According to a report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), “Research reveals consistent accounts of severe mental health conditions.”

Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and self-harm “among people of all ages and backgrounds” have emerged as byproducts of the hopelessness and despair after years of confinement and detention on Greece’s Aegean islands, Lesbos, Samos and Chios. One in three have contemplated suicide. One in five reported have  actually attempted to take their lives. As many as three out of four have experienced symptoms such as sleeping disorders, depression and anxiety. Over the year there has been a rise in the proportion of people disclosing psychotic symptoms, from one in seven to one in four. Disclosures of self-harm have increased by 66%.

 Psychologists concluded that the situation in the camps had worsened considerably since fires broke out in Lesbos displacing 13,000 refugees. 

The mental health toll had been aggravated by lockdown measures that had kept men, women and children confined to facilities.  The restrictions were stricter for refugees and migrants than those applied elsewhere in Greece, IRC support teams found a marked deterioration in the mental wellbeing of people in the camps since lockdowns were enforced.

Describing conditions in the camps as dangerous and inhumane, the IRC said residents were still denied access to sufficient water, sanitation, shelter and vital services such as healthcare, education and legal assistance to process asylum claims.

Kiki Michailidou, the psychologist in charge of the IRC’s psychosocial support programmes on Lesbos, pointed out, “After the fires we saw what could happen. There were transfers to the mainland and children were relocated to other parts of Europe. That’s proof that where there’s political will and coordinated action, the lives of people in these camps can be transformed.”

Thousands of refugees in mental health crisis after years on Greek islands | Global development | The Guardian

 Deal? No Deal? Bad Deal!

Narrow island in a turbulent sea

And islanders who think themselves ill matched

With the continent to which they’re attached

By bonds of geography and history.

Colour of the passport is of concern

It seems, blind pride when the flag is unfurled,

Rather than a clear vision of a world

Free for all, without boundaries to discern.

Surely time to look beyond Britannia,

See in common weal what capital lacks,

The country’s built on bent and beaten black backs

Triangulated out from Africa.

In Europe or out, the sovereign nation

Remains the keystone of exploitation.

D.A.

 Newham council,  one of the UK’s poorest boroughs, said its universal free school meals (USFM) scheme was no longer affordable as a result of funding cuts, leaving thousands of deprived youngsters at risk of missing out on a nutritious dinner.

The USFM, which has run for 11 years, guarantees all three- to 11-year-olds in the east London borough a free dinner during term time. The proposed cut would force thousands of families to contribute up to £270 a year for each of their children in years 3 to 6. 

Half of all children in Newham live in poverty, making it the second poorest borough in England after Tower Hamlets. Hunger is a growing problem in the borough during the pandemic, and already just under a quarter of Newham’s children are food insecure, meaning they regularly miss meals or go hungry. 

Sarah Ruiz, Newham council’s cabinet member for education and children social care, said the unprecedented economic situation facing the borough “leaves us with no choice but to look very carefully at how best to make the savings we need”.

 Ben Levinson, the headteacher at Kensington primary school in Newham, said the UFSM scheme had made a “life-changing” difference to the community, especially to children from struggling working families and migrant households, neither of whom were eligible for free school meals.

Free school meals scheme in one of UK’s poorest areas faces axe | School meals | The Guardian

Managing director of Kingspan’s insulation boards division and as a director of the plc, Peter Wilson will stand down.

Wilson was in charge of the insulation division since 2001, during which time it launched Kooltherm K15, a plastic foam insulation used on the Grenfell tower. Kingspan tested the foam in fire in 2005 and it passed, but then changed the chemical composition which made it more flammable, the public inquiry into the disaster heard. However, it continued to use the previous test pass and said it was safe for tall buildings.

Kingspan has an annual turnover of €3.5bn and its share price has fallen 15% in the last month. Shortly before evidence about Kingspan was revealed at the public inquiry, triggering a share price fall, Wilson sold share options worth £1.6m, sparking anger among bereaved and survivors. 

Gene Murtagh, the chief executive and Gilbert McCarthy, another director, also sold shares worth £3.1m and £1.8m respectively.

 The number of people in temporary accommodation, 253,000, in England is at its highest level in 14 years, says a new report by charity Shelter.

Shelter’s chief executive Polly Neate said: “Over a quarter of a million people – half of them children – are homeless and stuck in temporary accommodation. This should shame us all.” She explained that, “With this deadly virus on the loose, 2020 has taught us the value of a safe home like never before. But too many are going without, because of the chronic lack of social homes.”

 68% of all homeless people living in temporary accommodation are in London, which amounts to 1 in 52 of the city’s population. Outside of London, Luton has the highest rate of people in temporary accommodation (1 in 55), followed by Brighton and Hove (1 in 78), Manchester (1 in 93) and Birmingham (1 in 94).

More families ‘trapped in temporary accommodation’ in England – BBC News

 According to an analysis by the Washington Post, 45 of the 50 most highly valued U.S. companies have “turned a profit” in 2020. Despite their financial success, 27 of those firms cut staff this year, laying off more than 100,000.

Instead of using the wealth produced by workers to keep employees on payroll, corporations “put Americans out of work and used their profits to increase the wealth of shareholders,” the Post found. “Companies sent thousands of employees packing while sending billions of dollars to shareholders,” the Post noted. 

Walmart distributed more than $10 billion to its investors during the pandemic while laying off 1,200 corporate office employees. Walmart was not alone. Apple gave back tens of billions of dollars to shareholders. Apple spent $41 billion buying shares and paying cash dividends between April and September, more than twice as much as the company with the next highest total, Microsoft

Salesforce,  a company sitting on more than $9 billion in cash and short-term investments which generated $2.7 billion in profit during the first six months of the pandemic, its CEO Marc Benioff, was a signatory to the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement on corporate purpose and a proponent of so-called stakeholder capitalism, is one of the executives who continued to prioritize the interests of shareholders in 2020 —laying off 1,000 workers despite a 28% increase in revenue compared to last year—even after promising not to do so during the pandemic’s early stages. Layoffs “were announced one day after the software giant announced its biggest quarter of profit and revenue in history, sending its stock soaring 30 percent.”

Gary Walker, a systems engineer who was one of 1,000 employees Salesforce laid off in late August, told the newspaper that “the choices that they make are governed by, essentially, maximizing shareholder value.”

Chuck Robbins, chief executive of Cisco, a $180 billion software and networking giant, said large companies like his shouldn’t lay off workers during a global crisis because, even in a bad year, they had the resources to maintain payrolls. Four months later, Cisco began implementing a plan to lay off thousands of employees.

“The majority of Americans who lost jobs this year were laid off from small businesses, many of which had no option but to cut workers to stave off financial collapse,” the Post noted. “But larger companies actually laid off a greater portion of their workforces over that period—9 percent for large firms vs. 7 percent for smaller firms—despite having more resources to survive the downturn.”

‘Sick’: Most Profitable US Companies Fired Workers, Enriched Shareholders During Pandemic | Common Dreams News

 Concerns over use of force and the deaths of black people in police custody had been a focus of Black Lives Matter 

Police use force against black people five times more frequently than against white people in England and Wales, new figures show. Officers in London used force against black people four times more than against white people 

A Home Office document said black people were “involved in proportionally more incidents” where police used guns and Tasers, as well as batons and ground restraint in the year to March. The rate was almost three times higher for people perceived as being from an “other” ethnic group.

Black people were also seven times more likely to be involved in incidents involving Tasers than white people outside London, and five times more in London. 

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said black men were disproportionately more likely to be arrested or have altercations with the police overall

Police five times more likely to use force against black people than white people in England and Wales | The Independent

 Unfounded accusations of criminality are a long-standing tool of racism and bigotry and such claims should be challenged.

In the United States Sociologists Michael Light, Jingying He, and Jason Robey used crime and immigration data from Texas from 2012 to 2018 to find that relative to undocumented immigrants thatU.S.-born citizens are:

2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes;

2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes; 

4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.

Trump’s Lies About Immigrants Should End With His Presidency | Common Dreams Views

 Covax, the global scheme to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries faces a “very high” risk of failure, potentially leaving billions of people with no access to vaccines until as late as 2024. The bleak warning is contained in a financial risk assessment commissioned by Gavi, an alliance of governments, drug companies, charities and international organisations that arranges global vaccination campaigns and is the WHO’s partner in the Covax scheme. The Covax programme is the main global scheme to vaccinate people in poor and middle income countries against the coronavirus. It aims to deliver at least 2bn vaccine doses by the end of 2021 to cover 20% of the most vulnerable people in 91 countries, mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It has been beset by a number of issues, including a shortage of doses of approved vaccines, and a decision by India’s Serum Institute, which was initially earmarked to supply Covax, saying it would prioritise supplying India first. The cheaper and easier to transport vaccines that the scheme has banked on, including the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, have been slower in testing and getting regulatory approval.

Gavi says the programme is struggling from a lack of funds, supply risks and complex contractual arrangements, which could make it impossible to achieve its goals.

“The risk of a failure to establish a successful Covax facility is very high,” says an internal report to the board of Gavi. 

The risk of failure is higher because the scheme was set up so quickly, operating in “uncharted territory”, the report says. It also warns that issues with contracts that allow countries to back out of buying doses they have committed to could push up the cost of doses from the $5.20 benchmark and ultimately make the scheme no longer viable.

Scheme to get Covid vaccine to poorer countries at ‘high risk’ of failure | Coronavirus | The Guardian

  Super-cyclone Amphan, which battered the south of Bangladesh in late May. Bangladesh’s disaster management department has said 300,000 people have been affected by the flooding. About 50,000 people are still displaced. They have spent the months since Amphan living on government land, camped out by the riverside or near roads or in cyclone shelters.

“We are able to successfully evacuate millions of people and it can prevent loss of life but people are still losing their homes, land and livelihoods. There is a lack of support after the cyclone,” Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development explained.

The long-term effects of flooding are pushing Bangladesh’s rural populations into already crowded cities, expanding their slums.

“Unfortunately, with climate change and rising sea levels, people in the lower coastal districts of Bangladesh will gradually lose their livelihoods as fishermen and farmers, They will be forcibly displaced. This needs to be actively addressed by both the national government and the international community,’ he pointed out.

‘It’s over for us’: how extreme weather is emptying Bangladesh’s villages | Global development | The Guardian