CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Walgreens reaches $230m settlement with San Francisco over opioids crisis

Company averts a trial to determine damages as drug-related deaths surged by 41% in the city in the first quarter of this year

Abené Clayton

in Los Angeles and agencies
Wed 17 May 2023 

San Francisco has reached a $230m settlement with Walgreens over the corporation’s role in the city’s unprecedented opioid crisis.

The settlement is the largest ever awarded to a local government amid years of continuing, nationwide opioid-centered litigation, according to San Francisco’s city attorney.

The agreement comes nine months after a federal judge found the company’s failures played a “substantial” role in a crisis that has had “catastrophic” effects on the city, overwhelming hospitals and devastating neighborhoods. The US district judge Charles Breyer also faulted Walgreens for its “15-year failure” to properly scrutinize opioid prescriptions and flag possible misuse of the sometimes highly addictive drugs.

In his ruling 10 August 2022, Breyer found that Walgreens had a profit-driven “fill, fill, fill” culture in dispensing powerful opioids including fentanyl, oxycontin and oxycodone.

“This decision gives voice to the thousands of lives lost to the opioid epidemic,” David Chiu, San Francisco’s city attorney, said in a statement. “This crisis did not come out of nowhere. It was created by the opioid industry, and local jurisdictions like San Francisco have had to shoulder the burden for far too long.”

Walgreens’s settlement averts a trial to determine damages. In a statement, Walgreens said it “disputes liability” and did not admit fault, but that settling would allow it to focus on patients, customers and communities. “Our thoughts are with those impacted by this tragic crisis,” it added.

The Deerfield, Illinois-based company had been the only remaining defendant in San Francisco’s civil lawsuit, after several drugmakers and distributors reached settlements worth more than $120m.

Breyer found that Walgreens’s San Francisco pharmacies had received more than 1.2m opioid prescriptions with “red flags” from 2006 to 2020, yet performed due diligence on less than 5% before dispensing them.

The city attorney’s office said money from the settlement would be used to help San Francisco fight its drug crisis.

The settlement was far less than the city had initially requested. San Francisco had estimated it might cost $8.1bn to abate the opioid crisis, and that Walgreens was legally liable for the entire amount.

Overdoses in San Francisco have reached unprecedented highs in recent years. Drug-related deaths surged by 41% in San Francisco in the first quarter of this year – with one person dying of an accidental overdose every 10 hours. The city saw 200 people die of overdoses in the first three months of this year compared with 142 in the same months a year ago, according to reports by the San Francisco medical examiner.

The surge in deaths began in December and by January the city had seen 82 deaths, putting the city’s overdose fatalities at an all-time high. This rise came just after the city closed a key outreach center, where people were using drugs with medical supervision, and increased policing in San Francisco’s long-under-resourced Tenderloin district.

“We have seen the devastating impacts of opioid addiction in our most vulnerable communities and this decision is an important step forward in our efforts to save lives,” said Dr Grant Colfax, the director of the San Francisco department of public health, in a statement released by the city attorney’s office.

Avian flu vaccine for California condors approved amid fears of extinction



Vaccine gets emergency approval as ‘highly contagious’ virus sweeps through flocks of species on the brink of extinction

Gabrielle Canon and agencies

Wed 17 May 2023

A new vaccine has been granted emergency approval to protect California condors from a deadly strain of avian influenza, federal officials said this week, amid attempts to pull the endangered species back from the brink of extinction.

The emergency action underscores an outbreak that has alarmed the conservation community, which fears that condors, a vulnerable species that has spent decades in recovery, could be dealt a devastating blow. After first being detected in a deceased condor in late March, the illness has swept through the small flock of wild birds, which are closely monitored by agencies in the south-west. So far 21 condors have died, impacting eight breeding pairs, according to a statement issued by the US Fish and Wildlife service.


Top-flight recovery: the inspiring comeback of the California condor

The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or HPAI, is a virus that has been described as “highly contagious” by the agency. An April statement confirming deaths of the first infected condors in early April said the virus can spread quickly though “bird-to-bird contact, environmental contamination with fecal material, and via exposed clothing, shoes and vehicles”.

Several condors remain in the care of experts, including a newly hatched chick whose egg was pulled from its contaminated nest before its mother succumbed to the disease. Officials and rescue workers remain hopeful that the orphaned baby, now being nurtured with the help of a plush condor at the Liberty Wildlife facility in Phoenix, Arizona, can soon be returned to the wild. For now the chick is nestled among blankets and its stuffed surrogate, awaiting placement with foster parents at the Peregrine Fund’s captive breeding facility.

Despite it being limited to one flock in Arizona, conservation groups are concerned that the deadly illness has already taken a devastating toll on the delicate condor population. “In a matter of weeks, this event has set our recovery effort back a decade or more,” the Peregrine Fund, an organization dedicated to protecting birds of prey and a key federal partner in restoring and rehabilitating California condors to the wild, wrote in a late-April update on the HPAI impact on condors, adding that the new threat posed by avian flu “highlights the need to address preventable and manageable threats, and rely even more heavily on proven strategies such as captive breeding to increase the wild population”.

Once abundant in the skies across their western range, which spans from the Pacific north-west to Baja California, Mexico, only a few hundred of these iconic and enormous vultures remain in the wild even after decades of dedicated breeding and conservation efforts.

The fast-spreading disease is one of several threats condors have faced since populations were first decimated by hunting during the California gold rush, including dangers posed by the toxic DDT pesticide and lead poisoning from ammunition lodged in scavenged carcasses. Recovery has been slow. Condors don’t mate until they reach maturity at around eight years old, and females only produce a single egg every two years.

This dangerous strain of avian flu has rapidly spread across the US, killing millions of domestic and wild birds since it arrived in North America at the end of 2021. Though the virus is not considered a high risk to humans, it’s been among the most devastating outbreaks for birds in the country’s history. Roughly 58 million commercial poultry have had to be euthanized in attempts to slow the spread of the disease, which has also claimed the lives of hundreds of bald eagles and been detected in more than 6,700 wild birds, a figure widely considered to be underestimated.

While the emergency-use approval by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is limited to California condors, the agency is continuing work to develop options for other types of birds. Before administering it to condors, a pilot study has been initiated to test the vaccine on North American vultures – “a similar species” – to ensure there are no adverse effects.

“APHIS approved this emergency vaccination of the condors because these birds are critically endangered, closely monitored, and their population is very small which allows close monitoring of the vaccine to ensure it is administered only to the approved population,” the agency said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Along with the hopeful announcement that a vaccine may soon be ready to administer, efforts to isolate infected birds have been successful. Infections among the Arizona flock where the virus was found are holding steady.

“Our field teams have not detected any additional compromised California condors in northern Arizona since April 11,” the Peregrin Fund posted in an update this week, adding that four birds under its care are showing signs of recovery. “The Peregrine Fund’s captive breeding program is also in full swing, and new life is hatching,” it added. “Of 18 eggs laid, nine young have hatched and a new season for the recovery effort begins.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting

WARM BEER AND TAMPAX

Rishi Sunak cites cheap beer and sanitary products as benefits of Brexit

 

On his way to the G7 summit, the prime minster insists household income is ‘outperforming’ expectations

Rowena Mason

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 17 May 2023

Rishi Sunak has insisted Brexit is working by citing cheaper beer and sanitary products, as he claimed the economy was looking up and people’s household incomes were “hugely outperforming” expectations.

Despite consumers struggling with high inflation and the cost of living crisis, the prime minister claimed there were “lots of signs that things are moving in the right direction” with the economy.

Rejecting claims from the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage that Brexit had failed under the Tories, he cited freeports, cutting VAT on sanitary products and reforming beer duty as major successes.

“Economic optimism is increasing, consumer confidence is increasing, growth estimates are being raised,” he told reporters on the way to the summit of G7 leaders in Japan.

He said official figures for real household disposable income growth had been “very pessimistic” but were now “hugely” better than predicted.

“That’s a very important measure of people’s living standards – hugely outperforming what people thought,” he said.

The Resolution Foundation said in March that typical household disposable incomes were on course to be lower by the end of 2027 than they were during the Covid pandemic, and last month Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, said people needed “to accept” they were poorer.

Average living standards have been broadly stagnant since 2007. However, the latest figures for March 2023 showed a 1.3% increase in real household disposable income after four quarters of negative figures.

Sunak acknowledged things felt “tough” for families but highlighted the government’s contribution to energy bills.

He also defended the economic benefits of Brexit in the face of criticism that it has held back the economy and not brought promised prosperity.

“I introduced freeports – a Brexit benefit around the country attracting jobs and investment to lots of different places,” Sunak said.

“We cut VAT on sanitary products, we reformed the alcohol duties that mean this summer you will be able to get cheaper beer in pubs. These are all very tangible benefits of Brexit that I’ve already delivered.”

Sounding a positive note on the economy, he said two surveys of business leaders were showing “enormous confidence” in the UK.

“That’s what’s actually happening with the economy, that’s what global CEOs who actually have the money and are making investment decisions are saying,” he said, adding that he was “glad to have got that off my chest”.

Sunak acknowledged the UK was dealing with high inflation and elevated borrowing but said he was sticking to his aim to “reduce the tax burden” with tax cuts after dealing with those problems first.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies this week said one in five people would be caught in the higher rate of tax by 2027, leading to pressure on Sunak from his backbenchers to cut rates.

The prime minister’s assessment of the UK economy comes as he prepares to land in Tokyo for meetings with world leaders on the economy and defence.

He is expected to strengthen defence cooperation with Japan at a time of concern about China’s increasing militarisation and aggressive stance towards Taiwan.


Ford, Vauxhall owner and JLR call for UK to renegotiate Brexit deal

Before the trip, the former prime minister Liz Truss inflamed tensions by visiting Taiwan and calling for a tougher stance on China and for it to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

But Sunak said he was not paying any attention to Truss’s trip and the UK approach to Taiwan was “longstanding and has not changed”.

He said western allies and Japan were “aligned” on their policy towards China, despite the US taking a tougher stance than some European countries. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is due to meet Sunak in Japan this week, said last month that Europe should not involve itself as a “vassal” in clashes between the US and China.

AUSTRALIA

Westpac bans transfers to world’s largest crypto exchange Binance

Bank customers can no longer make payments to the cryptocurrency exchange, in a move to reduce scams

Josh Taylor
@joshgnosis

Guardian Australia

Thu 18 May 2023 

Westpac has banned customers from transferring funds to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, in a move aimed at reducing losses from scams.

The Australian big four bank said on Thursday it was blocking a number of cryptocurrency exchanges as part of a trial, after its own data showed investment scams accounted for about half of all scam losses, and a third of all scam payments were transferred directly to cryptocurrency exchanges.

The bank did not name Binance but it is understood the exchange has been hit with the ban.

Westpac’s group executive of customer services and technology, Scott Collary, said the move could save millions lost to scams.


Crypto exchange Binance has Australian financial services licence cancelled by Asic

“Digital exchanges have a legitimate role to play in the financial ecosystem. But since the rise of digital currency, we’ve noticed that scammers are increasingly using overseas exchanges,” Collary said.

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“Often our customers only discover they’ve been scammed after the money has left the country, making recovery extremely difficult.”

The block on the exchanges will be rolled out as a phased trial in the coming weeks, Westpac said.

Binance announced on Thursday it was unable to accept PayID payments in Australian dollars “due to a decision made by our third party payment provider”.

“We are working hard to find an alternative provider to continue offering AUD deposits and withdrawals to our users,” the company said.

The move comes a month after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) cancelled Binance’s Australian financial services licence to sell derivatives. The regulator found Binance had incorrectly classified hundreds of retail customers as wholesale investors.

Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, with 128 million customers globally and processing $65bn in daily trades.

Binance and its chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, were sued, in March, by the US commodity markets regulator, which alleged wilful evasion of US law. The complaint alleges the company had grown its US business despite publicly stating its intent to block US customers from accessing the platform.

The allegations against Binance include that the company knew it was facilitating illegal activity via its platform, and knew of loopholes to get past Know Your Customer rules.

At the time a Binance spokesperson called the regulator’s actions “unexpected and disappointing” and said the company had “made significant investments over the past two years to ensure we do not have US users active on our platform”.

“Nevertheless, we intend to continue to collaborate with regulators in the US and around the world.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch reported in April that investment scams made up the largest portion of scams reported to Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, IDCare and Asic.

Total reports were over 500,000 with losses of over $3.1bn, while investment scams accounted for $1.5bn of this.

Bank transfers were the most reported payment method, with 13,098 reports accounting for $210.4m lost.

But the ACCC said 3,910 people reported cryptocurrency as the payment method, up 162.4% with $221.3m lost.

Renovation of Brussels park ignites debate on decolonisation

Triumphal arch in Cinquantenaire park ‘linked to exploitation of Congo’, says cultural group in Belgian capital


Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 18 May 2023

For many Belgians, the Cinquantenaire park in Brussels evokes memories of childhood visits to see the stuffed horses of the military history museum, or vintage cars at Autoworld, two institutions on the edge of the park.

The much-loved green space’s cheerful flowers and whimsical follies contrast with the steel canyons and beeping traffic of the adjacent EU quarter, but above all it is an expression of national pride, with a giant Belgian tricolour often suspended underneath a massive triumphal arch. Built in 1880 to mark 50 years of the Belgian state, Belgium’s federal government last month launched a redevelopment plan for the 200th anniversary in 2030.

Yet often overlooked are the traces of Belgium’s former colonial empire, embodied in monuments including the arch. At a recent public meeting to announce the 2030 “masterplan”, none of the dignitaries, including five Belgian government ministers, one EU commissioner and the minister-president of the Brussels capital region, mentioned its heritage.

In the slick prospectus for what was billed as “Europe’s most ambitious heritage project” – renovating the park’s museums and launching an architectural competition to cover the road that slices it in two – there was only one fleeting reference to decolonisation.


Call for Brussels statue to be melted and made into memorial for Congo victims

The silence is surprising because Brussels authorities last year published a detailed report on the decolonisation of public space in the Belgian capital, which included a section on the Cinquantenaire. Georgine Dibua Mbombo, a member of the 14-strong group of historians, architects and other specialists that produced the report, said it was “a little confusing” that there was no mention of the colonial past at that event, or in other city heritage plans. “It’s bizarre that in all the declarations we don’t see the will to say certain things,” she told the Guardian.

“For me the Parc du Cinquantenaire remains a park strongly linked to the exploitation of Congo,” said Dibua Mbombo, who runs Bakushinta, a group dedicated to promoting Congolese culture in Belgium.

The triumphal arch and semicircular arcades were built on the orders of Belgian King Leopold II, who ran the Congo as his personal fiefdom from 1885 to 1908. These grandiose structures were funded with the proceeds of Congolese rubber, a fact well known at the time – one Belgian socialist politician spoke of “the arch of severed hands”, a reference to the horrifying fate that awaited Congolese workers who failed to meet their rubber quota.

The park also houses prominent monuments to colonialism, including one to Gen Albert Thys, who oversaw the construction of a railway line that was indispensable for transporting Congo’s ivory and rubber wealth from the interior to the coast.

Black Lives Matter protesters with a DR Congo flag on a statue of Leopold II in Brussels.

 Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

The monument to the “Belgian pioneers of the Congo”, completed in 1921, is perhaps the most notorious tribute to empire. “It is really one of the most horrible monuments in the Belgian public space. It cannot remain as it is because it is a monument that completely discredits the Congolese people,” Dibua Mbombo said.

Although weathered, the monument still displays all the hallmarks of colonial-era propaganda: a depiction of a nearly nude African woman offering her baby to a seated European; a “heroic” Belgian soldier crushing an “Arab” slave merchant under his foot. “I have undertaken the Congo project for the benefit of civilisation and the wellbeing of Belgium,” reads the inscription quoting a 1906 speech by Leopold II.

Belgium begins to face brutal colonial legacy of Leopold II

The former Belgian king is remembered on the other side of the park with an equestrian statue in the Royal Museums of Art and History. Next to the work is a plaque recounting the “unbridled capitalist greed … crime and dehumanisation” Leopold II showed in ruling the Congo. The museum’s director, Bruno Verbergt, said it is considering commissioning works by modern artists to sit nearby, with the aim of highlighting the reality of Belgian colonial rule.

The decolonisation group has also called on Brussels to make the history that has been ignored or forgotten visible. In the Cinquantenaire that could mean exhibitions about Congolese soldiers who fought for Belgium in the world wars in the military history museum, or research into the 1921 Pan-African Congress that took place in the building that now houses Autoworld. That gathering brought together luminaries such as WEB Du Bois, the African American intellectual and civil rights activist, and Paul Panda Farnana, a first world war veteran, whose fight for Congolese rights paved the way for independence. For now, Dibua Mbombo said, “there are many absences and things not spoken of”.

A spokesperson for the Brussels capital region said an action plan on the decolonisation of public space would be published by the end of May. The final recommendations will have to be signed off by the regional government.

Asked about the Cinquantenaire’s colonial heritage, the Belgian state secretary for strategic investments, Thomas Dermine, referred to the decolonisation report and said there would have to be discussions with the “communities involved”. He added: “If we remove all traces of the [colonial] past [it] is not a good solution, because if we remove these traces of the past, we lose also the opportunity to contextualise, to explain to a young generation behaviours that are out of step with our current values.”

But agreeing on how to “contextualise” a work glorifying the colonial past is not a simple question. Putting up a few information panels or QR codes is “not a solution”, Dibua Mbombo said, unconvinced that people read them. When it comes to the pioneers’ monument, she suggested a more radical option: breaking the work into pieces – a dramatic “decomposition” that would incentivise parkgoers to read panels on the work’s origins and fate.

‘The strongest fear I had ever felt’: RK Russell on coming out in the male world of football



In an adapted extract from his new memoir, the former NFL player reflects on coming to terms with his queerness in college and the life-altering conversation that gave him salvation

RK Russell
Thu 18 May 2023 

Back in Texas, everyone I knew had strong feelings about homosexuality. If you were straight, you would use slurs like faggot and pussy boy and rant about masculinity and manhood – things no teenage boy knows anything about. If you were gay, you had to fight for your freedom and sometimes even your life. I only knew of one openly gay kid at Creekview; our lockers were near each other’s junior year. Sometimes I would catch him at his locker, not opening it, not rushing to class, not coming or going, just standing there, staring off into the distance and trying to breathe, hiding in plain sight.

I hid at Creekview, too, I guess, acting happy when I was spiraling, being popular when I was filled with self-loathing.

At that point I had only been with women. I had had sex with women, had even fallen in love with them. I enjoyed sex, though I had it too young. Maybe I was trying to fill a void of affection, or maybe I thought that through sex I could become a man.

With consistent performances and big plays, I was on the radar of NFL draft scouts. On paper, I had a realistic path to achieving a dream – but I wasn’t sure whose dream it was. The questions in my head grew louder. Self-doubt about my sexuality and my identity overflowed into worries about the future.


As I played my role at Purdue and blindly searched for meaning in private, I felt like I was living a double life before I even knew how each of those lives worked. I had hidden my creative side from my teammates throughout middle school and high school – and I was doing it again with my college teammates. I worried that a young man who wrote poetry, drew pictures, and enjoyed slow songs about love would be seen as less masculine and, therefore, less of a football player. Being actually queer seemed like an instant, irreversible verdict on my belonging, on my right to exist in the male world of football.

When I first heard the news about Michael Sam coming out, I remember I tried to differentiate us in my mind as much as possible. He was gay, not bisexual, so naming his identity publicly seemed more clear-cut, or maybe he saw it as his only choice. He was SEC Defensive Player of the Year, so he would have gotten a shot at the NFL regardless. I was in the Big Ten, and Purdue wasn’t one of the top schools in our conference: my future opportunities weren’t so obvious.

Also, he had someone. The video of Sam and his boyfriend kissing when he was drafted played every hour on the hour that draft day, exposing what a lot of my peers, teachers, and family really thought about two men kissing. But I did all these mental gymnastics because deep down, I knew that in the most significant ways, we were the same. We were both different from what we were told from birth that a football player should be. We were Black, which meant society already judged us more harshly. And we both wanted to play in the NFL more than anything. Our very being threatened our biggest dream. I was afraid for him. I was afraid for myself.


The potential consequences of my worlds crashing into each other – would both of those sides be obliterated? – was the strongest fear I had ever felt. All the success I found on the field I attributed to my dedication, my hard work, my masculinity, my sacrifices. All the failures I blamed on my duality. A bad game was never just a bad game but a knock on my personal world, my creativity, my emotions, my sexuality. In our first four games of 2o13, we went 3–1, and I was having runaway success at my position. But when conference play began, we started losing and kept losing. What was the point of working so hard if we couldn’t win when it counted? What was the point of coming so far in my career if my sexuality would make me unwelcome in the NFL? What was the point of being good if it wasn’t good enough?

During an evening of playing Madden with Joe in our dorm room, something finally broke open. Joe and I would often play sports video games, but when Purdue football was struggling, our matches got a little more competitive; we randomly selected our teams for the video game. Joe landed on the Atlanta Falcons, me on the New York Jets. Joe liked teams that paired a strong running game with a vertical attack, and he was gashing me with Michael Turner, Julio Jones, and Tony Gonzalez. I was being overpowered – but I wasn’t even trying. Before long Joe realized I wasn’t even putting up a fight. He knew I wasn’t the type to quit. Not virtually, not in real life, never. So even a lackluster Madden effort alerted him that something wasn’t right. He didn’t turn to look at me or put down the controller, but he asked me what was wrong.

I didn’t know what to say. Honestly, a lot of my time in college up to this point had been trying to figure out what I could say. Everyone talked about their problems, but what if the problem was me?

In that moment, I remembered that Joe and I both loved Frank Ocean more than any other musical artist. When Channel Orange was released, and Frank revealed he was bisexual, Joe had hardly flinched – a piece of knowledge that felt like a sign, or just enough of a push.

Practically shaking, I asked Joe if he felt like we were close as a team, if we jelled well.

Joe took a deep breath before answering. “Sometimes. Some people really care, and others don’t give a fuck. They come to practice high and drunk and are just used to losing.”

“How well do you think you know everyone on the team?”

“I know them well enough. I know who is here to win,” he said with a shrug. It was that simple for Joe: he didn’t care about anything other than a man’s character and a teammate’s work ethic.


“What if they were gay?” I asked. The word gay didn’t quite fit me, but at that time, I thought no other description did. As I let the word slip out of my mouth, my video-game quarterback was being sacked. I felt suddenly afraid of what I’d done. I could feel each heartbeat pulsing through my temples. I didn’t look away from the television.

“If he’s here to win and he respects me, I could care less.”

It was an answer that should have made me feel better, but it wasn’t enough.

“What if he was your friend, also?”

Joe took a shaky breath, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he had just thrown an interception to my cornerback or if he was picking up the increasingly blatant subtext.

The Jets were a good matchup for the Falcons, because they had a stout defense. Even as I agonized over my words, I’d managed to focus on Madden a bit. The turnover gave me some momentum, and my guys were suddenly marching down the field.

Joe, eyes still glued to the game, asked me, “How close of friends?” The world outside of Madden had stopped. My running back had just pushed through a huge hole in Joe’s defense for a touchdown, but I couldn’t hear the simulated announcers shouting. I wasn’t sure how much of what I was saying applied to me. Did it even matter? What if this was just some kind of phase, and my attraction to women won out in the end? What if I married a woman, and this was all for naught? What if the rest of the team found out? What if the truth stained me in some way that everyone in the locker room could see? Would I lose my chance at the NFL and financial security? Would I lose my scholarship? Would I lose my best friend? Why did I have to know what Joe thought about a queer player, what he thought about me?

In a voice barely above a whisper, I answered, “What if it’s your best friend?”

As my question hung in the air, the screen showed the updated score, and Joe went back on offense. On the first play of the drive, he sent Julio Jones up the sideline on a go route. Matt Ryan took his drop step, stepped up, and launched the ball as deep as virtual-humanly possible. True to his real-life version, video game Julio Jones seemed to climb into thin air to grab the ball, and then dragged my defender briefly before breaking free for a touchdown.

Joe responded firmly, “If he’s my best friend, then that’s all that matters. We’re best friends.”

His answer felt like salvation.

This is an adapted excerpt from The Yards Between Us by RK Russell. 

Available to buy now

The law is gone but they are still in jail: who will free Britain’s most wronged prisoners?

George Monbiot

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 18 May 2023 

Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian

Victoria was sentenced to 21 months but has served 15 years. Even the politician who introduced indefinite detention now says he regrets it

There are those of us who exist in a more or less free society. And there are those who, while also living within the borders of the United Kingdom, exist in a police state. If the rest of us knew these people existed and what was being done to them in our name, we would scarcely believe it.

No one, including Victoria Carter (an assumed name), would deny that her crimes warranted a significant prison sentence. She had come from a terrible place: a father who beat her up, an alcoholic mother whose friends sexually abused her, extreme poverty as all the money was spent on drink. As a young teenager, she ran away from home, after which she had more than 10 placements in foster care and care homes. She responded with anger, violence and self-destruction.

As a teenager, she was convicted of criminal damage and burglary. She tried to kidnap a man she believed had abused her younger sister. She then went through a phase of alcoholism, during which she had sex with two underage teenagers, leading to a conviction for sexual offences. In an alcoholic rage, she set light to photos of her mother, scorching the carpet of her lodgings and earning herself an arson conviction.

In 2007, in her early twenties, she was prosecuted for actual bodily harm, among other offences. Her lawyer told her to expect a sentence of up to four years. This, the judge remarked, was roughly what she would have got under different circumstances: three and a half years. But instead he handed down a sentence of “imprisonment for public protection” (IPP).

IPP sentences were introduced in England and Wales by the New Labour government as it sought to prove it was tough on law and order in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. If an offender had previously been convicted of one of 153 offences deemed to present a danger to the public, and had then committed another such crime, the courts had no choice but to impose either an IPP sentence or life imprisonment. IPP means indefinite detention.

The crimes that qualified were wide-ranging. One defendant received an IPP sentence with a minimum term of just 28 days, but extended indefinitely. Another was imprisoned with a tariff of two years for stealing a bicycle. He served 12 and is now in a mental health institution.

These sentences included a “tariff”: the period after which the prisoner could be assessed for release. Victoria’s was 21 months. But IPP sentences carry a presumption against parole. Rather than the Parole Board having to prove that a prisoner presents a danger to the public, the prisoner has to prove that they don’t. As the then justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, said in 2011: “It is almost impossible for the prisoner to prove that, so … hardly any are released.”

‘David Blunkett: ‘I got it wrong. The government now have the chance to get it right.’’ 

Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock

Those who do manage to get out face a “life licence”, which cannot be reviewed for at least 10 years. The licence conditions are extremely strict. Released IPP prisoners can be sent back for infractions as petty as a missed probation appointment because their bus did not arrive, or even because the support service they were instructed to use no longer exists

In 2012, after widespread condemnation and a ruling by the European court of human rights that such sentences were “arbitrary and therefore unlawful”, IPP terms were abolished by the Conservative government. But the measure was not retrospective. As of the end of last year, 2,892 IPP prisoners remained behind bars. Of these, 1,498 were recalled back to prison and 1,394 had never been released; of this latter group, almost 97% of prisoners were more than two years past their tariff date, and nearly half were 10 years beyond it. Victoria was released at the beginning of this year, after serving more than 15 yearsof a 21-month tariff.

The former supreme court justice Lord Brown has called IPP sentences “the greatest single stain on the justice system”. When Michael Gove was justice secretary, he recommended “executive clemency” for IPP prisoners who had served terms much longer than their tariffs. But he didn’t act on it. David Blunkett, the Labour home secretary who introduced the sentences, regrets them, stating: “I got it wrong. The government now have the chance to get it right.”

But the government, always glancing at the media, refuses to take it. In February, it rejected the recommendation of the House of Commons justice committee that remaining IPP prisoners should be resentenced. Successive justice secretaries have failed to use the power they acquired in 2012 to introduce a presumption of release. So while people who committed far worse crimes come and go, IPP prisoners are forgotten, cast into a judicial oubliette from which some might never emerge.

The effects on their mental health of never knowing when or whether they might be released can be devastating. Rates of self-harm among these prisoners are more than twice as high as among prisoners serving life sentences.

In March 2008, when she began to understand what her sentence really meant, Victoria tried to kill herself, and very nearly succeeded. But then she became determined to sort herself out. She took every available course of psychotherapy and counselling, sat GCSE exams and started an Open University degree. She knew she wasn’t ready for parole when her tariff ended. Two years later, she didn’t qualify on the grounds that, through her own choice, she was still taking a psychotherapeutic course. But after a further two years, when she came up for parole again, she had turned her life around. Unfortunately, the standards of proof required for parole were impossible to meet.

Her application was refused and she spiralled into despair. She lost three and a half stone, started self-harming and taking drugs. She attempted suicide again. She became trapped in a vicious cycle. Being refused parole causes severe mental health problems for IPP prisoners, but mental illness is one of the criteria for the refusal of parole. So down they spiral. Instead of seeking help, some try to hide their problems from staff so as not to jeopardise their chances. Severe cuts have restricted the courses these prisoners can take, without which they have no hope of release.

Victoria is a remarkable woman: honest about what she was and what she did, acutely aware of the pain she caused, determined to lead a useful and purposeful life. But, close to 40, she is constantly confronted by the missing years. “I deserved to be punished,” she told me. “But did I deserve more than 15 years? No. I have days when I just sob in my bed. Just to get out some of the sadness of what I have lost.”

A great wrong has been done. Almost everyone in power accepts it is wrong. But none are prepared to address it.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

This article was amended on 18 May 2023. An earlier version said that at the end of last year, 2,892 IPP prisoners remained behind bars, and that almost 97% were more than two years beyond their tariff date and nearly half were 10 years beyond. That meant to refer to government figures, which showed that of the 2,892 IPP prisoners who remained behind bars, 1,498 were recalled back to prison and 1,394 had never been released. Of the latter group, almost 97% of prisoners were more than two years past their tariff date, and nearly half were 10 years beyond it.

Record numbers of British workers are sick. No wonder the economy is too. But there is a cure

The Tories have failed to pursue the obvious answers to this crisis, punishing ill people and NHS strikers instead

Larry Elliott

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 18 May 2023

Britain has a sick economy. That’s not a metaphor for the flatlining of growth over the past year, but a statement of fact. Never before have so many people been out of the labour force due to long-term sickness or disability. Never before has there been such a loss of human potential.

Better health is desirable in itself. Ill-health makes people miserable, so it shouldn’t really matter whether or not there were economic benefits from reducing the number of people who might want to work if they fell well enough to do so. Gross domestic product is not everything.

But in this instance, fewer people inactive because of health issues would be good both for personal wellbeing and for the economy. It is a win-win as opposed to the current lose-lose.

Here’s how things currently stand. The number of people who say they are not looking for work because of long-term ill health rose by 86,000 in the first three months of 2023 to 2.55m and is now 438,000 higher than it was before the start of the pandemic three years ago.

Clearly, Covid-19 represented a serious blow to the nation’s health and put pressures on an already severely stretched NHS. Of that 438,000 increase, some will be suffering from long Covid, while others found the stress of lockdown followed by the cost of living crisis affecting their mental health.

There are two things that would help instantly: an end to the strikes that have been affecting the NHS for months, and extra investment to start clearing the patient backlog. The government’s long-running battle with nurses and junior doctors has been a spectacular own goal.

At the start of 2023 Rishi Sunak made five pledges. One was to have shorter NHS waiting lists, currently running at more than 7 million for England alone, by the end of the year, while another was to get the economy growing.

The two are linked. A quarter of the 2.55 million people inactive due to ill health say they want a job; better and speedier treatment would help them find one, fill some of the million job vacancies in the economy and boost growth.

To make a real difference will require more than the cosmetic measures contained in Jeremy Hunt’s “back to work” budget. As the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has rightly noted, radical reform of statutory sick pay is needed to expand coverage to those on the lowest incomes and increase its generosity so that it is closer to the level of someone earning the “national living wage”.

One thing is certain: toughening up the eligibility criteria for long-term sickness benefits will do nothing other than make the lives of some of the most vulnerable people even harder. The deep-seated nature of Britain’s ill-health problem means a punitive approach won’t work.

It would be wrong to assume that the UK went into the crisis a healthy nation. Rather, the Covid-19 shock aggravated worrying pre-pandemic trends. A recent report from the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank said the death rate from all causes fell between 1990 and 2011, but then started to rise. The prevalence of cancer, diabetes, depression and hypertension all increased in the 2010s. In 1960, the UK ranked 7th for life expectancy among the rich nation members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. By 2020 it had dropped to 23rd.

According to the IPPR study, poor physical and mental health is costing individuals close to £2,000 a year in lost earnings and reducing the size of the economy by £43bn. Illness is, unsurprisingly, unevenly distributed geographically and by class, gender and ethnicity.

Times have been hard for the past 15 years. The 1990s and the early 2000s saw a long economic upswing in which real incomes grew and – under the Labour governments – spending on the NHS grew faster than at any time since it was created in 1948. Since 2007, there have been two deep recessions that have left wages – in inflation-adjusted terms – lower than they were 15 years ago.

Jobs have been reasonably easy to come by during this period, but they have often been low-paid, insecure and non-unionised. More than 50% of those living below the official poverty line are in a working household, and the constant struggle to make ends meet has taken its toll, both physically and mentally.

At the same time, spending on the NHS has become far less generous, with nugatory increases in funding since 2010. The need to make savings did not just mean that there was a shortage of capacity when Covid struck, it also meant underinvestment in prevention and mental health.

This is a bad place to be, and rather than setting itself the modest target of reducing waiting lists by the end of the year, the IPPR says the government should show more ambition and commit to a 30-year mission to turn the UK into the healthiest country on the planet.

That’s a worthy aim, but achieving it won’t be easy. It will require – among other things – better paid and more secure jobs; a greater role for unions in the negotiation of working conditions; a willingness to embrace new ideas such as hybrid working and shorter working weeks; and a recognition that the NHS needs to become a genuine National Health Service rather than a national illness service dealing with problems that could have been prevented.

Above all, it will require a recognition that inactivity as a result of ill-health is a symptom of a deeper malaise: the unhealthy state of modern British capitalism.

Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor

If Macron doesn’t know why he’s despised, he hasn’t been listening

The president had no mandate to dismantle France’s social model. His contempt for the people risks opening the door to extremism

Rokhaya Diallo

THE GUARDIAN
Thu 18 May 2023 

As France was commemorating the end of the second world war in Europe this month, Emmanuel Macron cut an isolated figure on a near-empty Champs-Elysées, surrounded by steel security barriers to prevent any member of the public from getting within shouting, let alone pot-banging, distance.

For the first time, and by police order the French people were barrred from a large area ringing the official 8 May remembrance of the liberation. Six years after his first presidential victory and a year after winning a second term in the Elysée, Macron can scarcely show his face in public without being booed, heckled or insulted.

Our youngest-ever president – who once embodied hope, triumphantly defeated the far right and claimed to have broken the political mould by rising above traditional divides – has gone from being admired to being despised. Macron’s decision to push through an increase in the state pension age from 62 to 64, despite a huge groundswell of opposition, has created unprecedented levels of anger across the country – most of it directed at the president himself.

It is not the first time that a French president has had to face the people’s wrath: Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and Jacques Chirac were in their day also publicly insulted. But none experienced such an extensive collapse of respect. More than 70% of the electorate disapprove of Macron.

I have been on some of the recent protests, and understand why so much of the frustration is focused on the president personally. The strength of feeling is neither disproportionate nor unfair. Macron’s electioneering catchphrase in 2017 was that France needed a “Jupiter-like” head of state, Jupiter being “not just a god, but the king of gods”. In office, he has duly exercised power in a top-down and highly self-centred manner. It is hard to disconnect this from the instinct to hold him personally responsible for the government’s actions.

On the pensions issue, people remain justifiably outraged that the government intentionally misinformed them about the minimum amount that they would receive during retirement. There is no alternative, Macron said. Yet, as economists have shown, alternative ways to fund the pension system were available. But Macron famously did away with the French wealth tax and slashed corporate taxes after being elected, decisions now borne by the working population. The “president of the rich”, as he is labelled, is more than ever perceived to be their best ally.

But the pension reform is no longer the biggest issue. The way its approval into law was handled and the mistreatment of its opponents explain why 65% of respondents in a recent poll said they considered Macron “brutal”. His arrogance has left people not just affronted but ready to conclude that he set out to dismantle fundamental pillars of the French social protection system.

A protest in Paris against pension reforms and police brutality on 12 May 2023.

 Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Macron lacks a majority in parliament, so got his way only by invoking constitutional exemptions. Article 49.3, which allows the executive to enact laws without a parliamentary vote, was the spark that started the fire. He can hardly have been surprised that defying the millions of people who were taking to the streets (78% had expressed their opposition to the use of article 49.3) would be interpreted as a provocation.

Macron’s tone-deafness to the mood also seems calculated: on the eve of some of the biggest nationwide strikes in March, he went on a daytime TV slot for which the average audience age was, at 68, already retired. “Do you think I enjoy doing this reform?” he asked. The clip went viral as even young TikTokers imitated his patronising tone.

Police brutality has heightened anti-Macron sentiment to the point that 77% of people now say they regard the president as “authoritarian”. Footage of police officers beating unarmed protesters, insulting them or joking about the harm they can inflict have gone viral. The hundreds of arbitrary detentions after each protest which led to no prosecution have been denounced by the official civil liberties oversight body, which has suggested that the authorities deliberately used police tactics to discourage legitimate protest.

Despite this violently repressive climate, the crowds grew because people knew that in riding roughshod over the objections of a majority, Macron was also betraying a core promise. In May 2022, he was re-elected with the support of many on the left who had not endorsed him in the first round, but were urged to vote in the second round to keep out his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. In his victory speech, he acknowledged this, saying that the result “obliges me”. He knows perfectly well that he was not elected to implement a neoliberal agenda that could unravel core elements of France’s cherished social model. There is no greater sign of his contempt for those who helped his return to power than this willingness to force through such an unpopular reform, backed by a brutal police force.

With four years left in his presidency, Macron is appealing for “conciliation and unity” – but succeeding only in reinforcing the impression that he doesn’t care what people think. In a TV interview on Tuesday night he stood his ground, again fiercely rejecting any suggestion that he had misjudged the situation. Asked if he understood why people felt he had displayed an attitude of contempt for them, he lectured the presenter on the definition of “contempt”.

Neither the president nor any government ministers can show up in public without facing hostile crowds, many banging pots and pans, now the symbol of popular discontent with a government that refuses to listen. Some have suggested that the ongoing unrest – a further round of nationwide protests is planned for 6 June – plays into the hands of populists. I see the protests as a positive sign that people refuse to lie down. This is the true spirit of French democracy.

If Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has been gaining ground it is not because it has anything credible to say on pension reform, but because it knows how to exploit anger. This is why Macron’s refusal to listen is perhaps his most dangerous betrayal. In dismissing reasonable opposition to his reform as troublemaking, he has fanned public anger while at the same time confirming the fears of millions on the left that the centre right can’t be trusted.

Abstention has become a feature of recent French elections: fewer and fewer citizens are willing to put their faith in voting, and more question the ability of elected officials to connect with their daily struggles. Macron’s lack of empathy will only amplify that sense of distrust and boost the far right’s false assertion that they alone are willing to put the people first.

By betraying those who need to feel heard by their elected representatives, Macron risks opening the door not only to future blank ballot papers but to dangerous ideologies spread by extremists who pretend to speak for the voiceless.


Rokhaya Diallo is a French writer, journalist, film director and activist

Review

Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight review – the awful truth behind the abuse that shocked a nation

This two-part ITV documentary lets the presenter’s victims tell their stories with sensitivity, as well as asking wider questions – about the people who enabled his sexual assaults

Lucy Mangan

THE GUARDIAN, AUSTRALIA

Thu 18 May 2023

There can be few people who, when the outpouring of allegations of historic child sexual abuse against the late Jimmy Savile began in 2012, did not at least acknowledge that there had always been something unsettling about the man, even if their only exposure to him was a few seconds of Jim’ll Fix It. Those who followed him more closely would have read the clues to his monstrousness scattered in his autobiography, the hints he gave to interviewers that his apparent philanthropy was a front to allow him to get away with things, or the casual jokes he made about sex with young girls (“My case comes up next Thursday!”). Of course those who worked in the prisons and hospitals that allowed him free access to patients knew far more – from the nurses who would refuse to leave vulnerable patients alone with him to the higher-ups to whom those nurses did not feel able to complain.

But Rolf Harris was different. When he was arrested in 2013 and charged as a result of the Operation Yewtree police investigation (leading to a conviction on 12 counts of indecent assault – one later overturned – and a nearly six-year sentence, of which he served half), there was genuine shock and disbelief. Nobody saw it coming, I don’t think. Except his many victims, of course, whose years of silent suffering are firmly attested to in this two-part documentary.

Karen Gardner was 16 in 1978 when she jumped at the chance to help in the filming of Star Games (a celebrity version on ITV of the BBC’s It’s a Knockout). She was assigned to assist Harris on the day and “for the first couple of hours he was lovely”. He then went on to assault her three times. She declines to say exactly what he did – a growing trend in these kinds of documentaries, and a pleasing sign of evolution in both survivors’ confidence and programme-makers’ attitudes – but notes that her period was due “and my breasts were very tender. There was no doubt he’d done it and done it deliberately. It was humiliating, degrading and awful. And your blood turns to concrete.” As in other victim testimonies later in the programme, she notes the look in his eyes – lascivious, triumphant, free of remorse. He was 48 at the time: “Ten years older than my dad.” She stayed silent for years because she thought she must have done something to deserve it. But “I bloody didn’t”.

The programme follows what is now, sadly, an established formula. The entertainer’s career is outlined, salient points emphasised – Harris’s friendship with Savile and appearances on Jim’ll Fix It, plus his involvement with an anti-child abuse campaign where he urged children to tell a trusted adult about anything that was happening to them – and commentary supplied from TV insiders such as Michael Grade and Mark Lawson explaining the place the star had in the social firmament. All this is interspersed with accounts from those who were exploited by him. This includes a friend of Harris’s daughter, Bindi, who speaking via her psychotherapist, claims that she (the friend) was abused by him for years from the age of 13.

That we have seen and heard it all before in recent documentaries about celebrities (several on Savile, R Kelly, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew) doesn’t lessen its power but gives it cumulative strength.

There are signs, too, that such documentaries are preparing to broaden their focus. The programmes about R Kelly have increasingly asked questions about his enablers – the people who helped him get the girls and keep them confined to his mansion, turning a blind eye to the obvious wrongdoing – and the many who colluded in Epstein’s horrors (beyond Ghislaine Maxwell). Here, makeup artist Suzi Dent remembers Harris groping her whenever she had to powder his face but just as angrily recalls that not one of the men in the room stood up for her despite her repeated requests for him to leave her alone. “It was the green light to have fun with me.”

So many green lights everywhere, still. So many stories to come

Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight is on ITVX, with an Australia screening to be confirmed.