UK’s hottest June on record caused ‘unprecedented’ deaths of fish in rivers

Sami Quadri
Mon, 3 July 2023 

Dead chub floating on the polluted waters of the once thriving River Ray in Wiltshire (PA )

The record hot weather in June helped cause a dramatic spike in fish deaths, environmental groups have warned.

The UK experienced its hottest June on record last month after temperatures exceeded the previous high of 14.9C set in 1940 and 1976.

The sweltering heatwave in the early weeks of June led to heat-health alerts, water shortages and caused an unprecedented number of fish deaths in rivers.

“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News.

In one incident, hundreds of dead fish were found floating on the surface of the River Cam near Ditton Meadows in Cambridge.

High temperatures lead to algal blooms which cause low oxygen levels, killing fish as a result. The Environment Agency received more reports of dead fish than the same time last year.

Ali Morse, from the Wildlife Trusts, said the scorching temperatures caused plants to wilt, which restricted the food supply for insects that feed on nectar and pollen.

“Every month seems to be the hottest, the driest, the wettest, or whichever record-breaking event it is. If we have a one-off pollution event or a wildfire, then there is normally time for nature to bounce back, but now it seems to be continually pounded by extreme weather,” she added.

Meanwhile, drought plans have been stepped up in England after water demand shot up during the hot weather.

Simon Hawkins, chair of the National Drought Group, said: “The recent heatwave has served as a reminder that we need to prepare for weather extremes and act now to ensure resilient water supplies.

“The Environment Agency, water companies and partners are working collaboratively to handle drought risk across the country; with our staff managing abstraction licences to balance need, ensuring water companies implement their drought plans, working with farmers to manage resources, and rescuing fish in areas where river levels are extremely low.”

South West Water customers in Cornwall have been subject to a hosepipe ban since August last year, which has since been extended to others in Devon.

Along with parts of East Anglia, the region has not left drought status since the extreme heat last summer, which saw 40C bring destructive grassfires and more than 3,000 excess deaths during the heatwaves.

The Enviornment Agency has been contacted for comment.

UK

Tighter limit on industrial, power and aviation emissions from 2024


John Besley, PA
Mon, 3 July 2023

A new limit on emissions for the power sector, energy intensive and aviation industries will come into force from next year, it has been announced.

Under the limit, the industries will be required to bring their emissions down at the rate needed to reach net zero goals.

The announcement forms part of a package of reforms unveiled by the UK Emissions Trading System Authority (UK ETS), the joint body comprising the UK Government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland that runs the emissions trading scheme.

The UK ETS incentivises decarbonisation through a process of buying and selling emissions allowances, which companies must obtain for every tonne of emissions they produce each year.

To help ease the transition to the new limit, the UK ETS Authority said the cap will be set at the highest level of the range consulted on, in line with net zero, in order to allow maximum flexibility for industries.

Extra allowances will also be made available to the market between 2024 and 2027, while the current levels of free allocation of allowances for industry has been guaranteed until 2026 in a bid to protect from international pressures.

The aviation sector is also affected (Steve Parsons/PA)

In a joint statement, UK ETS Authority Ministers, including Lord Callanan, Julie James, Mairi McAllan and Gareth Davies, said: “With the recent rises in energy prices, it is more important than ever that we accelerate the transition away from costly fossil fuels, towards greener and more secure energy.

“Our UK Emissions Trading Scheme, along with other interventions, forms part of a wider strategy to provide a long-term framework to incentivise UK industries to decarbonise – seizing the huge opportunities that are arising from a rapidly expanding clean energy sector, and providing the certainty that industries need to invest in new green technologies.

“The decisions taken here will not only put us on the path to net zero, but will also support crucial industries on their path to long term sustainability.”

EU official sees 'contradiction' between China's climate goals, coal plants

AFP
Mon, 3 July 2023

European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans delivers a speech about climate change to students at Tsinghua University in Beijing on July 3, 2023. 

(GREG BAKER)

A top EU climate official said Monday there is a "contradiction" between China's ambitious goals to combat global warming and its continued building of coal-fired power plants.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said in Beijing he was "convinced that China is willing to go in the right direction".

"But at the same time, it's also true that... more coal-fired power plants are opened," Timmermans said in a speech at Tsinghua University.

"And that seems to be in contradiction."

China is also the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving climate change, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and its emissions pledges are seen as essential to keeping global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius.

However, China relied on coal for nearly 60 percent of its electricity last year.

Greenpeace said in April that China has approved a major surge in coal power so far this year, accusing it of prioritising energy supply over its pledge to reduce emissions from fossil fuels.

The jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants has added to concerns that China will backtrack on its goals to peak emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.

Timmermans' comments come on the heels of record-setting heatwaves and flooding across China in recent weeks that have underscored the potential impacts of continued upticks in global temperatures.

He also warned of the consequences of not restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, saying this would lead to a "significant and widespread increase in adverse impacts of climate change, including in extreme weather events".

China's top climate centre announced at the weekend that 2023 has seen a record number of high-temperature days over a six-month period.

Beijing logged its hottest June day ever recorded, the national weather service said last month, as swaths of northern China sweltered in 40-degree heat.

Heavy sustained rainfall in central and southern China has also led to severe flooding in recent days, with more than 14,000 people forced to evacuate in Hunan Province, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The United Nations has warned it is near-certain that 2023-2027 will be the warmest five-year period ever recorded, as greenhouse gasses and the El Nino climate phenomenon combine to send temperatures soaring.

Beijing has repeatedly urged developed nations in recent years to honour their climate finance pledges.

China has rejected the idea that it should no longer be considered a developing country, even though it is now the world's second-biggest economy.

pfc/oho/pbt

Could Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ‘rebellion’ against Russia be just an illusion?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR----THE GUARDIAN

Mon, 3 July 2023 

Photograph: AP

Maybe China’s view that current divisions in Russia are an “illusion” is right (China downplays Wagner rebellion as Russia’s ‘internal affairs’, 26 July). Could we have just witnessed an incredible sleight of hand by the Russian president? What if Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup was not intended for Russia, but Belarus?

Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his desire to reunify the old USSR. Former member Belarus shares long land borders with other former USSR states, specifically Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. And while Belarus has shown itself to be a reliable Russian ally, Alexander Lukashenko is weak and Belarusian people have shown a preference for closer ties to Europe rather than Russia. With this in mind, it would be no surprise if Putin views the country as unreliable.

However, even if Russia’s forces were not already fully engaged, the invasion of a staunch ally would be hard to justify. So maybe Putin decided that Belarus needed to be brought under Russian control from within. And what better way than to install someone with a private army of at least 25,000 battle-hardened troops, and complete loyalty, into Belarus, ready to take over the country on command?

Having created the fiction that Prigozhin is acting independently and against elements of the Russian establishment and then duping the Belarusian leader into taking him in (Trojan Horse-style), the setup would be complete, with the added beauty that Putin has full deniability in the case of a failure in execution. It would also cast the earlier stationing of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus in a new light.
Anthony Walbran
Dee Why, New South Wales, Australia

• Before we crow too loudly over Putin’s supposed difficulties with the Prigozhin “rebellion”, shouldn’t we at least be alert to the possibility that this whole episode has been a feint to get him and his troops into position in Belarus so that they can attack Kiev from the north, catching Ukraine in a pincer movement? We’ve been caught off-guard before.
Sue Joiner
London

UK

How heating your home fuels climate change – and why government measures are failing to stop it


Ned Lamb, Research Associate on Low-Carbon Energy Systems, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

The Conversation
Mon, 3 July 2023 


Heat pumps are three times more energy-efficient than boilers. 

Virrage Images/Shutterstock

The UK’s housing stock is old, energy inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuel heating systems – mainly gas boilers. With heating responsible for 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions, homes and their central heating must transform if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050.

While there isn’t a single solution that will suit every home, government advisers on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimate that 8 million heat pumps need to be installed in existing homes by 2035.

The CCC recently published a damning assessment of the UK’s progress towards its 2030 climate goals, saying annual emission reductions outside the power sector must nearly quadruple. Home heating is of particular concern, as heat pumps are being rolled out at one-ninth the rate they need to be by 2028, alongside falling rates of energy efficiency improvements.

Heat pumps extract heat either from the air, ground or nearby water and transfer it into a building, providing heating and hot water through pipes and radiators. Some heat pumps can even work in reverse to cool homes during the summer.

Heat pumps run on electricity and use energy three times more efficiently than gas boilers.

Better still, UK homeowners are becoming more comfortable with this technology. A survey of 2,500 households in May 2023 revealed that more than 80% that had installed a heat pump were satisfied.

Air-source heat pumps like these are effective in most weather conditions. Nimur/Shutterstock

UK trails European neighbours

Only 59,862 heat pumps were installed in the UK in 2022. Although this is an increase of 40% on 2021, it’s far from the government’s target of 600,000 a year by 2028. To fully replace all of its gas boilers, the UK would need to be installing 1.7 million heat pumps annually by 2036.

Heat pumps are being rolled out faster elsewhere. In Norway, 60% of buildings have heat pumps; in Sweden, over 40%. Meanwhile, less than 1% of UK buildings had a heat pump in 2021. And compare the UK’s 2022 record with other countries in Europe: France installed 462,672 heat pumps (up 20%), Germany 236,000 (up 53%) and the Netherlands 123,208 (up 80%).

European governments support heat pump installations in various ways. The Netherlands has gradually raised taxes on homes burning natural gas for heating and offered subsidies for heat pumps. France has combined a 30% tax credit on improvements to heating and home insulation costing up to €16,000 with a 0% interest loan of up to €30,000 for energy efficiency upgrades.

These measures address two things which prevent people from getting a heat pump: the upfront cost of installation and the renovations required to prepare a home. Heat pumps are becoming cheaper but they are still more expensive than gas boilers and many UK homes lack the double-glazed windows, insulated walls and lofts, and pipework and radiators that help them perform optimally.

The CCC estimates that fewer homes were insulated in 2022 than the year before. 

Irin-K/Shutterstock

Since 2012, government policy has failed to drastically improve home energy efficiency or encourage low-carbon heating.

The carbon emissions reduction target introduced by Gordon Brown’s Labour government in 2008 required energy suppliers to cut emissions by helping customers make their homes more energy efficient. When it closed in 2012, it had beaten its target of saving 293 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. 41% of these savings came from installing insulation, in turn making homes more suitable for a heat pump.

The green deal followed in 2013 and the renewable heat incentive in 2014 under David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition government.

Green deal loans for energy-efficiency upgrades attracted just 14,000 applicants as homeowners baulked at the relatively high cost of borrowing and were unconvinced by the projected energy savings. The scheme was scrapped in 2015.

The renewable heat incentive paid homeowners quarterly over seven years for installing a heat pump but asked them to fund the installation upfront. In 2018, the government blamed high upfront costs, poor awareness and complex installations for the poor uptake. The incentive ended in 2022.

Ban the boiler?

Launched in 2022 under Boris Johnson, the boiler upgrade scheme offers homeowners a £5,000 grant to replace their gas boiler with an air-source heat pump (£6,000 for a ground-source heat pump) and aims to lower the cost difference between the two. Installing a new combi-boiler costs between £600 and £2,150 whereas a heat pump is £5,000 to £8,000 after the government subsidy.

The government also plans to implement a clean heat market mechanism that will ask boiler manufacturers to sell four heat pumps for every 100 gas boilers in 2024/25, or pay for the equivalent in heat pump credits if they can’t (one heat pump credit is worth £5,000).

These measures may improve on earlier failures if the rules for industry are clear and the incentives are generous enough for consumers to consider investing in a heat pump, as examples with other low-carbon technologies have shown.

For instance, evidence suggests carmarkers are already selling more battery-electric vehicles in anticipation of a law requiring them to sell a rising proportion of zero-emission vehicles each year from 2024. And the feed-in-tariff scheme requiring energy suppliers to buy electricity from homeowners at an agreed price for 10 to 25 years helped nearly a million households install solar panels.

Beyond targets for boiler manufacturers, the UK government will ban natural gas boilers in new buildings from 2025. While Germany’s governing coalition is implementing a ban on installing gas boilers in existing properties from 2028.

Gas boilers remain relatively cheap and convenient to install in the UK. 

Andrzej Wilusz/Shutterstock

Before such a ban is tabled in the UK, there are policies that could raise the dismal heat pump installation rate. First, like the Dutch, the UK could gradually lower taxes on residential electricity and increase them on gas.

Second, the government could ensure energy performance certificates more accurately assess the energy efficiency of homes and their readiness for heat pumps. And third, the government should dismiss opposition from boiler manufacturers and implement the clean heat market mechanism.

Decarbonising heat and encouraging heat pumps is essential for achieving net zero. Tighter rules and targets for industry must sit alongside attractive incentives for consumers if the UK is to reach 600,000 installations a year in five years’ time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ned Lamb is funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council's Low Temperature Heat Recovery and Distribution Network Technologies (LoT-NET) programme.

Staff strike will hit troubled Glasgow bar over busiest part of the week

Amanda Keenan
Mon, 3 July 2023 

STAFF at a troubled Glasgow bar have revealed the dates when they will strike - the first industrial action of its type anywhere in the UK for over 20 years.

Workers at the 13th Note in Merchant City will walk out on Friday July 14 - and will then continue to withdraw their labour every weekend until August 6.

Unite Hospitality, which represents 95 per cent of the workers employed at the venue, exclusively shared details of the plan with the Glasgow Times this morning.

It says the strike will go ahead unless drastic improvements are made by the owners of the King Street bar.

Glasgow Times: Staff at 13th Note (Image: Newsquest)

The escalating dispute, which has been rumbling on since March when workers lodged an official grievance, centres on the trade union’s campaign to secure better wages, improvements to health and safety and trade union recognition for those employed by the iconic music venue.

Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham said: “Unite’s members at the 13th Note bar in Glasgow are united in taking a stand in what could be the first bar workers’ strike across the UK in over 20 years. That says a lot about them, their strength of feeling and the stage this dispute has now reached.

Unite says it represents 95 per cent of the workers at the bar.

Bryan Simpson, lead organiser for Unite Hospitality, said that a breakdown is negotiations had brought the workforce to break point.

He added: “Unless the owners of 13th Note get back around the negotiating table to propose improvements to wages, health and safety as well as union recognition, the rift between the owner and workers will only grow wider.”

Nick Troy, who works as a chef at the venue, said: "We've tried for 17 weeks to resolve this and we have been trying to reason with the management. This is not a decision we have taken lightly, or a step that we wanted to take but from wages to hygiene and understaffing, and our demands have not been properly listened to. People are worried about the ramifications of a strike because we all want the 13th Note to succeed, but we hope this will send a message to management that we have had enough.

"We want them to get back around the table for meaningful negotiations to try and reach a resolution."

The venue’s owner, Jacqueline Fennessy, denied that the strike action is backed by all of the staff who work there.

In a statement to the Glasgow Times she said: “Unite the Union do not have 100% support for strike action from 13th Note staff.

“Only 10 union members actually voted in the ballot, out of 17 union who were eligible, and I will state again, there are no health and safety issues in the venue.

“Any issues raised by Environmental Health were dealt with immediately and we were authorised to reopen within 72 hours.

“I would reiterate there are no staff at the 13th Note on zero-hour contracts and all staff are being paid above the Living Wage.”

ABOLISH GOLF (COURSES)

Extinction Rebellion plugs holes on 10 Spanish golf courses in water protest

GOOD FOR THEM

Sam Jones in Madrid
Mon, 3 July 2023

Photograph: Extinction Rebellion/AFP/Getty Images

Climate activists in Spain have filled in holes on 10 golf courses to draw attention to the huge amounts of water the “elitist leisure pursuit” uses as a nationwide drought continues in the first heatwave of the year.

Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) revealed their latest direct action campaign in a video released on Sunday, saying they had targeted courses in locations including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, the Basque country, Navarra and Ibiza.

Footage showed activists plugging holes with soil and planting seedlings alongside signs reading: “Drought alert. Golf course closed for climate justice.”

In a statement, XR said it had carried out the action to “denounce the wasting of water by golf in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history”. It said golf courses in Spain used more water than the cities of Madrid and Barcelona combined, with each hole requiring more than 100,000 litres of water a day to maintain the greens.

“We cannot allow this kind of elitist leisure pursuit to continue,” the statement said. “Spain is drying up and the rural world is suffering losses running into millions because of the lack of water for crops – all because of an entertainment enjoyed by scarcely 0.6% of the population. Rich people and their leisure activities that gobble up essential resources are a luxury we cannot afford.”

While all of Spain has been in drought since January 2022, some parts of the country are more gravely affected by the lack of rain than others. Authorities in Catalonia, which has been in drought for more than three years, have introduced laws including a 40% reduction in water to be used for agriculture, a 15% reduction for industrial uses, and a cut in the average daily supply per inhabitant from 250 litres to 230 litres.

In May, the Spanish government approved a €2.2bn (£1.9bn) plan to help farmers and consumers cope with the drought, which has been exacerbated by the hottest and driest April on record.

“Spain is a country that is used to periods of drought but there’s no doubt that, as a consequence of the climate change we’re experiencing, we’re seeing far more frequent and intense events and phenomena,” said the environment minister, Teresa Ribera.

“And we need to prepare for that by taking advantage of all the technical capacity that Spain has accrued and developed over many years. We need to deal with episodes such as the present one – and that requires planning, structural measures and also, obviously, short-term and immediate help plans.”

Pro-choice Catholics fight to seize the narrative from the religious right

Maya Yang
Mon, 3 July 2023 




Since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade a year ago, reproductive rights have become an even more contentious issue in an already polarized landscape. With more than 1,500 politicians – mostly men – helping ban abortions since Roe fell, Catholic and pro-choice organizations are increasingly trying to carve out space for themselves in the nationwide dialogue to center their own messaging: that being Catholic and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.

One organization trying to dismantle religious stigma surrounding abortions is Catholics For Choice, a Washington-DC based Catholic abortion rights advocacy group. For CFC, the belief in individual reproductive rights comes as a result of the Catholic faith, not in spite of.

Speaking to the Guardian shortly after president Joe Biden – a Catholic – said at a recent fundraiser in Maryland that although he is “not big on abortion, he believes that Roe v Wade “got it right”, CFC president Jamie Manson said that despite Biden’s “good model of not imposing one’s religious beliefs on civil law”, his message echoed rightwing sentiments.


“President Biden is playing into a narrative that says, in spite of my faith, I support this. It’s a rightwing narrative that we should not give any energy to. It also creates shame and stigma around abortion,” said Manson.

In the US, 63% of Catholic adults say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Additionally, 68% say that Roe v Wade should have been left as is. In a separate survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 24% of abortion patients identified as Catholic.

“Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom… Catholic women who participate richly in the life of the church are having abortions and they have to hear from an all-male hierarchy that when they choose abortion, they’re participating in homicide,” said Manson.

Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice … and of religious freedom

“That message is profoundly spiritually violent,” she said, adding, “This is a real pastoral crisis in the church that Catholics don’t want to look at. Every time a high-profile Catholic says, ‘Even though in spite of my faith I support abortion,’ it reinforces that stigma… We need to dismantle this narrative.”

To Manson, there are three important ideas deeply embedded in the Catholic tradition which help fuel her organization’s pro-choice beliefs.

“The first one is this notion of individual conscience. The catechism says explicitly in all that we say and do, our individual conscience is what tells us what is just and right, not the church. So even if what our conscience tells us to be just and right conflicts with church teaching, we have to go with our conscience,” she said.

The next idea is the tradition of social justice, said Manson, which contradicts with the profoundly negative impacts that abortion bans have on already marginalized communities.

“Abortion bans and restrictions disproportionately harm people who are already suffering injustices like racism, poverty, immigration laws and domestic violence. The very people that we as Catholics are supposed to prioritize – the marginalized – are the ones who have their suffering exacerbated by abortion bans and restrictions. So there is a deep conflict with our social justice tradition,” Manson said.

The third and perhaps the most oft-repeated idea to Manson and other pro-choice faith leaders is religious pluralism.

“Catholic teaching supports and respects religious pluralism. And what rightwing Catholics are trying to do is have their theological ideas codified into civil law. By doing that, they’re infringing on the religious freedom of everyone else. Our religious freedom guarantees not only our right to practice our beliefs, but our right to be free of the beliefs of others and so abortion bans and restrictions take away religious freedom,” she said.

With far-right Catholic lawmakers continuing to double down on their anti-abortion stances and conservative Christian legal nonprofits funding anti-abortion organizations, the communities that CFC tries to focus on are those that are silent about their support for abortion.

“We focus on that population because the majority already are there with us. They’re just afraid to speak about it publicly and that’s because again, of the shame, stigma and punishment that comes from the church when you dare to question this teaching,” Manson explained.

“We prefer to cater to that population and we give them information that they need to strengthen their own arguments from a place of faith,” she added.

The other focus group of CFC is what Manson calls the “movable middle”, which consists of people who do not know how they feel about abortion and do not feel welcome in the two polarized populations within the abortion debate.

“There’s a lot of disinformation that the right wing has put out about abortion over the last 50 years and so we provide them with actual facts. We give them a space to discern how they feel about abortion and make a safe place for people for whom it is a complex issue,” Manson said.

We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people

Another challenge for organizations like CFC is dismantling certain narratives that automatically enmesh the Catholic faith with anti-abortion stances.

“We have to have progressive pro-choice, faithful voices speaking back and centered in the movement now… We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people. People have to bear in mind the five justices that struck down Roe last year were all Catholic,” said Manson. “We really are fighting a religious force so we have to center religious voices…and take back the narrative that we’ve ceded to this Christian right wing and say, ‘No, because of my faith, I support abortion’ and welcome people who feel conflicted about it rather than making them feel like they’re creating stigma.”

Manson added that she doesn’t think the pro-choice movement has done this well “and really needs to if we’re going to transform hearts and minds around this issue”.

“I think that they have to center faith voices [because] right now, faith voices are marginalized,” she said. “We need to widen our circle in the pro-choice movement and not create these absolutes and gate-keep each other on messaging.”

Unilever named ‘international sponsor of war’ by Ukraine

Sarah Butler
Mon, 3 July 2023 


Unilever has been named as an international sponsor of war by the Ukrainian government after the Marmite, Dove and Domestos owner became subject to a law in Russia obliging all large companies operating in the country to contribute directly to its war effort.

The move came as campaigners called on Unilever’s new boss, Hein Schumacher, who started work this weekend, to withdraw from Russia, where its local business continues to sell “essential” products from tea to ice-cream, after evidence emerged that it paid Moscow $331m in taxes last year.

The Ukraine Solidarity Project (USP) on Monday erected a giant billboard outside the Anglo-Dutch consumer group’s London headquarters featuring pictures of wounded Ukrainian soldiers – posing in the style of the Dove beauty brand’s advertisements – and the slogan: “Helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.”


Unilever was placed on the sponsors of war list on Monday alongside companies including Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world’s largest manufacturer of household chemicals and personal care products, and the French supermarket group Leroy Merlin.

It is thought that a new law in Russia could lead to the conscription of Unilever’s 3,000-strong workforce in Russia across its four manufacturing sites and head office.

Valeriia Voshchevska, a spokesperson for USP, said: “Unilever is contributing hundreds of millions in tax revenues to a state which is killing civilians and funding a mercenary group about to be designated a terrorist organisation in the UK.

“It risks its staff and resources being mobilised into Putin’s machine. Some of the world’s biggest companies have already left Russia. It’s possible – after 16 months of war – that the time for excuses has passed.”

Unilever Rus, the group’s local Russian business with registered offices in Moscow and Omsk, doubled profits to 9.2bn roubles last year, according to the Dutch investigative group Follow the Money, and increased advertising spend by 10% to 21.7bn roubles.

Oleh, 26, from Kyiv, had both legs amputated after an explosion on a Russian anti-tank mine while fighting in eastern Ukraine. He featured on the USP billboard and urged Unilever to withdraw from the Russian market. “Many civilians are being killed, children are being killed and the Russian military is torturing Ukrainian civilians. You’re paying taxes to the aggressor country and thus financing terrorism,” he said.

Unilever has previously said it ceased all imports and exports of its products into and out of Russia in March last year and has stopped all media and advertising spend and capital flows.

Its outgoing boss, Alan Jope, has said the amount of goods that Unilever sells in Russia was “down significantly by double digits” and the apparent increase in sales, profit and advertising spend was the result of inflation and exchange rate changes.

Unilever said: “We continue to supply our everyday food and hygiene products made in Russia to people in the country.” It is understood this includes soap and shampoo but also ice-creams including Magnum and Cornetto.

“We understand why there are calls for Unilever to leave Russia,” it said on Monday. “We also want to be clear that we are not trying to protect or manage our business in Russia. However, for companies like Unilever, which have a significant physical presence in the country, exiting is not straightforward.”

The company said that if it were to abandon its business and brands in Russia, “they would be appropriated – and then operated – by the Russian state”. Unilever said it had not been able to find a way to sell the business that “avoids the Russian state potentially gaining further benefit, and which safeguards our people”. It said in that light, continuing to run the business with “strict constraints” was the best option.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Ex-Carillion finance chief given 11-year company director ban


Rob Davies
Mon, 3 July 2023 

Photograph: Simon Dawson/Reuters

The former finance director of the collapsed outsourcing company Carillion has been banned from serving as a company director for 11 years over his role in the company dishing out dividends of more than £50m while misstating its financial position by more than £200m.

The outsourcer’s implosion in 2018 was one of the most high-profile failures in British corporate history, costing 3,000 jobs and plunging 450 public sector projects, including hospitals, schools and prisons, into chaos.

The Insolvency Service, which was responsible for managing Carillion’s collapse, has since been pursuing action against former directors of the company, including its former chief financial officer Zafar Khan.


On Monday, more than five years after the company’s collapse, the Insolvency Service said Khan had been disqualified from acting as a director for 11 years, citing his conduct as Carillion misled the markets about its parlous financial position.

The agency, an arm of the Department for Business and Trade, said Khan had caused Carillion to rely on “false and misleading financial information” during the preparation of its financial statements for 2016.

This meant that the accounts “did not give a true and fair view” of the company’s financial health, misstating the value of key construction contracts, including Battersea power station, Royal Liverpool University hospital, and the Midlands Metropolitan hospital.

The two state-of-the-art hospitals were subject to significant delays, setting back plans to improve the availability of medical care in two of Britain’s biggest cities, Liverpool and Birmingham.

The Insolvency Service said this led Carillion to declare a pre-tax profit of £146.7m when it had actually lost £61.7m, a misstatement of £208.5m.

Khan was also responsible for Carillion misleading the markets in two statements made during March and May 2017, the Insolvency Service said, giving a false impression of the company’s “performance, position and prospects”.

He also caused Carillion to make a dividend payment of £54.5m to shareholders in June 2017, which could not have been justified if the company’s financial statements had given an accurate picture of its position.

This was “not in the interests of [Carillion], its members or its creditors and was not one that [Carillion] could reasonably afford to make in view of its true financial performance”, the Insolvency Service said.

The agency is still pursuing legal action against remaining directors of Carillion, with a civil trial expected to begin in October.

When proceedings were launched in January 2021, the Insolvency Service named eight people, including Khan, Carillion’s former chair Philip Green – who was once an adviser to David Cameron on corporate responsibility – its former chief executive Richard Howson and Keith Cochrane, a company director since 2015 who replaced Howson as CEO in the final months before the company failed in January 2018. Khan’s predecessor Richard Adam was also named.

Khan’s disqualification means he cannot serve as a director of a company in England, Wales or Scotland, or get other people to manage a company under his instructions. He can be prosecuted if he breaches the terms of his undertaking not to do so.

The Guardian has approached a former representative of Khan for comment.