Australian Rules Asylum

Australia was one of the first countries to sign the 1951 UN refugee convention – and it welcomed the so-called “boat people” fleeing South Vietnam in 1976. But the course of its immigration policy changed abruptly in 2001.  The then prime minister John Howard saw a political opening and introduced the Border Protection Bill.  Tthe people coming in boats were labelled as “illegal”, rather than as asylum seekers with rights granted by the UN convention, conditioning the public to see them as criminal (and perhaps Islamic terrorists to boot), deserving of detention and punishment. The language was deliberate. If all asylum seekers are illegal, and hence criminals, then draconian policies are easier to justify. If it’s a “war” against people smugglers, then military deployments are acceptable, as is the rhetoric of national security threats.  Signatories to the UN refugee convention are obliged to assess the claims of asylum seekers reaching their shores. Australians obsessed with rules and fairness, and the queue-jumping argument resonates perfectly with a population primed to think in terms of orderly regulations, most of whom have never faced state-sponsored violence or war crimes. By this logic, whether or not you have had your hand chopped off doesn’t matter if you broke the “rules” to get to Australia.

Australia’s immigration policy has become a beacon for Europe’s far right. From France to Holland and Denmark, politicians point to the Australian model as the solution for Europe’s refugee crisis, and they are not talking about the points system that Australia uses to determine the educational and skill levels of potential immigrants. The real attraction is offshoring.

Rather than assess the asylum claims of people arriving by boat or rescuing them at sea, the Australian navy intercepts asylum seekers, towing them back or putting them into small sealed pods and sending them off in the direction of Indonesia. Those who reach Australian territory are sent to detention camps on Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Both camps are paid for by the Australian government and run by private contractors. The inmates can claim asylum there – but not in Australia – while they remain in miserable conditions of confinement designed to deter others from attempting the same journey. If people seeking asylum are never allowed to reach Australian shores, so the logic goes, they will never have a legitimate claim to refugee status in the country or access to its legal protections and welfare benefits. For far-right leaders promising to stop the hordes from storming Europe, the model has undeniable appeal.  Australia’s appeal is that it is an advanced western democracy that has managed to morally and legally outsource the processing and resettlement of refugees to poor island nations in the Pacific, where they are warehoused far from the prying eyes of the media and a population that might show them sympathy.

According to former prime minister, Tony Abbott, his government’s harsh measures – forcibly turning around refugee boats to prevent them landing, and sending asylum seekers to detention camps on remote Pacific islands – had ended the arrival of unwanted migrants in Australia. Whether those turned away died in another country’s waters or back in the countries they initially fled did not figure in his equation. By removing images of boats capsizing off Australia’s shores from local television and ensuring that more migrants seeking asylum did not arrive in the country, his work was done. Nor was he bothered by the fact that the offshore camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea were still operating, at a cost of billions of dollars. Nigel Farage called Abbott “heroic”.

Søren Espersen, the deputy leader of the nativist Danish People’s party, which became the country’s second largest party in 2015, has a very clear vision of how Denmark – and the rest of Europe – could implement the Australian model. “Tell them from the beginning … You have no future in Denmark.” It must be clear that “we don’t want to integrate them”.  To mimic Australia, they propose funding and staffing “Danish-driven refugee camps where they will be provided for, but the idea is that they should return”

Those politicians who demand what Bolkestein calls “nasty measures” and justify such policies by claiming that “The better we treat them, the more they come,”  defend them by resorting tothe spectre of an imminent civilisational threat. Rather than dealing with the migrant problem as a logistics issue they seek to foment fear by alleging European culture is endangered. They manufacture alarm that European civilisation itself might be destroyed by Muslim "invaders". The image of the brown-skinned hordes masses swamping the west has been conveniently taken up by the anti-Muslim right to encourage not merely islamophobia but xenophobia in general. The far right’s goal is to make European social benefits the exclusive property of native-born citizens, a hard-earned jackpot to be protected from the grasping hands of supposedly undeserving new arrivals.

The appeal of the Australian model for the European far right is not about “managing” migrants but the absolute commitment to keeping refugees out at all costs – defending the nation from them. The policy prescription is a simple one: turn boats back, deny entry at borders and build camps abroad. Force would be necessary.  And a lot of money. Between 2013 and 2016, the Australian government spent around A$9.6bn (£5.6bn) on intercepting migrant boats, transporting asylum seekers, and paying foreign governments to detain them overseas, thus absolving Australia of legal responsibility for their living conditions and of any obligation to grant them refugee status in Australia if their asylum claim is found to be genuine. The total cost is approximately A$400,000 (£236,000) per detained asylum seeker per year. 

 If they are intercepted by the Australian Navy and sent to a third country Australia has no further obligation to process them. After people are sent off shore, Australia wipes its hands and claims that because no one is shooting or torturing them, it has committed no sin. But the local islanders are not thrilled about their arrival. In February 2014, Reza Barati, a 23-year-old Iranian detainee, was killed during a riot when on Manus Island and local residents and police stormed the facility. An Australian-style solution to Europe’s crisis can be seen taking shape in the form of EU deals with Turkey to send back migrants arriving in Greece, and a more aggressive form of offshoring could be on the horizon. Italy is trying to make a similar deal with Libya, or, at least one of the factions that are engaged in a civil war in that divided country.  Libyan militias are already using force to stop European NGOs from rescuing stranded migrants at sea, often with Italian help. The EU has declared it a goal to “significantly reduce migratory flows by enabling the Libyan coast guard to ‘rescue’ a higher number of migrants and bring them back to Libya before they reach EU ships or EU territory”, a euphemism for what the policy analyst Mattia Toaldo calls “lightly concealed outsourcing” of Europe’s efforts to force people back to where they came from.

Migrants have become “a commodity to be captured, sold, traded and leveraged … they are hunted down by militias loyal to Libya’s UN-backed government, caged in overcrowded prisons, and sold on open markets”, as the journalist Peter Tinti has documented. Rape and torture are commonplace and sometimes streamed live online to pressure families into paying ransoms. Those who are not auctioned off or abused for ransom are often detained indefinitely in horrendous conditions at the mercy of crime syndicates and militias who sometimes “rent” detainees as indentured servants or sell them to smugglers. As with Australia and its offshore centres, what happens in Libya stays in Libya while Europe washes its hands of responsibility.

Whereas Australia turned back boats at sea, the EU is paying African nations to intercept migrants on land and send them home or detain them indefinitely in dangerous places. It has paid Niger huge sums and pledged more than $600m – including military training and equipment – to shut down smuggling routes. The copy-cat model is a dead end that will only end up funneling money to unsavoury and often criminal groups in Africa – and it is unlikely to keep migrants away the next time a major military or environmental crisis arises.

Far-right leaders in Europe rarely point to Canada as n alternative for their desired immigration policies. Canada has a highly regulated immigration system focused on skills and education and a limited number of refugee resettlement cases per year. But its policies, unlike Australia’s, have not been driven by a post-9/11 public panic about Islam, and its leading politicians have rarely stoked such sentiments for political advantage. It may have faults and flaws but it is not based on fear and hate.

Adapted and abridged from
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/how-europes-far-right-fell-in-love-with-australias-immigration-policy

The debt of house-ownership

The average mortgage term is lengthening from the traditional 25 years, according to figures from broker L&C Mortgages.

Its figures show the proportion of new buyers taking out 31 to 35-year mortgages has doubled in 10 years. The income squeeze also meant that many "needed some slack in the monthly budget", so were choosing the longer-term mortgages.

That means lower monthly repayments, but a bigger overall bill owing to the extra interest incurred. The extra total cost can be tens of thousands of pounds

The average term for a mortgage taken by a first-time buyer has risen slowly but steadily to more than 27 years.

In 2007, there were 59% of first-time buyers who had mortgage terms of 21 to 25 years. That proportion dropped to 39% this year. In contrast, mortgage terms of 31 to 35 years have been chosen by 22% of first-time buyers this year, compared with 11% in 2007.

The total cost of a £150,000 mortgage with an interest rate of 2.5% would be more than £23,000 higher by choosing a 35-year mortgage term rather than a 25-year term. If you keep the term shorter, it will save you money in the long run.

Lenders have been offering longer mortgage terms, of up to 40 years, to reflect longer working lives and life expectancy.

Sri Lankan Drought Misery

52-year-old Newton Gunathileka has never worked so hard – and earned so little. 

Gunathileka, from the Sri Lankan village of Periyakulam, in the North Western Puttalam District, is among hundreds of thousands of rural Sri Lankans who have borne the brunt of the worst drought in four decades. He has not seen any substantial rains on his farm in at least a year and has lost two harvests, resulting in financial loss and growing debts. He has now abandoned his two acres of rice paddy land and spends his time looking – mainly unsuccessfully - for other work in 40 degree Celsius heat.

"There is no work. Everyone, big or small, has lost out to the drought," he said. Gunathileka said his family was now eating some of the rice that he had put away to use as seed for the next growing season. "For the next month or two we are okay with rice, but we have been limiting eating meat, eggs, and vegetables we buy from outside. The other big problem I have is my children's higher education. If we can't get a harvest at least by the end of the year both of them will have to work," he said. His daughter is taking a course in secretarial work while the son is getting ready to sit university entrance exams. The family now survives on about Rs 800 ($5) or less a day, and both Gunathileka and his wife earn cash doing whatever work they can find. Gunathileka said that he was thinking of using the deeds to his paddy rice land as collateral and seeking a small loan from local money lenders. "The banks will not lend because I can't show any income. But if I don't get to pay back the money lenders, I lose my land," he said. Gunathileka and his wife look up to the sky each time they step out looking for work. "All we see are clear skies. All we want to see are dark clouds over the horizon," he said.

According to data by the United Nations, there are hundreds of thousands of households like Gunathileka's facing serious food security issues in Sri Lanka. With rice production for 2017 expected to be the lowest in a decade, "over 300,000 households (around 1.2 million people) are estimated to be food insecure, with many households limiting their food intake and in some cases eating just one meal a day," the United Nations said. The worst affected areas are the North Western, North Central, Northern and South Eastern Provinces that rely heavily on agriculture. The U.N report also said that household debt was rising due to the drought. A World Food Programme survey released in August said that debts of surveyed families had risen by 50 percent in the last year. Households reported that the amount of money owed in formal loans has not increased, indicating that families are turning to informal lenders for credit. The World Food Programme said in its August report that of 81,000 families surveyed in the 10 worst-hit districts, only 22 percent had access to government relief by early August.

A Food-bank Drama

The play "Food Bank As It Is," depicts stories of food poverty and threats of eviction. Written by Tara Osman, a food bank manager, the play brings to life the misery of hunger, which government data show is on the rise. It is a play based on real-life events that shows parents skipping meals to feed their children. 

One character in "Food Bank As It Is," is based on Mark O'Connor, a one-time mental health worker for the National Health Service. He suffered depression, lost his job and had no money to eat. "By the time I used a food bank, it had been five days that I'd been without food," O'Connor told the Foundation. "It's embarrassing, and you just feel like worthless. I live in London. I live in England," he added. "One of the wealthiest countries on the planet, and I'm having to beg for food."

The number of people using Britain's food banks, which provide emergency supplies, has risen amid government austerity cuts, stagnant wages and increasing living costs. The Trussell Trust, which runs a network of food banks, provided almost 1.2 million three-day food supplies in the year up to March, up by more than 70,000 from the previous 12 months. Trussell Trust data show referrals for people to receive emergency food have risen in areas where a new system overhauling benefits, universal credit, has been introduced.

The number of people going without food in Britain has been rising since 2010, said Rachel Loopstra, a nutrition lecturer at London's King's College.

"People with disabilities, lone-parent households and families with three or more children are particularly vulnerable to needing to use food banks," she explained. Suffering from hunger, people are less able to manage chronic diseases, children perform poorly in school and mental health declines, she said.

The poorest suffer the most

From Miami and Puerto Rico to Barbuda and Havana, the devastation of this year’s hurricane season across Latin America and the Caribbean serves as a reminder that the impacts of climate change know no borders. Category 5 hurricanes have brought normal life to a standstill for millions in the Caribbean and on the American mainland. Harvey, Irma and Maria have been particularly damaging. The 3.4 million inhabitants of Puerto Rico have been scrambling for basic necessities including food and water, the island of Barbuda has been rendered uninhabitable, and dozens of people are missing or dead on the UNESCO world heritage island of Dominica. The record floods across Bangladesh, India and Nepal have made life miserable for some 40 million people.  More than 1,200 people have died and many people have lost their homes, crops have been destroyed, and many workplaces have been inundated. Meanwhile, in Africa, over the last 18 months 20 countries have declared drought emergencies, with major displacement taking place across the Horn region. For developed and middle-income countries the economic losses from infrastructure alone can be massive but for countries that are least developed the impact of disasters can be severe, stripping away livelihoods and progress on health and education. Changing climate that threatens only more frequent and more severe disasters.

 Fatalities and economic losses from severe weather are rising in many of the world's poorest countries as climate change and a lack of disaster preparedness worsen threats, risk experts said.

Over the last 35 years, 60 percent of weather-related deaths globally were among people who earn $1,000 a year or less, said Ernst Rauch, a strategy expert at German reinsurance firm Munich Re. Those deaths - from disasters such as storms, floods, extreme heat, droughts and forest fires - happened largely in some of the world's poorest countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Nepal, Somalia, Madagascar and Mozambique.

Many of these countries are also seeing the biggest losses from severe weather as a percentage of their GDP, Rauch said. A 2017 ranking by Verisk Maplecroft, a British risk analysis firm, put 50 countries in its "extreme" risk category, with poor and hurricane-exposed nations in the Caribbean, Central America and Southeast Asia among the most vulnerable. One measure that has worked well in many parts of the world is strengthening building codes. Buildings that can stand up to high winds or flooding can help reduce both deaths and economic losses, alongside shifting to hardier crops, using irrigation, building levies or moving flood-threatened people out of harm's way, Rauch said. Miami is working hard on expanding its flood protection programme; $ 400 million is earmarked to finance sea pumps, improved roads and seawalls. Yet, this level of expenditure is beyond the reach of most low-income countries that stand to lose large chunks of their GDP every time they are hit by floods and storms.

 Under the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, richer nations have promised to raise $100 billion a year in funding starting from 2020 to help poorer nations cope with climate change impacts and adopt clean energy. But promised climate aid may not meet growing needs, particularly with major donors such as the United States pulling back from funding promises, the experts said.

Another challenge is that "climate finance" is being defined so broadly that, in Rauch's view, "not all the money is really making its way to reasonable solutions".

 During the last two years over 40 million people, mainly in countries which contribute least to global warming, were forced either permanently or temporarily from their homes by disasters. There is clear consensus: rising temperatures are increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, leading to more intense rainfall and flooding in some places, and drought in others. Some areas experience both. Rising and warming seas are contributing to the intensity of tropical storms worldwide. We will continue to live with the abnormal and often unforeseen consequences of existing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, for many, many years to come.  Poverty, urbanization, inefficient land use, ecosystem decline and other risk factors amplify the impacts of climate change. 

Efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce disaster risk will require global cooperation on a previously unprecedented scale as we tackle the critical task of making the planet a more resilient place to the lagging effects of greenhouse gas emissions that we will experience for years to come. Restoring the ecological balance between emissions and the natural absorptive capacity of the planet is the long-term goal. It is critical to remember that the long-term reduction of emissions is THE most important risk reduction tactic we have, and we must deliver on that ambition. Capitalism cannot achieve this goal as we are already witnessing its deficiencies. Only a world socialist society can accomplish what is necessary.

Adapted and abridged from here

http://news.trust.org/item/20171011134043-46hpj/

The Yemen Blockade

 The U.N. has warned for more than two years that Yemen is a step away from famine. The World Food Programme estimates that the number of people needing aid has risen to 20 million this year, or more than two-thirds of the population, compared with 17 million in 2016. Yemen is starving because it is a battleground in a political struggle in the Middle East and a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia and its allies entered the war in Yemen to counter Houthi fighters, a Shi'ite group backed by Iran. The U.N. Security Council effectively supported Saudi Arabia by imposing an arms embargo on the Houthi fighters; it said Yemen-bound vessels could be inspected if there were "reasonable grounds" to suspect they were carrying arms. International aid groups grew concerned about the effects of the Saudi blockade in early 2015, shortly after the Saudi-led coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan and Senegal, entered Yemen's civil war. Container shipments to Hodeida in 2015 fell to about 40 percent of their pre-war volume. Even after the U.N. grants clearances, all commercial ships have to get approval from a Saudi-managed warship stationed 61 km west of Hodeida port.

The Kota Nazar, a Singaporean ship with 636 containers of steel, paper, medicine and other goods, set sail to Hodeida, the largest cargo port in Yemen. It never got there. Like dozens of other ships carrying food and supplies to Yemen over the past 30 months, the 

Kota Nazar was stopped by a Saudi Arabian warship blocking Yemen's ports. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have been stationing naval forces in and around Yemeni waters since 2015. Western governments approved the show of military force as a way to stop arms reaching Houthi fighters trying to overthrow Yemen's internationally recognized government. The Kota Nazar had obtained U.N. clearance to sail to Hodeida in late December. But naval officers from the Saudi warship stopped and boarded it. The officers suspected that the ship carried concealed Iranian arms destined for the Houthi fighters. They ordered the Kota Nazar back to Djibouti, its previous stop. There, the vessel's crew offloaded 62 containers the coalition deemed suspicious, allowing the ship to set sail again for Hodeida in January. Then the Saudi-led coalition insisted on another inspection. Three days later, the U.N. ordered the vessel to sail to Jizan, Saudi Arabia. In Jizan, local authorities and two U.N. inspectors offloaded every container aboard the vessel and X-rayed them. They held back 27 containers with cargo they said could be used in the Yemeni military conflict. The contents included bullet-cartridge belts, as well as iron pipes, welding electrodes, motorcycle parts and other manufactured goods. In Djibouti, U.N. and local officials searched the containers the ship had left behind. They found rolled steel in nearly half of the containers and printing paper in others. Two containers carried refrigerated medicine.

In the end, the Kota Nazar could not obtain clearance to sail to Hodeida. It sailed instead to Aden, a southern port under the government's control. Aid and commercial cargo that land in Aden must cross hundreds of checkpoints on the road north to Houthi-held regions, a dangerous and expensive journey. After that incident, PIL cancelled all future voyages to Hodeida and other Houthi-held ports in the Red Sea. The world's second-biggest container shipping line, Swiss-based MSC, has also faced challenges with its journeys. One of MSC's vessels, the Himanshi, was delayed for two months in summer 2016 when it attempted to sail to Hodeida, according to the WFP and the unpublished U.N. report. The Himanshi was carrying 722 containers of goods, of which 93 held food and other aid cargo. The coalition held back the vessel in the Red Sea for 13 days until the U.N. directed it to the King Abdullah Port in Saudi Arabia. A lot of the cargo we carry in this region has a limited shelf life. For example, foodstuffs and chilled or frozen food," an MSC spokesperson said.

Other shipments have been blocked, although they contained no arms. Earlier this year, the coalition turned back four cranes the United States donated to the World Food Programme to boost aid operations at Hodeida port. The cranes would have replaced parts of the port's infrastructure destroyed by coalition airstrikes in August 2015. In January, the WFP sent the cranes on a ship to Hodeida. But the Saudi-led coalition revoked the clearance it had issued earlier that month and blocked the vessel. The ship waited at sea for 10 days before eventually sailing back to Dubai, where the cranes remain.

The blockade is exacting a dire humanitarian toll. The Saudi-led coalition's ships are preventing essential supplies from entering Yemen, even in cases where vessels are carrying no weapons, according to a confidential United Nations report and interviews with humanitarian agencies and shipping lines. A U.N. system set up in May 2016 to ease delivery of commercial goods through the blockade has failed to ensure the Yemeni people get the supplies they need.

The result is the effective isolation of Yemen, a nation of 28 million people where a quarter of the population is starving, according to the United Nations. Yemen imports more than 85 percent of its food and medicine, and commercial shipments have plunged. In the first eight months of this year, only 21 container ships sailed to Hodeida. By comparison, 54 container ships delivered twice the volume of goods in the same period last year. Before the war, 129 container ships reached the port in the first eight months of 2014. Food and medicine are being choked off. No commercial shipment of pharmaceuticals has made its way to Hodeida since a Saudi-led airstrike destroyed the port's industrial cranes in August 2015.

In the cases of the Kota Nazar and 12 other ships examined in detail by Reuters, the Saudi-led blockade turned away or severely delayed vessels carrying aid and commercial goods before they reached Yemeni ports even though the United Nations had cleared the cargo and there were no arms aboard. Seven of those vessels were carrying medicine and food in addition to other supplies.  One of the seven vessels was carrying antibiotics, surgical equipment and medication for cholera and malaria for 300,000 people. The shipment was held up for three months, during which $20,000 worth of medicine was damaged or expired, according to U.K.-based aid group Save the Children.

In July, four oil tankers carrying 71,000 tonnes of fuel, equivalent to 10 percent of Yemen's monthly fuel needs, were denied entry. Two were allowed in after five weeks.  Yemen's internationally recognized government notified the United Nations that it had closed a rebel-held oil port due to its "illegal status" and "damage to the marine environment." The government is also diverting all vessels carrying cement and iron to the Yemeni port of Aden, which is under its control,

Human Rights Watch said that the Saudi-led coalition "arbitrarily diverted or delayed" seven fuel tankers headed to Houthi-controlled ports between May and September this year. In one case, a vessel was held in a Saudi port for more than five months.

As a result of the blockade, there have been no commercial flights to Sanaa, Yemen's capital, since last summer. And two of the world's biggest container shipping lines — Swiss-based MSC and Singapore-based PIL — stopped sailing to Houthi-held ports in early 2017, because of the delays and dangers involved. PIL has not yet resumed services.

 In a confidential report submitted to the Security Council in April, U.N. investigators detailed many of the delays ships have faced getting through the blockade. In one case, a shipping company's vessels waited 396 days to dock at Hodeida, incurring $5.5 million in fuel and refrigeration costs. The U.N. report also said that the coalition of Saudi Arabia and its allies takes an average of 10 days to grant vessels permission to dock at Hodeida even when the vessels are not delayed. The U.N. Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM) in at least two private correspondences with U.N. member states and aid agencies this year, voiced frustration that the Saudi-led coalition stopped or delayed vessels they had cleared. One internal UNVIM report from March said the coalition had delayed six vessels, which were later granted access "after continuous liaison and effort."

Saudi Arabia has never formally drawn a line beyond which ships are not allowed to sail. It has not published a list of goods and materials covered by its restrictions. But it says it has the right "to take all appropriate measures to counter the threats" from Iran-supported rebels.

"Yemen is a catastrophic case. It is the man-made conflict that is driving hunger and driving the conditions for famine. Simple as that," said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme. "If we end the war, we will end the starvation."

German Strike Laws

According to article nine of the German constitution, people have the right to form groups with the goal of "upholding or improving working and economical conditions." This is the legal foundation of German trade unions. In 1955, the Federal Labor Court passed down a verdict that declared strikes "undesirable," but not illegal. Employees would no longer have to quit before they could go on strike — a landmark decision. In order to be eligible to push through demands with a strike, an employee has to work under a collective labor agreement that defines wages. A strike has to be called by a union and is only permissible if the employees' work contracts clearly mention the collective labor agreement.  If all those qualifications are fulfilled they are free to go and join the picket line. During a strike, the employment contracts of participants are suspended. That means they aren't guilty of neglecting their work duties, but it also means they don't get paid by their employer for the days they are on strike. 

These are the basic rules for regular workers, trainees and interns with employment contracts at private and state institutions like factories, department stores, public transport agencies or hospitals. But for employees of the Catholic or Protestant Church in Germany, there are different rules.

1.3 million people in Germany who work for a church-run institution sign special employment contracts. These are often rather strict, especially when they are with the Catholic Church. Many Catholic institutions don't accept employees who aren't baptized Catholics or lead a lifestyle not in line with the church's teachings, like homosexual or divorced people. This practice is not illegal since churches in Germany have the right to self-determination and can hire whomever and however they want. Those who argue against the right to strike say that employers and employees work together to spread charity and grace in the name of faith. That's why employees shouldn't feel the need to fight their employers, as they might in a capitalist context. Those in favor of strike rights for church employees counter that while churches have the right to self-determination, this does not cancel out the rights of unions to advocate for good working conditions as specified in the constitution. 

Nurses at the local hospital in Ottweiler, a small town in the western German state of Saarland, are on strike. Twenty of them stopped working on Wednesday to draw attention to the fact that they are constantly overworked. They are demanding that more nursing personnel be hired, so they can actually take breaks and not work an inhumane amount of overtime — a demand common to nurses across Germany. The special thing about this strike: the hospital in Ottweiler is a Catholic institution, and the staff members at the Marienhaus Clinic do not have the same rights to strike as non-Church employees. The move is a risky endeavor for all involved, but it's necessary, according to union activists.
"If we really want to push through improvements for nursing staff in all hospitals, then we have to go on strike here, too, now," said Michael Quetting, a representative of the regional chapter of German trade union Verdi.

Another group that does not have the same strike rights as regular employees in Germany are "Beamte," or public servants. In 2014, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed that no public servants, independent of their occupation, had the right to go on strike. According to the constitution, they fulfill special tasks in the name of the state and are in a "loyal work relationship" with their employer, which is why they cannot protest by walking off the job.

A “well-organised, coordinated and systematic...climate of fear and intimidation”.

Jyoti Sanghera, head of the Asia and Pacific region of the UN human rights office, called on Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to “stop the violence” and voiced fear that if the stateless Rohingya refugees return from Bangladesh they may be interned.

“If villages have been completely destroyed and livelihood possibilities have been destroyed, what we fear is that they may be incarcerated or detained in camps,” she told a news briefing. The UN experts documented Myanmar security forces “firing indiscriminately at Rohingya villagers, injuring and killing other innocent victims, setting houses on fire”.

“Almost all testimonies indicated that people were shot at close range and in the back while they tried to flee in panic,” the report said.

Myanmar security forces have driven out half a million Muslim Rohingya from northern Rakhine state, torching their homes, crops, and villages to prevent them from returning, the UN human rights office said. It was “highly likely” that Myanmar security forces planted landmines along the border in recent weeks to prevent Rohingya from returning.

 The UN human rights office said that “clearance operations” had begun before insurgent attacks on police posts on 25 August and included killings, torture and rape of children. UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein – who has described the government operations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” – said in a statement that the actions appeared to be “a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return”.

“Credible information indicates that the Myanmar security forces purposely destroyed the property of the Rohingyas, scorched their dwellings and entire villages in northern Rakhine State, not only to drive the population out in droves but also to prevent the fleeing Rohingya victims from returning to their homes,” the report said. It said the destruction by security forces, often joined by mobs of armed Rakhine Buddhists, of houses, fields, food stocks, crops, and livestock made the possibility of Rohingya returning to normal lives in northern Rakhine “almost impossible”. The campaign was “well-organised, coordinated and systematic” and began with Rohingya men under 40 being arrested a month earlier, creating a “climate of fear and intimidation”. The military campaign is popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya, and for Muslims in general, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged.

Failing vulnerable children

Ninety children are being taken into care every day in England and Wales and it's claimed social workers are "firefighting" the most serious cases late into the night. The latest government figures show 32,810 children were taken into care in 2017. The total number in care is a record 72,670 - up 3% on 2016. Council bosses, who are responsible for child protection services, says it's the biggest rise in seven years.

Prof Ray Jones, who works in social services improvement, says hard-pressed staff fear children are slipping through the net as workers try to keep up with rising pressures. He added, "And they are not able to work through potential cases where children are unhappy and distressed, because they are having to concentrate on cases where there is an immediate danger."

The Local Government Association says it comes as children's services face a £2bn a year funding gap by 2020. Local authorities had suffered an average 40% cuts in funding since 2010.  An estimated 600 youth centres closed between 2012 and 2016 while 1,200 children’s centres have shut since 2010.

The report added: “The symptoms of poverty are driving increased demand [for children’s services] and although councils continue to do their best to support vulnerable families and children, the lack of sustainable funding must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said austerity policies and an increasingly fragmented approach to public services were taking a toll on communities and punishing the most economically fragile households.

“The unintended consequence of the government’s austerity programme has been to drive up demand for [child protection] services as more and more families find themselves at the point of crisis with little or no early help available,” it said in a report.

 The ADCS president, Alison Michalska, said long delays for universal credit payments, alongside welfare policies such as the two-child limit and housing benefit cuts, were causing difficulties for poorer families struggling to pay for food and rent. She said," Families living in deprived areas will continue to suffer unless some flexibility can be introduced to the currently inflexible benefits regime. For example, in some local areas in which universal credit has been rolled out the wait for benefits is, in some cases, exceeding six weeks which means that families are struggling to pay for basic essentials such as food and rent. The rigidity of the benefits system also compounds the impact of insecure, erratic and unstable employment. There is a real need for government to consider how the benefit system can reflect and deal with the issues that affect families today.”

The Puerto Rican Disaster

 Officials privately admit there is a massive shortage of meals in Puerto Rico three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say that the government and its partners are only providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8m and 5.8m meals each day. More than a third of Puerto Ricans are still struggling to live without drinking water.

World Central Kitchen, founded by chef JosĂ© AndrĂ©s, cooks and distributes 90,000 meals a day through a network of local chefs and kitchens. “There is no urgency in the government response to this humanitarian crisis,” AndrĂ©s said. “They have all the officials and armed guards at headquarters, but they have no information about the island. They don’t even have a map they can share about who needs food. Fema is over-paying and it is under-delivering.”

Conditions on Puerto Rico remain dire; just 16% of islanders having access to electricity. Less than 400 miles of the island’s 5,000 miles of road are open to traffic.

Nothing Much Changes

Four out of every five Aboriginal reserves have median incomes that fall below the poverty line, according to income data from the 2016 census that provides insight into the depth of poverty facing Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

A Canadian Press review of census figures for areas identified as Indigenous communities found about 81 per cent of reserves had median incomes below the low-income measure, which Statistics Canada considers to be $22,133 for one person.

Of the 367 reserves for which there was data on total individual median incomes, 297 communities fell below the low-income measure, while just 70 registered median incomes above the de facto poverty line. At the lowest end, 27 communities reported median total incomes below $10,000.

A 2014 study found Indigenous Peoples were almost as disadvantaged as in 2006 as they were 25 years earlier in 1981.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3795083/reserves-poverty-line-census/

The Tax Cheats

Ebay is a huge international business that makes money mainly from advertisers and the commission on sales made through its auction site. The UK arm of eBay paid only £1.6m in corporation tax last year, even though the US company had total revenues from its UK operations of $1.32bn (£1bn).

The £200m revenues generated by eBay's UK arm last year, according to its accounts, came entirely from its Swiss parent, seemingly for acting as its advertising agency. The accounts describe the role of eBay UK as providing "services to eBay International by recommending market penetration and advertising strategies for the UK internal marketplace and related third party advertising sales in the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Australia". The pre-tax profit eBay UK made on those revenues in 2016 was £7.7m, according to the accounts, and it was on this figure that the UK corporation tax was levied.

The UK arm of eBay is wholly owned by eBay International, which is based in Switzerland and is itself owned by eBay in the US.

WORLD OF FREE ACCESS

World of Free Access was a document written by the late Paul Breeze, an ex-member of the Socialist Party. One of the reasons he left the Party was over the use of the traditional language of socialism, capitalism, working class, etc. After he left he wrote and published a pamphlet called  A World of Free Access which set out the case for socialism without using such words. Actually, it's quite a good exposition of the case for socialism.


Contents

1. World of Free Access: A short introduction 
2. What is wrong with the present form of society? 
3. Can the present form of society be made to run in the interests of all people?
4. World of Free Access: Our position in brief (.. ... ... ... ... ...
5. Is a world of free access really a practical and realistic proposal? ... ... ... ... ... ..
6. Will a world of free access mean sharing things out in some way so that we all get exactly the same? ...
7. What about greedy people? In a world where we can take what we want isn't it natural to grab whatever we can and hoard? Won't this lead to shortage, chaos and general irresponsibility? 
8. What would happen in the event of any possible shortage? 
9. In a world without money what would be the incentive for anyone to work? Who will produce the goods and services wc all need? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..

1. What about all the dirty, unpleasant and boring work? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
2. What would happen in the event of people as a whole not being prepared to do certain work? ..
3. Will people co-operate in a world of free access?... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
4. Is human nature a barrier to a world of free access? Isn't human nature basically bad/selfish/aggressive?...
5. What about violence, murder and rape? 
6. What about war? 
7. What about racism? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..
8. Will there be a need for some form of leadership or government in a world of free access? ... ... .
9. How will a world of free access be run? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .
10. Must a society of free access be worldwide? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..
11. How exactly can a world of free access be established?
12. Can a world of free access be brought about gradually by reforming the present form of society step by step, dealing with each problem in isolation?
13. Can a minority establish a world of free access by force?
14. Are the underdeveloped parts of the world a barrier to the establishment of a world of free access?
15. Supposing there is a majority in favour of a world of free access in one part of the world and not in another?
16. What about places where there is no democracy?
17. Supposing there is a minority violently opposed to the establishment of a world of free access?
18. Are people's attitudes and ideas really likely to change?... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
19. Is a world of free access eventually inevitable? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 
20. World of Free Access: Summary of our position 
21. What about religion?
22. World of Free Access: The Movement 

The Failed Welfare State

November marks the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge report that set out  the founding of the  Welfare State. The Socialist Party was one of the very few (perhaps the only political party) to explain and expose the hoax being perpetuated by the capitalist class and published two important critiques at the time, 'Beveridge Re-Organises Poverty' and 
  'Family Allowances: A Socialist Analysis'.

These reforms were aimed at eradicating what was called the five “giant evils”: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.  Beveridge thought taking the burden of healthcare and pension costs away from corporations and individuals and giving them to the government would increase the competitiveness of British industry while producing healthier, wealthier, more motivated and more productive workers keen to buy British goods. Seventy-five years on, however, the “five giants” are back in our daily life even if it is doubtful that they disappeared in the first instance. 

The number of people dying of starvation in the UK is on the rise. Over the summer, researchers at Oxford University surveyed food bank users for the Trussell Trust and found 80% of them with severe and chronic food insecurity, leaving them vulnerable to malnutrition and nutritional deficiency. In 2015, 984 people died from malnutrition or dehydration – that is 19 people every week, or just more than two a day, starving to death in the UK.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in May 2016, added a new measurement to its bleak scorecard: destitution – a term coined to describe someone facing two or more of the following in a month: sleeping rough, having one or no meals a day for two or more days, being unable to heat or to light your home for five or more days, going without weather-appropriate clothes or without basic toiletries.

 Across 2015, 1,252,000 people – including 312,000 children – faced destitution at some point in the year. That is roughly 2% of the population in the world’s fifth largest economy struggling to eat, keep warm and clean and find a bed for the night.

This summer, Unicef reported that nearly one in five UK children lacked sufficient safe and nutritious food. 

The official Households Below Average Income figures released in March show child poverty standing at the highest level since 2009/10, with 4 million children in the UK now living in relative poverty.

 The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) predicts absolute child poverty will rise from 15.1% in 2015-16 to 18.3% in 2020-21.

 67% of British children in poverty now live in a household where someone is in work.

Poverty levels have remained fairly constant over the past decade at roughly 21% of the population or 13 million people  but the IFS argues, these official figures are an under-estimate, with previously secure middle-class families living increasingly precarious lives and with people cycling in and out of the official definition of poverty once or twice a year.

At the end of 2016, the GMB union ran ONS data on average earnings for 170 occupations between 2007 and 2016 and found only 19 of them have seen earnings keep pace with inflation – including tax accountants, tailors, chauffeurs and air-traffic controllers. If you are a special needs teacher, a paramedic, a psychologist, a bricklayer, a journalist, a police officer, a cleaner or a vet, then your salary is going down.

 The ban on councils building houses has contributed to the shortage of homes that is slowly throttling the country – across London, the number of homes built in the six years to the end of 2016 is just 41.8% of the number of new households formed in the same period, according to a GMB analysis of government housing and planning data. Fewer people own their home either outright or with a mortgage than at any time since 1986. One-third of private rental homes in the UK fail to meet the national Decent Homes Standard – meaning they either contain safety hazards or do not have acceptable kitchen and bathroom facilities or adequate heating. More than 795,000 homes harbour severe health threats from damp and mould, pests, electrical installations, excess cold, dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, lead and other chemicals, including asbestos. One in 10 private renters were worried they would be kicked out if they made a fuss.  The Local Housing Allowancesets the level of housing benefit available for tenants in the private rented sector – restricting people to the less expensive properties. Since 2010, the maximum acceptable level of housing benefit was set in such a way that it only covers the rents of the cheapest 30% of homes. That level has been frozen until the end of the decade although rents are still climbing. In November 2016, the maximum benefit for a room in shared accommodation in Manchester, for instance, was £291 per month. For a two-bedroom flat, it was £519 per month. According to numbers from the Valuation Office Agency published the same month, the lowest rent for shared accommodation in Manchester was £325 per month, and for two bedrooms was £585 per month. Housing benefit, in other words, no longer covers people’s rent. Half of working families – roughly 3.7 million families – are cutting back on essential food and clothing to pay the rent, according to Shelter. 

Some 58,000 households were accepted as homeless in 2015/16, an increase of almost 50% over the past five years.

Prof Sir Michael Marmot’s review on health inequality, first published in 2010, found that people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in England died, on average, seven years earlier than people in the richest neighbourhoods. 
In July this year, he updated his findings – the longest life expectancy in the country was in Kensington and Chelsea where, on average, men die at 83 and women die at 86. By contrast, the lowest life expectancy was in the north of England: in Blackpool, it is 74 for men; in Manchester, it is 79 for women. Kensington and Chelsea may be the richest constituency in the country, but it is also among the most unequal. Life expectancy in the borough that included the Grenfell Tower was 14 years shorter for its poorest residents.

Babies born in the poorest areas in the UK weigh on average 200g less than those born in the richest areas, threatening their cognitive development. Babies living in poverty are more likely to die within their first year of life. Those who survive are more likely to have chronic diseases, while a 2016 report by NHS Digital found that reception-year children in the most deprived areas in England were twice as likely to be obese than children in the least deprived areas. In May, a survey of 266 paediatricians at 90 NHS trusts found two in five doctors held back on discharging a child in the previous six months because of concerns about housing or food insecurity. Only one doctor said poverty and low income did not contribute to the ill health of the children they work with, while more than two-thirds said it contributed “very much”.

In June, a survey from 40 health charities comprising the Prescription Charges Coalition found 30% of people living with long-term health conditions and paying for their prescriptions have not collected medicine due to concerns over cost, while in both England and Scotland GP coverage is lower in areas of deprivation.

The Socialist Party later published an analysis of education accusing the school system of  failing to develop children's potential. Today,  England and Northern Ireland rank in the bottom four OECD countries for literacy and numeracy among 16-24-year-olds, with employers investing less in skills than in most other EU countries. In September, 4,000 head-teachers across England wrote to parents to warn that budgets face a real-terms cut of 4.6% by 2020. According to the teaching unions, a typical primary school will be worse off annually by £52,546 and a typical secondary school will have lost £178,000 each year since 2015.

In the three months to May this year, average pay adjusted for inflation fell by 0.5% year-on-year. Unstable, precarious, low-paid and temporary jobs have a huge part to play in this. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimates that full-time employees make up just only 60% of the workforce. Around 900,000 people were on zero-hours contracts in May, according to ONS data – and since many of these people need two jobs to make ends meet, the survey found some 1.4 million zero-hours contracts in place, or 5% of all employment agreements. Someone on a zero-hours contract works, on average, 26 hours a week – with more than a quarter wanting more hours, compared with 7% of other workers. There are an estimated 1.2 million people working for recruitment agencies with companies from Sports Direct to Amazon contracting out their personnel operations to agencies such as Transline or Manpower.

As our pamphlet on Beveridge's reforms, better described as the the-organisation of poverty,  explains it "has provided a first-class political diversion and a red herring to draw across the trail of Socialism...The Beveridge proposals will not solve the poverty problem of the working-class. They will level the workers’ position as a whole, reducing the more favourably placed to a lower level and putting the worst placed on a less evil level. This is not a “new world” of hope, but a re-distribution of misery."

Figures from 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/10/beveridge-five-evils-welfare-state