‘This is Rishi Sunak’s recession’: How the left reacted to news the UK has entered recession

Basit Mahmood 

Yesterday

Left Foot Forward

With yet another major pledge broken in an election year, here’s how some of the voices on the left reacted to the news

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The UK has once more entered recession, despite Rishi Sunak’s repeated claims that the economy had ‘turned a corner’. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics are a major blow to Sunak’s authority, given that he had promised to ‘grow the economy’ as one of his five key pledges to voters when he took office.

With yet another major pledge broken in an election year, here’s how some of the voices on the left reacted to the news.

The Trades Union Congress slammed years of ‘Tory stagnation’. Responding to today’s GDP figures, showing GDP fell by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “The UK economy is in dire straits. After years of Tory stagnation, we are now in technical recession.

“The Conservatives’ economic failures are hitting jobs and living standards. With household budgets at breaking point, spending is down and the economy is shrinking. At the same time our crumbling public services are starved of much-needed funding.

“After being in power for 14 years, the Tories have driven our economy into a ditch and have no idea how to get out.

“It’s time for a government with a serious long-term plan and strategy for renewal, to revive our economy and sustain growth into future.”

Labour’s Darren Jones, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told Times Radio: “The fact we are now in recession shows that his plan has failed and the Conservative Party has run out of ideas for turning it around.”

Jones went on to add that GDP per head has been declining quarter on quarter across the whole of the last year, highlighting how the public has endured the largest reduction in real living standards since the 1950s.

LFF columnist Prem Sikka blamed the Tory government for the recession. He posted on X: “UK economy fell into recession at the end of last yr. Crisis made by the Govt – Real wage cuts, high rents & interest rates; no curbs on profiteering; soaring cost-of-living.

“Govt doing more of the same, enriching a few. Must redistribute income/wealth.”

The New Economics Foundation posted on X: “It’s no surprise the UK fell into a recession at the end of last year given this government’s long standing mismanagement of the economy and the Bank of England’s panicked interest rate rises.

“This government’s longstanding failure to invest means that the UK will struggle to rebound. For ordinary people this means low wages, falling standards of living and crumbling public services.

“We need the government to seriously increase investment in green industries, public services, housing and skills to boost our productivity and secure the increase in living standards we deserve.”

Journalist and commentator Paul Mason posted on X: “The UK is in recession – it’s official. Nothing “technical” about it: it’s induced by a clueless government and a bunch of free-market loons at the Bank of England. Only Labour has a plan for growth…”

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: “Rishi Sunak’s promise to grow the economy is now in tatters. The prime minister can no longer credibly claim that his plan is working or that he has turned the corner on more than 14 years of economic decline under the Conservatives that has left Britain worse off.

“This is Rishi Sunak’s recession, and the news will be deeply worrying for families and business across Britain.”

Rishi Sunak brutally mocked after predicting economy had ‘turned a corner’ day before recession was announced

Basit Mahmood 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

“I absolutely believe that the economy has turned a corner and we’re now pointing in the right direction.”

Rishi Sunak has been brutally mocked online after predicting that the UK economy had turned a corner and was on the up, less than 24 hours before official stats revealed that the economy had in fact entered recession.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that gross domestic product (GDP) fell by a larger than expected 0.3% in the three months to December after a decline in all main sectors of the economy and a collapse in retail sales in the run-up to Christmas.

The UK saw no economic growth between April to June and a 0.1% contraction in July to September, ONS revisions show, confirming a second consecutive quarter of falling national output-which means the country has hit a recession.

A clip being shared on X (formerly Twitter) shows Sunak speaking to the first meeting of the 2024 Business Council on February 14, where he says: “I absolutely believe that the economy has turned a corner and we’re now pointing in the right direction.”

He added: “Everyone is predicting us to grow this year. I think PwC has said that we’re going to outperform from France, Germany and Japan this year.”

News that the UK has entered recession will be another blow for Sunak’s authority, given that he made ‘growing the economy’ one of his 5 key pledges to voters when he took office.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: “Rishi Sunak’s promise to grow the economy is now in tatters. The prime minister can no longer credibly claim that his plan is working or that he has turned the corner on more than 14 years of economic decline under the Conservatives that has left Britain worse off.

“This is Rishi Sunak’s recession, and the news will be deeply worrying for families and business across Britain.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

Watch and read Rachel Reeves speech savaging “Rishi’s recession” as UK economy falters

Tom Belger 15th February, 2024

Rachel Reeves, centre. Photo: Labour

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves held a press conference this morning on the state of the UK economy, upping the ante for Labour attacks on “Rishi’s recession” as new data shows the economy shrinking. You can watch back her speech in central London via the link below.

New Office for National Statistics figures show a 0.3 per cent decline in gross domestic product – the total value of goods and services produced in Britain – at the end of last year.

With voters going to the polls in the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections today just as Labour faces heavy criticism over suspended candidates’ controversial comments elsewhere, the party is seeking to shift political focus onto the Tories’ woes.

Reeves pinned the blame for the recession on the Tory government and set out Labour’s “plan for growth”. She said earlier on Thursday that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to grow the economy is “now in tatters”.

Read Reeves’ speech in full on the UK recession and Labour’s plan for growth

Good morning. The Office for National Statistics has today confirmed that Britain has fallen into recession. And we now know that, GDP per capita fell in every quarter of the last year.

Let me start by saying that this is deeply worrying news for families struggling to make ends meet, and for businesses too.

These are provisional figures. They may change.

But it is absolutely clear that Britain remains trapped in a spiral of economic decline.

This isn’t a question of lines on a graph. It’s about the health of our high streets; about growing businesses; secure, well-paid jobs; and money in the pockets of working people.

The British people did not need to see these figures today to tell them that the economy is not working. That we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis and that they are worse off.

But these numbers shine a spotlight on the scale of that failure.

The confirmation of recession exposes a government and a Prime Minister completely out of touch with the realities on the ground.

A government that for too long has looked on economic failure with complacency, content to be managers of decline.

Rishi Sunak claims that he has a plan, but the plan is not working.

He claims the economy has turned a corner, but the economy is shrinking.

He claims he doesn’t want to take us back to square one, but we are going backwards.

The Prime Minister’s claims are in tatters. The cornerstone of his leadership has been shattered. The promise to grow the economy has been broken.

Our economy is now smaller than when Rishi Sunak entered 10 Downing Street in 2022.

Having spent years in the slow lane, Rishi Sunak has now put our economy into reverse.

This is Rishi’s recession and it is the British people who will pay the price.

This is simply the latest chapter in a long story of economic failure and stagnation.

A story that reaches back more than a decade, felt in stagnant household incomes, in the decay of our high streets, and in creeping insecurity.

I often think of a young family I met in Worthing, almost two years ago now.

A mum and dad, working five jobs between them, struggling to make ends meet, constantly juggling work and childcare.

As a family, they only get half a day a week together. They felt that any hope of buying a home of their own had evaporated. Good people. Working hard.

And do you know what the mum said to me? She said: “you just wonder if you’re doing something wrong”.

Well something has gone profoundly wrong. Because an economy that isn’t working for working people, isn’t working at all.

It is time the Conservative Party took some responsibility.

The origins of many of the crises that we have faced are global – pandemic, war, energy crisis.

But their consequences have been exacerbated by the choices of Conservative governments.

Each time crisis has hit, Britain has been acutely exposed.

First, austerity, which choked off investment.

Next, years of political instability, which has fuelled economic instability.

Brexit without a plan.

The Conservatives’ mini budget, sending mortgages and interest rates soaring.

Five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, 11 plans for growth – each yielding less than the last.

If the UK economy had grown at the average rate of other OECD economies over the past decade, it would now be £140 billion larger – equivalent to £5,000 per household every year.

That would also mean an additional £50 billion in tax revenues to invest in our crumbling public services.

Today, the average British family is 20 per cent worse off than their German counterparts.

One in three working-age families have less than £1,000 in savings.

And the typical family renewing their mortgage this year will find themselves paying an additional £240 a month.

Over this year and last, the fixed rate mortgages of more than three million people will come to end, all paying the price of the Tory mortgage bombshell.

And there are 700,000 more people out of the workforce now than when the pandemic struck four years ago.

The Conservative Party can’t fix the problem, they are the architects of the problem. Britain needs change. Our economy needs change.

Not just a change in government. A change in our economic approach, casting aside failed economic ideas in response to a new age of insecurity.

To embrace a new, emerging economic consensus that this Conservative government chooses to ignore. It’s what I call ‘securonomics’.

From instability and short-termism to a mission-based government, prioritising economic security, for families and for our country.

Pro-worker and pro-business, in the knowledge that each depends on the success of the other.

A plan based on the understanding that wealth doesn’t just trickle from the top down.

It comes from the bottom up and the middle out – from the talent and the effort of millions of ordinary people and businesses.

The times demand resolve, discipline, and a new vision for Britain in a renewed world, and a serious plan to back them up.

A plan supported by British business and developed in partnership with British business.

With Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, this is what you will get. This is Labour’s plan: stability, investment, reform.

Stability brought about by iron discipline, guided by strong fiscal rules, robust economic institutions, and with every policy that we announce – every line in our manifesto – fully costed and fully funded.

Investment, through partnership with the private sector: to steam ahead in the industries of the future, with a modern industrial strategy and a new National Wealth Fund to invest alongside business, in our automotive sector, in our ports, and in the future of our steel industry.

And with a new national champion in homegrown power, Great British Energy, leading the way on floating offshore wind, tidal and nuclear power, to ignite growth; boost our economic security, drive down energy bills, and create good, well-paid jobs in all part of Britain.

And reform, starting with our planning system, taking on vested interests to get Britain building again.

Supporting working people to develop the skills to thrive in the changing world of work, to make work pay with a genuine living wage and a new deal for working people.

To cut the NHS backlog and get people back to work.

Stability, investment, reform: the foundations of a plan to break free of the Tories’ vicious cycle of stagnant growth, rising taxes, and falling living standards. To repair our economic security.

I am under no illusion about the scale of the challenge that we may inherit. There are no short-cuts, no quick fixes, no easy answers. There are hard choices ahead.

We will not shrink from those choices, nor the hard work required for a decade of national renewal.

Labour will fight the next election on the economy. Every day we will expose what the Conservatives have done to our country.

Because the questions people will ask ahead of the next election are simple: do you and your family feel better off after 14 years of Conservative government?

Do our hospitals, our schools and our police work better than 14 years ago?

Frankly, does anything in our country work better than when the Conservatives came to power 14 years ago?

Here is further evidence today, in black and white: Britain has fallen into recession.

It’s time to turn the page on 14 years of Conservative failure. It’s time to demand better than managed decline. It’s time to start a new chapter for Britain.

Shining a light on overlooked Black women photographers

By Suyin Haynes, CNN
Thu February 15, 2024

Photographer Suki Dhanda's "Untitled" from the 2002 series "Shopna," features in Joy Gregory's new book "Shining Lights." Courtesy the artist/MACK


CNN —

The genesis of photographer Joy Gregory’s latest project, “Shining Lights,” began 40 years ago, at a Valentine’s Day party in London. It was here that Joy, who was the first Black woman to study an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London, first met activist and writer Araba Mercer. After the party and as they became friends, Mercer suggested the pair collaborate on a book about women’s photography.

“I knew lots of photographers who were emerging at that time,” Gregory recalled over tea in a cafe near her studio in south London. “So I persuaded all of the people I knew to submit work.” They presented their plan for the book — comprising the photographs gathered by Gregory, and text by Mercer — to Sheba, a feminist publishing collective focused on Black women’s storytelling that Mercer was a key member of. Sheba was enthusiastic, but the cost of printing all the submitted photographs ultimately proved prohibitive.


Jennie Baptiste's image "Portrait of two girls from a series for Fashion Designer Wale Adeyemi MBE," 1995. Courtesy the artist/MACK

The idea then, for a book surveying the work of Black women’s photography in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, lay dormant for several decades. But a 2019 talk Gregory gave at Autograph gallery in London about photographer Maxine Walker’s work sparked renewed interest in the contribution of women of color to photographic art during this period.

The result is “Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain,” a new photography book edited by Gregory and co-published by Autograph and Mack. Divided into thematic chapters exploring community and activism, kinship and family ties, travel and landscape photography and more, “Shining Lights” features 57 photographers, capturing the rich breadth of work from this overlooked period and community.
Telliing the stories no-one else was

The book includes work by well-known artists such as Walker, whose photographic practice centres on representations of Black womanhood, surrealist artist Mona Hatoum, and Turner Prize nominee Ingrid Pollard, whose images in the book use portraiture to examine gender and sexuality.

"Her" by Maxine Walker, from the series "Black Beauty," 1991. 

Courtesy the artist/MACK

As well as casting the work of these artists in a new light, the project also introduces readers to photographers working during that time who are perhaps not as well known. Examples include Jacqueline Moran Daubercies, whose vibrant photographic practice focused on Latin American women and children, and Maria Pedro, whose poised self-portraits in the book reimagine herself as historical Black female royalty.

“What’s really interesting about history, and the way that history is recorded, is there’s always heroes, but actually, it was a collective,” Gregory told CNN in an interview. “And I think a lot of the collective has been written out of the history.”

“Shining Lights” then is Gregory’s considered effort to write in that missing history. Reconnecting with old networks and contacts to gather the material for the book was a meticulous task, with Gregory posting callouts in her own Facebook group as well as others and spreading the word around different creative networks.

Eileen Perrier's "Ghana," dating to 1995-96. 

Courtesy the artist/MACK

She says that while some of the book’s contributors are now recognizable photographers, others have moved on entirely from photography since that era. Some had forgotten or not revisited their work during the interim decades, or had even lost large portions of their work. Gregory recalls one contributor arriving at her studio with three big bags of undeveloped negatives, consisting of close to 10,000 images. “That’s basically an entire book there, but again, that’s one of the people that’s completely disappeared from view.”

“That was the problem with going back and looking at the magazines and publications that were produced in the 1980s to try and find a trace of the women that are in this book,” said Gregory. “That wasn’t there because they weren’t picked up at that time, and nobody was telling their story.”

Joy Gregory, "Junie - Kingston, Jamaica, 1997," also features in her new book Shining Lights. Courtesy the artist/MACK

For some of the book’s contributors, Gregory says, revisiting that time and the poor treatment they received from the industry was painful. “It was reliving those disappointments…people were traumatized by the experience, and that wasn’t surprising, but it was shocking, in a way.”

An inaccessible medium

This era for Gregory, who was awarded the prestigious Freelands Award in 2023, was foundational. “I think I wouldn’t really have a practice without that period, obviously,” she said. Her own photographic series, “Autoportrait,” features in the book; originally made in 1990, it consists of a series of nine self-portraits of Gregory posed at various angles, looking both directly into and turned away from the camera.

She recalls how those among her network were often shut out of inaccessible arts institutions and forced to work at the margins. “Now, everybody has access to photography with their mobile phone; then it was a much more technically inaccessible medium,” she said.

Maria Kheirkhah's image titled "I Think Therefore I Question," from 2002-03. 

Courtesy the artist/MACK

Often faced with disappointment and rejection, these photographers rallied together. “There was a move to actually educate and help each other, and there was a lot of sharing of materials and knowledge,” she said, adding that community centres played an important role in offering space for learning. Gregory gives one example of photographer and curator Mumtaz Karimjee teaching herself how to do cibachrome color printing, and then teaching others in the network the same skill.

“The way in which people supported each other was really important — well, essential — because the other networks were not open to us,” said Gregory. “I think as women, it wasn’t open, and I think being of color, it definitely wasn’t open.”

In the book, Black “refers to the whole gamut of color, which was really about difference,” says Gregory. “Anybody who was different and seen as outside was included under that title Black, and it was more of a political identity, more than anything else.”

An installation view of Virginia Nimarkoh's "Afrotopia 1," from 1991. 

Courtesy the artist/MACK

A 1987 essay written by Karimjee and included in the book explains this definition and feeling in more detail. It’s one of several contextual essays and conversations in “Shining Lights,” both from the present day and from the 1980s and 1990s, on themes including the abuse of power in photography, identity in British arts and cultural production, and change and continuity for new generations.

On this note, Gregory feels that in some ways, the landscape today remains similarly inaccessible, meaning that the enterprising, do-it-yourself attitudes of the 1980s and 1990s are still present among new and emerging artists. One example featured in the book is photographer and filmmaker Ronan Mckenzie, who established her own independent exhibition space, HOME, in London in 2020.

Joy Gregory's "Autoportrait 1990 / 2006," also features in the book. 

Courtesy the artist/MACK

“I feel that a lot of the issues that we were dealing with in the 1980s haven’t gone away, and I think to include those essays actually highlights that,” said Gregory, adding that she hopes it will be encouraging for younger artists to see the work, perspectives and leadership of those who have preceded them.

While Gregory played a vital role in the book’s creation with support from associate editor Taous Dahmani, she emphasizes that it’s more about the dozens of photographers whose work is finally receiving overdue recognition

“The book is women in their own voices,” said Gregory. “That’s what I wanted to bring. So in a way, I feel that this is not my book. This is their book.”

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain is published by Mack and Autograph

Fragments of Asteroid With Mystery Origin Are Found Outside Berlin

Astronomers tracked the entry of a small space rock into Earth’s atmosphere, and then meteorite hunters made an unexpected discovery.

A meteorite that fell near Berlin on Jan. 21 was found be an aubrite, a rare class with unknown origins that some scientists argue may be pieces of the planet Mercury.

Credit...Peter Jenniskens/The SETI Institute

By Jonathan O’Callaghan
Jonathan O’Callaghan wrote about the origins of aubrites in 2022.
Feb. 10, 2024

Scientists have found pieces of a meteorite that fell near Berlin just after midnight on Jan. 21. It is a rare find, from an asteroid that was identified just before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. Only a handful of such events in the recent past have allowed astronomers to trace an incoming rock’s origin in the solar system.

Early analysis of the fragments has shown something equally rare. The meteorite is an aubrite, a class with unknown origins that some scientists argue may be pieces of the planet Mercury. They are so rare that they made up just 80 of the 70,000 or so meteorites that were collected on Earth before last month’s event.

“It’s really exciting,” said Sara Russell, a meteorite expert at the Natural History Museum in London. “There are very, very few aubrites.”

The asteroid that became the meteorite (or rather fragments of meteorite) was initially spotted by Krisztián Sárneczky, a Hungarian astronomer, three hours before it hit Earth’s atmosphere. A network of cameras tracked the incoming rock, 2024 BX1, as it fell near Ribbeck, a village outside Berlin. Estimates suggest the rock was tiny, less than three feet in size. It still made a brilliant flash that cameras in many parts of Europe picked up.

Video

Numerous cameras caught the asteroid’s entry over Germany. 

Video by Michael Aye, via Storyful.

As soon as he heard the news of the meteorite fall, Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, bought a plane ticket.

More on GermanyBracing for a Confrontation: German leaders have begun voicing concern that the security of Germany and Europe has been fundamentally threatened by a newly aggressive Russia. But the German public remains unconvinced.

Labor Unrest: Security screeners walked off the job at 11 of Germany’s busiest airports, bringing departures to a virtual standstill, scuttling plans for thousands of travelers and adding to the chaos caused by public-sector strikes.

Rallying Against the Far Right: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Germany on Holocaust Memorial Day to demonstrate in support of democracy and against the rise of a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is on track to make political gains in state elections this year.
An Easier Path to Citizenship: Lawmakers in Berlin approved legislation allowing shorter waiting periods before naturalization and the possibility of dual citizenship.

“On Saturday afternoon I learned about it,” he said. “On Saturday late evening I was on a plane to Berlin.”

During a nine-hour layover in Newark, Dr. Jenniskens calculated where pieces of the meteorite might be found so that, when he landed early on Monday morning, he and nearly two dozen students and volunteers could start looking for fragments immediately.

For days they trawled through fields around Ribbeck. “We couldn’t find anything,” he said.

But that Thursday, Jan. 25, a Polish team of meteor hunters announced that it had found the first piece of the meteorite. “They could show us what to look for,” Dr. Jenniskens said. The meteorites weren’t black, as expected from the passage through the atmosphere, but light, like terrestrial rocks.

With this information, in just two hours a member of Dr. Jenniskens’ team, a student at Freie Universität Berlin named Dominik Dieter, found a meteorite just sitting on top of the soil. More were quickly spotted.

“It was incredible,” Dr. Jenniskens said. “We found over 20 fragments.”

The meteorites are fragments of 2024 BX1, a small asteroid first spotted by an astronomer in Hungary.

Credit...Peter Jenniskens/The SETI Institute

Peter Jenniskens, with meteorite in hand, flew to Germany from the United States just after news of the asteroid entering the atmosphere, joining a team search for the fragments.

Credit...Peter Jenniskens/The SETI Institute


Researchers at the Natural History Museum in Berlin analyzed the minerals in the fragments using an electron microprobe. That revealed that the rocks appeared to be aubrites. It was the first time such meteorites had been collected in a tracked fall.

The source of aubrites, named after the French town of Aubres near where they were first found, remains mysterious, as their composition does not match other known sources of meteorites in the solar system. Some research has suggested they are fragments of the planet Mercury, but not all scientists support that origin story.

If aubrites came directly from Mercury, 2024 BX1 should have originated in the inner solar system. However, tracing back its path, it appears that the asteroid’s initial orbit was much wider and outside Earth’s orbit.

“Therefore this object could not have come to us directly from Mercury,” said Marc Fries, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

It is possible, though, that aubrites were ejected from Mercury long ago into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, forming a group called E-type asteroids. The orbit of 2024 BX1 does not rule out this idea completely, although Dr. Fries remains skeptical.

Whatever their origin, 2024 BX1’s fragments will prove scientifically fascinating. “I’m sure it’s going to be a priority to find out what its composition is and how it compares to other meteorites,” Dr. Russell said.

Tracking asteroids as small as this before they hit Earth’s atmosphere is also crucial for defending the planet from asteroids. Davide Farnocchia, from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said smaller objects from space go undetected all the time but can pose problems to people on the ground, such as the 65-foot-wide Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013 and injured hundreds of people. Knowing the trajectories in advance could give people time to reach safety.

“If you could send a warning, nobody would get hurt,” he said.

Scientificamerican.com

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asteroid-meteor-meteorite-and-comet-whats-the-difference

Asteroid, Meteor, Meteorite and Comet: What's the Differ... 

May 23, 2018 ... Comets are also composed of material left over from the formation of our solar system and formed around the same time as asteroids. However, ...

Gems stolen from British Museum seen for first time

By Katie Razzall

BBC

Culture and media editor

British MuseumBacchus, the Roman god of wine and pleasure, is depicted in green, white and blue banded glass

Ten glass gems have been put on display for the first time since they were stolen from the British Museum.

In August, the museum announced up to 2,000 objects from its storerooms were missing, stolen or damaged.

Interim director Sir Mark Jones told the BBC the process to recover them was "lengthy" and "complicated". So far, 356 items have been retrieved from six different sources, he revealed.

Ten of them now feature in an exhibition called Rediscovering Gems.

British Museum

Among the tiny items are an ancient gem of green, white and blue banded glass showing the Roman god of wine and pleasure, Bacchus, dating from the 1st Century BC; and one in yellow depicting the Greek god Zeus in eagle form.

The vast majority of the recovered items have come from Danish gemstone dealer Dr Ittai Gradel, who first alerted the museum to the thefts in 2021.

Dr Gradel told the BBC they were "direct evidence of the tastes, the foibles, the quirks, the mentality of the ancient Romans - a way to get to know these long-dead people".

He added: "That view into their mindsets never ceases to fascinate me."

British Museum


Gems - engraved in stone or cast in glass - were highly coveted for centuries, and competition to buy them was stiff, particularly in the 18th Century. They were also expensive.

Aurelia Masson-Berghoff, curator of the museum's recovery programme, said one of the Dukes of Marlborough once bought one "instead of buying a small palace in Venice". They were the same price.

British Museum

But gems fell out of favour in the early 19th Century, partly because their popularity had led to the creation of fakes that were passed off as Roman and Greek. "That shook the market" Sir Mark said.

And that may be one explanation why many of the museum's gems were left unregistered, which made them easier to steal.


Sir Mark said he expected it to take "at least a couple of years" to recover more of the 1,600 stolen items.

"Every museum feels a strong sense of responsibility for the objects in its care. Clearly that care was missing."

British Museum

But he believes "the British Museum will certainly recover from it… I feel certain of that".

A member of staff has been dismissed and a police investigation is ongoing.

The Rediscovering Gems exhibition is on from Thursday, 15 February, until 2 June.

Rhinos are returned to a plateau in central Kenya, decades after poachers wiped them out


A black rhino, on the Red List of Threatened Species according to IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), eats grass at Nairobi National Park, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, on Jan. 31, 2024. Conservationists in Kenya are celebrating as rhinos returned to a grassy plateau that hasn’t seen them in decades.

 Kenya Wildlife Service rangers and capture team pull out a sedated black rhino from the water in Nairobi National Park, Kenya, on Jan. 16, 2024. Conservationists in Kenya are celebrating as rhinos returned to a grassy plateau that hasn’t seen them in decades. 

Kenya Wildlife Service rangers and capture team pull out a sedated black rhino from the water in Nairobi National Park, Kenya, on Jan. 16, 2024. Conservationists in Kenya are celebrating as rhinos returned to a grassy plateau that hasn’t seen them in decades. 

(AP Photos/Brian Inganga, File)

BY TOM ODULA AND DESMOND TIRO
 February 15, 2024

LOISABA CONSERVANCY, Kenya (AP) — Conservationists in Kenya are celebrating as rhinos were returned to a grassy plateau that hasn’t seen them in decades.

The successful move of 21 eastern black rhinos to a new home will give them space to breed and could help increase the population of the critically endangered animals. It was Kenya’s biggest rhino relocation ever.

The rhinos were taken from three parks that are becoming overcrowded to the private Loisaba Conservancy, where herds were wiped out by poaching decades ago.

“It’s been decades since rhinos roamed here, almost 50 years ago,” said Loisaba security manager Daniel Ole Yiankere. “Their numbers were severely impacted by poaching. Now, our focus is on rejuvenating this landscape and allowing rhinos to breed, aiming to restore their population to its former splendor.”

Moving rhinos safely is a serious challenge. The 18-day exercise involved tracking the rhinos using a helicopter and then shooting them with tranquilizer darts. Then the animals — which weigh about a ton each — have to be loaded into the back of a truck for the move.

Disaster nearly struck early in the relocation effort, when a tranquilized rhino stumbled into a creek. Veterinarians and rangers held the rhino’s head above water with a rope to stop it from drowning while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released.

Some of the rhinos were transferred from Nairobi National Park and made a 300-kilometer (186-mile) trip. Others came from two parks closer to Loisaba.

Rhinos are generally solitary animals and are at their happiest in large territories. As numbers in the three parks where the rhinos were moved from have increased, wildlife officials decided to relocate some in the hope that they will be happier and more likely to breed.

David Ndere, an expert on rhinos at the Kenya Wildlife Service, said their reproduction rates decrease when there are too many in a territory.

“By removing some animals, we expect that the rhino population in those areas will rise up,” Ndere said. “And then we reintroduce that founder population of at least 20 animals into new areas.”

Loisaba Conservancy said it has dedicated around 25,000 hectares (about 96 square miles) to the new arrivals, which are a mix of males and females.

Kenya has had relative success in reviving its black rhino population, which dipped from around 20,000 in the 1970s to below 300 in the mid-1980s because of poaching, according to conservationists, raising fears that the animals might be wiped out completely in the country. Kenya now has around 1,000 black rhinos, the third biggest population behind South Africa and Namibia.

There are just over 6,400 wild black rhinos left in the world, all of them in Africa, according to the Save the Rhino organization.

Tom Silvester, the CEO of Loisaba Conservancy, said Kenya’s plan is to get its black rhino numbers to 2,000 over the next decade.

“Once we have 2,000 individuals, we will have established a population that will give us hope that we have brought them back from extinction,” he said.

Kenyan authorities say they have relocated more than 150 rhinos in the last decade.

An attempt to move 11 rhinos in 2018 ended in disaster when all of the animals died shortly after moving.

Ten of the rhinos died from stress, dehydration and starvation intensified by salt poisoning as they struggled to adjust to saltier water in their new home, investigations found. The other one was attacked by a lion.

Since then, new guidelines have been created for the capture and moving of rhinos in Kenya. Silvester said tests have been conducted on the water quality at Loisaba.

Kenya is also home to the last two remaining northern white rhinos on the planet. Researchers said last month they hope they might be able to save that subspecies after creating an embryo in a lab from an egg and sperm previously collected from white rhinos and transferring it into a surrogate female black rhino. The pregnancy was discovered in a postmortem after the surrogate died of an infection following a flood.
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Odula reported from Nairobi, Kenya.
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Who should speak for Europe’s farmers?

Radical reform is needed to make European agriculture economically sustainable and environmentally resilient.Yet Europe’s biggest farming lobby, Copa-Cogeca, opposes any policy inimical to the interests of large landowners. In the run-up to the European elections and in the face of demonstrations by the sector across Europe, there is one constituency that conservative politicians are particularly keen to court: farmers.

Published on 13 February 2024 
Thin Lei Win - Green European Journal (Brussels) - Eurozine (Vienna)
 

Ömer Çam | Cartoon movement

When the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the European Parliament, tried – and narrowly failed – to quash the Nature Restoration Law, it cited farmers and food security as reasons for its opposition. In her State of the Union speech in September, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen ‒ herself a member of the EPP ‒ made it a point to show her appreciation for farmers but avoided mentioning the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F), the Commission’s flagship effort to make agriculture fairer and more sustainable. The EPP is pitching itself as the farmers’ party and looks set to challenge and object to any attempts to rein in farming’s adverse impacts on ecosystems.

Of the more than 400 million eligible voters in the EU, only about nine million, or around 2%, work in agriculture. But politicians see their vote as crucial. This is partly because farmers are extremely vocal, but also because of a Europe-wide positive image of farmers as guardians of rural traditions and cultural heritage, and providers of our daily sustenance. This means a much wider part of the electorate sympathises and identifies with them, making them a powerful constituency.
More : Agro-industrial oligarchy and sustainable agriculture: the European farmer protests

There is no question that farmers need to be supported. Their existence is critical to Europe’s long-term food security and, ultimately, prosperity. But unfortunately, European farming is in dire straits. Despite agriculture being the EU’s largest budget item, disbursing tens of billions of public money a year, the bloc has lost three million farms over the past decade. That is a rate of 800 farmers leaving the profession every single day. Yet more concerning, they’re not being replaced: the average age of a European farmer is now 57.

These statistics date back to the decade from 2010 to 2020, before the war on Europe’s doorstep between two agricultural superpowers put further pressure on food producers, who have since struggled with rapidly rising prices of inputs such as feed, fertiliser, and pesticides. Over the past two years, European farmers have also been hit hard by multiple extreme weather events, from droughts and heatwaves to floods and wildfires, which have damaged farms and decimated harvests.

To make matters worse, scientists have warned unequivocally that extreme weather is likely to worsen and will threaten food production. It is imperative that farming not only mitigate its contribution to climate change, scientists warn, but also adapt and become resilient to these disasters, as well as to the more subtle shifts in cropping and rainfall patterns. Yet the farming lobby and the politicians who purport to care for the continued viability of European agriculture seem intent on resisting any reforms or changes to the status quo.
Misleading claims

This may be partly explained by the dominance of Copa-Cogeca, Europe’s oldest, biggest, and most powerful farming lobby. The organisation was established in 1959 at the inception of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was itself founded on the post-war ideal that Europe should never go hungry again. Starting out as separate movements representing farming (Copa) and cooperatives (Cogeca), the two merged in the early 1960s. Its members include many of the EU’s major national farm unions, and over the years Copa-Cogeca has proclaimed itself the voice of European farmers and agricultural cooperatives in Brussels.

Copa-Cogeca claims to represent more than 22 million farmers and their families which ‒ according to European Commission data ‒ would mean the entirety of Europe’s farm sector. Yet the claim appears more aspirational than realistic, as myself and other journalists revealed in our months-long investigation with Lighthouse Reports, a non-profit investigative news outlet.

Interviews with nearly 120 farmers, insiders, politicians, academics, and activists, as well as a survey of 50 Copa-Cogeca affiliates, cast serious doubt on the lobby’s membership claims and its legitimacy in the farming community.
‘Industrial farming is a big part of the problem for most of the ecological issues that we face. We need to change the way we farm‘ – Jean Mathieu Thevenot, French Farmer

In Romania, which has Europe’s largest number of agricultural holdings at almost 2.9 million, a total of 3,500 farmers are represented by an alliance of four unions that are members of Copa-Cogeca, according to their own press releases and interviews. In Poland, around 1.3 million farmers are nominally members of Copa-Cogeca’s affiliate KRIR, which receives considerable sums of taxpayer money, but does not keep track of who it represents. The country’s Supreme Audit Office concluded in 2021 that, “due to the lack of records, agricultural chambers had no knowledge of all the members whose interests they are supposed to represent”.

In Denmark, the sole member of Copa-Cogeca is the Danish Food and Agricultural Council (L&F in Danish). Its annual reports in 2016 and 2021 showed a surge in membership of 5,000 farmers, a curious development that seems to go against both European and national statistics. The union declined to provide a full explanation for its growing membership, but its latest annual report dropped this number entirely. Spain probably has the most comprehensive dataset among the countries that were investigated. Even there, the three farm unions that are members of Copa-Cogeca together represent only 40% of the country’s farmers.
Power without representation

The long-held perception of Copa-Cogeca as the arbiter of what European farmers need and want is based on data that is unreliable, unsubstantiated, and opaque. In addition, small farmers do not feel represented. “The decisions go through the big countries, big farmers, big unions… [There’s] no equality,” said Arūnas Svitojus, president of the Lithuanian Union and Copa member LR ZUR.

Other current and former members and insiders also said Copa-Cogeca represents mostly the interests of big, industrial farmers and cooperatives and not the small- and medium-sized farmers that make up the bulk of European agriculture. According to Eurostat, of the EU’s 9.1 million agricultural holdings in 2020, 63.8% had less than five hectares and at least 75% had less than 10 hectares. Despite this, Copa-Cogeca continues to enjoy a cosy relationship with the three EU institutions at the heart of agricultural policy-making: the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council. In a 2019 article on farm subsidies, the New York Times said European leaders have historically treated Copa-Cogeca “not as mere recipients of government money, but as partners in policymaking.”

Copa-Cogeca is the only group invited to meet and talk to the president of the Council before every meeting of EU agricultural ministers. Copa-Cogeca also had the largest number of seats on civil dialogue groups that assist and advise the Commission. The structure of these groups has recently been reformed, but sources say that Copa-Cogeca continues to dominate discussions. Commission insiders also spoke of “a mutual understanding” between DG AGRI, the branch of the Commission responsible for agricultural policy, and Copa-Cogeca.

In emails to members of the EU Parliament, Lighthouse Reports found, the lobby group gives detailed suggestions on how to vote on a certain piece of legislation and what kind of amendments should be made. One MEP has even felt Copa-Cogeca’s correspondence was a veiled threat.

This chummy, closed-loop relationship between the legislative, the executive, and interest groups in Brussels that have a tight grip on agricultural policy-making has been dubbed “The Iron Triangle”. Power without representation can lead to policies skewed to benefit the few that wander the corridors of power in Brussels, rather than the millions of farmers toiling away in the fields.

In the past year (2023), Copa-Cogeca has used its position to oppose environmental reforms proposed by the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy, including successfully sabotaging a law to cut pesticide use, defeating efforts to require large-scale farm operations to reduce harmful emissions, and attempting to derail a law that would restore European ecosystems. Its lobbying also delayed crop rotation and fallow land requirements under the CAP. In addition, it is against linking farm subsidies to environmental outcomes. Crucially, it does not want to put a ceiling on the maximum amount of money a farm can get under the CAP, which has so far benefited large landowners at the expense of small- and medium-sized farmers.
Disenfranchised farmers

This has the effect of disenfranchising the kind of young and committed farmers that Europe desperately needs, and perpetuating the vicious cycle of more farmers abandoning agriculture than can be replaced. Like Tijs Boelens, a former activist and social worker who now grows organic vegetables and indigenous wheat and barley varieties in Flanders. “We are not at all seen. We don’t count because we don’t have money,” he told me over a Zoom call during an afternoon break. His anger at policies at regional, national, and European Union levels ‒ which he said are very much focused on large-scale, industrial, intensive farming ‒ is palpable.

Like Katja Temnik, a former basketball star-turned-herbalist and biodynamic farmer, who during the annual EU conference on the future of agriculture in Brussels warned the assembled parliamentarians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and farmers that the increasing emphasis on technology-driven food production was wrong. Temnik said that decision makers “are completely isolated from reality or what people who actually live and work with land need and feel.”

Like David Peacock, founder of the lauded Erdhof Seewalde, a 111-hectare mixed livestock farm in northern Germany, who feels disconnected from big farm unions like Copa-Cogeca because “the way they farm and what they’re doing is destroying the planet.” He adds, “I know it is possible to work differently. So I’m quite critical of what they’re doing and of the structures behind the whole thing.”
More : Green populism: How the far-right embraces ecology

Like Jean Mathieu Thevenot and his friend, young engineers who have set up a farm in the French Basque country as “a political choice” to say “industrial farming is a big part of the problem for most of the ecological issues that we face. We need to change the way we farm.” “Most of the youth farmers I know and work with,” adds Thevenot, “are disconnected and in complete disagreement with the vision of Copa-Cogeca, which has a lot of power in the EU but advocates in favour of the status quo and industrial agriculture.”

Like Bogdan Suliman, a Romanian former utility worker who turned to farming to support his parents and is charting a very different path from his older neighbours who advised him to use as much fertilisers and pesticides as possible. He is trying to recreate a sustainable ecosystem that does not require chemicals to control pests or boost productivity. “We need a different mentality,” he says.

Although not all farmers are eager to change their practices, many are ‒ especially if it allows them to make a reasonable profit. Research shows this is a realistic perspective. If Farm to Fork is implemented carefully, many farmers stand to gain and only some will lose out. But this requires a bold set of measures and courageous, forward-looking representatives of European farmers.

This is why Copa-Cogeca’s lack of representation and the EPP positioning itself as a “farmers’ party” are so concerning. If these two largest and most powerful groups in Brussels continue to resist any reforms to how we produce, consume, and discard food, they will be doing a disservice both to the farmers who want to change and the consumers who need healthy and affordable food that does not wreck the planet. Ultimately, this will undermine European agriculture and the continent’s ability to feed its people.

👉 Original article on Green European Journal

This article is part of the series “Breaking Bread: Food and Water Systems Under Pressure”. The project is organised by the Green European Journal with the support of Eurozine, and thanks to the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The EU Parliament is not responsible for the content of this project.

Agro-industrial oligarchy and sustainable agriculture: the European farmer protests

Who are they and why are they protesting? European agriculture, an industry that involves around nine million workers, is in deep crisis, bringing thousands to the streets across Europe, with similar demands but various motivations.

Published on 8 February 2024 

Francesca Barca
Translated by Ciarán Lawless
 

Olivier Ploux | Cartoon movement

The European agricultural sector is on the warpath. "Contagion or coincidence?" Lola García-Ajofrín asks in Spain's El Confidencial: "The images from Romania are very similar to those from Germany, where in early January tens of thousands of people blocked the highways with their tractors. In that case, the protests were against a series of cuts in farm vehicle and fuel subsidies. The protests also resemble those in Toulouse (France), and Ireland, where farmers marched with cows, or those in Poland, and Belgium [...]. Earlier, in the Netherlands, farmers went so far as to found a party and gain parliamentary representation. Since the Dutch tractor protests broke out just over a year ago, agricultural protests have occurred in more than 15 EU countries, according to monitoring by the think tank Farm Europe."

More : Green populism: How the far-right embraces ecology

According to 2020 data from Eurostat, there are about 8.7 million farmers in Europe, only 11.9 percent of whom are under 40 years old. This figure represents a little over 2 percent of the electorate for the upcoming European elections. Since restructuring due to the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), the number of farms in the EU has declined by more than a third since 2005, explains Jon Henley, Europe correspondent for The Guardian.

A Politico.eu map shows where protests have taken place and (briefly) for what reasons."In 11 EU countries, producer prices [base price farmers receive for their produce] fell by more than 10 percent from 2022 to 2023.Only Greece and Cyprus have seen a corresponding increase in farmers' sales revenues, thanks to increased demand for olive oil," writes Hanne Cokelaere and Bartosz Brzeziński.

Henley In The Guardian writes that "besides feeling persecuted by what they see as a Brussels bureaucracy that knows little about their business, many farmers complain they feel caught between apparently conflicting public demands for cheap food and climate-friendly processes." For many, it is not climate compliance that is causing the agricultural world to suffer, but "competition between farmers and the concentration of farms," as Véronique Marchesseau, farmer et secretary-general of the French leftist union Confédération paysanne, explains in Alternatives Economiques. At the same time, adds Nicolas Legendre, a journalist specializing in the topic, interviewed by Vert, there is also a "visceral anger from part of the agricultural world toward environmentalists (and environmentalism in general), fueled by certain agro-industrial players."

While the press has a tendency to report on a "movement," the agricultural world is not monolithic. The mobilisation of European farmers emerges from a sector that is diverse in not only the modes of production, but also in worldview, political orientation, income level and social class.

More : Lucas Chancel: ‘Those who are most affected are those who pollute the least’

In Reporterre, a site specialising in ecology and social struggles that we often feature in Voxeurop, we learn that in France the average area of a farm is 96 hectares. Arnaud Rousseau, leader of FNSEA, the majority union of French farmers, owns a 700-hectare farm. Why would I mention Rousseau? Because, to return to the question of movements - who they represent, and who is represented - it is important to mention when a leading voice of a protest movement is that of an agribusiness oligarch. A portrait/investigation by Amélie Poinssot for Mediapart clarifies the political dimension: "He is the head of a giant of the French economy: Avril-Sofiprotéol, a giant of so-called seed oil and protein crops, founded by the trade union. It is no less than the fourth largest agribusiness group in France."

As Ingwar Perowanowitsch explains in taz, "there are powerful agricultural holding companies that receive up to 5 million euro in subsidies per year. And there are small family farms that receive a few hundred euro. There is animal husbandry and cultivation. There are conventional and organic farmers. Some produce for the world market, others for the weekly market." The German newspaper quotes a farmer from Leipzig, who works for a cooperative farm, who decided not to demonstrate in January due to the infiltration of the far right, and because he did not feel represented: "the farmers' association defends the interests of large companies that produce for the world market and not those of small-scale agriculture."

Farmers and violence: double standards

For Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, "many of the farmers' concerns are legitimate", as Le Soir reports, in the wake of demonstrations that saw thousands of farmers in Brussels light fires and throw eggs at the European Parliament building on 1 February. In El Pais Marc Bassets writes that "power fears them. The majority of the population looks at them with distance and respect."

This is an attitude that finds its peak in France, where the difference in treatment of protesters at the hands of police is flagrant. Europe has denounced the excessive violence of the police, first and foremost toward the Gilets Jaunes, but also various demonstrations around the country (against pension reforms, or during the riots in the banlieues), and finally the use of 5,000 grenades against the "ecoterrorists" in Sainte-Soline.

In recent days farmers have not only blocked roads and highways, or poured straw and manure, but also detonated a bomb in one building, and set fire to another. But no one is talking about "agroterrorism," and the police have never intervened. Quite the contrary, in fact. As for the minister of the interior, Gérard Darmanin, he abandoned his usual martial tone by expressing on TF1 his "compassion" for the farmers and stating that "you don't respond to suffering by sending CRS [riot police], voilà."

"Since World War II, public authorities have tolerated from farmers what they would not tolerate from other social groups," historian Edouard Lynch, an expert in rural studies, tells Libération. Moreover, not all farmers are equal: "Even within farmer movements, the state targets minority groups, as shown by the repression of demonstrations against the mega-basins in Sainte-Soline," in Western France, Lynch continues. On Arrêt sur Images, Lynch adds, "One can see today [in the face of these demonstrations] how the violence we have witnessed in recent years is the result of the strategies of the forces of law and order. [...] The violence of social movements is provoked by the keepers of the peace: decisions are made to move toward confrontation in order to stigmatise the opponent." Behind this, he explains, is a kind of national mythology of the "good farmer who feeds the nation."

Lynch is echoed by Thin Lei Win in Green European Journal: there is "a positive European-wide image of farmers as custodians of rural traditions and cultural heritage, as well as providers of our livelihood. This means that a much larger part of the electorate sympathises and identifies with them."


In partnership with Display Europe, cofunded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.