Letters to the Editor: Moon missions are great, but the planet we live on is dying

Los Angeles Times Opinion
Sun, August 27, 2023 

A rocket carrying Chandrayaan-2, India's second lunar exploration mission, lifts off from Sriharikota, India, in 2019. (Associated Press)

To the editor: It’s mind-boggling to me that with all the climate change problems this world is facing for the foreseeable future, countries such as the United States, China, Russia, India and others are wasting time, brainpower and money on missions to the moon and Mars. ("'India is now on the moon': A shoestring budget and can-do attitude equaled a cosmic success," editorial, Aug. 24)

For what? So that we can send a few astronauts to walk around and kick up dust? And by the way, further pollute our atmosphere from the exhaust of all those rockets?

There are also private companies spending vast sums and polluting the atmosphere so that a few wealthy people can experience a few minutes or even less of weightlessness, while hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless.

All those billions of dollars and great brainpower should be solely focused on technologies that provide non-polluting jet planes, shipping vessels, cars, trucks and trains. And we should be focusing on technologies that can actually clean our polluted air.

Herb Adelman, Del Mar

..

To the editor: It's wonderful that India's Chandrayaan-3 project was able to successfully land on the moon given a relatively paltry $74-million budget. The keys to India's success should be studied by engineering and space exploration programs worldwide.

But I think it's disingenuous to simply state how those scientists and engineers are able to do more with far less than their U.S. counterparts without questioning the amount of money that the individuals involved make.

For example, what's the income differential between a NASA engineer's salary versus that of the CEOs who supply the parts for NASA spacecraft?

While the U.S. space exploration budget may be bloated compared to that in India, we should be asking in which direction that bloat occurs. Frugality is only "wise" when the excess isn't just going to a handful of overseers at the top.

Matthew Neel, Sherman Oaks

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

UK

Firefighters threaten Home Office with legal challenge over Bibby barge

Charles Hymas
Sun, 27 August 2023

Fire Brigades Union previously named the barge a 'potential death trap' - PA

Firefighters are threatening the Home Office with legal action over the safety of migrants and staff on the Bibby Stockholm barge.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has sent a “pre-action protocol letter” to Home Secretary Suella Braverman outlining its concerns over safety aboard the vessel moored in Dorset’s Portland Port.

The union previously branded the giant barge, initially designed for about 200 people but modified to house 500 migrants, a “potential death trap”.

The first asylum seekers placed on board Bibby Stockholm earlier this month were removed days later after tests revealed Legionella - the bacteria which can cause the potentially fatal Legionnaires’ disease.

The water system on the barge has since been cleansed with sterilised water with further tests by Dorset Council environmental health officers on whether this has removed all traces of the bacteria due back later this week.

Ministers have maintained that all safety checks, barring the legionella discovery, have been completed including for fire risks.

Bibby was designed for 200 people but modified to house 500 migrants - PA

However, the FBU is demanding a response to its legal letter by Thursday. Matt Wrack, the general secretary, said: “The Fire Brigades Union is the professional voice of firefighters, and we have a duty to make our voices heard on matters of fire safety, especially when politicians let our members and the wider public down.

“We have been sounding the alarm about Bibby about the Bibby Stockholm for weeks. It is disgraceful that the Home Secretary is not even willing to meet us to discuss these concerns. Throughout this episode, the Government has displayed a lack of transparency and a callous disregard for the safety of both firefighters and those who are due to be housed on the barge.

“Fires do not discriminate based on immigration status, and neither can fire safety regulations. Everyone, no matter where they are from, has the right to live in safe and decent accommodation, and firefighters have the right to expect that they will not be recklessly endangered.
‘An industrial issue’

“This is an industrial issue for the Fire Brigades Union, as our members are the ones expected to respond to any fire aboard the Bibby Stockholm. We have therefore decided to move towards a legal challenge on this matter.”

The FBU has raised concerns about access to fire exits and possible overcrowding on the vessel.

The Bibby Stockholm is one of three sites including two former military bases where ministers want to use to house migrants as they await asylum decisions in an effort to cut the cost of putting them up in hotels and deter entries into the UK via unauthorised means.

Home Office data this week showed Channel crossings topped 19,000 for the year so far, despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge that he will “stop the boats”.

The Home Office has been approached for comment.

Will Europe’s centre-right parties accept defeat or sell their souls to the hard right?

Paul Taylor
Mon, 28 August 2023 

Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

There was a time when clear blue water separated Europe’s mainstream centre-right from the Eurosceptic populists and xenophobes of the hard right. A Christian Democrat such as Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel would have had nothing in common with – and nothing to do with – a nativist such as Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders.

No longer. In the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, once-sharp lines between pro-European conservative parties and the nationalist far right are blurring as both seek to tap into public anger or anxiety over migration, the cost of living, the green transition and gender diversity.

The longstanding “cordon sanitaire” against cooperation with the hard right is fast crumbling, first at local and national level and now potentially in Brussels too. That matters because the European parliament must approve all the EU’s net zero climate and energy legislation, and the right is already trying to water it down.


In recent weeks, Spain’s conservative People’s party has fallen just short of victory in a general election despite declaring its readiness to govern with the anti-immigration Vox party, which has intellectual roots in Franco’s fascist ideology. The leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, Friedrich Merz, suggested his party should work locally – though not at national or European level – with the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has soared to second place in national opinion polls. However, Merz had to row back after protests from within his party.

And the successor to Dutch prime minister Marc Rutte as leader of the centre-right liberal VVD party, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, (Rutte resigned in July triggering a snap election that will be held in November) has ditched a longstanding refusal to work with Wilders’ anti-immigrant PVV party.

Mainstream conservative governments in Sweden and Finland meanwhile have taken office thanks to the support of hard-right nationalists in, respectively, the Sweden Democrats and the Finns party.

In Italy, the hard right last year won power in a government headed by Giorgia Meloni of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy. In France, the conservative Gaullists of Les Républicains are vying to outdo Le Pen and her extreme-right rival Éric Zemmour in demonising Islam and proposing new ways to stop asylum seekers. Party leader Éric Ciotti wants to officially declare that the French constitution has primacy over European law in order to impose quotas of asylum seekers.

That is the same assertion with which hard-right nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary are defying the EU’s treaty order over the independence of their judiciary.

The reasons for this lurch to the right are clear. Europe’s big-tent centre-right parties are now succumbing to the electoral fragmentation that has afflicted the mainstream left, with green and radical-left groups luring voters away from social democratic parties. In a more diverse, individualistic society, conservative voters are no longer so bound together by the church, family values or free market ideology. They differ on economic protectionism, European integration, climate action and social issues such as LGBTQ+ rights.

In Germany, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, which bestrode the country’s postwar political landscape for decades, scored just 24.1% in the 2021 general election following Merkel’s retirement. Even with its current 26% rating, the centre-right has no hope of forming a conservative government without the AfD, which is polling above 20%. Yet cooperating with the nativists has hitherto been taboo, not least because of the long shadow of Germany’s Nazi past.

But all over Europe, mainstream conservatives face the same dilemma as they struggle to win back lost chunks of their electorate among blue-collar, rural and middle-class voters, and to attract younger people tempted by a far-right protest vote or abstention.

Marginalising and demonising the radical right has failed to staunch the losses. Adopting part of the populists’ vocabulary and policy on issues such as migration and identity has not worked either, except perhaps for Denmark’s Social Democrats.

Other options include seeking to engage and moderate the far right through coalitions, or making targeted pitches to discontented voter groups such as farmers and suburban motorists who fear that the EU’s Green Deal, pushed by a European Commission led by German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen, will take away their cars and ruin their livelihoods.

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s party (EPP) centre-right umbrella group, is experimenting with both approaches as he seeks to reposition the long-dominant political family before next June’s EU-wide vote.

In January, he met Meloni to explore a possible alliance between the EPP and the nationalist European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) after next year’s elections. The EU legislature is currently dominated by a three-way centrist pact between the EPP, the Socialists and Democrats, and the market-liberal Renew Europe group.

The ECR includes Poland’s rightwing ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), Spain’s Vox, the Sweden Democrats and the Finns party. Yet Weber has repeatedly declared that the EPP would not work with “far-right extremists”, explicitly naming Le Pen, the AfD and PiS.

In July, he made an unsuccessful attempt alongside the ECR and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group to defeat the EU’s nature restoration law, a key environmental protection measure that he said would burden farmers and force up food prices. Weber is trying to project the EPP as the farmers’ and motorists’ friend without embracing the hard right’s denial of climate science. It is a precarious balancing act, especially when it pits him against Von der Leyen from his own party.

Related: ‘The Eurocentric fallacy’: the myths that underpin European identity

A formal alliance with the ECR seems unlikely, not least because it would require the support of liberals including French president Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party. If such a pact did come about, it would probably push back against ambitious European Green Deal targets, take a tougher line on asylum and migration policy, and resist any erosion of national sovereignty.

More plausible is that Weber is trying to lure Meloni’s rising party into joining the centre-right EPP, which would strengthen its hand with its current partners.

While EPP officials say this is just about tactics and responding pragmatically to public concerns, Weber and his political family face a fundamental choice.

In deciding whether to ostracise, imitate or forge alliances with the nationalist hard right, Europe’s mainstream centre-right parties must choose between potentially losing voters and losing their souls.

Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank and a former European affairs editor at Reuters

How many more poor child workers must die in Pakistan before change happens?

Zofeen T Ebrahim
Mon, 28 August 2023 



The death of 10-year-old Fatima Furiro would have passed sadly but quietly had it not been for the two graphic videos that turned up on social media. The little girl’s body was this week exhumed for a postmortem examination, days after the videos mysteriously appeared online.

One appeared to show signs of torture on Fatima’s body, while the other showed her writhing in agony, and struggling to sit up, before collapsing.

There was immediate pressure on her parents to lodge a formal complaint, and police in Sindh province’s Khairpur district arrested her employer, Asad Ali Shah Jeelani, over the child’s death. Jeelani, who is a pir, an influential spiritual leader in a Sufi sect, has denied any wrongdoing.


As she mourned her child, Shabnam Furiro said sending her three daughters to work in the home of Jeelani would remain a lifelong regret. “All of this was not worth the 3,000 rupees [£8] every month we received in return,” she said by phone from her village of Ali Muhammad Furiro, almost 250 miles (400km) north of the port city of Karachi.

Fatima is not the first child to have died allegedly at the hands of her employers; she is also unlikely to be the last.

Poverty pushes many parents to turn a blind eye to the physical and sexual violence faced by their children

Earlier this year, an 11-year-old was killed by his employer in Karachi; in Lahore last year, an 11-year-old boy, Kamran, succumbed to his injuries after he and his seven-year-old brother were severely beaten by their employer for stealing food from a refrigerator; in 2020, eight-year-old Zohra Shah died from injuries inflicted after she released her employers’ prized bird from a cage; and in 2019, 16-year-old Uzma Bibi was tortured and murdered for taking a small piece of meat.

Every time such deaths occur, people in Pakistan go into a collective retributive frenzy. The pattern is always the same: the abuse is highlighted on social media and it is then picked up by the media, followed by expressions of outrage and horror from legislators and celebrities, and then the alleged perpetrators are arrested. But the indignation then subsides as quickly as it flared up.

Fatima’s death has also been a wake-up call for the village of Ali Mohammad Furiro, which is in shock. Families are bringing their daughters home and pledging never to send their kids to the homes of the rich.

Allah Baksh Koondhar, a journalist who lives in a neighbouring village, said: “Many of these young girls, aged between nine and 15, disclosed being whacked, their hair pulled, or scorched with a hot iron.”

Koondhar said the tradition in Sindh to “gift” young daughters to their pir to serve for a few years was grounded in ignorance among those who revere these rich spiritual leaders.

Shabnam insisted she had no idea her daughter was being beaten regularly. She did not even speak up on seeing the torture marks on her daughter’s dead body and said she thought she had died of a stomach ailment.

It is hard to imagine that parents are not aware of the risks when they place their children in domestic servitude, but extreme poverty pushes many to turn a blind eye to the possibility of physical and sexual violence in addition to the long working hours endured by the children, with little rest and no healthcare or education.

Shabnam said poverty had forced her to send her daughter to Jeelani’s house. After the floods of 2022, it had become difficult for her husband, a farmhand, to find regular work. The day he did, he earned only 400 rupees, making it difficult to feed the family; Fatima’s pay was essential to the family, she said.

Although it is illegal in most of Pakistan’s provinces for children under 14 to work, and in some for children under 18 to work in hazardous occupations, Pakistan’s Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child estimates there are 12 million child workers in the country.

Related: How Ivory Coast is winning the fight to keep its children out of the cocoa fields

While Punjab may be the only province that has banned children from working in private homes (though this still continues with impunity), Iqbal Detho, chair of the Sindh Human Rights Commission, has taken up the case of Fatima’s death and found many lacunae, or gaps in legal protection, in the complaint lodged by the parents. He said the incident could be investigated for breaches of bonded labour and child protection laws.

At the same time, the contradictions within the country’s constitution and the penal code about the legal age of children in work need to be addressed and revisited to protect children from abuse.

However, the most urgent need is for Pakistani society to realise that they are not doing a “good deed” by hiring the children of poor families.

AUSTRALIA

Five key moments from Qantas boss Alan Joyce’s Senate grilling

Elias Visontay Transport and urban affairs reporter

THE GUARDIAN AUS
Mon, 28 August 2023 

Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Alan Joyce has refused to answer questions related to his lobbying efforts, while delivering combative responses to allegations of Qantas misconduct, as he was grilled by a Senate committee on Monday.

At an explosive public hearing of the select committee on the cost of living, which Joyce had to be summonsed to after repeatedly refusing to appear, the outgoing Qantas chief executive defended the record $2.47bn full-year profit he announced just days earlier.

Related: Qantas record profit: delight for shareholders, distrust and derision from customers

Having faced accusations of anti-competitive behaviour, as well as historically high cancellation rates out of Sydney airport, soaring customer dissatisfaction and a looming class action over its Covid-era travel credits policy, Joyce opened the hearing by claiming Qantas had been caught up in a wave of “criticism of corporate profits” due to cost-of-living pressures.

Here are five key moments from the combative hearing:
Joyce denies Qantas credibility hit and defends his salary

In an explosive exchange between Joyce and the Labor senator Tony Sheldon, an ardent Qantas critic and former chief of the Transport Workers Union, Joyce was asked if he felt “embarrassed” with his personal pay – expected to be as much as $24m when he finishes as chief in November – given the airline’s soaring complaints and his decisions to restructure the airline to pay employees less.

Sheldon raised consumer complaints levelled against Qantas – the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has said Qantas was the most complained about company in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

He then asked Joyce if the Qantas board had ever raised with him “the fact that the credibility of Qantas has collapsed under your leadership”.

Joyce responded: “You’re making a whole series of points that are just incorrect.”

Sheldon said he was “getting very frustrated with your answers”.

Joyce repeatedly denied the premise of Sheldon’s questions.
Qatar Airways expansion

Joyce used the hearing to again defend Qantas’s right to have lobbied the Albanese government to reject a request from Qatar Airways to fly an additional 21 weekly services into Australia’s four major airports – Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane – beyond the 28 it currently operates under existing bilateral air rights.

While international air fares remain about 50% above pre-Covid levels, and Qantas remains constrained from increasing international services, Qatar’s push had been supported by state premiers, the tourism industry and partner airline Virgin Australia as making air fares cheaper and promoting economic spending and jobs.

Related: ‘Ghost flights’: Qatar Airways flying near-empty planes in Australia to exploit legal loophole

Joyce told senators it was impossible to answer if the extra flights – which he said Qantas had asked the government not to grant in October last year – would have brought air fares down, because the approval may have stopped other airlines from introducing competing services.

Asked repeatedly if Qatar’s expansion would have made international flights cheaper, Joyce said air fares were set to fall regardless of Qatar’s denied capacity.

Joyce then complained that Qantas also suffers from bilateral agreements limiting its expansion to other countries, and said “if you could wave a magic wand tomorrow and remove the bilateral system … we will be the happiest airline”.
Joyce refuses to divulge lobbying efforts

Joyce then refused to disclose if he discussed the proposal with the prime minister or transport minister. “Any conversations I have with the prime minister or a minister I never divulge. I’ve kept that for all seven prime ministers and I have no intention of changing my approach.”

Joyce also refused to answer a question about chairman’s lounge memberships for politicians’ family members.

“I’ve got privacy issues where we will not comment on who’s in, who’s been offered (a membership) ... I will not be making any comments, or confirming or denying it.”

The Nationals senator Matt Canavan suggested the committee may demand Qantas reveal those details.
‘Hoarding’ Sydney airport slots

Joyce faced repeated questions about Qantas’s high cancellation rate out of Sydney airport – with the Sydney-Melbourne route averaging a rate of just under one in 10.

He denied his company – which includes budget airline Jetstar – strategically schedules then cancels flights out of Sydney airport to block competitors from launching rival services, instead blaming air traffic controller shortages for stubbornly high cancellation rates out of the city.

Related: One in 10 flights between Sydney and Melbourne are cancelled. Is slot hoarding to blame?

When asked during the hearing, “Isn’t it true that Qantas actually has no intention of flying those flights and that you are indeed hoarding slots in and out of Sydney,” Joyce repeated his claim Qantas’s cancellation rate on a national level (not out of Sydney specifically) were the lowest of the major carriers.

He was interrupted with month-by-month cancellation data specific to Sydney routes and explained these with “supply chain issues” and “air traffic control delays”.

Joyce added: “To disrupt less customers, the easiest thing we can do is to concentrate the cancellations on a high frequency route like Melbourne-Sydney, because that means that there’s a flight every half hour we can re-accommodate people on (to).”

Canavan asked Joyce why Qantas’s cancellation rate out of Sydney was significantly higher than Rex Airlines’, given all airlines suffered from air traffic control shortages. Joyce said that while Rex only operated large jets between Sydney and major cities, “we (Qantas) have a network to protect”.
Outstanding flight credits higher than first thought

Another revelation was the true amount held by Qantas in credits for flights cancelled due to Covid-related restrictions.

Qantas in June announced more than $500m in Covid credits remained unclaimed and would expire by the end of the year. While refunds have been offered for some credits, not everyone was able to claim these, and a class action lawsuit is now claiming compensation for lost interest on the credits.

Recent figures from Qantas put remaining credits at $370m, and at Monday’s hearing, the Jetstar chief executive, Steph Tully, confirmed this number did not include Jetstar or overseas customers’ credits.

“Around $100m” in Jetstar credits remain unclaimed, on top of Qantas’s $370m, Tully said.

“You’re not being transparent,” Sheldon claimed. He then asked Tully “what’s stopping you from refunding the money”. Tully replied “lots of reasons”, citing codeshare flights and “half-taken trips”.

ChatGPT will lead to four-day week, says recruitment chief


Gareth Corfield
Mon, 28 August 2023 

businessmen with bowler hats and briefcases marching to illustrate worker productivity

Artificial intelligence programs such as ChatGPT will open the door to a four-day week and French-style working practices, the boss of one of the world’s biggest recruiters has said.

Jean “JC” Townend, president of Adecco in the UK and Ireland, said that chatbots are expected to increase such significant productivity gains that the working week could be shortened as a result.

She said: “I would put my money on ChatGPT giving us a four-day week.


“If you can get computers to do the really repetitive, boring parts of jobs that humans don’t like to do, then you can put the human on top to do the really creative, interesting parts.

“Productivity means either higher salaries or it means the ability to work less and receive the same salary.”

Britain is facing a productivity crisis with the UK at risk of being overtaken by the rest of the world in terms of living standards.

On current projections Poland will overtake the UK’s gross domestic product by 2030, as the country transforms itself into a tech and manufacturing powerhouse.

In 2021, an American worker was 26pc more productive than their British counterpart, producing $74.80 (£58.30) per hour worker versus $59.20 per hour for a UK worker.

Fears of the impact of a four-day working week on productivity have already led to crackdowns on the public sector.

A Cambridgeshire council was ordered to stop its four-day week experiment in June after local government minister Lee Rowley warned the authority it was potentially breaking laws that guarantee services for local residents.

Yet Adecco’s Ms Townend suggested a four-day week could lead to French-style labour market practices.

She said: “If you have a four-day working week we get what happened in France.

“When they changed the working hours laws more people went into the workforce, and people also took on extra jobs. So it actually increased the demand for jobs.”

Unemployment in France is running at 7.2pc, compared with 4.2pc in the UK.

ChatGPT itself faces growing challenges as public interest in the technology wanes. Software developers, seen as a key customer demographic for AI-powered productivity enhancement services, are turning their backs on it.

A third of UK developers do not trust the accuracy of AI tools, according to a recent survey by developer website Stack Overflow.

Two in five developers do not plan on using the technology at all, despite it powering services such as Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot code-writing AI, one of the Big Tech company’s flagship AI products.

UK Demonisation of landlords is putting middle classes at risk, says building society boss


Szu Ping Chan
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Mortgage payment crisis

Britain’s “demonised” landlords are dealing with a triple blow of crippling taxes, rising mortgage costs and increased red tape that has made the housing crisis worse, according to the chief executive of Skipton Building Society.

In a stark warning, Stuart Haire blamed unaffordable property prices and rising rents for a disappearing middle class, with more people pushed into social housing or forced to live at home with their parents for longer.

He said a toxic mix of rising costs meant it no longer made financial sense for some landlords to keep hold of their properties, piling pressure on the pipeline of properties available to rent.


Haire said: “The demand has gone. You’ve got a slightly demonised private rental sector and landlords are getting squeezed from a tax basis and from the increased mortgage rates they are having to pay if they have debt associated with that property.”

Haire, who runs Britain’s fourth largest mutual by assets, said new standards forcing landlords to make their properties more energy efficient were also adding to mounting costs.

The Bank of England warned earlier this month that renters were facing growing financial pressures that others have warned could trigger an arrears crisis “as landlords pass on higher mortgage and regulatory costs”.

Haire said: “Renters are going to find it less affordable to go into rented accommodation because the supply of rental accommodation will reduce, pushing prices up. That means more people are going to be dependent on social housing. And we don’t have enough social housing. We’ve got a lot of people on lists. And so you’ll have an awful lot of people maybe back living with the family in difficult circumstances, you’ll have a lot more social pressure.”

He said there was “a genuine risk of social cohesion breakdown” triggered by a lack of housing affordability and increasingly divided fortunes between the “haves and have nots” in society that could give rise to “desperate acts”.

“You get less people in the middle class, it becomes either a greater plutocracy or it becomes ungovernable. I’m talking in extremes. But these are the things I think about. If we’re not a caring society and more people move into the vulnerable thresholds, more desperate acts happen.”

The former HSBC executive added: “The more people who leave the middle classes and drip into struggling to afford things, the more unstable your politics becomes.”

Haire urged the Government to think harder about the impact of higher taxes and other costs imposed on landlords and ultimately renters, warning that many landlords were now unable to sell properties because of a lack of demand and rising mortgage costs.

“There’s [fewer landlords] coming in,” he said. “It’s just all becoming a bit hard. They’re not yet selling up, because there isn’t yet the level of buying demand in the market because mortgage costs are going up.

“Certainly if you view it economically rather than politically, you’ve got an asset class that used to yield ‘x’ per cent, and that has been reduced by extra borrowing costs, by the extra taxes, and you may also have to put capital into your property to make it more energy efficient. It’s just basic economics, so I think the government has to consider that.”

Rents rose at the fastest pace on record last month, with prices paid by tenants up 5.3pc in the 12 months to July, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), piling pressure on a group that tends to have more precarious finances than homeowners.

Bank of England data show renters have a median household income of £24,000, compared with £52,500 for those with a mortgage. Renters also have less squirreled away, with average cash savings of £750 compared with £5,500 for mortgage owners.

“Higher debt and lower savings would make renters more likely to face hard financial choices in the future – like defaulting or cutting spending – which could trigger or worsen a wider economic downturn,” Threadneedle Street analysts warned this month.

Haire said Britons spend more time in their homes than other nations, and take pride in putting their own mark on them.

Recent research by Bupa suggested two fifths of British adults spend less than an hour a day outdoors, which Haire said adds another dynamic to home ownership in the UK.

He added: “I’ve lived in England most of my adult life and for me, when you rent a place that’s not yours, it’s probably not your furniture, it’s not your walls, you can’t put a picture up. You never get the chance to fully personalise it. So I think in Britain, as opposed to some other places – a little bit because our weather is so rubbish – we spend more time in our houses than some other places.

“I spent a lot of time in Hong Kong. And some of the houses there are really challenged size-wise and so a lot of people live a lot of their lives out of them. Brits, however, tend to live a lot of their life in their houses watching television or whatever it is. And so the need for you to be able to personalise it and make it your own is high. You can’t really do that in rental accommodation.”

Haire said these brewing social issues were one of the key drivers behind Skipton’s decision to launch the UK’s first 100pc mortgage since 2008. The zero-deposit loan is available to first-time buyers who have paid their rent in full for at least a year.

While rising interest rates have led some to warn about the dangers of so-called negative equity if house prices fall, where people end up living in a property worth less than their home loan – Haire said the mortgage has been popular with members. “Over 30,000 people” have inquired about it, he said.

“We’ve had about maybe £40m of applications already and it’s really only two months old,” he said. “That’s still small in proportion compared with our £30bn mortgage book. But it shows that there’s quite a lot of demand out there. And it’s those types of offerings that have led to us increasing our first-time buyer percentages.”

Haire added that Skipton’s mortgage holders remain resilient – for now at least. Back in June when mortgage costs spiralled due to soaring inflation, Jeremy Hunt put pressure on lenders to offer borrowers more breathing space.

Many can now opt for temporary changes to their mortgage terms that lower repayments for a short time without affecting their credit rating.

Asked how many Skipton customers have asked for help, Haire said: “Very, very few.” In July, Haire said the building society received around 250 requests, and around 50 so far in August.

“So it’s small. It’s useful for the people who have it, but most of the reasons aren’t necessarily about the fact they’ve got an interest rate going from 2pc to 6pc,” Haire said. “It’s more to do with lifestyle, people just want that little bit of extra money in their pocket. They’re not struggling to feed their kids.”

BUISINESS IS AN AUTHORITARIAN HIERARCHY
Managers more likely than junior staff to be offered home working perks

Tom Haynes
Sun, 27 August 2023

manager working from home

Higher-paid management jobs are more likely to offer working from home perks while junior staff are more likely to be forced into the office, according to new analysis of jobs data.

Data compiled by jobs website Adzuna found the office was the most prominent workplace for entry-level to junior advertised positions, while “hybrid working” was the most common working style for roles advertising an annual salary of more than £40,000.

Job vacancies posted in July 2023 showed around a quarter of senior roles paying £60,000 or more to executive level advertised jobs were hybrid.


Last year, jobseekers looking for a senior role were more likely to be offered fully remote roles, with 29pc of job vacancies allowing them to work from home.

It comes despite government calls to push more workers into the office, amid fears of a slump in national productivity. Last year, the Government said the Civil Service would “lead the way in a return to office working”.

Steve Barclay, the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said: “We need to move away from a reliance on video meetings and get back to the benefits of face-to-face, collaborative working.”

The proportion of ‘office’, ‘hybrid’, and ‘remote’ jobs

Andrew Hunter, of Adzuna, said: “Senior managers and top executives not only have bigger paychecks but also greater flexibility.

“To effectively motivate workers to go back to the office, decision-makers should consider leading by example.”

Across the private sector, salaries for junior positions were found to be higher for employees working from home.

Analysis by market specialists the Stepstone Group found that the average salary for a hybrid worker was £42,000, compared to £37,000 for someone in the office full time.

That same analysis found there were three hybrid roles for every office-based job, meaning jobseekers desiring an office environment were met with lower pay and stiffer competition.

There are growing fears younger workers are missing out on vital guidance and career development by not being in an office with their superiors, who largely prefer to remain at home.

In May it emerged that Gen Z – roughly those born between 1997 and 2012 – were in fact leading the charge back into the office, according to the Chartered Institute of Personal Development.

The Institute similarly found that older workers were more likely to be in the “mainly work from home” category, and this was especially the case among high-skilled professional and managerial workers, such as managers, directors and other senior officials.

Writing in The Telegraph, Liz Emerson, of the Intergenerational Foundation think tank, said: “The social contract relies on the passing on of knowledge, training, expertise, behaviours, workplace culture and ethics to younger and future workers.

“The intergenerational transmission of workplace knowledge is at risk if older, senior workplace leaders ignore their responsibilities of passing these skills on to younger colleagues today.”

The enduring popularity of hybrid working, despite the easing of pandemic restrictions last year, has meant the average worker spends 1.75 days a week in the office, according to a study by AWA, a global workplace consultancy.

That same study found that company bosses were responding to the shift by reducing office space, often by downsizing – and that 37pc of employers were planning to reduce their office space through disposals, subletting or consolidation.

Roughly 70pc of offices in the study had less than 40pc attendance, while only five offices had attendance rates of more than 60pc.

Andrew Mawson, of AWA, said that while office attendance had risen, “we may have reached a steady state on hybrid working”.

He added: “While some organisations have taken a ‘let’s see what happens’ approach to hybrid working since the end of the pandemic, it’s now time for all organisations to develop holistic hybrid working policies and address a wide set of issues to prepare themselves for the future.”

UK

Jacob Rees-Mogg Among Top Tories Set To Lose Seat As Labour Heads For Election Victory

Kevin Schofield
Mon, 28 August 2023



Jacob Rees-Mogg could lose his seat at the next election.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is among a host of top Tories set to lose their seats at the next general election, a new poll has suggested.

At least five cabinet members also face being booted out by voters, according to the BMG survey for the i newspaper.


It gave Labour a 15-point lead over the Tories, enough to give Keir Starmer’s party an overall majority.

The poll puts Labour on 44%, the Conservatives on 29% and the Lib Dems on 10%.

If that result was replicated on election night, it could see Rees-Mogg lose his Somerset North East and Hanham seat, which he currently holds with a majority of 14,729.

Cabinet members Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Alex Chalk and Mark Harper would also be at risk, as would former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker.

The findings will pile further pressure on Rishi Sunak to turn around the party’s fortunes as MPs prepare to return to parliament next week.

The prime minister is already reeling from Nadine Dorries’s coruscating attack on him in her letter announcing her resignation as an MP.

Dorries followed that up yesterday by insisting the Tories cannot win the next election with Sunak as leader, and even refusing to say whether she will vote for the party herself.

In an interview with TalkTV, Dorries was asked if the Conservatives could win next year.

“I have to say my answer to that question is no, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s very unlikely.”

Dorries - a close ally of Boris Johnson - said: “The Conservative Party is broken.”

And asked if she would vote Tory, she said: “You are asking me a question I don’t want to answer.”

We should scrap cash. It is holding our country back


Ben Ramanauskas
Fri, 25 August 2023

Nigel Farage (Kirsty O’Connor/PA) (PA Archive)

A short-sighted campaign has begun to save cash. It certainly has some high profile backers including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage. A petition was signed and delivered to Number 10 which prompted a supportive statement from the Treasury.

While the campaign might be popular in some quarters, this does not make it right. Rather than try to save cash, we should be trying to speed up its demise starting with 1p and 2p coins.

Moving towards a cashless society would bring significant contributions to the country. The most obvious one being to bank customers themselves. For example, everytime you withdraw cash from a hole in the wall operated by a different bank, your bank pays an interchange fee. What is more, it is costly for banks and a poor use of their resources to pay people to dispense cash. All of this means that banks provide a poorer service to their customers then they otherwise would.

Then there are businesses. It is again costly and time consuming for businesses to deal with cash, especially change. Scrapping cash would allow businesses to serve customers more quickly, thereby making them more productive. This in turns can lead to more jobs being created, higher wages, and lower costs for consumers.

Going cashless could also spur innovation. Under the current system banks can simply rest on their laurels by ensuring that customers can pay for things if the bank is closed or a customer misplaces their card. Scrapping cash would mean that banks and FinTech firms would be motivated to create innovative new products to ensure that people can always have access to their money.

It would also help to fight crime. Violent crimes such as robberies and burglaries would hopefully become less common as it would be less likely that a business or a person would have as much of value on them which could easily be used and so would reduce the incentive for the would-be criminal. Moreover, it would make it much harder for criminals to enrich themselves through their illicit activities or launder money.

On a related note it would be good news for the public finances as it would make it much harder for individuals and firms to fiddle their taxes. This would reduce the burden on honest taxpayers while providing more funding for essential public services.

Going cashless will also help prepare the economy for the future. We saw in the turmoil caused by the Covid pandemic that many businesses preferred for their customers to pay by card or on app in order to protect their staff. This was not only problematic for themselves but also for their patrons who were not used to paying in these ways. Unfortunately many individuals and small businesses were unprepared for this and suffered as a result. We do not know what the future will bring and so it’s important that all businesses are prepared now if something similar were to happen in the future.

Furthermore, given that we are all experiencing relatively high interest rates the idea of them being lowered to a point where they were a few years ago might seem implausible. However, a future economic downturn would mean that the Bank of England would probably need to cut rates in order to stimulate the economy. Going cashless would help it to do this more effectively by allowing for the possibility of negative interest rates. This really isn’t possible while cash exists but going cashless would provide central banks with a powerful new tool to boost the economic growth in the future.

I am sympathetic to those who object to this on the basis of inclusivity. It is obviously right that the elderly homeless, and those in rural communities continue to have access to their money. However, this just lets the government and banks off the hook. They should be ensuring that it’s as easy as possible for elderly people to use a bank card to make payments. What is more, the government should ensure that every vulnerable person such as the homeless and refugees have a bank account and that, unless involved in crime, nobody is denied access to finance. Not only is this the right thing to do, it also creates opportunities for vulnerable people such as being able to rent property and get a job.

I am not suggesting we go cashless overnight. We should start by scrapping the pesky 1p and 2p coins and rolling out training and easy to use cards for those who might need them while ensuring that all vulnerable people in the country have a bank account.

Cash is holding the country back. If we want a strong and resilient economy then it’s time to scrap cash.

Ben Ramanauskas is a research fellow at Oxford University and an associate fellow at Bright Blue.