It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, September 03, 2023
UK
Two-thirds back taxes on wealthy to fund cost-of-living support, report finds
Almost two-thirds of voters support funding further cost-of-living support through taxes on the wealthy, a new report has indicated, just days after Rachel Reeves explicitly ruled out Labour introducing a wealth tax if it wins the next election.
The research, released today, also found that fewer than a quarter of those polled believe the cost-of-living crisis to be a priority for the Labour Party – with just 23% saying they thought it was a priority for the opposition, compared to 21% who said the same of the Conservatives.
The report was produced by the steering committee of the Stop the Squeeze coalition, a campaign bringing together more than 40 organisations to call for “bolder solutions” to the cost-of-living crisis, including guaranteeing affordable energy, boosting incomes and raising taxes on wealth.
The Shadow Chancellor said over the weekend Labour has “no plans for a wealth tax”, telling the Sunday Telegraph: “We don’t have any plans to increase taxes outside of what we’ve said. I don’t see the way to prosperity as being through taxation. I want to grow the economy.”
The party has previously set out several proposals to reform the tax system including scrapping the non-dom tax status, ending private schools’ tax breaks and cracking down on tax evasion and tax avoidance.
Momentum described Reeves’ announcement as “shameful”, tweeting: “Four people in this country have more wealth than 20 million Britons. Meanwhile, capital gains are taxed lower than income. This is a political choice to favour big business and the 1% over ordinary people.”
The new research from Stop the Squeeze – whose steering group comprises the Economic Change Unit, Tax Justice UK and the New Economics Foundation (NEF) – found that almost half (47%) of what they described as “key swing voters” do not know what Labour’s political priorities are.
More respondents said they thought Labour would do a better job than the Tories at tackling the cost-of-living crisis (40% compared to 21%). But three-quarters of those that backed Labour said they did not know what the party plans to do if elected.
The polling, which was completed by YouGov between July 25th and 26th, drew on a segmentation model developed earlier this year by the pollster alongside think tank Labour Together for its reportRed Shift.
The report outlined six separate groups of voters within Britain’s electorate and identified so-called ‘Stevenage woman’ and ‘Workington man’ as “critical” to Labour’s electoral success.
According to Stop the Squeeze’s report, by far the most popular option for further cost-of-living support among those surveyed was “policies that bring down the cost of energy for everyone” (58% for all voters).
The second most popular option was “policies that cut taxes on goods and services” (28%), followed by “policies that limit the rise in mortgage costs” (28%), “policies that increase the minimum wage” (26%) and “policies that limit the rise in rent payments” (24%). The idea of cutting taxes on incomes was less popular, coming 6th overall.
When asked how additional support should be funded, 64% of respondents said they would prefer for it to be paid for by “increasing taxes on rich or wealthy people”, compared to just 4% who backed tax rises for those on average incomes and 6% who supported additional borrowing.
Commenting on the findings, NEF senior economist Sam Tims said: “Ahead of the next election, voters’ priorities are clear: they want politicians to offer up bold solutions to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. Energy bills, housing costs and wages will be at the forefront of people’s minds.
“There is a golden opportunity for any political party that can offer voters both a short term-plan to support people through the cost-of-living crisis and the long-term change we need to improve living standards for good.”
Tax Justice UK head of advocacy and policy Rachael Henry said: “The public are ahead of the politicians. They want common-sense solutions. That’s why public support for fairer taxes on wealth is overwhelming.
“People know that, while they struggle to afford their food shopping and electricity bills, there are astronomically wealthy people that could be asked to contribute more. It’s high time our politicians caught up.”
‘Our report shows Labour must take a bolder stance on the cost of living’
Kate Dearden
31st August, 2023,
The summer recess is often known as ‘silly season’, but this summer has felt particularly stupid. Around a year out from a general election, and the government have spent their recess relentlessly focused on issues that don’t impact the lives of ordinary people.
We have had a week dedicated to small boats, endless stories about ‘eco activists’ and the new obsession: ULEZ. Meanwhile the cost-of-living crisis continues to hammer family finances, and the NHS is on its knees.
The extent of the disconnect has been laid bare by a new report from the Stop the Squeeze campaign, a coalition of civil society organisations, including Community union, campaigning for structural solutions to the cost-of-living crisis. The report, based on polling by YouGov, uses a segmentation analysis to pinpoint the views of crucial swing voters.
The NHS and the cost-of-living crisis remain voters’ top priorities
It finds that the NHS and the cost-of-living remain the two dominant issues for voters, and a key group of younger, economically insecure, swing voters value these topics far above all else. Unsurprisingly, the public have noticed the government’s desire to avoid talking about these issues – neither feature in the top two issues voters believe the government is focused on.
From a Labour point of view, there is much to be encouraged by. Labour enjoys a healthy lead on tackling the cost-of-living crisis with four in ten (40%) voters saying they think Labour would do a better job than the Tories who have the confidence of just two in ten (21%). Similarly, the party’s message on restoring economic security is resonating with voters, beating Conservative messaging among all the important voter groups.
Labour has done a great job in recent months of accurately attributing the blame for the crisis squarely at the door of the Conservatives, and that shows in the dire polling numbers for the government. But there is no room for complacency.
Voters aren’t clear what Labour will do to improve things
Labour should be wary of the fact that three-quarters of those who back Labour on the cost of living say they aren’t clear what the party would actually do to solve the crisis, and only one in ten (11%) 2019 Conservative voters prefer Labour on this issue, with 37% picking neither party. The Conservatives are definitely losing the argument on the cost of living, but to win it, Labour needs to articulate a vision of what comes next.
The Uxbridge by-election speaks to this vulnerability. The Conservative attacks on ULEZ attempted to position Labour as hurting the pockets of working people.
They had success with this strategy because they framed the debate about the fundamental issue that will define the next election: the cost-of-living crisis. This is why Labour should continue to highlight how vital the issue of economic security is and clearly demonstrate that people will be better off under a Labour government.
Of course, setting out more policy comes with its own risks, but the Stop the Squeeze research suggests that the rewards can be worth the trade off. The research found that there is support for bolder cost of living policies such as action to reduce energy bills, higher minimum wage and social security payments and greater taxes on the wealthy.
Bolder cost of living strategies could win votes for Labour
Combined with its successful critique of Tory economic mismanagement, this could deliver a 13-point swing towards Labour amongst crucial groups of voters, without losing the party substantial support elsewhere.
One critical issue within the research is energy bills, a problem that will only get worse as the weather gets colder and families start making calculations about when to turn the boiler on. The report also found the second priority of the key economically insecure swing voter group after fuel costs was raising the minimum wage, slightly ahead of action on rents and mortgages.
Compared to intervention against rising costs, tax cuts are not a vote winner. Income tax cuts came sixth in the priority list for reducing the cost of living, and parties would be better off focusing their energy and resources elsewhere when talking to voters.
Plurality believes the wealthy must pay more in taxes
When it comes to the critical question of how to foot the bill for all this, all demographic groups are united in believing that cost-of-living support should be funded by increased taxation of the wealthy, with this option receiving over 50% support among every single voter segment except the rural, heartland Conservative voters.
The cost-of-living strategy pursued by Labour has worked so far, focusing on government economic failures and leading the debate with popular interventions such as the windfall tax and the energy price freeze which were copied by the government.
While the groundwork has been laid, the focus now needs to be on developing a clear enough sense of how a vote for Labour would actually put pounds back in people’s pockets.
As the election approaches and the Tories focus on culture wars and creating debates about how to tackle climate change, this research shows Labour has a real route to power. With a clear policy offer, focused on tackling rising energy bills and housing costs, as well as raising the minimum wage, and funded by taxation of the truly wealthy, Labour will firmly place itself as the party of economic security, and that is what voters want.
Kate Dearden
Kate Dearden is head of research, policy and external relations at Community union. She is also a member of Renaissance's advisory board.
Turtle washed up on beach in Flintshire Wales flown over 4,000 miles to its home
Tally the turtle was stranded on the beach in 2021 during a storm, when she was discovered by a dog walker. She will soon be released into the Gulf of Mexico.
Tomos Evans Wales reporter Thursday 31 August 2023
Image:Pic: RAF Valley
A turtle has been flown to Texas after being washed up on a beach over 4,000 miles away from home.
She made the 22-hour journey by air to the US on Wednesday to be released from there into her native waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
The turtle had spent 20 months of rehabilitation at Anglesey Sea Zoo and her stateside return, which has been almost a year in the planning, "would not have been possible" without support from RAF Valley, according to Gem Simmonds from British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR).
Ms Simmonds told Sky News Tally's was an "unusual stranding", as not many turtles wash up on UK shores.
Most of those that do are loggerhead sea turtles but Tally was even more unexpected - a Kemp's ridley - the world's most endangered species of sea turtle.
Image:Tally the turtle is rescued. Pic: Gem Simmonds
"You're kind of a little bit reluctant to admit it because Kemp's ridleys are the most endangered turtle in the world," Ms Simmonds said.
"They're incredibly rare and they're only really found around the Gulf of Mexico, and sometimes the juveniles out into the Atlantic, but generally-speaking not in the UK and definitely not alive."
Tally was named after Talacre, the beach opposite the Wirral in the mouth of the River Dee where she was discovered by a dog walker during Storm Arwen.
"She was in a cold, stunned state and that's essentially a state of unconsciousness, and that involves organs shutting down and they float around on currents and what will eventually happen is they'll die and they're at risk of being hit by boats and all sorts of stuff, so really at the mercy of the oceans at that point," Ms Simmonds added.
"We assume that she'd just essentially hitched a ride on the gulf stream; they do that to migrate up the Eastern Seaboard [of the US] anyway, become unconscious... and she'd been knocked off in the storm and ended up with us here in little old North Wales."
Tally the turtle flies home. Pic: RAF Valley
Tally has now safely landed in Houston, where she will be assessed and is expected to be released in the coming days.
"We're just so happy that she's going back to where she belongs," Ms Simmonds said.
"It's just the impacts of climate change and multiple other things that we are getting them ending up over here."
UK
Whitehaven coal mine: Protesters occupy proposed site
Published
Image caption,
The protesters said they would stay on the site for a week
Environmental protesters have occupied the proposed site of the UK's first new major coal mine in decades.
The group, called Earth First, arrived in Whitehaven, Cumbria, on Tuesday and said it planned to stay for a week.
Plans for the mine were approved in December despite concerns about its impact on climate change.
Former mayor of Copeland Mike Starkie said the group should "clear off", stating there was "no viable alternative" to the proposed mine.
The Woodhouse Colliery scheme was finally signed off by the government at the back end of 2022, after years of back and forth which saw the plans stall after initial approval by Cumbria County Council.
Operator West Cumbria Mining says the extraction of millions of tonnes of coking coal for steel production will create 500 highly skilled local jobs, with up to 1,500 more in the supply chain.
Objections to the scheme centre on environmental concerns about the generation of more greenhouse gasses.
A legal challenge to the government's approval was launched but was quashed in the High Court in April, although those behind it insist their cause is not lost.
It is unclear how many protesters are at the site on the outskirts of the west Cumbria town but a marquee, numerous tents and several vehicles could be seen from the perimeter fence.
The group refused to speak to the BBC, but in a statement said it had "squatted" the site in protest against the plans.
It read: "We have chosen to occupy the site of the proposed Whitehaven mine to send a message to those on these isles and across the world, this mine will not go ahead, leave the coal in the hole."
Image caption,
Mike Starkie, former Conservative mayor for the area, is a supporter of the mine
Mr Starkie, the former Conservative mayor for the area, is a supporter of the project and said the protesters were "not welcome" in Whitehaven.
"First of all, clear off. Get out of our town. you're not wanted here," he said.
"Currently, we need to use the coal to make steel and there is no viable alternative."
The BBC understands the land, on the site of a former chemical works, is owned by West Cumbria Mining although the company did not respond when approached for comment.
Saturday, September 02, 2023
‘License to kill’: How ‘Stand Your Ground’ gun laws are fuelling random shootings and racism across the US
Josh Marcus reports on a growing body of laws making it easier to ‘shoot first and ask questions later’
I
n America, seemingly any interaction, from the innocuous to the intimidating, can end in gun violence.
Consider this year alone.
April saw multiple high-profile shootings. In Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old with dreams of pursuing a career in engineering, was shot at point blank range for ringing the wrong doorbell. A group of young cheerleaders in Texas were shot when one accidentally entered the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot. Kaylin Gillis, 20, was fatally gunned down in rural New York after mistakenly pulling into the wrong driveway. And Kinsley White, a six-year-old from Gastonia, North Carolina, was shot alongside her parents when her basketball rolled into a neighbour’s garden.
The violence continued into August, when University of South Carolina student Nicholas Anthony Donofrio, 20, was fatally shot when he violently attempted to enter the wrong home near campus. At the end of the month, police announced the killing was legally justified, citing state self-defence laws.
Ralph Yarl: Prosecutors charge Kansas City homeowner for shooting teen
Experts say these unpredictable acts of violence are made worse by so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, provisions that the US Commission on Civil Rights once dubbed a “license to kill.”
"If this is the sort of thing where ‘stand your ground’ can be enforced, then every US postal worker, every Amazon delivery person, every pizza delivery person, every Girl Scout volunteer, anybody knocking on your door now becomes someone who’s subject to be shot," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said of the Ralph Yarl shooting in an interview on MSNBC.
Traditionally, under the law of self-defence, deadly force is considered a last resort, and people generally have a duty to retreat from a situation if possible before resorting to lethal violence, according to Professor Kami N Chavis, director of the William and Mary Law School Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform. At home, though, the “castle doctrine” often applies, meaning one doesn’t need to retreat from a deadly threat.
However, she told The Independent, in the estimated 35 states with explicit Stand Your Ground legislation or similar provisions, the law takes things one step further. In these (often Republican) states, the castle doctrine has been expanded and the duty to retreat eliminated in venues well beyond the home. Fatal force can be used not just to stop imminent threats of harm, but also prevent burglaries, or in states like Florida, even to stop an unarmed person from entering an unoccupied vehicle.
“I am opposed to stand your ground laws because they don’t allow people to de-escalate their situations,” Professor Chavis said.
The first such law passed in Utah in 1994, and they’ve since spread across the country with the backing of millions of dollars from the gun lobby and the political clout of conservative-leaning advocacy outfits like the American Legislative Exchange Council, according to Ari Freilich, state policy director of the Giffords Law Center, an advocacy group attempting to reduce gun violence.
Despite this concerted and highly successful effort, the laws, he said, weren’t even proposed as a solution to any well-defined problem with public safety or criminal justice law.
The National Rifle Association helped lobby for the spread of Stand Your Ground-style laws at the same time as gunmakers began marketing high-powered weapons for self-defence
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
“There was no real problem that they were solving,” Mr Freilich said. “There’s not a person sitting in jail that they’re pointing to saying that their use of force should’ve been justified.”
Rather, Mr Freilich said, Stand Your Ground came about as the gun industry was trying to drum up new sales with the decline of traditional money-makers like hunting.
“It took them some time. They have now developed a new market. That market was fear-based,” he said.
The new business plan revolved not around selling hunting rifles, but rather high-powered semi-automatic pistols and assault weapons for a newly ascendant notion of “self-defence,” playing on racialised fears about the rise of terrorism and urban violent crime.
The combination of numerous guns, relaxed standards for self-defence, and poorly trained but highly armed individuals has caused a powder keg in states with Stand Your Ground laws.
Studies show Stand Your Ground laws drive up violent crime, and often apply disproportionately to protect white gunmen
Stand Your Ground cases also invite personal, and often racist, subjective judgements into lethal situations, according to experts. First, an individual’s perception informs when they think they’re under threat, then a jury must decide whether that was reasonable.
According to the evidence, this scheme often ends up creating a shadow right to self-defence, where white people claiming to be under threat from Black people are trusted at greater rates than when the situation is reversed.
In Stand Your Ground states, 45 per cent of cases with a white shooter and a Black victim were deemed justified, compared with just 11 per cent of cases with a Black shooter and a white victim, according to a 2021 Giffords report.
“If we’re going to have these laws, they seem to have some racial inequities built in,” Professor Chavis said. “That may not be a problem with that law, that’s a societal issue. If we know that and we study that, we ought to try and remedy that.”
If not, she said, there will be more cases like Ralph Yarl’s, where an individual’s perception causes violence with lifelong effects.
“Black adults deliver mail and DoorDash and Uber Eats and have car trouble... This law is just another avenue to perpetuate racial disparities and to allow people to unfortunately exercise their racial prejudices implicitly or explicitly in very dangerous ways,” she added.
“Your very being cannot be a threat.”
And yet it seems that may be exactly what happened in Ralph Yarl’s case.
Andrew Lester has been charged with assault for shooting Ralph Yarl
(Reuters/MerrittForTexas)
The teen was sent to pick up his younger brothers from a friend’s house, and suspect Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, shot him within seconds of the youth approaching his front door. The man, now charged with assault, told police he was “scared to death” by the sight of the child on his doorstep.
Legal experts like Professor Chavis say Mr Lester, who has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear back in court 31 August, doesn’t have a particularly strong self-defence case – even with all the subjectivity the law allows, touching a doorknob isn’t a lethal situation to most people – but Stand Your Ground law has a way of defying common sense notion when it comes to the concept of self-defence.
In 2012, for example, the killer of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was acquitted in part under the law. Local resident George Zimmerman called local police to report a “real suspicious Black guy” wearing a hoodie in his neighbourhood. Even though 911 operators urged Mr Zimmerman not to pursue the youth, he did so anyway, and killed the teen in an altercation that followed.
The killer of Trayvon Martin was acquitted in part because of Stand Your Ground laws
More recently, in 2020, there was the case of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Two armed white men chased the Black man down in a truck, thinking he had trespassed at a local construction site, cornering him before eventually fatally shooting him. Police initially declared the conduct a justified homicide under Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law.
If self-defence can include an interaction one deliberately provoked, there is little that seems to fall outside the concept.
There are some signs, however, that despite the proliferation of guns into everyday life, and laws which make their use less likely to face scrutiny, some officials believe self-defence and Stand Your Ground have their limits.
In California, legislation is moving forward requiring people to pass a written safety test, with questions about safety and de-escalation, before acquiring a licence to carry weapons in public.
In a country with more than one mass shooting per day and more firearms than people, barring dramatic changes to gun laws and US society more broadly, the next random shooting seems less a matter of if, but when.
Beyond just what’s on the law books, Mr Freilich of the Giffords Center says Stand Your Ground is reflective of a larger cultural message.
“That has been interpreted, that has been heard by some people, as an unambiguous encouragement for people to use force in more situations and more impunity, to shoot first and ask questions later,” he said.
Why Trump’s ‘Kubrick Stare’ mugshot is straight out of the horror film playbook
ByRobbie Collin August 31, 2023 —
Take a good, hard look at the Kubrick Stare: a fixture of the films of Stanley Kubrick, and one of cinema’s most recognisable shots. How does it work?
Well, for a topical example, consult the recently released police mugshot of Fulton County Jail inmate number P01135809, AKA former US president Donald J Trump.
Donald Trump’s Georgia mugshot.
The face is angled downwards rather than up, emphasising the brow, and the eyeline not directed at something far out of shot, but angled uncomfortably close to the viewer’s own.
It’s Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket, just before he shoots R. Lee Ermey, then himself. It’s Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, smirking from under the brim of his bowler hat. It’s Jack Nicholson in virtually every scene in The Shining – and, in all honesty, the rest of the time, too.
Like the Spielberg Gaze – an upturned face aglow with wonder – the Kubrick Stare is also implicatory. Perhaps incriminating is a better word, since the onlooker is being made party to the subject’s bubbling derangement.
“You know what’s going on here,” it seems to say. “And I know you know. And I know you don’t like it. And I like that you don’t.” So as expressions you might choose for your police mugshot go, it’s quite the flex.
Malcolm McDowell in the film Clockwork Orange.
Versions of the stare have appeared in Kubrick’s work since at least 1964’s Dr Strangelove, and in other directors’ oeuvres even before that.
(Anthony Perkins’ climactic leer to the camera in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, from 1960, is as Kubrick Stare-y as close-ups get.)
But it was McDowell’s unhinged chief droog, Alex DeLarge, in Kubrick’s own A Clockwork Orange from 1971, who definitively pinned down the look. Vincent D’Onofrio in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.
CREDIT:WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.
In a 2014 interview, McDowell revealed that Kubrick had asked him to come up with an expression he could use as the character’s reaction to a deafening blast of Beethoven’s 9th.
“So I was doing various things,” he recalled. “[My] eyes were kind of up and glazed over, and [my] mouth kind of took on a weird look. And when he started to laugh, we knew we had it.”
Actors and filmmakers have been deploying it with skin-crawling success ever since.
Anthony Hopkins smiling in his cell in The Silence of the Lambs might be the most chilling Kubrick Stare that Kubrick didn’t direct.
Joaquin Phoenix delivered a particularly upsetting one as the young Emperor Commodus in Gladiator, with flecks of blood on his face. And for Heath Ledger, it was understandably the go-to expression for the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Film director Stanley Kubrick in action in 1971.
Given the highly constructed nature of the shot, it’s always especially fun when a Kubrick Stare is spotted out in the wild.
Trump’s mugshot now seems likely to dominate this lively sub-genre, though other recent notable examples include a number of Madonna’s recent Instagram selfies, including an eyebrow-twisting corker from February 2020, and a January 2022 appearance by Elmo from Sesame Street, in which the fluffy red Muppet listens to his friend Zoe sing a song about Rocco, her pet rock. The brink of madness is closer than we might like to think.
