Government failure to maintain the £20 a week Covid top-up payment for universal credit will overwhelmingly hit the incomes of working and disabled people, and put more than 700,000 into poverty, according to the Fabian Society.

If the planned cuts to universal credit and tax credits go ahead it will put 760,000 people below the poverty line over the medium term. Of these, 490,000 (64%) will be in working households where at least one adult works, many with children.

Its analysis of how the cut impacts on different households concludes that households with a disabled adult will be hit by 57% of the cuts; families with children will be hit by half ; and households where someone is a carer will be hit by 12%.

Andrew Harrop, general secretary of the Fabian Society, said: 

“If ministers cut universal credit this April, they will overwhelmingly punish working families and disabled people. People in these groups have shown huge resilience during the pandemic and have done nothing to deserve this. The chancellor’s planned cut will strip £1,000 per year from 6 million families and plunge three quarters of a million people into poverty. Some politicians like to pretend that social security is just for the workshy. But the reality is that millions of working households need benefits and tax credits to make ends meet, as do disabled people who are out of work through no fault of their own. If ministers are considering a few months’ temporary extension to the universal credit uplift, that just isn’t good enough. The 2020 benefit increase must be placed on a permanent footing.”

Cutting Covid top-up ‘will put 700,000 people into poverty’ | Universal credit | The Guardian

  Biden’s officials, fearing a surge in immigration, has sent out the message that little will change quickly for migrants arriving at the southern US border, even if there is a softer reception for them.

The World Food Programme says three million Hondurans face food insecurity, six times higher than before the hurricanes. The dual hurricanes Iota and Eta affected an estimated four million of 10 million Honduran people. 

Dana Graber Ladek, head of the International Organization for Migration office in Mexico, explained, “They’re suffering poverty, violence, the hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence, and with that dream of a new administration, of new opportunities, they’re going to try [to migrate] again and again.”

 Okonjo-Iweala, the World Trade Organization’s incoming chief on Monday warned against “vaccine nationalism’ that would slow progress in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and could erode economic growth for all countries – rich and poor.

“No one is safe until everyone is safe. Vaccine nationalism at this time just will not pay, because the variants are coming. If other countries are not immunized, it will just be a blow back,” she said. “It’s unconscionable that people will be dying elsewhere, waiting in a queue, when we have the technology.”

Okonjo-Iweala said studies showed that the global economy would lose $9 trillion in potential output if poor countries were unable to get their populations vaccinated quickly, and about half of the impact would be borne by rich countries.

“Both on a human health basis, as well as an economic basis, being nationalistic at this time is very costly to the international community,” she said.

Incoming WTO head warns ‘vaccine nationalism’ could slow pandemic recovery | Reuters

 There are many media articles condemning the Chinese secrecy over the origins in Wuhan of the COVID-19 outbreak. They are accused of suppressing data concerning it and the local and national officials handling of it. Such lack of transparency has led to a number of conspiracy theories.

In contrast, the secrecy and with-holding of information by the pharmaceutical companies is treated as normal custom and practice regardless to the risk to lives patents and intellectual ownership creates. 

Wealthy nations and the vaccine manufacturers are engaged in contract disputes over supplies. Nations compete with one another for commitment by the drug corporations to fulfil their advance orders for the vaccines. 

Rich countries have ordered enough doses to vaccinate their populations three times over, while 9 in 10 people in nearly 70 poorer countries are unlikely to be vaccinated at all this year. We know that when it comes to Covid infection and prevalence, nobody is safe until we are all safe. But the efforts of almost every rich country to secure vaccines reminds us of first-class passengers receiving privileged treatment.

Getting the vaccine to the world’s poor will require an approach based on solidarity rather than competition. 

 People living in poverty around the world are in danger of food shortages as the coronavirus crisis continues, Agnes Kalibata, the special envoy to the UN secretary general for the food systems summit 2021, has warned, with the risk worse this year than in the period shortly after the pandemic began.

 She said, “Food systems have contracted, because of Covid-19. And food has become more expensive and, in some places, out of reach for people. Food is looking more challenging this year than last year. The main impact has been on markets, the shutdown of food markets. The lockdown has closed markets and that makes it very difficult for farmers.” She explained that “Last year, many countries used whatever opportunity they had to keep their food systems going. That is more difficult now. Food prices have increased significantly in some places.”

Kalibata highlighted the plight of African countries in particular, several of which are facing serious food price rises and shortages, exacerbated by problems such as drought predicted in east Africa, likely to affect northern Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. “This year, the predicted drought cycle is much more serious than last year,” she said.

Other countries were also seeing prices rise, she added. “The price of food is increasing in some cases very fast, which is really challenging.” As the coronavirus pandemic and the global economic crisis it has provoked continue, more countries are likely to be drawn into difficulties, she said. “We have not been able to strengthen our reserves. Now they are under pressure.”

Munderlying problems have grown worse over the past year, as people have exhausted their reserves of food, cash and family support and now are facing a long crisis without backup.

“We are facing a greater threat this year, as economies have shrunk,” she said. “That is happening across the globe, everywhere. Countries are in a very distressed situation, and it is not getting easier – it is getting more difficult. Some countries have hung on, but for how long?”

Risk of global food shortages due to Covid has increased, says UN envoy | World news | The Guardian

 Food has been speculated on the financial markets for a very long time. In December, water also became a commodity which can now be traded in the Wall St futures market. Now another basic of life is being speculated over for profit and private gain – oxygen, itself.

  With most hospitals full, many Mexicans are battling COVID-19 oxygen tanks and oxygen concentrators (devices that concentrate the oxygen from a gas supply, typically the air) have become scarce, as individuals and companies are taking advantage of the pandemic and selling or renting them at extremely high prices. Others are using the situation to fraudulently sell tanks without delivering them.

In Mexico City, people have been lining up for up to five hours to refill tanks, many of which only provide a few hours’ worth of oxygen. The demand for oxygen has grown by 700 percent over the past month. Oxygen products have roughly quadrupled in prices since November. Now some companies sell industrial oxygen tanks that aren’t medical grade and thus not fit for personal use.

Profiting From Desperation: Oxygen Tanks Become an Underground Market in Mexico (truthout.org)

 The pro-democracy campaigns in Hong Kong may have fallen out of the media headlines and been replaced by the struggles against the Myanmar military coup but they are very closely related. Both governments have deprived people of their political and labour rights and are acting more and more ruthlessly. 

The Chinese state are  suppressing and persecuting trade union officials. The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions is appealing for support and solidarity. This video has been posted to explain the situation. 

  UN envoy said US and EU sanctions on Venezuela were worsening a humanitarian crisis and recommended that the United States relax the measures.

 Alena Douhan, a UN special rapporteur focusing on sanctions, recommended in a preliminary report that the sanctions be lifted, and the Venezuelan government be granted access to funds frozen in the US, United Kingdom and Portugal.

“Unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the abovementioned calamities,” Douhan told reporters.

Maduro’s government blames the sanctions for Venezuela’s economic woes.  Once a prosperous OPEC nation,  the economic decline started in 2014 before the imposition of economic sanctions with the downturn in oil prices and that mismanagement and corruption also contributed.

UN envoy draws rebuke for bid to relax Venezuela sanctions | Politics News | Al Jazeera

Some background reading on sanctions

Sanctions: Waging war without bullets – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

 The humanitarian crisis in Yemen has been repeatedly featured in the media headlines for quite some time and still little has been done to alleviate the suffering.

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Acute Malnutrition report (pdf), 2,254,663 Yemeni children under five years old are so malnourished that they require medical treatment. 

Of these, 395,195 suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which is potentially fatal,  an increase of 22 percent over 2020.

Additionally, 1,155,653 pregnant and breastfeeding women are “acutely malnourished.”

“These numbers are yet another cry for help from Yemen, where each malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive,” said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, which prepared the report with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. “The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mix of conflict, economic collapse, and a severe shortage of funding.”

Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said that “the increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action. More children will die with every day that passes without action.”

Qu Dongyu, who heads the FAO, added that “families in Yemen have been in the grip of conflict for too long, and more recent threats such as Covid-19 have only been adding to their relentless plight.”

 Meeting held online via Discord – Glenn Morris, 11th December 2020

Why are socialists so few in number?