Scientists want to string satellites through space to communicate with other worlds

Andrew Griffin
Fri, 24 February 2023 

(Getty Images)

Scientists hope string satellites through space so that we can more easily communicate with other worlds.

The concept, inspired by the “Pony Express” that used messages relayed by riders on horses to cross the US. It operated for just 18 months around 1860 – before it was overtaken by the telegraph – but may live on in an entirely new form, researchers hope.

In the Earth-bound polar express, letters were sent between stations that would relay messages. The Solar System Pony Express, or SSPE, would use much the same system, except with satellites flying back and forth in space.

That could allow for much better communication with the spacecraft that are travelling through the solar system, exploring other worlds such as Mars and beyond.

At the moment, such communications rely on the Deep Space Network, a set of ground-based equipment that can send messages out to Nasa’s spacecraft. But that network is limited, both in terms of speed and how much data can be carried at once.

Scientists hope that the SSPE could help that system become faster and more capable. It would work by sending “data mules”, that are made up of small spacecraft and can travel somewhere such as Mars, passing on messages.

“The Solar System Pony Express is a mission concept that aims to augment the data transmission capabilities of the Deep Space Network using the idea of data mules,” said Robyn Woollands, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one of the authors of the new paper.

The mules would arrive at Mars and sit close to a probe’s transmitter. They would then carry the data back to Earth, where it could be sent back to a receiver.

Using low-thrust propulsion and the gravity of the Sun, Earth and Mars, the spacecraft would be able to travel around in space without using large amounts of resources, scientists suggest.

That is partly because of the development of ion engines, which are more efficient than widely-used chemical engines, and are light enough that they can be launched more cheaply.

“Our study revealed that the total data volume returned during the simulated mission exceeded our goal of 1 Petabit per year,” said Alex Pascarella, Robyn Woollands’ PhD student, in a statement.

The idea is detailed in a new paper, ‘Low-thrust trajectory optimization for the solar system pony express’, published in the journal Acta Astronautica.

THEY ARE ONLY LOYAL TO PROFIT

Only sanctions and seizure will fix the scandal of multinationals staying in Russia

Matthew Lynn
Fri, 24 February 2023 

Ukraine - Henry Nicholls/Reuters

It is too expensive to get out, according to the tobacco giant Philip Morris. It is too complex, according to the French hotels conglomerate Accor, and risks enriching local oligarchs. Or it is impossible to find a lawyer, or transfer staff, or the chief executive's dog ate the paperwork, according to multinationals ranging from the normally sanctimonious Unilever to BAT. Carlsberg has even raised the possibility of going back one day, once it finally gets around to selling its unit in the country.

A year on from Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, many of the world’s biggest companies are still operating inside Russia.

We all understand there are challenges of getting out of a major country. And it is a market where the weakness of the local competition means that there are easy profits to be made. But with the war potentially dragging on for years, there is no excuse for remaining. And there is a simple solution at hand.

Ukraine needs money for reconstruction, and companies need a punishment for helping to fund the war. The United States, the European Union, Britain, Japan and other leading Western powers should put in place a sanction-and-seize regime: tax Russian profits and pass the money to Kyiv. With that in place, it would be surprising how quickly they managed to get out.

Over the last week, most of the civilised world has marked the first anniversary of the invasion. Pledges of arms have been beefed up. Money has been found to help its suffering victims. Candlelit vigils have been held in New York and London, while in Paris the Eiffel Tower was lit up in the now-familiar blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.

Eiffel Tower - Pierre Suu/Getty Images Europe

Some of the world’s biggest companies, however, have found a less edifying way of marking the occasion: a fresh round of excuses for why they are still trading in Russia.

This week, Jacek Olczak, chief executive of Philip Morris International, which sells the company’s cigarette brands outside the US, argued that it was so difficult to sell its Russian unit that he might end up just keeping it. Apparently the Kremlin is imposing such strict terms that a sale could be impossible. Well, there’s a surprise Jacek. Who could have guessed Putin's regime would make withdrawing so difficult?

Sébastien Bazin, the boss of Accor, which owns brands such as Novotel and Ibis, told The Telegraph there was “no legal basis” for pulling out of Russia – and even worse, it might “enrich local oligarchs”. From Colgate to Unilever, BAT, L’Oreal and Procter & Gamble, plenty of the world’s biggest brands are still there.

The excuses companies are giving for remaining in Russia are lame, pitiful, pathetic and shameful. We all understand the challenges of exiting the country. Evidently, under the circumstances, it is hard to get much of a price. You are a forced seller, and it is not as if the Kremlin is exactly worried about its reputation for respecting international law right now. Putin’s gangster cronies are the only people likely to get their hands on your business, probably in a rigged deal. Staff and suppliers deserve some protection, and any sale will take a while.

Even so, a year is surely long enough. Russia is conducting a murderous campaign, and slaughtering innocent civilians as well as its own conscripts. It has turned into a war of attrition, and those are expensive to fight. The weaker the Russian economy gets, the harder it will be for the military machine to be maintained, and the sooner its forces will collapse. It is not hard to work out the real reason so many companies are still there: money.

With 140 million people, Russia remains a major market, especially for consumer brands. And of course, once local units are sold, it will be hard to ever get back in again; the prices will be higher, and whoever bought your business will be a rival. It is tempting to play for time, hoping that the war will end one way or another, and everything will quickly get back to normal.

Ukraine desperately needs to keep its own Army equipped, to keep the country alive, and to pay for the vast amount of reconstruction that will be needed. The IMF estimated in December that the country needs $5bn (£4.2bn) a month just to keep going. At the same time, there needs to be some form of punishment beyond condemnation, and potentially consumer boycotts, for the companies that remain.

The solution? Sanction and seize. If the G20 economies can come up with a global minimum tax, and most major economies can impose windfall taxes, it is hardly impossible to come up with a levy on Russian profits. Estimate the amount that each multinational is making in Russia, double it, and then impose a one-off charge on each one, and donate the proceeds to the government in Kiev.

The likes of Philip Morris and Accor can huff and puff if they want to. They can complain that it is too hard to sell local assets, that there is not enough time, or that they can’t get the right price. They can drag their heels, and come up with spurious reasons for remaining.

But here’s a prediction. If all the money they were making was confiscated, they would start to get a move on – and the scandal of major Western companies remaining in Russia would soon be over.

French owner of Orient Express claims pulling out of Russia is ‘not an option’

Oliver Gill
Fri, 24 February 2023

Sébastien Bazin - Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP

The chief executive of Accor, the French owner of the Orient Express and Novotel hotels, has claimed pulling out of Russia is “not an option” unless he is forced to by more stringent sanctions.

Sébastien Bazin said there is “no legal basis for pulling the plug” on Accor’s business in Russia and that his fiduciary duty to make money for shareholders holds sway.

Accor, which also owns the Ibis, Mercure, Sofitel, and Raffles chains, is the largest hotel operator in the country. Western nations would need to “go further” with sanctions to force Accor to withdraw from Russia completely, he said.

Mr Bazin told The Telegraph: “The reason why we did not really pull the plug is that we have no legal basis for pulling the plug.

“Even if we were to pull the plug, the hotel will keep the brand because I am in default. That way it is going to be run with the same people with the owner and me not being able to be a caretaker for the employee. So that's not an option.

“It's a legal issue where I have a fiduciary obligation for the next 25 years. I just cannot, unless the present sanctions [change]. I have no legal grounds. Unless they go further, the European Commission UK and US.

“And guess what? They're not. I don't have any pressure from any of those countries for me to go further.”

Zelensky - Sarah Meyssonnier/AFP

The company is the latest to confirm it will stay in Russia despite Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Philip Morris International, the tobacco giant behind Marlboro cigarettes this week said it would “rather keep” its business in Russia despite lining up three credible buyers.

Unilever chief executive Alan Jope has said exiting the country “is not straightforward” and refused to “abandon” approximately 3,000 employees in Russia or have its assets fall into the hands of the Kremlin.

French companies have come under particular fire for remaining in Russia. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last year accused a series of French businesses of “sponsoring the Russian war machine”. That came in March, weeks after the outbreak of war and a meeting at which Emmanuel Macron had reportedly advised French business leaders against a hasty withdrawal from Russia.

Mr Bazin said: “If you go, you give whatever has been built for a dollar, you actually get the Russians richer. Why should we actually be helping them to get rich at our expense?”

The UK Government was quick to put pressure on oil giants BP and Shell to sell large joint venture energy assets in Russia following Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

But in a signal to the complexities of exiting the country, BP has still yet to find a buyer for its 20pc stake in Rosneft, for instance.

Another of the UK’s biggest listed companies, British American Tobacco, is also struggling to offload its Russian arm.

Jack Bowles said earlier this month: “In terms of complexity we have to navigate not only the sanctions in Europe but also the sanctions in the UK and the US – plus the regulatory framework in Russia.”

Mr Bazin’s remarks about Russia came as he lamented the impact of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

He blamed Brexit for staff shortages that have been “devastating for our own industry”.

“It is probably one of the worst tragedies in terms of the decision-making process,” he added.

He said that the Covid pandemic had deferred the fallout from Brexit as businesses pared back trading during lockdowns and restrictions.

“We should have actually been battling together,” he said. “We all know today, but people don't pay attention, that the basis upon which [UK] people make a decision [to leave the EU], was just a bunch of lies.”

Nevertheless, Accor, which has more than 40 hotel brands and employs 230,000 people worldwide, announced on Thursday that annual revenue had risen 92pc to €4.2bn during 2022.

Layoffs cloud UK fintech prospects

Simon Hunt
Fri, 24 February 2023 

(Dominic Lipinski/PA) (PA Archive)

The UK’s long-term dominance of the European fintech sector has been thrown into doubt after a study found that a greater number of London-based firms have been hit by layoffs compared with their EU counterparts.

At least a dozen UK fintechs have let go of staff over the past 12 months, an analysis by the UK Trade and Business Commission found, against only half a dozen firms headquartered in the EU.

While London-based Revolut is set to hire at least 1700 staff over the next year, many of its peers have been less fortuitous, with the likes of Railsbank, Zilch Zego and TrueLayer all shedding at least 10% of staff.

The figures come amid further questions about the challenges facing London’s financial services post-Brexit.

Evidence already submitted to the Commission cites concerns that the UK’s financial services trade with the EU, which fell by 19% in terms of cash exports between 2018 and 2021, could be hit further when the last of the two equivalence decisions granted to the UK by the EU expires in 2025. Conversely, the EU has granted 21 of these decisions to the United States. Equivalence status is awarded when a country’s regulations are sufficiently similar to the EU’s to allow free trade to continue.

The analysis comes ahead of a UKTBC evidence session with fintech leaders on what the sector needs from future trade agreements, as part of the Commission’s economy-wide consultation on post-Brexit trade.

Dr Sarah Hall, professor of economic geography at the University of Nottingham, said: “The City has many strengths as an international financial centre but it is important the Government works to develop regulation that continues to support the ongoing growth of businesses and fintech across the UK in the future.”“Above all else, businesses need as much certainty as possible as they cope with challenging global conditions.”

German carmakers survive first round of climate lawsuits

Victoria Waldersee
Fri, 24 February 2023 

 A Volkswagen logo is pictured in a production line at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg

BERLIN (Reuters) -German carmakers made it unscathed through a series of lawsuits led by environmental groups demanding they restrict their carbon emissions, with the final ruling issued on Friday - but the battle is not over, with all plaintiffs pledging to appeal.

The heads of Greenpeace Germany and environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe, climate activist Clara Mayer, and farmer Ulf Allhoff-Cramer targeted three carmakers with lawsuits in 2022.

The filings, against Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, represented the first time citizens in Germany sued companies for exacerbating climate change.

"We knew this was new legal territory in Germany, and that it would be a long journey," Martin Kaiser, head of Greenpeace Germany, said. "But social dialogue on this has come a long way... a global topic like climate change must be regulated."

The lawsuits demanded that automakers end production of fossil fuel-emitting cars by 2030, and ensure the carbon dioxide emitted by their cars and factories before then does exceed a carbon budget calculated by the NGOs.

In what plaintiffs hoped would set a legal precedent to take action against other firms, they argued that the carmakers' carbon footprint was infringing on their rights to live a life free of greenhouse gases, enshrined in a ruling by Germany's federal court in May 2021.

Farmer Alhoff-Cramer also argued Volkswagen's emissions were damaging his livelihood.

In a series of hearings, judges ruled that the link between the infringement of citizens' rights and the carmakers' actions were not clear enough, though some added this could change in future, giving hope to the plaintiffs who all plan to appeal.

In Allhoff-Cramer's case, the judge deemed the changes in climate which have occurred so far the "new normal", and said it was not clear how much worse the damage to his land would get in a world warmed beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Carmakers welcomed the rulings, laying out their electrification targets and arguing that such matters should be decided via political debate, not lawsuits.

Still, lawyers contacted by Reuters said carmakers can expect to face tougher battles in court as the public becomes more anxious about climate change, with companies increasingly held accountable for the impact of their entire supply chain.

"The problem is, society is changing," a senior lawyer, who declined to be named, said. "There'll be more and more Greta Thunberg-types on the jury in future."

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee and Jan Schwartz; Editing by Miranda Murray, Friederike Heine and Jan Harvey)

Barring skilled refugees from work in the UK is a travesty that must be solved

Emma Sinclair
Fri, 24 February 2023 

Photograph: MBI/Alamy

Regardless of education or experience, getting a job as a refugee in the UK is hard.

Accessing most skilled roles requires English language tuition and requalification, the costs of which are prohibitive. As a result, we have neurosurgeons working as care assistants, marine engineers driving cabs, teachers with no students and lawyers stacking supermarket shelves.

It has been a year since the invasion of Ukraine. And a year since RefuAid mobilised the business consortium of 200-plus large companies to help get refugees into jobs commensurate with their experience – and fast.

We need doctors, nurses, pharmacists and vets urgently in the UK but when people with those skills arrive here, it is almost impossible for them to practise the jobs they know how to do. It is a travesty that must be solved.

When Russia’s invasion happened, Britons came together to offer homes to displaced Ukrainians. More than 8 million people were forced from their homes, and while this initiative was crucial, if we really want to support refugees in this country we cannot just offer shelter; we need to offer jobs, too.

As someone who started their own career in McDonald’s – and loved it – there’s nothing wrong with a job that simply pays the bills. However, when you studied and worked hard to forge a career you then lost through no fault of your own, the thought of never getting it back is devastating. And of course, vets, engineers and other skilled professionals are urgently needed in our workforce.

Not only do we not make it easy for people who simply want to get into paid employment to do so but there are hundreds of skilled professions where it is made so much harder than it needs to be.

Take dentists: it takes years for internationally qualified dentists to be able to sit the required conversion exams. While there is finally an effort to overhaul this system this year, in the interim overseas dentists have been stopped from working as dental care practitioners, such as therapists or hygienists, before they sit these extra exams. This means we are making it even harder for them to work in the dental profession rather than easier – and people are having to bow out of their jobs.

Many of us have heard NHS leaders including Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, talk about the terrifying lack of healthcare professionals in the NHS recently. Take the medical support worker role created during the pandemic with NHS England to allow overseas doctors to work once they had language exams, but before they had passed UK medical exams (providing they held valid medical degrees from their home countries).

More than 500 were hired, many of whom were refugees, but now national funding for these roles has been cut and their contracts terminated. People who have been working in the NHS providing critical care are losing their jobs. Pritchard faces calls to reinstate the role immediately. The salary is £34,000 – substantially less than doctors and consultants are paid.

In pharmacy, 142 refugee pharmacists need to convert their pharmacy accreditations from home countries to the UK but have to wait until 2026 because courses are oversubscribed. Horrifying. After years of no progress from people trying to solve this from the refugee community, it took a tweet to Gisela Abbam, the chair of the pharmacy watchdog, to get someone to pay attention.

Almost every skilled profession seems to face similar bureaucracy. It is an own goal for Britain, and something we should be ashamed of.

The journey of people who have to leave everything behind to start life with nothing is deeply personal to me. My father’s side of the family came to east London from Ukraine more than a century ago, fleeing persecution. And on my mother’s side our family includes the late Harry Balsam, one of the Kindertransport and few to survive the Holocaust from our family. It is only through their perseverance that I have had a life of opportunity. It doesn’t need to be this hard for other people.

Since the consortium launched, 117 UK businesses have partnered with the RefuAid recruitment desk, supporting 538 refugees on our language programme (including 145 doctors), helping 110 people find jobs commensurate with their level of expertise and supporting 204 Ukrainians to apply for UK visas.

The average starting salary for someone hired by the consortium is more than £32,000. Given that they will have been on universal credit, these roles provide urgent financial independence and dignity to refugees and bring much-needed skilled labour to the UK workforce.

Let’s make it easier: it’s the best possible outcome for everyone.

• Emma Sinclair MBE is the chief executive of EnterpriseAlumni and a supporter of RefuAid, a charitable fund.

LOBBYING PAYS WELL

WPP profits top £1bn as ad giant’s boss embraces “scary” AI revolution

Simon English
Fri, 24 February 2023 

(WPP)

WPP offered hope today that the economy could be in for a “soft landing” as clients resumed spending and profits zipped past £1 billion.

The ad giant founded by Sir Martin Sorrell saw revenues in 2022 up nearly 13% to £14.4 billion.

New clients include Audible, Verizon and Danone.

Chief executive Mark Read, in charge since Sorrell’s awkward departure five years ago, said the advertising world and the wider economy is in “a better place than people had feared”.

The bad recession predicted by many seems far from inevitable. “I think we are going to see a longer, smoother, landing than people thought last year,” he said.

The final dividend is up 30% to 24.4p, good news for shareholders including Sir Martin, who left after a row about alleged mis-use of company money and claims of a “fear culture” at the business.

Profits for the year jumped 22% to £1.16 billion.

Read thinks the growth of AI is going to challenge advertising as much as any industry.

“The impact of AI on our business and every knowledge business is going to be fundamental,” he said: “Parts of it are scary, it will do a lot of tasks that are now done by people.”

WPP has already embraced the AI revolution, using it in work for Nike featuring Serena Williams.

Read added: “We see it as a tool in a marketer’s kit, used to make workflows more efficient, rather than as a path to removing humans from the process. In fact, we believe it shows how valuable true creative thinking really is.”

A global slowdown in marketing and advertising spending post pandemic looks to be reversing.

Sophie Lund-Yates at Hargreaves Lansdown said: “WPP is a titan of industry. Its sheer size means gaining momentum and getting into shape is a huge challenge, but it’s one the company has risen to. The largest concern for investors was how successful WPP will be in realising its cost efficiencies, with £600m due to be found by 2025. The fact this target remains in focus and on track is a genuine relief.”

WPP shares rose 44p to 1062p, which leaves the business valued at £11.4 billion.

The company has both clients and staff in Ukraine. It has divested from Russia, leading to a loss of £63 million.

WPP and its staff have donated $1.35 million to Ukraine charities.

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE AI
I just called him by his code letter': Sally Walker, Britain's spy chief on her first boss

Rod Gilmour
Fri, 24 February 2023 

Sally Walker spent 25 years working in national security, during which she created Britain's first national cyber force. She now advises the social impact workforce technology firm WithYouWithMe.

Sally Walker worked in national security for 25 years, and was the first female director of GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence agency, where she created and headed up the National Cyber Force. She was one of very few women working at the spy agency when she joined in the 1990s, so she also became GCHQ’s diversity champion and currently delivers women in leadership programmes for a range of FTSE 100 clients.

She is founding member of Human Digital Thinking, and also board advisor and non-executive director at workforce technology platform WithYouWithMe, a social impact firm which helps armed forces veterans and their partners find meaningful work in the cyber field after they leave the military.

When I joined GCHQ you didn’t even talk about the fact you worked there, much less who you worked for. So this has been a journey of reflection for me.

I joined the civil service in the mid-90s and therefore my bosses were straight (otherwise you couldn’t hold a security clearance), and almost exclusively white, middle class, middle income, highly educated and usually introverted. There were no married women in the senior management structure.

Read More: My first boss: Martin Warner, 'UK's Elon Musk', on his business career

On one level they were all the same, but of course they were incredibly different, all with unique personalities and brains. Whether they were mathematicians, linguists or computer scientists, they had been recruited for their brilliance.

They all used letters and titles instead of their names; not only were they not known to the outside, they weren’t known to their staff. It added to their mystique and authority, they weren’t just faceless but almost nameless. It was very unusual. They all looked and sounded identical.

WithYouWithMe has helped over 20,000 people from marginalised groups including military veterans, refugees and neurodiverse individuals, find employment in tech roles such as data science and cyber security. Photo: BrianTWalters Photography

I first started in 1995 straight out of university and had no idea about anything. I was an intelligence analyst and a lone female voice. I'm extrovert and interested in people, but this group of mysterious individuals were supportive of me as an outspoken, feisty girl with a view of how to change the world.

They genuinely didn’t know what to do with me and I kept on being promoted. I went first to a middle and then to senior management role in 30 months. They saw potential I don’t think they could possibly have understood. They recognised difference but didn’t quite understand it, and decided to go with it anyway. I think it's true to the spirit of GCHQ which dates all the way back to Bletchley Park.

I was in senior civil service by 31, which was 26 years ahead of my next, most rapid female counterpart as there simply weren’t any women in the organisation. It was totally unbalanced.

I sometimes worry that I’m the person who changed the direction, but if you go back to Bletchley, all of the superheroes during the War were unrecognised females. At the time, I didn’t think that being female was an issue. I was so out of the norm that I just got on with it.

The 24-hour Operations Room inside GCHQ, Cheltenham . Photo: Reuters

That is until I got pregnant with my first child. I was now defined by being female and not part of the management structure. It became one of the things I can’t do, not the things I can do. Defining people this way is one of the most ludicrous approaches to human talent that anyone came up with, but we do it quite a lot.

There was maternity for senior civil servants but it was an uncomfortable period. The first comment I had when I revealed my pregnancy was, "I thought you were a career girl?" My response was, "So did I". What I learned over my time was how to treat people as humans, recognise that our lives are different, and asking people what they think and want was far more important than imposing your view of the world on others.

I finished as director of cyber operations, yet I left a job that I loved as I needed to do something different and see my family more. I stepped into a world of headhunters who saw me as an IT geek. "I do people, stand up organisational development and change programmes," I told them. My job description was reduced to the word ‘cyber’ and I probably got sifted out of jobs I could have done quite well in. I found it demoralising and challenging, all because of that wretched CV.

WithYouWithMe founder Tom Moore is a former Australian platoon commander who saw first-hand how hard it was for Armed Forces veterans to find meaningful employment afterwards.

WithYouWithMe (WYWM) was set up by its founder after he found trouble getting employment after a military career, but it has grown into something much broader, it now broaches the digital skills shortage whilst also helping many different under-represented groups find a foothold towards meaningful employment.

In the jobs world there is a community looking for people with coding skills – which we are short of – while there is a requirement for everybody to think differently about the jobs and skills market of the future. WYWM is helping with both of those challenges.

Read More: My first boss: Kathryn Parsons, Decoded CEO and digital education pioneer

A healthy board environment is one that encourages transparency and is actively listening. As an advisor, the key is to be human, recognise the challenges and offer support or direction. It is about facilitating conversation and relationships, appreciating how much work and effort goes into running a start-up like WYWM, and encouraging people – as I hope I have done in all my work – to be open to learning and making mistakes.

Back in the days of my old boss, family and home environment just weren’t discussed. When I look back on the civil service of the 90s, I hope they would recognise progress. I see more women coming through now, and even one of the male directors took all of his nine-month paternity leave. At that point you realise that the world has changed and that’s a good thing.

Six major UK employers have become the first to sign WYWM initiative 15,000 Futures to help armed forces veterans and their partners find meaningful employment in tech and digital roles after leaving the military.

UK Teacher strikes set to go ahead as no progress made in pay negotiations

PA Reporters
Sat, 25 February 2023 


Teacher strikes planned for next week are set to go ahead as no progress has been made in negotiations over pay.

The National Education Union (NEU) said this week it was “prepared to recommend a pause to strikes” to its national executive committee on Saturday in a “sign of goodwill”, but only if a “serious proposal” is made to end the dispute.

On Saturday, the union said it is not expecting any developments and that the strikes remain in place.

Dr Mary Bousted of the NEU (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan had written to teaching unions inviting them to “formal talks on pay, conditions and reform” on the condition that next week’s strike action is cancelled.

Regional walkouts by NEU members are planned for February 28, March 1 and March 2, with national strike action across England and Wales planned for March 15 and March 16.

Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU, said on Friday: “It is completely disingenuous to suggest that we are not willing to enter talks with Government.

“We are absolutely ready to come to talks. What we cannot accept are pre-conditions which require us to pause strike action before we have made any progress through negotiations to resolve this dispute.”

Labour says government has created ‘perfect storm’ in England’s teaching workforce

Sally Weale
Fri, 24 February 2023 


Labour has accused the government of creating “a perfect storm” in England’s teaching workforce, after analysis revealed the scale of the crisis, with teachers old and new quitting the classroom and too few replacing them.

A teacher who qualified in 2010 is 15% more likely to have left teaching within a decade than one who qualified in 2000, according to Labour’s analysis of the most recently available official figures.

There is also a concerning gap between the number of teachers quitting the profession and those entering it, Labour says. Its research found 36,262 left the teaching profession in 2020/21, compared with 34,394 who joined via initial teacher training, leaving a shortfall of 1,868.

The government’s own teacher training statistics, published in December, revealed recruitment down by a fifth, which was described as “catastrophic”. Fresh analysis by Labour, however, found that outside London recruitment is down by nearly a third compared with 2019/20.

Labour says the recruitment crisis threatens to jeopardise the quality of pupils’ education and harm the life chances of children, particularly in the north of England and the Midlands.

It is also at the centre of talks between government and unions, who say the erosion of teacher pay has made the job less attractive. Barring a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations, the National Education Union is due to hold its second day of strike action next Tuesday in the northern, Yorkshire and Humber regions in pursuit of its claim for a fully funded above-inflation pay claim.

The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “The Conservatives have created the perfect storm in our teaching workforce, with teachers old and new leaving and with too few replacing them.

“Our children will reap the whirlwind of lower school standards and worse life chances in years to come unless the Conservatives get to grips with the dangerous exodus of teachers that began under their watch.”

She went on: “Labour will recruit an additional 6,500 teachers to fill vacancies and reduce workloads on our overworked, overstretched and undervalued teaching workforce and drive up standards of education.”

Further analysis by the Liberal Democrats showed the government has missed its recruitment targets every year for the last five years in maths, physics and modern languages. The total shortfall over the five years is 3,112 maths teachers, 6,367 physics teachers and 3,519 modern-language teachers.

The Liberal Democrats are also concerned that too many secondary-school pupils are not being taught by subject specialists because of recruitment and retention problems. In physics, for example, where the shortage of specialist teachers is most critical, 40.6% of teachers don’t have a relevant post-A-level qualification, up from 37.3% five years ago.

Liberal Democrat analysis also reveals the scale of burnout among young teachers. In the last five years, a total of 102,588 teachers have given up teaching before reaching their 40th birthday.

Munira Wilson, education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, said: “The Conservatives are failing our children badly. They are missing their own recruitment targets and driving thousands of young teachers out of the profession, leaving millions of children to be taught by someone who isn’t an expert in their subject.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The number of teachers in the system remains high and there are now more than 465,000 teachers working in state-funded schools across the country, which is 24,000 more than in 2010.

“Our bursaries and scholarships worth up to £27,000 and £29,000 tax-free are helping to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as maths, physics, chemistry, and computing. On top of this, these teachers can receive a levelling up premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free in years 1 to 5 of their careers.

“As well as making the highest pay award in 30 years – 5% for experienced teachers and more for those early in their careers, including an up to 8.9% increase to starting salary – we are having ongoing conversations with unions on issues concerning recruitment and retention.”

Revealed: the US is averaging one chemical accident every two days

“Even in small doses certain toxic chemicals can be dangerous. They can lead to long term chronic illness, they can lead to acute illness” 

Carey Gillam
Sat, 25 February 2023 

Photograph: Michael Swensen/Getty Images

Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, recently lamented the toll taken on the residents of East Palestine after the toxic train derailment there, saying “no other community should have to go through this”.

But such accidents are happening with striking regularity. A Guardian analysis of data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by non-profit groups that track chemical accidents in the US shows that accidental releases – be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills – are happening consistently across the country.

By one estimate these incidents are occurring, on average, every two days.

“These kinds of hidden disasters happen far too frequently,” Mathy Stanislaus, who served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s office of land and emergency management during the Obama administration, told the Guardian. Stanislaus led programs focused on the cleanup of contaminated hazardous waste sites, chemical plant safety, oil spill prevention and emergency response.

In the first seven weeks of 2023 alone, there were more than 30 incidents recorded by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, roughly one every day and a half. Last year the coalition recorded 188, up from 177 in 2021. The group has tallied more than 470 incidents since it started counting in April 2020.

The incidents logged by the coalition range widely in severity but each involves the accidental release of chemicals deemed to pose potential threats to human and environmental health.

In September, for instance, nine people were hospitalized and 300 evacuated in California after a spill of caustic materials at a recycling facility. In October, officials ordered residents to shelter in place after an explosion and fire at a petrochemical plant in Louisiana. In November, more than 100 residents of Atchinson, Kansas, were treated for respiratory problems and schools were evacuated after an accident at a beverage manufacturing facility created a chemical cloud over the town.

Among multiple incidents in December, a large pipeline ruptured in rural northern Kansas, smothering the surrounding land and waterways in 588,000 gallons of diluted bitumen crude oil. Hundreds of workers are still trying to clean up the pipeline mess, at a cost pegged at around $488m.

The precise number of hazardous chemical incidents is hard to determine because the US has multiple agencies involved in response, but the EPA told the Guardian that over the past 10 years, the agency has “performed an average of 235 emergency response actions per year, including responses to discharges of hazardous chemicals or oil”. The agency said it employs roughly 250 people devoted to the EPA’s emergency response and removal program.

‘Live in daily fear of an accident’

The coalition has counted 10 rail-related chemical contamination events over the last two and a half years, including the derailment in East Palestine, where dozens of cars on a Norfolk Southern train derailed on 3 February, contaminating the community of 4,700 people with toxic vinyl chloride.

The vast majority of incidents, however, occur at the thousands of facilities around the country where dangerous chemicals are used and stored.

“What happened in East Palestine, this is a regular occurrence for communities living adjacent to chemical plants,” said Stanislaus. “They live in daily fear of an accident.”

In all, roughly 200 million people are at regular risk, with many of them people of color, or otherwise disadvantaged communities, he said.

There are close to 12,000 facilities across the nation that have on site “extremely hazardous chemicals in amounts that could harm people, the environment, or property if accidentally released”, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued last year. These facilities include petroleum refineries, chemical manufacturers, cold storage facilities, fertilizer plants and water and wastewater treatment plants, among others.

EPA data shows more than 1,650 accidents at these facilities in a 10-year span between 2004 and 2013, roughly 160 a year. More than 775 were reported from 2014 through 2020. Additionally, after analyzing accidents in a recent five-year period, the EPA said it found accident-response evacuations impacted more than 56,000 people and 47,000 people were ordered to “shelter-in-place.”

Accident rates are particularly high for petroleum and coal manufacturing and chemical manufacturing facilities, according to the EPA. The most accidents logged were in Texas, followed by Louisiana and California.Interactive

Though industry representatives say the rate of accidents is trending down, worker and community advocates disagree. They say incomplete data and delays in reporting incidents give a false sense of improvement.

The EPA itself says that by several measurements, accidents at facilities are becoming worse: evacuations, sheltering and the average annual rate of people seeking medical treatment stemming from chemical accidents are on the rise. Total annual costs are approximately $477m, including costs related to injuries and deaths.

“Accidental releases remain a significant concern,” the EPA said.

In August, the EPA proposed several changes to the Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations that apply to plants dealing with hazardous chemicals. The rule changes reflect the recognition by EPA that many chemical facilities are located in areas that are vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, including power outages, flooding, hurricanes and other weather events.

The proposed changes include enhanced emergency preparedness, increased public access to information about hazardous chemicals risks communities face and new accident prevention requirements.

The US Chamber of Commerce has pushed back on stronger regulations, arguing that most facilities operate safely, accidents are declining and that the facilities impacted by any rule changes are supplying “essential products and services that help drive our economy and provide jobs in our communities”. Other opponents to strengthening safety rules include the American Chemistry Council, American Forest & Paper Association, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute.

View of the site of the derailment of a train carrying hazardous waste in East Palestine, Ohio. Photograph: Alan Freed/Reuters

The changes are “unnecessary” and will not improve safety, according to the American Chemistry Council.

Many worker and community advocates, such as the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, (UAW), which represents roughly a million laborers, say the proposed rule changes don’t go far enough..

And Senator Cory Booker and US Representative Nanette Barragan – along with 47 other members of Congress - also have called on the EPA to strengthen regulations to protect communities from hazardous chemical accidents.

“The East Palestine train derailment is an environmental disaster that requires full accountability and urgency from the federal government. We need that same urgency to focus on the prevention of these chemical disasters from occurring in the first place,” Barragan said in a statement issued to the Guardian.
‘We’re going to be ready’

For Eboni Cochran, a mother and volunteer community activist, the East Palestine disaster has hardly added to her faith in the federal government. Cochran lives with her husband and 16-year-old son roughly 400 miles south of the derailment, near a Louisville, Kentucky, industrial zone along the Ohio River that locals call “Rubbertown.” The area is home to a cluster of chemical manufacturing facilities, and curious odors and concerns about toxic exposures permeate the neighborhoods near the plants.

Cochran and her family keep what she calls “get-out-of-dodge” backpacks at the ready in case of a chemical accident. They stock the packs with two changes of clothes, protective eyewear, first aid kits and other items they think they may need if forced to flee their home.

An aerial photo shows contaminated material being removed as cleanup continues in East Palestine, Ohio, on 18 February 2023. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

The organization she works with, Rubbertown Emergency Action (React), wants to see continuous air monitoring near the plants, regular evacuation drills and other measures to better prepare people in the event of an accidental chemical release. But it’s been difficult to get the voices of locals heard, she says.

“Decision-makers are not bringing impacted communities to the table,” she said.

In the meantime React is trying to empower locals to be prepared to protect themselves if the worst happens. Providing emergency evacuation backpacks to people near plants is one small step.

“Even in small doses certain toxic chemicals can be dangerous. They can lead to long term chronic illness, they can lead to acute illness,” Cochran said. “If there is a big explosion, we’re going to be ready.”

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group.

Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Rebecca Solnit
Sat, 25 February 2023 

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance.

Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now his regime seems bent on punitive destruction – of energy infrastructure, dwellings, historic sites, whole cities – and rape, torture and mass murder. This too is typical of abusers: domestic-violence homicides are often punishment for daring to leave.

Everything I needed to know about authoritarianism I learned from feminism, or rather from feminism’s sharp eye when it comes to coercive control and male abusers. Sociologist and gender violence expert Evan Stark, in his book Coercive Control, defined the title term as one that subsumes domestic violence in a larger pattern of isolation, intimidation and control. (The book has been so influential that in the UK, coercive control is now recognised as a crime.) The violence matters, Stark writes, “but the primary harm abusive men inflict is political, not physical, and reflects the deprivation of rights and resources that are critical to personhood and citizenship”. This connects it directly to what dictators and totalitarian regimes do to the people under their rule – it’s only a matter of scale. And the agenda at all scales is to control not just practical matters, but fact, truth, history; who can speak and what can be said.

‘Now his regime seems bent on punitive destruction.’ Vladimir Putin attends a concert at Luzhniki Stadium this week, before Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day. Photograph: SPUTNIK/Reuters

The antithesis of this is, of course, democracy, which is likewise a principle that works at all scales. A marriage can be called democratic if both parties exercise power equally and are unconstrained and unintimidated by the other. Equally, a marriage can be a little tyranny in which one gains and the other surrenders rights and powers through the union, which was until recently how marriage was defined legally and socially. Likewise we call democratic those nations in which national decisions are (however imperfectly) made by representatives elected by, and accountable to, the public.

At the very root of tyranny, no matter whether it’s personal or public life, lies the belief that the agency and agenda of others is illegitimate, that only the would-be tyrant should control the household or the nation. You can see this in authoritarian politicians’ rejection of the outcome of elections – Donald Trump, or in the Maga candidate Kari Lake’s unsuccessful run for Arizona governor, or the 8 January riot in Brasília to reject Lula’s victory.

One term formerly used to describe relationships between an abusive man and a manipulated woman, gaslighting, became an indispensable word in public life when Trump became president. The gaslighting, the bullying, the fury to crush dissent, the assumption that he should be in charge of everything including facts, the rage, the insistence that every other power and voice is illegitimate: these are all hallmarks of dictators in the domestic and the political sphere. He began his presidency in the shade of a recording in which he infamously advocated grabbing women “by the pussy”; he ended it in the shadow of an insurrection that was a refusal to accept the verdict rendered by more than 80 million voters and the rules laid down by the US constitution.

What’s striking about gaslighting is that it’s an attempt to push a lie or a distortion by using advantages of power, including credibility and social status, to overwhelm the gaslit person or people – or populace. It’s another kind of violence, not against bodies, but facts and truth. In stories of abusive households, the Trump administration and histories of authoritarianism, the men in charge regarded fact, truth, history and science as rival systems of power to be crushed or overwhelmed. And they are rival systems: a democracy of information means what prevails is what’s demonstrably true and substantiated, whether or not it’s convenient to whoever’s in power.

‘Gaslighting is another kind of violence, not against bodies, but facts and truth.’ The former US president Donal Trump speaks to supporters at an event in Florida, 20 February 2023. 

Photograph: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images

That gaslighting was a staple of the Soviet Union is well known through the work of George Orwell and later historians (when I wrote about Orwell, I found a striking example cited by Adam Hochschild: that when Stalin’s demographers showed that the Soviet population was declining, he had them killed, causing the next round of demographers to offer more pleasing numbers). It’s also true in brutal households, where the first rule is that one must not say that it’s brutal, lest more violence transpire.

Another way that studies of domestic abuse inform our political understanding is “Darvo”, an acronym that the domestic violence expert Jennifer Freyd coined in 1997 for how abusers respond in court or when otherwise challenged. It stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. You insist that anyone mentioning what you’ve done is insulting you, is a liar, then insist that your accuser is the abuser and you are the victim, and keep shouting it until you believe it and maybe convince others. Freyd herself, with another psychologist, recently noted “a growing trend in the world of civil litigation: alleged perpetrators of interpersonal violence are filing defamation lawsuits against the individuals who have named them as abusers … For abusers, these lawsuits are an opportunity to enforce Darvo through civil litigation.”

Related: Trump is trying to make a comeback. It’s not working | Lloyd Green

Darvo happens all the time in political life. In the US, the Republicans have a pattern of claiming to defend what they’re attacking and to be the victims of what they’re perpetrating. Or as the New York Times columnist Charles M Blow put it in January, describing the agenda of the new Republican majority in the lower house of Congress: “Understanding that they can’t throw federal investigators off the trail of multiple conservatives – including, and perhaps principally, Donald Trump – they have decided to complicate those investigations by kicking up so much dust that the public has a hard time discerning fact from fiction.” The very mention of those crimes is treated as an insult and an outrage, with those complicit the offended parties, and so they shout down the evidence. Prolonged loud noise is an effective tactic.

Blow mentions that the Republicans in the house are creating the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which will label the pursuit of Republican crimes, notably Trump’s around January 6, as baseless political vendettas. It’s, of course, a cover-up masquerading as a crusade. He continues: “The Republicans are using a fundamentally Trumpian tactic, accusing others of that which one is guilty of. It was Donald Trump, not the Democrats, who attempted to weaponize the federal government against his enemies.” That’s Darvo at its purest.

Individuals can be bullied into silence and obedience. So can whole populations. And so can facts and truth. Democracy matters at all scales.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist