Millions of council tax payers are in line for increases of up to 5% in their annual bills from April, with those on low and middle incomes hit hardest by a sixth year of increases in England above the rate of inflation. Hundreds of councils must decide soon whether to raise the tax by the maximum allowed by government of 4.99%, or to make big cuts in services.

Manchester city council has told residents that without a 5% increase in bills it must make savings of £8.5m in addition to the £50m it is seeking to cut from current spending.

David Phillips, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said council tax was a regressive tax that favoured wealthier people. “Council tax bills represent a larger share of income for low-to-middle income households than high-income households,” he said.

“This means increases in council tax will typically take up a larger share of their income too …” 

Figures show that a band D council payer in the lowest 20% of income earners last year paid £1,000 after extra government subsidies out of a disposable income of £16,776. A council tax payer in the top 20% of earners paid £1,823 out of a disposable income of £91,472.

 Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said: “It is the ‘not quite poor’ who suffer the most. Those who have enough income that means they don’t qualify for benefits. They get hammered by council tax increases as a proportion of their income.”

Middle-income households to be hit by ‘£2bn council tax bombshell’ | Council tax | The Guardian

  8 million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes.

The Church of England owns about 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of land. Assets include land suitable for the delivery of 28,500 new homes across England. However, fewer than a quarter of the 3,820 new homes that the church commissioners have secured planning permission for since 2015 were affordable.

A proposal to convert a former C of E school in Arkengarthdale in the Yorkshire Dales into affordable housing was blocked last year when the diocese of Leeds and the local parish said they were legally obliged to accept the highest offer for the property.

Church of England land should be used to help tackle housing crisis, says report | Housing | The Guardian

Belgium’s statistical agency, Statbel, released the first official study on the diversity of the Belgian population. The picture that emerged is one of an increasingly diverse and heterogeneous society. The study revealed that while Belgian citizens of Belgian ancestry make up just more than two-thirds of the country’s population (67.9 percent), the rest is comprised of Belgian citizens of foreign ancestry (19.7 percent) and foreign nationals (12.4 percent).

 The Belgian far right used the results of Statbel’s study to spread misinformation, distort reality, demonise immigrants and stir up racism,  expressing consternation, fear and outrage.

Tom Van Grieken, the head of the anti-immigrant Flemish nationalist political party, Vlaams Belang, tweeted a the comment “Omvolking. It is going fast”.

The Dutch word “omvolking” has its origins in the German word “umvolkung”, which was originally used by the Nazis to describe the perceived dilution of the superior Germanic race through assimilation with other, inferior races.

 Vlaams Belang doubled down on their claims that the Belgian population is currently subject to a so-called “ethnic conversion”. Vlaams Belang MEP Tom Vandendriessche described “omvolking” as a strategy utilised by so-called “cultural Marxists” in a supposed “cultural war”. “This is a deliberate policy,” he claimed, “if we continue with mass migration, we will become a minority in our own country.”

 Vlaams Belangallude to conspiracy theories, including the “great replacement” and its more extreme variations “white genocide” and “Eurabia” which are becoming increasingly popular, a belief that multiculturalism is a smokescreen for a global plot to dilute, weaken, replace or wipe out the white race. They  combine elements of classic anti-Semitism and anti-leftism with more recent elements of Islamophobia. According to the far right and neo-Nazis, a global cabal of either “cultural Marxists (Jews and leftists)” or “globalists (rich Jewish capitalists)” are conspiring to destroy white civilisation by “importing” millions of brown and Black people, especially Muslims, to the West, reflecting anxiety and a sense of inferiority at the heart of contemporary white supremacy.

That these “theories” enjoy currency and are given credence reflects the credulity of those who believe in them, as well as their ignorance of science, genetics and demographics among other things. The growing preponderance of these theories is also testimony to the far right’s skilful manipulation of social media to spread misinformation.

There is no “great replacement”, let alone a “white genocide” in progress anywhere in the world, including Belgium. The very idea is preposterous. So-called “white people”, ie people with pale skin, are in absolutely no danger of dying out – neither through immigration, nor interracial mixing.

Despite decades of large-scale movement, native Belgians still make up the overwhelming majority of the population, and whites are the overwhelming majority everywhere in Europe. The immigrants and people with immigrant backgrounds living in Belgium are not the dark-skinned non-Europeans that the far right claim are “invading Europe”. They are actually white Europeans from neighbouring countries who have taken advantage of the European Union’s freedom of movement.

 The most radical changes that have swept Belgian society, like elsewhere in the world, have little to do with immigration. Scientific and technological progress, as well as autochthonous social and cultural developments, are responsible for the lion’s share of change.

This will come as a shock to those who have been told for decades by the right that immigrants are nothing but spongers but not only do immigrants provide essential manpower in the medical and care sectors, among others, they also play a pivotal role in keeping Belgium’s healthcare and pensions system afloat. Without the taxes and social security payments coming from immigrants, Belgium’s welfare system may well have collapsed by now. In light of falling birthrates, demographers have long been warning that Belgium’s population would decline, with dire consequences for the ageing population. Luckily, immigration has made up the difference.  Judging by the large numbers of children with a mixed or foreign background currently making their way up through the school system, Belgium will become even more reliant on immigrants and their taxes in the near future.

Beyond the economic imperative, diversity is a beautiful thing in and of itself. Contrary to what anti-migration activists and politicians claim, a multicultural society is no more prone to conflict than a monocultural one. But it offers the additional advantages of dynamism and cultural richness. That the next generation is even more diverse than ours fills us not with fear but wonder and hope for the future. 

Humanity provides us with such a delicious range of cultural choice to feast on that it is a pity to stick to the same set menu. Rather than trying to stamp out multiculturalism, bigots should give themselves the chance to savour its delicious diversity.

The fictional menace of multiculturalism | Islamophobia News | Al Jazeera

 Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. 

An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, 

And the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. 

More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic,  they will be less likely to find jobs and fulfil their potential, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.

People who have lost their main source of income are struggling to feed their immediate households and are unable to send much-needed remittances to their families in rural areas.

Industrialised countries have spent up to 20% of their GDP on stimulus packages. But for the poorest countries, that figure is less than 2%.

Pandemics, world recessions and the climate crisis do not respect national borders. The answer must be global. Strong and sustained cooperation is essential. The longer the delay, the deeper the damage will become.

A “business as usual” approach will not deliver. 

The number of people in need is frightening – we need a global response | Debt relief | The Guardian

 While Texas slowly recovers from its power outages and Texans become accustomed to freezing temperatures, clean water shortages, empty supermarket shelves and sky-high utility bills, some are celebrating the disaster. 

 Dallas billionaire and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is cashing in on the crisis. Demand for what little natural gas the state can access has soared amid the crisis as millions have gone without power this week, and consequently, wholesale gas prices have gone up nearly 300-fold. 

The chief financial officer of the natural gas company owned by Jones, Comstock Resources Inc., had this to say on a call with investors about the crisis:

 “Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices…. Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production.”

The company could be selling their product at anywhere from six to 74 times what they were selling for on average last quarter.

Such news warmed the cold callous hearts of investors   as the company’s stock shot up about 12 percent. Jones, who had $1.1 billion invested in the company in 2019, will likely profit handsomely off of this energy crisis that experts now say was largely caused by failures of the natural gas industry in the state at large.

Billionaire Dallas Cowboys Owner and Oil Man Cashes in on Texas Blackout Crisis (truthout.org)

 End of the Year Review – Meeting held online via Discord, introduced by Mike Foster & Bill Martin, 30th December 2020

 New York governor, Andrew Cuomo , has fallen from grace. Last year he was the media’s darling, the Democratic Party’s caring public face to Donald Trump’s detachment with his hands-on approach to the Covid-19 pandemic in his state. This blog, however, was not impressed and back in May 2020 posted a critique about his callous policies towards the elderly in care-homes. Well, the chickens have truly come home to roost and Cuomo’s political reputation has withered away. Cuomo now faces calls for his resignation, an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors, and angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who want to strip him of the emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic.

Covid deaths in New York nursing homes which accounted for almost a third of the total death toll of about 46,000. Cuomo directed nursing homes to accept patients back from hospital who were infected or might be infected with coronavirus. The homes had to admit anyone who was “medically stable” – no resident was to be denied readmission “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19”. The motivation behind the notice was clear – there was an “urgent need” to expand hospital capacity in order to meet the surge in Covid cases. In other words, free up hospital beds by getting older patients back to their nursing homes.

Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had admitted to Democratic leaders in a conference call that the administration had withheld the true nursing home death toll from state lawmakers and the state revised its official tally from 8,500 to more than 15,000 deaths – making a mockery of Cuomo’s longstanding boast that his state had among the best records in the country with regard to nursing homes Covid fatalities.

‘Meet the governor we’ve known all along’: how Cuomo fell from grace | Andrew Cuomo | The Guardian

 The number of British households plunged into destitution more than doubled last year. It has emerged that there were 220,000 more households living in destitution by the end of last year, potentially more than half a million people.

The increase in destitution – from 197,400 to 421,500 households last year – is defined as a two-adult household living on less than £100 a week and a single-adult household on less than £70 a week after housing costs.

The disproportionate economic impact on regions such as the north-west of England that were placed under stricter restrictions during the tier system last autumn. National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimated that the number of households living in destitution in north-west England was three times the UK figure.

Louise Casey, Johnson’s adviser on homelessness last year, said she would be willing to be a part of a review, warning Britain had been “torn apart” by the pandemic.  She said. “By March, there will be 6 million people on Universal Credit. Almost 4 million are furloughed, and those still working are on less income. Unemployment has doubled and will keep rising. If 25% of your population is affected, then you can’t just tweak old policies, working out the least expensive, least challenging thing that can be done. You need big new policies.”

“We need to move into Royal Commission territory,” she said. “A new Beveridge report. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Government can, if it wants to, do something on a different scale now. The nation has been torn apart, and there’s no point being defensive about that. We’ve got to gift each other some proper space to think. We’ve got to work out how not to leave the badly wounded behind.”

Professor Jagjit Chadha, the director of NIESR, repeated a warning that the official unemployment rate of 5% “seems to be under-reporting the true level”. He said: “As a result of lockdowns, levels of destitution seem to be rising across the country. But what’s terribly worrying is that in certain regions – in the north-west in particular – we might see some 4, 5 or 6% of the population living in destitution.

Call for new Beveridge report as number of destitute UK households doubles during Covid | Poverty | The Guardian

 In Texas a propaganda war has broken out over the cause of its electrical power collapses.

“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Fox News. Abbott faulted renewable energy sources for Texas’s “situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis”. 

His lieutenant governor, fellow Republican Dan Patrick, however, told Fox News  that the problems were not attributable to green energy. “We had a breakdown everywhere,” Patrick said,

“The Green New Deal has nothing to do with our problems in Texas,” said Daniel Cohan, associate professor of engineering at Rice University.  “…Natural gas systems failed to provide those plants with a reliable supply of fuel.” 

“There is no Green New Deal in Texas, nor has there ever been,” said Joshua Rhodes, an energy research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. “Any investment in renewables has been because private companies have seen the opportunity to make money, which is core to the Texas ethos.” He said that gas supply issues and freezing water pipes appear to be the main issue when it comes to loss of capacity at power plants, and that the recent blackouts are no excuse to question the durability of alternative energy.

Rivers and lakes are vital ecosystems. They cover less than 1% of the planet’s surface, but their 17,000 fish species represent a quarter of all vertebrates, as well as providing food for many millions of people. Healthy rivers are also needed to supply clean water. Yet only 14% of rivers have fish populations that has escaped serious damage from human activities. Scientists found that the biodiversity of more than half of rivers had been profoundly affected. The worst-hit regions are western Europe and North America. In the UK, there have been no prosecutions or fines issued to farms by the Environment Agency (EA) despite 243 violations of legislation designed to curb the agricultural pollution of waterways in England. The scale of pollution in English rivers from the agricultural runoff of chemicals and sewage pollution was exposed when in 2020, for the first time, no river achieved good chemical status, suggesting that pollution from chemicals and agriculture is having a huge impact on river quality. Sewage wastewater discharges by water companies into rivers account for damage to 36% of waterways, and runoff from agricultural industries is responsible for 40% of the damage.

“Human well-being lies in protecting the health of the planet,” declared the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “It’s time to reevaluate and reset our relationship with nature.” 

The UN on Thursday released a report on the triple emergency of the climate crisis, the destruction of wildlife and habitats, and deadly pollution in what Guterres described as  humanity’s “senseless and suicidal war on nature.” He added. “Human well-being lies in protecting the health of the planet. It’s time to reevaluate and reset our relationship with nature. 

The UN’s report recommends various reforms such as carbon taxes; a redirection state subsidies and new business models. 

An article by Vandana Shiva, an eco-activists, proposes much more fundamental changes as a solution and it is in the title of this article by her, ‘Reclaiming Our Common Home: Expand the Commons to Include Everything We Need’. 

She explains “Through reclaiming the commons, we can imagine possibility for our common future, and we can sow the seeds of abundance through “commoning.” In the commons, we care and share—for the Earth and each other.”

Her language is not ours, but she reflects our aspirations for a sustainable steady-state economy of common ownership, where production is for peoples’ needs and not for a capitalist’s profit.