Peter Reydt | ukwatch.net

Forty percent of children live in poverty

Alex Doherty — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:55:43 +0000

More than 40 percent of children in the United Kingdom are living in poverty, according to the latest research. That is some 5.5 million children.

Whilst official measures of child poverty are based on a national survey of family income, the new research published by the Campaign to End Child Poverty was compiled using tax credit data. This gives the percentage of children on low incomes in local authorities and constituencies across the UK, as well as at the more local ward level in England and Wales and in local zones in Scotland.

There are two groups of children whose families receive the maximum Child Tax Credit because they have low incomes. Some 2,895,000 children are in families claiming Child Tax Credit, plus a Working Tax Credit entitlement related to their earnings. Another 2,664,000 children live in families claiming tax credits that also depend on benefits, because no one in the family is employed.

In 174 of the 646 parliamentary constituencies across the UK, more than 50 percent of children fall into these categories. Naturally there is a wide discrepancy between affluent and poorer constituencies.

Whilst the constituencies with the lowest levels of families in poverty are Buckingham and the prosperous constituency of Sheffield Hallam, both with 17 percent, the parliamentary constituency with the highest number is in Birmingham Ladywood, with 81 percent or 28,420 children living in poverty.

Other areas with high child poverty are Bethnal Green and Bow in London, with 79 percent (23,450), Bradford West with 75 percent (24,900) and Nottingham East with 68 percent (12,360).

At more localised levels, the poverty rate is even higher. For example, in the London electoral wards of Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green South and St. Dunstan’s and Stepney Green there are very high levels of child poverty, with 87 percent. When broken down still further, the concentration is even greater. For example, in the two zones selected by the Campaign to End Child Poverty in parts of Glasgow Baillieston—Central Easterhouse and North Barlarnark and Easterhouse South—98 percent of children are living in poverty.

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion has compiled the research figures by using data from August 2006. Economic developments since then will have already further increased child poverty. Rising food and energy prices and the slump of the housing market are pushing ever more people to the brink.

The Campaign to End Child Poverty, which is made up of more than 120 organisations including children’s charities, child welfare organisations, social justice groups, faith groups, trade unions and others, will stage a rally in Trafalgar Square as part of its Keep The Promise campaign on Saturday, October 4. The “promise” refers to the pledge to end child poverty made by Tony Blair when the Labour Party came to power in 1997.

At last week’s Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced plans described as “ground-breaking legislation” to enshrine in law Labour’s pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 and to end it fully by 2020.

However, Brown gave no concrete details on this legislation or the policies that would be employed by Labour to this end. And there has been no further information forthcoming. Not only is the target of halving child poverty out of reach, but figures show that it has in fact increased over the last two years by 200,000.

In reality, Brown’s pledge was made in recognition of the fact that Labour’s original promise is nowhere near being met. Nor could it be, given that the Labour government is entirely beholden to big business and the super-rich and that all its policies to this end have only increased social inequalities.

While Labour continues to make empty promises, it is fully aware that these cannot be squared with its using billions of taxpayers’ money to bail out billionaire and multimillionaire shareholders and bankers. Brown’s never-ending guarantees to do whatever is necessary to save the system will mean further handouts for failing banks and rising taxes, rising prices and deeper attacks on social benefits for workers, driving even more children into poverty.

Britain: Rising Fuel Prices Blight Millions

Ellie Keen — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:25:00 +0000

There are many ways in which poverty affects people’s quality of life. One of these is the ability to keep warm. The recent hike in oil and gas prices has seen a sharp increase in what is termed fuel poverty in the UK. The consumer group Energywatch estimates that about 4.4 million are now affected by fuel poverty, amounting to one in six people in Britain.

People are deemed to live in fuel poverty when they need to spend more than 10 percent of their income to heat and light their house. However, this rough definition is only part of a more complex situation that also involves a number of deprivations. These include poor housing stock with bad insulation and inefficient heating systems, rising fuel prices and low incomes. Fuel poverty therefore provides a good indication for the general level of poverty in society.

Based on the figures of Ofgem, which regulates electricity and gas markets in the UK, the last time fuel poverty levels were as high was in 1999, a period affected by broad world economic turmoil. Figures then fell until about 2005, but started to rise in the following years.

For many, fuel poverty is a question of life and death. The sick, the disabled and older people on low incomes are especially affected. Every year, tens of thousands die because they cannot afford to adequately heat their homes. Some 93 percent of these so-called “excess” winter deaths occur among those over the age of 65. Last winter, there were an estimated 23,900 such deaths.

Fuel poverty cannot be regarded separately from the general rise in poverty. The recent turbulence on the world markets following the US credit crunch crisis is leading to a further increase in attacks on the living conditions of millions, as the major corporations and banks seek to offset their losses onto the backs of the working class. In addition, many small and medium-sized companies are facing severe difficulties, if not being driven to the wall. This will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of workers, increasing poverty in general and fuel poverty in particular.

This general trend can be seen in the pricing policies of the six corporations that dominate the energy markets in Britain. The latest rise in fuel poverty is directly linked to a hike in prices by these major energy suppliers. Three have raised their prices significantly this year. British Gas, the UK’s biggest power provider, announced increases in gas and electricity bills of 15 percent. Npower raised its electricity prices by 12.7 percent and gas by 17.2 percent, and EDF Energy put up its electricity tariffs by 7.9 percent and gas bills by 12.9 percent. E.On, Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy are expected to follow soon. These increases will inflate household energy bills by well over £100 a year, pushing the average yearly cost to more than £1,000. It is estimated that each 1 percent increase in energy bills sends 40,000 more households into fuel poverty.

At the same time, the energy companies are making massive profits. There are many indications that the recent price hikes are nothing but a shameless attempt by these corporations to line their pockets. They seek to justify the consumer price hikes by pointing to a rise in wholesale costs for oil and gas on the world markets. While the energy companies claim they are simply passing on these extra costs to the customer, at best this is only half the truth. According to consumer groups, the current rises faced by domestic customers are far above the increased wholesale costs faced by these corporations.

British energy suppliers are holding the working class to ransom. For example, EDF claimed that “wholesale gas prices had risen 117 percent since February last year, with electricity up 90 percent over the same time,” whereas Ofgem put these figures at 31 percent for gas and 40 percent for electricity.

Research sponsored jointly by UNISON, the public service trade union, and the National Right to Fuel Campaign found that the average household prices charged to customers had increased by £2.3 billion more than the costs of producing and selling the electricity and gas that was supplied. In other European countries, such as Germany and France, price rises have been on a far lower level, even falling in some cases.

Consumer groups are demanding the government order a Competition Commission investigation into whether there has been “tacit collusion” by the power suppliers that dominate the UK market. Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, told BBC News 24 that the entire energy market should be reviewed by the Competition Commission. “The price rises we’ve seen are not justified,” he said, adding, “There’ll be more, but sadly the market is not working well and that’s leading to consumers paying much, much more than they need to.”

Following a meeting between Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Ofgem last week, a spokesman said the chancellor was “not minded” to call for an inquiry after “he had been reassured the market was working properly.”

This response reflects the contemptuous attitude of the government to the problem of fuel poverty. In 2001, the government announced a target to eradicate fuel poverty for all vulnerable and low-income households by 2010 and all other households by 2016. But in practice, it was adding to the problem by raising VAT (value-added tax) on consumer bills. A research commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes—a group of 700 industry bodies concerned with domestic energy efficiency—pointed out that electricity prices surged by 39 percent and gas prices by 61 percent between 2003 and 2006.

The eradication of fuel poverty and poverty as a whole is only possible through ending the domination of society by the transnational corporations, including the energy companies. The economy must be organised not for the profit of a few but to meet the needs of all; bringing the utility companies under the democratic control of the working class to guarantee that every household receives the basic necessities of heat and light.

No Central Control Over UK Nuclear Arsenal

Tim Holmes — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:16:42 +0000

In September, the world was stunned by news of what was described as an isolated mistake. A US Air Force B-52 bomber flew over the length of the United States armed with six cruise missiles. Each missile carried nuclear warheads that individually contained a yield of up to 150 kilotons—more than 10 times greater than the US bomb that levelled Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.

The incident evoked Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove—the black comedy starring Peter Sellers about a delusional air force commander giving the unilateral order for an unprovoked nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.

A recent report by the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Newsnight programme on the UK’s nuclear weapons evoked Kubrick’s Cold War satire once again.

In 1998, the last Royal Air Force nuclear bomb was withdrawn. Until then, the programme revealed, the RAF’s nuclear bombs were armed simply by turning a bicycle lock key with no other security on the bomb itself.

Furthermore, Newsnight explained, up to this day, there is a deliberate policy to allow British submarines the capability to launch nuclear missiles without any central control or oversight by the government.

The US, Russia and France have systems in place to prevent a Dr. Strangelove scenario of a rogue individual launching a nuclear strike. According to the BBC, this makes Britain the only nuclear power without a fail-safe.

In 1960, the American government under President Kennedy introduced a system called Permissive Action Links (PAL), which was fitted to every American nuclear bomb. To detonate a bomb. it was now necessary for the correct code to be transmitted by the US Chief of Staff and dialed into the nuclear device. Until 1991, the US submarine fleet was exempted from this arrangement. It was then that a fail-safe commission, under President Bush senior, decided to introduce PAL to the Navy as well, and by 1997 this was installed on all nuclear submarine missiles.

When there was an attempt to introduce a similar system in Britain in 1966, it led to ferocious resistance by the Royal Navy, and it was subsequently deemed unnecessary.

Newsnight showed papers from the National Archive, marked top secret and atomic. In these, the Chief Scientific Adviser Solly Zuckerman, who advised the then-Labour government’s Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, suggested that Britain needed to install PAL on its nuclear weapons to keep them safe. “The Government will need to be certain that any weapons deployed are under some form of ‘ironclad’ control,” he wrote.

But the Royal Navy was apparently deeply insulted by the implication that its officers were not be trusted absolutely: “It would be invidious to suggest…that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders,” it replied.

The plans were duly mothballed and the RAF bombs, as long as they existed, were not fitted with PAL. Even today, the Royal Navy’s nuclear devices remain free from such safeguards.

Newsnight reported that there is a deliberate policy to allow submarines the capability to launch nuclear missiles without an order from Whitehall. This is apparently so as to maintain a nuclear deterrent under conditions in which Whitehall is no more.

Britain is confident, it says, that the Dr. Strangelove scenario could never happen because the company of a British trident submarine is trained to spot a “rogue commander” and deal with him or her.

The Defence Ministry (MOD) responded to the Newsnight programme by stating that it was “satisfied that robust arrangements are in place for political control of the use of the UK’s strategic deterrent and these controls are tested and audited.”

The MOD stated that “A rigorous system of processes ensures the safety and thoroughness of the operating system for the UK nuclear deterrent.”

“Launching a Trident missile from a submarine is a complex activity,” it continued. “Prior to launch, the command and control structure on board the submarine would need to be satisfied that the Prime Minister has issued instructions to launch nuclear weapons. A coordinated effort involving key individuals from the boat’s company of 150 is required to launch the missile. The number of participants required to act in concert means that the ‘Permissive Action Link’ type safeguards found in other systems are not relevant in the SSBN domain” [emphasis added].

“We don’t discuss the detailed arrangements,” an MOD spokesman added, declining to respond to questions about the BBC report.

In short, the prime minister alone needs to be seen as having given the go-ahead for a nuclear strike. And launching a missile is apparently more complicated in Britain than it is in the US, France or elsewhere. So the wise-heads of the crew’s members will make sure no one gets the wrong idea. Even the talents of Kubrick and Sellers would find it difficult to ridicule further something that already reads like a satire.