Borrowing to survive

British households have spent more than they received for an unprecedented nine consecutive quarters amid a longer squeeze on real incomes, according to official figures.

Households across the country have been net borrowers in every quarter between October 2016 – when living costs started to rise after the Brexit vote – and December 2018. The Office for National Statistics said the run of nine quarters was unprecedented on comparable records dating back to 1987.

Household finances had been under pressure since before the EU referendum amid sluggish wage growth since the 2008 financial crisis, while cuts to benefits imposed under austerity have also damaged incomes. Average real wages remain below the peak recorded in 2007.

The ONS said there had been a noticeable hit to family finances in the wake of the Brexit vote, when the sudden drop in the value of the pound drove up the price of imports to Britain, pushing up inflation.

“This in part reflects the effect of a squeeze in purchasing power from higher import inflation following the fall in the exchange rate after the referendum on membership of the EU,” the ONS said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/29/uk-households-spend-above-their-income-for-longest-period-since-1980s

Quote of the Day

“Britain sending aid does not change the tragic reality of its arms sales. Jeremy Hunt cannot promote peace while at the same time acting as an arms salesman,” said Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, Yemeni leader 

War Heroes

The fate of the ‘Bonus Army’ of unemployed First World War veterans.

"...In the late afternoon a mixed force consisting of four troops of cavalry with drawn sabres, six tanks, and a column of infantry with fixed bayonets and tear-gas bombs in their belts moved on the Bonus Army camp at Hard-Luck-on-the-River. At its head, on a white horse, rode General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, accompanied by his aide. Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower ... The Bonus Army and its dependents were given an hour to evacuate the camp; then the troops moved in, throwing tear-gas bombs among those veterans who still lingered on and setting fire to their shacks and huts. A seven-year-old boy who had returned to recover a toy was bayoneted in the leg by a soldier; Major George S. Patton, Jnr. personally accomplished the destruction of a shack which happened to belong to a veteran who, during the war, had been decorated for saving the major’s life...."

Goronwy Rees, The Great Slump – Capitalism in Crisis, 1929-1933

Churchill's Famine Policies

The 1943 famine in Bengal killed up to 3 million people. A study provides scientific backing for arguments that Churchill policies were a significant factor contributing to the catastrophe.

“This was a unique famine, caused by policy failure instead of any monsoon failure,” said Vimal Mishra, the lead researcher and an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar.

The journalist Madhushree Mukerjee, have argued the famine was exacerbated by the decisions of Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet in London.

Mukerjee has presented evidence the cabinet was warned repeatedly that the exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort could result in famine, but it opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire.

Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.

During a famine in Bihar in 1873-74, the local government led by Sir Richard Temple responded swiftly by importing food and enacting welfare programmes to assist the poor to purchase food.  Almost nobody died, but Temple was severely criticised by British authorities for spending so much money on the response. So he reduced the scale of subsequent famine responses in south and western India and mortality rates soared.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study

An End to Austerity?

The number of children and pensioners in absolute poverty increased in 2017-18 as inflation and accommodation costs took a bigger chunk out of household finances.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said low pay, insecure work and the benefits freeze was trapping families below the breadline. “We need to redesign the economy to make it fair again. People need more control over their working lives and a fairer share of the wealth they create,” she said.

A household is considered to be in relative poverty if their income is below 60% of median income of £507 a week in 2017-18, while they are in absolute poverty if their income is below 60% of the 2010-11 median income, adjusted for inflation.

30% of children, or 4.1 million, were living in relative poverty (after housing costs) in 2017-18 in the UK and 70% of children living in poverty were in working families.

The percentage of pensioners in relative poverty before housing costs rose from 17% to 18%

The Resolution Foundation thinktank said the recent increase in child poverty had been primarily driven by the freeze in the value of working-age benefits, made worse by a spike in inflation to 3% in late 2017.

Adam Corlett, a senior economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “With the bulk of the government’s £12bn of welfare cuts taking place 2017-18, child poverty is likely to continue rising and could even hit a record high within the next few years.The political conversation around austerity may have shifted but the lived experience of it hasn’t for millions of families..."

Research carried out for the Child Poverty Action Group found that a four-year freeze on children’s benefits due to run until next year will lead to average loses of £240 per year for families with children. It will also result in 100,000 more children in poverty by 2023-24. 

Housing costs have become an increasing factor in measures of inequality over the past 30 years as house prices and rents relative to average incomes have risen by three times the rate of inflation. National Housing Federation (NHF) revealed that there are 847,000 children from working families living in poverty for the sole reason that their homes are too expensive. This is a 30% increase - 193,000 children - since 2010.

The number of children pushed into poverty before housing costs are factored in has increased by 287,000 children, it said.

Rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing in large parts of the country are being blamed for the problem. The average household in poverty would be about £3,172 a year better off in social housing when compared to renting privately. This is equivalent to a year’s supply of food for the average family, the NHF has calculated.

“We are now seeing the full effects of the housing crisis and a direct link between the lack of affordable homes and in-work poverty,” said Kate Henderson, the NHF’s chief executive.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/28/poverty-increases-among-children-and-pensioners-across-uk

A Happy Land?

A total of 70.9m items to treat conditions including depression and anxiety were given out in 2018.

This is almost double the 36m dispensed a decade ago in 2008. The 2016 and 2017 figures were 64.7m and 67.5m respectively.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/29/antidepressant-prescriptions-in-england-double-in-a-decade

Fleeing hell

Desperate refugees have now been labeled hi-jackers and pirates when the briefly took control of the merchant ship that had rescued them. They group  commandeered the ship, the El Hiblu 1, and turn it toward Europe when they learned that it heading back to Libya. The 108 refugees efforts to reach their destination was called "an act of piracy."

Rather than accuse them for trying to escape their fate, Medicins Sans Frontiers wrote that the "desperate and dangerous situation" underscored "the broken system at sea and the despair of vulnerable people."

"Imagine escaping from a concentration camp," wrote the rescue group Mediterranea Saving Humans on social media. "During the escape they catch you and want to bring you back. Would you rebel? So they made the 'pirates' of the freighter El Hiblu 1, to save themselves and their children. Imagine, then judge."

Libya as documented by numerous aid agencies in countless reports is not a safe haven. Tens of thousands of refugees who have been returned to Libya are forced to live in conditions which the United Nations has called "an outrage to the conscience of humanity." At Libyan detention centers migrants are locked up indefinitely with no access to medical care, little food, and the constant threat of rape, torture, and human trafficking.

The European Union announced it would suspend its sea-based patrols of the Mediterranean Sea, which have allowed the E.U. to rescue thousands of migrants and refugees in recent years.

The end of the E.U.'s sea rescues will mean "more interceptions by Libyan forces and return of women, men, and children to nightmarish conditions and treatment in Libya," explained Judith Sunderland, associate director for Europe at Human Rights Watch.

We applaud the bravery of the refugees who took action to avoid being sent back to Libya.

Adapted from here
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/28/not-piracy-matter-survival-refugees-take-control-ship-headed-back-hell-libya

The Mosquito Climate Change Threat

Yet another call for urgent action, this time from public health experts.

"Half a billion more people could be at risk from mosquito-transmitted diseases within 30 years as a result of the warming climate, according to a new study.

Canada and parts of northern Europe could be newly exposed to the threat. People there could come into contact with yellow fever, Zika, dengue and chikungunya, as well as other emerging diseases.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, finds that humans could prevent the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes if they aggressively take actions to combat global warming."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/28/mosquito-spread-diseases-may-endanger-millions-in-new-places-due-to-climate-change

Not caring about our elderly

Older people without children at greater risk of isolation, poor health and inability to access formal care. More than 1 million people aged over 65 without children are “dangerously unsupported”.

“Read any report on inequalities on ageing and you’ll see the adverse impact of being isolated with poor support networks, loneliness, poor health and a low income,” said Woodard. “Certain groups will be highlighted as being particularly at risk, carers for example, people from the LGBT communities, people with disabilities. However, one group you will hardly ever see mentioned despite being overrepresented in many of the above at risk categories is people ageing without children – even though they are disproportionately represented in every one of those categories.”  90% of LGBT people don’t have children, people without children are 30% more likely to be carers of their elderly parents, and 85% of people with disabilities don’t have children.

Individuals ageing without children have worse health, worse health behaviours and higher mortality rates, higher levels of depression and anxiety as they age.

People ageing without children have less access to unpaid care because that is overwhelmingly provided by children. “People ageing without children are trapped in a cycle where they are more likely to require formal care but struggle to arrange it by themselves because it’s usually children who arrange formal care for their parents,” she said. Woodard said. “Rising numbers of people ageing without children will have an impact on the health and social care system,” she said. “Their specific needs are so critical that they need a specific government policy to support them. Instead they are ignored by experts and researchers. They are put in the ‘too difficult’ box and ignored.”

Paul Goulden, chief executive of Age UK London, said the vulnerabilities of those ageing without children are a societal “blind spot”. “There’s an assumption that people have children they can rely on,” he said. “But those without children don’t have that vital lifeline. If you don’t have someone who you can pick up the phone to, you are wide open for abuse, scams and generally suffering a poor experience of life.”

Dominic Carter, policy manager at the Alzheimer’s Society, said the number of childless people living with dementia is expected to rise. “The number of people living with dementia is expected to rise to 1 million by 2021, which means there will be proportionally more people without children with dementia too.

“The care system for those living with dementia is overly reliant on family care,” he said. “If you don’t have family to care for you, you’re left to fend for yourself..."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/28/over-1-million-childless-people-over-65-are-dangerously-unsupported

Child Poverty Rises

Almost 3 million children from working families in the UK are living in poverty after housing costs have been paid, the latest figures show.

This means 70% of all poor children were in working families last year, up from 67% on the previous year, official statistics show.

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Despite high employment, today's figures reveal that 70% of children living under the poverty line have at least one parent in work. That is not an economy that is working for everyone..."

Analysis of the statistics, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, shows the high cost of housing in the UK is pushing more working families over the poverty line.Calculations by the National Housing Federation (NHF) , nearly a third more children - or 193,000 - are now living in such meagre circumstances because of spiralling rents and mortgage costs, compared with 2010. The Federation, which represents housing associations, points to a lack of social housing being built over the same period, as well as a lack of affordability of home ownership.

NHF chief executive Kate Henderson said: "Year after year hundreds of thousands more hard-working families are falling into poverty - forced to choose between feeding and clothing their children, or providing a roof over their heads. We are now seeing the full effects of low pay, benefit cuts and the housing crisis. The lack of affordable homes is exacerbating in-work poverty."

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-47734733

Brunei Brutality

Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex and adultery from next week. From 3 April, individuals in the Asian kingdom will be subject to a draconian new penal code, which also includes the amputation of a hand and a foot for the crime of theft. The capital punishments are to be “witnessed by a group of Muslims.”

The Islamic legal system which imposes strict corporal punishments was a directive of the Sultan of Brunei, who is one of the world’s richest leaders with a personal wealth of about $20bn and has held the throne since 1967.

Alcohol is already banned in Brunei and there are fines and jail sentences for having children out of wedlock and failing to pray on a Friday.

Brunei was a British colony until 1984 and the two countries still enjoy strong ties.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/28/brunei-brings-in-death-by-stoning-as-punishment-for-gay-sex

Newport West by-election Street Stall (30/3)

March 30, 

1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
John Frost Square,
Newport, NP20 1HZ.

The by-election is on Thursday 4 April but sadly there will be no candidate from the Socialist Party standing. However, we can put forward our case for socialism.

Are you Anti-Capitalist?

Then why vote for a capitalist politician?

Since the last election capitalism has become a dirty word again. The world over, people are protesting against the profit system's effect on the environment, poverty and on quality of life generally. There have been anti-capitalist protests in Britain too. Maybe you've taken part in them, but what to do in the coming election?

Vote Labour—you must be joking!

They are as committed to the profit system and to serving the interests of Big Business as the Tories. Labour has never aimed at anything more than managing capitalism. 

Vote Plaid Cymru?

They wish a separate Welsh state but the solution lies not in nationalism, which is a delusion and a snare, but in world socialism. The Socialist Party rejects allegiance to any State and regard themselves as citizens of the world.

Vote Green?

For them, Big Business is bad, while Small Business is Beautiful. Small Business, though, is still Business, still recklessly driven to pursue profits.  Green Party ministers in Germany, France and Italy haven't made any difference to the way capitalism works.

Follow the Leaders?

But what about those calling themselves left-wing socialists?

They're mainly Trotskyists who see the Russian Revolution as a model to follow and who have appointed themselves a "vanguard" to lead "the masses". The Russian Revolution only led to state capitalism.

Their programme doesn't even go beyond private capitalism. "Tax the Rich and Make Them Pay" sounds anti-capitalist, but it assumes that the rich continue to exist. It's the old illusion that you can use taxes and government intervention to make capitalism work for everybody's benefit.

For them, it is just a tactic to get disillusioned Old Labourites to join their ranks.

Don't Vote?

So, if we can't vote for any of these parties, what's left? Not voting at all? More and more people are doing this, and it's not as bad as voting for one of the capitalist parties. It's a cop-out, though. The fact that up to now the vote hasn't been used properly is no reason to reject it as useless.

Write-in vote for Socialism

We suggest something else: a write-in vote for Socialism. Real socialism, not the state capitalism that failed in Russia, but a leaderless society; where there's common ownership and democratic control of production; goods and services are produced for use not profit; and the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" applies.

Our idea is a world without frontiers in which the natural and industrial resources of the Earth become the common heritage of all humanity and are used to provide enough for everybody in an ecologically sound way.

We think that the election system could be used in a constructive way we shall be exercising our right to vote. We shall be casting a write-in vote against capitalism by writing "WORLD SOCIALISM" across the ballot paper. If you don't want capitalism, why not do the same?

Democracy ends at the factory gate

The key distinguishing feature of capitalism is the existence of a labor market, i.e. in capitalism human labor is commodified — it is bought and sold in a market place. From the point of view of employers, purchasing labor represents a production cost, and their objective is to make sure that it is utilized to the maximum of its productive potential. This, in turn, requires surveillance and it may be observed that capitalism as a socioeconomic system has always involved workplace surveillance for this reason... 

Capitalism has always been “surveillance capitalism” because in this system the main objective of any business activity is to maximize profits — to make sure that the resources purchased and employed — including labor — are used with the maximum efficiency. The function of new technologies, as this has always been the case with respect to workplace surveillance, is to seek to maximize worker productivity. This may be achieved in two ways: by extending the amount of time that employees work (e.g. by reducing the duration of breaks, by extending hours of work in the workplace or encouraging employees to work from home after the end of the working day, etc.), or by intensifying the labor process (the speed with which workers move, the number of tasks they complete per unit of times, etc.). Modern workplace surveillance technologies have the potential to enable employers to do both: to monitor more precisely and continuously the time employees spend to actually work, including the timing of lunch and toilet breaks, as well as to better scrutinize and measure their performance (continuously measuring output, developing performance scoring systems and rankings, etc.).

The main difference resides in the shift from surveillance based on the “gaze” — on the capacity of supervisors, foremen, managers, etc. to visually monitor workers — to surveillance that is digitalized, i.e. that goes beyond the “gaze” and involves the collection of all kinds of data. This shift greatly enhances the capacity of employers to monitor employees. Thus, if in the past workplace surveillance was limited to the time that supervisors were actually looking at workers, today the use of different types of new equipment (RFID badges, handheld devices carried by employees, and even implanted microchips) makes surveillance continuous. The data may be processed in real time and managers on their KPI [key performance indicators] screens may see not only the productivity of each employee, but his or her ranking in comparison to others. For employees this means that there is no breathing time and there is no place to hide — everything may be monitored, recorded, processed and analyzed.

It is common to cite Melvin Kranzberg’s dictum that “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” with reference to technological innovations, and to add that it all depends on the context and the use to which they are put. Surveillance technologies are no exception. They may be enabling and liberating (e.g., using wearable technology to locate miners unable to get back to the surface after an accident, monitoring health of patients at a distance, filming police brutality, etc.), but they may also be used to increase subjugation, oppression and exploitation. What we may say is that, overall, surveillance technology is more likely to serve the interests of the powerful (because they have bigger capacity and means to put it to use that they desire), be it governments, corporate managers or digital platforms.

Full interview here
https://truthout.org/articles/workplace-surveillance-is-central-to-capitalist-exploitation/

Persecuting the Roma

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said French laws would have to be changed to deal with the kind of violence seen on social media platforms, and the attacks on the Roma community. Griveaux said: "This kind of rumor, spread in a very viral and very organized way on social media, results in the stigmatization of a community" and violence "in the worst of its forms. We will have to adapt our penal and judicial responses to the violence that we see today, but also to the absolutely unacceptable targeting of the Roma community," he added.

In the Paris suburb of Bobigny said 19 people had been arrested on charges of violence, destruction by fire and taking part in armed groups during Monday night attacks on the Roma community. A false rumor had spread on social media that Roma community people in a white van were trying to kidnap children.

https://www.dw.com/en/fake-news-in-france-leads-to-attacks-on-roma-community/a-48083884

When the free market doesn't work

The SOYMB blog has on a number of occasions posted on anti-biotics and the increasing risk of a general immunity to them. It has also explained about the reluctance of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in developing new anti-biotics - the low profit return in doing so. 

Nationalised or state-run “utility” drug companies may be the only answer to the lack of investment in new antibiotics, former banker and superbug tsar Lord Jim O’Neill has suggested.

The drastic measure would be intended to ensure that the development and production of new antibiotics were not at the mercy of capitalist market forces.

O’Neill, explained, “They see their job as rewarding shareholders – and it’s kind of really worrying,”

Speaking at a London press briefing on “fixing the broken antibiotics market”, he compared it to the way banks or parts of their businesses were taken over by the government after the 2008 financial crash. O’Neill said: “It’s what happened in finance in the end. If you’re not going to do it yourself, we’re going to turn certain parts of your business into being a utility.”

Proposals including “prizes” for new drug developers, a “Netflix” model that would see health providers pay for the right to access new medicines, and pricing antibiotics in a way that properly reflects their value to society, had led to talk but no action, he said.

Another possibility was a “carrot and stick” approach that taxed drug companies opting out of antibiotics while rewarding others that stayed in the game

One possibility would be for the government to take over developers that were looking for a private buyer. Another would be to acquire all the remaining anti-infection business from the larger companies. This could prove cheaper than offering multibillion-pound rewards for producing new drugs that meet a defined need, said O’Neill. Alternatively, a taxpayer-supported utility company would focus only on the costly business of drug manufacture and distribution.

O’Neill revealed that he floated the idea of a publicly owned pharmaceutical company in his first month as the government’s “superbug tsar”. Between 2014 and 2016, he was chairman of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, which produced several reports on the looming dangers of overuse of antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria.

He accused the industry of talking “incredible nonsense” about their commitment to producing and distributing new antibiotics and vaccines. He added: “If pharmaceutical companies delivered just a tenth of the commitment that comes from their words, we might actually get somewhere..."

The problem facing drug companies is that antibiotics, which are sold on a per-pill basis, simply do not bring in big enough rewards. New infection-fighting drugs are generally priced at between £1,500 and £3,800 per course of treatment – a fraction of the cost of long-term therapy for chronic non-bacterial diseases, such as cancer.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/27/nationalised-drug-companies-may-be-needed-to-fix-antibiotics-market