Perhaps, there was a time when governments declared war on poverty. After all, no economy can flourish whilst masses are in poverty and can’t buy the goods and services produced by businesses. Now, the British state has declared war on low and middle income families.
The squeeze on workers has reduced their share of the gross domestic product (GDP), in the form of wages and salaries, from 65.1% in 1976 to around 50% at the end of second quarter of 2023. Between1980 and 2014, real GDP growth averaged around 2.2% per year and the economy has grown sporadically since then. However, most people have seen little benefit of that growth.
One study estimates that “if wages had continued to grow as they were before the financial crash of 2008, real average weekly earnings would be around £11,000 per year higher than they currently are – a 37 per cent lost wages gap”. The real average earnings are unchanged since 2005.
…
The war on the poor cannot provide economic or social stability. It has destroyed lives and inhibited social development. The institutions of government need to listen to saner voices, trade unions and non-governmental organisations to build a fair and just society through redistribution, higher public investment and by freeing themselves from the shackles of neoliberal economics.
Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.
LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Britain’s decision to authorise new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea was lawful, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday, dismissing a legal challenge by Greenpeace.
The environmental campaign group had argued Britain’s failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas – so-called end-use or downstream emissions – rendered its offshore energy plan unlawful.
But lawyers representing Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said at a hearing in July that ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them.
Judge David Holgate rejected Greenpeace’s case on Thursday, saying in a written ruling that the decision not to assess end-use emissions was not irrational.
There has been widespread bewilderment and anger after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has a history of lying and who trashed Parliament, was appointed as a ‘democracy adviser’.
Johnson, who was booted out of office after lying about Covid lockdown parties in Downing Street, trashing the very rules his own government had set, and who prorogued parliament, violated parliamentary codes, lied repeatedly, partied in lockdown and handed government contracts to Tory cronies, has been appointed to the advisory board of the International Democracy Union (IDU).
The IDU is a global centre-right group chaired by Stephen Harper, the former prime minister of Canada, whose stated goal is the promotion of “democracy and centre-right policies around the globe”.
On Tuesday the group announced: “The IDU is excited to announce that PM Boris Johnson has joined our Honorary Advisory Board”.
While the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been warming for decades, the annual extent of winter sea ice seemed relatively stable – compared to the Arctic. In some areas Antarctic sea ice was even increasing.
In 2018 the international scientific community agreed to produce the first marine ecosystem assessment for the Southern Ocean. We modelled the assessment process on a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). So the resulting “summary for policymakers” being released today is like an IPCC report for the Southern Ocean.
This report can now be used to guide decision-making for the protection and conservation of this vital region and the diversity of life it contains.
Sea ice is to life in the Southern Ocean as soil is to a forest. It is the foundation for Antarctic marine ecosystems.
Less sea ice is a danger to all wildlife – from krill to emperor penguins and whales.
The sea ice zone provides essential food and safe-keeping to young Antarctic krill and small fish, and seeds the expansive growth of phytoplankton in spring, nourishing the entire food web. It is a platform upon which penguins breed, seals rest, and around which whales feed.
The international bodies that manage Antarctica and the Southern Ocean under the Antarctic Treaty System urgently need better information on marine ecosystems. Our report helps fill this gap by systematically identifying options for managers to maximise the resilience of Southern Ocean ecosystems in a changing world.
An open and collaborative process
We sought input from a wide range of people across the entire Southern Ocean science community.
We sought to answer questions about the state of the whole Southern Ocean system – with an eye on the past, present and future.
Our team comprised 205 authors from 19 countries. They authored 24 peer-reviewed papers. We then distilled the findings from these papers into our summmary for policymakers.
We deliberately modelled the multi-disciplinary assessment process on a working group of the IPCC to distill the science into an easy-to-read and concise narrative for politicians and the general public alike. It provides a community assessment of levels of certainty around what we know.
We hope this “sea change” summary sets a new benchmark for translating marine research into policy responses.
Southern Ocean habitats, from the ice at the surface to the bottom of the deep sea, are changing. The warming of the ocean, decline in sea ice, melting of glaciers, collapse of ice shelves, changes in acidity, and direct human activities such as fishing, are all impacting different parts of the ocean and their inhabitants.
These organisms, from microscopic plants to whales, face a changing and challenging future. Important foundation species such as Antarctic krill are likely to decline with consequences for the whole ecosystem.
The assessment stresses climate change is the most significant driver of species and ecosystem change in the Southern Ocean and coastal Antarctica. It calls for urgent action to curb global heating and ocean acidification.
It reveals an urgent need for international investment in sustained, year-round and ocean-wide scientific assessment and observations of the health of the ocean.
We also need to develop better integrated models of how individual changes in species along with human impacts will translate to system-level change in the different food webs, communities and species.
What’s next?
Our report will be tabled at this week’s international meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in Hobart.
The commission is the international body responsible for the conservation of marine ecosystems in the Southern Ocean, with membership of 26 nations and the European Union.
It is but one of the bodies our new report can assist. Currently assessments of change in habitats, species and food webs in the Southern Ocean are compiled separately for at least ten different international organisations or processes.
The Southern Ocean is a crucial life-support system, not just for Antarctica but for the entire planet. So many other bodies will need the information we produced for decision-making in this critical decade for action on climate, including the IPCC itself.
Beyond the science, the assessment team has delivered important lessons about how coordinated, collaborative and consultative approaches can deliver ecosystem information into policymaking. Our first assessment has taken five years, but this is just the beginning. Now we’re up and running, we can continue to support evidence-based conservation of Southern Ocean ecosystems into the future.
