Some states reject federal money to find and replace dangerous lead pipes

MICHAEL PHILLIS
Tue, August 22, 2023 




A Denver Water crew works to replace a lead water service line installed in 1927 with a new copper one at a private home on June 17, 2021, in Denver. As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead water pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes.

States shouldn't “shrug their shoulders” and pass up funds, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It's troubling that a state would decide to take a complete pass on the funding because part of the reason for the funding is to figure out whether you even have lead," Olson said.

The Biden administration wants to remove all 9.2 million lead pipes carrying water to U.S. homes. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. The 2021 infrastructure law provides $15 billion to find and replace them. That money will help a lot, but it isn’t enough to get all the toxic pipes out of the ground. State programs distribute the federal funds to utilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is reviewing state requests to decline funds but did not provide a full list of states that have said no so far. That information will be available in October, officials said. States that declined first-year funds can still accept them during the remaining four years.

“EPA has been working closely with our state partners on utilizing Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding that is available,” the agency said.

Lead pipes are far more common in some states such as Michigan and Illinois, which each have hundreds of thousands. The harm there is clear. Flint’s lead crisis elevated lead in tap water to a national health issue. Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, drank water with too much lead for years until all their lead pipes were replaced. In response, however, Michigan is clamoring for as much money as it can get to remove lead.

The states that declined funds have fewer problematic pipes, but that doesn’t mean lead isn’t an issue. There’s concern about lead in some Maine schools. Portland, Oregon, has struggled with high lead levels for years, although recent tests have been better and officials say the issue isn’t lead pipes, but household plumbing.

Washington accepted $85,000 of $63 million it could have taken and said the decision was based on the limited number of water systems that wanted loans. The EPA estimates the state has 22,000 lead pipes. Oregon, which could have accepted $37 million, said inventories are going to be done with existing staff and resources, adding that utilities have no known lead lines. The EPA projected that the state has 3,530 lead pipes — a relatively small number — based in part on information collected from utilities.

The location of many lead pipes is a mystery. The EPA is requiring communities to provide initial inventories of their lead pipes by October 2024. Maine, which banned lead pipes far earlier than most states, said other funds would be used for inventories and they didn’t have lead replacement projects ready to fund. Most states that rejected funding initially indicated they would probably ask for money in later years.

To access the grants, there also needs to be demand for loans but utilities are hesitant to seek them out, according to Deirdre Finn, executive director of the Council of Infrastructure Financing Authorities, a group that represents the federally funded state programs that distribute infrastructure funds.

“This is a great opportunity,” Finn said. “But it would be helpful if states and utilities had access to 100% grant funding to move these projects along.”

Federal funds can only go to replacement projects that remove the entire lead pipe. Lead pipes run from the water main in the street to homes, but the ownership of the pipe is often split between the utility and homeowner. Some cities replace just the portion they own — a harmful practice that spikes lead levels — and paying to replace the homeowner's side is often a problem. Grants can help utilities pay to replace the homeowner's side, Finn said.

The EPA offered early funds based on a state's general drinking water infrastructure needs — not the number of lead pipes. The EPA later developed estimates of each state's lead pipes to inform how future years of funding should be distributed. Therefore, some states were offered more early money than they can spend.

In May, for example, Alaska told the EPA it wanted just $6.8 million of the $28 million it was entitled to receive. Carrie Bohan, facilities program manager in the division of water at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, said utilities' demand for loans to inventory their systems for lead pipes is “very, very small.” But over five years, there will be plenty of federal funds available to find the small number of lead pipes in Alaska and replace them.

Money that’s not used will be redistributed to other states that need it.

“I think it’s a potential disservice to other states if we were to apply for the full amount knowing that we couldn’t make use of it,” Bohan said.

But just figuring out how to distribute the money based on need is difficult. In April, the EPA's lead pipe estimate surprised some experts by predicting that Florida had 1.16 million, the most of any state.

The higher estimate meant Florida would get more funds, but the state objected, arguing its utilities would find far more lead in the tap water if it really had that many lead pipes.

“Once these lead line surveys are completed, it is expected that the actual extent of facilities with lead service lines documented in Florida will be significantly less than what was estimated by the EPA,” said Brian Miller, a spokesperson with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Biden administration spending $150M to help small forest owners benefit from selling carbon credits

RUSS BYNUM
Tue, August 22, 2023

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks to a conference of Black forestland owners in Brunswick, Ga., on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. Vilsack announced a new Biden administration program that will spend $150 million to help owners of small parcels of forestland partner with companies willing to pay them for carbon offsets and other environmental credits. 

(AP Photo/Russ Bynum) 

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday it will spend $150 million to help owners of small parcels of forestland partner with companies willing to pay them for carbon offsets and other environmental credits.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the grant program at a conference of Black landowners in coastal Georgia, saying programs that allow private companies to offset their own emissions by paying to protect trees have disproportionately benefited owners of large acreage.

“In order for those small, privately held forest owners to be able to do what they need and want to do requires a bit of technical help," Vilsack told about 150 conference attendees in a church ballroom in Brunswick. "And sometimes that technical help is not easy to find. And it’s certainly not easy to afford.”

The grant money comes from the sweeping climate law passed by Congress just over a year ago and targets underserved landowners, including military veterans and new farmers, as well as families owning 2,500 acres (1,011 hectares) or less.

The goal is to protect more tracts of U.S. forest to help fight climate change. The past decade has seen a rapidly expanding market in which companies pay landowners to grow or conserve trees, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere, to counterbalance their own carbon emissions.

For owners of smaller family tracts, selling carbon offsets or other credits would give them an alternative income to harvesting their timber or selling their property to a developer.

Companies are pouring billions of dollars into environmental credits, but small landowners face daunting barriers to eligibility, said Rita Hite, president and CEO of the American Forest Foundation. To participate, owners need to take an inventory of their forested property, have a land management plan and run models to calculate the land's carbon value.

“Previously, if you didn’t have 5,000 acres or more, you weren’t participating in these markets," Hite said. "Not only are there technical hurdles, but also financing hurdles.”

The American Forest Foundation and the Nature Conservancy launched a joint program four years ago that covers many of the costs for family land owners to sell carbon offsets for their land.

Those groups and other nonprofits will be eligible to apply for grants of up to $25 million to provide direct help to landowners under the Biden administration's program. So will state forestry agencies, university agricultural extension services and others The money could pay professionals to help owners develop land management plans or to connect them with with project managers who serve as middlemen between owners and companies seeking environmental credits.

The grants were welcomed by John Littles, a leader of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network hosting the Georgia conference. The group represents 1,600 Black landowners across eight Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

“Most of the time, we're left out — more specifically people of color,” Littles said. “We're not afforded the opportunity to help design the programs, so the programs are mainly now designed for large landholdings and large acreage.”

Littles said his network plans to apply for a grant under the new program. But he's not sure how much demand there will be from landowners. He said that will largely depend on whether owners of smaller acreages can get enough money from conservation credits.

“I think it's still early to tell," Littles said. “But it has to be a benefit for the landowners."

Hite of the American Forest Foundation said landowners with small acreage shouldn't expect big profits from selling environmental credits. She said owners enrolled in the group's Family Forest Carbon Program earn on average about $10 per acre in a year.

“Is this going to matter for a 30-acre landowner? It’s not going to make them rich,” Hite said. “But it will probably pay the taxes.”

Research finds reducing consumption of just one food item would be like taking 8 million cars off the road: ‘It would make a really big difference’

Jeremiah Budin
Tue, August 22, 2023 


According to a new study undertaken by an Oxford University professor, if the biggest meat eaters in the United Kingdom were to switch to low-meat diets, the environmental impact would be equivalent to eight million cars being taken off the road.

Professor Peter Scarborough and his research team surveyed 55,000 people with varying diets and analyzed the results in depth, accounting for all the myriad impacts that the production of different foods have on the environment, including land use, water use, water pollution, and loss of species.

Their findings were that meat eaters had the highest environmental impact in every case.

The study found that someone with a high-meat diet accounted for about 22.58 pounds worth of carbon dioxide production per day, while someone with a low-meat diet would account for about 11.84 pounds worth. A vegan would account for about 5.45 pounds on average.

The study’s findings do not say that everyone has to become a vegetarian or vegan in order to save the planet, but rather that simply reducing thea mount of meat people eat would be a huge benefit.

”Our results show that if everyone in the UK who is a big meat-eater reduced the amount of meat they ate, it would make a really big difference,” Professor Scarborough told the BBC. “You don’t need to completely eradicate meat from your diet.”

The adverse environmental impacts of the meat industry are not news — a growing body of scientific research has documented how harmful it is. Animal farming contributes a huge amount of planet-warming gases to the atmosphere relative to plant farming, while also using up and also polluting a huge amount of water.

However, another study has found that although people are aware that meat impacts the environment, they are largely under-informed about the extent of the problem. In reality, livestock farming accounts for 14.5% of the heat-trapping gases produced by humans worldwide, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

NASA scientist issues grim warning 35 years after his original prediction: ‘[W]e knew it was coming’

Stephen Proctor
Tue, August 22, 2023 


James Hansen, who was a NASA climate scientist when he first warned the world that the planet was heating in 1988, is back with another stark warning — this time hoping for different results.

When Hansen appeared before the United States Senate in June of 1988, the world had just experienced the warmest first five months of any year in recorded history, The New York Times reported at the time.

Up until that time, scientists had been cautious about blaming the warming of the planet on pollutants put into the air by human activity. But Hansen told the committee that NASA was 99% certain that the warming trend was caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere.

Sadly, the problem has continuously gotten worse worldwide in the decades since. And Hansen has continued his fight to bring attention to the issue. In 2011, he was one of 140 people to be arrested while protesting the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

In a recent statement released by Hansen alongside two other scientists, Hansen predicted the warming of the planet to accelerate in the coming years, musing about a “new climate frontier.”

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen told The Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality — we knew it was coming.”

Speaking of the heat waves that have ravaged much of the Northern Hemisphere recently, Hansen told The Guardian he cannot help but feel “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response.”

Of the lack of response by humanity as a whole, Hansen added, “It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.”

Though it’s been 35 years since Hansen first warned the world in Senate testimony about what we’re now seeing with our own eyes, there is reason for optimism.

The move away from dirty energy is kicking into high gear. Sales of electric cars continue to rise, with an expected growth of 35% from 2022 to 2023, electric boats with solar-powered charging stations are now available, and grassroots efforts to make renewable energy more widely available are underway.

ICELAND

Vet profited from 'cruel' exploding whale harpoons

James Crisp
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Iceland, Japan and Norway are the only countries where commercial whaling remains legal

 - Icelandic photo agency/Alamy Stock Photo

A vet who advised Iceland on whaling helped to design a “cruel” explosive harpoon used to hunt and kill the animals.

For more than 20 years, Egil Ole Øen, a whaling expert and adviser to the Icelandic government, profited from his patent on the weapons, which are meant to cut the time whales take to die.

The grenades on the explosive harpoons are packed with penthrite and need to detonate either in the thorax, thoracic spine, neck or brain to guarantee a quick death.

But in June, Iceland temporarily banned whaling after a report said the annual killing of fin whales was taking too long and broke animal welfare laws. The ban is set to expire on August 31.

The report by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority, which prompted the ban, documented some whales taking hours to die and having to be shot several times in last year’s season, which runs annually from June to September.

During last year’s hunt, 148 fin whales were killed.

Egil Ole Øen said he was not paid very much for the harpoon patent and denied he was in a conflict of interest - Nammco

Fin whales, which can live to 110 years and are classified as vulnerable, are the second largest creature on the planet after blue whales and are nearly 80ft when fully grown.

“Many of the whales killed in Icelandic hunts are pregnant – so you are killing the next generation,” said Danny Groves, the head of communications at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, which wants the ban made permanent.

“If the device does not explode, the harpoon cannon usually has to be reloaded for another shot. This takes about eight minutes and significantly prolongs a whale’s torment. Often it is far longer than eight minutes and can take hours.”

The method of killing is “never going to be welfare friendly”, he added, before raising concerns over Mr Ole Øen’s involvement in the practice.

“There is an ethical question here,” he said. “Having a consultant vet profiting from a cruel practice is not a good look.”

Questions have also been raised over whether frozen fin whale meat can still be exported to Japan legally because of the suspected breach of those laws.

Vet ‘proud’ of patent

Mr Ole Øen, who is also an adviser to Hvals, Iceland’s last remaining whaling company, said he was not paid very much for the patent and denied he was in a conflict of interest.

At its peak, it was less than about £2,000 a year, which he said he spent on travel expenses to attend conferences on whaling, which is still legal in Iceland, Norway and Japan.

He told The Telegraph: “The patent has nothing to do with harpoons. It is a safety that prevents from accidental fire. It has never been a secret that I have been the inventor and have shared the patent with the engineer that built it. I am proud of that it probably helped to save lives.”

He also told Iceland’s Heimildin newspaper, which reported he also trained harpoon shooters: “I know very well that there are many people who want to attack me because of my work and research on whaling.”

MAGA slammed as a ‘cult’ as poll reveals followers believe Trump over family and friends

Namita Singh
Tue, 22 August 2023 


MSNBC host Joe Scarborough compared supporters of Donald Trump to cult followers after a new poll revealed that they trusted the former president more as a source of true information over their loved ones.

The latest CBS survey conducted between 16 and 18 August found that 71 per cent of US adult residents believed the former president as telling the truth, while 63 per cent picked friends and family. Conservative media figures stood at 56 per cent, and religious leaders gathered about 30 per cent fewer votes than the former president, gathering 42 per cent of the votes.

The CBS poll also showed Mr Trump was the preferred candidate for 62 per cent of Republican voters, with Ron DeSantis trailing at 16 per cent.

“How could people support Donald Trump? And the question just kept coming up,” said the Morning Joe host on Monday as he marveled at the findings.

Seemingly attempting to decode Mr Trump’s continued popularity among his supporters, he said: “And there were really no good answers except, you know, the question is, is it a cult?

Scarborough then read out the definition of cult from Google, while trying to link it to Mr Trump’s appeal, as he turned to show’s guest Charlie Skyes for discussion.

“I just saw this on Google. Off the top, cult leaders must be dynamic, charismatic, and convincing because their goal is to control their members to acquire money or power-related advantages. These characteristics are crucial because a cult leader needs his members to strictly adhere to his teachings and doctrines.

“Now the funny thing there is, he doesn’t really fit there because Donald Trump doesn’t have any teaching or doctrine other than ‘follow me blindly’.”

“But think about it Charlie, how twisted it is just generally that in America, people follow a political leader. Like we always ask questions ‘’Why? Why do people have flags of a politician?’

File: Joe Scarborough, a one-time friend of former president Donald Trump, does not hold back as he calls his supporters ‘cult’ in the light of CBS polls (Getty Images)

“Trump people might be proud of that. No, that’s nothing to be proud of. Politicians serve us,” he continued as he repeated the findings of the polls.

“You look at the number, they trust a politician, a failed reality tv talk show host, who has been indicted because of what he did with a porn star, who has been indicted for trying to steal the elections which they (the supporters) know he tried to steal.”

“I think they must be happy that he tried to steal the election. They’ve heard the tapes.”

Probing if conservative media played a role in Mr Trump’s strengthened supporter base, he says: “‘Oh, it’s because they watch Fox. It’s because they watch Fox.’ Well, now, Trump members are attacking Fox News!”



“And then this is the most shocking thing coming from the evangelical church,” he added. “Nearly 30 per cent more people blindly follow their cult leader, Donald Trump, than their own religious leaders.

“Please don’t tell me about how this is a Jesus thing. It’s not a Jesus thing. It’s a cult thing when 30 per cent more blindly follow Trump than listen to their religious leaders.”

Meanwhile, another poll revealed Mr Trump’s commanding lead over his Republican rivals in the state of Iowa, where the party’s presidential nominating contest begins in January.

The Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers shows Mr Trump has the backing of 42 per cent, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis at 19 per cent and US senator Tim Scott in third place with nine per cent.

Other Republican candidates in the crowded field aiming to take on Democratic president Joe Biden in the November 2024 election registered in lower single-digit numbers.

Mr Trump‘s four indictments showed little signs of deterring his supporters. The poll found 65 per cent of likely Republican caucusgoers didn’t think he had committed serious crimes, compared with the 26 per cent who believed he had.

The poll was conducted 13 to 17 August, coinciding with news on 14 August that a Georgia grand jury had issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Mr Biden.

Additional reporting by agencies

THERE IS NO TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN THE USA, THE DEMOCRATS NEED TO SPLIT IN TWO; THE WALL STREET PARTY AND THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY TO MAKE UP FOR THE IMPLODED GOP

UK

Opinion 

FROM THE RIGHT
Voices: Why Starmer is running scared of Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband

John Rentoul

THE INDEPENDENT
Tue, 22 August 2023

The absence of a reshuffle is a reminder that even the power of an opposition leader on the threshold of government has its limits (PA)

After two years of Tony Blair’s government, Martin Rowson, the cartoonist, identified what he thought was “the fundamental problem with New Labour…” He drew an adviser holding a satchel upside down and saying to the prime minister: “Hey boss! We’ve run out of principles to betray!”

After this week’s latest retreat from the policies on which Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader, Rowson could re-do it, with Starmer as the central figure instead of Blair.

In fact, the U-turn on employment rights took place four weeks ago, at the party’s National Policy Forum in Nottingham. Labour discipline is now so strict that it has taken this long for some of the key text to leak. Instead of promising full employment rights to all workers from the first day in a job, employers will be allowed to put new hires on probation.

This is a switch from the wrong policy to the right one, but it will be seen as yet another betrayal by many party members – not just by Corbyites, but by some of those who see themselves as in the Labour mainstream.

Indeed, Starmer’s hurtle towards the embrace of the Tory-minded swing voter has been so fast, and so little defended and explained, that many Labour right-wingers are suffering from whiplash. So much so that Starmer’s party management problems have nothing to do with the common myth of a Labour government held to ransom by the Socialist Campaign Group, the Corbyite faction of 32 Labour MPs. They have nowhere to go, and will find it hard to make common cause with the Conservative opposition if Labour wins the election.

The real threat to Starmer is noisy resignations by significant members of the shadow cabinet – or, if Labour wins, the cabinet. This is the tension delaying Starmer’s reshuffle. On the one hand, the imminence of the election and the prospect of office exerts a strong restraining force on shadow ministers. On the other, the mix of principle, ambition and pique could explode if pushed too far.

The two main risks are Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband. They both have a standing in the party that is independent of the leader. As Rayner reminded us on Wednesday, she and Starmer were “both elected by the membership differently and independently”.

She is not only the elected deputy leader, but shadow secretary of state for the future of work, and as such she guards Labour’s employment policy jealously. She responded to the leak of the new policy by insisting that, “far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it”. Yet she could not tell Nick Robinson of the BBC that she would be responsible for the policy in government. “The important thing is that I will be the deputy prime minister,” she said.

Miliband’s power is different. As a green champion, he has a status that rests on the urgency of stopping climate change, especially as felt by younger voters. He is not as popular with the youth as is often assumed. Indeed, he is the most unpopular member of the shadow cabinet in YouGov’s likeability ratings, reflecting his high visibility as former leader, but he is less unpopular among young people.

And he has a credibility on green issues as a former leader and a former energy secretary. For different but overlapping groups of admirers, St Edward and St Angela are the guarantors that Labour actually believes in something, and so they have some power to push back against Starmer’s ruthless electoralism.

That said, they are both choosing not to use that power yet. Despite comparing her relationship with Starmer to an arranged marriage, St Angela was strenuously loyal to her political spouse, saying her role was “supporting Keir as the leader”, and “the important job is getting into government”.

St Edward, meanwhile, strongly supported Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, when she postponed plans to borrow £28bn a year for green investment. But it is easy to imagine him resigning, accusing Starmer of willing the ends but not the means in slowing climate change. He is dangerous because he has nothing to lose.

Rayner, on the other hand, is dangerous because she believes she has everything to gain. She thinks that, if Starmer falls, she would win the leadership – and the premiership if that is what followed. I don’t know if she is overreaching herself, but if there were a vacancy, she would stand a good chance in a leadership election among Labour members against Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting.

These calculations may explain a couple of recent oddities. Rayner’s working-class and trade-union credentials may have something to do with Starmer suddenly adopting the un-Blairite language of class in an article this week. He wrote for The Scotsman on Tuesday that “you cannot seriously take on inequality, or poverty ... without talking about class”. He even said: “My political project is to return Labour to the service of working people and working-class communities.” He wants to head off the charge of betraying the workers.

And the power of St Edward may explain why Starmer was so emphatic about sticking to the 2030 target for decarbonising electricity generation. I suspect this is not going to survive until the election, because it hasn’t been prudently costed yet, but Starmer also wrote: “There has been a lot of noise about this in recent weeks, so let me be crystal clear – we will throw everything at making sure our electricity system is carbon free by 2030.”

Wariness of the power of Rayner and Miliband may be one reason Starmer has not yet reshuffled his shadow cabinet, six months after Rishi Sunak created four new departments. Some of those around the Labour leader say this is because he wants a shadow cabinet that reflects his five “missions” rather than just copying the government’s reorganisation. But what does that mean? The five missions are growth, clean energy, NHS, crime, and opportunity (childcare and education). If anything, that suggests leaving things as they are – and Labour still doesn’t have a shadow science secretary.

Starmer is in a period of maximum power, as election victory edges tantalisingly closer, and yet the absence of a reshuffle is a reminder that even the power of an opposition leader on the threshold of government has its limits.

Opinion
FROM THE LEFT
Labour is parading its true leftwing credentials in the byelection fight against the SNP

Polly Toynbee

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 21 August 2023 

Angela Rayner was in Rutherglen 

Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

In the upcoming byelection in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Labour faces an altogether different battle from those fought recently in three English constituencies. Here, it confronts incoming on its exposed left flank in a firefight with the Scottish National party. Far from engaging in daily combat with English Tories and their press, Labour leaders parade their leftwing credentials in Scotland, without giving ammunition to the old blue enemy south of the border.

Both the SNP and Labour desperately need a win. It would only take a 5% swing for Labour to unseat the SNP here; if it can’t, with all the brouhaha surrounding Nicola Sturgeon, her husband and police investigating party finances, hopes of capturing a tranche of crucial SNP seats at the general election will fade. But the first minister, Humza Yousaf, with low ratings and a quarrelsome party, will be urgently looking to shore up the SNP after 15 long years in power.

Knuckle-dusters are out already. SNP leaflets in the constituency target Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit cap, suggesting there’s no difference between Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Labour ripostes that Rutherglen has been “failed by two sleaze-ridden governments and a shameless MP”: the former SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier, was ousted by a recall petition for travelling with Covid to London to speak in the Commons. The SNP boasts of its Scottish child payment, giving all families on universal credit an extra £25 a week per child. That’s in contrast to Starmer’s less-than-agile BBC interview in which, on the spur of the moment, he chose to prove Labour’s fiscal discipline rather than cancel the two-child cap affecting 1.5 million children.

The two sides will fight over the recent claim that Labour has softened its radical workers’ rights plan. Angela Rayner was in Rutherglen with a forceful rebuttal: it’s just not so. Meeting apprentices in Glasgow, she promised that Labour’s new deal for working people would be law within 100 days of the party coming to power: “the biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades”. And so it is.

It bans zero-hours contracts, and fire-and-rehire policies, makes the presumption of flexible working a day-one right, and strengthens parental leave and pregnancy protection. “We’ll make sure work actually pays with a genuine living wage that covers the cost of living,” Rayner has said. Ending bogus self-employment is “a key priority”. Pledging fair pay agreements that vary according to sector means some sectors that can afford it will have to pay a higher minimum. Trade unions will see their membership rise steeply when they are given access to recruit in every workplace.

The issue that blew up last week concerned whether everyone would get rights from day one in a new job. Rayner said Labour would be “ending qualifying periods for basic rights, which currently leave working people waiting up to two years for basic protections”, with “stronger protections against unfair dismissal”. The claim is that Labour’s national policy forum weakened this with some permissible probationary periods for new employees: it caused a furore, with Unite and Momentum accusing Labour of kowtowing to employers, but Labour says a probationary period was always there. The GMB, Unison and all other affiliated unions have backed the policy.

That’s because the rights that Rayner spelled out in Scotland are indeed radical. Labour expects this policy to come under the same relentless Tory attack at the election as introducing a minimum wage did in the 1997 campaign. Tory HQ has drawn up a list of 20 “anti-business” Labour policies, which it calls a job-killing “Trades Union Congress wish list”. Indeed, these rights were drawn up with strong backing from Frances O’Grady, the former TUC leader, and as Rayner told Glasgow apprentices, they would “raise living standards for all”, tilting power back towards employees.

Is it because of a clumsy mishandling of messaging that Labour’s two most radical policies of recent years have now been tarred as “retreats”? Or is it Labour’s own ambivalence on whether to present them as radical or moderate? The £28bn pledged for Labour’s green investments – for jobs in clean energy, battery factories and home insulation – is enormous and popular. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never dared make such a spending promise in 1997, even when the economy was growing, not stagflating, as it is now. It’s more money per capita than Joe Biden’s mighty green infrastructure fund. Taking two years to build up to this huge spend is reasonable: how do you get £28bn worth of spades in the ground, without waste, on day one? Yet Labour has let this delay enter the political lexicon as a green retreat.

There are always doomsters eager to get disillusion with Labour in early, forever expecting betrayal. But Angela Rayner herself stands as guarantor for workers’ rights: it’s unlikely she would stand by and see those pledges seriously diminished. In the same way, Ed Miliband stands guard over Labour’s green credentials. But nor do I think Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves has any less commitment to the radicalism of policies they drew up.

Nerves and lack of self-confidence seem to make Labour hesitate to issue loud rebuttals when these “retreat” stories appear. They know the Tories’ well-oiled campaign machine (and its foghorn press) hasn’t yet got out its knife sharpener to begin assaulting Labour with utterly mendacious distortions of its policies. They know, despite an 18-point lead, that 55% of voters say they might still change their mind. They know that the party scoring best on the economy always wins. Labour has shifted that dial: entering No 10 last year, Sunak was most “trusted to run the economy” by 33% to Starmer’s 29%, according to Opinium. Though Labour now leads on the economy by six percentage points, that still feels precarious.

Fighting to win Rutherglen against an SNP foe purporting to be more leftwing is doing Labour good. As he travels up and down to Scotland almost monthly, do read Starmer’s thundering essay in the Scotsman, full of words Blair and Brown feared to use. “In the recent past,” he wrote, “Labour was afraid to speak the language of class at all – but not my Labour party. No, for me, smashing the ‘class ceiling’ that holds working people back is our defining purpose … Because you cannot seriously take on inequality or poverty … without talking about class. This is personal.” On poverty, he wrote, “This isn’t the trickle-down Tory nonsense that, for working-class communities, means jobs trickle out and power trickles up … I don’t look at our current social security system and think tinkering at the edges will be good enough.” And he repeats Rayner’s list of “a new deal that will strengthen workers’ rights and finally make work pay”.

Expect this to be the mood of Labour’s October conference: messages get clearer as elections approach. As ever, Labour will do more in office than would be wise to promise in advance, but that requires some trust and patience from its natural supporters.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

UK
Rishi Sunak facing red wall wipeout at general election, shock poll shows

Archie Mitchell
Tue, 22 August 2023

Rishi Sunak faces losing all 42 red wall seats won by his predecessor Boris Johnson, polling seen by The Independent shows (Getty/AP)

The Tories are facing electoral oblivion in the red wall as a shock poll reveals they will lose every single seat.

Polling from Electoral Calculus, shared with The Independent, reveals all 42 red wall seats held by the Conservatives are set to return to Labour at the next general election.

The scale of the rebellion against the government appears to in part be driven by the spiralling cost of living, with a separate analysis seen by The Independent showing the crisis is having a devastating impact on Tory-held seats in the red wall.

The data, compiled by analytics firm Outra, show 15 Conservative-held red wall seats, which were won at the last election but have historically supported the Labour Party, are among the 50 constituencies with the highest number of financially distressed voters in the country.

Such as Great Grimsby, Blackpool South and Walsall North are among those with the highest portion of voters deemed financially vulnerable.

In total, 15 of the top 50 seats in which voters are at risk of falling behind on their bills were won by the Conservatives in 2019.

It follows research by investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown that shows the northeast has been hit hard by the cost of living crisis – with the joint lowest level of savings in the country, and just a third of households reporting they have enough cash left at the end of the month.

The figures will set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street, with experts warning that voters facing financial distress will make their voices heard in the ballot box.

Pollster and political analyst Robert Hayward pointed to a defining phrase from Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 run to unseat George HW Bush as US president: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

He told The Independent that the economy is “always the most important issue” on polling day across all age groups, social groups and genders.

Lord Hayward said it was especially important for the Conservatives, having historically been considered better managers of the economy than Labour.

“The government has to restore that credibility,” he warned.

Pollsters predict a landslide Labour victory at the next election,

 with the Tories losing all of their red wall seats (PA)

Lord Hayward added that Mr Sunak’s party may be doing so “slowly”, with inflation finally falling, but without further progress before an expected general election in October 2024, the Conservatives will lose.

Almost two-thirds of voters believe the economy to be one of the top three issues facing the country, putting it significantly ahead of health and immigration, YouGov polling shows.

The risk of a red wall wipeout will also raise fears in Conservative HQ, with Lord Hayward warning it will leave Mr Sunak facing “serious difficulty” securing an overall majority.

Addressing the collapse in support facing Tories in the red wall, Lord Hayward said that while the party has achieved majorities without the voting bloc in the past, “it delivered the size of that majority last time around”.

He added that the failure to win those seats next year “would leave the Conservatives in serious difficulty trying to find an overall majority”.

Electoral Calculus chief executive Martin Baxter pointed to former PM Mr Johnson’s acknowledgement that red wall voters had “lent him” their support in 2019.

“And it looks like they are taking it back,” he said. “The Conservative tide went up that beach in 2019, and it looks like the tide is going out again.”

The pollster is forecasting that the Tories will lose all 42 of their red wall seats.

And Mr Baxter said that while the economic figures “underline” the struggle in voters in those areas for the Conservatives, the prospect of the party holding on to power in the general election is already “not likely”.

Nationally, Electoral Calculus predicts a landslide Labour victory, winning around 460 seats, with the Conservatives reduced to just 90 seats.

Many red wall seats were turned blue in 2019 as voters repulsed by the Labour leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn, backed Boris Johnson to “Get Brexit Done” and “level up” neglected towns and cities.

But Outra’s figures show that in many of those seats, voters are now feeling the pinch of the cost of living squeeze.

In Great Grimsby, which Mr Johnson loyalist Lia Nici won from Labour’s Melanie Onn in 2019, more than a quarter of constituents are at risk of financial distress.

Ms Onn, who is Labour’s candidate hoping to win back Great Grimsby next year, told The Independent the figures “laid bare the reality of life under the Conservatives”.

“Areas like ours that placed trust in the Tories have been hit the hardest,” she added.

Ms Onn said: “Their economic mismanagement has caused incomes to nosedive, revealing a disregard for ordinary working people.”

In Blackpool South, held by suspended Tory MP Scott Benton, just under a quarter risk not being able to meet payments. And in Walsall North, represented by Eddie Hughes, 23.1 per cent of voters are at risk of financial distress.

Other Tory MPs believed to be vulnerable to losing their seats include Jonathan Gullis, Johnny Mercer and Jack Brereton.

Warnings of scientific ‘suicide’ as US-China research collaboration hangs in balance

Amy Hawkins,

 Senior China correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, 22 August 2023 



In 1991, about 25 babies in every 100,000 in the United States were born with spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause paralysis and brain damage. Fifteen years later, the likelihood had fallen by nearly one-third. That so many babies could be spared such a fate was thanks to the simple discovery that folic acid supplements could dramatically reduce the chances of neural tube defects, which cause spina bifida and anencephalus, a rarer condition.

It was “one of the great successes of public health,” according to Tom Frieden, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – and it was a success that was established in China during a collaboration between researchers from the CDC in Atlanta and Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing.

Related: China’s war chest: how the fight for semiconductors reveals the outlines of a future conflict

Now, such collaboration – which has also led to advances like reductions in air pollution and improved understanding of earthquakes – is under threat. The US-China Science and Technology Agreement, the umbrella framework under which the birth defects study was facilitated, is set to expire on 27 August. The agreement – the first signed after Beijing and Washington normalised relations in 1979 – is normally renewed every five years. But amid growing tensions, the future of US-China scientific collaboration looks uncertain.

US legislators from the select committee on China are urging US secretary of state Antony Blinken to let the deal expire, lest Beijing use it to “advance its military objectives”. Mike Gallagher, the chair of the congressional committee on China, has said that the agreement jeopardises US intellectual property. But scientists argue that such a move would hinder progress on transnational problems.

“Failure to renew the agreement would have a highly negative impact on scientific cooperation of all kinds,” says Deborah Seligsohn, a political science professor at Villanova University and former science and technology counsellor at the US embassy in Beijing. “It would make it much more difficult to increase cooperation in areas we really care about, like climate change.”

A spokesperson for the state department declined to comment on international negotiations. The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond to a request for comment.

Xie Feng, China’s ambassador in Washington, has said that Beijing wants to renew the agreement. China has long benefited from US funding and partnerships. Between 2015 and 2021, US government agencies provided nearly $30m to Chinese entities for a range of activities, including disease surveillance, vaccine studies and drone technology. But since China’s leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, Beijing’s annual spending on scientific research has doubled. Lately, he has emphasised the need for “high quality growth” and technological self-reliance, particularly in strategic areas like artificial intelligence. So despite China’s struggling economy, government support for research and development has continued to be generous. In 2022, spending on basic research increased by 13.5% and total spending on research and development surpassed 3trn yuan (£326.3bn).Interactive
China ‘setting the priorities for the next decade’

The most striking metric of China’s growth has been in the sheer number of research papers that the country produces. In 2020, it overtook the US to become the world leader in terms of the overall volume of research published, according to Clarivate, a data firm that tracks scientific research. “What [China] is doing is going to set the priorities for the next decade,” says Jonathan Adams, the chief scientist of the Institute for Scientific Information, the research arm at Clarivate.

But as the volume of research from China has increased, some experts have raised concerns about its quality. Between 2017 and 2022, 2,500 Chinese or Chinese co-written papers were retracted because of concerns about plagiarism or due to being linked to a paper mill, according to Retraction Watch, a website that monitors scientific retractions. Paper mills are black market vendors that sell ghostwritten studies to researchers desperate to get published. For studies from US institutions in the same time period, just 123 papers have been retracted for similar reasons.

Interactive

In 2020, Beijing instructed Chinese institutions to stop offering cash rewards for published research, in a bid to crack down on high quantity, low quality research. But other incentives remain. Many paper mills in China appear to be linked to medical institutions, says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist-turned-science investigator who studies research for signs of manipulation or plagiarism.

Medical students are expected to publish research in order to climb the career ladder, an “impossible requirement” considering their training schedules, Bik says. So some students end up turning to the black market. In January, the Ministry of Science and Technology said that dozens of medical researchers at hospital-affiliated universities had been punished for academic fraud, including using ghostwriters and falsified data for PhD theses.

Scientists interviewed by the Guardian stressed that China’s top universities and reputable international journals still maintained high standards. “There will always be low quality research,” says Joy Zhang, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent who focuses on transnational scientific study. “The issue is really about how we filter them.”

Interactive

Several indicators suggest that the quality of Chinese research is improving. Between 2012 and 2021, China’s share of the top 1% of the most-cited papers grew by 40%, while the US’s share dropped by 18%. The US is still ahead, according to Clarivate’s data, but the gap is narrowing, and other estimates suggest that China has already overtaken the US.

This is particularly apparent in fields that China considers a strategic priority. In computer science, China’s share of global research far outstrips the US, and is increasing rapidly. Washington is concerned about Chinese advances in artificial intelligence, especially for military applications, and has restricted China’s access to the most advanced semiconductors in a bid to slow down this research. In August, the US president, Joe Biden, signed an executive order restricting US investment in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, having already banned the export of certain types of these technologies in 2022.

Fear, stigma and slowing collaboration

The Biden administration’s restrictions are a product of the souring ties between the US and China. Between 2018 and 2022, the US Department of Justice ran a project known as the China Initiative, which aimed to weed out spies in American research and industry. Critics of the initiative, which resulted in more than 100 people losing their jobs, said that it discriminated against researchers of Chinese origin.

In November last year, Sherry Chen, a Chinese-American hydrologist, was awarded $1.75m in damages from the US commerce department. Although Chen’s case predated the China Initiative, it was seen as a bellwether for the increasingly hostile environment for Chinese researchers in the US.

Washington no longer operates the China Initiative as a formal programme, but it “created a strong sense of fear among the scientific community”, notes Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, in a recent report. Several scientists spoken to by the Guardian say the effects have endured.

There is a “social stigma” attached to working with Chinese scientists, says Zhang. “A lot of young researchers who are not Chinese have expressed concern about collaborating with China.”

Interactive

One Chinese clinical researcher in the US told the Guardian that she had turned down multiple promising job offers because they came from people or institutions with links to China. “It’s sad to say that. I still have attachments there. But in the US I need to sustain myself, and no one is going to be my saviour if I get into trouble. So I stay ultra safe”.

Chinese universities have also increased their scrutiny of any international engagements. Zhang says that it is now much harder than it used to be to get a response from Chinese research teams, because “establishing international collaborations doesn’t mean that much to them any more,” as Chinese institutions put more emphasis on producing their own research.

Beijing is also trying to lure back Chinese researchers. Yu notes that the standard salary for a natural sciences researcher returning to China is $150,000. In 2021, China went from being a net exporter to a net importer of scientists, helped in part by restrictions in G7 countries on Chinese students working in strategically important sectors such as AI. “The US government’s various initiatives have inadvertently boosted Chinese Stem researchers’ returning home,” says Yu.

Interactive

All this, and the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, mean that the pace of collaborations between US and Chinese researchers and institutions has slowed. That threatens to undermine some of the most cutting edge scientific advances.

Between 2017 and 2021, around one-third of US research on telecommunications and computer science was produced in collaboration with China, according to Clarivate. One-fifth of environmental science research published in that time period was done with Chinese scientists. “All the high impact research is international collaboration,” says Clarivate’s Adams. “To miss out on that would be suicidal.”

TELL ME ABOUT UPS DRIVERS AGAIN

PwC partners to be paid £906,000 this year

Rob Davies
Tue, 22 August 2023 

Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

More than 1,000 partners at the UK division of the “big four” accounting firm PwC will be paid £906,000 this year, a slight fall on last year’s record payout as profits fell despite rising revenues.

Unaudited accounts released by the company showed that PwC’s UK profit fell from £1.5bn to £1.3bn in 2022, although last year’s figure was boosted by a £139m gain from the sale of its global mobility business.

Excluding the asset sale, revenues rose by 18%, from £4.9bn to £5.8bn.

Last year PwC’s partners celebrated their highest-ever personal rewards, pocketing more than £1m each as their record £920,000 basic pay was topped up by a £100,000 bonus.

The top-up was linked to the $2.2bn (£1.7bn) sale of a business providing tax advice for companies moving staff overseas to US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.

There was no such bonus for 2023, while basic pay for the 1,057 partners dipped to £906,000.

Kevin Ellis, the chair and senior partner at PwC, said senior partner profits were still ahead of forecasts, highlighting investments in staff and technology, including AI, which had increased costs.

“Against a backdrop of political and economic upheaval, our multidisciplinary business has charted a strong course.

“Considering the sizable investments we’ve made in our people and technology, partner profits beat our forecasts. Our strong performance is due to the adaptability of our business in supporting our clients and is a credit to the talent of our people.”

PwC invested £100m in new technology, while UK staff numbers increased from 24,500 to 26,000.

The company said it had also paid about half of that workforce an extra £1,500 over five months to help them cope with soaring winter energy bills.

The group’s UK results also include its Middle Eastern business, which was the driver of 30% growth in revenues from PwC’s consulting business, up from £1.3bn to £1.7bn.

This was down to Gulf countries seeking to “modernise and diversify the region’s economy beyond oil”, PwC said.

Ellis added: “The economy may be sluggish but it is also changing as new technologies and the climate emergency change production and consumption.

“We will continue to invest in skills and technology so we can help our clients and communities adapt. This way we can address the unknowns with confidence – both the challenges and opportunities.”

PwC’s UK division and its partners operate separately from PwC Australia, which is at the centre of a scandal that has cost 12 partners their jobs.

The Australian outpost of the big four accounting firm is subject to several investigations, including a criminal inquiry, after its now-former international tax chief Peter Collins used confidential information and documents obtained through government contracts for the firm’s commercial gain.

Twelve partners have been forced out as a result of the scandal. Some are accused by PwC of misusing classified information, while it is alleged others did not properly exercise their expected leadership or governance responsibilities.