SCOTLAND

Third union rejects pay offer as strike by school support staff looms


Lucinda Cameron, PA Scotland
Fri, 15 September 2023 

A third union has rejected a “measly” pay offer from local government employers as the prospect of strike action by school support staff looms closer.

Unite criticised the revised offer from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) which it said would represent an increase of only £0.01 per hour for those on the lowest pay, effective from January 1, next year.

And it warned that members across 11 councils will walk out later this month unless something “dramatic” happens over the coming weeks.


It comes after the Unison and GMB Scotland unions also rejected the two-part offer that Cosla had said would provide at least a £1,929 increase in annual salary for workers by January 1 2024.

School support staff including cleaners, caterers, janitors and school support assistants will take part in the co-ordinated action over three days from Tuesday September 26 to Thursday September 28.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “It has taken Cosla five months to increase their offer by a measly 38 pence a week for the lowest paid council workers.

Unite boss Sharon Graham said the union will support its members ‘all the way’ (PA)

“Unite’s local government representatives rightly rejected this offer.

“The fight for better jobs, pay and conditions in local government goes on, and if needs be by strike action. Unite will back its members all the way.”

The trade union has urged First Minister Humza Yousaf to directly intervene in the pay dispute.

Unison has warned that more than three-quarters of Scotland’s schools could shut during the strike action.

It has mandates in 24 local authority areas across Scotland while GMB Scotland members plan to walk out in 10 council areas.

Cosla said the offer would mean the lowest paid workers would see a 21% increase in their pay over a two-year period.

It said the pay offer currently on the table will cost councils just under half a billion pounds and said that council leaders had gone to the “absolute limits of what local government can afford”.

Commenting after Unison and GMB Scotland rejected the offer on Thursday, Cosla resource spokeswoman Katie Hagmann said: “I am doubly disappointed today, firstly with the rejection itself, but perhaps more importantly with the fact that they did not take the revised offer to their membership for consideration.



“We have continued to conduct these negotiations in good faith and kept communication channels open at all times.

“We absolutely value all our local government workforce and throughout these negotiations council leaders have reiterated the value we place on the workforce and the work that they do.

“That is why we enhanced an already strong offer yesterday, with council leaders going to the absolute limits of what local government can afford. The simple fact of the matter is that we have no more money available for pay without real cuts to jobs and services.

“It must be remembered that we are talking about a pay package worth over £440 million, specifically targeted at the lower end of our workforce. A pay package which not only compares well to other sectors but recognises the cost-of-living pressures on our workforce and which would mean the lowest paid would see a 21% increase in their pay over a two-year period.

“Whichever way you cut it, this is a very strong offer in the financial climate we find ourselves. We have a duty to ensure that services are sustainable within the funding for pay we have available.”

Cosla has been asked for fresh comment.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Local government pay negotiations are a matter for local authorities as employers and unions.

“The Scottish Government and Cosla have committed to respect this negotiating arrangement as part of the Verity House Agreement.

“Despite UK Government cuts, the Scottish Government has provided a further £155 million in 2023-24 to support a meaningful pay rise for local government workers, which has been taken into account in the pay offer made by Cosla.

“We continue our engagement with Cosla on how staff and services are supported this year and next.”

UK

Train drivers in England to strike during Tory conference

Gwyn Topham 

Transport correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, 15 September 2023 

Photograph: James D Morgan/Getty Images

Train drivers have announced two more days of strikes and an overtime ban across England, timed to bring services to a halt at the start and end of the Conservative party conference.

Members of Aslef will strike on Saturday 30 September and Wednesday 4 October, when the Tories’ conference is taking place in Manchester, meaning virtually no national rail services will run in England on those days.

The overtime ban will be in effect the rest of the week from Friday 29 September and will disrupt trains across the country and cross-border services into Scotland and Wales.

The industrial action directly affects 16 rail companies contracted to the Department for Transport in England.

Mick Whelan, Aslef’s general secretary, said: ‘While we regret having to take this action – we don’t want to lose a day’s pay, or disrupt passengers, as they try to travel by train – the government, and the employers, have forced us into this position. Our members have not, now, had a pay rise for four years.”

Whelan called on ministers, who ultimately dictate the contracts and pay offers made by train companies, to negotiate an end to the long-running pay dispute. He said the union had had no contact with the transport secretary, Mark Harper, since December, adding: “The train companies have told us … they cannot act without his say-so. But he’s hiding.”

He added: “Do you remember Where’s Wally? Well, what we want to know is where’s Harper?”

The transport secretary called the latest strikes “cynical” and “politically motivated”. Posting on the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, Harper added: “Train drivers are paid an average of £60k for a 35-hour, 4 day week. There’s an offer on the table to take that up to £65k – and still they strike, putting their own jobs at risk.”

Aslef last met formally with industry figures from the Rail Delivery Group, the body that represents train operators, in April. The strikes will be the drivers’ 12th and 13th 24-hour walkouts since July 2022 in the national pay dispute.

An offer of 8% over two years, tied to changes to working conditions, was dismissed by Aslef earlier this year. The government and industry said it should be put to a full ballot but the union said it would only ballot on an offer it recommended, and drivers have since overwhelmingly voted to continue strikes.

The RMT union, which represents about 20,000 staff working on stations or as onboard crew for the same train operators in England, has yet to confirm if it will also stage strikes during the Conservative conference.

Train drivers’ strike to coincide with Tory annual conference

Aslef members will also ban overtime from September 29 to October 6, which the union said will “seriously disrupt” the rail network.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, said: “While we regret having to take this action – we don’t want to lose a day’s pay or disrupt passengers as they travel by train – the Government and employers have forced us into this position.

“Our members have not had a pay rise for four years – since 2019 – and that’s not right when prices have soared in that time.

“Train drivers quite reasonably want to be able to buy now what they could buy four years ago.”

Mr Whelan likened Transport Secretary Mark Harper to “Where’s Wally?”, saying he had made no contact with the union since last December.

“Where’s Mark Harper? He holds the purse strings. The train companies have told us. They say they cannot act without his say-so.”

A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group said: “Further strike action by the Aslef leadership will cause more disruption to passengers.

“We want to give our staff a pay increase, but it has always been linked to implementing necessary, sensible reforms that would enhance services for our passengers.

“The union have rejected a fair and affordable offer without putting it to their members, which would take average driver base salaries for a four-day week without overtime from £60,000 to nearly £65,000.

“We ask the Aslef leadership and executive to recognise the very real financial challenge the industry is facing and work with us to deliver a more reliable and robust railway for the future.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “The Government has facilitated fair and reasonable offers to both RMT and Aslef.

“RMT members working for Network Rail accepted their offer months ago and Aslef’s would bring the average train driver’s salary up to £65,000.

“Further strike action will not only put a strain on taxpayers, but risk driving passengers away from the network for good. These strikes will not prevent the need for essential workplace reforms."

Train strikes 2023: Next dates and the rail services affected

Jack Simpson
Sat, 16 September 2023 

Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan (centre) with striking rail workers on the picket line outside London Euston station - EDDIE MULHOLLAND for The Telegraph.

Passengers across the UK face further disruption after Aslef announced yet more industrial action.

Members of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, have timed their latest walkouts to disrupt the Conservative Party Conference.

The union has so far, called 12 one-day strikes during its 16-month dispute over pay.

The latest strikes will force 16 train operating companies to cancel all services, while a ban on overtime on separate days will seriously disrupt the network.

Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “While we regret having to take this action – we don’t want to lose a day’s pay, or disrupt passengers, as they try to travel by train – the government, and the employers, have forced us into this position.

Our members have not, now, had a pay rise for four years – since 2019 – and that’s not right when prices have soared in that time.

“Train drivers, perfectly reasonably, want to be able to buy now what they could buy four years ago.”

When are the train strikes?

The Aslef union will hold strikes on:

Saturday, September 30


Wednesday, October 4

Members will stage an overtime ban across the rail network on:

Friday, September 29


From Monday, October 2 to Friday, October 6
Which rail companies are affected?

The train companies affected are:

Avanti West Coast


C2C


Caledonian Sleeper


Chiltern Railways


CrossCountry


East Midlands Railway


Gatwick Express


Greater Anglia


GWR


GTR Great Northern Thameslink


Heathrow Express


Island Line


LNER


Northern Trains


Southeastern


Southern


Gatwick Express


South Western Railway main line


Stanstead Express


SWR depot drivers


TransPennine Express


West Midlands Trains.
Advice for travelling during train strikes

National Rail warns passengers to expect “significant disruption” on strike days. Services are also likely to be disrupted and start later on the day immediately after.

National Rail has recommended that passengers:

Use its Journey Planner. Passengers should check close to the time of each strike date.


Use its Live Trains page for the most up-to-date information about arrivals and departures


Plan ahead and check before you travel. This includes checking your entire journey, especially if you’re travelling on the first and last trains of strike days.
Train station ticket office closures

Nearly all railway station ticket offices are being shut and staff moved on to station platform and concourse duties, according to the Rail Delivery Group (RDG). Ticket office facilities will remain open only at the busiest stations.

Posters are being displayed in stations informing passengers about potential closures. The Government will make the final decision on which offices will be axed following a consultation. It is not known how quickly the first offices will shut, but the closure programme is expected to last for three years.

Why are Aslef striking?

Aslef members are taking industrial action as they push for a pay rise.

The union has criticised the government from failing to meet its negotiating team – general secretary Mick Whelan, assistant general secretary Simon Weller, and executive committee president Dave Calfe.

They last met representatives of the employers, the Rail Delivery Group, under the agreed post-pandemic framework of the Rail Industry Recovery Group, in April.

Mr Whelan added: “Do you remember Where’s Wally? Well, what we want to know is Where’s Harper?

“We last saw the Secretary of State for Transport in December.

“We last saw Huw Merriman, the Rail Minister, in January.

“And we last saw the train companies in April.

“Since then, nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a letter, not an email, not a text message, not a phone call, not a WhatsApp. Not a word!”

CARROT AND STICK

Free food and threats to bonuses: UK finance and tech firms fight working from home

Julia Kollewe
Sat, 16 September 2023 

Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Free parking and changes to managers’ bonuses have helped Britain’s biggest insurer, Aviva, lure staff back to their desks for most of the working week.

Welcome to the new-old world of work: where companies, particularly those in financial services and technology, push for staff to spend more days in the office as they try to rebalance the working from home trend.

Aviva is one of a growing number of banks, insurers and fund managers trying to bring workers back for at least half, if not most of the working week, long after enforced working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic ended.

There has also been a big drive to get staff back in the office in the technology sector, where companies including Google, Amazon and Meta have ordered employees back to their desks for most of the working week.

Aviva allows its 16,000 UK staff to split their time equally between home and the office but reported that the number of people who came in to the office had gone up every month this year. At the same time, it said there had been a reduction in the number of days taken off because of mental health problems.

Aviva said the number of people who came in to the office had risen every month this year. Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Reuters

The shift happened after the Aviva chief executive, Amanda Blanc, decided to include senior managers’ ability to get their teams back into the office in their end of year performance assessment, on which bonuses would be based.

Danielle Harmer, the chief people officer at Aviva, said: “The majority of our people are now back in the office for the majority of the week. Our colleagues clearly value working side by side, collaborating and meeting regularly in person, and this experience is leading more to come back, more often.”

Aviva has also dropped its parking charges in Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield and its other sites in the UK, with the exception of London, to help staff with the rising cost of living and encourage their return to the office.

This mirrors changing working patterns elsewhere in the City. “There is an underlying trend towards a greater number of your working days being in the office rather than remotely … across insurance, asset management, banking, the US and the UK,” said Bruce Carnegie-Brown, the chair of Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market.

He said he wanted to see people working in the Lloyd’s building in the City at least three days a week – and not just Tuesday to Thursday – to avoid a situation where people were taking “long weekends” every week, as he worried that Mondays and Fridays were not properly covered for clients.

Lloyd’s of London is revamping its underwriting room and wants insurers’ staff to be present on the ground floor. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Lloyd’s closed its underwriting room last month to revamp it, installing better technology, seating and lighting, and will reopen it next week. As part of the changes, Carnegie-Brown wants representatives from all 85 insurers that are members of the market to be present throughout the week on the main ground floor.

This should make the main floor “much busier and buzzier”, although he added: “Hybrid working will continue. I don’t believe we will return to five days of working in the office”, apart from certain roles.

Similarly, HSBC has told its 24,000 staff in the UK that it wants them in the office three days a week. A spokesperson said: “We have been clear from the outset that hybrid working would evolve to ensure we are serving our customers in the right way. From October, hybrid working at HSBC UK will mean colleagues spending typically three days a week in an office or with clients.”

The London-based fund manager M&G, which was spun off from the insurer Prudential four years ago, said it expected its senior staff to spend an average of three days a week in the office so they can be with their team and clients.

Lloyds Banking Group has been offering free hot rolls, fruit and drinks in some of its offices to attract staff back and has asked them to come in at least two days a week.

Collaborating effectively “is difficult, if a team are below strength on certain days of the week, or if some key people are only available at times when the majority are not”, the bank’s chief executive, Charlie Nunn, told staff in July.

Citigroup has reportedly started monitoring the office attendance of its 12,500 UK staff. Photograph: Kevin Coombs/Reuters

By contrast, other firms such as NatWest Group and the car insurer Admiral do not mandate days in the office. NatWest said its staff were spending one or two days in the office, on average.

Citigroup, the US bank, has reportedly started monitoring the office attendance of its 12,500 UK staff, most of them in its Canary Wharf headquarters, who are expected to come in at least three days a week. A memo, seen by Bloomberg News, said: “One swipe per person, per day, per location will be captured. The focus of the reports will be employees with consistent office absences.” This could affect their bonuses or even lead to them being sacked.

But perhaps the strongest backlash against homeworking has come from the very tech companies that benefited from the working from home boom.

The Amazon chief executive, Andy Jassy, told US staff last month that “it’s probably not going to work out for them” unless they came in at least three days a week.

CRIMINAL STATE CAPITALI$M
Chinese Police Detain Some Staff of Evergrande Wealth Unit

Jacob Gu
Sat, 16 September 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Chinese authorities detained some staff of China Evergrande Group’s money management business, a sign that the saga around the defaulted developer at the heart of the nation’s property crisis has entered a new phase involving the criminal justice system.

Police in the southern city of Shenzhen said the actions were taken “recently” in a statement on social media Saturday night. They only identified one of the detainees by the last name Du. No charges were disclosed and the statement didn’t say how many people were in custody.

Evergrande Financial Wealth Management Co., based in Shenzhen, is a wholly-owned Evergrande unit established in 2015. The firm’s general manager is Du Liang, according to his Linkedin profile. Bloomberg News wasn’t able to verify that he is among the detainees.

Evergrande sits at the center of a credit crisis that has rippled through China’s real estate sector and curtailed growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The debt-laden developer has offloaded a range of assets, including trophy land parcels and stakes in other financial institutions.

Evergrande missed payments on 40 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) of wealth management products in 2021, sparking nationwide demonstrations and putting pressure on Beijing to find a solution to avoid further unrest. More than 70,000 people had bought the products, including many Evergrande employees, as the cash-strapped developer tapped them for funding.

The money management arm of Evergrande said Aug. 31 that it couldn’t make payments due on investment products because of a liquidity crunch.

Police said Saturday that the investigation into the wealth management unit is ongoing and called on investors to provide leads to the authorities, including filing complaints online.

China Evergrande is undergoing the country’s biggest restructuring ever, and the protracted process remains in limbo as key votes on its offshore-debt revamp plan were further delayed to October.

The latest development came as the government set up a joint venture to take over China Evergrande’s insurance arm. State-backed Hai Gang Life will run Evergrande Life Assurance Co., according to notices issued by the National Administration of Financial Regulation on Friday.

(Adds more details and background of the Evergrande crisis.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

The high-speed railway that’s uncoupling the Baltic states from Russia and their Soviet past

Callum Tennant
Sat, 16 September 2023 

The high-speed railway that’s uncoupling the Baltic states from Russia and their Soviet past


The largest infrastructure project in the Baltic region for a hundred years is under way.

The 870 km Rail Baltica project, which is due for completion in 2030, will connect the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia with Warsaw and the rest of Europe, allowing trains from the continent to run uninterrupted.

However, the project is symbolic as well as physical.

For the EU, it’s a statement about the Baltic states’ return to Europe and their decoupling from their Soviet past.

Paris to Berlin in an hour: Welcome to the future of high-speed rail travel in Europe
An ambitious project

Talk of an inter-Baltic rail project has grown since the late 1990s, with a cooperation agreement being signed by Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian transport ministers in 2001.

However, it wasn’t until 2010 that a memorandum was signed by representatives of the transport ministries of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

While it currently takes seven hours to drive from Lithuania’s capital to Estonia’s, the new line will almost halve that to just three hours and 38 minutes.

The railway will begin in Tallinn before passing through Pärnu, Rīga, Panevėžys, and Kaunas before reaching the Lithuanian-Polish border; there will also be a connection to Vilnius from Kaunas.

Once completed, trains will be able to travel up to the Baltics from Poland, with passenger trains operating at top speeds of 234 km/h.

Concept rendering of the inside a train carriage on the future Rail Baltica high speed network. - Rail Baltica
Economic benefits

While the project doesn’t come cheap at an estimated cost of €5.8 billion, the project’s cost-benefit analysis predicts the project would bring in up to €16.2 billion in quantifiable benefits.

The project’s cost for the Baltic countries is alleviated due to the EU funding up to 85 per cent of the project through its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) instrument.

So far, the EU CEF fund has contributed €824 million to the new line.

Free public transport in Europe: Is the social experiment working or is it just a gimmick?

The scheme is so colossal that its construction alone is expected to create 13,000 direct full-time jobs and another 24,000 indirect jobs.

Once completed, the line will form the latest addition to the EU’s North Sea-Baltic Corridor, a trans-European route including key cities such as Rotterdam, Berlin, and Warsaw.

For passengers, there will be regular connections with at least one international train service every two hours, resulting in eight train pairs daily in each direction.

As well as making passenger journeys quicker, the project will also lower freight costs and offer a time-efficient way of transporting mass cargo.

Map of the proposed Rail Baltica railway - Rail Baltica

Political statement

Perhaps more important for the EU than the economic promise of the project is its political message.

While the Baltics used to be connected by European rail standards of 1435 mm gauge, since its Soviet occupation, the region’s rail system adopted the Russian gauge which is 1524 mm.

This difference severely limited the Baltics’ ability to connect with Europe by rail, as passengers or cargo would need to be reloaded onto a new train at the Polish border before continuing on.

Because of its Russian gauge, the Baltics have typically relied on a West-East axis, with much of its rail trade coming from Russia.

However, since gaining their independence in the 1990s, the Baltics have swung towards Brussels and away from Moscow.

The countries joined NATO in March 2004, and accession to the EU quickly followed in May; both moves infuriated Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In the face of growing Russian aggression, all three countries were already looking to increase interoperability with the rest of the EU, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year has added urgency to that.

In August 2022, the project attracted military mobility funding from Latvia’s funds, demonstrating the civil and military characteristics of the scheme.

"In the current geopolitical conditions, the strategic significance of the Rail Baltica project is increasing," Latvia’s Transport Minister said at the time.

"It is particularly important to ensure reliable connectivity with Western Europe and to fully use the new rail transport connection with Europe to increase our country’s defence capabilities".

The decoupling of the Baltic state’s rail network from Russia is not the only area where the countries are trying to reduce their reliance on Russia.

Another legacy of Soviet occupation is that the Baltics’ electricity power grids are synchronised with Russia’s centrally controlled network, raising fears that Russia might cut power to the countries.

The Baltic states have agreed to complete desynchronisation from the Russian power grid and synchronise with European networks by 2025.

However, in July last year, Reuters reported that the European power grid network ENTSO-E would connect the Baltic states’ grids within 24 hours if the countries were to be disconnected by Russia.

The cities that will thrive the most in the future will be those getting people to walk more

Criticism of the project

Like all large projects, Rail Baltica hasn’t been without its critics.

Speaking to Emerging Europe last year, Priit Humal, board member of the civil movement Avalikult Rail Balticust (Publicly About Rail Baltica), explained that Rail Baltica is as controversial in the Baltics as HS2 is in the UK.

He went on to say that the major difference relates to differentials in GDP, stating that Rail Baltica is three times more expensive for Estonia than HS2 is for the UK.

There have also been concerns over the certainty of EU funds.

Any decrease in EU funding would need to be made up by national governments, which could lead to higher levels of public opposition to the scheme.

However, with multiple parts of the project now under construction, it seems unlikely that the scheme will hit the buffers before its predicted completion in 2026.

Huge groupers, the joy of Florida divers, are now 'vulnerable'


Jesus OLARTE
Sat, 16 September 2023 

The goliath grouper, which can weigh up to 360 kilograms (nearly 800 pounds), is a delight for divers, like this one in waters near Boynton Beach, Florida, though scientists warn its numbers are declining 

(Jesus OLARTE)

The goliath grouper, a colossus of a fish that can weigh up to 360 kilograms (nearly 800 pounds), is the delight of divers in Florida, though scientists warn their numbers are down since the US state allowed fishing of the giants to resume.

"There's nowhere else you can have an experience with a fish that big while you're diving -- and being this close to it," Dr. James Locascio, a marine biologist with the Mote Marine Laboratory, told AFP.

"And so, really, we feel that the fish is worth a lot more alive than it is dead."


During a sea trip early this month off Boynton Beach, on Florida's Atlantic coast north of Miami, divers were amazed by these giants, which can measure up to 2.4 meters (eight feet) long.

With naturally down-turned mouths, these creatures may appear cranky, but some actually allow themselves to be brushed by a human hand.

- 'Fewer and fewer' -

"We were totally amazed about the amount of groupers that show up to the Boynton Beach area," diver Ben Galemmo told AFP.

Still, he added, "from talking to the locals, (the population) has actually gone down in numbers" in recent years.

A recent study confirms that trend.

"The diving industry has reported that they are seeing fewer and fewer of these fish," said Locascio, the marine biologist.

That could devastate the local diving business.

Last year, when researchers with the Mote laboratory repeated a census of spawning sites first conducted in 2013, they observed significantly fewer goliath groupers in five of the six locations studied.

Overfishing had left the species near extinction in the 1980s, but conservation efforts saved it. Goliath grouper fishing was banned for more than 30 years.

But in the past year Florida authorities deemed the population had recovered sufficiently, and allowed 200 of the fish to be caught and killed each year in state waters.

Unfortunately, the goliath grouper lends itself to overfishing partly because it grows slowly -- it can live as long as 30 years -- and takes a relatively long time to reproduce.

The goliath is now classed as a "vulnerable" species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, according to Locascio.

Calling the fish "an essential species for maintaining the balance of the ecosystem," he added, "We do not want its population to decline."

The huge fish also lives in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and off the coast of Brazil.

la/mdl/bbk/caw

Mali, Niger, Burkina sign mutual defence pact


AFP
Sat, 16 September 2023 

Mali and its neighbours (Laurence SAUBADU)

The military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger on Saturday signed a mutual defence pact, ministerial delegations from the three Sahel countries announced in Mali's capital Bamako.

The Liptako-Gourma Charter establishes the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Mali's junta leader Assimi Goita posted on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.

Its aim is to "establish an architecture of collective defence and mutual assistance for the benefit of our populations", he wrote.

The Liptako-Gourma region -- where the Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger borders meet -- has been ravaged by jihadism in recent years.

"This alliance will be a combination of military and economic efforts between the three countries", Mali's Defence Minister Abdoulaye Diop told journalists.

"Our priority is the fight against terrorism in the three countries."

A jihadist insurgency that erupted in northern Mali in 2012 spread to Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.

All three countries have undergone coups since 2020, most recently Niger, where soldiers in July overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum.

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to intervene militarily in Niger over the coup.

Mali and Burkina Faso quickly responded by saying that any such operation would be deemed a "declaration of war" against them.

- Mutual defence pact -

The charter signed on Saturday binds the signatories to assist one another -- including militarily -- in the event of an attack on any one of them.

"Any attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracting parties shall be considered as an aggression against the other parties and shall give rise to a duty of assistance... including the use of armed force to restore and ensure security", it states.

It also binds the three countries to work to prevent or settle armed rebellions.

Mali has, in addition to fighting jihadists linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, seen a resumption of hostilities by predominantly Tuareg armed groups over the past week.

The escalation risks testing an already stretched army as well as the junta's claims that it has successfully turned around a dire security situation.

The successionist groups had in 2012 launched a rebellion before signing a peace agreement with the state in 2015. But that accord is now generally considered moribund.

The renewed military activity by those armed groups has coincided with a series of deadly attacks attributed mainly to the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist alliance Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM).

Mali's junta pushed out France's anti-jihadist force in 2022 and the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA in 2023.

French troops have also been pushed out of Burkina Faso, while Niger's coup leaders have renounced several military cooperation agreements with France.

UK

A DECADE OF TORY AUSTERITY

NHS sinks into £7bn cash crisis as inflation and strikes bite


The problem of soaring deficits is hitting a growing number of trusts across England  and will raise further serious doubts about Rishi Sunak’s chances of meeting his pledge to cut record waiting lists.


Toby Helm and Denis Campbell
Sun, 17 September 2023 

Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Observer

The NHS is heading into an unprecedented financial crisis and will overspend its budget by at least £7bn next year as the effects of inflation and strikes plunge hospital trusts into alarming levels of debt, according to leading independent experts.

The problem of soaring deficits is hitting a growing number of trusts across England ahead of a likely general election within 12 months, and will raise further serious doubts about Rishi Sunak’s chances of meeting his pledge to cut record waiting lists.

In a sign of the extreme pressures, the Manchester Integrated Care System, bringing together trusts and other healthcare providers in Greater Manchester, has brought in Stephen Hay, a troubleshooter from PricewaterhouseCoopers who formerly worked in the NHS, to help sort out its disastrous financial position.

According to the Health Service Journal, NHS Greater Manchester has reported a deficit of £125m after the first four months of 2023-24, more than £100m worse than planned.

Insiders say they expect the dire state of trusts’ finances to be high on the agenda at a meeting of NHS England’s board on 5 October.

While inflation and strike costs have worsened the situation, the descent into debt is also traced back to years of pre-Covid austerity. It comes as ministers are trying to claw back extra money that they pumped in during the pandemic to deal with the emergency situation.

Sally Gainsbury, senior policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust, one of the leading authorities on NHS finance, said: “The English NHS faces an almost impossible struggle to balance its books and cover the costs of care this financial year, as a result of the government’s desire to squeeze its budget back down to the levels expected before extra spending during Covid.

“Official figures suggest the service was already on track by the end of May to overspend its budget this year by around £2bn. That figure may well worsen throughout the rest of the year as the cost of covering striking doctors at premium rates ratchets up. In addition, the NHS as a whole is currently looking at a budget for next year which is some £7bn smaller than its current rate of spending.”

It is hard to believe that in an election year the NHS will be allowed to hit the buffers
Siva Anandaciva

In a further escalation of NHS woes, this week will see the first joint strike by junior doctors and consultants, with resulting extra costs of employing agency workers to cover and loss of income from cancelled operations.

Consultants in England will be striking on Tuesday and Wednesday with Christmas Day levels of cover, meaning emergency services will continue but elective surgery will be hit. Junior doctors will join the strike on Wednesday.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, said: “The NHS finance directors I speak to are deeply concerned about how quickly their financial position is deteriorating.

“Financial deficits in the NHS have real consequences for the care we receive – as pressures mount, NHS providers are faced with decisions like leaving staffing vacancies unfilled or cutting back on plans to improve how services are delivered. And as hard as it is to believe, it is likely that 2024-25 will be even worse as the number of people requiring care and treatment continues to increase while funding growth starts to slow.

“It is equally hard to believe that, in an election year, the NHS will be allowed to hit the buffers,” he added.

Much of the pressure on funding has come from the estimated £3.9bn bill for the 5.5% average pay rises awarded recently to NHS staff. The Department of Health and Social Care was only funded by the Treasury for part of this, so will have to make budget cuts, or ask for more.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of of NHS Providers, said it was vital that the strikes ended soon before more damage was done. “There is a danger that industrial action becomes part of trusts’ business as usual. Not only does this underplay the growing impact on patients and staff, it also masks the severity of the mounting financial challenges that the NHS is now facing.”

Julian Kelly, the deputy chief executive and finance chief of NHS England, has issued public warnings at several board meetings about the grim financial outlook facing the service this year and in 2024-25 – and said that it may have to cut planned funding of key areas of care as a result.

Last October, Kelly, a former senior Treasury civil servant, warned that in the next few years the NHS could have to “completely revisit” investment in cancer, mental health and diagnostic services. He blamed high inflation for wrecking NHS financial planning.

NHS England has also agreed to make unprecedented “efficiency savings” in return for budget increases from the Treasury.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said last year that the NHS was facing “small real-terms budget cuts” in 2023-24 and 2024-25, partly because of inflation but also because its current funding settlement was front-loaded to give it more money early on to help it cope with burdens imposed by Covid.

The financial thinktank pointed out that if those cuts happened, it would be the first time since the early 1950s that the NHS had faced two successive years of real-terms cuts to its income. “In the absence of additional funding, or a sharp lowering of inflation and cost pressures, the NHS will be asked to do more with less,” said Ben Zaranka, senior research economist at the IFS.

Last week, the government pledged an extra £200m towards winter pressures, although NHS sources said it would be used to pay agency and other staff to cover for striking doctors.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We’re backing the NHS with record funding – the core NHS budget in England is currently at £163bn and will increase to almost £166bn next year – the highest spend on health and care in any government’s history.

“To ensure the continuity of patient services, we provide cash support to trusts in financial difficulty. Trusts also work with NHS England to address the underlying issues, improve performance and manage their budgets.

“NHS England can deploy the national recovery support programme to provide intensive support to Trusts in financial difficulty.”

'Medicane' storms to increase as climate change heats Mediterranean

RFI
Sat, 16 September 2023

© NASA Worldview Snapshots


The flash flood that killed thousands of people in Libya this week followed a "medicane" – a rare but destructive weather phenomenon that scientists believe will intensify in a warming world.

The term is an amalgamation of the words "Mediterranean" and "hurricane". Used by scientists and weather forecasters, it is less well-known to the wider public.

Medicanes, which tend to form over parts of the Mediterranean Sea near the North African coast, are similar to hurricanes and typhoons, although they can develop over cooler waters.

On satellite imagery they look like a swirling mass of storm clouds with an eye in the middle.

Fierce winds and approximately 170 millimetres of rain were unleashed by Storm Daniel when it made landfall in Libya on Sunday.

Scientists say the storm bore all the hallmarks of a medicane.

"We are confident that climate change is supercharging the rainfall associated with such storms," says professor Liz Stephens from the University of Reading.

International aid effort stepped up as Libya searches for flood victims

The Mediterranean cyclones are usually smaller and weaker than their tropical equivalents and have a smaller space in which to develop.

However their peak strength is usually the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, encompassing speeds of 119 to153 kilometres per hour.

(with AFP)

Does Wile E Coyote explain US voters’ gloom amid buoyant economy?

Dominic Rushe in Charlotte, North Carolina
Sat, 16 September 2023 

Strolling past the colorfully restored Victorian homes of the Fourth Ward, watching the barman hand-carve blocks of ice for old fashioneds at the jam-packed bar of The Crunkleton, it’s easy to fall for Charlotte’s ample southern charms. And yet, people are not happy – at least according to the polls.

Consumer sentiment in North Carolina is now lower than it was at the height of the pandemic, according to High Point University’s confidence tracker. “People are just not feeling particularly good,” said Martin Kifer, director of the university’s survey research center.

North Carolina is not alone. Official figures suggest the US pulled off an astonishing recovery from the Covid pandemic and recession.

Related:US economy going strong under Biden – Americans don’t believe it

More than 20 million people in the US lost their jobs in April 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the world’s largest economy. The unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. But the rebound was just as dramatic. Unemployment has hovered near 50-year lows since January 2022 and is now 3.8%. In North Carolina, it’s just 3.3%. More than 100 people are moving to the city every day.

But as an exclusive Guardian/Harris Poll survey found this week, two-thirds (68%) of Americans report it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month.

Across the country, poll after poll shows people are not feeling it. That’s not good news for the Biden administration, particularly in a potential swing state where the perceived success – or failure – of “Bidenomics”, as Biden has dubbed his economic strategy, will be one of the key issues in next year’s election.

The US Treasury building in Washington. Official figures suggest ‘Bidenomics’ is working. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The election is still a way out, and Biden has proven pollsters wrong in the past. Nevertheless, the economy – or voters’ perception of it – will be a defining issue in one of the most consequential elections in US history.

Americans are deeply divided on the economy. The Harris poll shows over half (53%) of Americans believe the economy is getting worse. Some 72% of Republicans share that view compared with 32% of Democrats. But the unhappiness runs deep on both sides. Only a third of Democrats believe that the economy is getting better.

Even when Americans say they are doing OK financially, they believe the economy is in trouble. According to the Federal Reserve’s annual survey of economic wellbeing, 73% of households said that they were “at least doing OK financially” at the end of 2022. In 2019, that figure was 75% of households. But back then, 50% said the national economy was good or excellent. By 2022, that number had fallen to just 18%.

Some heavyweight voices share the gloom. Both the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Bill Dudley, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have speculated that having shot out of the pandemic like a coyote chasing a roadrunner, the US may be in a “Wile E Coyote” economy and, like Warner Brother’s cartoon canine, the US economy may be heading off a cliff. “Falling back to earth will not be a pleasant experience,” Dudley has warned.Interactive

Partisanship explains much of the seeming disconnect between economic data and sentiment. But not all of it. Large forces are reshaping the US economy and may explain the nation’s vertigo.

Many low-wage workers, have been living with that fear of falling for a long time.

•••

Ieisha Franceis’s wages have shot up from $12.50 to $17 since the Durham, North Carolina, resident made the shift from working in fast food to a job at a senior living facility. Wages are – finally – running ahead of inflation overall but for Franceis, “everything looks the same. Inflation’s not gone down, it’s just not going up,” she said. “These days $17 an hour is looking a lot like $12.50,” said the low-wage activist.

Franceis used to buy her family’s side dishes, boxes of macaroni and cheese, mashed potato, at Dollar General. The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (“the good stuff”) has gone. “Now they only carry a cheaper brand with the powdered cheese.” At the average grocery store, that Kraft Mac and Cheese is over $2.

“The Dollar Tree went from everything being $1 to everything being $1.25. Now they even have a $5 section and a $10 section. Huh? This was a dollar store,” she said. “Bidenomics” means little to Franceis. “What we need is higher wages and more unions,” she said.

Even entrepreneurs are finding the new, post-Covid economy taxing.

Cocktail queen Tamu Curtis saw her business boom during lockdown. A Los Angeles transplant, she started giving cocktail classes online and saved enough to open her bricks-and-mortar shop. The Cocktailery – nestled between an Anthropologie and Warby Parker inside an old streetcar station – opened in September 2021 when the vaccines started rolling out. “I thought, OK everybody is going to run and get the vaccines. We are saved! Of course, it didn’t work out that way,” she said ruefully. “That was a plot twist.”

Up and running now for over a year, business has been strange. “This has been the craziest summer. It’s so slow,” she said.

Retail sales have collapsed but classes have boomed. “People will spend money on experiences. On travel. We spent two years filling our houses with stuff. Maybe we just don’t need that any more.”

On top of that, she said, “inflation is killing me.” An order of cocktail bitters that used to cost her $700 shot up to $1,500. “There’s only so much you can pass on. I can’t sell a bitter for $42. There’s a max people will pay.”

At the same time, rent is high and financing is getting tougher as interest rates rise. “It’s difficult,” she said. And more so for a minority, woman-owned business. She hasn’t been able to get a traditional bank loan yet or a line of credit from her bank, Charlotte-based Bank of America. “Now the banks aren’t lending the way they were.”

A sign advertises ‘inflation busting prices’ at an Amazon Fresh grocery store in Schaumburg, Illinois, in July. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Post-Covid has been an easier ride for other local business people but still, existential questions remain, ones that may point to a wider national malaise.

Desmond Wiggan and his partner Aubrey Yeboah launched their business, BatteryXchange, in 2019, just before the pandemic. The company sets up battery charging stations for mobile devices and the idea had originally been to target people at conferences or out on the town. “Suddenly there were no people,” said Wiggan.

BatteryXChange retooled and now rents its equipment to healthcare providers and others who use the service to help keep their customers online. It worked and business is booming, as is Wiggan’s profile. He has just returned from a business symposium on swanky Martha’s Vineyard. A copy of Propel, a local Black business magazine, sits on his office table. Wiggan’s headshot is above a message from Michelle Obama: “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make.”

But Wiggan has some wider concerns. He spent two years living in China and has seen firsthand that other countries think on a longer timescale. Back in the US, he said, it’s all about the next election cycle. On top of that another likely hot election issue worries him. “The age gap of our leaders. They are old. The torch has got to be passed.

“These other countries are starting to sniff us out,” he said. Foreign students were getting their education in the US then going home because they see their country looking to the future, he said. “They are thinking 2060 not every four, eight years when we go back and forth.”

****

Why people feel so bad about an economy that – technically – appears strong is a question that is vexing not just the White House but Nobel economic laureates. Historians will have a better answer. For now, the reasons look manifold.

As HPU’s Kifer points out “the perception of the economy is not the economy.” The disconnect between the official figures and how people feel may be temporary. Nor is it unusual for the hangover of a recession to outlast what looks like the beginning of a recovery. High Point’s own consumer confidence index started in 2010, two years after the peak of the 2008/2009 recession. It wasn’t until September 2011 that confidence started rising.

The US’s pandemic recession began in February 2020 and ended two months later, making it the shortest recession on record. The body blow it dealt to confidence is, however, proving hard to shift. And things are different this time. For one, there is relatively high inflation – something never directly experienced by Americans under 40. Slowing increases have done little to calm people’s nerves and most people in North Carolina expect inflation to get worse next year, according to another HPU poll.

The mood of economic despondency is fueled by other fires, too, illustrated by life in North Carolina and felt across the country.

Politics plays a huge role. The University of Michigan’s national consumer confidence index shows Republican confidence soared under Trump and dropped under Biden while Democrats’ did the opposite.

But it’s not the only factor. While people may not have lost their jobs, America’s middle class has lost $2tn in wealth since 2020 thanks to inflation and the fastest increase in interest rates since the 1980s, according to data compiled by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.

That fall comes after outsized gains from stimulus cheques, rising house prices and other assets for those who rode out the pandemic with little financial cost. Still, the psychological pain of losing is about twice the pleasure of winning, according to Nobel-winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman. Losses loom larger than gains.

Then there are the epochal issues of our day – ones that will spread far beyond North Carolina and the Biden presidency.

North Carolina has been voted the best state for business for two consecutive years and business is still good. But there are signs of a slowdown. According to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, the Charlotte area expects businesses to invest $2.3bn in the region this year and create 7,200 jobs. That’s down from $8bn in investment and 20,000 jobs last year.

Uncertainty is a large part of that drop, said Danny Chavez, chief business recruitment officer of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Concerns about the direction of interest rates and political change are part of it – businesses waiting to see what happens next year, a natural part of the cycle. There is also something more.

The number of jobs created per investment is also decreasing as tech takes jobs. Financial services and manufacturing are extremely important to the region. They remain so, said Chavez. “But in terms of jobs, both those industries are highly vulnerable to automation and AI,” he said.

A worker picks up food from a restaurant for a Flytrex drone delivery in Holly Springs, North Carolina. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

While Charlotte is better positioned than most to ride out that change, Chavez said the region – and the rest of the US – is also increasingly competing with global players. India and China are challenging the US’s rank as the world’s largest economy.

Biden’s economic plans are playing to the long term and America has proved resilient to big shocks before. The president also has a track record of beating expectations. If hiring stays steady and inflation keeps receding, maybe Americans will hear the good news soon. That may or may not happen before the 2024 election.

But the polls may also reflect a wider anxiety about the existential challenges the US (and other economies) face. Perhaps those challenges explain some of the national mood. It’s hard to measure existential dread.

Longer term, neither Bidenomics – nor Trumponomics – are likely to fix America’s broken healthcare and childcare systems or the climate crisis. Nor do they offer clear solutions to the global trade winds that threaten American exceptionalism or the challenges presented by AI and automation.

Little wonder then that so many in the US feel like Wile E Coyote, running off the cliff, treading air, waiting for the fall.