Big banks are raking in billions, and we all pay the price – time for a new windfall tax


Fran Boait
Tue, 21 February 2023 

Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Another week, another corporate monopoly recording huge profits off the backs of millions struggling to pay bills, feed their families and keep the lights on. This time it’s the turn of the big banks, which are reporting record profits driven by the interest rate hikes that the Bank of England has continued to ratchet up, despite its own admission that this may do little to bring down inflation, which is driven by high fossil fuel prices.

Today HSBC reported doubling its quarterly profits to £4.3bn for the end of 2022. The big five banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, NatWest and Standard Chartered – look set to post profits of £37.4bn as they reveal their earnings for 2022. These are the highest since the 2008 crash and are coming straight from households and small businesses in the form of higher mortgage payments, and increased rates on loans. Banks are also set to receive £150bn in the next six years from the Bank of England paying interest on the risk-free reserves banks hold with the central bank, an average of £25bn a year essentially just for sitting on cash.

The scale of this transfer from the public to banks is especially difficult to justify at a time when most workers are barely able to cover the essentials, and public services are facing even more cuts. And it’s not as if the banks are passing these interest rate hikes on to savers; they are hoarding them, and paying out huge bonuses after the government removed the bonus cap. Last week Barclays reported £1.8bn was paid out in bonuses, from a total of £7bn profit, and NatWest profits increased by a third to £5.1bn.

The interest rate hikes that banks are benefiting from are not inevitable or necessary, they are a symptom of the dysfunctional institutional setup of macroeconomic policy and economic thinking. The idea is that by increasing the cost of credit, businesses will cut back on staff, increasing unemployment, and so reducing the ability of workers to win higher wages. But wages are not driving inflation – pay has been failing to keep up with inflation for more than a decade in the UK. The main culprits are fossil fuel prices and corporate profiteering.

Aside from the reality of what is driving inflation, surely economic policy should never be purposefully driving unemployment, lowering wages and pushing people into poverty? And if it does, shouldn’t we ask what kind of economy we are living in? And while the governor of the Bank of England has criticised workers for asking for a pay rise, he has supported lifting the bankers’ bonus cap, and the Bank has itself given out £23m in bonuses, all the while saying nothing about the role of corporate profits.

Just like oil and gas companies, banks are cashing in on the cost of living crisis, and should be subject to the same taxes on their unearned windfalls. The former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Charlie Bean has supported the plan, suggesting that it could raise tens of billions of pounds. If the government increased the existing surcharge on bank profits from 3% to 35%, in line with the energy profits levy, this would raise £67bn over the next five years. A bank windfall tax must avoid the loopholes the energy levy contained, which BP and Shell have exploited in recent months. The oil giants have been allowed to avoid paying the tax in full by chucking loads of money into fossil fuel exploration.

Bank profits are being announced amid a backdrop of giveaways to the City from the government. Rather than any increase to the banking surcharge, in the last budget bankers won a 60% reduction to it, from 8% to 3%. As usual City lobbyists rolled out myths about themselves as the “engine of the economy, providing jobs and investment up and down the country”. The reality is that big banks are heaping crippling interest rates on to small businesses and mortgage holders, while reducing the amount they lend to those who need it.

This year the Edinburgh reforms, otherwise known as big bang 2.0, will rip up the post-crash regulation aimed at constraining banks’ worst excesses. It should come as no surprise that the Conservative party is a cheerleader for the finance sector, from the direct financial ties, the revolving door and the direct lobbying access. Between 2020 and 2021, the Conservatives received £11.5m from the finance sector and almost one in three meetings with Treasury ministers were with big finance and its lobbyists; it is by far the most powerful lobbying force in the UK. Evidence of them falling over themselves to help out big finance was on display this week as the City minister, Andrew Griffiths, even proposed banks could sue the Bank of England for forcing them to hold more capital against their lending, ie for doing their job of protecting financial stability.

Unexpectedly, the precedent for applying a bank profit windfall tax after interest rate hikes comes from Margaret Thatcher, an infamous champion of the City. And she did it while pushing forward with financial deregulation, culminating with the original “big bang”. The parallels with 1981 are a reminder that while a windfall tax would be a step in the right direction, it would have to be part of a wider agenda to loosen the grip big finance has over our democracy, rein in the big banks, and purpose finance with the task of actually supporting communities, and a green, just, transition.

Fran Boait is executive director of campaign group Positive Money

UK NHS STRIKE
Biomedical scientists at Blackburn hospital striking over pay and conditions

Nat Goodlad
Tue, 21 February 2023

Biomedical scientists at Royal Blackburn Hospital will strike on Wednesday this week

Around 70 biomedical scientists at the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust will strike at Royal Blackburn Hospital from 7am to 7pm tomorrow (Wednesday, February 22).

The workers’ union, Unite, says more strikes will be scheduled if the government fails to address poor pay and unsafe staffing across the NHS.

With more ambulance worker strikes also set for the coming weeks, Unite has again hit out at the prime minister for failing to get into the room to address chronic low pay and unsustainable workloads.

These issues are driving a recruitment and retention crisis and devastating the NHS, Unite said.

Unite ambulance workers in the North West are to stage strike action again on Wednesday in the ongoing row over pay and conditions.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The government’s refusal to do its job, to get around the table and negotiate a solution to these strikes, is frankly shocking.

"They are failing the country and failing the NHS.

“The strikes are spreading. More health workers are taking a stand for patients and for decent pay. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak remains missing in action.

“Unite’s NHS members are fighting for the future of our health service. They are faced with a government that appears to be hell-bent on destroying it. They have their union’s full support.”

The biomedical scientists are part of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust’s pathology department.

They analyse patients’ blood samples at Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Teaching Hospital.

Unite regional officer Keith Hutson said: “NHS workers are striking because they know without a proper pay rise, more staff will leave the health service.

This will turn the current crisis in patient care into a disaster.”

The Government has said the Health Secretary "has been clear he wants to continue discussing how we can make the make the NHS a better place to work for all".

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has been contacted for comment.

‘We are failing families’: Burnt out junior doctors on why they voted to strike


Maryam Zakir-Hussain
Tue, 21 February 2023

Junior doctors who have voted unanimously for a 72-hour walkout said they think about quitting “every day” as they claim severe understaffing puts them and their patients at risk.

Feeling “burnt out” and “traumatised,” the doctors claim they are “endlessly firefighting” resulting in patients suffering and staff dreading coming into work.

A lack of staff also leaves medics working in “unsafe environments” as they battle with exhaustion and the constant fear of making high-risk mistakes, they say.

Dr Martin Whyte, deputy co-chair of the Junior Doctors Committee, said the system cannot cope (Supplied)

Dr Martin Whyte, a paediatric registrar and deputy co-chair of the Junior Doctors Committee, told The Independent that doctors feel like they are “failing families” due to a “fundamental issue of staffing and resourcing”.

“There is a real sense of moral injury,” Dr Whyte said. “We are not able to offer care at the standards we want to deliver because this system cannot cope with the volume of patients that are coming in.

“I’ve come onto shift with over 20 children waiting between six to seven hours to be seen,” he continued. “Within paediatrics, we’ve seen waiting time double. There is a real sense of failing these families. The children spend too much time in the hospital and we want to get them home as quickly as possible.

“But if the NHS can’t retain doctors and nurses, these problems aren’t going to go away.”

The issue of critically-low staffing issue was also highlighted by a junior doctor, who does wish to be named, claiming she often works 13-hour shift with no breaks in a London hospital.

Junior doctors who have voted unanimously for a 72-hour walkout have said they think about quitting “every day” (PA)

“We don’t have the minimum staffing level which is deemed to be safe for patients. So we’re more scared of making mistakes,” she said.

“In ICU, you are meant to have one-to-one nursing for patients. But we actually have two patients per nurse which means we can’t give care to the optimum level.

“Patients can deteriorate because we are stretched and see them later than planned. It’s so upsetting as a doctor, but we are really trying.”

Almost 37,000 junior doctors belonging to the British Medical Association (BMA) – 98 per cent of those who voted – said yes to next month’s strike action.

The BMA claims that, after a real-terms pay cut of more than 26 per cent since 2008, junior doctors were offered an “insulting” 2 per cent pay rise in the current year.

Junior doctors are to stage a walkout in a dispute over pay (PA)

“I get really upset because I love medicine, but I don’t like working as a doctor in the UK,” the junior doctor said.

“We’re portrayed as money-hungry, but we’re not even asking for a pay increase. We’re just asking for pay restoration. A lot of first-year doctors are struggling to pay their rent.”

Echoing the claim that salaries do not represent medicine’s “long-training programmes,” Dr Whyte said: “People are going to Australia and New Zealand because they can get paid two or three times the salary.”

A survey from BMA showed that in 2022, 6,950 doctors applied for a certificate to work abroad – an increase of 24 per cent on the previous year.

According to the recruitment website Glassdoor, as of February, junior doctors in Australia earn an average of £70,000 Australian dollars - around £40,000.

Another London-based junior doctor, who does not wish to be named, said “the thought of leaving crosses [her] mind every day”.

Nurse have already staged a number of walkouts (REUTERS)

She claimed that on the weekends, junior doctors are expected to “manage a whole hospital which normally is run by teams from every department”.

Despite this, she said: “Junior doctors are not treated with respect, are not well-supported and not well-paid. We’re like a little traumatised family.

“If the government doesn’t put more money into paying staff on the front line, then no one is going to stay. Doctors and nurses aren’t machines, we have to put our finances first.

“As much as we love taking care of people, it’s not enough to make you happy.”

Health secretary Steve Barclay said: “We hugely value the work of junior doctors, and it is deeply disappointing some union members have voted for strike action.

“As part of a multi-year deal we agreed with the BMA, junior doctors’ pay has increased by a cumulative 8.2 per cent since 2019/20. We also introduced a higher pay band for the most experienced staff and increased rates for night shifts.”

The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.

‘Junior doctors are going to Australia in droves because they come out with £100,000 debt here’

Rosa Silverman
Tue, 21 February 2023 

Dr Jim Down on the NHS: 'I’m sure there are reforms to make, but really it comes down to investing' - Heathcliff O'Malley

Lying in bed at night, Dr Jim Down sometimes imagines being in the intensive care unit (ICU) where he works, “wired up to the bleeping machinery … with tubes into my stomach, airway, arteries and veins.” Not immensely comforting thoughts for a self-confessed hypochondriac.

Indeed, working as an intensive care doctor may seem an unlikely career choice for someone who suffers from health anxiety. Not unexpectedly, practising medicine hasn’t helped Dr Down’s. As a medical student, he worried he had every disease going. “Apart from in obs and gynae!” he says.

Undeterred, he opted for a role as a critical care consultant in the ICU at London’s University College Hospital, where he has worked since 2005. Here, among the breathing tubes and digital displays of the ventilators, life and death decisions are routinely made. It’s an area of medicine that mercifully few of us have glimpsed – but one he has helped to demystify in his compelling new memoir, Life In The Balance.

The aim of his second book (his first, Life Support, chronicled his time working through the Covid crisis) is to show what happens in an ICU, but also to prompt conversation about difficult ethical questions around the value of human life: “What’s the right thing to do, how much suffering is worth it, [what is] quality of life?” he says, listing what’s at stake. “There are some big dramatic days [in ICU] but more of the time is spent wrestling with what to do.”

Working in a major teaching hospital in central London, Dr Down has lived through more of recent history than most. He was a new consultant when the July 7 terror attacks brought carnage to the capital. His gut-wrenching descriptions of injuries are graphic. “Her lower limbs had taken the full force of the blast and were a mangled mess of tendons, muscle and skin,” he writes of a 33-year-old casualty. “As we tilted her to the trolley it became apparent that someone else’s foot was embedded in her thigh…”

Dr Down dealt with victims of the 7/7 terror attacks while working at a teaching hospital in central London - Getty

The following year, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was admitted to Bed 9 in the hospital’s ICU, having been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. “Eventually, we accepted the inevitable and terminated CPR,” he writes. “I had been a consultant for a little over a year and this man was the lead item on the national news. He had died on my watch and I didn’t know why.”

Would he and his colleagues also suffer the adverse effects of polonium? How a self-confessed hypochondriac coped is hard to fathom, and yet he did, and ploughed on.

Growing up in Dorset, his father was a doctor, but young Jim was convinced medicine wasn’t for him until aged 17, when a week of work shadowing made him think, “Actually, I really quite like it.”

This, despite his habit of fainting when things got messy.

Now 52, he juggles the ICU with family life: he met his wife of 16 years, actress Patricia Potter, 47, in 2003 on the set of BBC drama Holby City, when he was a medical adviser, and the couple have 13-year-old twins. With age has come experience but, counterintuitively, not a tougher skin. “[As] a junior doctor, you’re 25, you think you’re immortal. As I’ve got older, I relate to the patients more. In many ways I’m more affected now, I’m more doubtful.”

Decisions, such as when to continue trying to save a patient, and when to accept defeat, can seem less clear. Does confronting the precariousness of human life every week affect his philosophical outlook? “When I see people [in ICU], I always think ‘God, [I’m] so lucky, love every minute of your life,’” he says. “And then within five minutes of coming home I’m shouting at the children.”

On the page, he comes across as a sensitive man prone to doubts, trying to find the best solution to dilemmas few of us face in our daily lives: how to decide, for instance, who should get an ICU bed when there aren’t enough. He calls it the “impossible daily bed puzzle”, describing one fraught shift: “Now, we had 10 patients trying to get into seven beds…Should we downgrade? Cancel? Wing it and kick the problem down the road?”

Down treated former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko just a year after qualifying - Getty

The options were bleak: cancel surgery for a morbidly obese bariatric patient? For a woman with throat cancer who had only a 30 per cent chance of surviving her disease for another year? “Proceeding with her surgery might mean delaying several other cases… She might well die in the next year for unrelated reasons,” he says. Tough choices have
to be made.

Dr Down recognises how extraordinary it seems that such important decisions about people’s lives are made “in such a last-minute and ad-hoc fashion”. But they are, every day.

Of course, ICU is not the only part of the NHS under pressure. Post-pandemic and post-austerity, our healthcare system is creaking under the strain. On the day I meet Dr Down in his tranquil north London townhouse, nurses and ambulance drivers are on strike. Junior doctors are being balloted on industrial action. They have Dr Down’s sympathy. “Particularly in London, as a nurse or junior doctor you can barely survive, so I’m with them,” he says. “There’s inflation and [other] problems, but I think we’ve got to look after them. Junior doctors are going to Australia in droves because they come out with £100,000 debt here.”

He does not envy young medics. In his day – he qualified in 1994 – “You could live reasonably comfortably and you knew it would be OK in the end.”

The system is overstretched. “[W]e run at over 90 per cent capacity,” he writes. Patients might question “whether we are working as safely, compassionately and efficiently as possible”.

The UK rate of ICU beds per head of population is one of the lowest in Europe. Post-Brexit, staffing those beds has become “increasingly challenging”. And so they have to be juggled; operations postponed.

Dr Down doesn’t claim to have the answer to how we fix our healthcare system, but has concerns: “The investment in the NHS in the last 10 years has slowed down and you really feel that.” In the New Labour years, he points out, waiting lists were not an issue. “I’m sure there are reforms to make, but really it comes down to investing.”

Dr Down says that his mental health has been affected by working in ICU - Heathcliff O'Malley

But in an ageing society, where medical advances mean patients can be kept alive far longer, spending more on clinical care for the sick can only be part of the solution. A greater focus on prevention, he believes, is crucial. Smoking has dwindled since the 2007 smoking ban. Now, it is time to tackle the next great public health problem, he argues.

“You’ve got to take on ultra-processed foods and sugar. That’s number one.”

He has adopted a healthier lifestyle with age, taking exercise including cold-water swimming (“such a cliché”). He hardly drinks alcohol – “partly because I can’t, I just feel awful” – and eats better. After losing his mother to dementia last year he tries to keep his brain healthy, by doing Wordle. “Do you think that helps?”

Disconcertingly, it is possible to make all the right lifestyle choices and still succumb to disease. But what about patients who end up in ICU as a result of making the wrong choices? He insists there is never room to be judgmental. “It’s not our job [to judge],” he says.

Inevitably, working in ICU, not all his patients survive. Some deaths hit him especially hard. In the book he describes how the death of a patient called Linda, a 56-year-old alcoholic with a ruptured oesophagus, triggered a mental health breakdown that meant Dr Down had to temporarily stop working. Today, he’s in a better place, mentally, after seeking support.

Seizing the day is easier said than done, he smiles ruefully. “But it’s made me get up in the morning and get on. I suppose I’m aware of how long there is left.”

‘Life in the Balance: A Doctor’s Stories of Intensive Care’ by Jim Down 

Government Rail Minister

Sussex MP has laptop containing sensitive strike information stolen from bar

Patrick Barlow
Tue, 21 February 2023 

Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill and Battle, had his laptop stolen

An MP has had his laptop containing information about rail strike negotiations stolen from a pub.

Huw Merriman, Conservative MP for Bexhill and Battle, had his computer stolen from under his chair in Covent Garden in London.

Mr Merriman, who is also the government rail minister at the Department for Transport, had the work laptop stolen on the same week as thousands of train drivers took industrial action causing widespread disruption.

The theft from the pub in James Street was reported to police at around 7.30pm as soon as it was noticed, the Evening Standard reports.

The laptop was then remotely accessed and wiped of sensitive information following the theft on Thursday, February 2.

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Mr Merriman was approached for comment.

A government spokeswoman said: "We take the security of government devices extremely seriously, which is why devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, are always encrypted so any loss does not compromise security."

Up to November last year, 32 gadgets belonging to MPs were reported lost including phones, laptops and iPads.

SNAFU
Spanish transport secretary resigns after new trains too big for tunnels

Sam Jones in Madrid
Tue, 21 February 2023 


Spain’s secretary of state for transport and the head of the state rail company have resigned amid continuing public and political anger after it emerged that dozens of new trains ordered for two northern Spanish regions were too big to fit through some tunnels.

Three years ago, the state rail operator, Renfe, announced plans to modernise the rolling stock on narrow-gauge commuter trains and medium-distance trains in Asturias and Cantabria.

But it was revealed last month that the trains being built under the €258m (£227.5m) contract would be too wide to pass through some of the tunnels in the two regions.

Miguel Ángel Revilla, the regional president of Cantabria, described the project as a “bodge” and called for urgent action, while Adrián Barbón, the president of neighbouring Asturias, said he was “baffled, angry and disappointed”.

The firing last month of two senior officials – one at Renfe and the other at the state rail infrastructure company, Adif – proved insufficient to placate those angry over the poor planning and the consequent delay.

On Monday, Isabel Pardo de Vera, Spain’s secretary of state for transport, tendered her resignation, as did Isaías Táboas, the president of Renfe.

The Socialist-led coalition government of prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has tried to make further amends by announcing that travel on the Asturian and Cantabrian networks affected by the delays would be free until the new rolling stock began to come into service in early 2026.

“From the moment I found out about this matter, I’ve done everything I could to find out what happened and to find a solution,” Spain’s transport minister, Raquel Sánchez, told reporters after meeting Revilla and Barbón on Monday.

“From the outset, we’ve accepted responsibility, said sorry, recognised the mistake and determined responsibility. We’ve also begun an internal audit and put together a working group to find a solution and speed up construction of the trains as much as possible.”

The government has, however, previously been at pains to insist that the errors had been spotted before any train was built, and that “not a single euro of Spaniards’ money has been wasted” as a result.

“The search for, and approval, of the optimal solution when it comes to designing most spacious, modern, fast and efficient train possible, while also bearing in mind the singular rail infrastructure has not led to any wasteful use of public resources,” the transport ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The situation would have been worse, it added, had smaller trains been built that had failed to live up to travellers’ expectations.

With regional and municipal elections at the end of May and a general election to be held before the year’s end, the opposition conservative People’s party (PP) has sought to portray the mis-sized trains as further proof of the government’s shoddy approach to policy.

The Socialist party and their junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party are still at loggerheads over reforming the latter’s controversial only-yes-mean-yes sexual consent law, which has so far allowed hundreds of convicted sex offenders to have their sentences retrospectively reduced.

“If a secretary of state and the president of Renfe resign over the train fiasco, who’s going to resign over the more than 4,000 sex offenders who’ve won the lottery thanks to only-yes-mean-yes?” asked the PP MEP Esteban González Pons. “Will it be Sánchez or no one? Don’t they care about all the humiliated victims?”

UK spent £50 billion extra on gas since Ukraine invasion, say analysts

Danny Halpin
Tue, 21 February 2023



The UK has spent more than £50 billion extra on gas since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new analysis suggests.

Wholesale gas prices exploded after the invasion and have been in a volatile state ever since, with many British households now burdened with much higher bills.

The analysis, carried out by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), estimates that the UK paid between £50-60 billion more for wholesale gas in 2022 than in a typical pre-pandemic year.

British households have been hit harder by the current crisis than in any other western European country, according to the IMF, because of the UK’s dependence on imported gas.

Gas is used to produce around 40% of the country’s electricity as well as to heat 85% of British homes, which are among the least energy efficient in Europe.

Analysts at ECIU said the impact would have been less severe if the UK was further ahead with its net-zero policies of improving energy efficiency in homes, building more onshore wind and installing more heat pumps.

Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin, head of analysis at ECIU, said: “As the IMF has pointed out, the energy crisis hit UK households harder than those in other western European countries because as a nation we’re incredibly dependent on gas. The price of gas is largely set by international markets, so the only way to protect yourself is to use less.

“The onshore wind ban has been one of the barriers to this. We’re also running behind places like Sweden, Poland and Estonia on installing electric heat pumps. As renewables and heat pumps proliferate, less imported gas is needed, which in turn benefits our balance of payments and energy security.”

ECIU’s analysis used data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to estimate non-domestic gas costs.

While wholesale prices have fallen in recent weeks, consumer prices are still high because they are based on trades made last year at very high prices and are unlikely to come down soon because analysts are still wary of market volatility.

Alethea Warrington, energy campaigner at the charity Possible, said the cheapest and quickest way to reduce people’s energy bills outside of a windfall tax would be to change the planning laws around onshore wind.

The Government is currently consulting on local support after lifting David Cameron’s 2015 ban on subsidies.

Ms Warrington described the Government’s reliance on gas as “stupid” and “unhelpful”, and said a lot of people support onshore wind and the need to achieve net-zero.

She said: “It’s frustrating that the Government is quite willing to give these huge tax breaks to companies that want to drill for more oil and gas but they’re not willing to let communities – which have already done the local outreach and got people on board – have proposals for projects that would be being beneficial to the local community.

“They’re not able to go ahead with them because they’re just sort of snarled up in a planning system that’s not fit for purpose.”

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to double onshore wind and quadruple offshore wind by 2030 (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Labour has said it would rip up the planning laws around onshore wind and shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband has previously criticised the Government’s target of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 as “way short of where they need to be”.

Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson said in an interview with the Telegraph last week that the company has designed a heat pump which can be installed for the same price as a gas boiler.

Heat pumps are an alternative to gas boilers and use a network of water pipes to channel heat from underground into homes.

Dr Matthew Trewhella, CEO of heat pump manufacturers Kensa Group, said: “Heating is responsible for a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Currently, 24 million homes in the UK are heated by gas boilers, and this number is still rising. With under 27 years to remove gas boilers in line with net zero targets, new gas heating systems need to stop being installed now and be replaced with low-carbon heating alternatives at the rate of one million per year.

“Heat pumps offer far greater efficiencies than gas boilers, meaning you get more heat for the energy used. Gas boilers use around 1.2 units of energy, often imported, for every unit of heat they produce.

“Whereas Ground Source Heat Pumps can produce four units of heat for each unit of electricity used and produce no carbon emissions if combined with a renewable electricity source.”

UK

Labour gave us national parks – why is Starmer so silent on nature’s survival now?
BECAUSE HIS NAME BEGINS WITH SIR

Craig Bennett
Tue, 21 February 2023 

Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

When I arrived at the Labour party conference last year, it was hard to miss its new slogan – A Fairer, Greener Future – which was emblazoned across Liverpool exhibition centre. Just a few small words, but such prominence for the climate at a national political party conference put a smile on my face.

But, as we saw today in Keir Starmer’s speech to the National Farmers’ Union, the party is less vocal about its plans to solve the nature crisis. There is no green or fair future without nature, and there is no solution to the climate crisis unless we put nature into recovery at pace and scale.

There have been significant achievements by Labour governments on nature – wonderfully summed up but simultaneously exploded by John Prescott when he said in 1998, “The green belt is a Labour achievement – and we mean to build on it.” However, the roadmap to a fairer, greener future that Labour published at its last conference does not mention nature, nor what is needed to reverse its dramatic and alarming declines.

Addressing the climate crisis has not come naturally to the Conservatives – they are more at home with “countryside” issues. Sometimes these align with a nature-positive agenda, sometimes not. Recently Conservatives have come close to losing this advantage and have created an opportunity for Starmer to seize.

The river pollution scandal, partly a product of austerity cuts to enforcement agencies, now plagues the government and swamps Conservative MPs’ mailboxes. Even worse, the Liz Truss government’s efforts to dismantle environmental protections, which were branded an “attack on nature”, continue under Rishi Sunak with the appalling retained EU law bill.

Starmer must take the opportunity to set out a clear, authentic narrative on how a Labour government would tackle the climate crisis and the nature crisis, and how it will deliver the ambitious international targets agreed at last year’s United Nations Cop15 nature summit, not least cutting nutrient pollution (faeces) from our waterways by half by 2030.

‘Labour must recognise that there’s no such thing as food security if our pollinators are in decline, our soils are disappearing and our rivers are polluted.’ Sewage foam by Marlow weir, Buckinghamshire. Photograph: Maureen McLean/REX/Shutterstock

Today’s speech focused on the pressures farmers face, and committed to upholding high standards and boosting food security through public procurement. This is all great. But Labour must recognise that there’s no such thing as food security if our pollinators are in decline, our soils are disappearing and our rivers are polluted. The UK Food Security Report in 2021 identified the loss of nature and the climate crisis as the two greatest threats to food security in Britain. The extreme heat and droughts last year were a taste of our new reality.

Investing in nature is critical for our food supply – to rebuild our tired soils and to allow farmers to break free of imported fertilisers. Yet public investment in farming is tiny – we are spending more than 10 times as much on roads as we are on the annual farming budget.

What is needed is a green rural regeneration budget that has nature at its heart, reflecting the scale of the challenge needed to restore our natural world and safeguard the nation’s food and water security. The government’s agricultural reform has faltered partly because the financial offer to farmers has not been generous or consistent enough to help them transition to more nature- and climate-friendly practices.

Investment in nature pays in other ways. The landmark Marmot review in 2010 exposed the cost of environmental decay to our health and life expectancy. It warned that those living in the most deprived areas have less green space, worse air pollution and worse river water quality – and this is deepening existing health inequalities.

Related: Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place | George Monbiot

Studies show that the further your home is from green space, the higher the disease prevalence. One in three people do not live within 15 minutes’ walk of natural green space. Addressing this inequality can cut GP appointments, save the NHS money and create fairer, greener places to live. Polling shows that good quality natural places are the most important thing to foster pride in people’s communities – more than pubs or even the local football team.

And it’s easy to see why. More than 8 million Britons belong to nature charities such as the Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and National Trust, dwarfing the membership of political parties. Millions more will sit in awe at the new David Attenborough TV series, Wild Isles, next month. Britain is a nation of nature lovers.

Previous Labour governments understood this important part of our national story. After the suffering of the second world war, Clement Attlee’s government opened up rural Britain to the public and created the first national parks through the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. This was extended by Tony Blair via the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

Labour has strong foundations to make a compelling pitch to the electorate on nature recovery ahead of the next general election. In the words of John Prescott, they should build on it.

Craig Bennett is the chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts

'Terrible' plight of international students who fled Ukraine



Issued on: 22/02/2023 

Leicester (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Korrine was a second-year medical student in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine when Russia invaded last year.

The 27-year-old, from Leicester in central England, fled the country along with a group of Zimbabwean students.

"When it actually started kicking off, I realised we were on our own," she told AFP.

Before the war, Korrine was among tens of thousands of international students in Ukraine, many from developing countries, who paid relatively low fees for courses such as medicine and dentistry.

After fleeing the country, they have found they cannot access the same benefits and rights as exiled Ukrainians.

Since returning to Leicester, Korrine has been left in limbo unable to continue her studies.

A naturalised British woman born in Zimbabwe who uses the moniker Korrine online, she asked for her real name to be withheld after receiving racist abuse when discussing her plight.

Meanwhile, her former international classmates who also left Dnipro are now "in a terrible situation," she said.

"Most of them are homeless, they've just been trying to go from place to place."

She has taken up their cause, contacting UK universities, engaging with the United Nations as a "youth champion" and meeting Ukraine's education minister.

"It's just been a lot of knocking on doors and having them slammed in your face," Korrine added.

"We experienced the same thing (as Ukrainians). We were living in the same country. Why is it that there's no empathy?

"A lot of the students can't go back to their own countries."
'Racism'

Before the war, Ukraine had some 76,000 international students, often from African countries, in a practice dating back to the Soviet era, according to Catherine Gladwell, chief executive of the charity Refugee Education UK.

There were "significant" numbers of Nigerian and Moroccan students, as well as those from Ghana, Zimbabwe and India, she said.

After the outbreak of the conflict, Ukrainian students could access British universities on the same terms as full citizens.

But for Ukraine's former international students, "even getting to the UK is a major challenge", said Gladwell. "They don't have a safe and legal route."

If they do somehow make it, they are not eligible to study on the terms offered to Britons and Ukrainians, who are charged lower fees than international students and have access to special loans, Gladwell said.

She cited the example of an Afghan student who managed to escape the 2021 Taliban takeover and transfer to Ukraine, only to have to flee again last year.

While Ukrainian classmates could transfer to the UK, "this Afghan student hasn't been able to access any of that, despite having experienced a double displacement."

"We've seen a lot of lack of awareness," Gladwell said, while Korrine argued the "demographic" matters.

"When it comes to black and brown issues, unfortunately it's always at the bottom of the list," she said.

"I didn't think that as a society we were so governed by racism."
'Nothing to show'

Ukraine's displaced international students have found themselves largely excluded from UK scholarships for those fleeing war.

The University of Manchester in northern England is a rare exception.

Nalin Thakkar, vice-president for social responsibility, told AFP their scholarship is available to "any student, anywhere, from any conflict zone".

But he added: "We only had one applicant (from nearly 1,000) who was a student in Ukraine but from elsewhere."

This is likely due to international students in Ukraine often studying medicine and dentistry, which the scholarship does not cover.

Korrine said she is trying to accept that her dream of becoming a doctor is over.

She first considered going to eastern Europe while studying nursing in Leicester, after meeting a doctor who had studied in Bulgaria.

She was attracted by the lower fees for medical training, since her family's resources were limited after arriving in the UK as asylum-seekers.

In a fresh blow since leaving Ukraine, she learnt that the UK's General Medical Council (GMC) has stopped accepting medical qualifications from the Dnipro school.

The GMC told AFP "some students had been awarded a degree following a pattern of study that meant they had not completed a full medical degree." It stressed that the ban was "for reasons completely unconnected to the war in Ukraine".

But the decision has devastated Korrine.

"All my hard work, I've got nothing to show for it," she said.

© 2023 AFP

How the ultra wealthy have re-shaped the global discussion on climate change



07:51

Issued on: 21/02/2023 -

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24

By:Stuart Norval

A new book critiques the juxtaposition of rich and powerful people preaching to the rest of us on climate change. Author and political scientist Édouard Morena looks at how the ultra wealthy have re-shaped the global discussion on climate change, often to suit their own needs, whilst ignoring more obvious ways to save the planet. Issues such as billionaires defending their use of private jets, or one of the world's largest oil producers hosting the next round of UN climate talks are among those under the microscope. Morena spoke to us on Perspective about his book "Fin du monde et Petits Fours", or "The end of the world and appetisers", which has just been published in French.

Google Could Face Tidal Wave of Legal Threats After Supreme Court Ruling

Story by Thomas Kika • Yesterday 

A forthcoming decision from the U.S. Supreme Court could have massive ramifications for legal liabilities regarding the internet, possibly resulting in a wave of legal threats against companies like Google.


Above, a representational image of Google logos reflected in a person's eye. 

© Leon Neal/Getty Images

As of Tuesday, the Court is now hearing oral arguments in the case of Gonzalez v. Google. The family of Nohemi Gonzalez is suing YouTube, the massively popular video-sharing site and a subsidiary of Google, after the 23-year-old college exchange student was gunned down by ISIS-affiliated gunmen in a Paris restaurant in late 2015.

The family has argued that YouTube's recommendation algorithm surfacing ISIS content effectively acted as a recruitment tool for the terrorist group, violating U.S. law.

The SCOTUS decision in the case would impact the fate of Section 230, a provision to U.S. law passed in 1996 that protects internet platforms from legal culpability related to the content that individuals share on them. Google has argued that the provision applies to this situation, while the Gonzalez family has countered that it should not apply to recommendation algorithms.

Newsweek

Gonzalez v. Google: What To Know As SCOTUS Hears Case Against Big Tech

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"If the Supreme Court limits Section 230 immunity based on how online platforms display or prioritize user-generated content, that would effectively eviscerate the immunity altogether," Sophia Cope, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a statement to Newsweek.

"To mitigate this new legal exposure, platforms would take drastic steps to censor user speech or alter the services they provide to users," Cope continued.

"As we wrote in our amicus brief, 'The judicial interpretation of Section 230 that Petitioners seek would be detrimental to all users' speech online. It would incentivize online services to take down even more user-generated content, and would likely limit services' ability to provide essential tools that organize content for users,'" she added.

The law has also become a major sticking point for lawmakers on both ends of the political spectrum, with each keen to revise it in different ways and enact more hands-on regulation of digital content.

Democrats, like President Joe Biden, have argued that the law allows internet companies to dodge responsibility for hosting hateful and dangerous content.

Republicans, like former President Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress, have argued that the companies remove too much content and that they have done so with an alleged, but unproven, bias against conservatives.

Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google's general counsel, told The Washington Post that the SCOTUS review of the case would put the company and others at greater risk of costly legal battles, threatening the health of technological and business growth.

"It goes beyond just Google," DeLaine Prado said. "It really does impact the notion of American innovation."

Speaking at a press briefing, Mary B. McCord, the executive director for the Georgetown Law Center Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said that it was unlikely that lawmakers could have foreseen the extent to which internet platforms could be abused when they drafted Section 230 in the '90s.

"It's implausible to think that Congress could have been thinking to cut off civil liability completely...for people who are victims of terrorism at the same time they were passing renewed and expanded legal authorities to combat terrorism," McCord said, according to the Post.

The Post also spoke to Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, who argued that giving the government too much control over internet content regulation could backfire.

"Once you give up power to the government over speech, you're not getting it back," Kosseff said in the Post article.

In her statement to Newsweek, Cope added that big tech companies would not be the only entities affected by strict changes to Section 230. It could have consequences all the way down to Twitter users retweeting things.

"It's also important to remember that Section 230 not only applies to the large social media platforms," Cope wrote. "It applies to any internet intermediary that connects content creators or speakers to audiences—this includes ISPs, web hosting companies, email providers, domain name registrars, and end-user services like review sites and discussion boards.

"So with a narrowed Section 230 immunity, all these companies would have to determine how to mitigate their legal risks for third-party content, either by censoring user speech or significantly altering what services they provide or how they provide those services, which at the end of the day would be bad for internet users."

Cope continued: "Section 230 also applies to users who themselves engage with third-party content, such as retweeting someone else's content or forwarding an email. Justice Barrett noted this more than once during today's oral argument."

While the Supreme Court could refine the interpretation of Section 230, only Congress maintains the ability to repeal or alter it. Several such proposals have been put forward, though none have yet been passed.

Updated 2/21/2023, 6:55 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comments from Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Sophia Cope.

Oil and gas industry could slash methane emissions by 75% with barely a hit to income, says IEA

The global energy industry isn't doing enough to slash its methane emissions, says a report from the International Energy Agency.

The energy sector is the second largest methane emitter, after agriculture.
While methane is less present in the atmosphere and dissipates faster than CO2, it has about 85 times the warming effect.


An oil pumpjack operates on November 02, 2021 in Long Beach, California. The Biden administration pledged to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production today. In California, 35,000 oil and gas wells sit idle, many of which are unplugged and could leak methane gas. Scientists estimate that one-third of human-induced global warming is caused by methane. 

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Story by Catherine Clifford • CNBC -Yesterday 

The energy industry is not making sufficient efforts to reduce its methane emissions, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

Carbon dioxide is the largest contributor to global warming. But while CO2 is 200 times more present in the atmosphere than methane and lasts a lot longer, methane's warming effects are around 85 times as strong, and it's contributed 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

The energy sector is the second-largest source of human-caused methane, behind only agriculture, and was responsible for 40% of human-created methane emissions in 2022, the IEA says.

But much of the methane emitted by the energy industry could be stopped with existing technologies, "highlighting a lack of industry action on an issue that is often very cheap to address," the report said.

The global oil and gas industry would have to invest only 3% of the income it earned in 2022, $100 billion, to reduce its methane emissions by 75%, the report said. For the oil and gas industry, fixing methane emissions mostly comes down to finding and repairing leaks. The coal industry could capture methane from mines and then use it.

"Some progress is being made but that emissions are still far too high and not falling fast enough – especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming. There is just no excuse," IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a written statement.

"The Nord Stream pipeline explosion last year released a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere. But normal oil and gas operations around the world release the same amount of methane as the Nord Stream explosion every single day," Birol said.

The IEA is a multigovernmental organization established in 1974 of OECD member countries after the oil crisis to help ensure global energy security and sustainability.

More than 150 countries have signed on to the Global Methane Pledge launched at the COP 26 conference in 2021 to address methane emissions. Those signatories represent 55% of anthropogenic methane emissions and 45% of methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry.

The danger of methane in contributing to global warming and the fact that it is fixable make the issue urgent, according to the IEA.

"The untamed release of methane in fossil fuel production is a problem that sometimes goes under the radar in public debate," Birol said.

"Unfortunately, it's not a new issue and emissions remain stubbornly high. Many companies saw hefty profits last year following a turbulent period for international oil and gas markets amid the global energy crisis. Fossil fuel producers need to step up and policy makers need to step in – and both must do so quickly."