’re going to have fewer children.”

US population growth at lowest rate in pandemic’s 1st year | AP News

 As 2021 draws to an end let us not forget what the passing year brought.

The combined wealth of the 745 U.S. billionaires surpassed $5 trillion in 2021, up 70 percent since the beginning of the pandemic.

U.S. corporate after-tax profits hit a record high of $2.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2021, further enriching wealthy executives and shareholders. 

Corporations went on a stock buyback spree in 2021, spending a record $234 billion on share repurchases in the third quarter of the year. As analysts have long documented, stock buybacks artificially inflate executives’ stock-based pay and siphon off capital that could be used to raise worker wages 

 As of November 2021, there were 3.5 million fewer people in the U.S. labor force than before the pandemic. The drop has been most dramatic among Black women, a sign of how racial barriers compound pandemic-related health concerns and the shortage of affordable child care services.

 The British government has been accused by NGOs and trade unions of “chasing colonial post-Brexit fantasies” at the expense of the world’s poorest.

They urge Liz Truss to keep aid focused on poverty reduction rather than geopolitical manoeuvring.

The groups criticise the rebranding of the UK’s development investment arm, which will see the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) become British International Investment (BII) next year.

“This new strategy and name change appears to repurpose BII as an institution that focuses solely on private-sector investment and profit-making, rather than development goals and poverty reduction,” write the 12 organisations, including Global Justice Now, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) and Unison.

“Rather than investing in general job creation and projects with only the most tenuous relation to poverty reduction, in the hope that the economic benefits will trickle down to the world’s most marginalised communities, UK aid must retain a strong poverty reduction mandate … and support decent job creation to retain its international credibility,” they said.

Increased funding for BII will “almost certainly lead to catastrophic cuts to other, grant-based areas of aid spending”.

“Ultimately, this means that more UK aid will be directed to projects, countries and sectors that provide an economic benefit to the UK, rather than to the world’s most marginalised communities,” they add.

Unison’s international officer, Mark Beacon, said: “Ministers shouldn’t be channelling the diminishing aid budget into the private sector. They must instead fund quality public services to reduce global challenges such as poverty and inequality.”

UK accused of abandoning world’s poor as aid turned into ‘colonial’ investment | Aid | The Guardian

 UK proposals to raise the age of retirement should be put on hold according to a consultancy company.

 The Refugee Council has warned the UK’s failure to create safe routes for vulnerable Afghans is forcing thousands to make the “gut-wrenching” decision to embark on “perilous, life-threatening journeys” to seek safety in Britain.

Four months since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August, causing mass displacement of hundreds of thousands, the government’s Afghan citizens resettlement scheme was not yet up and running.

The charity said it wanted a rethink on the nationality and borders bill so Afghans and other people seeking asylum were not treated differently based on how they reached the UK.

Under the nationality and borders bill, “anyone reaching the UK from Afghanistan who does not arrive under a resettlement scheme could be prosecuted and sent to prison for having entered the country unlawfully. The government must rethink its proposals and ensure all Afghans can be given protection irrespective of how they arrived in the UK.”

Failure to create safe routes ‘forcing Afghans to make perilous journeys to UK’ | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

The UK’s largest building control organisation was warned 18 months before the Grenfell Tower fire that “any number of buildings” could go up in flames because they were fitted with combustible panels that did not meet building regulations.

But the body did not check whether it had given approval to any such blocks.

The warning, from a facade manufacturer, came at a construction safety conference in January 2016 addressed by Steve Evans, head of technical operations at the National House Building Council (NHBC). It prompted the event chair to ask if “we are sitting on … a timebomb”.

 In a question-and-answer session at the industry conference Nick Jenkins, a senior technician from Booth Muirie, which manufactures cladding systems, said: “You could have an exact repeat of the Dubai fire in any number of buildings that we supply product to in London.”

Jenkins said he felt “real concern” because over the last 15 years his firm had only supplied limited combustibility cladding on two projects in the UK. The rest, he implied, was combustible.

Another similar warning of “grave concern” was sent by the same manufacturer to the government’s senior civil servant with responsibility for fire regulations, Brian Martin. He replied that such panels should be tested but “if the designer and building control body choose to do something else then that’s up to them”.

Housebuilders council was warned of risk before Grenfell fire, inquiry hears | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

 Coal power is on track to hit a new global record this year after an economic rebound that could drive worldwide coal demand to an all-time high in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

The amount of electricity generated from coal power plants has soared by 9% this year after a surge in fossil fuel demand to fuel the recovery from Covid lockdowns, a report by the watchdog says.

Coal power fell by 4% in 2020 as the pandemic caused a global economic slowdown, but the IEA found that demand for electricity this year had outpaced the growth in low-carbon sources, leading many wealthy economies to rely more heavily on fossil fuel power plants. 

A global gas supply crunch, which has caused record-high prices worldwide, has also helped reignite demand for coal, the IEA report says.

Fatih Birol, the IEA executive director, said: “Coal is the single largest source of global carbon emissions, and this year’s historically high level of coal power generation is a worrying sign of how far off track the world is in its efforts to put emissions into decline towards net zero. Without strong and immediate actions by governments to tackle coal emissions – in a way that is fair, affordable and secure for those affected – we will have little chance, if any at all, of limiting global warming to 1.5C.”

The IEA report found India was on track to grow its coal-fired electricity generation by 12% this year, while China’s use of coal plants was forecast to increase by up to 9% despite a sharp slowdown in recent months. This would mark an all-time high in both countries, despite an “impressive” rollout of solar and wind power projects, the IEA said. In the US and the EU, coal power generation is expected to rise by 20%, from low levels in 2020. In the UK, where coal power has been in steady decline in recent years, the owners of the last remaining coal power stations were paid record sums to help keep the lights on this year as electricity prices reached new highs after record gas market prices and one of the least windy summers since 1961.

Global demand for coal could hit all-time high in 2022 | Business | The Guardian

 I expect you’ve heard of the Sioux. Other ‘warlike’ tribes as well — Cheyenne, Apache. You may know something of the Seminoles of Florida, the Cherokees’ ‘trail of tears,’ the League of the Iroquois. Two American states take their name from the Dakota. But can you name even one of the indigenous groups who used to live in California? You may not even have realized that anyone did live there before Europeans arrived. 

In fact, California was home to an estimated 150,000 indigenous people. But they were too weak and too peaceable to put up much resistance to the hordes of armed European invaders. They were easily wiped out and – except by a few experts — easily forgotten.  

In 1848 California became the property of the United States – a spoil of victory in its war with Mexico. Gold was first discovered in California the same year. In 1850 California became a state. 

The Gold Rush led to the death of 80% of California’s native people. Some 100,000 perished in the first two years alone. By 1873 only 30,000 remained. Though some died of hunger after their land was seized or of diseases caught from settlers, between 9,000 and 16,000 were murdered in cold blood — victims of a policy of genocide pursued by the State of California and eagerly assisted by its new citizens. 

The Act for the Governance and Protection of Indians was passed in 1850. This sounds benign, but it was malign in the extreme. The Act allowed Native Americans to be enslaved even though California was admitted to the Union as a free state and was to back the North in the Civil War. It was illegal to enslave black people, but native men, women, and children were openly bought and sold in city streets throughout the 1850s. 

The Act made it easier to remove natives from their traditional lands, separating a whole generation from their families, languages, and cultures (1850–1865). It provided for ‘apprenticing’ or indenturing Indian children and adults to Whites and punished ‘vagrant’ Indians by hiring them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail. White settlers and the state government enslaved native people and forced them to labor for ranchers through at least the mid-1860s. They were then forced onto reservations and their children compelled to attend ‘Indian assimilation schools.’ 

The Act permitted ownership of Indian children (Section 3. Any person … obtaining a minor Indian … and wishing to keep it,) In 1860 this provision was expanded to enable ownership of Indian children to extend into adulthood.  Indians were denied equal standing under the law (Section 6. In no case shall a white man be convicted of any offence upon the testimony of an Indian).

The first governor of California, Peter Hardeman Burnett, declared on January 6, 1851 that

a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct. 

He proceeded to set aside funds to equip local militias to be used against Native Americans, raiding tribal villages and shooting and scalping Native Americans. Local settlers set about doing the killing, while the authorities placed bounties on Native Americans. At one point the prize was about $25 for a male body part, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and $5 for a child or a woman. 

Only in 1900, after the Act for the Governance and Protection of Indians was repealed, did many Californians learn that it had still been legal to kill Native Americans. 

Genocide and enslavement do not exonerate the preceding Spanish and then Mexican rule with their forced conversions, brutal corporal punishment, slave labor, deadly disease outbreaks, and widespread rape and abuse. However,the intent of the Catholic clerics and the soldiers who accompanied them was to subjugate the indigenous people – not exterminate them.

The story is told of a white settler found with a small ‘Indian’ child. 

 ‘What are you doing with this child?’ someone asked him.

‘I’m rearing him. He’s an orphan.’ 

‘How do you know he’s an orphan?’

‘I killed his parents.’ 

Apocryphal

Slavery and genocide in California | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)