poverty | ukwatch.net

Ending Poverty in a Carbon Constrained World

Ellie Keen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:12:07 +0000

Rapid Transition and New Development Directions

Several years ago the International Red Cross sent me on behalf the World Disasters Report to assess the early impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations. What I saw in Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, and learned from other small island states, about being resilient in the face of an unpredictable and extreme climate, may hold lessons now for how many millions more can withstand the upheaval of global warming on our small island planet. Tuvalu is living a uniquely modern paradox. It won the lottery of the internet age being awarded the domain name ‘.tv.’ Allegedly it has a bigger delegation in Los Angeles to sell rights, than it has here at the UN to protect its political interests. But, lying just a few metres above sea level, Tuvalu is in acute danger of losing its real home, just as it benefits from its new, virtual one.

We can learn a lot from the mere fact that island communities like this survived for so long on remote shards of land, exposed to the full force and vagaries of nature To do so, first they had to respect their obvious environmental limits. Next they evolved resilient local economies that helped them cope with extreme and unpredictable weather. These were, of necessity, based on reciprocity, sharing and co-operation, and not unlimited growth fed by individualistic, beggar-thy-neighbour competition.

Today, as collectively we face and exceed the limits of the earth’s bio-capacity, we are challenged at the global level to learn in a few short years, lessons that such small communities often took millennia to arrive at. Our task is enormously complicated by the intricate interdependence of the modern global economy, the unbalanced distribution of power and benefits within it, and a pace of international decision making that, until the ice started to melt so rapidly, I would have described as glacially slow. Fortunately there is much that we already do know to guide our actions, drawing on decades of experience in dozens of countries and through thousands of community based organisations around the world.

For example, the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of leading NGOS based in the UK, that we helped to form, spelt out in a series of reports looking in detail at different global regions, how climate change, if unchecked, stands not only to block further progress on the Millennium Development Goals, but to reverse gains hard won over many years. Our conclusion was that irreversible global warming, which appears perilously close, would mean not just greater hardship for millions, but the end of development as we have understood it for the last half a century.

One severe drought in Australia has already partly triggered world-wide food shortages and high and rising prices, creating shocks that ripple from the High Street in Britain to the markets of Dhaka and Port au Prince. And the UK’s official Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, recently concluded based on a moderate scenario for change, that the percentage of the Earth’s land surface prone to extreme drought having already trebled to three per cent in less than a decade, will rise to fully one third by 2090, with droughts also longer in duration.

More worrying still, the edge of the climate cliff is not clearly visible. Scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen believe we may already be tipping over. This means not just stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases, but reducing them, with unimagined implications for the global economy. Oddly-named ‘positive environmental feedbacks’ are volatile, hard to predict and may be terrifyingly sudden. So we must act on precaution and the best estimates available.

Because the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biosphere we have no choice but to act, using precaution and the best information available. An individual may recover from financial bankruptcy, but if we allow our ecological debts to bankrupt a climate conducive to human civilisation, geological history shows that it could take tens of thousands of years to be restored if, indeed, it ever is.

We already know that people living in poverty are hit first and worst by global warming. This and the challenge of reducing poverty in a carbon constrained world calls for a new development model which is climate proof and climate friendly. From now on, all decisions will need to be scrutinised for whether they will increase or decrease vulnerability to climate change. We must look through the lenses of building resilience at the community level, and reducing risk. And, it is the communities at risk who must shape our plans.

Parallel to the approach of the IPCC, the recent report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology showed that a massive shift of support to small scale farmers using a diverse range of agro-ecological methods would be one of the most efficient ways to build resilience, inoculate against food crises, and insure against increasingly hostile weather patterns. Community-based coping strategies such as the use of seed banks, water management, vulnerability mapping, storm and flood protection that works with the local environment, and the conservation of forests and other ecosystems – all represent effective ways for threatened communities to adapt.

If replicated and scaled-up, small-scale renewable energy projects promoted by governments and community groups can help both to tackle poverty and reduce climate change. But this needs political commitment, significant new funds from governments and a major shift in priorities for energy lending by the World Bank and other development bodies. There is no either/or approach possible; the world must meet both its commitments to achieve the MDGs and tackle climate change. The two are inextricably linked.

Here we crash headlong into another, equally large problem. It is clear that conventional economic growth will happen in poor countries as a consequence of effective poverty reduction. But at a global level, the policies designed to pursue growth have become a mask for making the rich, richer, whilst leaving the poor with few benefits and abandoned to deal with growth’s environmental consequences. During the 1980s – what was called lost decade of development – from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0.60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.

There has been, in effect, a sort of ‘flood-up’ of wealth from poor to rich, rather than a ‘trickle-down.’ It means, perversely, that for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer, implying patterns of consumption which, in a world facing climate change, cannot be sustained. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth – made up of all those energy-hungry giant flat screen TVs and sports utility vehicles – to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people in absolute poverty, compared with just $45 dollars in the 1980s. Earnings of between $3 and $4 per day is the approximate level at which the strong link between income and life expectancy breaks down. So, let us ask what would happen if we agreed $3 per day as the minimum level of income to escape absolute poverty?

Using the ecological footprint measure, if the whole world wished to consume at the level of the United States – a consumption pattern which has been fuelled, incidentally, by the credit binge which led to the current economic crisis – we would need, conservatively, over 5 planets like earth to support them. But, under the current pattern of unequally distributed benefits from growth, to lift everyone in the world onto a modest $3 per day, would require the resources of around 15 planets like ours. Where, you might ask, will the other 14 come from?

To tackle poverty in a carbon constrained world, then, we need a new development model, based on better measures of progress, and a shift from relying on unequal global growth to serious redistribution. If we think of the planet as a cake, we can slice it differently, but we surely cannot bake a new one. Climate change is not the only reason that we have to learn to live with far fewer fossil fuels. Development must also contend with the high and rising price of oil, and the imminent global peak and long decline of oil production.

What, if any, guides do we have to surviving these multiple shocks?

One country, much maligned, provides a glimpse of a near future that many more may face. Almost like a laboratory example, positioned on the flight path of the annual Hurricane season, since 1990 Cuba has lived through the economic and environmental shocks that climate change and peak oil hold in store for the rest of the world.

The sudden loss of cheap Soviet oil and its economic isolation were so extreme at the end of the cold war, and its reaction to the shock was so contrary to orthodox approaches, and relatively successful, that it was dubbed in Washington the ‘anti-model.’ Then oil imports dropped by over half. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers dropped by 80 percent. The availability of basic food staples like wheat and other grains fell by half and, overall, the average Cuban’s calorie intake fell by over one third in around five years.

But, serious and long-term investment in science, engineering, health, education, plus land redistribution, reduced inequality and research into low-input ecological farming techniques, meant the country had a strong social fabric and the capacity to act.

At the heart of the transition after 1990 was the success of small farms, and urban farms and gardens. Immediate crisis was averted by food programmes that targeted the most vulnerable people, the old, young, pregnant women and young mothers, and a rationing programme that guaranteed a minimum amount of food to everyone. Soon, half the food consumed in the capital, Havana, was grown in the city’s own gardens and, overall, urban gardens provide 60 percent of the vegetables eaten in Cuba. The threat of serious food shortages was overcome within five years.

Time magazine recently called for a ‘War on Climate Change,’ and, interestingly, Cuba’s experience echoed what America achieved in a more distant time of hardship during World War II. Then Eleanor Roosevelt led the ‘victory gardening movement’ to produce between 30-40 percent of vegetables for domestic consumption, and public education campaigns warned that wasting fuel was like fighting for the enemy. Cuba demonstrated it is possible to feed a population under extreme economic stress with very few fossil fuel, but there were other surprises too.

As calorie intake fell by more than one third, of necessity the proportion of physically active adults more than doubled and obesity halved. Between 1997-2002, deaths attributed to diabetes halved, coronary heart disease fell by 35 percent, and strokes and other causes by around one fifth. The approach was dubbed the ‘anti-model’ because it was both highly managed and led by communities, it focused on meeting domestic needs rather than exports, was largely organic and built on the success of small farms. The same countrys approach to disaster preparedness and management is also instructive.

Compared to the deaths and destruction in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, when Hurricane Michelle hit Cuba in 2001 only 5 lives were lost, and recovery was quick. It was due to proper planning, and a collective approach managed by government, but owned at the local level. Disasters expert Dr Ben Wisner commented on the evacuation of 700,000 of Cuba’s 11 million population, ‘This is quite a feat given Cuba’s dilapidated fleet of vehicles, fuel shortage and poor road system.’ At least one analyst suggests that the Cuban experiment, ‘may hold many of the keys to the future survival of civilisation.’

Currently, according to our calculations, in a given calendar year the world as a whole goes into ecological debt around October 7th – by which time we have consumed more and produced more waste than ecosystems can deal with. The results are seen in climate change, oceans emptied of fish, and desertification. Forty years ago Robert Kennedy said that economic growth measured everything apart from that which really matters. But it is possible to assess if we are achieving human development whilst living within our environmental means.

nef’s own ‘Happy Planet Index’, compares the relative success of nations at delivering long life expectancy and high levels of well being, compared to their size of ecological footprint. The results reveal many middle income countries performing well, with good life expectancy and well-being, and relatively low footprints. Strikingly, some of the best performers are small island states. Somehow, they have worked together to produce more convivial communities, whilst respecting environmental limits.

The UN faces huge challenges. Not least is how to recognise and protect the large and growing number of people we can expect to be displaced in a warming world. The climate refugee crisis will dwarf that of political refugees. What will happen to the nationhood and economic areas of countries that could disappear entirely, like Tuvalu? How can we change our locked-in thinking about economic development, and reorganise around the principles of resilience, social justice, sufficiency, ecological efficiency, and the capacity to adapt?

We might begin by asking, as acid tests:

Will what we do make people more or less vulnerable?
Will it move us toward truly sustainable, one-planet-living?
Will it move us fast enough to prevent irreversible, catastrophic climate change?

When the people of Tuvalu first encountered Europeans in the 19th century, they gave them the name palangi. Victorian travellers translated the word to mean “heaven bursters,” a reference to their ship’s guns. Now, some of our lifestyles truly threaten to burst the heavens. At the very least, to achieve poverty reduction in world threatened by climate change, we know that rich countries must radically cut their own consumption to free-up the environmental space in which others can pursue, as a first step, the Millennium Development Goals.

The good news is that we now know from the literature on human well-being, that making the rich, richer does nothing to increase their life satisfaction. On the contrary, numerous studies confirm that once your basic needs are met, you are just as likely to have high life satisfaction, whether your ecological footprint is large or small. My conclusion is that a new development model is needed as much, if not more, in countries like Britain and the US as the majority world. We have to demonstrate that good lives do not have to cost the earth.

Impassable ecological obstacles lie on the path down which we chase the shadows of over-consumption to deliver our well-being, expecting the poor to be grateful for and crumbs that fall from our plates. The good news is that another way is not only possible, as the philosopher A.C. Grayling writes, it is better, richer and more enduring.

Andrew Simms is policy director and head of the climate change programme at nef (the new economics foundation). This article is from a speech he gave to the UN ECOSOC special session on climate change and the MDGS, New York, 2 May 2008.

Inflation: the poor pay More

Ellie Keen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:47:57 +0000

The rising cost of living is leaving millions of workers in Britain in poverty. Spiralling food prices have pushed inflation to a 16-year high.

Rises in the cost of food jacked up the official Consumer Price Index by 0.3 percentage points last month to 3.3 percent.

The slightly more realistic Retail Price Index – which includes some housing and other costs such as council tax – has risen to 4.3 percent.

The underlying reason for this is the spiralling cost of essentials. For instance, vegetable price rises almost doubled from 3.8 percent in April to 7.2 percent last month.

A basic basket of a dozen essential items has soared by an average of 23 percent in the past year. For example, 12 eggs, which cost £2 last May, are now £2.92 – a 46 percent leap. The price of a bag of rice has increased by 93 percent.

A chicken costs £1.50 more than 12 months ago and bread is up 28 percent, butter 30 percent and milk 17 percent.

Food prices across the board have risen by 6.6 percent in the last year, with the cost of staple foods soaring even faster.

A typical family’s annual shopping bill has gone up by about £1,000 in the past year – that’s an extra £2.70 every day.

Figures also show gas and electricity were 11.2 percent more expensive last month than May 2007.

They are set to go up by as much as 40 percent this year. This is another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than £1,000 a year.

The average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was £1.11 in May, up 16.8 percent in a year. Diesel was up 26 percent to £1.21.

However, the truth about soaring prices is being systematically distorted. The reality is that the rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising twice as fast as the official figures show.

Based on Office for National Statistics calculations, a family in the south west of England with a mortgage and two children faces an inflation rate of 6.5 percent.

If they live in London it’s 7.3 percent. Pensioners are enduring even tougher times. One estimate shows they struggle with a real inflation rate of over 9 percent.

Elderly people are hit hardest by inflation because they spend a larger proportion of their income than other groups on basic goods such as food and fuel.

The official inflation rate is calculated on a basket of 650 goods. Some of the goods used are somewhat removed from most people’s reality – chocolate biscuits were recently taken out of the basket and champagne added in.

The Office for National Statistics also added fees for stabling horses to the basket of goods in spring this year.

But the real problem is the weight given to different items. Utility bills are given similar importance to luxury goods, for instance.

That means that falling prices for flatscreen televisions effectively cancel out rising gas bills in the figures.

So for the affluent, prices might be falling. But the daily necessities that all of us are obliged to spend money on are subject to massive price rises.

Low pay leads to poverty in British Army

tim — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:56:58 +0000

A report on the state of the British Army released this month revealed considerable resentment amongst ordinary soldiers over low pay, leading many into financial difficulties, under-nourishment and the quitting of the armed forces altogether.

The findings are contained in a briefing team report prepared for the head of the British Army, Chief of the General Staff Richard Dannatt, and are based on months of interviews with thousands of soldiers and their families between July 2007 and January 2008.

Much of the report is concerned with manning levels in the armed forces in light of the increased military engagement, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. But new light is also thrown on the levels of poverty suffered by many frontline soldiers.

In a section entitled Pace of Life, the report says:

“It is viewed that the ‘pace of life’ has been compounded by undermanning, the amount of change being implemented and the lack of support and expertise to deliver that change. COs [Commanding Officers] are concerned at the impact this is having on the moral component.”

The report goes on to say that undermanning is “having a serious impact on the retention in infantry battalions.”

Almost half of all troops are unable to take their entitled annual leave as they are forced to cover gaps.

The brief section on pay then reveals:

“More and more single income soldiers in the UK are now close to the UK Gov’t definition of poverty. Thus many married junior soldiers feel that they are being forced to leave because they cannot afford to raise a family on current pay.”

The study also states:

“A number of soldiers were not eating properly because they had run out of money by the end of the month.”

Army COs now enforce “hungry soldier schemes,” whereby destitute soldiers are loaned money in order to enable them to eat sufficiently.

A scheme known as Pay as You Dine (PAYD) requires soldiers not on active duty to pay for their meals. COs have reported being inundated with angry complaints from soldiers due to the quality of the food and the large amount of paperwork involved. Such schemes are a break from the past when the army provided, as a bare minimum, a staple of three square meals a day, free of charge to all serving soldiers.

According to the Independent newspaper, “Now hard-up soldiers have to fill out a form which entitles them to a voucher. The cost is deducted from their future wages, adding to the problems of soldiers on low pay.”

The report contains warnings from senior officers that “there is a duty of care issue” involved. Also the “core meal” on offer “is often not the healthy option.”

Despite the obvious alarm among senior ranks, General Dannatt has made clear that he intends to persist with the current food schemes. He said recently, “I am determined that PAYD must be made to work to both the financial and physical well-being of those who are fed.”

Along with millions of workers, rising costs have made buying a home impossible for many serving soldiers. “The ability to purchase a property was a major area of concern across all ranks. Discussion included an increase in… Buy to Let legislation and the cost of moving from one private home to another private home near their new appointment.”

Also cited as growing concerns amongst soldiers and their families were children’s school fees and the lack of medical support for families, especially dentists.

Previous studies show that, due to their hours of service, UK soldiers are actually paid well below the national minimum wage. Most serving soldiers earn only £16,000 a year, with a “new entrant rate of pay” of just £13,012.

According to the Armed Forces Pay Review Board, a 2007-08 pay increase of 2.6 percent has to be measured against an estimated net increase in charges of 3.9 percent.

The report also touched on the increasing resentment felt amongst the ranks towards the governments’ cap on the amount of compensation received by the families of wounded soldiers, as well as the growing incidents of “accidental deaths.”

Dannatt said, “I am concerned at the comments from the chain of command, some elements of which clearly believe that they will lose influence over their soldiers and that this will impact on unit cohesion.”

Douglas Young of the British Armed Forces Federation was one of a number of military figures who utilised the report to demand an increase in funding for the Army, in line with the demands of fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

He told the Independent, “People are leaving the armed forces for financial reasons. There’s no question about it.”

Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP and former army colonel said, “I’ve been talking to some very senior officers recently, all of whom privately have said to me that the Army is running on empty; the money has run out. The manpower situation is in crisis, and the so-called Military Covenant is abused at every turn. The thing that really worries them is that the MoD [Military of Defence] seems to be in denial about it.”

Colonel Bob Stewart, a former commander of British forces in Bosnia, said that the British Army was “woefully imbalanced, badly equipped, particularly for training, and quite honestly I’m afraid to say it is losing its edge as a top-rate army in the world because it cannot maintain it.”

Major Gen Patrick Cordingley, who led the “Desert Rats” into Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, said, “I would be very concerned about the strain on the armed forces remaining at this level of deployment in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It cannot be sustained for longer than perhaps another two years.”

Colonel Clive Fairweather, former deputy commander of the elite SAS, commented, “I really do think the Army is heading for the rocks and I don’t say this lightly.”

There has been a concerted campaign, sanctioned by the government, orchestrated by the military, and aided by the press and the monarchy to “rehabilitate” the British Army which is now associated with the brutal video and photographic images of detainee abuse in Iraq.

The government is, for example, proposing a new law making it a criminal offence to “discriminate” against anyone wearing a military uniform in public. The hostility toward soldiers from members of the public, which the law is supposedly directed against, was largely concocted by the media and the government by amplifying a few isolated cases.

It is one of 40 proposals contained in a report, “National Recognition of Our Armed Forces,” ordered by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and drawn up by Quentin Davies, the former Tory MP who switched to Labour last year. Davies has called for a “new era of greater openness and public involvement of the [armed] services.”

A new Armed Forces and veteran day is under consideration as a public holiday, as well as more media-friendly parades for regiments returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, secondary schools are being strongly urged to set up cadet forces. At present only 260 grammar and independently maintained schools have them.

The current report into the actual conditions faced by soldiers in the British Army goes some way to unmasking this grotesque propaganda campaign, whereby princes and aristocrats born into privilege and plenty parade at the head of an ill-fed, poverty-waged army prosecuting wars of imperialist aggression.

Calling for Recognition

Ellie Keen — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:27:02 +0000

The signal to stop work in the call centre I work in is a manager flicking the main switch off and on – “flashing the lights”.

It’s a moment of glee as workers are released from the monotony of repeating themselves for hours and the stress of attempting to convince someone to part with a slice of their wages or pension. At that moment, we can all relax. Or perhaps not.

Callers (as we are referred to) will often come under pressure from a manager for not achieving targets or for spending too long away from the phone (a well known mantra ringing in our ears from our superiors is, “Dial, dial, dial! Keep dialling!”), or to be pulled up for breaching a petty rule.

But if job insecurity isn’t the worry, paying the rent and bills will certainly cause concern. I invited a colleague for a drink after work one evening. “Sorry, Pat,” he said, “I am absolutely skint.” “What do you mean you’re skint? We only got paid a few days ago.” “Honestly, Pat, I have just paid my rent and bills, bought my travelcard, and stocked up my fridge and freezer for a month. I have £30 to see me until the end of the month.” Then there are the sofa-surfers, dragging their rucksack between friends’ homes.

What chance has a young worker to find a deposit and rent in London when you are earning between £6 and £8 per hour? This is the main factor behind a staff turnover of 200 a month, while those who remain dream of escaping to a better job.

Early in 2006 a fellow caller told me that we were earning less than our colleagues doing the same job at the Bedford site. This was due to a cut in pay rates for new callers in 2004. There had been no increase since 2002.

I suggested meeting in a pub with anyone wanted to change this. I expected a handful, but we got 20 callers. People talked about how they felt the company did not recognise their efforts. All sorts of issues were raised, but mainly it was pay.

A petition was agreed, and in following weeks more than 200 staff signed. Crucial, though, was the intervention by an older caller who said, “If we don’t get organised in a union, nothing will happen.”

Not everyone agreed, but enough signed up and were willing to take around the petition and ask colleagues to join the union. We also made announcements in the callers’ rest area. There was resistance from colleagues to joining at first, but this was broken down over time. Persistence was a virtue, but showing that the union could win little victories was the key. A campaign by callers won the reinstatement of a longstanding colleague who had been sacked on a trumped-up charge.

Our union bulletins and emails ensure that workers are more informed by the union than by management. We also felt that we needed to find more imaginative ways to engage our young workforce.

We have held two union parties, and a film showing of Bread and Roses introduced by the director Ken Loach. At all these events the union grew. Young workers who had joined a union for the first time in their lives were taking a lead.

It was this recent injection of new blood that saw the success of the “badge day”. They designed the “Pay Up” badges with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) logo and they won virtually the whole of the call centre to wear them – whether union members or not. Action beyond this has been discussed, but was put on hold when the pressure forced management to concede pay increases of 13 to 15 percent for the vast majority of callers. This was the first increase in six years.

The fact that we now have more than 100 members means that the CEO has started talks about recognition with CWU officials.

The lesson I have learned is this: taking the first steps to organising in your workplace will do no harm, in fact it will be harmful not to do it.

Pat Carmody is a Communication Workers Union rep. He writes in a personal capacity

Peak Food: Blaming the Victims

Ellie Keen — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:48:27 +0000

I’ve already written about this in previous posts under the ‘hidden holocaust’ theme, but am prompted to re-address this issue given the way it’s been dealt with by mainstream media and associated ‘experts’.

In today’s Independent we see an eye-opening article revealing that amidst what is described as a series of “global food shortages”, a new “government-backed report” shows that “the British public” annually throws away “4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas, 1.3 million yoghurt pots, 660,000 eggs, 550,000 chickens, 300,000 packs of crisps and 440,000 ready meals. And for the first time government researchers have established that most of the food waste is made up of completely untouched food products – whole chickens and chocolate gateaux that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being discarded” — adding up to “a record £10b” every year.

And that’s just us Brits. Imagine what the totals are for the Western world combined: Scary and revealing stuff that makes the word “overconsumption” seem like a gross understatement.

But despite the shock value of such important revelations, I’m increasingly concerned at the way in which the food crisis is being portrayed. The Independent goes on to explain the causes of the food crisis as follows: “... millions of the world’s poor face food shortages caused by rising populations, droughts and increased demand for land for biofuels, which have sparked riots and protests from Haiti to Mauritania, and from Yemen to the Philippines.”

So the food crisis comes down to three things:

1) rising populations (presumably not us in the advanced West, but rather those Third World crazies breeding like rabbits despite being so poor)

2) droughts (which may be exacerbated by climate change but in any case often occur naturally and therefore we purportedly can’t do much about)

3) and the drive from energy corporations for investment in biofuels.

Indeed, according to the British government’s new chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington speaking at a government conference two months ago:

“price rises in staples such as rice, maize and wheat would continue because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations. He also said that climate change would lead to pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate. ‘The agriculture industry needs to
double its food production, using less water than today.’“

So again, population and economic growth in the ‘developing nations’, plus climate change, are to blame, and can only be addressed by doubling food production using less water (technologically impossible for all intents and purposes, but we’ll come back to that). It’s Them again — too many of Them, wanting More.

As if to emphasise the point, we hear in the same piece that:

“Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, said at the conference that the world’s population was expected to grow from 6.2bn today to 9.5bn in less than 50 years’ time. ‘How are we going to feed everybody?’ he asked.”

Only a rhetorical question of course. Sorry to break it t’ya folks, but ‘feeding everybody’ has never really been one of the state’s major concerns. That’s why “Each tonne of wheat and sugar from the UK is sold on international markets at an average price of 40% and 60% below the cost of production respectively (ie, it is dumped)”, thus undercutting local farmers across the South, who thus lose any semblance of agricultural-independence they may have once had (i.e. the ability to feed their own people), thus becoming subject to the whims of the global food market, manipulated through speculation in the interests of Northern investors and consumers.

But the important point for now is that as far as Hilary Benn is concerned, it’s clear that the cause of the problem is “their” population growth.

Later in the article, Professor Beddington is cited pointing out that global grain stores are currently at the lowest levels ever, just 40 days from running out. He again emphasises the question of food production: “I am only nine weeks into the job, so don’t yet have all the answers, but it is clear that science and research to increase the efficiency of agricultural production per unit of land is critical.”

According to Beddington, food security is the “elephant in the room” that politicians must face up to quickly. In reality, the “elephant in the room” goes far deeper than the surface issues scratched at lamely by the government, and sits in the heart of global food production. Some of Beddington’s observations show that he is dimly aware of this problem. He understands that production needs to be increased drastically. But his solution is a technological one, “science and research” in order to maximise “efficiency” so we can produce faster and better to meet escalating global demand. This is unlikely to happen. Beddington knows it. Benn knows it. The supermarket chains know it.

From this conventional analysis of the food crisis, we are not left with many solutions. We may, however, pick among the following: 1) the proliferation and prolongation of droughts due to climate change means that we need to slow down our CO2 emissions by introducing ‘market incentives’ (i.e. big taxes) targeted largely at consumers, who are blamed for having no regard for the size of their individual carbon footprints. transfering to alternative renewable energies is, for some odd reason, irrelevant. 2) reducing population growth in developing countries to decrease demand for food (nothing at all to do with NSSM 200, of course). 3) go easy on the biofuels (but fail to propose investment in other viable alternative energy sources). 4) pray day and night that Science will somehow generate a technological miracle of agricultural production.

Obviously, none of these ‘solutions’ seems to really offer a way out for the food crisis — and that’s because the analysis is fundamentally flawed. It’s not completely wrong, it just misses out half the picture, and so comes up with a false diagnosis of what’s actually gone wrong. The result is that the institutions that require urgent re-structuring are being absolved. The government, the state, and the network of giant multinational corporations that govern global agribusiness, are excused of any culpability. The cause of the crisis, we keep hearing is, WE, THE PEOPLE! It’s the developing nations, who just won’t stop breeding, dammit. It’s us Western consumers, who won’t stop eating and throwing a third of our food away. It’s everyone except the state-corporate complex that controls the food industry.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that you and I are NOT culpable. Of course we are. We do throw away tonnes, literally, of food. We do, each of us, have large carbon footprints that we should try to reduce in our own ways. Populations are increasing. But the question is this: are these factors the fundamental causes of the current global food crisis? Or are they exacerbating factors that are accentuating and intensifying the impact of the food crisis? Following mainstream news coverage of food shortages, one would be forgiven for believing that rising food prices are all because of you and me, the public, the general consumer. We have been thoroughly pathologised. And the British government, with its eye-opening study of how much food the British consumer chucks away without thinking, is complicit in this pathologisation.

Why is that the government-backed report discussed in today’s Independent, says nothing about the institutions who are primarily responsible for food wastage, the supermarkets, the multinational food chains? If the government is genuinely concerned about food wastage in this country, why won’t they do something about the fact reported by the same newspaper in February, that:

“Retailers generate 1.6 million tonnes of food waste each year… An influential watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), will condemn targets set by the Government’s waste-reduction programme as ‘unambitious and lacking urgency’. It will also say multi-buy promotions are helping to fuel waste and obesity in Britain. Speaking to The Independent on Sunday ahead of the report’s publication on Saturday, Tim Lang, SDC commissioner, said it was ‘ludicrous’ that the Government had not pressured retailers into setting tougher targets to cut waste.

Three years ago, the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) left it up to supermarkets to find voluntary ‘solutions to food waste’ in an agreement dubbed the Courtauld Commitment. ‘The Government is frankly not using its leverage adequately. It really should toughen up on Courtauld, which must be enforced because this is ludicrous,’ said Mr Lang, who is also professor of food policy at City University, London.

The 18-month study, which found that ‘too many supermarket practices are still unhealthy, unjust and unsustainable’, said Wrap should adopt a ‘more aspirational approach to reducing waste in food retail by setting longer-term targets and [supporting] a culture of zero waste’...

A separate study by Imperial College for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, found that supermarkets preferred to throw away food that was approaching its sell-by date rather than mark it down in price.”

So three months after being hit over the head by the Sustainable Development Commission, the government’s waste reduction programme completely ignores the warnings that supermarket profit-maximisation policies are not only directly generating billions of pounds of waste by dumping good food, they are encouraging consumers through excessive advertising, multi-buy offers, and refusal to slash prices on older foods, to also buy excess food they don’t need, a third of which they dump in turn.

Instead, the government simply blames consumers. Period. Don’t penalise Profit, nor Power. Pathologise People.

The corporate-biased law doesn’t help either, because: “The scale of the wastage from supermarkets, food processors, wholesalers and restaurants is not known, because many companies refuse to make their data public, citing commercial confidentiality.” In other words, we don’t even know the real scale of corporate food wastage. Worse, the government regularly does the same thing — here’s an example: “In the past 10 months, the government’s food intervention board dumped almost 30,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables and fruit which had been withdrawn from the market to guarantee farm prices.”

So the problem is far more complex, rooted in a consumerist culture that is tied to a political economy being deliberately sustained by those institutions with the most to gain from this entrenched structure. The government has no interest in transforming that political economy. So the result is an insistence on inspecting only half the picture, ignoring the role of the global corporate food industry.

Driven by capitalist imperatives for short-term profit maximisation and long-term cost-minimisation, global agribusiness has established an international food production system that is, basically, dying.

Most of the Earth’s fertile land is already now being used for food production. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005 reported that “there is now little room for further agricultural expansion.” One of the scientists, Dr Navin Ramankutty, points out: “The real question is, how can we continue to produce food from the land while preventing negative environmental consequences such as deforestation, water pollution and soil erosion?” Or, more bluntly, how are we going to keep producing food if our production-system continues to destroy the very means to produce food?

It’s not that the Earth can’t produce the food. Its that corporate agribusiness can’t produce the food. In fact, as I’ve warned previously, it has been failing to produce the food since the 1990s, during which grain production has increasingly slowed. The frenzied application of fertilisers and other modern agricultural practices served to temporarily escalate production, but simultaneously have intensified soil erosion, destroying in years essential nutrients for crop-growth that take centuries to replace. The imminent peak of world oil production, oil being the chief underpinning for industrial agricultural methods, which is either just round the corner in 2010-ish (or worse, passed in 2005) means that the global corporate food production system is up against its own physical limits.

For us to keep eating, it’s true, we have to put an end to our insane overconsumption and wastefulness. But there are real limits to what the consumer can do within the existing global corporate food system. So we need to turn our attention to that system, and demand that it changes fundamentally, which means, of course, a wholesale transformation of our political economies in ways which rely on renewable energy resources and localised less-intensive but no less successful traditional agricultural practices. We need some kind of grassroots action, which makes our voices impossible to ignore. It will take time to develop, to become strong, to gather momentum. But it needs to be done, and now. Because at current rates of declining food production and rising prices, fuelled by unscrupulous market speculation, many, many people are likely to die, not just in the South, but here too. And while this death escalates, a few at the helm of the global corporate food industry will reap unprecedented windfall profits from their deaths. That’s why real solutions aren’t being put on the table. Death is regrettable, but when it comes wrapped in £££$$$, it’s not so bad…

Brown slated on ‘cynical’ poverty event

Ellie Keen — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:52:27 +0000

‘Business allies given free ride on rights abuse’

British prime minister Gordon Brown today faces heavy criticism for launching his Business Call to Action on global poverty with corporations that have been widely attacked for deepening poverty and undermining human rights.

The attack comes from the charity War on Want as Mr Brown and the United Nations Development Programme host a meeting with business leaders to showcase private sector initiatives.

The companies behind the Call to Action on the UN’s anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals include several that War on Want has condemned in its reports on poverty and labour rights abuses in Africa, Asia and Latin America:

UK mining giant Anglo American, one of the first to sign up to the call, has been criticised for profiting from violence against poor communities in countries such as Colombia, South Africa and the Philippines.
Wal-Mart has achieved global notoriety for its record on labour rights and opposition to trade unions. In a recent report War on Want revealed that workers in Bangladesh making clothes for Wal-Mart subsidiary Asda are paid just five pence an hour for toiling 80 hours a week, well short of a living wage.
Coca-Cola, which signed up in support of Brown’s call at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, has been the target of action in countries such as India and El Salvador for taking communal water resources from poor farmers and for its pollution of agricultural land.
Bechtel has been widely attacked over the failed privatisation of water in the Bolivian town of Cochabamba and its subsequent attempts to sue Latin America’s poorest country for millions of dollars.

Government officials leading on the Call to Action have told War on Want that there has been no prior screening of the companies’ records on human rights or poverty, and that there is no intention of using the initiative to persuade them to clean up their operations overseas. The officials have also admitted there is no mechanism in place to measure whether the new products and services to be announced by the companies will indeed lead to poverty reduction.

This is despite UK government acknowledgement that complicity in human rights abuses, labour rights violations and pollution is “unacceptable” corporate behaviour.

John Hilary, War on Want’s new executive director, said: “This whole event smacks of a cynical public relations exercise. Instead of holding these companies to account for their actions, Gordon Brown has allowed them to portray themselves as allies in the fight against poverty. The prime minister should be working to address the poverty and human rights problems caused by business, not giving the companies a free ride.”

Fair Wages are a Fantasy

Ellie Keen — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:55:41 +0000

... in the brutal underside of Cowboy Boss Britain

With Labour reeling from the worst electoral drubbing for four decades, you could argue that this week is not a good moment to bring out an exhaustively researched, carefully thought-out report on the blight of insecure, low-paid work in the UK, 18 months in the making. But this Wednesday was set for the date of the launch of the TUC’s Commission on Vulnerable Employment (of which I’ve been a member) many months back, and no one envisaged then that one of the biggest research initiatives of the TUC since 1997 would thump its catalogue of the inadequacies of Labour employment policy on Brown’s desk at such a point of desperate soul-searching. But I would argue that this investigative analysis is exactly what Brown needs if he is to understand what happened last Thursday.

Brown makes much of his commitment to poverty. Even his most grudging critics concede that some headway has been made on child poverty even if it has not been enough. But the headline figures obscure how stubbornly persistent the phenomenon of working poverty has been. Many poor families may now have an earner, but it has not got them out of poverty: the number of poor children living in working households is 1.4 million – exactly the same figure as it was in 1997. Half of all children living in poverty have a parent in work. The advances in child poverty have been among those on benefits, while the number of poor working households with children has actually increased by 200,000. Labour promised it would “make work pay”. It hasn’t.

Low pay is not just a problem of an extreme underclass or of migrants; it is endemic across the country. One in seven of all working households are poor; one fifth of all workers, 5.3 million people, are paid less than £6.67 an hour (two thirds of the median), the worst low-pay rate of any in Europe. It works out at less than a £12,000 salary. In some regions, the proportion of low-paid is well over 25%, while in some constituencies (in Wales, Birmingham, the West Midlands, even the rural West Country) it is comfortably over 40%. For those scratching their heads over the mystery of Labour losing Merthyr Tydfil, perhaps they should look at the pattern of low-paid, insecure work. This is the shocking record of a country after 11 years of Labour rule and economic boom. It explains why the 10p tax debacle caused such resentment: these are the “hard-working families” extolled in Brown’s speeches and yet they are scrabbling to make ends meet. The Brownite rhetoric of “unleashing potential” is a nonsense to those trapped in jobs that consign them to fall ever further behind.

This report challenges another of Brown’s much-used rhetorical flourishes: fairness. He talks of it as a national characteristic, but it’s not one that the 5 million-strong army of low-paid, insecure workers would recognise. This is the section of the labour market where regulations about the minimum wage, holiday pay and employment rights reach only intermittently or not at all. The chance of an employer being inspected on the minimum wage is once every 330 years. Given such odds, an unscrupulous employer takes the risk.

Labour has made much of bringing in the minimum wage and the working time directive (which gave many workers their first rights to paid holiday) but after these advances, the reality is that progress in tackling Britain’s chronic problem with low-paid, insecure work stalled. Increases in the minimum wage are not keeping pace with average earnings, and it is set at a considerably lower rate than in other countries. A combination of political cowardice (Brown didn’t want a fight with the CBI) and indifference – it earns no political capital with middle England – ensured that Labour has repeatedly prevaricated in tackling this brutal underside of Britain’s economic boom. It has fudged crucial issues such as equal treatment for agency workers or the much-needed clarification on worker status, a legal loophole which makes a mockery of employment rights – both were manifesto commitments.

The months of sitting on the commission listening to people’s accounts of their working lives and to those who tried to offer advice when things went wrong provided a glimpse of what an obstacle course it is when you’re poor. It’s not always the lack of material resources that cuts deepest, but the lack of power and the absence of options. When you’re sacked or when you don’t get the sick pay or holiday pay you are owed, how do you fight back? How do you find the employment adviser to help or the courage to stand up to an employer and the sheer guts to take a case to an employment tribunal with no legal aid or a lawyer to help you? The answer is that more often you don’t, you can’t – and that’s how you get trapped in bad jobs.

Poor pay is inextricably bound up with a culture of institutional negligence: no one ensures workers know their rights or how to find out about them; a myriad of enforcement agencies with tiny budgets confuse everyone, and the legal system to arbitrate on abuse is slow and inaccessible. While the government has consulted and dithered, low-paid, insecure work has flourished like some rapacious mould. The face-to-face legal advisers (which the most vulnerable are known to find easier to deal with) have been axed and replaced with cheap websites and telephone helplines (but how do you know about them?). English language lessons have been cut. While millions of pounds are devoted to advertising for benefit fraud, the amount allocated to advertise the national minimum wage was, until a recent increase, a sixth of that spent on a government campaign urging people to use tissues when they sneeze.

Here is a compelling moral purpose on which that famous Brown compass could take its bearings. I haven’t a clue if it will restore his electoral fortunes, and frankly that’s not the point. This is an issue that any Labour government worthy of its name should have sorted out by now and yet it has devoted a fraction of the effort and energy required. If Labour cannot ensure that at the end of a hard week’s work, someone has earned enough to keep themselves and their children out of poverty, then it doesn’t deserve power.

Tony Blair boasted that Britain was the “most lightly regulated labour market in the world”. The OECD puts Britain second only to the US for the lowest levels of employment protection in the developed world. This is Cowboy Boss Britain and it leaves a long trail of anger and resentment – the Citizens Advice Bureau alone deals with over half a million employment problems a year.

The most frustrating aspect of these meetings, though, was with the representatives from the political parties. Labour’s was doggedly complacent; the Conservative’s, all charm, finally admitted he knew nothing; the Liberal Democrat’s didn’t seem to have quite worked out which meeting they were in. It was a deeply depressing demonstration of how detached the political process has become from issues which are absolutely basic to the lives of millions of people.

Left Behind, and Unhappier

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:20:57 +0000

Britain is in a social recession. Three decades of market-driven capitalism have damaged the social fabric of this country. While Labour evades the problem, Cameron’s rebranded Conservatives are making it a central plank of their politics. They’re staking out ground that once belonged to the left, taking the ideological offensive that will cost this government the next election.

The symptoms and pain of the social recession are often concealed inside our homes. We experience them as our own shameful and personal failings. One in six adults suffer from anxiety or a depressive condition. A quarter of men and a third of women suffer sleep problems. The charity, Mind describes stress in the workplace at almost “epidemic proportions”. Mental ill health accounts for a third of all working days lost. To make the problem worse, over 1.1 million people in Britain are dependent upon alcohol. The social recession has contributed to an alcohol culture of broken relationships, domestic violence against women, chronic illness, and street brawling.

Children have been particularly affected. The 2004 Nuffield study identified a sharp decline in adolescent mental health. In 2006, Unicef published a report that painted a bleak picture of British childhood. Its summary of six dimensions of child well-being places the UK at the bottom of the league. Since then the Children’s Society‘s Good Childhood Inquiry and Cambridge University’s review of Primary School education have confirmed many of the stresses in children’s lives.

Both Labour and Conservatives claim that our class-based society is giving way to a more individualistic, meritocratic culture. But, though there have clearly been changes, class remains a central part of our society. One in six leaves school unable to read, write or add up properly. One in four 16-17 year olds are not in education, employment or training. There is less social mobility. Health inequalities are entrenched. Success in education, and life chances in general, remain dependent on family background.

We have become a society of a small number of winners and many losers. Half the population share just 6 per cent of wealth, earning the median annual income of around £18,876 or less. In contrast the top 1 per cent – 470,000 people – earn an average annual income of £220,000 and between them own approximately 25% of marketable wealth.

The shame of failing in education, of being a loser in the race to success, of being invisible to those above, cuts a deep psychological wound. This kind of ongoing humiliation creates chronic anxiety which dramatically increases the risk of disease and premature death. Inequality not only damages the life chances of people living in poverty, it adversely effects the quality of life of everyone.

Alongside affluence, market-driven capitalism has created uncertainty and a decline in a sense of belonging. Cultural difference is the prism through which large sections of the population experience and react to their insecurity. Political conflict around race and religion attempt to construct boundaries of identity which will define a sense of belonging and entitlement. Cultural difference becomes a focus for people’s resentment, fear and hatred.

The liberal economic policies of successive British governments have not only failed to end the social recession, they have contributed to it. A politics up to the task must recognise that alongside greater equality and fairness, individuals have four basic needs: for safety, a sense of belonging, a feeling that we are worth being loved, and the experience of esteem and respect. It’s a politics still to be made.

Britain: Tax credit system plunges families into debt

tim — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:52:51 +0000

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Working Families Tax Credits (WFTC) system, launched in 2003 and which was supposed to lift families with children out of poverty, has caused untold stress and financial hardship for millions of families.

Designed to replace an earlier system of tax credits introduced by Brown when he was chancellor in 1999, a family of four with an annual income of £15,400 a year (half the male average earnings), would get an additional £4,200 in 2006, still less than two-thirds average male earnings, under WFTC.

But the new IT system was overly complex, dealt with three times the number of households and was riddled with design and implementation problems. Brown rejected warnings that the system would not be able to cope and pushed on regardless.

The system was designed so that claimants would notify Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which administers the system, of changes to family circumstances and income after the year end so that adjustments could be made the following year. But HMRC had underestimated the volatility in poor people’s income and the work after the year end this would give rise to, particularly as there is little information publicly available to show entitlements or how the credits are calculated.

While HMRC had anticipated 300,000-400,000 overpayments in the first year as the tax credit payment system bedded down, the volume was five times that number. It “overpaid” £2.3 billion to 1.9 million families in 2003-2004, £2 billion to 2 million families in 2004-2005, and £1.7 billion to 1.9 million families in 2005-2006. One third of payments to more than 6 million households were wrong. This is equivalent to an average overpayment of £1,000 a year or £20 a week, a large sum for a low-income family for whom this could represent more than 10 percent of their income.

HMRC then sought to claw back the overpayment automatically. Families were brusquely informed that deductions would be made in their tax credits for the subsequent year or recouped via increased taxes, arguing that families could “reasonably” have expected that their changed circumstances would result in HMRC seeking to recover the overpayment. Unless challenged, HMRC immediately begins recovery.

HMRC had made no provision to examine each family’s situation on a case-by-case basis before automatic recovery of overpayments. The transfer to HMRC, which had been used to dealing with taxes, usually where people are more prosperous, meant that it would be totally unused and unsuited to dealing with highly vulnerable people for whom £10 a week matters.

Claimants were faced with bills to repay £5,000, a massive sum for families earning an average wage, let alone the more vulnerable families on low and fluctuating incomes, and were plunged into debt. Unable to pay, many found themselves facing court orders for the repayment of thousands of pounds of tax credits.

Having commissioned a fully automated system, HMRC had few staff to handle the volume of complaints that poured in. In 2006-2007, 371,282 families disputed the recovery of overpayments. When challenged, HMRC has taken months to reply and provides no explanation of the so-called overpayment. So error-prone and arbitrary is the system that some families have had their “overpayments” reduced and a few have had them written off, but many families found they were increased, again with no explanation.

There is scarcely a family in the country that does not have a horror story to tell about their experiences with WFTC: from the extreme complexity of forms that have been known to defeat qualified accountants to the nightmare of challenging the alleged overpayments and attempts to claw them back, and coping with reduced income the following year.

Nearly 55,000 people filed an official complaint expressing their dissatisfaction with HMRC, mostly relating to the handling of disputed overpayments. The parliamentary ombudsman has stated that more than a quarter of the cases she handles relate to the WFTC system, higher than any other department. In 2006-2007, she received 393 complaints about tax credits, of which 74 percent were fully or partially upheld, higher than in any other department.

The ombudsman’s 2007 report, Tax credits: getting it wrong?, noted that a group of some of the poorest people in the country had said that this had led to them getting into debt where they had previously not been in debt—causing distress, anxiety and even family break-up.

Many families have refused to have anything to do with WFTC for fear of being caught up in the system’s maladministration. As a result, hundreds of thousands of families do not claim the money to which they are entitled.

While families can appeal to an independent tribunal about the amount of tax credits to which they are entitled, they do not have a similar right in relation to a decision by HMRC to recover an overpayment once the claimant has disputed it. They cannot appeal the way the HMRC has reached its decision or applied the “reasonableness” test, unlike the comparable right of appeal in the benefit regime.

The reform agenda

The state of play with WFTCs is not simply the result of bureaucratic error. WFTCs were part of the Tony Blair government’s broader agenda of getting families off welfare and into work by “making work pay.” When Blair took office as prime minister in 1997, he categorically rejected redistributive taxes and universal cash benefits to reduce the ever-growing social inequality that is the hallmark of Britain today.

Instead, he called in an array of big businessmen to review welfare and social policy issues and suggest how it should be reformed. Martin Taylor, then chief executive of Barclays Bank, was asked to set up a task force “to advise on the reform of the tax and benefits system.”

His task force concentrated on work incentives and converting the existing system of family credits to a tax-based system. It was a crucial step in the direction of a unified benefit system more directly linked to the tax system and workplace, and a tax-based credit system that would force people off benefits and into low-paid work.

As a unified benefits system, WFTC would—it was claimed—reduce fraud and “offer joined up government,” with a “more efficient service to customers.” But a unified benefits system would have to bring together the assessment of eligibility for benefits and their payment. It therefore depended upon highly integrated IT systems linking the various agencies and the transfer of responsibility from the then-Department of Social Security to the Inland Revenue, which has subsequently merged with the Customs and Excise Agency, under the direct control of the Treasury.

This resulted in yet another lucrative IT contract for EDS, but a financial disaster for claimants. While most of the responsibility for the faulty IT system and the £7 billion worth of wrong payments has been laid at EDS’s door, the contractor has been subject to a trifling £75 million penalty, and £25 million of this would only be payable if it won further government contracts. To date, less than £55 million has been repaid.

WFTC aligns benefits away from payments paid as a matter of right based on rules of eligibility to a means-tested tax credits system. In effect, it is determined by employers. Under the Labour government, welfare henceforth was to be linked to the responsibility to work. In the future, anyone refusing a job, however lowly paid, will have his or her benefits stopped. This is now being extended with attempts to force those with disabilities, long-term sick and health problems into work.

The “social safety net” of collective social insurance is being replaced by discretionary payments by the state. They can be withdrawn or changed as the state sees fit and are subject to tax regulations rather than those of the benefits system. Part at least of the benefits system has been brought under the direct control of the Treasury.

In this context, a little-reported measure in the Finance Bill going before parliament is significant. It will extend the right of Customs and Excise officials to turn up unannounced on taxpayers’ doorsteps, demanding to go through records, to tax inspectors, as part of the ongoing merger of Revenue and Customs. The proposals will specify and standardise the records taxpayers must keep, although it is as yet unclear what these requirements will be.

While Customs officials have long had strong search rights, tax inspectors require official warrants to make surprise visits. Now, HMRC is seeking to extend these rights across the two merged agencies. While these new powers are ostensibly aimed at corporations and businesses, they will be used against working people under the guise of combating fraud.

A recent report published by the Economic and Social Research Council, Tracking income: how working families’ incomes vary through the year, sheds light on the implications of the move to a tax credit system. It found that low-income households had much greater income volatility than had been expected. For example:

*Only 7 of the 93 families it tracked had incomes within 10 percent of the annual average.

A quarter of the families had at least four periods with incomes outside the range of 85 to 115 percent of their annual average.

The families with the highest volatility were generally those with the lowest incomes, and a higher proportion of lone parents and tenants had more variable income.

WFTC was aimed at creating a new pool of cheap labour by forcing people off benefits. That in turn would serve to drive down wages. By providing inducements to work in the form of tax credits, it was a barely disguised subvention to big business, enabling employers to pay poverty-level wages. The government admitted as much when it said that making savings was not the primary purpose of the scheme. Indeed, it would cost more, not less, as the evidence has confirmed.

WFTC is a £20-billion-a-year subsidy to the employers and has become key to making Britain a low-paid service centre, while the service companies are the Stock Market’s darlings. It is an essential mechanism for corporate welfare—for redistributing wealth from the mass of the population to the financial elite.

The latest official figures show that unclaimed means-tested benefits—pension credits, housing benefit, council tax benefit, jobseekers’ allowance and income support— amounted to about £9.37 billion in 2005-2006, the most recent year for which data is available. This is an increase of £1 billion on the previous year. It contrasts with the paltry £750 million for 2008-2009 and £950 million earmarked for tackling child poverty in the budget, which Save the Children believes means that the government will miss its own target for relieving child poverty by 450,000.

It is now deliberate government policy to increase the level of unclaimed benefits. According to official papers from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), ministers have decided not to try to meet the benefit take-up targets on the grounds that it would not represent “value for money to repeatedly press unwilling people to take up their entitlement.”

In the case of pensions, the government has introduced legislation making it compulsory for workers to pay into a second-tier personal and portable insurance for pensions, whose funds are to be invested on the Stock Market.

The new welfare system radically alters the relationship between the government and its citizens: the individual’s responsibility is to work, be independent, support family members, not just children, and save for retirement. The state’s role is to ensure that people do work and thus become “economically independent” so that the state supports only those unable to work, and then only on the most stringent conditions with meagre entitlement. Thus, the Labour government has gone a long way towards dismantling the system of state social insurance, introduced by the post-war Labour government exactly 60 years ago as a mechanism for eradicating poverty.

Pledges that Melt Away

Ellie Keen — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:53:44 +0000

IT is to be hoped that Labour MP Greg Pope is kicking himself today for believing the assurances made to him by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and various senior ministers that they would review the impact of the abolition of the 10p basic income tax rate and its effect on the poor.

The gullible Mr Pope withdrew his motion opposing the abolition, which had been signed by over 40 MPs, in the light of those assurances.

But no sooner had Mr Pope withdrawn the motion than reactionary Business Secretary John Hutton leaped onto the airwaves to rule out any rethink of the government’s decision, claiming that it was not possible to go back on the change that was announced by Mr Brown last year in his final Budget as Chancellor.

So much for promises from new Labour ministers. Clearly they are not worth the paper they weren’t written on.

But what adds insult to injury is the vacuous nonsense that Mr Hutton spouted to justify his government’s inflexibility.

Claiming that the tax change had been part of a “balanced package” which cut the main rate of income tax by 2p to 20p, and which left families with children “significantly better off,” he continued by saying that, for those who did lose out, the scale of the losses was relatively small.

“We are talking in the worst case scenario about half a per cent of net income being the scale of the maximum loss that someone might have,” he said.

It takes little imagination to trash such a blatantly untrue statement.

Mr Pope pointed out that people with low incomes between £5,000 and £15,000 a year will pay up to £152 more tax and pensioners particularly could be hard hit.

Well, if £152 is half of 1 per cent, then the old or low paid would appear to be trousering around £30,000 a year, if Mr Hutton’s statement had any truth in it.

So Mr Hutton is, quite simply, a liar.

And his political master Mr Brown is revealed as a manipulative deceiver who will promise anything to quell dissent in Labour’s ranks, with his cronies not even waiting a week before they shamelessly renege on his pledges of a review.

The new tax rates took effect on Sunday and the biggest beneficiaries will be people earning £35,000 a year, who will be £377 a year better off, those on £30,000, who will see a £292 increase in their take-home pay, and people earning more than £45,000, who will also be paying £292 less tax a year.

But, down at the bottom of the heap, people earning between £5,931 and £15,075 will be up to £152.40 a year worse off.

However, we can console ourselves that those poor devils of struggling higher-rate taxpayers with short-term investments will see the rate at which they pay tax on those investments fall from 40 per cent to 18 per cent.

Quite possibly the only truth ever uttered by the new Labour clique was when they proclaimed themselves as the natural party of business.

For the rest of us, its a question of devil take the hindmost and, for new Labour, hindmost clearly means poorest.

Those 43 MPs whose signatures appeared on Mr Pope’s motion will have their work cut out to fight for the reinstatement of the 10p rate.

But fight they must if the gap between rich and poor is not to be widened yet again by this monstrously ineffective Labour government.

More Like Arbitrary Execution

Ellie Keen — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:40:37 +0000

During the period 1972-6, the gap in life expectancy between social classes I and V was 5.4 years for men and 4.8 years for women. By the time New Labour succeeded the Tories in government, these gaps had risen to 9.4 years and 6.3 years respectively. See tables 1 and 3 in:
‘Life expectancy by social class’, UK Government Statistics.

One of New Labour’s purported aims in office was to reduce these inequalities. Health Secretary Frank Dobson stated that “Inequality in health is the worst inequality of all.

There is no more serious inequality than knowing that you’ll die sooner because you’re badly off”; while Tony Blair himself wrote: “Our society remains scarred by inequalities. Whole communities remain cut off from the greater wealth and opportunities that others take for granted. This, in turn, fuels avoidable health inequalities. The statistics are shocking enough. Families in these communities die at a younger age and are likely to spend far more of their lives with ill-health. Behind these figures are thousands of individual stories of pain, wasted talent and potential. The costs to individuals, communities and the nation are huge. Social justice demands action”.

The interim research indicates that Labour have utterly failed in this aim. Examining Labour’s record, the British Medical Journal reported in 2005 that “inequalities in life expectancy have continued to widen” and that “When individual local authority districts are compared, the difference between the one with the lowest life expectancy (Glasgow City) and the one with the highest (East Dorset) has risen to 11 years. Since Victorian times, such inequalities have never been as high” ( ‘Health inequalities and New Labour: how the promises compare with real progress’,British Medical Journal,2005).

This week saw the publication of the third and final edition of ‘Tackling Health Inequalities’, the Department of Health’s own verdict on Labour’s efforts: ( ‘Tackling health inequalities: 2007 Status Report on the Programme for Action’,Department for Health).

It found that “The latest data for 2004–06 show that the relative gap in life expectancy between England as a whole and the fifth of areas with the worst health and deprivation indicators was wider than at the baseline (1995–97) for both males and females… For males, the relative gap is 2% wider than at the baseline (the same as 2003–05) and for females it is 11% wider than at the baseline (compared with 8 % wider in 2003–05)”.

The report also found that among babies born to families in “routine and manual” occupations, the infant mortality rate “was 17% higher than for the total population in 2004–06, compared with 18% higher in 2003–05 and 19% higher in 2002–04. It was 13% higher in the baseline period of 1997–99”. So far from eliminating health inequalities, Labour has in fact succeeded in increasing them.

Inequality, not poverty

Why is this? After all, there has been record investment in the NHS under Labour’s watch. However, as the World Health Organisation’s figures show, the US spends more on health care per capita per annum than any other country in the world ($6096 at 2004 prices), yet life expectancy is only six months greater than Cuba ($229) and five years lower than Japan ($2823), so large-scale expenditure is not in itself enough, particularly if the distribution of that spending is highly skewed.

Much of Labour’s so-called ‘investment’ has in fact simply been a transfer of public funds into private hands, via PFI and other various privatisation initiatives. However, this alone does not explain Labour’s failures.

Current research in the field of epidemiology, centred around Richard Wilkinson and Sir Michael Marmot (a New Labour adviser and author of the preface for the Tackling Health Inequalities report) is increasingly finding that it is inequality, rather than poverty, which is the key determinant of health outcomes once a certain minimum level of income has been passed (Wilkinson postulated around $5000 at 1992 prices: ( ‘Income distribution and life expectancy’,British Medical Journal,1992).

As Marmot puts it: “Autonomy –how much control you have over your life- and the opportunities you have for full social engagement and participation are crucial for health, well- being and longevity. It is inequality in these that plays a big part in producing the social gradient in health… the lower in the hierarchy you are, the less likely it is that you will have full control over your life and opportunities for full social participation. Autonomy and social participation are so important for health that their lack leads to deterioration in health”.

As the Tories redistributed wealth in favour of the rich, so health inequalities increased. Health inequalities are increasing under Labour because this process of redistribution has not reversed, and is, if anything, increasing.

(Gini coefficient, the standard statistical measure of inequality in Britain, 1979 to 2005/6. Source: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn73.pdf, p19.)

The consequences of this are not trivial. According to the winter 2007 Office of National Statistics figures, Kensington and Chelsea has the highest life expectancy of any local authority in Britain by a distance (83.1 years for men, 87.2 years for women).

By way of comparison, in the lowest ranked London borough, Islington (399th out of 432), life expectancy is 8.2 years lower for men and 7.2 years lower for women; for Birmingham those figures are 7.9 years and 6.7 years respectively; for Newcastle 7.9 years and 6.9 years; for Liverpool 9.3 years and 8.9 years; for Manchester 10.1 years and 8.6 years; and for the lowest ranked local authority, Glasgow City, 12.6 years and 10.2 years (‘Life expectancy at birth & age 65 by local area in the UK, 2004-06’).

Away with excess enemy, but no less value to property

On an even more localised level, within the London borough of Camden, life expectancy in the wards of Kentish Town, and St Pancras & Somers Town is 7.9 years lower than in Belsize ward; within Kensington and Chelsea, life expectancy in St Charles –north of the Westway- is 11.4 years lower than in Courtfield between the Fulham and Cromwell Roads ( Office for National Statistics).

Michael Marmot states in the 2005 textbook Social Determinants of Health that within Glasgow life expectancy in the poorest districts is twelve years lower than in the wealthiest.

It is Richard Wilkinson who best articulates the scale and significance of these phenomena: “We are used to feeling indignation at the human rights abuses in countries where people are imprisoned without trial, or simply disappear, but health inequalities exact a much greater toll. What would we think of a ruthless government that arbitrarily imprisoned all less well-off people for a number of years equal to the average shortening of life suffered by the less privileged in our own societies?

“Given that higher death rates are more like arbitrary execution than imprisonment, perhaps we should liken the injustice of health inequalities to that of a government that executed a significant proportion of its population each year without cause”.

Budget Defeat Over Child Poverty

JamieSW — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:07:51 +0000

In 1999 the Government said it would halve child poverty by 2010 – taking 1.7m children out of poverty. To date it has missed its targets and only removed 600,000 children from poverty. In the pre-budget briefings pouring out of Number 10 and the Treasury we were all led to believe that the Chancellor would make a major announcement today to get the Government back on course to meet its target.

Instead, the Chancellor has admitted defeat in the war against child poverty and has confirmed that the Government will not meet its 2010 target – and will leave over 2.5m children still living in poverty in the fifth richest countries in the world.

The measures announced today will only remove at most a further 250,000 children from poverty by 2010. Some of the media and other agencies have grasped at this straw argung that at least the Government’s budget proposals aren’t as bad as some thought they would be . But on analysis the situation is even more disappointing. In calculating child poverty the Government has massaged the figures by removing housing costs from the calculation. If these costs are put back the real assessment of child poverty confirms that in fact 3.5 million children will remain in poverty in our society. The TUC has rightfully expressed the deep disappointment of the trade union movement at the failure of the Government to prioritise effective action against child poverty.

At the same time the Chancellor has done virtually nothing to tackle the unfairness of our tax system. Big business benefits from the lowest corporation tax in this country in decades, which is to be cut further on 1st April. Proposals to tackle the scandal of non doms, some of whom are paying less tax than their servants, have been watered down and there are no measures to address the £97 to £150 billions the Treasury now admits to losing each year from tax avoidance.

If after eleven years in office, a Labour Government cannot meet such a basic aim of lifting our children out of poverty, many will judge this period of government as the greatest missed opportunity in the history of the Labour party. There is a growing feeling that the Government is running out of both time and ideas.

Waged London: photographer Larry Herman on his new project

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:40:33 +0000

Larry Herman was born in New York, and moved to Britain during the Vietnam War. Since then he has lived in Glasgow and Sheffield, but mostly in London.

At art school Larry trained as a sculptor. He started taking photographs in his mid-20s and has since produced several books.

In the early 1980s he stopped photography to work in steel mills, foundries and on London Underground. He returned to professional photography in 1993.

His most recent book, Land, Land, Land! looks at the living conditions for rural African Americans in the US South.

What prompted you to start the Waged London project?

I always need something to do that I think is important, something with enough scope to occupy me for the several years I take to work on my independent projects. Clearly our period of time is marked by war – but it is also marked by mass migration.

According to the United Nations, today there are more people living in towns and cities than there are living in the countryside. That will have a profound effect in the future. We are living in a world where more and more people have no other means of sustenance than selling their labour.

I’m from New York, and when I was a child New York and London used to compete for the title of the biggest city in the world.

Now they are mid-ranking cities as other huge cities have grown – though London is still one of the “heartland” cities of the world, of course.

So millions of people are being economically compelled off the land and towards the cities. They will starve to death unless they accept being forced into selling their labour.

I wanted to put that process of people selling their labour in the centre of this project. So I photograph wherever people work. I define that quite widely, but all the photographs in the project will relate to people’s working experiences in some way.

What sort of difficulties have you encountered with the project?

I had to narrow the project down, so I chose to focus on people who sell their labour by the hour, rather than salaried workers – though, at one level, that is a false demarcation.

Initially the project was called Low Wage London, but I felt that title was too subjective. For instance, I met a family with six low incomes that when combined meant they did OK. In contrast a family with one income of £18 an hour would be really struggling.

I have come across difficulties taking pictures of people in work. Managers have a lot to hide and often simply don’t want me around. Getting access can be difficult.

I don’t want to put people in any sort of jeopardy with their employer.So I do a lot of photographing from the rear or with people’s faces hidden. I also don’t photograph people without their permission and I deliberately don’t use names or even identify specific workplaces.

It’s beyond my comprehension how a person can be “illegal”. I don’t care whether they’re here with the sanction of the state or not. People have a right to be where they are simply on the basis that that’s where they are.

Is the Waged London project partly about bringing the hidden into view?

Many migrant workers certainly are hidden from view – but so, in a way, is everyone who sells their labour. The media keep us all hidden – most notably during strikes, but also in many other ways and on a daily basis.

When images of working people do emerge, they tend to be shown as entertainment, or as victims, or as people who just produce distress and heartache for us all.

For example, Africa is full of intense political activity. Millions of people struggle every day to organise a better society that can meet the needs of everyone. All of this is either ignored or reported in a way that portrays people as helpless, as passive victims and nothing more.

I am in awe of people’s dignity – the dignity that comes from an ability to put two feet on the floor every morning, but also from the determination to resist and organise.

How do your political convictions fit into your work as a documentary photographer?

I am inspired by the world as it is. I see myself as a political person who happens to be a photographer. I define myself politically.

Of course, I also have ideals of how the world should be, but my motivation and inspiration come from the reality of the world.

As a social documentary photographer, I am recording my the world around me as part of the process of influencing it.

I’m very aware that we have all sorts of things that we don’t have to fight for, because other people have fought for them in the past. But we do have to constantly defend those gains.

For instance, there is an appalling attack on women’s rights in Britain at the moment – the growth of porno‑culture, and the chipping away at the time limits on abortion.

But there is always a level of resistance that provides inspiration and a sense of dignity. If there wasn’t resistance, they wouldn’t need violence to defend the status quo.

The real thing, the interesting thing, is to photograph the world in resistance. People refusing to acquiesce, refusing to be passive. I want to move people from being the passive objects of history to being its originators.

What do you look for in an image to reflect this political commitment?

It’s important not to have anything redundant in the photographs – everything in the image must contribute to the succinct statement I’m making.

In this sense still photography is closer to poetry than to film, because it says something very precise.

I also always use captions, sometimes long ones and sometimes very brief ones. They give a context to the image and help prevent it from being used in an abusive way.

If I was the only photographer in the world, I would do things differently. But as it is, it is far too easy to photograph people with their dignity down – it is too easy to photograph degradation.

So at one level, I’m using people as metaphors to tell the world what I think of it. When I photograph, say, a cleaner in a hotel, I want that image to ram home what that person is doing in numerous different ways.

I also want the image to be aesthetically pleasing. I’m not a news photographer in the sense of simply firing the camera into events. Some news photographers criticise me for being too “arty” – but I also get art photographers criticising me for being too “newsy”!

What do you think of the idea that photography should be “neutral”?

I am recording my period of time, but I am not a camera. I don’t see my role as some kind of “community photographer”.

I want to show the reality of people’s lives. This means interpreting and editing the world in a certain way.

There is a battle of ideas in our society. Millions of people die for reasons that are eminently solvable. Natural events turn into catastrophes because of the system we live under.

So you can rebuild New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina – but not for the people who lived there, apart from those who will be needed to service the tourists.

But people are resisting everywhere – though not always in a particularly organised way. In that context, it is important to throw your lot in with the people who are resisting.

There is immense coverage of the US election, but I hardly ever hear a report that makes sense. People parachute in and observe – but they don’t relate to the reality in front of them. At best it’s pretentious and at worst downright erroneous.

They never, or rather hardly ever, interview ordinary people – instead they interview themselves. When I was last doing a project in the US I never met anyone who owned a single thing – yet those are precisely the people who are kept out of the debate.

The dominant values are those of the status quo. We are products of society where there are sides. And if you say you’re neutral, then you are in fact taking sides.

Class struggle permeates every element of our society. Sometimes it is difficult to see – but it is there. You sometimes have to fight hard to bring to light – but it is there. And in the face of class struggle there is no neutrality. You either align yourself with the oppressors of the world, or you take the opposite side.

Whenever I’ve been in a situation, I’ve chosen sides – in Ireland, the Miners’ Strike, or wars in southern Africa. And whenever I’ve done that, people have defended me back.

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Waged London will be on show at the Marxism festival of resistance in July this year. For more details about Larry‘s work go to www.larryherman.net

The Poverty of Nations

Ellie Keen — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:37:23 +0000

Why do the richest societies on earth constantly harp on their poverty? There is apparently never enough money to do all the things we would like to do. Every institution in Britain complains about “resources” (a word always qualified by “limited” and now a synonym for money) – the BBC, universities, the health service, educational provision, policing, the fight against crime, and especially, of course, the war on poverty. Scarcely a day goes by without some sombre warning about budgetary constraints, the non-existence of the bottomless purse and the illusion of the free lunch.

To a visitor from outside our market society (an increasingly implausible tourist in a globalised system), the rhetoric of perpetual indigence might come as a shock, given the highly material excesses that accompany it. We are always having to tighten our belts, make sacrifices, go without, cut our coat according to our cloth. There is always some privation to be endured, some penny-pinching measure to take, some curtailment of our plans. Treats must be foregone, merited rewards postponed. The present panic over the impending (or avoidable) “recession“ has expressed itself in apocalyptic terms – this is a time of mortgage famine and credit drought, a tsunami of bad loans, people drowning in debt, “the stench of fear and insecurity” according to one market analyst, an imagery of sickness and debility, of plagues, contagion and collapse.

This solemn perspective is bound to be reflected in people’s view of the world. There is never, even at the best of times, enough of anything to go round, and not only money: there is also a lack of recognition, a want of respect, an insufficiency of regard, an absence of consideration, a shortage of appreciation. Celebrities never get quite enough attention; the famous are always in search of more publicity. Even the rich – whose incomes have grown prodigiously in our time – dwell, not upon the power their money bestows upon them, but on all the things they still cannot afford. There is always someone in a better position, with greater prestige, of higher status and regard in the world. A state of chronic wanting, if not want, is now the common condition of early 21st century humanity.

The most privileged people on earth dwell upon the coveted goods, sensations and experiences from which the slenderness of their means estranges them. Why has the wealth of the rich world set up such an unassuagable obsession with what remains always just out of reach? How does our plenty produce such a feeling of penury, our prosperity of deprivation?

Of course, economists, like philosophers, have answers. The satisfaction of basic needs, it is claimed, simply reveals second-order wants and desires, while the fulfilment of these only uncovers new, hitherto unsuspected layers of need. The answering of these, in turn, lays bare yet more abstruse yearnings. It is all perfectly explicable. This, the grim justification goes, is human nature, the one, the only, unalterable in a world in which every other aspect of nature is supremely malleable.

Human longing has always been without limits. Throughout recorded time, the richest have professed themselves unsatisfied, even when their wealth and power were absolute. They lamented that they could not command love or longevity; they could not acquire characteristics they did not possess; could not purchase health or attain contentment. This serves as a useful last word, and sets a term to argument.

Questioning this last resting place of conventional wisdom is overdue. The limitlessness of human desire has rarely been a preoccupation of the poor, whose longings have concentrated on the material qualities of the full belly and protection against the elements. Aspirations towards the infinite have, in any case, usually been taken care of by religion, which traditionally warned against attempts to aim for what cannot be realised in this world; exhortations to which the mighty have usually assented, although this has rarely prevented them from seeking the satisfaction of their own every whim in the here and now.

What are the insistent fangs of insufficiency that gnaw at the heart and psyche of everyone in the rich world, if not the internalised mechanisms of the need for perpetual economic growth? Human need and economic necessity have changed places, so that no one can say with any certainty where the circulation of the blood ceases and the cashflow begins, whether the rhythms of the heart mimic moments of boom and bust, or how the rise and fall of our life’s breath follows the seasons of production and consumption. Our version of “human nature” is a very particular one, for it demands conformity with the nature of capitalism.

The universal sense of impoverishment in rich societies is simply the subjective expression of an objective need for more; a need as vast as it is impersonal, for it is the essential characteristic of a system and not of humanity. We are all poor in this scheme of things, for our own frail individuality is pitted against measureless engines of global production. It is now our destiny to gain as much of this abundance as we can cram into one poor limited lifetime. To frame our response in moral terms, as some do, is mistaken. Greed, avidity, eagerness for experience, sensation and novelty are names, not of vices or virtues, but of the urgencies that we inhabit and which inhabit us – the impulse towards perpetual growth and increase; “development” it is sometimes called.

This is the mirror image of a now archaic urge not to lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust do corrupt; for the amassing of treasures in this life is now our human purpose, the using up of as much of the earth’s substance as can be contained in that cramped, overcrowded space that our lives have become; for in this way, we serve the greatest need of all, which is the unstoppable energy of economic growth. The cultivation of continuous dissatisfaction and constant disappointment is the motor of this majestic machine.

“The poor you shall have with ye always” used to be regarded as a sorrowing biblical comment on the natural state of things. Whether or not it ever was “natural”, it has certainly been brought to a high art by human contriving; so much so that we have, through the mysterious alchemy of wealth, all become poor; a poverty destined to remain forever incurable, since it is inseparable from the peculiar dogmas of wealth-creationism; a faith from which few people in the world now dissent.