UK

Oxford asylum seeker charity boss reacts after Home Secretary's latest comments

Oxford Mail reporter
Sun, 24 September 2023

Mark Goldring of Asylum Welcome (left) and Home Secretary Suella Braverman Pictures: PA Media (Image: PA Media)

The head of an Oxford-based charity set up to welcome refugees to the country said there was ‘nothing new’ as the Home Secretary suggested a shake-up of international rules to address the migrant crisis.

Suella Braverman questioned whether legal frameworks created more than 50 years ago were still ‘fit for purpose in an age of jet travel and smartphones’.

She has previously said she personally wants the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, signed in 1950, claiming it had hampered the government’s efforts to introduce tougher policies – including sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

“Illegal migration and the unprecedented mass movement of people across the globe is placing unsustainable pressures on America, the UK, and Europe,” Ms Braverman said.

The Home Secretary was speaking ahead of a speech in Washington later this week setting out her assessment of the challenges of global migration.

READ MORE: Real life dating app swindler met victim in Oxford

Mark Goldring, director of Oxford-based Asylum Welcome, told the Oxford Mail that there was ‘nothing new’ in Ms Braverman's latest comments.

“It’s a continuation of the hostile environment where, really, the only policy is if we sound nasty we’ll put people off coming and our problems will be resolved,” he said.

Asked what impact Ms Braverman’s words and the headlines had on asylum seekers supported by the charity, Mr Goldring said: “People are very confused because it’s hard to work out what’s rhetoric and what is reality.”

One asylum seeker currently housed in a hotel at the Kassam Stadium complex had been due to speak at Asylum Welcome’s annual general meeting earlier this week, he said.

But shortly before the event, the man received a notification he would be transferred to Dorset-moored mega barge Bibby Stockholm when people could be moved onto the floating accommodation.

Mr Goldring said of the devastated man: “He was in no fit state to talk to anybody and had to withdraw from the event. The emotional pressure is significant.”

On Sunday, chairman of campaign group Migration Watch UK, Alp Mehmet said Ms Braverman was right to ‘call out the conventions’ and suggested the UK should withdraw from the ECHR and the United Nations Refugee Convention if reforms were not made.

“We have long been saying that both the Refugee Convention and ECHR are outdated and ill-suited to modern challenges,” Mr Mehmet said.

However, Refugee Council chief Enver Solomon said: “What we need is a fair process for people who come here in search of safety and protection.”

The government should be addressing the ‘real issues’ in the asylum system, such as the backlog in processing asylum claims.

Hollywood writers reach 'tentative' deal to end strike over AI and compensation

Sky News
Updated Sun, 24 September 2023 


A "tentative" deal has been reached to end a long-running strike by writers in Hollywood.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the group which represents studios, streaming services and producers in negotiations.

A statement from the WGA said: "We have reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language.


"We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional - with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership."

The three-year contract agreement - settled on after five days of renewed talks by negotiators from the WGA and the AMPTP - must be approved by the guild's board and members before the strike officially ends.

Read more on Hollywood strikes: How much of a threat is AI?

The terms of the deal were not immediately announced.

The statement added: "To be clear, no one is to return to work until specifically authorised to by the Guild.

"We are still on strike until then. But we are, as of today, suspending WGA picketing. Instead, if you are able, we encourage you to join the SAG-AFTRA picket lines this week."

The agreement comes just five days before the strike would have become the longest in the guild's history, and the longest Hollywood strike in decades.

About 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America walked off the job on 2 May over issues of pay, the size of writing staffs on shows and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the creation of scripts.

In July, the SAG-AFTRA actors' union started its own walkout which is yet to be resolved.

It said in a statement: "SAG-AFTRA congratulates the WGA on reaching a tentative agreement with the AMPTP after 146 days of incredible strength, resiliency and solidarity on the picket lines.

"While we look forward to reviewing the WGA and AMPTP's tentative agreement, we remain committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.

"We remain on strike in our TV/Theatrical contract and continue to urge the studio and streamer CEOs and the AMPTP to return to the table and make the fair deal that our members deserve and demand."

Social media is a double-edged sword for the public image of Canadian labour unions


Vincent Pasquier, Professeur en GRH et relations professionnelles, HEC Montréal, 

Christian Lévesque, Professeur de Relations du Travail, HEC Montréal,

 Marc-Antonin Hennebert, Professor of Human Resources Management, HEC Montréal
Sun, September 24, 2023 

THE CONVERSATION

There is hope that social media can breathe new life into the labour movement. (Shutterstock)

Union membership in Canada has been declining over the past four decades. In 2022, the percentage of employees who are union members fell to 29 per cent from 38 per cent in 1981. This decline has been partly attributed to the stagnant or outdated image of unions, which makes it difficult for some workers to relate to these organizations.

There is hope that social media can breathe new life into the labour movement. Social media platforms offer unions the opportunity to communicate with their members, advocate for their causes, address grievances and rally public support swiftly and efficiently.

However, social media is not a panacea for the challenges facing unions. Our recent research reveals that rather than revitalize the public image of unions, social media can sometimes have the opposite effect, underscoring a serious concern: the potential for unions to become invisible online.
Widening the divide

Our research has identified four ways in which social media can distort the image of unions. First, it can increase the “us versus them” divide between unions and entities like companies, employers or governments. This growing divide can be partly attributed to the normalization of vehement or abrasive disagreements online.

This effect is reminiscent of the heightened political polarization we are witnessing today with the widening chasm between left- and right-leaning groups. Social media has played a role in exacerbating this type of polarization.

According to the union communication managers we spoke to, there is a higher tolerance for aggressive communication online. This phenomenon is fuelled by the fierce competition among organizations vying for the fleeting attention of social media users.

An argumentative online culture and the fleeting attention of social media users have led some unions to adopt briefer, less nuanced and more assertive communication styles. (Shutterstock)

The combination of these two factors — an inherently argumentative online culture and the pursuit of attention — has led some unions to adopt briefer, less nuanced and more assertive communication styles. The fervour generated by such polarizing content can rally supporters and drive conversations that amplify the union’s message.

Importantly, not all unions experience this effect to the same degree. Our findings indicate that unions with an activist background are more likely to be polarized online.
Self-centeredness

The second way social media can distort the online image of unions is by fostering self-centred behaviour. Social media has been shown to encourage narcissistic behaviour in its users and our research suggests this also applies to organizations like unions.

Unions can unintentionally distort their online image by portraying their members in an overly positive way. Our research found that content praising union members tended to generate more engagement, such as likes, comments or shares. As a result, some communication managers gravitated towards this type of content to increase online engagement.

This tendency was most pronounced in unions with a homogeneous membership and strong professional identity, where fostering a sense of professional pride is easier.
Becoming a caricature of themselves

The third way social media can distort the online image of unions is through caricaturing, a process that exaggerates the characteristics of a union to the point of appearing absurd or grotesque.

This type of distortion likely stems from the pressure to maintain an active online presence by posting frequently. All the unions in our study posted between five to seven messages weekly on their Facebook pages.

However, not all the unions had fresh or engaging content to share regularly. As a result, their communications often became overly repetitive and focused on routine activities, such as union meetings, assemblies and the signing of collective agreements. This led to an exaggerated, caricatured online representation of the unions.

Unions most susceptible to self-caricaturing online were those with a more bureaucratic mindset, as they were less likely to have new and interesting content to share consistently.

Disappearing behind the news

The final way social media can distort the online image of unions is through what we call the “fading effect.” This occurs when communication managers over share news articles from external media outlets, rather than sharing news directly related to the union itself.

This can result in a decline in an organization’s visibility and relevance online — to the point where the identity of the union almost disappears. This effect becomes more pronounced when there is no accompanying text or references connecting the shared news articles to the union or its members.

Unions most susceptible to the fading effect are those with social media managers who lack expertise or those that have a servicing model of unionism as opposed to the organizing model.

Unions that only share news articles, instead of news about themselves and their members, risk fading into the background too much. (Shutterstock)

Invisibility on social media

Social media can be a double-edged sword for labour unions. While certain distortion effects may yield positive outcomes, others have negative effects. Polarizing and self-centredness, for example, can be beneficial because they increase online engagement, but caricaturing and fading effects can decrease online engagement.

A lack of engaging online content poses a significant risk to unions, potentially rendering them algorithmically invisible. Studies have shown that caricaturing and fading effects are prevalent among unions, increasing the risk of the labour movement being marginalized in the digital public sphere.

Since communication plays a key role in bolstering the power of unions, there is a legitimate concern that social media could weaken their ability to defend workers’ rights, instead of strengthening it.

Our research underscores the need for unions to think about how they can transform their images online with more effective social media communication. As the labour movement adapts to the digital age, the balance between engagement and algorithmic visibility is vital for the future of workers’ advocacy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Vincent Pasquier, HEC Montréal; Christian Lévesque, HEC Montréal, and Marc-Antonin Hennebert, HEC Montréal.

Read more:

Can ❤️s change minds? How social media influences public opinion and news circulation

Striking a balance: How the law regulates picket lines

Christian Lévesque receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture.

All work and low pay — Europe’s migrant workforce

Despite Europe's extensive labour shortage, it seems incapable of improving the poor working conditions that migrant workers find themselves in

WORK AND DIGITALISATION 18.09.2023 | Ankita Anand

Pexels/Mark Stebnicki

These oppressive structures exist not only in traditional factories and on farms but also in the online world of platforms and the ‘gig’ economy.


According to the World Migration Report 2022, Europe hosts some 87 million international migrants. Almost 10 million workers in Europe are ‘non-EU citizens’, of whom a number would fall into the ‘essential’ category.

Majority-world workers might have been compelled to migrate in search of employment. But there is also a demand for their labour in European markets. Yet, as with most employer-employee equations, this is not exactly a symbiotic relationship.

Migrant workers in Spain have lived in places with ‘far worse conditions than a refugee camp, without running water, electricity, or sanitation’.

In Europe and Central Asia combined, there are 4.1 million forced labourers. In Serbia, Indian workers have been driven to organise public protests in pursuit of unpaid wages. (Of course, workers from the Balkans are also discriminated against when they go to work in Western Europe.) In Italy, farm workers are dying by suicide. Migrant workers in Spain have lived in places with ‘far worse conditions than a refugee camp, without running water, electricity, or sanitation’. Women who went to work as domestic workers in diplomats’ houses in Switzerland have had to file coercion and trafficking cases against high-profile bosses.

This oppressive structure exists not only in traditional factories and on farms but also in the online world of platforms and the ‘gig’ economy. In Germany, a company offering cleaning services can undercut all others while still profiting from the informal workers it recruits. The workers, on the other hand, operate in isolation from one another with little or no bargaining power.
Forced into flight

So why do workers from the Global South still migrate to Europe? For many, it is not a happy choice — driven by climate disasters, political strife, persecution of minorities and unemployment in their places of origin. The unemployment rate in India, for example, was at a 45-year high even before the pandemic.

Corrupt governments do play a part in a country’s poor economic condition, but the colonial shadow of the loot of natural riches, plus contemporary extractivism towards the same resources by already privileged nations, cannot be ignored. And there are ample cases of political instability in the majority world (take the continuing chaos in postwar Iraq) driven by the interests of the Global North.

Those in the Global South who could survive on a domestic income but choose to cross borders are drawn by the old dream of ‘a better life’: decent wages, dignified working and living conditions, equal rights. Some migrant women from India I spoke to admitted that life abroad was not easy. But, they said, their families grudgingly respected them as breadwinners and did not see them only as liabilities to be married off.

Men also talked of enjoying a higher status in their countries of origin if family members were working abroad. For those battling class, caste and religious discrimination, such social acceptance by their communities makes a world of difference. Ultimately, as the poet Nissim Ezekiel puts it, ‘Home is where we have to gather grace.’
A system in need of an update

Labour shortages in Europe make a business case for the region to forge a new contract with its migrant workers. Yet, not only economics but humane principles – of liberty, equality and dignity – should drive the change.

The convoluted visa processes of employing states cry out for overhaul. An abstruse system ostensibly inviting workers makes them the victims of illicit agents (in home and host countries) who facilitate their migration while charging a tidy sum in ‘fees’ workers can ill afford. Aspiring migrants are then driven into debt bondage, which can later be compounded by wage theft.

Strict registration rules for companies have to be in place, with regular checks to ensure compliance.

Not knowing the host country's language makes workers especially vulnerable to exploitative middlemen and prevents them from seeking assistance from legitimate sources. Workers may also stay in the shadows, fearing they lack the complete documentation to work in Europe — they can freely report wrongdoings only when they know their migrant status will not lead to sanctions. This anxiety can even keep them from seeking essential medical help.

To ensure proper integration of migrants with members of host communities, there should be more initiatives at the state and local levels, as commended in 2022 by the Council of Europe, including language courses and programmes to create awareness among workers of their rights. In the ‘common basic principles’ agreed upon back in 2004, the European Union recognised integration as a ‘two-way process’, rather than putting all the onus on migrant workers to find their way.
Dehumanising workers

Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ – ‘The Billows Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production and decrease your overhead’ – reminds us of the importance of state intervention, so that company (or land) owners preoccupied with ‘decreasing overheads’ do not dehumanise workers, perceived as mere mechanical hands.

Strict registration rules for companies have to be in place, with regular checks to ensure compliance. When it comes to the ‘gig’ and informal workers supporting the digital economy, regulations have to be implemented with urgency — already some platforms have been lobbying hard against such legislation.

Many migrants, however, work in an atmosphere of fear. They are not likely to name their abusers, so interviewing them does not reveal all. In examining their living and working conditions, more frequent, unannounced inspections can help. Inspectors must present themselves as figures one can turn to for redress, not as people to run away from. Unions can act as a bridge between workers and public officials.


Some workers daring to raise their voices have thus been left baffled trying to identify the competent authority to address their grievances.

For the migrant worker, moreover, the immediate contact is often a recruitment agent or contractor. When incidents of abuse are exposed, the primary hirer must not be able to plead ignorance and must be brought to account.

Companies operating in one country may, however, be registered in another. There is already a lot of push and pull around what the employing country’s responsibilities are and when the home country should come in to protect workers’ interests. A corporation based in one region, headquartered in another and with affiliations with several other companies further adds to the confusion.

Some workers daring to raise their voices have thus been left baffled trying to identify the competent authority to address their grievances. Workers attempting to earn their daily wages cannot confront these legalities alone: they require free or low-cost legal assistance.

Warsan Shire’s poem ‘Home’ begins:

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

Majority-world workers leaving their ancestral abodes, due to a raft of challenges, have filled Europe’s labour vacancies. But the paucity of labourers across the continent could keep growing — if workers travelling to it fail to find a workplace where promises of fair and timely pay, safety, health and rights are not only made, but kept.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

The masters of greenwashing

The UN’s SDGs are not the answer to the global crises. In fact, with their techno-optimistic, finance-focused approach, they make things worse

ECONOMY AND ECOLOGY 22.09.2023 | Albert Denk | IPS

elkhiki (CC BY 2.0)

In the current global economic order, value chains based on exploiting other people and their natural resources only remain the best ‘business plan’ if your aim is to generate profit.

Disillusionment pervaded the UN summit in New York. On 18 and 19 September, member states met to discuss progress towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Half way towards the 2030 deadline, just 15 per cent of them are on track to be met, and up to 30 per cent have even seen a regression.

This elicited broadly similar reactions across the board, namely that it was vital to ensure the goals are still achieved after all. To that end, the international community is pinning its hopes on the twin pillars of digitalisation and finance. Via a large dose of techno-optimism plus injections of new funds (Germany, for instance, is giving the World Bank around €300 million from the budget of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development), it is thus aiming to achieve a very different outcome over the remaining seven years, while in fact pursuing an essentially unchanged approach. It’s hardly surprising then that the summit’s speakers seemed to be stuck in the rhetorical no-man’s land of hopes, dreams and wishes. That they were forced to resort to such vague exhortations to keep the faith is down to the fact that participants face enormous practical constraints, and are also hamstrung by the contradictions of the 2030 Agenda itself.

Right at the start of the summit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on the member states not to focus on the reasons for this failure and on mutual finger-pointing, but to instead redouble efforts to achieve the SDGs. It’s an approach that calls to mind Kurt Tucholsky’s maxim that those who point out muck are much more dangerous than those who create it. The question of whether the international community should admit that the SDGs themselves are a problem was thus rendered taboo by those at the very top. There is, it would seem, no exit strategy from the current plan.
The UN’s grand delusions

Sustainable development is the best business plan of all, Guterres stated earlier at the SDG Action Weekend. What he chose to ignore was that, in the current global economic order, value chains based on exploiting other people and their natural resources only remain the best ‘business plan’ if your aim is to generate profit. Sustainability and economic growth are almost always contradictory, despite the masterclasses in cognitive dissonance and greenwashing offered by summit participants.

SDG 8’s goal of sustained economic growth is emblematic of a grand delusion perpetuated by the UN. The constant quest for more is at best partly responsible for and at worst instrumental in many of today’s global problems. After all, some of the very biggest international corporations are those behind the exploitative fossil fuel use that has caused a global climate crisis and led to structural inequality between different regions of the world.


Mostly, the end result of a constant quest for more is more problems – improvements for the worse, as it were.

At this mid-way point, summit participants expressed disappointment that, despite the agreed goals, not enough has been done to tackle global warming. Six out of nine planetary boundaries have already been breached. These sentiments, however, stand in contrast to the dropping of fossil fuel reduction as a goal, which happened before negotiations on the SDGs even began. Any discussion of such a goal would have resulted in oil-producing countries refusing to come to the negotiating table at all.

The SDG summit saw the adoption of another new declaration, after facilitation by Ireland and Qatar. There is, however, still no mention of reducing fossil fuel use in this 10-page document, something both countries, given their current situations, benefit from. According to ecological footprint assessments, the average per capita CO2 emissions are currently more than three times too high in Ireland, and more than nine times too high in Qatar. For the declaration to talk of countries’ vulnerability to climate change while remaining silent on fossil fuel use is frankly absurd.

Another grand delusion within the UN is that member states intend to meet the development goals despite crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, the SDGs foster a way of life that positively facilitates global crises. SDG 9, for instance, talks about building infrastructure, the consequences of which include an increase in impervious surfaces, deforestation and the destruction of wildlife habitats. One result of this is an ever-increasing animal-to-human transmission of pathogens, as people around the globe experienced in the recent pandemic. Likewise, famine, an issue repeatedly emphasised during the summit, is connected not to the quantity of infrastructure, but to a massively unequal distribution and blockades on supplies. Mostly, the end result of a constant quest for more is more problems — improvements for the worse, as it were.

Ultimately, the UN development goals seek to preserve an unsustainable way of life.

A third grand delusion becomes apparent if we look at the issue of global social inequalities. SDG 10 includes, among other things, a division into sustainable and non-sustainable countries in relation to their migration policies, where countries with high refugee populations are classified as non-sustainable. This seeks to create border regimes aimed at controlling and separating people. The declaration adopted at the SDG summit goes even further, with its emphasis on ‘taking into account national circumstances’ representing an extreme watering down of commitments. Here, sustainable development, in effect, means that people’s movement should be restricted or entirely curtailed. True social justice would mean the exact opposite, given that those who migrate are the people most likely to experience upward social mobility. At present, we are seeing crises of control at Europe’s external borders and those of the United States, places that have become mass graves for tens of thousands of people. In terms of social justice, sustainability would mean open migration routes, i.e. fewer individual state borders. By focusing on the consolidation of border regimes and thus preventing global mobility for individuals, the SDGs, on the other hand, promote a deepening of social inequalities. Indeed, there could hardly be a more potent symbol of the failure of the United Nations in general than its underlying principle of discrete states that seek to keep people apart.

At this mid-point in the 2030 Agenda, one thing should by now be apparent: the elephant in the room is that, if participants are serious about meeting the challenges of today’s polycrises, then the SDGs are not the answer. Ultimately, the UN development goals seek to preserve an unsustainable way of life. It seems baffling to wish to uphold prevailing notions of prosperity while completely ignoring the frequent crises they cause. Sustainability means ensuring the world is, at the very least, no less liveable for future generations than it is today. As we saw from the SDG summit, member states are set to allow even this most basic goal to be missed, while their techno-optimistic, finance-focused approach risks making global crises worse.

Large Landspout Swirls Through Kansas

NOT A TORNADO

Storyful News & Weather

 Sep 20, 2023

What the National Weather Service said was a landspout was seen swirling near Nekoma, Kansas, as the area was under a severe thunderstorm warning on September 19.

Credit: Lindsey Broin via Storyful

 

WATERSPOUT

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MH370 

HE HAS A 'KIND' OF A POINT

Russian FM accuses West of direct fighting in Ukraine

AFP
Sat, 23 September 2023 

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reponds to a question during a press conference following his address to the 78th United Nations General Assembly (Ed JONES)

Western powers through their support to Ukraine have effectively entered direct fighting against Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

"You can call it anything you want, but they are fighting with us, they are straight-up fighting with us. We call it a hybrid war, but that doesn't change things," Lavrov told a news conference at the United Nations.

US President Joe Biden has repeatedly said he is seeking to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia, a fellow nuclear power, and will not send American troops. His administration has also distanced itself from Ukrainian attacks into Russia itself.

But Lavrov pointed to the billions of dollars in Western military equipment provided to Kyiv since Russia attacked last year, as well as US and British intelligence support and the presence of Western military advisors.

Westerners are "de facto fighting against us, using the hands and bodies of Ukrainians," Lavrov said.

"I think everybody present here who pays at least some attention to... the situation in Ukraine knows very well that Americans, Britons and others are fighting, first of all, through providing more and more weapons," he said.

He also pointed to the presence in Ukraine of Western mercenaries. The United States and several other Western governments say that they discourage citizens from traveling to Ukraine and that such fighters have gone on their own.

Lavrov was taking part in the annual United Nations General Assembly, where all eyes were on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who flew to New York to appeal for greater support against the invasion.

Zelensky on Wednesday addressed a special Security Council session, in which he demanded that Russia be stripped of its veto. Lavrov showed up well after the Ukrainian president had spoken.

"I watched it on TV. He seemed rather grim," Lavrov said.

"But I have my own affairs to attend to. We all knew what he was going to say, so why waste time?"

Zelensky has promoted a 10-point blueprint for ending the war that would include a complete Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory -- including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014 -- and a special tribunal for accountability on war crimes.

Lavrov scoffed at Zelensky's plan and denounced the United States and European Union for backing it.

"It is not realistic and everybody understands this, but at the same time they say this is the only basis for negotiations," Lavrov said.

"We draw our conclusion that nobody wants to seriously show an understanding of what is happening," he said.

On ending the conflict, "under these circumstances, if they say it's on the battlefield, then fine, it'll be on the battlefield."

nr-md-sct/mlm/dw

UK

Business chiefs urge Labour to consider ‘fantastic’ plan to rejoin EU under new membership scheme

Adam Forrest
Sun, 24 September 2023

Labour leader Keir Starmer has ruled out rejoining the bloc if his party comes into power (PA)

Business bosses have urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to consider a bold plan to bring Britain back into the EU’s orbit through “associate membership”.

The French and German governments commissioned a report recommending a new outer tier for non-members, which could be open to the UK, in a bid to forge closer economic ties.

Under the associate membership plan, outer-tier countries would be expected to contribute to the EU’s annual budget in exchange for “participation” in the bloc’s single market.


Labour insisted the idea was a “non-starter” – but eyebrows were raised when it emerged that Sir Keir had told fellow leaders at a conference in Canada that “we don’t want to diverge” from EU rules.

British trade chiefs frustrated by Brexit red tape told The Independent that they welcome the idea of associate membership – saying it would be “fantastic” to remove tariff barriers and cut down on current friction.

It came as The Independent revealed that Sir Keir and French president Emmanuel Macron held secret Brexit talks in Paris and “covered all the difficult issues, not just pleasantries” – although Sir Keir has ruled out rejoining the bloc if Labour comes into power.

Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), said: “Anything that makes trading with the EU more seamless would be a good thing – it would be a big improvement on what we have.”

He added: “I’d like to think Labour, and all parties, would keep an open mind about associate membership. When it comes to regulation and standards, at the moment we’re behaving as though we were in Europe – but with all this bureaucracy and costs that are damaging productivity and adding to inflation.”

The BMPA has backed Labour’s plan to seek a new veterinary agreement in an effort to remove some agriculture and food checks when Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal – the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) – is reviewed in 2025.

But Mr Allen said it is worth going further and exploring the option of associate membership if it would mean wider alignment with EU rules. “We would want to see full regulatory alignment,” he said. “It would make things a lot easier. We could still discuss with the EU some of the ways we would like to diverge at certain intervals, like Switzerland does.”

Keir Starmer discussed Brexit with Emmanuel Macron in Paris last week (Laurent Blevennec/Presidence de la Republique)

Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, said Britain’s food supply chain has suffered badly since waves of confusing new rules came into force with Brexit.

“A model that would see a more sensible economic arrangement between the two sides would be fantastic – so much better than the last six years. From a business point of view, we want the UK and EU to be as cooperative as possible,” he said.

But the supply-chain leader warned that full regulatory alignment would make Britain a “rule-taker” – an outcome that is unlikely to be popular with either a Labour or a Tory government.

Mr Brennan said a bespoke “equivalence” agreement on some mutually shared regulations might be better, adding: “It’s all about the details. If associate membership is about regulatory equivalence, to remove a lot of the friction in the movement of goods, it would be attractive.”

The Port of Dover has seen continual disruption in the wake of Brexit (AFP/Getty)

William Bain, head of trade at the British Chambers of Commerce, said associate membership is an “interesting idea” – but added that the UK remains “substantially down the list” when it comes to the EU’s desire to open up talks on a new trading relationship.

Asked about the prospect of Labour picking up the idea, Mr Bain said: “A new political dynamic can change things, but it’s difficult to see any appetite in Brussels at the moment to substantially rewrite the TCA or come up with a bespoke agreement.”

Germany and France commissioned an EU overhaul blueprint, dubbed “Macron’s onion”, which proposes the creation of three new tiers. The most closely aligned states would form an “inner circle”, with a secondary group of less closely integrated members and an outer tier of non-members with access to the single market.

A European diplomatic source told The Times that the plan had been designed with Labour in mind, despite Sir Keir having ruled out rejoining the EU single market.

A video clip of an event in Canada showed Sir Keir suggesting that the UK could have a stronger economic relationship under Labour because the party has the same ideas as Brussels on regulation.

“Most of the conflict with the UK being outside of the [EU] arises in so far as the UK wants to diverge and do different things to the rest of our EU partners,” the Labour leader said.

He added: “Actually, we don’t want to diverge, we don’t want to lower standards, we don’t want to rip up environmental standards, working standards for people that work, food standards and all the rest of it.”

The Tories accused Sir Keir of plotting to “unpick” Brexit. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: “I think those kinds of comments about not wanting to diverge will worry a lot of people that what he really wants to do is to unpick Brexit.

“And we are going to make a tremendous success of Brexit. We’ve already started to do so. And there’s lots more to come.

“We want to be good friends with our neighbours across the Channel. But I think any suggestion that you want to align our laws and regulations with the EU will worry a lot of the people who voted for Brexit.”

Scottish port feels force of UK fishing storm


Véronique DUPONT
Sat, 23 September 2023 

The industry has faced a wave of complications and added financial costs (Andy Buchanan)

In Peterhead, a major port in northeast Scotland and Europe's largest wholesale market for white fish, Brexit was supposed to offer "a sea of opportunity" for locals.

Instead they have suffered a wave of complications and added financial costs in recent years, even before the impact of surging inflation.

"Careful what you wish for, it hasn't turned out as they promised," Mark Addison says in front of his trawler, the Benarkle II, which is moored just behind Peterhead's fish market.


"It's been the hardest three years," he tells AFP. "Brexit followed by the (Ukraine) war was just a double whammy."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent prices soaring worldwide, with the fishing industry hit hard by rocketing fuel prices and large cost increases for key equipment such as nets.

Even though fishing represents just a small fraction of Britain's economy, it became a key negotiating issue in the country's new trade deal with the EU, as UK politicians rallied behind the island's rich maritime history.

- 'Make it work' -

In 2019, Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, visited Peterhead as he sought re-election for his Conservative party on a platform of Brexit promotion, telling locals: "It's a sea of opportunity up here."

Johnson also made a trip to Grimsby, a major fishing market in northern England.

But for Addison, he was "sold a lie" over Brexit.

"There's been issues with queues, passports, paperwork... There's always something, which is a big problem with fresh-produce fish," he says.

Delays to UK exports have caused the prices of some white fish to drop.

Together the problems have offset what Addison calls a welcome increase in fishing quotas for the UK in the English Channel and North Sea waters separating the island nation from mainland Europe.

Although the quotas are larger, Addison says he must be more selective in what he catches. Fish whose flesh spoils quickly are no longer worth catching.

Before Brexit, his family business caught as much as it was allowed to, with the assurance of earning a good price at the Peterhead auctions.

Despite the changes, "you have to make it work", he says with a look of resignation. "I have three sons on that fishing boat."

In a hall the size of a football pitch, hundreds of boxes of fresh-caught fish are lined up under a pale neon light, ready to be sold.

Around fifty sellers, wearing plastic boots, raincoats or padded jackets to guard against the chill inside, will have sold 6,000 cases of fish in under two hours to the bidders gathered in the early morning.

- Labour shortage -

Graeme Sutherland, co-director of Whitelink Seafoods, was in favour of Brexit but says promises made by the UK government have yet to bear fruit -- and he remains hopeful of even higher quotas.

"It's still not delivering at the moment, we're still hoping," he says with a smile.

His family business, which catches and processes fish, employs nearly 200 people. It has been hit by a cost-of-living crisis, resulting in less income from the sale of prime produce such as monkfish.

Brexit ended the free movement of people between Britain and the EU, which means for Alistair Brown, operations director at Nolan Seafoods, finding staff has become difficult.

"Labour shortages are crazy. We need foreign people for processing," he says.

"Fishermen thought Brexit was going to be utopia for processors. It's been a disaster, it only brought extra costs. Everything is strained because of costs, inflation in the end."

Fisheries biologist Bryce Stewart of the University of York said there were some large fisheries that had seen benefits from Brexit.

"On the other hand, small scale fishermen, which make up the majority of boats... they've seen basically no benefits at all," he said.

"If you talk to the average fisherman, he would probably tell you that it's left them either no different or worse off."

ved-bcp/rfj/har/cw

Scientists warn next pandemic 'already on the way' and 'we got lucky with Covid'

Matthew Evans
Sun, 24 September 2023 

A virus akin to the Spanish flu could soon be causing havoc among society

 (Image: Getty)

Scientists have revealed fears surrounding the next pandemic that is 'already on the way' and believe we got off lightly with COVID-19.

Disease X - as it has been dubbed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) - is a probability rather than a possibility and could hit at any moment.

It could come from a million undiscovered viruses and it could kill 50 million people globally, 20 times more deadly than coronavirus, which caused 2.5million deaths.

The next pandemic could be on a similar scale to the Spanish flu. From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish flu infected an estimated 500 million people globally and killed 10% of those infected.

WHO believes vaccines will need to be created and delivered in a rapid response to combat the disease.

It adds that its devastating effects are likely to far outweigh that of Covid, which the world was dangerously unprepared for when it hit in early 2020.

Kate Bingham, who chaired the UK's Vaccine Taskforce between May and December of that year says we shouldn't be complacent just because Covid-19 is now "largely regarded as a routine illness".

The 57-year-old Dame warned in the Mail: "Let me put it this way: the 1918–19 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, twice as many as were killed in World War I.

"Today, we could expect a similar death toll from one of the many viruses that already exist. Today, there are more viruses busily replicating and mutating than all the other life forms on our planet combined. Not all of them pose a threat to humans, of course - but plenty do."

"In a sense, we got lucky with COVID-19"

She revealed that scientists are currently aware of 25 virus families, which each comprise up to thousands of individual viruses that all have the potential to evolve into a pandemic.

On top of that, it is estimated that there could be around a million more undiscovered viruses lingering out there which could leap from species to species and have the capability of killing millions of human beings.

She continued: "In a sense, we got lucky with COVID-19, despite the fact that it caused 20 million or more deaths across the world.

"The point is that the vast majority of people infected with the virus managed to recover. Imagine Disease X is as infectious as measles with the fatality rate of Ebola [67%]. Somewhere in the world, it’s replicating, and sooner or later, somebody will start feeling sick.

"We need to take the first steps in dealing with the next pandemic right now — and that involves putting money on the table. Yet there’s very little evidence that we’re prepared to spend anything remotely comparable on protecting ourselves from real viruses - the ones that could kill us.

"The monetary cost of inaction is seismic. After all, even Covid-19 - a milder virus than Disease X - managed to leave us holding a bill for $16 trillion in both lost output and public health expenditure."

Kate said it is crucial that we discover a collection of "different prototype vaccines for every threatening virus family" that we know of before the next pandemic begins.

"With that "head start" vaccines could be engineered to "target the very specific features of Disease X", which thankfully is "not impossible at all".