URBAN NATIVES DISCRIMINATED AGAINST

'I don't belong here': Homeless Albertans describe life in Wetaskiwin encampment

WETASKIWIN, Alta. — Alvin Johnson holds on to a tarp flying in the wind as his partner tries to secure the corners of their tent with shards of wood.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

His weathered hands wipe tears from his eyes as he talks about living in a homeless encampment on the edge of Wetaskiwin, southeast of Edmonton.

"I wish they would help us," said Johnson. "I don't belong here."

The City of Wetaskiwin moved the camp to a city-owned plot of land after shutting down the community's homeless shelter in August.

Johnson, 61, used to live in nearby Maskwacis, which serves reserves from four Cree First Nations. The City of Wetaskiwin and band leaders have failed to help him, he said.

"It’s like the reserve — you have to take care of yourself," said Johnson about living at the camp. "When we step out of the boundary, we're on our own."

Fights break out in the "tent city," he said, but people try and look out for one another. His biggest worry is his chosen family getting hurt.

In between long pauses, he talked about traumas he's faced, including the death of a brother and being beaten with a hammer. He doesn't say whether the attack happened at the camp.

He joins upwards of 60 other people in the open field fighting to stay warm as winter nears.

The frigid air creeps into tattered tents at night and people wake up to frost in the morning. Ashes sit at the bottom of fire pits. On a chilly day in October, there's no more wood to start a fire.

"I can just see people declining, deteriorating and mental health is getting worse and worse," said Kristen Anderson, who lives in one of the tents.

Anderson, 41, said he started living rough in 2019 after his parents died, his welding company went under and he weathered a divorce. He turned to alcohol to cope, which he said only made things worse.

A log holds up his tent. There are soap bars at the entrance to deter mice from burrowing inside. Anderson said he has items to protect himself hidden among his belongings but didn't say what they were.

"Within the last week, it's been getting a lot worse. I find it's the predator and the prey. There are people out here preying on the weak," he said. "I hear women cry themselves to sleep at night."

During the day, most people leave the camp to roam the city, panhandle or seek social supports. Some medical staff and community members visit the site to provide aid.

It's relatively calm until the sun goes down and alcohol and drugs "add fuel to the fire," said Anderson.

Another woman at the camp, who declined to give her name, said some community members drive by and hurl insults and racial slurs at the people living there.

"I would choose not to be here," she said. "But I have no choice."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2021.

Alanna Smith, The Canadian Press

B.C. civil rights group sues federal government over solitary confinement

VANCOUVER — A civil liberties group has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over solitary confinement, two years after the top courts in British Columbia and Ontarioruled there has been a violation of prisoners' constitutional rights.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association alleges in a notice of civil claim filed in British Columbia Supreme Court that the conditions of solitary confinement infringe on federal inmates' charter rights, arguing they are exposed to physical, psychological, social and spiritual trauma.

Grace Pastine, the association's litigation director, said thousands of inmates are still being isolated in their cells for 22 hours a day or more with little access to human contact, despite promised reforms.

"Wardens at federal prisons continue to isolate people for days, weeks and months at a time as a routine form of prison management," she told a news conference Wednesday.

Long periods of isolation have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous and racialized people or those with mental disabilities, says the notice of claim, which names the Attorney General of Canada as a defendant.

The lawsuit alleges that inmates who experience extended use of restrictive movement routines and lockdowns "are observed to suffer from a wide variety of adverse effects" including anxiety, hallucinations, panic, paranoia, self-harm, social withdrawal, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

A statement of defence has not been filed with the court.

A spokesman for Justice Canada said the Correctional Service of Canada would respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Pierre Deveau, a spokesman for the Correctional Service, said in a prepared statement that the agency could not comment on any specific allegations.

None of the allegations made in the notice of civil claim have been tested in court.

The Correctional Service launched so-called structured intervention units at 15 prisons across the country in November 2019, months after the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Canada’s administrative segregation regime violated inmates' charter rights.

"Structural intervention units are part of a historic transformation of the federal correctional system that is fundamentally different from the previous model," Deveau said in the statement.

However, senior counsel Megan Tweedie of the civil liberties association said in an interview that the units that are "essentially solitary confinement by another name" are not the focus of the lawsuit.

"Our urgent human rights concern right now is lockdowns and restrictive movement routines because thousands of prisoners are being affected by this," Tweedie said, adding those strategies can apply to an entire institution as part of a "mass solitary confinement."

Efforts have been made to deal with the problem through internal grievance processes without any overall change for inmates, she said.

"Nothing's happening," she added. "So we're stepping in to fight that fight for them."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2021.

Camille Bains, The Canadian Press

BEST TO REMOVE FOOT FROM MOUTH BEFORE SHOOTING IT 
France's Le Pen says she will take down wind turbines if she is elected

PARIS (Reuters) - French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said that if she is elected president next year she will end all subsidies for renewable energy and will take down France's wind turbines.

© Reuters/SARAH MEYSSONNIER FILE PHOTO: 

French far right leader Marine Le Pen reacts to the results of regional election, in Nanterre

Le Pen, who will be the candidate of the Rassemblement National party in the April vote, made it to the second round of the 2017 election, and is expected to do so again, although some recent polls have shown that right-wing talk-show star Eric Zemmour could best her if he decides to run.

"Wind and solar, these energies are not renewable, they are intermittent. If I am elected, I will put a stop to all construction of new wind parks and I will launch a big project to dismantle them," she said on RTL radio.

She added that she would scrap the subsidies for wind and solar, which she said added up to six or seven billion euros per year and put a heavy burden on consumers' power bills.

Le Pen also said that she would provide strong support for France's nuclear industry by allowing the construction of several new nuclear reactors, fund a major upgrade of France's existing fleet and would back the construction of small modular reactors as proposed by President Emmanuel Macron.

In a 2030 roadmap for the French economy presented this week, Macron proposed billions of euros of support for electric vehicles, the nuclear industry and green hydrogen - produced with nuclear - but made little mention of renewable energy.

France produces about 75% of its power in nuclear plants, which means its electricity output has among the lowest carbon emissions per capita of any developed country. However, it also lags far behind Germany and other European nations in wind and solar investment.

There is an active anti-wind movement, which is supported by the far right and centre right, notably by Xavier Bertrand, the leading conservative contender in the presidential vote.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Peter Graff)

We Accidentally Solved the Flu. Now What?

Perhaps the oddest consolation prize of America’s crushing, protracted battle with the coronavirus is the knowledge that flu season, as we’ve long known it, does not have to exist.

© Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty

Jacob Stern

THE ATLANTIC

It’s easy to think of the flu as an immutable fact of winter life, more inconvenience than calamity. But each year, on average, it sickens roughly 30 million Americans and kills more than 30,000 (though the numbers vary widely season to season). The elderly, the poor, and people of color are all overrepresented among the casualties. By some estimates, the disease’s annual economic cost amounts to nearly $90 billion. We accept this, when we think about it at all, as the way things are.

Except that this past year, things were different: During the 2020–21 flu season, the United States recorded only about 2,000 cases, 17,000 times fewer than the 35 million it recorded the season before. That season, the flu killed 199 children; this past season, as far as we know, it killed one.

“We’ve looked for flu in communities and doctors’ offices and hospitals, and we’ve gotten almost zero,” says Emily Martin, a University of Michigan epidemiologist who’s part of the CDC’s flu-monitoring network. The same was true of other seasonal respiratory viruses last winter, says Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University in Virginia, though some have since rebounded. RSV, parainfluenza, rhinovirus, adenovirus—for a while, they all but vanished.

[Read: The pandemic broke the flu]

For this, perversely, we can thank the pandemic. The coronavirus itself may have played some role—infection could produce a general immune response that would also confer protection against the flu—but most of the epidemiologists I spoke with instead emphasized the importance of the behavioral changes adopted to slow the spread of the coronavirus: masking, distancing, remote learning, working from home, limiting indoor social gatherings. Despite the inconsistency with which America deployed them, these measures helped tamp down the spread of the virus, but they completely crushed influenza, a less transmissible foe to which the population has considerable preexisting immunity. We set out to flatten the curve, and we ended up stamping out the flu.

This was one of the few blessings in an otherwise abysmal winter, in which COVID cases and deaths surged to their highest levels ever in the U.S. At least we didn’t face the dreaded “twindemic.” But our triumph over the flu also poses a dilemma, as much ethical as epidemiological. We’ve demonstrated conclusively that saving nearly everyone who dies of the flu is within our power. To do nothing now—to return to the roughly 30,000-deaths-a-year status quo without even trying to save some of those lives—would seem irresponsible. So what do we do? Which measures do we maintain and which do we let go?

One thing we’re not going to do is go into lockdown every year (or even go into what passed for lockdown in the United States, which in reality was not). This, the public-health experts I spoke with for this story all agreed, would be neither feasible nor desirable. Broad restrictions on travel and large indoor gatherings, they said, also seem like nonstarters (though Seema Lakdawala, a flu-transmission expert at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that companies might consider rescheduling their annual holiday party for the summer and moving it outdoors). Even more moderate capacity limitations, though beneficial from a health perspective, Popescu told me, are “tricky for business.”

Still, perhaps other, targeted versions of the restrictions deployed during the pandemic could work. Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech, proposed a sort of “circuit breaker” system, in which schools and workplaces could go remote for a week or two to slow flu transmission during severe local outbreaks. Before shutdowns kick in, people could keep a close eye on flu cases in their area—just as many have monitored COVID numbers over the past two years—and make their own personal risk assessments. For one person, Lakdawala imagines, that might mean being more efficient in a crowded grocery store; for another, masking at a movie theater. (That said, people tend to be less than perfect at gauging the danger of different situations.)

Masks, in theory, are one of the simplest pandemic-times interventions to hold on to. They are “the low-hanging fruit,” says the Emory University immunologist Anice Lowen, because, unlike shutdowns or restrictions on indoor gatherings, they don’t disrupt our daily routines. In an ideal world, several epidemiologists told me, people would mask in crowded indoor spaces during flu season—if not all the time, then at least when case counts are on the rise. If that became the norm, Marr told me, “we would see huge reductions in colds and flus. No question.”

[Read: Why are Americans still—still!—wearing cloth masks?]

Ours, of course, is not an ideal world, and masking is unlikely to become an uncontroversial American norm anytime soon. Demand too much, warns Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, in Saskatchewan, Canada, and you risk inciting backlash. Even if health officials ask people to mask only during local surges, she worries, “you’re going to have a lot of people who are like, ‘Well, we saw this coming. First you mandated masks for COVID; now you’re mandating masks all the time. It’s all about control! What about my freedom?’”

At the very least, both Marr and Rasmussen would like to see the CDC recommend that people wear masks when symptomatic and provide information about how masking in crowded indoor spaces can lower the risk of infection. For now, the CDC isn’t prepared to endorse any new antiflu interventions. David Wentworth, the virology, surveillance, and diagnosis chief within the agency’s influenza division, agrees that pandemic precautions played a major role in reducing flu transmission over the past year. But he told me that the agency needs to see more data on which measures were most effective before it officially recommends any of them. “It sounds like we’re doing nothing, but really we want to understand what factors have the big impact before you start making those kinds of recommendations,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t care about the tens of thousands of people who are impacted by flu.”

The agency’s most up-to-date information on masks and the flu is labeled “Interim Guidance” … as it has been since it was published in 2004. It stresses, as several of the experts I spoke with did, that no one intervention can provide total protection, and it even mentions social distancing and school closures as possible “community measures.” But outside of a health-care setting, it recommends masks only for people who either are diagnosed with the flu by a doctor or have a fever and respiratory symptoms during a known local outbreak—and even then, it stops short of an actual prescription. Those people should try to stay home, it says, but if they can’t, “consideration should be given” to masking in public spaces.

Like everyone else I spoke with, Wentworth strongly recommended flu shots, which he called “the most important tool” at our disposal for fighting influenza. And while most years’ flu shots are considerably less effective than the best-performing COVID vaccines, several of the experts I spoke with said that not-so-far-off advances in immunization technology could narrow the gap before long.

[Read: The most important vaccine I’ll get this fall]

Certainly, methods for knocking out the flu need not be limited to successful pandemic interventions. Many experts advocated for changes they said were long overdue even before the pandemic began, chief among them paid sick leave, which every wealthy country in the world except the U.S guarantees. As a result, nearly a quarter of the American labor force must report to work when ill. Among the bottom quartile of earners, that proportion is more than half. And while many employers have introduced more accommodating policies during the pandemic, there’s no guarantee they’ll outlast it. In schools, perfect-attendance awards encourage a similar dynamic, even if well intentioned, says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.

Giving workers and students the ability to stay home when sick would go a long way toward reducing the flu’s spread. But policy changes alone won’t unravel the problem overnight. “There’s a real culture … that if you’re not on your deathbed or you’re not going to the hospital, that you’re fine to go to work,” Rasmussen told me. “If you’re sick, you should stay home. It seems like a no-brainer, but people are actually really resistant to that.”

Whether because of that culture or because they don’t realize they’re contagious, some sick people will still come in to work. That, experts told me, is where overhauled ventilation can help us. For all the advances we’ve made in preventing diseases transmitted via water or insects, my colleague Sarah Zhang has written, we have overlooked air. Until the advent of sewer systems and water treatment, Marr said, people accepted deadly waterborne diseases as a basic fact of life. These days, the idea of drinking dirty water strikes most as repulsive, even as we resign ourselves to breathing filthy air and contracting seasonal respiratory viruses. But now, Marr said, “we’ve seen we don’t have to live that way.” By better ventilating our buildings—which to this point have largely been optimized for energy efficiency, not air quality—she said, we could do for air what we have done for water.

That is at least a little ways off, though. To fight the flu right now, flu shots and nonpharmaceutical interventions are all we’ve got. If we’re going to save people, that’s how. We’re unlikely to consistently replicate the nonexistent flu season we just had, but the experts I spoke with said that even the more modest precautions could reduce mortality by 25, 50, even 75 percent, which translates to tens of thousands of lives saved. Those figures, they stressed, are highly speculative. So far, the 2021–22 season is off to a good start, though some experts worry that the flu will be back with a vengeance before long.

Whatever happens, there can be no more illusions of inevitability. The flu, it turns out, has always been a choice. Now we have the opportunity to do something about it—and the burden of knowing we can.

Coal is 'king' as gas prices soar, Total CEO says — and it's backfiring on cleaner energy goals

Natasha Turak 

CNBC


Surging gas prices have led to a jump in the use of coal, one of the more polluting fuels whose use Europe has been trying to reduce.

"High pricing is not good news — of course immediately for my company results are better, but for customers" is it not, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne told CNBC during a Russia Energy Week panel in Moscow.

Pouyanne, like many other oil and gas company executives, has called out the risk of relying on renewables whose efficacy is determined by the weather.

© Provided by CNBC Vapor rises from the cooling towers of the Turow coal powered power plant, operated by PGE SA, in Bogatynia, Poland.

Surging natural gas prices have led to a jump in coal use, with plants in Europe and Asia firing back up as temperatures decline and the world grapples with worsening gas shortages.

TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne on Wednesday stressed the need to achieve price stability, contending that lower gas prices will reduce the need to rely on the higher-polluting coal, but that the transition to cleaner energy has also created an imbalance in the market.

"High pricing is not good news — of course immediately for my company results are better, but for customers" is it not, Pouyanne told CNBC's Hadley Gamble during a Russia Energy Week panel in Moscow.

Replacing coal with gas "is good for climate change, but to do that, we need to have a lower price," the CEO said. "Because coal today is a king, because coal is cheaper than all the other sources of energy."

Coal-produced electricity has shot up in Europe, and European coal futures have more than doubled since the start of the year. And the irony is clear, as this is happening just as Europe is trying to reduce its use of the polluting fuel. Gas prices in Europe, meanwhile, have nearly quadrupled since the start of the year.

"So for us today prices are too high. We have to find stability, going back to something more normal," Pouyanne said.

He added that this is not merely a European gas crisis, but a global one, stemming from both a "huge hike in demand for gas from China and Asia," as well as "more demand for gas because of energy transition, going from coal to gas, which is good for climate change."

"So that is I think a lesson," Pouyanne said. "Another is that the more we put renewables in our electric system, we put in intermittent sources which depend on the weather."

TotalEnergies CEO: Maybe too much emotion in the way we look at the planet


Pouyanne, like many other oil and gas company executives, has noted the risk of renewables that rely on weather. Brazil, which has increased its reliance on hydropower, saw less rain this year, while other parts of the world that have invested heavily in solar and wind power saw less sun and wind.

BP CEO Bernard Looney, speaking on the same panel, echoed Pouyanne's concern.

"I think that this crisis in Europe has reminded us that energy is part of the lifeblood of society and that energy use is only going in one direction — and that is upwards," Looney said. "We all understand that the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow so we have that question of renewables' intermittency to deal with."

'A more volatile system'

Talking about governments' pushes to reduce fossil fuel production and use, Looney said: "At the end of the day, if supply goes away and demand doesn't change, that only has one consequence, and that is an escalation in price rises. So I'm not suggesting that the onus needs to be put on customers or society, but this is a system, and both the supply and the demand side have to work together."

"Just simply correcting a supply-side issue without affecting demand will not result in a more stable system, it'll result in a more volatile system," Looney added.

Higher gas use due to colder weather earlier in the year "has lowered all the inventories on gas, and so we see today an exceptional circumstance," Pouyanne said. "I think that after wintertime we should be able to come back to lower prices which would be good for everybody."

Gas prices are surging to record highs in Europe. Power shortages are also impacting households and businesses across Asia, and have forced factories to shut down.

This has been brought on by supply shortfalls and the transition to cleaner energy, which has spurred higher demand for gas, considered a cleaner fuel. Demand is also rebounding from its Covid-induced slowdown as economies reopen and travel resumes around the world.

Other energy commodities including oil have also soared in recent weeks, with international benchmark Brent crude trading at $83.37 at 12:00 p.m. ET, its highest level since 2018 and up 64% since the start of this year.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate hit a seven-year high this week, and was trading at $80.63 at noon ET.

The spike in energy prices comes amid supply chain disruptions and a shortage of shipping containers, both of which have contributed to rapidly rising inflation.

BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE IS
Sinema fundraising in Europe as reconciliation talks 'ongoing': report

Caroline Vakil

THE HILL

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is fundraising in Europe this week as discussions over Democrats' reconciliation bill continue, The New York Times reported.

© Getty Images Sinema fundraising in Europe as reconciliation talks 'ongoing': report

Sinema took part in fundraising efforts for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a spokesman for the Arizona Democrat told the newspaper. One of those fundraising events occurred in Paris, one source told the Times, and Sinema was also reportedly planning meetings in London.


Her office, however, declined to say if she would be fundraising for her own campaign as well, where she would be going in Europe or for how long, and how the trip was being paid, according to the Times.

The newspaper reported that Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chairs the Senate campaign committee, was also fundraising this week in Europe. It is unclear if the two are participating in events together, however The Times noted that a copy of an invitation for one event hosted by Peters did not include Sinema's name on it.

John LaBombard, a spokesperson for Sinema, told the Times that the Arizona Democrat has continued to be involved in conversations over the party's reconciliation bill, which she and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) oppose in its current size.

"So far this week, Senator Sinema has held several calls - including with President Biden, the White House team, Senator Schumer's team, and other Senate and House colleagues - to continue discussions on the proposed budget reconciliation package," LaBombard told the Times. "Those conversations are ongoing."

Democrats are seeking to break an impasse in two pieces of legislation - a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the much larger reconciliation bill, which is currently priced at around $3.5 trillion. Sinema, who helped negotiate the bipartisan infrastructure bill, expressed frustration earlier this month after several attempts to bring the legislation to the floor were punted by Democratic leaders.

"Over the course of this year, Democratic leaders have made conflicting promises that could not all be kept - and have, at times, pretended that differences of opinion within our party did not exist, even when those disagreements were repeatedly made clear directly and publicly," Sinema said in a statement.

"Canceling the infrastructure vote further erodes that trust. More importantly, it betrays the trust the American people have placed in their elected leaders and denies our country crucial investments to expand economic opportunities," Sinema continued.

However, fellow Democrats are frustrated with Sinema for failing to make her demands clear for supporting the reconciliation bill. While Manchin has indicated he's open to a figure between $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion, Sinema has offered no such window.

The Hill has reached out to Sinema's office and DSCC for comment.

 

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak Plans Budget Cuts Worth £2Bln Amid 'Highest' Tax Rate in Peacetime

Yesterday

© REUTERS / Toby Melvilee

Max Gorbachev

All materialsWrite to the author

The news is likely to add pressure on the government of Boris Johnson, which has come under criticism for breaking a 2019 manifesto pledge not to raise taxes, when it introduced a health and social care tax. Johnson has defended the move, citing the financial crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is planning budget cuts worth 2 billion pounds, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said in its "Green Budget" assessment conducted jointly with the investment bank Citi.

According to the economic think thank, the planned tax hikes will increase Britain's tax intake "to its highest sustained level in peacetime", but this will not be enough to fund some government departments.

The spending squeeze is likely to affect areas such as "local government, prisons, further education, and courts", IFS said

"These budgets were cut substantially in the 2010s, and a further round of cuts would be difficult to reconcile with the government's stated objectives – particularly around 'levelling up'", the assessment read.

The economic think tank noted that overall government spending will settle at 42 percent of national income, more than 2 percent above its pre-pandemic level, however, due to the ageing population a growing share of the budget will be spent on healthcare, leaving other areas underfunded.

A spokesperson for the Treasury said the government will continue to invest in key public priorities.

"Core departmental spending will grow in real terms over this parliament at nearly 4% per year on average – a 140 billion pound cash increase and the largest real-terms increase in overall departmental spending for any parliament this century", the spokesperson said.

Economic Outlook

Commenting on the UKs' recovery from the financial crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, IFS said it was rapid, but incomplete, with the economy being "one large recession short of its pre-COVID trajectory".
Brexit, however, has had a more detrimental effect on the economy, says an analysis by Citi Bank.

"The scarring just because of the pandemic may not be as large as we thought last year. The scarring due to Brexit may actually be larger. Brexit is casting a long shadow over the economy", said Christian Schulz, the bank's director of European economics.

Citi's forecast estimates that Britain's economy will be between 2 and 3 percent smaller in 2024-2025.

The IFS said under the most optimistic scenario, the government could reap the biggest current budget surplus since 1972.

"[Rishi Sunak] still faces huge uncertainty over the direction of the economy and hence over the state of the public finances. He will be hoping against hope that stronger-than-expected growth in revenues over the next few years will help to dig him out of what still looks like a fair-sized hole", said IFS director Paul Johnson.

Rishi Sunak 'will save billions of

pounds by counting IMF

contributions towards the UK's

foreign aid budget'

Rishi Sunak is said to be planning to use IMF cash as part of UK's aid spending

Such a move would save the Treasury billions of pounds over the next few years

Campaigners said the cash should be spent in addition to the existing budget

By JACK MAIDMENT, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 11 October 2021 

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is facing criticism over plans to 'recycle' a windfall from the International Monetary Fund into the UK's aid budget.

Campaigners believe Mr Sunak is preparing to use a large portion of the funds to replace part of the UK's current international development spending rather than using it in addition to what has already been allocated.

The move would likely save the Treasury billions of pounds over the next few years.

It comes after the Government came under heavy criticism for cutting aid spending for the world's poorest from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of national income.

UK TORIES SHARE BIDEN SLOGAN

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is facing criticism over plans to 'recycle' a windfall from the International Monetary Fund into the UK's aid budget.

Britain has received £19billion of its share of IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) which are designed to help poor countries ailing from the coronavirus pandemic.

But rather than following other countries by using it to provide help in addition to existing budgets, The Guardian reported that the UK will stick to internationally agreed rules allowing 30 per cent of lending through the IMF to count as aid.

Romilly Greenhill, the UK director of the One Campaign against poverty, said she expects the Government to recycle around 75 per cent of its SDR allocation, saving up to £5billion in the coming years.

She called on the Chancellor to reverse the 'shocking' decision in his spending review on October 27, adding: 'It's even more outrageous that we are the only rich donor to be considering counting this money as aid.

'Because of the way SDRs work this money comes at barely any cost to the UK taxpayer. It's literally taking charity away from those most in need.'

Conservative former international secretary Andrew Mitchell was also among those criticising the move.

He said: 'While the IMF expenditure is indeed within the definition of the aid budget, including it at this time – especially when it is not actual cash expenditure – and when the aid budget has already been slashed during a global pandemic will have a devastating effect on humanitarian causes British people care about and send a terrible message about global Britain.'

The Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokeswoman Layla Moran accused the Government of sending 'completely the wrong message' ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Boris Johnson votes to approve foreign aid cuts

'This Conservative Government has dealt yet another damaging blow to Britain's global reputation, by recycling aid money to avoid helping the world's poorest people,' she said.

The Treasury did not deny the plans, and a Government spokeswoman said: 'The UK is one of the leading international aid donors and this year we provided over £10billion towards poverty reduction, climate change, and global health security.

'We will return to the 0.7 per cent target when the fiscal situation allows.'

WAIT, WHAT

Just 20 UK visas issued to foreign lorry drivers, government admits

Oliver Dowden says applications ‘relatively limited’ for emergency visa scheme aimed to stem supply chain crisis
 

An advert for drivers and warehouse staff is displayed on the side of a lorry as a driver makes a delivery in central London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA


Aubrey Allegretti
@breeallegretti
Wed 13 Oct 2021

Just 20 UK visas have been issued to HGV drivers from abroad who took up the emergency offer of employment to avoid empty shelves in the run-up to Christmas, a senior minister has admitted.

Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party chair, said there were a “relatively limited” number of people applying for the jobs, with about 300 applications received and “just over 20” fully processed.

It came as the Home Office disclosed it would take three weeks to process the documents, in accordance with “the public service standard” turnaround time of 15 working days. The admission, from Kevin Foster, future borders and immigration minister, was contained in a letter to MPs, seen by the Guardian, and prompted accusations that the government was not moving fast enough to avert a national crisis.


EU lorry drivers will not help Britain ease its fuel crisis, union says

In the face of mounting fuel, food and goods shortages last month, it was announced that 5,000 visas would be granted to lorry drivers until the end of next February, and a further 5,500 could be applied for by poultry workers that would last until 31 December 2021.

Dowden told LBC on Wednesday: “We have 300 people that have applied for these [HGV] visas. I believe the number is just over 20 that actually received them, so are on the road. But I expect that number to increase over time.”

Foster suggested the recruitment drive was not yet fully under way. He said the Home Office was “currently making the necessary changes” to immigration rules, adding that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was “standing up the operators to begin recruitment”.

The Liberal Democrats raised concerns there would be little time left for those taking up the roles to make a significant improvement to the UK’s supply chain struggles.

Alistair Carmichael, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, said the lack of progress was “staggering”, especially in light of reports that the UK’s biggest container port, Felixstowe, was being forced to turn away ships from Asia because of a backlog of containers caused by the lorry driver shortage. He said: “In the face of a national crisis and our ports going into gridlock, the response from Conservative ministers is too little, too late. This incompetence will mean more empty shelves and more misery for British consumers in the run-up to Christmas.”

Ministers were reluctant to approve more emergency visas for workers to stem the HGV driver crisis because they were trying to put more pressure on the industry to improve pay and conditions, rather than being seen to bail it out by providing an influx of labour from abroad.

Meanwhile, shortages of other workers are having a significant impact. The poultry worker visas were issued as healthy pigs began to be culled because of a lack of staff at abattoirs, leaving as many as 120,000 pigs stranded on farms long after they should have been slaughtered. And the army had to be called in to help with fuel deliveries after the HGV driver shortage affected some companies, causing mass panic buying.

PERENNIAL LOSERS THE RICHEST TEAM
Toronto Maple Leafs Head Sportico’s 2021 NHL Valuations at $2 Billion


Kurt Badenhausen
Wed, October 13, 2021


The year is ingrained in the mind of every Toronto Maple Leafs fan: 1967. It marks the club’s last Stanley Cup title, the longest current drought between championships in the NHL. Last season teased a glimmer of hope, with the club’s first division crown in two decades, led by the NHL’s top goal scorer, Auston Matthews, but the Leafs were unceremoniously dumped from the playoffs in the first round by their archrivals, the Montreal Canadiens.

Yet, the Leafs can claim another trophy: the NHL’s most valuable team and its only $2 billion franchise, according to data compiled by Sportico. The average team is worth $934 million, and the combined fair-market value of the NHL’s 32 clubs, including ownership’s stakes in real estate, regional sports networks and additional team-related holdings, is $30 billion. That represents five times the $6 billion in annual revenue the league should generate from its next full season with fans in buildings, along with revenue from non-NHL events.

Toronto ($2 billion), the New York Rangers ($1.87 billion) and Montreal ($1.58 billion), which are the locales for the NHL’s three league offices, lead the way in this year’s rankings, while 10 teams cracked the $1 billion mark.

“There is a lot of wealth in Toronto that would fall all over themselves to bid on the Maple Leafs,” Drew Dorweiler, a valuations expert at boutique Montreal investment bank IJW, said in a phone interview.

Even with the Canadian dollar currently valued at 80% of the U.S. dollar, the Leafs have the highest sponsor and media revenue in the NHL, including its blockbuster $30 million-a-year arena naming rights deal with Scotiabank. Sportico projects gross revenue for the Leafs at $300 million for a full season with fans in the building, including 50% of the revenue from non-NHL/NBA events at Scotiabank Arena, with the other half allocated to the Raptors, which are also part of the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment conglomerate. And there’s more good news: Toronto starts the 2021-22 season as one of the Cup favorites, along with Colorado, Tampa Bay and Vegas, according to Caesars Sportsbook.

The Leafs are working on their sixth decade without a title, yet history and tradition matter in the NHL for generating revenue that drives value. The 10 most valuable clubs have won a combined 74 Stanley Cup titles, while the bottom 10 have a total of three.

Team Sales

Sportico spoke with more than 30 people inside and outside the league over the last month to dig into the values of NHL franchises. What emerged is optimism around the business of the sport that has the same potential revenue levers to pull that are driving values higher in basketball, football and soccer, with gambling, sponsorships, streaming, blockchain and international prospects front and center.

“The best way to drive values in all professional sports is to sell the right teams,” one sports banker told Sportico, which granted anonymity in order to most accurately assess valuations. The right teams have definitely not been sold in hockey. The last control sale was the Arizona Coyotes for $300 million in 2019, continuing a quarter-century run of that franchise being passed around from owner to owner like a game of hot potato since it moved to Arizona from Winnipeg in 1996. In August, the city of Glendale announced it would terminate the Coyotes’ lease after the 2021-22 season, leaving the club without a home; Sportico values the team at $410 million, more than 20% lower than any other team. Fellow bottom-five in value teams, the Carolina Panthers and Florida Panthers, also changed hands over the past eight years.

The last marquee NHL franchise sold was the Maple Leafs, in 2012, but some recent limited partner transactions at lofty valuations, according to several sources, indicate the NHL is cashing in on the supply/demand equation driving sports team values up across North America. And more deals are likely on the way. Private equity is still sitting on the sidelines in the NHL, but the league is expected to greenlight PE investment into teams in the near future, injecting more liquidity into the sport.

PE money would be welcomed by certain owners. Overall NHL revenue plummeted $2.6 billion, or 55%, last season for a league that can’t fall back on a massive national TV deal like those in the NBA and NFL. The decline followed a COVID-19-impacted 2019-20 season, when the regular season was cut short, and the playoffs took place in “bubbles” without fans. The final 2020-21 revenue tally: $2.2 billion and significant red ink for team owners.

One silver lining of the revenue shortfall for owners moving forward is the collective bargaining agreement. The CBA calls for a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenue (HRR), which excludes non-NHL events and allows deductions to sponsorship, concession and premium seat revenue. Players have captured more than 60% of HRR over the past two seasons, and the roughly $1 billion sitting in an escrow account will revert to owners over the next few years to make up for the revenue shortfall.

New Beginnings

The NHL dropped the puck on the season Tuesday, and the night highlighted a few developments that have team executives bullish. Most important for the gate-driven league, fans are back in buildings, with the Canucks and Canadiens the only two NHL teams expected to start this season at less than 100% fan capacity, due to local COVID-19 protocols.

The league kicked off a pair of new TV deals with Walt Disney and Turner Sports worth $4.4 billion combined over seven years. ESPN, which held the rights to games in 2005, will air more than 100 regular-season games a year, ending the run of NBC where national broadcasts sometimes felt “hidden,” according to one NHL insider.

NHL arenas have transformed their concessions operations to include more grab-and-go items, along with cashless transactions that speed up wait times and goose more sales at higher prices. The result is an expected per-capita spending on concessions between $23 and $27 for most teams, according to event food-service industry consultant Chris Bigelow. It represents a 20-25% boost over prior spending.

The Seattle Kraken were approved as the 32nd NHL franchise in December 2018, with an expansion fee of $650 million. The ownership group, led by David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer, is a minority partner in the $1.1 billion redevelopment of Climate Pledge Arena. Oak View Group will run the building in addition to being the arena’s majority equity partner. Sponsorship and premium seat sales are expected to be sold out ahead of the first home game next week, with a waiting list for the premium products, while merchandise sales have set a record pace. Sportico valued the team at $860 million, No. 14 in the NHL.

The Islanders have been nomads in recent years, bouncing between Long Island and Brooklyn, and also faced the challenge of building a pandemic arena. They finally get a permanent home base with UBS Arena, where OVG and the Islanders are equal partners in the $1 billion building.

The Isles sold out 12,000 general season tickets and 3,000 premium seats; some suites are priced at nearly $500,000. Sportico estimates sponsorship and premium seat revenue will top $100 million annually at UBS, up ten-fold versus recent Islanders seasons. The Swiss banking giant locked up naming rights for 20 years in a deal worth more than $15 million a season.

“This building was built for hockey but made for music,” UBS Arena president Tom Pistore said in a phone interview. Construction included easy access for crews to load/unload concert equipment—saving time and money—and a robust compound near the stage for artists that Pistore compares to a luxury hotel. Pistore is bullish on the venue’s concert opportunities, and his premium seating sales staff has been able to push through multiple price increases since they first went to market in early 2020. “Music has been a very important second tenant in our selling,” he adds.

Real Estate Titans

The Edmonton Oilers operate in one of the five smallest NHL markets, but the team punches above its weight with gate receipts and a local TV deal that rank among the NHL’s best. The club sold out 549 games over 13 years in a streak that ended in November 2019, and its TV territory stretches throughout the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and includes more than 5 million people.

Daryl Katz, who owns the Oilers and made his fortune in the pharmacy business, has used the team and Rogers Arena as a tentpole for a massive mixed-use real estate development, ICE District, around the building. The 25-acre development includes condos, a public plaza, dining, hospitality, retail and office space. The $2 billion project will eventually grow to nearly $5 billion, according to sources. Katz has unloaded portions of the project, including a $400 million sale for the commercial portion of the 69-story Stantec Tower, as well as an office building to Alberta pension manager AIMCo for $300 million. Sportico excluded the Ice District from its related business valuations, due to the size of the project, which will ultimately dwarf the team’s assets.

Sportico did include another related business in its $1.16 billion total valuation of the Oilers, ranked ninth overall. OEG Digital Gaming is a separate company that operates the club’s digital, subscription and gaming operations, including sponsorships in those categories. It also operates the Oilers’ popular 50-50 raffle business that grossed $70 million over 70 games last year while also handling raffles for clients in addition to the NHL team. The firm is poised to grow, as gambling rolls out after the Canadian lawmakers’ approval of single-game wagering in June. We conservatively valued it at $260 million. OEG's database has 250,000 names that have engaged with the company.

Next Frontier

The Washington Capitals have always been one of the NHL’s most forward-looking teams under the ownership of Ted Leonsis and his Monumental Sports & Entertainment empire. MSE launched an over-the-top streaming product, Monumental Sports Network, in 2013 and two years later added an equity stake in its RSN partner, NBC Sports Washington.

The NHL announced DraftKings as its official sports betting and daily fantasy sports partner in a five-year deal this week. “The potential revenue streams from gambling have everyone across the league excited,” said one team executive. Leonsis is already a step ahead.

Leonsis was an early investor in DraftKings and Sportrader through Revolution Growth, the investment firm he co-founded, and this year, Washington became the first NBA or NHL arena with a sportsbook inside the building through a 10-year lease with William Hill (a temporary sportsbook was in place the prior nine months). It also includes a broadcast studio, three bars and a restaurant.

“We have grand aspirations for the sportsbook,” Zach Leonsis, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at MSE and Ted’s son, told Sportico this spring. “I think that will be a flagship location, not just for William Hill, but for sports betting venues across the country.”

So when the NHL approved jersey patch partners starting with the 2022-23 season, it was no surprise to see the Caps act first. Caesars will adorn the team’s home jerseys starting next year in a deal worth $6 million a year. We valued the Capitals at $1.17 billion, including its related businesses and real estate, No. 8 among NHL clubs, but Leonsis made one thing clear about his plans for his MSE sports teams at a Sportico Live NBA Valuations event in January: “I never want to sell the team.”

On eve of strike deadline at John Deere

Dana workers call for joint action with John Deere workers

George Kirby

WSWS.ORG
an hour ago


On the eve of a midnight strike deadline for 10,100 John Deere workers Wednesday evening, workers at auto parts maker Dana Inc. expressed their support for joint action with workers at the agricultural equipment maker. The strike deadline was announced by the United Auto Workers last week after Deere workers voted down a sellout contract, which would have included the elimination of pensions for new hires, by a 90 percent margin.

Dana auto parts workers in the United States voted down a sellout contract of their own by a similar margin more than a month ago, but the UAW and the United Steelworkers (USW) are keeping workers on the job on a day-to-day contract extension, working for 12 hours and seven days a week in many cases. Talks between the unions and Dana management have been dragged out for weeks, giving the company time to stockpile parts and complete the changeover to producing parts for next year’s vehicle models.

“I know what you’re going through,” a tenured production worker at Fort Wayne stated. “Requests aren’t being met. We need more unity; we need to take hold of workers’ destiny. We need to let companies know we’re not scared of them. Dana walked out of the negotiations. You need to be 10 times stronger. We need all Dana plants and Deere to cease production.

“I remember PATCO. [The] whole system needs to be changed top to bottom. Corruption [in the union] is ridiculous … it’s in your face like it’s normal. As long as these officials are sucking up to the company we’re screwed every time. They have boats and yachts, they’re not even workers. They’re all for the companies.

“Union officials are like outside contractors. The tactics like erasing votes and the other trickery has to stop. Wages haven’t been going up for a decade, but all other things are going up. The amount of bribes is so great that you can’t get a foothold in the union.”

“I’m on board for workers taking control of negotiations [and] getting rid of union [bureaucrats]. We need solidarity with other plants in [the] auto industry and elsewhere. This will make a statement to the companies. There’s an old saying ‘strength in numbers,’ we need everyone on board.”

A tier worker spoke to the World Socialist Web Site, “Stick together. There are more of us than them. We all have to stick together.”

When asked about what he thought about the negotiations between Dana and the unions, one Fort Wayne worker responded, “What negotiations? It’s a farce. A big ‘ol bunch of BS. We’re supposed to hear about the negotiations when the committee comes back Monday or Tuesday. Honestly, I don’t know what to think until they bring back the contract. They [the USW] expect us to sign, honestly? I don’t think it’s going to be anything better than the last one they brought back.”

“[The first contract] was definitely crap!” another worker said. “The only good thing on that was giving everyone the same point system. ... Everything else was worse.”

She continued, “There’s no updates on COVID due to no information by the union. No one knows anything about the contract. It’s likely they will try to split the vote times for plants. It will be turned down like the Deere contract. Two weeks ago on Friday, the third shift workers didn’t even see the USW proposal. I’m not alone with the suspicion of the union. I’m telling everyone to vote no.”

Workers at Dana have formed the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee (DWRFC) to fight for their own interests. In order to reverse the decades of attacks on workers, the DWRFC is appealing to workers across the auto industry and in the working class internationally to establish lines of communication to fight for a common strategy.

To join the DWRFC, email them at danawrfc@gmail.com