How Pete Buttigieg Has Become the Unlikely Breakout Star of Fox News


BY STUART EMMRICH October 9, 2020 VOGUE 

Twitter

It was an indelible moment of live TV. On Wednesday, Pete Buttigieg, a former rival of Joe Biden’s for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and now one of the media surrogates for the Biden-Harris campaign, appeared on Fox News, where he was asked about the vice presidential debate that night between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.

Specifically, Fox’s Martha MacCallum asked Buttigieg about Harris’s views on policy issues that differ from the former vice president, most notably on “Medicare for all,” which the California senator supported during the Democratic presidential primaries and which Biden opposed.

MacCallum got an answer that she clearly did not expect.

“Well, there’s a classic parlor game of trying to find a little bit of daylight between running mates,” Buttigieg said. “And if people want to play that game, we could look into why an evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with the president caught with a porn star, or how he feels about the immigration policy that he called ‘unconstitutional’ before he decided to team up with Donald Trump.” (The “porn star” reference was, of course, to Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, who alleges that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. It’s a claim the president has denied, but that his then lawyer Michael Cohen has testified about paying $130,000 as part of a settlement between her and the president.)

Mayor Pete had only just started. “If folks want to play that game, we can do it all night,” he said. “But I think what most Americans want to hear about is: Are our families going to be better protected than they have been by this president who’s failed to secure America in the face of one of the most dangerous things ever to happen to our country?”

The response left MacCallum and her cohost Bret Baier in seemingly stunned silence, their faces frozen for the next few seconds, before Baier eventually jumped in with an awkward transition to his next question, about the Supreme Court.

The exchange quickly became a viral moment on Twitter.

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And this wasn’t the only time Buttigieg created news on Fox this week—and perhaps not in the way the network’s bookers had expected.

The morning after his takedown of MacCallum and Baier, Buttigieg appeared on Fox and Friends, where cohost Steve Doocy asked him what he thought of the breaking news that President Trump was refusing to participate in a virtual debate on October 15 because it was a “waste” of his time.

“Well, it’s too bad—I don’t know why the president’s afraid to participate in a debate. All of us have had to get used to virtual formats,” said Buttigieg, before going into attack mode. “It’s not something I think most of us enjoy, but it’s a safety measure. And I think part of why the U.S. is falling behind—is badly behind the rest of the developed world on dealing with the pandemic—is because every time there’s been a choice between doing something that’s more safe, or less safe, this president seems to push forward less safe.”

Then Buttigieg added, “Of course, the only reason that we’re here in the first place is that the president of the United States is still contagious, as far as we know, with a deadly disease.” He concluded, “I don’t know why you’d want to be in a room with other people if you were contagious with a deadly disease, if you care about other people. But maybe the president of the United States doesn’t care about other people.”

Later in the interview, Doocy asked what Buttigieg thought Harris’s strongest moments were in the previous night’s debate, and he responded that one of them was Harris calling out Trump for referring to people who had lost their lives in combat as “suckers” and “losers,” as reported in a recent blockbuster article in The Atlantic.

“I hate to interrupt you, Mayor Pete,” Doocy said, looking slightly uncomfortable as the otherwise amiable conversation took another unexpected detour, “but you know the president has denied that particular story.”

“We know he’s lying,” Buttigieg replied, looking straight into the camera. “If you really believe the president now on this kind of stuff, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.” And then he smiled.

Once again, the moment became a trending topic on Twitter.

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https://twitter.com/HeatherWhaley/status/1314406772547911680

Prominent Democrats are more likely to be found on MSNBC and CNN than on President Trump’s favorite network (though Senators Chris Coons, Tammy Duckworth, and Sheldon Whitehouse, and Representatives Tim Ryan and Jim Clyburn have made appearances on Fox), but a spokesman for Buttigieg told the Daily Beast that the former mayor sees Fox as an important outlet. “You’re more likely to have a back-and-forth on Fox since it’s not preaching to the choir, but Pete enjoys that,” said Sean Savett, “especially after spending the past few weeks getting into character as Mike Pence [in the debate prep for Harris]. He knows it’s a valuable way to connect with voters who might not otherwise hear our message.”

Indeed, during his own campaign, Buttigieg recognized the value of reaching out to an audience on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Along with Senators Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, Buttigieg was one of the few Democrats running in the last presidential primaries who agreed to participate in town hall events with Fox.

In that town hall, moderated by Chris Wallace, Buttigieg acknowledged that not all of his peers and supporters agreed with his decision to appear on the Rupert Murdoch–owned network. “A lot of people in my party were critical of me doing this, and I get where that’s coming from, especially when you see what goes on with some of the opinion hosts on this network,” Buttigieg said to Wallace. “But I also believe that even though some of those hosts are not always there in good faith, I think a lot of people who tune into this network do it in good faith.”

Buttigieg also acknowledged the political bent of the average Fox viewer, but argued Trump had failed to live up to their support. “This network is known for having a lot more conservative viewers, but I don’t think you have to be a Democrat to see what is wrong with this president,” Buttigieg said. “If you’re having trouble looking your kids in the eye and explaining this presidency to them, you have a choice.”

Though Buttigieg got a standing ovation from the audience, and positive reviews in the media, at least one viewer was unhappy with his appearance on Fox. “Hard to believe that @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him,” Donald Trump tweeted shortly before the town hall. “Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems. They got dumped from the Democrats boring debates, and they just want in. They forgot the people who got them the

NZ ELECTION 2020

What Would A Green New Deal Look Like In Aotearoa?

Jess Berentson-Shaw

Transitional Livelihoods


And what are the preconditions for achieving it?

Top-down solution building is the work of yesterday, not the work for today, or the future. A people-centred Green New Deal could catalyse a system-level transition to a sustainable and universally thriving future for Aotearoa. What is required to see this vision become a reality?

Covid-19 has shown us that the vast majority of people can and do act together out of connection to something greater than our individual selves in times of crisis. People across New Zealand rolled up their sleeves and came together to ensure people in our communities have what we need to get through this together. While people in politics played an important guiding role in supporting the community in this work, the ongoing crises of climate change and ecosystem destruction haven’t had the benefit of the same brave and clear political leadership (yet).

So it is us, the wider community, who are going to have to pave the way to getting through together. Activating a citizen led process requires a clear vision and a roadmap for how people can make a transition to a better relationship with the environment. A vision builds people’s hope about the better life they will experience, and a roadmap gives them the practical achievable steps they and their families, businesses and communities can take to achieve it.

The earth’s ecosystems will not support us if we keep living as we do

As countries have developed and industrialised, our collective activities, (shaped and encouraged by people and industries that reap unfathomable financial benefits), have wrecked the ecosystems that we are part of and that support our health. A heat-trapping blanket of rampant carbon has warmed and acidified the oceans, as global temperatures have risen, our weather patterns become extreme and damaging. Vast deforestation and intensive monocultural farming, threatens our oxygen makers, our pollinators, our food growing systems, and our physical and mental well being.

This way of development has extracted too much from our life-sustaining ecosystems, while extracting from our communities to do so. People on low incomes, indigenous people, women, people of colour, and those with disabilities have been exploited by people profiting from industries interested only in financial return for their shareholders. These marginalised groups have been injured by industrial processes or in the process of protecting their lands and communities from confiscation, theft and resource extraction. Most of all, they have been shut out of the benefits of this industrial economy through systems of governing and policy making that orientate to the most visible and powerful.  

‘Takarangi’ – A Māori take on the Doughnut economy concept – a collaboration between Teina Boasa-Dean, Juhi Shareef,Tineke Tatt and Jennifer McIver.

This systematic destruction of the planet and exploitation of the vulnerable has been primarily driven by a focus on the growth of wealth above all else. However, there are alternative approaches. Kate Raworth in her book Doughnut Economics has called for a refocus towards “meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet” through economies that “make us thrive, whether or not they grow.” This approach reflects indigenous knowledge and economic systems that predate our current extractive approach.

Psychologists tell us that our minds tend to slide away from these realities to minimise their impacts on us, meaning that we tend to find it hard to engage in the much needed change. However we also have it in us to respond, to adapt and to act on this urgent threat to our wellbeing. We paddled across the inlet together to deal with COVID-19. Now we must take our waka into the open waters and seek the new future we all need. How do we chart the course?
Policy makers need to refocus (and help to do it)

Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez on the campaign trail for a Green New deal

Our current systems of economics and policy making, and our ways of living, all need to be reset and policy makers are key to this task. Tinkering around the edges of the current system (for example investing COVID-19 money in building bike paths next to new roads while relying on the low paid labour of Māori and Pacific communities to do so) is not going to solve the climate or environmental crisis.

To achieve a true reset, people in policy making will need to be focussed much further upstream from the problems that we are currently experiencing. A broad and systemic focus on the upstream rules and policies that encourage and enable extractive practices across government, business and society is required. Our tax and financial systems are key – as Jonathan Barrett of VUW has pointed out, with their conservative campaign promises, “Labour and National lock in existing unfairness in New Zealand’s tax system.” However, just as critical are housing, work and labour, transport, health, agriculture, social and economic development and foreign policy.

Policy makers need shared and clearly articulated and bold goals for actively restoring and rebuilding the health of the planet, and the inclusion of all people, they need a mission (or missions even) that they can work in collaboration with business, iwi, community groups to meet.
How the Green New Deal can help chart the course

Obama era U.S. Energy Department’s poster series inspired by iconic New Deal-era posters.

This is where the various Green New Deal’s come in. The name harks back to the comprehensive policies instituted by US President Roosevelt in the 1930s to rebuild social and economic systems crippled by the great depression. The Green New Deal proposals are a similarly comprehensive and system level policy intervention aimed at dealing with the upstream causes of the crises of inequality and climate.

The UK Green new deal was born out of a paper written by economists, including Ann Pettifor, in response to the 2008 financial crisis. It recommended a set of joined up policies that aspired to deal with the upstream conditions that shaped the credit crisis, encouraged the release of rampant carbon, and led to high oil prices. What it did was focus squarely on how the rules of our current economic systems shaped climate change, environmental degradation and social inequity. The series of Green New Deal plans now seen across the world, were adapted from that original work and have gained increasing support from the public and across the political spectrum.

A European Green New Deal Vision

Notable examples in play in the real world include the European Commission’s 2019 €1tn ‘European Green Deal’. It aims to transform the 27-country bloc from a high- to a low-carbon economy, without reducing prosperity and while improving people’s quality of life, through cleaner air and water, better health and a thriving natural world. Meanwhile, leading the Asian region, Korea has commited USD$61bn to a Green New Deal by 2025 which they estimate will create 1.9 million new jobs by 2050.

The European Deal has been lauded by Jeffrey Sachs as a global benchmark and a “how-to guide for planning the transformation to a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable economy.” However, others have advised that close scrutiny to the details is required and that more needs to be done. In all of the current proposals, the risks of industry capture and a focus on ‘green growth’ at the expense of ‘de-growth’ have been raised. This is something that must be actively rejected if the deals are to be truly transformative for people and the planet.

Where is NZ’s Green New Deal?

Whakaipo planting day. Photo: Kim-Turia

So far no Green New Deal has emerged in New Zealand despite growing calls for this more substantive approach to addressing our current crises. This election we see at best a group of individual policies from the main parties on climate change or conservation that don’t go anywhere near creating a vision of a country that has responded to climate change effectively in the timeframe that is required. There is no clear pathway laid out that articulates the upstream issues or solutions that a Green New Deal covers.

As would be expected after the major job loss of COVID-19, there is huge focus from both Labour and National on “jobs”, and Labour has a nod to “green infrastructure”. Yet these policies are located within status quo thinking about our economic systems and what good jobs are. The Government committed $1.1 Billion in Budget 2020 to restoring our environment through projects anticipated to create nearly 11,000 new jobs in the regions. At the time, this was even labeled a Green New Deal by the Environmental Defence Society. However, such investment falls far short of being a Green New Deal as it fails to address the systemic drivers of the challenges we face.

Absolutely we need jobs. But those jobs need to come from an economy that we have built out of protecting and restoring the environment, from circular systems of production. They also need to come from re-centering the value we place on the work of caring for people, children, people who are ill and disabled, the elderly, both paid and unpaid, as a fundamental activity that must be optimised in order for society to thrive.
Rena oil spill cleanup – Sam Shepherd, NZ Defence Force.

Good jobs would also ideally be in enterprises owned by the workers themselves through cooperative or community/worker-owned models. This would ensure greater worker control over their labour conditions and transform economic futures of communities. New Zealand lags far behind most developed nations in our adoption of these alternative company models. Our over reliance on unproductive housing to drive our economy, and huge housing costs, don’t enable innovation and creativity (or free up resources to take risks) in business.

Jobs in planting monoculture non-native trees for multinationals exploiting minimum wage labour and precarious employment conditions does not offer economic or environmental transformation for those concerned. This is particularly problematic when such jobs rely heavily on the efforts of Māori and Pacific people, many of whom left school early because the education system excluded them, or worse because of the constraints of poverty. This is not a reset. It is trying to build a new future using the same shonky foundations that led to the problems we currently have.

The pre-conditions for a Green New Deal

Green New Deal activists in Detroit, USA.

So what do people in New Zealand politics need to be able support a New Green Deal approach? They need a roadmap that has been created for them by everyday people who most need change to happen, and they need to feel there is widespread public support for it. That support needs to be built by a range of groups across our communities and society using innovative thinking and tools.

A new narrative

A good evidence/knowledge based policy package is necessary but not sufficient. Recently Anne Pettifor reflected that the original Green New Deal in the UK struggled to get traction, she put this down to it being written by a group of academics and economists who knew nothing about building a movement behind the ideas. It took the efforts of The Sunrise Movement to take the deal to the political sphere in the US. It takes a diversity of skills and approaches to deliver systemic and structural change.

Providing evidence driven rationales for upstream solutions to address systemic inequities is critical. However, just as important are skills in bringing a diverse range of ordinary people together in agreed and mutually beneficial collective action. Even the best policy solutions in the world need a movement to support them.

It is also important that those in power listen to the wants and needs of communities. Rather than designing policies from the top-down, inviting participation in the process of solving this problem could increase the support and buy-in from the public and ensure the policy works in the local context and for our communities.
Address the “public appetite” problem

Related to the need for building a movement is the no “public appetite” problem. Which is really a public narrative problem. People in politics will often understand at least some of the solutions required to shift a system, but if they see no public appetite for a solution (we could frame this as a lack of leadership), they will fail to act. Any policy package that requires a system reset, also needs effective narratives – a list of ingredients is not the same as selling the cake.

These narratives need to be built on understanding the thinking (mental models) and current narratives that hold a system in place (eg “climate change is too big and scary and governments are useless”). Narratives for change navigate people around this thinking towards deeper more helpful thinking, building support for change. The Green New Deal movement generally does approach narrative in a disciplined and evidence-led way which makes it a powerful vehicle for change worthy of support in New Zealand.
A shift from individual consumer choice to collective action

Related to effective narratives, is a clear focus in public discussion on people acting as citizens. Changing spending habits and acting as conscious consumers matters, but it does little to fundamentally change the rules governing our current extractive economic system.

The more we (those working towards climate action) engage in discussions about individual choice and consumer behaviour in order to act on climate change or environmental degradation, the less likely people are to engage in the collective and civic action needed to achieve systemic change. Engaging people as citizens in a collaborative society lifts people’s gaze to seeing things like the Green New Deal as a critical part of the solution, and will help build the movement required.

Clarity about locating agency and power

Part of the unbalanced focus on individual behaviour results when the source of power for change is not clearly articulated. While collective citizenry is a source of power for the solutions, there are individuals and agencies who actively fight such change. These individuals and the organisations they represent will not voluntarily lead systematic change, not when their bottom lines are going to be affected. They will, the research shows, use a series of tactics to undermine, sow doubt, and actively fight it.

These behaviours need to be named, and the change these ‘blockers’ need to make must be articulated. Tobacco law reform showed us that such people and the values they prioritise, should not be at the decision making table when what is at stake is in the best interest of the public.

Philanthropy gets political

Many people with money and power(including those invested in the fossil fuel industry) are working incredibly hard to hold the status quo in place. Thus, money and power is also needed to help Green New Deal movements grow. Philanthropy is where the money mostly (but not exclusively) is to be found. In New Zealand, Philanthropy has tended to fund bricks and mortar (downstream solutions). It’s a small country and wealthy New Zealanders tend to see funding political movements as risky.

However, people in philanthropy need to recognise how money, lobbying and formal power works against the changes they want to see in the world. Working upstream in philanthropy means using money and power in support of grassroots and political movements for system change.

Embracing Te Tiriti o Waitangi

I speak here as a Pākehā woman. A uniquely Aotearoa Green New Deal could lay out a vision for people of different backgrounds to come together to embrace innovative indigenous solutions to the climate and environmental crisis. It would be a significant reset of the system to support the self-determination of our indigenous population, which includes their role as kaitiaki of this land. We are a unique country, with a unique founding document. Meaningful shared decision making between Maori and non-Maori, set out in our own New Green deal, would create world-leading systems change.

First steps in this direction are being made in the conservation sector where Māori have led a number of successful projects on Māori land in partnership with DOC. Such successes have been recognised and highlighted in the recently released New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy Te Mana o te Taiao, which outlines an intention to scale up the Māori-led and community-led approach to other areas of biodiversity regeneration.

Another promising approach is the devolving of environmental goal setting and monitoring to Iwi and hapu. This has happened with the recent devolution of the Waikato Regional Council’s Lake Taupo monitoring functions to the local iwi, in a first for a Regional Council in Aotearoa.

Such initiatives could provide a great model for expanding such iwi-led approaches to the creation of more ‘good green jobs’. Both people in government, and everyday New Zealanders can further explore what genuine co-creation involves in the environmental space. It can be as simple as supporting Māori leadership and pioneering models first and then adopting them more widely over time.
Making it work for communities


As Naomi Klein has written of the quest for a Green New Deal in the USA, it is crucial to draw out the connections between the environmental imperatives and the much needed improvement it could present for working class lives, in ways that capture the public imagination. In Klein’s view this task “will take a massive exercise in participatory democracy.”

Similarly, If we are to successfully implement a Green New Deal in New Zealand, it will be important that a large group of people come to think about it as something that will lead to better lives for all of us. Building strong support for change takes commitment to solutions that are upstream and grounded in the everyday needs of all people, not simply the most vocal or currently privileged.

This is how to ensure green growth helps people where it counts. Co-creating solutions at an early stage (e.g. community budget setting, citizen assemblies), supporting Māori self determination and environmental goal setting, and giving more real power to communities in decision-making, will increase the support and buy-in from the public and ensure the policy works in the local context and for all our communities. In short, this involves rethinking our economy, our institutions, our social structures, and even our democracy. Top-down solution building is the work of yesterday, not the work for today or the future.

Refinery-based carbon capture plan in the running for Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund cash

VPI and Phillips 66 proposal Humber Zero is submitted alongside region-wide project

By David Laister Business Editor (Humber)

8, OCT 2020
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Phillips 66 Humber Refinery at South Killingholme. (Image: Phillips 66)

A second major bid has been made to government to accelerate the Humber’s decarbonisation.

Humber Zero, a joint carbon capture initiative from Vitol Group and Phillips 66, has been submitted.

It will sit alongside Zero Carbon Humber’s £75 million application for support to create a pan-region CCS and hydrogen network as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

The two major projects are being brought forward with the aim of transforming one of the most carbon intensive areas to become an exemplar for the world, protecting and creating thousands of jobs.

Humber Zero is focused on the refining cluster, and can work with the wider proposal or stand alone.

It involves the complex Humber Refinery and the adjoining combined heat and power plant, VPI Immingham, which is now owned by Vitol. Developed by Phillips 66, it currently provides electricity and steam to both the former owner and neighbouring Total Lindsey Oil Refinery, and is regarded as one of the most efficient generators in Europe.


  

Jonathan Briggs, project director for Humber Zero. (Image: Humber Zero)

Further details of the bid are anticipated shortly for the scheme unveiled back in May, with hopes to be operational by the mid-2020s.

Jonathan Briggs, director of Humber Zero, said: “We have put the bid in, and it is a joint bid between VPI and P66. We are very excited about it and working on a successful project, at scale, to aid decarbonisation.”

A reduction of eight million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year has been identified, with potential for more and the integration of hydrogen, with near neighbour Uniper looking at that phase, which may target future funding pots.

The grand plan would see post combustion capture on two of the three existing generators at VPI Immingham and selected processing units at the Humber and Lindsey refineries. It would be combined with the development of a hydrogen hub producing green and blue hydrogen to serve the third generator and local industry.
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Uniper, the new name for what was E.on’s fossil fuel generation portfolio, is also part of Zero Carbon Humber, with a 600MW gas-fired power plant at North Killingholme.

The anchor project in that scheme is Equinor's Hydrogen to Humber (H2H) Saltend project, which will establish the world’s largest hydrogen production plant with carbon capture at Saltend Chemicals Park.

They are two of 12 partners, including Associated British Ports, British Steel, Centrica Storage Ltd, Drax Group, Mitsubishi Power, National Grid Ventures, PX Group, SSE Thermal, Saltend Cogeneration Company Ltd and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

Decisions on backing are anticipated in December.

SEE CARBON CAPTURE IS NEITHER GREEN NOR CLEAN

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

UK
Government to pay two thirds of wages at businesses forced to shut during coronavirus lockdown

Chancellor Rishi Sunak vows to help businesses hit by local measures to slow coronavirus pandemic

By Alistair Houghton Business Live Editor 9 OCT 2020


VIDEO 

https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/government-pay-two-thirds-wages-19079628


Chancellor Rishi Sunak says the Government’s Jobs Support Scheme will be extended to support businesses forced to close by any new coronavirus restrictions or lockdowns.

Mr Sunak this afternoon, Friday October 9, said that any firms whose premises are “legally required to shut” due to local or national restrictions will get grants worth up to two thirds of each employees’ salary (or 67%), up to a maximum of £2,100 a month.

The Government says that under the expanded JSS scheme, employers will not be required to contribute towards wages but will have to cover National Insurance and pension contributions.

The Government says: “It is estimated that around half of potential claims are likely not to incur employer NICs or auto-enrolment pension contributions and so face no employer contribution”.

Businesses will only be able to claim the support while subject to restrictions. Employees must be off work for a minimum of seven consecutive days.

The support will start on November 1 and run for six months, with a review in January.

Payments will be made in arrears through an HMRC claims service that will be available from early December.

The scheme is UK-wide and the Government has pledged to work with devolved administrations. The Government has also pledged to work with local elected mayors and political leaders over proposed local lockdowns, following criticism in some areas over a lack of consultation.

The Government has also increased the cash grants for businesses required to close in local lockdowns.

Up to £3,000 per month will be available, compared to £1,500 previously.

Mr Sunak said: “Throughout the crisis, the driving force of our economic policy has not changed.

“I have always said that we will do whatever is necessary to protect jobs and livelihoods as the situation evolves.

“The expansion of the Job Support Scheme will provide a safety net for businesses across the UK who are required to temporarily close their doors, giving them the right support at the right time.”

But in Wales it's already feared that some local firms could miss out on the benefits of the scheme.

In the north, where local lockdowns are likely, Northern Powerhouse Partnership director Henri Murison said: "This news will undoubtedly come as a huge relief to many communities and businesses across the whole of the North.

“Further lockdowns must go hand in hand with further support packages from the government and this scheme will help to save businesses and livelihoods for up to hundreds of thousands of people.

“However, the help can’t stop here. We wrote to the Chancellor today to urge more support in both the short and long-term. We can’t let Covid undo all our efforts to rebalance the economy in recent years.

“Instead we must give local leaders more tools to meet the needs of the people who elected them and invest back into Northern cities - if we are ever to achieve real levelling-up.”

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce chief executive Paul Cherpeau said: "The measures from the chancellor offer some support to businesses that once again through no fault of their own have to close their doors.

"We welcome the support of wages, however the £3,000 figure will not even cover the rents of some businesses let alone revenue loss and again we fear for the future of our leisure and hospitality which is the fuel of the region.”

Jaeger and Peacocks owner Edinburgh Woollen Mill Group on the brink of administration

Normal trading "impossible" due to coronavirus impact as boss blames "false rumours" for hitting reputation

birminghampost

The Edinburgh Woollen Mill group also owns Jaeger and Peacocks (Image: Hertfordshire Mercury)



The Edinburgh Woollen Mill Group is on the brink of administration - affecting around 24,000 workers at fashion brand including Peacocks and Jaeger.

The group's boss said tough trading since the pandemic had been followed by "false rumours" about trading that had hit its ability to get credit insurance.

EWM dates its history back to 1046. As well as Peacocks and Jaeger, its brands include Ponden Home and the James Pringle Weavers site in Anglesey.

The group has now filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators to give it breathing space. All stores will continue trading for now.

EWM Group chief executive Steve Simpson said: “Like every retailer, we have found the past seven months extremely difficult.

“This situation has grown worse in recent weeks as we have had to deal with a series of false rumours about our payments and trading which have impacted our credit insurance.

“Traditionally, the group has always traded with strong cash reserves and a conservative balance sheet but these stories, the reduction in credit insurance – against the backdrop of the lockdown – and now this second wave of Covid-19 and all the local lockdowns, have made normal trading impossible.

“As directors we have a duty to the business, our staff, our customers and our creditors to find the very best solution in this brutal environment.

“So we have applied to court today for a short breathing space to assess our options before moving to appoint administrators.

“Through this process I hope and believe we will be able to secure the best future for our businesses, but there will inevitably be significant cuts and closures as we work our way through this.

“I would like to thank all our staff for their amazing efforts during this time and also our customers who have remained so loyal and committed to our brands.”

Norway oil strike ends after wage agreement

By Nerijus Adomaitis

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian oil firms struck a wage bargain with labour union officials on Friday, ending a 10-day strike that had threatened to cut the country’s oil and gas output by close to 25% next week, negotiators for each side told Reuters.

A general view of the drilling platform, the first out of four oil platforms to be installed at Norway's giant offshore Johan Sverdrup field during the 1st phase development, near Stord, western Norway September 4, 2017. REUTERS/Nerijus Adomaitis

Brent oil prices fell by more than 1% on the news to $42.67.

Six offshore fields shut on Monday and a further seven had been scheduled to follow in the coming days, with the oil and gas outage set to grow to 966,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boed) by Oct. 14, the industry had said.

“We have a deal, there will be no (more) strike (action),” negotiator Jan Hodneland of the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (NOG) said after the talks ended.

The Lederne trade union confirmed the news.

“The strike is over,” union chief Audun Ingvartsen said.

Oil firms and union officials met on Friday with a state-appointed mediator to try to end the strike in western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producing nation.

Friday’s meeting was the first with the state mediator since the strike was announced on Sept. 30, although informal talks had been taking place.

Under the wage deal for offshore workers, Aker BP AKERBP.OL and Equinor EQNR.OL both agreed to include provisions for land-based staff at their onshore control rooms, the NOG said, a key demand of Lederne.


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The settlement also included a commitment from oil firms to sign a broader, long-term agreement by April 1, 2021, the NOG added.

Wages will also increase, according to Lederne, although this was in line with what other workers in the industry had obtained, the union said.

The strike's first production outage began on Oct. 5, amounting to 330,000 boed, with an additional shutdowns due this weekend at six fields operated by Equinor, ConocoPhillips COP.N and Wintershall Dea.

Equinor’s Johan Sverdrup oilfield, the North Sea’s largest with an output capacity of up to 470,000 barrels per day, had been scheduled to close on Oct. 14 as a result of the strike.

Norwegian oil workers are among the highest paid in Europe but earn less than those in Australia or North America, a review of the latest available data shows. (Graphic: Norway's gas exports 2019, )

Additional reporting by Nora Buli, writing by Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik; editing by Kirsten Donovan and Susan Fenton

#QUACK   #SNAKEOIL

Donald Trump won't answer this very simple question about his health

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Fri October 9, 2020


(CNN)On Thursday night, President Donald Trump did what he often does on Thursday night: Watch football Call into Sean Hannity's Fox News show.
Hannity began the interview with a very basic question about Trump's testing regimen for the virus -- especially since his positive test last Thursday night. Here's the exchange that occurred:

Hannity: Have you been tested recently?

Trump: Fortunately, the -- yes, I just saw the doctors today. They think I'm in great shape. I'm in great shape.

Hannity: Did you test negative?

Trump: I know when I'm in good shape or not. And I will tell you, I took this Regeneron. It's phenomenal. And Eli Lilly has something very comparable. It's phenomenal. And it's a whole new day. It's a whole -- and if you go back a few months, nobody ever even thought about this stuff. We came up with it. And I'm going to have it delivered to every hospital where you have sick people with the Covid, or the China virus, as we call it. And we are going to make people better.

It actually made me better. I went in. I could have left a day later. I'm telling you, Sean, it was incredible. So, that's Regeneron. But, again, Eli Lilly has something similar. The kind of things we're coming up with now are incredible, remdesivir, but that's a little bit different, works much differently, actually. But these things are absolutely incredible.

I think I'm going to try doing a rally on Saturday night, if we can -- if we have enough time to put it together. But we want to do a rally in Florida -- probably in Florida on Saturday night. Might come back and do one in Pennsylvania in the following night. And it's incredible, what's going on. I feel so good.

Hannity: Have you had a test since your diagnosis a week ago?

Trump: Well, what we're doing is probably the test will be tomorrow, the actual test, because there's no reason to test all the time. But they found very little infection or virus, if any. I don't know that they found any.

So, not going to answer the question then, I guess? Remember that Trump is not, in fact, a medical doctor. Nor is he an infectious disease expert. Which means that when Hannity asks Trump if he has tested negative and he responds, "I know when I'm in good shape or not," well, that means absolutely nothing.

Trump's evasiveness came just hours after Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, who has his own struggles with telling the truth about Trump's condition, released a memo arguing that Trump was now free to resume in-person activities on Saturday.
"Saturday will be day 10 since Thursday's diagnosis, and based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the President's safe return to public engagements at that time," wrote Conley.

And soon after that, Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who himself has Covid-19, released a statement citing Coney's report as proof that "there is no medical reason why the Commission on Presidential Debates should shift the debate to a virtual setting, postpone it, or otherwise alter it in any way." (The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Thursday morning that the second presidential debate, set for October 15, would be virtual -- based on advice from the Cleveland Clinic; Trump told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo he would not participate in a virtual debate soon after the announcement.)

While guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues over the summer does not require a patient to receive a negative test before returning to normal activities, the caginess of Trump and his White House on testing is neither new nor terribly transparent.

The White House has yet to answer repeated questions about when Trump last tested negative prior to his positive test last Thursday. "I don't know when he last tested negative," White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said Wednesday, the day Trump returned to the Oval Office. "We're not asking to go back through a bunch of records and look backwards."
On Thursday, White House communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters she "can't reveal that at this time," when asked about the last time Trump tested negative. "My understanding is that it's his private medical history." Of course, the White House has released LOTS of other medical information about Trump -- all of which supports their case that he is recovering quickly and well from his Covid-19 diagnosis.

Why does it matter when Trump last tested negative? Because, if officials had that information, they would be able to conceptualize the universe of people that Trump had potentially infected between that last negative test and his positive test eight days ago. According to all reports, Trump was showing symptoms last Thursday but we know that the virus can incubate in the body from anywhere between two and 14 days after exposure -- meaning that Trump could well have been infectious for days before he tested positive. And could have exposed any number of people to the virus.

But the White House won't answer that question. Just like Trump won't answer if he has tested negative for the virus now -- even as he insists he is ready to return to the campaign trial and the debate stage.

Trump and his team are essentially asking the public -- and former Vice President Joe Biden, who would be in the same room as Trump next week for the debate -- to simply take his word for it that all is well. The President's track record on truth, however, suggests we all should be very skeptical of his word.

#QUACK  #SNAKEOIL

Trump's claim to have been "cured" of COVID-19 is "bombastic" and not based in fact, experts say

It is unclear if Trump himself is out of the woods from COVID-19, but he definitely has not found a "cure"

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures upon return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on October 05, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump spent three days hospitalized for coronavirus. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Trump's claim to have been "cured" of COVID-19 is "bombastic" and not based in fact, experts say

It is unclear if Trump himself is out of the woods from COVID-19, but he definitely has not found a "cure"

Although President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that the special treatment he had received for COVID-19 had "cure[d]" him, scientists agree that the president has not in fact been cured — and that by claiming so on video, he is spreading dangerous disinformation about how COVID-19 is treated and how the novel coronavirus infects the body.

In his video, Trump claimed that his novel coronavirus infection was "a blessing from God" because his treatment proved "much more important to me than the vaccine." He claimed that the experimental antibody cocktail given to him by Regeneron, REGN-COV2, "wasn't just therapeutic, it made me better. I call that a cure." He also claimed that he was going to arrange it so that people could receive this drug for "free."

Salon spoke with a number of doctors and public health experts, all of whom agreed that the notion of Trump having been "cured" by his medical treatment is outrageous.
]

"It would be VERY unusual for him not to still be infected," Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email. "There is always the possibility that the unlicensed cocktail of monoclonal antibodies he received early in the course of his disease was unusually effective; but that would be very unlikely until real data are seen. More likely, he is being 'Trump,' made more bombastic by the heightened sense that the dexamethasone he received commonly causes."

Sommer's comment about dexamethasone refers to how the steroid, which is prescribed to COVID-19 patients when doctors are concerned about severely lowered oxygen levels and want to prevent a patient's immune system from fatally overreacting, can cause side effects; those include severe mood swings, insomnia and nervousness. Less common psychological side effects include confusion, depression, delirium, hallucinations and paranoia.

Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon that even if the president misspoke and meant to say he is "immune" to the disease, rather than "cured," even that would not make any sense given what we know about the science of COVID-19.

"What we do know is the president has been infected with COVID-19 and he is currently going through a period in which the disease will run its course," Medford told Salon. "His statement that he is immune is not based on any obvious facts to the case and a full and complete immune response would not be expected to occur until later, if at all, in the course of this disease."

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, echoed these thoughts, writing to Salon that "his claim about being cured is wrong. Nothing currently exists that can cure this disease. Your body has to recover from it. The medications he was given helps his body recover a bit faster and reduces his symptoms. But he has to heal naturally which may take weeks."




Based on known science, the novel coronavirus has an incubation period of roughly 14 days, and the infected who develop symptoms are likely to start doing so within four or five days of contracting the virus. Throughout that two week period, people with COVID-19 remain highly contagious, which is why they are often held under quarantine. While there are ways of treating sufferers, there is no evidence so far that any of them are "cures."

"COVID-19 has some established and emerging treatments for it and has a variety of clinical manifestations even without treatment, including complete resolution," Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, wrote to Salon. "There is not yet evidence that a particular treatment — e.g. the monoclonal antibody that President Trump received — cured him of COVID-19."
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Trump's most prominent adviser in dealing with the pandemic, expressed similar thoughts to The New York Times. As Fauci explained to the publication, "I think it's a reasonably good chance that the antibody that he received, the Regeneron antibody, made a significant difference in a positive way in his course." At the same time, when you have only one case study, "you can't make the determination that that's a cure. You have to do a clinical trial involving a large number of individuals, compared either to a placebo or another intervention."

Science aside, Trump's statements regarding his medical treatments, and their accessibility to the general public, are similarly misinformed. The medical treatments he received are unlikely to be available to the average American. REGN-COV2 has not yet been authorized for production by the Food and Drug Administration, and Trump was only able to access the drug because of a compassionate use permission request made by Trump's staff. Trump's elite status as president seems to have played into the decision to authorize use: "When it's the president of the United States, of course, that gets — obviously — gets our attention," Regeneron's CEO told the New York Times.

In addition to dexamethasone and REGN-COV2, Trump also received an antiviral drug called remdesivir, which is thought to possibly hasten recovery time in patients. Although Trump claims he would make this free for Americans, the medication regimen that he received is extremely costly and would likely only be available to all Americans if they had access to the same military health care system that Trump used — which is, in effect, a single-payer health care system specifically for the military and veterans.

"[It's] way too expensive" for ordinary Americans, as Dr. William Haseltine, the founder and former CEO of Human Genome Sciences, told Salon. "In addition, you have to be in a hospital where they're going to stick a needle in your arm and infuse it over a long period of time. And the same thing is true for that five day course of remdisivir. You've got to infuse that in the hospital over a five day course. So he was getting two drugs that required intrusions, the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a pin cushion."

There are also ethical concerns about Trump's repeated touting of Regeneron. Trump's video caused a 4.7% increase in Regeneron stock. The president used to own stock in the company and he is friendly with its CEO, Leonard Schleifer, who is a member of one of Trump's golf clubs and whom the president calls "Lenny."

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD

QUACK 

Trump’s doctor has become a menace to public safety


October 9, 2020
By AlterNet- Commentary

Dr. Sean Conley. (CNN screenshot)


White House physician Sean Conley confirmed on Thursday that President Donald Trump is now free to make a “safe return” to public events beginning on Saturday. However, medical experts are now questioning Conley’s assessment and swift clearance of the president.

The president’s doctor released a memo about the president’s health insisting his condition has stabilized as he completed therapy for COVID-19. According to Conley the president is said to have responded the therapy “extremely well.

“Since returning home, his physical exam has remained stable and devoid of any indications to suggest progression of illness. Overall he’s responded extremely well to treatment, without evidence on examination of adverse therapeutic effects,” Conley wrote.

“Saturday will be day 10 since Thursday’s diagnosis, and based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the President’s safe return to public engagements at that time,” he continued.

The latest news came as Trump announced his intent to resume with campaign rallies over the weekend as he insisted on holding a rally in Florida on Saturday and another in Wisconsin on Sunday. Conley is now facing criticism for his overall assessment of Trump’s coronavirus case.

Last week, Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center where he was hospitalized for COVID. The White House faced scrutiny for its inconsistencies and lack of transparency regarding the president’s health. Although Conley often painted a relatively pleasant picture of Trump’s health, the medications he was administered suggested that the president may have been battling a severe case of COVID. Despite speculation, Conley defied odds by allowing the president to discharge from the hospital in just three days.

Now, he has given Trump the green light despite the president being COVID-positive for just one week. Conley’s continued efforts to trample public health norms undermines the expertise of health experts which further diminishes the severity of the coronavirus. Despite Conley’s stance on Trump, there are 7.8 million coronavirus cases and each person’s response to the virus is different. More than 217,000 Americans have died from coronavirus.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/10/trump-symptom-free-has-covid-19.html

MORE TRUMP QUACKERY

HIS SO CALLED DOCTOR IS A BONE CRUNCHER,

A CHIROPRACTOR BY ANY OTHER NAME 

#SNAKEOIL #QUACK

Fact Check: Here's the Deal With Trump's Antibody Cocktail and Fetal Cells

Tom McKay
and Shoshana Wodinsky
Yesterday 6:17PM
•

The inevitable happened, and Donald Trump wound up hospitalized with covid-19. But now Trump is supposedly recovered and back to his usual business, like recording galaxy-brain videos calling his infection a “blessing from God.” One thing that the president has said may well be true: that he recovered with the help of a still-experimental monoclonal antibody cocktail produced by drugmaker Regeneron, called REGN-COV2.

This treatment was made possible in part thanks to fetal tissue research that happened over 40 years ago, though no actual embryonic stem cells were used in its production or development. The hypocrisy here is that the Trump administration halted federal fetal tissue research in 2019, a blow to medical science.

Some of Trump’s critics have taken this connection a little too far. Take Democratic Representative Ted Lieu, for example, who tweeted out documents Regeneron has posted to its web site:

The representative’s claim spread far and wide, racking up over 28,000 retweets and over 64,000 likes as of Thursday afternoon. A search for “human embryonic stem cells” on Twitter shows that it has been a near-constant subject of discussion all week. One tweet making the claim REGN-COV2 was “made with stem cells” and has 81,000 retweets and over 324,000 likes, while another has over 5,300 retweets and 11,800 likes. Numerous other identical claims have gone viral on Twitter, and stem cell claims are circulating on Facebook, too, sometimes with the implication that Trump’s recovery hinged on some relatively recent abortion.

To be clear, Regeneron’s antibody cocktail wasn’t produced using any human embryonic stem cells, though it was tested with the help of line of cells that was originally derived from aborted fetal tissue more than 40 years ago. This particular cell line—which, again, was never actually in a fetus—is widely used in scientific research and has been cultured again and again over the decades.

Neither of the two companies working to develop monoclonal antibodies effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus have used embryonic stem cells in the process.

Per Science Mag, Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail and another being made in collaboration between AstraZeneca and Vanderbilt University were developed via a technique that involves harvesting B cells from consenting adults (or laboratory mice) who had recovered from the virus, then identifying which produced antibodies are effective against it. They then injected the genes to produce those antibodies into epithelial cell lines derived from the ovaries of Chinese hamsters. (“Chinese hamster” is the common name for the species C. griseus and does not suggest anything about where the hamsters were necessarily located.) Hamster ovary cells are utilized in a broad spectrum of medical research. That part of the process doesn’t involve anything related to a human fetus.

Lieu described the posted document as showing that “Regeneron, the experimental drug” relies on “human embryonic stem cells.” The document he posted is actually a position statement from Regeneron—the corporate entity, not its as-yet-unnamed drug—on the use of stem cells published in April 2020, when the company was in the early stages of its research on covid-19 antibodies. The statement merely establishes that Regeneron conducts stem cell research in general. It also states that when Regeneron conducts such research, it more commonly relies on mouse or adult human stem cells than it does on embryonic stem cells created by in vitro fertilization.

That document isn’t referring to Regeneron’s treatment, company spokesperson Alexandra Bowie wrote via email to Gizmodo, because it doesn’t use stem cells.

“... This is our general position statement on stem cell use,” Bowie wrote. “This particular discovery program (REGN-COV2) did not involve human stem cells or [embryonic stem cells].”

Lieu’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo asking what sources they had to back up the claim the antibody cocktail “relied on ‘human embryonic stem cells.’” However, some science-minded folks on Twitter noticed that Regeneron’s own supplementary research material referenced human embryonic cells—specifically a derivative of the widely utilized HEK 293 line, HEK293T, with HEK standing for “human embryonic kidney”—as playing a role in production.

To a layperson, the technical language used to describe the process may read as indicating fetal cells are an ingredient in REGN-COV2. Back in 1972, a team of Nordic researchers working with the FDA to crank out the first vaccines for HIV originally cultivated HEK 293 from the kidneys of an aborted fetus, just like the name suggests.

This isn’t the first time that the origins of this specific cell line have made headlines. Back in 2011, pro-life groups lost their shit after discovering that a San Diego-based biotech company that helps create the flavors behind Pepsico and Kraft’s products was actually using HEK to do so. As Snope’s article on the topic points out, these rumors swirled around for years, leading an entire longstanding mythos that your mac and cheese or diet soda might contain fetal tissue. The claims, in many ways, sound nearly identical to the current yelling about REGN-COV2.

Suffice to say, the Pepsico and Trump cocktail rumors are off base. As science writers at the time explained, HEK is a cell culture, meaning that it’s the result of embryonic cells pulled from a single aborted fetus back in 1972 doing what those embryonic cells are particularly adept at doing: multiplying, and multiplying fast. The HEK cells used by the San Diego company were engineered to mimic taste receptors and quickly test new flavors in a laboratory setting; they never came anywhere close to a production line. In Regeneron’s case, the HEK 293T cells were used to cultivate pseudoparticles that mimic the “spike” protein of the coronavirus, which helps the virus invade cells.

Exposing antibodies to these pseudoparticles allows scientists to study how the antibodies might respond to an actual invading coronavirus. It’s not part of the produced drug, just like body armor (usually) doesn’t come with bullets stuck in it.

“The 293T cell line was originally derived from human embryonic kidney cells (back in the 1980s at Stanford University), but is an immortalized epithelial cell—again, not a stem cell,” Bowie told Gizmodo. “These cells were transfected and used in production of a ‘pseudoparticle’ that mimics the virus’ spike protein and allowed us to test neutralization ability of our antibodies against the virus.”

“The HEK293 cell lines are common research tools used to express many kinds of proteins, as briefly described here,” Antibody Society executive director Janice M. Reichert, an expert on antibody therapeutics, wrote to Gizmodo. “By now, there are numerous derivatives of the original cell line. HEK293 cell lines are typically purchased (e.g., from ATCC) by labs, not generated de novo using the method described in the original paper.”

In any case, HEK 293 has been cultured so many times over multiple decades that its origin barely matters—unless, of course, you are vehemently opposed to any kind of fetal tissue research. Its versatility has made this line a staple of medical science. HEK 293T has itself been further modified and cultivated. Neither is a line of stem cells, which are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells with the ability to develop into specialized cells. The distinction is important, as the ability of pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into pretty much anything offers hope for novel treatments for everything from physical trauma to genetic and/or degenerative conditions.

As Snopes put it in its Pepsico debunker:

Saying that possessing a digitized image of a photocopy of a picture of a Beethoven manuscript is the same as “owning a document in Beethoven’s own handwriting” — the original is not present in substance, only in a multi-generational, representational form.

The underlying criticism of Trump—that he is the beneficiary of research he opposes—is fair. In June 2019, the Trump administration moved to cut off federally funded research at the National Institutes of Health utilizing fetal cell tissue collected after an elective abortion. It also forced scientists receiving grants from the NIH to go through a more exhaustive review process, including a “Human Fetal Tissue Ethics Advisory Board” stocked with opponents of fetal tissue research. An investigation by Democrats in Congress later found, unsurprisingly, that the White House’s decision was motivated almost entirely by political concerns and impeded critical medical research, including coronavirus treatments.

Tom McKay
"... An upperclassman who had been researching terrorist groups online." - Washington Post
Shoshana Wodinsky
I cover the business of data for Gizmodo. Send your worst tips to swodinsky@gizmodo.com.

DISCUSSION
lkodl
Yesterday 6:31PM
their website mentioned development of REGN-COV2 was aided by mice which have been genetically modified to have a human immune system, and i didn’t know that we could do that. sounds so sci-fi.